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Viewing 1 - 7 out of 7 Blogs.
Self KnowledgeBy Cliff and Tatjana Eggink With each passing decade, we hope that our knowledge of self increases, and that we know our good as well as our less admirable qualities. You know that old saying, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” This is true within reason and we are no way suggesting that you should berate yourself or ruminate about those things that are past and cannot be changed. We want you to focus on self-awareness and do something about two particular behaviors we observe again and again and that may sabotage your healthy lifestyle plan.
In the gym, at the pool, on the track: How many times have you proclaimed for your benefit and the benefit of others listening “I worked out for an hour and a half today”? But how long did you really workout, swim, run or bike?
Next time, whatever you do, use your stop watch or bike computer to keep track of the minutes, and you will find that your hour and a half workout was probably not 90 minutes. Why? Sitting on a machine between sets in a gym is NOT working out. Stopping at a signal while biking, running, or walking, is NOT working out. Resting at the end of your swim lane is NOT working out. Don’t kid yourself, time yourself.
In a restaurant: How many times have you said, again for your conscience and your audience, “I’ll just have a salad.”? We see this quite often, and we must admit that is often the fairer sex who engages in this delusional behavior. Salads in many restaurants are devoid of a number of nutrients, such as low fat protein, and the dressings are loaded with an excess of sodium, saturated fat and unpronounceable chemical additives and preservatives. Don’t kid yourself, you are probably not eating healthy ordering that Cobb salad with Ranch dressing.Tell us what you quit kidding yourself about: www.irongeezer.com and www.irongeezelle.com
Tags: Get Active
IrongeezerSays: “Who Are Your Workout Partners?”
Surround yourself with supportive people. Decide what kind of support you need. The Mayo Clinic suggests that you think about the following: Do you want them to remind you to exercise? Ask about your progress? Participate with you regularly or occasionally? Allow you time to exercise by yourself? Go with you to a special event, such as a 10K walk/run? Be understanding when you get up early to exercise? Spend time with the children while you exercise? Try not to ask you to change your exercise routine? All of these factors will contribute to you sticking to your plan, and reaching your goal. Share your activity time with others. Make a date with a family member, friend or co-worker. A workout partner may help motivate you.
Tags: Know What You Want
A Senior Moment, Or?
“A senior moment is a tip of the brain ‘Eureka’ moment, not about forgetting, but about remembering the one thing you always wanted to do. Now you can. So do it. Seize your senior moment today!” Cliff & Tatjana Eggink Irongeezer.com
Tags: Think Positive
"Be Good to Yourself by Exercising for Health."
IrongeezerSays: It doesn't take a lot of hard work to enjoy the benefits of improving your health through light exercise. Improvements such as better cardiovascular health and maintaining proper weight are just a couple of the better known health benefits of daily exercise; the list is endless.
More than 50% of the U. S. population does not get enough physical activity to provide the health benefits of being active. A very large percent of older Americans do not even spend 20 minutes a day outdoors. Think about that! Get your neighbors out of doors.
To be active for health does not take money or hard work, it only takes commitment.
If you haven't been active and want to start, start out slowly and don't overdo it. Perhaps you could join in with others and participate in the physical activities that you enjoyed as a child. Some fun ways to exercise for health include dancing, swimming, biking, walking, jogging, gardening, triathlon, and hiking.
And as always, check with your health care provider before starting any new activity or increasing your present activity. Tell your doctor that you want to have fun being good to yourself by "exercising for health." Ask what he/she suggests for you? Please visit us at www.irongeezer.com for free healthy lifestyle tips.
Tags: Live Long
IrongeezerSays™," While Exercising Be Good to The Environment."
By Cliff and Tatjana Eggink We all know that Kermit the Frog says, "It isn't easy being green;" however, it must become the thing to be for all of us, and especially for us athletes and any active outdoor person. After all, “being green” means that we are breathing cleaner air on our runs, walks and hikes, viewing scenery in the mountains, in the desert, at the beach, on the water without litter, and swimming in and drinking cleaner water.
Being "green," while outdoors can be as simple as putting trash, such as your food wrappers, in a trash can or keeping the trash with you until you return home. This includes using aid stations in races where a runner, biker, or triathlete should discard bar wrappers, empty gel packs and empty water bottles. Even in the competitive climate of a race, your trash does not belong on the city streets, trails or side walks. They belong to you to dispose of properly at an aid station, where a volunteer will kindly finish off your disposal action. And by the way, don’t forget to thank them for this For the hiker, mountain biker, or trail runner, "green" can be staying on the trail and not disturbing nature by leaving the designated trail area. It can also mean helping to maintain trails, replanting native plants, and not collecting souvenirs, such as plants, rocks, and animals. Everyone can contribute to the "green" movement; we all have the opportunity not to use an automobile once in a while. We can walk or bike to the mail box, the store, school, or to visit neighbors. I think we are all clever enough to find an alternative to reduce any one of the 100 short air polluting trips that we take every year. As a plus, these added short walks or bike rides are good for us, too, increasing our exercise time effortlessly. The small steps that we can all take toward being "green" are endless. Let’s just make “being green” part of our active, healthy lifestyle. Please share your green ideas with us: www.irongeezer.com and www.irongeezelle.com
Tags: Exercise & The Environment
The “Free” Way of Your Life
As we get older, it is strange that snippets of songs and poems return to our minds with new meaning: Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” dropped in unexpectedly, after reading an article about the prevalence of regrets in people of a certain age.
We will call this the “would’ve-could’ve-should’ve syndrome.” It seems that many people, 40 on up, are afflicted. What’s a 40-something to do when regrets keep him awake at night, ruminating? The solution seems clear. The prescription is action!
It is never too late to do most things you wished you had done, although it may not be possible to do them precisely as you had envisioned. Pick something you always wanted to do – be an athlete, be a “parent” to a kid, be a student, be in your dream job, be a great friend or romantic mate, etc, then find a way to express that today, now, and not a moment later because time is finite. “Time’s Winged Chariot,” and all that, but that’s another poem.
Anyway, it may also help to remember that life in a free country offers an endless variety of possibilities to actualize your dreams; you know, the wishes that your heart desires. If you choose one avenue, one road to get there, though that also means that you may have by-passed another. Your choice can alter the outcome of your dream, taking you another direction on this strange, exciting trip that is our life.
Finally though, as you “face the final curtain,” you may still have a few twinges of things undone, but, if you begin today to choose to have the will to do, to act, to participate: Do that one thing that makes your heart sing and your spirit soar because you can and you should. Do it your way, today! Share the dreams that you have put into action with us: www.irongeezer.com and www.irongeezelle.com
Tags: Dreams
Obesity: The Rant Two thirds of the American public is either overweight or obese. Adults and kids alike are gaining pounds and suffering dire, life altering, life threatening health consequences: Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease are among those consequences. We all know the list of diseases and their outcomes. So there is no need to belabor that point, is there?
Yet, why are so many of us unwilling to change eating and exercise habits? The doctors don't know. The exercise physiologists don't know. The researchers don't know. The government doesn't know. Actually, no one knows what to do about this looming health care crisis that will cost all of us, not just financially in increasing health care costs for everyone, not just for the overweight and obese, in increasing insurance premiums, money lost for sick days, and loss of productivity -- (and yes, Michael Moore, the nation's gadfly on health care in his recent movie Sicko, needs to participate in that aspect of health care -- the diet and exercise - and not just rant about what others need to do).
But most importantly, beyond the dollar signs of the issue, are the misery of lives reduced to couch sitting, huffing and puffing, missing out on really delicious, nutritious, fresh food, instead gorging on synthetic, industrial tastes of, let's say, "Twinkies." However, any mass produced food will do fit the bill here- as long as it is cheap, fast and satisfies fat and sugar and/or salt cravings.
All the "health apostles," as some call the reasonable voices for a sensible approach to food and activity, have tried to educate, cajole, beg, plead, threaten, negotiate, but have finally resigned. Doctors do it -- resigning themselves to the prescription pad, managing disease with the latest pharmaceutical -- statins for high cholesterol, for instance. What often should go on that prescription pad is a simple: "Exercise and eat sensibly!" Then, let's just see what happens. Maybe that might prompt even one person to a positive change.
Doctors are not to blame though; some even try this approach, but are rebuffed by patients, who are irate that a doctor would discuss nutrition and have the audacity to suggest getting their duff moving. The government has resigned -- it has tried throwing money, in the form of public education, at the problem, but no change has happened. The nation, the industrialized world as a whole, as a matter of fact, just keeps getting larger.
So, what happened? No one seems to know. We are suggesting that it is not the fault of television, the food manufacturers, the pharmaceutical companies, or any one else, but the "fault," if we can call it that, lies within ourselves. As a people, we have an odd relationship to bodies, food, and who we admire and at what tables we worship. On the one hand, we salivate over every detail of some emaciated glamour life, and sneer at the discovery that this celebrity actually does have cellulite; that's the euphemism for fat, by the by. All the while, as we are glued to the television screen fixated on this celebrities' life, we are eating a bag of potato chips.
On the other hand, we are willing to try most fad diets, at least once -- swearing today that carbs are good, then bad; tomorrow, it's the cabbage soup diet, the South Beach diet, and next, we discuss the "wondrous, marvelous, awesome" moment of sports television, a gluttonous, disgusting hot dog eating contest, complete with spewing vomit from one of the contestants. That's just sick, depraved, and alarming on so many levels. What does it say about us and our culture when we award a person who can force-feed himself until he spews or wins? Metaphorically, not historically, we have sunk to the level of a declining Rome, just before the fall of that once great civilization. The Romans, too, vomited at their lavish banquet, so that they could continue eating. Interestingly enough, force-feeding geese to produce foie gras is coming under scrutiny and has been outlawed. Right or wrong? At any rate, someone is watching out for the geese. But what about the overweight children? Isn't it abuse on some level to allow your children to eat themselves into a state of obesity? Do we sense there is a disconnect here somewhere? Our mental state, our bodies, our nature are out of sync. And that's the essence of the problem.
Can we fix it? Yes, but the cure is hard. It worked with smoking. Yes, bigger is not better; bigger is bad. We are not talking about people either. Don't make the cars, houses, chairs, beds, plates, portions, etc, bigger: keep 'em normal. Once we accept larger as normal, larger becomes normal, and we can grow larger yet. Not a good idea. But that's not going to happen until we make obesity as much as a pariah as smoking has become. Remember, in the not too distant past, smoking was normal, perfectly acceptable; now, it is marked as a "disgusting, tumor causing habit" -- well, guess what, so is overeating. I already hear the politically correct choir chiming -- and yes, o course, the overweight are humans with feelings and no one suggests here that those should be ignored, or that people should be outcast, ridiculed or shamed in any way -- we are all here to help. Just remember, if you think that this is tough medicine, substitute every idea about obesity in this sassy piece with smoking, and you will find, for instance, that smokers are people with feelings and rights, too, and we weren't nearly as politically correct when it came to them. Why? Maybe because eating is a necessity, smoking isn't. Maybe because eating is seen as benign, compared to smoking. Maybe because smoking, as in second hand smoking, affects others, but guess what, so does obesity -- we all pay for that health crisis in the end.
And lest you think the authors speaks from a lack of experience: One has been a smoker, and I understand addiction, and one of us has weighed 205 pounds, so he understands being overweight.
Agree or disagree? Need help getting off the couch?. Check us out at www.irongeezer.com. Or www.irongeezelle.com.
Tags: Obesity
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