By Stacey Nolan Young
Recently I was asked the same question a few times by different people. I thought it best to post a reply here on the website to this popular question:
Should I still exercise if I am sick?
It being cold and flu season now people are wondering if they should continue about their routines and keep on training. Some think that a break from their training could impede their progress or that training will actually make them stronger and better able to fight off a virus.
My answer? It depends.
As a general rule if your symptoms are from your neck and above and generally mild, you should be able to exercise. If they extend below the neck then my answer would be absolutely not. But this is the simplified version.
Above the neck would generally mean a cold or allergies.
If your symptoms are mild than you can get away with training. This would not be the time to break any personal records though. You’d want to take it a little bit easier by decreasing your weights by roughly 25% and stopping short of muscle failure. And above all else- listen to what your body is telling you to do. If you feel run down while training, then stop your workout, let your body recover and start again at the gym when you are ready. As a side note though- exercise has been proven effective for relieving nasal congestion.
Below the neck would indicate a flu.
If you have the flu or suspect you have the flu it is best to stop your exercise regime altogether. You do not do any service to your body at all if you continue to train through an illness like this. In fact you are doing more harm than good. The best thing to do in this case is to take the time off and rest and drink plenty of fluids.
Why?
Your body’s immune system is taxed much more by the flu than by the common cold. While training can help us gain muscle, lose fat, feel good and energetic, it is still a catabolic (breakdown) activity. The body needs to be in good health in order to go from the catabolic state caused by the exercise to an anabolic (building) state of recuperation and muscle growth.
So if you have the flu, your body is already fighting a catabolic state caused by the Influenza virus. In this case, weight training would only add more catabolism, which in turn would negatively affect the efficiency of the immune system against the virus causing you to get sicker. In other words, your body needs every ounce of energy it has in order to fight off the virus and cannot spare the energy required to repair itself from an exercise bout at this time without comprimising your immune system.
Once the flu completely runs its course, you can slowly start up back on your weight training program with lighter weights and not going to failure. Don’t push yourself too hard during this first week. Within the next couple of weeks you will slowly be returning yourself to where you were before you got sick.
Keep healthy!
January 20th, 2010
(originally posted January 2008)
Making your Weight Loss Goal Work For You
By Stacey Nolan Young
January, in the fitness industry is HUGE. It is busy. If you go to a gym it is likely you will have to wait a while for the equipment you want. You may need to elbow your way to a treadmill. It is the month where fat burners are ripped off the shelves, diet books need to be restocked and gyms are raking in the cash from memberships being purchased. It is a fantastic month for anyone in the fitness industry.
Why?
Because you made the decision to lose weight and improve your health this year. This is your New Year’s resolution.
In March the fitness industry dives. Things even out. If you still go to a gym you will likely be able to use the machines you want. You should have access to an available treadmill if needed. Supplement sales are good but not necessarily rocking. Diet books may gather a little more dust than last month and the gyms are still getting the membership dues because of contracts, but the number of people they see diminishes.
Why?
Because your motivation has waned. You were gung-ho at the start but you have fallen off your plan. Your New Year’s resolution has bitten the dust.
HOW MANY TIMES HAS THIS HAPPENED TO YOU?
A new year begins. Everyone wants a fresh start. They believe that they will make it happen this year. THIS IS THE YEAR FOR CHANGE. The motivation is there. You have a plan in place. You go for it like you haven’t ever gone for anything before. Some people make it. Most don’t.
Why?
Because you have not established the habits or lifestyle necessary to sustain your change.
I have met many people who have made the resolution to lose weight. They clear out their fridges and replace what they were previously eating with “healthy foods”. They give up things that they have been eating or doing for most of their lives. They plan to go to the gym 6 days per week. They have every intention of following through. And it works for a little while. They lose some weight. They feel better.
Then something in their lives happens. They start to skip appointments at the gym thinking that they will make it up later in the week. They miss meals. They begin to reason away eating that one cookie because one cookie can’t hurt, can it? And this continues until the worst thing arrives; the “screw it” mentality. This is where these people figure that they’ve already blown their plan so they just binge and eat everything is sight that they have deprived themselves of while they sit on their couch watching TV.
In the meantime, they continue paying for a gym membership that they are not using. They tell themselves that they will get back on their plan on Monday. All of the weight they lost comes back just as rapidly, if not more rapidly, than when it came off. All of the hard work that they put in is gone. It’s hard to rationalize getting back on the plan when they know that this will have to be a lifestyle change. So…as is true with human nature… they put it off.
The truth?
Motivation wavers at times for anyone striving to reach their goal and maintain it. Ask anyone who has lost a lot of weight and maintained that loss if it has been an easy road for them. Ask that person if they were 100% motivated each step of the way. In most cases the answer would be no. But what separates those people who achieve their goals from the rest of the population that struggles with their plans?
The answer:
They want it bad enough. They are willing to go the distance. They are truly motivated and they realize that it will require a complete overhaul of their lifestyle forever.
One of the biggest mistakes that we make is to commit to lose weight and to go for it without having the necessary support system in place. We go for it without establishing those habits that will make this new, healthy lifestyle sustainable. Take that person who is now going to the gym 6 days a week, for example. What happens when, for whatever reason, they miss a workout one week and are unable to make it up? They hit 5 of their 6 sessions and they should feel good about that but instead they have let themselves down by missing that one day. They feel like they have failed. This is step one into that “screw it mentality” that I talked about earlier.
Another common mistake we make is to want it NOW. It is not in our nature to wait for things to come. I suppose that this is why fad diets and fat burners are so popular. But think about this. How long did it take you to get in the condition you are in now? For the majority it is years of bad eating and poor lifestyle habits that has gotten them to the point they are at now. Why would you expect to lose all of that “conditioning” in a matter of weeks? This is just not realistic.
A good and healthy weight loss plan will allow you to lose anywhere from 1-2 pounds per week so that initial motivation is going to have be spread out for a little longer than you expected. But the results will make it worth the wait. This is the key to maintaining your weight loss. Otherwise you become what is fondly referred to as a “yo-yo dieter”.
HOW DO I BEGIN MY WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY?
Step One: Set Your Goals
Actually write this down. Post it on your wall or better yet, your fridge. Write what your goals are. How much weight do you wish to lose? What size do you wish to be? Do you want to gain strength, endurance, improve posture and flexibility or be able to walk up stairs without huffing and puffing? Write it down. Even something that may seem small and insignificant to you.
Set a fitness goal. Is there an event you would like to participate in? Perhaps a race for a charity in the summertime? Would you like to be able to participate in a sport or activity? Or do you just wish to be able to bike with your children? Whatever your goals are you need to write them down.
Step Two: Announce Your Goals
You have set your personal and fitness goals. Now you need to announce them to your friends and family. Tell people about your goals. While it is great to be accountable only to yourself, it is easier to put yourself on the backburner and let yourself down. In sharing your goals with people you now become accountable to them as well and you have a support system in place. You are less likely to slip back into old habits and more likely to succeed.
In my experience, people that do not tell others that they are trying to lose weight do not succeed. They have a much harder time with it because they don’t have their friends, family or co-workers telling them that they should “put the cookie down!”
Step Three: Assess
You have your goals set and you have told people of your intention to lose the weight. You are almost ready to begin. Purchase a small notebook. In the first page you will re-write your goals. Next you will record your current weight and size. There are different measures of assessment so it is up to you to choose which you would like to use. Here are a few examples: scale, clothing size, bodyfat percentage, BMI, tape measures (chest, waist, hips, thighs, arms), Energy assessment between 1-10 morning and night, Blood pressure, flexibility, endurance and an array of medical tests. Some people like to take pictures. Now you have a start point. What’s next?
Step Four: Plan
Decide how you are going to go about achieving your goals. Are you going to need a gym membership? Do you need to look for a personal trainer? Are you going to join a sport or a walking club? Look into your options. It is best to get the advice of a fitness professional before embarking on your journey.
Once you have chosen your route you must plan times and dates to go. Mark the times in your planner and treat each visit to the gym as an appointment. You are less likely to skip it if it is planned. Your initial workouts should make you break a sweat but, start yourself off with a few whole body exercises each day. The intensity of your workouts should progress as time goes on. You don’t want to scare yourself off from the gym by completely killing yourself when you first start. Remember- if you haven’t done anything like this before you will be feeling those few exercises the next day. Record what you are doing at the gym. Record the exercises and weights that you are using. Also be sure to incorporate both resistance and cardiovascular activity into your routine.
Step Five: Baby Steps
If you decide to go the gym route (highly recommended) then make sure that you don’t overdo it. Instead of 6 times, why not shoot for 2-3 times per week? As a fitness professional that is all I would recommend to someone starting out. It is more realistic to fit these times into your schedule and you will be happier and more likely to succeed if you make it to all of your “appointments”.
As for nutrition, this is an integral part of your weight loss journey. We’ve said it time and time again. Exercise and nutrition go hand in hand. To achieve great results, you need to do both. Take the same approach with your eating. Don’t completely overhaul everything when you begin and give up all of things you have been eating. Simply begin replacing some of what you were eating with healthier options. Meal frequency is of the utmost importance when trying to lose weight. You want to make sure that you are eating every 2-3 hours. This is a habit that you’ll want to form. So begin with that. Maybe replace white refined bread with whole grains. Eat more vegetables. Eat protein containing foods. And keep to that schedule. It’s not rocket science.
Step Six: Cheat!
Do I have you confused? Yes. I did say cheat. I firmly believe that for most people to maintain their sanity while trying to lose weight that they need to be able to have times where they can satisfy their bad food cravings. Just as with your visits to the gym, take out your planner. Pencil in 2 days per week when you can have a meal where you can eat what you want to. I did say meal. This means that you sit down and eat and when you get up from the table that “cheat” is over. These meals restore sanity as well as preventing metabolic slowdown.
The best thing is that when you are craving something on a non-cheat day you know that you may not be able to have it now, but you will soon. This has a huge impact on you psychologically when you are “dieting”. So enjoy your cravings on your planned “cheat meal”.
Step Seven: Check In
Remember your initial assessment? You will be repeating that. It’s good to check in and see how you are doing every couple of weeks. See if what you are doing is working for you. Take all of the measurements that you initially took and record them in your handy little notebook. Compare them to the last ones. At some point you may hit what we like to call a plateau in your weight loss journey and this may require you to change a few things.
Step Eight: Refine
Once you have established the above steps and they have become part of your daily routine you are ready to move on. You do not do yourself a service to skip ahead to this point if you are not 100% successful with the last steps. This is the point where you refine what you are currently doing. Make the necessary changes to continue to get results. Usually this entails cleaning up your diet and eating much healthier. As for your training, the intensity should increase as well. If you are going 2 times to the gym perhaps you’ll consider 3 times?
Step Nine: Progress
As with a lot of things in life, your body has this amazing capacity to adapt to what you are doing to it. This was mentioned in the previous step. You always need to progress. What you were doing 2 months ago is no longer going to have the same effect on your body. It has adapted.
For example, a particular workout you were doing then that kicked your butt and left you panting and sweating may be easy for you now. Progress. Change. Lift more weight. Run instead of walk. Push yourself.
Step Ten: Join
Get your loved ones involved in your journey. Do activities together that are fun but that are also good exercise. Share your new found health with those around you. Join a club or sport that you had always wanted to. Purchase a bike or rollerblades. Spend time with your family hiking or swimming. What you will quickly come to realize is that if you succeed in your goal of weight loss you will garner the respect of others around you and, in essence, become an inspiration. This is quite the gift. Pass it on to people.
Conclusion
Losing weight is hard. I won’t deny it. At times it sucks. At times it feels great. But when you reach your goal it is the most rewarding feeling. It is entirely possible to attain your New Year’s resolution this year. Follow the steps above and you are more than equipped to go about it. Resolve to do this. You will not regret it. Remember that there is no try. Just do.
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January 6th, 2010
