Musings

The Power of a Story

On Easter Sunday, a site called Chat About Jesus (https://www.chataboutjesus.com) took out a full-page ad in major newspapers. The title of the ad was—

 

“LET THE AUTHOR OF LIFE

WRITE YOUR STORY”

 

Then they placed three little crosses (with the middle one being the largest) over the passage found in Jeremiah 29:11:

 

“For I know the plans I have for you, “ declares the Lord,” plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

 

—above an old manual typewriter. The passage looked as though it was being typed on paper inserted in the typewriter. It was a beautiful ad. Simple. Attention grabbing. Compelling.

And true.

 

What about your story?

So how about you? Do you like to write or tell stories? Are you writing a story now?

Did you ever consider that God is writing a story through you? What story have you kept to yourself that others need to hear?

 

Guideposts magazines—

Through this weekend, I’m going to be working with other Guideposts magazine contributing writers and Guideposts editors on writing good stories. Stories God is writing through people. A lot of them. Just like you.

It’s always amazing (and humbling) to me to read how God works in such astounding ways. Unusual circumstances. “Chance” encounters. Otherworldly guidance and protection.

Some of the stories we’re going to peruse are about season of life changes, love stories, how destructive poor body image can be and how long it can last, mule trains, and miraculous intervention and protection. Daily events that don’t at first glance appear to be extraordinary, until we looked more closely at them and see just how miraculous they are.

Sometimes we put God in a human box and forget He’s unlimited in what He can do, and does do in our lives. Even in the lives of those who don’t pay too much attention to Him.

And when we look carefully over all of our years, we all find something miraculous to tell.

And that’s what Guideposts does. We tell stories to uplift and encourage (because we all need encouragement in our daily living), explore the mysterious ways of the universe and God, observe how God uses all of his creation—including four-legged ones—to protect, guide and give us companionship. And they explore the Heavenly realm of angels and angelic encounters, which are more prevalent than we notice or think.

 

Start telling your story. You never know who might be awed, encouraged or brought to faith by it. And if you think it’s something Guideposts editors might like to share with millions of readers, contact their editorial board in New York.

We all need stories. They move us emotionally and spiritually and sometimes move us to action. They’re what make life rich. They make great family history.

 

NEXT WEEK—Free-for-All Fridays will be on hiatus until May 18. So until then, be thinking about the story you can tell.

Until then, write and tell your story. And don’t forget to tell everyone who the

Author is!

Make it a great weekend of story writing!

Blessings,

Andrea

“May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2).

Photo care of Google Images

How to Determine Your Target Heart Rate Goal

So now you’ve measured and know your resting heart rate and have an idea on how to determine what your target heart rate should be during exercise. (See my post last week http://andreaarthurowan.com/2018/04/25/the-best-way-to-calculate-your-exercise-training-heart-rate/admin/).

Now what?

 

Setting some goals—

This is the exciting part. Where you decide what your exercise goals are. Spend some time thinking about this one. And consider your age, current physical condition, and what type of exercising you would like to do, and will stick with. Do you want to:

 

  • Lose weight?
  • Put on some muscle and have nicely contoured arms and legs?
  • Tone up what you’ve got?
  • Increase your lung capacity and improve your heart function?
  • Maintain your current level of conditioning?
  • Run a 5K, or triathlon?
  • Increase your reaction time and power or speed?
  • Just get stronger?

 

What fitness goal you choose will determine how you exercise, where you exercise, what you do for exercise, and what exercise heart rate you’ll aim for.

 

Conditioning, toning, power, or aerobic capacity—

As a general rule, for general conditioning goals, you will want to exercise at a heart rate level of 50 to 70%.

As we saw last week, for someone my age (60) and resting heart rate of 58, (don’t forget to use that as your base for proper calculations), I would want to exercise at a level that keeps my heart rate between 109 bpm and 129 bpm.

At the lower rate of 109 or even up to 120, I could maintain a reasonable exercise rate—like walking at a 3.0 mph walking rate—for two to three hours, or longer. As long my knees and feet hold out for me.

If, however, I want to work on power and strength, which I sometimes do, (for toning, muscle definition, and muscle power), I’d want to push my heart rate up to a higher level, say 80 to 90% of my heart rate maximum, again with my resting heart rate as a critical factor in the formula.

When I use the 80 to 90% range, and plug those numbers into the formula we covered last week, we arrive at a target heart rate range of 140 to 150. That’s a rate I wouldn’t be able to sustain for an indefinite period of time, though. In fact, I probably wouldn’t try to sustain it more than 20 minutes, if I were hitting a 140 – 150 bpm rate throughout the entire 20 minutes.

I could, however, go longer, if I were ramping my heart rate up and down as I exercised, as sometimes happens when I’m walking on the treadmill and increasing the ramp angle considerably to mimic hiking uphill and then lowering the ramp angle to a slight or flat grade.

 

 Working up to your target level—

But even if you know what your target level should be, you may need to take it slowly and work up to your desired level. If you haven’t exercised for a while, are recovering from an illness, or you’re changing up your exercise program for some reason—because your goals have changed—you’ll want to work up to a level where your heart rate is being stressed a little but not so much that you have a difficult time breathing, feel weak, or can’t maintain that level of exercise for five to ten minutes. Or, after exercising, your heart rate takes longer than it should to come back to normal.

Again, if you’re just starting an exercise program, make sure your doctor is in agreement with what you want to accomplish and gives you the thumbs up on the program you’ve designed. She can also help you design one!

 

Where do you go from here?

I know all of this probably sounds a little—or a lot—vague, but as we progress, we’ll look at more specific exercise goals and see what a training program might look like for you. If you’re already on an exercise program, you might see some ideas here that will help you improve or stress yourself a bit more.

 

I forgot to provide an answer!

A couple of weeks ago, I asked if you knew which athletes typically have the highest VO2 maximums. I promised to give you the answer the following week—and then forgot! Many apologies for my forgetfulness!

The answer is: Cross-country skiers. They have HUGE lung capacities. One reason is the long distances they ski, but it’s also because they’re using nearly all of their bodies when they’re exercising at those long distances. It’s a grueling sport.

 

 What’s coming up?

NEXT WEEK, “Workout Wednesdays” will be on hiatus. I’m heading to Philadelphia this weekend for an intensive writing/editing workshop with the Guideposts editors and eleven other writers; and my younger son graduates from college the following weekend.

I’m trying to take my own advice and live a balanced life!

So I’ll see you back here May 16!

Until next time, keep working on setting your goals!

Blessings,

 Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

Photos courtesy of Google Images

19 MOVERS AND SHAKERS IN HUMAN HISTORY WORLDVIEW (Part 1)

The first eight big thinkers—

Today, let’s look at 8 of the 19 most well known thinkers of all time. We’ll specifically explore what they thought about God in human history.

 

MOSES (500 B.C.?)—Moses is considered to be the lawgiver, and the man who wrote the first five books of the Old Testament portion of the Bible (the Pentateuch). Moses identified God as an all knowing, all-powerful, all and everywhere present being.

 

PLATO (430 – 350 B.C.) —The Greek Plato is considered to be the first great Western philosopher. He believed that existing things are modeled on changeless, eternal forms. He also believed in a multitude of gods, who were very active in human affairs.

 

 

ARISTOTLE (384 – 322 B.C.)—Also a Greek, Aristotle was the first to systematically describe physics, biology, psychology, and the standards of literature. He was also the first true empiricist—one who believes in the scientific method of forming a hypothesis from observations and beliefs, asking a question, designing research to test the hypothesis, doing the research to gather data, and forming a conclusion based on the research findings. He is also identified as one of the first agnostics—someone unsure about whether there really is a living God.

AUGUSTINE (A.D. 354 – 430)—While St. Augustine of Hippo originally struggled to “find” faith in Christianity, he later became one of the most important and well-known theologians in Christian history. He also addressed the tug-of-war                                                                                                         between science and religion.

 

THOMAS AQUINAS (A.D. 1224 – 1274) Aquinas, a Catholic priest, wrote the famous work Summa Theologica. In it he offers proofs of the existence of God and outlined ways to blessedness. He was a strong Theist—belief in the existence of one God who is the creative source of the world and human race and who transcends that world while also functioning within it.

 

BARUCH SPINOZA (1632 – 1677)—Spinoza, who lived in Holland, believed that God is an infinite being who is identical with the world. In other words, God is alive and He is everywhere. Because He is everywhere, we are all part of                                                                                            the deity.

 

DAVID HUME (1711 – 1776)—Hume, a Scotsman, thought the entire world is formed from the perception of our sensory experiences and believed everything had to be measured and replicated in order to believed, He doubted that we could ever really know anything with certainty. Consequently, he believed that the miraculous, and whether God existed, were irrelevant discussions.

 

 

 

 

 

KANT (1724 -1804)—Kant, a German, believed the human reason creates a world where all events are causally connected, (cause and effect) and this connection enables us to act in moral ways. His focus on reason as the driving force behind action, led him to believe that the mind was god.

 

 

Have you heard of any of those guys? Moses, Plato, and Aristotle, probably. Maybe Augustine. Perhaps Thomas Aquinas. But the others? Even though you might not have heard of them, can you identify their beliefs as ones you’ve read about or been taught before?

 

We’ll stop with Kant today.

Next week we’ll look at other movers and shakers who have influenced our thinking and helped shape our worldviews. And see how our beliefs align with or contradict theirs.

 

Things to Consider—

Do any of the beliefs of the philosophers we gave overviews for today resonate with you?

Do any of your beliefs sound like theirs?

Do you disagree with their judgment?

 

 

And as we move forward, be thinking about the following truth:

All of these thinkers can be wrong, but they can’t all be right.

 

Until next week,

Have fun thinking deep thoughts!

Blessings,

Andrea

“May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2).

 

Photos courtesy of Google Images

Taking a Postmortemistic View of Life

Have you ever looked at your life postmortemistically?

 

Don’t try looking the word up in a dictionary, because it doesn’t really exist. A Google search will tell you postmortemistically doesn’t match any documents they have in their search engine. But it’s a great word The New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast invented and used in her priceless memoir Can’t we talk about something more PLEASANT?

The back cover describes the book as: “Roz Chast and her parents were practitioners of denial: if you don’t ever think about death, it will never happen. [It’s] the story of an only child watching her parents age well into their nineties and die. In this account, … Chast combines drawings with family photos and documents, chronicling that ‘long good-bye.’”

The story is heartwarming, heart-wrenching, realistic, candid, and laugh-out-loud funny. I loved it, and her.

 

I can relate to Chast: I’m an only child of older parents, sandwiched between still raising children and working while watching a parent slowly die; and now, nine years later, watch another parent still battle—in spite near total blindness, loneliness, depression, and ravaged hearing—to hang onto life at 96, and probably beyond.

As all of this is occurring, and you’re aging too, you start thinking postmortemistically, even if you didn’t know to call it that.

 

 Postmortemistically—a perfect word to describe what goes through your head when you’re cleaning out your parents’ “stuff” or getting rid of their “stuff” after they die.

Chast calls it a “transformative process.” And, indeed, it is. It’s a depressing, destabilizing, and physically and emotionally exhausting process.

She says, “Once you go through that process, you can never look at YOUR stuff in the same way.”

 

 Like—

You acknowledge, even if you’re not a hoarder, that you’re probably a typical consumer who’s accumulated your fair share of stuff. Stuff that, at some point, will probably have to be given away, thrown away, or sold at one of those edifying “Estate Sales” where other people decide your stuff is worth making their stuff.

 

 

And the big life dilemma and question—

 

One day, your kids will have to go through all of your stuff. What will they find worthy of keeping, as a wonderful memory of you and your life?

And that prompts you to wonder whether or not you should start shedding your stuff before your children have to endlessly paw through it to see if there’s anything they might want to make theirs. You know, as heirlooms.

It’s something for all of us to think about no matter what stage of life we’re in. And being a postmortemistic thinker means a dramatic paradigm shift for many of us that requires some brain re-training and habit breaking. Like not heading to the mall every time a favorite department store or boutique has notified you by email of a sale. Just so you can save some money.

 

I started thinking this way about a year ago, as another one of my birthdays (and my mom’s) rolled around, and the end of my life definitely looked a lot closer to me than the beginning. When a lot of my “stuff” started looking more like junk, dust bunny collectors and storage space-gobblers than cherished treasures. And then I started thinking:

I don’t want my kids to have to dig through all of this stuff and try to make sense of it or decide what to do with it. Or, worse yet, argue over who gets it! (Both of them told me they wanted my sports car after I’m gone, right after I got it ten years ago!)

Now I’m regarding all of my belongings and purchases with a postmortemistic mindset. Not morbidly, just thoughtfully. What’s giving me joy and edification right now, definitely will in the future (when my memory is in the toilet), and what’s just taking up space or ordering my life more than it should?

Thinking that way isn’t morbid, although the word has a morbid ring to it.

It’s actually rather refreshing. And freeing.

I hope you’ll give it a go!

 

Next week, I’ll tell you how my postmortemistic paradigm shift is going.

In the meantime, please share how you’ve handled getting rid of or keeping your deceased parents’ stuff. Is it on display, or stored in a box in the attic, with the hopes that one day you’ll have it all neatly displayed in some gorgeous album (or display case) you painstakingly assembled and explained, for everyone to look at?

And if you’re at that point in your life right now, or know someone who is, I highly recommend getting a copy of Roz Chast’s book. At the very least, you’ll be permeated with happiness and relief that you’re not alone, that there are others whose minds, and lives, go through the same contortions yours does during the agonizing goodbye journey.

 

Until next week,

Happy Reading (and thinking postmortemistically)!

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

 

Photos courtesy of Google Images

The Best Way to Calculate Your Exercise (Training) Heart Rate

Have you ever spent weeks or months exercising following all of the rules of exercise engagement and not made any progress in your training? There may be a reason for that, and it may have to do with how you’re monitoring and setting your exercise heart rate.

 

Last week we looked at the importance of knowing what your resting heart rate is and how it can be an indicator of your heart health. We also discussed what the standard maximum heart rate and exercise heart rate ranges are, the ones you find most often printed on the treadmill or stationary bike at your gym.

 

Then I ended the post by saying that the most common formula is often not the most accurate or best way to determine your exercise heart rate. Today I’m going to tell you why and show you how to get the measurement you need.

 

Exercise heart rate review—

Let’s begin with a short review about what happens to your heart rate during exercise.

Your heart rate usually rises during intense workouts, prolonged long-distance (aerobic) exercise workouts. Your heart’s maximum heart rate is the rate at which your heart is working at its hardest to supply oxygen to your body. In exercise, this is the rate that can only be sustained for several minutes.

Your maximum heart rate is a function of aerobic capacity—the amount of oxygen your body is able to consume, or the heart’s ability to pump oxygenated blood to your muscles. When an exercise physiologist measures it, she’ll write in terms of VO2 max and actually measure the volume of oxygen you move through your lungs during exercise. The more conditioned you are, the higher your VO2 max usually is.

 

As you exercise and your fitness level improves, the body ramps up in efficiency, at metabolism and everything else it does. Your gastric motility improves—the speed and efficiency at which your body digests and moves food through the digestive tract. Your muscles get stronger and more efficient. Your body actually makes more capillaries in which to circulate oxygenated blood to those muscles, and your lungs become better at moving those oxygenated blood cells through the transport system. (Do any of you remember the People Mover ride at Disneyland? It’s like that. The blood cells line up to load the oxygen and then get whisked away to the distribution sites. The movers are filled to capacity, rather than moving out partially loaded.)

 

Knowing what your maximum heart rate level should be during exercise is fundamental to setting effective exercise parameters and goals.

 

If your fitness level is improving, and you really want to keep improving it, how do you calculate your maximum exercise heart rate?

 

Last week we looked at this scenario:

You go to the gym, hop on a treadmill or stationary bike and see the maximum heart rate formula and exercise intensity graph to indicate where you should be exercising for your age.

The basic formula is: 220 minus your age multiplied by 50 to 70%

 

So let’s punch in some numbers.

If you’re 40 years old, your max exercise heart rate will be 180 bpm. What does that tell you? It tells you that 180 bpm is the highest heart rate number you should obtain while exercising at your maximum level. But you’ve already seen that the maximum level can only be, and should only be, sustained for no more than several minutes.

So, unless you’re planning to exercise for just two to three minutes, how do you decide what heart rate you should be exercising at?

The percentage number you use really does depend upon what you’re trying to achieve. Do you want to work on your power, the speed you can move a barbell from your chest to an overhead position? Maybe explode from a crouched over position in a 100 meter sprint? Or do you want to get long, lean muscles?

 

What if you just want to work on your general fitness level, or burn off some of that pesky fat that accumulated when you weren’t looking?

I promise we’ll get into more specifics about what percentage is likely to be best for you, but today we’ll stick to discussions about averages. For most people, they want to aim for 50 to 70% of the maximum heart rate of 180. So the formula for would look like:

 

Max HR formula: 220 minus your age multiplied by .50, .60, or .70

 

So, with 220 minus 40 we arrive at our 180 and then multiply that by 50%. That number would be 90 bpm. As I noted last week, that number doesn’t sound very high. But it can be very effective for someone trying to maintain their fitness level, is a beginner, or is planning to walk the treadmill for an hour or more at a moderate pace.

This is the average. And as handy as averages can be sometimes, they often don’t tell the story you want told. So we want to get more specific. We want to ask a different question.

 

Using gold standard formula for setting your exercise heart rate—

If your fitness level and heart function are improving, and you really want to keep improving, how do you calculate your maximum exercise heart rate?

 

You want to use the Karvonen Heart Rate formula, the gold standard in exercise heart rate calculations.

 

Let’s go back to the max heart rate calculation formula. Only now, we’re going to tweak it for exercise and use that important information you gathered about heart rate a couple of weeks ago. I’ll use the 40-year old example again.

Ms. 40-year old Lulu Lemon jumps on the treadmill at the gym. She’s in better-than-average physical condition, because just that week she measured her resting heart at 65 bpm, not the average 80, which is what is used for the average formula posted on the treadmill she’s on. But she doesn’t want average. She wants personal!

So, she takes that 65 bpm number and plugs it into a more accurate formula to determine her maximum exercise heart rate—

 

Formula steps—

  1. 220 minus her age of 40 = 180
  2. Now this is where the change starts. This calculation will tell her what her heart rate reserve or cushion is.

180 bpm minus her resting heart rate of 65.

180 – 65 (resting heart rate) = 115 (heart rate reserve)

  1. Ms. Lemon wants to focus on a fat-burning workout for this session, so she plans to walk at 50 to 70% of her heart rate reserve. So she calculates the range this way:

115 (heart rate reserve) multiplied by 50% = 57.5

115 (heart rate reserve multiplied by 70% = 80.5

This gives her a nice percentage range to work within, but now she needs to know exactly what her exercise heart rate should be within those ranges. So she returns to her resting heart rate for the final calculation.

  1. 65 (resting heart rate) + 57.5 (50% of her reserve) = 122.5 bpm

   65 (resting heart rate) + 80.5 (70% of her reserve) = 145.5 bpm

So Ms. Lemon knows that she can safely and effectively exercise in a heart rate range of 123 to 146 bpm.

Abbreviated, the formula looks like this:

220 – 40 = 180 (max heart rate)

180 – 65 (resting heart rate) = 115 (reserve heart rate)

115 x 50% = 57.5; and 115 x 70% = 80.5

65 + 57.5 = 123 exercise heart rate (rounded up); and 65 + 81 = 146

a 123 to 146 bpm target exercise heart rate range

 

What difference does it make?

Tons! A quick look at what Ms. Lemon’s target rate would be if her resting heart rate were 80 tells you that this target range would change from 123 to 146 bpm for the lower rate of 65, to the higher range of 130 to 155 for the higher rate of 80.

Do you see the difference? Ms. Lemon is in better condition, so she doesn’t have to maintain as high of a target heart rate range as her 80 bpm counterpart. In short, she doesn’t have to work as hard because her body is already more efficient! Cool, huh?

 

Let’s look at an older (just got my senior movie discount) lady like me—

I’m 60 (just), with a resting heart rate of 58. (An anesthesiologist once quipped he could make it lower during my surgery. Ha! Funny guy. No doubt he could take it to zero!)

Anyway, my calculations would look like this:

220 – 60 = 160 (Eek! I hate to look at that low number.)

160 – 58 (my resting heart rate) = 102 (reserve heart rate)

102 x .50 = 51; and 102 x .70 = 71.4

Add my resting HR of 58 to 51, and I get a minimum exercise heart rate of 109.

Add my resting HR of 58 to 71.4, and I get a maximum exercise heart rate of 129.

So, if I want to burn some fat, I should exercise within a heart rate range of 109 – 129 while I’m plugging away on the treadmill next to Ms. Lemon, who has to (and can) work harder than me.

 

Can you work in higher ranges? Sure. But as I’ve said before, it will all depend upon what your exercise goal is.

We’ll look at some of those goals and target differences next week!

Until next time,

Happy heart rate targeting!

(If you like this post and think it might be helpful to others, please pass it on. Or if you have a question, send me a comment in the comment box. I’d love to hear from you!)

Blessings,

Andrea

 

*You should always check with your doctor about what your target heart rate should be if you’re taking medication for a heart condition.

Photo courtesy of Google Images