by Lyle Hurd, Editor, totalhealth
Joanie Greggains is one of America’s
favorite health and exercise personalities.
Her long-running TV exercise
show, “Morning Stretch,” and her
popular number one talk show, “The
Joanie Greggains Show (on KGO Radio 810
AM in San Francisco, California, the number
one talk radio station in the country) have
made her a familiar, popular and respected
authority in the health and fitness field.
Joanie has produced, choreographed and
starred in 15 exercise videos. Her byword is
SAFETY. No one gets hurt exercising with
Joanie and all have fun doing it. She currently
teaches variety training classes and
runs her Fit Camp for Women, an educational/
nutritional/exercise program at a
studio in Corte Madera, California.
Recently Joanie and Ann Louise
Gittleman, author of the best-selling Fat
Flush Plan and a totalhealth editor, have
teamed up to create The Fat Flush Fitness
Plan (McGraw Hill). Whether fitness seekers
are followers of the Fat Flush Plan or simply
people looking for a low-impact and efficient
way to exercise, this revolutionary plan is a
program they can use, based on “smarter,”
not “harder,” exercise. Used in conjunction
with The Fat Flush Plan, this fitness program
builds calorie-burning muscle mass, speeds
weight loss and helps keep those excess
pounds from returning.
Joanie is the author of Fit Happens
(Vallard Books, New York, 2000). She is a
member of the President’s Council on
Physical Fitness and Sports. She has been named “Best On-Air Personality” American
by Women in Radio and Television. She
received the American Fitness Leader Award
from Jaycees of America and numerous other
recognitions for her work.
TH: Joanie, it is a pleasure to meet you.
Congratulations on your Fat Flush Fitness
Plan book.
JG: It is really exciting to work with Ann
Louise—I have been a great supporter of the
Fat Flush Plan since it was just a two-week
detox program that she explained in Beyond
Pritikin. So to see it evolve to what it is now
and also to have the opportunity to add the
exercise component is really rewarding.
TH: It’s incredible to observe what has developed
with the overall Fat Flush Plan program.
JG: The great thing is that Ann Louise is the
real deal. She hasn’t changed. She is always
trying to move forward. It is really nice to see
someone legitimate get the right kind of
recognition.
TH: I agree. The important aspect of what
you are doing together is that for optimal age
management you need a comprehensive program
that includes diet, exercise, attitude
and meditative components.
JG: Exactly, making the years we have left on
the planet better, because then you can function
on an optimal level. You see so many
people who may not be sick but because their
muscles are atrophied or they are sedentary
and have no energy, they are not able to function
normally. This leads to depression and
other health problems. And that doesn’t necessarily
mean they are overweight.
TH: I read where your friend, Jack LaLanne,
suggests we are moving more towards a
society where a mature individual’s potential
will be judged more by their biological age
and capabilities, not necessarily their
chronological age.
JG: Jack LaLanne is great and he is right on
target. Today millions of people are faced
with the prospect of working 10 or 15 years
longer than they had planned. The biological
age of your body and brain is critical.
Whether or not we continue to work, our
predicted life span is 20 years longer than
when many of us were born. What good is an
extra 20 years if you are locked into a body or brain that doesn’t work during what should be
the best years of our lives?
TH: When and how do we start?
JG: Start today. Set your own goals, learn what
your body needs. You have to deal with your
own biology. You can do all the exercising and
dieting but you must understand and feel good
about who you are and deal with what you
have been given to work with.
TH: Joanie, the programs you and Ann Louise
have developed are based on decades of experience.
Both of you have earned a number of
degrees in your fields and realize that optimum
wellness is an amalgam of whole body commitments.
How important is it for an individual
who is looking to make a permanent
change in his path to wellness and vital
longevity to understand the credibility of institutions,
books, individuals and products they
select as their partners in achieving these goals?
JG: It is an imperative because this is the
beginning of the rest of your life. Whether you
are 14, 34, 54 or 80, you can take control of
your own destiny. However, you need a recognized,
safe and reliable program that will not
only help you reshape your body and habits
but provide you with the tools to maintain
your success.
The problem is there are so many devices
and diets that not only don’t work, they are
very dangerous. So many people have tried so
many weight loss plans. But there is no magic
pill, no magic anything. It still involves your
complete participation mentally, physically
and nutritionally. It is really sad when you see
people spending so much money because they
see this person who looks so good and sounds
so fabulous representing a program that just
isn’t going to work for them on any level.
TH: You mention that many individuals are
constantly going on and off diets. Explain
what this process can do to your body.
JG: There are a number of negatives and it creates
more than just physical problems. First, it
makes it harder and harder to lose weight. And
by the way, when you lose weight, you lose
both fat and muscle mass. When you gain it
back, it’s fat. So over a period of time, losing
the same 50 pounds over and over can seriously
alter the ratio of fatty tissue to muscle mass, as
well as affect your body shape and the condition
of your skin.
Mentally it becomes harder to lose weight.
Your body is always thinking, “Am I starving,
am I going to eat?” You begin to have problems
with your metabolism. Depression sets in. It
becomes harder to convince someone who goes
from plan to plan, pill to pill and all the exercise
devices that a long-term comprehensive nutritional,
exercise and healthy lifestyle plan is the
answer to their continuing frustration.
TH: What are the practical values of exercise
to an individual committed to a long-term
weight loss program?
JG: People who diet, especially women, need
to be involved in both aerobic as well as
weight training exercise. It helps maintain
muscle mass and bone density, particularly as
they age. Proper exercise is excellent for the
heart, brain, skin and lymphatic system;
it helps build endurance, promotes a sense
of accomplishment and of course, burns fat
calories.
TH: Fill me in about your book and how it
compliments the Fat Flush Plan.
JG: Ann Louise was aware I was incorporating
the Fat Flush Plan in my program and was
convinced that individuals following her plan
would benefit from a well-designed fitness
component.
When I conduct classes, I have always suggested
it is important to incorporate a good
detox program and good diet. So I have
everyone get the Fat Flush Plan book. Then
while they are involved in the detox phase
during the first two weeks, I have them add
exercises to the suggested walking.
Then we start getting them involved in
rebounding. I am really interested in the lymphatic
system which I feel has been pretty
much ignored. Everyone always talks about
the cardiovascular system but not the lymphatic
and its effect on the immune system.
Rebounding is great for flushing the lymphatic
system as well as all around general
fitness.
Our goal is to detox from the inside out,
combining the components of fitness with
cardio and lymphatic cleaning. It is good for
the heart and lymphatic system and also
muscle tone, endurance and flexibility.
When you add in proper nutrition, aromatherapy,
therapeutic massage, the lifestyle
and mental attitude components, really
incorporating your goals into your whole
life, it rewards you physically, spiritually and
mentally.
TH: Having began your career as an educator
in the school system how does the idea of regular,
planned, even supervised exercise, fit into
the trend towards childhood obesity and
sedentary lifestyles?
JG: It is one of my pet peeves and I am very
involved in California in trying to get mandatory
PE back. When I was teaching, before they
took PE out of the school system, it meant
from seventh grade until you were a senior in
high school both boys and girls exercised every
single day, whether they liked it or not. We had
good PE programs. First of all the students had
physical activity every day for at least 45 minutes.
They also learned to play on teams and
get along with each other, which was very good
for girls since they learned to blow off steam.
Kids who have physical activity do much
better processing academic stress. When you
compare that to how many hours kids watch
TV today and sit at their computer, their diets
(which are proliferated with super-sized foods,
fast foods, processed foods), it has become a
real problem.
I really think that the message has not gotten
out. Kids as young as 12 or 13 are already
fighting cholesterol and diabetes and depression;
ADD and ADHD are epidemic in young
kids. It is interesting we have these kids studying
and studying and while we used to be number
one, American kids have never done worse academically.
I happen to believe that not taking
care of these kids physically has a direct correlation
to their mentality. The real problem is that
many of these kids will carry this mentality and
these problems into adulthood.
TH: Any final comments?
JG: Please remember right now is the beginning
of the rest of your life and as I said earlier,
whether you are 14, 34, 54 or 80 you can take
control of your own destiny. Also, you are
special. Beauty is what is inside you. Don’t
try to be someone else; just be the best at
being you.
The Fat Flush Fitness
Plan by Ann Louise
Gittleman, M.S., CNN
and Joanie Greggains
is published by
McGraw-Hill. |
 |
|
|
