Jason Harrison

Let’s talk lunch in Dayton

March 2, 2016 By Jason Harrison

There’s an interesting diversity directly linked to geography that I’ve noticed while coaching clients around lifestyle issues in different parts of the country.

Not the greatest lunch idea.

My New York clients ate well at breakfast and lunch because the range of healthy options available to discerning Type A personalities was plentiful. Dinners were most difficult for them because I trained a lot of people in finance and law, industries in which late nights, after work drinks, and sometimes gluttonous dinners were actually part of the job description.

My Washington, D.C. clients had a harder time with breakfast, I think in large part because of the long commute times in a notoriously terrible city for traffic. These clients often were government workers or lawyers who were trying hard to get a jump on their day and skipped breakfast as a result.

Perhaps counterintuitively, my sense of the nutrition picture for my Los Angeles clients was actually pretty good. The slower pace and less formal atmosphere among my many entertainment industry clients meant that people took the time to eat a healthy breakfast while sitting on their deck or taking a walk in the sunshine to grab lunch at a local, fresh eatery (where your waiter is probably the best looking person you’ve ever seen in person).

Turkey chili recipe from the New York Times’ beautiful cooking app.

In Dayton I’ve noticed a trend both in my personal life and among my clients: eating well at lunch is difficult. If you have the time to go out with colleagues and sit at a restaurant, you’re probably in luck because there are some really good, local options. But what if you want something quick? That’s where things get more difficult, and that’s where I’m a strong advocate–at least for now–of almost always packing your lunch.

I’ve written before about “fast food” chains like Sweetgreen, where for around $10 you can grab a locally sourced salad with a fantastic balance of macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, fat). I’ve struggled in our city to identify the equivalent, where you can eat a veggie-centric meal that also contains protein and healthy fats. (If you know of any–please comment on Facebook!) For the most part, your “fast” lunch options in Dayton generally aren’t going to do you much good.

That leaves you with two options. First, you can still go out for lunch but make the best of the situation. Try eating mostly vegetables and make sure you’re getting protein and a healthy fat (like olive oil or avocado) as well. The protein and fat combination is important because that’s what’s going to help you feel both full and satisfied–avoiding the M&M bowl that Debbie keeps at her desk.

The second and preferable option is for you to bring lunch from home. Now, some people object to this by saying that they “don’t have time” to pack a lunch every day. My answer to that in recent months has been the big batch, one pot meal. Think soups, stews, and Crockpot dishes. This turkey chili recipe from the New York Times has been getting a lot of run in my house recently, and I’ve recommended it to several clients. I like the recipe because of the great combination of tasting great as a leftover, not taking very much time to prepare, and being easily divided and saved for lunchtime meals. Make it on a Sunday and eat it for lunch throughout the week.

What about the boredom factor? People tire of eating the same thing every single day, but if you’re one of those people who are going out for lunch five days a week, then having turkey chili twice a week probably isn’t going to get old too fast–and you’ve reduced the amount of times you’re eating out by 40 percent. So if the one pot meal can get you to two times a week of packing your lunch, and you can make enough dinner one night to have leftovers for lunch another day, you’re up to cooking 60 percent of your lunch meals at home. Not bad, right?

The takeaway here is that I’ve talked to a number of people in Dayton over the last few months who want to bring their lunch more, both from a health standpoint and from a financial standpoint. Given that we don’t have a lot of great, quick, healthy options for lunch to begin with, you have some incentives to brown bag it. But the key in implementing this behavioral change is not biting off more than you can chew. Don’t make your goal 100 percent compliance with packing your lunch. Start off with two days a week. If you can do that, then you’re well on your way to saving money and eating well during your work days. Better for the body and the wallet.

What’s the Right Way to Work Out?

February 23, 2016 By Jason Harrison

One of the most difficult things for fitness consumers to do is identify the difference between objective best practices and the subjective preferences of various coaches.

I’ve used this space to argue before that it is an objective fact that everyone would benefit from doing progressively overloaded weight-bearing exercise. Everyone.

But hopefully I’ve also made clear that “progressively overloaded weight-bearing exercise” can take on many forms.

Crossfit. Powerlifting. Weightlifting. General strength and conditioning. Pilates. Yoga.

Everything on this short list contains pros and cons. But they all involve some sort of weight-bearing aspect. The question, then, isn’t “which one is best?”
The question is, “which one is best for you?” based on your schedule, preferences, background, experience, likes, and dislikes. Fitness for busy professionals involves a balance between what we want out of our bodies and how much time we’re willing to spend on achieving those things.

Once you weigh all of those variables, generally the best option for you will emerge. But people confuse this notion with there being a best option for everyone.

I know dogmatic yoga people who tell everyone who will listen that yoga is the best—no, the only—way to achieve balance between mind and body.

I know strength and conditioning professionals who declare in no uncertain terms that if you’re not lifting weights then you’re a (what would Donald Trump call a political rival?)

Don’t believe this con game. There’s no right way. There’s only the best way for you.

Now, this doesn’t give you carte blanche to do whatever the hell you want without regard for science or basic common sense. If you want a lean, more mobile body then Zumba classes aren’t going to do you much good for very long. That is an objective fact. If you’re new to fitness at some point you’re going to have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Understand the difference between there being no one right way of exercise and the fact that there are some basic truths when it comes to fitness. Let me give you some concrete examples.

There’s no one right way to lift weights.

But there are generally accepted principles around how to do a barbell back squat.

There’s no one way to learn yoga.

But there are generally accepted principles around how to properly execute a downward facing dog.

There is no one right way to eat.

But there are generally accepted principles—on which both ardent Paleo enthusiasts and Prius-driving vegans can agree—that govern what the body does with macronutrients like protein, fat, and carbohydrates. (And almost everyone can agree that we all should be eating more vegetables.)

There’s no right way to do cardiovascular exercise.

But there are generally accepted principles behind how aerobic exercise affects one’s body.

The dirty secret is that fitness isn’t all that complicated. While we’re learning new things every day, chances are the kettlebell guru you see on Facebook hasn’t discovered the best path to strength any more than the yoga expert has developed a system that works for everyone.

All of us fitness types try to bat 1.000. But none of us do. The best way for you to distinguish between a fitness pro who is secure and open-minded and an insecure dogmatic charlatan lies in the answer to this question: are they willing to tell you they’re not the best option for you?

They ought to be wiling to tell you you’d be better off going to a yoga studio.

They ought to be willing to tell you that you ought to go to a powerlifting gym.

They ought to be willing to tell you that you ought to spend your money on a nutritionist instead of personal training.

They ought to be willing to tell you that you’d be better off going to a physical therapist.

There’s no right way. There’s only the right way for you. It’s simple advice, I know. But more people like me need to be giving it.

Focus: From Your Toes to your Nose

February 17, 2016 By Jason Harrison

How many of our problems could we solve, from bad sex to bad cooking to bad relationships, if we just paid attention?

A lot of them. A lot of them is the answer you’re looking for.

My own training space has yet to open, but I’m able to train my clients in a few different generous facilities in the area. For the places that have televisions, I’ve noticed that people spend an inordinate amount of time watching cable when they ought to be paying attention to what they’re doing.

A really good gym, in other words, like a really good bar, doesn’t have televisions. (Perhaps here it would be wise to make a distinction between say, a watering hole, and a Bar with a capital B. A watering hole is a place you go after work to knock a couple back and joke about Jim in Accounting’s propensity to fart silently in his cubicle. A Bar on the other hand, is a place you go to create, build upon, or re-establish intimacy. There are no televisions because you’re paying attention to the quality in your glass and the presence of your company.)

I’ve watched people all week walk into various health clubs and zone out in between sets, or worse, watch television while performing some sort of exercise. Sometimes you’ll even see a little television mounted on the treadmill, elliptical machine, or other cardio equipment.

What’s wrong with watching a little television at the gym? After all, if I’m someone who hates going to the gym, why can’t I check out a home-flipping show on HGTV while I’m doing lunges?

The television-at-the-gym attitude stems from the old idea that you’re there to burn calories or lose weight. As long as I’m burning calories (and thus losing weight), the thinking goes, then I’m fine, television or not.

But that attitude misses at least half the reason why we ought to be going to the gym, which is learning how to operate our own bodies.

Yes, get stronger.

Yes, change your metabolism.

Yes, build stronger bones.

Yes, set and exceed personal bests for various lifts.

But don’t forget to learn how to MOVE.

Don’t forget to learn how to tilt your pelvis this way, or retract your shoulders that way, fight hyperextension in your spine another way.

Don’t forget to learn what it feels like just short of exhaustion.

Don’t forget to learn what it feels like to use your butt to squat.

Because that connection between brain to muscle is what will keep you injury-free and moving well as you age. If you’ve spent all of your time sitting on a machine and scrolling through Kanye West’s Instagram feed or watching Sportcenter in between sets you’re missing something.

During one of the most stressful years of my life, I would wake up occasionally from anxiety about having to face the day ahead of me. Somewhere along the line I learned about a meditation technique that never failed to put me back to sleep, and it had everything to do with listening to my body. I still use the technique to this day.

When I wake up in the middle of the night because of anxiety, I think about my body starting down at my toes. I feel the way the sheets and covers feel against my feet. And I don’t move up to my shins until I am sure I am really feeling my toes and feet. Once I internalize all of the senses involved in one body part, I move to the next.

This type of meditative technique works for two reasons. One, it gets me thinking about something other than what I’m worried about—which is almost certainly something about which I can do nothing in the middle of the night anyway.

Second, it reminds me of my body. Focusing on my body, my breath, and my aliveness all serve as reminders that I’m living and breathing and okay. I’m okay.

This is just one example of how tightening the connection between our minds and bodies can have a dramatically positive effect on our lives. What better place to begin closing that gap than at the gym?

If you’re already working out, I implore you to turn away from the television set, away from your phone, and toward your body. Rest for that 90 seconds in between sets, and think about how your body feels. You’re alive. You are alive. And you are okay.

For extra credit, incorporate the same technique the next time you’re with someone you love or someone with whom you think love might be a possibility. Look into their eyes. Don’t be creepy about it, but watch their bodies, the way they tilt their head when you ask them a question, the way they talk with their hands, and the way they smile when they talk about their hobbies. Human beings can’t help but reciprocate this kind of connectivity. And I promise you that what follows will be more interesting and infinitely more gratifying than anything you’re likely to see on your phone or on T.V.

Strength, Individual Edition

February 10, 2016 By Jason Harrison

I used to write a regular newsletter for my business, but contributing weekly columns here largely has brought that output to a screeching halt. It’s not a complaint so much as an admission to my limited capacity for meaningful output. To the extent that I lament my newsletter’s slow demise, it’s because I miss having an avenue where I could explore broadly without fear of alienating anyone. That is, if you signed up for the Present Tense Fitness newsletter, you sort of knew that you were just as likely to get a think piece on street art as you were anything about squats.

In this space, I know people tune in a least partially because they want to learn about something fitness related. I confess to being a little self-conscious about the sometimes tenuous connection between what I write here and straight up fitness. This self-consciousness is a close cousin to the insecurity I sometimes feel around my own accomplishments (or lack thereof) in the weight room. I’m not as strong as most well-known trainers, for example, and I’ve never competed in any sport at a high level. So why the hell should you even listen to what I have to say about fitness?

When I describe what I do, I try to be clear that I’m not the guy to go to if you’re trying to achieve a 600-pound deadlift. I can teach you how to deadlift, but if you’re looking for elite, I’m just not the right guy. Sometimes I feel that my niche–people who are new to fitness who are trying to live well-rounded, rich lives–is an excuse used to paper over my own lack of accomplishments. But then my clients remind me why I do this, and why the way I’ve chosen to use the space can be useful.

Earlier this week I was coaching someone who told me they “hate the gym.” We’ve been working together a while now, and this person is thoroughly convinced of strength training’s efficacy. That’s not in doubt. What is in doubt is whether this person will ever be the type of person to love driving to a place, maybe changing clothes and heading over to the power rack, and busting out some barbell front squats. That’s likely never gonna happen.

But yoga, yoga is something this person has always loved. And having been convinced of why strength training is important and can measurably improve one’s life, this person sprinkled in some dumbbell work with a recent yoga workout.

And loved it.

Will this client ever load up 225 pounds on a bar and squat to depth?

Will this client deadlift twice bodyweight?

Will this client compete in a powerlifting competition?

No. I try generally to avoid words like never, but I can safely say in this case the answer to these questions is almost certainly “never.”

But can this person love the body they inhabit?

Can this person live a life full of passion, soul, and creativity?

Can this person with a combination of yoga and selected strength-training exercises mitigate bone density loss, enhance mobility, and increase the amount of lean body mass while decreasing fat mass?

Yes. So much yes.

So whenever I get that imposter feeling, that feeling that I’m not really serving a purpose, and that I ought to use this space to break down the force vectors involved in a high-bar back squat, I remember conversations like I had this week.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t find the right mix of exercise for you. That you shouldn’t run. Or you shouldn’t do yoga. Or that you’re wasting your time if you’re not doing X, Y, or Z. (Especially Z. Z is overrated).

I’ll say it again. Every person on the planet ought to be doing some sort of weight-bearing exercise at least two days a week. What form that takes though can be highly individualized. Chances are if you’re reading this you’re not getting ready for the Olympics, so your goal is to find the right combination of exercise that will allow you to live a life full of passion, soul, and as much creativity as your brain can handle. Live. Get stronger and go out there and live.

Edit: I actually sent out a newsletter ahead of this column. It was about songs with outer space as a theme. I’ll say you’re welcome in advance for not writing about that here.

Ignore the shame and just find what works

February 3, 2016 By Jason Harrison

Somewhere along the line–after I began personal training, but before I started taking the profession seriously–I noticed that if I drank more water, I felt better. My skin felt better, my trips to the bathroom were more, um, comfortable, and I had more energy in the gym.

Rewind to about ten years or so ago, when I bought a souvenir “BPA free” water bottle at MIT during a quick trip through Boston. I didn’t think much about that bottle until I realized how much better I felt when I was hydrated, so I dusted it off and it never left my side for years.

I consumed plenty of water and always had my bottle at the gym, at work, and in the car during road trips. When we moved back to Dayton last year, however, I broke the bottle. No big deal, right? I had been drinking enough water for years now, and the habit was deeply engrained. Not only that, but I’m, like, a fitness guy. I KNOW the value of staying hydrated.

But my water consumption plummeted. In recent months I’ve knowingly watched as my digestion suffered, skin suffered, and overall wellness suffered. And this wasn’t some deep mystery: I knew exactly what was going on.

“I drank a lot more water when I had my green MIT bottle,” I’d say to myself. And yet the days would march on. I was smart enough to try different solutions, like other water bottles or even big glasses to sit on my desk while working from home. Nothing seemed to work.

Then it finally dawned on me. Why don’t I just order another wide-mouthed BPA-free bottle? I jumped on Amazon, placed the order, and received my bottle just a few days later. It’s the same water bottle I had been using for years, only without the logos or branding.

And guess what’s been happening the last the several days?

Yep, I’ve been drinking more water.

Let’s take a moment to deconstruct this. I know I need to drink water and I’ve experienced how good it makes me feel. I know that I drank more water when I had that particular bottle, and I was conscious of the fact that my hydration plummeted when I lost my MIT security blanket.

Yet I took no action, despite the fact that I placed probably a couple dozen Amazon orders between the time that I broke my bottle and when I finally ordered another one. The solution was right in front of my face, I was aware of it, and I refused to act.

Why?

I’m not sure, exactly. All I know is this is something that we all do. We KNOW we need to work out. We KNOW we need to eat better. We KNOW we need to get more sleep. Often the solutions are right in front of us, but we refuse to act. My theory is that in my case I was selling myself the fiction that my water intake couldn’t have been regulated solely by my water bottle. Certainly I could replace what worked with something else and get the same results. Right?

I was wrong. I delayed solving the problem for months because I felt quiet shame about the silliness of a thing, an object, being so closely linked to a healthy habit like water consumption. Had I ordered a replacement bottle right away, I could have saved myself a lot of discomfort.

You might have something in your life like my MIT water bottle. Maybe it’s your favorite workout pants that you’ve stained and no longer feel comfortable wearing, so you’re actually working out less. Maybe it’s a kitchen knife that you somehow lost along the way and now you just don’t feel like cooking as much. Whatever it is, if there’s something in your life preventing you from doing what you know you need to do, but it’s something that you’ve labeled “silly,” I have some pretty simple advice.

Get over it.

Yeah, just get over it. Maybe there is something silly about the fact that I don’t seem capable of drinking enough water unless I have a very particular container. But it doesn’t really matter, does it?

Find what works, and do it–no matter how silly you think it is.

Lifting Weights Isn’t Just For Competition

January 27, 2016 By Jason Harrison

The fitness industry has made great strides toward making women feel more comfortable in weight rooms across the country, but there’s still some work to be done.

Twenty years ago fitness types were still selling women the fiction that they might “get big” if they lifted heavy weights and didn’t spend countless hours “doing cardio.” Based on what I hear from new clients this old myth persists among many women, but it seems to be dying a slow death thanks to fitness thought leaders like Jen Sinkler and Neghar Fonooni, among others. There still exists a subtle roadblock, however, that prevents more women from abandoning the elliptical machines and Zumba classes in favor of the efficient transformation technique that is weight-bearing exercise:

Competition.

I asked an acquaintance in the gym yesterday how her training was going, and she somewhat sheepishly replied that she was doing her best, but that she wasn’t training as hard as others. It was a revelatory answer to a throw-away question meant more as a means of polite conversation than a piercing inquiry. I know her a little, and she’s impressively strong and impressively conditioned–but she probably couldn’t place at an elite level of any sort of Crossfit, powerlifting, or figure competition. My unscientific analysis indicates that she’s probably fitter than 90 percent of the women in her age group, yet she was somehow embarrassed that this wasn’t “enough.”

Strength training is among the most efficient delivery systems for body and health transformation that there is. You can develop your conditioning, change your body composition, and push a host of health markers in the right direction by incorporating things like squats, deadlifts, presses, and rows into your weekly routine. Yet I worry that somehow this message is getting garbled into the notion that barbell training is only for people interested in Crossfit, powerlifting, or Olympic-style weightlifting.

I think part of the problem is that most big commercial gyms lag behind barbell style gyms when it comes to stocking plentiful free weights, and the barbell style gyms that exist do tend to have at least somewhat of an emphasis on competition, personal records, and Instagram stardom.

Barbell training isn’t just for competition. It can be an important slice–but just a slice–of an otherwise well-rounded and interesting life full of art, music, friends, and good food. Approaching the squat rack doesn’t mean that you have to buy knee socks and booty shorts. All it means is that you’re interested in the most important movement pattern you can learn to do well (squat), that you’re interested in building muscle and bone density, and that you’re interested in being strong and mobile well into your 80s.

One of my worries about this post is that it wreaks of condescension, that I’m presupposing that women aren’t competitive. I’m not arguing that women somehow aren’t as competitive as men. What I am trying to do is grapple with the reality that the fitness industry generally has been an unwelcoming place for women when it comes to strength training. While I do think some of those walls are coming down–having been smashed by the strength of female leadership–I do think that the correlation between barbell training and competition does prevent some women from feeling completely comfortable pursuing strength. And I happen think that’s a shame.

Fitness Insecurities: Male Edition

January 20, 2016 By Jason Harrison

File this post under gross gender-based generalizations.

In my experience women are most insecure about what they look like, which leads to a host of issues around not eating enough, feeling shame, and misguided attempts to “lose weight.” Social pressures and cultural discrimination against aging women have something to do with this. Just ask any woman in Hollywood when well-written, three-dimensional roles start drying up. Amy Schumer hilariously skewers this hypocrisy in the definitely NSFW clip below (seriously don’t click if salty language offends you). The basic message in Hollywood is one that I think gets filtered through the rest of our culture, which is, “women, don’t get older.”

Men, on the other hand, tend to feel less secure about what they can do. My theory is that one can split men into two categories: men who go to the gym in their teens and twenties, and men who don’t go to the gym during that timeframe. The men who go to the gym in their teens and twenties spend a lot of time at the bench press and doing various curl movements to achieve big arms. The men who don’t go to the gym as young men perhaps never will, especially if they’re not able to perceive how their unfit status holds them back from enjoying greater quality of life.

I spend a lot of my energy with older male clients trying to get them to understand the benefits of gradually progressing, avoiding injury, and working on movement patterns instead of ego-boosting exercises like bench presses and dumbbell curls. They look over and see the kid in his early twenties pressing a bunch of weight over his head and they immediately think less of themselves if they can’t lift the same weight. I have to work hard to convince them to do things like warm up properly and stretch post workout. They just want to load a bar with as much weight as possible and move it, especially with their upper bodies.

That’s not the most difficult obstacle to overcome for me as a coach. The biggest hurdle consists of the guys who used to work out in their twenties but stop going to the gym because, well, they got older, and they’re not as strong as they used to be. So rather than face the indignity of a long warmup and lighter weights they just stay home and talk about their “bad back” or “bad knees.” Sound familiar? I spend a lot of time thinking through how to convince guys like this to go to the gym and most of the time I feel like Sisyphus pushing an Indiana Jones-sized boulder up a hill.

Women in my experience are more willing to ask for help in the gym because they haven’t internalized the cultural pressure to already know everything about it. Remember, a woman’s only job in our culture is to stay as young-looking and thin as possible. So for the women who seek out personal trainers, yoga instructors, or Pilates coaches they’re more willing to say “help.”

I’ll be forty next month, so I know a little bit about the aging male demographic. And I know more than a little about ego because I’m constantly battling my own in the gym. There’s a voice in my head who sees stronger men as confirmation that I’m less than rather than as an inspiration. It’s not difficult to see how this destructive thought process could turn–even subconsciously–into “I’ll just not work out” with some sort of half-baked justification thrown in to massage the ego.

I’ve had too many conversations with the children of aging parents who report that they just cannot get dads to pay attention to their health and wellness for me to stay silent or ignore gender-based culture differences. If I had one wish for my female readers it would be for them to learn how to love their bodies as they are. For the men? It would probably be to learn how to swallow their pride, ask for help, and learn how to get stronger step-by-step. (Actually, I’d have the same hope for women. The learning to love their bodies thing is almost always the first step toward a willingness to strive for step-by-step strength).

If you’ve been struggling to get your dad or grandfather into the gym, try talking him through the logic.

1.) He doesn’t have to wake up hurting every day just because he’s older.

2.) Strength training isn’t just for young guys. The benefits go well beyond the aesthetic and performance.

3.) He can still build muscle well into his 70s–it’s never too late to start. Even in his 80s, he can still see neurological benefits from strength training that will manifest as improved movement and strength.

As for the aging women? Let’s talk next week…

My Community Fitness Wish List

January 13, 2016 By Jason Harrison

Fitness columns aimed at untrained people generally focus on the easiest things people can do in the short term to develop a healthy lifestyle. I know I’ve devoted a good deal of my space here to that endeavor. Today, however, I want to tackle the big things that we can be doing as a Dayton community to promote healthy living. Understand up front that I’m not claiming what follows would be easy.

1.) Communities designed for health: What would the Dayton area look like if it were designed for health? Consider things like where development dollars go, how transportation is allocated, and whether we are taking full advantage of the potential density (and thus walkability) offered by having a more vibrant downtown. Where, how, and when we choose to build and develop have profound implications on community health.

2.) Healthy schools: I’ve worked a couple of different stints in urban school districts, and the single most important change I would make in education is ensuring that school leaders are held accountable for the health of the children they lead and all that that entails. This would mean a move away from compliance-based disciplinary policies ushered in by the reform movement and toward 360-degree support for the emotional and physical well-being of students. Today if you’re a black secondary student you’re three times (!) more likely to be suspended than your white counterparts. Unless you believe that black children are somehow a worse group of kids than others, this statistic should strike you as profoundly disturbing. Policy created disenfranchised neighborhoods and segregated schools, so we shouldn’t be punishing children when they exhibit the perfectly human and predictable responses to growing up around violence and desolation. Children ought to be moving well, eating well, and managing stress. Yes, they ought to be learning—but think about what you’re like at work when you’ve had a stressful day outside of the office. Now imagine managing stress with the emotions of a child or developing adolescent. Schools ought to reflect this same understanding. More physical education (and art for that matter), longer lunch, more emotional support—and dramatically reduced suspensions and expulsions.

3.) Mindful grocery shopping: One of my wishes for the Dayton area would be for us all to push harder for more information around where our food comes from, how it’s prepared, and how it’s connected to the local economy. I would like to see our grocery stores provide more information about distances traveled for fruits and vegetables, for instance, and the conditions in which livestock have been raised. I would like to see more of us buy local, and I would like to see multiple grocery options in the city’s core. All of these things would allow us to have a stronger, more mindful connection to what we’re putting in our bodies.

4.) Everyone lifts: I spend more time thinking about this than virtually anything else when it comes to fitness. How can we get more people lifting free weights? I was at a local YMCA yesterday, for example, and I was imagining how we could get to the point at which people in their 60s and 70s were taught movement patterns and strength instead of sitting on machines designed for rehabilitation. Picture your local chain gym or YMCA in your head, and now imagine that same facility stripped of all cardio equipment and Nautilus machines. What would go on in such a place?

Seniors learning how to squat, first maybe assisted with a medicine ball, and then maybe unassisted, and then maybe holding a light weight. I’m not talking about teaching grandma the clean and jerk, but how about we at least get her off of that bicep curl machine and onto a gym floor where she can learn how to pick something up safely from the ground? This would be a skill she could use in her actual life. As far as cardio—that’s what walkable communities and green spaces are for! (Icy and cold outside? Let’s take it to the indoor track, or simply make use of all the open space indoors for which we now have room now that we’ve removed expensive machines).

Fitness is a Community Effort

A healthy community is no accident, so I’m hoping the next time you have the opportunity to ask a local leader (including school board members) questions around policy that you’ll do so with fitness and wellness at the forefront of your mind.

How Much Should You Work Out?

January 6, 2016 By Jason Harrison

Two days a week. That’s how many days you need to be spending doing weight-bearing exercise if you’ve not been exercising over the previous 365 days. Supplement that with a handful of walks during the week, and you’ll be pretty happy with your body.

This isn’t a scientific assertion (though it coincidentally is in line with current government recommendations), but one I’ve determined over the course of a decade of coaching people. I’ve watched people who were relatively untrained transform their bodies from only two hours a week of strength training.

This should be good news for those of you who are reading this but believe yourself to be too busy to work out. This also should be good news for those of you who simply hate the gym and hate the idea of working out. You can do anything for two hours a week, can’t you?

Two hours a week. Eight hours a month. That’s it.

There is a catch. The clients who’ve achieved success lifting weights only twice a week did properly supervised, progressively overloaded, full body workouts when they were in the gym. And they consistently incorporated no less than two of the following lifestyle choices in their weekly lives:

Regularly sleeping 7 to 8 hours a night.
Eating a balanced menu with veggies at almost every meal.
Walking with an exercise purpose for at least 30 minutes at least two days a week.

What kind of results am I talking about? I’m talking several dress sizes lost, objective biomedical markers moved appreciably, and subjective reports of “feeling better” and more mobile.

One of the things I really like about fitness is its reliability. If you tell me what you’re doing, I can usually predict how you’re feeling. The science behind those two days a week of strength training having such dramatic results when incorporated with other lifestyle changes is straightforward and uncomplicated.

1.) Untrained people usually have relatively more fat mass and relatively less lean body mass.

2.) Once untrained people begin lifting weights, they begin putting on muscle, which in turn helps them burn more fat.

3.) This new muscle is part of what makes them “feel better,” feel stronger, and report more mobility. Their previously rapidly deteriorating bodies benefit, in other words, simply from having more strength.

4.) The progressively overloaded workouts were key to their success because their bodies did not get used to the new weight-bearing stimulus. What that means is, when the person could do a goblet squat with a 25-pound dumbbell for ten repetitions, they moved on to a 30-pound dumbbell, and so on. Because the person constantly gave the body “new” stimuli—in this case progressively heavier weights—the body was forced to change by building new muscle tissue. This we already know burns fat and enhances one’s ability to move (up and down stairs, at the park, in the bedroom).

Don’t want to invest in a gym membership? Well then how about a bench and a pair of adjustable dumbbells? Beginners will be able to get a lot of mileage from a pair of dumbbells and a bench because they can do all of the foundational movements composing a well-rounded fully body workout. (Squats, hinges, pushes, and pulls).

There’s two ways to read this blog. One is to say, “sweet, I ONLY have to work out two days a week.” Remember, if this is your take, that those two days only will be effective if you include other lifestyle changes listed above as well.

The other way to read this is that two days a week of weight-bearing exercise is the minimum effective dose. In other words, I’m fairly certain that an adult cannot claim to be healthy UNLESS they are doing at least two days a week of weight-bearing exercise.

One question you might be wondering is “do I have to lift weights? Isn’t yoga, Pilates, running, or dance enough?” All of these activities are great and potentially life-transformative in their own rights, but for the most part two days a week of any of them won’t be enough to see the significant changes most people want. That is not to say that you shouldn’t do these other things, but for busy people I’m all about identifying the most efficient path. From my experience that path is that of the barbell, dumbbell, and kettlebell.

Do you have two hours a week to devote to a stronger, healthier, more mobile body?

I want to dress better next year. But how?

December 30, 2015 By Jason Harrison

Imagine a guy who wants to dress better in the New Year. He’s not happy with his style or his default to oversized jeans and t-shirts. He can’t seem to get out of his sartorial rut even though it makes him feel miserable. He looks at other guys out on the street and says to himself, “why can’t I put something like that together?”

“2016 is going to be my year,” he says. “Starting January 1^st,” I’m going to dress better. I’m going to buy new clothes, get a haircut, and I’m going to look like a grown man instead of a middle school child when I go out.”

January 1^st rolls around and he goes shopping. He’s not afraid of investing a little money in his new endeavor, but he doesn’t really know where or how to start. He goes to his old standby stores that carry the clothes in which he’s most comfortable. Though he spends a lot of money and it feels good in the moment—he’s finally doing something about the style that’s been bothering him for some time—when he gets home the aura wears off just a little. He branched out a little with his purchases, but it still looks like more of the same.

The next day he tries on some of his new clothes, but he’s a little surprised to see that not much has changed. The jeans don’t quite fit right. He’s no more stylish really than he was last year. Within a week or so he’s right back to his old t-shirts and jeans. Worse, he’s beating himself up for “failing” at yet another New Year’s resolution.

Where did he go wrong?

1.) He understood that he didn’t like the way he dressed, but he made the wrong diagnosis. The most stylish people I know don’t just dress well, but also their homes are well-planned, their taste in books and movies is interesting, and they are meticulous about their grooming. In other words, style is a lifestyle, and it’s not a lifestyle that can be bought because it’s primarily about paying attention to details. (We’ve all met people with plenty of money but very little taste.)

2.) He didn’t seek help. Our straw man character thought there would be something different about 2016 because the six replaced a five on the calendar. But while he may have wanted to be more stylish, the difference between December and January was negligible because he didn’t make it a point to take in new information. If you’re trying to change your lifestyle, you need help. That can be in the form of an expert friend willing to help, a paid expert, or significant time learning online. Our straw man might have spent some time perusing Instagram accounts for the BK Circus and Street Etiquette for ideas, or he might have subscribed to GQ, Esquire or an interesting art magazine. But he just waited for January 1^st to come around and ended up right where he started.

3.) He didn’t use the tools he already had at his disposal. Most of us are good at something, but fewer of us think about what makes us good at whatever thing that happens to be. The process of living a healthy lifestyle can be broken into digestible chunks just like any other endeavor. You have to troubleshoot, you have to be realistic, and you have to be clear-minded.

Don’t Make Resolutions, Refine Processes

It’s fashionable now in fitness circles to make fun of New Year’s resolutions, and I’ve definitely been critical of the whole idea that one can “jumpstart” fitness with longterm success. But that’s almost beside the point. The fact is, a lot of people are thinking right now about how they would like to be different/better/more of/less of in the New Year. If you fall into that category, then I encourage you to identify an area of your life in which you are proficient and learn from that. Chances are you already know how to troubleshoot, you already know how to learn, and you already know how to break things down into processes. All you have to do now is apply those things to your health and wellness.

It is my sincere hope that you can learn to live well in 2016, that you can learn to love your body, and that you can learn to slow down a little and pay more attention to the people all around you. Don’t think about losing weight or getting lean. Think about living. Learn to live.

As for me? Well, that straw man and I have a little something in common…

How Important Is Your Body?

December 23, 2015 By Jason Harrison

Ta-Nehisi (pronounced TAH-nah-HAH-see) Coates won the National Book Award this year for his book “Between the World and Me,” written in the form of a letter to his son. The book is an extraordinary exploration of what it means to be black in the United States of America. As I sat down to write this week’s column, I found myself returning to the text because of Coates’ emphasis on the cumulative effects of racism on the black body.

Coates uses the word body (or its variants) from the opening sentence of the book to the very last paragraph, and the repetition is intentional. He recounts a scene in which his young son is inconsolable following the announcement that the police officer who shot Michael Brown would not face punishment.

“What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” (emphasis mine)

As far as I know, Coates hasn’t devoted much time in his writing to fitness and health in the traditional sense. But this emphasis on the word “body” betrays an intuitive understanding of what it means to be a healthy human being. One of the great things about literature–and art generally–is that we bring our life with us into the piece. So I read “Between the World and Me” as one of the great arguments in favor of holding policymakers accountable for the health of the citizens they lead. And I read it in part as a rebuke to those of us who don’t treat our bodies with the respect they deserve, especially given how easily some people’s bodies can be destroyed in an instant.

Too deep for a fitness blog? Maybe. But I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people lately about their bodies, and I’m disheartened to hear the way many people think and talk about the one body they’ll ever have.

“I don’t have time to cook,” they say.

“Working out feels like a waste of time,” they say.

“Why would anyone work out five days a week?” they’ll ask.

With each statement and each question, my interlocutor suggests that they don’t take their body seriously. They they think the food they put into it is only an afterthought; that ensuring proper movement of the vessel that will carry them along in their existence on this planet is time better spent on other things; that the spreadsheets at work are more important than having the strength and energy to spend quality time with the people that they love.

When I respond to their questions and statements with reason and fact, usually people agree with me. Their body IS important. Nutrition IS important. Movement IS important. So more people share Coates’ intuitive understanding of the human body’s primacy than it would appear given how most of us choose to spend our time. The question becomes, then, how do we close the gap between what we know to be important and the values we exhibit on a daily basis?

I’m not sure I know the answer. I wouldn’t call myself a cynic necessarily, but I know the stubborn tug of job, television, and eating out can be difficult to surmount. I know this because I’ve had the same struggles even while I work as a fitness professional. To say that I’m well-known in certain Oregon District restaurants would be a colossal understatement, for example. I happen to hate our kitchen and the dishwasher we inherited doesn’t appear to have been operational within the last ten years. (It only “sort of” cleans the dishes). So I get it: cooking doesn’t always seem like a fun option. But when I find myself slipping into the abyss, I remind myself of my body. It’s my body.

Normally I’d end a column like this with a numbered list of things you can do starting right now to turn your life around. Today I just want to ask you to do this. Take off all of your clothes. Stand in front of a full-length mirror. Be honest with yourself about what you see–and what you’d like to see.

This is your body. It’s the only one you’ll ever have. Contained within it is your emotional health and memories; contained within it is your ability to interact with the world around you and the people that you love; contained within it is your capacity for expressing the physical manifestation of love. How ought you to treat such an important and impressive vessel? What choices could you make right now to reflect that?

Your Television is Killing You

December 16, 2015 By Jason Harrison

My wife and I recently watched Jessica Jones, the extraordinary television series on Netflix. The show is weighty, dark, funny, thought-provoking, and fun. I’d read commentary about the female-driven superhero series from people I respect, and the show did not disappoint.

Once we finished Jessica Jones, we couldn’t help but watch another Marvel property on Netflix, Daredevil. If you’re counting that’s roughly 28 hours of television that we binge-watched in a manner of a few weeks. Great for keeping up with the zeitgeist and relaxing.

Terrible for almost everything else.

According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey (based on 2014 data and released in July 2015), Americans watched television for an average of almost three hours per day. There were weekend days during our Marvel/Netflix binge-watching extravaganza during which we exceeded this average.

Probably the excuse I hear from people who don’t work out and don’t cook at home is lack of time. You see where I’m going with this television thing, right?

The only way to think about health and wellness is this: if you’re not exercising at all and not cooking most of your meals at home, then you have no time to watch television.

If you care at all about your lifelong health and quality of life, then you should construct your daily calendar along these priorities (in this order).

1.) Sleep — Block off 7 to 8 hours

2.) Nutrition — Schedule your grocery trips and build in time for food prep and cleanup.

3.) Exercise — When, where, and how will you be working out?

If you listed your top five priorities based on where you spend your time and what you do most consistently, what would that list look like? For many of the people I coach, initially that list looks something like this:

1.) Work

2.) Television

3.) Social media/online time

4.) Eating out

Candidly, I don’t often attack people’s television habits head on. I tiptoe my way toward the topic, even when I know right away that the person I’m coaching is watching hours of television. I’m wary because hearing that one watches too much television feels like the worst kind of judgmental and condescending rebuke. That’s a recipe for shame—not exactly the kind of relationship I like to have with my clients.

And yet I cannot escape the truth. The amount of television you’re currently watching might actually be detrimental to your health. Those few weeks of binge-watching decreased the amount I cooked, decreased the amount of sleep that I got, and decreased my level of readiness for work.

The difficult thing for someone trying to balance a healthy lifestyle with living a textured existence is we’ve never been in an era with more interesting choices on television. Very good television, like good literature, has the capacity to make us more empathetic, thoughtful souls. That’s not a bad thing. So I’m not here to tell you to give up television completely. But here are some guidelines you can use to make sure that your TV-watching habits don’t interfere with your health.

1.) Cut the cord: Getting rid of your 200+ channels will go a long way toward helping you eliminate the mindless flipping of channels that can suck away an evening better spent cooking, talking, and having sex. You’ll have to be more intentional about your TV-watching choices (by paying specifically for shows on services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu), which is exactly what you’re after. Cut away the fat.

2.) Don’t binge: Shows like Mad Men, Jessica Jones, and Breaking Bad demand binge-watching. Establish a rule for yourself or your house that you’ll never watch more than one show in a row. That way you can grab an hour in front of the television to unwind without losing hours of your life.

3.) Quality over quantity: Empty TV calories like terrible mid-season NBA basketball and HGTV reruns featuring wealthy people complaining about the backsplash in $500,000 homes are the equivalent of drinking Kool-Aid for lunch. Your time is better spent elsewhere (I promise).

If you have a team, then watch your team. Check out the Bengals’ game on Sunday, but don’t watch the 1 o’clock, 4 o’clock, and 8 o’clock games.
If you like using television to unwind, choose a show and watch it. But don’t binge, and don’t just turn on HGTV and let some house-flipping show lull you into a drone-like consumeristic sugar coma.

Counterintuitive Eating Advice

December 9, 2015 By Jason Harrison

I’m not a registered dietician, but as a fitness and lifestyle coach I’m often in the position of giving general nutrition advice. More often than not, the people who come to me aren’t seeking advice on managing a disease. My clients usually just want to feel and look a little better.

I’ve been trying to do more thinking lately around my process with people and the patterns I see with clients. I realized that when it comes to nutrition, probably the advice I give most often might surprise you.

Eat more.

People are shocked to hear this. They think they can’t “lose weight” because they’re eating too much. “What am I doing wrong?” they’ll ask me. Then they’ll show me a food log that indicates skipped breakfasts, an iceberg salad for lunch, and then a low-carb (or virtually all carb) dinner. And they’re coupling this woefully inadequate amount of food with cardio. Lots and lots of cardio. Sure, this method of starvation and sweating on the treadmill might help them lose weight initially, but usually they’ll plateau. Why?

1.) Don’t try to lose weight

The first problem is that they’re trying lose weight in the first place. A nasty drug habit can help you lose weight. Losing weight shouldn’t be the goal. Strength should be the goal. And if strength is the goal then you need to eat well to be strong.

Starvation means you’re losing body weight, but a lot of it’s going to be muscle. And if you’re a woman this vicious cycle of starvation and cardio could be wreaking havoc on your hormones, ensuring that you retain body fat and work against your goals.

2.) Eat more, but eat well

Eat more. You mean, I can have the donuts?

Not so fast. Eat more, but eat more vegetables, eat more good sources of protein, and more of a variety of foods. If you’re eating for strength, you need nutrient dense foods to ensure your body is functioning properly. If you’re eating for strength, you need to make sure your body has a ready pool of amino acids from which it can draw to build muscle. If you’re eating for strength, you need to be eating at regular intervals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner).

3.) Cardio is for stress relief and heart health, not fat loss

If you like to run, run. But don’t try to run off your excess pounds. The goal with body composition is to change your metabolic environment, which is a complex stew of hormones, tissues, biochemical reactions, and gastrointestinal function. You’re not going to run off that piece of cake you had a Janet’s going away party in the conference room. But you can, with the right combination of strength training, sleep, stress management, nutrition, and conditioning work ensure that the piece of cake won’t make much of a difference in your overall body composition.

4.) It’s difficult to overeat (actually) healthy foods

If you fill more than half your plate with vegetables at every meal, you’re going to have a difficult time eating too much food. This is where a little education goes a long way. I coach people all the time who tell me during our first meeting that they “eat healthy.” And then they proceed to tell me about the healthy spaghetti meal they ate for dinner the night before.

Spaghetti doesn’t seem unhealthy, does it? And since I’m not an advocate of low-carb dieting, I’m not hating on it because of the pasta.

But the way most of us eat pasta is terrible for us from the most basic plate composition standpoint. Few vegetables. Little fiber. Way more starchy carbs than is advisable. Probably not as much protein as we need. See how quickly that healthy spaghetti dinner becomes a starchy sugar bomb with just a little understanding?

If you think you’re eating healthy now, check yourself. Gluten free does not necessarily equal healthy. Low fat does not necessarily equal healthy. Homemade does not necessarily mean that it’s good for you. “All natural” doesn’t mean anything at a all.

So yes, eat more, but make sure you’re eating well with an eye toward strength and fitness. The rest will usually take care of itself–as long as you’re eating your veggies. And lots of them.

Don’t Read The News If You’re Trying To Get Fit

December 2, 2015 By Jason Harrison

The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times do what they do well, which is report the news on a range of political, economic, international, and social topics. But most newspapers fail consistently to accurately report about fitness. The New York Times–my go-to news source–does a particularly poor job of informing without confusing when it comes to fitness because of its reliance upon academic studies to drive so much of its reporting. My guess is that most people turn to the Times not because they’re interested in the latest science, but because they’re trying to get fit. So we ought to judge the paper’s reporting on the efficacy of the advice offered.

On the face of it, randomized control trials are the lifeblood of learning. Some people consider RCT’s the gold standard of clinical research because their design allows for a control group against which to study a hypothesis. But fitness isn’t something that’s studied to the same degree as say, cancer, so it make sense to view the most recent studies as one tiny blip on a long continuum of developing knowledge.

I’d go so far as to argue that strength coaches working with athletes usually figure things out in the field first before academia confirms a finding. The former governor of California, also known as Arnold Schwarzenegger, is widely considered the greatest bodybuilder ever to walk the planet. He developed his training methods in the late-60s and early 70s, well before exercise science had developed into the sophisticated academic discipline it is today. But researchers have found evidence that his methods, once derided as “bro science,” had a basis in real science whether he knew it at that time or not. All Schwarzenegger knew is that his methods worked in his own lab. The gym. I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge here that some of his success came from real labs. He’s an admitted steroid user. The fact remains that Arnold’s methods for building muscle worked and have been confirmed by modern fitness experts.

Think about it this way. There are thousands of coaches and trainers out there who’ve been actually helping people get fit for many years. While they aren’t academics, the best coaches and trainers are in business to get results either for their sports team or their individual clients. The real world is their laboratory and wins, losses, injury rates, and body composition outcomes are their results.

What the New York Times and other mainstream news outlets typically do is cite a very recent study to proclaim one thing or another that may or may not prove to be true over the course of several years. To take but one recent example, the Times Wellblog suggested in a post just before Thanksgiving that a study supported the idea of counting every single bite of food one takes as a mechanism for losing weight. Here’s the lede:

“Thanksgiving and the rest of the holiday season are famously ruinous to waistlines. But a new study suggests that we might be able to fend off weight gain and even drop a few pounds in the coming weeks by taking note of every time we put teeth to food or drink.”

The blog does point out that this strategy worked as a weight loss strategy only for those who were able to stick with it, but that’s a bit like saying that only the only people who get stronger lifting weights are those who stick with it. It’s just not very helpful advice. The point with fitness writing ought to be to not only point out what works, but also what is sustainable, realistic, and practical.

Imagine if the Times took the same approach to reporting foreign policy that it does to writing about fitness. Its reporters, rather than developing sources among policymakers and on the ground in dangerous places like Syria would simply dial up academics and talk to them about the Assad regime. Understand what I’m saying here—there’s a place for this sort of thing. There are some really fantastic international relations and security experts in academia who by definition have the time and the resources to do excellent deep dives into complex topics. But for following events on the ground, a well-written and useful story compiles sources from a number of different disciplines, perspectives, and experiences.

Health and fitness are far from the frivolous topics one might think they are given the news coverage surrounding them. My advice to fitness bloggers at mainstream news sites is to get out of the newsroom and visit some well-regarded gyms and strength coaches. For those of you reading who aren’t journalists? Go directly to the source to get your information: find good people with proven track records and read what they write. You’ll save yourself some wasted time reading about the latest randomized control trial.

If you’re thinking that 2016 is your year to get fit, think about investigating some of the following resources. These are all people who’ve had to prove their results with clients, competitors, and athletes.

Resources for General Strength:

Jen Sinkler

Negar Fonooni

Tony Gentilcore

Resources for Competitive Strength:

Eric Cressey (This guy is like the professor of shoulder health. His YouTube videos are master classes.)

Juggernaut Training Systems

Local Gyms for Competitive and General Strength:

The Dirty Gym

Dayton Strength and Conditioning (Disclosure: I’m a member there and team up with DSC coaches on occasional projects.)

Resources for Nutrition:

Precision Nutrition (Disclosure: I received my nutrition coaching certification from PN but don’t receive any sort of remuneration from them. I just happen to really love their approach to nutrition coaching.)

Grateful to be in Dayton

November 25, 2015 By Jason Harrison

I moved back to the Dayton area in April this year, and I admit the transition was not without trepidation. I grew up in Huber Heights, studied political science at Ohio State, and with the exception of a two-year stint back in the area during 2003-2005, I’ve lived most of my adult life in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles. It’s safe to say I’m a bit of a big city guy.

Like others that I’ve met who’ve left and come back, I’m here to be closer to family. But since I’ve spent so much of my adult life away from Dayton, I’ve come back as a bit of an outsider. I’m discovering the city as one would any “new” place. This outsider’s status, coupled with a personal training career that I hadn’t even contemplated the last time I lived here, is inspiring in me a feeling I didn’t anticipate back in April.

Gratitude, and not simply because I’m closer to family.

Gratitude for the Dayton community itself. I’m not enjoying myself “despite being in Dayton,” but because of it.

You know by now my approach to fitness is that health and wellness are inextricably linked to the rest of our lives. I want my clients to learn how to pay attention to what matters most in their lives. I don’t want my clients (or readers) to obsess about fitness, but to see it as an avenue toward healthier, more vibrant, more connected living. This sort of life in Dayton includes things like exploring challenging independent movies, creative new art galleries, empowered understanding of our own sensuality, and venerable hometown institutions.

Blush Boudoir’s studio in a historic house downtown.

It’s easy, isn’t it, to ignore these things. We get so locked into our jobs, responsibilities, and commutes that we forget to see what is around us. I’ve been working with a remote client to build “mindful” lunches into her weekly routine. We came up with the concept together after realizing that she often works straight through lunch, picking at food here and there but never stopping to enjoy. She took her first mindful lunch last week, and you know what she found?

Quiet. Peace. Strategic thinking. When she gave herself permission to slow down, unplug, and pay attention to what she was eating, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that she found inspiration.

Dayton’s pace is undeniably slower than New York’s, but with maturity, experience, and more than a few stumbles under my belt, I feel better equipped now to enjoy what my hometown has to offer. Now when I travel to New York (or wherever) I find myself bringing a bit more of Dayton with me.

If you’re gathering with family tomorrow, I hope you’ll take a few moments to contemplate the community we live in. I hope you’ll make it a point in the coming weeks to shop local, buy someone you love a surprise cupcake, or take an interesting yoga class. You want to be healthy? It’s not just about diet, exercise, and sleep–although all three of those things are important. You also need to feel inspired, connected, and stimulated. I’m proud to call myself a Daytonian, but from a health and wellness perspective I’m proud to live in a city in which I know my clients can become the best possible version of themselves.

Fitness advice for Thanksgiving: Just be a grownup.

November 18, 2015 By Jason Harrison

With the Thanksgiving holiday rapidly approaching, I thought it wise to address a stubborn myth about health living, which is that one must be obnoxious about their food choices as guests in other people’s homes or during holidays. My advice? Eat well, but have some manners.

Don’t show up at grandma’s house with your own bag of food. Don’t skip the office holiday party because there’s going to be a lot of pie. Don’t make faces when the composition of the menu at dad’s house isn’t what you would like it to be. There’s a word for people who do these things. I think you all know what that word is.

I can’t imagine living a life in which I couldn’t have a piece of pecan pie with my dad while talking football at Thanksgiving. We’re human beings, not animals. Food isn’t just about feeding our bodies. Preparing a meal for others, or eating a meal as an invited guest, is an act of love and companionship. Your relationships with the ones you love are as important to your health as anything else you do, including the food you eat and the exercise you do. You work against both human nature and good manners when you adopt an air of condescension and restriction at the communal table.

What to do then, if you’re at a table without vegetables, or in a room full of delicious pies, or in the living room when your slightly buzzed uncle starts talking politics?

You do the best you can. Just like you should every day.

Load your plate up with vegetables first. This will serve as an automatic portion control mechanism.
No, or few vegetables? I’d err on the side of protein (like turkey) and limit the amount of starchy carbs (like mashed potatoes).
Put down your fork in between each bite. Pay attention to the conversation around you. Listen to the person with whom you’re speaking. Don’t anticipate what you’re going to say. Just listen. Be thankful for the time you’re allowed to spend with a loved one. (The science linking gratitude to health is increasingly strong and convincing).
Never, ever, drink with the intention of getting drunk. Not only will you end up acting a fool, but you’ll also probably eat a lot more. Yes, your ultra-lefty cousin is home from college and she’s telling you all about how you should be composting. And your super duper conservative childhood neighbor has some questionable views on diversity. But you’re a grownup, aren’t you? Drink like a gentleman. Consume wine like a grown woman. If you don’t like the conversation you’re in, politely excuse yourself and find a better one.
When it’s time for dessert, try to eat in a room without a television. Hopefully you’re in a home with good taste in coffee, so they’ve served you a fresh cup of Wood Burl from Press in the Oregon District. Sip your coffee, eat your pumpkin pie. Again, put your fork down in between each bite. Listen to the conversation. Taste the pie. Smell the coffee. Be aware. Be present.

You’re going to be reading a lot of “surviving the holidays” fitness articles in the coming weeks. Few of them will focus on the idea of acting like a dignified human being and practicing the art of conversation. But a healthy lifestyle is a holistic lifestyle in which you’re living, loving, cooking, moving, and feeling well. You don’t have to live like a monk. You don’t have to have the discipline of an Olympian. Ultimately, all you have to do is embrace your humanity, treat both the food and your company with respect, and always–always–eat as many vegetables as you can.

Jason Harrison

Mon 18

Tue 19

Wed 20

Thu 21

Fri 22

Sat 23

Sun 24

Tattoo Fest Dayton

Tattoo Fest Dayton

Tattoo Fest Dayton

Tattoo Fest Dayton

$1 Oysters

Daybreak Community Open House

$3 Burger Night

Trivia Shark

Free Yoga with Aleasha

Trivia at The Greene

Trivia Night

Audtions: Drunk As You Like It