Happy Summer Solstice!

By Dan Schoolfield, Atlanta Cycling | Exam​iner​.com

The long awaited sum­mer sol­stice is finally here today, June 21st. With the sun ris­ing at 6:25am and set­ting at 9:00pm we get the ben­e­fit of nearly 15 hours of day­light. As a mat­ter of fact, every day this week will be within a sec­ond or two of the same. This means that Atlanta cyclists have plenty of time to get a nice hour + ride in every­day after work. If you have to work late, you should be able to get your ride in early, before work. This is not to say that night rid­ing is out of the ques­tion, how­ever, for the major­ity of rid­ers in Atlanta, there is def­i­nitely a pref­er­ence to day­light rid­ing on the longest day of the year.

To shed some light on the tra­di­tional Amer­i­can sum­mer sol­stice cel­e­bra­tion, there is no bet­ter place to look than to our good friends, the Pueblo in Ari­zona. The west­ern most mem­ber of this peo­ple is the Hopi Indi­ans. One of their biggest fes­ti­vals of the year takes place in Oraibi which is the old­est Hopi vil­lage on the third mesa.

To grow crops in their semi-arid land, the Hopi believe they must cul­ti­vate the favor of the spir­its who have power over nature and weather. The fes­ti­val in June accen­tu­ates how impor­tant the favor of these spir­its is for all plant life, espe­cially the sacred corn. The hopes of the peo­ple rely on the corn receiv­ing the spe­cial bless­ing of rain to sup­port its growth to maturity.

Each June, on the longest day of the year the katchi­nas will appear from their cloud homes to be among the peo­ple and renew the pow­ers of fer­til­ity and rain. Pre­cisely at sun­rise on the dance day, the katchi­nas appear and pro­ceed in sin­gle file to the plaza, bring­ing gifts of food to the peo­ple — sym­bols of what the com­ing har­vest will bring.

Even though his ori­gin is some­what uncer­tain, Kokopelli is con­sid­ered the most well-known of the Hopi spir­its. Accord­ing to their lore he rep­re­sents the spirit of fer­til­ity. His image can be found carved into rock through­out the four cor­ners region. Due to the fas­ci­na­tion that the Kokopelli has had on the moun­tain bik­ing enthu­si­asts of this region, many peo­ple have begun to iden­tify his image with cycling in gen­eral. In fact, there is even a 142 mile net­work of desert cycling trails that bears his name. The Kokopelli Trail con­nects the trails of Fruita and Moab, mak­ing it the regions most famous and exten­sive trail sys­tem. The net­work was cre­ated by con­nect­ing a vari­ety of dif­fer­ing trails that include sin­gle­track, sandy roads, dirt roads, occa­sional mud roads, and even some pavement.

While we do not have a desert trail adorned with ancient Kokopelli carv­ings in Atlanta, we do have 15 hours of day­light to ride in cel­e­bra­tion of the sum­mer sol­stice. We can cer­tainly ride the route most con­ve­nient to us while giv­ing thanks to what­ever spirit that moves us. Whether that be Kokopelli, or just our own spirit of adven­ture that reminds us to get out­side away from our com­puter, TV, and iPad and ride our bike for the pure joy that has inspired us to do since we were 5 years old. It will take us back to a sim­pler time when the pri­mary direc­tive from our par­ents was the usual “Just be home before it gets dark.” A time when spon­ta­neously chas­ing the sun’s golden ray could make life so easy to endure!

Happy Trails!

Determining BMI, and Its Importance

BY ANDREW

I have a rest­ing heart rate of 57 beats per minute. When I am cycling hard, my heart rate can go in to the mid 180’s and I feel fine. I have gained one waist size in the last 15 years, now I am a 34 and dur­ing that time I have gained 20 pounds. Accord­ing to the CDC I am well into the over­weight cat­e­gory on my way to being very close to obese with a BMI of 27.5. Maybe a lit­tle love han­dles and small man-boobs, but close to obese? Excuse my acronyms, but WTF.

In order to find some cor­re­la­tion with me and my BMI I started search­ing the inter­net for some sort of expla­na­tion, the first thing I came across was an arti­cle that had been posted on the NPR site, Top 10 Rea­sons Why The BMI Is Bogus. Hmm, this got me think­ing. There is a rela­tion­ship between mus­cle mass and BMI which all of the BMI cal­cu­la­tors do not take in to account. It also reminded me that my Tanita scale (which cal­cu­lates BMI) is telling me that I have a BMI of 11%, this I am pretty sure is low, but some­where there has to be an accu­rate and easy way for you to find out how seden­tary you can be before hav­ing to worry about things.

On the Live­strong web site there is an arti­cle enti­tled BMI vs. Body Fat. The arti­cle goes into describ­ing the the inter­pre­ta­tions of the body mass index and where these cal­cu­la­tions put peo­ple. At the end of the arti­cle, it is noted that the stan­dard BMI cal­cu­la­tion has a sig­nif­i­cant excep­tion, that of highly-trained ath­letes. I am not a highly-trained ath­lete, but some­times think that I am OK shape so maybe this com­ment might apply to me.

WebMD has a BMI Plus Cal­cu­la­tor. It takes pant size as well as all of the other “stuff” and asks you for goals as well as your activ­ity level. Once you have plugged it all in it does not seem to do any­thing, maybe if it did work it would pro­vide some more per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion than the stan­dard calculation.

So of all of the things that peo­ple seem to rely on is the Body Fat Test. It involves a num­ber of things includ­ing a water tank. The basis for the test dates back to Greek times and how much our bod­ies dis­place and with this one is meant to get an accu­rate read­ing of ones body com­po­si­tion. I have never done it, but I am told that it works.

In any case, I think that for peo­ple who are work­ing out on a daily basis a con­ven­tional BMI test does not give you an accu­rate read­ing of where you or I stand so take it with a grain of salt and keep watch­ing your diet and work­ing out.

Editor’s note: the photo is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of mea­sur­ing BMI, but not nec­es­sar­ily a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Andrew’s feet. IMAGE CREDIT: OnCalc​.com

Don’t Make It Stop! Interval Training for Serious Results

Editor’s note: The post is a re-post from last year.

BY LAUREN

You know that you love inter­val train­ing, because you know that inter­val train­ing can dra­mat­i­cally improve car­dio­vas­cu­lar fit­ness and raise the body’s poten­tial to burn fat.

But did you know that (if you came to boot camp this morn­ing) you just com­pleted one of the most effec­tive forms of inter­val training?

First, a brief reminder about how inter­val train­ing works. Inter­val train­ing works both the aer­o­bic and the anaer­o­bic system:

Dur­ing the high inten­sity effort (the stairs or the sprints), the anaer­o­bic sys­tem uses the energy stored in the mus­cles for short bursts of activ­ity. Anaer­o­bic metab­o­lism works with­out oxy­gen. The by-product is lac­tic acid, which is related to the burn­ing sen­sa­tion felt in the mus­cles dur­ing high inten­sity efforts. Dur­ing the high inten­sity inter­val, lac­tic acid builds and the ath­lete enters oxy­gen debt.*

Dur­ing the recov­ery phase (the squats, lunge walks, step-ups and super­stars) the heart and lungs work together to “pay back” this oxy­gen debt and break down the lac­tic acid. It is in this phase that the aer­o­bic sys­tem is in con­trol, using oxy­gen to con­vert stored car­bo­hy­drates into energy.*

Inter­val train­ing can be done in a vari­ety of ways. The key is to keep your heart rate blast­ing for a short period of time and rest­ing peri­ods active, so you can burn as much as pos­si­ble in record time. Stair run­ning is a great, high-intensity vari­a­tion that helps build speed, power and car­dio­vas­cu­lar fit­ness. Stair run­ning is also a great addi­tion to any agility train­ing pro­gram because it builds quick­ness and foot speed while get­ting an excel­lent sprint workout.

Seri­ous ath­letes have used inter­val train­ing to improve per­for­mance for decades. Are you ready to join the ranks?

* Eliz­a­beth Quinn “Inter­val Train­ing Builds Fit­ness Fast”
IMAGE CREDIT: New York Times

5 Foods to Fuel Your Workout

FROM iVIL­LAGE

Before we begin, there’s one thing you need to know: The best food to eat before a work­out depends on when you’re going to eat it.

If you’re an early riser who goes to the gym on the way to work, you won’t have enough time between leav­ing home and arriv­ing at the gym to really digest a full break­fast. Your pre-workout snack is going to have to be really light. On the other hand, if you’re work­ing out in the mid­dle of the after­noon, your work­out is going to be fueled by your choices at lunch and you’ll have a cou­ple of hours to digest your food before hit­ting the gym. That means a dif­fer­ent pre-workout meal from the one you might choose if you were scroung­ing around the kitchen at 5:30 a.m. on the way to the track.

The closer to your work­out, the more you want to focus on eat­ing car­bo­hy­drates rather than fat or pro­tein. Car­bo­hy­drates are digested in the small intestines, whereas fat and pro­tein are bro­ken down in the stom­ach. This means cramp­ing and indi­ges­tion are more likely when you work out with a belly full of fat– or protein-rich foods.

The rule is this: The less time until the work­out, the less you should eat. This makes sense: It takes time to digest food, so you don’t want to scarf down a huge break­fast right before get­ting on the tread­mill. Those plan­ning to run the marathon on Sun­day usu­ally eat a huge din­ner on Sat­ur­day night. But those plan­ning to go for a three-mile jog at 5:30 a.m. may be fine with just an orange eaten about 20 min­utes before.

With that in mind, I’ve pre­pared a list of my five favorite all-around pre-workout snacks. These work just fine whether you’re an early-morning exer­ciser and need some­thing light or you’re about to head out for a work­out in the late after­noon and are just look­ing for a lit­tle extra energy to com­bat the 3 p.m. crash.

With a smear
This is one of my favorite snacks, period. I take some hearts of cel­ery and fill in the groove with some organic almond but­ter or peanut but­ter. This snack really trav­els well in Tup­per­ware and makes a ter­rific pre-workout snack. Why? The cel­ery has fiber and nutri­ents (includ­ing cal­cium and vit­a­min A) and a ridicu­lously low 6 calo­ries per medium stalk. The nut but­ter has pro­tein and fat. The over­all calo­ries are low, and this really fills you up with­out slow­ing you down, pro­vid­ing great “slow-release” energy for a ter­rific workout.

The dou­ble A
Sim­ply put, an apple with almonds. The apple is the per­fect food for a pre-exercise snack. The sugar load is mod­er­ate, it con­tains valu­able pectin fiber which slows the entrance of that sugar into the blood­stream, and it’s a nutri­tional pow­er­house con­tain­ing vit­a­mins, min­er­als and antiox­i­dants. Com­bine it with about a dozen almonds, which add some fat and pro­tein. They’ll fur­ther slow the entrance of the sugar into the blood­stream for sus­tained energy and keep hunger away.

Whey to go
Whey pro­tein is my favorite kind of pro­tein pow­der. Not only is it extremely high-quality, bioavail­able pro­tein; it sup­ports the immune sys­tem by pro­vid­ing the build­ing blocks for glu­tathione, arguably the body’s most impor­tant antiox­i­dant. And stud­ies indi­cate that whey pro­tein may boost weight loss efforts. Accord­ing to one French study, eat­ing whey before exer­cise sup­ports fat burn­ing and may help with gain­ing or main­tain­ing lean body mass. I sug­gest a whey pro­tein shake made with either water alone or with frozen berries. The berries add fiber, nutri­ents and some extra car­bo­hy­drates, and make for a more deli­cious drink.

Berry cheesy
Here’s a tid­bit of info that you might enjoy: In my book The 150 Health­i­est Foods on the Planet, I asked 16 nutri­tion experts to con­tribute lists of their 10 favorite healthy foods. Berries, espe­cially blue­ber­ries, made the list of more experts than any other food. Berries are loaded with phy­tonu­tri­ents, antiox­i­dants and fiber, and are low in sugar. Mix a bowl of berries with a piece of string cheese for the per­fect pre-workout snack. The string cheese has 8 grams of pro­tein, some fat to keep hunger at bay and only about 80 calo­ries. And it’s an excel­lent source of calcium.

TG: too good
The ini­tials of this snack stand for turkey and grapes. It’s a per­fect match of pro­tein, carbs and low calo­ries to take the edge off your hunger and prime your exer­cise pump. Four small slices of deli-packaged turkey con­tain only 87 calo­ries but give you more than 14 grams of pro­tein, plus some of the cancer-fighting min­eral sele­nium to boot. A cup of grapes adds some carbs to the mix together with phy­to­chem­i­cals. Go for fresh turkey when­ever pos­si­ble as the pack­aged kind is high in sodium, and choose red or pur­ple grapes because they have more antioxidants.

Obvi­ously there are other choices besides my five favorites. In a pinch, I’ll use a pro­tein bar, though you’ll want to watch the sugar con­tent and look out for the pres­ence of trans-fatty acids. One of my favorites is Atkins Advan­tage, though there are oth­ers you may like as well. Hard-boiled eggs are another secret weapon in the search for portable pro­tein that com­bines nicely with a lit­tle fruit (such as an apple).

Remem­ber: What you eat after the work­out is even more impor­tant than what you eat before it. That’s when your mus­cles are hun­gry and your depleted glyco­gen (mus­cle sugar) stores need replac­ing. The “golden hour” after the work­out is the time when those mus­cles soak up nutri­ents most effec­tively. Choose what you eat after the work­out with just as much care as you choose that pre-workout snack.

Reviewed by Ger­a­lyn Coop­er­smith, M.A., CSCS

6 Tips to Build a Weight-Loss Diet

FROM ACTIVE​.COM

Your body needs fuel to exer­cise, and the source of that fuel is food. That’s why some peo­ple report feel­ing hun­grier when they start to work out. If you’re try­ing to lose weight, this could be counterproductive—unless you find the right bal­ance of healthy, fill­ing foods.

The typ­i­cal Amer­i­can diet is loaded with refined or sim­ple car­bo­hy­drates such as white flours, rices, and pas­tas, and pas­tries, sodas, and other sug­ary foods and drinks. These carbs, which lack the fiber found in com­plex carbs (whole grains, fruits, and veg­gies), are metab­o­lized by your body quickly. So while you may feel rar­ing to go after eat­ing them, that energy boost will soon be fol­lowed by a major energy slump, mak­ing it hard to give your all dur­ing your workouts.

In addi­tion, if many of the foods you eat are metab­o­lized quickly, you’ll find your­self feel­ing hun­gry more often, which could mean more snack­ing and a higher calo­rie intake. To keep from eat­ing back all the calo­ries you’ve burned, stick to a diet based on these six science-backed components.

1. Fiber

Eat at least 20 grams of fiber per day from whole grains, fruits, and veg­eta­bles. Fiber helps keep you feel­ing full longer—a big ben­e­fit when you’re try­ing to lose weight. A 2009 study from Brigham Young Uni­ver­sity Col­lege of Health and Human Per­for­mance demon­strated that women who ate more fiber sig­nif­i­cantly low­ered their risk of gain­ing weight and fat. Each gram of fiber eaten cor­re­lated to ½ pound less body weight. The researchers sus­pect that the higher fiber intake led to a reduc­tion in total calo­ries over time.

2. Cal­cium & Vit­a­min D

Strive for three serv­ings of cal­cium– and vit­a­min D-rich foods a day. These nutri­ents often occur together in foods, espe­cially dairy.
Cal­cium and vit­a­min D work together in your body, pri­mar­ily to strengthen your bones. But if the lat­est research is any indi­ca­tion, both of these nutri­ents may flex some mus­cle in your weight loss suc­cess. Dairy foods are the prime source of cal­cium and vit­a­min D in the diet. In a recent study from Johns Hop­kins Bloomberg School of Pub­lic Health, col­lege stu­dents who came clos­est to meet­ing the three-a-day dairy require­ment while eat­ing an oth­er­wise healthy diet weighed less, gained less, and actu­ally lost belly fat, com­pared with stu­dents who con­sumed lit­tle or no dairy.

More­over, vit­a­min D by itself may play a role in weight con­trol. Extra body fat holds on to vit­a­min D so that the body can’t use it. This per­ceived defi­ciency inter­feres with the action of the hor­mone lep­tin, whose job is to tell your brain that you’re full. And if you can’t rec­og­nize when you’re sati­ated, you’re more likely to overeat.

You may also want to con­sider a vit­a­min D sup­ple­ment. The lat­est research sug­gests that this nutri­ent may be a fac­tor in pro­tect­ing you from every­thing from heart dis­ease to mem­ory loss and even chronic pain. Evi­dence is mount­ing that we need more than the cur­rent rec­om­mended intakes, espe­cially as we age, because older skin pro­duces less vit­a­min D (and sun­screens block the body’s abil­ity to use sun­light to pro­duce this vit­a­min). That’s why the lead­ing experts in vit­a­min D research are now rec­om­mend­ing a daily sup­ple­ment of 1,000 IU of vit­a­min D—the kind most read­ily used by the body.

Daily Rec­om­mended Cal­cium Intake
Men and women ages 19–50: 1,000 mil­ligrams
Men and women age 51+: 1,200 milligrams

Daily Rec­om­mended Vit­a­min D Intake
Men and women ages 19–50: 200 IU
Men and women ages 51–70: 400 IU
Men and women age 71+: 600 IU

3. Good Fats

These include monoun­sat­u­rated fatty acids and omega-3 fatty acids, found in oils, nuts, avo­ca­dos, cer­tain fish—and yes, even choco­late! Eat three to four serv­ings daily.

A recent study pub­lished in the jour­nal Appetite shows how these fats—besides being good for your heart—can help you feel fuller longer after meals. The study par­tic­i­pants with a higher intake of omega-3 fatty acids (more than 1,300 mil­ligrams a day, either from foods or from sup­ple­ments) reported feel­ing less hun­gry right after their meals, as well as 2 hours later, com­pared with a lower omega-3 intake (less than 260 mil­ligrams a day). Less hunger means less munch­ing and an eas­ier time keep­ing calo­ries in check.

More spe­cific research has been done on wal­nuts, a good source of monoun­sat­u­rated fats. An Aus­tralian study had par­tic­i­pants fol­low a healthy low-fat diet, either with wal­nuts or with­out. Both groups ate the same num­ber of calo­ries and lost approx­i­mately the same amount of weight at 6 months. But dur­ing the next 6 months of the year long study, the walnut-eaters con­tin­ued to lose weight and body fat, while the other group stopped losing—even though they were still fol­low­ing the same diet.

4. Pro­tein

Aim for three serv­ings of lean pro­tein (such as fish, white meat chicken and turkey, pork loin chops, and lean beef sir­loin) per day. In addi­tion to being an essen­tial nutri­ent, pro­tein helps to keep you feel­ing full longer, which is a big ben­e­fit when you’re try­ing to lose weight. In a small 2009 study, par­tic­i­pants who ate a higher-protein break­fast were more sati­ated after­ward (and took in fewer calo­ries at lunch) than those who ate a low-protein breakfast.

5. Water

Stud­ies from Stan­ford Pre­ven­tion Research Cen­ter sug­gest that water helps pro­mote weight loss in two ways. First, drink­ing more water—at least 4 cups per day—was linked to a 5-pound weight loss over the course of a year. Accord­ing to the researchers, this amount of water increases the amount of energy or calo­ries your body burns. Sec­ond, sub­sti­tut­ing water for sug­ary drinks—sodas, sports drinks, fla­vored drinks, and sweet­ened milks, cof­fees, and teas—resulted in even more weight loss. The exact num­ber of pounds lost depended on how many sug­ary drinks were con­sumed in the first place, and how many were replaced with water.

Still don’t think you can give up your sodas and mochac­ci­nos? Then con­sider this: It’s been shown that when peo­ple con­sume a cer­tain amount of calo­ries, they’re more hun­gry and more likely to overeat at their next meal when those calo­ries are in liq­uid rather than in solid form. Trans­la­tion: If you eat a 200-calorie snack, you’ll be more sat­is­fied after­ward and eat less later than if you drink a 200-calorie bev­er­age. So fre­quently drink­ing calorie-dense bev­er­ages could increase both your hunger and your calo­rie intake through­out the day.

6. Green Tea

Sip at least 3 cups of green tea every day. Cat­e­chins, the antiox­i­dants found in high amounts in green tea, have been shown to be help­ful in pro­mot­ing weight loss, specif­i­cally belly fat. If caf­feine is a con­cern, decaf tea is an option. Some decaf­feina­tion processes, how­ever, can lower the antiox­i­dant con­tent so you might want to have an extra cup or two.

In a study at the USDA Human Nutri­tion Research Cen­ter on Aging at Tufts Uni­ver­sity, par­tic­i­pants who drank the equiv­a­lent of 3 cups of green tea a day lost twice as much weight as those not drink­ing tea. The tea-drinking group also lost sig­nif­i­cantly more belly fat than the non-tea drinkers.

If you like cit­rus, the news gets bet­ter. Replac­ing some of the tea brew­ing water with cit­rus juice, such as lemon, lime, orange, or grape­fruit, allows your body to use more of the tea’s cat­e­chins. You can drink your green tea freshly brewed for a warm­ing hot drink, or chill it after brew­ing for a refresh­ing cold drink.

Excerpted from Walk Off Weight by Michele Stan­ten (Rodale, 2010).