Fitness & Wellness

How Often Should I Do Cardio Per Week??

Published by superadmin on September 15, 2020 | Leave a response

Whether you’re working out with us at Body Sculptors in Louisville, KY, or using our online workout program, you have to be consistent and get the right amount of exercise to ensure you get the benefits you want. How much is enough each week? You need to get approximately 150 to 300 minutes of moderate cardio per week or 75 to 150 minutes if it’s vigorous, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. That’s about 30 to 60 minutes of moderate cardio five days a week or 15 to 30 minutes of vigorous exercise.

Try alternating days with cardio and strength training, which include flexibility training every day.

Do intense cardio three days a week and strength-building two days. If you do 25 to 40 minutes of intense cardio each session, you’ll have 75 minutes to 150 minutes in each week. If you aren’t fond of intense cardio, do a 40-50 minute session three days a week and fill in the void with walks on your days away from the gym. On the two days you don’t do cardio, do strength training, making sure you get a day of rest between the days. If you prefer, include both strength training and cardio five days a week, but focus on different areas of the body for strength training to let your muscles repair, such as upper body one day, core muscles the next and lower body the third. Skip the fourth day and do total body strength training the fifth day.

Combine strength training with cardio using HIIT—high intensity interval training.

You can use any type of workout to create a HIIT workout, even strength training exercises. What is HIIT? It’s exercising at top intensity, raising your heart beat high for a few seconds to a few minutes, based on your fitness, then switching to lower intensity for equal or longer time to get your heart rate back down to 60-65% of maximum. When you use that technique, it provides plenty of cardio, plus you’ll be doing strength training to achieve it two days a week.

Focus on total body training.

If you don’t work out five days a week, but just three, you must cram a lot of exercise into your workout in a short amount of time. HIIT is a great way to start. You can also do total body training two of those days with just cardio on the third. Ways to do that can include using kettlebells or ropes. Total body strength training workouts with limited rests between exercises, such as circuit training, can provide a good cardio/strength workout two days a week with just cardio on the third day.

On your days off of cardio, you can end each session with cardio sprints for five to ten minutes. You can fill in the rest of the time with walks at lunch or on the days you don’t workout.
How can you gauge intensity of cardio if you don’t take your pulse rate? If you have rapid, deep breathing, are sweating after a short time and can’t say more than one or two words without stopping for a breath you’re working out at high intensity.
If you hate running and rowing machines are too boring, try some fun cardio workouts. Go dancing and dance every fast dance for a real cardio workout. Skip rope or go bicycling. Even power walking is a good workout.
Studies show that you don’t have to do all thirty minutes of cardio consecutively. You can break up your brisk walks to ten minutes each and still get the benefit of thirty minutes that day.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

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Is A Food Journal Important?

Published by superadmin on September 5, 2020 | Leave a response

Have you ever had a food journal, or even heard of keeping one? If you haven’t, you’d be surprised at how this simple tool can really help you lose weight. People sometimes eat mindlessly, a handful of M&Ms as you pass the candy bowl, that last cookie on the plate so you can wash it and far more than one serving size of dinner, even though you considered it one serving. Keeping a food journal used to require carrying around a paper and pad, but with Smartphones today, your memo section or voice recording makes it easy to transfer to a journal at the end of the day.

Food journals can be about more than just how much and what you eat, but also how you feel.

Keeping an accurate record can mean more than just recording food, the amount of food, when you ate it and the number of carbs or calories it contained. In fact, some people don’t even record calories if they’re trying to learn to eat healthier and just look at the type of food they eat and when they’re more apt to eat junk. Others record how they feel emotionally. If they find they turn to candy when they’re upset or emotional or potato chips when they’re angry, they can choose an alternative method of dealing with the emotions and make a smarter choice, like walking a bit or working out and crunching on some veggies.

Food journaling can be vital if you have an illness nobody can identify.

You don’t have to feel desperately ill to get the benefit of a food journal. Just feeling gassy or queasy could be a sign. If you have symptoms that seem to always appear after eating certain foods, like next step would be eliminating it from your diet to see if it brings relief. Recording how you physically feel, and specific symptoms helps you with this. It can help your doctor narrow the search and even eliminate unnecessary medication. Remember, at one time gluten and lactose intolerance weren’t heard of so were misdiagnosed. Many people were given an ulcer diet before 1960, which was high in cream and milk, when in reality they were lactose intolerant and it made their situation worse.

You have to learn portion control to journal.

That’s a good thing. Identifying portion size can help you track your food better and see just how many calories you eat. You also have to be precise. Instead of noting you ate an order of fries, you have to note how many you ate. There are all sizes of French fry orders, but 12-15 in one serving size.

You can trick yourself into eating more or less by varying the size of the plate. A large serving plate will make you feel like you’re eating less than it would if you put the same amount on a smaller plate. It’s another reason serving size is important.
When you food journal, you can track your macro and micro nutrients to ensure you have a balanced diet. Whether it’s a vitamin, mineral, phytonutrient, fiber, protein, carb or fat, you’ll have a record.
Food journaling can help pinpoint your problem losing weight. If diligently record every bite, and your carb or calorie count indicates you should be losing weight, but aren’t, you need to consider going to a doctor for help. If you find you’re overeating, there’s no more excuses.
A study had two groups of people, one who journaled, but did nothing else and the other that didn’t journal and did nothing else. The group that journaled lost weight, despite the fact that they didn’t diet.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

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Why Meal Planning Is Important

Published by superadmin on August 25, 2020 | Leave a response

What is meal planning? It’s more than just planning meals ahead. It’s cooking them ahead, too. It’s a process that not only can save time during the week, but also ensure you are eating nutritious meals that are lower in calories. Meal planning can save you money, while it also boosts your nutrition. Eating healthy doesn’t have to cost a fortune or require hours of cooking at the end of the day and meal planning proves it.

The process doesn’t have to be difficult.

The hardest part of meal planning is actually planning a week’s worth of meals. It can take some study and calculations to ensure your meals are high quality and perfect for your needs, whether it’s gluten free, low calorie or any other need. You could spend hours going through online recipes to find the right mix. Luckily, we’ve got you covered on that part. We have a great app that takes all the work out of it. It has meal plans for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, recipes for all meals and even a grocery list. All you have to do is shop and you’ll have the grocery list with you at all times.

When you shop for food for the week, do it all at once.

Not only should you do all your grocery shopping at once, you also should do it after you ate. If you’re like many people, if you go to the store hungry, you come home with bags of snack foods and sweets. On the weekend, you cook all the meals for the week. Most people double the recipes, so they have meals to freeze for those weekends where they’re too busy. You don’t ever have to cook during the week again or use a drive through. Your meals are ready to heat and serve.

Meal planning saves calories and money, while boosting nutrition.

If you thought eating healthy had to cost a lot, you’ll be surprised at how inexpensive it really can be. Not only do you save time during the workweek and improve your nutrition, before you shop, you can check for coupons and look for sales to save money. Using fresh fruits and vegetables from the Clean Fifteen lists means you don’t have to buy everything organic. They include: Avocados, sweet corn, pineapples, frozen sweet peas, onions, papayas, eggplants, asparagus, kiwis, cabbages, cauliflower, cantaloupes, broccoli, mushrooms and honeydew melons.

Having meals in the freezer is like having money in the bank for those times your budget is stretched to capacity. It also means you’ll have extra, just in case and unexpected guest arrives.
You’ll be amazed at how good healthy meals taste and how much you save avoiding the drive through. If you’re a frequent flyer at the premade meal section of the grocery freezer, you’ll also find how much cheaper, fresher and better tasting home-made can be.
Make it fun for the whole family. When you’re cooking meals, let everyone help. Kids will love the idea of being part of the process and learn a lot in the process. It will become some of their best memories.
Healthy snacks are important. That’s why having fresh fruit or vegetables cut and ready to eat or individual serving sizes of nuts and seeds packaged for the week.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

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Stay Healthy And Fit As You Get Older

Published by superadmin on August 15, 2020 | Leave a response

We love working with people of all ages at Body Sculptors in Louisville, KY. While it’s satisfying, no matter what your age, it’s particularly enjoyable to watch seniors. We can help you stay healthy and fit as you get older. Aging doesn’t have to sentence you to a rocking chair or limit your energy. You can be more mobile and self-sufficient no matter what your age if you practice healthy habits. You do have more of a challenge the older you get, since the body doesn’t produce as many enzymes for digestion and muscle tissue breaks down faster. That may make it harder, but definitely not impossible.

If you can start earlier, by all means take the challenge.

You don’t have to wait until you’re frail, begin today. If you’re in your 40s, you already have probably noticed changes. Think of people like Jack Lalane or Jane Fonda who spent much of their lives exercising and look fabulous. That doesn’t mean it’s ever too late. You may not have heard of Charles Eugster, who was the world’s oldest runner at 97, or Ernestine Shepherd, 84, the world’s oldest competitive body builder. Charles didn’t start working out until he was 87. Ernestine started body building in her late 50s and still competes today. It just proves that while it’s harder the older you get, it’s still possible. Always check with your health care professional first.

Making lifestyle changes is the key to staying healthy and fit.

As people age, they often become more sedentary. Hormone levels also drop. Both of those things increase the loss of muscle mass. What can change that is simple. A program of regular exercise, a healthy diet, adequate hydration, lack of sleep and more. Start with eating healthier. Switching to a diet high in whole foods, such as fruits and vegetables, lean protein—especially fatty fish—and fewer processed foods containing sugar and white flour is a great start to healthy eating. You won’t have to cut calories to lose weight, just focus on healthy eating.

A program of regular exercise can help maintain and build muscle mass.

Building back muscle tissue or stopping the natural loss that occurs all starts with a great program and a consistent effort. Don’t ever get discouraged because you don’t see the immediate changes you got when you were younger. It takes a little longer, but is well worth the effort. If you have mobility issues, there are chair exercises you can do. Start where you are. If you can only walk to the corner, walk there and tomorrow take a few more steps until you can walk miles. It’s all about improving, not competing with others or even your younger self. If you have physical limitations or health conditions, don’t give up. Seek the aid of a personal trainer for a program designed specifically for your needs.

Weight training is just as important to older people, if not more important. Not only will strength training slow and reverse the loss of muscle mass, it also can help keep bones strong and healthy.
When you’re working on building more muscle strength, increase your protein intake. While younger people need approximately 1.8 grams of protein per pound of weight, seniors tend to need 2.6 grams for the same results.
Get adequate sleep. Lack of sleep can cause hormones to become imbalanced, creating more ghrelin—the hunger hormone and reducing leptin—the hormone that makes you feel full. That can lead to overeating. Sleep is also important for heart health.
Drink plenty of water. It will help you physically and mentally. Seniors are more prone to dehydration, which can lead to kidney stones, stroke, infectious disease, constipation and even cause symptoms that resemble dementia.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

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Counting Calories Vs Macronutrients

Published by superadmin on August 5, 2020 | Leave a response

Before going into the discussion of calories vs macronutrients, you need to understand what both are. Calories are a measure of energy or heat, whose definition has changed over the years. You don’t need to know the exact definition to understand that if you eat too many calories, you’ll gain weight and to lose weight you have to eat less. Macronutrients are carbohydrates, protein, and fat, which are the building blocks for your body and all food you consume.

When you focus on macros, you’re focusing on eating healthy and the quality of the food.

It’s different with calories, that only focuses on the amount you eat based on the energy they contain. Counting just calories doesn’t mean you’ll eat your healthiest. An order of large fries from McDonalds has 510 calories, but you wouldn’t be healthy if you ate three orders of fries on a 1500 calorie diet, just as you wouldn’t be healthy eating 21 double stuffed Oreos as your diet, which is almost 1500 calories. Instead, focusing on the ratio of macronutrients wouldn’t allow you to overeat sugary treats that are primarily carbs or go for only greasy snacks.

The Food and Nutrition Board of Institutes of Medicine—IOM—ratios may differ from your goal.

The IOM suggests that the ratios should be approximately 45 to 65 percent of your calories should come from carbs, with 20 to 35 percent from fat and 10 to 35 percent from protein. As you can tell, there’s quite a range. That’s because modifying the amount of each macros will result in achieving different goals.

The more information you have, the better your results.

You still have to know the calorie count when you track macros, but also need to know the amount of each macronutrient. If you want to lose weight, increasing your protein intake can help you feel full faster and aid you in reaching your goal. For building muscles, you need a balance that’s 50% carbs, 20% fat and 30 % protein. You’ll have the energy you need for a tough workout.

If the process sounds difficult, it is far more difficult than just counting calories, but gets better results. It is made easier when you use our app that has everything, including menus designed to meet your needs.
When you eat makes a difference, especially if you’re trying to build muscle. A quick carb snack within an hour after a workout can help your body use the protein for building muscle and get the best results.
Eating healthy often follows the macronutrient diet. If you have plenty of fruits and vegetables each meal with a healthy source of protein and fat, most of the time you fall within the recommended allowances.
Counting macros doesn’t mean you’ll never get to eat any sugary treats. You can, but just not as much and not as often.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

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Workouts That Are Perfect When You’re Busy

Published by superadmin on July 23, 2020 | Leave a response

It does take time to come to the gym and workout, but it’s worth it. However, there are times when you’re busy that it might seem impossible. For those times, you don’t have to skip exercising entirely, just supplement it with workouts that fit into your schedule. You can start by breaking down your workout into sections that last ten to fifteen minutes each and do them throughout the day when you get a few minutes. Studies show that it doesn’t matter how many sessions you have as long as they’re about ten to fifteen minutes long, if you get at least 150 minutes a week.

Get an early start to get your workout in.

Squeezing your workout in when you first get up is one way to conquer the lack of time. You don’t even have to do the whole workout. You can do half your workout in the morning or even ten minutes of it and spread the rest throughout the day in one or two other sessions. If you have television time, get the second fifteen or twenty minutes while watching and you’ll be done for the day. Getting up early and doing the entire workout checks it off for the day and gets you ready to face the day with a clear head and more energy.

If you want the most from your exercise routine in the shortest amount of time, consider HIIT.

What is HIIT? It’s an acronym for high intensity interval training and a way to cut time from your workout, while still getting the maximum benefit. HIIT is a technique where you alternate between your top intensity, where your heart rate is high and a recovery intensity that allows your heart to slow, then back to high intensity. A half hour of this type of workout is as effective as an hour of steady state exercising. One study found that a minute of sprinting followed by nine minutes of moderate running provided the same improvement as 50 minutes of steady state running at a moderate pace.

Use exercises you can do anywhere.

There’s a four-minute nitric oxide dump created by Dr. Zachary Bush that combines four different types of movements to work the major muscles of the body. It’s done three times a day, but only four-minutes each time. The famous eight-minute workout can supplement when you don’t have time. Each set is fifty seconds with a 10-second rest between. It starts with a shoulders-elevated hip thrust and moves through push-ups, squat jumps, inverted row, hip hinge, pike push-ups, step ups and a pull up.

Even non-exercise can be exercises. Putting vigor into household tasks or yard work can turn them into a workout routine. Varying your tempo when you do chores from high speed to moderate is a form of HIIT.
Find alternatives that you enjoy. If you hate running, don’t do it. Ride a bicycle to the grocery or work, take the stairs not the elevator. It’s all good exercise.
Make your social time a time to exercise. Instead of stopping for drinks after work, go to the gym and workout as you socialize. Everyone needs a social life, so combining it with something active is a big time saver.
Create a workout you can do during commercials. Doing squats during commercials or maintaining a plank while watching a show can make beneficial use of your time and let you watch your favorite program.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

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Start a Fitness Program by Increasing how Much You Walk

Published by superadmin on July 15, 2020 | Leave a response

While many clients come regularly to the gym for their workout, there are those that for a variety of reasons, never go to the gym at all. Even those that attend regularly often find they cut corners avoiding other exercise outside the gym. In fact, they may even circle a store parking lot several times trying to find the closest spot, rather than doing the extra walk. Whether you workout regularly or are completely sedentary, increasing how much you walk can be a huge benefit to your overall health.

You’ll improve your heart health when you walk.

It doesn’t seem like much exercise while walking, but it can make a big difference in your cardiovascular health. One study found that people who walked around at least five minutes every hour maintained all the benefits from working out compared to those that remained seated for longer than an hour. Adding walking to your program of exercise or even starting one with walking is simple and it costs nothing to do. It helps shed pounds and raises your good cholesterol.

Does the 10,000 steps a day method work?

You may have heard of the recommended 10,000 steps a day, but did you know there was research that backed it. An Australian study using 2500 subjects that were sedentary showed the group that added the activity of 10,000 steps a day increased their mortality by 40%. A second study showed that just increasing walking by 3,000 steps a day lowered the risk of dying by 12%. These studies spanned a minimum of 15 years. A third study showed that just 150 minutes of walking each week, lowered the risk of dying by 20% overall with the risk of dying of respiratory disease lowered by 30%, and dying of cancer lowered by 9%.

You don’t have to do your walking all at once, either.

Pedometers have become popular with people using them to register every step. It also encourages them to walk more, if for no other reason than to improve their personal best. While 30 minutes of walking every day is ideal, it doesn’t mean you have to do it 30 minutes straight. You can break it up into three 10-minute sessions at different times of the day. If you have a slightly longer time for lunch at work, walk to your favorite restaurant that’s ten minutes away, eat and walk back to work. That’s two ten minute sessions completed and just one left to go for the balance of 30-minutes.

Alternating your walking speed from a brisk speed with a short period of recovery and back to a brisk pace can help you get into shape faster. It’s a form of interval training.
Walking can be the perfect way for a sedentary person to start their workout program. It can be personalized by adjusting for speed, distance and amount of time spent. It can be done in shorter sessions as noted previously.
Find ways to add more walking to your daily life. Besides parking further from the store, taking the stairs rather than the elevator, walking to lunch and getting up and walking for five minutes every hour is beneficial, too.
If you’re uncomfortable working out in front of others, you can start a weight loss program with healthy eating and walking. As you start to see the pounds drop off and you feel more energetic, it’s time to go to the gym for a complete program of fitness.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

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Burn Calories and Boost Your Mood

Published by superadmin on July 4, 2020 | Leave a response

You can actually watch people’s faces change from stressed to more relaxed as they workout at Body Sculptors in Louisville, KY. When you workout, you not only burn calories, you also boost your mood. The recent stay at home order caused many people to become sedentary and there was an increase awareness of depression on a national level. Society wasn’t getting the exercise they needed to chase the blues away and often mild depression became even worse. While there are medications for this mental health issue, one of the best ways to help is strength building exercises. You’ll get a benefit for the body and the mind.

Strength training has both mental and physical benefits.

Strength training is a real calorie burner that builds muscle tissue. That muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain than fat tissue does, so it raises the body’s metabolism. That’s a huge benefit when you’re trying to lose weight. It also boosts mental health, according to the WHO—World Health Organization. The WHO suggests you get at least two days of strength training for improved bone strength, overall fitness and improved mental health. While the endorphins make you feel good, it’s more than that. Strength training helps improve sleep, reduce anxiety and symptoms of depression, improve cognitive thinking and increase self-esteem.

A meta-analysis backed the belief that exercise was good for mental health.

A meta-analysis is a study of many different studies on the same subject. One recent one was looking at those that looked at the mental health effects of strength training. The conclusion was that people who did strength training received benefits that included the reduction of depression symptoms and a significant improvement in their mental health. The studies spanned various health statuses, amount of training received and even whether they actually became stronger. For people that had no signs of depression, there was modest improvement in attitude, but for those with mild or moderate symptoms the improvement was far greater.

How does exercise actually help?

While strength training was the focus on the meta-study, other studies showed that aerobic training also helped. It helps explain why people pace when they’re under stress. Dopamine, endorphins and norepinephrine are released during exercise and these hormones boost your mood. Exercise helps build new neurons in the brain and they are the communicator cells. They release the chemicals that help keep your mind calm. Several studies show that HIIT—high intensity interval training—lowered symptoms of depression in older adults better than normal depression treatment or low intensity workouts.

When people workout and stick with a program, they often increase their self-esteem because they’re doing something good for themselves and accomplishing goals.
A protein— the brain-derived neurotrophic factor—is boosted via exercise. That protein is lower in people that have depression.
An 11-year study of 34,000 adults showed that people who exercised as little as an hour or two a week were far less likely to be depressed than those who didn’t by as much as 44 %.
Exercise helps improve sleep and improved sleep is a great way to help avoid depression.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

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Why Taking A Time Out Can Improve Your Happiness

Published by superadmin on June 24, 2020 | Leave a response

Going to Disneyland, taking a vacation or enjoying the latest nightspot may not be what you need to be your happiest. Sometimes, you can improve your happiness by stepping back and taking a short break. Wearing the latest fashions, being in with the in-crowd and having the latest iPhone isn’t going to make it either. Being happy is a state of mind. Nobody can make you happy but you. Sometimes, all it takes is carving out a few minutes each day to count your blessings and looking at the things that truly make you happy.

Being more aware of your needs can start the process.

Understanding what your true feelings are may seem simple, but self-awareness is the basis for being happy. You have to know what your real desires are, not what society tells you they are. After all, there are conflicting commercials bombarding you daily telling you what you should want out of life and many of those things aren’t important to you. Finding out what’s not important is a huge step, then you can work on what is important to you.

Taking time out can also help reduce the stress in your life.

Unless you take time to appreciate what you have and identify not only what you want, but also what you don’t want, you’ll have stress in life. If you’re living under a great deal of stress, you’re not only not happy, you probably aren’t as healthy as you should be. Learning ways to cope with stress, such as meditation, exercise, deep breathing exercises or other type of stress relief can help you reduce your stress and encourage a state of happiness.

Taking time out can help prevent burnout.

If you’ve ever had a burnout, you know it affects all areas of your life, not just your happiness. It affects how efficient you are at work. It also affects whether you are social. Burn out can be prevented. Recovering from your burnout takes far longer to overcome than simply taking a few minutes each day to prevent it. Taking time to prevent both physical and emotional exhaustion will keep you at the top of your game and help you enjoy life more.

Learn to prioritize your tasks. Sometimes, other people’s emergencies shouldn’t be yours. If you’re constantly bailing out someone, you’re denying them the opportunity to learn and destroying your own happiness.
If you truly enjoy helping other people or like to be the head of a committee, then it’s what makes you happy and worth pursuing. Sometimes, work is what truly makes you happy and if that’s so, do it.
Taking time out from both work and play to appreciate the “wins” and “glories” of the day will help you achieve even more.
When you identify things that make you happy, focus on the end results, too. Do you love how you feel after working out? Focus on achieving that feeling the next time you go to the gym and you’ll find working out is a lot easier.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

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