Authors: Chris Kresser
Tags: #Health & Fitness / Diet & Nutrition / Diets, #Health & Fitness / Diet & Nutrition / Weight Loss
Most of my patients and readers report huge improvements in energy levels and cognitive function and reductions in muscle and joint pain and soreness when they sneak in moderate to vigorous activity throughout the day. Of course, if you can’t do this at work or you simply prefer a predictable workout schedule, that’s fine too. The important thing is to Push!
•
Push it for 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity, 75 minutes of vigorous activity, 30 minutes maximal or near-maximal activity each week, or some combination of these.
Resistance training, or strength training, is a proven way to build up and maintain muscle, which helps keep your metabolism revved, helps keeps
you mobile, and helps prevent injuries. Stressing your body with a load makes it stronger, whether that load is a dumbbell or your own body. Lifting weights at the gym a few times a week is a great option, but for those of you with less time or without gym access or who wish to pursue a more natural pattern of movement, try incorporating your strength training throughout the day using relatively affordable tools you can keep in your home or office. This is the strategy advocated by Dan’s Plan with their inTUNE daily movement practice. The acronym inTUNE stands for “integrative and opportunistic training.” The idea is for you to integrate short bursts of physical activity throughout your day. You might, for example, do three sets of push-ups, three sets of pull-ups, and three sets of lunges interspersed with periods of sitting or standing at your desk (or walking at it, if you have a treadmill desk).
With this approach, you’ll reap great health benefits in very little time and without leaving your home or office. You’re far more likely to find multiple two-minute opportunities for exercise across your day than you are to find one larger chunk of time. Also, it’s no-cost (if you use your body, as when you do push-ups or lunges) or low-cost; no need for an expensive gym membership. And the more time-efficient and convenient your exercise routine is, the more likely you are to stick with it. Here are some tools that make incorporating exercise throughout the day easier than ever:
•
Push-up handles.
Around twenty dollars, these amp up the intensity of push-ups.
•
Pull-up bar.
Around twenty-five dollars, this can be attached to a door frame so you can do pull-ups and chin-ups.
•
PowerBlocks.
These dumbbells are pricier—around three hundred dollars—but they can adjust from fifteen to ninety pounds, so you don’t need a whole set of weights taking up room.
•
Abdominal wheel.
Around twenty dollars, this gives your abs a super-intense workout.
•
Weight bench.
You can find this at any price point to add more range to your strength-training workouts.
•
Weight vest.
For about thirty-five dollars, this makes pull-ups, push-ups, and dips more intense.
•
Suspension trainers.
These straps are pricey—one hundred to three hundred dollars—but they turn a doorway into an instant gym—and they’re portable. I take mine along when I travel.
If you want to make a change stick, then track your progress. Getting visual confirmation that you’re meeting or even exceeding your goals is one of the best ways to stay motivated and inspired. Tracking your SWAP program is easy if you’ve got the right hardware and software.
There are lots of hardware gadgets to choose from: FitBit, Nike + Fuel Band, Jawbone’s Up, BodyMedia FIT, Striiv, or a simple pedometer can each do the job. I use a FitBit every day and I get a lot of value from it. The FitBit includes a pedometer that measures the number of steps you take each day. (It can also track sleep and calories.) It then syncs up wirelessly to the FitBit dashboard, which e-mails you progress reports.
There are a zillion apps to help you monitor your progress. My favorite tracking software by far is a free Web-based application called Dan’s Plan (DansPlan.com). The goal of Dan’s Plan is to bring more attention to lifestyle habits and encourage daily actions that support health. It combines several variables (for example, sleep, physical activity, weight) into a Health Zone Score, which gives you a quick visual indicator of whether you’re reaching your daily health goals. Dan’s Plan integrates with several popular hardware tracking tools, such as the FitBit (for sleep, step, and weight data). But Dan’s Plan also helps you track the kind of daily movement practice we’ve been discussing in this chapter. Exercise is measured in a simple, flexible way so you get credit for any type that you do. Your total physical activity is also tracked and reported, so you can be sure you’re getting enough overall activity to promote health. Dan’s Plan is simple to use and takes only a few minutes each day, but it provides powerful feedback that quickly tells you whether you’re living in your
Health Zone. I use Dan’s Plan myself and I recommend it to all of my patients.
Most of my patients know when they’re not getting enough exercise; they’re less likely to know when they’re overtraining.
Competitive athletes who specialize in endurance sports as well as any people who perform intense, strenuous exercise several times a week are at the highest risk for overtraining. You may be at risk too, even if you don’t put yourself into those categories, because if you’re chronically ill, injured, sleep deprived, or restricting calories, it’s possible to be overtrained at much lower levels of physical activity. This is why it’s so important to customize your exercise and other activities to your unique circumstances and needs—which often change over time. (I also recommend you work with a qualified trainer who can monitor you and tell you if you’re overdoing it.)
How do you know if you’re overtrained? Typically you’ll experience one or more of the following signs and symptoms:
•
Decreased performance
•
Increased recovery time
•
Fatigue or lethargy
•
Insomnia
•
Difficulty concentrating and memory issues
•
Muscle and joint pain
•
Low libido
•
Amenorrhea in women
•
Anxiety or depression
The longer you overtrain, the more severe these symptoms become, and the more difficult it is to recover. Remember, sometimes less is more. You don’t have to train like an Olympic athlete to stay fit. In fact, unless you actually are an Olympic athlete, training like one is likely to cause more harm than good.
If you think you’re overtrained, here are some suggestions for recovery:
•
Reduce or even stop anything more than moderate physical activity for a while.
How long depends on how severe your symptoms are and how long you’ve been overtraining. Most people benefit from at least a month of reduced activity, but some will need three months or even longer.
•
Focus on gentle, nourishing activities like walking, gardening, leisurely hiking, and so on.
Low-level physical activity is unlikely to exacerbate the problem and will protect against too much sedentary time.
•
Spend time outdoors.
Spending time in nature and getting exposure to sunlight seem to be particularly helpful for recovery.
•
Get plenty of sleep and rest.
At least eight hours a night but preferably ten or even more if you’re significantly overtrained. If you’re tired during the day, take a nap.
•
Eat!
Do not diet or restrict calories when you’re overtrained. Your body needs an adequate supply of macronutrients (especially protein) and micronutrients to repair itself.
•
Read the bonus chapter on adrenal fatigue syndrome
(available on my website) and follow the suggestions on treatment. The brain-adrenal axis is typically most affected by overtraining.
I know scaling back might be difficult for you. But consider this: the more you rest and take care of yourself, the faster you’ll recover and be able to resume a more normal level of activity. I’ve seen people string their recovery out for years by not taking the necessary time to rest or by going back to their high-intensity routine too quickly. That just deepens the hole they’re already in and makes it harder to ever get out.
Our ancestors walked, ran, and performed other physical activities barefoot or in simple leather shoes. I recommend you do the same.
Today’s running and fitness shoes are often highly cushioned with elevated heels and other features that impair range of motion and create an unnatural gait. Studies have shown that most athletic shoes increase the risk of overuse walking and running problems like plantar fasciitis, ankle sprains, Achilles tendinitis, hamstring tears, and lower back pain. Other studies have shown that simpler shoes that don’t restrict range of motion or change natural foot-strike dynamics are less likely to cause injury and are better for long-term orthopedic health than typical fitness or running shoes. For these reasons, walking, running, and exercising barefoot or with minimalist footwear have become increasingly popular. Some of the more popular minimalist footwear brands include Vibram, VivoBarefoot, and Inov-8. Brands like New Balance, Merrell, and Patagonia also offer minimalist options. (Some of these companies also make shoes with flat, thin soles for work and casual wear.) I go barefoot or wear minimalist shoes almost exclusively at this point (including while I’m walking at my treadmill desk).
Barefoot running is not without controversy, however. Some recent studies suggest that runners who go barefoot or wear minimalist shoes are still prone to injuries—they’re just prone to different injuries than runners who wear traditional running shoes. That said, most experts in barefoot or minimalist running believe that the injuries associated with it are due primarily to poor technique and making the transition from traditional to minimalist footwear too quickly.
So if you decide to give this a try, it’s crucial to focus on proper biomechanics and make the transition slowly—especially if you’re a runner. Here are a few tips for making the switch:
•
Go slowly.
Don’t expect to be able to run your typical mileage when you first move to barefoot or minimalist shoes.
•
Run on a hard surface to begin with.
This allows you to determine if you’re heel-striking, and it provides more immediate feedback on your form. We evolved to run lightly on the balls of the feet, not to hit the ground hard with the heels, as people do when they wear typical running shoes.
•
Try alternating running and walking at two-hundred-meter intervals.
This can help you make the transition to barefoot/minimalist training.
•
Do most of your barefoot/minimalist running on level ground to start with
—for at least the first month, if not longer. Running uphill or downhill puts additional stress on your body.
•
Pay extra attention to good biomechanics.
Christopher McDougall, author of
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
, has some instructional videos on his site. See my website for links.
Once you’re accustomed to going barefoot or wearing minimalist footwear, consider doing your walking or running on soft, natural surfaces such as grass and dirt and over uneven terrain. This was the norm for humans until very recently. It’s difficult to imagine a situation in the past when humans would have walked for miles on solid, flat, hard surfaces—yet this is exactly what most modern runners do. No wonder we get so many injuries! A preliminary study reported that some runners who transitioned from typical running shoes to minimalist footwear developed a stress injury called bone-marrow edema. It’s unclear whether this injury developed because the runners were putting in miles on unforgiving pavement, because they transitioned too quickly from highly cushioned footwear to uncushioned footwear, or for some other reason. The authors of the original study suggested that runners transition “very slowly and gradually in order to avoid potential stress injury,” which makes good sense to me.
Go barefoot and you’ll never go back.
I’ve told you about how my back pain and fatigue dissipated once I began to SWAP. Given my profession, I was naturally open to the benefits of exercising this way, but even I was amazed at my improved physical and mental state—and I’ll never work the old way again. For my patient Terry, the benefits of SWAP improved his quality of life tremendously.
When thirty-five-year-old Terry came to see me, he had a laundry list of complaints: metabolic syndrome/pre-diabetes, very high cholesterol, and obesity, as a start. “I’m tired all the time,” he told me. “My back’s so bad I’ve got to take painkillers just to get to sleep.”
A computer programmer, Terry sat for eight to twelve hours a day, five or six days a week. He was on Metformin for his blood sugar and statins for his cholesterol. “Time to get moving, Terry,” I told him. Since he worked from home, I had him get a treadmill desk for his office along with TRX straps, PowerBlocks, kettle bells, an abdominal wheel, and push-up bars. I set Terry a goal of walking at least ten thousand steps a day (which he built up to slowly). I also had him sprinkle higher-intensity strength-training exercises throughout his workday.
Terry lost twenty pounds in the first thirty days, and sixty pounds over the first six months. “I can’t believe it!” he told me. “My back pain disappeared! My blood sugar and cholesterol are back to normal! I haven’t had this much energy in years!” His doctor even stopped his medications.