FITNESS BY INFLUENCE: HOW TO MOTIVATE AT HOME FITNESS BY EXAMPLE (ISSUE 26)

by Diane Gold

Everybody’s talking about fitness, motivation, abs, fruits and veggies, muscle tone. We see videos and photos of models who are size 2s and, if they are very tall, 4s. So where does that leave girls who are size 18 on their thinnest day?

At home, whether we realize it or not, we learn from the habits of our family. When our mom does no physical exercise, we don’t criticize her for it (although it never hurts to talk about it); we probably think,

“Oh, she’s not working out because she is getting older.”

When exercise is not done by one of our main role models, our mom, we are being taught that it is not important. In this day and age, we know it is necessary for health. The truth, obvious by looking around at all the senior sports programs and the 50-year-olds who look 35, is that fitness becomes more important with age. And by being an example of fitness and health, we have big influence over our daughters. We always need to be sensitive to our daughters and don’t want to boast or swagger if our daughters are struggling with weight and exercise. That is why the below actions use relatively easy action steps.

With that said, we are going to go over 3 simple non-earth shattering ways that can jump start fitness by example. They require no huge sacrifices, are best implemented together and are common sense ways we can add to our lives without much effort on our part or the part of our daughters.

EXERCISE: ROUND THE BLOCK WALK

As a mom, we can tell our daughter that we want to hear about her day, but that we are starting a new fitness program that requires walking around the block 1 time. We can say we’d like to hear about her day while we are doing that walk. If she is under 10, we can probably say,

“We’re going for a 1 walk around the block.”

If she’s between 10 and 13, we might say it a different way but can usually get it to happen.

If she’s over 13, we may have some resistance. We can keep asking her for 31 days straight to see whether, one day, she says yes. While she is saying no, we have to go out and do the walk. It’s not a marathon, remember. It’s only a block. If it’s a country road with no block divisions, approximate the distance.  This whole time, she will see that we are going out and doing 1 block only. This way, she will know she can do it and will grab motivation from our perseverance.

If medical issues preclude this activity, we can spend the same amount of time inside moving and talking with our daughter.  If psychological issues make our daughter say no because it is too far, we can make adjustments.

When she says yes and our daughter agrees to walk, we need to be observant. When we see that our daughter is slowing down and does not want to continue, don’t continue so that we get our work out in. Remember this particular activity is for our daughters with the added benefit of helping ourselves.

We can do a little coaching to see whether we can get her to walk a little more. The next time, she might get further before she says she’s had it. The time after that, she might go all the way. If she won’t budge, we can talk while heading back home.

MOTIVATION: FITNESS ACCESSORY

How often do our daughters want to buy something for themselves? When our daughters are carrying extra weight, they might not be interested in new clothing because they may not like how it looks on them. In the coming weeks, we will have a world renowned fashion expert talk about the clothing she has created because we are all beautiful.

In the meantime, let’s go to the sports store with our daughters. An alternative, depending upon where we live, would be to go to a wholesale or department store. On the way to the store, to build anticipation and to quench curiosity, we can say we wanted to get an accessory for ourselves and wanted our daughter’s opinion. Then, when we walk over to sweat bands, sun visors, wrist bands, anything that does not require trying on over the body, there will be no threat to our daughters.

Asking for our daughter’s opinion makes them important, and they will probably want to help with our workout. Don’t be surprised if requests to try on clothing come up. Depending upon the family budget, this might encouraged, even though this buying trip’s purpose is to get a colorful, new accessory for the walk. Sometimes, wanting to wear the accessory will be enough to get our daughters to say yes to everything.

IMPORTANT CALORIES: VEGETABLE JUICING

A simple food preparation is juicing, not a new concept, and one where there has never been a negative word about its benefit. In any diet, adding a little juice to the day is a healthy way to get vitamins, minerals, nutrients. If there is a lot of resistance to vegetable juice, mix it with apple.

I remember going to brunch the morning after a family celebration. The hotel buffet was serving wheatgrass shots – but they were half apple juice. One of the main reasons to drink wheatgrass juice is to utilize the live nutrients which work best on an empty stomach and without another ingredient. I had never heard of diva wheatgrass juice, which, of course, thwarts much of the mission. But, better to have diluted wheatgrass juice than none at all.

OK, I’m not suggesting wheatgrass juice as a first juice with daughter, although I do recommend it to everyone. I am suggesting gentle juicing, which is the juicing of items whose taste we already know and enjoy. Adding juicing to our kitchen teaches our daughters healthy food preparation.

Did you know that as a result of eating raw foods such as juicing, our tongue receptors become more sensitive? This is a good thing and can train us to recognize food additives and chemical substitutes.

Here’s a recipe for rhythmic carrot-orange juice (rhythmic because it has a beet). To begin, start with once a week, 4 ounces for ourselves and 2 ounces for our daughters. This should begin at the same convenient time every week. We must keep at it so that our daughters see consistent, healthy eating habits. Our persistence will be effective whether our daughters watch or partake. And it will be healthy for us in the process.

Rhythmic Carrot-Orange Juice (with a Beet) by Anahad O’Connor and Dave Lieberman’s 10 Things book. The number of units of the raw ingredient is dependent upon the size of each unit.
2 2/3 ounces of carrot juice

2 ounces of beet juice

1 1/3 ounces of fresh orange juice

Stir the juices together and serve.

(Often, to get one ounce of carrot juice, 2 carrots would be used. Let us know how many you needed.)

CONCLUSION

The beautiful thing about leading by example is what a profound but subtle effect it can have. When we set up a way to work together with our daughters on activities that are not too demanding, we will get our daughter’s thinking. At least, our daughters will know that we care about them.

As mentioned earlier, it is very important not to compete by showing off the progress we have made, unless our daughters are working right alongside of us and succeeding, too. We want to encourage, not discourage. The purpose of these small actions is for our daughters, even though the exercise and the juice will serve us well.

It’s sometimes difficult to see how difficult it might be for our daughters to move, motivate, act on their own behalf. If we invite exercise, create motivation and do family juicing with love, our daughters will be exposed to positive influence that could happily impact their fitness.

FEEDBACK

Please leave your comments below. We value them. You can also converse with us on Twitter @warriorsoweight.
______

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Moms For Healthy Daughters, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music and stress expert and a dedicated mom. She believes we are role models to our children throughout our lives. She says, “Hopefully, we are showing our true side to our daughter when we influence her, and we remember that we can always learn from our daughters.”

The Avocado Story And Fat Can Be Good (Issue 11)

by Anahad O’Connor and Dave Lieberman

(Anahad) Most of us have been programmed for years to think that cutting back on fat in every shape and form is the shortest path to better health. But the science could not be any clearer. Focus on the right kind of fat, and you’re likely to lose weight, protect your ticker, and lower your risk of all sorts of diseases. Scientists have known this is the case since at least the 1940s, when out of the devastation of World War II came one of the most crucial nutritional discoveries of the last century.

The setting was post-war Europe, southern Greece. In 1947, the Rockefeller Foundation sent researchers and humanitarian aid workers to the palm-dappled island of Crete, a land steeped in ancient history. Previously a paradise, the island had been left in near ruins after a brutal invasion and occupation by German and Italian forces. When the Rockefeller researchers arrived, they were sure they’d find rampant malnutrition. Compared to Americans, the Cretans ate like peasants. Wartime dinner tables were bereft of dairy, and protein was scarce. Instead the locals ate mostly bread, nuts, legumes, some fruits and vegetables and ample amounts of fat, some from fish and animals and a lot of it from olive oil.

But the diseases that the researchers were sure they’d find among the Cretans were nonexistent. Cardiovascular disease, cancer and other ills were almost unheard of, and life expectancy was high.

That was in stark contrast to what scientists found when they examined six other countries, especially one much further north, Finland. Physically, the Finns could not have been more different from the people of Crete. They were loggers and farmers, standing tall, strong, and rugged. Malnutrition was not a concern. Like the Cretans, the Finns ate plenty of fat, most of it from meat, milk, and their national condiment, butter. They also had cholesterol levels that were similar to what was seen in Crete. But unlike the Cretans, the Finns had extraordinary rates of heart disease, the highest in the world. Sharp chest pains were as much a part of reaching midlife in Finland as a fiftieth birthday, except that the chest pains came first. Many Finnish children knew their grandparents only from pictures.

Some researchers thought the difference was genetics, or perhaps Crete’s balmy climate. But that theory was quickly disputed. Cretans who migrated to other countries, including tropical ones like Brazil, suffered the same rates of heart disease and cancer as their new countrymen. Speculation soon turned to tobacco. The Finns were known to like their cigarettes. But later studies showed that even in rural areas of Crete where the locals smoked frequently, drank heavily, and had other coronary risk factors, cardiovascular disease was low. Like a Doberman standing sentry over its turf, something in the Cretan diet was fiercely cardio-protective.

We know from more recent studies that the Finns were torturing themselves with the principal fat in their diet, saturated fat, while their Cretan counterparts were reaping huge rewards from the type of fat they were eating, monounsaturated fat.

The benefits of monounsaturated fat cannot be overstated. The medical literature on what it can do for you is enormous. It lowers bad cholesterol, raises the good kind, reduces inflammation, and prevents heart disease. Compared with the artery-gumming effects of saturated fat, it acts like arterial drain cleaner, keeping blood vessels clear and reducing harmful deposits. That’s the kind of fat anyone could love.

Balance may be a good thing, but experts say that when it comes to your fat intake, you definitely want the scales to tip heavily in favor of monounsaturated fat. Ask most people where they can find them, however, and beyond a mention of olive or canola oil, you’re almost guaranteed a blank stare. So consider yourself a Rockefeller scientist, on the verge of another great discovery. One of nature’s most abundant and perhaps surprising sources of monounsaturated gold is a food that plays almost no role in the average person’s diet: avocados. If the only time you eat them is in guacamole on Super Bowl Sunday, you’re making a huge mistake, like limiting green veggies to St. Paddy’s Day.

It’s time to make some room in your culinary repertoire.

Ounce for ounce, avocados have more fat than virtually any other fruit, which is why most people typically avoid them, busting them out in the kitchen only a couple times a year for football or Cinco de Mayo.

Avocados collect dust on supermarket shelves the rest of the year, making only brief appearances in California rolls and burritos, as we fill our plates with foods that are nutritionally inferior.
Avocados may be high in fat, but the bulk of it is monounsaturated; and, like all plant foods, they contain no cholesterol. In fact, with their extremely high levels of fiber, about 30 percent of the recommended daily amount in a single cup (the most of any fruit); they actually work to lower your cholesterol.

But it gets better. Half an avocado has only 150 calories. That’s less than a small tier of [fast food] fries (230 calories), and amazingly, it’s even less than a single serving of most [creamy] salad dressings (170 to 190 calories), which also come loaded with sodium and both trans and saturated fats. Why dump that on a perfectly healthy salad when you can top it off instead with the best fat possible in the form of a few slices of avocado?

If every American made that decision, our health and nutritional landscape would look a lot different. According to a joint report by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, as many as a hundred thousand cardiac deaths in the United States could be prevented every year if people replaced the bad fats in their diet, particularly trans fats, with monounsaturated fat and its similarly healthy sidekick, non-hydrogenated polyunsaturated fat.

Then there’s potassium, the blood-pressure-reducing mineral that bananas are famous for. Bananas are a wonderful food, but avocados contain about 60 % more potassium. Like carrots in a candy store, avocados rarely get their due.

Consider avocados something of a culinary triple threat: tasty, versatile, and an excellent stand-in for other fats. As a health reporter who’s been through the studies and examined the science, I was sold a long time ago. But for all my good intentions, every time I experimented with avocados I would find myself right back in the same place: looking for … chips.

I just couldn’t seem to break out of the guacamole rut.

So I turned to Dave, who had dabbled only occasionally with avocados but quickly came around when he discovered their nutritional profile. In fact, he said, he had wanted to put them to good use all along.

(Dave) When I lived in Los Angeles, I thought I had entered an avocado Nirvana, because I had a big, beautiful avocado tree growing right on my deck. It was heavy with fat, green avocados. But I wasn’t the only one who had designs on them. Like clockwork, every time the avocados were ready to pick, I’d walk out onto the deck to find that every last one of them was gone, save for a few sad casualties left on the porch that were riddled with little tooth marks. That’s when I discovered I had squirrels. So much for my avocado heaven! That is, until now. Anahad finally gave me another good reason to dream up a bunch of ways to use avocado.

I’ve always loved avocados, but it wasn’t until I finally got around to experimenting with them that I realized just how truly versatile they are. Like most Americans, I’ve been pretty narrow in my avocado repertoire, sticking to salads, sandwiches, and dips. But …there’s a wide range of uses for avocado, from serving it hot in stews and soups to making it the starting point for delicious smoothies and desserts.

Preparing avocado in a sweet way was the most eye-opening part of this exploration for me. But in many parts of the world, particularly in South America and South Asia, enjoying avocado as a dessert with nothing more than some sugar …is de rigueur.

Treating avocado as a luscious dessert makes sense, considering its velvety richness. This heart-healthy fat content and mild flavor is exactly what makes avocado such a versatile ingredient. …With endless uses, avocado has everything you need to make it a staple at lunch, dinner and dessert.

Publisher’s Note:
It always seemed to me that avocados tasted so rich so that we would eat them and get full of good, healthy fat so that we could curb our appetites from the fullness we felt.

FEEDBACK
Please leave your comments below so others can share what you think.
______

ANAHAD O’CONNOR

Anahad has been writing for the Science Section at the New York Times. He is passionate about investigative science and fitness reporting. He is one of our panelists whose full bio you will find in the Experts section. Check our Resources Tab to purchase The 10 Things You Need To Eat.

DAVE LIEBERMAN

Through watching his father cook, Dave started his relationship with food. He went from hosting a campus cooking show at Yale to hosting shows for the Food Network and authoring several books. He works as a personal chef in New York, NY.

Copyright © [2012] by [WarriorsOfWeight.com] – All Rights Reserved.
Click here to subscribe to this newsletter.