Phil’s Health and Fitness Strategy
Health and fitness go hand in hand. You generally do not have one without the other. I think of good health as more than just the absence of disease and fitness as more than just mobility. Good health involves keeping all normal body functions working within acceptable limits so as to not interfere with, or limit, any activity that contributes to the quality of your life. Fitness is the capacity to engage in those activities with little probability of injury. Both begin with attitude, enthusiasm for life and the desire to live life to its fullest!
My passions in life beyond family and friends relationships are golf, water sports, skiing, painting, cooking (eating) and opining on almost any subject! As I have grown older, some body parts are showing signs of wearing out, and I have learned to appreciate the miracles of modern medicine. There are medications and treatments to normalize my diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, high triglycerides and prostate cancer, but I prefer the more holistic approach of controlling these bodily malfunctions with diet and exercise, except for the cancer which was eliminated with surgery.
One factor that has a major impact on all these other ailments is weight control. Consequently, it was incumbent on me to learn all I could about controlling my weight naturally, that is by adopting a regimen of diet and exercise that would be conducive to losing weight and keeping it off permanently! I am talking about a life style change, not some fad diet and a two week stay at some “fat farm” spa.
Calories DO COUNT! It is simple math, if you eat more calories than you burn, the excess gets stored as fat. If you burn more calories than you eat, the body naturally makes up the difference by burning off stored fat. It is called a zero net sum exchange. Once you understand this truth, the task becomes one of finding ways to make this process, called metabolism, more efficient.
The conversion of food and/or stored fat to energy is done on an “on demand” basis. So it follows that in order to lose weight we must either reduce supply (eat less) or increase demand (exercise more), or do both. There is another consideration that is rarely discussed, but can boost your weight loss efforts. There are some foods and natural hormones that help to block the adsorption of fats into body cells, and others that promote it. We should yes to the first and no to the second. Also, there are ways to exercise that maximize the energy your muscles demand from your digestive system.
There is a lot more to be learned about both diet and exercise that will help to keep you healthy and fit. There are two websites with products that I have found to be most helpful in my quest for a healthier life style, Fat Burning Furnace, is a guide to boosting your metabolism and blocking the adsorption of fats, and for exercising when ever and where ever you might be, I recommend Bodylastics!
