Live The Active Life

This week’s “Good Food” post is going to be short. We are doing some work in our house and as a result internet access is hard to come by. So, I thought I’d toss the question out to all of you. And I figured I’d make it a contest as well!

When you go to a fast food place what do you get that is healthy?

I know most places have added healthier items to their menus, let’s hear about them. Tell us what the restaurant is and what you have found on their menu that is healthy. I’ll compile all of the results into a summary post for next week. Now, on to the contest portion of this:

I will award a special prize to the person who, in my humble opinion , makes the most impassioned case for their favorite “healthy” fast food. There are a couple of rules to this.

1. There needs to be at least 4 “entries”, from different people, in order for the prize to be awarded.
2. The entries must be actual useful comments, not just something like “hey, great post”.
3. I will close the contest on Saturday at 9AM Eastern.
4. I will ship the prize to a US address.

So, what is the prize?

A copy of Eat Out, Eat Right: The Guide to Healthier Restaurant Eating

I know, it’s not the million dollars you were hoping for but this is a great book to have with you when you go out to a restaurant. If you don’t win it I’d suggest you get this book anyway. You can click the link to order if you want.

I will post the winner on Saturday or Sunday. Make sure you use a valid email so I can get your shipping details from you.

That’s it. Let’s see lots of comments/entries so I can compile a helpful list of healthy fast food choices for everyone to benefit from. Subscribe to our RSS Feed if you haven’t already and tell all of your friends to check out this blog and enter the contest. Good luck!

This is an update of week four of 8 Minute Meditation.  I have been working through the book for 4 weeks so far (half way done) and am definitely getting used to meditation and am enjoying it more and more.  But, this week was the most difficult for me as far as trying to achieve the objective of the week which is “The Magic Moment”.

Basically, “The Magic Moment” refers to that instant in time during meditation when you are completely in the present with no thoughts running through your head.  The author, Victor Davitch, says that our minds are always working, generating thoughts that are either in the past or about the future.  He suggests that during meditation, when the thoughts start flowing, to simply categorize them as either past or future and mentally “file them away”.  The magic moment will occur right after you have filed away a thought, before the next one enters your mind.

As I said, I found this exercise to be a little frustrating.  I did manage to achieve the goal a couple of times but it was definitely fleeting.  When I did succeed it was a little magical.  The feeling of a totally focused mind is kind of neat.  I just didn’t get there very often.

What did I learn this week?

1. My mind is definitely full of thoughts- Many, many more than I ever imagined.  It’s really amazing how much your mind does and most of the time we don’t even know it.  Meditation shows just how much we “think”.
2. It takes a real effort to meditate- That sounds kind of strange but this week confirmed to me that meditation is work.  A good kind of work, but still work.

I am half done with the eight week program.  So far I am impressed with the book.  It lays out an easy to understand, and follow, program that virtually guarantees success if you are willing to work through it.  Next week’s focus is on “Gracious Declining”.  I am looking forward to trying it out.

Here is my weekly activity for the week ended March 23rd.

This week was pretty much back to normal as far as the schedule goes. We weren’t traveling and we had an extra day off due to the Easter holiday so I was able to workout Friday morning. I was a little low on energy all week which I think was due to me trying to fight off a late season cold. It did affect my workouts a little. My legs were more tired than usual. By Sunday I was feeling a little better so hopefully I kicked it.

Bike Riding

I rode every day except Friday. The only day I rode inside was Wednesday when I did a max heart rate and 20 minute power test on the trainer. I did better than I thought considering that I was feeling a little out of it due to the cold I was fighting. See my post on maximum heart rate testing to see how well I did. Overall I got in a little over five hours and twenty minutes of riding in. Next week the group I ride with is planning on a longer ride in the mountains on Sunday. If the weather holds that will be a good workout.

Weight Training

I only lifted on Friday. My right shoulder is still a little sore so I did not want to push it by lifting with my upper body. So, I focused on my legs like I have for the last few weeks. Getting to the gym to lift is going to be a little harder now that it is warming up and staying light longer in the evening. I need to get back on a schedule and hopefully my shoulder cooperates. If not, I will be seeing the Dr. next week.

Healthy Eating

This week was pretty good eating wise. We got back into our routine and I was able to fix a few home cooked meals that were pretty tasty. Our Big Green Egg is starting to get a lot of work now that things are warming up. I grilled some chicken on Friday as well as some lamb on Saturday and salmon on Sunday. We really like grilled and smoked foods. The challenge is to use lean cuts of meat and to limit portion sizes.

That’s it for this week. Keep moving and I’ll update again next week.

OK, time for a little interactivity. This is the first poll on Live The Active Life. Now that we have some regular readers I thought it would be good to start off with a basic question to see where everybody is regarding exercise. Let us know where you are by answering the poll and feel free to add any additional information in the comments.

Welcome to part two of this series on using your heart rate to exercise properly. This part is fairly long but I think the information is worth the time it will take to read it.

In part one of this series I discussed what maximum heart rate is and how it relates to developing a zone based training program. Now that we have an idea of how training using your heart rate can help us achieve our fitness goals we need to find out what our specific “zones” are. We do this by performing some basic tests to give us an idea what our maximum heart rate is. We then use this maximum to construct the training zones that we can use in our exercise program. Once again I must emphasize:

Please Remember: You should always check with your doctor before starting any exercise program.

OK, now that I have gotten through that disclaimer again we can proceed

In order to accurately determine our maximum heart rate we need to actually do some physical activity. Depending on your exercise experience there are a couple of different ways to do the test.

The exception, and this is important, is if you have been inactive for an extended period or have never exercised. If that describes you then you can get an estimate by:

Subtracting your age from 220.

(For example, I am 43, so my max HR using this formula is 177 (220-43=177). This will get you started. Once you have been working out for a while you can use one of the other methods to verify your number)

Sub-Max Testing

If you have some, but not extensive, experience exercising use this method:

This first method is a good place to start if you are new to exercise (within the first 6 months or so). If you are more experienced you may want to skip down to the “Full-Max” section. Depending on your level of fitness you will adjust your results by adding a different number to your results to get your maximum heart rate. Here are the three levels of fitness (aerobic, not muscular) to use:

1. Low- if you do not exercise at all, or if you have not exercised recently (last 8 weeks). Remember, you can be thin, have no weight-loss goals, and still be in poor shape.
2. Medium- you walk a mile 3 times a week, or participate in any aerobic activity 3 times a week for 20 minutes.
3. High- you regularly have training sessions that total more than 1 hour a week, or you walk or run at least 5 miles a week.

Ok, here is the “Sub-Max” test:

Use an 8″ step (almost any step in your home or in a club will do) and perform a 3-minute step test. After your warm-up, step up and down in a four-count sequence as follows: right foot up, left up, right down, left down. Each time you move a foot up or down, it counts as one step.

Count “up, up, down, down” for one set, with 20 sets to the minute. It is very important that you don’t speed up the pace–keep it regular. After 2 minutes, monitor your heart rate for the last minute. Add to your last minute’s heart rate average one of the following numbers:

1. Low: +55 bpm
2. Medium: +65 bpm
3. High: +75 bpm

The result should be pretty close to your maximum heart rate.

Full-Max Testing

If you are an experienced exerciser (over 6 months) and you really want to determine your max heart rate you can do one of these “Fun” tests:

Another disclaimer is in order here. These tests are extreme in nature and should not be attempted unless you are in very good shape. Even if you are in good shape you should still verify everything is OK with your doctor before trying these tests.

If your primary form of exercise is running then you can do the “run up a hill ’til you can’t run any more test”. This is pretty basic, all you need is a moderate hill of 400-500 yards long.

1. Warm up for 10-15 minutes at a medium pace.
2. After the warm up slowly build your speed for a couple more minutes until you reach the bottom of the hill.
3. When you reach the bottom of the hill continue to build speed and run up the hall as hard as you can.
4. Fall down when appropriate (when your body tells you it can’t go any more)
5. Take your heart rate or look at your heart rate monitor to see the number.
6. If you don’t have a hill you can substitute a treadmill with an incline feature or just go to your local high school track and sprint a lap as hard as you can after building speed over the previous lap or two.

If you do this test properly you will get a pretty accurate number.

If, like me, you do cycling as your primary exercise, the test is pretty much the same as the running, just substitute a bike for Nike shoes. Here’s how I have done this test outside:

1. Warm up for 20-30 minutes at a moderate pace
2. Do a couple of hard 15-30 second sprints, then recover for a minute or two
3. Find your favorite hill (at least 1/2 mile long) and start riding up it as hard as you can go without sprinting staying seated.
4. When you feel you can’t go any harder sprint with all your effort for 15 seconds, standing is OK.
5. Stop, get off or fall off and check your heart rate.
6. You can do this on your indoor trainer by following the same basic steps, just increase the tension and then stand up and sprint the last 15 seconds.

As “research” for this article I performed this test last Wednesday on my indoor trainer and I made it to 186.

Ok, once you have recovered from the testing you can build your zones based on your max heart rate. We will cover that in part three as well as give you a couple of sample workout programs (for running/walking and cycling).