Kolaches and Doughnuts Anyone? – Part Two!

Last week I promised to reveal a system to reverse the ravages of time on our dumpy and fat-dimpled bodies and help us double our weight loss and I am going to deliver as promised.

The plan starts with simply reducing our intake of food each day by 500 calories and since a pound of yucky yellow fat weighs in at 3500 calories, we can lose a pound a week simply by this reduction. If we are faithful and do not make up for the loss through food rewards, we can lose 4 real pounds of fat in one month.

This one strategy alone can possibly knock 50 pounds off of us in one year! Oh, if it were only that elementary. Simple math aside, our bodies have the wondrous and disappointing ability to sense weight loss as a form of starvation and hence, resists weight loss. Reduce our food and we automatically slow down and burn less energy. We get tired easily and give up. So this is one good reason dieting alone is doomed to fail in the long run and the sad conclusion of all this suffering is usually weight gain, not loss.

Not to fear, we are going to work around this built-in weight regulator with our new system or plan. We are going to combine our food intake reduction of 500 calories with a new energy burning philosophy, something I call Industrial/Urban Trekking. Upping our exercise will help us regulate our appetite and give back the energy we need to succeed.

In a nutshell Indy/Urban Trekking is creating planned and strenuous ways to make our life more physically challenging. Do what, you say? Let me qualify Indy/Urban Trekking before you think I’ve fallen on my head.

Our life is full of labor saving methods and devices and collectively, these energy saving acts actually help us store fat. Something as simple as changing the station on our TV used to require getting up, walking across the room and physically turning a dial. The average person may do this one act 10 times over an evening. Now, we punch a button. Too simple? Maybe…but we have eased ourselves into this sluggish existence and the only way back to a Tarzan or Jane body is to get off our duff.

We drive to the supermarket (no fat burning there) and drive in circles attempting to get as close as possible to the front door, when parking at the rear of the lot and pushing an empty cart up would burn a few extra calories.

At work, the stairs are only used in emergencies and the elevator is our friend. We reward ourselves with a glass of sugared tea while a lawn service whips through our yard, not realizing we could have burned 500 -1000 calories, if we had elected to push-mow it ourselves. Push-mow?! What is a push mower? (Well, It’s a mower that is not self-propelled and you surely do not sit upon it and push-mowing your yard is a very very good way to Urban Trek.

Urban Trekking is defined as looking for creative ways outside of your workplace to get exercise. Biking, hiking, mowing, stair-climbing at places like the San Jacinto Monument, swimming and even hand-washing your car are all forms of Urban Trekking, especially when combined. The target time initially is 30 minutes of activity and as you advance in stamina, one hour is your target. 500 calories burned is your objective and combined with your target of 500 calories of reduced food intake and healthier food choices and 8 glasses of water per day, the average person can safely lose 7-10 pounds of ugly fat in one month.

Indy Trekking is defined as using your time at work to achieve this energy consuming goal. In the Refinery or Chemical Plant environment, instead of taking a break or whittling away free time, a person simply lays out an alternating course inside the Plant using stairs and ladders to get a tremendous work-out. It is important to lay out a challenging course that takes one hour to complete and a side benefit to the company is the worker is out in the Unit AND getting in better shape.

If a person works in an office they use their lunch hour to Indy/Urban Trek, drinking a protein shake in lieu of a meal, thus accomplishing both objectives simultaneously. No two work places are alike and this is where creative thinking and planning come in. You must have a plan to burn your 500 calories using Trekking and it must vary to keep it fresh. Keep a log on your computer of what days you trekked and the duration. Remember, exercise can be fun and very rewarding, so by all means enjoy your new found health and good luck Indy/Urban Trekking. You can keep abreast of this new trend, get fitness tips and leave comments here: http://industrialtrekking.blogspot.com/