I shot a segment today for Eyewitness News here in the NYC Area.  It will air this coming Monday, during the 5 PM news.   I won’t spoil the segment, but in doing a little research for the piece I found some rather amazing information.

In 2002 they did a study in England and Ireland where they asked women to walk up the stairs at work each day for 8 weeks.  They started with one flight of stairs and gradually worked up to walking 200 steps which took most people about 2 minutes.  They went up the stairs 6 x during the work day – for a total of 12 minutes of work.  Now mind you this wasn’t all at once, rather just 2 minutes at a pop.  The results?  In just 2 months these women increased their HDL (the good cholesterol) and improving the ratio of good cholesterol to bad.  They improved their work capacity (as measured by their “VO2 Max” and a decrease in the production of metabolic wastes during exercise).  Experts calculated that in just 8 weeks they had decreased their of having a heart attack by 33%!!   Working out just 12 minutes a day — and not changing their diet or anything else.

Then another study built on that and looked at a much larger group of individuals.  But in this study they only had them do only 100 steps/day for a total of 6 minutes of work spread out in their work day.  And guess what?!  These folks had similar benefits to the point that they decreased their risk for cardiovsacular disease by about 20%.  In just a few weeks with 6 minutes of exercise per day.

Now nobody is saying that these people became hard bodies from these workouts, but the fact is they had a tremendous impact on their health and their risk for having a heart attack.  That’s significant because every year 1.1 million people in the US have a heart attack and about 1/2 of those will be fatal.

This is really great news, because everyone has 6-12 minutes/day to exercise.  Best of all stairs are free and found everywhere…at home…at work…in the park…at the mall…you name it.  There is really no excuse! 
Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!

I’ve always been fascinated with the yin-yang symbol and the concept of balance and moderation that it represents.

It’s a particularly powerful concept for us here in The West where so many aspects of our existence seem to be all or nothing. Perhaps nowhere is this truer than in the area of health and fitness. On one end of the spectrum we have the “couch potatoes” that don’t exercise, eat whatever they want and sit back watching their waistlines expand year after year.

On the other end are the “health nuts” that tyrannize themselves with stringent diets and exercise programs. These folks use the words “always” or “never” a lot. They’ll tell you in a self-righteous (and slightly accusatory) tone, “I always go running every morning” or “I never eat sweets”.

As a personal trainer you might think I would applaud the latter group for doing all the supposed “right things”. But the fact is these “nuts” get on my nerves just as much (if not more so) that the “potatoes”.

My thought is that for every person that these extremists inspire to start working out and eating right — they probably turn-off another 10 to the idea entirely.

De-conditioned folks usually point to these health freaks and they say to themselves, “Yeesh, they’re really obsessive — I don’t want to live like that.”. And I agree with them!!

Ironically, many of these fitness-obsessed people are actually hurting their health in the name of wellness. They often have multiple injures caused from training too much or not resting enough in between. Or they may have nutritional deficiencies from being on an extreme diet of one type or another.

I honestly don’t understand why people can’t find a middle ground between the two extremes. A healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to be an all or none proposition. Why is it that over 95% of all diets fail? Because they are designed to be so extreme that people can’t live like that for very long. They go on them, they may (or may not) lose some weight and then sooner or later they go “off the rails” because they’ve been living in a state of deprivation for so long.

My friend Joy Bauer, “Nutritionist to the Stars” (that’s my characterization, not hers) has a best-selling book called The 90/10 Weight Loss Plan. It’s less of a diet and more of a change of perspective in the way that folks think about eating. Joy’s basic premise is that you eat healthfully 90 percent of the time and 10 percent of the time you get a little crazy and make a conscious choice to eat some crappy stuff – just because it’s pleasurable.

The same is true with exercise. You don’t have to be sitting on your duff watching OR training for the NY City Marathon. There is something easier and far less extreme in the middle. In fact, scientific research would suggest that from a health perspective you’d be better off taking a brisk 30-minute walk most days of the week then training aggressively for a few months for a specific event. The habit of a daily 30-minute fitness walk would give you a great return on your fitness investment in terms of: potential weight loss, lowering of blood pressure, reducing risk of developing Type II diabetes and heart disease – with virtually no risk of injury. Plus it’s free! Open the door to your house, walk in one direction for 15-minutes turn around and walk back home.

Here are some other simple suggestions for small, simple changes that you can make in your daily life which payoff in looking better and being healthier.

 Cut down on non-nutritive drinks particularly regular sodas.

 Try to eat lower fat or fat-free dairy products most of the time.

 Spend five minutes while you’re watching TV gently stretching your hips and upper back.

 Do five minutes of deep breathing and meditation at some point each day.

 Reduce your alcohol consumption.

 Do 10 minutes of calisthenics like a quick circuit of body weight squats, push-ups and dumbbell rows two or three times a week.

The point is when it comes to taking care of your body and your health, you can’t cram and a little goes a LONG way. True and lasting wellness isn’t an all or nothing proposition.   So I challenge you to make a small shift in one thing that you’re doing that you know isn’t great for you in the long run. Commit today to make one little change. It doesn’t have to be major shift. It doesn’t have to be an “I’ll never, ever, do that again” shift. Just an “I’m going to “cut back on that a bit” or a “do more of that” shift.   
Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!

Since September is Menopause Awareness Month, I thought I would share my own menopause memoir to commemorate the month.  I should warm my male readers that this post will contain information about my girlie parts, hormones and my periods menstrual cycles.  If you are squeamish of such topics or simply just not interested, then now would be a good time to click away.  However, if you stick around to read my post, you may learn a little more insight to the baffling female species.

Before children, my cycle was 21 days, but at the age of 34 after the birth of my second daughter, I began to have irregular periods.  For some cycles, my period would arrive 6 weeks later.  As you can imagine, these irregular period patterns would cause me to think I was pregnant, but then my old reliable Aunt Flo would finally arrive. 
About two years ago in the midst of this new pattern of irregular menstrual cycles, I became pregnant.  Unfortunately, the pregnancy was not viable and I lost my baby at 10 weeks, which was my first miscarriage and my first experience with all the awful symptoms that occur as a result, such as severe cramping and weeks of very heavy bleeding. 
Then, almost a year later to the date, I experienced another episode of severe heavy bleeding, which I thought I was another miscarriage.  I took a pregnancy test which read negative, but I doubted the accuracy of the test and tried 2 more tests which also read negative.  I began to think there was something more serious happening with me and I made an appointment with my obstetrician.

When I visited my OB, a number of tests were performed on me: a pregnancy test, blood work and an ultrasound.  As the other pregnancy tests already demonstrated, I was not pregnant.  Thyroid was also ruled out.  Nothing irregular showed up on my ultrasound.  So, what could be wrong with me? 

That’s when the nurse practitioner revealed to me news I was not ready to hear.  “You are experiencing pre-menopause.” 

*Freeze frame for dramatic effect and insert tragic climatic music.*

According to my NP, my heavy and irregular periods could only be explained by perimenopause.  It would not affect my ability to get pregnant, but simply my biological clock ticking and reminding me to get cracking if I want more children.

After I left the doctor’s office, I researched pre-menopause and I even recalled a show that Oprah did years ago about the topic.  When the episode aired, I remembered thinking what an unfortunate situation for these women in their thirties to face.  Who knew I would be one of those women? 

    
As I read the symptoms of perimenopause, it became a checklist for all my bizarre ailments over the past 2 years, particularly an increase in allergies and insomnia.  Even my poor sex-deprived DH would attest to my change in libido. 

Upon my research, I also discovered that perimenopause can occur 5-15 years prior to the onset of menopause.  I recalled my mother’s menopause experience.  My mother went through her change when I was teenager.  When I did the math, I realized my mom could have very well been my age when her symptoms of perimenopause surfaced.

As with everything else, diet and exercise seem to be the key to ward off the symptoms of perimenopause.  At the time of my menopause manifestation, I consumed a lot of Diet Dr. Pepper, so my first course of action was to replace my daily dose of diet soda with green tea.  I began to eat more flax seeds and other foods with Omega-3.  I added soy milk and soy beans to my diet.  I also limited my morning coffee to one cup.  I increased my number of work-out days from 3 days a week to 5 days. 

Within a week of changing my diet and increasing my exercise, I felt remarkably better.  My energy levels rose and my sleeping patterns improved.  My menstrual cycles became more regular and my menstrual flow gradually decreased.

It has been a year since my menopause manifestation.  By simply changing my diet and increasing my exercise routine, I feel I have found my own Fountain of Youth.