August 6, 2012: Day 5 of 30

Decent day today.  The next two weeks at work will be long, but I am happier than I have been in months.  I am completely comfortable with my decision to leave my job at the bank and become the Finance Director at Castle Creations.  All is well.

8/6/2012: Day 5 of 30
Weight: 181.4
Today's calorie count: 1555
Morning exercise: Strength Training, see Day 2
Evening exercise: Day off
Alcohol consumption: None
Younger Next Year pages read: 20
Notes from book: 
In this 20 pages of the book Chris starts to define what he means by, "exercise six times a week."  First, they give the universal advice, "See your doctor first."  I suppose that is a good idea, but does anybody really do that?  I saw a doctor a little less than two years ago for a physical and a very thorough exam of my heart, including looking at it with a sonogram after taking a stress test.  It was fascinating getting to watch my heart pump and looking into the various openings and arteries.  I had the tests done because I had unexplained pains in my chest and the doctor was worried enough that he wanted to take a look.  It turns out that my heart and arteries are fine.  In fact, the doctor that ran the test said that my heart was in much better shape than most women my age, in spite of my extra weight.  He showed me a couple of spots where it was typical for there to be build up on the walls of the arteries, and there was none.  He basically said that when it came to my heart, I didn't have anything to worry about.  I guess I'm hoping that that clean bill of health a couple of years ago was close enough to, "See my doctor first," to satisfy that requirement.

The book recommends starting out by doing mild aerobic exercise six days a week, particularly if you are currently not exercising at all.  Basically, at the very beginning, for a couple of weeks you are just getting your feet under you for an hour, six days a week.  As you get comfortable exercising, start pushing.  Within a few weeks you should be pushing it so that the exercise feels heavy, but that means heavy for you, and that can vary widely from person to person.  For some, it means a 4 mile walk on the beach, for others, it's a six mile run.  The point is to get out there six days a week, every week, and you should be breathing heavily while you're doing it.  The book cautions about over-doing it.  Injuries can take months or years to recover from.  But don't under-do it either or you will get bored and quit.

Chris talks about setting reasonable fitness goals.  While winning a triathlon would provide an amazing sense of accomplishment, you may wreck your body getting there.  Set a goal of fitness that will carry you throughout the rest of your long life, that will give you the ability to do all of the things you want to do into your 80s and 90s.  It's not a competition and it's not athletics, it's a lifestyle.  Getting out there and exercising every day is about feeling good, all of the time.  Chris' advice is to exercise for an hour a day six days a week (and they get more specific about the specific type of exercise later in the book) for a year or two before deciding to take on any really tremendous fitness feats.  At that point, after a couple of years of regular exercise and when you are feeling really good, then think about how much effort you are willing to put in to take it to the next level.  As he puts it, "Intensity reaps great and sudden rewards; I love the feeling after a 70-mile bike ride.  Or a hellish climb.  But please remember this:  Consistency trumps intensity every single time.  It is far, far more important to find a good level for you - and stay there for the rest of your life - than to dip too deep into the intensity experience."

There are many recommended aerobic exercises including endurance machines at the gym (treadmills, elliptical machines, stair-climbers, skiing machines, rowing machines, etc...), jogging & running, and what Chris refers to as the healing sports such as swimming, cycling and cross country skiing.  Doing some combination of these is great.

The authors state that one of the problems that they have encountered when doing the research to write this book is the great number of women that lie to themselves about how much they exercise.  It turns out that women tend to overestimate the exercise they are getting.  It is important to remember that in this book exercise means an hour of continued exercise that raises the heart rate and makes your breathing heavy.  The book gets more technical soon regarding what heart rate we should be targeting, but we are not talking about house cleaning or gardening, here.  I mean, I suppose it is possible to do aerobic house cleaning - but you'd have to wear a heart monitor to prove to yourself that you have an elevated heart rate for the whole hour.  I can see me now, flying through the house, scrubbing while doing squats, to keep my heart rate up.  Yeah...not likely.  Anyway, the point is you are not likely to get the benefits of the type of exercise that Chris and Harry are talking about without actually putting on your gym shoes and making a concentrated effort to exercise for an hour.  Every day.  For the rest of your life.

The last few pages that I read last night were written by Harry (which is what Chris calls Dr. Henry Lodge).  He talks about the biology of exercise and gets into a cellular discussion about bacterial mitochondria burning oxygen, which "gave birth to aerobic metabolism."  He states that, "Aerobic fitness is all about making more energy in the muscles.  That means building more mitochondria and bringing them more fuel and oxygen."   He goes on to say that mitochondria burn either fat or glucose.  At rest and with light exercise we burn 95% fat and 5% glucose.  As we exercise harder, we are still burning fat in the background, but we are also burning glucose.  With this harder exercise our circulation is getting a double workout, first bringing in more glucose and the oxygen necessary to burn it, then carrying away the exhaust, especially the carbon dioxide.  Harry stresses, over and over again, that circulation (not our hearts or our lungs) is the basic infrastructure of exercise.  Steady aerobic exercise, over months and years, produces dramatic improvements in our circulatory system, which is one of the ways exercise saves our lives. 

Have a great Tuesday!!

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