January is “shape up month.” This is the time to add getting in shape to your resolutions. Not only does it make sense, but it also is a good investment of your time and energy. Shaping up isn’t just about getting to the gym regularly. It is about adopting a healthy lifestyle and being active.
There are so many little things you can do to add steps or burn calories every day. Your challenge is to seek them out. For example, you can park farther away from store entrances when you’re out shopping. Or, if you work in an office, walk over and talk to a colleague instead of sending an email. When watching TV, move around during the commercial breaks.
It’s when we become complacent, always seeking the easy way, that we get into trouble. When weather disrupts our regular exercise routine, we get into trouble. The key is to plan for the disruptions and temptations. Voicing your healthy lifestyle intentions to friends and family is one way to help you plan for success.
If good health is your top desire for 2015, know that the healthy changes you make for yourself are good for your family, or future family, as well. Adults and children, as young as infants, can reap the benefits of healthy eating, daily physical activity and adequate sleep. If reaching a healthy weight is your new year’s resolution, make your goal a family affair.
Weight loss experts and even the U.S. Government have long advocated a combined approach of a healthy diet plus exercise to achieve weight loss. For example, if you start out by cutting 200 calories from your daily diet, to reach the same calorie target deficit of 500 calories with exercise will take considerably less time. You would need to walk for only 45 to 60 minutes to burn the additional 300 calories. Using this combined approach of diet plus exercise, the total calorie deficit will achieve the same 500 calories, but will take 40 percent less time devoted to exercise.
But what about exercising to prevent weight gain? If you have managed to lose a significant amount of weight, how much exercise is required to prevent gaining it all back?
A recent study confirmed what Shape Up America!, a non-profit organization, has been saying for years: to prevent weight gain, exercise helps for sure, but it takes more than you think.
To avoid weight gain, studies suggest that more exercise is typically needed along with continued commitment to a healthy diet. Shape Up America! recommends taking a combined exercise approach:
Adhere to this program for six months and carefully monitor your weight. If your weight is still creeping up, step up your exercise commitment a bit more.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest issued a new diet report card in 2013: Americans are eating more chicken and yogurt and gradually cutting down on sugars, shortening, beef, whole milk and white flour. However, Americans are still consuming 450 calories more a day than in 1970, using more fats and oils, and not making much progress in eating more fruits and vegetables.
Total consumption of fats and oils continue to rise but the types of fats are changing for the better. Salad and cooking oils are replacing shortening (saturated fat) and margarine (unhealthy trans-fat). Americans are eating less beef but still more than poultry and seafood. Less whole milk is being consumed and is being replaced by lower fat and fat-free milk, but lots of cheese continues to be eaten. Since 1970, cheese consumption rose from eight pounds per person per year to 23 pounds in 2013!
During the 1980s, Americans began to eat a lot larger quantities of vegetables but leveled off in the 1990s. More grains, such as breads, cereal, pasta and pizza are being consumed. One positive note is that a high of 89 pounds per person of sugar was consumed in 1999 but has been lowered to 78 pounds of mostly sugar and high-fructose corn syrup consumed per person in 2013. This is still considered very high, but at least the trend is tapering down.
To shape up, we need to eat more fruits and vegetables, choose low-fat or fat-free dairy products instead of full fat, replace white flour with whole wheat flour and whole grains, include healthy fats from nuts and seeds, eat less fatty meats and sweets and decrease the intake of sugary drinks.