How to Do the Four Minute Workout

To start things off, I would like to apologize to my readers for not being able to post last week. I had several hindrances, both personal and professional, to cause writer’s block. In addition, trying to get a search engine to lead back to this blog is starting to bug me.

I’m happy to say that I had the time to post more than once a week last month and I hope that my passion for writing will continue to develop. I would appreciate some feedback on the topics I place on these pages mainly because, although there are several people who visit this site, I have absolutely no idea on what they think or what they would like me to write on. Anyway, this seems to be my last post on health care for the moment so I hope you would endure me for the next few minutes.

So now we go to how to improve output. First off, there is a baseline level of energy expenditure. Sedentary people use only 1500 cal/day while very active ones spend more than 3000 cal/day. The moderate ones, of course, would be in between.

Now let’s go hypothetical. A cup of rice would at least be 100 cal/serving and fried tocino would be 250 to 300 cal/serving. If you only have one serving of food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you would get about 1200 cal per day. However, we would be without snacks. Realistically, a Filipino usually has 4 to 5 meals a day. Considering that a can of regular soda would have at least 100 cal and a bag of potato chips go for at least 155 cal, you could easily breach the 1500 cal mark. This is the reason why a lot of people are getting fat.

Although most people would teach that aerobic exercises burn more calories than anaerobic ones, I would beg to disagree mainly because anaerobic exercises accrue an oxygen debt similar to aerobic exercises. However, they pay their dues long after the exercise has terminated. Aerobic exercises allow a person to pay off his oxygen debt during the exercise process. Some people argue that anaerobic exercises build muscle, add weight, and do not burn energy. This statement is a contradiction in itself. Any man of science knows the law of energy and matter conservation. You don’t build muscle from nothing. In addition, the process requires energy. Furthermore, muscles increase the maintenance cost of the body and burn more for nothing in the long run. The only thing they require for maintenance is exercise.

So, without further ado, here’s the Four-Minute Work-out as I understood from the video of Jim Saret and Tina Ryan. But before you start, don’t forget to limber up. Focus on your arms, neck, and waist. These are the things you normally don’t move a lot during the course of your day.

The first step is the plank position. This is a basic exercise taken from Pilates. You stay in this position for 30 seconds.

This is soon followed by squats. Ten repetitions will do.

You then go down on the floor again for ten push-ups. I found an instructional video here just in case the first video of this section wasn’t clear.

Now you stand up and do twenty lunges, one for each leg. Beginners can do what DJ Tina Ryan did in the above video. If you’ve done it long enough, the real lunge looks like this.

The last step is composed of ten crunches.

Now, if I remember correctly, Mr. Saret mentioned something about burning 400 cal per episode. Remember, you don’t need to pay and you don’t need to change clothes for this. You can do it on a long flight and even while it’s raining hard, without fear of catching a cold. Since your feet are firmly fixed on the floor at all times, there’s no impact. Beginners can do this once a day until you get used to it. I would recommend a maximum of three episodes a day, five days a week. Happy weight loss and weight management!

Jim and the Four-Minute Workout

Last week, we discussed decreasing caloric input. However, this is only half of the problem. Increasing caloric output is the other half. Exercise is, of course, the obvious answer. It is also a rhetorical answer as most people would rather not exercise. They just like to talk about it.

Warning: Although exercise is a healthy activity, there are several things that it does not do. It does not cure hypertension. It does not cure diabetes mellitus. The only medical condition that it can possibly cure is obesity. It is not safe for people with uncontrolled blood pressure to undergo exercise and other strenuous activities.

Being a sedentary person, I decided to ask myself why I avoid and abhor exercise. The first reason that came to my mind was that I don’t like to put on exercise clothes. The next was that I didn’t like to be seen by other people. Other reasons included financial expenditure (I find it ridiculous to spend for something I might use only once or twice), portable (I can do it anywhere), and, lastly, adjustable difficulty levels. This is where another radio show on 99.5 RT comes in. The TNT show, previously hosted by Neil Almighty and Tina Ryan, had fitness experts over on Wednesdays on a segment they called FIT Radio. I listened eagerly every time, hoping that they would give me a piece of the puzzle I was currently trying to solve. One day, they had a guest that they called “Coach Jim from the gym.” He had something he called the Four-Minute Workout. What enthralled me were the words that followed. He said that it would burn 400 calories every time and that he wasn’t going to copyright it since he wanted a fit Philippines. It was perfect. After some thought, I realized that it wasn’t. I needed this man’s name. If he wasn’t going to get the cash his idea should produce, at least he should get the credit. A phone call later, I knew that this fitness genius was Jim Saret. He happens to be a Sports Training and Fitness Consultant for the Philippine Smart Gilas, the Philippine Swimming Team, and the Philippine Olympic Committee, among others.

Now that I had my wanted workout, I then found a new obstacle in getting people to exercise. Motivation. Most adults say that their exercise is housework. Guess what? Exercise is a planned activity with the objective of strengthening or increasing the fitness of the performer. Work is an activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something. From their definitions, you could easily see that work uses your pre-existing abilities to do something whereas exercise makes you stronger. The problem arises when one is expected to perform work that is beyond their present capabilities. This results in injury.

Before I go, I would like to thank Neil Almighty and Scarlet of The Awesome Show for advertising my blog. I’ll try and get in touch with Jim Saret for any corrections or confirmations he may have regarding this entry.

Calorie Restriction and the Half-Diet

So, after a few days, we’ve finally reached the last bullet point to discuss:

3. The only proven method of extending your lifespan is by calorie restriction.

Okay, I’ll admit, when you look at the data on the webpage above, you’ll see an animal study showing that mice and rhesus monkeys live longer. There are claims on other species and I managed to look at them before they restructured this webpage. Unfortunately, I can’t claim evidence that I can’t show you. There are other articles based on human studies but they are simply ‘presumptive.’ That means these studies point to a few things and presume that the people who have these things will live longer. It’s difficult to make studies regarding human lifespans mainly because humans live longer than our interest levels would hold.

Now, one big difference with people and animals is that we can rationalize eating less or more. Another difference is that we have a lot of freely available food compared to animals that have to struggle and scrounge for their nutrition. What does this mean? Animals consume a fairly static level of calories per day because their level of activity is fairly static. Humans, however, have occasions where they consume more or move less. Holidays, in general, allow people to eat more. They also move less, resulting in less traffic during said days. The result is a greater input and lesser output. This means that although total caloric intake is important, our ability to regulate our caloric output also means that we can focus our attention on caloric excess, or the difference between our input and our output. If your output is equal to or greater than your input, you’ll lose weight. It’s actually that simple.

After a large part of my life was spent labelling things black and white, maturity has shown me that things, even when simplified, are not really that simple. I do not advocate calorie restriction wholeheartedly. Another tenet in my life is to “Enjoy everything in moderation.” That rule also applies to calorie restriction. I only advise it when you’re trying to reach your ideal body weight. I use Broca’s formula (the first one on the previous link) simply because it’s easier to remember. However, if you are a stickler for accuracy, the Body Mass Index (BMI) is the way to go. Since most of my readers are Asians, I would recommend either the Japanese or Singapore version for you.

Sometime ago, Glyco wrote a request for me to discuss liquid fasting diets. Although liquid fasting diets are great to jump start a weight loss program, they’re not really that great to use for the rest of your life. Weight loss is just the start. Weight maintenance is the real battle. And that’s where liquid fasting diets fail. What people need is a diet that they can and will adhere to for the rest of their lives. My answer to that is the “half diet.” You eat whatever you used to eat before you started dieting but half the amount. That means half the viands and half the rice. It also means no in-between-meal snacks. The nice thing about this diet is that you’re going to be eating the same things you’ve been eating. Why? The smaller the change, the easier it is to incorporate into your daily life.

Now that we’ve got the preliminary discussion down pat, we’ll continue with increasing output next week.

Eating Cake and Losing Weight

After a few days of counting my usage of a certain phrase, I’ve decided to take Luis’ suggestion and rename my blog. I’ve also decided to schedule updates on Fridays so as to give me more time to write. I basically write when the muses visit me and not whenever I want to, which is inconvenient but I don’t like making works of poor quality.

As promised, my next discussion will be on weight loss and maintenance. This is very important to me because I have a sedentary job and I found myself gaining weight after I became self-employed. Although I knew that obesity was a risk factor for deadly incommunicable diseases, there was always this voice in my head telling me that I wasn’t going to be one of those people on television. Then, one a rainy day, I was watching the Discovery channel and it was an episode entitled, “Super Obese.” I don’t have a copy of this episode and I’m hoping that it becomes available locally soon.

The important word for this article is “calorie” which means “an amount of food having an energy-producing value equal to the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water 1 degree Celsius.”

To cut a long story short, the program has 3 bullet points:
1. People usually gain weight because their daily activities decrease but their eating habits remain the same.

Basically, we all know that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Well, the human body is an energy system. Our only sources of energy input are eating and drinking. Breathing only contributes the material by which we can harvest the energy. Although we use an amount for regular maintenance, our energy output can be voluntarily increased by physical activity. So when we go back to statement #1, it simply means the person’s input eventually exceeds the output.

You often hear the statement, “I have a low metabolic rate,” or something roughly similar to that. Guess what? Your metabolic rate is actually under your control. You can increase it by exercising or working, exercise being the safer. Take note that exercise is not work and vice versa.

2. Our bodies run better when we have fewer calories available.

The human body is an expert in conserving energy. That’s basically the reason why it is easier to gain rather than lose weight. Unfortunately, becoming overweight is like living in a cluttered house. You eventually have very little space to move and do things quickly and effectively.

A lot of individuals have forgotten that the human body produces sugar (glucose) and fat (triglycerides) at will in response to excessive intake of calories. If you remember your high school biology, you would know that the digestive system breaks down all the food you eat into its component compounds. Carbohydrates become sugars, fats become fatty acids and glycerol, while proteins become amino acids. In short, getting fat and eating fat are two different things. As most people have experienced, you can get fat without eating fat. However, what most people don’t know is that you can lose weight even while eating fat.

I’ll continue with the third bullet point when I return.