Healthy Herbs.

The other day I posted about supplements, I do believe that some herbs can be healthy for us to take. One must be careful when taking supplements though, because they are not regulated by the government. I believe that generally supplements are okay for use in tea form. I have even made herbal expectorants and other more concentrated medicines from herbs, generally they tasted nasty but they could also work. The concentration levels are another reason that a person needs to be careful with taking supplements. There were recently reports that too much green tea in supplement could be dangerous. Read about it here.
Numerous deaths were caused by Fen-Phen. Supplements can be dangerous. It can be difficult to consult a naturopath, because they are often unregulated. Even regulated naturopaths can differ greatly on what they prescribe. My general belief regarding herbs and supplements is that if a claim that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Supplements should not be trusted for serious illnesses, but for a sore tummy or something of that sort herbs can be beneficial.

The Greeks Knew It Way Back Then

Upon the entrance to the Oracle of Delphi two phrases were carved: Sophrosune and Gnothi Seauton. These are important phrases to consider when attempting to achieve health through moderation.
Sophrosune, while not easily translated into English, means something like the wisdom to know moderation in all things. It is the ability to eat a couple of chocolates, instead of the whole bag. The ability to have one beer instead of a six pack. It is also knowing that if you have certain triggers that encourage you to overdo, knowing how to keep them in check. Knowing when to take a rest day from your fitness routine, and knowing when to return. It is important to be able to moderately indulge, because complete deprivation leads to binging. Binging leads to guilty feelings. Being able to have a couple of chocolates a day will keep your cravings down. Not allowing yourself chocolates will lead to a day when you eat a whole bag of chocolates and end up searching your house for some more, until you feel sick and bloated.
Sophorosune goes hand in hand with Gnothi Seauton. Gnothi Seauton is an imperative that can be translated as Know Yourself! Knowing yourself is an important part of fitness through moderation. One of the fitness pitfalls that I am guilty of is moving too fast. Once I get into a fitness routine, I will up the intensity too fast and will end up in a great deal of pain. If I add more and more weight to my lifting every week I will end up not being able to work out due to the pain.
There is a fine balance of knowing your body well enough to know what pain is good and what pain is bad. It is good to feel sore after a workout, the microtears in your muscle will heal themselves and make you stronger. It is bad to feel a shooting pain during a workout. If you experience a shooting pain while working out STOP IMMEDIATELY! Your body is telling you that you are doing too much. If however your workout seems to easy, maybe it's time to up the weight or intensity. By the end of your reps you should just barely be able to push that last one out, but you should be able to push it out. Keep challenging yourself, but don't give yourself too tough a challenge, or up your challenge too fast.
Knowing yourself could also be knowing what situations cause you to binge drink, and being able to avoid those situations or monitor yourself. If you know that there are no situations in which you can moderately drink, don't do it.
In most cases, being able to indulge a little will prevent a binge. Since binge eating is the #1 eating disorder in the United States, being able to know yourself will prevent binges. This is something that I have problems with. I know that in certain situations I will binge eat, and so I try to avoid those situations. I don't go out to all you can eat buffets, because I will stuff myself until I feel sick, and may even get physically sick.
Achieving fitness through moderation should be a lifelong goal. Aristotle thought that as we get older it gets easy to be moderate. If you do slip, don 't obsess on it. That only creates a guilt cycle that will encourage the behavior in the future. Just pick up where you left off. It will make you feel better in the long run. The longer you act moderately about fitness the easier it will get and the more you will be able to do in the future.

Can you be moderate with supplements?

Whatever your fitness goals are, whether they be losing weight, gaining muscle, or fitting into a 32" waist again, you may be tempted to use supplements. Supplements don't fit into fitness through moderation, because they are an extreme measure. Here I will explain the basics and categories for the most common supplements.
Weight Loss: There are two main classifications of weight loss pills: appetite suppressants and drugs that block fat absorption.

• Appetite suppressants work by tricking you hunger signals into thinking that they don't need food. Commonly they contain some type of stimulant, thus they are basically legal speed. These can be used to achieve rapid weight loss. Take it from a former tweaker: if you are fueling your body with speed instead of healthy foods you will eventually crash. Once you stop taking these supplements you will have to work much harder to maintain your weight. With healthy eating and exercise, once you reach your goal weight, you can actually eat a few more calories or exercise a little less to maintain your weight. Another bad side effect of using stimulants to lose weight is DEATH. Stimulants weaken the heart muscles and can lead to heart attacks or strokes. Cigarettes are sometimes used as appetite suppressants, and many smokers fear weight gain. Is it better to be a little chubby and healthy or thin with weak lung function. Also quitting smoking would be a good time to begin a healthy eating exercise program.
• Fat Blockers work by affecting the way that your body processes fat. The primary organ for processing fat is the liver. Liver failure has been associated with a number of fat blocker supplements. Again once you go off of the supplement, you will have to work harder to maintain your weight.
  

There are a wide variety of supplements available for gaining muscle: the two I will cover here are amino acids and creatine supplements.

• Amino Acids come in a wide variety of packaging. They can be called whey protein, muscle boost, or they could even just be called amino acids. Amino acids are the basic building blocks of protein. A healthy diet with eggs and dairy will get you the same amount of amino acids, and so they are not really necessary if you eat well. Anecdotal evidence has shown that amino acids decrease muscle pain after working out, but a little soreness is good as it reflects the micro-tears that are needed to strengthen muscle, and if the pain is too great adjust your workout, instead of pushing through. Bottom line: if you eat healthy there is no reason to take amino acid supplements.
• Creatine is another supplement that has promises of boosting muscle mass. It works by making the muscles retain more water, thus it doesn't increase muscle mass but merely creates an illusion of muscle mass. The muscles will be bulky, but you will sacrifice muscle tone for the added bulkiness. Creatine has also been associated with an increased risk for kidney stones. Since Creatine doesn't increase muscle mass, it is not a very effective supplement for muscle development.

Taking Supplements are not a real option for fitness through moderation. They are extreme measures, that should only be taken under the guidance of a trusted physician. Supplements are only for extreme cases, and they don't work in the long run. The best advice is to eat moderately, exercise moderately, and have moderate goals.

Avoiding Extremes

Many of the ills that our society faces health wise are directly linked to the fact that we shoot for the extremes. In many cases an obese person has become so through wholly seeking pleasure, through food, rest, and entertainment. These things are not good in themselves, they are goods that are dependent upon some other good. The anorexic seeks to be thin, not seeing that this is also not a true good. Fitness should be the end goal, though it is not a goal that ends. Fitness is the good that is a good in itself. I realize that it is tough to be moderate. I especially have a hard time with this one. I tend to go overboard with anything new that I discover. I have the propensity towards an addictive personality, thus it is very difficult for me to try to be moderate. I used to be a vegetarian, but once I started eating meat, my diet suffered horribly. It was all burgers and juicy steaks, the fattier the better. I work in a place where dough-nuts are plentiful and so once I started working there I would indulge in one or two a day, this led to a six a day habit approximately this last December. Around the time that I began eating red meat again I began another unhealthy habit- smoking. I had quit when I was 22, and didn't smoke again until I was 27. from 27-29 I went through periods of quitting and starting again. I generally drink moderately, but once I graduated from college I accelerated my nightly drinking to the point that I was drinking 3-4 beers a night. My health suffered. I was chronically tired, my weight had surged to 250 lb. I generally felt like crap. I was living to an extreme.
When I became a vegetarian at 22 I lived at the end of another vicious extreme. I began exercising a lot. I was lifting weights 7 days a week, running 5 miles every morning without fail, I was doing yoga 5 times a week, I took up Taekwondo, kick boxing, Hapkido, Judo. It was to the point that I was in the Dojo 3 hours a night 4 nights a week. In the daytime I was riding my bike 70 miles round trip to swim in the river. What was the end result of all this exercise? I was physically exhausted. If I missed any part of my routine I would feel intense guilt about it. I was unable to help friends move as my muscles would give out midway through the day. My typical workout consisted of 2 hours of heavy weight lifting. Where now I would count helping someone move as a workout, then I would just workout early in the day so that I would still get my workout in before the moving.
You can't reach fitness goals if you live in the extreme. You should not look at reaching fitness goals as being torn between extremes, you should look at it as practicing to hit a target. Being torn between extremes does nothing to achieve actual health. You should aim not to overeat, nor under eat. You should aim not to over exercise, not under exercise. There is no plan that works for everyone, so you should try to find one that works for you. The most important rule of thumb, it to not beat yourself up if you slip, just get back on the horse as soon as you can. If you are just beginning start slow, if you are continuing look at a way to re tune your workout.