The French Don't Diet Plan

by Dr. William Clower

  The good news? It turns out that an overeager approach to exercise isn’t even necessary for weight loss. New studies reveal that short bouts of activity spread throughout the day are just as effective at improving your aerobic fitness. Even walking for ten minutes three times during the day, according to a recent study by Drs. Murphy and Hardman, is just as good for your fitness level as one thirty-minute walking workout. Much of this new research on the “slow exercise” movement—analogous to the Italian “slow food” movement—has been done by Glenn Gaesser, an exercise physiologist at the University of Virginia. He advises that people must “get out of the all-or-nothing mind-set that, unless they exercise for 30 minutes, they’re wasting their time.”

  The Irony of Convenience

  Taking the time out of your day to enjoy your life doesn’t encourage sloth any more than loving your food has anything to do with gluttony. It’s about engaging in the world around you. That may mean walking when you could drive, taking the stairs instead of elevators, or playing with your kids instead of watching from a distance. In fact, sometimes convenience and labor-saving devices are exactly what stand between us and lifelong fitness.

  Try this thought experiment by taking the notion of convenience to its logical extreme. At some point, can conveniences become a bad thing? At some point, do labor-saving tools become harmful, instead of helpful?

  Imagine what it was like when people had to tote their own laundry down to a stream about a mile from their home. They might spend all day just doing laundry. Thank goodness that indoor plumbing and the washer and dryer came along. These really helped. With electricity and gas, we don’t have to chop wood to cook food. What a wonderful benefit. And, with each new invention over the past one hundred years, we’ve progressed along this path that continually maximizes leisure and minimizes movement.

  But how much convenience is enough? What if someone did your work for you, mowed your yard, drove you around, and even set you in a rolling chair so you could move at the slightest push of a button, and you wouldn’t have to walk for yourself? What a convenience—or is it? Do you know anyone who does this? Most likely, you’re picturing someone who’s disabled. These are people who would give anything they had for the luxury of inconvenience: to walk, take the stairs by themselves, or go to the store on their own.

  There is a line over which convenience becomes debilitation, and the search for labor-saving devices becomes sloth. The question is, where is that line?

  There’s nothing wrong with timesaving efforts, but as we’ve seen over and over, anything taken to an extreme becomes extremely unhealthy for you. Bear this in mind when you have the opportunity to walk a few more feet or to get outside on the weekend: being active is not a liability but a gift you would ache for as soon as you had to be pushed around in a wheelchair or have someone do your shopping or tend your garden for you.

  So nurture your gifts. If you spend your life trying to find ways to avoid walking, standing, and just moving, your wish may be granted. To avoid this fate, move every chance you get: up the stairs, from the far end of the parking lot, when you’re on break, when you’re on the phone.

  Daily Activities That Really Do Burn Calories

  Lawn mowing: burns up to 400 calories per hour.

  Gardening: burns up to 400 calories per hour.

  Strolling while talking on your cell phone: burns 300 calories per hour.

  Doing light housework while watching TV: burns 200 calories per hour.

  Typing: burns 113 calories per hour.

  Standing: burns 140 calories per hour.

  Raking leaves: burns 225 calories per hour.

  Throwing a Frisbee in your free time: burns 225 calories per hour.

  Having sex: burns 190 calories per hour (your individual mileage may vary).

  Taking the stairs instead of the elevator: burns 100 calories per day.

  Problem: I don’t have enough energy to be active.

  You hear this all the time: “I eat a lot because I have a big appetite.”

  You also hear this: “I’m too tired to go out and exercise.”

  Both of these statements should be reversed. You have a big appetite because you eat so much. We talked a great deal in Step 4 about how you can train your body to expect larger quantities of food, just by your behavioral habits. But the same is true for your activity levels. People can become sluggish, in part, because they don’t move.

  The worst part of this is that you can get into a negative circle of inactivity, which makes you lethargic, which makes you inactive, which makes you lethargic, and on and on. At this point, you’re circling the drain.

  Solution: Be intentional.

  The way out of this downward spiral is to be active on purpose, which will increase your ability to be active by boosting your overall energy in the long term. Why is that?

  Have you ever exercised right before bed? When you do, you find that it’s hard to fall right to sleep because you’re heart is still pounding and your metabolism is way up. The elevated metabolic rate is a temporary phenomenon that becomes permanent when you’re consistent. And, when your body’s metabolism is cranked up, you have more energy. This becomes a positive feedback loop that supports even more activity!

  So, to shake yourself out of the lethargic blahs that keep you from being active … go out there and be active! Manually kick-start your metabolic engine, to train your body to boost your energy level and burn calories throughout the day. It’s okay to start with small additions to your daily activity, but you must add something. You can add longer periods of activity later, as it makes sense to you.

  PEOPLE ON THE PATH

  Dear Will,

  When I was a child, I was as skinny as could be. I ate what I wanted when I wanted to. It was great. Unfortunately, however, I grew up and started gaining weight in my twenties and more in my thirties and forties. When I started dieting in my thirties, the roller coaster began. I’d lose fifteen pounds and gain twenty pounds. I hated the way I looked and I hated the fact that I could no longer eat the things I loved. I tried all the no-fat foods out there thinking they would help, but they didn’t and I still hated my food.

  I was so excited when I saw your eating plan—it made immediate sense to me. Faux foods were out the door immediately. My twenty-one-year-old daughter and I cleaned out the refrigerator, freezer, and cupboards. We rid ourselves of every item that had high-fructose corn syrup in it or ingredients that we didn’t recognize as real food. That was easy and fun. We went grocery shopping and stuck with fresh foods. Fruits and vegetables, meat, chicken and fish, and bread. Oh, how I love bread. We started lingering longer over our meals. Enjoying every bite. Savoring each flavor.

  Next, the accomplishment that I am the proudest about: I stopped drinking diet soda. I have been a soda-holic my whole life and I easily stopped drinking it. I haven’t had a soda in almost three months. It took me close to fifty years to start eating the right way and I can’t begin to tell you how great I feel.

  I just bought myself a pedometer and challenge myself to walk five miles a day. I keep track of how many steps I walk in a daily journal. My family and I are really enjoying this approach to healthy living. Mealtime has become a special occasion every night thanks to you.

  —Jean L.

  How Can I Increase My Metabolism Without Going to the Gym?

  As we’ve said, being active is like putting money in the metabolic bank, because it revs up your metabolism—a word that simply reflects the amount of energy your body needs for all its organs and tissues. With a higher resting metabolism, your body uses up more energy while you’re not exercising, even while you’re sleeping. In fact, this basic energy demand is believed to account for around 70 percent of your total daily calorie expenditure.

  In fact, your resting metabolism is one of the chief reasons standard diets of calorie restriction do not work—because they lower your metabolic rate! So you may be eating less, but you’re burning less as well. When you return
to normal eating patterns, with that depressed metabolism, any weight you did lose comes right back.

  One very important key to cranking up your metabolic rate is to increase your muscle tone. You don’t have to bulk up (have you ever seen a muscle-bound Frenchman?), but being active builds lean muscles, which burn more energy even when they don’t happening to be flexing. Each pound of lean muscle burns about thirty-five calories per day. Thus, going for muscle tone is the metabolic equivalent of learning healthy eating habits. Once you have them, their benefits continue to silently work for you in the background—so you don’t have to think about them all the time.

  Activities to Tone Your Muscles

  If you want to adopt a reasonable balance between the French laissez-faire approach to exercise and the gung-ho approach, a wonderful middle ground can be the series of simple toning activities we list here. And only ten minutes of low-level tone building per day is all you need to make this happen. Choose any of the simple movements below, and make just ten minutes for yourself at some time during the day—mornings are best. You’ll start to see concrete results, such as weight loss, in the first two weeks. The only caveat is to work different muscles on different days so you don’t overtax any single muscle group.

  Here are the general rules. Repeat each exercise ten times, or until fatigued. Hold each posture for one full second during each repetition. Do each set of ten movements three times. If you get tired, don’t worry. Expect to increase the number of repetitions your body can do as you continue.

  Legs

  FOR YOUR HAMSTRINGS: Lie on your back on the floor with your feet (flat) up on the seat of a chair in front of you and your legs slightly bent. Press down with your feet on the chair to extend your legs and arch your back. Hold for one full second in this arched position. Return to the original position.

  FOR YOUR QUADRICEPS: Stand in front of a chair, facing away from it, and slowly sit down to lightly touch the seat. Be sure to keep your back straight. Hold. Return to standing.

  FOR YOUR CALVES: Stand on a stair (at the bottom of a flight) with your heels extended over the edge and only the balls of your feet on the step. Allow your heels to drop as far down as they will go. Then slowly rise onto your toes. Hold. Return.

  FOR YOUR INNER AND OUTER THIGHS: Lie on your side with your legs slightly apart so that you can raise your lower leg. While the upper leg remains still, lift the lower leg slowly up as far as you can. Hold. Slowly return to floor. Next, lift your top leg up slowly as far as you can. Hold. Return. When you’ve completed each leg, switch to the other side.

  FOR YOUR BUM: From a position on your hands and knees, slowly extend your right leg straight back as far out and up as you can. Hold that posture for a long count of one. Slowly return to the starting position. Repeat with your left leg. You’ll probably need to be on a mat or something soft, so you don’t hurt your knees.

  Arms

  FOR YOUR SHOULDERS: Weights can be used, but they aren’t necessary if you don’t have them. Sit in a chair with your hands extended to your knees. And, if you like, hold light weights (or something that weighs about five pounds) in each hand. Keeping your arms extended, slowly raise your hands to the level of your head. Hold. Repeat. (See A Note About Weights.)

  FOR YOUR CHEST: Do a simple push-up either from your knees or from your toes. Be sure to keep your back straight (do not bend at the waist). Slowly bend your arms until your body touches the floor. Hold. Return.

  FOR YOUR BICEPS: Sit in a comfortable chair and grab a weight of between two to ten pounds, depending on what you can lift easily. Begin with your arm extended and your elbow placed on your thigh. Slowly curl the weight up toward your shoulder until your arm is completely flexed. Hold in that position for a long count of one. Return to the extended position.

  FOR YOUR TRICEPS: Find any fixed object in your house (for example, bathtub or cabinet countertop). Facing away from it, put your hands behind you on the edge. Make sure you have a good grip and then step your feet in front of you until your weight is resting on your hands. Keep your legs straight, and slowly bend your arms until they are roughly at a 90-degree angle. Hold. Return to the arms-extended position. You will find that the higher the object is that you are grasping, the easier this exercise will be.

  A Note About Weights

  The point of these exercises is not to build muscle bulk, but to tone muscle, increase your resting metabolic rate, and therefore remove fat. To do this, keep in mind that you need to choose a weight that feels too light to begin with. But, because you’re doing each exercise ten times, it will certainly feel heavier as you go. So start with a very light weight and do these exercises for a week or so. If you experience soreness, back off on the weight or the number of reps. If it hurts, don’t do it.

  Axis Muscles

  FOR YOUR LOWER ABDOMINALS: Try simple leg raises. Lie on the floor on your back, bend one leg to support you and extend the other. Slowly lift the extended leg about twelve inches off the ground. Hold. Return slowly to the ground.

  FOR YOUR UPPER ABDOMINALS: Lie on your back with your feet up and your knees bent at 90 degrees. With your hands across your chest, curl your shoulders upward so they are about three inches off the floor. Hold. Slowly return.

  FOR YOUR LOWER BACK: Lie on your stomach with your hands extended in front of you. Slowly arch your torso and legs off the ground in the shape of a bow. Hold. Return slowly to floor.

  These activities take very little time, are easy to do, and burn energy for you without your ever having to think about them. And all you have to commit to is ten minutes per day. The key here is to be consistent and to mix muscle groups from one day to another. Here’s a sample routine that works wonders: leg movements one day, arms the next, axis muscles on the third day, take a break on day four, and then repeat. Simple!

  What If I Love to Work Out?

  I’ve said that you don’t have to go to the gym, and also that you don’t have to exercise. But that doesn’t mean you must avoid it altogether if you love that sort of thing. Personally, I do. My family and I take karate, and it’s a blast to get out there and scream in the air, kick in the air, punch in the air. I learn something new about this art every time I go, and let me tell you it’s a sweaty workout.

  But the point is that I love it. It’s not something I feel compelled to do just because of some arbitrary idea about the requirements for being fit.

  If jogging in place on a treadmill is something you couldn’t do without, please don’t give it up. If oscillating on a stair stepper for thirty minutes lights you up, by all means continue to do it. Just do it because you love it, not because you feel guilty. This way you’ll never trudge through two weeks of some workout regime that you completely dislike.

  Don’t Forget, Don’t Diet

  How do you know that our French approach is a “way of life” and not just another quick-fix fad diet? Because it applies general principles that work wonderfully across the board: in your food choices, eating routines, methods for stress management, and even fitness. It allows you to stop straining so hard to see what’s right in front of you, to let go, and to embrace your own joie de vivre.

  Physical fitness fits perfectly into the very same theme. Follow your heart and do what you love every day. Yes, be active, but don’t think you have to put yourself through overt pain and suffering to achieve lifelong effects—this is something we’ve been told, but it just isn’t true. The thin, healthy people of the world outlive the rest of us, have less risk of heart disease, and a lower obesity rate without our type A fitness fanaticism—and they’re relaxed using this approach.

  So your task is to find activities you can love to do every day. If laughing and friends and conversation are involved somehow, so much the better! This general guideline frees you workout-a-holics up to go pound the treadmill or pump iron if you like. But it also releases the rest of us from the belief that you have to do that to be fit and healthy. It opens your fitness goals to enjoyment and, in the end, you�
��ll move more every day, enjoy the process, and stick with it longer.

  The result? A longer, fitter, happier life.

  CHEAT SHEET: MOVIN’ & GROOVIN’

  Be active, even if you don’t exercise. Fill your life with movements you love to do, instead of painfully boring routines you feel like you have to do. That way you’ll stick with it longer, have more fun doing it, and get more fit in the process!

  Get Moving

  Find an activity or two you love to do, and get engaged.

  Give up the onerous exercises designed to “whip you into shape.”

  Make your exercise social whenever you can.

  Tone your muscles to increase your metabolism.

  Walk, every chance you get.

  The Results You’re Looking For

  IMMEDIATELY

  You will add pleasure to your fitness approach.

  You will add activities that don’t even feel like exercise.

  WITHIN TWO WEEKS

  Your cardiovascular system will respond with greater efficiency and a longer time before reaching exhaustion.