How to be stronger and healthier

WHEN I was in my early teens, I met a man who was on his late 80s whose body still looked tough, sturdy and strong. I was even more amazed when in one of my weight trainings, I saw him lift 200 pounds with his muscled arms and easily heaved it upward as if he was lifting a piece of paper. And there was no trace of effort on his face! Wow! What a strong, old man!

Not only that. In one of our trainings, we went mountain climbing. As we cruised along for a kilometer or so, suddenly he started sprinting up the side of the mountain. I tried to catch up with him by sprinting too but only made it halfway. I was sitting there, panting, my heart pounding in my ears, my legs shaking and my first thought was: “Geez, I’d like to have that kind of energy when I’m 50.” And my next thought: “Geez, I’d like to have that kind of energy now while I’m still young.”

A lot of us buy the myth that energy and vitality are the province of the young. In the eyes of society, “when you’re 20, you are hot; when you’re 40, you’re not; and when you’re 60, you’re shot.” Fortunately, you can disprove this. Whether you’re in your 30s, 40s, 50s or even older, you can still amaze people with your energy, drive and raw strength. You can push a little harder on the playing field, you can run the treadmill or the oval with ease, come through a 12-hour workday with loads of energy to spare and still make love like you did in your college days. In most cases this energy and vigor is already inside you. You just need to learn how to unleash it. Here’s how:

Lead the pack

Whether it’s that fifth set of tennis or badminton, a full court game of basketball, a crucial game of golf, or even a group hike up  a mountain, you don’t want to just keep up, you want to lead. Even when you’re working out on your own, squeezing one or more of the heavy barbell or one more lap in the pool can make a  difference between meeting a personal goal and falling short. To help you push it to the next level, here’s what the experts do to boost their energy-boosting secrets.

•Beef up on breakfast. Energy begins with fuel. Even if you are getting the recommended 60 percent of your calories from high powered carbohydrates, that may not be enough to sustain you through intense workouts. Yes, the best place to add energy is breakfast. Eating a big meal in the morning restores energizing blood sugars depleted during sleep. For a quick 400 calories of carbohydrate, have a one or two banana (which also adds potassium, a high-energy nutrient lost in sweat), an orange, a bowl of cereal in skim milk and toast with jam.

•Stock up on power snacks. Common wisdom has it that you should not take extra calorie an hour before exercising because digestion will draw energy away from working muscles. For a moderate workout, that’s true. But if you are planning to train hard and long you will need extra energy. Load up on carbohydrates in the days before your workout and tank up on a high-carbohydrate sports drink right before. In a study of runners who ran 42 kilometers then were asked to finish their workout by going all out for five kilometers, those who had a high-carbohydrate sports drink just before their run could maintain their pace longer, and with greater power than runners who had nothing beforehand.

•             Construct the muscle with carbo. Can what you eat make the difference in how much muscle you have? Yes, according to researchers of the University of Illinois at Chicago. When they put 18 people on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet for 20 weeks they found the subjects lost an average of 1.3 percent fat. Makes sense, but here’s the kicker: Those individuals gained an average of 2.2 percent lean muscle. researchers speculate that

because our bodies don’t turn carbohydrate into fat very efficiently, a high-carbohydrate diet may make us more prone to gain muscle. That’s also the reason why muscle cannot grow if the carbohydrate is too low. The muscle needs the carbohydrate to fuel it.

•Beat the heat. Outlast younger competitors by being smart about how your body reacts to the heat, whether it is outside or inside in an overheated gym. First, drink even if you’re not thirsty. By the time you are, you could be well on your way to dehydration. Sunburn will cause your body temperature to rise making you lose more fluids. To help ward it off, wear light clothing instead of going out without a shirt. In hot weather soak those clothes with water before you put them on and you’ll be wearing portable air-conditioning.

•Energize with lunch. Put protein on your plate in the form of food such as slice chicken, lean meat and skim milk. They prime the brain with chemical messengers that carry alertness signals. balance with carbohydrate from such sources as whole wheat bread and fruit to keep muscles supplied with fuel.

•             Join extra-curricular activities. There’s a saying: “All work, no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Unless you’re a solitaire player when you are at work. But set a time to join activities like joining a health club or a civic or

religious organization. It gives you full fulfillment and does not make you a self-centered person. Aside from being a coach and trainer, I joined a religious organization because aside from serving my family and providing their needs, I gain   self-fulfillment and full satisfaction if I can serve God who is my creator and great provider. There’s  complete peace and tranquility in my mind and my soul because it is a major way of expressing to my God my deepest gratitude to Him for changing my life into  a better one.

•Never underestimate yourself. It was found out by

research that it’s not so much our mental powers that suffer as we get older. It’s our confidence in them.

•             Exercise your arteries and muscles. Regular cardiovascular exercises, like running, brisk walking, jogging, biking, swimming and strength training exercises does more than burn fat and makes your muscles strong and keep you heart healthy. It also keeps you mentally sharp. Research shows that exercise can prevent arteriosclerosis, that old hardening of the arteries that we blame grandpa’s forgetfulness on. One study found that endurance, strength trained older men had significantly reduced arterial stiffness, compared with their less active person who is at their age. Exercise regularly for at least two or three times a week for an hour is not that much to occupy your busy schedule. Study found that people who don’t exercise regularly are 100 times more likely to have heart attacks under stressful conditions than those who get regular exercise.

•             Take your pulse. Your resting heart rate might be the most important indicator of how long you have to live. Not only does a lower heart rate indicate a healthy heart but research shows it may also protects you from cancer and other diseases. In a study conducted by scientist men ages 40 to 59, those with resting heart rates above 90 beats per minute were more than twice as likely to die of cancer or other disease as those with heart rates below 60 beats per minute even adjusting for smoking behavior. To change your forecast, you need cardiovascular exercise which will strengthen your heart and lower the number of times it needs to beat per minute.

•Eat a few fruits and vegetables everyday. This  wards off of cancers and other problems both big and small. Just pick  a few fruits and vegetables that you like and eat five of them everyday. Throw some fruit on your breakfast cereal, snack on an apple, order a salad in your lunch, eat baked potato and some spinach for dinner. There. You have one of the most important building blocks of a good diet.

•Take vitamin E supplements. More and more

research seems to indicate that E is the king of vitamins. In two studies, people who took at least 100 international units of vitamin E a day for two years had about a 40 percent lower risk of heart disease. This is important

because vitamin E is hard to get through diet alone, is mainly found in foods like canola oil and nuts. The

vitamin has been shown to keep fat in the bloodstream from turning into artery-clogging cholesterol.

•Don’t diet. As bad as being overweight is losing weight and gaining it back may be worse. If you are overweight the key is to lose weight slowly through lifestyle changes like exercise which will help you keep the weight off.