Personal Trainer Secrets Issue Feb 12 2007

Fitness Article of the Week
The Importance of Choosing Organic Meat

Organic, grass-fed beef is the healthiest meat option When most people think of organic foods, they envision spinach and tomatoes ripening in the sun gardens cultivated with natural fertilizers. While this is an inspiring picture for many, it's missing a key element: meat. Eating organic is not necessarily equated with eating vegetarian. The products on the organic market range from fresh produce to pastas, ice cream, and, yes, meat. The variety of meats available has increased as the health awareness of people today has grown.

People today are eating less meat than ever, so when they choose meat, they want assurances that it will be the healthiest, best-tasting meat they can buy. With organic foods, the quality is so much improved that you can taste the difference between a commercially farmed and an organic cow. Commercial meat farming has become almost like farming produce, in that animals are boxed up in their neat rows and expected to live, grow, and be harvested like a plant. Animals are not plants, though, and a natural lifestyle for the animal leads to better tasting meat for us.

For the past 50 years, our farming of both animals and plants has grown more and more dependent on chemicals. Our focus has shifted away from quality and toward mass production. We are looking at a society of “bigger, faster, more,” and that is driving our food production in unhealthy directions. You may have heard that within the next year, we can expect to see meat from cloned animals on the grocery store shelves, without the benefit of additional labeling.

All commercially farmed animals are pumped full of antibiotics and synthetic hormones to make them grow bigger faster, and their meat is processed with chemical additives and preservatives, such as phosphates. Generations of Americans have chewed their way through these chemicals, all the while thinking about how good that ham looked on the shelf – it had better look good, seeing as it was chemically colored and “enhanced”!

It is truly sad how few people have experienced the delight of tasting meat farmed as nature intended: grass-fed and allowed to roam safely and happily. Organically raised animals are fed on organic feed and on grass that is grown without the “aid” of toxic pesticides and harmful fertilizers. Organic animals are not fed animal byproducts, like some of the unfortunate animals at “regular” farms. These typical feeding practices may in fact contribute to problems like mad cow disease, so buying organic can help protect you from this hidden killer and others.

The animals at organic farms are treated very humanely, as required by organic certifiers, with large living quarters and access to the outdoors. The animals are healthier than commercially farmed animals because they have the room to move about and are not crowded in with sickly animals.

The use of antibiotics in feed for organically raised animals is strictly forbidden. Commercial farmers use antibiotics to accelerate growth in young animals and to help to prevent the diseases common in the overcrowded conditions in which these animals are kept. This practice, so common in commercial agriculture, has been proven to contribute to the growth of bacterial strains that are resistant to antibiotics in humans. This practice, originated for the convenience of the farmers, has aggravated many dangers for all of us. On the other hand, organic farmers use natural processing methods, which never implement synthetic chemicals, artificial preservatives, or additives like sodium nitrate.

Eating organic meat is not just about the taste (although the great taste makes it highly rewarding). It is also about doing what is good for your body, the animals, and the planet. If everyone knew how great it tastes to do the right thing, commercial animal farms would be wiped out before you could say, “Beef: it’s what’s for dinner.”

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Featured Exercise
Squats

Squatting exercises help develop functional coordination between the hips, knees, and ankles Squatting literally means assuming a crouching position with the knees bent so that the hips will come into line with the heels. The advantage of squatting exercises is that they develop a level of functional coordination between the hip joints, knees, and ankles, meanwhile training the corresponding muscles, including the hamstring, quads, gluts, calf muscles, and lower back muscles. Originally, weightlifters popularized this exercise, but these days, virtually every sportsman involved in any sport requiring some amount of athleticism performs squats as a supplementary workout routine.

Squatting can be done in several ways – with or without a bar bell, in a narrow or wide stance (in terms of foot position), and with a definite amount of knee flexion (knee angle). The variation in weight or change in position is meant to vary the weight or force exerted on the knees, hips or ankles, to suit the existing physical strength of the individual. Even though parallel and deep squats produce virtually the same amount of muscle activation, the former is prescribed for athletes who have had knee injuries, since this method puts less strain on the knee joints and muscles. Similarly, those with hip problems are advised to do 90-degree squats, as the parallel and deep squats put a significant amount of pressure on the hip joints.

Other squatting exercises in vogue include back and front squats, overhead squats, box squats, dumbbell squats, pistol squats, ATG squats, and Smith machine squats (which I'm not a big fan of, because of the sheer force on the knee's and un-natural motion of the squat) .

The choice of squatting exercises must be made based exclusively on the prevailing conditions of one’s knees, hips, and ankles. Hence, it is advisable that instead of randomly starting with any squatting exercise, you first seek the advice of a personal trainer and listen to his/her instructions carefully. You must always remember that a badly done workout can actually bring more harm than benefit. After all health is wealth, isn’t it?

Ask Scott White | Personal Trainer

Question
Can you cut through all the mixed messages and tell me, once and for all, how important it is to count calories to achieve your goal weight?

Scott Responds

Lose weight by implementing diet and exercise. A healthy diet depends on several factors for success. Cutting calories alone isn’t the answer to attaining and maintaining your target weight. To achieve success, you must combine the right nutritional balance with the proper amount of exercise. Another important component necessary for the success of your diet is mental focus – changing your eating and exercise habits is as much a psychological change as a physical one.

By simply cutting calories, you may actually withhold from yourself the necessary vitamins and nutrients your body needs to become healthier. In the extreme, relying only on cutting calories as a means to lose weight may lead to a state of starvation. Instead of slashing a certain number of calories from your diet to achieve that magic number, reallocate those calories to healthier foods. Rather than reducing the number of meals you eat on a daily basis, reduce the size of those meals and increase the number of times you eat. That’s right! By eating more often, but in smaller portions, your metabolic rate will increase, increasing in your calorie-burning potential, as well as your energy level.

A smart eater will plan meals ahead of time, in order to properly balance the number of meals, amount of calories, and types of food consumed. Maintain a well-balanced diet by ensuring proper levels of carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals, fiber, fat and water. Consult the food pyramid for suggested servings-per-day for each basic food group. Try to break these suggested servings evenly between your multiple meals – eating all of your fruits in one meal, all of your grains in another, and all of your proteins in yet another will not benefit you.

When designing your nutritional plan, keep in mind that the first pounds you lose may come off rapidly, as your body sheds water weight. After that, plan your caloric intake based upon your activity level and the goal of losing one or two pounds per week. Look at the amount of calories you already consume on a daily basis. In order to lose one pound per week, you will probably need to reduce your overall caloric intake by around 3500 calories per week, or 500 per day. When creating your nutritional plan, never plan for fewer than 1200 calories per day, or your body will not properly maintain itself. Falling below 800 calories per day could lead to malnutrition and starvation.

You do not need to reduce the amount of calories in your diet simply by cutting food; you can also cut calories by increasing your current exercise to burn a certain number of extra calories per day. Long-term weight loss must always include an exercise regimen to supplement smarter eating habits. Just as you moderate your food intake to sensible levels, also moderate your exercise. Never take on more than you can safely handle – even burning just 100 extra calories per day by walking briskly for 20 minutes can be beneficial to your diet.

Most importantly, always keep your head in the game and your eyes on the goal. Healthy weight loss and a healthier future are well worth making your best effort to strive for, but you must have the determination and perseverance not to expect immediate results but to work towards long-term success. Remembering that simply cutting calories is not enough will be the key to your goal achievement. Instead strive to change your entire lifestyle through nutrition and exercise, and you will be well on your way to becoming healthier and more fit!

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