1. WEEK OF AUGUST 9, 1991
Athletic execs stay upbeat on fitness,
but keep tabs on weight and exercise
BY CHRIS BARNETT |
Investment adviser Kurt Brouwer could quote the daily Standard & Poors 500 Index
and the five-year performance of Harbor Fund, but he didn't have a clue about
his own basal metabolic rate.
"I was doing a good job taking care of my clients," says the president of San
Francisco-based Brouwer & Janachowski, "but I wasn't taking care of myself."
At 38, he noticed his endurance was flagging, his strength was slipping and he
was losing his flexibility. Worse yet, he didn't know how to read his body's
internal
gauges. Athletic in his 20s, Brouwer was now only monitoring his fitness by the
way he felt. And two years ago, he was running down.
Gaynor Strachan, director of advertising and marketing for Esprit de Corps, the
San Francisco-headquartered apparel firm, never had a weight problem. She was
working out regularly to relieve stress and keep fit. And despite the anxieties
in the pressure-cooker womens' fashion industry and in her prior job as a
planner with the Chiat/Day/Mojo ad agency here in San Francisco, Strachan was
never a binge eater.
Still, she knew something was wrong with her regimen. "I was doing OK working
out by myself but I knew I wasn't getting the most out of it," she says. "Nobody
ever told me about the connection between lean body mass and weight, and I never
knew my body fat percentage. And I was just working out and not knowing if (my
heart) was within a training rate. Frankly, I didn't know how my body was
working."
John Cannon had a more painful problem. The biotechnology sales representative
in the San Francisco office of Becton Dickenson, a $2.4 billion (in sales)
medical conglomerate, missed a turn skiing in Vail, and "popped" his knee - tore
the anterior cruciate ligament. Cannon knew how his body functioned and he
exercised it diligently, bicycling 200 miles a week. But he didn't have the
patience required to let his surgically repaired knee heal properly.
Brouwer, Strachan and Cannon, intelligent businesspeople and seasoned decision-
makers, all shared a common shortcoming: They were pushing themselves physically
but without a road map or navigator.
"Working out - cardiovascular exercise like bicycling, stair-mastering and
running and anaerobic exercise like lifting weights - is better than simply

2. sitting on your derriere at your desk all day," says Richard Aubrey, president
of BodyFactor, a San Francisco-based personal fitness training consultancy. "But
unless you systematically monitor your body while you're building it, you will
make little real progress or, worse yet, you can injure yourself. And I don't
just mean muscle pulls."
What's more, says Aubrey, "You've got to track your numbers regularly to make
sure you are producing results from your training and, more importantly, that
you don't overtrain or undertrain." This is especially true for the recreational
athlete or the person who simply wants to lose weight and improve their overall
shape, he adds.
Aubrey, who now trains Brouwer, Strachan and Cannon, advises his clients to
start with the basic internal gauges.
First is heart rate. "Your baseline is your resting heart rate and you can take
it yourself in bed first thing in the morning." How? Find your pulse - either on
your wrist or on the side of your neck, next to the large muscle - and count
heartbeats per minute. The range is usually from 40 beats per minute for a
person in excellent shape to 80 beats a minute for a more sedentary person.
Next, warns Aubrey, "If you're going to engage in any exercise program,
supervised or unsupervised, get a thorough physical exam, which may include an
EKG treadmill stress test, from your physician." To skip this exam, he says, can
be suicidal.
Medical clearances are crucial. Once in hand, Aubrey establishes the person's
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) - "the level at which your motor is idling."
How do you calculate your BMR? Convert your weight into kilograms (divide by 2.2
pounds) and multiply by 24 hours. A 192-pound person has a BMR of 2,094 calories
per day, explains Aubrey. To figure your General Activity Metabolic Rate(GAMR),
divide your basal metabolism by two if you are very active every day; divide by
four if you have a desk job or sit on your duff.
The active 192-pound person adds another 1,047 calories to his BMR; the duff-
sitter adds 524 calories. Bottom line, the active person with no exercise needs
3,141 calories just to get through the day; the inactive person needs only about
2,618 calories.
Having this insight into how your body behaves, says Aubrey, is key to
understanding the principles of weight loss and exercise. Here's why: One pound
of fat is 3,500 calories. "Every time you eat 3,500 calories more than you
metabolize or burn, your body stores it as pure fat and you put on weight." You
can lose a pound of fat by reducing your food intake 500 calories a day for
seven straight days, he notes.

3. But aerobic or cardiovascular exercise alone doesn't raise your BMR for more
than a few hours, points out Aubrey. To raise it permanently, you must convert
fat weight to usable fuel and build muscle weight. "The real goal is to get lean
and improve your lean body mass. Why? Because every pound of lean body mass uses
up another 50 calories a day and raises your metabolism."
Strengthening muscles through a 20-minute-a-day, three-day-a-week weight
training program which is an anaerobic exercise, improves lean body mass.
Hence, a total workout combines aerobic and anaerobic exercises. "It's the only
wise, healthy way to raise your metabolism and improve your lean body mass,
"says Aubrey. And this, too, can be measured and monitored.
Sports medicine centers and hospitals like the Ralph K. Davies Clinic here in
the city have underwater weighing techniques that spell out which of your pounds
are fat weight, and which are muscle weight. The results are expressed in a
percentage of fat pounds to total body weight. A very lean person might have 12
percent body fat.
"The leaner today, the better," says Aubrey.
Esprit's Strachan says now that she's discovered the lean body mass measurement
techniques and added weight training to her cardiovascular exercise program,
she's changed her diet and reduced her stress. "Finally, I know how my body
works," she says. 'Why it gets sore and why, at the same time, it feels so
good."
Chris Barnett is a free-lance business writer based in San Francisco.
rich aubrey can be reached at 415-730-1963