Discovery Health - National Body Challenge (Pam Peeke)

Muscles to the Rescue

One of my pals is former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee. As you may recall from so many of his media interviews, he was the 50 yr old guy who shed over 110 pounds and reversed diabetes and heart disease and became one of the public heroes of the fitness movement. This guy couldn’t lace up his sneakers at 300 pounds 5 years ago, and now runs marathons. I ran the 2005 Marines Corps Marathon with him in and had a blast watching him in action. What I really love are his one liners. “If it comes through your car window, it isn’t food.” But one of my favorites is when people ask him “You’re so busy, how do you find the time to do any exercise?”, his reply is “I don’t find the time. I make it.”

There you have it. It’s a deliberate conscious determined priority. You simply look at your schedule and make it happen. Here’s where being creative comes in handy. Heck, just get up and move more. Every little movement is like putting money in that piggy bank. By the end of the day, you’ve got quite a stash. Get it out of your mind that you have to be some kind of gym rat. Just look around your living and work space and find ways to move more. Lean against a wall and do wall pushups to stay strong in your upper body. That strengthens 4 muscles: your chest, shoulders, triceps and biceps. If you fall, you need your upper body strength to get up again. Go ahead. Get down on the floor right now. Now try to get up.

See what I mean? What if you’re alone and you have no one to help you get up. It’s those glorious muscles that will rescue you. They need your care and attention. Here’s the win win. You’ll stoke your metabolism with trained muscles---shedding fat faster and keeping it off, while you achieve strength and energy--- to survive and enjoy each day of your life. So, make the time to care for yourself. The payoff’s worth the effort.

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Target Motivation

When my patients come into see me, I ask them why they made the appointment. Immediately I hear the typical list reasons, usually starting with “I want to get healthier”, followed by a litany of diseases they want to either prevent or reverse. Everyone wants more energy just to get up in the morning and without the help of a front end loader. And, people want energy to do joyful things--- run after kids and grandkids, travel and walk for miles through foreign countries, play tennis with your friends, and get up a flight of stairs without calling 911.

Then I ask folks how long they’ve been feeling this way. Usually they say the feeling’s been strong for months, even years. Everyone acknowledges that this is front and center in their lives. It really bugs them. Now, here’s the clincher. I then ask, “If this is so important, why haven’t you been able to make it happen?” Quizzically, they ponder and say “I don’t know”. It doesn’t seem to make sense. If it’s all that important, why haven’t you changes?

So, what’s the bottom line here? Folks, so often the usual litany of health and energy related motivations is just not strong enough. Heck, I’ve had men and women come in after coronary bypass, still munching on burgers and figuring that popping pills will do the trick. Here’s the answer. You have to go deep and figure out what’s really important to you. It’s something I call the Target Motivation. Maybe the coronary bypass didn’t move you to change. But perhaps realizing that you want to be around to hang out with your kids and grandkids, really hits you where it counts. It’s also perfectly OK to say “I deserve to wear terrific clothes and to feel great every day.” Give yourself permission to feel entitled to look and feel great. It’s a deep, primal feeling that helps you to keep focused no matter how overwhelmed you feel. It’s all about making choices.

So, to help you stay focused all day, and make the changes you need to achieve your dreams, you need to be really clear about choices. One of my patients noted that every time one of her usual self care choices comes up, she came up with her own mantra--- Flab or Fit. So, I have taught her to say “What would a fit woman do right now?” “What would a flab woman do?” Whichever you choose, you become. You become every choice you make in life.

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Sister Genevieve Kunkel

Howdy.

I met the most amazing person. She’s always been a hero of mine. Remember the famous Nun’s Study that hit the media about 6 years ago? Dr. David Snowdon is the scientist studying Notre Dame nuns, most of whom hit 100 years old and remain in remarkable mental and physical shape. There was one in particular, Sister Genevieve Kunkel, who has been widely quoted by Snowdon and the press. She’s feisty, witty, wise, and radiates enough energy to light up a small city. She’s also 96 yrs old. I just found out she’s in my own backyard, residing at the Villa Assumpta convent associated with their awesome Notre Dame University for women. Once I’d located her, we arrange to meet.

I can’t tell you how cool she is. And how much I learned from her. First, she’s gotta be 80 pounds soaking wet, yet she walks around with a powerful and determined stride. I, like everyone else, wanted to know her secrets to longevity. Was she always in great shape? How’d she manage to keep such an incredible memory--scary, probably better than mine? What did she eat? What about her physical activity? Well, her classic response as been, “I have two good traits. I’m alert, and I’m vertical!” I love it. That’s really our call to arms…and legs…as we approach our own wellness journeys. We want to maintain a mind that’s swingin’ with the program most of our lifetime. Same goes with the body. We want to be the ones who determine when we check out. And preferably, in our own beds. But, as Sister Genevieve stressed repeatedly, you gotta work it. She’s never seen the inside of a gym. She just keeps moving. You need to as well. She burns up the carpet at the convent all day long and has done this for a heck of a long time. She, like most fit people, eats simply every day, sticking to whole foods---she doesn’t know what Pop Tarts are--and she loves to savor her food. Yep, no vacuuming Mount Saint Pasta into her mouth.

When it comes to stress management, she loves to say “If you hope, you cope. If you don’t, you mope.” Amen, Sister! She’s learned to move on after every life experience--good, bad or otherwise--and glean the lesson to build her foundation of wisdom. It’s said that “the older you are, the healthier you’ve been.” I love that! So, I’m taking her to the University of Maryland medical school this month when I keynote one of their bicentennial celebrations. It is, after all, Women’s History month. I can’t wait to hear what she’ll say. What the heck. I’m bringing with me living history.

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A Liberating Epiphany

Hello everyone.

I’m sitting at my desk in my medical office after having seen my last patient of the day. I observed she had perfect hair, nails and teeth. Her make-up, jewelry and shoes were perfect. And then there was the area in between all of this finery. She was 48 years old, 5’5” and had no idea what her weight was. As we did the measurements of her body composition, she faintly smiled when the total body weight clocked in at 223 pounds with a body fat of 48.6% (normal is about 25%) and a girth of 44 inches (normal is considered less than 35).

“I guess I’m a bit overweight. But otherwise I feel fine”.

Nope, obese is the word. And “fine” as Fergie, Duchess of York once said, really means “Frantic Insecure Neurotic Emotional”. She should know, having battling the “I’m fine when I’m not syndrome for years”. When I asked my patient what size she was, she said “elastic”.

When I asked her what her cholesterol and blood pressure usually ran, she couldn’t recall, but she immediately chimed in that her hubby’s cholesterol was 205 and his blood pressure was terrific now that he’d been walking every day. But, what about her? This wonderful woman represented a pattern I see so often in women.

First, the appearance issue. Their “protein parts” are well attended to---the hair and nails. The accessories and skin were spot on. But the oasis in between was merely shrouded in loose fitting clothes and plenty of elastic. I am not a fan of elastic. Women never know if they’re putting on more weight since the elastic grows right along with them. They float. It fosters what this woman represents--- mind and body dissociation. That means she is not cueing into the fact that she’s carrying around so much excess fat. And that this fat is increasing her risk for breast cancer, and lack of girth control is ramping up her chances for getting diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Yikes. Time for a come to heaven session. We got down to the bottom of it. She’s just a fabulous care giver who never learned how to set boundaries to allow herself the time for her walk and her careful eating plan. She had a minor meltdown when she finally acknowledged her dissociation. Once she really saw what she was doing to herself, it was a painful yet liberating epiphany. When she left, she vowed to toss her elastic and start wearing fitted clothes that hug her and keep her mind tracking with her body. She committed to her daily walks and was excited about the thought of actually feeling her body move through space, stretching muscles, getting stronger, removing fat, and freeing herself to live the life she deserved.

As she left me today, she smiled and said, “My goal is to read a fashion magazine and not just buy accessories. I deserve to wear the clothes, too!” Yep, that she does.

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