Good Mood Diet Articles

Alice Lockridge, Physical Activity expert, MS PhysEd, Exercise Physiologist

If you want to be in a good mood every day, it's a good idea to get moving. Being physically active is one of the most important steps to good health, a good body weight and a good mood. From the time you wake up in the morning until you finally go to bed at night, each step you take counts toward your goal to be physically active. Of course a trip to the gym, tennis court or jogging trail are all great ways to get exercise but there are other ways, besides formal exercise routines, to help set your mood.

How Much is Enough?
Research has shown that those people who are physically active throughout their lives are the healthiest. But just how active do you have to be? How do you know if you're doing enough?

The answers: 10,000 steps a day and a digital pedometer.

A pedometer is a tiny, battery-operated mechanism that you wear on your clothes that counts every step you take. A pedometer is smaller and lighter than a cell phone or pager and is easy to use. The pedometer works because it feels your foot impact the floor and has a screen that shows your daily step count. This immediate feedback on how many steps you've taken is a great motivator. You will feel good knowing that every step counts as you go about your daily activities.

How Far is 10,000 Steps a Day?
Research has shown that it doesn't matter how far you travel in a day it just matters how many steps you take. An average person takes a 2½ foot long step; if they do that 10,000 times (2.5 X 10,000 = 25,000 feet), the distance is just a little less than 5 miles! You can get all your activity steps in your home or office and still be active enough to meet the daily health goal of being "physically active."

You don't need to change your clothes and go to the gym for this part of the health prescription. You see, Every Step Counts, even if it's walking around the house behind the vacuum cleaner or across the driveway carrying your groceries. Of course, there are other things you need to do during the week to be healthy, like strength building and stretching, but we'll talk about those later.

Start Here and Now
The place to start in your good mood plan is with getting enough physical activity. If you don't have an accurate pedometer, check out the pedometers at PRO-FIT's Exercise Express.

Put on a pedometer when you first get up in the morning and find out how many steps you take during the day. Wear your pedometer daily for a week or so and write down the number of steps you take each day. This will let you know if you are meeting the health goal of getting 10,000 steps a day. If you aren't quite there yet, you'll be able to watch the step count each day and know how much more you need to do. As you start to average 10,000 steps a day, your mood should be good and your health will start to improve.

Alice Lockridge, Physical Activity expert, MS PhysEd, Exercise Physiologist

How's your schedule? Packed with things you have to do, with no time left for your favorite exercise? Until you have time for that Big Deal Exercise Routine - whether that means going skiing, finding a personal trainer, or commiting to a running club, consider an informal Physical Activity Plan. Your plan doesn't have to include a health club membership, appointments with personal trainers, a whole new wardrobe, or another stop at the day care provider. Your Physical Activity Plan should be personalized to fit you and fit into your schedule.

Whatever makes you more able to get moving is okay for this plan. Walking is the most basic part of a Physical Activity Plan, so let's look for ways to put walking in your busy life.

• If you live in a neighborhood that isn't very walkable, consider a short drive to an area that has wide, flat sidewalks with ramps across the curbs. The easier-to-walk neighborhood will provide interesting scenery. Looping around the block can keep you near your car for easy access when your workout time is complete.


• If you have a small child and a stroller, you just need a sidewalk or a mall to get physical activity that includes your family and your personal need to get moving.


• If you have a parent or grandparent who uses a wheelchair, consider wheeling your loved one around the halls and grounds of their living quarters. You'll get moving and they'll have a fun spending time with you and get a stimulating change of scenery.


• If you have a dog, remember that they need exercise too. A brisk walk with a perky puppy (or even a lazy old dog) is a great way to increase your daily walking distance. Most of us take better care of others, so take advantage of this tendency and think of it as "really essential for the dog's health" and get moving!

To increase the chance that you will go for a walk every day, take a look at your wardrobe. Find the clothes that make it easy to get up and go for a walk no matter the weather or temperature.

• Have sturdy, supportive, walking shoes. In winter it's better to have shoes with more leather. This makes them more waterproof and warmer. In hot weather, have partial mesh uppers to keep your feet ventilated and cooler.


• Get comfortable pants, shorts or both to create layers for warmth.


• Both short and long sleeved shirts under a front-opening jacket or coat will give you layers for warmth and the ability to vent body heat once you've started to warm-up.


• If it's cold outside get a hat, scarf and gloves ready so you won't have to look for them when it's time to get moving.


• Pack these things near the door or in a small bag in your car so you are ready for quick walks every day.

Three ten-minute walks a day works well for those who just can't get away from work or family duties for very long. Others find it easier to go for the full 30-60 minutes once they finally get away from daily work. Either way really works and both types of activity can elevate your mood. The goal is to get 10,000 steps a day and to get about 30 minutes of brisk walking almost every day.

Get a Good Mood - Get Moving. You'll be amazed how fun it is to know you've done what's good for you.

Sometimes it's good to start with the dry, hard-to-fathom, scientific facts when you want to learn more about a subject. Here are some facts about body fat that you might find useful.

Fact 1: The average American female adult is just a little over 36% fat.
If you are anywhere near being an average American woman, you can easily estimate how much of your body weight is fat by dividing your total body weight by 3. To estimate your body composition a little more precisely, multiply your weight by 0.36. If you weigh 160, you'll get 57.6. This number is the pounds of fat you probably have. You do not need to lose 57.6 pounds!

A reasonable goal would be to reduce your fat pounds to the recommended range of 20%-27%, depending upon your age. If you weighed 160 and were the recommended 27% fat (160 X .27 = 43.2), then you'd have 43.2 pounds of fat. So to go from almost 60 pounds of fat down to 45 pounds of fat, you need to use up 15 pounds of fat to be at the recommended health percentage.

Fact 2: The average male body has over 26% fat.
Men, you can estimate how much weight in fat you have by dividing by 4 (or be more precise by multiplying your weight by 0.26).

Therefore, if you weigh 180 and have the average build for an American man, you have approximately 45 pounds of fat.

The recommended range for men is 15%-23% fat, depending on age. Men in this category have 27 to 41 pounds of fat. A reasonable fat-loss goal for a 180-pound average American man is 3-18 pounds, again depending on age.

FYI: Measuring Body Fat There are three ways to measure an individual's body fat. Each method has drawbacks, so most people find the math calculation method mentioned above to be the most appropriate. Skinfold measurements with fat-pinch calipers: The sum of your fat and skinfold measurements are compared to a gender-specific chart to give you an estimate of the weight of your overall body fat. Skinfold measurements pinch pretty hard and the accuracy is very dependent on the skill of the person doing the pinching. Bioelectrical impedance: This method involves an instrument that emits a low-level electrical current through an electrode into your body at your hand and out of your body at your foot. The amount of electricity that is impeded (stopped) is mostly due to the flow being blocked by non-water filled tissues, your fat cells. The instrument then uses your exact height and weight to calculate what percentage your body is lean and fat. Underwater weighting: When done in a laboratory setting, this is the most accurate method. But it's hard to do and a little scary since you have to put your whole body (and head) underwater and blow out all your air, have short hair and a completely empty stomach and bowel (which means you need to have an enema).

Fact 3: The more lean weight (muscle) you have, the less likely you are to create and store fat.
If a greater percentage of your body is muscle than fat, then it is somewhat harder for you to gain fat. Your metabolism level is a function of how much lean muscle you have and how reved up it is all day. Muscles are the only part of your body that use up stored fat. To ensure that your muscles keep your fat level in check, make muscles strong with resistance activities and then make sure they are active every day.

Fact 4: The more muscle you have, the more body fat and calories you burn, whether active or inactive.
Don't fall for that old adage that if you get muscled-up you'll have to keep strong or you'll just get fatter when you quit. That just isn't true. When you have firm strong muscles, you burn more calories (your metabolism is higher) all day long, even when you are sitting or sleeping. If you later stop the active lifestyle that made your body firm, your muscles atrophy at a speed correlated to how sedentary you become. But all the people who were never fit or strong will still be in a worse condition than you. There's no harsh, later-life punishment for being fit at some time earlier in your life!

Fact 5: A pound of human fat is equal to 3500 calories.
That means you have to eat 3500 calories more than your muscles burn to store one pound of fat. If you eat a piece of cake each evening that has 350 calories and you aren't at a metabolism level that will burn it up, then you will store the extra calories as fat. If this happens 10 times, you have enough extra food stored to add one pound.

This fact also means you must burn 3500 calories to take off one pound of fat. When it comes to burning fat, the math is similar. If you walk (or run) a mile you burn about 100 calories. (This is an average; very large people burn slightly more than this and small bodies burn slightly less.) If you walk 2 miles every day and your other daily activities have burned all the calories you ate, you will be in a calorie deficit and will burn stored fat equal to the 2 miles: 200 calories. If you do this at least 17.5 times (almost every workday in one month), you should expect to lose one pound of fat!

Fact 6: The last place your body deposits fat is the first place you tend to lose it.
Your body's adipose tissue cells are the stretchy storage units that are just waiting to hold any extra food you eat each day. These fat cells are arranged in an order determined by heredity, gender and hormone levels. Your body has a predetermined plan on the order in which these storage units will be filled and will empty them in virtually the opposite order. If you put fat on your thighs in your teens and not in your upper body until years later and then start to eat smarter and increase your physical activity level, you'll lose the fat that you haven't even noticed (behind your neck and around your armpits) in your upper body before you ever start to thin your thighs (that were the first to get fat).

Fact 7: For most people, exercising 4-5 days a week is the minimum requirement for improving or maintaining fitness, including weight-control.
The prescription is simple: Get a minimum of 10,000 steps every day. Do at least 2 days a week of strength building and maintaining exercises. Do at least 3 and at most 6 days a week of aerobic workout - that's at least 30 minutes a day, most days of the week. Every day you need to do some essential stretches to help maintain joint function.

Stay tuned for Alice's follow-up article, "Facts about Building Muscle."

Alice Lockridge, Physical Activity expert, MS PhysEd, Exercise Physiologist
with Liz Diether-Martin, Editor of The Good Mood Diet web site

How often have you heard the saying, “Use it or lose it?” And how often have you stretched your arms straight over your head and held them there for 60 seconds? If you’re like most people, you’ve heard the saying way more than you’ve done the stretch.

As a fitness instructor, I remind my clients that it’s a good idea to stretch every day even if they don’t do any other exercises. Stretching is also an integral part of a workout program:

• As the second part of the warm-up before any brisk physical activity. All it takes is a little walking for 5 minutes and a few static stretches (static means the stretch is held still) involving your shoulders, back, hips and calves. This combination enables your walking muscles to create heat to send to the stretched joints, readying them for more intense activity. With a quick warm-up you’ll feel better and be more apt to burn more calories during your workout. It also gives you an opportunity to notice sore spots or injured areas that need to be cared for before you work out. Try the stretches listed below, holding each stretch at least 10 seconds to produce the desired warm-up effect.


• During the cool-down phase after any vigorous physical activity, work or exercise. The following exercises are good for helping your muscles recover after a bout of intense or unfamiliar activity. Holding stretches for at least 10 seconds after workout helps you cool down and flush out metabolic waste products that are built up during the activity. Holding stretches for at least 60 seconds is needed if you want to increase your flexibility and ability to move through a larger range-of-motion. Pick one of these exercises to hold for the full minute each time you cool down to help you reach greater flexibility.

With all stretches, being careful with your body is key. Stretch slowly and hold still at the point where you feel a slight sensation of stretching. Never pull on a body part or bounce or jerk when stretching. Stretching should be a smooth action, not a quick or forceful action that could tear or injure the muscles. Abrupt, forceful stretches are counter-productive. Our bodies automatically respond to abrupt stretches by contracting the muscle. This protective response, called the Stretch-Contract Reflex, tries to prevent us from tearing our muscles.

Remember it this way: “Never stretch with a jerk!”

For each of these exercises, I’ll point out the ultimate goal. You may not be able to get there at first, but keep the goal in mind each time you stretch to help you have the most correct form.

Shoulder flexion

1. Lie on your back with knees bent and feet on the floor.
2. Reach your arms straight up over your head until they reach the floor.
3. Relax your arms and shoulder and lie passively.

The goal is to keep your arms narrow, alongside your head, elbows straight, with the length of your arms and your wrists touching the floor. Pay attention to your lower back and hold it in a neutral position without a huge arch underneath. If reaching your arms overhead pulls your back up into an arch, use your abdominal muscles to do a pelvic tilt to hold your trunk still.

Spinal twist

1. Lie on your back with your arms spread wide.
2. With one leg extended on the floor, bend the other knee and move it over and across your body and your straightened leg, trying to put your bent knee to the floor.
3. Relax and be passive, letting the weight of your leg and arms stretch your back muscles.
4. Pull your leg back and repeat, going the other direction with the other leg.

The long-term goal is to have both shoulders on the floor while your knee touches the floor. At first both may be off the floor and hovering. Be patient and let your body adjust to this new twist!

Spinal side bend

1. Sit on the floor with your legs either crossed or slightly bent.
2. Reach up with one arm, across your head toward the other side of the ceiling, keeping your elbow straightened.

The goal is to laterally bend your spine to 30 degrees and to stretch the muscles between your armpit and hip. Check your position: If you had keys in your upper hand and dropped them, they’d miss your head, but would drop straight to the floor on the opposite side of your body.

Spinal forward hang

1. While sitting with legs either crossed or slightly bent, let your arms hang loosely toward the floor.
2. Round your back and move your chin toward the floor.

The goal is to move your head as far from your tailbone as possible and make your back as round as possible.

Hamstring hug

1. Lie on your back and extend one leg on the floor.
2. Lift the other leg, with your hands behind your knee (on the back of your thigh not smashing your knee into hyperflexion).
3. Hug your thigh against your belly. Hold for 10 seconds.
4. Slowly straighten your knee, moving your foot up into sight while maintaining the hug of your thigh. Hold for 10 more seconds in a position just before the place that makes your leg “shake like a Chihuahua.” It should be a passive-held stretch not a tug-of-war!

The goal is to stretch the fibers of your hamstring that cross both your hip and the back of your knee. Normal range-of-motion is to be able to lift your leg, with your hip bent to a 90-degree angle, and have your knee straight. The ultimate position would be to have your leg move closer toward your face. Take care to avoid over-flexing your knee during the first part of this stretch. This stretch should be used to replace touching your toes from standing or seated positions.

Calf stretch – straight knee

1. While standing, position your right foot flat on the floor, pointing straight forward. This is the hard part. Your back foot will try to point outward, toward the side wall to avoid getting any stretch in your calf muscle.
2. Shift your weight back onto your right heel and gently take a normal step forward with your left foot. You don't have to be in a tight-rope walker's stance so step wide enough to maintain your balance.
3. With your right heel still on the floor, move your head and hips forward, away from your back heel and hold for at least 10 seconds.
4. Relax and repeat with the left leg in the back.

The goal is to stretch the gastrocnemius (the big calf muscle) so that the stretch sensation is in the belly, or the wide part of the muscle close to your knee. You should feel less of a stretch in the Achilles tendon, the big ropey tendon that attaches to your heel. Note: If these two calf stretches are too confusing to be done correctly, there is a great little blue calf stretch gadget made with a curved bottom that will keep you in the correct position and allow you to stretch longer and more comfortably.

Calf stretch – bent knee

1. While standing, position your right foot flat on the floor, pointing straight forward.
2. Shift your weight back onto your right heel and take a small step forward with your left foot so that the left foot is only slightly ahead of the right one. Again, step wide enough to maintain your balance.
3. Bend both knees and hips in a semi-squat, keeping most of your body weight on your right foot. Hold for at least 10 seconds.
4. Relax and repeat with the left leg in the back.

The goal is to stretch a much-underrated second muscle at the back of your calf. It's the soleus and it is much shorter than the gastrocnemius and only reaches up a few inches above your heel. Calf injuries are one of the most common for adults starting a new physical activity so don’t skip this stretch. Tight calf muscles can become injured and put a halt to your daily physical activity.

In several recent blogs, I’ve talked about one of my most frequently asked questions, in which the asker grabs some part of their body that they find undesirable and asks, “Can you give me an exercise to get rid of this?” This common question brings up two important topics: body shapes and where your fat is stored and that all-time favorite subject of “spot reducing.” To learn about where fat is stored and how different bodies burn fat differently, check my blog archives.

Today I’d like to talk about the fact that you can target muscle firmness – or tell your body exactly where to firm up a muscle.

Targeting muscle strength, firmness, and tone is a really good aspect of exercise. If you use a muscle (make it contract and relax repeatedly) it will be hungry or metabolically more active. If you do this often or involve a lot of muscles in this activity, you will use a lot of calories and perhaps burn some of your stored body fat. But of course, the fat that is burned isn’t necessarily the closest fat cells to the worked muscles.

If you have reached the primary goal of being physically active most days of the week, it’s a good idea to set a goal of doing some targeted strength building. To plan an exercise routine that will build strength in skeletal muscles, you should know the “Thirty Repetition Rule.” This rule of physiology says,

“If you can repeat an exercise 30 times, then that proves you are already as strong as that particular exercise can make you. You won’t get any stronger by doing it, even if you do it for more repetitions.”

If you want to get stronger, then you need to overload the activity enough that you are not quite able to do 10 repetitions of the activity. The resistance you use can be metal weights, rubber balls filled to make them heavy, jumbo rubber bands, or for some exercises, your own body weight. No matter what the resistance device or your age or gender, you want to make it hard to repeat the exercise 10 times. If you pick up a book bag to use for your weight and you find that you can only repeat the exercise 2 times because the bag is so heavy, then make it lighter until you find just the right weight – that you can perform between 8 and 10 repetitions and are really glad to stop there. If you can easily do 10 or 15 repetitions, then you will need more resistance to be able to make yourself stronger.

The American College of Sports Medicine advises that American adults should find 10 exercises to do at least twice a week and do them against a resistance that makes it hard to do 10 repetitions. Each exercise you do will probably need a different amount of resistance because different parts of your body have different strength levels. So plan on finding 4 to 10 different weights/bags/bands.

Once you have loaded the muscles that perform each of your chosen activities with enough resistance that it is hard to do 10 repetitions, you have found a way to build more strength, cause the muscles to firm up, and to become more toned. Keep at it about twice a week and your muscles will become stronger, denser, heavier and hungrier! You will then have a higher metabolic rate and will be able to burn today’s food better and also will be a better fat metabolizer to burn up yesterday’s stored food.

Finding ways to eat more food and not be concerned about it turning to fat puts me in a good mood!

The misconception of "lower abdominals" is still alive in gyms, on TV shows and in fitness magazines. Talking about and thinking that there really are muscles known as “the lower abdominals” is prevalent in school Phys Ed classes, personal training sessions and group exercise classes. It’s commonly heard but it’s just not true. There is no such muscle and therefore there is no need to make up exercises to strengthen it. Let it be heard loud and clear! You don’t need to work out, isolate or even strengthen your “lower abdominals” to attain a "flat stomach" or to strengthen your core!

The phrase “lower abdominals” implies that there is an abdominal wall muscle that is lower than the others. This is anatomically false. Just glance at any abdominal chart and you’ll be able to see that each of our abdominal muscles have attachment sites on the pubic bones (right there at the bottom of your jean’s zipper). None of them is any lower than the others.

Some think the words “lower abdominals” merely refers to the lower half of the central abdominal muscle, the rectus abdominus. The problem with thinking the lower portion of a muscle’s fibers are a separate muscle is that this implies the lower half of a muscle can contract without its upper half being affected. This is impossible due to the structural construction of our skeletal muscles. Read on to understand why this isn’t possible.

To understand the abdominal muscles, it is vital to understand the basics of all skeletal muscles. A muscle has at least two ends. These ends attach directly, or by way of a tendon, to at least two separate bones. Each muscle crosses at least one joint. When the muscle contracts, it either causes the joint between the two bones to flex (bend) or causes them to extend (straighten). One end of the muscle, referred to as its origin, is usually stable and doesn't move. The other end, called the insertion, usually moves when the muscle contracts.

Full range-of-motion is recommended

The meaty part of the muscle is made of fibers that stretch from the origin to the insertion. The long fibers in the abdominal muscles go from the origin (on the ribs and xiphoid process) to the insertion site (on the pubic symphysis). A concentric contraction (concentric means “toward the center”), done during curl-ups or sit-ups, is performed as the two ends move closer together. For full range-of-motion to occur on each repetition of the exercise, the muscle relaxes and allows its two ends to move as far apart as possible to regain its resting length. The next contraction happens from this length and is referred to as being done from its full range-of-motion. It’s considered a basic principle of good exercise performance to do all strength building exercises (including those for the abdominals) by going through a full range-of-motion.

The all-or-nothing principle of muscle contraction

The two ends of the rectus abdominis (the main abdominal muscle on the center front of your belly) move toward each other when the muscle fibers contract or one end can hold still while the other end moves toward it. They may switch duties, or they both may move toward the middle. But the entire length of the muscle fiber is always involved no matter which end is mobile. You can not isolate the muscle’s contraction into just one half the length of the muscle.

The “all-or-nothing principle” pertains to the length of a muscle fiber, not to all the fibers of a muscle. One fiber may contract while a nearby fiber does not, but the fiber that is contracting is committed along its entire length. A muscle fiber cannot contract along only half its length.

Imagine a stretched rubber band representing the rectus abdominis. As the rubber band shortens to its resting length, the entire band is involved in the shortening process. This is similar to the way the muscle contracts along its entire length. For one end of the muscle to move, it must be pulled upon from the anchored end at the origin site. Hence, the lower end of the abdominal muscle cannot contract without affecting the rest of the length of fiber.

Spot reducing

Exercisers have been led to believe that exercises for the “lower abdominals” are those that make the bottom end of the abs move or at least feel the pain of exercise (for example: when the hips lift and the ribs remain stationary on the floor). This makes you "feel" the exercise below the waist where most people store most of their abdominal fat. Exercisers gladly try to feel the exertion near this fat storage spot because they believe in spot reducing. They believe that if the pain is near their detested fat pad that fat will be targeted and made to reduce. This dangerous misconception perpetuates the belief that you need to feel pain to gain the effects of exercises.

If “spot reducing” is inherently linked to lower abdominal exercises, then the entire concept is incorrect. Different exercises move either one or both ends of the rectus abdominis, but that movement does not mean the fat above it is being used to fuel the movement. Nor does it mean one particular end of the muscle is going to be strengthened or tightened more than the other. There is no need to switch emphasis of which attachment site is held stationary on any other muscle group to cause directed fat loss. Doing a variety of abdominal exercises is nice and may prevent boredom and fatigue that makes you stop exercising before very many calories have been burned, but the variety is not essential. A full range-of-motion is the best way to strengthen the muscle. A stronger muscle is firmer, harder or tighter. A stronger muscle has a higher metabolic rate and will use more calories daily, even during rest.

It's time to be cognizant and to apply these basic exercise principles to our abdominal wall workouts and stop taking exercise advice from poorly trained “trainers” who pass on erroneous gym talk about "lower abs."

Experts advise us to perform at least four different abdominal exercises to give enough variety to stimulate each of the four pairs of abdominal muscles (none of which are the “lower” abdominals). I'll share my favorite abdominal strengthening exercises in my next article.

Eat right and exercise regularly!
Alice Lockridge