I'm a recovering...

sugar addict:

I have a confession:... I'm a recovering sugar addict. I love sweets of many kinds and fault my love of sweets for a significant weight gain after my marriage to a country gal who knows how to make them :-). I take full responsibility, however, and even now I break out in a cold sweat at the sight of strawberry twizzlers. One taste of a strawberry twizzler and it's over. This normally self-controlled man will devour the whole pack in minutes and sit with a blurred glaze at an empty cellophane wrapper and little memory of what happened. I'm not alone, however, in my sugar addiction. According to the American Heart Association, the average American consumes over 40 LBs of sugar each year. That's 8- five pound bags of sugar a year! Quite honestly, its killing us in a variety of ways. Obesity, diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, and many other afflictions, can be traced to excess sugar consumption. Here's a couple of things to keep in mind. Sugar comes in several forms including sucrose, fructose, and high fructose corn syrup. These forms of sugar and are simple sugars that directly enter our blood as glucose. Over consumption of these sugars, taxes our pancreas which tries to compensate by spiking our insulin levels. Eventually this leads to insulin resistance and inflammation.

I know I sound like a killjoy this holiday season but here's my point; reduce your intake of sugar if you value your health! Watch out for the main culprit - high fructose Corn syrup. It's sneaky and is in many condiments, and foods you would never consider. As a friend who has a renewed interest in being healthy and fit, I would highly recommend that you watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM. You can also watch it at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sugar-The-Bitter-Truth/122420818483?v=wall.

It's a little long (over an hour) but very informative and powerful. Watch it before you go to bed as you munch on your celery stick :-). Considering my family history of diabetes, I needed an "intervention" and have made changes in my diet. In making nutritional decisions about your health, please consider reducing your sugar intake and ,of course, exercise often.

your friend

Ruffin: 1 Corithians 6: 19-20

Write it down!

One of the most helpful tasks in my weight loss success has been my journal. I record everything I eat and all my exercises in my electronic journal..DAILY. If you're serious about weight loss and fitness it's essential to track your progress with something. Some prefer to do this by hand (written) journal, however, I prefer my laptop. One of the tremendous advantages in tracking your nutrition and exercise via software, is that many programs can calculate your daily needs and project your weight loss over a future time period. I use a software package call "Fitness Assistant". I don't own stock in this company so believe me when I say that it far exceeds many of the other packages out there.

It calculates and tracks my nutrition, exercises, calorie expenditure, BMI, and helps me set goals for fitness and weight loss. I've used it for nine months and find it one of the most important tools in my quest for fitness. The progam will deduct my Basic Metabolic Rate calories (Calories just sitting and resting) automatically when I input my daily expercise. Therefore a net calorie expenditure is displayed and recorded. There are many exercise routines already in the database, however, you can add or customize it to comply with your specific routine.

Nutritional input is phenomenal. It comes with a standard database of many foods, but you can add/or customize it for additional foods and meals. I've set up some of my typical menus and logging my calories is as simple as selecting the meal.

There are many software packages that may do similar tasks, but none as economical as this software package. The point of the matter is to RECORD your daily workouts and calories. If you've never done this before, you will find how easy it is (if you're not careful) to meet your daily calorie limit. A journal helps to keep you honest...with yourself. You can try it out for free by downloading it from the website for Fitness Assistant at: http://www.x3msoftware.com. Remember Write it Down!

Polar HRM Watch

If you're tracking your calorie expenditure through
exercise, DONOT rely on the digital readouts on exercise machines and or calorie calculators on various websites. Gender, fitness, weight, and effort are all factors that impact the amount of calories that are being burned during exercise. Machines in most gyms generally include partial information (weight)to estimate calorie expenditure. This is incomplete information to adequately measure the amount of "work" you do exercising. My recommendation? Purchase a heart rate monitor watch. I own a Polar FT60 watch. It is accompained by a strap and wireless device that is straped to my chest. I entered my personal data (age, weight, height, etc) upon starting the watch. Tracking expended calories is as simple as pressing the button on the watch. The watch measures my heart rate and calculates my calorie expenditure during exercise. The faster my heart beats, the more calories are expended. The watch stores and keeps track of my progress. It's absolutely amazing.

The first time I used it I found out that my actual calorie expenditure was 60% of the reported calories shown on the digital readout of the exercise machines. So you can see, if you not carefully tracking your calories you can blow all the work you gained by that extra muffin :-).

There are several companies making these devices at a variety of models and prices. If you run, bicycle, etc., they have one for you. If you're serious about being fit, and losing weight, buy one. BTW, I have burned (throught exercise only) over 211,000 calories for this past year. Please keep in mind, however, that for weight loss...nutrition/diet is more important. More about that later.

It starts with a commitment...

...to yourself! Losing over 65lbs has significantly improved my quality of life. I no longer need blood pressure medication (from 145/90 to 112/68), have reduced my resting heart rate from 85-90 BPM to 55-60 BPM, significantly reduced my diabetes risk (which is rampant in my family), and improved my energy level immensely. I feel great and look forward to shopping for clothes now! I still have work to do... a few more pounds and some weight lifting to increase my muscle mass.

It's hard to believe, but I was just talking with someone today who mentioned that 65lbs is the average weight of a 10 year old!. Can't believe I've been walking around with a 10 year old on my shoulders all this time. :-)

For those who are striving to lose weight or just get healthy...exercise and, most importantly, EAT PROPERLY. We're all on this plane ride called life. I hope that good health will allow me "to travel" as comfortably as I can...and not in the cargo hold :-).