Nutrition
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Best Practices for Healthy Nutrition
Steve Markusen Featured Photo: First ride of the season and four months until the 2026 state championships. March 25, 2026. Credit: Charlie Markusen Foreword The starting judge lines us up for the first event of the 2017 Minnesota State Senior Cycling Championships: the 10K time trial. It is a miserable spring day: the air temp…
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Burning Fat for Fuel
Photo: The early bird gets the worm: first tracks on the XX Face of Mt. XXXX, Teton Pass, WY 2025 The buried ski track winds through Lodgepole pine and Douglas fir, branches laden with snow. It is 7:30 am, January, 2025. The sun peaks over the Gros Ventre Mountains bathing Teton Pass Ridge in dawn…
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It’s War: 7 Strategies for Winning the Weight Battle
Photo: Losing the war: three months ago and six pounds lighter. U.S. Senior National Cycling Championships, August 2025. I know the bad news even before stepping on the scale. Over the last several weeks, my pants fit tighter, I feel heavier and my stomach is prone to bouts of indigestion; familiar signs of weight gain.…
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Are You Getting Enough Protein in your Diet?
Photo: Climbing mixed alpine terrain to the summit ridge of Gannet Peak on a marathon 18 hour round trip from high camp. Gannett Peak, Wyoming, 2024. Credit Paul Gardner I look down at my feet planted on the scale. The digital screen reads 161 pounds. Good news? Kind of. Over the last 6 years, I…
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Weight Loss: Changing Your Body Set Weight
Photo: Off the beaten path looking at Baker Lake, Klondike Glacier, and Klondike Peak on our way to climb Gannett Peak and a new body set weight. Wyoming, July 2024. Credit Paul Gardner. We walked in circles under grey skies. The air was bitter cold. Thanks to an early season snow storm, two foot high…
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Fasting: Critical for Weight Loss
Photo: Pronghorn Peak from Bonneville Pass 5 days into an 8 day through hike in the Wind River Range, WY. At age 65 made possible by strength training, interval training and intermittent fasting. Mark was frustrated. He was out of shape, thirty pounds overweight and pre-diabetic. He came to me for strength training and help…
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Keeping it Simple: Nutritional Supplements
Featured Photo: The author keeping it simple: no motor, no gas flying his paraglider a mile above the fields of Western Minnesota. The fifty plus year old man standing in front of us demands attention. We listen spellbound. With square jaw, close cropped grey hair, and bright eyes he is preaching the benefits of nutritional…
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Fat for Fuel
Photo: The ultimate fat burn—nine days, eighty miles off-trail alpine hiking. Bonneville Pass with Pronghorn Peak, Wind River Range, Wyoming 2017. Slipping off my pack, I slumped to the alpine tundra back resting against a granite boulder… exhausted. It was late afternoon, the sun tracking low in the sky above the mountain ridge to the…
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Gaining Fitness, Losing Weight and Slowing Aging with Interval Training
Photo: Doing what I love to do at age 65. Deep in the Escalante Grand Staircase wilderness, Utah; on a eight day, eighty mile off-trail through hike. May 2019. Photo Credit Paul Gardner In my previous What I Learned newsletter, https://crooked-thumb.com/2021/04/07/interval-training-live-longer-live-healthier/ I defined interval training, how it works and the benefits of incorporating interval training…
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Body Set Weight: Why It’s So Hard To Lose Weight
Photo: Steve ice climbing at Sandstone, MN, January 2021 My client was twenty five pounds overweight. A common problem in our country where over forty percent of the population is obese. When I started full-time personal training at Lifetime Fitness, the company’s weight loss philosophy could be summed up in the phrase, “eat less, move…