Anne Keckler, Personal Trainer in Tallahassee

Sleep!

By Anne Keckler | May 8, 2008

I’ve been horrible about writing lately. I’ve been so busy with my sons’ activities!

But here is a post you might enjoy about how to get a better night’s sleep.

Sleep is so important to your health, your weight, your energy levels, and everything else. J.D. has dug up some good information that might help you.

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Are You Bored With Your Fitness Routine?

By Anne Keckler | April 22, 2008

This is the time of year when many of the New Years’ Resolutioners have already given up and quit going to the gym, exercising, or dieting. Maybe you’re thinking of doing the same, or you haven’t been to the gym for a couple of weeks, and you’re wondering how the rest of us keep going week after week, year after year.

Here are some tips to keep yourself motivated and interested in your fitness improvement program:

Change what you’re doing
Set a specific goal
Train for an event
Keep a journal
Look at your “before” photos
Look at before and after photos of others
Watch videos of others doing physical things that impress you
Remember how great you felt the last time you worked out
Think about how you want to look three to six months from now and concentrate on what it will take to get there
Hire a trainer, or find a training partner
Make it easy to stick to your guns. Keep your gym bag packed and ready to go and keep healthy, easy-to-prepare foods in the house.
Just do it!

What do you do to fight boredom? How do you keep going when you want to give up?

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Topics: Exercise, Motivation, Nutrition | 2 Comments »

Film Festivals!

By Anne Keckler | April 8, 2008

My son, Patrick, was in an FSU Masters Thesis Film last year, called Cosmos. It has been accepted to the Sarasota Film Festival, as well as the Atlanta Film Festival. So last weekend we were in the Sarasota area, attending parties and film screenings. Tomorrow we leave again to go to Atlanta.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll get periodic updates from me about these things. I thought I’d let the rest of you know why I haven’t posted anything in a while.

I’ll be back!

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Is Obesity Linked to Disease?

By Anne Keckler | April 3, 2008

My cousin, who is just a few years younger than I, was just diagnosed with diabetes a couple of days ago. When I mentioned this on another forum, one dedicated to combating fat discrimination, I was told that obesity does not lead to disease, and that thin people get diabetes, too. Now, I realize that thin people get diabetes. I also realize that there are two types of diabetes, and that there are other factors involved. But do overweight people get certain diseases more than thin people, regardless of other lifestyle factors?

I decided to investigate.

I’m a skeptic at heart. We constantly hear that obesity is linked to various diseases, including heart disease and diabetes, and I had to learn this information to pass my personal trainer certification exam. But I never stopped to question the evidence. Could it be that there is a correlation, but that no causation has been found? And if this is the case, how strong of a correlation is there? Are there other factors to consider?

I am currently researching this, and I’ll be back with some information soon.

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Recall of Total Body Essential Nutrition Products!

By Anne Keckler | March 28, 2008

THE FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH WARNS CONSUMERS OF ADVERSE REACTIONS FROM DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS

TALLAHASSEE - The Florida Department of Health is investigating an outbreak of suspect selenium poisoning associated with consumption of a dietary supplement. Total Body Essential Nutrition of Atlanta is the sole distributor of the products and has voluntarily recalled Total Body Formula in the flavors of Tropical Orange and Peach Nectar and Total Body Mega Formula in Orange/Tangerine flavor.

The liquid dietary supplement products may cause severe adverse reactions, including nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, joint pain and fatigue. These symptoms can be followed by hair loss, nail brittleness and neurological abnormalities (such as numbness and other odd sensations in the hands, arms, legs or feet). To date, 27 cases have been identified in Florida from four counties (Calhoun, Gulf, Lake and Washington).

The Total Body Formula products are sold in eight-ounce and 32-ounce plastic bottles. The Total Body Mega Formula is sold in 32-ounce plastic bottles. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is analyzing samples of the products to identify the cause of the reactions, including the possibility that the products contain excessive amounts of selenium, which is known to cause symptoms such as those described in the adverse events. Selenium, a trace mineral , is needed only in small amounts for good health.

The products have also been distributed in Alabama, California, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

DOH and the FDA advise consumers in Florida to avoid using the products immediately and to discard the bottles by placing them in a trash receptacle. Consumers who have been taking the products and have experienced adverse reactions should consult their health care professional or their local Poison Control Center at 1 800-222-1222 for medical advice.

For information about the product, consumers can call the FDA’s toll-free Food Safety Hotline at 1-888-SAFEFOOD. All suspect cases of selenium poisoning should be reported to a local county health department.

DOH promotes, protects and improves the health of all people in Florida. To learn more about DOH, visit the website at www.doh.state.fl.us.

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How to Lose Those Last Stubborn Pounds

By Anne Keckler | March 28, 2008

You’ve been working hard, dieting and exercising, and you’ve almost reached your goal weight. You only have a few pounds to go. But you’ve hit a plateau. Your weight loss has stalled, and what has been working for weeks or months just isn’t working any more!

What do you do now?

That’s the question I asked several knowledgable people at my gym, Club Legends, yesterday, including a couple of the most experienced personal trainers. I’ve put their answers in bold, and my comments to you about their answers are in italics.

How does someone who has lost weight by dieting and exercising lose that last stubborn five pounds that just aren’t coming off?

Vince Graham, Personal Trainer:

You need to take a look at your nutrition. That’s very important. Lower calories more, but be sure to keep them above 1200 calories per day. Eat breakfast every single day. Eat frequently. Get some protein at every meal.

Many people underestimate how many calories they are taking in each day. If your weight loss has stalled, you might find it helpful to keep an accurate record of your calories for a few days, to see how many you are really consuming. Weigh and measure your food, and use a good calorie counter. Fitday.com is one free option, with a database of common foods. It will also track macronutrients, water intake, and some micronutrients.

Eating breakfast, and eating frequently are both intended to keep your metabolism high. Protein prevents muscle loss while dieting.

Increase the intensity of your exercise.

By increasing weight, reps, and/or sets, you increase the intensity of your weight training. Ways to increase the intensity of your cardio include going faster, going uphill, increasing the resistance on the stationary bike, etc. Get your heartrate up higher.

Get adequate rest.

Inadequate rest increases cortisol, which is the hormone that makes your body store fat. It’s the stress hormone, because your body creates more cortisol during times of stress (such as high intensity exercise). You cannot completely avoid this, but you can reduce it. I’ll write more about this another time, but for now just remember to get plenty of sleep when you are trying to lose weight.

Stan, NASM Certified Personal Trainer, Training Manager of Club Legends

Get a personalized plan from a qualified fitness professional.

Just as you would go to a dentist or doctor for help, a qualified fitness professional is trained to help people who are trying to reach a fitness goal, such as weight loss. We keep up to date on the latest research, and we have experience in helping others like you. Of course you’re smart enough to study and learn all of this on your own, but do you really have the time to dedicate to it, or would it be better to hire someone who does just that? Hiring the right trainer can be a very smart move, and just think of how great you’ll feel when you’ve finally reached your goal — in weeks rather than months or years!

Time your meals for optimum fat loss.

I plan to write an entire article about meal timing soon. Stay tuned for that! But try some of the other suggestions here for now, and see how they work for you.

Get plenty of rest.

As I said above, this is vitally important. It reduces cortisol, thus helping you to lose fat.

Tim Durning, Bodybuilder

Increase the intensity of your workout.

We’re starting to see some things repeated here. Adequate rest. Higher intensity workout. Tim is in training for another competition in a few weeks, so he’s currently trying to shed most of his bodyfat. He likes to do “stadiums,” which means that he goes to a football stadium and runs up and down the bleachers! He also suggested increasing the reps in your workout, but keeping the weights high. Notice that this isn’t the same old “high reps with low weights” that you’ve read in all those fitness magazines (especially the women’s ones)!

Have low-carb days.

Before his last competition, Tim did a low-carb diet to shed those last few pounds of fat. This time, he’s doing it a little differently. He is alternating ultra-low-carb days with moderately low-carb days. This is often referred to as a Cyclical Ketogenic Diet.

Use the sauna.

Tim calls it the “hot box.”

Along with drinking plenty of water, sweating can help you to get rid of fat. One of the reasons for this is that the right diet and exercise program will release fatty acids into your bloodstream, and you have to then flush them out of the body. Just be careful you don’t get dehydrated. Which leads us to Tim’s last piece of advice:

Drink tons of water.

Flush out those fatty acids!

Kim Gracik, former personal trainer, really fit mom:

Eat lean protein: tuna fish, boiled egg whites, and turkey breast all work for me.

This echos Vince’s advice to eat protein at every meal. She gives specific recommendations, though, which can be helpful.

Drink lots of water.

Again, lots of water. I can’t stress this too much. If you are going to the bathroom a lot, just think of how much fat you are flushing out of your system each time.

Cardio in the morning, before breakfast.

This one is controversial.
author, Bill Philips, is a big supporter of doing cardio in the morning before breakfast. Some people undoubtedly get good results with this, and there is some research to back it up. Other people, however, feel woozy, lightheaded, and weak if they try this. For them, it might be better to eat something light before exercising in the morning. I tend to think that it’s the overall calorie balance over the course of 24 hours that matters most. You can always try it, though, and see if it works for you!

So those were my mini-interviews. I enjoyed getting the perspective of others in my gym. It was good to get my mind working on this issue, since I’ve decided to lose 5 - 10 pounds, myself. I know that my readers want to be fit and healthy, and, like me, you aren’t willing to lose weight at any cost.

Finally, here are my own tips, and the things I will be doing over the next few weeks to lose a few pounds of fat:

Drink a lot of water. Do you have water at your desk right now? Keep water near you at all times, and sip on it all day. Drink more during exercise or warm weather.
Increase the intensity of your exercise. Are you just going through the motions at this point? You might have been losing weight for a while now, and you’re tired of it, so you don’t put in a lot of effort. Or you just haven’t increased the effort in a while. Lou Schuler recommends, in his book,
, that you attempt to set some kind of personal record with each workout. Either add a rep, or add weight, or do an additional set. That’s not a bad mindset to have, really. And it can be especially important when you’re trying to lose those last few pounds. It’s one way to keep increasing the intensity of your exercise.
Eat a little less, as long as you are getting at least 1200 calories per day. 1200 seems to be the lowest you can go while still getting adequate nutrition, and even at that level you have to really work on making every bite count in order to get all of your micronutrients. Throw in a multi-vitamin, just in case. I’ll reduce calories by decreasing the amount of carbohydrate and fat that I take in, and try to keep the protein consumption relatively high. Protein powders help me to do this, especially when I’m dieting.
Learn to relax. Get enough rest, and get enough deep sleep.

Finally, I would definitely try a Cyclical Ketogenic Diet.

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Topics: Losing weight | 2 Comments »

Video Challenge!

By Anne Keckler | March 28, 2008

I’m challenging myself, and anyone else who wants to join in.

I plan to lose at least five pounds and save up a couple of hundred dollars or so to buy a decent video camera. When I have reached these goals, which should take me a couple of weeks to a month at the most, I will make a video.

ALSO!

You can vote for what kind of video you’d like to see in the comments to this post! Some of the ideas I have currently are:

The best ab exercises
My current workout
How to do a sqaut
How to do a deadlift
How to improve your bench press

Please let me know what you’d like to see!

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What’s Wrong with BMI?

By Anne Keckler | March 21, 2008

We’ve all heard that we have an obesity epidemic in the United States. It’s true that more and more children, as well as adults, are overweight. But obesity is being defined by BMI, or Body Mass Index. Is this a good indicator of obesity?

I don’t watch TV at home (but I make up for that by spending all my time on the computer), but while I was away I happened to catch a few minutes of some morning news show. The guests were talking about whether it’s possible to be fat and healthy. Rachel, author of The F-Word blog told her story of losing weight, and losing her health along with it. She was trying to attain an “average” BMI, and she ate an 800-calorie diet while exercising for two hours each day just to maintain that BMI once she reached it. Her journey took her from being 300 pounds down to 125 pounds, but in terrible health.

One thing is clear from this: thinner does not necessarily equal healthier! And BMI is a very poor indication of one’s health. As Rachel pointed out, according to some sources Tom Cruise has a BMI of 31, making him officially “obese.” Bodybuilders fall into this range or higher, too.

That’s because BMI doesn’t differentiate between weight from fat and weight from muscle and other lean body tissue! BMI is calculated only from your height and weight, period.

Did you know that you have an average to low BMI and still be overfat? There is a term used by many trainers to describe this: skinnyfat. When someone loses 175 pounds by dieting and doing endurance-style cardio exercise, she will lower her BMI but not necessarily increase her lean body mass.

That’s where resistance exercise comes into play. In order to increase your metabolism and be truly healthy, you need more than just a low weight. You need muscle! You don’t have to look like Arnold, either. Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and other leading men tend to be lean but strong. They have a gymnast or swimmer’s look, which most people find attractive.

When setting your fitness goals, ignore BMI. Ignore the number on the scale, for the most part. Set yourself a goal based on bodyfat percentage, and you’ll end up healthier in the end.

As for Rachel, she ended up increasing her calories, thus overcoming an eating disorder she had developed in her quest for an average BMI. She now weighs about 175, if I remember correctly. Unfortunately, I have no idea what she is doing for exercise, nor what her bodyfat percentage is.

For reference, here is a chart of bodyfat percentages. Remember that your own ideal body fat will depend on your body type, health, and goals.

FOR WOMEN:

Age	Athelete	Average	Overweight	Obese
20-40 yrs	12 - 20%	21 - 33%	33 - 39%	Over 39%
41-60 yrs	14 - 22%	23 - 35%	35 - 40%	Over 40%
61-79 yrs	15 - 23%	24 - 36%	36 - 42%	Over 42%

FOR MEN:

Age	Athelete	Average	Overweight	Obese
20-40 yrs	4 - 7%	8 - 19%	19 - 25%	Over 25%
41-60 yrs	7 - 10%	11 - 22%	22 - 27%	Over 27%
61-79 yrs	9 - 12%	13 - 25%	25 - 30%	Over 30%

I go into more detail about methods of measuring body fat in Methods of Assessing Fitness.

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How Your Lifestyle Affects Your Fitness

By Anne Keckler | March 19, 2008

We moms are a busy bunch of people. We’re constantly interrupted with questions, have to settle disagreements (especially if we have more than one child), drive children to activities, and chase after them on vacation. We are called upon to practice their sport with them in the back yard, to clean up after them in the house, and to stay up late to help them with homework. Whew!

So why do we gain weight and have so much trouble keeping it off?

I thought about this while I was on a trip with my family for the past few days. We drove from Tallahassee to Miami Beach, walked all over South Beach, played in the surf, attended the state boys’ gymnastics meet, drove to Orlando to go to Disney for a couple of days, and then drove home. You’d think that with all that walking around I’d have lost a few pounds. You’d be wrong.

Even though I’m sure I logged more than 10,000 steps per day, they were slow steps. You can’t hurry through the crowd at Disney when you have kids in tow. You have to take everything at a slightly more leisurely pace, even though it feels frantic trying to keep track of where everyone is and taking care of everyone’s needs. I was certainly exhausted at the end of the day, but it was more of a mental or emotional exhaustion than one brought on by strenuous physical activity.

And that’s the thing. We are often tired at the end of a long day, so we skip real exercise. Or we eat because we’re tired or slightly dehydrated. We don’t take care of ourselves the way we should because our minds are preoccupied with taking care of everyone else.

How has your lifestyle affected your fitness?

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Topics: Exercise, Losing weight | 1 Comment »

Net Carbs

By Anne Keckler | March 11, 2008

If you’ve ever been on a low-carb diet, you might be aware of the term “net carbs.” Since fiber (cellulose) is not digestible by humans, you only need to count the carbs minus the fiber. This will give you the “net carbs.”

In an effort to consume fewer net carbs and more fiber, you should make sure that most of your carbs come from whole, unrefined foods. To this end, J.D. over at GetFitSlowly compared whole grain breads commonly found in his local supermarket.

I’ll probably do a similar taste-test in the near future, with breads available here in the Tallahassee supermarkets. For now, though, I give you my famous whole grain bread recipe, which requires almost no kneading:

Keckler Bread

4 2/3 cup warm water (about 110 degrees fahrenheit)
2/3 cup honey
2 Tablespoons active dry yeast

Mix honey with warm water and sprinkle yeast over this mixture. While you’re waiting for that to get foamy, mill about 14 cups of flour (about 10 cups of hard red wheat).

Mix together the following:

2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 Tablespoon sea salt or Real Salt
2 Tablespoons liquid lecithin
1/4 teaspoon vitamin C powder

Add this to the yeast mixture. Gradually mix in flour until dough is the right consistency. The actual amount of flour will vary depending on the humidity that day, the moisture of your wheat, etc.

Knead for 10 - 12 minutes.

The dough should fill about 5 medium bread pans, so get them out and grease them. I use a mixture of liquid lecithin and olive oil. Pam works well, too. Plain old butter or lard would probably work fine.

Separate your dough into five equal balls. Roll each one out, and then form into loaves and put into the greased pans. Let the dough rise in the pans until it is about 1/2 inch above the top of the pans.

While the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. I routinely u se an oven thermometer, and I recommend it unless you’re absolutely sure your oven is accurate. I’d still recommend it because oven temperature can fluctuate with the seasons.

When the dough is risen to about 1/2 inch above the top of the pans, bake at 350 for 28 minutes. You might check it after 25. The crust should be golden brown - not too dark, the sides should be slightly pulled away from the pan, the loaf should come easily out of the pan, and when you tap the bottom it should sound hollow.

Do not slice for at least half an hour, as the inside continues to cook for that long.

This bread will provide you with plenty of bran, healthy vitamins and minerals from the germ of the wheat, and no artificial preservatives or other ingredients. I hope you’ll try it out some day soon, and let me know how you like it. It’s one of the few whole grain breads my children will eat!

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