Author Archives: Michael C. McGreevy

Long Workout Post Is Long

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Saturday, July 11th

51 Minutes Walking

Sunday, July 12th

45 Minutes Walking

35 Minutes EA SPORTS Active (Heavy)

80 Minutes Walking

Monday, July 13th

20 Minutes Stationary Bike

5×5 Assisted Pull Up – 170 pound counterweight

5×5 Pull Down – 100 pounds

5×5 Dumbbell Row – 50 pounds

5×5 Bicep Curls – 30 pounds

100 Pushup Challenge – Exhaustion Text (11)

200 Situp Challenge – Week 3, Column 2, Set 2 (21-28-21-21-28)

85 Minutes Walking

Tuesday, July 14th

5×5 Vertical Chest Press – 150 pounds (up 10 pounds)

5×5 Pectoral Fly – 160 pounds

5×5 Rear Deltiod Fly – 100 pounds

5×5 Shoulder Press – 120 pounds

20 Minutes Elliptical Trainer

35 Minutes Treadmill

77 Minutes Walking

Wednesday, July 15th

5×5 Assisted Pull Up – 170 pound counterweight

5×5 Pull Down – 100 pounds

5×5 Dumbell Row – 50 pounds

5×5 Bicep Curl – 30 pounds

20 Minues Recumbent Bike

50 Minutes Treadmill

100 Pushup Challenge – Week 2, Column 2, Set 1 (9-11-8-8-11)

200 Situp Challge – Week 3, Column 2, Set 3 (24-32-23-23-32)

60 Minutes Walking

Five breakfast options for 100 calories or less

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Powdered Toast Man!Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

When it comes to healthy eating battle cries this has to be one of the most common ones. However, despite the scientific evidence proving the statement above to be true quite there are a great deal of people who choose to skip off on breakfast before starting their day. For some folks it is simply because the allure of sleeping an extra 30 minutes is too great to pass up. If you’re trying to lose weight you may skip off on breakfast because you’re not sure of the healthy, low-calorie options that are out there. Many of the popular breakfast options that we’re familiar with such as pancakes, doughnuts, fried eggs, and biscuits with sausage gravy really don’t fall into the “light” category.

Not every breakfast has to be a big bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. If you’re looking for a healthier way to start your day I have five options that may just tickle your fancy.

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Washington Doctor writes a prescription for American obesity

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I'm Just A Bill - Schoolhouse RockWith all the talk coming out of Washington these days about health care, and specifically the impact that obesity has an our rising health care costs as a nation, it is not difficult to imagine a time when our elected officials may see fit to try and regulate our waist lines.  We’ve written here about several incidents where the government has seemed to do just that.  From taxing sugary soft drinks to removing a morbidly obese child from his Mothers care, several states have taken a very hands-on approach to dealing with obesity.  With those kind of precedents being set it is only a matter of time before slippery slope logic dictates we will have some kind of federal intervention into our daily caloric intake.

Contrary to popular belief, though, not everything that comes out of Washington, D.C. is going to be the equivalent of the next $400 hammer.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing that the federal government is taking a closer look at what can be done about the obesity epidemic in America, and one doctor has outlined a plan that could really make a significant difference without infringing on our personal freedoms.

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Socially acceptable starvation diets

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Image courtesy of Ethan Hein

Image courtesy of Ethan Hein

One of the things that I hear often at my WeightWatchers.com® meetings is that those of us on program are not “dieting” but attempting to change our lifestyle.  There’s a very valid reason they try to make that distinction.  For most of us diet is a four letter word, albeit one you’re allowed to say on television (Link contains profanity and is NSFW).   If you tell the world you are on a diet not only are you letting everyone around you know that you are not comfortable with your current weight (and thus do not “love yourself for who you are”), you also open yourself up to an uncomfortable level of scrutiny in social situations (“Are you sure you should be eating THAT?”).   So instead of packaging their program as “diet” (and all the negative baggage that goes along with it) the folks at Weight Watchers instead choose to say they are promoting a healthy lifestyle change.

The positive labeling trend seems to be catching on, but some of these new “healthy lifestyle changes” are nothing more than good old fashioned starvation diets wrapped up in a pretty name.

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Walking to Seattle

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Image by Ken Lund

Image by Ken Lund

Over the last few months I’ve been taking part in the Weight Watchers® Walk-!t Challenge.  The program is a partnership between Weight Watchers and Active.com that encouraged Weight Watchers members to sign up for and complete a 5K walk for charity.  As part of the program Weight Watchers provided trainers to those who signed up for the challenge to help prepare them for the 5k.  I’ve never taken part in any kind of event like this before, so while I already walk considerably more than 5k on a daily basis I thought it was a great opportunity to get some more exercise in to my routine and I signed up.

I got an email this morning from my trainer that got me thinking.  Amusingly enough it wasn’t part of the email itself but her signature that sent the wheels in my head spinning.

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Encouraging bad behavior

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Rush LimbaughAs much as we’d like to avoid it, the fact of the matter is that there are occasions when covering the health and fitness end of the news spectrum is going to lead us here at ShrinkGeek into the murky waters of personal politics.  On the whole we strive to be as politically neutral as we can simply due to the fact that we do not wish to alienate readers who may not agree with our views.  We want everyone to be healthy, regardless of where they fall in the political spectrum.

There are occasions, however, when something comes out of that ugly world that is so incredibly wrong it simply must be called out.  We must recognize those moments when Val Kilmer would have deemed a response as being a “moral imperative” and act accordingly.

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Workout of the Day – June 29th

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35 Minutes Elliptical Machine

4×5 Assisted Pull Ups – 180 pounds (down 10 pounds)

1×3 Assisted Pull Ups – 180 pounds (down 10 pounds)

1×2 Assisted Pull Ups – 190 pounds

4×5 Pulldown – 100 pounds (up 10 pounds)

1×5 Pulldown – 90 pounds

5×5 Dumbbell Row – 40 pounds (up 5 pounds)

3×5 Bicep Curls – 25 pounds

2×4 Bicep Curls – 25 pounds

35 Minutes Treadmill

No freakin’ idea what’s going on with the bicep curls in those last two sets but not only was I not able to go up at all I couldn’t complete a set I’ve done several times already.  Maybe I stressed my muscles out too much increasing on the other machines.  I think I’m finding the weights I need to work with for a few constant workouts.  Overall, though, I’m kinda dissappointed with this one.

Treating Parkinsons Disease with the Wii Fit

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Jorge and Samuel are doing it wrong. Image courtesy of hdaniel

Jorge and Samuel are doing it wrong. Image courtesy of hdaniel

Health care is big business.  Just ask President Obama.  Even with our twenty-four hour news cycle being overrun with updates about the Iranian Elections or the latest round of tragic celebrity deaths, there is still almost daily coverage of the debate in Washington about the future of health care in America.  While there is a great deal of conflict over what exactly the cure is for our ailing health care system, it seems as though everyone agrees that something needs to be done to reign in the rate at which health care spending continues to grow.  If nothing changes the current estimates indicate that by 2017 health care expenses will top nearly $4.7 trillion dollars (nearly 20 percent of the Gross Domestic Product).

With all of that money floating around in the health care system it should not come as much of a shocker to learn that in the last 18 months exergames have generated nearly $2 Billion dollars in worldwide sales.  Despite our ever-expanding waist lines (or perhaps as a direct result of them) video game fans are flocking to fitness related video games like Wii Fit and EA SPORTS Active.

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User Queries : The Dreaded “D” Word

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Questions

Image by marcobellucci

I recently got my Diabetes status alert level to “OMGITSNEAR,” which means that I have to both lose weight and be pickier about what I eat. I was wondering if there are any common drinks or foods that I should avoid which might seem healthy at first glance but are not.

For instance, I’ve heard that sports drinks like Gatorade and Cereals like corn flakes should be be on my “do not consume” list because they contain lots of sugar, even though they’re supposed to be alright for consumption for a healthy body. At the same time, it seems that eating chocolate flavored oatmeal with nonfat milk might be bad, but is supposed to be alright. As you can guess, I’m a bit confused.

Any advice for people trying to avoid diabetes while eating right?

– Victor

I can certainly understand the confusion you’re dealing with at the moment.  Diabetes is a scary and intimidating disease and there is a lot of misinformation out there about it.  To many folks a diabetic is someone who isn’t allowed to eat candy bars, but the reality is that not only can a diabetic person eat a candy bar if they want to there are times when a candy bar could be the best thing to keep them from going into a coma!  I could go on at length about Diabetes here (and my original response to you started down that path), but I’ll do my best to stay focused so that Krystalle doesn’t beat me with the editor stick.

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Crazy Cupcake Lady is crazy

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the evil cupcakeThere’s nothing quite like the crazy of an extremist to make a movement look really bad.  From politics to religion and everything in between we are constantly bombarded with examples of people who take hold of an idea so fiercely that they actually do more harm than good for the cause they are trying to prop up.  These kind of people make great headlines and are, unfortunately, usually more interesting to read about than those of us who are trying to make rational arguments.

The proponents of healthy living are not immune from this phenomenon.

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