Exercise

Natural Remedies For Sleeping Better

Published by superadmin on October 25, 2023 | Leave a response

If you listen to pharmaceutical commercials, you probably think there’s a pill for everything. At the end of every commercial, the announcer speaks rapidly in a soft, unemotional voice about all the side effects of the drug, many of which are far worse than the ailment it’s supposed to cure. Many people in Louisville, KY, look for natural remedies to help them sleep that don’t require disclosures. Lack of quality sleep causes many physical issues, yet millions of Americans suffer from it. Many people may be in bed for 8 hours but still don’t go through all stages of sleep to be healthy.

Should you eat before bedtime or not eat?

Almost everyone has heard you shouldn’t eat before bed, but that isn’t always true. The type of food you eat and the amount you eat is the key. Don’t overload your stomach with fatty foods, food high in sugar, or junk. It can cause digestive issues if you do or if you eat too much. However, if you can’t sleep, the problem may be hunger. Man is hardwired to stay awake and hunt for food if he’s hungry for survival. If you can’t fall asleep, try eating a small amount of protein with tryptophan, like beef, poultry, or seafood, combined with a healthy carb.

Get plenty of exercise.

A consistent program of exercise can help you sleep better. It doesn’t matter what type of exercise, walking, running, calisthenics, or just dancing. If you have a chronic problem with sleep, getting 30 minutes of exercise daily can help. Don’t overdo it, especially at first. It can cause aching muscles that will keep you awake all night. Not only will exercising regularly help you fall asleep, but it will also improve your quality of sleep, too.

Avoid alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine before bedtime.

People drink coffee to stay awake, so it seems like a no-brainer. However, most people don’t consider the caffeine in colas, chocolate, and energy drinks. Drinking or consuming caffeine-containing substances late in the day can keep you awake. Alcohol may help relax you, but if you drink it before bed, you won’t get the quality of sleep. You’ll wake up throughout the night or miss several stages of quality sleep.

Get out in the sun and eat food higher in omega-3. Both vitamin D and omega-3 are necessary to produce serotonin which plays a vital role in how quickly you fall asleep and the quality of your sleep.
Eating almonds or almond butter on toast can also help. Almonds contain magnesium that can calm your mind and help you sleep. A magnesium deficiency can cause insomnia.
Make sure you turn off all electrical appliances that emit light, such as the computer or TV. Sleep in a dark room that’s a bit on the cool side. You may think the TV helps you fall asleep, but it interferes with the quality of sleep.
Make a sleep schedule and stick with it, even on the weekends. Falling asleep at a specific time becomes a habit and helps you go to sleep quickly.

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

Posted in Exercise, Fitness & Wellness

How To Lose Body Fat And Preserve Muscle Mass

Published by superadmin on October 15, 2023 | Leave a response

It’s possible to lose body fat and preserve muscle mass. To lose weight, you have to eat fewer calories than you burn. The body doesn’t differentiate where it gets those calories, whether it’s from burning fat or muscle for them. Bodybuilders tend to focus most on this since getting ripped requires reducing fat, allowing muscles to show. To achieve body recomposition, reducing body fat and maintaining or increasing muscle tissue, focus on the best diet and exercise program.

It starts with your diet.

There’s a reason we include nutrition in our fitness programs, especially when you want to focus on losing fat and not muscle. Reducing your caloric intake too much can result in losing muscle mass. While many weight loss diets reduce calories by more than 500 a day, it can cause a loss of muscle mass. Rather than lowering calories, increasing activity levels is the way bodybuilders achieve that goal. They maintain the calorie intake for their weight and exercise more, increasing intensity and activity.

Some exercises are better for body recomposition.

Maintaining your caloric intake while boosting your exercise regimen is the key if you just want to burn fat and build or maintain muscle tissue. If you have a particularly intense workout, like intense strength training or HIIT—high intensity interval training—-you can even minimally increase your caloric intake to provide the energy you need. On days away from the gym or doing moderate to mild exercise, you can cut your calories by a small amount, such as 200 to 300.

Full-body workouts, interval training, and HIIT workouts are a few options.

A personal trainer can develop the perfect plan to help you, but if you don’t have a trainer, aim for full-body workouts, such as kettlebells that burn the most calories. Constant aerobic workouts won’t give you the results you want. They burn both fat and muscle. Strength-building workouts build or maintain muscle tissue and burn mostly body fat. Make your workouts shorter but work at a more intense pace, taking fewer breaks between sets or exercises. When you’re doing strength training, increase the weight you lift. You can also set a time and focus on increasing the number of lifts you do in the allotted time.

Increasing protein intake can help protect your muscles is important. Protein is necessary for building muscle tissue and can help burn fat. Cutting out processed food and food with added sugar is also necessary.
If weight loss and maintaining muscle mass is your goal, you have to adjust your diet slightly. Maintaining the same or slightly lower calorie intake on your days working out and cutting it by 300-400 calories on your days off works well.
Never underestimate the power of a good night’s sleep. Getting adequate sleep can boost your energy so you burn more calories. It also keeps your appetite in check.
Drink more water and stay hydrated. Water makes you feel full, so you don’t overeat. It also boosts your energy level. Don’t forget to include protein and carbs after working out. It helps with recovery by providing the necessary raw materials.

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

Posted in Exercise, Fitness & Wellness

How Many Calories Are Burned During Each Workout?

Published by superadmin on October 5, 2023 | Leave a response

Predicting the number of calories burned during a workout isn’t easy. Each person is different. The calories they burn doing the same exercises as someone else will vary by age, weight, gender, percentage of muscle tissue, length and intensity of the workout, and other factors. Even though you may be doing the same workout, the calories you burn at each will also vary. You can approximate the calories you burn, which for most people is adequate.

Your weight, gender, age, and body composition make a difference.

If you weigh more, moving around takes more energy, and you’ll burn more calories. Gender and body composition are linked. Men tend to have more muscle mass than women. People with more muscle mass burn more calories working out. The older you get, the harder it is to reach the intensity required to burn the maximum calories. You might think that fit people will burn more calories, but that’s not necessarily true. Their body is more efficient, so they burn fewer calories.

The area temperature, the amount of sleep, and your intensity affect the calories burned.

It makes sense that someone running at peak speed will burn more calories than someone walking slower, so intensity counts. If the room is warm, your body temperature will be higher, burning more calories. Getting adequate sleep the night before makes a difference. It can cause fatigue so you won’t work as hard. It also slows your metabolism.

Sometimes, just estimating the number of calories is enough.

Many charts will show the number of calories burned. Some even add weight to the mix. For instance, a 125-pound person will burn 165 calories doing 30 minutes of low-impact aerobic exercise, while a 155-pound person will burn 108. High-impact exercises burn more. That same 125-pound person will burn 210 calories, while the 155-pound person will burn 252. Knowing approximately how many calories you’ll burn based on the activity is often enough. Staying more focused on consistency and being active is more important.

While lifting weights doesn’t necessarily burn the most calories, they do create afterburn that increases your metabolism for hours. They also build muscle tissue that boosts metabolism.
Eating a small snack before you exercise can help keep you working your hardest, burning more calories in the process. The snack should contain a carb and some protein.
HIIT—high intensity interval training—torches calories. It’s not a type of exercise but a way of modifying any workout, alternating between peak intensity and a recovery pace.
A personal trainer will create a program designed to help you maximize the calories you burn, while also focusing on all types of fitness, strength, endurance, balance, and flexibility.

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

Posted in Exercise, Fitness & Wellness

How To Get Started With Strength Training

Published by superadmin on September 15, 2023 | Leave a response

All types of exercise are necessary to be your fittest, cardio, flexibility, balance, and strength training. Each type of fitness requires different training. Some are easier to start than others. If you want to build cardio strength, ride a bike, run, or walk. Those activities don’t focus on building strength or improving balance or flexibility. Other exercises provide those benefits. While running may help build lower-body muscles, it doesn’t build upper-body strength. Here are some tips to help you start on the path to improved strength.

Don’t believe the myth that you need special equipment.

People often fail to do strength training because they believe they need expensive equipment, like barbells, dumbbells, or kettlebells. The truth is you don’t need any of those things. People have been doing strength training without any of those things. They use bodyweight exercises to provide resistance. Lifting your body against the force of gravity helps build muscles. If you want equipment but are short on cash, use resistance bands. They allow you to work muscles on all planes.

The most important factor in strength training is form.

To build strength, lift something heavy, push something heavy, or pull something heavy. It’s that simple. What isn’t that simple is maintaining the proper form when you do it. If your form isn’t correct, you face the potential of an injury or not getting the full benefit of your efforts. When you first begin, either have a friend to help or do the exercise in front of a mirror to check your form. Doing it right is far more important than the number of reps or the amount of weight you lift.

Don’t train the same muscle groups two days in a row.

When you’re building muscles, you stress them and cause microtears in the muscles. It takes time for those muscles to heal. The healing process is what makes them stronger. If you do strength-building every day, it doesn’t allow muscle tissue to heal. The muscles dwindle and get weaker. Get adequate sleep, eat quality protein, and if you do strength training two days in a row, work different parts of the body.

Track your progress. Make your workout tough, but one you can do without compromising your form. Start with exercises like push-ups, walking lunges, and planks. As they become easier, increase your repetitions and sets.
Kettlebell workouts or HIIT—high intensity interval training—workouts can speed your progress, while also boosting your cardiovascular health. Circuit training can also build muscle tissue with less time exercising.
Besides increasing repetitions and sets, you can modify exercises. You can make them easier or more difficult. You can alter them to focus on working other muscle groups. If you place your hands wider when doing a push-up, works other muscles.
Having a snack of carbs and protein 30 to 60 minutes before a workout can improve your workout. Consuming a high-protein, high-carb snack afterward can help with recovery.

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

Posted in Exercise, Fitness & Wellness

Why It Is Important To Have A Regular Exercising Schedule?

Published by superadmin on September 5, 2023 | Leave a response

Do you want to be a better pianist? Practice every day. If you want to be a better writer, write every day. The same is true of exercise. It’s even easier if you do it at the same time each day to form a habit. A regular exercising schedule carves out the same time every day to increase your chance for success. Consistency is the key to success and scheduling a workout helps maintain that consistency.

If you have an appointment, you don’t take other appointments in that time slot.

When you put something in your calendar, like a doctor’s or dentist’s appointment, you don’t accept another commitment at that time since it’s already filled. The same happens when you consider your workout an appointment with the gym. People who use a personal trainer have found meeting with the trainer at a specific time is far more motivating than going to the gym and working out alone. The gym takes second place to anything that interrupts the day when you don’t schedule it.

You have to make it important to you.

You should value your time at the gym. Exercise helps keep blood pressure regulated, reduces the risk of insulin resistance, helps shed extra pounds, reduces stress, and improves your immune system. You should value the benefits it provides and appreciate the time it saves at the doctor’s office later. Creating a regular workout time increases its importance and helps you develop a habit. Habits are hard to break.

Scheduling helps put structure into your workout.

You know you’ll exercise at a specific time every day and understand it doesn’t have to be at the gym. Scheduling your workout gives you the liberty to switch things up. You can work out in the gym three days a week and use the other days for different types of exercise. You could ride a bike, walk, or do something different, such as take dance lessons. You can schedule cardio, strength-building, and flexibility training on different days or include them every day, dividing up your strength-building to different areas of the body.

If you schedule your workout at the same time each day, you’ll miss it when you don’t do it. It becomes a habit to devote that time to improving your fitness.
Going to the gym at the same time every day can increase your social circle. You start to see the same people each time and interact. That makes working out more fun and improves your chances of continuing.
Just considering the best time to schedule your workout can be a benefit. If you know you get busy during the day and it wrecks your schedule, the logical choice is to make your appointment the first thing in the day.
It takes more than exercise to be your fittest. It takes a healthy diet, too. We provide nutritional coaching that can help you create new dietary habits.

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

Posted in Exercise, Fitness & Wellness

The Role Of Gut Health In Weight Loss

Published by superadmin on August 5, 2023 | Leave a response

If you want to lose weight, we’ll help you at Body Sculptors in Louisville, KY. We address all aspects of weight loss, including diet and exercise. A healthy diet and regular exercise both affect your entire body. The combination improves endurance, metabolism, mood, and gut health. That’s right, gut health is vitally important to your body. There’s a link between gut health and losing weight. It takes more than just cutting back on calories. It takes a healthy diet to create a more efficient digestive system to lose those extra pounds.

Your gut microbiome makes a difference.

Your body has trillions of microbes. There are more microbes than cells. Estimates say that for every cell you have, you have three microbes. These include fungi, bacteria, archaea, and viruses with an estimate of between 300 to 500 species. The beneficial microbes perform several tasks for the body, including maintaining gut health and protecting the body from harmful microbes. If the microbes are out of balance with too many harmful ones, it can create many problems, including sugar cravings.

Besides the microbes, the gut produces vital hormones.

Hormones play a role in all bodily functions. They’re messengers. They regulate metabolism, control appetite, and send a wide variety of critical information to the brain. There are approximately 20 different hormones created in the gut that vary based on diet, stress, overall health, and the substances produced by microbes. The hormones can help or hinder weight loss. If your calorie intake is too low, hormones increase appetite or reduce metabolism. An unhealthy gut causes digestive issues like gas, bloating, and constipation. It can cause unintentional weight changes, autoimmune disturbances, and mood changes.

You can improve your gut health

Studies show that a healthy diet with probiotic and prebiotic foods can help improve gut health. Prebiotic foods include food high in soluble fiber. Soluble fiber feeds the beneficial bacteria. A diet low in sugar also discourages harmful microbes, while a diet high in sugar harms beneficial ones. Getting adequate sleep also helps gut health, and so does good hydration. Studies found that starting or continuing a program of regular exercise can improve your gut health by improving the microbes in the gut.

You can help your digestive system and improve gut health by chewing your food longer. That allows more digestion to take place in your mouth, rather than your gut, making it more efficient.
Scientists have identified certain strains of microbes that are associated with obesity. They found the byproducts of certain microbes in obese people or those overweight.
Eating food high in fiber is good for gut health. So is consuming fermented food that is rich in probiotics. Garlic, chickpeas, onions, and bananas are excellent prebiotics that feed beneficial bacteria.
One study showed that after exercising for six weeks, the beneficial bacteria in the gut increased. Other studies show that chronic stress can reduce healthy bacteria.

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

Posted in Exercise, Fitness & Wellness

Reasons Why People Shouldn’t Go Vegan

Published by superadmin on July 25, 2023 | Leave a response

There’s nothing wrong with being vegan if you know how to create a well-balanced diet and have the will to get past the restrictions. Those people consuming a strict vegan diet often have studied the nutritional requirements or use an app to help them create their daily diet. While a vegan diet can be healthy, some people shouldn’t go vegan. A vegetarian, pescatarian, or flexitarian diet works better for most people.

What’s the difference in the diets?

There are all types of diets, but the most prominent ones in the plant-based world are pescatarian, vegetarian, flexitarian, and vegan. Flexitarian diets are the most liberal. This type of diet includes all types of food but limits the consumption of poultry, meat, fish, and seafood to the occasional meal. Pescatarians eliminate poultry and meat, while vegetarians eliminate meat, poultry, fish, and seafood. The strictest diet is the vegan diet. Only plant-based food is allowed and all animal products are eliminated.

A vegan diet provides many nutrients, but getting certain ones is difficult.

There are two major drawbacks to a vegan diet. Getting adequate vitamin B12 is one of those. Vitamin B12 is vital for nerve, heart, and muscle health. It boosts your metabolism and helps keep your body functioning properly. Supplementing with a B12 vitamin is often necessary unless the vegan focuses on consuming food fortified with B12. Zinc is another nutrient that’s difficult to get from a plant-based source. Many of the plant-based sources also contain phytates that bind to the zinc and make it unavailable.

Balancing your diet can be a challenge.

The body can create many amino acids, but there are nine essential ones it can’t create. You have to get the essential amino acids from your diet. Animal products contain all nine, but only some plant-based products do. You can combine food with incomplete proteins to achieve a complete protein profile. Combining beans and rice is an example. It takes planning to ensure you get all essential amino acids throughout the day, but some healthy people prove it’s possible.

Collagen is a building block for skin, muscle, bones, hair, ligaments, and tendons. It’s missing from a vegan diet. Plants don’t contain collagen but do contain the building blocks of collagen, so the body has to create it.
Studies show that people who are vegans often are low in vitamins K and B12, collagen, DHA, and EPA. Deficits in those nutrients create a potential for premature aging. A vegan diet can also cause an imbalance of Omega 3 and Omega 6.
Plant-based diets aren’t for everyone. People with IBS, soy, nut, or gluten allergies or intolerance aren’t candidates for a vegan diet. If you’re on a low carb diet, it’s not for you.
It’s simply more difficult to eat when you’re on a strict vegan diet, especially if you like to eat in restaurants. Few offer many vegan options. If you’re not good with planning or details we can help make it easier with personalized meal plans.

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

Posted in Exercise, Nutrition

Are All Calories Created Equal?

Published by superadmin on July 5, 2023 | Leave a response

Clients at Body Sculptors in Louisville, KY, understand that cutting calories can help you lose weight. They even understand that some foods are healthier than others. I’m lucky to have such smart clients who also know not all calories are equal. It’s not the actual calories that makes a difference in whether a food will promote weight gain, but the food itself. If you eat 2400 calories, all from healthy fruits and vegetables and a friend eats an equal amount of calories from sugary treats, you’ll get more benefits and lose weight faster than they will.

In order to metabolize some calories, it takes extra energy.

If you ate a stalk of celery, it wouldn’t amount to many calories. Your body would get even fewer calories since it takes calories to digest the celery. Some people think celery is a negative calorie food, but so far, no studies have proven or disproven the theory. Celery is also a diuretic, so if you’re gaining weight from retaining water, it helps you lose it. Eating 100 calories from celery—which would be a lot—has less effect on your weight than eating a hundred calories of cookies—two medium ones.

It’s about thermogenesis.

When you eat, it has to digest. That all takes energy and produces heat. The body has to break down the food by producing digestive juices and sending the food through the digestive tract. There it breaks food down further, removing the nutrients from the food. Those are extra calories used and not available to the body. Fibrous foods, like fruits, vegetables, or other complex carbohydrates, fats, or meat, use many calories for digestion, while simple carbs, like sugar and sugary products, use much fewer. Hence, 100 calories from high thermogenetic foods depletes to fewer calories, while those from sugary treats are available at 100%

The fiber in the food and the toxic elements make a difference, too.

Food with added sugar can be toxic. It can cause inflammation, which can cause weight gain. It can cause insulin resistance that leads to that and diabetes. A few calories from food with added sugar is more than just a few calories, it also can change your gut microbiome. A healthy balance makes your body work properly, but an unhealthy balance leads to disease and even obesity. If you get your calories from high-fiber food, the fiber feeds beneficial microbes to improve health and reduce weight.

Let’s not forget the nutrients in the food. Magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin C, carotenoids, iron, and zinc can all boost your weight loss efforts. Studies show that obese people are often deficient in vitamin D. People eat for a number of reasons besides just hunger.
Eating other thermogenetic foods, like meat and fat, can keep you feeling full longer. It’s because these types of food take longer to digest. Complex carbohydrates take longer to digest than simple ones.
The same food can have a different caloric effect. If you refrigerate a potato, reheating it later, the chilling process changes half the starch into resistant starch. You can’t absorb resistant starch so it passes out in your feces.
Calories from junk food are considered empty calories. That’s because they provide no benefit, other than the calories they provide. Choosing food that offers other benefits can make you leaner and healthier.

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

Posted in Exercise, Nutrition

Strength Training Benefits As You Get Older

Published by superadmin on June 25, 2023 | Leave a response

As people age, they often focus on endurance and do some type of aerobic exercise to improve it. They also may include stretching in their daily exercise routine. Far fewer people include strength-training. Many don’t realize all the benefits it provides as they get older or think it could be too taxing for them to do. Some senior women think strength-building is just for men, or worry they’ll become muscle-bound. The truth is, strength training is important for people of all ages no matter what their gender, particularly seniors.

Strength training won’t build big muscles in women, but it will keep seniors mentally sharper.

While the attitude is changing, some women think that lifting weights is just for men and unladylike. That’s not true. Deceased icon, Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, had a personal trainer and regularly lifted weights. She knew it helped her maintain her health both mentally and physically, allowing her to serve with clarity until her death at age 87. While she was a trailblazer who broke the glass ceiling, nobody would ever call her too muscular. The male hormone testosterone increases muscle bulk, and the reason women don’t develop large rippling muscles without a lot of extra work and a special diet.

Fighting obesity is important.

Obesity can lead to serious health conditions that include diabetes and heart disease. Aerobic-style exercises like walking and running burn calories, but the calories come from both fat and lean muscle tissue. Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue does, so the less you have, the fewer calories you’ll burn. That makes losing weight or preventing weight gain harder. Strength training builds muscle tissue allowing you to torch more calories, preventing obesity, the leading cause of preventable death.

More muscle mass means greater strength.

The stronger you are, the less likely you’ll fall, which can lead to the inability to care for yourself. Besides lack of strength and improved balance, when you lack adequate muscle strength, it causes sarcopenia. Sarcopenia leads to a wasting of muscles, which are necessary to maintain bone strength. Strong muscles tug on the bones, causing them to uptake calcium to be strong enough to resist the tug. Lack of strength-building allows the bones to lose calcium, causing osteoporosis. Strength-building leads to stronger muscles and bones.

Strength training can slow the process of aging on a cellular level. Studies show that exercising increases mitochondrial activity to keep cells younger. The people benefiting most were 65-80.
Unless you workout regularly, muscle loss starts in the 30s, with loss increasing every decade. The older you are, the harder it is to build muscles due to lower hormone levels and more inefficient protein processing.
Strength training helps maintain mental fitness. Dementia, depression, and Alzheimer’s all benefit from regular strength training. Many therapists use it as an adjuvant therapy.
Weight training can help relieve arthritis pain, back pain, and aching joints. It builds the muscles, ligaments, and tendons to help reduce further pain by providing more support.

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

Posted in Exercise, Lifestyle