Top 5 Ways to Gain Fat if Overeating Makes You Sick
If you want to gain fat, this doesn’t mean you should force down foods you don’t like such as gritty protein powders or a ton of fastfood.
Obviously, if you pig out with the highest-calorie foods at fastfood restaurants a few times a day, you will gain fat.
Some fastfood selections are inundated with calories.
Assume that any gargantuan-portioned dish at a fastfood place is loaded with calories and fat. That’s a given.
However, there are alternatives that are cram-packed with calories, such as cashews and peanuts. Snacking on peanuts and cashews will help you gain fat.
Add pine nuts to salads and meat dishes. One tablespoon of pine nuts contains 190 calories, and they are very tasty. Any kind of nut should be part of your weight gain plan. Nuts are good for the body.
Smearing peanut butter on whole grain crackers or, better yet for weight gain, a whole grain bagel, will also contribute to your weight gain plan.
I’ve found that a chocolate mint bar can be devoured in seconds with a chilly glass of milk.
If you like chocolate mint, then snack on a couple of supersize chocolate mint bars – that’s almost 1,000 calories — that you can get at Whole Foods Market.
These bars have fewer processed ingredients than conventional mint patties.
Add a tall glass of milk and that’s another 200 calories or more, depending on type of milk.
Less Healthful, but Very Delicious Options
©Lorra Garrick
A breakfast of waffles, pancakes or French toast will add significant calories to your daily diet.
One tablespoon of regular syrup is an outlandish 200 calories, give or take.
When you pour syrup on your pancakes, waffles or French toast, you’ll be pouring (and thus eating) far more than just a few tablespoons.
Three pancakes can easily soak up five tablespoons of syrup.
The pancakes, waffles and French toast add a lot of calories, but don’t forget the butter – add a tablespoon of butter, and you have a ridiculously calorie-packed meal, and that excludes the tall glass of milk!
You are on your way to successful fat gain.
Additional Ways to More Easily Gain Fat
Load up on mashed potatoes, stuffing and plain cheese pizza.
Keep in mind that conventional grocery store preparations of these foods are highly processed and have very high sodium content.
An alternative is to make them at home.
Nevertheless, a whole box of Stovetop stuffing is about 1,000 calories, yet is easy to gobble down.
So have fun on your plan to easily gain fat, but don’t give up exercise; exercise is always important and should be a staple, whether you want to lose fat or gain fat.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified by the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained clients of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Shutterstock/fizkes
Improve Brain Power with Balance Exercises
Brain power can be improved by doing physical things like balance and not just by performing mental tasks like crossword puzzles.
Never underestimate the effectiveness of balance-based exercises for improving the function of your brain.
Balance and coordination training will boost the power of your brain by engaging the nervous system to take on new challenges.
Neuromuscular facilitation is what happens when you perform balance exercises, and this affects the brain by forcing new neural connections to develop.
Exercise that revolves around balance will help prevent or minimize cognitive decline that comes with age.
You’ve certainly seen some balance-training tools at your gym, namely, wobble boards and pliable curving surfaces that people stand upon.
And for some individuals, just maintaining a standing position on these is challenging. For others, merely standing on these implements is too easy.
When you do balance exercises, the brain gets involved by trying to figure out how to solve the riddle of keeping balance during the task.
This keeps brain neurons active and working, causing them to sprout new pathways that link to other neurons.
Suppose it’s a major struggle for you to stand on a mushy air cushion or shaky wobble board, and at the same time, perform dumbbell curls.
If you do this often enough, eventually it will become easy; your nervous system has sprouted new neural connections to carry out this task efficiently. Your brain was involved just as much as your feet, legs and arms.
Convenient Balance Exercises for Boosting Brain Health
Wobble board. A simple, cheap board will do. These are sold online. If you need to at first, lightly hold onto a table or countertop. Freepik.com, Racool_studio
-Stand on one leg. If this is easy, lift the knee high. Rotate the raised leg to your side. Close eyes. Do this standing on a wobble board or air cushion. Add arm and torso movement.
Stand on one foot for 30-60 seconds. Shutterstock/Jacob Lund
Go up and down on your feet standing on a BOSU board. Freepik/pvproductions
-Walking or jogging backwards on a treadmill without holding on.
-Walking or cantering sideways on a treadmill without holding on.
-Step-back lunges, and forward and side kicks (cardio kickboxing classes/martial arts).
-Swiss ball routines. For example, sit on ball and grab right foot with both hands, and pull leg up to stretch the hamstring (leg does not need to be perfectly straight up), while other foot remains planted on floor. Hold for about 8 seconds, then switch legs.
-Bench crunches. Keep hands in the air, crossed at your chest, or folded atop your head, while crunching in as tightly as possible before extending the legs.
-Hopping up a flight of stairs with both legs at the same time, without holding the railings.
-And of course, one of the best ways to improve balance is with yoga.
As you improve brain power with balance exercises, you may not realize it in a direct way, especially if you’re younger.
But as you age, all that balance exercise will come in handy because you’ll have more “neural reserves” from which the aging process will draw from.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified by the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained clients of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Freepik.com, kjpargeter
Weight Gain from Staying Up Late, Sleeping In: Link Not Clear
If you’re trying to lose weight or prevent weight gain, you’d better not stay up late and sleep in, as this increases the risk of putting on fat.
Weight gain is a risk from staying up late each night and then sleeping in.
A Northwestern Medicine study says that the weight gain risk, from these sleeping habits, results from night owls consuming more food in the evening, greater amounts of fast food, and fewer vegetables and fruits.
They tend to weigh more than normal-cycle sleepers. So far, sounds like nothing inherent in going to sleep late and awakening late causes weight gain, but rather, causes or leads to eating habits that are conducive to weight gain.
Another thing that I wondered about, at this point, was the idea that people with bad eating habits who don’t care about health, are more likely to stay up late, sleep in and just gain weight.
In short, I did not see any cause-and-effect relationship with the study. The night owls also drank more sugary sodas – again, which came first, the chicken or the egg?
“The extra daily calories can mean a significant amount of weight gain — two pounds per month — if they are not balanced by more physical activity,” explains (in the report) co-lead study author Kelly Glazer Baron, who is a health psychologist and neurology instructor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Co-lead author Kathryn Reid points out that the extra junk food calories eaten at night may be because there are “less healthful options at night,” though she also adds that night owls may simply prefer more calorie-rich foods.
My question then is: How can there be fewer healthful options at night if your kitchen is stocked with healthful foods?
This sounds more like it has to do with what the night owl purchases at the grocery store, not whether or not Joe’s Vegan Restaurant is open all hours of the night.
“Human circadian rhythms in sleep and metabolism are synchronized to the daily rotation of the Earth, so that when the sun goes down you are supposed to be sleeping, not eating,” says Phyllis Zee, MD, senior study author, professor of neurology, director of the Sleep and Circadian Rhythms Research Program at Feinberg.
“When sleep and eating are not aligned with the body’s internal clock, it can lead to changes in appetite and metabolism, which could lead to weight gain.”
Now we’re talking, I then reflected, because “metabolism” is mentioned.
Indeed, wayward sleeping habits can disrupt metabolism – the rate at which one burns calories – and cause weight gain.
The study summary didn’t detail this, but as a fitness professional and weight loss expert, I already know the fact that going to bed late cheats the human body out of maximal production of human growth hormone during sleep.
To optimize production of HGH, one should get 7-8 hours of quality sleep between 9 pm and 6 am.
HGH is one of the most powerful, if not the most potent, natural fat-burners. You get shorted on this due to unnatural sleeping habits, and you can forget about optimizing weight loss.
This doesn’t mean that all night shift workers or second-shift workers will gain weight or struggle to keep a lean body.
I used to work a third shift and second shift, and I did not experience weight gain. I still got strenuous workouts in, played tons of volleyball and was conscious of my eating habits.
People who choose second shifts may do so because they are hardcore partiers, not likely to be gym rats who prefer clean eating over junk food eating.
One of my second-shift coworkers, a chunky woman, told me she chose the shift so that she could go clubbing afterwards.
The Northwestern researchers plan on broadening their study to a larger community, to further investigate the effect of staying up late and sleeping in, with metabolism, weight gain and other factors like circadian rhythms.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: ©Lorra Garrick
Source: sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110504111143.htm
What’s an Effective Low Back Exercise for the Elderly?
There is a low back exercise that elderly people can do that will also significantly enhance their efficiency in daily living tasks. It is the deadlift.
I have yet to see a personal trainer having a senior citizen client doing a deadlift. When I was training people over 65 at a health club, I had them perform the deadlift motion.
The key here is the MOTION. The amount of weight on the bar can be as light as only five pounds.
The deadlift motion, performed with a very light weight for novice older people, can reactivate many dormant muscles.
It’s actually a safe exercise, even though it’s a competition event for powerlifting meets.
Shutterstock/Ihor Bulyhin
When performed with a light barbell that engages the entire body including the core, with the goal of improved fitness and mobility rather than winning a powerlifting meet — the deadlift is a lot safer than you may think.
This puzzles me, because the deadlift can be very safe for senior citizens when coached properly, and will go a long way in 1) helping prevent low back pain, and 2) alleviating existing low back pain.
Before you conclude that the defining characteristic of the deadlift exercise is hoisting up a very heavy thick barbell, you are very much mistaken.
The image below shows how to perform a deadlift. Don’t let the youth of the model deter you.
Shutterstock/Everyonephoto Studio
So very few senior age people do the deadlift, it shouldn’t be surprising that I couldn’t find a photo sequence of an elderly-looking man or woman performing this exercise. I found only stills.
A frail elderly person can do bodyweight-only deadlifts as a start. The progression could be holding a broomstick or holding a 2-pound dumbbell in each hand.
Elderly people desperately need to lift weights, and the deadlift is one of the best strength training routines because it works the entire body at once.
“Resistance exercise is a great way to increase lean muscle tissue and strength capacity so that people can function more readily in daily life,” says Mark Peterson, Ph.D., a research fellow in the University of Michigan Physical Activity and Exercise Intervention Research Laboratory, at the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
This fact applies to elderly people. Peterson adds: “Our analyses of current research show that the most important factor in somebody’s function is their strength capacity.
“No matter what age an individual is, they can experience significant strength improvement with progressive resistance exercise even into the eighth and ninth decades of life.”
Trudy Daxon is of elderly age and just completed the top movement of the deadlift.
Hear that? If you’re in your 80s or 90s, it is not too late to reap benefits from lifting weights, and the deadlift – even with just your bodyweight – is a form of strength training.
Muscles worked include the front and back of the legs, upper back, middle back, shoulders, arms, and of course, the lower back.
A weak lower back is an impediment in many activities of daily living, as well as physical endeavors that senior citizens like to participate in, such as recreational hiking, wallyball, golf and bowling. A weak lower back will also become an issue during gardening.
Peterson endorses full-body exercises – exercises that engage more than one joint at a time (which means more than one muscle group at a time).
The deadlift is a very multi-joint exercise, tapping into the hip joints, knee joints and shoulder joints.
For elderly people who already go to a gym or health club, they should consult with a personal trainer to learn proper deadlift form.
However, the technique isn’t that far-removed from what people already do around the house; it’s just a modified (and safer) version.
Around the house, bending over to pick something weighted off the floor (such as a box of magazines, a cat, a toddler, a basket of laundry, a bucket of paint, a toolbox) yields a multi-joint motion that is similar to a deadlift. However, often, people use improper form and “throw their back out.”
As an elderly person gets stronger with the deadlift motion, he or she can advance to a 20-pound barbell if their gym has these.
A bare Olympic bar weighs 45 pounds. If that’s too heavy, dumbbells can be used.
But bear in mind that “Deadlifting 101” is not covered in medical school or in any hospital training.
So don’t be surprised if your physician has no idea what a deadlift is.
Ask if it’s okay to do strength training exercises that engage the lower back muscles.
Contraindications to strength training typically apply to intensity rather than to the type of motion.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Source: sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110331163539.htm
Five Traits of Kids Who Are Bully Proof
An expert on bullying explains five common characteristics of kids who are bully proof.
Don’t assume that in order for kids to be bully proof, they must act tough or exude a “You’d better not mess with me” persona.
To act tough to gain a bully proof armor is, essentially, over-correcting to prevent being bullied.
Kate Walton, a former public school teacher, has developed very effective anti-bullying strategies for schools, and she speaks to schools and universities on the topic of “The Power of Human Kindness.”
A mother of two, Walton is also the author of young adult novels about the hideous consequences of bullying, “Cracked” and “Empty.”
Walton says that the students she’s worked with throughout the years, whom she’d categorize as bully proof, shared five key traits. They are as follows:
Dignity and respect. Bully proof kids “treated every child around them with dignity and respect, regardless of popularity, race, gender, etc.,” says Walton.
There was no distinction in terms of ethnicity, religion, size, etc. Rather, everyone, in the eyes of bully proof kids, was a human being.
Confidence. Bully proof kids exude what Walton refers to as a quiet confidence.
This doesn’t mean meekness, but a self-assured type of quietness; no need for arrogance or loudness.
Happiness. Bully proof kids are happy and comfortable in their own skin, says Walton.
They are fine with their physical attributes, even if they don’t blend in.
Diffuser. Another trait of bully proof kids is that of not being afraid to stand up to bullies, but doing so in a diplomatic way.
Bully proof kids also “typically diffused the tension without any resulting drama,” says Walton.
At ease with expression. The fifth trait common to bully proof kids is ease at expressing their feelings, whether on paper or conversationally, says Walton.
These five common traits of bully proof kids all add up to confident, well-adjusted, happy, kind and compassionate individuals, says Walton, and these traits can certainly be cultivated at home by parents who set a proper example.
“When parents or caretakers parent in a compassionate, conscientious, and diligent manner, the result is a great kid!”
A mother of two, Kate Walton is also the author of two young adult novels about bullying, “Empty” and “Cracked.”
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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Top image: ©Lorra Garrick
Strength Training Guide for 300 Pound Women: Safe, Burn Fat
You’re never too heavy, never too fat, to begin strength training with weights.
Do you weigh 300 pounds and want to start lifting weights (strength training), but don’t have the tiniest clue how to begin, how much weight to lift, how many sets and reps, etc.? I’m a certified personal trainer.
Being 300 pounds or morbidly obese is not a contraindication to strength training.
No matter how heavy or “fat” you are, this is not a medical reason to avoid strength training.
In fact, if you weigh 300, even 400 pounds, the way you would strength train would be no different than if you weighed half this much. Lifting weights does not require a thin or light body.
Weigh 300 pounds?
Now is better than ever to begin strength training.
Obesity significantly impacts the ability to move swiftly. Strength training for fitness, fat-burning and better health does not require swift movement.
Being obese also interferes with one’s wind during cardio activities. Strength training is not a cardio activity; the work demand is primarily on the bones and muscles, not the cardiorespiratory system.
Weigh 300 pounds? Don’t wait till you lose pounds to begin strength training.
Strength training burns fat. Waiting around does not. Get started now. That’s the first step. Just get through the doors of the gym, health club or rec center.
“Help! I weigh 300 pounds and wouldn’t know what to do in a gym!”
Not knowing what to do is not (or should not be, anyways) a function of one’s body weight. Imagine you weigh 150 pounds and are setting foot in a gym for the first time.
- Would you feel as helpless?
- If not, why? You’d still be doing the same thing for the very first time: pushing and pulling against resistance.
So pretend you weigh 150 pounds, because weighing 300 or 400 will not make performing most strength training routines more difficult than if you were smaller.
Shutterstock/Reshetnikov_art
Novices, regardless of their size, should start out with light resistance. Do not complicate things or else you’ll be setting yourself up for confusion.
Give yourself permission to take a while to figure out how a machine works.
Sit in the machine and take some deep breaths and relax. There is no deadline.
The machine should have an illustration of how it is used. Many machines are very self-explanatory.
As for how much weight to lift, it won’t hurt to just start out with the lightest possible, to get used to the machine.
Do 15 to 20 repetitions at this light sample weight.
Take your time in between routines for various body parts. Spend 30-60 minutes sampling various machines.
If you weigh 300 pounds, don’t let this stop you from walking into the free weight area and picking up some light dumbbells.
Lie on a bench and press them over your chest.
Or sit against a back support and press dumbbells over your head.
Sample the cable machine for back routines (pulling actions).
Being very heavy will not make it more difficult for you to do most strength training routines.
Stick to the basics to work the major muscles: seated leg press machine, pull-over or pull-down machine, and seated chest press.
Ask a personal trainer to identify this equipment for you. Also ask about the seated row, shoulder press, leg extension and leg curl machines.
You will continue weighing 300 pounds unless you make some changes. Get into comfortable clothes and head to the gym right now!
Once your body begins acclimating to strength training, make a point of increasing the amount of weight that you’re lifting — gradually over a period of time. This is called progressive resistance.
This is crucial for significant improvement in body composition (ratio of fat to lean muscle tissue) and fitness.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Shutterstock/New Africa
Jumping Workout with an 18 Inch Stool: Burn Fat
Learn how to use an 18 inch stool to burn the most fat possible.
Jumping routines with an 18 inch stool will burn fat and reap other fitness benefits. Eighteen-inch workout stools are sold online.
The great thing about plyometric (jumping) workouts is that there’s plenty of rest or downtime.
This is motivating because it makes you want to really go at it when it’s time to resume the jumping.
Stool jumping, even with an 18 inch device, should be rhythmic, smooth and clean, and quiet. If feet are slamming and making a lot of noise, this means lack of control.
Jump up and down as quietly as possible and see what happens. If it’s difficult to be smooth and quiet, then keep working at it; that’s part of the workout.
A hardcore jumping routine will activate fast twitch muscle fiber. Take a look at people who are skilled jumpers — jumping over and over onto an 18 inch stool (or sturdy box).
Do they ever look out of shape?
Do they ever have flabby, scrawny or chunky legs?
Even their upper body looks very fit. Plyometrics are part of any savvy fitness enthusiast’s program.
18 Inch Stool Workout for Burning off Fat
Beginners won’t do too well with 18 inch stool jumping, and thus, this program is more suitable for intermediate and advanced performers who’d like to burn fat.
Warming up for a plyometric session can be done by doing plyometrics. That’s the beauty of jumping exercises; you can go right into the actual mode of exercise with your warm-up.
Simply jump onto the stool with both feet at once, then jump off. Pace or march in place for several seconds, then jump again.
Focus on form and quietness, like a cat landing.
As you feel your body warming up, shorten the intervals between each jump.
Maybe toss a set of jumping jacks in between. And when jumping off the stool, don’t just jump off from where you came, but jump off to the other side — a forward exit.
Jump twice or thrice in a row quickly, then as fast as possible. Then do five jumps in rapid succession.
Simply jumping up and down in all these ways is a workout in itself for many trainees, even advanced.
How to Increase the Intensity
An advanced or very fit individual could increase intensity (and therefore increase fat burning) by doing the following:
• Increasing the distance from the jumping point to the stool.
• Increasing the distance from the stool to the floor landing point.
• Adding a pike when jumping off the stool.
• Jumping as high as possible when jumping off the stool.
• Adding a quarter or half squat upon landing onto the stool and then immediately squat jumping off of it.
• Adding a quarter or half squat upon landing back onto the floor.
• Jumping sideways onto the stool and/or sideways off of it.
• Holding weights when jumping
Plyometrics with the 18 inch stool should be conducted with strength training in mind, not aerobics.
This isn’t about trying to jump nonstop for 20 minutes. It’s about power, tapping into the fast twitch muscle fibers, which utilize more energy than the endurance-designed slow twitch.
With plyometrics, the goal is to jump with the most power: height, speed and distance, rather than doing tons of weak jumps nonstop over a long stretch of time.
This way you’ll burn more fat. Plyometric training is about explosive bursts, not endurance, for maximal fat burning and strength training.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Shutterstock/wavebreakmedia
GOMAD Alternatives that Work Better for Weight Gain
GOMAD means a gallon of milk a day, but there are better ways to gain weight.
GOMAD means a gallon of milk a day for weight gain; have you hopped on the GOMAD bandwagon? There is nothing special about milk that it should be regarded as a superior way to gain weight.
Though it’s true that people trying to lose weight will avoid whole milk like the plague, this doesn’t mean that whole milk is the ultimate for weight gain. Let’s look at GOMAD more closely.
A gallon of milk every day.
- There are 128 ounces in one gallon.
- Eight ounces of whole milk are 150 calories.
- There are 16, 150 calorie servings in one gallon (128 ounces) of whole milk.
- This means that GOMAD translates to 2,400 calories.
Wow — that’s a lot of calories to pile onto what you’re already eating on a daily basis.
Shutterstock/Andarii
So if you normally eat 3,000 calories a day of food and other beverages and still wish to gain weight, it only makes sense that tacking on an additional 2,400 calories a day will definitely make you gain weight.
There are 3,500 calories in one pound of fat. Assuming that with a GOMAD program, you continue to eat your normal 3,000 calories a day, rather than allow the milk to replace some of those calories, you will gain a pound of fat about every one and a half days (since 2,400 times three is 7,200, and remember, there are 3,500 calories in one pound of fat).
You will gain about four and a half pounds a week on GOMAD as long as the milk does not replace any of your regular food intake.
Some claims say that you can put on 25 pounds in 25-30 days with GOMAD.
Based on the math you just read, you know that this gain-rate of 25 pounds in 25-30 days is impossible.
It will also be difficult not to feel so full and bloated from all that milk, that it ends up replacing some of the calories you normally eat.
Think about that: A gallon of milk a day is a LOT. Some men who do GOMAD report having to run to the bathroom all day long with diarrhea.
Can you really drink all that milk, day after day?
If you love the taste of plain milk, GOMAD is doable.
- But will your stomach have room for all that extra fluid?
- And what will you do after you reach your weight gain goal?
- How will you maintain that weight gain?
- You can’t do GOMAD for life.
A better alternative to GOMAD is consuming a food that, for a much smaller amount than a gallon of milk, offers far more calories.
This way, you won’t feel stuffed or bloated; won’t have diarrhea emergencies; and won’t suffer the drudgery of having to drink down so much of the same bland-tasting beverage day in and day out.
You can get an additional 1,200 calories a day (no need to spike it way up to 2,400) by making the following changes daily:
- Adding a few tablespoons of olive oil to your salads and the water you cook rice in
- Eating a bowl of cashews, peanuts or other nuts
- Eating Grapenuts cereal (this stuff is loaded with calories and is a good source of complex carbs)
- Eating protein smoothies made with peanut butter; and increasing consumption of other high calorie foods such as avocados and lamb (which is free of hormones and antibiotics).
Chocolate coconut balls — made with coconut oil, coconut flakes, chocolate powder, almond powder and pureed dates — are loaded with calories.
Since a gallon of milk contains 64 grams of fat, it wouldn’t be any worse if you added a serving of ice cream at the end of the day to the above plan.
After all, your goal is weight gain, rather than eating the healthiest diet in the world.
If your primary goal is to put on weight and get bigger from your gym workouts, you can easily take in that additional 1,200 calories a day with a breakfast of French toast, natural butter and natural maple syrup, plus a tall glass of milk.
One quarter cup of maple syrup is about 200 calories. Do you realize how many quarter cups of maple syrup you’d use for four or five slices of French toast?
Add to that the butter, eggs, bread and milk, and there’s your 1,200 calories, easily. Then eat as you normally would the rest of the day.
When you get sick of French toast, substitute pancakes or waffles. When you get sick of it all, have a large bowl of Grapenuts, then eat a bowl of cashews as a mid-morning snack.
Have some pie and ice cream with your peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch.
Have a “hard gainers” protein shake a little while later. Go generous with the high fat salad dressing on your dinner salad.
There are all sorts of little tricks you can do for weight gain, that will be far more enjoyable than stuffing down a gallon of milk a day.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified by the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained clients of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
Homeschooling a Bullied Child: Pros & Cons
This article deals specifically with home schooling as a possible solution to bullying, since some parents of bullied children are at their wit’s end.
There are lots of online articles about the pros and cons of home schooling, but what about specifically for removing a child from an environment of bullying?
I first want to point out that this article isn’t about home schooling a child to prevent bullying that never happened.
When parents are asked why they home school their children, they may name “so that they don’t get bullied in the classroom” as one of the reasons, even though their kids have never even set foot inside a “regular” school.
My niece has always been home schooled. I’m sure that one of the reasons for this is to prevent bullying (which of course, has never happened since she’s always been home schooled).
But what about “yanking” a child out of a traditional setting and into the home school environment to escape from actual bullies?
Shutterstock/ VCoscaron
“While the first instinct is to remove the child from a negative environment for instant relief, the long term view needs to be the real focus,” begins Janet Lehman, MSW, co-creator of The Total Transformation Program; social worker who’s been a case manager, therapist and program director for 25+ years in traditional residential care and group homes for troubled children.
She explains that if the decision to home school is primarily fueled by educational reasons, it can be great.
I wonder if my niece, who at age 7 was reading at tenth grade level (I witnessed this), would have acquired this skill had she been in a traditional academic setting.
Lehman points out that kids (including victims of bullies) need to have “plenty of opportunity to interact with peers to develop a skill set to deal with troublesome personalities.
“The desire to swoop in and fix things can backfire if the message that your child is getting is that he is incapable of solving his own problems.”
She urges parents to balance the academic reasons for home schooling with the social ones, before making a decision.
Lifelong Scars from Being Bullied at School
I have read many online bully topic threads as research for my series of articles about bullying.
One of the things that kept coming up is how tainted and ruined kids turn out to be, from years of bullying, by the time they graduate from high school.
One man posted that as a result of the bullying he was “internally unstable.” Another woman posted that she was afraid of interacting with people and had few friends.
Many adult former-bully-victims make similar posts: that years of being targeted turned them into bundles of nerves fearful and skittish in a dog-eat-dog world, afraid to do things as simple as informing a restaurant server that their steak is undercooked.
Read bully threads and you’ll clearly see that bullying leaves a hideous mark on social development that’s carried all throughout the former victim’s adult life.
So it may seem that home schooling a bullied child is a sure-fire solution, to preserve internal stability and minimize all the social impairment that can result by the time they’re 18.
After all, social rejection can leave a hefty mark that can’t be cured with a pill.
But what Lehman emphasizes is that bullying at school needs to be remedied, rather than hastily taking the victim out of the system.
The victim needs to learn effective coping skills, says Lehman. This can’t happen in a home school environment, she adds.
Yes, there are victims who never learn effective coping skills. We’ve all heard horror stories in which the parents don’t care, are too afraid to get involved, and/or the school does absolutely nothing.
But Lehman stands by her assertion that “a ‘re-do’ in a home school environment” will not act as a “magical game changer.”
Early intervention in the traditional academic environment is crucial to provide the victim skills to change the bully-victim dynamic so that the victim does NOT grow up to be internally unstable or crippled in social settings.
Lehman speaks from experience. Her son, Jeremy, was bullied in junior and senior high school.
She says, “It was very tempting to try to pull him and switch academic settings but we struggled through it.
“He had some very tough days but eventually learned to deal with some very unpleasant people and to find a group that was supportive and accepting of him.”
Jeremy is now a productive, thriving adult who embraces new people and cultures overseas where he resides.
“If we had tethered him at home, he may have never become the person he is now,” says Lehman.
What about victims who, because they remain in the traditional school system, eventually snap and become violent?
Lehman says, “My advice is to have the child identify the behavior and share this with authorities when appropriate and continually touch base with supportive adults to give regular feedback on how it is going.”
What if a child is too afraid to be this proactive?
On the other hand, if a parent wants to home school a child to escape from bullying by classmates, then the parent is already very aware of the problem, and is in a position to begin working on the solutions that Lehman supports.
“Since my counsel involves interventions like alerting authorities and working on coping skills, my intent and approach is to avoid the example where the child is so overwhelmed and stressed that they lash out [e.g., shoots classmates].”
Lehman believes in role-playing by script and repeatedly rehearsing it so that a victim has “appropriate strategies to use when he is facing the aggressor.”
Lehman is concerned that homeschooling a child to escape bullies may have “unintended consequences like impaired problem solving skills and over-reliance on others.”
Janet Lehman, with her husband James, developed the foundational parenting programs offered by EmpoweringParents.com.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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Top image: Shutterstock/karen roach
How Much Can Thyroid Problems Be Blamed for Obesity?
Where do we draw the line for blaming thyroid issues on obesity? Can low thyroid make a woman weigh 528 pounds?
That’s a LOT of weight to attribute to a sick thyroid gland.
It seems that only laypeople, not doctors, insist that obesity can be caused by thyroid problems, even in the case of Victoria Lacatus.
The 25-year-old Victoria Lacatus from Romania weighed 528 pounds and died — five months after giving birth.
Apparently, the morbidly obese Lacatus had a thyroid disorder that did not respond to medication.
The “comments” to the msnbc.com article about her have filled up rapidly, with many posters insisting that her extreme obesity was caused by a thyroid condition, in particular, hypothyroidism that was unresponsive to Synthroid or other treatments.
Can hypothyroidism actually cause morbid obesity?
Shutterstock/Kokhanchikov
“Yes, this is possible,” says Dr. Kent Holtorf, MD, thyroidologist and founder of Holtorf Medical Group in California.
“We have many patients come in that are considering gastric bypass or have gotten gastric bypass and still do not loss weight.
“They are told over and over that their thyroid is fine or given Synthroid or Levoxyl until their levels are normal and told it cannot be their thyroid.”
He continues, “However, when we check their metabolism it can be 500 to 1,000 calories per day deficient or more.
“This adds up to a 10 to 15 pound weight gain per month, and over the years it is hundreds of pounds.”
Dr. Holtorf mentions the case of one particular obese patient who failed to lose weight after a gastric bypass (stomach shrinking surgery).
She was placed in a hospital so that her caloric intake could be monitored: 500 calories per day. She still lost no weight.
“She came to us and we found she was severely low thyroid and very low metabolism, despite standard blood tests being normal,” says Dr. Holtorf.
“She was finally able to lose weight with proper thyroid replacement with T3, not T4 (Synthroid) and treating her leptin resistance. While not everyone will be so dramatically affected, we see such similar cases all the time.”
Dr. Holtorf adds, “With suboptimal thyroid treatment (considered to be fine by the majority of physicians), there will be ongoing difficulty losing weight, or continued weight gain. It can be 10 pounds a month or a hundred.”
In the case of Victoria Lacatus, who died from a heart attack, we don’t know what her exercise habits were. Those who believe that she was too heavy to exercise are mistaken.
Morbidly obese people are very capable of seated strength training.
Whether or not you have a thyroid condition, whether or not you are extra obese, a little heavy or on the skinny side, you absolutely must exercise on a regular basis: cardio and strength training, and include bouts of intense, rigorous sessions.
Shutterstock/Travelerpix
A thyroid disorder is no reason to avoid exercise, even if you’re obese.
And if walking across a room is all that the obese person can do, then that’s the exercise: a 10 second “work interval” across the room.
Rest a minute or two. Repeat. Rest. Repeat 10 times. This can be done several times a day.
Water activity is also a very viable exercise option for the morbidly obese.
And I can’t say it enough: lift weights. This can be done while seated.
One thing is for sure: The percentage of obese, especially morbidly obese, men and women at health clubs is alarmingly much lower than is the percentage of obese people in the general population. This is very telling.
Dr. Holtorf has published a number of endocrine reviews on complex topics in peer-reviewed journals on controversial diseases and treatments.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
