Walk Away the Pounds (WATP) is the creation of Leslie Sansone. She offers a large collection of mostly walking dvds. She does have some that are for strength training (with stretchy bands) as well as things like kickboxing and yoga. She says that her program has everything you need to be fit for life—strength training as you walk, aerobics, stretching. I like the idea of fitting all that in in a simple way, but the strength training is pretty mild (in the walking dvds anyway…I have not tried the firm up dvd she has which is purely strength training with a stretchy band). Some of her walkers look pretty fit, but I’ve always wondered if they do other exercise! I have a pretty large collection of her stuff! I was drawn to her because walking seems like the most natural of exercises, and being able to do it indoors without a treadmill was appealing! She has numerous people who walk with her on the recordings who have lost a lot of weight with her program. She’s very encouraging and down-to-earth. She is rather chatty, which many people find annoying—usually I don’t, but sometimes….and her dvd’s vary a good bit as far as how well-made they are. Some have various cuing mistakes and weird camera angles…I find that somewhat appealing—like she’s not trying to be perfect, and she wants you to relax and just keep moving! Other times, it does seem cheap or unprofessional. Overall, I would recommend her workouts as a way to be fit for life!

Beyond sustained, brisk activity (of whatever aerobic activity you choose), the latest information suggests interval training (just fyi, Leslie Sansone’s later dvd’s usually incorporate intervals) is more effective, and it requires less time. In The Ab Diet, editor-in-chief of Men’s Health, David Zinczenko, cites examples of studies that show that while you burn less calories during the actual exercise period doing a shorter session of intervals vs a longer, steady rate session, your metabolism is raised by the more intense interval session and stays raised for an extended period of time. Authors of other exercise books I have read (Mind Over Body, Body for Life) say the same thing. One mental aspect of doing the more intense intervals (which I read about in Jon Gabriel’s The Gabriel Method) is that bursts of speed in whatever you’re doing send the message to the body that it’s in danger, that it needs to be thin to go fast to survive. Some books recommend only doing interval work, others suggest a mix of interval and the traditional “brisk, steady” approach. I often think about how we were made to be in nature—yes, we were of necessity more active…but not all of it was intense survival mode. There were times when we just needed to be able to walk a long distance at a steady pace. So mixing intervals with steady pace walking is what I do.

Before I discuss the strength training component of being fit for life, there’s one book I read and liked—Prevention’s Chris Freytag’s Shortcuts to Big Weight Loss. This book sort of stands alone as far as how it suggests fitting exercise into your day—namely breaking it into 10 minute increments (there are multiple 10-minute exercise dvd’s out there…I just never saw the approach discussed in books). The idea here is that in earlier days, when more people were “naturally” fit, exercise wasn’t done in long blocks of time. People were just more active throughout the day, often in short “bursts.” I really like the idea here! Especially with weights, which as I previously noted, I don’t enjoy! Of course, she has people who’ve had success with this approach—no surprise. My main confusion over it was with the weights—she says to do one to two 10-minute weight workouts three to five days a week…but what about “rest days?” I actually contacted her by email—she’s great about responding to emails! She said that with the shorter weight workouts, it was a different animal—that is, you didn’t have to have rest days as with traditional lifting. Of course, there are people who do heavy lifting everyday as part of their job—so how does that jive with all the science behind needing rest days?! Needless to say, the various approaches to weights for strength training leave me a little confused. I finally settled on Jorge Cruise’s 12-second approach…it’s only 20 minutes twice a week which is appealing to me….and of course, you’ll see people in his book who have had success with his approach!

Strength Training

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail regarding strength training here other than to say, as noted above, that it seems to be a key component to staying healthy and slim. Back to thinking how we were made to be in nature, it does make sense to me that we need to use our muscles—and if our lives don’t naturally involve a lot of lifting or physical labor, an organized approach to doing so seems wise! Weights are the way I’ve chosen to work my muscles—I use dumbbells which have certain advantages—the biggest one for me is being able to exercise at home. But certainly working out at a gym is great if it suits you!

Another way to practice strength training to be fit for life is with yoga. I gave yoga a bit of a try when I was hoping for a way to skip the weights! You look at committed practitioners of yoga and they look long and lean. Yoga doesn’t seem to follow the “science” of strength training but it’s been around and effective for a very long time! Workouts that look easy when you’re just watching have very difficult components and do indeed require strength! My mentality of exercise is definitely a western one, however, and so yoga isn’t for me! I will likely practice yoga in limited amounts all my life, but not as my primary form of strength training. I have enjoyed various 10-minute yoga dvd workouts (10-Minute Solutions Yoga and Yoga for Beginners) as well as workouts from Yoga for Dummies. I have some of the longer yoga workouts (45 minutes to an hour) but have never tried them.

The last strength training approach I have tried to be fit for life is Pilates. Here again, as with yoga, I only tried this on my own—I am not interested in classes or gym workouts—they just don’t fit my lifestyle (which is a variable day-to-day schedule). Pilates only uses your own body weight, as does yoga, and it focuses in large part on the core muscles. I have used a couple of dvd workouts (10-minute Solutions Rapid Results Pilates, and Denise Austin’s Hit the Spot Pilates), and one book (Brooke Siler’s The Pilates Body)to guide me in this practice, but just never felt satisfied with what I was doing. The Chris Freytag book discussed above as well as Michele Stantens book 3-weeks to firm up, do incorporate Pilates exercises into their core workouts.

Other Options

The last two forms of exercise I’d like to mention are Tai Chi and Qigong. These two practices appeal to me because they are mind-body practices (in fact, you can make any form of exercise a mind-body exercise if you engage your mind in what you’re doing versus distracting yourself with music or television). I have trouble committing to these practices as my only exercise because they are different to what I grew up on as an athlete—but something about them is appealing! I have a dvd by David-Dorian Ross that is very cool…in fact, I might get it out again and give it another try. I also have two Morning Cup books by John Fey—one on Tai Chi and one on qigong. He has developed his own versions of these two ancient practices and they are simple and fun and only require about 15 minutes. For me, the problem in sticking with these practices is one of time and confidence…I stay really busy and have only a certain amount of time per day to devote to exercise…and I’m just not convinced these approaches are enough! They certainly don’t feel like work! But maybe exercise needn’t be hard work?? I would certainly recommend them as enjoyable and fun…I just don’t know if they are enough to keep you fit for life. Probably if you believe they’re what your body needs, they would be! In all the New Thought books I have read, the only references to exercise were for walking and Tai chi—for whatever that’s worth! I haven’t forgotten flexibility as a component of being fit for life! The consensus on flexibility seems to be that you should only stretch warm muscles—so after your walk or bike ride….the best way to warm up for activity is by doing the activity at low-intensity. So you walk slowly before walking briskly or jogging. You do one round of weights with light weights and with less range of motion before getting serious. For weight training you can also just march in place and move all you muscles and joints by lifting your arms etc…one dvd I have (Abs Diet workout) and one book (Wini Linguvic’s Lean Long, and Strong) suggest stretching the muscle right after doing the strength move, but others just recommend a handful of stretches after the whole workout. The important thing is to be sure to incorporate stretching into your days to maintain flexibility throughout your life! Of course, some exercise practices, like yoga, for example, have flexibility work built in—which is great!

Diet

No discussion of being fit for life would be complete without addressing diet. There are a gazillion books out there that address this topic…as with everything else, it seems, different authors suggest different approaches and all seem to have success. So again, it becomes a matter of finding an approach that suits you. Somehow I have a sense with diet more than I do with exercise that it’s not so much what you eat, but what you think about what you eat that really matters! Like the story about the model-thin woman who ate a lot mentioned before, it seems there are people who live long and healthy lives with very divergent eating habits! My parents are a good example—they are in their late 80’s and are in good shape having never formally done any exercise and eating a good mixture of natural foods along with plenty of processed foods. They use what they think are good eating habits, but habits which run counter to much of the information out there…and it works for them! Consider the yogis who can ingest toxic substances without suffering any consequences (can’t remember where I read about that!) and it makes you wonder about the whole concept of how important diet is….of course, here again, most of us aren’t so evolved as that! And so we do have to consider, at least to some extent, what to put into our bodies. I have adopted eating 6 small meals a day—I find it appealing to eat so often! But the biggest meal is only about 400 calories, so I am not eating a ton. Supposedly, especially as we age, our bodies handle the small meals better. And, again supposedly, such an eating approach keeps your body feeling that there is plenty of food and no need to store up energy as fat. Works for me! I try to eat a good balance of foods and I indulge in one 200-calorie treat per day—candy, cookies, whatever. And, of course, there are days that don’t fit this plan when I can’t eat as often or I eat a big meal out…I figure it’s a good way to change things up for my body so that it doesn’t get too “used to” a certain way of being. In the end, we each have to decide how we want to eat…as this part of fitness is less interesting to me than the exercise component, I’m not saying as much! I think the primary factor should be one of enjoyment—if eating becomes a drag and too serious, what’s the point?!