February Challenge - Exercise!

All right, it's almost time for the February challenge to get enough exercise!

Drinking water was sort of the boring task, but it was also the most important. Getting enough water sets the stage for many subsequent tasks, exercise being the biggest one. I've had people report to me that they are drinking far less coffee and soda than before they started drinking water. Others have told me that their skin cleared up, they have more energy, and generally feel better. Oh, and they have to pee more, too. I hope the challenge for this month has become more of a habit than a task.

Now, the challenge for February is to get the minimum amount of exercise recommended by the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine for people under 65 to maintain a healthy lifestyle. The minimum is recommendation is 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity (think brisk walking or swimming) five days a week or at least 20 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity (such as running) three days a week, plus strength training exercises twice a week.

See this website for more details: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/AN01713

Remember, when you exercise, you need more water.

Jason

Water for a day of snowboarding

Since I'm heading to Sunriver this weekend, and Mt. Bachelor is supposed to get some decent snow, I decided I should recalculate my water needs for the day. Using the handy calculator from the Water Logged post, I put in 90 minutes of exercise (the max in the calculator), high elevation, dry climate, and cold weather. And, since I'll be on vacation at Sunriver, I'll have at least 4 beers. The total ended up being 151.5 ounces of water! This is double a normal day for me! Considering that about 20 percent should come from food I'll need to drink 121.2 ounces of water. Good thing beer counts in the total!

I guess the important thing to remember is when you are doing something out of the normal, like snowboarding for a day, your water needs change quite drastically from the baseline.

Jason

Milk Bad? Diet Soda...Not Bad?

I was talking with a co-worker about the challenge and we were discussing the merits of drinking enough water and what qualifies as a water substitute.  I had said that while soda actually counts in the water tabulator, it really isn't that good for you.  He contradicted me saying that there was no evidence that diet soda is bad for you and even went so far to say that MILK is bad for you.  Now, before I get into my rant, I need to give a little background information.  This particular fellow has admitted in the past that he likes to pick the opposite side of an argument, whether he believes it or not, just to get the other person to think about the issue...or to get them fired up depending on your perspective.  Anyway, if he wanted me to think more about my position he succeeded (and he taught me about Google Scholar, which only references scholarly publications).  I did quite a bit of research on both topics on regular google and found some interesting, although not very credible, results.  

There are a surprisingly large number of people who believe that milk is actually bad for you!  On regular Google you can find several links to websites professing the terrible things that milk will do to you.  I personally think it's all hogwash, so I won't repeat what I found here.  If you really want to know you can search it yourself.  However, on Google Scholar I didn't find anything beyond if you drink too much whole milk you'll get fat and have high cholesterol.  

Now for diet soda.  There are studies that suggest that drinking diet soda is a marker (not necessarily a cause) for obesity.  There are other studies linking diet soda to diabetes.  The main study cited in several different articles for these two findings was an eight-year study at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.  My chiropractor told me that whenever she runs across a health issue that is a little odd she asks about diet soda consumption and more often than not the answer is that the person consumes quite a bit of the stuff.  I've also noticed this same trend in some friends of mine who drink a lot of diet soda.

Anyway, stick to water.

Any thoughts?  Feel free to comment.

Jason

Beer Counts!

Good News! It seems that beer actually counts in the overall total! It is, after all, mostly made out of water. However, the alcohol in the beer drives your daily requirements up a bit, but it is less than the beer. Check out the link to the water calculator in the previous post for exact details, but it seems that each beer drives up your daily requirements by about 5 oz. It's still a net gain. Wine is pretty much a wash. That being said, unless I do a lot of excercising, 64 oz of actual water a day seems to be a pretty normal intake for me. Of course, things like juice and milk count. As do coffee, tea, and...surprisingly...soda. Just caution that too much coffee and tea is bad for you, and any soda is bad for you.

It's been going pretty good so far, and I must admit. I do feel a bit better than before I had enough water. Although bathroom trips are more frequent.

Good luck!

Jason

Water Logged

I did a little digging, and found a calculator that takes in a lot of factors and not just body weight. It also includes excercise, altitude, dry climate, alcohol consumption, hot or cold weather, fever, and a few other factors. Remember that most of these things are different from day to day, so your water requiremens are also different from day to day. Also, I've seen multiple sources that say rougly 20% of your water comes from the food you eat, so that is subtracted from the total.

http://nutrition.about.com/library/blwatercalculator.htm

For example, it told me that I need 79.5 oz of water today, but taking food into account, I'll need 63.6 oz of liquids. Ironically, after all of the research and opinions, this is pretty much right where I started! Eight 8oz glasses a day was the original recommendation!

OK! Let's kick this thing off! I need to go get a glass of water.

Jason