Mar 02

Improving Sedentary Behavior

Society has evolved into an innovative community, mastering the ability to manage our everyday affairs through electronics.  Along with phones, computers, and tablets offering instant gratification comes a position where we physically conform our bodies to a resting position requiring little to no movement.  In other words, we sit a lot.  In fact, six to eight hours a day of commuting to work, conducting administrative duties at our desks, or scrolling through our phones to view text messages, emails, and the latest social media crutch isn’t uncommon.

Lack of physical movement is categorized as sedentary behavior.  People with lifestyle habits where movement is at a minimum pose threats of developing a multitude of metabolic diseases such as cardiovascular afflictions, insulin resistance, decreased lean muscle mass, and surplus fat storage

Another contributing factor, creating a synergy for increased fat storage, is the overconsumption of carbohydrates at suboptimal periods.  For instance, snacking on chips, breads, pastries, or candies during times of the day when physical activity levels are low or directly before bed.  Low energy expenditure contributes to a lack of calorie utilization, which converts to dense fat under our skin.

Carbohydrates are fancy words for sugars.  We need sugar to utilize as a source of energy.  Sugar gets a bad rap due to its identity toward developing metabolic disease.  However, sugar is present throughout the body and is responsible for various cellular interactions within the nervous and muscular systems.  A common misconception of sugar is that sugars are only present in sweet foods such as candies, pastries, or sodas.  Sugars are also formed from gluconeogenesis, which is the breakdown of non-carbohydrate sources, such as fats, into usable energy.

Wearable technology such as Fit Bits and Apple watches track activity rings and remind us where we are in our daily recommendations for physical activity.  One of the best ways to fill in the physical activity rings is to get up and walk for brief bouts.  This is a potently effective method to utilize the aerobic energy system for caloric expenditure.  However, it’s important to note that getting up and moving the body via standing and walking isn’t the only key to the puzzle.  Appreciating the beneficial properties of skillfully consuming food and exercising to enhance lean muscle mass are critically significant to decreasing factors leading to developing metabolic diseases, heart dysfunction, and increasing BMI.  Not only will nutritional awareness and routine exercises reduce the likelihood of metabolic disease, but practicing these habits enhance the productivity and quality of everyday life activities.

Skeletal muscles are the organs in our body that move and stabilize our bones.  Examples include the trapezius, which stabilizes our shoulder blades, triceps that extend our arms, paraspinal muscles that hold our vertebrae together, and gluteal muscles that move our hips.  These muscles are not only responsible for large movements in our body, but they also possess the ability to utilize insulin as a growth factor to repair stressed sites of skeletal muscle.

Skeletal muscle also possesses insulin receptors.  After skeletal muscles are stressed from rigorous activity, such as a concentrated resistance training session, the muscles welcome insulin to bond onto the surface of their cells.  Insulin is a potent anabolic hormone that regulates the influx of sugars from the bloodstream into connective tissue cells.  Absorbing sugar into stressed muscle cells allows the muscles to utilize sugar as source of energy to grab onto free-floating proteins and amino acids to repair post-workout damaged muscle structure.  This action of muscle resynthesis increases insulin sensitivity, which counteracts the possibility of developing insulin resistance.

It’s important to understand that increased physical activity is beneficial for regulating the ability to move optimally and fend off disease.  Filling up the activity rings on our helpful wearable technology aids us in living healthier as the technological demands of our lives segway to sitting longer.  However, let’s not forget to acknowledge the importance of skillful nutritional habits and routine exercise combined with increased physical activity.  Decreased sedentary behavior, nutritional awareness, and consistent adherence to exercise equals reduced likelihood of disease and improved overall quality of life.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Feb 22

Healthy Foods with One Ingredient

Sprinkling lemon, lime, and orange juice on food offers bright and exciting notes of acidity.  The sweetness and crunchiness of carrots, celery, and onions contribute a satisfying and refreshing note when added to a dish in raw and cooked forms.  The juiciness and refined flavor of properly cooked salmon are reminiscent of the scent of an early morning walk on a beach or riverfront.  These simple flavors create a harmonious and healthy composition of taste and nourishment for the body to be satisfied both in our taste buds and in the absorption of vital nutrients.

Fresh fruit, veggies, and lean meats have many features that add to a dish but share one trait, they each possess one ingredient.  A carrot from the produce section has a carrot in it.  A lemon plucked from a tree in the neighborhood is comprised of a lemon.  It shouldn’t be any surprise that a filet of salmon is made up of one hundred percent salmon.  When paired together, these foods have the potential to make a delicious and healthy meal.

Our grocery stores also have other items on the outskirts of the produce and fresh seafood and meat section.  These are the foods that reside in boxes, packages, and bottles.  The prepared food items in these boxes offer a similar eating experience to fresh fruit, vegetables, and proteins. For example, a pack of healthy cereal could possess delicate notes of crunchy texture, sweetness, and a perfect balance of seasoning that is efficiently composed by pouring it into a bowl and dousing it with milk.  A protein bar offers a similarly satisfying experience when unwrapped, and a bite is taken out of the bar-formed vessel.  A kaleidoscope of acids, salt, and sweetness courses throughout our palate as we masticate the bar.  The convenience of a protein powder mixed into water for a quick meal consisting of strawberry, vanilla, or chocolate flavor is another popular option for immediate gratification to suffice the requirements of a healthy meal.

The difference between these packaged, premade foods to raw veggies, fruits, and lean protein is the number of ingredients in the boxed, bottled, and or ziplock-bagged foods.  The ingredients on present the side of packaged foods possess a paragraph’s worth of small font describing the contents that make up the food inside the package.  The elements within the food label can range from ten to fifty components, all in various compositions.

Some of these items are processed in sophisticated methods we can’t necessarily describe unless we are food researchers with a degree in organic chemistry.  Additionally, some of these packaged foods contain processed and denatured carbohydrates to fill the capacity of the vessel carrying the food.  Carbohydrates are beneficial for supplying energy to the body.  However, when carbohydrates are cooked down, denatured, and then resynthesized into another form, the sugar content can become high enough to spike insulin levels at suboptimal periods throughout the day.  Additionally, the digestive system may not recognize processed food as noticeable as a single-ingredient food in its raw state.  This could lead to a diminished absorption rate of vitamins, water, and disease-preventing substances within each food.

Packaged foods offer convenience and a viable food acquisition method to the population.  However, all the ingredients present within these premade foods can pose a challenge to individuals less experienced in identifying beneficial qualities in food.  Reading the tiny font on the side of the package isn’t the first thing people think of when buying these foods.  However, the ingredients in the raw form of veggies, fruits, nuts, and meats are simple to identify.

Creating meals from simple ingredients acquired from the produce section, meat counter, or a simple bag of raw unsalted nuts ensures the consumer they are eating exactly what they expect.  Raw and simple ingredients are easily absorbed throughout the digestive system.  This means the water and nutrients in single-ingredient foods are synthesized more efficiently throughout the body and delivered to the organs to extract the beneficial properties within the food we consume on a daily basis.  Focusing on simple ingredients has the potential to keep us on a healthy track to efficiently manage our weight, heal the body, and fend off disease.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Feb 16

Core Muscles-Like the rings in the trunk of tree

Many moons ago, I participated in a  class curated by an accomplished gentleman possessing his PhD in Botany.  His life’s work was to s engulf himself in studying redwood trees.  Our class was fortunate to take a field trip to Armstrong Woods park.  This area outside of Guerneville was flooded with massive redwood trees on Earth for hundreds of years.

As we ventured through this awe-inspiring fantasy land of brisk air, an intoxicating aroma of redwood needles, and an array of majestic birds and acrobatic squirrels, our teacher stopped at a tree trunk dwarfing his five-foot-five-inch ectomorphic stature.  “The dark rings on this tree stump signify the number of years this tree has been alive.”  Named the Colonel Armstrong tree,this massive artifact was estimated to be over fourteen hundred years old.

Enjoying every moment of this trip, I couldn’t help but relate to this tree’s core structure to the studies I was involved in as I pursued my academic path of kinesiology. Immediately, I thought of the core muscles involved in stabilizing the midsection of the spine present in the human body.  Similar to the fibrous structures comprising the rings surrounding the inner rings of the titanic Colonel Armstrong, the muscles around our spine have similar features within the skeletal muscles supporting the core of the body, so our top half doesn’t topple over.

A multitude of muscles run up and down, side to side, and around the spine.  The paraspinal muscles trace the spine vertically, aiding in the ability to bend forward and backward and ensure the torso is upright throughout everyday human activities.  Transverse abdominal muscles lace around the waist like a zipped-up jacket to allow rotational movements and protect the spine from twisting too far at the spinal joints.  Rectus abdominus muscles reside in the front portion of the abdomen, aiding in forward bending and bringing the torso closer to the lower extremities.  This movement is essential for getting up off the ground or out of bed.  The deeper muscles of the psoas attach to the anterior portion of the spine to the upper portion of the pelvis and thighs.  These deep muscles of the core are similar to the inner location of the rings of a tree trunk.  Psoas muscles act as strong core multi-plane movers and stabilizers and are responsible for the first movements of our core and hips before more significant movements.

Comparing the rings of a tree to our human anatomy responsible for the structural integrity and function of our “trunk” gives a visual representation of the vital role our muscular tissue contributes to the condition of our core muscles.  One could imagine if a tree had a feeble, skinny designation of rings within its trunk, the likelihood of it bending over, breaking, or even uprooting and toppling over is increased.  The same circumstances are present within our bodies.

Exercising the core muscles of our body enables us to have a robust and strong trunk.  Therefore, ensure to input core stabilization exercises into your fitness routine one to three times per week to reinforce the inner lining of our trunk so we can live a strong, healthy, and stable life.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Feb 10

Moving Side to Side and Front to Back

Curbs, steps, speedbumps, and roots causing sidewalk cracks have a purpose in the functionality of our society.  Sidewalk curbs create a location for our automobiles to park next to as not to disturb walking patrons.  Speedbumps made of asphalt and painted with white or striped yellow give the message to drivers to slow down.  Otherwise, the bottom end of the car could receive a reminder in the form of a repair bill from a local autobody shop.  Trees need room to grow as well.  Their roots spread underground to acquire nutrients and water so their leaves can deliver oxygen to the air we breathe.

Society and mother nature harmonizes, offering organization between humans traveling on foot, our four-wheeled gas-powered transportation devices, and our tall leafy friends, the trees.  However, these byproducts of increased height on the ground we walk on are sometimes perceived as obstacles for individuals with hindered movement.

Walking is a normal human motion mastered at a young age.  Putting one foot in front of the other to travel a set distance is commonly perceived as a non-challenging task.  This is until something happens, causing us not to walk normally.  Overcoming a significant illness, recovering from surgery, or shifting from a deconditioned lifestyle poses physical challenges to the body.  Pain, lethargy, and decreased muscular strength and endurance can make these seemingly simple increases in height to move our feet while walking laborious and challenging tasks.

Maintaining the ability to have an efficient forward stride followed by the posterior follow throughout each step of walking ensures optimal forward movement.  Picking up the feet to increase the elevation of the foot moving forward ensures we don’t scrape or stub the front of our foot on any object while walking forward.  This motion requires adequate hip and knee flexion.  As the femur elevates and the knee bends in a normal stride, the foot’s distance from the ground increases.  Additionally, as the foot is elevated via optimal hip and knee flexion, the foot’s sole needs to be parallel to the ground.  If the toes are at a decreased angle, the probability for the front of the foot to drag and catch an object increases.  Lastly, proficient walking strides include an efficient follow-through in which the foot travels behind the body after that foot propels the body forward.

Awareness of these variables in walking is critically essential.  However, to increase our body’s walking performance and decrease the likelihood of falling, consistently performing routine exercise substantially improves our overall walking performance.  Below are a few techniques we practice with our personal training clients:

  1. Isolated single-leg step-up:  Place one foot on a step three to nine inches high.  The elevated foot remains on the step the entire time.  While shifting the torso slightly forward to where the axis of the armpit is over the middle of the thigh, push the elevated heel on the step into the ground as you elevate your trailing foot onto the step. Next, maintain the same elevated foot on the step and slowly descend the trailing foot to the ground.  Ensure to keep the elevated foot’s heel planted firmly into the step throughout the movement.  Repeat this movement for one to three sets of five repetitions on each leg.
  2. Standing isometric single-leg hip flexion: Standing with good posture, lift one leg to where the thigh is somewhat perpendicular to the axis of the crest of the hip.  Ensure to keep the shin directly under the knee as the thigh remains elevated.  Stand next to an object to grab onto for balance, such as a door frame or post.  Hold this position on each leg for one to three sets of fifteen seconds each leg.
  3. Standing knee flexion: Maintaining an upright posture, flex one knee by “kicking” the heel posteriorly toward the back of the body.  You should feel slight muscular sensation in the hamstring muscles.  If additional balance is required, perform this exercise against a wall.  Repeat this movement for one to three sets of five repetitions on each leg.

Walking might seem like a task as simple as breathing. Unfortunately, physically traumatic events in life hinder our ability to perform such an everyday task.  Remember to practice refining your walking stride.  Let’s also remember to refine our walking performance practicing consistency and adherence to our exercise routine.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Feb 01

Self improvement balancing acts as time goes on

“It doesn’t get much easier.”  This statement came from one of my peers who was ten years older than me.  He who expressed this to me after sharing with him the knee pain I was experiencing.  This knee pain was brought about by spending a significant amount of time preparing my garden for the spring season over the weekend.  Moving wheelbarrows of mulch, laying weed barriers, setting up anti-squirrel defense systems, and turning my compost pile were just a few tactics that took a fair amount of physical exertion.  I knew my garden was getting prepared to become a lush and fertile climate for veggies to thrive.  However, my knee felt tired, swollen, and cranky after the rigorous effort I put into gardening.

I understood my friend’s dry, yet, honest exclamation.  His statement expressed his experience with aches and pains he has endured throughout his life.  He was a sage I respected who had seen ten more years of stress than me that life could throw at a person.  However, my entrepreneurial spirit was motivated to find the positive in this comment.

The next day, I thought about the phrase “it doesn’t get any easier” and connected that statement to the currency of the situation regarding my knee pain.  My immediate counter to this statement was, “but, it gets better.”  I’m sure many people can relate to challenging times in life.  Being a parent, attending college, and starting a business were not easy parts of my life.

I learned fast that progressing from a regular undergraduate student to graduate classes didn’t offer any breaks.  After my son turned fourteen, I was posed with an intelligent, courageous, and strong-willed human under my roof that I hadn’t dealt with throughout my life.  Branching off from working for large companies to opening my business left me feeling like I was on an inflatable raft out in the Pacific Ocean with only an oar to paddle myself to shore.  Those times weren’t “easy” at all.  However, by enduring the trials and tribulations these circumstances put in my way, I’ve progressed through these challenging experiences. I now possess pertinent tools to make my everyday life enjoyable and fulling.

Enduring the nagging pain and the inconvenience of a swollen knee wasn’t the most desirable state of affairs I would prefer.  However, I believed I would feel better in more ways than one by developing well-thought-out approaches to progress past this knee pain.  As an advocate of lifetime fitness, my nature was to implement tactics to improve my knee status and find a way to “get better.”

We promote a phrase to our personal training clients at the beginning of their training session: “you’ll feel better walking out than when you walked in.”  Even though a person might feel physically deconditioned, enduring pain in the body, or stressed out from the logistics of life, nine times out of ten, they feel better after a bout of routine exercise.

So, how could the currency of my situation become better?  I had a strong sense that focusing on the healing abilities of my body as I aged wasn’t a productive way to improve my situation.  A billion research articles state that the body doesn’t heal as fast following each trip around the sun.  Mulling my mind on those thoughts wasn’t going to do much good for my knee pain.  However, designing a workout focusing on healing loads, injury prevention, balance, and strength training, the other parts of my body will improve how I feel.  If I can improve how I feel, things will “get better.”

Focusing on joint injury prevention, balance, coordination, and functional strength are simple yet effective exercise themes.  Techniques such as planks, push-ups, and single-leg balancing exercises promote strength, endurance, and durability in many critically essential joints throughout the body.

Enduring pain at any episode of life can obstruct the overall experiences we get out of our everyday lives.  Indeed, we can be posed with new challenges that we haven’t yet seen, making them a challenge to overcome.  However, if we can establish a starting point in how we can “make things better,” perhaps we can take steps forward to alleviating and potentially surpassing what malady is imposing its will upon us.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Jan 25

Instant Gratification and The Human Body

The human race has been privileged throughout the past few decades with phenomenological inventions offering instant gratification.  Payment via tapping our credit card or phone on the surface of a payment processor at grocery stores, gas stations, and restaurants removes any apprehensions of thinking twice about the number being deducted from our digital bank account.  Remember when we needed to acquire a carbon copy by superimposing an image of the credit card’s number on a triplicate of white, yellow, and pink paper?  Those days have been conveniently put in the archive of human history.  Our lives are far less complicated thanks to the genius of the human race.

Downloading content on our phones can be acquired in the blink of an eye.  To make this more impressive, I could watch the entire series of Friends on a road while droning through the badlands of I-5 on Hulu, thanks to the assistance of our 5G phone networks.  Remember the sound of connecting to the internet back in the ’90s?  It sounded akin to the combination of screeching tires and an albatross mating call.  For the generation of humans who lived through these experiences, they can appreciate that the era of digital instant gratification is here to stay.

These technological advances to aid in our everyday productivity can offer massive improvements to our lives. For example: opening up the Amazon app and having a thirty-six pack of toilet paper delivered to my doorstep in less than twenty-four hours is pretty cool.  This convenience allocates a free hour in my day by alleviating a trip to Wal-Mart to buy some toilet paper.  Avoiding waiting in a line watching people stare at their cell phones to absorb the latest mind-leaching Tik-Tok reel while being blasted by the cacophony of screaming children isn’t that bad.

Unfortunately, this immediate result of completing tasks requiring physical effort and thought can be debilitating to our productivity in human development as we age.  The resources that give us that “ta-dah!” effect after we get something done right away can become too prevalent in our day-to-day lives.  Too much immediate gratification could lead to a lack of using the brain to produce creative thoughts and the body to move and interact less with the environment around us.  If long-term health is a goal in our lives, it’s worthwhile to maintain clarity of the critically important factors of moving and making conscious decisions throughout our day.

The physiology involved in the human body doesn’t offer instant gratification the same way as the tap payment of a credit card when filling up our gas on their convenient payment processors located on the pump.  If our fitness goals entail increasing strength, losing weight, or decreasing pain, a substantial amount of focus and consistent practice in keeping the body moving must be allocated to our schedule.  We can’t download an app from the Apple or Google Play store to immediately be able to perform ten pushups, maintain a healthy weight, or overcome nagging pain and injuries.  The efforts, thoughts, and energy we dedicate to moving our bodies are the application.  There aren’t many machines that can replace the willpower and discipline ingrained within our human identity.

It’s helpful to put digital devices away for a moment that track every variable of data present in our lives.  Ensuring we can participate in everyday activities like walking long distances, stepping up and down stairs, or bending down to pick objects up off the ground are necessary to live long and happy lives.  Instant satisfaction from technology has created this fantastic world we exist in.  However, let’s not forget to maintain the movement that our ancestors who lived before the era of instant digital satisfaction.  Even though our everyday lives are proficient thanks to technology, we still need to roll up our sleeves and consistently perform chores, walk frequently, and train our bodies to endure the demands the world imposes on our bodies.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Jan 12

Getting Fit and Staying Healthy for The New Year

As January approaches mid-month, New Year’s deals for group fitness classes and gym memberships are operating in full effect.  The local gyms are flooded with current and annual gym members who put their attendance on the back burner. Newbies to the gym scene flock through the sliding glass front door of the gym, filling the aisles bordered with weight machines like schools of fish during a seasonal breeding season.  As a veteran gym rat, this time of the year is akin to the tourist season in the summer months in Napa Valley.  Visitors from afar flood the roads with rental cars traveling twenty miles below the speed limit while they fiddle with Google maps on their cell phones to find their next winery to visit.  It’s not much different on the gym floor when an individual with little-to-no gym experience attempts to adjust the setting on the leg press machine.  A look of bewilderment, awe, or even terror isn’t uncommon for this novice population of exercise participants in the gym throughout the first month of the year.

Our society is fortunate to embrace this New Year’s theme of self-improvement by focusing on life-enhancing factors via exercise.  However, I’m sure my fellow gym rats who spend ten-plus hours a week in the fitness arena know that come February, we’ll see the number of New Year fitness enthusiasts substantially decrease.  As an advocate for self-improvement using exercise as tool for success, it’s a bummer to see people veer away from such a powerfully impactful goal toward overall quality of life

I can recall when my son was attending first through sixth grade in elementary school.  I happened to be starting my journey as a self-employed businessperson at the same time.  I knew I needed a specific level of adherence to a solid routine to be a good parent and business owner. This meant I needed to understand the business logistics of balancing financials, communicating with clients, and maintaining a physical storefront while ensuring my son ate breakfast, got to school on time, and could be picked up from school on time.  These requirements of a business owner and parent meant I needed a sturdy foundation of waking up earlier than everyone else, going to bed on time, and becoming a master of time management. Understanding that I needed to establish this foundational level of “busy” kept my business and son healthy as they both developed into thriving and strong pinnacles in my life.

Maintaining optimal fitness levels is similar to owning a business or ensuring your 1st-grade child receives adequate attention.  More importantly, the consistent nourishment toward a living and breathing business and a developing human learning to read, write, and socialize is similar to optimizing our ability to stay fit and healthy.  Establishing a base fitness level helps us stay in shape for the long run.

Understanding a solid base level of fitness helps to set parameters of our expectations of what defines a strong version of ourselves.  An example might be to set the goal of performing ten to twenty push-ups without resting in between reps, a one-minute plank, or conducting the sun salutation by memory.  Once those movements are mastered, and the desired number of repetitions is achieved, the next trick is to maintain those examples of strength for an extended period in the future.  Additionally, the ability to stay in shape is forged by the expectation to avoid deviating from movements we hold ourselves accountable to be able to perform at will.  If we falter from those numbers, we now have a barometer of an inadequate fitness level.  Once we detect our performance in these baseline exercises is suboptimal, we know that we need to spend more time and energy on our exercise adherence.

Exercising to improve the overall quality of life is essential.  Setting guidelines to stick to and ensuring specific movements can always be performed allows us to live happier, stand up to the stresses imposed upon us, and avoid psychological and physical illnesses.  It’s equally, if not more important, to get in shape and then stay in shape for years to come.

 

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Jan 05

Finding a stable relationship… with exercise

The new year brings about feelings of revolution in our lives.  Two Thousand and Twenty-Two  is behind us.  Along with all of the time, energy, and emotions we devoted to progressing ourselves last year, those remnants of time become water under the bridge.  As we dust the debris of last year off our shoulders, the popular new year’s theme of motivation produces a path to a new frontier of laying plans to achieve big audacious goals for 2023.  Along with capitalizing on financial logistics, obtaining new skills to support our careers, or improving our interpersonal relationships, one topic commonly hitting the New Year’s resolution wish list is self-care.

Losing weight, getting more sleep, or weaning off caffeine are a few examples of common goals to refine wellness.  As much as these goals contribute to substantial benefits to human productivity and adequately enjoying life, sometimes people can enter the tactics required to obtain these goals in a state of reluctancy.

Let’s take a trip back to our years as seniors in high school.  I’m sure we can recall one of the most challenging teachers who seemed to be in emotional rapture after handing out in-class reading assignments of Catcher in the Rye;  no offense to J.D. Salinger.  Catcher in the Rye was one of my favorite books that developed my love for reading and writing.  But in my last year of high school, itching to graduate and never set foot on a high school campus again, sitting down at a desk and reading a book wasn’t at the top of my list of priorities.  After the teacher administered this mind-numbing, dry as a bone assignment, he exited the room and left the students to their own devices with the trust that the chapter would be complete.  We were expected to regurgitate the pertinent lessons this critical reading assignment offered our lives upon his return.  Did we read that chapter when the teacher walked out of the door?  Nope.  My fellow students and I flung the Salinger’s masterpiece over our shoudlers, turned to our favorite classmate, and began chatting about where the next raging party was after Friday graced us with its presence.

The same feeling of irritable inconvenience my adolescent classmates and I experienced when given an in-class reading assignment can be related to the tactics required to accomplish our new year’s health and wellness goals.  Sure, new year deals at local gyms, small group fitness classes, and personal training services offer spectacular value.  However, if we resent the actual activity, the likelihood of executing the actions taken to achieve these goals significantly decreases.  Supporting a plan in which the user views the activity as a mundane, undesirable task makes accomplishing these new year goals challenging.

To counteract these feelings of being pressured into improving our health because we have to, it helps to remember a few helpful tips to adhere to exercise without feeling like you’re walking over hot coals to accomplish your health and wellness tactics.

Pick modes of exercise you enjoy:  Do you want to spend five hours a week in Planet Fitness utilizing their state-of-the-art exercise machines and running on treadmills?  If the answer is yes, that sounds like a great solution.  However, if the thought of being surrounded by individuals in a large setting terrifies you, then don’t do it.  If you like hiking, Yoga, Pilates, or Salsa Dancing, then those activities could be fitness topics to focus time and energy.  Exercise doesn’t have to be undesirable.  Our community offers plenty of fun and engaging avenues to reinforce our health and wellness.

Look forward to something:  Recreational sports and local activities have leagues and classes offered once a week.  Developing a schedule to attend activities you look forward to an established amount of times per week makes completing these tasks enjoyable.  If we look forward to something and develop a sense of excitement to attend a bout of physical activity, the effort to clear our schedule and spend the time and energy to attend seems less complicated.

Have a reason:  Embracing exercise as a gift to allow our bodies to perform pain-free and efficiently throughout our lives is an excellent reason to adhere to an regimented fitness routine.  Getting down on the ground to play with our grandkids, hoisting our kids in our arms after they win their first baseball game, or being healthy and strong to show our friends and family we can support them is a gift they can’t buy.

Redefining our eating habits, exercise consistency, and other elements of self-care offer life-enhancing benefits; offering us a healthy and strong new year. However, a significant amount of effort must be allocated toward the tasks required to the success of our goals. Therefore, find routines that you look forward to providing us with a realistic scenario of victory in our goals.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Spell out when starting a sentence with the year

Dec 29

New Year’s Resolution: Simple and Effective Tactics

The eventful, yet restful holiday season is coming to an end.  The lights encompassing houses illuminating streets will be taken down.  The Santa Claus, reindeer, and snowman decorations at grocery stores prepare to enter hibernation in a storage shed until next year.  Holiday music and classic television shows convert to normally scheduled programming as we approach New Year’s Eve.

December 31st usually brings about a sense of nostalgia and overwhelming excitement.  As boisterous New Year’s Eve parties and street celebrations occur worldwide, this exuberant day of the year filled with decorated streets, confetti on the ground, bottle caps popping off of sparking wine bottles, and fireworks bursting in the air at 11:59 PM signifies the start of a new calendar year.  The words,:“2023 is going to be the best year ever,” motivate our society to adopt a more refined mission statement in their personal lives, careers, and outlook on self-care.  As the new year approaches, many people adopt the practice of putting the previous twelve months behind them and embark on a new journey filled with goals, experiences, and never before obtained milestones.

Improving health is a popular topic for a new year’s resolution.  This could be achieved by preparing for an outdoor journey requiring endurance to hike a mountain or trek long distances through foreign terrains.  Another popular goal is training for marathons, bike rides, or backpacking expeditions.  One of the most prevalent new year’s goals is to lose weight.

“This year, I’m cutting out sugar,” “I’m not drinking as much alcohol,” or “I’m giving up gluten” are a few themes we might hear from our peers when establishing their new year’s resolution.  While all of these comments are effective in losing weight and refining our overall health, the steps it takes to achieve these goals don’t occur overnight.  If the process involved in fulfilling these tactics were as easy as the less than ten-word mission statement, we’d all have the physiques of Greek gods.

Losing weight requires a significant amount of discipline and adherence to healthy decision-making tactics.  Big audacious goals such as training for a physically demanding expedition or mitigating vices responsible for impeding our dietary success positively impact our quality of life.  However, let’s not forget a critically important theme in virtually every other aspect of life:  what you get out of something is equal to what you put in.  Perhaps focusing on simple yet effective tactics that can be repeated throughout the week, or even daily, can help attain these new year’s aspirations.  Here are a few tactics to encourage simple and effective refinements to our dietary habits.

  1.  Buy small packages of treat food:    If we enjoy cookies, chips, or cheese on crackers, then have some.  Just don’t go off on a bender.  A helpful tactic in controlling the overconsumption of treats is to stay away from the sales and value packages grocery stores offer consumers.  If weight loss is a goal, then purchasing a value size of Chips Ahoy and having that vessel easily accessible in your pantry isn’t going to help efforts to manage adherence to healthy eating habits.  Instead, purchase only one treat item and ensure it’s of the smaller portion size.  Focus on the quality of the treat, not quantity.  You’ll consume less “guilty pleasure” food and prevent storing treat foods in your home within your arm’s reach.
  2. Consume veggies with at least one meal per day:  The habit of buying vegetables and preparing them at dinner has countless positive effects for supporting weight loss efforts. For example, order a vegetable-themed dish while out to lunch is a valuable tactic in controlling the amount of food consumed while in a restaurant setting.  Additionally, veggies’ fiber and water content aid in food absorption and movement through our digestive tract.  The faster food is absorbed, the more nutrients our organs and connective tissue can utilize to fend off disease and regenerate connective tissue.
  3. Drink water first thing in the morning:  After waking from six to eight hours of slumber, our bodies are dehydrated and waiting for nourishment.  Drinking a sixteen-ounce glass of water immediately after waking is a simple and effective tactic to regenerate our bodies and start our metabolism too.  Research supports the more hydrated our systems are, the more efficiently the body can metabolize calories.  Additionally, hydration improves the amount of energy we have throughout the day as well.  If we have more energy, we’ll be expending more calories for energy and storing fewer unused calories as subcutaneous fat.

New year’s resolutions are a powerful component of our culture that fuel motivation for people to better themselves.  Lofty goals are essential to set a target for us to work diligently to achieve.  However, let’s not forget the nuts and bolts that hold us together.  By practicing the simple and effective tactics of consistency in dietary awareness, we can establish a solid foundation to achieve our new year’s aspirations.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

Dec 22

Too Busy to Exercise? Set a timer

My baking hobby ensues at full capacity throughout the holiday season.  One of my favorite baked treats I’ve mastered throughout years of trial and error is the lime white chocolate blondie.  These vessels of mind-blowing lime and rich white chocolate require a refined yet simple recipe I developed throughout years of surfing the internet and browsing cookbooks to acquire a path to blondie heaven I could confidently repeat and create on demand.  Throughout my trials to produce blondies suitable to gift my friends and family, I discovered I needed the correct baking equipment, precise measurements, and, most importantly, time.

The world knows investing time in optimizing our health offers a feature in our lives that outweighs countless hours of working and making money.  Investing time to exercise allows us to live happier, longer, healthier lives in which we can allocate the bi-products of our success in our careers to when we have vacation time or after we retire.  Without our health, we’re hard-pressed to enjoy the life we work so hard to create throughout our careers.

Similar to the creation of my jaw-dropping blondies and devoting energy toward the busy lives required of our careers and family obligations, exercise involves time.  However, exercise requires less time than baking holiday treats, an eight-hour shift at our jobs, or running errands around town.  Fortunately, our bodies are equipped with the tools needed to exercise on demand at any time in pretty much any environment:  a brain, heart, and muscles.  No measuring cups, baking tins, or ovens are necessary.  Every organism on this earth has two pieces of resistance training equipment required to conduct an effective workout:  gravity and the ground.  Performing exercise using only our body, such as squats, pushups, and planks, offers us an equally if not more effective workout than heading to a local gym and using their fancy exercise machines.

The features we have been gifted with since birth make it seem like a structured exercise routine should be simple to achieve.  However, we need to remember one variable in accomplishing exercise:  time.  The complex structure of thoughts in the human mind is a miraculous blessing.  However, our minds are also fantastic escape artists at finding reasons to avoid exercise.  For example, people are too busy with the demands of their jobs or managing family dynamics.  Deadlines, emails, texts, and phone calls before or after the ordinary workday sucks up time throughout the day. Additionally, finding the motivation to exercise presents complications.  The thought of carving time out of the day to achieve a bout of exercise could be boring.  Getting that extra hour of flipping through text messages and social media on cell phones while in bed sounds like a far more entertaining experience than exercising.  Sometimes, investing time in venturing to the drive-through and sitting in the car after a long day of work to wait for an In-N-Out burger and fries seems more stimulating than making a quick trip to the gym.

There is a connection between baking, looking through text messages, or sitting in our cars at the In-N-Out drive-through. They all take fifteen minutes or more to participate in these tasks.  What if we took that time and devoted it to exercise?  A simple and effective tactic we recommend to our personal training clients posed with similar aversions to exercise is setting a timer to complete the exercise.  The simple act of opening the timer in our cell phones and setting a time limit to perform an exercise routine for fifteen, twenty, or thirty minutes can produce substantial benefits to an individual’s health and well-being.  During this period, simple and effective exercises such as body weight squats, pushups, planks, or stretching exercises can be achieved in this small window of time.  The best part of this tactic in setting a timer is that after the timer goes off, the person who isn’t the fondest of exercise is allowed to do their favorite movement in their exercise routine:  stop exercising.

Understandably, exercise isn’t appealing to the entire population.  Humanity has been blessed with so many wonders that give us something to do through the advancement of technology.  However, the anatomy and physiology of our bodies always remain consistent.  The only way to keep our bodies in optimal operating conditions is through compliance and consistency through an exercise program.  If exercise is challenging to achieve because the demands of life impede the ability to take time out to exercise, set a timer and get a few exercises in.  This short amount of time can significantly affect how our bodies operate and feel in our everyday lives.

Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.

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