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Working Out Lifts Your Mood

Published by superadmin on April 28, 2019 | Leave a response

Everyone has those days when you want to scream at the store clerk, kick the dog or knock off everything on the counter. It’s often created by an extremely stressful situation that occurred earlier, but sticks with you for a long time. You can get rid of that bad mood by working out. It doesn’t take long before you feel the mood lifting back to your normal, relaxed self.

Exercise burns off the hormones of stress.

Why do you feel so much better? It’s easy. When you’re under stress, your body creates hormones for the fight or flight response. In the days of the caveman, it was extremely important. It sent the blood to the extremities, raised blood pressure, increased breathing and got you prepared to run from the danger or stay and fight. Today, stress comes from many places, yet the body still prepares as though it’s a physical threat, not the boss screaming or a traffic jam. By working out, you’re mimicking fighting or running, so you burn off those hormones that make you feel bad and replaces them with ones that make you relaxed.

Exercise helps with anxiety.

Trying something new, talking in front of a group or even worrying about your children can cause anxiety. It’s a normal part of life, unless it happens constantly and takes over your entire life. That’s when you have to take action. When it’s mind-numbing and stops you in your tracks, then it becomes a problem requiring professional help. Many therapists are now using exercise as part of their therapy for clients suffering from severe anxiety. It helps you to relax and even sleep better. You don’t have to wait until it’s out of control to start, you can use it as part of your mental wellness program. I have a client that runs up and down the stairs until she’s tired when she starts to get anxious and she says it really works.

You’ll love how you feel after you workout.

Not only does the body burn off hormones created by stress, it replaces them with ones that make you feel at ease and relaxed. When you consider that early man who had to run or fight when stress occurred, you probably already realize he or she didn’t always come out unscathed. Providing the body with a pain blocking endorphins that bind to the opioid receptors of the spine and nervous system, any injury wouldn’t be nearly as devastating. Endorphins also trigger the release of dopamine, which gives you that great feeling often called the runners high.

If you’re going to a stressful meeting, consider walking there or parking further from the meeting place to walk more. That brisk walk can help you improve your mood.
Learning breathing techniques and meditation can also help reduce stress immediately when you’re faced with it. That helps minimize the stress you have to deal with until you can workout.
Exercise increases serotonin, that hormone that helps you sleep and regulates your appetite. It also helps neurons grow by increasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
When you workout in the gym, it not only reduces the feeling of isolation, it takes you away from most of your problems, at least for a short period. You can get lost in your workout, relieving you from worry at least for a while.

Posted in Fitness & Wellness

Reduce Your Risk Of Diabetes By Exercising

Published by superadmin on April 15, 2019 | Leave a response

Losing weight is important if you want to avoid type 2 diabetes, but you also can reduce your risk of diabetes by exercising. Exercise provides other benefits too, including heart health. It helps lower LDL and triglycerides, while raising the healthy cholesterol, HDL to make your cholesterol profile healthier. It builds strength and improves your mood. The benefits it offers to your body also helps you reduce your diabetes risk by regulating your blood sugar levels, aiding in weight loss and increasing insulin sensitivity.

Exercise helps you lose weight, but you have to eat healthy, too.

No matter how hard you workout, if you’re eating a high calorie diet of junk food and sugar, the impact exercise makes on reducing your risk for diabetes will be small. Good health begins in the kitchen, but exercise puts those nutrients to work for you and boosts the calories you burn to make you lose weight faster. Cutting out sugary products helps reduce insulin production and levels out blood sugar.

Exercise increases insulin sensitivity.

Insulin is a hormone necessary for many bodily functions, including helping the cells use glucose as a source of energy. When there’s a problem with insulin sensitivity, the cells become less and less receptive to effects of insulin, so the body has to produce more. The more it has to produce, the worse the problem becomes until there’s a high amount of blood sugar and full blown diabetes. Stress, excess weight, pregnancy, illness and inactivity can cause it. When you exercise, you burn the glycogen stores in your muscles and it’s replaced with the glucose in the bloodstream. By doing that, it gets insulin sensitivity back on track.

Exercise regulates blood sugar levels.

Just as exercise helps with insulin sensitivity, it also helps regulate blood sugar levels. When you’re exercising, it burns off the excess sugar levels by using more for the muscles. In fact, it can lower blood sugar levels for up to 24 hours after working out. In fact, your muscles can take up glucose to use for energy even when there’s no insulin available.

If you want to keep diabetes at bay, you have to watch not only what you eat, but what you drink, too. Switch off soft drinks and choose water instead.
A healthy diet to reduce the risk of diabetes should include insoluble fiber, like fresh fruits, nuts and seeds, whole grains and leafy vegetables. The insoluble fiber in these foods help prevent type 2 diabetes.
You need all types of training to help prevent diabetes. Strength training works muscles to increase your base metabolism. Even something as simple as walking more can help.
If you have type 1 diabetes, exercise with care to avoid too much of a drop in blood sugar levels. One study found that people who did strength training first and then aerobic training had a less severe drop in blood sugar levels that lasted longer than doing aerobic first and strength training last.

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Exercise Lowers High Blood Pressure

Published by superadmin on April 3, 2019 | Leave a response

There’s a lot of clients in Louisville, KY that ask for help from a personal trainer to help shed weight. They also know that exercise lowers high blood pressure in the process. When you participate in a program of exercise, you’re heart pumps hard, making it stronger. That means it pumps with less effort and causes the force exerted on your arteries to be less. Lowering that force means lower blood pressure.

Exercise helps you lose weight.

Losing weight is often recommended when a person has high blood pressure. That’s because the more you weigh, the higher your blood pressure tends to rise. In fact, often just losing as little as 2.2 pounds can lower your blood pressure by one millimeter of mercury. If the weight loss was in the abdominal area, blood pressure dropped more significantly. That’s because visceral fat, the fat that collects around the middle, crowds organs and is far more dangerous than regular fat that accumulates other areas. Taking waist measurements is as important as weighing in. Women with waist measurements higher than 35 inches and men with measurements higher than 40 are more at risk to higher blood pressure.

You’ll reduce the hormones of stress when you workout regularly.

When you’re under stress, the body sends out hormones to prepare it for the fight or flight response. I makes changes like sending more blood to extremities and temporarily raising your blood pressure by making your heart work harder. It narrows the blood vessels, while also making the heart beat faster. Exercise burns off the hormones of stress that causes the changes, lowering the blood pressure and reducing the risk of stroke and heart attack.

It’s more than just working out, it’s also a healthy diet.

If you want to lose weight or just want to see your blood pressure come down without the aid of medication, you need to switch your diet. Eat more whole foods, cut out salt and increase foods that are high in potassium. You can’t out exercise an unhealthy diet when it comes to losing weight, so changing your diet is important, particularly if weight loss is part of your goal.

Regular exercise can help you sleep better at night. A good night’s sleep can help you lower your blood pressure.
Get active and enjoy it. Working out in the gym is a start, but living an active lifestyle is the key to a healthy body. Start doing active things you love and spend time with family and friends doing them. It adds to a healthy social life that also lowers blood pressure.
If you smoke, quit. Working out can help you through the nicotine withdrawal. It helps improve your mood and makes quitting far easier.
A program of regular exercise can help prepare your body for life events that come along. Whether you find you have to lift something heavy or need to maintain balance and flexibility for something, you’ll be ready.

Posted in Fitness & Wellness

A Teenager’s Nutritional Needs

Published by superadmin on March 27, 2019 | Leave a response

A teenager’s nutritional needs are different from their parents and even different from younger children in the family. I see so many teens in Louisville, KY that are consuming junk food for their primary meals and wonder whether they even know what constitutes a healthy meal. It wouldn’t be unusual to find they don’t, many adults don’t have that knowledge either. As a parent, you probably have very little control over what your child eats when he or she is away from home, but you can control what they eat at home.

Help your teen with an outline of a menu that will guide him or her.

Don’t over complicate things with a specific menu. Make it general. Teach your child about portion size and how much they need of each type of food. For teens, three meals a day and two snacks a day are important. It should contain two servings of fruit and three of vegetables with three and a half servings of dairy, which includes cheese and milk—throughout the day. The amount of protein necessary for teens is based on age, body weight and activity level. You can estimate it by multiplying the body weight by 0.43 to get the number of grams. A 100 pound boy would need about 43 grams a day. It should also contain whole grains and healthy fat. The more active the teen, the more protein is necessary.

Help the teen develop healthy habits when it comes to what they drink.

Too often soft drinks are a big part of a teens daily calorie intake. These are loaded with sugar and slightly acidic, so they cause damage to the teeth. Don’t have soft drinks available in the house. Instead, have bottled water. An active teen needs about 9 to 14 cups of water a day to help keep joints lubricated, keep a healthier complexion—pimple free—and regulate body temperatures. It’s a huge beauty aids for teenage girls and can help with weight loss, improve skin and hair.

Focus your encouragement on things that are important to the teen, rather than just good health.

There’s a lot to gain from eating healthy. The ability to think clearer and get better grades, a better complexion, improved athletic performance, weight loss and silky smooth hair. Find what’s important to your teen and identify healthy foods that will be beneficial to what they think is important. Staying healthy and living longer isn’t what most teens are concerned about, but a pimple free complexion is.

Keep fresh fruit and vegetables in the refrigerator, cut up and ready to eat. If it’s easy and right in front of them, most teens will opt for healthy food.
Keep junk food out of the house. There’s no reason you need potato chips and cookies in the house. Not only will your teen eat them, you will too.
Add family activities that get everyone moving if your teen is sedentary. Regular exercise is important for everyone. It builds confidence, improves coordination, endurance, strength and transforms a body.
When your teen starts eating healthier, you’ll not only notice a difference in how they look, you’ll notice a difference in their energy and mood.

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The Role Stress Hormones Play In Health And Illness

Published by superadmin on March 17, 2019 | Leave a response

When man lived in caves, stress hormones were extremely important for to remain alive. They prepared early man to flee or fight if necessary. Today, stress hormones also play a role in good health, but they also play a major role in illness when left unattended. Blood pressure increases, the flow of blood to extremities and away from non-essential smooth muscles like the digestive system occurs. Returning the level of stress hormones back to normal would involve running or fighting, but today’s stresses don’t call for either, so they remain causing damage to the body.

Stress and the change caused by stress can affect your health dramatically.

Most doctors now recognize the symptoms of diseases and conditions caused by stress. In fact, it’s estimated that about three fourths of all doctor visits come from stress related ailments. If you had statistics on all the people in America, you’d find that about half of the adult population has a stress related disease. Some of those conditions or diseases would include high blood sugar levels and high blood pressure. It increases the risk of diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, asthma, headaches, backaches and gastrointestinal problems. It causes aging to accelerate and premature death.

The hormones of stress are necessary if you’re in real physical danger, but you need to burn them off if you have only mental stress.

You need the hormones of stress, but if you don’t run or fight, you also need to burn them off and get back to normal. If you don’t, it can shut down your immune system or damage it, leaving you open to all illness and disease. It can leave an opening for cancer and bacterial or viral disease, since the immune system plays a role in fighting it.

It’s not always easy to get rid of stress, but you can do something about burning off the hormones and getting back to normal.

When you workout hard, your body is often mimicking the things you might be doing if you were running or fleeing. The changes that were made by the hormones start to return to normal when the workout is near the end. Not only that, your body starts to produce hormones that make you feel good, adding another benefit to the list for exercising. You can learn ways to help control stress, like meditation and deep breathing exercises, but for most people working out regularly provides the biggest benefits.

If you’re under stress, you may gain weight. Ancient stressful times often included food scarcity. We may be internally wired to eat as much as possible even when not hungry because of that. One study showed people who were under stress ate 40 percent more than normal.
Stress shortens the telomeres that protect chromosomes. That means fewer replications and earlier cell death. It leads to premature aging and affects muscles, skin vision and all other parts of the body.
Stress can trigger tension movements, like tooth grinding. That’s linked with broken or worn teeth and periodontal disease.
Stress leaves you with a sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach. It can lead to anxiety and depression, beside putting you in a bad mood. Taking a walk or working out can break that cycle.

Posted in Fitness & Wellness

Is Chronic Cardio Making You Fat

Published by superadmin on March 3, 2019 | Leave a response

Are you pedaling for miles on that stationary bike riding to nowhere or running down the street each morning at the crack of dawn, but still find you can’t lose those excess pounds. It might be the type of workout your doing. Is that cardio making you fat? Is it sabotaging your efforts to lose weight, while teasing you into believing that it’s what’s going to work? Before you throw your running shoes in the garbage or change the stationary bike to a clothes rack, cardio workouts have a place in your fitness program. However, doing ONLY cardio won’t beef up your metabolism and may make it harder to shed weight.

You might be burning off the muscle tissue that boosts your metabolism.

Cardio does burn a lot of calories, so how could it sabotage your efforts? Long bouts of cardio triggers a reaction in your body that lean times have arrived. It makes your body want to store fat, rather than burn it, so if food is scarce, there’s a source of energy. The first part of a cardio workout your body burns the glycogen stored in the liver and muscles for fuel. When it hits the thirty minute mark, that runs out. The body still is using more calories and if the cardio is intense, it starts burning muscle tissue instead. Moderate workouts tend to keep the body burning both fat and lean muscle tissue.

Running daily or doing any form of cardio daily makes your body too efficient.

Your body is an amazing machine. It’s created to burn as few calories as possible, which helped with survival. The longer you do any type of exercise, the more efficient your body becomes at doing it. Efficiency is great everywhere else, except if you’re trying to lose weight. It means the body burns fewer calories. That causes plateauing that can slow weight loss. You have to vary your workout and do more than just cardio for the best results.

Cardio workouts burn lean muscle tissue for fuel as well as fat tissue.

The more muscle tissue you have, the more calories you burn. That’s because muscle tissue requires more calories for maintenance than fat tissue does. If cardio uses lean muscle tissue for energy, you’ll have less, slowing your metabolism. Adding strength training to your workout can burn calories, while also build muscle tissue that gives your metabolism a boost.

Doing high intensity cardio creates stress. One of the hormones of stress is cortisol. It converts muscle tissue to energy, but also is associated with accumulation of visceral fat—abdominal fat—the hardest type of fat to lose.
While doing cardio exclusively may make you gain weight, you need it to remain healthy. Just make sure you balance it with other types of exercise that build strength, flexibility and balance.
Strength training will do more than just help you build muscles and lose weight. It also helps prevent serious conditions, like osteoporosis.
No matter what type of exercise you choose, a healthy lower calorie diet is a must. Eating a healthier diet and combining it with resistance training sheds pounds faster than eating healthy and doing moderate cardio.

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Benefits Of Workout Partners

Published by superadmin on February 25, 2019 | Leave a response

The benefits of workout partners are easy to identify. In fact, one of them is the very reason people use personal trainers. Workout partners keep you accountable for your workout. If you have an appointment to meet a buddy at the gym, the odds of you going increase, just as they do when you workout with a trainer. Some studies show that even having someone check on you to see if you worked out that day can improve your chances of maintaining a regular workout schedule. +

There are lazy days that just making it to the gym isn’t enough.

At one time or another, everyone has managed to make it to the gym only to put in a half hearted effort. It’s on days like that a workout partner can be a huge benefit. A workout buddy often makes you work harder than you might on your own, just because they’re watching and you know it. You also may workout harder as part of friendly competition. Workout buddies may keep you going longer. If you are by yourself, you might skip the last few exercises because you’re tired. You’re more likely to push through it with a partner there.

You’ll pick up more ideas when you workout with a partner.

Whether you and your partner are working out alone or in a group, you’ll get more from having a partner. In groups, partners often pick up things you miss and visa versa. When working out alone, a partner can provide new ideas that will add to your workout and techniques to make each workout better.

Safety can be an issue that a workout partner can help.

Not all exercises can be done alone safely. Weight training, for instance, needs a spotter. If you run, especially in the early morning or late evening, there’s safety in numbers, making a partner important. If something does happen when running, there will always be someone there to get help. There are many ways a partner can boost the element of safety and make the difference between an effective, safe workout and one that isn’t.

Working out with someone can make it more fun. That’s one reason group sessions are so popular. The more you enjoy something, the more likely you are to do it, so it helps you stay on track, too.
A workout partner can encourage you and help you through the tough times. Whether you want an “atta’ boy” for accomplishing a tough goal or a nudge to keep going, a workout partner can help.
You can get help with more than just exercise when you have a workout partner. You can also get help to stick with healthy eating. Sharing menu ideas and recipes or other information keeps you eating healthier.
You’ll have someone to talk to that understands the problems faced when getting fit. It doesn’t take long for people not involved to mentally turn off your conversation when you talk or get that deer in the headlamps look.

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How To Break A Plateau

Published by superadmin on February 16, 2019 | Leave a response

In fitness, there are lots of different types of plateauing. You can have a plateau that puts a ceiling on the amount of weight you lift, a plateau where you’re stuck at the intensity of a workout and a plateau for weight loss. Most people hear plateauing and think of weight loss. That’s because it’s one of the biggest frustrations people who try to lose weight often face. There are ways to break a plateau, but first you need to identify why it occurred.

Weight loss can start with a huge drop in weight and then almost none.

When you consider what occurs during weight loss, it’s easy to understand how the weight comes off faster at first and then becomes obstinate. It’s all about numbers. The first number is 3500. That’s the amount of calorie deficit it takes to lose a pound. The second is your own weight. The heavier you are, the more calories it takes to do everyday things. The more weight you lose, the fewer calories you burn, even if you’ve built more muscles. When this is the cause of plateauing, making your workout harder is the route to take.

Not only should you ramp up your workout, you should vary it, too.

One of the leading causes of plateauing is doing the same workout for a long time. Your body is amazing. After you do so many repetitive moves, it finds a way to do them that burns fewer calories. That’s called efficiency. While that’s not so great for modern day people with burger castles on every corner, it was great for a caveman who wasn’t sure where to find his next meal. Varying the workout frequently keeps your body off balance, never quite becoming as efficient and burning more calories.

Sometimes even when you do everything right, those stubborn pounds remain.

Maybe the problems isn’t coming from lack of progress, but great progress. When you’re working out, you’re building muscle tissue. That muscle tissue may be the culprit. It’s a good culprit and not the enemy. Muscle tissue weighs per cubic inch than fat tissue does. It also takes a smaller container to hold ten pounds of muscle than it does take to hold ten pounds of fat. You may be losing inches instead of pounds, but you’ll look better, thinner and fitter, even if the scales won’t budge. Gauge success with a tape measure, not a scale.

Look for ways to increase your daily activity not at the gym. Just by taking the stairs, rather than the elevator, can help you make those last few pounds budge.
You may be eating healthy, but are you drinking healthy. Sugary drinks, especially soft drinks, add loads of calories to your daily intake, include drinks in your healthy eating plan.
Are you putting forth your best effort at a workout? You won’t if it bores you. Find ways to add exercise you enjoy. Shoot hoops with the guys or ride bikes with the kids as an alternative.
Fight the urge to weigh yourself every day. Weight fluctuates and that fluctuating can cause a lot of discouragement if you hit a day when it’s on the upside.

Posted in Fitness & Wellness

Does Your Workout Gear Matter

Published by superadmin on February 4, 2019 | Leave a response

Does your workout gear matter? If you don’t have the funds for those “spectacular” workout clothes or don’t want to spend the money, since you’re planning on shedding lots of weight and will have to buy new clothes. It shouldn’t stop you from going to the gym. Here in Louisville, KY, my clients dress in a number of different ways, but what they all have in common is that the clothing allows them to move easily. Whether it’s made from the latest fabric or your gym shorts from high school and a T-shirt, dressing in clothing that allows easy movement is top priority.

Wear clothes that are made of breathable fabric.

Breathable fabric allows the heat from your body to release. That can help keep you cooler longer and prevent cutting the workout shorter because of overheating. Having a workout outfit made of material that wicks the moisture away from your body also helps prevent excess heat and that drippy feeling you may well know that comes after a tough workout and lots of perspiration. Tops made from 100% cotton won’t cut it. The material absorbs sweat and holds it against your body, making you miserable. While cotton is breathable, sweat evaporates more slowly from it, so look for tops made of spandex, polyester blends, polypropylene or those specifically created to wick moisture away from your body, while allowing the material to breathe.

Good shoes can help your performance and prevent injuries.

If you’re running, the type of shoes you wear is top priority. Your feet and joints take a pounding and the right shoes can help prevent injury. For those that workout in the gym, finding the right type of shoe is also important particularly if you have high impact exercises. Blistering can keep you out of the gym for a couple of weeks, so ensuring they fit well is also a priority.

You can boost your recovery with the right type of clothing.

You see compression clothing more and more when you go to the gym. Many professional athletes are using it because there’s been more findings that it actually helps recovery and performance. Compression clothing was originally created for people with problems with their veins, but now it’s used to help during workouts to stimulate circulation and increase blood flow, which can help recovery by removing lactic acid. It can be used after working out by increasing direct pressure to the muscle for reducing inflammation and soreness. While the jury is still out on the benefits, there are no negatives to wearing this type of clothing so it may be worth a shot.

Wearing too short of shorts can cause chaffing, especially if you’re a runner. Stick to shorts that are mid-thigh to avoid it.
If you aren’t wearing material that gives and is supposed to be snug, make sure your clothing isn’t too tight. A tight cotton shirt can restrict movement and even make breathing more difficult.
Of course, you’ll feel more confident if you look great, but the gym isn’t a place for a fashion show, it’s a place to get fit. Never let your lack of the latest workout clothing stop you from going to the gym.
You don’t have to spend a fortune on gym clothes. If you’re trying to lose weight, you may not wear them long. Instead, start saving for a great look in the size you WANT to be and use it as incentive.

Posted in Fitness & Wellness