The Denial of Fitness

The Denial of Fitness

How we deny what is good for us when it comes to fitness, health & wellness

By Richard Tardif

2 Copyright © 2016 by Richard Tardif Depot Legal: National Library of Canada

THE DENIAL OF FITNESS HOW WE DENY WHAT IS GOOD FOR US WHEN IT COMES TO FITNESS, HEALTH & WELLNESS BY RICHARD TARDIF

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

Never Better Press [email protected] TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ...... 6 Fitness, health and wellness is today’s breaking news ...... 8 CHAPTER 1 ...... 11 A CRISIS IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE...... 11 Mark, fat Monica and Gilbert Grape ...... 11 What about the Biggest Loser? ...... 17 What’s eating Gilbert Grape? ...... 20 Why hip raises may save your life ...... 21 Stand out at work and toss out the chair ...... 23 The seat or muscle of the soul – a Psoas by any other name ...... 24 CHAPTER 2 ...... 27 I USED TO SMILE WITH MY EYES ...... 27 Newspapers are dying, so am I ...... 27 I made it to Whitehorse. My father, not yet! ...... 28 Belly memories ...... 32 Calories in, Calories out not the best way to lose fat ...... 35 Our parents ate the same calories ...... 36 Eat up! We’ll burn it at the gym! ...... 37 10,000 steps to fitness? ...... 38 CHAPTER 3 ...... 40 FUNCTIONAL AGEING: STICKING IT TO FATHER, AND MOTHER TIME ...... 40 Myth 1: Physical activity is pointless, as our health will inevitably decline...... 41 Myth 2: Physical activity isn't safe for someone my age ...... 42 Myth 3: I'm sick, so I shouldn't do any physical activity...... 42 Myth 4: I'm afraid I might have a heart attack...... 42 Myth 5: I never really exercised before. I’m too late...... 42 Myth 6: Physical activity will hurt my joints...... 42 Physical activity is medicine for older adults ...... 45 CHAPTER 4 ...... 47 I’M A CHICK IN CONTROL ...... 47 Smelling the breath of more than one blue whale ...... 47 The average Joe and supermom endorsements ...... 50 Trainer’s notes - Fasting to lose weight ...... 51 Trainer’s notes - The 21-Day Fix ...... 51 The cold shoulder to fat loss ...... 52 CHAPTER 5 ...... 56 WHEN THE SUN SHINES IN JULY, THERE IS HOPE ...... 56 Yukon Jack liquor and sourdough ...... 56 CHAPTER 6 ...... 59 THE FOG FACTS OF THE FITNESS INDUSTRY ...... 59 When it doesn’t snow in March ...... 59

Richard Tardif

Is the 80/20 Eating Rule good for you? ...... 60 “OMG” it’s heaven in a bottle! ...... 63 All this sugar can’t be good for you ...... 64 Bees on java dance and get it done ...... 65 “I don’t sweat, I percolate.” ...... 66 Trainer’s notes – what the coffee studies show ...... 66 Red Bull gets in the mix ...... 68 It takes guts to be fit and healthy ...... 70 Do you make the vitamin grade? ...... 71 Taste Bud rehab! ...... 72 CHAPTER 7 ...... 74 THEN WHY DO YOU HAVE A BIG BELLY? ...... 74 Valerie Bertinelli, Jenny and a trainer ...... 74 Trainer’s notes – underestimate those calories ...... 75 Trainer’s notes - Too Much Pizza! ...... 76 My saboteurs, your saboteurs ...... 77 The Slight Edge ...... 78 CHAPTER 8 ...... 80 IT’S NOT ONLY BURPEES AND LUNGES ...... 80 NEATness counts for your health ...... 80 Plank-mania! What more do you need? ...... 81 I’m crossed with CrossFit ...... 82 Bodyweight training ...... 83 CHAPTER 9 ...... 85 LOVE HANDLES ...... 85 PhD rule number 1 – hide your Mars bar ...... 85 Trainer’s notes - 2025 is when we all get diabetes ...... 89 CHAPTER 10 ...... 92 CLICHÉ ALERT: I’M GOING TO STACK THE DECK IN YOUR FAVOUR ...... 92 This story stacks up ...... 92 Trainer’s notes - It’s my turn to say, “Cardio sucks”...... 94 Expect the cardio to be pushed ...... 95 How about that energy? ...... 96 Trainer’s notes - Back to why traditional cardio sucks ...... 97 CONCLUSIONS ...... 98 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 101

5 Introduction

Thoughts, feelings and behaviours affect our health and wellbeing. Recognition of the importance of these influences on health and disease is consistent with evolving conceptions of mind and body and represents a significant change in medicine and the life sciences - Baum & Posluszny, 1999

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek - Joseph Campbell

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself - Anna Quindlen

My first thought for this book was to write about the importance of physical activity and structured exercise as a person’s path to health, fitness and wellness. I’ve been a lifelong advocate of cardio and weight lifting for fat loss. Go to the gym, walk, run, and bike and eat less, calories in, calories out, move more. I got your back. I’ll hand you a free copy and then educate you about eating, techniques in the gym and why 30 to 45 minutes on a machine will lead you to fat loss. Good job. This book is a reality check. Somewhere in the writing of this book I realized I was passing on information I didn’t believe. After 20 years focusing on sports, health, fitness and wellness, and more than 100 interviews of people trying to lose fat, chasing diets and buying weight loss gadgets, people like me; after writing more than 800 articles about health and fitness, I decided that I should study our mind connection to body expectations and image of society; on how we are oversized and outsized by food sellers thinking they know how we should eat; on how the fitness industry tells us how we must unconditionally be physical activity, and then stop as we age and retire, but as I

Richard Tardif

moved through my interviews and continued to educate myself I realized I also had this “all-in” sense of societal expectation. As a journalist and researcher I needed to step back, re-examine and seek answers. This began, as I look back, in 1988 during a College critique of a book connecting the mind to what we eat and to how we feel about our bodies. Simply titled Mind Connection, written by Louise Menard, the 200-page book was balanced, suggestive and original. Gradually, Menard unfolded how our perceptions are influenced by our expectations, realistic or unrealistic, of how people see us, and then the final unveiling connected how the message of society’s expectations of ourselves influenced our self-perceptions. Simply put, we think people see us the same way society shapes our thoughts and expects us to think. This book had an impact. I graduated in Social Sciences from college in 1989 and then in university studied psychology and graduated in 1993, and then in 1997 graduated in Human- Environmental Relations. I wanted to know what connected us, how our expectations shaped us, and how external influences conditioned our behaviours. I learned we struggle to reconcile mind and body, perceiving the two as separate and irreconcilable entities. I was wrong. Changing the way we think impacts our physiology and changing our physiology affects the way we think. And then I denied it. From 2006 to August of 2012 I ate enough to gain 66 pounds. I went to work in the morning, went through the motions, came home, ate a large supper, and watched television as I drank back four liters of Diet Coke. Through those years I biked, ran sprint triathlons, and played hours of basketball. I gained weight. I was in denial. I wanted to eat as much as I could because I was eating up to go to gym, going to the gym to eat up. I biked, ran sprint triathlons, and played hours of basketball. I gained weight. When I turned 50 in 2010, I stopped believing, and stopped being active. In 2013 I went to Whitehorse in The Yukon and canoed The Yukon River. Too many things happened to me during those two weeks. The first thing was reading a print out version book by Laura Sinclair, Over 50, Overweight & Out Of Breath: A Year Of Going From Super Fat To Super Fit. This book also had an impact, but not like Mind Connection. I read the book on the flight to Vancouver, and finished it before landing in Whitehorse. I left it on the plane. This book showed me we need to address the over 50s, or what I will call the 50 to 100s, differently than we do the traditional cardio-pump-ego-intimidating knee popping, back breaking protein shaking mantra of today’s fitness industry. In other words, we need to stop denying true fitness and health. It wasn’t until January 2015 when I stopped denying.

7

The Denial of Fitness

Today’s mantra among writers and fitness industry motivators is that the most effective way to bring about lasting change is to modify our behaviours. If we engage in deliberate and persistent action, while allowing time for rest and recovery, this combination yields long-term improvement. Getting outside the comfort zone headfirst is a way of using behaviour to bring about change. This is a book about how our fitness, health and wellness goals are shaped, and thus achieved, or not achieved, by how we feel about ourselves and what we believe as fact, even a foggy fact embedded in the literature of media. This book reads at times like a novel. The characters are real. Throughout this book people are accepting society’s notion of fitness, and are dialing in, like 54-year old Mark, father of many and a shift worker whom we will meet in chapter 1, and Rebecca, a professional single woman who in chapter 3 confessing to trying everything the industry is recommending. And Devon, a professor of geography, discovering Diabetes at the age of 62 in 2015 like my father had in the 1970s, denying the diagnosis, accepting pop- psychology advice, and almost dying.

Fitness, health and wellness is today’s breaking news Throughout history food has always been our obsession. French author of maxims and memoirs La Rochefoucauld once said, “To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art,” and in perpetuity the seventeenth century moralist re-united eating, a staple of common peasant bread and rotting meat, with overall health unheard of, given that century’s lifespan of 35-years. This reset mankind on a journey of preservation and new hope. Today hope is a confused banter between losing weight by way of Carbohydrates, fats and proteins, I Quit Sugar, the Fat Revolution, Fitness Pal, Smart Cookies; Biggest Loser, CrossFit, weight-lifting, and maxed out, beyond the limit cardio. Less is written about François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld than many other seventeenth century authors and moralists, and perhaps this once Prince de Marcillac and his philosophy is getting more attention in the twenty-first century as humankind continues struggle with health issues, illness and disease, and much of it preventable with proper no nonsense nutrition. In 400 B.C., Hippocrates, considered the "Father of Medicine" said to his students, "Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food". Today’s Multi-Level-Marketing companies promoting food, health and wellness use his famous quote as inspiration. He also said, “A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings”. Scientist and artist Leonardo da Vinci in the 1500s compared the process of metabolism in the body to the burning of a candle, and the man who opened his mind to the suggestion from

8

Richard Tardif

Natives to repel scurvy by handing out limes, Dr. James Lind, a physician in the British Navy, in 1747 was also breaking news in Nutrition. Food has long been considered medicine. Eat wholesome, eat more often during the day and eat less is also today’s mantra, and indeed, eating properly can be considered an art form, and its not news. Today’s food is sugar filled, processed, fatty, and tasty, fast and delivered, in powdered form or spiked with “food like” tasting chemicals, and fortified and not news! Breaking news nutrition is never ending collected up in web-sponsored advertising crafted to grab reader’s attention, or should I say obsessions? The 15 best weight loss diets at a glance! Ten tips to healthy eating. The 25 best diet tricks known to man. The best weight loss drink to help you lose 30 pounds in 30 days! Experts. Certified trainers. Celebrity trainers. The 10 worse diets! The truth about “fill in the blank here”. Today everyone is an expert. Breaking news is everyday. It’s an art, per se, to fool us into believing the latest news is the best news. New and improved! Don't miss out. Now you can eat and not feel the guilt. * * * My character is to challenge everything I hear and read and to research at length what puzzles me. How is it, then, I held esteem allegiances to fad diets, formula-based eating plans and workout trends and worse – caught up that my character was based on achieving a six-pack of abs – any gullible way? This is my story as much as it is your story. Chapters two and four reveal I denied true fitness, health & wellness, and chapter six is my revelation and my defiance of the fake and rogue societal expectations of fitness, health & wellness. I could not ask the people I interviewed for this book to be transparent if I didn’t want to be transparent. I’m as much a victim as the people in this book. Chapter five examines some fitness traps and gadgets and tries to clear up the fog. I’ll conclude by briefly looking at the role of science and research and how in equal parts overall wellness is our individual responsibility, and in our responsibility to others. I’ll leave the “how” you do it, up to you, and I will not hold back because I want you to have the information I had, and I had to learn the hard way. The people in this book learned the hard way. I interviewed more than 55 people with just as many backgrounds, from different walks of life, at different weight sizes. Their story is our story. Their story is all our stories, as my story is yours. This is not a book filled with recommendations, or the Never Better guide to health and wellness. I selected three interviews for this book.

9

The Denial of Fitness

The book is also a reality because of the wonderful advice given to me by fitness, health and wellness professionals. I’m fortunate to have a network of dedicated health professionals. Their input was valuable. As we move through the interviews, we will take advantage to address some of the craziness; crazy diet guidelines and why they do not help with weight loss, health and your fitness, and we will lightly, with humour address some recent research in fitness, health and wellness, in terms of how the wrong message of fitness is killing us.

10 Chapter 1

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

The Doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition -Thomas Edison

That's it! Listen to me - that's it! You get 24! I don't care if you broke. You grew up broke. I don't care if you grew up rich. I don't care if you in college, you not in college. You only get 24hrs! - Eric Thomas, Blueprint To Success

Mark, fat Monica and Gilbert Grape Mark always looked well dressed and it was all a charade! He was living under the poverty line in a one-bedroom apartment. The man never wore anything less than an old and well kept suit, a Rolex watch and black shoes. It was the only business attire he owned. His first wife had good taste and bought the suit and watch in preparation for an interview for a warehouse worker. Mark, 54, had been married three times in his life, the latest wife for nine years, though they didn’t live together. She loved him because he was a big cuddly bear with a shiny balding head, double chin and great big bear-hug arms. And he smiled with his eyes. Mark greeted me with smiling eyes when he opened the door. I was bear hugged by a man for the first time in my life. I was having a moment of difficult breathing. Mark was as strong as a bull and as big as one. Green-eyed, a bald top scalp and white hair on the sides he earns his money as a security dispatcher in a downtown building, a job he landed two days after being turned down for the warehouse job because, as he put it, he was bigger than expected. Today he wore black jeans; blue T-shirt, both extra large and not flattering to his 310-pound frame.

The Denial of Fitness

I closed the door behind me. “When my kids are away at school or work, you can actually see the floor,” Mark said in a loud voice, as if his voice was being used after not speaking too much. He pointed to the old hardwood floors. “When they’re home or visiting there’s barely enough room for the door to clear before tripping over work boots, winter goulashes, and sneakers. And if there’s unidentifiable footwear among the clutter, chances are good a few of my daughter’s “ding dong Avon calling” friends have stopped by as well.” He’s smiling his face-off through wall-to-wall teeth, and the volume of his voice leveled. I’m thinking – here is an Alpha male if I ever saw one. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by a thing. In fact, this man is almost irresistible. He’s talking a mile a minute as if he cares none for small talk. He’s making me feel important somehow and his love for his children is undeniable. “She’s also into natural products,” he added. “I never know why she just doesn’t want a regular job.” Avon perfume boxes are stacked five high. “My kid has made some extra money for the month with her sales,” he states, proudly. Hockey sticks and tiny skates are in the corner next to the doorframe. The blades are still wet. “My boy,” he says, explaining the wet skates, “Took him skating this morning. He’s a wonder.” I’m beginning to see why he gives great big bear hugs. He’s a simple loveable man. I glance at the kitchen table. The table is a messy stack of newspaper weather clippings and opened Atlas road maps. He hands me a can of Diet Pepsi and asks me to follow him into what could be called a porch, but more of a plastic enclosed balcony shielding the street. The surface of my skin is sprouting tiny goose bumps as I meet the dampness. I watched the dampness fog up the windows. In his porch is an elaborate display of old Coke bottles and other Coke souvenirs – trays, plates, placemats, openers, etc. It was hard to miss. I loved Coke. I used to drink it by the gallons. The good old' days come alive when you look at the glasses. Coke. Coke. Coke. Coke lighters. Coke matchbox. Coke holiday cans. The theme of coke is alive in this man. Coke is it. Catch the wave. The real thing! Above his plush rocker on the wall is a dark woven coke rug. I sip on my Diet Pepsi and realize the irony here. “I drink a ton of it,” he says. We sit in matching wooden and cushy rocking chairs. His size is escaping over the handles, and he looks uncomfortable, as if he has been squeezed into the rocker. He runs his hands over his elbows and knees. He is then leaning forward and showing me an old Polaroid picture from 20 years earlier. His mind is rewinding like a tape.

12

Richard Tardif

The younger Mark was wearing his boot cut trousers and a badly fitting jean shirt. The top of his head was hidden under a white Montreal Expos cap. I glance at his deformed left thumb, a result of an Army knife slip as he was skinning a fish, and look back at the picture. “It happened six years ago,” he said, holding up his right thumb and grinning. Shrimpy and wiry in the picture and I can see his knobby knees through the jeans and his pointy elbows under his jean shirt. His hair in the picture was the colour of brown coffee, full, with bangs hiding his right eye. He tells me he is a half Mohawk Indian, half white, with smelly old bones. He elaborates back to the present and says he sleeps occasionally, never could sleep well. Shift work is killing him, he admits. If he didn’t sleep, he explained, he would spend the early morning after his 12-hour shift in this makeshift porch, smoking stinky Indian cigarettes, rocking, and reading Louis L’Amour trading post books belonging to his late father-in-law. Sometimes he’d drink white rum with ice from an old French’s mustard glass. His five kids are grown (two girls, three boys) and he jokes if one can call being in your 20s grown. “You want to know why I am fat?” I felt uncomfortable now. I wanted to know how he feels about his weight, not his fat. I took a deep breath. I show him a mini recorder and ask him if I could record the interview. He’s hesitant, makes a face, and agrees. “I know, I’m a journalist and I give the worse interviews,” I tell him. I place the recorder on a small and round glass table between us. I press play. “I’m more interested in your story and why you think you are where you are now…and…” “I love food and turn to it when I am happy or sad,” he piped in, saving me. “It can slip away from you gradually over time. This is what happened to me. I stopped paying attention to my body and soon I ballooned. This is why the world sees me as fat. This is why I see myself as fat.” I was trying not to wince. I was thinking of Brené Brown, an American scholar, author, and public speaker, and the Author of Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution. In her best selling book, I recalled a chapter where she tackled the idea of people doing the best they can. Here in front of me was a kind and caring man, doing his best and in the shadows around him was every indication of weight loss shame. Here I was judging him, already. “When I finally discover how much weight I gained I went at it,” he continues. “I always started too fast and tried to do too much and injure myself. What was the use anyway?” Mark spread his arms. “I would give up.” He rubs his elbows and knees again. I was in an emotional fit. I was listening to Mark in his vulnerability in sharing his discomfort and all I was thinking, “Do I judge people who are overweight?” Mark was facedown on the

13

The Denial of Fitness

arena floor, using a term from Brené Brown, and I’m thinking he should have sucked it up, been a man. I’m also thinking he thinks his son is a wonder. His place reeks of cheap perfume but his daughter needs his help and he tolerates it. I’m in a revelation of something else. The can of Diet Pepsi is next to the recorder. In his email he asked me what I drink. I said Diet Pepsi. Around me is a museum of Coke. “You okay,” he asks. I confess. “I’ve been judging you from the moment I came through the door. I’m in your apartment and I’m sitting here thinking you should have done better.” “Oh I recognize it,” he said, sincerely. “I would argue it is human nature.” I made a face of my own. “Is this argument supposed to be working? I can’t buy that argument.” Mark adjusted in his seat. For a moment I felt like ice water was pumping through my heart. Then Mark saved me, again. “I judge people bigger than me,” he confessed. “I only watch the first few episodes of the Biggest Loser. Know why?” I shrugged. I did have one quick thought. Mankind is becoming more obsessed with weight gain. “After four episodes the remaining contestants are shrinking in body size. They are either at my weight or less than my weight, and I know I’m going to be envious as they continue to lose more weight. I have never seen a Biggest Loser finale.” I watch the Biggest Loser right to each finale. I’m impressed by the contestant weight loss. What I am not impressed with is how fast contestants lose weight. I could feel the goose bumps returning. Mark noticed and suggested we move to the kitchen. I snapped up the mini-recorder and followed my host to his small newspaper and map-cluttered table. I looked around the kitchen, sensing disorder and everything seems out of place. In one corner stood an old single door, Westinghouse fridge, not frost-free, its top littered with half- empty bread bags and Maxwell House coffee jars, long and supersized orange Velveeta Cheese boxes, a wooden breadbox and a pocket-sized transistor radio, one the like I have not seen since the 70s. In the opposite corner sat a G.E. electric stove, its black tubing burners supporting several metal pots with black handles. Beside it stood three plastic shelves cluttered with varieties of canned goods, Chef Boyardee, Lipton chicken soup boxes, Tim Horton mugs, chocolates and black Cola bottles. The nostalgia came from my own days as an apartment dweller only my boxes were Kraft Dinners, Ahoy Cookies and perhaps at the ready, store in closets, a dozen 2-litre bottles of Costco bought Diet Coke.

14

Richard Tardif

Mark seemed dangerously unmothered and unprotected and unguided, almost as though he had lacked mentors all his life. I could only think - desperation and play and narcissism with self-love, dismemberment with wholeness, absence with presence, stillness with animation. Thank you again Mrs. Brown. I sat at the table, the roundtable of Mark’s universe, and placed the recorder on top of an Atlas Map. “Las Vegas, huh?” reading the cover. He grinned. “I may need a vacation, soon.” Mark sat with his hands in his lap, his rolls pressing against the table. I press play. “As a person who has gone from morbid obese to "normal" weight a few times, my body fights me on every inch,” he said. “I fought obesity back in High School as well and my body tried its hardest to fight back. I’m a football player,” he said, grinning and making a fake pass with his arm. “Quarterback. I was afraid of gaining. I just didn’t eat. I had no energy. I didn’t listen to my coach’s advice about eating.” “Eat more to stay thin, right?” He shrugs. “It would be great, wouldn’t it?” “You don’t accept such an idea?” “Acceptance,” he stated, without moving. “I have friends joining the "acceptance" movement. I have some friends formerly obese, and look pretty good now, and not as those fit people you see in the gym or on magazines.” “Wait a minute?” I said, raising my brow and holding out my hand in a stop position. “Do you see yourself as fat?” I was thinking he’s not going to answer this one right away. He whistles lightly a 1960s Beatle’s song, looking down in thought. He stops whistling. “I’m not unaware I have a weight problem. In fact, I walk everywhere and go about my business. I have kids and ex-wives to worry about. I do feel every pound of my weight. I wear the same clothes, keep them repaired and clean, and altered as I gain and lose fat. Then later when I see a photo of myself, I am surprised.” He’s eyeing me carefully. “What?” I softly said, as if I didn’t want the recorder hearing me? “I’ve seen your before/after picture. Did you believe you were big?” I didn’t need to think about it. “No, I just didn’t. Confidence is reality…well, I learned later I was deceiving myself to avoid reality.” “People know they are fat. Know why? Other people won’t shut up about how fat we are. The media won’t stop shaming us. The media is a also lying and saying being unhealthy and overweight is somehow okay?”

15

The Denial of Fitness

“I can’t defend the media even if I am a journalist.” Mark presses back against his chair. “You are aware of it?” I was. Think about John Goodman? Roseanne Barr? Both actors were overweight and starred in the nine-year sitcom Roseanne about the struggles of middle class family life in America. I don’t remember more than two episodes about obesity. To be fair, the media followed Roseanne Barr’s up and down weight loss during each hiatus but ignored Goodman’s off-season weight issues. Studies have analyzed primetime television shows and movies and found that overweight female characters are often teased and insulted by male characters, followed by audience laughter. Sitcom writers are aware of this. Obese characters are shown overindulging in junk food and are less likely than thinner characters to be involved in romantic relationships. Remember “Fat Monica” on the hit show Friends? The thin Monica is a hottie, good natured and likeable. In a few episodes the thin and hot looking Monica is in a fat suit portrayed as pathetic and gouging on food as a self-loathing disaster. The media relentlessly attacked Hugo “Hurley” Reyes of Lost. Hurley was one of the castaways deserted on an island after a plane crash. The media focused on how he couldn’t lose any weight to make the drama more convincing. It doesn’t stop in drama television. A 2015 small-sample study claims children witnessing over long periods plump cartoon characters (Homer Simpson, Fat Albert, Winnie the Pooh) triggers overeating in children. The study conducted at Colorado State University shows kids who were exposed to chubby cartoon characters, from TV shows like Peppa Pig to McDonald’s Grimace, or even Sesame Street’s Big Bird, were more likely to overeat eat compared to children who watched healthier characters. “They have a tendency to eat almost twice as much indulgent food as kids who are exposed to perceived healthier looking cartoon characters or no characters at all,” Margaret Campbell, marketing professor at Colorado State University’s Leeds School of Business and lead author of the study, said in a press release. Slip into the past to 2007, Fat Stigmatization in Television Shows and Movies: A Content Analysis, authored by Susan M. Himes and J. Kevin Thompson, examined the phenomenon of fat stigmatization messages presented in television shows and movies. The analysis was used to quantify and categorize fat-specific commentary and humour. Researchers targeted 135 scenes from television shows such as The Golden Girls (1985–1992), Friends (1994–2004), King of Queens (1998-2007), Will and Grace (1998–2006), Family Guy (1999–current), and Saturday Night Live: The Best of Chris Rock (1999); and movies such as The Nutty Professor (1996), Thinner (1996), South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999), Erin Brockovich (2000), Bridget

16

Richard Tardif

Jones's Diary (2001), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), and Monster's Ball (2001). The findings indicated a majority of fat-specific material was verbal as opposed to non-verbal. Fat comments made about the self were much less common than those about or directed to another person. Male characters were three times more likely to engage in fat commentary than female characters.

What about the Biggest Loser? I’m not a Biggest Loser fan and I will admit I watched the first five seasons, and when Season 3 contestant Kai Hibbard appeared on CBS The Early Show one morning to discuss, or as it turned out, defend her claim the NBC show is hurting its contestants and promoting an unhealthy body image, my ears perked up. Hibbard disposed of 118 pounds on the show. That’s great, right? Hibbard went on to accuse Biggest Loser, the show matching obese people against obese people, of supporting a dangerous dieting myth and claims the show stretches the truth when it comes to its shooting schedule. “The whole f- -king show,” she said in the interview, “is a fat-shaming disaster I’m embarrassed to have participated in.” 2014’s Biggest Loser, Rachel Frederickson, became the first winner to generate concern over her 155 pound, 16-month weight loss. She appeared on the cover of People with the headline “Too Thin, Too Fast?” Frederickson gained back 20 pounds within one month after the finale and announced she felt never better. Eric Chopin was the winner of the third season of the Biggest Loser discarding 200 pounds; a few years later he was on Oprah discussing his weight gain. The consensus was The Biggest Loser provided him with a nonsensical and metabolically dangerous approach to weight management. Biggest Loser winner Ali Vincent’s 2016 Facebook confession over her pre-reality show weight gain attracted more than one thousand likes, but rather than giving up, the Season Five winner enlisted Weight Watchers, a program based only on calorie counting and now promotes gradual change, sustainable eating and ongoing emotional support. Vincent in her struggle has come to understand the grind of daily life. It can turn people away from what’s good for them to what’s bad, and the truth is - family, friends and acquaintances are acknowledged as bona-fide life coaches, without the fees, to keep us on track. “When I first went on the show I weighed 234.7, and now I’m, like, 234.8,” she told Us Weekly. “People recognize me but … they never even put it together that I was the girl that won The Biggest Loser. When I tell them how they know me, they look me up and down with this confused look on their face. It makes me not want to leave the house.”

17

The Denial of Fitness

Vincent dropped 112 pounds in 16 weeks participating on the show, a dangerous and unrealistic number. Doctors do not recommend such a loss. Sociologists won’t recommend it, but for another reason. Sociology tells us weight is all about one thing; changing behaviours over time. The caveat is that people will fall back into their old habits. In the case of many, life has a way of derailing us, and kicking reality back in our faces, and returning us to old habits. Trainers won’t, or should not, recommend far-reaching weight loss over short periods. The goal of any trainer, or program, should be to educate people about habits, especially the ones where a trainer is not looking over their shoulders: in the kitchen, at work, in relationships with kids and significant others. Those who have been successful are those who have continued to be physical activity, make eating right a priority and have an emotional support system. Weight Watchers is known for weight control using a points system. Unlike the popular Biggest Loser it now provides ongoing and group support, something Vincent reported brought her to tears during her first WW support meeting. In December 2015 daytime talk show Queen Oprah Winfrey, with a documented history of weight struggles, bought 10 percent of the company. Weight Watchers is now healthier, happier, and holistic; a revamped weight-loss goal beyond the scale. The true message may have come from the weight of WW shareholders. Weight Watchers’ revenue and subscription numbers have plummeted in recent years. The company had some loss of its own, worth about $400 million in 2015, an incredible slide from $6.2 billion in 2011. What was the cause of the revenue landslide? Free fitness apps and gadgets such as the Fitbit have made it easier to count, to name a few. The critics may be out there, but WW’s today offers ongoing support; essentially at the ready life coach, something fitness and motivational apps and intelligent wristbands cannot provide. Biggest Loser contestant weight loss is dramatic and fast. A study released in 2016 followed eight Biggest Loser contestants and all but one regained the weight. A slowed down metabolism is to blame yet most studies of fat loss show no slow down in metabolism. The Biggest Loser study is a little foggy, and many studies are finding a slower metabolism is an expected consequence of weight loss, but not a gigantic one. I remain skeptical of the Biggest Loser claims, and after all, it is a reality show. Perhaps a medicine show, like Dr. OZ, because of celebrity endorsement will fool people? In a 2012 Dr. Oz show he revealed a diet study (one of many) about the benefits of green coffee bean extract, which reached national attention after the mega-popular and talented Doctor promoted it on his TV show. Later, the heart surgeon retracted his endorsement. Retraction Watch, a watchdog website concerned with false science claims, reported that the two researchers who were paid to write the study admitted they could not verify the data.

18

Richard Tardif

"The sponsors of the study cannot assure the validity of the data so we…are retracting the paper," the researchers said in a joint statement. The study was originally published in the journal Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy in 2012. They claimed, according to reports, green coffee bean extract could help people lose weight without diet or physical activity. It was later discovered key data, including the participants' weight measurements appeared to have been altered. Now Dr. Oz did his own study of 100 women (half received the extracts, half a placebo) with the women on extracts losing two pounds, one pound for the women given the placebo. The Doctor has promoted Raspberry Ketone, Acai and other foods as fat loss foods with extra fat-burning ingredients, all of which lack scientific. Dr. Oz, no doubt had no mal-intent, it does provide an example of how science and diet have not been the best bed-pals, nor the media all over the fabulous “panacea” weight lost extract. There are times when Dr. Oz topics make sense. For example, his show on the truth of frozen yogurt actually made from powder and other toxic ingredients. He fails legitimacy too often. Another weight loss scam is already around the next corner and Dr. Oz promotes it as diet of three drops three times daily for 30 days at 1000 calories, and trending as a gut-busting product with fat-burning properties. The product is getting a great deal of media attention, not to mention unheard of glorified testimonials from those praising the product’s benefits. Not bad for an unproven and unsupported product. Pure Slim, or as I reported in The Eastern Door, The Montreal Gazette and other media, “pure slime” and the media at large is supporting the product’s claim as a ‘miracle fat-burner in a bottle’. In order to lose weight one must reduce their calorie intake and increase their energy expenditure. The product instructions want you to maintain a strict 1000 a day calorie limit and kick-butt in the gym. While you limit your intake, Pure Slim helps you burn stored fat whilst retaining muscle mass, and reduces cravings and hunger. Yes, it would be a miracle. I’d probably die with as few as 1000 calories a day over a 30-day period. You too! The ingredients and how much are sketchy which makes it impossible to know if it actually works and what are the side effects? One side effect is my continued distrust of Dr. Oz, where I first heard about the product. According to Dr. Julie Chen (A guest host on the Dr. Oz episode where Pure Slim was featured) the product works in more than one way, “The first way is it goes in and causes the body to burn glucose, or sugar, and burn fat, mainly in the liver,” she said in the show. Damn the media!

19

The Denial of Fitness

What’s eating Gilbert Grape? “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” Mark said, rolling his eyes and sighing. The story goes, Johnny Depp, the lead character of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) is living in his dilapidated family house, stuck in a dead-end job in a small Iowa town. A young Leonardo DiCaprio plays his mentally handicapped younger brother under his care because his mother (played by first time actress Darlene Cates) gave up on her parenting after her husband killed himself. This propelled her into a severe depression, overeating and massive uncontrollable weight gain. I check the battery light on the recorder. All good! “I remember the movie.” “When the handicapped boy gets in trouble with the law the mother is forced to go to the police station,” Mark explained. The scene is running through my mind. She has left the house for the first in seven years. Her size draws a crowd. “Imagine what that’s like,” Mark asks? “You’re connecting depression to her weight,” I said, proudly. “You’re overthinking it! I go out everyday as if I’m a regular man. Then someone casts me this dirty look, or makes a comment they think I cannot hear.” I glance at the recorder. “You still wish to be recorded?” He smiles. “Let’s continue.” “All my kids, my ex-wives, they all look to me as the leader of the family. I have the answers for everything. The sun rises and falls when I decide. When I want to say no I mull in a ball of gooberness.” He’s chuckling. “That’s a word, right?” “I’ll have to look it up!” “I’m not saying this is why I am big. Sometimes I am tired of being the one everyone turns to, and I stop caring about my weight and appearance.” He’s in thought, then, “You know the Groucho Marx line about not wanting to belong to any club that would have him as a member?” He puts out his arms like he wants to be hugged and sighs, lowering them at his sides. The Avon perfume scent is reaching my brain. I glance at the boxes by the apartment door. He catches me glancing. “Exactly,” he says. “Why should my daughter keep her inventory here? I just say yes.” He rubs his knee and then his elbows. “What if you lost the weight? For good?” His nose and forehead scrunch up. “I don’t think it would change anything.” His head and eyes seem to avert downward. Then he looks toward me. He points, in thought. “What an interesting question. I used to be okay with gaining weight. My kids call it my “dad bod”.

20

Richard Tardif

“You eat when you are emotional?” His shoulders slump. “Don’t you?” “I’m the journalist here! I ask the questions?” He grins. He’s back to being playful, sitting up straight. “I have a great deal to think about.” I pause the recorder. “Are you saying you are thinking about change?” “I’m tired of this perfection blueprint,” was his response. “I’m supposed to be taut, toned, square-jawed and well-endowed.” "Hard to be Ken as it is to be Barbie,” I said. He pauses, smiles. “Hey, great line.” I’m shaking my head. “I can’t take credit for it.” “Sometimes I work five shifts of 12 hours, then only three days off,” he says, adding a sigh. “My doctor wants me to see a trainer, but I really need to get up from the chair more often.” “And physical activity?” He shrugs. “The doctor wants me off my butt. He says I have a dead butt.” “He’s right. Sitting on your butt does not work your butt.” “You want to help me?” “Yes I do,” I said. Then he smiled with his eyes.

Why hip raises may save your life Mark’s co-workers might think him strange but one way to safely fire the glutes and keep his back, legs and behind active is to get out from behind his desk, lie on the floor and do a series of hip raises. The synergistic working of the hamstrings, gluteal, extensors and lower back muscles will literally be more supportive, and begin the process of alleviating back pain. It could also save his life. “This overlooked physical activity is amazing in terms of giving more for the glutes and lumbar region than a squat or lunge and at a much easier load on the body, knees and back,” says Zackary Finley, Master Instructor and owner of the Dorval based Mouvnation. “For deconditioned people this will be the safest entry point to working the legs, glutes and hips.” Our behinds play a supportive role for our bodies at rest and in motion. With prolonged sitting at work and on the couch adversely affecting muscles, joints and spinal disc integrity, we are leading to a decline in physical functioning, or deconditioning. One might say, “Prolonged sitting will affect you from head to toe.”

21

The Denial of Fitness

Outside of regularly scheduled physical activity sessions, active people sit just as much as their couch potato peers. In a 2012 study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, researchers reported people spent an average of 64 hours a week sitting, 28 hours standing, and 11 hours on non physical activity walking, whether or not they physical activity the recommended 150 minutes a week. That's more than nine hours a day of sitting. Sitting means your large postural support muscles, such as the quadriceps and glutes, are inactive. Muscles have an electrical activity, often referred to as a light switch that turns on muscles and keeps firing all the way through the chain of muscles from head to toe. One might say, “Prolonged sitting will affect you from head to toe.” So why start with hip raises? “People assume squats will automatically address the hips and the glutes,” says Finley. “In the squat the glutes don't always fire. The legs take over and the problem persists. Also, the bigger must be better mentality drives some people who are not ready to tackle barbell squats or deadlifts.” So while you work, your behind isn’t. “Sitting often shuts down the glutes, so people new to physical activity would benefit from hip raises,” Finley says. “The safety factor and the ability to concentrate on and connect with the glutes is unmatched by other leg movements. Once the glutes are firing properly people can advance to other physical activity such as the squat or the lunge.” Bret Contreras, considered as an authority on glute training, considers the glutes as sleeping giants, dormant but waiting to be used when needed. He writes the glutes contract harder during body weight activation physical activity than from one-rep max squats and deadlifts. Our glutes aren't maximally involved in squatting, lunging, and deadlifting. They target the quads and erector spinae muscles. Even box squatting, walking lunges, and sumo deadlifts may not activate our glutes. They are only maximally contracted from bent-leg hip hyperextension physical activity. But while we sit they do not fire. And we are sitting for longer periods than our parents, particularly in the 50 years plus. The Annals of Internal Medicine in 2014 reported that more than half of those over 50 years spend half their day sitting: watching television, working at a computer, commuting, or doing other physically inactive pursuits. More evidence suggests, in fact, the more hours a day you sit, the greater your likelihood of dying an earlier death. Longitudinal studies indicate prolonged sitters have a 112 percent increased risk of developing diabetes and a 147 percent increased risk of having a heart attack or stroke, coupled

22

Richard Tardif

with a 90 percent chance of dying from such an event. In addition, longtime sitters, mostly those over 50, have a 49 percent increased risk of dying prematurely. The findings, supported by a growing body of research, New evidence suggests, in fact, that the more hours a day you sit, the greater your likelihood of dying an earlier death regardless of how much you physical activity or how lean you are.

Stand out at work and toss out the chair I hope you’re reading this while standing. If you’re not, stand up. As we discussed above, studies continue to show the average adult spends anywhere from 50 to 70 percent each working day sitting or slouching behind a desk. It’s a sedentary lifestyle Doctors warn may be contributing to overall obesity, diabetes, some types of cancer and premature death. The outbreak of sitting studies in the last five years suggest we need to be on our feet for better health, and while these studies are observational and they do not take in account other factors (alcohol, smoking, unhealthy eating and lack of physical activity) they are worth considering. In a nutshell, the theory is the body is 'shutting down' while sitting and there is little muscle activity, slowing our the metabolism, which affects our ability to regulate blood sugar and blood pressure, and metabolize fat, leading to weaker muscles and bones. The theory is not new. Current theory is based on a link between London bus drivers being more likely to have heart attacks as their more active bus conductor colleagues, and years later research on astronauts, which found life in zero gravity, or weightlessness, was linked with accelerated bone and muscle loss and ageing. Just how much do we sit? The Healthy Active Living and Obesity (HALO) Research Group at the CHEO Research Institute in Ottawa reported Canadian adults in 2013 spent, on average, three-quarters of their waking hours each day sitting or reclining. This includes during the daily commute. Our children are getting the message, too. On average, Canadian children spend two-thirds of their daytime hours sitting at school, and behind computer screens in the evening. Dr. James Levine, co-director of the Mayo Clinic and the Arizona State University Obesity Initiative, and author of the book Get Up! Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It, writes the impact of movement can be profound. You'll burn more calories. While it’s not the same calories as 30 minutes on a treadmill this could increase your energy levels.

23

The Denial of Fitness

His investigations, and other studies, show when you've been sitting over a long period and then get up, a number of molecular tides occur. Within 90 seconds of standing up, carrying your own bodyweight, the muscular and cellular systems that process blood sugar, triglycerides, and cholesterol, which are mediated by insulin, are activated, pushing fuel into your cell.

The seat or muscle of the soul – a Psoas by any other name Prolonged sitting affects the glutes and hamstrings and can lead to lower back pain and postural abnormalities, which is consistent with society’s desk job syndrome, but another muscle, the Psoas (pronounced so-as), also may be contributing to back pain and misguided posture. The Psoas, a thick and long muscle connecting the spine with the upper leg, within Taoist tradition is thought of as the seat of the soul surrounding the lower ‘Dan tien’, a major energy center of the body. It is considered our deepest muscle aligning, like a finely tuned orchestra, structural balance, muscular integrity, flexibility, strength, range of motion, joint mobility, and organ functioning. “The Psoas is so intimately involved in such basic physical and emotional reactions,” says Lisa Chretien, personal trainer, spin coach and a yoga instructor at Mouvnation in Dorval, Quebec. “A chronically tightened Psoas continually signals to your body you're in danger, eventually exhausting the adrenal glands and depleting the immune system.” While not typically associated to injury, a shortened Psoas spreads eventually affects the lower back, lower thoracic and the gluteal and lateral hip regions. The Psoas shortens when sitting, a natural function in response to your feet fixed to the floor. Prolonged sitting keeps the Psoas in a shorten position, even when you stand up. This is when the orchestra begins to miss its beats. The lower spine is pulled forward. Now the paraspinal muscles of the lower back counter by tightening. Often compared to a tug of war, this action pulls the spine down, compressing the facet joints and intervertebral discs of the lumbar spine. A tight Psoas also constricts the organs, puts pressure on the surrounding bundle of nerves, interferes with movement of fluids and impairs breathing. Discs may even herniate and press on the sciatic nerve, causing unbearable pain down one or both of the legs. “Without the normal curve the low back is weakened and vulnerable to injury, especially in the intervertebral discs,” says Chretien. “A weak Psoas causes decreased ability to flex at the hip joint as well as difficulty bringing the trunk forward when preparing to rise up from a seated position or to walk up an incline.”

24

Richard Tardif

Because it is not typically an injury, restoring the normal length of the muscle requires patience and gradual stretching. “By incorporating exercises and poses to strengthen and lengthen the Psoas, you can release habitual muscle holding patterns, improve your low back alignment and create a more balanced posture and overall body function.” Some effective yoga poses recommended by Chretien to help to release the Psoas included the Low lunge (sometimes called runner's lunge), Bridge (holding a hip raise), wheel (advanced) or Pigeon (variations). Strengthening poses include variations of the Boat, or seated Leg Lifts. “The best approach to the Psoas is with quiet attention, patience and perseverance. It is vital to take the time to strengthen and lengthen these muscles to get the most out of your workouts and to prevent injuries.” As part your journey to recovery first consult a Doctor specializing in back and hip pain. There are everyday practices to help proper Psoas function. Hip raises, performed correctly and on a regular basis, will assist in the process of straightening your Psoas and surrounding muscles. Move. Make it a point to get up and move during the day. The Psoas will “exercise”, lengthening and shortening and never remaining in one state. Sit with good posture. Sit back and keep your feet flat on the ground. An Acupuncturist once told me to shift your position often when sitting, and you guessed it, move more. Don’t sleep on your stomach. Stomach sleeping hyper-extends your lower back, adding to an already tight situation. Get a deep massage from a trained therapist. A deep hip flexor massage can be at first painful if your muscles are tight, but it can contribute to your recovery. My own life was affected by a shortened Psoas. People visit their Doctors reporting an aching low back. The predominant pain is in the low back, just above the pelvis. Some, like me in 2013, reported lower back pain and a hernia in my belly button. The Doctor said it could be related to a weak psoas. He then asked me if I sat at work often, and did any sports on the weekend? For the Doctor, this inactivity increased the likelihood that I had a dysfunctional psoas that “may” have influenced my abdominal muscles and caused a hernia. He said he could not be sure, because the psoas can affect many things. First, we fix the navel, he said, and later we talk about your back. Exercises such as prolonged walking or running, sit-ups and push-ups may weaken the psoas by creating increased tension and shortening. To restore the normal length of the muscle, you need to gradually and with patience, stretch out the psoas. One Yoga stretch I found useful is called the Navasana pose that strengthens the psoas isometrically. You can feel the basic action of the psoas in navasana while sitting (ironic) on a

25

The Denial of Fitness

chair. Sit tall on the front edge of the chair, with your arms stretched out in front of you, parallel to the floor. Then lean toward the back of the chair without touching it, while keeping your chest lifted. As soon as your body inclines backward past vertical, gravity is trying to pull your torso down toward the earth, and the psoas contracts to hold you. Consult a yoga trainer first. When Mark asked me to train him, I immediately contacted a yoga trainer. Mark made a funny face when I told him I was worried about his Psoas. He laughed. When he stopped laughing, he said, “This sounds serious.” “It is,” I told him. “You’ll come to me ready, when you are ready. Is there a possibility you can stand at work?” “I’ll make it happen.

26 Chapter 2

I used to smile with my eyes

Expending more energy than we consume – exercising more or eating less – does not make us lose weight. It makes us hungry! -The Diet Delusion, Gary Taubes, 2007

You can’t physical activity your way out of a bad diet. -Mark Hyman, MD, 2015

The diet debate has gotten out of hand. Why? Because a lot of people want reassurance that they can eat shit food all the time: "Please, someone give me a scientific-sounding reason to stuff my face with junk food!" – Paul Carter, 2016

Newspapers are dying, so am I I always knew I’d end up visiting Whitehorse. My father, born in the 1930s, a large man with a dry manner and sometimes muddled in his emotions was loaded up from birth with his generation’s salt and vinegar, spice and pepper and one Summer Saturday evening, after a hearty supper of Macaroni meat pie and several slices of margarine buttered white bread, he announced the family was moving to Whitehorse. “One day,” he said, “We will move to Whitehorse.” He’d shake his head slowly, the barest movement, and say in a whispered, dreamy afterthought, “Whitehorse. In good time.” In my mind, Whitehorse was a funny name for a city and was no further than the five-hour drive from Montreal to Toronto. Soon after his Whitehorse vision my 42-year old father developed a new life plan after he was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, and began what is turning out to be a lifetime of dieting, pill consumption, daily needles and uncompromising

The Denial of Fitness

lifestyle changes. In good time, for him, was turning into less time. I have many memories of my father. The one stuck in my mind is his realization he was now diabetic. Hours after learning he had diabetes he sat at the kitchen table studying the Doctor’s referral slip for a Diabetes clinic. There was nothing dramatic about it: about his drinking, smoking and eating ways. Drinking was relaxing, men and women of his generation were told. Smoking took the edge off a hard day’s work, they were told. Steak and potatoes, apple pie and ice cream, told to them by producers and company pitchmen, was their right. I recalled he was scheduled for a second job interview, and he spent 24 hours drinking water and eating fruit hoping to clear out his system. It got worse. Today he is a lithe, tall and bony man turned 80 and, to his credit, and admission, happy to be alive. He’s the first to tell anyone about his life. He never heard of diabetes. He never thought he’d make it beyond the age of 60. My mother, God love her, supported him the best she could. Her own weight fixation and diets – Weight Watchers and the Scarsdale Diet – took priority. My mother, a victim of spinal polio and wheelchair bound until the age of 12, left behind her wheel chair one Christmas and walked across the family living room for an orange. She too is in her eighties. It was my younger brother with me playing ball hockey, pitch and catch on the street, strumming air guitars in the basement and riding our high bar and banana seat bikes. We were attracted to the military; me, at 17 joining the regular infantry, ground pounders as we were called; he, younger and joining the Royal Air Cadets. We both, as years passed and marriages happened, kids born, stressing over work, the weight gain spiraled downward into the cycle of overeating, cardio and weight lifting, with some to little results.

I made it to Whitehorse. My father, not yet! I was 53 and in the summer of 2013. By then, like my father, and unbeknownst to family, I was being monitored for diabetes and was taking over-the-counter medicines for joint pain and inflammation. I was living a desk-bound life, the keyboard my livelihood, my connection to my world of journalism. I was the head-down reliable man and top-notch producer. It didn’t seem I would change. It seemed I had less time and time in Whitehorse was slow moving. Change was coming. It started with an interview of a young Yukon News reporter, drilling me about the state of dying newspapers and why my generation didn’t see the rise of the digital revolution and didn’t adapt? As journalists we are the worse to be interviewed. She was a tiny and unforgettable

28

Richard Tardif

delight, with big wide green eyes and short red coloured hair and a long thin face over squishy shoulders. She was dressed in khaki combat pants with a no logo green tee. I stood straight, sucked in my belly, and felt winded. She suggested we meet at the foot of the Black Street stairs leading up to the Airport escarpment where it tagged into a hiking trail. Fitness groups train on these stairs and there is a Facebook page called Black Street Stairs. The young journalist runs the stairs for 30 minutes each evening. At two in the afternoon, rosy-faced and with labouring breath, escaping a newspaper conference loosely called “Newspapers, the Next Step” both of us walking up the stairs; her in aghast enthusiasm as a new reporter far from home asking me those schooled reporter questions (How do you feel about newspapers dying? What is the solution?), her accent Russian, all the while she’s holding a silver mini-recorder under my chin, and me: realizing I wasn’t 20 anymore and not with any surprise breathing heavy. I was about to give her an unintended scare. I felt tightness in my chest followed by a sharp and cold pain pinch the area near my ribs. I felt pressure. Terrified, through patchy breathing, “I’m having…a heart…attack.” I didn’t have a heart attack – I was simply out of breath. She handed me a plastic water bottle. I gulped some water, handed it back. The colour returned to my face. The pressure was disappearing. Relieved, I suggested, forcefully, we continued the interview right there, standing halfway up the stairs; the young reporter sighing with annoyance, telling me she didn’t like to be scared and next time, if there would be a next time, maybe we’d sit down; me, one hand on the rail, one hand on my hip, eyes looking down and envious of other people around us running and walking with apparent ease up and down those stairs, also annoyed the stairs as an interview spot was her idea. My resolve was fast and I was breathing easy again, the pressure subsided, much to the relief of the cub reporter. “How much do you weigh, anyways,” she asked, patting my belly. Oh how I hated having my belly patted. It felt like she was touching a nerve. I was experimenting with the idea of ending the interview. “Oh, this?” patting my own belly, “I’m okay with.” I brushed my right hand through the air. “I stop weighing myself years ago.” I smiled, just barely. I took measured breaths, difficult. I persevered through the interview. “How do you keep in shape?” “I Keep track of everything,” she said, “Feelings, heart rate, blood pressure, weight, temperature, breathing. I’m in the gym three times a week for strength training, and I am preparing for a triathlon in two months.” * * *

29

The Denial of Fitness

The next morning I was reading her story on page 3 of the Yukon News, Death of newsprint a myth, impressed with her writing style, as I was standing behind the hotel room window. “Newspapers will have to evolve if they are to survive,” said the veteran journalist and editor, “a man whose career has grown over the years as large as his appetite”. Huh? I had no luck reaching her by text, or phone and guessed I would have my chance to see her at the conference. I read over the words. My appetite, huh? The newspaper ended up folded on the sill. I sipped a fresh cup of coffee and studied the waterfront of the Yukon River. I zoomed in on a middle-aged jogger. My anger resolved. She was moving as fast and as diminutive as the river. I was thinking I should be jogging. I’ve completed a 10k race and buckets full of 5k races and sprint triathlons and marathon bike tours. While not as active as the Yukon News journalist, why not? My jogger was moving effortlessly, light on her feet. Athletically attired in an orange tracksuit and white runners, blonde hair in a ponytail, I recognized her from the conference. An hour later, unplanned, in the hotel hallway on her return I meet her. I’m stuck to the floor. My thoughts about her jogging along the waterfront hung over everything. She seems to be rocking it, I said to myself. I suggested we meet the following morning for a quick run, or in the least a brisk walk, or as I further lessened the commitment, to just coffee, no sugar. It would be my “restart” I told myself. Reset. Refit. Out of the box. She accepted, the jogging part; I was already thinking of a graceful way out of the deal. My ankles hurt and my hips felt tight and I didn’t want another Black Stairs embarrassment. Eat less today, skip the morning run, I tell myself. But later, at a Shoppers Drug Mart in the Quanlin Mall on a quest to replenish my Tylenol, I was unfocused and had already decided I wasn’t jogging the next morning when another middle aged woman with her black hair tied up in a neat bun, wearing big jeans and a Vancouver Canuck hockey jersey passed a comment to her male companion, “Ask the big guy over there.” I was wearing my grey sweat pants and black T-shirt, standing in the cake section where there was no Tylenol to be found. Didn’t they know? I’m a 53 year-old man, currently losing weight, overweight since I left the Army in my early twenties. I’m married, I’m a father, I have a job, and a house. Didn’t they know? I’m learning to deal with food. I can play basketball for two hours a day, and then bike another hour. I’m canoeing the Yukon River in three days. I’m reacting badly and I know it. “You can’t be talking about me?” I said, almost in a shamed whisper. I realized later I was rather loud, forcefully, blatantly, threatening. The couple gathered their collective thoughts realizing they may be embarrassing themselves, or thinking I was embarrassed. I wasn’t. They headed away, pushing their cart towards the stacks of broccoli and cauliflower and kale; me, left standing in the cake section reading food

30

Richard Tardif

labels; them probably thinking what a bitter, jealous fatty; me, thinking all the gymnastics and weight training in the world wouldn’t change her thinking. I’m a nice and helpful guy. I’m not jealous. I don’t sit at home on the couch all day. “What did you want to know? How can I help?” I said with the brightest smile I could assemble. “It’s okay,” the man, a thin towered figure wearing faded jean shorts and a plain brown tee, said with a quick and polite glance my way followed by a quicker return look to his reality. “Sorry,” I said, my turn under the cone of embarrassment. I knew what I was going to do. I’m going to eat a couple of Joe Louis cakes and then canoe the Yukon River in three days. Six months ago I walked the Great Wall in China. Well, not all of it. And what about the 100 Black Street stairs yesterday? I was talking to myself, inaudible to others, my nerves twitching. I looked at the Joe Louis six-pack and chose the Super Joe Louis six-pack instead. You know? The double layered, two cakes in one sugar-bomb? I held a momentary allegiance to what those cakes could do for me emotionally. Who names their kids after a cake? I’m thinking I have a general-perhaps type of deal to run in the morning with a middle-aged woman I didn’t know and who could probably take on those unforgiving Black Street Stairs. * * * Darkness had fallen back home: not in Whitehorse. The next morning, awake for only minutes, I was lying with the soles of my feet together and legs bent like butterfly wings, already committed to avoiding my jogger friend, thinking of the food store couple and still angry at the cub reporter’s uncalled for reference to my appetite. The blanket felt heavy on my toe tips. A pain was running along the tendon under my left foot. My right knee ached. I was aching all over, my head throbbing. The curtains were black, pulled tight to block out the 24-hour sun. I looked at the night table. Three of the Super Joe Louis cakes remained. Oh those plastic- wrapped confection of two half-moon red velvet cakes with a creamy filling surrounded by a milk chocolate shell, or 1,000 or more calories. I got dressed in a black suit, blue shirt and white tie and presented a mirror pose; let it hang (Before) and then tuck it in (After). For a moment, in my humour, it was as if I was letting the stairs, the quote, the middle-aged couple, and the Joe Louis cakes, go. For a moment I had a watery, undecided look – I wanted one more Joe Louis! At the hotel buffet restaurant I toast two slices of whole-wheat bread and scrape on a spoonful of butter or margarine followed by two heaps of white sugar. I waited for the concoction to melt into a slushy-soupy mess. I’m already avoiding the fresh-faced jogger. Alone, biting into the pie (I don’t know what else to call this metamorphosis) of wheat, butter and sugar, waiting for my colleagues to arrive before the conference.

31

The Denial of Fitness

Newspapers weren’t the only things dying. I found myself thinking about my belly.

Belly memories Thirty-four years ago, my father’s friend Mister Daigneault, said he was taking a trip to Plattsburgh in New York State to buy a weight loss over-the-counter diet pill called Dexatrim developed in the 1970s and popularized in the 1980s. They have a pill for that? Mister Daigneault, whose first name I never knew, wasn’t exactly obese. He was a randomly employed Milk Man, and a part-time welder with a potbelly who enjoyed Sunday evening barbecues and drinking beer from the bottle sitting in a yellow lawn chair on his balcony. My father enjoyed drinking with him as they discussed hockey and how the neighbourhood was going to pot. They’d eat grilled hamburgers and swear in French and made no apologies. Together, they engaged in beer wars; one drank Molson’s, the other Labatt’s and they swore the two brands of beers tasted different. When Mister Daigneault died of a heart attack soon after he weighed 255, a hefty weight for a small sized man, I remember two things: remembering his belly, and my father vowing to trim down his own 260-pound frame and travel to Plattsburgh in his honour to buy Dexatrim. Soon the diet pill became controversial when a Yale University School of Medicine study found a link between its contents and hemorrhagic stroke in females, and Dexatrim pulled the formulation off store shelves in 2001. In 1982 I was 22 years old and not giving a thought to my own weight thanks to four years of military training and relatively healthy mess hall food. We didn’t count calories, Carbs or Proteins. We didn’t take pills. We moved our bodies a great deal. Ten-mile full equipment marches, push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups. With all the push-ups, sit-ups, leg raises, chin-ups and something fashionable to today’s walking lunges it seemed weight lifting was optional. Lunges? Burpees? Never heard of them. Shuffle in place, in-and-out squat, and low-rotational squats? What? These were physical activity of the future. We ate plenty of food. We drank barrels full of draft no-name beer. For six months I served beer and alcohol in the Private’s mess, which got me out of marches, push-ups, pull-ups and sit- ups. It got me into late night closures and late morning sleep-ins. At 19-years old, I had developed a little potbelly like Mr. Daigneault. The remedy was to return to my Platoon. After one month and six 5-mile marches I lost the potbelly. I left the Canadian Armed Forces a year later and within six months I weighed a whopping 245 thanks to nightly treats of Dutch Chips and Onion Dip and couch lounging. One afternoon during a typical November Winnipeg snowstorm I walked into a familiar restaurant to meet my old Army friends, and when I removed my parka and sat down, no one

32

Richard Tardif

recognized me; at least the silence suggested. When they did, the first question was, “What happened to you?” All of them were looking at my belly. Good question, good Lord! In six months since I left the Army, along with the weight gain, I had gone from a 34 to a 42-inch waist. I landed a sit-down job as an assistant manager of an F.W. Woolworths department store in Winnipeg’s impoverished North End. The manager, a tall lanky brown haired man, talked non-stop about running and was encouraging me to train with him over our lunch breaks. I just could not be bothered. In 1983, at 23, after not showing up at F.W Woolworths one morning, I boarded a train to Montreal and two days later moved into my parents’ basement. Butter fried steaks, white potatoes, Coca-Cola and Friday night Pizza with fries and ketchup. I landed a graveyard shift job cleaning a downtown McDonald’s. Big Macs. Apple pies. Salted fries. At closing, the night crew would leave me two Big Macs with fries, and I had a key to the pie cabinet. One night, there was a note, and it read, “You don’t need this kind of food. Consider this a gift from your co-workers.” I did consider it a gift. I felt like they truly cared. I still weighed 245 pounds. I went on another diet, a few of them beginning with the Grapefruit diet, and then the original Cookie Diet, a 1975 plan where you eat cookies made with a blend of amino acids. Hollywood eats it up; the rest of us grow fatter. Then there was Slim Fast, endorsed by celebrities as the product is today. More temporary allegiances to my thinking, I say. I returned to playing basketball and long distance hard-core biking, two of my favourite pastimes. In the summer of 1986 my bike and me clocked in over 5,000 kilometres. After each session I’d write the kilometres on my garage wall before resetting the speedometer. Still, I was always hungry. Eventually I left McDonald’s and cofounded a youth center where I coached basketball and other sports. In one year I dropped to 230, a 38-inch waist, and was again athletic. In my diverse community I was called “Big Man” which I took once as being “overweight” when in reality it is Caribbean slang for being the oldest and fittest man on the basketball court. I moved on from the youth centre in 1999, and I was forced into the only job I could find working under the banner as a security agent at a halfway house for Correctional Services Canada. One needs to imagine this life of rotational shift work, sometimes eight-hour shifts, twelve-hour shifts on the weekends, and bad sleeping patterns, bad eating habits and your mood wanes quickly. Your brain is one time zone, your body and its organs in another. The human body functions according to a natural sleep-wake 24-hour cycle referred to as a circadian rhythm to maintain most internal functions ranging from body temperature and hormone levels to blood pressure and sleep/wake patterns. Shift work, particularly involving work at night, disrupts the circadian rhythm. This disruption has been linked with cancer and a range of other health and social impacts in shift workers.

33

The Denial of Fitness

I didn’t care. My waistline was bulging. I was less an athlete. At one point, people finally started bringing up my weight almost casually. “You’ve gained some weight!” said while patting my belly, hitting a nerve again. “You don’t need to eat so much, now do you?” said while pointing at my food. Have you gained weight? I find it easy to gain weight this winter, and you must also? Have you tried the new (add any diet here) I hear it works? Maybe, tuck in your shirt? Do you know weight gain is unhealthy? I was at the point where my friends and family are noticing. My mother would puff up her cheeks and stick out her belly in my direction, signaling her distaste. My father insisted a slender build appeals to women. I didn’t feel shame. Friends told me I hid it well. My self- confidence never waned. My girlfriend at the time, who I married a year later, was worried. Soon enough, I’m back at 245, 44-inch waist, married with a daughter, the halfway house closed, and in another security job at a downtown complex again working the graveyard shift working an unruly, double 12-hour shift on the weekends. I walked and patrolled on average 10 kilometres a night, and after three months I was moved to the evening shift. I began to train and run in 5k races and managed to run in a 10k race. Once, I jogged from my house to work, a coup d’état of 17k from door-to-door, and then walked my 10k at work. Now at 225, 36-inch waist, I felt I had won. At the same time, I was working part-time as a free-lance journalist and took the plunge in 2005 and began full-time work at a community newspaper in a busy but small newsroom. The work hours were long. The sitting was longer. The newspaper industry was changing. A whole generation had become bored with newspapers and began shifting to the alternative sources, like the Internet, slowly dragging readers and advertisers into an abyss. We did more as reporters for less pay. We worked longer hours without complaining, not too much anyways. I wrote many articles about fitness and health, and covered every possible sport. I gave up biking, playing basketball and running. I didn’t feel like I was walking the talk. Now up over 255, 46-inch waist, I was sinking. I began Mixed Martial Arts classes. During the first session I pulled my lower back muscles during a kick. A day later I felt a burning in my neck. A week later I felt something pop in my navel. I had an umbilical hernia. Somewhere during the workout I went from an inny to a golf ball sized outty. Physical activity became painful. No more pain and no more exercising. Then a few months later I was spread out on an operating room table waiting for the surgeon to open me up and tuck the hernia back where the tissue belonged. I kept my humour, flirty with the attractive anesthesiologists, betting a coffee date it would take more than 10-seconds to put me under. I lost. Just before I faded out I had a memory of eating a Joe Louis.

34

Richard Tardif

During recovery I sat around in my big recliner at home and watched afternoon television (Dr. Phil’s first diet book has just been published and it was the craze and Jenny Craig was still milking the big news over Valerie Bertinelli and her loss of 48 pounds). I was served on hand and foot. It was pure heaven. A new allegiance! In 2012, fully recovered, I accepted a job as the Executive Director of the Quebec Community Newspapers Association. It was a desk job regardless of where the desk was. Meetings were meetings. I went to see my doctor. He gave me three pieces of advice.

Calories in, Calories out not the best way to lose fat “It is simple,” he said. “Burn more than you eat.” Calories in, calories out for optimum weight loss is a simple formula, but this idea of burning more calories than we eat is being challenged by health practitioners, researchers and the general public. At the onset of weight loss the formula seems to be working, but after the initial drop in weight we plateau, struggle and become frustrated and begin to question why we can't lose more weight. This was my cycle. “The glycemic index of food is the number one factor,” says Bruno Saint-Hilaire, health consultant specializing in nutritional medicine and sports medicine, and owner of the Mont- Tremblant based CEnerJ Optimal Health, near Montreal, Quebec. The Glycemic Index (GI) is a relative ranking of carbohydrate in foods according to how they affect blood sugar levels. Foods with a low GI value (55 or less) are more slowly digested, absorbed and metabolized and cause a lower and slower rise in blood sugar affecting insulin levels. The higher the GI results in higher peaks of sugar in our blood vessels. “The "roller coaster" effect of blood sugar causes a lot of inflammation and the body responds by releasing two stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol,” says Saint-Hilaire. “That's when we feel the "cravings" of certain foods such as cookies, candies, crackers, and chips. After months of this type of diet an individual has a higher chance of suffering from insulin resistance or being pre-diabetic.” According to the World Health Organization in 2014 over 50 percent of the North American population is in a state of insulin resistance. In a continued state, the body will store the excess sugar from high glycemic foods in fat cells mostly around the waistline, the belly and the hips. “Even if you measure your calories in/calories out, it will be extremely difficult to lose weight,” says Saint-Hilaire. “We see this in many individuals on a new fitness program to lose

35

The Denial of Fitness

weight and are discouraged later because they might have lost weight and then reached a plateau.” There is good news. The glycemic index is just one tool to control blood glucose levels. A healthy management plan also includes regular physical activity and a positive approach to life. “Always focus on lifestyle changes for long term sustainable results,” advises Saint-Hilaire. “We should focus first on food with a low glycemic diet that will not spike our blood sugar, and provide us with lots of nutrients and sustained energy throughout the day. The primary function of nutrition is to provide nutrients to our billions of cells so they can do what they have to do to maintain a healthy state,” says Saint-Hilaire. “If we eat foods lacking in nutrients we will always be hungry for more nutrients.” How the body makes use of how we feed it depends on many factors, and something as simple as move more, expend more than you intake my be too simple, but it stands to reason if we continue to feed it right, it will heal us.

Our parents ate the same calories “What’s wrong with you?” the doctor asked me. “You eat the same amount.” Are we eating more compared to two decades ago? Three? Four? According to some long- term research we're not eating more calories than decades ago yet we are heavier. If this is the case, to lose weight today, we have to eat more glycemic foods and burn more calories than our parents did? One study analyzing trends in caloric intake and physical activity over a 22-year period (1988 to 2010) shows Americans 18 and older have increase rates of belly fat yet calorie intake "did not change substantially”. Published in The American Journal of Medicine, Uri Ladabaum, M.D., of Stanford University wrote: "Our findings do not support the popular notion the increase in obesity in the United States can be attributed primarily to an increase over time in the average daily caloric intake of Americans." Women ages 18 to 39 reported eating 68 fewer calories per day in 2010 compared with 1988; the percentage of that population who were overweight increased by more than 20 percent, while those who were obese soared by 56 percent. I thought we were eating more? There is more evidence. A 2014 study published in the British Journal of Nutrition assessed 2,732 individuals over a 17-year period, and found their daily calories in had increased by just 10 calories. Not convinced?

36

Richard Tardif

The Journal of Obesity Research & Clinical Practice in 2015 reported that the dietary data of 36,400 North Americans between 1971 and 2008, and the physical activity data of 14,419 people between 1988 and 2006, and concluded it’s harder for adults today to maintain the same weight as those 20 to 30 years ago, even at the same levels of food intake and physical activity. And we take part in less activity than we did 20 years ago. We sit at work (newsroom) sit at home (television) and physical activity is, for most but not all, on weekends, compared to the old order Amish of Ontario, Canada, on the other hand leading a low technology, high physical activity lifestyle. This lifestyle may explain a low obesity rate of four percent. David R. Bassett, a professor of physical activity science at the University of Tennessee, in 2004 gave pedometers to 98 Amish adults and found the men averaged 18,000 steps per day, the women 14,000. Bassett reported the Amish eat pancakes, ham, cake, and milk, foods not considered by modern society as healthy. They also eat large amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables. Between 2007 to 2010, about 11.3 percent of daily calories came from fast food, down from 12.8 percent reported between 2003 to 2006, according to data collected by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. What’s going on? We eat less fast food according to the above study yet there is no decline in obesity rates. Other reports suggest overuse of prescription drugs, a 24/7 lifestyle, exposure to toxic environments and eating processed foods have serious affects on our weight and health. In this case, based on reports, the numbers suggest overeating and inactivity may not adequately explain weight gain. Why are we denying this?

Eat up! We’ll burn it at the gym! I’ve burned many calories at the gym. “Go to the gym more often,” the doctor recommended. There's a popular approach to fat loss promoting the idea you can eat anything so long as you physical activity and sweat off those calories. Just like the zebra song, does a zebra have white stripes or black stripes, do we eat more and go to the gym, or do we go to the gym and eat more? Aside from the occasional indulgence, many of us at one time in the past have had a big meal and headed to the local gym for an over-the-top, full-blown heavy breathing workout session. A lot of people say, “you can eat some junk because I went to the gym today,” or “It won’t affect me if I have some cake…I’ll be in the gym tonight.” We’ve decided we have earned a treat and then eat a double sloppy burger chased by an apple fritter as a reward. Not the best plan, says Alex McComber, The Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project Community Advisor and Researcher.

37

The Denial of Fitness

“We continue to need a balance of all food groups,” adding plenty of vegetables is a great choice. They are buff with large amounts of vitamins and nutrients. Physical activity on a regular basis is a great way to improve your overall health and it brings about a number of positive changes. It seems, however, most of us are not interested in these changes. Physical activity is becoming the green light to pig out on processed foods. “Processed food is still crap with the added preservatives, high levels of salts and added sugars and fats will still do us no good in the long run,” says McComber who for most of his life has managed his diabetes. A treat may house more calories than you think. This is complicated when you consider you’re probably burning off fewer calories than you think. One of my favourites was a big bag of Lay's Barbecue-flavoured potato chips with 230 calories per serving, and who eats a serving? A bag is between 500 and 1000 calories. On average, factoring in treadmill pace, height and weight, a person may, and I’m being generous here, burn 500-600 calories. You’re going to work harder at the gym. In 2014, health journalist Michael Mosley shocked and shook the fitness world warning physical activity can actually cause us to gain weight. “The key problem is we reward ourselves with 'treats' after physical activity or have the "I've been to the gym, so I can eat what I want mentality,” he said during a BBC interview about his claims in the 2012 documentary The Truth About Physical activity. For many people, the whole objective of going to the gym, or exercising more, is to lose weight, yet eating up to what you burn won’t make this happen.

10,000 steps to fitness? “Walk more, at least 10,000 steps,” said the doctor. “Isn’t this the same as going to the gym?” A Japanese company marketing the simple and affordable "manpo-kei," loosely translated as “10,000 steps meter” popularized the general notion of 10,000 steps a day will shed the weight. It was actually a Japan walking club during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics using a belt meter to count their steps. I did 15,000 steps five days a week as a security agent. I still gained weight. Do we truly need 10,000 steps a day, or five-miles, to lose and then manage weight? A small number of pedometer-based walking programs without a dietary intervention component yet increasing and tracking steps resulted in health benefits associated with both a modest decrease in weight and an increase in physical activity.

38

Richard Tardif

A longitudinal study of sedentary women did demonstrate some health benefits of increasing to 10,000 steps per day. The 2001 US study demonstrated that hypertensive women who increased to 9,700 steps per day were able to reduce their blood pressure and weight after 24 weeks of walking. In 2002, an eight-week study examined the effects of a 10,000 steps a day intervention in overweight, sedentary women with a family history of type 2 diabetes. The women had significant improvements in glucose tolerance, despite not losing weight. One cannot argue with the changes. Based on the above studies our answer to the question of stepping more to lose weight is, no! This level of steps per day is approximately equivalent to burning 300 and 400 calories, depending on body size, speed, distance, and other variables. Walking on a daily basis can help you with some weight loss, but “significant weight loss comes when people reduce the amount of food and increase the quality of food they eat”. Even the popular Step Diet in 2007 reporting you eat whatever you like, as long as you cut back your usual portion size by about 25 percent, observe eating habits as you increased daily stepping. Should we aim for 10,000 daily steps? Why not? Yes! We are made for movement. This is a can-do activity and a physical activity. Walking 10,000 steps a day, planned or normal may seem like a lot to some people, but it is within reach given many of us already take between 6,000 and 7,000 steps daily. It isn’t that the numbers, based on research, a given, is a lie; they just don’t tell the whole story. What is common throughout the research is how dietary considerations play an important role in our health and fitness goals. It isn’t just calories in, calories out, and as we learned we are not eating more than decades ago, and while increased walking helps, the amount and quality of our food plays a vital role.

39 Chapter 3

Functional ageing: Sticking it to Father, and Mother time

Functional age is a concept that rests on the premise that a measure other than chronological age could better reflect one’s position in the ageing process.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks…oh shut up! Get out of my way – Richard Tardif, 2016

John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth. He made history again when, at the age of 77, he became the oldest person to travel in space.

I am planning to live into my nineties, and I hope you are too? I’m also picturing myself biking, hiking and exercising, what I’m doing today, and also into my nineties. I’m not placing anything on my retirement shelf until I’m called away to the great beyond. I won’t be rocketing to space, but move over Father and Mother Time, none of us over 50 to 100 are taking life lying down. But we need to move fast. The over 50 to 100 years are the largest overweight cohort. Statistics Canada in 2014 summarized data on body mass index, overweight or obesity in Canadian adults, revealing 61.8 percent of males and 46.2 percent of females fit into one or more of these categories. Shockingly, males 65 years and over hit the 65 percent mark, with females at 54.2 percent. The heaviest group is males between the ages 45 to 64, weighing in at almost 70 percent. Since 2010, these numbers have trended upwards. The study was self reported and in many cases when it comes to fitness or body weight, humans underestimate out of embarrassment the true nature of their situations.

Richard Tardif

It seems the older we are, the faster we give up on physical activity. Many people assume they are too out-of-shape, or sick, or tired, or just plain too old to physical activity. They're wrong. What they are right about is what can happen when we stop activities. A lack of physical activity or activity during adult life is associated with deconditioning, fatigue, weakness, decrease in one's physical and mental health and wellness, the onset of disease, loss of self-esteem and self-efficacy, and an increase in depression and anxiety. The one intervention proposed to have the most preventative and therapeutic impact on these age-related changes is physical activity. Physical activities for the elderly needs to take into account the individual's health status, fitness level and age. This is a complex relationship. Health, fitness and wellness professionals should not view the elderly as being a one-size-fits-all group. Indeed, literature has coined a few categories of seniors; old-old, or frail old, who are over 75 years of age; young-old who are persons between 65 and 75 years; and athletic-old, elders who have maintained a high level of fitness throughout their life. Before we go on, let’s garbage some myths about the 50s to 100s. The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2008 indicates how certain problems associated with old age can be largely attributed to myths surrounding the aging process. It shows how many of these problems could be effectively tackled through changing lifestyles, appropriate care and adjustments in the social, working and physical environments. It aims to broaden the debate on the changes necessary to ensure people of all ages take advantage of a longer and healthier life. Here are six common myths about physical activity for the 50 to 100s.

Myth 1: Physical activity is pointless, as our health will inevitably decline. People from 50 to 100 years run marathons and are bodybuilding. Many symptoms we associate with old age, such as weakness and loss of balance, are actually symptoms of inactivity, writes Alicia I. Arbaje, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Geriatrics and Gerontology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. Physical activity improves more than your physical health. It can also boost memory and help prevent dementia. And it can help you maintain your independence and your way of life. If you stay strong and agile as you age, you'll be more able to keep doing the things you enjoy and less likely to need help.

41

The Denial of Fitness

Myth 2: Physical activity isn't safe for someone my age Studies show physical activity can reduce your chances of a fall. Physical activity builds strength, balance, and agility. Physical activities like tai chi may be especially helpful in improving balance. Worried about osteoporosis and weak bones? One of the best ways to strengthen them is with regular physical activity.

Myth 3: I'm sick, so I shouldn't do any physical activity. On the contrary, if you have a chronic health problem physical activity is almost certainly a good idea. "Physical activity is almost like a silver bullet for lots of health problems," says Arbaje. "For many people, physical activity can do as much if not more good than the 5 to 10 medications they take every day."

Myth 4: I'm afraid I might have a heart attack. Being a couch potato is actually more dangerous than being physically active. We’ve all heard of those who have had heart attacks while exercising. This is rare, though, and often sensationalized by the media.

Myth 5: I never really exercised before. I’m too late. It may seem too late. Studies have found 90-year old people living in nursing homes after some physical activity boost muscle strength. Other research shows physical activity late in life can s cut the risk of health problems and reduce pain symptoms.

Myth 6: Physical activity will hurt my joints. Studies show activity helps with arthritis pain. One study of people over age 60 with knee arthritis found those who are more active had less pain and better joint function.

There are many myths. Rather than filling up these pages with myth after myth consider this 2015 article in The Atlantic Ian McMahan.

Running into old age: A growing number of seniors are completing marathons and triathlons, shedding new light on how physical activity affects the elderly body. George Sperzel, 63, estimates that he’s run over a hundred competitive races over the last few years. Sperzel, a finance executive from Lake Forest, Illinois, dabbled with physical activity in his younger years, but didn’t embrace competitive running until he was nearly 60. Despite his late start, though, he feels that his athletic ability

42

Richard Tardif

has only gotten better with time: “I have found that focused training will deliver the same benefits for aging athletes as for anyone of any age,” he says. In general, peaking in one’s 60s is somewhat of a rarity. In sports medicine, the years between 35 and 40 are often considered a turning point for serious athletes: Skill begins to erode more quickly with time as age brings changes in muscular strength and susceptibility to injury. Endurance tends to peak around age 35 and then slowly decrease until around age 60, at which point the decline becomes much steeper. And unsurprisingly, it holds true across generations that older adults as a group tend to be less active than their younger peers. Roughly one-third of Americans over the age of 65 are considered physically active, compared to around 80 percent of the general population. But within the minority of active seniors, some, like Sperzel, have held on to or even increased their athleticism. In recent years, a growing number of senior citizens have begun competing in marathons and triathlons, causing experts to question much of the conventional wisdom about age-related changes in physical capacity. In U.S. marathons, runners over the age of 40—known as “masters” in the running world— now represent more than 50 percent of male finishers and 40 percent of female finishers, often outperforming younger athletes. Greg McMillan, the owner and head coach of McMillan Running, an online company that coaches competitive runners, says he’s worked with many older athletes, a large number of whom only recently took up the sport. “We’ve never had so many people starting to get active later in life and stay active through their advancing years,” he says. “So we can no longer lump everyone in the same boat because of age.” “In the past, the majority of finishers in marathon and triathlon races were young competitors,” agrees Hirofumi Tanaka, an aging researcher and a professor of physical activity science at the University of Texas. “The demographics of participants have shifted substantially.” These older runners may be reaping rewards beyond a medal at the finish line: Research has shown that physical activity can help maintain physical fitness that may otherwise be lost over time. "A lot of the deterioration we see with aging can be attributed to a more sedentary lifestyle instead of aging itself,” a 2014 review article on aging and physical activity, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, concludes. “The prevalence of age-related chronic diseases and physical dysfunction is substantially reduced or even absent in older adults who continue to train and compete in athletic competitions." “Aging merely lowers the ceiling of physical ability,” Tanaka says. "Older adults, even those over 90 years of age, respond well to physical activity training and regain much of what they lost with aging.” But the authors of the 2014 study emphasize those athletic feats like marathons aren’t the only way to enjoy the benefits of physical activity in old age. According to their data, any regular vigorous physical activity may reduce the decline in aerobic capacity—the ability of the heart and lungs to deliver oxygen to muscles, a main component in overall age-related physical decline—by as much as 50 percent.

43

The Denial of Fitness

According to a 2011 study published in the journal The Physician and Sports Medicine, muscle strength can also be preserved through physical activity. While some loss of strength is inevitable, the researchers found older athletes who participated in physical activity programs showed significantly more muscle strength that people of similar age who didn’t physical activity. Maintaining muscle strength can be a key component of successful aging, as past research has shown that its loss in seniors is correlated to an increased risk of falling, a significant cause of age- related trauma. In fact, contrary to popular belief, older adults are not at an overall increased risk of injury when participating in physical activity; rather, regular physical activity puts them at diminished risk compared to their sedentary peers. The 2014 study noted that regular movement could strengthen bone density, which protects against osteoporosis, while a separate study, published in 1985 in the Journal of Applied Physiology, found that it could also help reduce the risk of arthritis and injuries to tendons and ligaments. Even for the adults who haven’t physical activity in years or even decades, research suggests that late is still better than never. A 2014 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that among a group of people aged 55 to 73, those who had physical activity at least once a week subsequently had lower rates of chronic disease, depression, and “physical or cognitive impairment” than their more sedentary peers. However, the subjects that began the study as sedentary but began exercising regularly sometime over its eight-year follow-up period had outcomes that were almost as good. For optimal results across the board, researchers say, older adults should routinely strive to exceed the minimum weekly physical activity recommendations for their age group: 150 minutes of week of moderate-intensity activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, and two sessions of muscle-strengthening physical activity, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. But the advice comes with a caveat: Gains in fitness, function, and health are reliant on the maintenance of a physical activity program. If a person stops exercising, the effects can be reversed in a relatively short amount of time. It’s an unavoidable truth that physical function does diminish with age, and physical activity cannot fully protect against the natural aging process. What it can do, however, is reduce the magnitude of this decline. By staying active and competitive, older athletes may help more sedentary seniors realize that an active lifestyle may lead to not only longer life, but a better life, too. Sperzel, for one, has no intention of slowing down in the years ahead. “I am literally in the best shape of my life,” he says, “and physically I feel better than I ever have.”

The point is obvious. The 50 to 100 years can be as physical as we wish. Physical activity can also shape how we feel about ageing. University of Konstanz psychologist Verena Klusmann in the March 2012 issue of the Psychology of Sport and Physical activity indicated regular physical activity could make you both stronger in body and mind.

44

Richard Tardif

Klusmann compared three groups of sedentary older adult women before and after a 12-week period. The women, ranging from 70 to 93 years old were randomly divided into three groups, or 80 participants in each group. The physical activity group completed three 90-minute sessions per week riding a stationary bike, lifting weights, and physical activity helping to improved balance. This group was later compared to a group who received classroom training in the use of computers. The third group did not include either type of activity. All women completed a six- item scale, before and after, measuring attitude toward growing older. At the start of the study, the women scored midway on rating scale, and all three groups received about the same beginning scores. After six months, the women in the physical activity group showed a significant improvement in their positive attitude toward growing older compared to the women of groups two and three. The women in the computer-training group were slightly more negative toward growing older. This shows that the results were specific to physical activity, not just group activity. The women in the physical activity group grew stronger in their approach to physical activity. The more physical activity, the more they found the activity to be rewarding. The attitude change toward physical activity played a major role in transforming their views about aging. The social aspects of physical activity can become an incentive for many people. This is key when it comes to those who feel intimated in a gym setting when there is no support. Settings offering support, such as an understanding staff and gym buddies, and group workouts, change attitudes toward physical activity.

Physical activity is medicine for older adults Denise Taylor, in 2014 in the Post Graduate Medical Journal, writes Physical activity is medicine for older adults. She indicates there is evidence from high quality studies to strongly support the positive association between increased levels of physical activity, exercise participation and improved health in older adults. Worldwide, around 3.2 million deaths per year are being attributed to inactivity. In industrialized countries where people are living longer lives, the levels of chronic health conditions are increasing and the levels of physical activity are declining. Key factors in improving health are exercising at a moderate-to-vigorous level for at least five days per week and including both aerobic and strengthening exercises. Few older adults achieve the level of physical activity or exercise that accompanies health improvements. A challenge for health professionals is to increase physical activity and exercise participation in older adults. Some success in this has been reported when physicians have given specific, detailed and localized

45

The Denial of Fitness

information to their patients, but more high quality research is needed to continue to address this issue of non-participation in physical activity and exercise of a high enough level to ensure health benefits. The term exercise is used to distinguish structured programs from day-to-day physical activity, such as housework, mowing the lawn, gardening and walking around the mall, etc. Those who do not ‘exercise’ are often inactive. Study after study show there are five leading risk factors for death; high blood pressure, smoking, high blood glucose, physical inactivity and obesity. High blood pressure and glucose levels as well as obesity are connected with physical inactivity. From that point, with ageing, we begin to see a decline in many physiological systems; a loss of muscle mass, a decline in balance ability, a reduction in muscle strength and endurance, and a decline in cognitive performance. For older adults, extending life is an important factor, but the maintenance of functional independence is also of high importance, both to maintain quality of life and to manage health resources.

46

Chapter 4

I’m a chick in control

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves 'who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world...as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same - Marianne Williamson

Smelling the breath of more than one blue whale Rebecca, 46, was the first to admit it: she is a perpetual teenager and makes no apologies for it. She’s an administrative assistant at a downtown Montreal law firm, hates it there but like many of us, the pay is just too enticing to leave. She has no children, divorced twice, confesses to liking older men. She won’t date for a while, just too damned tired, she admits, and admits right after this is the missing piece to her puzzle. She would like to settle down but men her age want to date younger women. I met her at small and cozy restaurant in Montreal. I could hear the click of her shoes as she approached the table. She strapped her little black purse to the wooden armrest of her chair. She wore ragged black army surplus pants, a black hooded sweatshirt, battered shiny black converse boots. Her hair is short and red, coloured? I can’t be sure. This is a far cry from the administrative assistant I expected. On the phone she said it would be workable to meet after work. The sun through the window was in her brown eyes. She raised a hand, palm inwards, over her eyes. She looked no more than a high school girl did as if the sunlight had rejuvenated her genes.

The Denial of Fitness

I rose up, greeted her and sat back down. "Tell me more about you." She smiled. "I love to talk about myself?” I shrugged. "An old habit of mine. Journalist you know? Humour me?" She takes a deep breath. "Okay…People who know me casually, such as colleagues and casual acquaintances, will say I am cheerful, happy, helpful and a joy to be around. People who know me intimately will tell you I am complex, intensely intelligent, passionate, exceedingly loyal, unnervingly intuitive, extremely kind and empathic. I also have a tiny bit of darkness to those who love me call hauntingly beautiful." She stops and looks at me. “Shall we order?” “I’m not hungry. Go on?” "Well then, the man I give my heart to will not be mad if I have my thighs "done". I won't be mad if he thinks my legs are prettier afterwards; I am not jealous or clingy, though I can be extremely intense physically; I have a Brittany spaniel named Rex, and he is the most perfectly behaved dog on earth. I love dogs and will probably always want to have one. When I go to the movies I like to eat salted popcorn and M&M's at the same time, while drinking Diet Coke, and I never EVER talk during the movie. Sometimes I give money to street people in town. Sometimes I buy them a meal and sit down with them and chat while they're eating." "I am envious…I think…oh never mind…go on, go on, please." "Well, I have never seen an illegal drug, though I did once have a job as an administrative assistant in a maximum-security prison. I looked out of place. They asked me nicely to quit and I did. I can sing, and have performed in front of some large audiences. Though I don't do it anymore, I think it would be wonderful to sing old torch songs in a local night club a couple of times a month, and I would do it for free." "Heck, I wanted to be a rock star once…made cardboard guitars." "I love languages, and I am currently studying Italian on my own. I’m pretty I think, but find men who appreciate beautiful, intelligent women tend to be successful/powerful/self-assured, and most often cold, dispassionate and selfish. I'm allergic to these types of men and have been known to break out in hives if someone I love yells at me in a degrading way – fortunately, it hasn’t happened often.” “Go on?” "My favourite authors are Alan P. Lightman, a passionate, funny physicist who is the most brilliant writer on this planet, and Josephine Hart, an Irish-born playwright who writes intense, psycho-sexual novels which have less to do with aesthetic details than they have to do with the sweet, hidden darkness in the human soul…. like it?"

48

Richard Tardif

"Sure…why do you ask such a question?" I think I’m in love! Well, at least impressed and maybe I found a new friend. "One year I spent two weeks in Alaska on a wilderness fishing trip. I was the only Woman in a group of nine men, and they said a pretty girl without a mirror would not make it for more than two days. Not only did I make it without a mirror for two weeks I caught a 105 pound halibut, sang to the seals, smelled the breath of more than one blue whale, and made nine new friends by the time I left camp." She folded her hands in her lap and looked straight into my face. A strange and peaceful moment passed, until, “I’m overweight today, and now I just eat what I want. How about that?” “Including popcorn and M&Ms?” She laughs out loud. Other people in the restaurant are looking at us. Then she pulls an old black and white photograph out of the hip pocket of her pants, tosses it on the wooden table. “Me at 23, see that?” She points to her photo, taken when her hair was long, natural black and exotic. She sits back, crosses her legs. “I once thought if only I could look that good again. See there? I am trim.” “I see.” “After the Alaskan trip I received the photos from the guys and began posting them online. That’s when I noticed. I noticed I was gaining weight. Anyway, the camera adds ten pounds! It wasn’t until I got half way through the photos when I noticed how big I had become. I was shocked and disgusted by myself and couldn’t believe I actually looked that way. At this point, I was at my heaviest weight of 192 pounds. One evening I was hanging out with my family, watching some awesomely terrible reality TV, when my first husband said, “I think I’m going on Slim Fast like Tommy Lasorda.” Tommy Lasorda, famous Los Angelas Dodgers manager, known also for his trademark low hanging belly, became the Slim Fast spokesman in the 1990s. He also participated in the program. After losing the weight he began doing a popular series of commercials for the heavily promoted weight loss shake. Shari Belafonte (actress, model, writer, singer), Kathie Lee Gifford (former co-host of Live with Regis and Kathie Lee), Whoopi Goldberg (comedian), and Ann Jillian (actress) are just a few well-known names fist-pumping Slim Fast over the years. “I looked at my Ex in and said, “I’ll do it with you!” I loved him for the comment, because I had the chubby-me picture still in my head.” She pauses, then, “Results not typical,” she says, “and here is the problem! We are not typical. My Ex lost 28 pounds, geez.” Rebecca went through a list of Gym workouts and other types of weight loss attempts through Zumba, cardio feats, Aerobic, even competing in a gym fitness category for beginners. There have been many get thin and fit scams.

49

The Denial of Fitness

The average Joe and supermom endorsements A friend of mine a few years ago was saying he had not gone to the gym in three weeks. “I’ll just crank up Shaun T’s Beach Body backed Focus T25 fat burning workout, and close my office door.” T25 is one of the most popular workout programs in the world, as was Shaun T’s 60-minute butt busting in your face 2010 Insanity workout. Real name Shaun Thompson, former backup dancer for Mariah Carey and the creator of Hip Hop Abs and Rockin Body. Insanity: The Asylum Vol. 2 - Elite Training Series, was released in 2012, and it shot to the top of the list of fitness videos out there. My hats off to Shaun T, and also Tony Horton, Creator of the bestselling P90X workout program and 10-Minute Trainer Workout, another immensely over-the-top popular workout complete with a diet plan and more in your face training. These, as other similar programs, tend to focus more on 90-day results or just burn you out, when regular physical activity should be a lifetime program. Those 90-days, in many cases are about as much challenge as we tend to commit. Once we are done we may not visualize ourselves any further into the future. The idea is simple. Instead of working one muscle group at a time, Horton and Shaun T works your legs, your arms, your core, your shoulders, heart and your lungs…all in a single 10-minute routine, or 25- minute routine called super stacking and is nothing new, and if you’ve spent one hour with a true and knowledgeable professional trainer in the gym, you’ll know what super stacking is and you will have worked your arms, shoulders, back and everything else in your body. In fairness, many P90X users adapt the program as their lifetime program and do multiple rounds of P90X and treat this like a "rest of our lives" P90X, as Insanity and Focus T25 are fitness programs, not pure "fat loss" programs. Some people swear by these videos and others – tabata, the four minute workout scientifically proven to make you FIT in four minutes and keep you burning calories for the next 12-hours. This is unlikely. You burn calories, not time, with just four minutes of physical activity. Then there is the 15 Minute Fast Fitness designed for busy people to become fit and stay fit, fast. Designed by world-class athletes, celebrity personal trainers Wayne Gordon and Jenny Pacey, said to be UK’s leading fitness celebrity couple, uses a Swiss ball, dynamic dumbbells and core training. It’s a form of metabolic training as we will see in a later chapter.

50

Richard Tardif

Another video for the hyper-busy is Davina Fit in 15 based on interval training with 45 seconds of tough physical activity with 15 seconds rest split into four 15-minute sections. What’s new here? Not much! There’s nothing you can do with a workout program that hasn’t already been done before. But here comes the supermom – the late sleeping, early to rise mom with a handful of kids out the door in an hour; working mom with a fitness regime thanks to the time saving innovations of 30 intense minutes right in your living room. Here’s what is out there.

Trainer’s notes - Fasting to lose weight Intermittent fasting, also known as IF, is all the rage, though fasting is not new, and it was sparked with the 5:2 diet, based on a book called "The Fast Diet" by Dr. Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer, both who lost 20 pounds in a month on the 5-2 Plan. The fasting goes like this: you fast for two days of the week while eating one-fourth of your typical daily calories, estimated at 500 calories for women, 600 calories for men. The other five days just go to it, sisters and brothers. Fasting can cause you to become overly focused on food, to the edge of obsession, and as many recovering dieters know, it prompts overeating on your free-eating days. What about the warm and fuzzy feeling unhealthy foods provide, albeit temporary? We want more of it, right? I refuse to endorse any diet, but in this case, Mosley reported he had been diagnosed as pre- diabetic, and his method helped him, yet long-term benefits are making this diet, like many, controversial. At cursory glance at Canada’s Food Guide issued by Health Canada states that the recommended caloric intake per day for men and women engaging in some physical activity, but not much, is 2,600 and 2,000, respectively and reasonable.

Trainer’s notes - The 21-Day Fix The 21-Day Fix is a seven day-a-week, three-week workout, simple eating and educational DVD program done in the privacy of your home. It says it is designed to burn fat and have you looking better than ever in just 21 days. Your meal fits into colour-coded portion-sized containers. If it fits and isn’t on the accompanying eating plan, you can’t eat it! Most people who have used it stopped after 21-days, gained weight back, and did a second round, only to repeat the cycle. It is what the name of the product says it is – a fix, and temporary.

51

The Denial of Fitness

The cold shoulder to fat loss Now, in the smoky light of dusk, I began to measure Rebecca’s mind: brilliant with obvious cynicism. Somehow this woman held an aura of hope. To Rebecca’s credit, she tries to eat right, jog, and does spinning classes, and confesses to being a weight lifting guru at one time, but she seems to be always sore. She stopped. She admits to trying weight loss patches and chewing gum, toning gels, fat melting creams, and creams claiming to do all the work for you as you sleep. “One day I was lazy and sitting in my father’s easy recliner, in his home office, stuffing myself on potato chips, washing it all down with a two liter bottle of Diet Coke,” she was telling me. “A cute fitness bombshell on the one eyed monster is blabbering that with five minutes a day of abdominal vibration I can have a finely tuned well sculpted six pack. Ab vibration, huh?” She’s smiling and rolling her eyes. “And it gets better: some muscle body beast with chiselled abs has an eighteen wheeler drive over his abs. He claims his abs were built in just five minutes a day.” He's called the human speed bump, real name Tom Owen and he holds the Guinness World Record by having seven trucks run over his abs. He's been run over more than 1,000 different times. He did it one behalf of his Christian group called The King’s Ranch. “The cute fitness bombshell goes on to explain once I use the vibrator ab helper, I can move on to kick some serious butt. I am superstitious. Oh well! Those ab-energizers and ab-tronics do not work anyway, nor does the butt-be-gone, ab-roller, or ab slider or Tony Little screaming out "technique, technique.” Tony Little is an American television fitness personality and businessman, best known for his fitness infomercial products. Little is a certified personal trainer and identifies himself as "America's Personal Trainer". He is known for his over-the-top, hyper-enthusiastic personality and long blond ponytail. “The future of fitness is finally here.” Rebecca laughs. "The ad for ab-tronic shouts, promising improvement without workouts. I’m up for that. You`ll develop a six pack you’ve always wanted in the easiest way imaginable and all for just under a hundred dollars." “I already have a six pack-you just cannot see it under the flab! And what about those total gym ads with Chuck Norris? Lets' not forget solar plex? Winsor Pilates? And the Hollywood Diet? What about Tony Little's Rubber Band Program?” She’s laughing. I can’t resist asking, “Did you buy any one them?” “Yup,” and she laughs harder. “I had a trainer back then who thought I needed reconstructing. He was intense. He has tried, in vain, to make his gym my home. I would, if he would just stop taking those before/after pictures and insisting I do weights and examine my

52

Richard Tardif

goals and affirm I would stick to them. Posing for the before picture means one has to let it all hang out. No thanks.” “I called him and asked about these so-called weight loss toys. Show me proof the ab- whatever works. I bet you can't?" he asks, and then asks me about my goals. A challenge! I move to my computer three feet away from my ex-husband’s recliner. Indeed, a study by the Human Performance Lab at the University of Wisconsin determined following subjects for eight weeks using ab-tronic-like devices experienced no significant changes in weight, body fat percentage, strength or overall appearance. Some subjects also reported abdominal pain when high levels of stimulation were used. A 1999 study commissioned by the American Council on Physical activity compared using the ab roller plus, Ab Sculptor, Ab trainer and Ab Works with doing the traditional crunch. The results indicated that the devices provided no more benefit than a properly executed crunch. “I even did the Fitness Flyer, you know? Like walking on air?” The ad, featuring Buns of Steel and Abs of Steel Leisa Hart made the Fitness Flyer one of the hottest products in the world of infomercials. “The shake weight?” She says. “The Free Flexor!” Her eyes widen. “Sauna Suits?” She’s snapping her fingers. “Oh…Oh, Physical activity in a Bottle?” Enforma, the company behind Physical activity in a Bottle pills and other weight loss “miracle drugs,” was forced to hand over $10 million as consumer compensation. Toning Shoes. Ab Rocket. Thigh Master. Ab Lounge. Ab Circle. Dumbbell Utensils. Between convulsions of laughter Rebecca tells me shortcuts and overdoing it isn't the key. " Regimented workouts and a balanced diet," she says as her laughter trails off. “The last one I tried was TrimSpa? You know, Anna Nicole Smith in her classic red dress?” I grimaced. “I just read an old study on TrimSpa. Not good,” added while shaking my head. TrimSpa, an over the counter supplement promoted as a factor in weight loss and heavily backed by Anna Nicole Smith, contains the following ingredients; Chromium (75mcg), Glucomannan, Cocoa Extract, Green Tea Extract, Hoodia Gordonii Extract, Glucosamine HCL, Vanadium and Citrus Naringin. “Well those pills didn’t work.” Neither does the Cold Shoulder, a $150 ice pack developed by a NASA scientist, claims to burn fat 70 percent faster than dieting alone. Just wear the vest up to three hours each day (two 90-minute sessions) on an empty stomach, and try to ignore the discomfort. Blue Tinted Glasses does not work. I am not kidding! The glasses are designed to prevent dieters from overeating as it makes food look less appealing. The theory behind the glasses says

53

The Denial of Fitness

few foods are naturally the colour of blue hue and blue hue acts an appetite suppressant. This one came from a 2005 television report seen by and Osaka, Japan entrepreneur named Yasuhira Niioda, actually working with lens manufacturers to develop blue fashion sunglasses for dieting purposes. Maybe a few magnets will cut some fat? MagnaSlim claims to relieve stress and its by- product of overeating by placing magnets and a magnetized solution at specific acupuncture points. The magnet at the acupressure point would supposedly improve cell function, restore Chi and give a person more control over what they put in their mouths. * * * “I tried…it…all,” Rebecca said. There was a pain in her voice, and I felt she was regretting letting it show. “I’m such a phoney bitch, or I was.” “What now?” I asked. “It’s all about this cycle I've lived through many times. It is possible to stop the cycle with the right mindset and the right tools. Why do we do well on a diet? Why do we fall? When I where I want to be, I fall. There is no magic wand making everything different. When it doesn't happen, you throw up your hands and give up?” Rebecca is a tight as a spring. “I was a compulsive overeater. Doctors told me it was a disease. I could see myself at 60, glum and sick-looking, hair unkempt living in a room with a steel supported undercarriage for a bed, with a film crew taping Season 200 of My 600-Pound Life.” Right now my little delight has the vitality of a mean and tired and cranky shift working security agent. “It would help if the government banned all junk food and control the food industry,” she adds, sighing. “Let’s call them out?” “Phhhtttttt won’t work!” In previous weight loss attempts, Rebecca, like most people, assumed by reducing calories would help lose weight, and once the goal is reached, she would eat naturally. “Oh, I thought I would have underwent a magical transformation. The new me, look at me, but how that failed to materialize. I became discouraged and had a big bag of Frito-Lay chips.” “You didn’t change?” “What are you? A psychologist?” “Funny you should ask? Almost, I have a degree in Psychology.”

54

Richard Tardif

She’s swayed, partially. “I finally realized I would always be the same person with the same impulses. Skinny? I’m still a Frito-Lay girl.” She’s got her eyes on me, thinking, pondering, until, “You tell me Mister half-way psychologist? What did I do?” “You could work on how you react to those impulses,” I suggest, and then I realize Rebecca, like Mark wanted to become the journalist and ask me the questions, and I’m not. I shrug. It wasn’t easy for them about opening about weight gain and weight loss. “Let’s agree I’ve been where you have, and I don’t have the answers.” I’m waiting for a rebuttal, but “You’re cute sometimes.” “Well, thanks, now what’s next?” “Okay, self-learning, conscious effort, and falling, falling, falling and getting back up each time, in a nutshell.” “Lifestyle…” “Change! Yes!”

55 Chapter 5

When the sun shines in July, there is hope

The Doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition -Thomas Edison

Yukon Jack liquor and sourdough I felt I belonged in Whitehorse. The evening before the Yukon River adventure I sat on bench at the Klondike National Historic Site, staring up at the SS Klondike, the famous sternwheeler greeting visitors to Whitehorse. I had taken the tour earlier in the day, still avoiding my jogger friend, but on this evening I wanted to be alone with the sternwheeler, today a museum on blocks mounted at the edge of the fast moving river. Change had turned the former gold rush city into a modern tourism and residential city. No more would these massive sternwheelers travel up the river. The Robert Campbell Bridge, constructed in the late 1960s as part of the federal government’s Roads to Resources program, spans the river linking Whitehorse with the Riverdale subdivision and the city hospital. I watched the bellies of slow moving clouds glow over the night-less city of the North. A chalky coloured mist rolling over one the airport escarpment moved North on an intersect course with the clouds, producing a light and pleasant rainfall surging to its most in the sticky heat – unusual July weather for Whitehorse - before quickly evaporating. A warm and light breeze pushed soundlessly over the river from the south; bringing more rain in an instant, mostly over Riverdale, then in an instant it was over. Today was the day my brother made it to Whitehorse.

Richard Tardif

I walked back to the hotel thinking of our upcoming Yukon River adventure. I knew he had been training and eating right for more than six months. At 47, he looked slimmer than he had in years; face, shoulders, chest and waist. He was healthy looking, and fit. I sure was proud of that guy. How was it, though, that I could not see my own way to weight loss? Looking back, I realized I didn’t think I was that overweight. “Dude, just physical activity,” I would tell myself. I’m wearing my researchers hat right now when I asked myself how I could not see my own way to weight loss? I realized denial and a negative male body image had something to do with it. A quick hour of library research followed by another hour on the Internet proved body image problems are not limited based on gender or sexuality. Circumstances are different but the emotional tax is all the same. Going shirtless at the beach or at a backyard pool? Never! Posing for pictures taken without a shirt? Never! Being careful not too eat too much at family dinners? Always! Our supper was at the Klondike Rib & Salmon restaurant, a big plate of decadent sourdough bread pudding baked with raisins and coconut, topped with a caramel sauce cooked with Yukon Jack liquor and poured over ribs and salmon. The two of us ate like Kings. The morning we left for the Yukon River adventure, I tried one more text to the cub reporter and decided to let it go. The guide met us at the entrance of the hotel. “Oh, you’re a big one,” he said, a man with a belly himself. I shrugged it off. I was about to embark on a life-long dream of canoeing The Yukon River. On the River trip there were five of us along with an old, misshapen and furry wisecracking river guide. It was to be an adventure of a lifetime. Joining us was a middle-aged woman from Australia escaping a high-pressured career, and a 77-year-old practical-minded retired doctor from Ontario and his son, a school principal, from Calgary. Doc’s story goes – he changed his diet and trained over six months to lose 25 pounds in the hope of keeping up with his 35-year old son. Certainly, the river offered challenges. Every day we paddled 40 to 50 kilometers. In the evening we set camp, ate President’s Choice pre-packaged foods, sausage and pirogues, flapjacks and salami sandwiches provided by our guide. I could not believe processed food was following me up the Yukon River. One evening my doctor friend warned me I needed to lose weight before it was too late. “I’m currently losing weight. Don’t you know the food on this trip is unhealthy?” The Doc is truly an experienced and rugged man. He has a man’s jaw, a serious nose, and wide-open clever eyes. He is to this day one of the most intelligent men I ever met. I know I’m outdone on this weight issue.

57

The Denial of Fitness

“You need to lose the gut.” What happens in the next few seconds seems to be this: Excuses start popping up, then another, another, another. "I've got no energy" "I’m too tired" "Man, I'm way too stressed and depressed" "I don't have the time" “Big boned, Doc,” I say. “Genetics,” I tell him. “Metabolism,” I enlighten him, and shrug. “To hell with genetics,” the doctor says, almost angry. Okay, he used more flavourful language. “Eat. Healthier. Richard.” I got out of the habit of healthy eating and of training. I knew I loved comfort food. I think only the overweight talk about food as if its comfort food. Pizza. Chips. Doritos. Mars Bars. Macaroni and cheese! Through my writing career I could spend half-days behind the keyboard, eating Cadbury bars, like a chain smoker, and drinking bottles of two-litre Diet Cokes. I endured knee pains and back pains. I can remember complaining about growing older and becoming full of aches and pains. My mother would tell me, “Don’t deny it, son, getting older is all about the aches and pains and getting sick. Don’t fight it.” Truth was, I was not holding myself accountable and recognizing I was gaining weight. When my pants were tighter, I bought bigger. I refused to step on a scale. I began to drink more Diet Pepsi. I watched more Television. I ate larger bags of barbecue chips. I surfed the Internet. Escalators instead of stairs! The Doc leans in. “Eat. Better. Richard.” Back in Montreal a few weeks later, to fiend off the pounds I began climbing the stairs at Mont Royal in Montreal and returned to hard-core biking. I tracked my kilometers using an App called Runkeeper and counted my calories using Just Lose It App. I was travelling back and forth from Montreal and Ottawa twice a month. I felt trapped between two cities. My discourse was off. At backyard barbecues I ate whatever I could. Hotel buffets. What people said, in front of me or behind my back, was not relevant. The day after I would hike the many trails in Gatineau Park and back in Montreal on the mountain, to work it off, they say. This work it off to eat, or eat and work it off, lasted 12 months. Stress was doing me in, also. Finances were shrinking. Bills were too many. Relationships were testing. I told myself, “Don’t look back, you’re not going in that direction.” A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

58 Chapter 6

The fog facts of the fitness industry

“I used the term econospinning to refer to some sort of economic journalism that shapes the data around a predetermined story, rather than the story around the discoverable data”. - Gene Epstein, Econospinning: How to read between the lines when the media manipulate numbers, 2006

“The failure to see what’s before our eyes” - Larry Beinhart, Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the land of spin.

When it doesn’t snow in March A man I once knew loved spring and counted the days without snow starting in January. March, he always said, without snow would mean there is hope. There would be truth in April. He was my High School English teacher and basketball coach. I respected this man and always felt his true calling was philosophy. He left his students with many quotes of famous philosophers. “When it doesn’t snow in March…there is hope and when there is hope, there is truth,” he said after one basketball game, after our team lost to another High School team, after being ahead by 29 points, by one point, after a controversial call by the referee. It was March and I guess coach needed to say something, and he said, “When it doesn’t snow in March…there is hope and when there is hope, there is truth.” Real message? Don’t believe you know everything, you could be wrong, but respect other people’s opinions, yet judge carefully. The referee was correct in his judgment. We had gone

The Denial of Fitness

undefeated until this game. We are not perfect, so the truth hurts. Don’t give up hope. Message received. Our teacher died a few years later of a massive heart attack. He was a large man. In fact, he once said he weighed over 350 pounds. His wife said he tried everything to lose the weight, and many fake fad diets. He was desperate and was always looking in the news for the latest weight loss research. This chapter will examine some of this breaking news. Are they fog facts, or facts?

Is the 80/20 Eating Rule good for you? When fitness and nutrition guidelines are applied to our eating habits they may turn out worse for us, in some cases. Is this the fate of the generally accepted and misunderstood 80/20 Eating Rule? Simply put, eat healthy and wholesome 80 percent of the time, and treat yourself, or indulge 20 percent of the time, is the calling. Fill up on fruits, vegetables, greens, eggs, and more wholesome foods and then have your Grandmother’s cheesecake (a slice) once in a while. A free pass? We may be doing more harm than good. Our bodies are slow to change and will resist at first. Here’s the problem. Once you begin your fitness and health journey and decide to adopt the standard 80/20 Rule your body may not have enough time to adapt, or detoxify to it. By the time you indulge what you may have gained in terms of adaptation in the previous five days is wiped out. If you indulgence every weekend, you’re going back to the drawing board every Monday. As the saying goes, “You can’t out physical activity your bad eating habits”. What if we made a slight adjustment to this rule? Your healthy eating remains 80 percent. The 20 percent is your focus on fitness, replacing indulgence? Let’s say over a two-month period? The consequence is weight loss! Today’s approach to becoming fit and healthy has a great deal to do with what's north and south of your mouth – north your thoughts, your strength of mind, your understanding of eating rules and mental attitude, and the desire to want to bring about change, and south what you put into your body. It’s more than one guideline, more than rules and one size doesn’t fit all. This 20 percent of physical activity (sweating, pushing, pulling, lifting and moving) will contribute to wholesome food that makes up the 80 percent. Let’s forget the math and the formulas, and simply say 80 percent of your physical results will come from your nutrition, and 20 percent of your results will come from physical activity. Let’s allow our bodies to adapt to the healthy eating before we consider indulgence?

60

Richard Tardif

When you begin your health quest the 80/20 Rule as suggested here will keep you on your journey. Ignoring the 20 percent of physical activity, and accepting indulgence instead, will yield turtle-like progress, if any at all. Let’s slip back in history and see where this whole idea originated. The 80/20 Rule is said to be the brainchild of Vifredo Pareto, an Italian economist born in Paris, France in the mid 19th century who theorized that out of 100 percent of the work we do, 20 percent will produce 80 of our income. His business example, according to the prevailing economists of his times and those 100 years later, evolves into all walks of life, suggesting we only wear 20 percent of our clothes; we only appreciate 20 percent of our leisure time, we only enjoy 20 percent of our food, etc. We are 80 percent of the time at work, with money, relationships, etc. Simplified, input nets the greatest returns, or 20 percent. The theory was flawed when it came to management. Economists considered the focus should be on the 80 percent (the inefficient) thus when it comes to our eating habits, which in reality is how we truly lose and maintain our weight, the theory was adapted as follows; as long as you focus on eating clean, wholesome good-for-you foods 80 percent of your meals (moving from inefficient to efficient) you can indulge in foods considered unhealthy the other 20 percent. Applying this rule allows us to be realistic with our diet, and eating those other foods, or fun foods, in the 20 percent category, in moderation. Breaking it down what does a week’s worth of eating look like applying the 80/20 Rule, and this is not new nor is it specific to how we eat, digest, when we eat, etc. Let’s take the standard breakdown, found in literature. If you are eating three meals a day, one snack each day, and one dessert every day, you’re eating about five times a day, or 35 different times a week you make food choices. Eighty percent of the time (or 28 times during the week) you select natural food. Supporters of the 80/20 Rule suggest it tackles the usual diet killers. First, you don’t have to be perfect or overwhelmed. Many people report on the 80/20 Rule report they do not feel like a “failure” if they indulge on the weekend, nor do they feel one slip up on a strict, must-do fad diet could lead to binging. Even trainers all say on some mornings they feel like hungry-hippos and purposely have breakfast at MacDonald’s or other fast-food restaurants. Indeed, there is some wiggle room in this rule. Second, the 80/20 Rule promotes a lifestyle change, and this leads to consistency, the hallmark of any fitness goal. When people don’t feel deprived, they tend to stay on course. Lifestyle changes sounds sexy, doesn’t it? It isn’t. Consider this quote?

61

The Denial of Fitness

"Your audacious life goals are fabulous. We're proud of you for having them. But it's possible that those goals are designed to distract you from the thing that's really frightening you - the shift in daily habits that would mean a re-invention of how you see yourself." - Seth Godin, August 2012.

Entrepreneur, author, and public speaker Seth Godin pioneered the idea of permission marketing. He has written 18 bestselling books and his high profile and standout blog is considered the most popular in the world. He acquired his first Internet Company Yoyodyne in 1998 and he served as VP of Direct Marketing at Yahoo according to his biography. Godin is saying you first have to get out of your comfort zone, a scary idea.

“Discomfort brings engagement and change. Discomfort means you're doing something that others were unlikely to do, because they're hiding out in the comfortable zone. When your uncomfortable actions lead to success, the organization rewards you and brings you back for more.” - Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Sociologists don't think humans consider change a bad thing in general. We don't welcome change. It's threatening to our ideas of accepted survival strategies. But how many of us have had our life changed at a drop of a hat? What do we do to survive? The suddenly jobless who feels no choice but to find another job? The divorced must deal with it. Accidents happen and it changes our lives? Our doctors tell us we are overweight, on the verge of diabetes, and will die sooner, than later…what do we do? We change, or try to. Or we deny…if we decide ourselves, most of us are going to enjoy it. Third, engaged in the 80/20 Rule you can live without obsessing. We all have events in weddings, business meetings, conferences, vacations, holidays, etc. The choices we make during those times, we may consider 20 percent. Some of us may find it hard to draw the line between ‘neat’ and ‘treat’, as in one handful of nuts is healthy, but several large handfuls are a treat. Others try to stay under 400 treat calories per day. Fog fact or fact? My concern is how each of us defines clean wholesome eating and what it can, or cannot do. Eating clean foods will help you lose fat or build muscle faster, and some say you will never be fat eating clean foods. Purple grapes will add pounds, if you eat too much. You’ll be leaner while in a surplus if you’re eating clean, and calories matter little, so don’t keep an eye on calories, as long as you’re eating clean. This food with the same calories or less clean food is

62

Richard Tardif

better. Some foods have same amounts of calories, but are one actually good for us, while the other is not? To me, I can’t see through the fog. This way of thinking, a cheat day, backfires and it often leads to binging and consuming too many calories, which may undo all of the progress you made during the week as I wrote above. How about this? Instead of rewarding your healthy diet efforts with food, treat yourself to new workout gear or another nonfood reward?

“OMG” it’s heaven in a bottle! It’s sweet and it’s heavenly. And you’re going to ingest large amounts of it because, well, many of our drinks and foods are loaded with it and tastes, well, OMG! We’re talking Aspartame; 200 times sweeter than sugar and manufacturers can use less in their products while hyping it as a panacea to weight loss. The artificial sweetener can be found in over 6,000 products and reportedly consumed by more than 250 million people each day. Aspartame is made of the two amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid, and methanol. At high enough levels the triple play has been linked to headaches and panic attacks, to name a few, but it is still permissible in low doses in our foods and drinks, the FDA says. Its 1980s marketing pitch was marketed as a great way to cut back daily calorie consumption and lose weight. Turns out, Aspartame is a violation of sound nutrition principles (no kidding) and counterproductive to weight loss (I’m not kidding). Our body learns to feel full by associating with certain tastes as we eat, including sweetness. The best description of this phenomenon came from a Montreal doctor lecture at a health and wellness summit in Ottawa in 2013 that summed it up like this - Diet sodas taste sweet. Your body after ingesting Aspartame thinks it can now turn calories into energy. But with Aspartame our brain isn’t fooled, and reports, "That wasn't full of calories. My body has no energy. I need some energy." Then we eat more and usually its sugar filled products. Fog fact or fact? The Aspartame poisoning story is a hoax, yet there is a point here. If the evidence isn’t going to convince someone that this is all a hoax because they believe the research and studies that support Aspartame are the true hoax, then nothing will convince that person. Stick with the facts, form your own opinions, and you’ll see that there is much more fiction in Aspartame poisoning than fact. I still drink it. A good can of cold “no free advertising here” soda at the end of a week is great. One can, that’s it. Moderation, and there’s that word again!

63

The Denial of Fitness

A friend of mine said he drinks four litres a day of the stuff that no one would want to accept a donation of his kidneys. Here is the best advice I received to help me reduce my Aspartame intake The best zero calorie drink is water. Period. A drink or food that has coloured and a sweet sugary taste, but zero calories is one heck of a processed food. If it has no vitamins or minerals, it’s not food. Period. Low fat means there is probably some artificial sweetener involved. Period. It took me ten years to understand this.

All this sugar can’t be good for you It isn’t. Sugar makes us fat. In 2015 the World Health Organization announced it would eventually chop the organizations’ daily sugar recommendation of 10 percent of total sugar intake to five. Less rigid is the U.S. Institute of Medicine recommendation of 25 percent of daily calories from sugar. Canada’s Food Guide is laissez-faire over sugar consumption serving up moderation as the key. The message is refined sugar, too much of it, is what is making us fat. John Goodman, who we referred to in chapter one, the actor known for his father role in the family sitcom Roseanne in the 1980s, but known more about his struggle with obesity, cast off 100 pounds in 2015 thanks to daily physical activity, an end to alcohol consumption and a drastic cut in sugar. Just like Aspartame, your brain reacts to sugar. Your taste buds send a direct-message to your brain, incroyable! Unleash the dopamine. Once the sugar is in your stomach your intestines vacuums it up and breaks it down into simple carbohydrates (glucose, sucrose and fructose). In general, when people eat a diet high in calories and high in fructose, the liver is overloaded and starts turning the fructose into fat. Reducing fructose and eating small amounts of it and eating more fiber these carbohydrates can be regulated in a healthy way. Be on the lookout, though. Manufacturers may be sabotaging you without you knowing. What about those hidden or added sugars? Confectioner’s sugar, corn syrup, dextrin, honey, invert sugar, maple syrup, raw sugar, beet sugar, cane sugar, sugar beets, lab-concocted high-fructose corn syrup just to name a few, makes reducing sugar intake, and knowing how much you are ingesting, near impossible. Fog fact or fact?

64

Richard Tardif

If sugar is proven to be a hoax, then there better be hard evidence to support refined sugar as good for us. There’s nothing new or revolutionary about saying sugar negatively affects your health, an undeniably linked to the rise in obesity, type 2-diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Best advice I received was to educate myself on these hidden sugars and avoid processed or packaged products, and drink more water.

Bees on java dance and get it done If bees can drink coffee why can’t I? Well, I do drink coffee. I love the stuff. According to scientists at the University of Sussex in 2015 caffeinated bees can cut it on the dance floor (waggle dance bragging “Hey, I found some awesome stuff over there!”) and act more productive during pollination compared to their decaf fellow bees. Why the heck am I writing about over caffeinated dancing bees bragging about a new cache? Seems the bees became attached to the same feeders after the caffeine had left their system and when the feeders were caffeine-free. Now I’m not going to be brave enough to say humans behave in the same way…Tim Horton’s, anyone? Starbucks? "We describe a novel way in which some plants, through the action of a secondary compound like caffeine that is present in nectar,” said Margaret Couvillon, the lead researcher, in a press release. Spiking the nectar may be tricking the bees by securing loyal and faithful foraging and recruitment behaviours, such as waggle dancing. But these bees had less than healthy diets, according to the study and it got me wondering, does coffee make us bad eaters? It didn’t take me long to uncover the answer. One study from Duke University suggests consuming excessive amounts of caffeine (250- 700 mg.) during the day can lead to anxiety, hypertension, insomnia and nervousness triggering stress-related emotional eating. Caffeine may also increase hunger cravings by reducing blood sugar leading to increased hunger. The studies are inconclusive, yet there is a case to be made for some benefits to moderate consumption. If it’s fresh and of high-quality studies show caffeine can improve alertness and it may, based on studies, reduce the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, gallstones, kidney stones and liver cirrhosis. In the longer term it is associated with an increased risk of high cholesterol, heart disease and osteoporosis, ulcers, IBS and acidity. It’s best to drink in moderation. I am like many coffee drinkers who are protective of their coffee. In fact, I roll my eyes when I hear about decaf and alternatives, but in the summer of 2014 I made a decision to cut back, and it was difficult. Yet, I felt alert, energetic, and was more productive. I slept through the night.

65

The Denial of Fitness

The coffee-bee study is great news in biology, but if the results are convincingly applied to human behaviour, it will sting – I had to say it!

“I don’t sweat, I percolate.” Cup of Joe isn’t helping your mojo? Maybe too much of it may be doing you more harm than good, and it is a problem for the bees also. Caffeine, a basic chemical compound bitter to the taste, acts as a stimulant of the central nervous system and as a diuretic. Cheap and readily available, it is most commonly found in soft drinks, diet pills, chocolate and of course in our coffee. In addition to being an early morning pick-me-up, it is used by students, athletes and teachers alike, to produce clear, rapid thought, and keep fatigue at bay in order to improve academic performance, by staying awake longer. Former journalism student and now lawyer Eric St-Pierre used caffeine as extra boost. It boosted him like a rocket. “I use coffee to keep me awake to study longer,” St-Pierre said in 2006 when I first interviewed him. “When I started to feel tired I knew it was time to drink more. It did what I wanted it to do.” St-Pierre said in time he needed more cups of coffee and eventually other caffeine products to achieve the same results. “I was skipping lunch and replacing it with coffee. It got to a point where I was having only one meal a day and eight to ten cups of coffee.” By his third year of university he was balancing a full-time schedule and working part-time. “The coffee I was drinking helped,” he said. “It kept me up and helped me through my busy schedule. Caffeine seemed to help but after a few months I was always feeling exhausted.” During a 48-hour marathon session to finish a 40-page thesis, he drank eight pots of coffee, and then slept, on and off, over two days. When he woke up he felt as if he had never slept. Over the following six months, he awoke every morning feeling tired and wanting more sleep. It took over 10 cups a day to keep him awake – several cups in the morning and several more cups in the afternoon.

Trainer’s notes – what the coffee studies show Studies in 2006 were suggesting that people are drinking more than they need. On average, Canadians consumed 210 to 239 milligrams of caffeine a day in 2006, more than twice the international average of 76mg. When Statistics Canada surveyed university students in 2005, it found an average daily caffeine consumption of 422mg, way over the maximum recommended daily intake of 300mg.

66

Richard Tardif

This can lead to negative health effects, outweighing the perceived benefits. Also, too often we eat or drink on autopilot and we associate food with certain activities or even times of the day. Too much caffeine may cause surface blood vessels to contract and blood pressure to rise. As a result, less blood flows to the stomach, the adrenal glands secrete faster and more sugar is released into the bloodstream by the liver. Some doctors have likened it to a “fight or flight” stress response. Eventually, someone who drinks large amounts will crash when the stimulating effect subsides, bringing anxiety, headaches and nausea, as well as disrupted sleep patterns. But could caffeine be good for you? It didn’t do well for the bees. It depends on how much you ingest and who you trust when t comes to the data. In a 2005 study, researchers at Austria’s Innsbruck Medical University found that caffeine revs up brain areas tied to short-term memory. Dr. Florian Koppelstaetter studied about a dozen healthy adults and found that caffeine boosted activity in brain regions related to attention and short-term memory. Other research suggests regular doses of caffeine can reduce the risk of developing asthma. In Scotland, caffeine has been used to treat asthma since at least 1859 when French Novelist Marcel Proust wrote he used caffeine to help him breathe. Drinking coffee also might help protect against Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and cirrhosis. And it might improve bone health and strengthen the body’s immune system. In moderation, it may help to sharpen the mind and elevate energy levels through the body but taken in large doses, and over a period of time, it invites adverse effects. An eight ounce cup of brewed coffee contains anywhere from 50 to 100mg of caffeine per serving, which makes it just a mild stimulant. How much caffeine do Canadians drink? A 2010 Canadian Coffee Drinking study revealed the proportion of Canadian adults drinking coffee in the past day has risen significantly, up from 62 percent in 2009 to 65 percent in 2010. Canadian coffee drinkers' drink an average of 2.8 cups of coffee per day. Men and women are equally likely to be coffee consumers with men drinking slightly more coffee than women. Coffee drinkers within the 35 to 64 year-old age category continue to consume more coffee daily, on average, compared to those in younger or older age categories. Daily coffee consumption varies across the country, from a high of 71 percent in Quebec to 60 percent in the Atlantic region. Approximately 63 percent of adults in Ontario, 63 percent in the Prairies and 64 percent in the Pacific region drink coffee on a daily basis. Canadian consumers overall consume nearly 55 percent of coffee during breakfast; 19 percent in the balance of the morning; eight percent at lunch’ 12 percent in the afternoon; seven percent at dinner and eight percent in the evening.

67

The Denial of Fitness

In 2016 The World Health Organization's research arm downgraded its classification of coffee as a possible carcinogen, declaring there isn't enough proof to show a link to cancer. Then the International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, announced in a report that drinking "very hot" beverages of any kind could potentially raise the cancer risk, and it classified them as "probably carcinogenic" to humans. The IARC cited countries including China, Iran and those in South America, where teas such as the bitter herbal infusion mate are traditionally drunk at extremely high temperatures —above 65 or 70 degrees Celsius (150 or 160 Fahrenheit). These are considerably hotter than drinks would normally be served in cafes across North America and Europe.

Red Bull gets in the mix It’s six a.m. and 23-year-old Robin Harper taps the snooze button. Ten minutes pass before the alarm goes off again and the first thing Harper is thinking of is a pick-me-up. As she staggers into the kitchen, it isn’t coffee she’s reaching for – it’s a Red Bull. “Coffee comes later at school,” she said in 2006 during our interview for The Concordian feature on coffee consumption in students. I’ve known Robin since the day she was born. One of my friends is her father. Robin is a fast moving, hurricane storm character type of woman without coffee. By the time the second year psychology student reached her class she’s already had two Red Bulls and is starting on the first of four coffees she will have before noon. Harper isn’t alone. Many of Canada’s university students can be seen clutching the signature silver and blue cans as they arrive to their morning classes. Energy drinks, like Red Bull, have fast become another stimulant of choice for students. Introduced in North America in 1997, Red Bull opened its first offices in Canada in 2004. Red Bull spawned an entirely new category in the beverage business. It raked in 65 per cent of the $275 million wholesale revenues of energy drinks in 2005. “Red Bull Energy Drink is for anyone who needs energy,” said a Red Bull spokesperson. “It gives you energy and vitalizes body and mind, improving concentration and reaction time.” And some students swear by it. “It wasn’t uncommon to see my friends stocking up on Red Bull during exams,” said Harper. “But now it has become an everyday thing along with regular coffee intake or caffeine pills.” Harper, who hopes to work in sport psychology, said she typically consumes seven cups of coffee and two or three cans of Red Bull each day. She used to take caffeine tablets, her favourite being the non-prescription NoDoz, which contain 200 mg of caffeine, but found it prevented her from sleeping.

68

Richard Tardif

“I still need Red Bull,” she said, “It’s the only way I can stay awake and study longer.” Over time, Harper, like St-Pierre, found she needed more caffeine. “It’s scary. I sleep no more than four hours a day,” she admits. “When I do sleep, I crash and spend half a day in bed. When I wake up I want a Red Bull or else I’m just no good to anyone…I don’t sweat; I percolate!” It hasn’t helped her study, in case you’re wondering. “I sit in front of the computer with shaky hands and stare at a blank screen and panic,” she said. “Reading is twice as hard. I just cannot concentrate.” Another energy drink showing up is Nelly’s Pimp Juice. It is promoted by the company as a healthy, non-carbonated premium energy drink, a safer alternative compared to its competitors in the energy drink market. Pimp Juice claims its product is for “those who know pimp’n ain’t easy.” What won’t be easy, in fact, is how your body reacts to just one 16-ounce can of Pimp Juice. A single can is packed with 200 mg of guarana caffeine, which experts agree is virtually identical to regular caffeine. And, why not chew yourself awake? Icy Mint Jolt Gum has “icy freshness” plus caffeine, ginseng and more guarana caffeine. Two pieces equals one cup of coffee but you can expect a faster rush of caffeine. Even bottled water companies have jumped on the Java train. Buzz Water Caffeine Regular Natural Spring Water has 200mg of caffeine. While most makers of energy drinks such as Nelly Pimp Juice and Buzz Water will tell you how much caffeine is in their products, many other products do not have a label disclosing their caffeine content. A dose of more than 4.5mg per pound of body weight, or 787.5mg per 175 pounds per day, can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, cramps, and muscle twitching, according to Health Canada study released in 2004. Higher amounts can make you extremely agitated and give you tremors and a rapid and irregular heartbeat. As for Harper, she was on her third attempt to cut back ion 2006. “Caffeine withdrawal hurts,” she said back then. “Sometimes I have this tingling sensation from my shoulders to my knees, but when I drink caffeine the pain subsides.” Why did Harper decide to quit? “During final exams I drank a lot of coffee and fell asleep during the exam. Can you believe it? I convinced the exam monitor to escort me outside to buy a coffee from a machine I saw on the way in. When I got home I slept for eighteen hours,” she said. “And then reached for a Red Bull.” Fog fact or fact?

69

The Denial of Fitness

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada stated in 2006, and 2014 the average amount of caffeine consumed in North America is approximately 300 mg per person per day - the equivalent of two and four cups of coffee. This is considered to be a moderate caffeine intake. According to many studies it can promote a variety of health benefits. But some studies claim otherwise, even suggesting that one or two cups of coffee a day may negatively impact our health. What are we to believe? Moderation (there’s the word again) is key. I drink four cups a day. I’d call this one some fog, some fact.

It takes guts to be fit and healthy The research on weight loss and healthy eating may have landed where perhaps it should have started, in the gut. The exploration linking evolutionary intestinal microbes to maintaining a healthy weight is all the rage these days, and all we have to do is eat fermented foods. Sauerkraut and pickles anyone? According to geneticist Tim Spector, author of the book “The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat”, the traditional consensus is we are identical in our response to food and consume calories the same way is the biggest diet myth. Spector writes, “just like a fingerprint, each person’s microbiome is unique, and so is the way diet impacts our weight and our health”. What works for a construction worker in Montreal may be radically different from a construction worker in Hong Kong, and what works for you may be different from your neighbour. On CBC’s The Nature of Things, a 2014 documentary explains our gut microbes as helpers to digest food, harvest calories, provide us with energy, produce crucial vitamins, regulate appetite, protect our immune system and fend off severe allergies, obesity and with less occurrence of other diseases associated with obesity. It’s our modern lifestyle of fast and processed foods and overuse of antibiotics Spector blames for driving our historic microbes into extinction. The result is a burgeoning obesity rate and associative disease. So what? Fog fact or fact? Moving more throughout the day, sleeping an extra hour and maintaining a positive attitude will shed a few more pounds. You’ll feel fit and healthy. Then again, the consumption of additives and preservatives isn’t dong anyone, including gut fauna, any favours. Those who eat at restaurants may be consuming chemicals that adversely affect the gut. Years of consuming pre-prepared and processed foods with all the additives and

70

Richard Tardif

preservatives cannot be healthy. It takes guts, not just the trillions inside us, to be fit and healthy. Gut bugs are fact.

Do you make the vitamin grade? Multi-Level Marketing health, wellness and vitamin companies hoping to add me as a sales generator are always bombarding me, and while I don’t support or criticize these companies, nor their hard working salespeople, I was curious about one offering. In particular, the differences between pharmaceutical grade vitamins, sometimes called neutriceuticals, and the run-of-the- mill drugstore vitamins. I made a $47.99 deal. I would try one company’s pharmaceutical grade vitamins for one month. I shelled out some money for a quick blood test as a baseline and then weighed myself. According to the clinic my blood revealed nothing out of the ordinary and I was at a good weight. One week later I received two bottles, one mega-antioxidant, one mutlimineral plus, 112 tablets in each. I watch what I eat and decided to drink more water. I rated my mood and recorded my hours of sleep and kept a daily stress journal. In a nutshell, according to Health Canada and the FDA Pharmaceutical Grade meets pharmaceutical standards while Food Grade meets standards set for human consumption. The difference between each grade type is one of quality and purity. The difference between the grades is one of how much of these other substances, or impurities, are present in the supplement. Nevertheless, vitamin supplementation is a reported $69 billion global industry. For my $47.99 self-test I was expected to take two tablets from each bottle twice a day preferably with a meal of protein, or 28 tablets a week from each bottle. By day three I had an unexpected turn of events. I felt nauseous while at the gym, and had to sit down. It passed. The next week I cut the dosage in half, and still felt nauseous. I made it through the two bottles in two months, not the one-month recommended and returned for my second blood test. There was no significant change. I lost two pounds, but I am a man in a gym and I was drinking more water and eating more protein. The lesson here, for me, and hopefully others taking supplementation, supports the idea of health, wellness and fitness is what we do naturally. Given I lost 54 pounds in nine months, and didn’t take one supplement, I believe I’ll continue along this path. The supplements may not have benefitted me, but they did not harm me, and that is the mantra surrounding supplementation today. Fog fact or fact?

71

The Denial of Fitness

I heard of vitamins for the first time as a kid when I read “now, fortified with Vitamin D” on a Pop Tart box. My mother was saying how good for you were these vitamins. My father would wave his hand in disgust saying, “It’s all fake.” Thus began my world of vitamin controversy and at one time, a blanket condemnation of vitamin supplements. I have had adverse reactions to certain vitamins, no reactions to others. But do they benefit me? I have no answer. Some of this is fog, some is fact but if you are in a grocery store, you will never see fortified with Vitamin D on any vegetable or fruit.

Taste Bud rehab! I have good taste…in my buds that is! I should say my taste buds seem to have changed in the last year. Foods I loved a year ago just, well, taste different today. I went and ordered pizza and with anticipation to bite into my only slice and…it was over. “It’s Mother Nature happening at its best,” says Liz Stokvis, a Certified Nutrition and Health Coach based in Montreal. “Eating healthy organic whole foods is indeed organic to our species,” says Stokvis. “Once individuals are able to successfully grab a steady hold of what I call the “nutrient ladder” and begin working toward healthier options they begin to feel the steady flow of energy and clarity of mind that are intimately linked. With that in mind, our taste buds begin to change.” It is estimated adults have between 2,000 and 10,000 taste buds. The more taste buds you have, the more you can taste a variety of flavours. People with over 10,000 taste buds are considered “supertasters” or deeper tasters. “The key is to make the food choice changes fun and easy,” Stokvis continues, “And going with the natural flow of our lifestyle. Otherwise, we shock our body system, which is never a good thing since we’re hardwired to move toward a state of balance or homeostasis.” Intriguingly, there is a phenomenon developing in the world of bariatric surgery linking taste bud changes to new eating habits. People who underwent the surgery reported they seemed to taste food differently, leading doctors and researchers to examine this phenomenon. One study measured how well bariatric surgery patients could identify the five tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami (savory taste), both before and after surgery. The results show our taste perceptions could change with weight loss. Interestingly enough, my childhood aversion to onions was different than my brother’s love of onions. As a teenager, he could eat a whole onion as if one would eat an apple. I remember as a boy the hours I sat at the dinner table with my parents insisting I eat everything on my plate,

72

Richard Tardif

including those onions. How can my parents eat those same foods? I have been eating onions for the last 20-years, albeit not like I would eat an apple. Our taste buds may change over time, allowing us to experience new foods, even those we swore off as kids. Fog fact or fact? Fact. Scientists know our taste buds do wear out over time. As we become adults and grow older, taste buds start to disappear from the sides and roof of the mouth. This may result in duller taste sensation, as we mature. We still have good taste!

73

Chapter 7

Then why do you have a big belly?

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. - Alan W. Watts.

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.” - Jim Rohn

Valerie Bertinelli, Jenny and a trainer The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance wrote English philosopher and author Alan W. Watts. It’s a simple, playful message and perhaps one should have fun. Perhaps another Watts quote is valid here. Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the Gods made for fun. It took me until January 5 in 2015, 17 months after my Yukon River trip, without making one change in my lifestyle, a lifestyle void of fun, when I was arrogantly sitting in front of my first consultation with a trainer, one recommended to me. I’ve never been sold on the idea of trainers. Still, I was slouching back in a chair, explaining my unhealthy eating habits and lifestyle to a stranger. I don’t understand why I feel sick, I explain, all the time. I sleep nine hours and wake up exhausted, and I have no motivation to physical activity, not with inflammation, aching shoulders and knees. I can’t think straight. I have no desire. The only thing I do well, I said, is eating and plenty. “Then why do you have a big belly?” he asked. Up yours! I’m going to use my French Quebec attitude to raise bloody hell on this guy. I looked at my belly. Belly memories, I said to myself.

Richard Tardif

Big. Tall boned. Portly. But the man almost brought me to tears. It wasn’t until later, at home, in bed looking up at the ceiling, where I understood. I had no words. I sat there. Sad. Shame. Pain. But, “Don’t you know I work long hours? I’m going to be 55 in six months.” He’s silent in his chair. I’m thinking, amidst this eerie and unexpected silence, I have decided to create a big man’s club, and that the membership is small but it will increase. Humour is always good in these situations. We’ll meet once a week, talk about calories, sugars, fats and the latest diet craze, you know? Paleo! No Carbs! Eat to Win! Jenny Craig and we will put up posters of a slim and hot looking Valerie Bertinelli (confession time, she was my first celebrity crush when she was a teen actress on the 1970s sitcom One Day At a Time). Our group will mostly eat. We are good at eating. We physical activity and will keep our hearts alive. We have good hearts. We will find support in an otherwise skinny world. My sense of humour would not help. Maybe this trainer has run out of ideas? I started to complain, but he shooshed my effort.” “Well, that’s all,” he whispers, and flips shut his notepad. I still had no words. It was the longest silence of my life. Forget you man, I’m thinking. Back to Brené Brown and face first in the arena. And then it’s all hitting me – the fad diets, the exercising, the eating, Whitehorse, the Black Street stairs, the jogger, and the one “fat” picture taken on the Yukon River adventure that until now, I avoided. I’m hearing the sound of banging weights and cranking cardio machines outside the office. “What do you want?” was his next question, as I zipped up my jacket. I thought we were done? I unzipped. This is what some have referred to as going down the rabbit hole: of self-denial, of self- diminishment, of self-destruction physically and emotionally. How then would I shift from internalizing the negative patterns, the defeating self-talk and the “bull” we have to deal with? "People are sick and tired of being afraid all the time. People want to be brave again. The message is; do it! Get your courage on, but be clear it won't be easy. It's going to feel like shit." Thanks Brené Brown! “I can do this,” I replied, aware that I was handing over my trust and everything I am, to a trainer.”

Trainer’s notes – underestimate those calories My weight today is…it doesn’t matter, not one bit, and here’s why.

75

The Denial of Fitness

I lost 54 pounds and stopped weighing myself. Not a great idea, say researchers. I do check how the pants fit, and visually eye my waistline. Weight management is healthy and fit living. I didn’t say weight loss; I said, weight. I lost fat. Diets I tried over the years were focused on losing weight. None of them, at least in my day, mentioned health, fit or lifestyle change. We could just do the diet, and voilà! We’re good! We don’t have to change anything, but the diet. Not today, however because all the physical activity claims come with diet plans. Most urged the counting of calories to affect fat loss. It works until those pounds climbed back on, and we know why. Short term never works. Weight loss is not a mathematical model. We’ve heard it before? Output more calories than you input we explored in Chapter 2. Try replacing 1,000 Joe Louis calories while sleeping? Let’s not forget the sugary-butter slushy gushing over the crust of my toast. It’s certainly easy to count the number of calories of your favourite junk foods. We underestimate our calories, labels are inaccurate, we tend to see low-calorie as being “healthy”, we run the risk of being compulsive with physical activity, and it’s stressful, we get hungry, and wait for it – it is not a long-term goal, and it doesn’t work. What the heck is a glycemic index anyways? I lifted weights today and does that mean my body is still burning calories? Give me a shake and popcorn at the movies because “they” say it’s good for you?

Trainer’s notes - Too Much Pizza! Allow me my attempt to convince the doubters. Every Friday evening over eight years I ordered two medium-sized all dressed pizzas. One was for my other half and my daughter and the second was all mine. Yes, I used to eat a medium-sized pizza once a week at supper. If counting calories made sense, and as we explored earlier, it doesn’t, and while the following breakdown may be convincing evidence for counting, but one slice pizza is on average 300 calories, and I know my medium sized pie is eight slices, for a whopping 2,400 calories. One small bag of French Fries with ketchup is on average 200 calories, but who eats on average? For now, let’s make 200 calories the norm. One can of Coke, 12 ounces is 138 calories. We know to lose one pound one needs to reduce weekly consumption by 3500 calories, but on Friday night I intake, at supper only, 2,735. Yikes. Common sense says cut it out and replace it with less calories, preferably with real foods. We are still counting, right? Over 30 days it would save me 10,940 calories and 131,280 over a year, which logically would result in 37.5 pounds, without any unknown variables interfering. Infomercials always do this. Stop this and stop that and you’ll be slim.

76

Richard Tardif

What am I going to eat now at supper on Friday nights? This means, without any data, let’s say 500 calories of vegetables, depending on what I ate during the day, and week, but now we are heading deeper into the counting. Physical activity? It helps, but not as much as doing right in the kitchen over the same period. I can do both over a long period? By now hopefully you see my point? Health (living a healthy eating lifestyle) and fitness (get your butt moving) consistently results in fat management. It’s not my formula. It’s just a formula. Life is not a formula. Oh yeah, remember the glycemic index? I would say a year of low glycemic foods versus a year of over the top high glycemic foods deserves the credit as does not making excuses. We all experience life. Divorce, work stress, death, family issues, car accidents, and we cannot always shine. We simply need to be dull – that’s life, sometimes. People hurt us emotionally and physically, we hurt people emotionally and unintentionally and it hurts and our expectations are shattered, and we feel like giving up. We feel, we hurt, we laugh, cry and sometimes we are happy enough and we cry – that’s life. A profound and deep experience catching an unusual and untamed sunrise while drinking a fresh cup of brewed coffee or feeling joy watching welcome behaviour at an airport? Have you ever seen that all embracing, tear-jerking airport greetings, the ones you want to watch forever? Or looking at someone you find attractive and they smile back? This is life, also. We love our children we would do anything for them, like Mark, in exchange for our health? Ever smell the breath of a blue whale? Rebecca smelled the breath of more than one blue whale.

My saboteurs, your saboteurs I love my friends. There is absolutely no diverting from health fitness. Health and fitness is not a goal. It may seem odd to say, given we are always asked about fitness goals. It has to be a lifestyle, and there must be no diversion. Temptation is everywhere. Six months after I began my journey to health and fitness I agreed to meet with my “Friday night friends”. I had disappeared from the pack and thought it would be great to reconnect. For five years we met every Friday night at our local pub and drank and ate to our heart’s content. Four of those years we were the same group, until one, we’ll call him Gary for privacy sake, fell to a heart attack and died. When I arrived after being a no-show for six months the first reaction was, “wow, what happened? I was reminded of my past army buddies asking the same question after I gained 30 pounds.

77

The Denial of Fitness

“You look good?” The next inevitable question was, “What is your secret?” I didn’t have a chance to answer. The usual order of chicken wings with sauce arrived along with the first round of beers. The topic soon turned to work, women, and whining, the 3Ws as we always called it. Conversation stopped when I ordered a salad with dressing on the side, and drank water. Then I felt I was under a semi-verbal assault. The act of sabotaging is cruel. Being ridiculed for my eating habits and “one night off won’t hurt you” teasing is difficult to deal with it. One night off will hurt me. It took me six months to get it! A whopping 5,000-calorie night out will slow my blood, force my pancreas and liver into overtime to keep up with the intake, and zap my energy. I invested too much time to go back to my old ways. The most common way people tend to sabotage your fitness plans is to play on your guilt for leaving the weekly pig out sessions. This was obvious during the evening. I had some chicken wings, and stuck to water. It was eating a chicken wing when I remembered something I read many years ago.

I am.

Ignore their comments. Ever thought that your friends might be admiring you? Maybe they will follow your lead, once they are not around the pack? Accept their comments and acknowledge their opinions. Never get in an argument or a back and forth over your choice, and you are not obliged to defend yourself. Respect their choices. Move on. You can change the topic of conversation. There is no reason to distance yourself from your friends. They were your friends before. They are your friends now. No reason to end the relationship.

The Slight Edge The "Slight Edge" involves what Author Jeff Olson writes as success built on each turn of a flywheel building on the right and mini decisions, compounding the investment of effort. Olson's basic premise is that small actions taken over time add up to big effects, and that taking some kind of action, however small, is better than no action. There is nothing new here that Dale Carnegie, Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn or any other motivator hasn’t said in the past. It is a book written with a “down to earth” narrative.

78

Richard Tardif

Change and success comes from a very small, tiny beginning, and grows with time. Olson says the secret ingredient to success is one's philosophy. What are the attitudes behind your actions? Your attitudes lead to actions and lead to results in your life. Olson provides a useful diagram of our actions and how their compounding interest leads to success or failure over time. The upper curve on the diagram is the formula for success: a few simple disciplines, repeated every day over time. “I won’t eat that piece of cheesecake. Today, I won’t have that bag of chips.” The lower curve is the formula for failure: a few simple errors in judgment, repeated every day over time. “That cheesecake won’t hurt me. I was at the gym this morning. Yummy, chips!” The upper curve according to Olson represents the one person out of twenty who follows the "Slight Edge." Each of us, every day and every hour, chooses which side of this curve we want to ride. "The Slight Edge" provides good guide on making the right choice, and a reminder that successful people form habits that feed their success, instead of habits that feed their failure. If I make a list of “no” and “yes” and by week’s end I have said no 20 times, and yes three times, the 20 slight edges, over a year, will accumulate. So no Friday pizza contributed to my health and fitness, while eating Friday pizza, Olson’s lower curve, gives me no edge at all. Olson actually writes about pizza. “If I eat a slice of pizza today instead of a plate of vegetables, it isn't going to make me unhealthy. But if I eat pizza every day instead of vegetables, over time I would become very unhealthy. Likewise over time I would become very healthy if I chose the vegetables.”

79 Chapter 8

It’s not only burpees and lunges

NEATness counts for your health Long walks or walk meetings, I read, can add to your overall fitness and health goals. It’s called Non-Physical Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) and it isn’t a pass to overeat. You cannot out walk or out do physical activity unhealthy patterns of eating, yet NEAT is attracting a great deal of attention. Dr. James Levine (Sitting is bad for you guru) is credited for his research and findings on NEAT. According to Dr. Levine, “You can expend calories in one of two ways. One is to go to the gym and the other is through all the activities of daily living he termed NEAT.” The basic theory supports movement as adding up over time and the amount of everyday activity you get out of the office may benefit you more than your traditional investment at the gym. These activities are what Levine says render us vibrant, unique and independent beings. Walk, dance, shovel snow, play the guitar, swim or bike ride with a friend. Take the stairs, walk your kids to school, have “walk” meetings, are just a few recommendations. There is no argument over moving more but if more body locomotion were as simple as it sounds we’d all be healthy and fit, right? Obesity might not be a word in every dictionary and we might not be suffering from high death rates from diseases related to excess weight. Fog fact or fact? There are two general problems with NEAT. First, many of us are mentally fatigued early in the day and busy and don’t count calories. Further, in many cases the midday foods we choose are nutrient lacking. How much NEAT

Richard Tardif

activity do we need to do now? We’ll never know, unless one is accurately counting calories and even then we traditionally underestimate calorie intake. Second, a plethora of studies have shown a lunch hour walk promotes overcompensation of the calories burned. How does this happen? They went back to their desk and returned to grab-n- go, unchecked and unhealthy eating. NEAT can be integrated into an overall health, fitness and well-being strategy. This includes a healthy diet, a physical activity regime and a little NEATness to boot.

Plank-mania! What more do you need? You can’t miss a plank in a gym these days. They are considered the panacea to core training and the go-to physical activity in the last 15 years replacing traditional crunches. It involves maintaining a difficult position in which one’s body weight is in a straight line held up by the hands or forearms, elbows and toes. Planks are isometric training, which involves contracting your muscles against stationary resistance. Done correctly, the upper-body stabilizers (pectoral and serratus muscles) and lower- body muscles (quadriceps, sartorius and tensor fasciae latae), and the rectus abdominis and transverse abdominis of your outer and inner abdominal muscles, including our obliques, become primary supporters during planks. The inner core muscles supporting our joints are also engaged. One can see that an effective plank can use several muscles. Jonathan Ross, author of Abs Revealed, is not totally in favour of planking, and writes, “static planks are like the first grade of core training, “and you shouldn’t stay in first grade forever. Life is movement and effective physical activity, including core training, should always progress toward movement, not the lack of it.” Dr. Wayne Westcott, instructor of physical activity science at Quincy College in Massachusetts explains, “you need to activate the muscle to near fatigue, within the anaerobic energy system, which typically takes 60 to 90 seconds. Any physical activity (including planks held beyond the normal range) doesn’t address muscle strength or size.” Other arguments against planking say planks are isometric and have limited range and won’t provide a full range of motion, or weight resistance, is considered the harbinger of muscle development. I don’t recommend adding any weight on your back during a plank. The longest time in an abdominal plank position is 4 hours 26 minutes and was achieved by Mao Weidong in Beijing, China on 26 September 2014, but since this writing he lasted over seven hours. Fog fact of fact? The Holy Grail of planking is five minutes and planking has become a real status symbol. They hurt! Costochondritis, an inflammation of the cartilage that joins the ribs to the breastbone

81

The Denial of Fitness

is often, and more regularly diagnosed as a planking injury. Every time someone does a plank, they tense the intercostal muscles between the ribs, and the pectoral muscles of the chest. This puts pressure on the costochondral joint, that area of cartilage joining the ribs to the breastbone. Discomfort from this state goes away with out additional treatment and rest (no more planks) is the usual advice. A few doctors might also prescribe a muscle relaxer as treatment or perhaps may just suggest making use of a heating system pad towards the chest anytime pain exists. A plank, in correct form, at 15 seconds, three sets, can help someone get in touch with their muscles, direct them to become aware of the muscle connection. The idea that planks are as beneficial as popular fitness model is a little fog and some fact.

I’m crossed with CrossFit Once, I had a great workout. It left me exhausted and somehow wanting more. I felt a lot of pain, as well. Yes, I took a CrossFit session, something I said I would never do. CrossFit is a conditioning program mixing Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, calisthenics, gymnastics, sprints, plyometrics, and incorporates hard-to-do physical activities like rope climbing with a weight vest and push-ups with weights on your back. Theses workouts are intense, timed and considered high-voltage. It’s an exquisitely punishing system of a combination of physical activity that started as an online phenomenon, then paved the way for more than 10,000 CrossFit locations across North America. It’s that popular. CrossFitters, and I know a few of them, often refer to this form of workout as getting to the mess-you-up moment, the recognition of spent euphoria after some creative and inventive combination of physical activity. You're the sorest you've been in years, and the most satisfied. It sets the bar high from the beginning. This is a good thing. There is a cautious side. These combinations of physical activity are not programed and at random, and almost strung together at the last-minute seem strange and reckless and maybe dangerous. It is risky and unhinged, many fitness trainers write. Here is a fitness routine that has sent people to the hospital, though, in fairness, some of these were extreme cases. Most CrossFit centres are taking safety measures as a priority, without losing the mess-you-up. Led by Greg Glassman, a living recklessly rebel type of man who, in a 2006 CrossFit.com comment, wrote, "We have a therapy for injuries at CrossFit called STFU." The box, as they call each of their gyms, is open space, with rubber floors and high ceiling, and barbells and plates, kettle bells, medicine balls, jump ropes, rowing machines arranged around a perimeter. I was intrigued.

82

Richard Tardif

I did one CrossFit session. “Get it done! Finish it out! Almost there! Finish it! Arrgghhhhhh!” shouted all the participants. When I was done stepping up on boxes and jumping rope, and pushing up, I was done. Not everyone around me was done. Some people, laying flat out and breathing like whales on the rubber floor, love it. These were experienced CrossFitters. The real danger is to new CrossFitters, like myself. Fog fact or fact? Beginners can perform the workouts, and we have to start somewhere. I was warned to tell the difference between training to failure and simply getting a good workout. Too much, well, is too much. I also realized some of the lifts require Herculean type strength combined with technique. That is why I was done – I’m not Hercules! Those looking to escape routine or have reached a peak of health and fitness, CrossFit lives up to its reputation, but as in all new beginnings, go at it at a pace that keeps you safe, and gradually build up. CrossFitters, those who can endure, would call it a fact. More CrossFit locations have what we can call “newbie” routines, a wise approach.

Bodyweight training I first learned bodyweight training in the military during physical training, which was three times a day, and I cannot recall too many weight lifting sessions nor did we ever enter a weight room. Bodyweight workouts were the norm. They were called calisthenics. With all the push- ups, sit-ups, leg raises, chin-ups and something fashionable to today’s walking lunges it seemed weight lifting was optional. It was a different time and the fitness, health and wellness industry was not what it is today. The general population did not attend fitness centers or weight rooms. Lunges? Burpees? Never heard of them. Shuffle in place, in-and-out squat, and low-rotational squats? What? It’s not all burpees and lunges and now it is recognized and called bodyweight workouts. All you need is 10 to 30-minutes, some space and a little motivation. It can be a family fun workout. It can save you time. And it’s free! Ageless! It looks easy, but it can leave your muscles spent and your breathing challenged. “It’s using what you are built with,” says Jeremy Rubin, a professional strength and conditioning coach, and co owner of Le R.E.C Room, a Montreal-based multipurpose family facility promoting an overall health and wellness lifestyle. “Some of the movements are tough and the order can also be tough and it can be an intense workout.”

83

The Denial of Fitness

These moves are the foundation of what you do in life and prepare your body for the unknown. To replace the traditional weighted leg squat try a single-leg squat, without weights. The squat is known to improve balance using our gravity muscles and by doing it slowly on one leg the resistance is amplified. The unknown could be running after a taxi, carrying a heavy bag, and having to side step several pedestrians. These are possibilities that require balance and shifting from one muscle to the next, engaging those gravity muscles. It takes time though. “You have to build up to it and there is a starter base for everything,” Rubin says. Fog fact or fact? Fact. The people I help know I am a big fan of bodyweight physical activity. If you want to become a bodybuilder, then that is a whole different animal. Bodyweight training can be invigorating and one can spice it up by adding variations. Adding repetitions, modifying or performing the physical activity fast or slow will intensify the challenge. The only limit is your imagination.

84 Chapter 9

Love handles

“A year from now, you will wish you started today.” - Karen Lamb

PhD rule number 1 – hide your Mars bar Devon Lyon was thinking about his next book, and the looming deadline. He sat in an old leather chair behind the busy looking desk in his office, a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee sitting firmly in the coaster in front of him. His head was turned slightly to gaze out through the window at the ancient volcano of Mont Royal where he would jog daily and pinch his love handles; out along Mountain Street were he’d buy protein shakes, and then his eyes cast downwards following Peel Avenue where twice a week he’d lift some weights at the YMCA. This time of the morning there was little activity. Without looking, Professor Lyon reached for his fresh cup of coffee, took a long sip. The heat of the Styrofoam scalded his fingers more than it did his mouth. He reacted quietly and placed the cup back in its coaster. “Deadlines,” he said to me, looking at me. “It sneaks up on me like a waiting cougar. Once you were trapped into a deadline there was no escaping. One had to do what one had to do.” He’s looking at me through brown eyes. “I guess you’d know the meaning of deadlines?” A knock at his door startled both of us. “What student is up at this hour?” I shrugged. He got up and went to the door. “Saskia,” he said, looking harder at her as the morning sunlight filtered through the window and over her face. “Come in.” He closed the door behind her. “What brings you to my office at this hour?”

The Denial of Fitness

“I am not disturbing you, am I?” Devon laughed. “I am grateful for the distraction. Besides, there is a journalist with us.” He returned to his chair and offered her the leather high back chair in front of his desk and next to me. I peered closely at her. Her features were as strong and regular as faith. The skin had still its clear, warm, chestnut tint of youth. She walked into the office strong, sturdy, and graceful as if she had the blood of royalty brightening every tissue with every move. I wondered if she could feel my stare on her. She must be a gym person, a runner, swimmer and she does a great amount? Probably, and I wondered if she was uncomfortable. If the roles were reversed it would be flattering. She wore ragged black army surplus pants, a black hooded sweatshirt, battered shiny black converse boots, unmolded as could be and as unlikely royal as could be. “I cannot recall seeing you often in my class? I do know you,” the professor asks. He moved his head and the sunlight roamed over her face again. She raised a hand, palm inwards, over her eyes. She looked no more than a high school girl did as if the sunlight had rejuvenated her genes. He moved his head back into position and felt the heat of the sunlight on his neck, blocking the sun from her face. She lifted her shoulders, and they fell as fast. “I have a busy schedule. I don’t get to all of my classes, but I do all right.” Her eyes kept him at a distance. I’m wondering how he was being portrayed. Devon is an old friend I met while working as a journalist in the Mohawk community of Kahnawake. I was writing a story on the Sixties Scoop, a post Residential School scoop of Native children adopted by non-native parents, and he became a basketball buddy. In his football-basketball frame, he is not the imagined professor portrayed in film who sits rigid and tight behind his paper-cluttered desk. His desktop is clean and his office is ordered, as he looks at the dark haired young student sitting stiff-legged with arms folded across her stomach. She unfolded her arms, and put her hands in the front pocket of her pants. “Well, how can I help you?” She lifted her shoulders, and they fell again. “I was asked to visit with you.” She withdrew her hands and refolded her arms. He caught himself looking at her eyes and thought it would be a good time to recall why he also wanted to see her. He snapped his fingers in the air. “Brokenhead? You listed Brokenhead as a possible feature story and as your final paper?” Her lips jerked in a quirky smile. She took her hands out of her pockets and crossed her legs, sitting back. “You said someone sent you?” She smiled at him and he saw her white even teeth. “Someone who was at Brokenhead.” Her voice had raised somewhat, excited.

86

Richard Tardif

His lips are still, straight, even unbreakable by an impatient breath rising up from his lungs to the roof of his mouth. The rouse is up, I’m thinking. Devon dislikes talking about his books. He is considered a Native activist. He thinks he’s the worse activist when it comes to Native concerns. Every inch an intelligent man, he knows his student is wooing him. "Never," she says, excited, but then, not unexpectedly, out pops a true sweetness. I’m visualizing and creating in my mind her apartment of discarded and red stained pizza cartons, left open computers, stacks of bills and change, and cell phone ads, and a hanging waitress uniform from Scores, the chicken people. "This is not the greatest time," he informs her. "I have plenty of papers to grade and Richard here,” pointing at me, “Wants to interview me about my up and down weight gain. He’s writing a book.” The quivering fanatic in him is struggling to get out. The real Devon Lyon can barely get out. The real Devon is deep inside him and long ago booted out of his cells, buried by a divorce, a mortgage, three kids, four rounds with unemployment insurance, two car accidents without him behind the wheel, and an affair ending with a lost love. Lyon pointed toward her. "I know where I have seen you. You just received an Aboriginal student award…journalism." "Ahhhh someone noticed," she joked. "I was there." "Ohhh…then you saw me try, and fail, to hold back my tears," her voice breaking. "Yes, honoured for outstanding contribution to the university community…ohhhh if I can just remember…yes, I got it…Concordia Council, student life awards." She tilted her head, smiling from under her eyes, and sat back. She folded her hands on her belly. "Thank you." She turns to me. “Isn’t everyone writing a fitness book?” “I didn’t say it was a fitness book.” She tilted her head and smiled more, her hair not moving. "Tell ya what," she says in her best serious voice. "Let’s talk over lunch. I can tell you about my weight gain and loss." And then, she says, less serious and almost chirping, "I can edit your book.” I looked over the desk at my old friend. He has been holding in his little pot for ten minutes and he cannot wait to escape the strictness of his suit. He’s thinking of his jeans and the gray Concordia basketball sweatshirt in the office closet. I know him well. He can't wait to change. He points a finger towards her. "What can you add to the Brokenhead story?" She uncrosses her legs and sits forward. “I don’t know. I am hopeful I can find something to add.” “Maybe lunch is a good idea.”

87

The Denial of Fitness

"Our interview?" "Oh, this is now an interview? You are aware I was at Brokenhead? I wrote the book? I have nothing left to say.” She rose quickly, and leaned forward and lifted her head until her big black eyes were not a ruler's length from his. He felt surrounded by her layers of curly black hair that brought forward her round face. She was smiling-her beautiful and kind smile. Devon found a silence and let it hover. She tugged a little at the ends of her hair along her shoulder line. She spoke in accented English that was new to the meeting. She placed a small hand on his elbow and completed her smile, and then she took a pen from a white mug on his desk and wrote her cell number on his desk pad. "I am not that interesting," he said, and he dearly wanted to get out of any interview. She left and we started to laugh. “Two grown men just fell in love?” I said. And we laughed for a good minute. He sat down again and spun around in his chair and looked out over the northern part of the city. It was a great place to see Montreal and drink a coffee. He turned back to me. PhD rule number 1: Fall in love every day. I’m chuckling now. “You just got your Ph.D.” He spun back the chair and looked down at the pile of papers stacked in a mess under his desk. Scowling, he pinches his nose bridge and feels the pressure build in his eyes. The papers are lifted and placed on his desk. I pull out my laptop and begin writing this chapter. As the minutes pass he’s stacking the term papers he had to read and grade. “Ten pages each,” he says. “Why ten? Five was once considered okay. Ten pages and sixty students, guess I didn't bother with the math. Just do it, right? Well, it was time to see just how good a professor I am.” He lit another cigarette and slid the top paper from the stack and lifted it up to his desktop. One hour passed when Murielle opened the door. She was dressed in a white blouse and navy skirt. Her hair was tied up in a bun, as always, and why I wondered didn`t she ever wear it down? She was one of the most glorious of all women I knew. “Hello Richard.” I smiled and raised my brows. "Professor Lyon, how come you are not at your class?" Shaking his head and downing cold coffee, he squirmed. "Shit…second time in a month…shit!" He checked his wristwatch--fifteen minutes late. “Why bother. One day, Murielle, I am going to get myself fired. You should remind me…no, never mind, never mind.

88

Richard Tardif

Send someone to the class and let them know they can leave." More polite, "Thanks a bunch. I could use the interruption." "Term papers?" Shaking his head in disgust, "students write badly." He takes off the glasses and rubs his eyes. "You're impossible," she said, softly. "And do you know it is against university policy to smoke inside?" She brushed her hand through the mild smoke in the air. He looked at the ashtray and saw eleven butts. When had he smoked them? I was surprised too. "How about you get me some water and some Rolaids?" "Sure…I will just be a minute…and go easy on the coffee…that was a full pot two hours ago." He lit another cigarette. “PhD rule number 2: you can afford any fine,” he said, without a grin, looking at me. “Are you making this up as you go along?” He checked his watch. I checked the time on my laptop: 11:06. “What are you waiting? I thought you would be interviewing me?” The next ten minutes passed quickly. I asked three questions. He answered decisively. He then managed over ten minutes to grade eleven more papers, low grades, but told me he’d have a second look. His mind was not on it. He buzzed Murielle’s desk at the same time she opened the door. "I could not find any Rolaids, but here is the water." She placed a Styrofoam cup on the corner of his desk. "Anything else," she asked, crossing her arms." "No…thanks.” My professor friend and basketball buddy took the glass of water and stood at the window. Then he said, “I have diabetes 2. The Doctor wants me to lose weight and as you know, I’ve been trying.”

Trainer’s notes - 2025 is when we all get diabetes In 2010, I remember writing an article with the headline, Are we turning the tide on diabetes? Those with diabetes and family members with loved ones struggling with diabetes, have always understood that empowerment over diabetes is through the road of education and prevention. Just how much education and prevention was clear after the federal government of Canada in 2010 provided $110 million in funding over two years directed to the Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative (ADI) to continue addressing and battling the high rates of diabetes among Aboriginal people in Canada.

89

The Denial of Fitness

Funding is a good thing, and we shouldn’t think money, any amount, is too little. But $110 million is a drop in the bucket when it comes to eradicating diabetes in Aboriginal populations, and it should be seen as a continuation in the battle against this devastating disease. It’s also a petty amount. Its simply throwing money at this problem while not doing what it can to reduce and prevent diabetes? The Canadian Diabetes Association understands the funding of diabetes research is a crucial step in providing medical advances. Although CDA-funded research is diverse in its scope, covering a broad range of specialties, the key aspects of every study and researcher remain the same – to improve the quality of life of people living with diabetes and to find a cure. Every November is diabetes awareness month, and November 14 is Diabetes Day around the world. While the world turns its attention to news articles and television reports, what is clear each passing November is the numbers of those diagnosed with diabetes is increasing, particularly when it comes to Aboriginal communities. People of Aboriginal descent are three to five times more likely than the general population to develop diabetes. First Nations women in their prime reproductive years are hit disproportionately by diabetes. Incidence of Type 2 diabetes, a condition in which the body cannot properly store and use fuel as energy, was more than four times higher in First Nations women compared with non- First Nations women and more than 2.5 times higher compared with non-First Nations men, says a study of cases published in an August 2010 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Why is the prevalence of Diabetes in Aboriginal communities higher? Aboriginal people in Canada do not have the same kind of easy access Canadian have to physicians, specialists and hospitals. The ADI does a great job, given the scope and magnitude of the problem, in delivering culturally relevant programs aimed at reducing the incidence and prevalence of diabetes. This includes diabetes awareness and screening, diabetes management, and the promotion of healthy living and wellness in more than 600 communities throughout Canada. Still, the news isn’t good and doesn’t lead Aboriginal populations to think their situation will improve. Research in 2010 shows nearly nine out of every 100 Canadians will be diagnosed with diabetes by 2020, which will lead to an estimated nearly two million new diabetes cases in Canada by 2017. The study also predicts more cases of diabetes will develop in Canadians who are overweight versus those labeled obese.

90

Richard Tardif

Some 230 million people in the world have diabetes, and by 2017, the death rate at the hand of diabetes is expected to rise dramatically. If nations don't begin to bring it under control, health care programs will be overwhelmed. The CDA’s 2015 Report on Diabetes: Driving Change, suggests the number of Canadians living with diabetes has more than doubled since 2000 to more than three million in 2016, and will grow by a staggering 40 percent by 2025. It doesn’t seem surprising. From the point of view of Aboriginal people, with diabetes rates significantly higher on average than Canadians and those globally, diabetes rates in Aboriginal communities could be as high as four in every five by 2017, a devastating rate. It isn’t all bad news. We all must come to understand its seriousness. It is not just plain "sugar," as it has been labeled. Diabetes is a bitter, devastating disease, one with a death sentence often attached.

* * * “Are we going to play basketball, or what?” Devon knots his brows together. “Well?” I close my laptop. “You just told me you have diabetes.” He shrugs. “Are you going to train me?” I shake my head. “Are you going to stop smoking?” “Nope!” “Then I’m not training you.” I knew he wanted to laugh but he was more amused and almost experiences a sudden mood change. He also looked puzzled, but a puzzled look rising up from sudden reflection, a looking back, or an unscheduled trip along memory's ledge. “Last question?” “Shoot!” “Do you still hide a Mars bar in your desk?”

91 Chapter 10

Cliché alert: I’m going to stack the deck in your favour

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame.” - Erica Jong

“People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.” -George Bernard Shaw

“If there are any limits to what can be done. The limit is right here (in your head). You've got to get physically fit between your ears. Muscles don't know anything. They have to be thought.” ― Noah Hawley, Before the Fall

This story stacks up If I said you could train in less time with three times the effect of traditional cardio and strength benefits as a result would you believe me? Probably not! That’s probably because, like me, traditional cardio (steppers, stationary bikes, treadmills and elliptical) have long been the guiding mantra to fat loss. Today metabolic stacking, altering, adding or stacking medium to high intensity strength training with short-burst interval training can really stoke your metabolic fire and is revered by many trainers. This will get your attention. You will burn more calories after you leave the gym, or dojo or wherever you train. “Intense strength exercises are nearly impossible to perform while out of breath but at a lower threshold the two can be combined,” says Zackary Finley, Master Instructor and owner of the Dorval based Mouvnation.

Richard Tardif

“Circuit training works well this way by alternating strength and interval cardio stations to provide a full body complete workout.” Metabolic Stacking is a term attributed to and popularized by Mike Whitfield, the creator of the Workout Finishers program, or what is often referred to as ‘character building” finishers, though the first known Ironman athletes in Southern California were known for using stacking and finishers in the 1970s. “The benefits to this approach are huge for beginners and intermediate members,” Finley said. “Interval cardio bursts are fun, very satisfying psychologically and create depleted oxygen levels that keep the body burning fat after each session. The workouts are short and thereby more time convenient, and the combination of cardio and strength more closely mimics life and sports than common gym training where each is done separately.” It involves combing four different elements together in an aim to improve fat loss. First, density training is where you perform more exercise in the same or less amount of time than you would usually. Whitfield describes it as sacrificing time in your rest periods in order to complete more exercise in a given time frame. Second, active recovery, not suited for beginners, is where you’re still putting some sort of physical stress on your body in your ‘rest’ periods. The hip raise, which all of my clients learn, is where I instruct people to hold for one second at the top thrust and squeeze, and then lower. Third, strategic rest periods use the correct work to rest period ratio in your workouts, and four, high volume using unique set and rep schemes. You can change the way you perform a repetitions. Adding straps around the outer thighs increases resistance, for one example, to hip raises. By incorporating all four the idea is you can effectively burn fat in less time. It’s not new, and it’s been thoroughly studied. Quickly, in one study researchers used a circuit training protocol of 12 sets in 31 minutes followed by a measurement of an EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption), or calories burned, after exercise. The findings indicate this form of metabolic resistance training increased post-workout metabolism anywhere from 20 to 38 hours. That’s one heck of a conclusion. This bears consideration. A similar study adding metabolic resistance training and stacking three times a week over a three week period to a reduced calorie intake shed up to 44 percent more fat, while maintaining muscle mass compared to those who dieted alone. “The benefits to this approach are huge for beginners and intermediate members,” Finley said. “Interval cardio bursts are fun, very satisfying psychologically and create depleted oxygen levels that keep the body burning fat after the session. The workouts are short and thereby more

93

The Denial of Fitness

time convenient, and the combination of cardio and strength more closely mimics life and sports than common gym training where each is done separately.” MS seems to be heavily beating on traditional cardio.

Trainer’s notes - It’s my turn to say, “Cardio sucks”. Before we push on, let’s examine some of those criticisms for traditional cardio. I have problems with the traditional cardio as a sure-fire method to fat loss, as do many people today. I never lost fat on those machines. I am not anti steady-state cardio for enjoyment once in a while, or for beginning rehab or even to diversify your pace of training, but I am when it comes to it being considered a panacea to fat loss and its potential for injury. First, traditional cardio is great as an entry-level activity for beginners. It requires very little knowledge or skill. There is an illusion you are having an effective workout; elevated heart rate, beads of sweat (which is not an indicator of fat loss) and you even have feedback, albeit from a fixed machine, of the calories you may be burning. These calorie-counters are notoriously inaccurate creating a false impression that you are burning more calories. Second, you won’t build much strength, power, or muscle doing the same thing day in, and day out. You won’t burn any significant amount of fat. This goes against the grain that cardio, and more and more cardio is the ticket to faster fat loss. Third, what troubles me more about traditional steady state cardio is the amount of time performing the same fixed movements. The more load on one area of the body increases the risk of injury, and inevitably halts training. When I used to do cardio on machines I would change machines after ten minutes to avoid being fixed to one machine. Today I do not train on machines. Fourth, the body becomes more efficient with steady state cardio, which means over time it burns less of those calories performing the same activity. Steady state cardio has been discussed as having a “glass ceiling” on how intense it can be. You would need to go faster, or longer, until the body becomes efficient at this new level. This increases the risk of injury. I hear it all the time. “My legs are always sore.” When asked how often one does machine cardio I get the ‘everyday” response, and usually ‘everyday’ is done on the same machine. Fifth, heavy amounts of steady-state cardio training has been reported to devour muscle mass. Muscles help you burn calories throughout the day. Thirty-minute sessions, six days a week may be working against you. You are not working the muscles. You are better off implementing some serious changes with your diet. Do some muscle work thorough lifting or bodyweight workouts.

94

Richard Tardif

Expect the cardio to be pushed With metabolic stacking you can increase the intensity of work periods in various ways like adding more speed or resistance, or you can cut back the amount of rest breaks. High intensity short bursts with limited rest between sets seem to maximize cardiovascular performance and build muscle. You are moving from cardio (aerobic) to strength (anaerobic), cardio to strength and so on, with some finishers to push you beyond your expectations of your own limits. “Expect the cardio to be pushed,” advises Finley. “Expect yourself to get stronger and to rapidly lose body fat. Expect a variety of exercises that are functional and will challenge you in new ways during each session. This keeps the body guessing.” My own experiences knocked me out of the default that cardio was best for any fat loss and tossed me into this form of training. One spring day I did 91 kilometres of biking, 70 percent of it uphill, and I burned 4,000 calories according to Map My Ride app. This is highly unlikely. That’s just over a pound lost, if 3,500 calories is the marking for one-pound loss, yet I did eat throughout, and as we mentioned above, these calorie-counter devices are notorious for overestimating. Imagine doing all those hills in one day and I burned, maybe, 4,000 calories. It is unlikely I burned more than this amount. It is discouraging. But wait! Two days later I looked trimmer and weighed three pounds less despite eating more than usual. What happened? To answer that I look back two years to the only trainer I hired. When I started losing fat, my tell-it-like-it is trainer was metabolically stacking me through the lifting machines and using free weights. He kept me going full steam for an hour with short breaks, then ball slams, burpees and weights. I rarely used the treadmill, stepper, elliptical, or bike. And I was exhausted. What I learned was how I was being pushed through cardiovascular, then strength, then cardiovascular, and so on, until I was depleted. I also learned that a big advantage from stacking is it changes the way your body stores your calories in the future: and in a very good way. If one takes the approach understanding the benefits of exercise comes after the exercise is completed. It is how the body adapts and changes. So we tear down muscles by short bursts of strength and intense cardiovascular training for oxygen depletion and in the one to two days after, the body repairs the tiny micro tears and stores calories to use during the next oxygen demanding stacking.

95

The Denial of Fitness

Now you are improving. You are not in oxygen deficit as much. When you add more resistance, push more, and mix up the types of exercises, add variety to combat routine, the cycle repeats.

How about that energy? When 33-year old Emilie Bourque began early morning training all she wanted was more energy throughout the workday. Being spring we took to outdoor training. A Marketing Director for a technology firm, and a mother of two she thought she would be lunging, squatting and running track with some lifting. She also was recovering from a knee injury related to three to five times a week of running. She even ran a few 21k races and plenty of 10k races. Well I left Emilie breathless, but in the living, the first morning. By three in the afternoon I asked her by text about her energy level. It was high. And she knew why. “In one word? Efficiency,” she said. “I love starting a day with that kind of training. It's fun and I feel energized all day. Usually, I have a down turn of energy by mid afternoon. It's harder to work and to concentrate. Now, when I have the morning training, I have more energy all day and my mind is active.” Emilie continues to train under the metabolic stacking principle. “I definitely approach training differently,” she admits. “I know it's possible to make short, but intensive training sessions for results. Also, that way, I am able to work a lot of muscle at the same time instead of focusing on only one area.” The result is massive fat burning, increased work capacity, and enhanced local muscular endurance. Another result is how the mind works during stacking. There is no counting repetitions or sets. This sets you in a completely different frame of mind. You focus on technique, form and execution. During the short breaks you focus on your breathing. When you feel you cannot do anymore but you have ten seconds remaining, your mind is on focus to motivate yourself. Oh yeah, there are drawbacks! They. Are. Hard. To. Do. That’s the point. Second? Because they are hard to do trainers cannot bring a new client to them right away. With Emilie, with a history of weight lifting and various cardio experiences over the years, she was somewhat primed. I met her at her level. For some clients laying hip raises were out of the question, but a band attached to a wall and wrapped around the hips in a standing position, this

96

Richard Tardif

movement can be performed. With time, clients get the idea, adapt and then progress to the floor. “MS is not the only option and not suitable in certain scenarios but in terms of bang for your buck it is a great approach and gives a balance of all the things you are looking for with beginners or intermediates to accomplish,” said Finley.

Trainer’s notes - Back to why traditional cardio sucks I won’t do traditional cardio. I have come to detest them. My legs hurt. Of course, someone will tell me my legs would not hurt if I did them right, but it isn’t difficult to be in one position and move that way for 30 to 45 minutes. I see people get injured because of overuse and repetitive movements. Of course, the pain begins not doing the machine, but I can bet the injury started on the machine. Long distance biking, which I do, I tend to get off the bike every 15 km and I do the best I can to make good use of gearing. I stopped running as a way to stay in shape in 2005. I will never purposely run again. I will do kettle bell swings. I will perform ball slams. I will do hill sprints. I enjoy battling rope splits. And I will do stacking. I will beast crawl instead of straight body planks For those who feel continuous cardio is the Cadillac of weight loss, be my guest. I will not deny my fitness when it comes to my body.

97 Conclusions

For example, you’d thin that the people most likely to believe in the promises of a dubious diet product would be the casual observers of the weight loss industry, but, often, the opposite is true. It’s the most knowledgeable who can be the most gullible - Melissa Dahl, Why Smart People Fall for Weight-Loss Scams

Stephen Lea, a well-known psychologist studying scams at the University of Exeter, says its not the non-knowledgeable who fall for scams, be it fitness or another subject, but the already converted. It seems those looking to lose weight and maintain it will try many things. It’s a cliché for a reason: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. In 2015, news broke over Eating chocolate ... can even help you LOSE weight” bounced around the world at an alarming speed, even with today’s communications. The story was written by John Bohannon and published by Britain’s Daily Mail and based on the findings published by the International Archives of Medicine. Great name and they must be great ethical scientists? And chocolate? Yummy! The thing is the study was fabricated. Bohannon, a science journalist with a Ph.D., reported he carried out a junk study as a planned hoax to expose just how easily bad nutrition science fans out across the media.

Diet science, Bohannon stresses, is still science – and reporters need to know how to cover it. "You have to know how to read a scientific paper — and actually bother to do it," he writes. "For far too long, the people who cover this beat have treated it like gossip, echoing whatever they find in press releases. Hopefully our little experiment will make reporters and readers alike more skeptical," he writes.

Richard Tardif

It was a legitimate implemented study. There were 16 people recruited believing it was a study on dieting. The ones who followed a low-carb diet and also ate a 1.5-ounce bar of dark chocolate daily dropped weight faster than the control group dieting alone. First, the study had too few subjects. Second it measured too many factors opening the door to some unknown variable intent on skewing the results. Third, few of the journalists, expected as science journalists to double check and fact check, followed up. They would have discovered the journal, called pay-for-play publication, was not reputable. Further, these journalists didn’t ask the opinion of outside experts. Even the human subjects were deceived. Lancet editor Richard Horton published a commentary on bad scientific practices, claiming that, “much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.” Increased public awareness and transparency are likely to ameliorate the problem. In the meantime, both reporters and readers should be cautious as they digest health headlines – if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is. Emil Karlsson in Time to get rid of bad science journalism, on his blog Debunking Denialism, Defending science against the forces of irrationality, writes,

One of the largest obstacles to the public understanding of science is the presence of pseudoscientific crankery that replaces evidence with personal testimony and critical thinking with personal credulity. However, other obstacles have become increasingly apparent during the last few years: the menace of bad science journalism. These practices have even managed to infiltrate high-quality publications such as Nature. Causes may range from cognitive myopia and increasing demands for sensationalism to boost ad revenue but they consequences could be dire. It misleads people, promotes falsehoods about science and damages the credibility of both science and science journalism.

The advertisement messages, as Samour and King in 2011 argue

…Are not based on nutrition but on an emotional/psychological appeal – fun gives you energy, yummy taste. Younger children generally cannot discriminate between the regular program and advertisement messages…giving more attention to the latter due to their rapid, attention-getting pace…television viewing and other types of “screen time” have been suggested as factors in the rising obesity rates among children and teenagers in the United States…television watching and low levels of physical activity are associated with obesity and overweight, and television viewing has been inversely linked with intake of vegetables and fruits.

99

The Denial of Fitness

Don’t blame it all on the media. The media is one embedded influence. How we perceive our bodies visually, how we feel about our physical appearance, how we think and talk to ourselves about our bodies, and our sense of how other people view our bodies are the major influences embedded in our thinking. The result is extreme dieting, extreme physical activity compulsion, eating disorders, extreme or unnecessary plastic surgery and using steroids for muscle building. Those who shun physical activity begin to feel muscle pain, lack of joint mobility, fat gain, organ degeneration, and so on. One can live the next 30 years in pain, if chosen. One can make those 30 years enjoyable and it’s a choice. Our goal is to adopt a regular fitness habit resulting in a stronger heart, stronger muscles, and improvement in joint-mobility. Less body fat is almost like a welcome consequence. If we just stop denying fitness.

100 Bibliography

Ballentine R. (1989) Diet and Nutrition: A Holistic Approach, Himalyan Press.

Bassett, D., Patrick, L et al (2004) Physical Activity in an Old Order Amish Community, Department of Health and Physical activity Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN; and Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.

Batmanghelidj F. (2000) Your Bodys Many Cries for Water, Tagman Press.

Baum, A, Posluszny, D.M (1999) Mapping Biobehavioral Contributions to Health and Illness Annual Review of Psychology

Bohannon, J., Koch, D., Homm, P., & Driehaus, A. (2015). Chocolate with high Cocoa content as a weight-loss accelerator, International Archives of Medicine,

Boik J. (1996) Cancer and Natural Medicine: A Basic Text Book of Basic Science and Clinical Research, Oregon Medical Press.

Boyd-Eaton S. et al (1989) The Stone Age Health Programme: Diet and Physical activity as Nature Intended. Angus and Robertson.

Brody J. E. (October 1990) Chinas Block Buster Diet Study, The Saturday Evening Post.

Brown, B. (2007) I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't): Telling the Truth About Perfectionism, Inadequacy, and Power. Penguin, New York, New York.

Brown, B. (2010) The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Center City, Hazelden.

Brown, B. (2015) Rising Strong: The Reckoning, The Rumble, The Revolution.

The Denial of Fitness

Browna, R.E, Arya M. (2015) Secular differences in the association between caloric intake, macronutrient intake, and physical activity with obesity, Obesity Research & Clinical Practice.

Budd M. (1981) Low Blood Sugar, Thorsons.

Campion K. (1985) Handbook of Herbal Health, Sphere.

Carper J. (2000) Food Your Miracle Medicine, Pocket Books.

Chaitow L. (1987) Stone Age Diet, Macdonald Optima.

Cheraskin E. et al (1977) Diet and Disease. Keats.

Coffee Association of Canada. (2013) Canadian Coffee Drinking Study.

Cooper C. (1987) Living with Stress, Penguin Books.

Culton S. (1991) The Psychology of Stress and Nutrition, National Book Company.

Dahl, M (2014) Why Smart People Fall for Weight-Loss Scams, Science of us

Davies S., Stewart A. (1987) Nutritional Medicine, Pan Books.

Diamond H., Diamond M. (2004) Fit for Life, Bantam.

Diet and Health: Implications for Reducing Chronic Disease Risk. (1992) National Academy Press.

Diet, Nutrition and Cancer. (1982) National Academy Press.

Doyle W. (1994) Teach Yourself Healthy Eating, Hodder and Stoughton.

Erin F., Juen G., et al (2016) Persistent metabolic adaptation 6 years after “The Biggest Loser” competition, Journal of Obesity.

Feingold B. (1975) Why Your Child is Hyperactive, Random House, New York.

Geary A. (2001) The Food and Mood Handbook, Thorsons.

Gladwell, M. (2005) Blink, The power of thinking without thinking, Little Brown, New York, New York.

Gladwell, M. (2008) Outliers, Little, Brown, and Company, Little Brown, New York, New York.

102

Richard Tardif

Gladwell, M. (2013) David and Goliath, Little Brown, New York, New York.

Gladwell, M. (2000) The Tipping Point, Little, Brown, Boston.

Godin, S. (2012) V Is for Vulnerable: Life Outside the Comfort Zone. Portfolio Hardcover.

Godin, S. (2013) Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck, And Other Provocations. Portfolio Hardcover.

Godin, S. (2014) What To Do When It's Your Turn (and it's always your turn).

Greenberg J. (1999) Comprehensive Stress Management, McGraw-Hill.

Greenfield B. (2014) Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health & Life, Victory Belt Publishing, Las Vegas.

Hambly K., Muir A. (1997) Stress Management in Primary Care, Butterworth Heinemann.

Himes S.M., Thompson, K.J. (2007) Fat stigmatization in television shows and movies: a content analysis, Silver Spring.

Holford P. (1996) Mental Health: Nutrition Connection, ION Press.

Horne R. (1989) Health Revolution, Happy Landings.

Horne R. (1996) Cancer Proof Your Body, Anguson Robertson.

Horwitz, R.I, Brass, L.M., et al (2000) Phenylpropanolamine & Risk of Hemorrhagic Stroke: Final Report of The Hemorrhagic Stroke Project. Yale School of Medicine.

Junsji C., Collin-Campbell T., Junyao C., Peto R. (1993) Diet, Lifestyle and Mortality in China, Oxford University Press.

Karlsson, M. (2014) Time to get rid of bad science journalism, Debunking Denialism.

Koppelstaetter, F. (2005) Influence of Caffeine Excess on Activation Patterns in Verbal Working Memory, Austria’s Innsbruck Medical University found that caffeine revs up brain areas tied to short-term memory.

Ladabaum, U., Mannalithara, A (2014) Obesity, Abdominal Obesity, Physical Activity, and Caloric Intake in US Adults: 1988 to 2010, American Journal of Medicine.

Lazarides L. (1996) Principles of Nutritional Therapy, Harper Collins.

103

The Denial of Fitness

Leeds A., Judd P., Lewis B. (1990) Nutrition Matters for Practice Nurses: A

Handbook of Dietary Advice for use in the Community. John Libbey.

Leverkus C. et al (1985) The Great British Diet, The British Dietetic Association.

Levine, J.A. (2014) Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It, St. Martin’s Press

Macgregor G.A., deWardener H.E. (1998) Salt, Diet and Health. Cambridge University Press.

McGraw, Phillip C. (2003). The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom. New York: Free Press.

McKarness R. (1976) Not all in the Mind, Pan. Medical Aspects of Dietary Fibre: A Report of the Royal College of Physicians, Pitman.

Menard L. (1988) Mind Connection, Random, Toronto, Ontario.

Mosley, M, Spencer, M (2015) The FastDiet - Revised & Updated: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting, Atria Paperback, New York, New York.

Mount J.L. (1975) The Food and Health of Western Man, Charles Knight and Co. Ltd. Norfolk D. (1986) Executive Stress, Arrow.

Ornish D. (1984) Stress, Diet and Your Heart, Signet Books.

Parker L.T. (2015) Success over Stress, Hartman Publishing inc. Persistent metabolic adaptation 6 years after “The Biggest Loser” competition.

Plant J., Tidy G. (2002) The Plant Programme: Recipes for Fighting Breast Cancer, Virgin Books.

Posluszny D M., Baum A. (1999) Annual Review of Psychology, Health psychology: mapping biobehavioural contributions to health and illness.

Pritikin R. (1991) The New Pritikin Program, Pocket Books.

Quillin P. (1989) Healing Nutrients. Vintage Books.

Snowden L, Humphreys. (1991) The Walking Diet, Mainstream Publishing.

Somer E. (1999) Food and Mood, Henry Holt.

104

Richard Tardif

Spiller G.A. (1991) The Mediterranean Diet in Health and Disease, Avi Books.

Statistics Canada. (2005) Caffeine Consumption in University Students, Statistics Canada.

Stewart-Truswell A. (1993) ABC of Nutrition, British Medical Journal Books.

Tarnower, H and Baker, S.S. (1978) The complete Scarsdale medical diet plus Dr. Tarnower's lifetime keep-slim program., Rawson, Wade Publishers; 1st edition

Taubes G. (2008) Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health, First Anchor Books, New York, New York.

Taubes G. (2011) The Case Against Sugar, Penguin-Random House, Toronto, Ontario.

Taubes G. (2011) Why we get fat and what to do about it, Random House, Toronto, Ontario.

Temple N.J., Burkitt D.P. (1994) Western Diseases: Their Dietary Prevention and Reversibility, Humana Press.

Terras S. (1994) Stress, How Your Diet can Help: The Practical Guide to Positive Health Using Diet, Vitamins, Minerals, Herbs and Amino Acids, Thorsons.

Werbach M.R. (1989) Nutritional Influences on Illness: A Source Book of Clinical Research, Thorsons.

Werbach M.R. (1999) Nutrition Influences on Mental Illness, Third Line Press.

WHO. (2013) Global action plan for the prevention and control of NCDs 2013-2020,

World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.

Williamson, M. (1992) A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles, Harper-Collins, New York, New York.

Wilson E., Lewith G. (1997) Natural Born Healers, Channel 4 Books.

Wurtman J. (1988) Managing Your Mind and Mood Through Food, Grafton Books.

Wurtman J.J. (1997) The Serotonin Solution, Fawcett Columbine, New York. Index

105

INDEX

1 F 10,000 ...... 4, 33, 34, 60, 70 Fat Monica ...... 15 Fat Stigmatization in Television Shows ...... 15 8 First Nations ...... 78 80/20 eating rule ...... 4, 48, 49 Focus T25 ...... 38 80/20 rule ...... 48 Frederickson ...... 16 A G Aboriginal ...... 75, 78, 79 Gilbert Grape ...... 4, 10, 19 Alan W. Watts ...... 62 Gladwell, M ...... 85, 86 Ali Vincent ...... 16 glycemic index ...... 29, 30, 64, 65 American Council on Physical activity ...... 41 Greg Glassman ...... 71 Amish of Ontario ...... 31 guarana ...... 57 Anna Nicole Smith, ...... 42 H Aspartame ...... 51, 52, 53 Aspartame...... 51 Health Canada ...... 39, 57, 59 Austria’s Innsbruck Medical University ...... 55, 86 Healthy Active Living and Obesity ...... 69 Hibbard ...... 16 B Human Performance Lab ...... 41 Biggest Loser ...... 4, 8, 13, 16, 17, 18, 85, 87 Hurley ...... 15 Black Street Stairs ...... 23, 25 I bodyweight training ...... 71 Brené Brown ...... 12, 63 Intermittent fasting ...... 39 British Journal of Nutrition ...... 31 J C James Levine ...... 67, 70 caffeine ...... 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 86 Jenny Craig ...... 29, 63 Calories ...... 4, 29, 88 Jeremy Rubin ...... 72 Canada’s Food Guide ...... 39, 52 Joe Louis ...... 25, 29, 64 Canadian Coffee Drinking study ...... 55 John Bohannon ...... 81 Canadian Diabetes Association ...... 78 John Goodman ...... 15, 52 Certified Nutrition and Health Coach ...... 60 John Goodman? ...... 15 Chopin ...... 16 Journal of Obesity Research & Clinical Practice ... 31 coffee ... 12, 13, 18, 24, 29, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 65, K 73, 76, 77 Coke ...... 7, 11, 13, 36, 40, 64 Kai Hibbard ...... 16 Colorado State University ...... 15 Koppelstaetter ...... 55, 86 Costochondritis ...... 69 L CrossFit ...... 5, 70, 71 Liz Stokvis ...... 60 D M David R. Bassett ...... 31 Dexatrim ...... 26 Mao Weidong ...... 68 diabetes ...... 5, 22, 32, 33, 50, 53, 69, 78, 79 McGraw, Phillip ...... 87 Diet Coke...... 7, 13 media ...... 7, 15, 18, 19, 47, 81, 83 Dr. Oz ...... 18, 19 Menard L ...... 87 Dr. Phil’s ...... 29 Monster's Ball ...... 16 Multi-Level Marketing ...... 59 E My 600-Pound Life.” ...... 42 Eating chocolate ...... 81 Emil Karlsson ...... 82

Richard Tardif

Step Diet ...... 33 N Stephen Lea ...... 81 NEAT ...... 67, 68 sugar . 4, 8, 19, 24, 25, 29, 30, 51, 52, 53, 55, 69, 70, newspaper ...... 11, 13, 23, 24, 28 79 Newspapers ...... 4, 21, 23, 24, 26, 29 Super Joe Louis ...... 25 NoDoz ...... 56 T O Taubes G ...... 88 Oprah Winfrey ...... 17 The 21-Day Fix ...... 4, 40 The Diet Myth ...... 58 P The Golden Girls ...... 15 P90X ...... 38 The Nature of Things ...... 58 pay-for-play publication ...... 82 The Nutty Professor ...... 16 Pharmaceutical Grade ...... 59 The Truth About Physical activity...... 32 plank ...... 68, 69 Tim Spector ...... 58 Pure Slim ...... 18, 19 Tom Owen ...... 40 Tony Horton ...... 38 Q Tony Little ...... 40, 41 Quincy College ...... 68 U R Uri Ladabaum ...... 31 Red Bull ...... 56, 57 V Retraction Watch ...... 18 Roseanne Barr ...... 15 Valerie Bertinelli ...... 4, 29, 62, 63 vitamin supplementation ...... 59 S W Samour and King ...... 82 scams ...... 38, 81 Weight Watchers’ ...... 17 Scarsdale Diet ...... 22 weight...... 7 Seth Godin ...... 50 weights ...... 41, 64, 70, 72, 73, 83 Shaun T’s Beach Body ...... 38 Whitehorse ...... 4, 21, 22, 25, 44, 45, 63 Shift work ...... 12, 28 World Health Organization ...... 30, 52, 88 Slim Fast ...... 27, 37 Y South Park ...... 16 Statistics Canada ...... 55, 88 Yukon ...... 4, 22, 23, 24, 25, 44, 45, 62, 63

107