Supernatural Botanicals

Here are five great magazines to get to know better. 

  Body + Soul Magazine:  Articles on whole living, living green, health and fitness articles, recipes.

  Cooking Light:  Hundreds of light, low calorie, and low fat recipes each month.  Great fitness articles.  Wellness.

  Organic Gardening:  Advice on green gardening, eco-issues, environmental issues, living organically.

  Every Day with Rachael Ray:  Many recipes each month, lifestyle advice, decor, girlfriends, household tips, etc.

  Cincinnati Magazine:  A favorite resource guide for local Cincinnatians.  Shopping, dining, events in and around Cincinnati.

Did you know that your skin can retain up to five cups of water every time you take a shower?  Good news for hydrated skin…bad news for the scale.  If you regularly weigh yourself, make sure and do it before the shower.  Five cups of water won’t be doing you any favors on the scale. 

Speaking of photoshopping…People magazine’s cover girl Valerie Bertinelli can’t believe her bikini body at age 48!

Neither can Michael K. over at Dlisted.  Here’s what MK has to say…  Quote:  Valerie should also consult a medical professional, because it can’t be healthy that her thighs and arms got a bad case of the jaggeds. ….Michael K. from Dlisted.com

That Michael K. is so observant!

Update:  Further research has found that Miss Bertinelli says she was 5’2″ and 172 pounds before she started her diet.  She claims to have lost 40 pounds…making her 132 pounds currently….still 5’2″ we are assuming.  First of all, glance up at the picture again and see if that looks like 5’2″ and 130 pounds.  Secondly, if you calculate her height and weight on the body mass index (BMI) calculator, she’s 0.8 of a point from being labeled as “overweight”!    Wouldn’t it be great if People magazine actually showed you what she really looks like and her real accomplishments?  She lost 40 pounds!  That’s such an accomplishment…but photoshopping to this degree really undermines her hard work.  It’s as if they said, yes, you look good, but not quite good enough.   Numbers don’t lie.  We know what 130 pounds looks like on a 5’2″ frame….and it doesn’t look like the picture above.  Magazines should stop their lie-telling.  I mean, if they are writing stories to inspire others, shouldn’t they be giving factual information?

   You’ve heard many, many people say it before…..”I have no idea how much I weigh, I just go on how I feel.”  Admittedly, going on how you feel is certainly one way to assess your overall well-being and feeling of confidence, but it’s not the whole picture.  I’ve heard professionals in the fitness industry tell their clients to throw out the scale, don’t worry about the numbers.   That logic, to me, is not very logical. 

Have you ever solved any of the problems in your life by ignoring them?  I believe that to be a very inefficient way to deal with problems in one’s life.  I say, step on the scale, see your numbers, know what you are dealing with, see your progress and/or obstacles.  How can you accurately know what’s happening with your body if you won’t even step on a scale? 

I have this scale (two of them, actually.)  It’s a Tanita Body Fat Composition Scale.  It’s amazing!  Not only does it tell you your weight, it also tells you your body fat percentage, bone mass, muscle mass, visceral fat percentage (fat around your belly), percentage of hydration in your body, physique rating, metabolic age, and also calories needed for the day.   Now that’s documentation that I can do something with.  If the scale shows that I weigh two more pounds than normal, I see what else is going on….like my muscle mass increasing, my bone mass increasing, my body fat decreasing.  When you strength train, you’ll notice that your actual weight can go up a pound or two, but your body fat will be decreasing.   You most certainly want to increase that lean muscle mass in your body.  Think of it this way…. a five pound piece of led could fit in the palm of your hand, but it would take a huge pile of feathers to add up to five pounds.   Lean muscle (the piece of led) takes up less room in your body than fat (the pile of feathers.)   A pound is a pound, but it takes up less room, therefore, your body takes up less room (skinnier!)  Make sense?

Ignoring the scale is absolutely one of the most insane notions I have come across in the fitness industry.  I can assure you that no one has solved problems by ignoring them.  It’s important to know how much you weigh.  You could have a critically high body mass index, or BMI, that seriously puts your health in jeopardy.  And to the contrary, you need to see your progress after pouring blood, sweat, and tears into your workouts….with the emphasis being on sweat.  Whatever it is that is going on with your body right now, you need to know about it.  It’s time to break out the scale and get real with yourself.  Hiding from it won’t make the numbers any better.  Be accountable and take charge.  I highly recommend a scale that will give you more info than how much you weigh.  I’ve had great success with my Tanita scales, have had them for more than six years, and enjoyed them ever since. 

The whole movement against the scale is complete lunacy in my estimation.  Don’t ignore the numbers, embrace them and tweak them, if need be.  This way, at least you know.  To my knowledge, no one has ever solved a problem by ignoring it, so take a look in the mirror, know you can handle whatever it is the scale throws back at you, and own up.  It’s the only way.