T-Rex Hates Plank

I have a friend that continually complains about "his bad back". He also often avoids activity for the same reason. Don't get me wrong I realize that there are people that have serious back injuries- some that eventually require surgery or other serious interventions. But just as often people suffer from intermittent back pain because their core has grown weak with age and under or mis use. 

The fact is that if your core is weak the simplest of activities (vacuuming, standing for long periods of time, gardening etc.) can cause you back pain as your back strains to support the body and make up for the under functioning core. 

You have probably heard people refer to “Core exercise”. The term "core" refers to your body minus your legs and arms. Functional movements are highly dependent on the core, and lack of core development can result in a predisposition to injury. In fact in many cases when you fall and incur injury (sprained wrist or ankle, broken arm, hip etc.) the disaster doesn’t come because you tripped. Instead it happens because you tripped and were unable to right your course and catch yourself. Your core muscles were too weak to come to your aid so you plummeted all the way to the pavement.

Core exercises are an important part of a well-rounded fitness program. Aside from occasional sit-ups and push-ups, however, core exercises are often neglected. Still, it pays to get your core muscles — the muscles around your trunk and pelvis — in better shape. Read on to find some ideas shared by the Mayo clinic.

Core exercises improve your balance and stability

Core exercises train the muscles in your pelvis, lower back, hips and abdomen to work in harmony. This leads to better balance and stability, whether on the playing field or in daily activities. In fact, most sports and other physical activities depend on stable core muscles.

Core exercises can help tone your abs

Want more-defined abdominal muscles? Core exercises are important. Although it takes aerobic activity to burn abdominal fat, core exercises can strengthen and tone the underlying muscles.

Strong core muscles make it easier to do most physical activities

Strong core muscles make it easier to do everything from swinging a golf club to getting a glass from the top shelf or bending down to tie your shoes. Weak core muscles leave you susceptible to poor posture, lower back pain and muscle injuries. 

Core exercises can help you reach your fitness goals

Aerobic exercise and muscular fitness are the primary elements of most fitness programs. But to have a truly well-rounded fitness program, you should include core exercises in the mix as well. 

Core strength needs to be safeguarded as you age. I remember several years ago when my friend Gail and I visited our now 99 year old friend Lorna. Poor Lorna who at that time was 94 had gotten up on a tiny step stool to dust the ceiling fan blades and she was sore for days. On the other hand around that same time my older daughter was a Pilates Instructor. She challenged her class to hold a plank for 3 minutes. An older gentleman (in his 60's) went on to plank for a full 6 minutes and his wife planked for 7 minutes. He said "I would have gone longer but if I go to 7 she tries to hold it for 8 or more and I didn't want her to hurt herself. You are never too old to work on core strength and as you age it is even more vitally important and you strive to avoid injury. 

So what is your challenge for the week? I would like you to practice planking every day and I hope you will continue this challenge beyond this week and complete this monthly challenge. (Note I have a young friend that makes it a practice to plank every day before her morning shower- a great way to keep up with core strength)

I am including 5 levels of planking and no you don't have to do ALL of these plank exercises. You may only be able to plank against a wall or a counter or on the ground from your knees. Pick one that is challenging to you but not TOO challenging- begin where you must. Remember it’s not where you are at now but that you begin to make dedicated daily positive progress. For each day (other than Sunday) that you give your best effort to planking you earn the 5 daily bonus points. So this weekly challenge awards you only 30 points. If you mistakenly enter 35 on our report doc I will adjust it.  Notice that at the bottom of this post there is a chart for a 30 day plank challenge. It would be awesome if you complete the whole thing! 

No Fast Food

According to an article in Psychology today when McDonald's began advertisingits $1 menu featuring the Big N' Tasty burger, some franchise owners were forced to sell them at a net loss; the popular item cost $1.07 to make. How could they afford to do this? Because McDonald's already knew that you were going to buy fries and a Coke—products with big profit margins. It costs pennies to fill up a large drink, but you're charged more than a buck for it. This is a great deal for them and not such a great deal for us, but we can't help ourselves, because sugar lights up our brain's reward pathway. 

Many recent neurosciencediscoveries about food's effects on our brains and how we make decisions about eating are actually gold-standard trade secrets from super-chains such as McDonald's. With billions and billions served, they must be on to something. Here are 7 things they know, and that you should, too:

1. Sugar is addictive.

Nearly everything on fast food franchise’s menus contain some sugar, from the drinks to the ketchup to the hamburger buns and fries. They know that most people are going to shell out an extra dollar for a soft drink because sugar is addictive. Just as you can develop a physiological and psychological dependence on cocaine, you can become dependent on sugar. 

Recent experiments have shown that sugar offers the hallmarks of addiction—bingeing, withdrawal, and craving. Researchers kept rats from eating for 12 hours, then gave them unlimited access to food and sugar water for a brief period, then took the food and sugar away again. They repeated this schedule for a few weeks. The rats formed a cycle of bingeing when given access to sugar, and, over time, increased their intake to twice the amount from when they started. When researchers stopped offering sugar or gave the rats an opioid blocker, which prevents the high by blocking some of the pleasurable effects in the brain, the rats showed signs of withdrawal, such as teeth-chattering and body tremors. 

2. The push of convenience.

The fact that you can go to almost any city in the country and find fast food within five minutes of driving contributes to the likelihood of compulsive eating. It’s fast, it’s easy and you don’t even have to get out of your car to get it. 

3. The Value Meal taps the brain's economy.

Low prices minimize the pain associated with parting with your hard-earned money. 

4. Our brains prefer high-calorie foods.

," our brains evolved during a time when food was scarce, so we became adept at choosing foods that packed calories. 

In one recent experiment, scientists used genetically engineered mice that were missing sugar receptors and therefore unable to detect sweetness in food. The researchers then gave the mice free access to two water dispensers, one with sugar water and one with regular water. Initially, the mice showed no preference; sugar water tasted just like regular water. However, after several hours, the mice shifted to drinking almost exclusively from the sugar water dispenser. To ensure that the mice preferred the calories, but could not detect the taste, the researchers offered them water sweetened with sucralose (e.g. Splenda). The mice didn't take it. 

When the scientists analyzed the mice brains, they found that the mice released dopamine in response to sugar water, even though they couldn't taste it, but not in response to regular water or sucralose. Our brains can tell the difference between high calorie foods anddietfoods even if they taste the same and our instinct for survival pushes us to seek out the calories even though in our world calories are not scarce or in danger of not being available.

5. Speed has addictive properties.

The closer you can pair a stimulus with reward the stronger the drive to obtain it. Fast food provides a quick fix for hunger. You don't even have to get out of your car to pick up a burger, fries or soda. You place your order at the drive-thru and within two minutes you can take the first bite as you drive home. You can hardly get a pan hot enough to fry in that time. The sooner you have the burger in hand, the sooner it can trigger the release of the cocktail of rewarding chemicals in your brain. 

6. Brains like branding.

Just as Pavlov was able to get a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell, The sign advertising your favorite fast food place gets your juices flowing anytime you hear their jingle. Pavlov showed that if he rang a bell before giving food to a dog, eventually the bell itself would whet its appetite. 

Across the nation, Fast food franchises provide a consistent experience every time you enter their doors. The employees recite a scripted greeting, the menu looks the same, and the same images and logos are posted on the walls. The more consistent the experience, the more strongly your brain associates the brand with the desired experience. The brain's reward chemical is dopamine, a molecule that's released when you experience something you enjoy. However, one of the brilliant aspects of the brain is its ability to learn and make predictions about the world based on past experiences. When the brain learns that a certain cue is associated with a reward, dopamine neurons learn to fire whenever the cue appears, even before the reward is given. Dopamine does more than simply reward you; it also motivates you to seek the pleasure again. As soon as you see the cue, your brain begins to anticipate the reward. The anticipation is part of the pleasure. Would you like fries with that? 

7. McNuggets stoke your memory.

In a recent study, researchers gave children chicken nuggets in an unmarked container or in McNuggets packaging. Not surprisingly, kids preferred the ones that resembled a Happy Meal. Neuroscience research has shown that a big part of the pleasure of eating stems from memoriestied to the food, not taste alone. 

In a brain-imaging study of the Pepsi Challenge, Read Montague at Baylor College of Medicine first gave participants a blind taste test of Coca-Cola and Pepsi while in an MRI scanner. The subjects preferred Coca-Cola and Pepsi equally, and both of the sodas caused brain activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region involved in pleasure and reward. However, when the subjects were told they were drinking Coke, they shifted their preference. Now, 75 percent preferred Coke. What's more, their brain activity changed. The hippocampus, the brain region crucial to memory formation, lit up with activity, suggesting that drinking Coca-Cola, rather than a generic soft-drink, stirs up your memories of Coca-Cola.

Similarly, eating a McNugget not only sates your appetite for chicken (and the glue that holds the McNugget together), it also reminds you of your childhood, the cool Transformers toy you got in your Happy Meal, and the first time you were big enough to order the 10-piece instead of the 4-piece. 

What can we do?

You guessed it ladies this week’s challenge is a NO FAST FOOD CHALLENGE. For every day that you do not eat at any fast food franchises you earn 5 points for a total possible bonus challenge points of 35. 

And yes I know that some fast food franchises offer somewhat healthy choices. But for this week we will abstain. And we will define fast food franchise as places with pizza, nuggets, burgers, fries and sodas in most instances anywhere that you can drive through and buy food while seated in your car. 

Eating and then NOT eating

One of the world's current health and fitness trends is intermittent fasting. People are using it to lose weight, improve their health and simplify their lifestyles.

Many studies show that it can have powerful effects on your body and brain and may even help you live longer.

FASTING- YIKES! Don’t worry-- I’m not going to ask you to go a week without food. Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating. It doesn’t specify which foods you should eat but rather when you should eat them.

Commonly intermittent fasting methods involve daily 12-16 hour fasts. So if you take your first bite of food or drink of juice in the morning at 7:30 a.m. you would need to take your last bite of food in the evening by 7:30 pm (though restricting it to an 8 or 10 hour window of eating rather than 12 is even better). During the time period that you have chosen to fast you would not take in any substances with calories. You take in only water when you not in your window of eating. 

I have been experimenting with intermittent fasting or time restricted eating for some time and have found that for me the biggest change was giving up evening treats in front of the t.v. But honestly it really hasn’t been that painful.

 For our bonus challenge this week I am going to ask you to restrict your eating each day to an 8,10 or at least 12 hour window and other than that take in only water.(NOTE IF YOU HAVE A MEDICAL REASON THAT YOU NEED TO EAT REGULARLY DURING ALL THE HOURS YOU ARE AWAKE LET ME KNOW AND I’LL GIVE YOU AN ALTERNATE CHALLENGE.) *There are free apps to help you track this

Fasting has been a practice throughout human evolution. Ancient hunter-gatherers didn't have supermarkets, refrigerators or food available year-round. Sometimes they couldn't find anything to eat.

As a result, the human body evolved to be able to function without food for extended periods of time.

In fact, fasting from time to time is more natural than always eating 3–4 (or more) meals per day.

How It Affects Your Cells and Hormones

When you fast, several things happen in your body on the cellular and molecular level.

For example, your body adjusts hormone levels to make stored body fat more accessible.

Your cells also initiate important repair processes and change the expression of genes.

Here are some changes that occur in your body when you fast:

•  Human Growth Hormone (HGH): The levels of growth hormoneskyrocket, increasing as much as 5-fold. This has benefits for fat loss and muscle gain, to name a few.

•  Insulin: Insulin sensitivityimproves and levels of insulin drop dramatically. Lower insulin levels make stored body fat more accessible .

•  Cellular repair: When fasted, your cells initiate cellular repair processes. This includes autophagy, where cells digest and remove old and dysfunctional proteins that build up inside cells.

•  Gene expression: There are changes in the function of genes related to longevity and protection against disease.

These changes in hormone levels, cell function and gene expression are responsible for the health benefits of intermittent fasting.

A Very Powerful Weight Loss Tool

Weight loss is the most common reason for people to try intermittent fasting.

By restricting your eating to a short time period intermittent fasting can lead to a reduction in total calorie intake.

Additionally, intermittent fasting changes hormone levels to facilitate weight loss.

In addition to lowering insulin and increasing growth hormone levels, it increases the release of the fat burning hormone norepinephrine (noradrenaline).

Because of these changes in hormones, short-term fasting may increase your metabolic rateby 3.6–14%.

By helping you eat fewer and burn more calories, intermittent fasting causes weight loss by changing both sides of the calorie equation.

A 2014 review study found that this eating pattern can cause 3–8% weight loss over 3–24 weeks, which is a significant amount, compared to most weight loss studies. 

According to the same study, people also lost 4–7% of their waist circumference, indicating a significant loss of harmful belly fatthat builds up around your organs and causes disease 

Another study showed that intermittent fasting causes less muscle loss than the more standard method of continuous calorie restriction.

However, keep in mind that the main reason for its success is that intermittent fasting helps you eat fewer calories overall. If you binge and eat massive amounts during your eating periods, you may not lose any weight at all.

Health Benefits

Many studies have been done on intermittent fasting, in both animals and humans.

These studies have shown that it can have powerful benefitsfor weight control and the health of your body and brain. It may even help you live longer.

Here are the main health benefits of intermittent fasting:

•  Weight loss: As mentioned above, intermittent fasting can help you lose weight and belly fat, without having to consciously restrict calories 

•  Insulin resistance: Intermittent fasting can reduce insulin resistance, lowering blood sugar by 3–6% and fasting insulin levels by 20–31%, which should protect against type 2 diabetes 

•  Inflammation: Some studies show reductions in markers of inflammation, a key driver of many chronic diseases

•  Heart health: Intermittent fasting may reduce “bad” LDL cholesterol, blood triglycerides, inflammatory markers, blood sugar and insulin resistance — all risk factors for heart disease 

•  Cancer: Animal studies suggest that intermittent fasting may prevent cancer 

•  Brain health: Intermittent fasting increases the brain hormone BDNF and may aid the growth of new nerve cells. It may also protect against Alzheimer’s disease 

•  Anti-aging: Intermittent fasting can extend lifespan in rats. Studies showed that fasted rats lived 36–83% longer 

Keep in mind that research is still in its early stages. Many of the studies were small, short-term or conducted in animals. Many questions have yet to be answered in higher quality human studies

Let's Get Positive

Here we are again! Some are new to our healthy living challenge and some have participated several times in the past. But we all step forward this week together. We weigh ourselves and take our measurements (and hide this info in a safe place) and we begin to be accountable for our health choices once again.

Each week you will look here (I usually gave the new blog post up by Sunday to give you time to grocery shop if needed) for our weekly bonus challenge. For this week we are going to start the year off by being incredibly POSITIVE! For our weekly challenge you need to do the following:

FOR THOSE THAT ARE NEW:1. Join myfitnesspal.com and friend at least 3 ladies to be support to you. (You can find names in the header for out healthy living group)

FOR EVERYONE: (No matter how many times you have competed.)
1. Read or re-read the FAQ's and RULES tabs on the blogs site
2. Weigh yourself and take your measurements3. Begin logging onto myfitnesspal.com every day to record what you eat and drink.4. Choose 3 positive affirmations for yourself and repeat them each day this week. Share them with your healthy living partner. 


Positive daily affirmations can help you conquer your past and present fears, and enjoy your present or create a better future. Affirmations can redirect your values, help formulate goals, and help prepare you for situations, whenever or wherever they may occur.

In general you can say your positive daily affirmations silently or aloud to yourself. For our weekly challenge however we are going to be saying them out loud with enthusiasm. I would like you to write your affirmations on a card ─ make it your phone screen saver, carry it in your pocket, tape it to a mirror, or place it somewhere where it is always visible to you. Repeat your positive affirmations at intervals throughout your day, to reinforce the positive belief and to maintain a positive state of mind.

You should state your positive daily affirmations in the present tense, that is, use "I am..." rather than "I will be..." Saying things in the present tense will program your subconscious mind to believe that what you affirm is already fact. When the subconscious believes that, it will start arranging for bringing what you affirm to you. In other words, the subconscious will drive you to perform the actions needed to live out what you affirm; and, acting thus, you will create the circumstances that make them actually happen for you.

Another important guideline in formulating your affirmations is to write them in the positive state. Many people have the tendency to write affirmations in the negative state (ie: I am not going to pig out on candy anymore!) ─ which immediately defeats the purpose and the effectiveness of the affirmation. Affirmations written from the negative perspective will never work.

(Do not forget all day and then blurt them out 10 times before jumping in bed!)
A few ideas for positive affirmations :1. I love to exercise! Moving my body relieves my stress, calms my mind and is just plain fun.
2. I love fruits and vegetables. I notice when I eat them I feel full of energy and life. They are my favorite treat.
3. I am in control of my health and wellness.
4. I have abundant energy, vitality and well-being.
5. I am always able to maintain my ideal weight of _______.
6. I radiate good health.
7. I sleep soundly and peacefully.
8. I have abundant energy, vitality and well-being.
9. The more I honor my health and body the better I feel.
10. I love clear clean water. It is my favorite drink and I love sipping it all day long.
11. I am a sweet treat gourmet. I love waiting and planning all week for one special dessert.
12. I am a record keeper. I enjoy writing down my exercise and meals. It reminds me I control the destiny of my health.