Movestrong, Blogstrong

Sunday, April 27, 2008

The Body for life challenge


Well I have to thank my patient Theresa for introducing me to the Body For Life Challenge.

Having gained more weight after the birth of child number 2, and putting myself last behind my family and all my practice members- the time came to make a change.

So far, there are 4 people in my office who are participating in this program, and I couldn't be more excited.
My goal is to lose 25 pounds of fat, and gain 10 pounds of muscle.
More importantly, I'm setting the goal of waking up at 5:30 in the morning, planning my days the night before, and re-writing and reviewing my goals everyday.

I'm going to keep track of my progress both here, and on the BFL forum- under the Movestrong BFL Challenge topic listing.

All those taking part, or interested in learning more, please feel free to comment on either spot.
We're here to help each other, so that we all succeed at the challenge and our goals.

Let's all build the habits of Eating strong, breathing strong and Moving strong!

Dr. Adam

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Earth Hour and Bob Dylan



Bob dylan said that the way we treat the planet is a reflection of the way we treat ourselves, and it is with this paraphrased quote in mind that I reflect about Earth Hour on Saturday evening.
With great media hype, many of us turned our lights off for one hour (in my case from 8-9pm).
I took that opportunity, while rocking my infant son to sleep, to reflect on what the hour meant to me, and what I could do once the lights came back on at 9 o'clock.
In my city, apparently the power consumption fell by about 5 percent. Now this is clearly not a gigantic amount, especially compared to New Zealand who dropped by over 10%.
However, as the japanese principle of Kaizan says, the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. And we must ask ourselves what the next simplest step is to saving the planet.
In my opinion, Earth hour served to start creating the habit of turing the electricity off, as well as showing us that we can mobilize together for a good reason to make a difference.
I created a principle called "3 minutes on the floor" to help people create the habit of doing something good for themselves. Many people tell me that they want to stretch, or meditate, or do yoga, or eat better, but they don't have time. My advice begins by getting them to make a commitment to spending 3 minutes every day lying on the ground. During that time they can do something active, reflect on life, or do nothing.
Why 3 minutes? Because everybody has 3 minutes. It's not about quantity, it's about building the habit of breaking yourself away from the TV, or computer, or kitchen, or desk and focussing on yourself.
People who do this consistently are so proud of themselves for sticking to something, even if it is only 3 minutes on the floor, and invariably end up increasing the time to 4, 5, or even 10 minutes.
I know that I felt good about myself for not turning the lights on, and not even listening to my iPod. I increased my level of awareness of how much I consume, thought about where I could cut back, and ways I'd like to be more environmentally conscious. But I also spend an hour in silence, clearing my own head without the hum of the TV. There's currently a miniseries on HBO about John Adams and the founding fathers, and I found myself wondering if they would have gotten as much accomplished if there had been 3 TVs in every house.
So doing something for the planet also meant doing something for me. I think often about Dylan's quote, and think that as more people become conscious of wellness and Naturally Savvy living, they invariably become more environmentally conscious. Bob's a pretty smart guy.
What can you do for yourself and the environment?

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

How do you think 3 days of "healthy food" made me feel?

Having spent the whole weekend at Lifefest, which is a wonderful show, I reflected on the vast amount of pseudo-green that was being sold to the 30,000 women in attendance.

When working a trade show like that for 3 days, the reality is that your breaks and snacks tend to be the samples that are being given out by the food vendors.
While the good people from Florida Grapefruit were there giving out actual food, the rest was all processed or packaged.
Despite a great number of dietitians in attendance and the "Health check symbol" that was touted by the heart and stroke association, so much of the food was still junky, and would still make you sick over time.

Michael Pollan in his tremendous new book "In Defense of Food" says that most of what we eat isn't food, but "Edible Food-like Substances". Right on Michael.
The Dietitians are touting health-check foods, because they fit in with Canada's food guide. Except just about everything on the food guide's rainbow is a whole or healthy food. Everything they were pushing was canned or boxed. They were even giving out canned soup (a serving of which has on average 700mg of sodium). It's ridiculous.

Dare cookies had a new product called "Simple Pleasures" that had the healthcheck symbol. When I asked what was healthy about it, they said that it had no trans fats. What Bullshit!!
It also has no plastic or poison in it too. It must be really healthy.
Now, there's no question that I had my fair share of samples over the weekend, but I understood that it was a cookie bar.
But don't piss in my ear and tell me it's raining.

I thought about the fact that after eating supposed healthy food all weekend, I felt (nutritionally) like crap by the end of it.
Isn't that ironic.
Shouldn't I have felt fantastic from eating all that healthy food?

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Just because it's kosher

While food can be positive in one dietary sense, it isn't necessarily positive in the healthy way.

This weekend, we had a booth at the wonderful Lifefest show down at the Metro Convention Centre, here in Toronto.

One of the major sponsors of the show, Shoppers Drug Mart, had a new organic line of products called NATIVA. Their slogan was "Good for you, good for the environment".
So what products were they promoting?
Potato chips and button cookies.
Really???
Is that good for you? Organic junk is still junk.
Just because it's got organic ingredients, doesn't mean it's healthy. You can get organically fat and organic diabetes too.

Pseudo-green. It really makes me sick, because there are people who don't really understand the concept of organic, and think it is synonymous with health. people will buy those chips and cookies because they're organic and labelled as "good for you".
Shoppers Drug Mart should be ashamed of themselves. But then again, I've argued before that they sell food in the first half of the store that makes you need the drugs in the second half.

When I was a kid, we went to a store that sold only kosher food.
I remember seeing some candy, and telling my mom that they had kosher Kit Kat.
"Just because it's kosher, doesn't mean it's healthy".

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