Ninety Days to a New You

AstroFit
by William J. Evans, Ph.D., Gerald Secor Couzens

(Page 2 of 3)

Performing the AstroFit program regularly comes closer to being a fountain of youth than anything modern medicine can offer. Although many people blame "getting old" on bad luck, fate, or poor genes, staying young is mainly a lifestyle decision that you make. In addition to making you feel thirty years younger, the AstroFit program will help you develop more strength than ever before. Your bones will become stronger, and you'll become steadier on your feet. In just ninety days, you will enhance your ability to compete in the workplace and on the sports field. Fatigue will be banished and your stamina will quadruple, giving you the energy to do the things you yearn to accomplish. You'll be able to live your life to the fullest. Live longer? Most likely. Live a fuller, more vital life? Most definitely.

There will be powerful psychological changes as well, starting with a huge boost in self-confidence. This belief in your skills and capabilities will be bolstered as you see yourself achieving your potential, getting stronger, and feeling more energetic.

You don't need a lot of equipment. You don't have to go on a wacky diet. There are no special pills or herbal concoctions. AstroFit is specifically designed to build lean body tissue — that's muscle — and to dramatically turn up your metabolism. When you speed up the process by which your body converts the calories in food to energy, you'll make steady and significant gains in how you look and feel, beginning with your first workout. In just ninety days, you will:

• Go from fat to firm, paring off pounds of excess body fat while still eating as much as you want of a fat-burning, muscle-nourishing diet. After just twelve weeks of dedicated exercise and proper nutrition, you will see a dramatic drop in your body fat composition and improvements in your muscle strength and firmness.

• Put on pounds of fat-burning muscle. Muscle is the most metabolically active tissue of the body. Think of muscle as an engine that is always turned on. Strengthening your muscles can help rev up your internal engine. After twelve weeks of E-Centrics, it will be like replacing your small four-cylinder engine with a turbocharged V-8. Even when your muscles are at rest — for example, when you are sleeping — they keep burning calories. For every pound of muscle you put on with AstroFit, expect to burn an additional 100 calories per day. This will help reverse the slow but steady weight gain that is an all-too-common pattern among Americans.

• Improve the functioning of your heart. Like your other muscles, the heart becomes stronger and larger as a result of E-Centrics so it can pump more blood through the body with every beat. A fit heart will pump more blood at this maximum level and sustain the pumping longer with less strain.

• Prevent or combat obesity and its cascade of dangerous health problems. Most Americans eat not only too much but too much of the wrong foods — fast food, fried food, sweets, and "empty calories" with no nutritional value. To top it off, we're not physically active enough during the day. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that we've become a nation of fat people. Almost 35 percent of Americans are now considered obese. Obesity is a primary risk factor for heart disease and is linked to many other ailments as well, including diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, certain cancers, gallstones, and degenerative arthritis. Regular E-Centric workouts, coupled with the sensible AstroFit eating plan, are the key to effective, permanent weight loss. Even small weight losses — 10 to 15 percent of body fat — are associated with decreased cardiovascular risk, improved glucose tolerance, lower blood pressure, better cholesterol profile, and reduced symptoms of degenerative joint disease.

• Bolster the production of insulinlike growth factor 1, which directly stimulates muscle growth.

• Build stronger, denser bones. Strong muscles and strong bones go hand in hand. By targeting all the major muscle groups, the E-Centric program helps strengthen bones all over your body. The more weight you can lift, the more stress you can put on your bones — stress that stimulates more bone growth. More than 25 million Americans, many of them menopausal women, are thought to have osteoporosis, a disease of severe bone loss that causes 1.5 million fractures a year, mostly of the back, hip, and wrist. About half of those who break their hips never regain full walking ability, and many of these fractures lead to fatal complications. By strengthening your muscles and bones and improving your balance, you reduce your risk of dangerous falls.

• Prevent and reduce physical frailty. It's now thought that by the time most Americans reach their seventies, more than one-fourth of the men and two-thirds of the women are unable to lift an object heavier than ten pounds, such as a bag of groceries, a laundry basket, or a small dog. Performing E-Centrics over the initial ninety-day training period will give you a guaranteed 5 percent boost in strength at every workout! No longer will you be daunted by any physical task, whether it be carrying luggage, opening jars, shoveling snow, or lifting your dog into the tub for a bath.

• Improve your posture. The E-Centric program works on building strong core muscles, particularly those of the abdomen (the rectus abdominis, the external obliques, the internal obliques, and the transversus abdominis). Posture is improved because strong abdominal muscles help support the spine and hold up your body throughout the day.

• Improve your diet. Part of the AstroFit program is nourishing your muscles with a protein-rich diet. Your muscles are fueled by calories from high-quality protein. If you don't consume a steady supply throughout the day, your body will "steal" protein from your muscles. The end result is that you will lose muscle. Also, without adequate protein, your body becomes less efficient at burning fat. My protein recommendation is double that of the current RDA. In order to ensure the steady utilization and release of energy, the protein-rich AstroFit food plan stresses the consumption of foods in the following percentages of total daily calories: carbohydrate, 60 percent; protein, 20 percent; and fat, 20 percent.

• Combat excess blood sugar. E-Centric exercises build muscle fast, increasing the sensitivity of cells to insulin, which, in turn, lowers blood sugar and the need for insulin. This helps prevent adult-onset diabetes. Lean muscle is the biggest "sponge" for soaking up glucose, the simple sugar that is the body's source of all energy. The less lean muscle you have, the greater your likelihood of developing excess blood sugar and diabetes. By adhering to the AstroFit program, you'll build lean muscle and help keep your blood sugar levels in the healthy range.

• Improve your sense of balance. Starting in their thirties, people begin to lose their balancing ability imperceptibly. This affects their daily living as well as exercise and sports routines. The AstroFit program will give you enhanced proprioception — a heightened sense of where your body is in space. Plus, when your muscles are strengthened, your balance improves and you become less injury-prone and less likely to fall. And when you do stumble, you will be able to right yourself more readily.

• Reduce elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Stress is hard on the body; lowering stress levels can improve neural function and help prevent overall debilitation. When I work in my laboratory with the men and women in my studies, they are generally less tired, less angry, less tense, calmer, more focused, and happier. Your half hour of AstroFit training is "your" time, and the E-Centrics will help calm you, even if you are highly anxious. Exercise is great for your mental well-being because it gives you a beneficial "time out" from your worries.

• Sleep like a baby. You're guaranteed more restful, deeper sleep. E-Centrics help raise the core temperature of your central nervous system, lulling the body into a somnolence similar to that experienced after a warm bath.

• Reduce depression. The more you exercise, the more your body's cells increase their ability to use oxygen. Strong, muscular people are less likely to tire during the day, allowing them to work and play harder without missing a beat. Within two weeks of beginning AstroFit, you will feel an increase in energy and an enhanced mood. Even if you're not in good shape when you start, you can still achieve these wonderful benefits.

• Boost your self-esteem. You'll be surprised, but the psychological catharsis you undergo may match or surpass your physical changes. Performing E-Centrics regularly can improve your general feeling of well-being. Feeling healthier can raise your self-esteem, making you feel more confident, assertive, and attractive.

• Enhance your sexual pleasure. You couldn't ask for a better aphrodisiac. Not only does AstroFit improve your overall health, which then promotes better functioning of all of the body's systems, it also improves your body image. Because sex is a whole-body experience, it makes sense that you'll enjoy it more when your muscles, blood vessels, and nerves are performing at peak levels.

• Reduce or eliminate joint aches and pains. In a normal joint, each end of a bone is coated with cartilage, a tough, smooth, slippery cushion that protects the bones and reduces friction during movement. Osteoarthritis develops when cartilage breaks down or wears away, sometimes disappearing entirely, creating a painful bone-on-bone joint. Any joint may be affected, but the feet, knees, hips, and fingers are the most common. People with arthritis and osteoarthritis will greatly improve their condition and stay mobile and active by building muscle around the joints the AstroFit way. And remember, you can do this at any age.

• Enhance your immune function. Performing E-Centrics regularly will boost several key aspects of immune function. There's also evidence that people who exercise regularly have higher levels of InterLeukin 1 (IL-1), a natural substance that temporarily raises body temperature — producing fever — and helps kill invading organisms.

• Improve your cholesterol levels. Cholesterol, a waxy substance found in the bloodstream, helps form cell membranes, some hormones, and a variety of tissues. E-Centric training has the ability to boost protective HDL ("good" cholesterol) levels, while lowering LDL ("bad" cholesterol) blood levels. A high HDL level, defined as 60 mg/dl or more, is considered to be extremely protective against coronary artery disease.

AstroFit is revolutionary. Yet it's also basic, and, best of all, it works. Within these pages you will find everything you need to revitalize and enhance your appearance, your health, and your life. This isn't a quick fix, but rather a rejuvenating lifestyle change involving special weight-training and balance exercises along with optimal nutrition for a high-energy, healthful way of life. The goal of AstroFit is to make you stronger, more active, slimmer, more mobile, more energetic, more vigorous, and more self-confident. In a word: youthful.

Why E-Centrics?

One important aspect of my scientific investigation has been distinguishing what is true biological aging from what is a consequence of personal lifestyle choices. I'm convinced that much of the physical deterioration associated with the passage of time is far from inevitable, and that E-Centric strength training to maintain and build muscle throughout life can reverse this decline.

From the studies of aging I have carried out with men and women as old as 100 years of age, what has become increasingly clear is that a sedentary lifestyle is a major aging accelerant. Lack of physical activity leads to a weakening of the body due to the loss of muscle, and also to an increase in the percentage of body fat. This is a slow, insidious process that can begin in our twenties and ultimately manifests itself in lower back pain, osteoarthritis, or a heart attack.

I've spent the better part of two decades uncovering the secrets of muscles, investigating how muscle fibers perform on a biochemical level and what type of weight training best stresses them and makes them get stronger. In the course of my research, I have developed the weight training program that is the foundation of my AstroFit program.

E-Centrics are very different from any type of weight training you may have done in the past. Even for an experienced weight lifter, the change in the raising and lowering cadence will take some getting used to.

Let me explain. Any weight-lifting maneuver, whether it's a biceps curl or a lunge, entails both a lifting phase and a lowering phase. The lifting phase is called the concentric phase. What is so novel — and extremely effective — about E-Centrics is that the focus is on the lowering phase of every weight-training exercise. This is the all-important eccentric phase of each exercise, the part that most people ignore when they lift weights.

Typically, what happens in weight lifting here on Earth is a struggle to bring up the weights and then — bam! — down go the weights, back to the starting position. The exerciser ends up missing out on what happens to be the most important part of the exercise. By lowering the weight very slowly and smoothly, you send the message to your brain that you need more muscle cells to help in the effort.

Muscles are made to contract. This is what happens in, for example, a biceps curl when you raise a dumbbell from your thigh, curling it up to your shoulder. However, when you perform an E-Centric biceps curl, you raise the weight in two seconds and then lower it slowly back down from your shoulder to your thigh in six seconds. First the biceps muscle contracts, and then it is powerfully stretched as you slowly lower the weight.

AstroFit is a safe, progressive strength-building program. The idea is to stress your body without straining it. At first, you perform exercises based on body-weight resistance, rather than dumbbells or gym weights. As you gain strength, you begin to add weights to your workouts. Each weight resistance E-Centric exercise is performed with a weight that can be lifted no more than ten consecutive times in perfect form. This means:

• Raising the weight in two seconds.
• Lowering the weight slowly in six seconds.

As you reach each strength plateau — where this type of lifting finally seems easy — you add 5 percent more weight at your next workout and introduce the muscles to the new resistance.

The body's response to this dual action is interesting: within forty-eight hours it builds significantly more muscle fiber than it would have with a concentric-only maneuver.

Ultimately, E-Centric exercises allow you to achieve the best results in the shortest time. In the process of exercising this way, the muscle becomes stronger — with 5 percent gains in strength achieved at every training session for the first three months!

Copyright © 2002 by William J. Evans and Gerald Secor Couzens

About the Author

William J. Evans, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of age reversal for more than twenty years, has worked as an expert adviser to NASA on nutrition and exercise since 1988, and is the former head of the Nutrition, Physical Fitness, and Rapid Rehabilitation Team of the National Space Biomedical Institution. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with his wife and three children.

Gerald Secor Couzens is the managing editor of the Johns Hopkins Prostate Bulletin and a contributing writer for both the Johns Hopkins Health After 50 newsletter and the John Hopkins White Papers medical series. He lives in New York City with his wife and four children.