Many people who keep up with “health” and getting into shape, and all the attendant essays, books, websites and folklore surrounding these topics, are probably aware of the “Couch Potato To 5K” program that’s fairly popular on the Internet. It’s usually shortened (in that internetty predilection towards acronyms) to CP25K. My daughter Lily, a dedicated runner, turned my attention to the program several months ago. The premise is pretty straight-forward: start out with very easy, very attainable goals, work at them 3 times a week, ~20 minutes at a whack, and ramp it up each week. The website lays out each week’s scheme. The first week, it’s 30 seconds jogging, 1:30 walking, for a total of 20 minutes. Each week increases the jog/walk ratio, and somewhere around the 9th week, the participant is running a full 5K. What could be easier?
As it turns out, many things. I’ve cranked up the program a couple of times, only to be stymied at the third week. Look, some of us just have a lot further to go, both physically and figuratively. I just never could keep ramping it up at the prescribed rate. Nevertheless, the benefits are obvious. So, in order to try and reap more of them, I decided, in my complete naiveté and utter lack of professional capability, but always in the complete conviction that I was utterly capable of designing such a thing, to invent my own program. And, being an internetty acronymizer of the first rank, gave it a clever name:
“Master It, Then Improve”. MITI. And, in recognition of the terrific progress my daughter made in her running, I added “Do It Everyday”. DIE. Or (at the very least) “Do It Every Other Day”. DIEOD. I believe that the success of an acronym lies mainly in its pronouncability. Well, “MITI/DIE/OD” is a sure winner. And the DIE/OD part, while perhaps having some negative connotations, is nevertheless truth in advertising. Anyway, here’s the program.
- Find yourself a course of some sort, some place to do the exercise. I’m lucky. There’s a gravel walk/jog/bike path that runs for 3 miles right along the Tennessee River in my home of Decatur, Alabama. But any place is fine. You really don’t even need a specific course, as we’ll see. But I think familiarity has some benefits. At least you know where the bends are, and you learn the turnarounds and so forth.
- Now choose: time or distance (Einstein says they’re both just the other side of the same coin, so it’s equivalent)
- Say you choose time. Then choose an amount of time that’s appropriate. Say you go for an hour. That means 30 minutes “in”, then turn around and 30 minutes “out”. That’s why, with the Time option, you don’t really need a course. Just a watch.
- Or choose distance. Say, 2 miles. Or 3. Or whatever. In choosing distance, you’ll definitely need some marker that you know is halfway, so you’ll know when to turn around.
- Start your exercise. Note the time, or reset the stopwatch, whatever.
- Walk the first 5 minutes or ¼ mile.
- Now: jog 30 seconds, then walk 1:30. Do this until half the time (or distance) is complete. At the halway mark, turn around and head back. Not necessary to match the turnaround point to when you switch from walk to jog or from jog to walk; just turnaround and head back. Maintain the jog/walk ratio.
- Walk the last five minutes or 1/4 mile.
That’s it. If 30 seconds is too much, start with 20 seconds or 15 or 5 or whatever you can do. If you’re in better shape, and 30 seconds jogging is too easy, well, start with 40 or 45. But here’s a hint: if 30 seconds is too easy, MITI/DIE/OD is probably not for you. Go do CP25K.
Now, you have the starting point. Next: Do It Everyday (Or Every Other Day). Find a time and a space, and do it consistently. Do it until you master it. That is, until there’s no problem doing the 30 second jog, and you are completely at ease with this level of effort. This means mainly that (1) your legs don’t hurt and (2) you can breathe easily for the whole outing. When this is the case, then improve. Increase the jog/walk ratio by whatever amount works for you. You might want to add 15 seconds to the jog, or maybe only 10. Now master that level of exertion, still investing the daily hour of effort. Master that new level of exertion, then increase the ratio again, and so on.
Master It. Then Improve. And Do It Everyday. (Or Every Other Day).
Body Fat, Nutrition, Water, Breath
But MITI/DIE is not just about becoming a jogger. For purely arbitrary reasons, I’ve added other aspects of “health”. Mainly because I’ve recently been at the nexus of several conjoining streams of good advice, so, what the heck? Why not just do all kinds of good things? Live better, live longer. Sort of anti-DIE, right?
As for losing weight, which for most Americans is no longer a luxury nor even a simple matter of narcissism, but rather a matter of life and death, it is an established fact that a the more muscle mass you carry around, the better your body burns up the residual fat, and the more “correct” your weight will become. Hence, my program includes some daily and weekly muscle work. Daily is a set of abdomen exercises. Situps, leg raises, crunches, bicycles, knee raises. Not killer, but steady. DIE, remember? And once or twice a week I work on upper body with weights. You can find any number of books or gyms that will give you an achievable program. For me, it’s definitely NOT about six-pack abs; it’s just about increasing muscle mass w.r.t. body fat. Note that I don’t spend much time on lower body work; MITI, plus daily bike rides have pretty much taken care of legs.
Nutrition & Water
Here’s a remarkable fact: eat less, and you will love longer and be healthier. This bit of wisdom is now just as proven as the “more muscle burns more fat” adage already mentioned. A good idea for most Americans (60% are overweight. Yes. 60%. Egad) is to eat less than 100% of the calories need to maintain your body weight. The web is full of places to calculate the latter, as well as sites that let you add up the daily total for the former. Here are a couple of weight maintenance calculators:
http://www.nutritiondata.com/tools/calories-burned
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm
Calorie King has a great database/calculator for figuring out how many calories are in that meal you just ate (or are planning to eat):
http://www.calorieking.com
When you figure out what calories your body needs to maintain your weight, then take some percentage less than that and restrict yourself to that amount. For instance, to maintain my 250 pounds 58 year old 5’8” mass, I need about 3450 calories. Say I choose 80% (I did), that means I should top off at 2760 calories/day.
How you arrange those calories is another matter. Low carb, no carb, good carb, whatever. As for me, I’ve chosen to eliminate red meat, and greatly reduce other meats, emphasizing fish, fresh vegetables (“whole foods”), leafy greens, and other such choices. Everyone’s mileage will vary, and everyone’s taste is different. Reduction is probably more important as a first consideration. But the more you can eliminate processed foods and substitute fresh foods… well, some things are more obvious than others. Oh, and an occasional fast (or juice fast) for a day or is also very beneficial. Fasting is much more difficult psychologically than it is a hardship physically. Try it a few times, you’ll be amazed.
[Youngest daughter and running junkie/healthy food advocate Lily requires me to urge you to strictly avoid fried foods, which is, I must admit, a very food idea. She also wants people to concentrate on raw, whole foods, and eat them sans salt, so as to savor the flavor. A tougher notion, regardless of how correct it is.]
Here’s breaking news: it is critical to drink LOTS of water. The old 8 12 oz glasses/day rule is hard to beat. Drinking water as a first resort when you think you’re hungry will definitely help curb appetite. But the most critical thing about water is its natural propensity to cleanse the body. And if you’re starting from the overweight, not-in-shape condition that most people attempting MITI are in, you’re body will soon be wanting to get rid of lots of toxins and metabolic by-products. Water is the channel for doing that. So drink lots of water, and pee lots of pee.
Breath
Breath is something you might not have expected to see discussed. Nevertheless, it is basic to everything. No breath, no oxygen. No oxygen, no movement. Corollary: less breath, less movement. Or, more breath means more movement. And less discomfort.
Here’s a funny little fact: if you can increase the amount of O2 getting to your muscles, they will (1) go further without fatigue and (2) ache less when you’re done. To accomplish this, one thing you can do is to simply concentrate on your breath, focusing on the inhalation and exhalation, watching yourself purposefully fill the lungs with oxygen and then deliberately expelling the carbon dioxide. Force it out.
Here’s a funny little side effect. It’s hard enough just getting the out of shape body to tackle this new regimen. But if you mindfully engage yourself with your breathing, I think you’ll find that it becomes a form of meditation. And if you’re concentrating on the breath coming in, then the breath going out, you have less mind available to be concerned with negative thoughts about your feet or legs hurting or whatever.
It’s also a nice way to estimate the time applied to jogging. After you go a bit, if you count your breaths, you may find that there’s a “standard” number of inhalations/exhalations that correspond to, say, 30 seconds of jogging. Knowing this, you can free yourself a bit from the clock, and instead count the requisite number of respiration cycles. It’s like a micro-goal.
Okay, that’s MITI. So, get started. And remember, DIE/OD. (Do It Everyday, or Do It Every Other Day).