Discovering Dad » Diet

Fitness for Dads – The “S” Factors: Three Reasons You May Not Be Burning Fat

Jeremy — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:54:54 +0000

This article written by Contributing Writer Chris Lopez.

Your weight workouts are intense and you’re getting better and better with each passing session.

Your interval training sessions leave you dripping with sweat and out of breath.

Your diet is tight and you’re eating all the fruit, vegetables, protein & healthy fats that’s allowed.

Your a health conscious dad setting a good example for your family.

But, when you look in the mirror, you still have that annoying little extra ring around your belly that, no matter what you do, you still can’t lose.

Well, even though exercise and diet are 2 major factors in determining whether or not you get those six-pack abs, there are 3 “not-so-common” factors that could be preventing you from having a shredded physique. Take a look and see if you’ve got these “in check”…

1) Sleep – Speaking from experience, one of the most neglected areas of your life if you’re a busy parent is how much GOOD, QUALITY SLEEP you get on a nightly basis. With a nightly routine of getting dinner on the table, cleaning-up, after school programs or sports, homework, baths and bedtime stories and then “me” time, it’s no wonder that we’re a sleep-deprived society.

Sleep is nature’s way of allowing you to recover and revive your constantly changing & growing cells. Sleep acts as a catalyst to kill off bacteria, cleanse & regenerate your immune system and balance your hormones. Experts even suggest that sleep has an effect more powerful than any over-the-counter pill or potion that you would use to fight off sickness.

When it comes to weight loss, lack of sleep has been shown to decrease levels of Leptin, a hormone that suppresses appetite and increases levels of Grehlin, a hormone that tells your brain that you’re hungry. That said, it’s no wonder that if you’re up past your bedtime, you’re probably eating as well and thus, doing nothing to help your fat loss goals. Lack of sleep will also lead you towards feeling an excessive amount of…

2) Stress – Stress is a funny thing because it is one word that encompasses a myriad of factors in everyday life. Lack of sleep, strained relationships, financial troubles, a job that makes you miserable, a crappy diet, even doing the wrong type of exercise is all stress to your body. Your body, as smart a machine as it is, can only see stress as exactly that – STRESS. It has no ability to differentiate between you not getting along with your wife OR a 60-minute “slog” session on the treadmill. The end product is your body producing an excessive amount of a hormone called cortisol.

Cortisol is Fat Loss Public Enemy #1. Higher than normal levels of Cortisol in your blood is directly related to the storage of BELLY FAT.

So if you’re diet is “dialed-in” and your workouts are efficient and intense and you think you’ve been doing everything right for the past 12-weeks, but you’ve still got that little extra flab around your belly, then it’s time to take a look at your lifestyle and how you can effectively eliminate, alleviate or manage stress. Mind-body exercises like yoga, tai chi & qi gong are excellent forms of stress relief. Simplification through elimination is a great way to get rid of unwanted stressors – simply put, you assess what’s causing you stress in your life and well, eliminate it…quickly, tactfully and without causing you further stress. However, the simplest way that I’ve found to manage stress is through forms of deep breathing and/or meditation.

3) Support – The saying “No man is an island” comes to mind when it comes to having a sound support system in your fat loss efforts. If you’re a parent running a busy household, trying to get in shape and lose fat is pretty hard if you’re husband or wife wants to eat pizza and cheeseburgers every night. It’s important to make sure that you have your immediate support system (ie. The people you live with or spend the most time with) on board with your goals. That doesn’t necessarily have to mean that they have the same goals (although it helps), but that they support you and will hold you accountable to yourself when it comes to making decisions towards those goals.

That’s why communities like FitAndBusyDad.ning.com or TTMembers.com are so effective. You have the support of hundreds of like-minded individuals who share the same goals and, more often than not, have similar life experiences.

Remember, when you’re transforming your body, your entire LIFESTYLE must be altered to create good habits and ensure success. After you create the exercise habit and your diet is solid, tackle the 3 factors mentioned above and you’ll be “beach ready” in no time!

Chris Lopez is a Contributing Writer for Discovering Dad. His personal site is Fit and Busy Dad Blog. You can also follow him on Twitter @fitandbusydad.

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Fitness for Dads – Part 3: Chin-Ups

Jeremy — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:06:15 +0000

This is a guest series by Chris Lopez from Fit and Busy Dad.

How Many Can You Do? Chin-Ups Are the BEST Upper Body Exercise For Men

Those darn monkey bars were never my friend when I was a kid. I had friends who could swing off them, hang upside down on them, I even know one kid that could do a 1-arm handstand on them. Me? Not a chance. I could barely get through 2 rungs before my grip would give out and I would come crashing down to the sand.

It was embarrassing. So as a plump 10-year-old, I made a pact to myself to get better at it. To be able to swing from bar 1 to bar 10 without the embarrassment of falling on my worn out Levis that my mom had to sew knee patches on.

That summer, I worked on it. Every day before going to baseball practice I’d make sure I swung by the playground and did my round on the monkey bars. I grew that summer as well, and I went from plump to “athletically husky.” I was determined. By the time September rolled around, I went from 1 to 10 without slipping.

The cycle started again in high school when I started doing CHIN-UPS. As a then skinny freshman basketball/volleyball player, I didn’t really have access to a great gym. So one of my mentors said that chin-ups would allow me to wear my basketball jersey (without the t-shirt underneath) and not get laughed at. Determined again, I set my goals and by the time I was a senior, I was doing sets of 20. I just applied the same “monkey bar” principles to get me there.

Chin-ups are, by far, the best bodyweight-only exercise that you can do. They involve the use of almost every upper body muscle, and they are great for your abs as well.

To perform a chin-up, take a supinated (palms up) grip on a bar. From there, suspend yourself by hanging with your elbows completely locked out (this is called a “dead hang”). Brace your abs like someone was about to punch you in the gut and start pulling. You’ll want to pull yourself all the way up so that your shoulders are down and away from your ears and the bar is almost touching your chest. Lower yourself in a controlled motion and repeat.

OK, so what if you can’t do a chin-up yet? Well, there are a few things that need to happen in order for you to get there.

First, drop some weight. Let’s face it. If you’re too heavy, there’s not a lot of chance that you’re going to be able to get up there. So you need to drop some extra body fat. This is accomplished by 1) altering your diet by eating less processed food and junk and more lean protein, healthy fats and fruits & veggies and 2) using a program that combines resistance training and interval training to incinerate those extra pounds.

Second, you need to practice the movement. Just like you needed quite a few reps to learn how to throw a football properly, the same holds true for any physical motor skill – chin-ups included. PERFECT practice makes PERFECT. So buy a chin-up bar or hang one from your garage and get to it.

I know, I know. How am I supposed to practice doing a chin-up if I can’t even pull myself up? Well, there are 2 great tricks that I’ve taught my clients to use to get there. Check out the video below to learn more…

So there you go. Dropping some weight and practicing consistently using the tricks that I outlined above will definitely get you to that goal of doing your first chin-up. It’s the best way to develop that functional relative strength that we all need to be the hero in our kids’ lives. Keep at it Dads and you’ll get there in no time.

Chris Lopez, BSc HK, CSCS is a fitness expert, writer and personal trainer. He is an occasional contributor to the Globe and Mail, Maximum Fitness and Men’s Fitness Magazines and has been helping get Busy Dads in shape for 10 years since the birth of his first child. He and his wife live in Toronto, Canada with their 4 daughters. Visit Chris’ blog at FitAndBusyDad.blogspot.com or sign-up for your free report & workout at www.FitAndBusyDad.com.

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Fitness for Dads – The “S” Factors: Three Reasons You May Not Be Burning Fat Your weight workouts are intense and you’re getting better and...

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Fitness for Dads – Getting in Shape: Part 2

Jeremy — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:06:40 +0000

This is a guest post by Chris Lopez from Fit and Busy Dad.

We discovered why traditional cardiovascular exercise is a waste of time if you “don’t have the time” and why resistance training is actually a more efficient option for weight maintenance, metabolic control and overall conditioning.

So what now? What can we do specifically, that accomplishes both our goals of attaining more energy so that we don’t collapse on the couch as soon as we get home from the office AND shrinks our bellies so that they don’t uncomfortably hang over our seatbelts when we’re driving?

The “Gymless” Workout

There’s some ongoing myth out there that you need a bench press, a bunch of dumbbells and an endless number of machines if you want to get a good workout in. NOT TRUE. If you think about our military personnel and even martial artists and gymnasts, one common training method among them standouts. BODYWEIGHT TRAINING.

Male gymnasts, especially, seem to have the most well-defined and functionally sound physiques in all of these past Olympic games. This wasn’t accomplished by running on a treadmill at their local 24-Hour Fitness. In fact, I don’t think gymnasts, male or female, are even allowed to do cardio. It didn’t happen by bench pressing and working their “chest” on Mondays, their “legs” on Tuesdays and splitting up every other body part and working each individually on a separate day each week. And I can guarantee that no fancy machine or gadget has ever carved out abs like the ones you saw in Beijing.

Gymanasts, and most athletes, train by moving their body in space and using their own bodyweight as resistance. Granted the age difference, time dedication and genetics are different for gymnasts than us busy dads, but the principles still remain the same. We may not be doing iron crosses hanging from suspended rings, but we still can get the physical benefits from training like gymnasts/athletes.

First, I think it’s incredibly important to address our midsections. Addressing our “core,” as it is fondly called in the popular media these days, is the first step. Our core musculature, consisting of our abdominals, mid and low back, hip and glutes are often never trained the way they were meant to be trained – do sit-ups or crunches come to mind when I mention “ab exercises”?

Our abdominal muscles’ primary function isn’t to bring our chest into our thighs (like the movement of a traditional sit-up), it’s to hold our body upright and keep our spine stable. Therefore, the best movement to train our abdominals is really NO MOVEMENT AT ALL.

I use a series of Isometric Holds to introduce my clients to abdominal or “core” training. The circuit that I have outlined below is, by far, the best way to get your core strong, activate and use your core muscles the way they were meant to be used and fix you posture all at the same time. You can watch this circuit in action below:

After our cores get stronger, it’s time to start incorporating some basic movement exercises. To get both strength and cardiovascular results, try using a bodyweight circuit like the one outlined below…

1) Bodyweight Prisoner Squat x 10-15 reps (prisoner squats are done with your hands behind your head and your elbows pulled back so that your shoulders are squeezed together)

2) Push-ups x 10 – 15 reps

3) Prisoner Step-Ups x 10 reps per leg (put your left foot on the second step of your staircase, place your hands behind your head. Push through your left heel and step-up. Bring yourself back down in a controlled manner and perform all repetitions on one leg before switching to the other)

4) Stick-Ups x 10 (this is a great postural exercise. You can find the description HERE).

5) Jumping Jacks x 20 (yes, basic can also mean “old school”. Truth be told, JJs are a great way to get your heart rate racing to make your workout more “fat burning”)

If you’re slightly overweight, start off by using a circuit like the one I filmed below. This circuit will be less of an impact on your joints and can ease you into more intense movements like jumping jacks and step-ups.

So here’s the progression for both of the above bodyweight circuits…Time yourself on your first time through the circuit and record the time. Each successive attempt through the circuit, try to beat your time. Perform the circuit 3 times per day, 3 or 4 days per week. There’ll obviously be a point when you can’t go through the whole thing any faster. When you reach that point, it’s time to change things up.

Like I mentioned in Part 1, there are an infinite number of variations and progressions on these exercises. You can YouTube or Google “bodyweight exercises”, check my blog at FitAndBusyDad.blogspot.com (I’ve done a lot of Q’n’A and have an “Exercise of the Week Feature”) or you can check out my e-Book, “20-Minute Workouts for The World’s Busiest Dads” which contains a few circuit variations as well.

The take home message here, guys, is that not being able to get to the gym is no longer an excuse. All you need is your bodyweight and some creativity. As much as technology is propelling us into the future, man was never built to sit on a machine and move our thighs in and out against resistance. We need to be on our feet moving, lifting, pushing and pulling ourselves into better shape. No one has ever created a gym better than the one we were born with – our bodies. We just have to know how to use it the right way.

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Fitness for Dads – Getting in Shape: Part 1

Jeremy — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 02:34:49 +0000

This is a guest post by Chris Lopez from Fit and Busy Dad.

It’s all happened to us before. It’s late at night. You just get home from one of those crazy parties with the in-laws. The kids are asleep in the back (for me, all 4 of them are asleep) and you don’t want to wake them. So now, you have the task of picking them up out of their seats, laying their heavy heads on your shoulder and carrying them from the car into bed. Sound familiar? I do it almost every time we have a family get together. Sometimes I take two of them at a time. Thankfully, I’ve never had the experience of pulling my back or twisting anything in a painful fashion.

Sadly though, it happens a lot. A weird twist here, a wrong step there and before you know it you’re at the chiropractor’s office or popping Advils for the rest of the week.

I’ve made it a point to help as many busy dads as I can get back in shape and lose weight. In this two-part article series, I’ll show two types of dads that come to me for help and what I do for them.

The first dad, let’s call him “Joe,” is not overweight by any means. He’s got a slender build, a little bit of a paunch belly and has very low energy. Joe either works in an office or runs his own business, he’s got a couple of kids, comes home late from the office and passes out on the couch after dinner.

Joe’s weight is under control. He just needs to gain some energy and feel better about himself. Joe just wants to “get back in shape.” Joe is the “Skinny-Fat Dad.”

In my training practice I espouse a philosophy that if you can’t handle your own bodyweight, then you shouldn’t be lifting any external resistance (like dumbbells, barbells, machines, etc). So in my practice, I have certain benchmarks that everyone must achieve before even touching a weight.

For example, for a male between the ages of 30 and 45, you must be able to do 10 full range push-ups, 3 chin-ups, 20 bodyweight squats (where your rear end goes below parallel) and 20 lunges. If you’re unable to make these numbers, then we work to get you up to standard. You’ll notice that as we work up to the benchmarks, you’d be getting stronger and will start feeling better as well (more energy, better overall sense of well-being).

So the bottom line is that you don’t need a gym to stay in shape and you can do so in as little as 20-minutes per day with just your own body weight. After you’ve achieved the benchmarks stated above, there are a myriad of progressions and variations you can add to the above exercises to make them more challenging.

The second dad, Tim, is overweight. He was probably an athlete in high school or college. He has tendency to overeat because he still feels like he has the same metabolism that he did when he was playing football. After having a couple of kids, Tim takes a look in the mirror one day and says, “what the hell happened.”

Tim, believe it or not, should avoid cardio altogether…at least for now. I know that may come as a shock and now Jeremy is probably thinking twice about having me contribute a piece on health & exercise, but allow me to explain.

Although cardio seems like the most logical and the easiest form of exercise to drop the pounds, it actually has been proven (I can cite the studies for you if you’re a science nut like me) to be counter-productive. Even Dr. Kenneth Cooper, the pioneer of aerobic/cardio exercise and founder of the famous Cooper Institute, said that he may have been mistaken about its benefits.

***Now keep in mind that if you’re a cardio or bust type of person then doing something is far better than doing nothing at all. If that’s the case, then treadmill, elliptical or bike away! Just remember though, if you’re going to do something, why not do it the RIGHT way the first time around instead of wasting your time.***

Your body sees all strenuous exercise as stress. We use exercise to stress the body and then gain the physiological benefits of exercise as our body recovers from the stimulus. It recovers by either A – building muscle, B – burning fat or C – both. Only in that recovery phase are we actually gaining anything positive.

The actual act of exercise produces cortisol (a stress hormone directly related to storing body fat primarily in our mid-section). Therefore, the longer we exercise, the more cortisol gets produced. The more cortisol in our system (remember cortisol also gets produced by ANY stress in our lives, not just physical), the more belly fat we store. Ever notice that guy at the gym who hops on the bike for an hour everyday and looks the same as he did when he first started a year ago?

So what’s the solution then? Resistance training. The amount of “work” you are doing when you train with resistance is a lot less than that of a cardio session lasting 30, 40 or 60 minutes in length. Resistance training consists of you completing a set of an exercise and then resting. More often than not, a set will last no more than 60 seconds in length. When you add up the total amount of sets that you perform in one workout, the actual “work” time really only ends up being anywhere from 18 to 24 minutes. If you’re doing aerobic training, you’re performing the same movement for the FULL DURATION of the workout…non-stop!

When we’re exercising, we need to STOP looking at what we are gaining while we are doing the actual activity and START looking at what we gain while we’re recovering. This all boils down to the QUALITY of work we do when we’re working out and NOT the duration of the activity (QUANTITY). Training hard for 20 minutes for example, will always trump sitting on a stationary bike reading a magazine going about 20% of your maximum capacity.

The other downside to traditional aerobic training is that it’s repetitive. You are using the same muscles, performing the same movement for usually over 500 to 1000 repetitions in one session. Because there is a lack of variation, you are risking over-working some muscles and completely under-working and shutting down others. This leads to overuse injuries primarily in the ankles, knees, hips and lower back.

Also, the impact of running on your joints is very damaging. The average runner puts 3-5 times his bodyweight on one leg for each stride he takes. As mentioned above, you’re taking anywhere from 500 to 1000 strides per session. Now imagine that you’re 10 or 20lbs overweight and you’re putting 3 to 5 times your bodyweight on your poor ankles, knees, hips & low back and I can almost guarantee that you’ll get some form of overuse or impact injury in a matter of 2 weeks.

So, whether you’re a Tim or a Joe, there are smarter and effective ways to get you back into it. The thing to remember is that using repetitive movements, as intuitive as it seems, really doesn’t make much sense. And that’s exactly what riding a bike, running on a treadmill or pedaling an elliptical machine is…REPETITIVE.

Now that you’ve got the urge to get back in shape, Part 2 of this series will actually show you some of the strategies that I use to help my clients and friends get back on the road toward living a healthy and active lifestyle.

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Fitness for Dads – The “S” Factors: Three Reasons You May Not Be Burning Fat Your weight workouts are intense and you’re getting better and...

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Discovering Dad Diet Plan – Hospital Food

Jeremy — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:29:00 +0000

As most of you know, my wife Lori and I welcomed our baby girl Caitlin to the family three weeks ago. Unfortunately, she hasn’t had an easy road during her first weeks of life, so we’ve been spending most of our time shuttling back-and-forth between the hospital and home.

Throughout this time, as I described for you last week, I have struggled with stress eating, which I guess is understandable. I have tried to stick to a few of the good habits I created before this happened though. I’ve only had two sodas the entire time, and I have been drinking a ton of water. In addition, I have continued eating bananas or other fruit for breakfast before leaving the house to go to the hospital.

Lori and I have been eating lunch together most days at the hospital. And, as you can imagine, the choices are not really that good. In fact, the lack of appetizing options has probably helped me, as I’ve actually eaten a salad almost every day. The problem is that I’ve treated myself a few times to some mega-portions of rice pudding or tapioca pudding with whip cream.

Dinners have been hit-or-miss, at times eating out and others eating nothing. The hospital food has certainly been the only consistent staple item in my diet for the past few weeks, other than the 2-4 beers I’ve had almost every night and 3-5 cups of coffee each morning.

Needless to say, I was nervous about stepping on the scale today. But, here goes nothin’…..

Whew! I can’t believe it! I still would not recommend my diet to anyone else, but I guess something is working to increase my metabolism slightly (or maybe, all the salad is making me a little more….regular ).

Now, if only Caitlin would come home, and I could take her, Ty and Chani for some nice long walks to get some exercise!!!

Make sure to check out my fellow weight loss dad companions: BusyDady, PG and NukeDad.

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