Top 10 Healthy New Years Resolutions

Well 2008 is just about over. That means it's time to make your annual New Years Resolutions.

With that in mind, I put together a Top 10 List of things you can do to make 2009 a little healthier.

Here it is:

1. Exercise your heart 4 or 5 times a week for at least 20 minutes.

2. Strength train 2 or 3 times per week with machines, dumbbells, or bands.

3. Do balance exercises at least 4 days per week.  Click here to learn more.

4. Stretch at least 4 days per week for 5-10 minutes.

5. Breathe 5 or 10 slow breaths each day.

6. Eat a little dark chocolate every day.

7. Eat more healthy fats like nuts, avocados, and olive oil.

8. Add more vegetables and fruits to your diet.

9. Learn new things on a regular basis to keep your brain in shape.

10. Be optimistic.

For more details, check out the full Top 10 article here.

Have a happy and healthy 2009!

A Great New Way to Exercise at Home

If you don't go to a health club regularly, one of the best things you can do is buy an exercise video that you can follow along with at home.  The problem with most senior exercise videos is that most were made many years ago by somewhat unqualified people.

But there's a new series of videos I found called Take 5 to Exercise. I checked out the instructor's credentials, and she is definately highly qualified.

The idea behind these videos is that you have five days and you do certain kinds of exercises on each day.

Day 1 - Flexibility

Day 2 - Strength

Day 3 - Posture

Day 4 - Strength

Day 5 - Maintenance

This five-day plan looks like a great idea to me, and all of the exercises are done in a chair so they're very safe. To watch preview clips or to order, go to www.seniorexercisevideos.net

Give it a try!

Have a Healthy Thanksgiving

Between family, turkey, and football, Thanksgiving is always a fun day.  But I would bet the average person eats twice as many calories on Thanksgiving as they do on a normal day.

Here's some tips to help you eat healthier this Thanksgiving:

1. Don't have seconds. It's OK to have a big plate of turkey, potatoes, and other stuff(ing).  But it's the 2nd and 3rd plate that you should avoid.

2. Easy on the gravy. You don't have to drown your food in gravy just to make it taste good.  You can get all the taste you need by thinly spreading a little over your food. 

3. Choose a smart drink. Water is best. If you're going to eat 1000 calories, why drink another couple hundred?

4. One piece of dessert! I know there may be a couple things to choose from, but that doesn' t mean you should have one of each.

My final advice is to not judge the quality of your meal based on the amount of food you eat, which is what most people do. Instead, focus on the kind of food.  

Turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, etc. That should be what defines Thanksgiving for you. It's a day where you eat certain foods that you may not eat the rest of the year, foods that have been eaten on this day for many years. But please do not define Thanksgiving as the day where you eat as much as possible. Have a good one.

How to Control Your Eating

I had an idea the other day about how to control your eating when you're at a restaurant.

The problem with restaurants is that they give you way too much food.  So you say to yourself, "I'm only going to eat this much."  Then you get to that point and you stop eating.  Nice job.

But wait.  Five minutes later that food is still sitting in front of you.  So you take a nibble.  And another nibble.

Then the person you're dining with asks if you want to taste their food.  Sure!

Or someone you're with doesn't finish their food and you help them finish it.  Can't let if go to waste, right?

All the sudden you've eaten 200 calories more than you wanted to.  How can we prevent this?

Try this out.  Bring some gum with you and place a stick of gum next to your plate when your meal comes. Decide how much of that food you should eat.  After you finish that much food, immediately put the gum in your mouth.

Now you can't nibble anymore.  No more french fries.   No more samples from someone else's plate.  This way you can leave the restaurant without feeling stuffed.

Are you going to give this a try or what?  It may sound ridiculous, but a lot of these little diet tips do sound ridiculous until you try them and they work.

Avocados and Guacamole

Avocados get a bad rap because they are quite fatty, but that fat is actually the good kind. They're also a good source of potassium, folate, and antioxidants.

Maybe you should try to eat one per week. You can cut up avocados and put them in a salad or use them in guacamole.

Here's my simple guacamole recipe:

1 Avocado
1 small plum tomato (or any tomato)
Corn chips

Scoop out the avocado, put it in a bowl, and mash it. Dice the tomato and stir it in with the avocado. Shake some garlic salt and add a spritz of lime juice and it's ready to eat! Makes a hearty snack for two.

Don't be surprised if you feel quite full after eating some guacamole. Fat is known for producing a feeling of satiety. It's pretty much a small meal more than a snack. I like to eat it as a meal on a day where I'm not that hungry or if I had a big lunch earlier.

Senior Strength Training Tip

Here's a common strength training mistake I see a lot of people making. Let's say you're lifting weights, and you're doing a set of 15 reps, and you find it's too easy, what do you do next time?

A). Increase the weight.

B). Increase the reps.

Let's go over choice A. Let's say you increase the reps and do 20 reps. But eventually that's too easy.

Now what. 30 reps? If you continue on this road, you might be doing 50 reps or more in a couple months.

I actually see this a lot. People tell me they're doing 3 sets of 50!

If you're doing that many reps, you probably aren't even using your strength muscle fibers, you're using your endurance fibers.

But you already work your endurance fibers plenty when you're doing your cardiovascular exercise (you are doing cardio, right?).

Your strength fibers will only be used if the weight is heavy enough that the brain thinks they're needed. If you're using a weight that you can do 30 reps with, it will be too light to recruit your strength fibers.

The solution, of course, is to go with choice A - increase the weight. You should be doing sets of 20 or less reps if possible. Choose a weight that fatigues the muscle by the time you get to 20 reps.

Three Reasons to Eat Dark Chocolate

If you're not already eating dark chocolate on a regular basis, you're missing out. Here's three reasons you should start today:

1. Dark chocolate is packed with antioxidants that can help prevent heart disease, Alzheimer's, and arthritis.

2. It improves your mood because it contains serotonin and stimulates endorphin (your body's natural pain killer) release.

3. You can use it as a substitute for junk food. Instead of a candy bar or a cookie, have a few squares of dark chocolate. It tastes good, but it's low in sugar.

Try Ghirardelli Twilight Delight, which is delicious.

To learn more about dark chocolate click here.

Senior Exercise Video

Check out this senior exercise video.  It talks about 4 major components of senior exercise - cardiovascular training, strength training, balance training, and flexibility.  It also covers the basic parameters for each aspect, like how often and how much.

Senior Health and Fitness

I can sum up the entire idea behind senior health and fitness in one word - prevention.

It's much easier to prevent than it is to try to turn the tide after a couple decades neglecting your health.

Don't wait until your Dr. tells you your're at risk of a heart attack to start exercising.

Don't wait until your Dr. tells you you have high cholesterol before you start eating right.

Don't wait until you have Osteoporosis before you start thinking about building bone mass.

And don't wait until you fall to start thinking about training your balance.

Don't wait.  Prevent.

It's much easier to start preventing now before it's a problem than it is to try to turn the boat around after it's been sailing one direction for ten years.

Strength Training for Seniors

If you're doing some strength training already, great.  Here three important things to think about that most people don't know.

1. Think about the muscles you're using as you do the exercise.  It's easy to just go through the motions.  By mentally trying to contract the muscles that are involved, you will get a much better activation of the muscles.  This is called the "Mind-Muscle Connection."

2. Breathe.  People often tend to hold their breath when strength training.  This is a bad idea because it causes your blood pressure to skyrocket.  Try to breathe smoothly and continuously.

3. Engage the muscles both ways.  There are two parts of every strength training motion.  The hard part where you move the weight or stretch the band, and the easy part where you return to your starting position.  During the second part, it is easy to move quickly and just let the weight or band pull themselves back to where they started.  Try to resist it on the way back.  You can do this by going a little slower on the way back.  Now you'll get a muscular contraction in both directions.  That's twice the workout in half the time, as they say.

Stay tuned for more posts on Strength Training for Seniors.

Senior Brain Fitness

Do you ever walk into a room and forget why you came in there?

Do you ever call someone by the wrong name?

Do you find that you're losing your keys more often as you get older?

A lot of seniors worry about cognitive decline as they get older. Most of us know someone who has Alzheimer's or dementia.

It's natural to forget where your keys are and then start to worry that maybe you have Alzheimer's, but that's usually not the case. It's just part of the normal cognitive decline associated with aging.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do something about it.

I recently posted a new article called "The Secret to a Young Brain." It explains what really makes your brain tick and it will show you how to keep it in good shape. Check it out.

Balance and Fall Prevention Lecture

If you live in the greater Chicago area, come to Gottlieb Health and Fitness Center in Melrose Park Thursday, October 2 at 7pm to hear me talk about balance and fall prevention. We will cover:

• The cause of poor balance.


• How to improve stability.


• Why the leg muscles are so important in preventing falls.


• What to discuss with your doctor if you're concerned about your balance.


• How to reduce falls at home.


• and more...

The lecture is free of charge and all are welcome. The fitness center is on the Easternmost end of the hospital campus.

Stick around afterwards and say hello.

Is Your Balance Getting Worse?

Do you know why your balance may get worse as you get older?

The astronauts living at the International Space Station also experience a decrease in the quality of their balance, but in a much shorter amount of time.

Whereas it may take twenty years of slow deterioration before you notice your balance is not so great, astronauts spend a year in space and come back to Earth with balance impairments.

What can we learn from this? To find out more, click here for the full Astronauts and Balance article.

While you go read that, I'm going to contact NASA and see if they would like to read The Balance Manual.

Boldly going where no book has gone before!

5 Things You Need to Know About Your Balance

1. Balance tends to deteriorate with age.

2. Poor balance increases the possibility of falling.

3. Balance can be improved.

4. Occasionally doing two exercises you saw in a magazine will not improve your balance.

5. You need a structured program of balance exercises that will consistently and safely challenge your sense of balance.

The Balance Manual demonstrates a variety of exercises for balance that can be done at home with no equipment in less than ten minutes a day. It also shows you how many to do, how long to do them, and how often to do them.

If you're serious about preventing falls with better balance, The Balance Manual can help.

Senior Exercise Video

I've just uploaded a new video to YouTube.  It covers the Four Essential Components of an Effective Senior Exercise Program.  Those components are cardiovascular exercise, strength training, balance training, and flexibility.  

The video goes over how often you should be doing each of those as well as other parameters and recommendations.  Click here to check out this new senior exercise video.

A Great Online Medical Resource

"What's this bump?"

"Is this a rash?"

"Why does my shoulder hurt?"

You've probably asked yourself one or more of those questions at one time.  You think everything is going well, and then one day you notice something that wasn't there yesterday.

And you worry.

Usually, it goes away, or the doctor tells you there's nothing to worry about.  Next time, before you start worrying check out WebMD.  Click here to go to WebMD.

They have a neat "Symptom Checker" where you point to the part of your body that you're concerned about.

Then you click on the symptoms you're feeling, and it tells you what it may be, and it tells you all the details about that condition.  

It's real easy to use, and it may give you a little peace of mind next time you notice something weird.

Free Cardiovascular Exercise

Most doctors agree that the best exercise for just about everyone is walking.  Walking is the most basic form of movement--it's what our bodies were designed to do.

You also don't need any equipment.

Well, Fall is just about here, and pretty soon it will be colder, so take advantage of every precious day where the temperature is above 50 and get out there and walk!

I recommend at least 20 minutes at least 3 times per week for starters.  If you can, try to get up to 40 minutes 5 times a week.

What's Brain Fitness?

Someone asked me to elaborate on what I mean by brain fitness. The brain is just like your muscles in that it also needs exercise to keep in shape, and it will deteriorate with disuse.

The way to "exercise" the brain is to engage it in tasks that require thinking, learning, and the use of imagination.

Typically, as someone gets older, they do less new things and less things that require in-depth thinking, and life becomes a routine that involves very little learning, just repetition of the same tasks every day, because repetition is safe.

Unfortunately, this allows brain degradation.

It's a vital part of the Total Fitness philosophy because what good is a strong heart and muscles if your memory and wits are in poor condition?

P.S. Cardiovascular exercise is also good for your brain. You can read about that in an article I wrote by clicking here.

Three Keys to Successful Balance Training

If you are getting started with balance training exercises, there are really three things you need to make sure you're doing:

1. Variety - Don't do the same exercise the same way every day.  You need to present your sense of balance with a variety of challenges.

2. Progression - Your exercises need to get harder as time goes by if you want to see continued improvement.  There are many ways to make balance training more difficult.

3. Consistency - In order to see real results, you need to do the exercises regularly, a minimum of 4 times per week.  Every day would be ideal. 

If you want more guidance, check out The Balance Manual.  It will show you a variety of balance exercises and teach you how to progress the difficulty as you get better at them.  It also includes an exercise log where you can keep track of what exercises you do and how often you do them.

It Begins!

Welcome to the Total Senior Fitness Blog!  The idea behind "total" is that we will cover all areas of senior fitness, such as:

• Heart health
• Strength
• Balance
• Flexibility
• Nutrition
• Brain fitness

Be sure to check back often, and if you have a question, just leave a comment below.