| Dear Friends of Roscoe Chiropractic, Another month flown by! I am pretty happy that April is beginning tomorrow, the grass is getting greener and soon the little buds will be sprouting on the tree branches. What a great time of year. All this new growth all around us has inspired us to begin something new at Roscoe Chiropractic as well. It's always good to keep shifting and moving toward a higher goal so in light of that idea we are introducing our Health Commitment Program. We encourage you to inquire about it and talk to Dr. Chris to see if it would be a good fit for you and your family. We will have brochures available upon request to explain the pricing and details for you! What are you committed to? Think about it and give us a call. Ok...I know how much you love it when I talk about exercise and nutrition so I'm going to write about it again! I promise, I write about it as much for myself as for any of you. These are all things I need to put into practice as well! It's important not to let our bodies control us, but for us to take control of our bodies! I'll list three steps to attaining this goal of controlling our bodies, yes, just three but they're all very important. Step One: Diet and Nutrition. Diet is not just about creating a caloric deficit (burning more calories than you eat) but also about increasing your intake of quality protein, good carbohydrates (veggies anyone?), fiber and healthy essential fats and water. The biggie in this one is eating less carbohydrates (NO! I do love potato soup and bread...), but it is recommended to have less than 150 grams daily and then eating more protein. This is recommended especially if you want a body that functions at a high level and looks lean. You'll also need a good multi-vitamin or mineral supplement as well (Standard Process' Catalyn is wonderful, ask Doc!). One way to help control what you eat is to keep a food diary. If you are diligent with keeping it you'll become far more aware of what goes into your mouth, including liquids! Many of us forget to take into consideration the types of things we drink when it's these liquids that often ruin our diets! Step Two: Resistance Training Key word here is Resting Metabolic Rate which is largely a function of how much muscle you have on your body and how hard it works. Simply bumping up cardio for a while to lose weight isn't going to accomplish much because you must add activities that burn calories, promote/maintain muscle mass and elevate your metabolism. This means working every muscle group. So this isn't just taking a jog and walking around on your lunch break it's about weight training. Muscle is an active tissue that requires calories to maintain and burns calories when it's working (this is a good thing!). Studies show that people who weight train lose more fat than those who diet and perform long bouts of (boring) aerobics only. Step Three: High Intensity Interval Training Something better than steady state running for three or four miles at a time is running short 15 second high speed sprints. For example run full out for 15 seconds, walk for 30 seconds and sprint again for 15 seconds, repeating ten times. The idea is not to overdo it or make yourself feel sick, but to push yourself to a level where you can complete this exercise and then bump up the time from 15 seconds to 20 and so on. The purpose in this kind of exercise is to burn more calories and increase what is called "Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption" (EPOC). This means that regardless of how long you have exercised that you'll continue to burn calories hours after you've completed your workout - up to 38 hours, research suggests! So that means if you've trained from 9am to 10am on Monday morning, you're still burning calories (without further training) at midnight on Tuesday! That's what I like to hear. We want to help all of you attain this kind of fitness here at RCC. We are here to promote total health, not just spinal health, so have a chat with Dr. Chris about how we can help guide you into a commitment to your total health! Have a great week! Karla H. Roscoe Chiropractic Centre |
