Barbecues and summer vacations at the beach are just around the corner. It’s that time of year again to get beach body ready! Need a little help? Check out these great tips.
Eat Right Eating three reasonable meals and two snacks a day will keep you satisfied and boost your metabolism. Here are a few healthy eating tricks:
1. Eat at least two servings of low-sugar fruit and three servings of vegetables a day. Eating the actual fruit and vegetables rather than juices that contain no fiber will save you calories!
2. Choose whole grains, as they have more Vitamins E and B6, magnesium, zinc, copper, manganese, potassium and fiber. The complex carbohydrates will help you lose weight.
3. Say no to sugar-sweetened drinks. Choose drinks that have no or few calories and be wary of sodas and teas. Many of these beverages are high in sugar.
4. Decrease the amount of pre prepared foods you eat such as frozen meals, canned soups, and food from restaurants. These foods are typically high in sodium and calories.
Reducing the pain of everyday life is incredibly important if you want to engage in an effective exercise program. Chronic low-grade pain saps energy and takes away the desire to workout.
Here are few practical solutions that, if done regularly, may help to ease that pain:
1) Stretch your hip flexors:
The hip flexors are a group of muscles that act to flex the femur into the lumbo-pelvic complex. When you sit all day, this group of muscles is put into flexion for an extended period of time, causing them to essentially shorten. This pulls the pelvis down, causing a compression of the muscles of the spine. This, in turn, can cause intense pain.
Here is a hip flexor stretch. While this one is performed on a PowerPlate, it can also be performed on the floor:
Spring is here! As we all prepare for spring cleaning, it’s important to remember to start with ourselves. Exercise is an important part of preventive medicine, but do we really know how exercise detoxifies our bodies?
It’s commonly thought that as you exercise, toxins are released through sweat but this isn’t true! Sweating is triggered by the brain. The hypothalamus regulates temperature in the body. When the body heats up, it stimulates the eccrine glands, which produce moisture on the skin’s surface to cool the body. Sweat itself only contains water, sodium, potassium, chloride, and very tiny amounts of toxins.
Interestingly enough, one study recently published in Nature found that exercise does push waste and toxins out of the body – just not with sweat. Exercise accelerates natural processes that remove junk from inside the body’s cells. Our cells accumulate this junk, officially called “flotsam,” from misshapen proteins and debris from cellular membranes, viruses and bacteria broken down as part of the everyday wear on our cells.
1. Not Having A Plan
Your primary objective should influence the amount you do, as well as the the intensity and the type (cardio, resistance, stretching) of every workout. Pick a goal such as losing 10 pounds, running a 5K, or improving your endurance and research proven plans. This is a great way to optimize your workout and stay focused!
2. The All-Or-Nothing Approach
Research shows that just ten minutes of exercise can provide important health benefits. A ten minute workout is better than a 0 minute workout!
3. Skipping The Warm Up
Taking 5-10 minutes to gradually increase your body temperature and heart rate decreases your risk of injury since working cold, stiff muscles can lead to sprains and tears. Warming up also increases circulation and improves range of motion.
March may be coming to a close, but National Nutrition Month is not over just yet and it has signaled a reminder that “dieting” and eating well are not necessarily the same thing.
Why is nutrition important? What you eat affects how your body works your ability to fight off infections and diseases. It’s impossible to separate your eating from your health and fitness.
Healthy eating can seem like a time consuming and costly endeavor. Consider these easy tips to improve your health and fitness:
1. Start your day with a healthy breakfast
Breakfast starts-up your metabolism and refuels both your body and mind after a good night’s sleep. Eating breakfast also reduces hunger and prevents eating binges.
2. Have pre-prepared healthy snacks with you to the office, school or on-the-go
If the body goes without food for longer than four to six hours, its metabolic rate may slow down along with the rate at which you burn calories. However, avoid snacking on the wrong foods or snacking on too much food.
3. Don’t rely on “willpower”
Instead, arrange your environment so that you can be successful without relying on willpower alone. If the junk food isn’t around to tempt you then no willpower is required! Also, try enlisting the help of family and friends.
Many of us go out of our way to avoid stairs, but using them as part of our exercise routine is a great way to lose weight and improve fitness; while toning and strengthening problem areas. Stair exercises can be used for aerobic and anaerobic conditioning, lower body strength training, power development and flexibility.
Dr. Harvey Simon, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School states that one reason American women outlive their husbands by an average of more than five years could be a result of many housewives taking care of two- or three-story homes. The Harvard Alumni Study also found that men who average at least eight flights a day enjoy a 33% lower mortality rate than men who are sedentary.
In fact, researchers in Canada monitored 17 healthy male volunteers with an average age of 64 while they walked on the level, lifted weights or climbed stairs and the results revealed that stair climbing was the most demanding exercise of the three. They found stair climbing to be twice as taxing as brisk walking on a level surface and 50% harder than walking up a steep incline or lifting weights.
The increasingly popular trend of barefoot running relies on the theory that running shoes are the cause of many runners’ injuries. So are running shoes actually causing your injuries?
Famous runners have gone barefoot before us, including Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila, the greatest Olympic marathoner of all time, who won the first of his consecutive gold medals while running barefoot in a world record time of 2:15:17 minutes.
Interest in barefoot running sparked when Michael Warburton, physical therapist and marathoner, published an online paper titled, simply, “Barefoot Running.” Warburton points out that the extra weight of shoes on your feet is much worse than a pound or two elsewhere. Weight on your feet is subject to constant acceleration and deceleration and Warburton claims that 100 grams of extra weight on your feet decreases your running economy by 1%.
