Alcohol and Fitness after 40

Most of my middle-age readers consume some form of alcoholic beverages on a weekly or daily basis. For many, this is one of life's great pleasures after all. Consumed in moderation (no more than the equivalent of 3 glasses of wine a day for a man and two for a woman) alcohol has mostly proven to be beneficial or at least not harmful to your health.

A few studies have evidenced a slight increase in the risk for certain cancers (digestive tract) but this risk may be offset by potential cardiovascular benefits. 

Now I personally do not believe that red wine alone makes a big difference in the likelihood of having a heart attack in one's 50's or 60's. The so-called French paradox has probably been largely exaggerated by marketers of wine to increase sales in the US. On the other hand, I am pretty convinced that drinking moderately, especially wine is not harmful to yourhealth and may even have psychological benefits by enabling moderate drinkers to relax after a hard day of work.

The monotonous diet

I promised never to use the word diet in this blog. I should have specified that what I meant was "diet" in the sense of a "time-limited change in eating habits aimed at rapidly losing weight".

Lentils rule

What I mean by "monotonous diet" is a permanent eating pattern whereby the number of different food items consumed is limited to a minimum covering all nutrition needs.
I have been following a monotonous diet, for the last 20 years. When I go to the supermarket, 99% of what I buy is exactly what I have been buying for ever. Here is the list:

1. no-fat, no-sugar quark or yogurts
2. reduced-fat cheese (gruyère or similar)
3. avocados
4. veggies: green salad, radish, tomatoes, Brussels sprout, spinach, broccoli...
5. sauerkraut
6. fruits: apples, oranges, bananas, berries and seasonal fruits in the summer  (peach, apricot...)
7. unprocessed frozen fish (salmon, tuna, herring...)
8. canned fish (sardine and mackerel)
9. unprocessed frozen turkey or chicken breast
10. eggs
11. unsweetened rye bread or high-fiber whole wheat/rye cracker bread (e.g. Wasa)
12. unsweetened muesli cereals (for god's sake, stay away from kids cereals)
13. oatmeal
14. wholewheat pasta
15. plain tomato sauce
16. soy milk (unsweetened)
17. beans (re-fried beans, black beans)
18. pulse (lentils, split peas)
19. nuts (raw almonds or walnuts in small portions)
20. olive oil (or less frequently walnut oil)
21. tea

That's it: about 20 items, all of which unprocessed or minimally processed.

Conspicuously absent from this list:

• sugar or anything made with refined sugar
• salt (I get enough from the bread I eat daily)
• red meat (beef and pork)
• coffee (I am not an anti-coffee crusader though, coffee is simply not good for me)
• any kind of alcohol (except on special occasions a few times a year, and then only good red wine)
• Bottled water (this one has to be the most extraordinary marketing scam of all times, unless you live in Flint). I only drink tap water that I carbonate with a sodastream appliance.

Some may be surprised to find frozen food and cans in the list. Let it be known once and for all that frozen food is more often than not of equal or even higher quality than its "fresh equivalent". Similarly, canned food (especially fish) can be extremely valuable if consumed in reasonable quantities.
In addition to being healthy, this shopping list will save you thousands of dollars (none of these items are expensive, except maybe avocados) and countless hours at the supermarket each year.
I make no claim that this constitutes a perfect diet for everybody (especially if you are not physically active). But it is close enough to serve as a basis for your own shortlist of food items.

The monotonous diet I have been adhering for over 20 years is the main reason why I have not put on any weight since my early 20's. The second reason, which is actually closely related to it, is that I rarely eat out.

Experiments conducted on animals have clearly demonstrated that rats given a variegated diet systematically put on weight whereas their monotonously fed brethren stay lean. The simple reason is that variety sustains appetite, be it in rats or humans. One understandably gets bored of eating the same thing all the time, which largely contributes to curbing any tendency to overeat. 

Of course I can hear you sigh that this monotonous diet, like anything monotonous for that matter, is no fun. Then again, the purpose of this blog is not to sugarcoat the reality of staying fit for life.
There are other ways of controlling one's food intake, such as eating a more variegated diet but scrupulously keeping tabs on the quantity and calorie content of each food item consumed on a daily basis (think weight watchers' cards). Honestly, that option is a lot of work if you want to be rigorous.
That is why I found the monotonous diet to be both the most convenient and most reliable way of achieving my fitness goal. As far as I am concerned, this is well worth the small pleasure trade-off.

How much protein should you take per day?

One of the most frequent questions I am asked about nutrition and sport is the optimal protein intake per day. This is a relevant question because, without enough protein, it is impossible to maintain, let alone increase your muscle mass.

Many figures are bandied about, some of which are grossly exaggerated. And as far as proteins are concerned more is not always better. Proteins are not a miracle ingredient that can only be used by the body for building muscle. If you eat too much protein, be it through food or supplements, you will put on fat instead of extra muscles (remember that every gram of protein contains 4 calories, which is the same as sugar).

Weekly periodization rules for resistance training

Most of you already know that after the first few months of practice, anybody who is serious about resistance training should work on different muscle groups on each session instead of working out the whole body every time.

What is less well-known is that there are additional rules for combining muscle group workouts between 2 successive sessions.



MATURE ATHLETES NEED LONGER RECOVERY TIME
These rules are especially important for mature athletes because it takes significantly more time for their muscles to recuperate from a given workout than young athletes' (keep in mind that the very principle of resistance training involves tearing up muscle fibers).

Can Fitness trackers help you lose weight? The answer is NO!

Update October 2016

When I wrote this post over 5 years ago, at a time when the fitness tracking market was picking up, I may have passed off for a luddite. Now I feel vindicated. A recent study tracking 470 overweight people over 2 years has demonstrated that fitness trackers are completely inefficient at helping users lose weight.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/21/fitness-trackers-may-not-aid-weight-loss-study-finds
My advice to you: don't spend hundreds of dollars on a gizmo whose only redeeming value is to make you look cool, use the money for a gym membership instead.My advice: don't spend hundreds of dollars on a gizmo whose only redeeming value is to make you look cool, use the money for a gym membership instead.

As an IT person, I am naturally attracted to the newest high-tech gizmos. So I could not ignore the growing trend in the fitness world consisting in using some kind of electronic monitor to measure one's physical activity and the corresponding number of calories burnt.

GOOD OLE PEDOMETER
The ancestor of all these sophisticated contraptions is the good old pedometer that can still be had today for less than $20. All it monitors is the number of jolts, i.e. steps the wearer takes within a certain period of time. Quite useful indeed for somebody whose sole notable physical activity is walking. But how much better (more effective) are those new activity monitors?

CAN TECH MAKE YOU LOSE WEIGHT?
Most of the modern cousins of the pedometer use several sensors to measure additional parameters like body temperature, heart rate, skin conductivity (level of sweating), speed and distance based on

Glutes: the neglected trouble spot

This post may not be relevant for overweight readers. As a matter of fact, excess fat can hide atrophying glutes (buttocks) muscles by giving an impression of plumpness, especially in women. Needless to say that I do not recommend being overweight. However this post will become extremely relevant as soon as an overweight person will have lost significant weight as muscle weaknesses will become exposed.

When one thinks of signs of an aging figure, the very first thing that comes to mind is a bulging midsection. However, barred a pot belly (that can be avoided simply by not overeating or drinking -easier said than done- ) nothing betrays an aging
figure more surely than a flat derrière. And in this case, no amount of dieting will help. 

Working out with back pain

This may be one of my most important posts date on FitandWise and here is why. Back pain is a major health and socio-economic problem in modern societies. The lifetime prevalence of back pain has been estimated at anything between 59% to 90%.
In other words, the vast majority of us will have back pain at some point in our life. And being over 40 does not help in that respect.

MY OLD PERSONAL NEMESIS
I think that my own personal experience with back pain is worth telling. I first encountered problems with my back in my early 30's as I started working behind a screen for several hours every day. As a matter of fact this risk factor has only worsened since with the emergence of the Internet. I remember my first visit to

Is a calorie a calorie or what apes can teach us

The debate has been raging on between opposite schools of thought since the word fitness was invented: is a calorie a calorie? In other words is the energy measure "Kcal" a purely fungible notion as physicists (and I) are inclined to believe or are "Kcal" (more often referred to as simply "calories") not born equal depending on what they consist in? (low-glycemic starch, high-glycemic sugar, lipids, protein...).

IS A CALORIE A CALORIE?
The definitive solution to this quandary would have dramatic consequences on the efficiency on just about any diet. If all Kcal are created equal, then the only relevant metric to lose weight is the number of Kcal consumed daily minus the daily energy outlay (basic metabolism + physical activity) If on the other hand, there are "good" and "bad" Kcal then the latter metric will be skewed and designing a diet will be a much more complicated affair.