Weight Debate

All adults should avoid inactivity. Some physical activity is better than none, and adults who participate in any amount of physical activity gain some health benefits.

Adults with disabilities, who are able to, should get at least:

• 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) a week of moderate intensity aerobic (endurance) activity
  OR
• 75 minutes a week of vigorous intensity aerobic activity
  OR
• An equivalent combination of moderate intensity and vigorous intensity aerobic activity

Aerobic activity should be performed in episodes of at least 10 minutes, and preferably, it should be spread throughout the week.

Also, adults with disabilities, who are able to, should do muscle strengthening (resistance) activities of moderate or high intensity that involve all major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week, as these activities provide additional health benefits.

When adults with disabilities are not able to meet the Guidelines, they should engage in regular physical activity according to their abilities and should avoid inactivity.

Adults with disabilities should consult their doctor about the amounts and types of physical activity that are appropriate for their abilities.

Being physically active is one of the most important steps that people of all ages can take to improve their health, along with eating a healthy diet to promote good health and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

Strength training is crucial to weight control, because people who have more muscle mass have a higher metabolic rate. Muscle is active tissue that consumes calories while stored fat uses very little energy. Strength training can provide up to a 15 percent increase in metabolic rate, which is enormously helpful for weight loss and long-term weight control.

About Strength Training
Strength training is a means for improving your health. Strength training is resistance type exercises, which means your muscles work or hold against an applied force or weight – such as lifting weights – to improve muscular strength, endurance, power, and muscle mass.

Strength Training Benefits
Strength training exercises have many benefits, particularly as you grow older. Being physically active and doing strength training exercises two or three times a week will give a person more energy and make other daily activities easier.

• Strength training helps to increase muscle mass and bone density.
• Strength training helps to increase the strength of your muscles.
• Strength training helps reduce age-related muscle loss, called atrophy.
• Strength training helps relieves stress.
• Strength training can help you sleep better at night.
• Strength training can help prevent, manage, or ease the symptoms of certain chronic diseases such as:
  • Osteoporosis
  • Arthritis
  • Diabetes
  • Obesity
  • Back pain
  • Depression
• Strength training makes you feel stronger and more energized.
• Strength training helps increase metabolic rate, which is helpful for weight loss and long-term weight control.
• Strength training can help improve your balance, coordination, and mobility, which helps reduce the risk of falls resulting in fewer bone fractures.
• Strength training can change the appearance of your body with better muscle definition.

Some Examples of Muscle Strengthening Activities Include

• Working out with weight machines
• Free weights
• Using resistance bands – looks like a giant rubber band
• You can use soup cans or dumbbells to work out your arms
• Carrying full laundry baskets
• Push ups – you can do without any equipment
• Pull ups
• Biceps curls
• Dancing
• Jogging in place
• Sit ups
• Rowing a boat
• Strength training in aerobics class

In addition to meeting recommendations for aerobic physical activity, experts recommend that adults do muscle strengthening activities on 2 or more days per week that work all major muscle groups:

• Back
• Shoulders
• Chest
• Arms
• Abdomen
• Hips
• Legs

Be sure to give your muscles at least one day of rest between workouts. Consult your doctor before starting any new exercise program.

Calcium is needed for strong bones and proper muscle function. Dairy foods are the best source of calcium.

Studies show that many female athletes who are trying to lose weight cut back on dairy products. Female athletes who don’t get enough calcium may be at risk for stress fractures and, when they are older, osteoporosis.

Young women between the ages of 9 and 18 need about 1,300 milligrams of calcium a day. After age 25, the recommended intake is 1,000 milligrams.

Low fat dairy products are a rich source of calcium and also are low in fat and calories.

Daily Recommended Calcium Intake mg = milligrams

• Birth to 6 months 210 mg
• 7 to 12 months 270 mg
• 1 to 3 years 500 mg
• 4 to 8 years 800 mg
• 9 to 18 years 1,300 mg
• 19 to 50 years 1,000 mg
• 50+ years 1,200 mg

Many athletes, especially those on strength training programs or who participate in power sports, are told that eating a ton of protein or taking protein supplements will help them gain muscle weight. The true secret to building muscle is training hard and consuming enough calories. While some extra protein is needed to build muscle, most American diets provide more than enough protein. Extra protein is eliminated from the body or stored as fat.

Between 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram body weight per day is sufficient if your calorie intake is adequate and you are eating a variety of foods. For a 150 pound athlete, that represents 68 to 102 grams of protein a day. To find out how much you weigh in kilograms, simply divide your weight in pounds by 2.2.

Example of Complete Proteins

• Fish
• Chicken
• Meat
• Eggs
• Milk
• Yogurt

People who are vegetarians must eat a wide variety of plant proteins to get a combination of all of the essential amino acids.

Depending on how muscular you are, 55 to 70 percent of your body weight is water. Being “hydrated” means maintaining your body’s fluid level.

Keep Your Fluid Levels Up
When you sweat, you lose water which must be replaced if you want to perform your best. You need to drink fluids before and after intense physical activity and events, and smaller amounts in between.

Whether you drink water or a sports drink is a matter of choice. However, if your workout or event lasts for more than 90 minutes, you may benefit from the carbohydrates provided by sports drinks. These products provide just the right amount of carbohydrates (carbs), and electrolytes such as potassium and sodium to replace fluids and keep your nerves and muscles working.

A sports drink that contains 15 to 18 grams of carbohydrate in every 8 ounces of fluid should be used. Sports drinks with a higher carbohydrate content will delay the absorption of water and may cause dehydration, cramps, nausea or diarrhea.

There are a variety of sports drinks on the market, so be sure to experiment with them during practice instead of trying them for the first time the day of your event.

Sports drinks may be great when you are active, but not if you aren’t – they have high levels of sugar, salt, and potassium that you don’t really need unless you are working your body hard.

Do not confuse sports drinks with energy drinks. Energy drinks contain high levels of caffeine and other stimulants that can dehydrate your body.

All athletes need a diet that provides enough energy in the form of carbohydrates and fats as well as essential protein, vitamins, minerals, and fluids, especially water. Dehydration can stop even the finest athlete from playing his or her best game. This means a variety of foods are needed every day – fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, lean meats, and low fat dairy products.

While the exact percentages below may vary slightly for some athletes based on their sport or training program, these guidelines will promote health and serve as the basis for a diet that will maximize performance. Health and nutrition professionals recommend an athlete’s diet provides:

• 55 to 60 percent of the calories in your diet should come from carbohydrates – 10 to 15 percent from sugars, and the rest from starches.
• No more than 30 percent of the calories in your diet should come from fat.
• And… 10 to 15 percent of the calories in your diet should come from protein.

Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates are the preferred source of energy for your body. Carbohydrates are sugars and starches found in foods like fruits, vegetables, breads, cereals, pasta, milk, honey, syrups, and table sugar.

When you are training or competing, your muscles need energy to perform. When starches or sugars are eaten, the body changes them all to glucose, the only form of carbohydrate used directly by muscles for energy.

Whether carbohydrates are in the form of starches (in vegetables and grains), sucrose (table sugar), fructose (found in fruits and juices) or lactose (milk sugar), carbohydrates are digested and ultimately changed to glucose that your blood carries to cells to be used for energy. Your body cannot differentiate between glucose that comes from starches or sugars. Glucose from either source provides energy for working muscles.

The body uses this glucose in the blood for energy. Most glucose is stored as glycogen in the liver and muscles. During exercise glycogen is broken down in the muscles and provides energy. If you don’t consume enough carbohydrates, your glycogen stores become depleted, which can result in fatigue. Both sugars and starches are effective in replenishing glycogen stores. Usually there is enough glycogen in muscles to provide fuel for 90 to 120 minutes of exercise.

Most exercise and sport games do not use up glycogen stores so eating carbohydrates during the activity usually isn’t needed. But for some athletes, eating or drinking carbohydrates during exercise helps maintain their blood glucose and energy levels.

Most athletes need not be concerned with carbohydrate loading, the special technique of eating a lot of carbohydrates for several days before an endurance event. Instead, focus on getting enough carbohydrates everyday. The best way to ensure plenty of energy for exercise is to eat a nutritious, balanced diet that is high in carbohydrates and low in fat with lots of different foods.

Carbohydrates provide 4 calories per gram, while fat provides 9 calories per gram.

Aerobic activity is also called endurance activity or cardio activity.

During aerobic activity, your body’s large muscles move in a rhythmic manner for a sustained period of time. Aerobic activities cause your heart to beat faster than usual to meet the demands of your body’s movement. Aerobic activities also require your body to use more oxygen. Over time, regular aerobic activity makes your heart and cardiovascular system stronger and fitter.

Aerobic physical activity has three components:

1. Intensity - or how hard you work to do the activity:

• Moderate intensity - As a rule of thumb, a person doing moderate intensity aerobic activity may make you breathe harder and make it more difficult to talk, but you should still be able to carry on a conversation. If you are just beginning, slowly work up to moving at a moderate intensity pace. Some examples:
  Walking briskly (3 miles per hour or faster, but not race-walking)
  Water aerobics
  Bicycling slower than 10 miles per hour
  Tennis (doubles)
  Ballroom dancing
  General gardening
• Vigorous intensity - As a rule of thumb, a person doing vigorous intensity activity cannot say more than a few words without pausing for a breath. Some examples:
  Racewalking, jogging, or running
  Swimming laps
  Tennis (singles)
  Aerobic dancing
  Bicycling 10 miles per hour or faster
  Jumping rope
  Heavy gardening (continuous digging or hoeing, with heart rate increases)
  Hiking uphill or with a heavy backpack
  Rock climbing
  Training to run a 10K for charity

2. Frequency - or how often you do an aerobic activity.

3. Duration - or how long you do an activity in any one session.

Although these components make up a physical activity profile, it is shown that the total amount of physical activity (for example, minutes of moderate intensity physical activity) is more important for achieving health benefits than is any one component, such as frequency, intensity, or duration.

Experts recommend at least 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) of moderate intensity physical activity, or 75 minutes (1 hour and 15 minutes) of vigorous intensity aerobic physical activity per week, preferably spread throughout the week. You don’t need to do all of your exercise at once to be physically active. 3 days a week produces health benefits, and may help to reduce the risk of injury and avoid excessive fatigue. You may break up your activity into shorter segments of 10 minutes or more. Episodes of this duration are known to improve cardiovascular fitness and some risk factors for heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Moderate intensity or vigorous intensity physical activities that last for at least 10 minutes count toward meeting the weekly recommendation.

Adults can do either moderate intensity or vigorous intensity aerobic activities, or a combination of both. It takes less time to get the same benefit from vigorous intensity activities as from moderate intensity activities. A general rule of thumb is that 2 minutes of moderate intensity activity counts the same as 1 minute of vigorous intensity activity. For example, 30 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week is roughly the same as 15 minutes of vigorous intensity activity.

If you want to lose weight, you may need to do more than 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week. Remember that you can be active in several shorter sessions, and that your daily activities count toward calories used.

Physical activity is an important part of your weight management program. Exercise has a benefit of reducing risks of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, beyond that produced by weight reduction alone.

Most weight loss occurs because of decreased calorie intake. Sustained physical activity is most helpful in the prevention of weight regain.

Start exercising slowly, and gradually increase the intensity. Trying too hard at first can lead to injury.

• Bicycling 4 miles in 15 minutes
• Jumping rope for 15 minutes
• Shoveling snow for 15 minutes
• Stairwalking for 15 minutes
• Basketball (playing game) for 15 to 20 minutes
• Running 1 and 1/2 miles in 15 minutes (10 minutes/mile)
• Swimming laps for 20 minutes
• Basketball (shooting baskets) 30 minutes
• Bicycling 5 miles in 30 minutes
• Dancing fast (social) for 30 minutes
• Pushing a stroller 1 and 1/2 miles in 30 minutes
• Raking leaves for 30 minutes
• Walking 2 miles in 30 minutes (15 minutes/mile)
• Water aerobics for 30 minutes
• Walking 1 and 1/2 miles in 35 minutes (20 minutes/mile)
• Wheeling self in wheelchair 30 to 40 minutes
• Gardening for 30 to 45 minutes
• Playing touch football for 45 minutes
• Playing volleyball for 45 to 60 minutes
• Washing and waxing a car for 45 to 60 minutes
• Washing windows or floors for 45 to 60 minutes

Note:
Calories burned per hour are approximate because a heavier person burns more calories, and a person who weighs less burns fewer calories.

Type 2 diabetes was once rare in children. Now, it is estimated to account for 8 percent to 45 percent of newly diagnosed cases of childhood diabetes. Most cases of type 2 diabetes in children occur in those who are overweight. And overweight children are likely to become overweight or obese adults.

Being overweight is linked to increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, certain cancers, and other chronic conditions. Health experts are especially concerned about the long term consequences of excess weight in children.

People have lots of reasons to care if they weigh too much, both in the short run and over the long haul. In the short run, when a child is overweight, it can be hard to keep up with friends, play outside at recess, or wear the latest styles. Other kids at school can sometimes tease. Excess weight can be hard for adults, too. Clothes feel too tight, it’s not always easy to be active, and one can tire easily.

The two main ways to encourage and maintain a healthy weight and prevent overweight are to make smart food choices and to be physically active.

As parents, you make a big difference in what your children do and think. Your children look up to you as role models. If you eat right and are physically active, you have a good chance of helping your children make those choices, too.

Make small, easy changes over time. Some strategies are:

• Plan regular family time that involves physical activity.
• Put a bowl of fruit on the kitchen counter and make a family agreement not to have chips or other high calorie snacks in the house.
• Turn off the TV and the video games.
• Get off the bus one stop earlier than usual and walk the rest of the way, especially when you are with your kids.
• Give your family more vegetables for dinner.
• You won’t feel so full if you have a smaller portion or skip dessert.
• Going hiking with your teenager might lead to a wonderful talk that neither of you anticipated.
• A fruit salad tastes great and looks beautiful.
• Dancing with your spouse is lots of fun and can give you a great workout.
• Take a walk after dinner a couple of nights a week instead of turning on the TV.
• Instead of chocolate cake with frosting, enjoy sliced strawberries over angel food cake.
• No one will notice if you use part-skim mozzarella cheese instead of whole-milk mozzarella in your lasagna, but you’ll be reducing the calories and fat for everyone who eats it.
• See if everyone will commit to eating healthy dinners together at least four times a week.
• Get your children involved in the process of shopping for and preparing healthy dinners.
• Make a plan with your child to walk to school together.

Two easy ways to burn off 150 calories (calories burned by a 150 pound person)

• Shoot hoops for 30 minutes.
• Walk 2 miles in 30 minutes.

People who weigh less will burn fewer calories doing these activities, people who weigh more will burn more calories doing these activities.

There are many suggestions out there for “homemade” weights, ranging from lifting one pound soup cans, to lifting buckets or gallon jugs filled with sand.

One pound soup cans are harmless for you, and may be good for a beginner, but they won’t build muscle. They may also be clumsy for you to hold.

Buckets and plastic jugs are not made for strength training. Buckets and jugs are not designed to hold that much weight and the handles are designed for carrying, not lifting.

You should not improvise! Please use weights designed for lifting. Homemade weights can easily break and injure you, and they can also impede your ability to perform an exercise with proper form and through the full range of motion.