Introducing the Peanut

Can You Squeeze In a 20 Minute Workout Today?

Of course you can!  Who can’t find 20 minutes to spare?  This is what I do if my day is booked, there is not a chance I can get to the gym, and I need to break a sweat to maintain my sanity.  It is short, but it is not easy.

Basically, you pick one exercise for each of the SIX basic movements that human bodies are designed to do: a squat, a hip hinge, a push, a pull, a twist or anti-rotation move for the abs, and a single leg move.  Pick your favorites, or get crazy and try something you never do.  You will do three supersets of paired exercises.  In a superset, you move from one exercise directly to the next with no rest.  THEN, you rest, and repeat the superset for a specific number of times.  Huh?  Never mind. Here are the pairs

Squat move + Twist or Abdominal stability (examples below…or come up with your own!)

body squat x 15 followed immediately by front plank x 60 seconds

kettlebell goblet squat x 8 followed immediately by Russian twist x 16

dumbbell squat x 12 followed immediately by side plank, 30 sec/side

Pick one of these combinations, and do three supersets, resting only 60 seconds between each.  The grand total of time for this superset pair should be around 6 minutes or less.  Then, move to the next superset pair.

Push + Pull (examples below or come up with your own!)

Push Up x 10 followed immediately by horizontal rows x 8 (I use my dining room table for these)

Dumbbell military press x 8 followed immediately by pull ups x as many as you can do (this number will go down with each superset!)

Dumbbell chest press x 8 followed immediately by bent over dumbbell rows x 8 (use heavy dumbbells)

Again, pick ONE of these and do three supersets resting only 60 sec between each.  Six more minutes.  Last superset coming up.

Hip hinge + Single leg exercise  (examples below or come up with your own!)

Dumbbell or Kettlebell Deadlift x 8 followed immediately by alternating forward lunge x 8 (with dumbbells) or 12 if bodyweight only

Single leg bodyweight deadlift x 6 each side followed immediately by alternating backward lunges x 6 each side  (with dumbbells) or 12 each if bodyweight only

Kettlebell swings (my favorite) x 20 followed immediately by walking lunges x 8 each side

Same thing here:  no rest between paired exercises, but 60 seconds of rest between the supersets…three times.  Grand total…about 18 minutes. Use the 2 minutes for a brief warm up before you start…body squats, push ups, plank, or just run around the house for 2 minutes and have the dog chase you.

Of course, you can mix and match exercises or come up with your own.  The key is to move quickly between each exercise, and only rest between each superset.  Sixty seconds passes by very quickly.  I use my iphone to time the rest periods, just to keep me honest.

Try it and let me know what you think.

What I Do For “Cardio”

How To Gain Muscle: Part II

 

In the last post, I discussed the first of three very important essentials of gaining not just weight, but aesthetically pleasing and healthy weight, AKA muscle. If you missed that post, you can read it here.  In part II, I’ll reveal the very basic and obvious second essential ingredient.  While obvious, this is the one that I personally have the most trouble with.  It’s another case of a habit being very simple, but not necessarily easy.

You have probably guessed Rule Number Two by now.  If you are going to work your muscles with a well-designed resistance training program, you also need to feed them!  Muscle tissue is largely protein, and to build it up, you need to consume…wait for it…protein!  You very likely need to consume more protein than you are now.  The target I shoot for is 0.8 to 1.0 grams of protein per pound of weight.   But the weight number I will use is the weight that I’m aiming to reach.  So if I want to weigh 115 lbs, I would eat 90-110 gms of protein each day.*

But it’s not just protein that is important.  You also need to consume calories in the form of fat and carbohydrate.  Basically, you need to eat more calories if you want to gain weight.  It is not complicated.  Sometimes, people get fancy, and calculate their exact resting energy expenditure, then multiply this by a factor that accounts for activity level, then add the exact amount that they expend in their workout, and then add the square root of the distance to the moon divided by pi.  Are you dizzy yet?

These methods may work fairly well for the general population, but as you know, people with cystic fibrosis don’t follow the rules.  Our resting energy expenditure is way higher than normal, so I have a better method.  Write down EXACTLY what you eat for three straight days.  These should be days where you are not trying to gain or lose weight, but are simply in maintenance mode.  Record not just the type of food, but how much.  Then find a good online calorie calculator and add up the calories for each day.  Don’t forget to include what you drink as well!  Those sodas add up.  Now calculate your average daily calorie consumption.  If the days are wildly different from each other, you may want to do this for a whole week to get a more accurate average intake.

Got it?  Now add 500 calories per day, and this is your new target.  So if I calculated that I eat 2000 calories per day, and I want to gain muscle in order to weigh 115 lbs, here is what I need to do.  First, my new target is 2500 calories, and of those, 440 are going to be in the form of protein (110gm x 4 calories per gram of protein).  So I also need to eat about 2000 calories—I’m rounding here–of fat (9cal/gm) and carbohydrate (4cal/gm).  OK, no more math.

The reason I am bad at this, and something that you, too, might struggle with, is that it is HARD to eat this much.  If you skip a meal, you get way behind on calorie intake and it can be nearly impossible to catch up.  So, eat early and eat often.  Never skip breakfast, or lunch, or dinner.  Have a snack before bed.  Drink calories.  Read the “How to lose weight” articles and break every rule.**

It’s also hard to do this on the fly.  I’ve figured out that if I plan what I’m going to eat and make sure my strategy includes enough calories beforehand, I am much more likely to be successful.

Finally, the bane of my existence…pancreatic supplementation has to be fine-tuned for this to work.  Also, if you have CFRD, you will also have to figure out if and when you might need to adjust insulin dosages.  Close monitoring of blood glucose and, in my case, er…..digestion capacity, will help.  Bon appétit.

*Ask your CF nutritionist if this amount of protein is safe for you.

** Don’t break the rule about not eating junk food. You are what you eat.  So eat real, whole, healthy food.

How To Gain Muscle

One of the drawbacks to not digesting nutrients very well is that people with CF are often small.  Male or female, we tend to run on the petite side if we are pancreatic insufficient.  With earlier diagnosis and better enzyme replacement therapy, this is slowly improving, of course.  But for those of us who are already full grown, it can be a constant struggle to keep weight on. Not only do we want to maintain weight, it is often encouraged to have a few extra (I said, “a few”) pounds on board to stay strong and resilient to lung infections.

I don’t know about you, but when I need to gain weight—which is pretty much always—I would rather put on lean muscle tissue than fat.  This is not just an aesthetic issue, either.  The amount of lean body mass (LBM) you have (this includes everything but fat and water) correlates with disease severity.  The less LBM a CF patient has, the more severe their disease tends to be.  Additionally, LBM decreases with age, so as we get older it becomes more and more important to try to increase muscle mass.

So, what does it take to gain muscle?  Three things, well…maybe four.  If you are pancreatic sufficient, it takes doing three things, regularly.  If not, it takes four (the fourth being, obviously, sufficient supplementation with pancreatic enzymes).  This post is all about thing number one:  Resistance Training.

First, you have to lift weights.  Muscle tissue does not grow unless you impose a stress to it that it cannot handle.  When you do that, the muscle adapts by healing and coming back bigger and stronger.  In my opinion you should lift weights at least three times per week if you are serious about gaining muscle mass, and it is everyone’s opinion that you must lift heavy weights (for you).  So ladies, forget about the purple Barbie weights.  Soup cans will not work for long.  Sure, you may have to start there, but within a couple of weeks, you will be strong enough that you will have to put some energy into finding heavier resistance.  I realize most people are not training program junkies like me, and that you might not have a clue what to do with those heavy weights.  One great resource is The New Rules of Lifting for Life, by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove.  You can probably find about a million training programs online, but the reason that I like this one is that it is scalable…you get to decide what level you begin at in each of the basic movements, and progress from that point.  So, brand new lifters or old pros have something to gain from this book.  I am also working on my own CF-specific training program, which will hopefully be available in a couple of months.  Don’t wait for me though…get started now.

So, in summary, if you want or need to gain weight, do it in style—by adding muscle.  There are three keys to doing this.  First, find a weight lifting program that works for you, and commit to it for at least three months.  If you do this, in addition to the two remaining steps outlined in the following posts, you will increase your lean body mass, and with it, your chances for a longer and healthier life.  When you see the progress that you have made in the three months, I’m betting that you will be hooked for life.

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