Cardio is a Must for Middle Aged Women:: Right or Wrong?

The Dallas Morning News published an article entitled "Fighting the fat: no easy task" with the tag line as follows: "As they age, women need an hour of activity a day, researchers say". This appeared in the Wednesday, March 24, 2010 edition, reported first by The Associated Press and linked to a study done by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Impressive, right? But what if it is wrong?

The gist is that, as women age, they require a least an hour of moderate activity every day if their weight is healthy and they aren't dieting. Overweight women - most of America - need even more exercise to avoid gaining weight without eating less. A great quote from the article says "The results (of the study) echo what gym-fuls of middle-aged American women see every time they step off the treadmill and onto the scale."

My question is this: if it is obvious that cardio workouts do not achieve the results desired, why do we continue to get on the treadmill? You can go into any gym in any city in the U.S. and see heavy people, not just women, who are on the treadmill for an hour at a time who never lose an inch, never shed a pound, never gain energy, never look healthy...are not healthy.

Why aren't results achieved?

There are so many factors that play into the answer. I will share a few with you.

In his book "Your Guide to Healthy Hormones", Daniel Kalish, D.C., writes that, "...excess cardiovascular exercise, along with a highly stressful lifestyle, can make hormone problems worse. It also can lead to more body fat by stimulating the stress response." I repeat: in a stressed individual, the additional stress of a cardio program can make a person fatter. This means that an unhealthy person increases the amount of cortisol - a fat storing hormone - in the body by exercising strenuously. A stressed body just cannot handle the additional hormonal stress of exercise. Exercise is a great way to reduce stress and get fit once a person has followed a period of healthy eating and stress management, and initial improvements have been made in balancing hormones made out of whack by an unhealthy lifestyle. It doesn't work the other way around.

Paul Chek, world renown fitness and wellness expert, cautions against the overuse of aerobic exercise. "How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy!" talks about Chunky Aerobics Instructor Syndrome. This is a term Paul learned from strength coach Charles Poliquin that refers to the adaptation to aerobic exercise. Over time, athletes and regular folk who build a fitness program around lots of cardio find they are unable to keep body fat off with aerobics alone. Poliquin concluded, as a result of extensive research, that the body adapts to any given stimulus very quickly so the best results come from frequently changing the fitness program. Paul also talks about aerobic training triggering the release of glucocorticoids, stress hormones which are catabolic. That means they destroy tissue and prohibit the creation of additional muscle tissue. Additionally, over-training (over exercising) suppresses the immune system, which results in infections and chronic fatigue. Stress hormones...fat storing hormones!

Andy O'Brien is an elite fitness trainer who has coached a slew of Olympic medalists in hockey and swimming. For Andy, nutrition is the key. If an exerciser corrects their metabolism - meaning delivering the right fuel to the body - they are empowered to make the physical changes they desire. Nutrition is the link to performance. When Andy works with a client, be it an elite athlete or a housewife, he is looking for a hormonal and metabolic response so that change and adaptation in the body can produce results, whether it be more speed, better endurance, better over-all health and wellness. Everything we do is movement...skating in for a goal on net, breaking the record in free-style, juggling a baby on one hip while loading groceries into the mini-van. Our bodies can adapt to every movement we choose to perform. So much time in the gym without change is due to poor food choices. What we do outside the gym matters. Andy feels training once or twice a week in the gym is better than every day. The professional teams he works with get no fried food, hormone-free, organic meat and organic veggies. And, as all these experts agree, Andy believes in a variety of exercise.

What should a middle aged woman - any person - do?

...EAT RIGHT for your metabolic type and NEVER DIET. Dieting disrupts hormones and enzymes. We respond to a missed meal with an elevation in stress hormones. Stress hormones are fat storing hormones.

...Find a way to MANAGE THE STRESS of everyday life. If daily stress is lowered, the body is able to handle day to day activities with a higher level of competence and is better prepared for a crisis, should one occur.

...Eat high quality food. Organic, organic, organic. Hormone free, gluten free, sugar free. CLEAN FOOD IS KEY. Water is as important as food. Hydrate with PURE WATER.

...Move, move, move. VARY YOUR EXERCISE to stave off boredom and to tax your body to continually adapt, which creates strength, agility, weight loss, health and makes for fun. Going outside the comfort zone physically and emotionally provides an opportunity to experience life and your body in ways you never dreamed about. Aerobic movement mixed with resistance training (better than a calcium pill) and energy building exercises hit most of the bases.

...Get enough SLEEP. Irregular sleep/wake cycles create stress on the body and can lead to weight gain. Broken record? Stress hormones are fat builders.

...Don't believe everything you read. Test it, try it out, BE OPEN to many opinions.

Resources you might want to check out:

"Your Guide to Health Hormones" by Daniel Kalish, D. C.

"How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy" by Paul Chek

www.chekinstitute.com

http://www.livingfuel.com/Andy_O'Brien.aspx

http://claudiazelazny.blogspot.com

March 11, 2010 Entry

It's Never Too Late - My Journey to Wellness