Posts Tagged ‘ s ’

In days gone by, it would have been very difficult to find a senior citizen looking for a gym. The idea of taking responsibility for ones fitness was not a common one in the general population anyway, and was even rarer among the senior citizens who would always feel that if they had gotten to the ages where they could be considered ‘seniors,’ then they were doing things right and there was no use ‘fixing it if it wasn’t broken.’

Then somewhere along the way, the idea of taking responsibility for one’s own fitness took hold and with time grew to a point where many people, including senior citizens are now to be seen undertaking exercises aimed at taking themselves to a higher level of fitness.

Now by the time a person attains an age at which they would be considered senior citizens, they usually have dispelled the notions which would make them subject to ‘mob Psychology’, that it, just doing something because others are doing it. Because of this, there must be something else to explain the proliferation of senior citizens taking more responsibility for their physical fitness.

Indeed, as it turns out, the reality of living in today’s world calls for a new level of fitness for senior citizens.

People are living longer, for one, and today it is considered realistic to expect to live to an age like 80 or 90 in many countries, at least if the life expectancy statistics are anything to go by. Now considering that someone who is 60 (and who already qualifies to be considered a senior citizen) might have another 20 or 30 years to live, it is only fair that such a person would take responsibility for their personal fitness – lest they end up spending the last years of their lives on a wheel chair, which to many people is a very off-putting prospect.

People are also working for longer – and this is another factor leading to the need for a new level of fitness for seniors. The International standard retirement age has progressively been lifted from 50 to 55 and lately to 60, with most countries have lifted theirs even higher to an extent that it is not rare to find a person who has clocked 70 still on a company’s or a government’s payroll. Challenges of the modern workplace on the other hand call for a higher level of fitness and the senior citizen who has to stay at their work place has to conform to this new degree of physical fitness requirement to work effectively.

Beyond the workplace, living in today’s world – which is becoming ever more fast paced – also demands for a new level of fitness for seniors who find themselves having to rush from place to place to get various things they need to be done, a great difference from the past when they would have just sent a child or some other youngster to get the same done for them.

Pedometers are electronic devices that count your walking steps and from the same steps work out the distance you have traveled in the more advanced pedometer models.

The working of a pedometer largely depends on a motion sensing mechanism – which is implemented using a coiled spring set-up in the most basic models, a hairspring mechanism in the slightly more advanced set ups and a piezo-electric accelerometer mechanism in the most advanced set ups.

The main role of pedometers in personal fitness is motivation. Success breeds success, or so we are told. Noticing that you managed to walk 5000 steps yesterday, and then 6,000 today can motivate you to do some 7,000 tomorrow. That build up of figures can lead to a sense of accomplishment – which can be considered a form of success, even before the success starts to show up on the weight scales, for those who want to use walking exercises as a part of their weight loss effort. As it turns out, many people using other exercises for their weight loss would be glad to get such a way of getting motivation before their weight loss starts showing up on their weighing scale – and unfortunately, this is something that only people using walking exercise can get, thanks to pedometers. This is to say that through a pedometer, you get a way of enjoying the exercise journey, as well as the destination (weight loss) – which is consistent with the sage’s advice of enjoying the journey as well as the arrival at the destination.

The more advanced pedometer-models can convert the steps that one has walked into actual distance (in terms of kilometers and miles) and this way one can get a way of enumerating their weight loss efforts to their friends (or more usefully to their physician) in a way other people – even people who are not involved in weight loss efforts, can relate with. Saying that you walked 10,000 steps yesterday might be meaningless to someone who is not conversant with the recommended walking steps for weight loss. Saying to the same person that you managed to clock some 10 kilometers obviously sounds much more meaningful.

The even more advanced pedometer-models can even convert your walking in terms of calories (albeit approximations) you are likely to have lost through the effort. In this way, coupled with a monitored calories intake, you are in a position of working out whether your are expending the calories you are taking in your exercise regime and whether you are even going beyond expending the calories you are consuming to burn up those stored in form of fat in the body, which is what will ultimately result in weight loss from your exercise effort.

There are even pedometers that come with a memory feature – that they are able to keep a record of how much you have been walking, and perhaps even represent it graphically in the most advanced pedometer models. Now if watching your walking graph shoot up and up is not motivation, then there is really no telling what motivation is.

Most genuine weight loss programs revolve around the use of diet and exercise. A person seeking to lose weight is, for instance, advised to reduce their calorie intake or to reduce their intake of carbohydrates (as in a low-carb diet) so that their bodies are forced to make use of the excessive fats stored, resulting in weight loss. People seeking to lose weight are also advised to adopt a consistent and regular exercise regime – with an aim to burn the extra calories and thereby lose weight.

To be fair to it, a weight loss program centered on diet and exercise is usually successful, and is in any case the only reliable way to lose weight. Unfortunately, such a weight loss program centered on diet and exercise tends to result in some ‘side-benefits’ such as the muscle build up which is likely to result from regular rigorous exercise – and which to some people is more of a (undesirable) side effect than a benefit. In this regard, men pursuing weight loss program who happen to build up their muscles in the process generally tend to view the muscle build up as a huge benefit since muscles are associated with masculinity, while the women who happen to experience muscle build up as a result of their weight loss efforts view the muscle build up as more of an undesirable side effect – perhaps feeling that being too muscular undermines their feminine image.

It is of course possible to lose weight without building muscle – as it all depends on the type of exercise regime you use in your weight loss program. If you really want to lose weight without building muscle, you have to ensure that you make this clear to your physical instructor right from the beginning. This way, you physical instructor would be able to devise for you a weight loss program through which you can lose weight without building muscles. The mistake which many people make in their weight loss attempts is to get into an exercise regime that is known to build up muscles expecting to be exception, which of course is unlikely. If you want to lose weight, but don’t like the muscular look, the time to ensure that you get it is right from the beginning – by telling your physical instructor that you want an exercise regime that won’t lead to muscle build up.

Of course, you need to know that attempting to lose weight without building up muscle is counter-intuitive, and carried out that way, your weight loss is likely to be slower and might not be successful at all in some cases. This is because the muscles are said to be the ‘weight-fighter’s best ally’ because they are one of the sites where the most calories are burnt (even when you are not doing much). Therefore by opting to lose weight without building muscle, you effectively choose to do away with one of best aids you would have had in the venture, namely well built muscles.

There is a consensus in the weight loss community that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to weight loss simply does not work. Our bodies are very unique and what works for me in terms of weight loss might not work for another person. Furthermore, the resources – both in terms of money time – that various individuals have to put into their weight loss programs differ greatly – hence the need for a personalized approach to weight loss.

Unfortunately, most of the weight loss programs we have in the market seem to be made with the philosophy that ‘one size fits all’ – and the participants are all subjected to basically the same diet and exercise regimes, with a supplement thrown in here and there, their body types and life circumstances notwithstanding.

Perhaps the administrators of these weight loss programs that take a ‘one size fits all’ approach do so in order to minimize on both the costs of developing the programs and keeping them running. This is because most of the people who are looking for weight loss programs are looking for the cheapest solutions and a small weight loss program administrator who offers a customized weight loss program (at the considerably higher cost it takes) risks being pushed out of business by the others who offer generalized weight loss programs at a lower cost.

Thankfully, though, there are still (albeit a few) customized weight loss programs for the person who is really keen to loss weight. Enrolling on such a customized weight loss program greatly increases the chances of success in your endeavor to shed the extra pounds.

The Weight Loss Centers program, though portrayed as controversial by some people, is an example of a popular weight loss program that takes a personalized approach to weight loss – creating a customized weight loss program for every client who seeks their services. To this end, every person who goes to a weight loss center has to undergo a consultation session with a weight loss specialist (as weight loss centers call the people who administer the programs), from which the weight loss expert is able to work out a customized weight loss program for the person in question. Factors such as the client’s current body weight, the client’s current state of health as well as the client’s goal in terms of weight loss are some of the things that are explored during this first weight loss consultation program.

Of course, as one goes looking for a customized weight loss program, they can reasonably expect such a program to be more expensive than a generalized weight loss program, but with higher chances of success. And if you live in a place where there is no weight loss center nearby, or if you don’t subscribe to the weight loss approach pursued by the weight loss centers, you might just enter the term ‘customized weight loss’ alongside the name of your city into your favorite search engine and see what you get out of it.

There is only so much you can conclude from your body weight figures. While the body weight, for instance, as seen against your height in body mass index can give us some sort of a picture of your state of health as far as body weight is concerned, the information that we get in this way is far from complete. The body weight does not, for one, reveal what the components that make it up are – and these could be more important than anything else in determining your state of health. It could, for instance, be true that you weigh so much, alright, but if your high weight is composed largely of muscle tissue rather than fat, then you are better off than another person of a similar weight and even height, but whose weight is composed more of fat than muscle tissue. Obviously, there is a need for a way going deeper and working out what the specific components of body weight are – so that we can make more informed decision based on it.

Enter the body fat monitors.

Body fat monitors are bioelectrical devices that conveniently work out the percentage of your body weight that is fat – which is a very useful revelation, because in fighting excessive body weight, the thing you need to target is this excessive fat – rather than the other components of body weight like muscle tissue which truly serve a useful purpose. If you have been in a certain diet or exercise weight-reduction effort, and have indeed lost weight, but the body fat monitor shows that your fat percentage has remained constant, then it might be that your weight loss effort has not been entirely successful. In a similar manner, if you have been in a weight loss effort where you have not lost very much in terms of overall body weight, but have lost significantly in terms of body fat percentage, then chances are that you are being successful with your weight loss effort (in spite of the relatively low overall weight loss achievement) because it is body fat that is generally targeted in weight loss efforts.

And contrary to what you might fear, the use of body fat monitors is not intrusive. All you have to do to get a body fat monitor reading could be as simple as taking some three pinches at your skin (it is not painful – just an ordinary pinch like what you would make on your skin to look keenly at a mysterious pimple) or just stand on a body fat monitors that works like any bathroom scale.

The body fat monitors that require you to take three pinches at three different locations on the body work through electronic calipers which take the fat components at the three points where you take the pinches as samples, and from them work out a reasonably accurate body fat percentage figure. The body fat monitors that you stand on as a bathroom scale, on the other hand use a method called bioelectrical impedance analysis to work out the percentage of fat in your body and this can give highly accurate and consistent results. Bioelectrical impedance is obviously slightly more intrusive than the use of electronic calipers but the former (bioelectrical impedance) tends to be largely safe and anyone, expect a person using a pacemaker, can use it, with added advantage of consistency it comes with, at least as compared to electronic clippers which work through sampling.