The QLog

Diet Day and 14 More Years!

If weight loss or fitness is a goal for 2008, then these two items might interest you.

1. National Diet Day is the Second Tuesday of January (today). No, this is not a day to pick a fad diet. Instead, it is recommended that you choose a long-term plan and adopt healthy lifestyle habits that includes a smart diet that you can sustain for many years.

2. The PLoS Medicine, a peer-reviewed open access journal, published a new study today that concluded that four very basic and easy behaviors could add as many as 14 years to one's lifespan. The evidence came from the EPIC-Norfolk Prospective Population Study which had a large data set of 20,244 men and women.

The four longevity lifestyle behaviors are:

• not smoking
• being physically active
• moderate alcohol intake
• eating at least five vegetable servings a day

If you are looking for some lifestyle habits to improve your life, these are obviously a good four to adopt today.

Here is the download citation for the full article:

Combined Impact of Health Behaviours and Mortality in Men and Women: The EPIC-Norfolk Prospective Population Study Khaw KT, Wareham N, Bingham S, Welch A, Luben R, et al. PLoS Medicine Vol. 5, No. 1, e12 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050012

Here is the link to the PLoS editorial on the article:

From Theory to Practice: Translating Research into Health Outcomes The PLoS Medicine Editors PLoS Medicine Vol. 5, No. 1, e15 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050015

Health, Wealth, and Stealth Goals

The most common resolutions each year involve health, wealth, and stealth. Resolutions are rarely measurable, time-bound, or planned, so it is no surprise that these rarely succeed. Instead, set some goals within these domains for 2008.

Heath Goals: Weight-loss goals are the most common via more exercise or a specific diet. I do encourage you to optimize your wellness; however, expand your scale and scope and focus on overall fitness. Multiple studies have demonstrated that short-term or temporary diets almost universally fail over time as these behaviors (such as severely reducing calories or only eating a single type of food) are not sustainable over time. Instead, choose new lifestyle habits that can be done for the next 20-years as daily exercise or consuming twice as many fruits and vegetables than you do now. Losing 15 pounds this year can be part of this plan; however, increasing your healthspan and lifespan will have a more significant impact.

Wealth Goals: The majority of these center around reducing debts, earning more money, and finding superior investments. I suggest picking one major wealth goal for the year from starting your own enterprise to getting a promotion. If you really can not think of a single wealth goal, consider becoming a million by December 31, 2013, and create a game plan of how that could be possible.

Stealth Goals: As children, we feel free to share are highest dreams, such as becoming President or flying the Space Shuttle. Stealth goals are often hidden as strangers, friends, and family might not understand the vision and regard it as mere fantasy or delusion as these are often grand and bold ideas that would force the individual to stretch further than they ever had before. If you have a stealth goal, kudos! First, work out a rough plan on how it could be achieved. Second, begin focusing one hour a day every single day.

Seven Keys for Weight Loss

If losing weight is one of your goals for 2007, here are seven keys for successful weight loss.

1. Strong Desire – Resolutions are not enough! You need to really want to get healthier. Many people will state they plan to lose weight on January 1, but few will complete the work needed to achieve this after the first week of the year. Without passion for this plan, it will be hard to put forth the effort that is required.

2. A Clear Goal – ‘How Much?’ is an important question. Decide exactly what your ideal weight is before you begin!

3. Realistic Deadlines – Determine by when you’ll complete this life enhancing journey; however, do not try to do too much too soon. Be reasonable when setting targets.

4. An effective plan – You need to find a reliable methodology that works for you which includes both a better diet and increased levels of exercise.

5. Systemic Measurement – You need to keep score. Weigh yourself at least once week. Every day is fine as long as your realize that there will be minor fluctuations. Keep track of your progress over time. 

6. Public Declaration – Diets are not secrets. Share your plan to improve your health, especially with those whom you often dine.

7. A Support Group is KEY – Look to family and friends to assist with your plan. Ask them to keep your honest during meals and not to tempt you with treats or snacks. Find diet partners to work on this together. Another strategy is to hire a coach to keep you accountable.

The Share Diet Plan

This is very simple and it is eatting with significance. Here is how it works:

1)      Pick one night a week and plan to fast that evening for the next 52 weeks. You should eat a healthy breakfast and lunch that day.

2)      Calculate the amount of money you would have spent on dinner for that night over a single year.

3)      Donate that sum to a charity that focuses on feeding others from starving kids to homeless shelters.

5 Plus 2

I’ve talked to over 25 dietitians and nutritionists over the past 18 months. So far, not a single one has disagreed with this 5 Plus 2 strategy: eat SEVEN servings of fruits and/or vegetables per day! The standard recommendation from the US Government is five per day. Most Americans have a hard time eating 35 serving a week; however, I challenge you to go beyond, especially during the holiday season where treats seem to lurk on every table. Instead, be healthier and strive for 49 serving every single week.

To learn more about the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables, check out www.5aday.gov

The Four Word Diet, Part 3

Is there an easy, affordable, and effective way to implement the Four Word Diet? I think so. Yet, this is no free lunch (pardon the pun). It does require an investment of time, energy, and thought.

Eat Less
Reducing the number of calories one ingests on a daily basis can be achieved without beginning a strict regiment. How? Simply reduce the portion of the food you currently eat at each meal. Start with 10% less. A balanced diet is the next step. I highly suggest eliminating fast food and striving to eat, at minimum, 5 fresh fruits or vegetables a day.

Exercise More
One of the best solutions does not require a gym membership, but will require a small investment of about $30 dollars and is available to the vast majority of people: Manpo-kei. I’m talking about walking! This Japanese word literally translates to “10,000 steps meter” and this means you’ll need to purchase a reliable pedometer to measure the numbers of steps you take. In addition, I highly suggest you keep a daily journal or log this within a spreadsheet to count the number of steps you take daily with the goal of gradually increasing this number to 10,000 a day. This can be done by increasing the number of steps by 20% a week from your initial count or by adding 500 more steps every two weeks.

Is 10,000 a magic number? Not really. It is a useful one and an easy to remember number. Although every person has an individual stride length, 2000 steps is approximately equal to a single mile, so 10,000 steps equals five miles or so. Although every person has a different metabolism, walking a mile typically burns 100 calories, so, walking 10,000 steps is the equivalent (give or take a few) of burning 500 calories. WOW. And while you walk, you can enjoy nature, think about the mysteries of the universe, or listen to educational programs/audiobooks/music via headphones. If you walk with a friend or loved one, you can have a meaning conversation while staying healthy together.

Two experts and researchers in this field provide the following Lifestyle Guidelines:

• < 5,000 Steps: Sedentary
• 5,001 - 7,499: Low Active
• 7,500 - 9,999: Somewhat Active 
• >10,000: Active
• >12,500: Highly Active

Tudor-Locke, C., & Bassett, D.R. Jr. (2004). How Many Steps/Day Are Enough? Preliminary Pedometer Indices for Public Health. Sports Medicine, 34(1): 1-8.

Bottom Line
The Four Word Diet is very possible, but it is a choice and requires consistent action and can not be a ‘part time’ endeavor. Also, I strongly suggest that before beginning ANY weight loss program that you first consult with your primary physician or a heath care professional.

The Four Word Diet, Part 2

The Four Word Diet seems so simple: Eat Less, Exercise More. Yet, obesity is a real problem in America. Why? There are two major forces behind this:

·         We have many opportunities to eat beyond what is truly necessary for growth or maintenance of our bodies. For most of human history, food was expensive and/or scarce. The main methods for acquiring food (hunting, gathering, and farming) were labor-intensive and did not always produce results. Also, cyclic events, such as drought, famine, and disease could greatly impact the available supply when local foodstuffs were really 99% of what was consumed by people. In 21st Century America, food is extremely cheap and abundant. It is easily procured without much effort from a fast food restaurant or a mega-sized grocery store.

·         We move less than we should. Unlike most places in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, the design of cities and neighborhoods of the USA are centered on the automobile. The main assumption is that people will drive from location to location when they need to go somewhere. Although there are environmental reasons and community quality issues that should force one to question the wisdom of urban sprawl, from a wellness perspective, this has resulted in a population that is dependent on their cars. Although there are exceptions, few people can do all the following from their residence on a regular basis: walk to work, walk to the store, and walk to a nearby café or pub. There are many people who rarely have to walk more than several hundred steps each day. Of course, sedentary entertainment choices, including TV, Movies, and the Internet, contribute to this 'moving less and less' phenomena as well.

In our modern ecology, our health and wellness needs to be an active choice. Likewise, every single meal is choice…or should be seen as a series of choices (what kind of food to eat, how much to eat). The Four Word Diet then is based on deciding to follow those principles and make the correct choices, each day, at every meal, for a lifetime.

The Four Word Diet, Part 1

This formula will never result in a best-selling diet book, but here is <drum roll, please> the Four Word Diet plan: Eat Less, Exercise More! Although some charlatans will always be peddling magic potions and so-called 'super-scientific' methods for shedding pounds, Caveat Emptor. There are three main ways to lose weight:

1) You can eat less (e.g. reduce the input of calories).

2) You can exercise more (e.g. increase the output of calories as energy so they are not stored as fat).

3) You can do both! The best strategy is to eat less and exercise more as changing both variables is the most effective method.

The key to weight loss is simply to burn more calories than one has ingested on a daily basis and to do that consistently over a period of time until one achieves an ideal or target weight.