Body & Soul

Josef Brandenburg • March 17, 2016

It’s that time of year again: the days are getting longer and the winter coats are going back into storage (most days). Spring is one of the best times of year to reignite your fitness motivation. Here are five simple, actionable tips to help you get started “springing” back into fitness.

Get a new playlist. No matter how much you loved your old workout playlist, listening to the same thing gets boring fast. Not only is boredom demotivating, but boredom also motivates you to overeat. You don’t have to make your own playlist. Your music streaming service adds dozens every month.

Use your calendar. Before the week starts, schedule your workouts, specifying day, time, place and what. This increases follow-through by at least 200 percent. Otherwise, the time you need to take care of yourself is at the mercy of everything else — work, family, TV. Bonus tip: Make the appointments recurring so it’s easier to manage your workouts each week.

Clean up your kitchen. If it’s in your house it’s in your mouth. We will eat whatever is most convenient. By keeping cookies, ice cream, etc., in your kitchen, you create an environment where eating right is a challenge. Get rid of what you don’t want to eat every day, replacing those items with supportive foods, such as fruits, vegetables and protein. Sure you can still treat yourself to a cookie, but not every single day.

Get a program. “A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client” is true in fitness as well. When you’re in charge of your own fitness program, that usually means you will do only what you feel like doing. Rarely will this be all of what you need. Having an expert call the shots helps you get better results and frees your brain up for other tasks.

Shift your focus. Outcome goals are things like “lose 20 pounds.” Process goals are things like “clean out my kitchen” or “strength-train three days per week.” When you focus primarily on the outcome, you are always frustrated; you’re never going to get there fast enough. What’s worse is that this frustration often leads to jumping from program to program without ever getting meaningfully closer to your goals. The more you focus on the process — and on getting better at implementing these behaviors — the better your outcome will be. It doesn’t happen the other way around.

*A best-selling author and fitness expert, Josef Brandenburg owns True 180 Fitness in Georgetown. Information about his 14-Day trial may be found at true180.fitness.*

Stacy Notaras Murphy • March 10, 2016

Dear Stacy,

I am starting to realize that I am not handling things in my relationship the way I used to. I have had a lot of life changes in the last month — I moved and started a new job with a significant commute that I’m not quite used to — and I haven’t been sleeping well either. My girlfriend is frustrated that we aren’t spending as much time together anymore and it feels overwhelming. I honestly feel stressed out and anxious most of the time. I even woke up at 3 a.m. multiple times this week with my heart racing and was unable to go back to sleep. I wonder if it’s time to just take a break from my relationship with my girlfriend (we’ve been dating six months, in case that’s important) so I can focus on my new job. Should I stop spending so much time with my friends? I just don’t know what to do next. I am having trouble making decisions for the first time in my life.

— Adjustment Problems

Dear Adjustment:

I can see why you would be struggling. You have come across more than one of the mental health community’s “big ticket stressors” in the last few months. Moving and starting a new job (not to mention the frustration of commuting) are incredibly challenging experiences, even when they represent welcome changes. Please be gentle with yourself. You are reacting as many of us would in your shoes.

But let’s not go about making big relationship decisions amid such circumstances. We need to triage this situation. Prioritize the most pressing issues and work them out first. My pick? Sleep. This is the most important issue to get under control before you start slashing and burning your relationships. Make this your first goal and do everything you can to protect your sleep.

Start by asking yourself if you are practicing good “sleep hygiene.” Are you setting a time to stop working each night? Putting screens away an hour before bedtime? Avoiding caffeine and sugar late in the day? All of these habits contribute to sleep disturbance. If you wake up early and cannot fall back asleep after a reasonable amount of time, get up — but do not start doing work. Instead, try to exercise and set yourself up for a better night of sleep the next night.

Once you are sleeping better, I imagine you might see some of the other stressors in a different light. Your having trouble making decisions could truly be sleep-related, so please give getting good rest precedence before taking drastic measures to try to feel better.

Stacy Notaras Murphy is a licensed professional counselor in Georgetown. Visit her on the web at stacymurphyLPC.com. This column is meant for entertainment only and should not be considered a substitute for professional counseling. Send your confidential question to stacymurphyLPC@gmail.com.

Georgetowner • February 24, 2016

Losing weight is one of the classic New Year’s resolutions, and eating better is an essential component of success. Food labels can be booby traps for dieters because they contain misleading information. Here are three of the most common pitfalls to step over.

1. Gluten-free. Even people with little or no nutrition education know that cookies aren’t very good for you. Made of refined starch and sugar and fat, they’re very calorie-dense. They’re also hyper-palatable, which means that it’s really hard to stop eating them. Everybody knows this. Food marketers, however, know that slapping “gluten-free” on a box of cookies is a way to bypass our common sense.

Gluten is a protein found in wheat (and in a few other grains) that helps gives bread its unique texture. It’s only a problem if you have a sensitivity. Gluten-free cookies are the nutritional equivalents of regular cookies because they’re, well, cookies. With or without gluten, they’re made of refined starch and sugar and fat. Healthy foods like chicken, eggs and green beans are all naturally gluten-free, but they’re not healthy because they’re gluten-free.

2. Trans-fat free. Trans-fats (from hydrogenated vegetable oil) might be the worst ingredients in our food today. We’ve become increasingly aware of their dangers, and the FDA introduced trans-fat labeling requirements with one exception: If a food has less than half a gram of trans-fats per serving, it can be legally called “trans-fat free” on the packaging. What’s more, on the nutrition label the trans-fat content can be rounded down to zero. This means that you can take a product that is almost pure hydrogenated vegetable oil (the source of trans-fats) and make the serving size so small that you can call it “trans-fat free.”

The takeaways for you, the consumer, are (a) be suspicious of anything labeled “trans-fat free” and (b) read the ingredient list and look for hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil of any kind — so you can avoid it.

3. “All natural” or “no artificial anything®.” These terms have no real legal definition, meaning that you can put “all natural” on a highly processed food without violating any law. As for the term “no artificial anything®,” please notice the registered trademark symbol. What the ® means is that this term is the intellectual property of the food manufacturer; the company has the exclusive right to use it for marketing and branding purposes. It does not mean that the term has any legal meaning regarding the contents of the package. (It doesn’t.)

A best-selling author and fitness expert, Josef Brandenburg owns True 180 Fitness in Georgetown. Information about his 14-Day Personal Training Experience may be found at true180.fitness.

Josef Brandenburg • February 22, 2016

Celebrity bodies on the red carpet are a combination of fact and fiction. On the one hand, many of the celebrities use smart nutrition and exercise to stay in great shape. But nearly all of the images from the red carpet are also painstakingly created illusions.

UNREAL: Starvation and dehydration. To look amazing on the red carpet often involves days or weeks of starvation-level dieting and dehydration. Using herbs or prescription drugs to boost dehydration makes you look very lean and tight, but it is also very unhealthy.

REAL: Skip the treadmill. According to celebrity trainer Valerie Waters (she’s trained Jennifer Garner and many others), her clients are very busy — especially during a shoot — so they only have time to focus on a combination of strength and interval training.

UNREAL: Retouched photos. A-list celebrities have a retouch artist on staff to make sure that no photo of them is published un-touched. Rolls and cellulite, wrinkles and imperfections disappear; thigh gaps and muscle tone are added. This creates unrealistic standards of “fit and beautiful.”

REAL: Kettlebells. Hollywood has been a hotbed of kettlebell training for over a decade. Celebrities are drawn to it because it’s incredibly time-efficient, great for fat loss and very safe if you have good instruction on the fundamentals.

UNREAL: Makeup magicians. A highly skilled makeup artist is like a real-time retouch artist who works on your face and body. He or she can make a lizard look like a model. This creates fantastic expectations about aging (meaning, they’re a fantasy).

REAL: Don’t drink your calories. Avoiding calorie-dense beverages such as juice, soda, sweet coffee, etc., helps to cut your empty-calorie intake. This is an essential component of improving your health and keeping weight off over time.

UNREAL: Waist trainers. These items come with the promise that they will change the shape of your body when you’re not wearing them. Completely false! However, while on, these garments will change the shape of your body — especially your midsection and butt. But (or butt) this is an illusion. Dangerously similar to the corsets of the 1800s, these garments put excessive pressure on your ribs and organs, making it very difficult to breathe.

A best-selling author and fitness expert, Josef Brandenburg owns True 180 Fitness in Georgetown. Information about his 14-Day Personal Training Experience may be found at true180.fitness.
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Josef Brandenburg • February 18, 2016

On Instagram or at your gym, you may have seen someone wearing what looks like a hazmat mask. These masks — altitude training masks — aren’t worn to combat poor air quality. Instead, they promise to simulate training at high altitudes (where the air is thin) to boost athletic performance.

Let’s look at fact vs. fiction.

“The mask simulates training at high altitudes.” Fiction. The mask can’t simulate training at high altitudes because it can’t change the percentage of oxygen available in the air you are breathing. The changes that take place when you live at a high altitude are primarily due to the low oxygen level.

“The mask makes it hard to breathe.” Fact. Wearing one reminds me of the asthma attacks I had as a child. Making inhaling more difficult causes your body to rely more on your neck and shoulder muscles to assist with breathing. This can lead to headaches and to neck and shoulder pain.

“The mask will boost your performance.” Fiction. Performance boosts require months of living at a high altitude. Even if the masks could change the level of available oxygen, you would need to wear one 24 hours a day — not just when you work out — to benefit.

“The mask causes you to do less during a workout.” Fact. The mask reduces the intensity of a workout. Because the mask makes it so hard to breathe, it makes everything harder. For example, if you could normally do three sets of 15 pushups, then wearing the mask would limit you to only 10 to 12 pushups per set. Doing less work during your workouts will lead to less fitness and worse results over time.

A best-selling author and fitness expert, Josef Brandenburg owns True 180 Fitness in Georgetown. Information about his 14-Day Personal Training Experience may be found at true180.fitness.

Stacy Notaras Murphy •

*Dear Stacy,
I have been in a relationship for six months after a long time without a relationship. I am thrilled to have a boyfriend and am loving getting to spend holidays and weekends together. I am so excited to plan things for just the two of us. The problem? I recently discovered that he “borrowed” my credit card without asking. He has been struggling with money lately, and I know it’s stressful to him that I am always paying for our dates and such. I understand why it was hard for him to ask me for money — but my friends are saying he “stole” it from me. He apologized and said he won’t do it again, but I wonder if he’s actually done it before (I’m not too careful about reading my credit card statements and only discovered this by accident). I don’t know what to do. Is this the red flag my friends say it is? I am in love with him, so this is not an easy position for me.
— Loving a Thief?*

Dear Loving,

Before jumping to conclusions, we need to know what we are dealing with on this. Clear vision is required, or you could either regret it later or always find yourself wondering. Go through your credit card statements to make sure what we have here is a one-time indiscretion and not a pattern of behavior. If you find that Boyfriend’s use of your card went beyond the incident you discovered, then we have both a thief and a liar — a bad, and perhaps irredeemable, combo. But if it was, indeed, a single episode, we can use it as a learning experience for you both. But you have to use it. Don’t ignore it. Please.

When I say “learning experience,” remember that a relationship requires us to learn and stretch and grow. When relationships don’t demand that of us, we are stagnant and wither away. So take heart! This is an opportunity for you and Boyfriend to stretch and grow your relationship. I know that may not sound as exciting to you as it does to me, but bear with me.

Use this as a chance to really talk about what honesty means to you, what money means to you, what debt means to you, etc. Try your best not to just sweep this incident under the rug. (If you already have done that, pull the rug up and talk about it.) Use it as an opening to a conversation about expectations and security — a conversation that all long-term relationships require.

*Stacy Notaras Murphy is a licensed professional counselor in Georgetown. Visit her on the web at stacymurphyLPC.com. This column is meant for entertainment only and should not be considered a substitute for professional counseling. Send your confidential question to stacymurphyLPC@gmail.com*