Category — Exercise and Wellness
Exercise And Wellness:Fat Loss and Muscle Building - Third Piece of the Puzzle
When talking about exercising to burn fat or build muscle, people talk about the importance of the workout itself and the dieting aspect that goes with it. There is no doubt that these two aspects are vital and equally as important as each other for losing fat or building muscle, but there is also another part which is required for success, which in my opinion is never mentioned enough.
So what is this hardly mentioned third piece of the puzzle? What I’m talking about is the mental aspect of training. There are two main parts of this that are extremely important, these are what I like to call the pre-gym mindset and the in the gym mindset.
The pre-gym mindset is the preparation before a workout. The first thing you need to do is actually get yourself to the gym. This may sound like a strange statement to make, but it is so easy after a long day at work to decide that you don’t feel like doing your workout, or think to yourself that you’ll ‘do it tomorrow’ or ‘miss it just this once’. For success with fat loss or muscle building, you need to develop positive habits, once you start missing the odd training session here and there, the regularity of your whole training will fall apart. You need to consistently train to get the best results. Get yourself into a routine of getting to the gym and completing every workout that you have scheduled in. Training at the same time of day will help develop a routine, and your brain will get used to this. Eventually you will have trained your brain with these positive habits and going to the gym will be as normal as brushing your teeth in the morning and at night, it will just become a normal part of your daily routine.
In the gym mindset is what you need to complete a productive workout. Having a positive attitude in the gym and developing the ability to push yourself in your workout is essential. If you go into the gym and lift weights half hearted, or end your 30 minute run after 20 minutes, just because you’ve had enough or are tired, you will never get the results you are after. Look at elite athletes in any field, they will push themselves to their absolute limit, and the results will show in their performances. If you want to get the body that you desire, whether that means putting on pounds of muscle or losing pounds of fat, you must have the right mental attitude in your workouts. Force yourself to push out those extra reps on your weights. Try and go through your pain barrier (by this I mean normal workout pain, not injury pain) after all it is the last few reps that produce the most muscle growth. Set yourself mini goals in the gym, aim for a target weight you want to lift and try to achieve that goal. If you constantly push and challenge yourself, you will find your workouts a lot more fun, and more productive. Keep this up for long enough and you can completely change the way your mind thinks, acts and responds to exercise.
You will find that developing and improving yourself mentally will bring you the results that you want. It will also spill over into other areas, such as helping you stick to your diet, and avoid going back to any unhealthy habits that you may have had.
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June 30, 2009 No Comments
Exercise And Wellness:Losing Weight - How Can You Tell Which Diets Will Be The Most Effective for You?
Are you one who aims to achieve his/her weight loss goals by skipping meals? Are you already skipping your breakfasts and meals? Are you feeling weary as a result of fasting? Have you lost your appetite? You see, you might be highly motivated to reach your weight loss goal, but you are not losing weight safely. Using these methods are not the most effective diets. And you need to understand that there is a big difference between weight loss and ’safe’ weight loss.
The most effective diets make weight loss safe. You follow a regular diet and exercise plan. You do some aerobics such as swimming, jogging, cycling, etc. You regularly sweat it out in the gym. You do all these but without giving up eating! If your weight loss program recommends crash dieting and meal-skipping then I am afraid that it is not a safe weight loss program!
As a matter of fact, the most effective diets will vary by person depending on your physique is built based on your eating habits. If you tend to eat fatty foods then you will get fat. If you eat foods that have low fat and calorie content, then you will remain slim. If you don’t eat at all then you will suffer from weakness, loss of energy and a host of other problems. How good or bad your physique will be depends on how much calories you consume and how much you burn off by doing exercises.
There are so many different weight loss pills and products out there that they often try to distract us from the basics of the most effective diets. It is not surprising that people are falling in love with magic weight loss pills, for example. After all, if you can lose twenty pounds just by popping a couple of pills, why would you diet and exercise?
There are also certain fad diets which advise you to remove all fats and all carbs from your diet. This method is definitely not the most effective diet either. In fact, it is borderline crazy. Yes of course, stop eating all the fatty fried and calorie-rich junk foods. But it is unwise to remove all types of fats and all types of carbohydrates because your body needs them.
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June 29, 2009 No Comments
Exercise And Wellness:How to Get in Golf Shape Part 4
Now we are ready to move onto the Initial Takeaway. This is a very important part of the golf swing because if you mess this up it is next to impossible to get your swing back on track. The first 18 inches to 2 feet can very well determine the type of swing you will have.
The takeaway is what sets in motion the sequence of events that will allow you to deliver the club to the ball in the way that you need to in order to produce the shot you want. You should be letting your upper back and shoulder muscles initiate the takeaway and not your arms.
The first exercise to help with the intial takeaway is the seated hand to floor reach. You are going to sit in the upward position that you would be in if you just did a sit up. While maintaining this position stretch your arms straight out and rotate them to one side until you touch the ground. Then, rotate back to the other side. Perform 10 to 12 repetitions for 3 sets.
The second exercise to help with the initial takeaway is Lat pulls. These can be performed at your local gym with a pully machine. Ask a trainer to direct you to the lat pull machine and they will be able to show you the proper way to perform this exercise in about a minute or so.
The final exercise to help with the initial takeaway is the overhead should weighted stretch. You will need dumbells for this exercise. Start with the dumbells in your hands and at your sides. Next, raise them all the way to above your head while keeping your arms straight. Do 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions with this exercise.
Now you have exercises to work the muscles that you use for your setup and for the intitial takeaway. These are very important parts of the golf swing and you should exercise these muscles regularly.
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June 28, 2009 No Comments
Exercise And Wellness:The Under Used Un-Talked About Bodybuilder Secret
There are many things that you can spend your money on when it comes to muscle building. But one of the most beneficial expenditures that you can make is one that few take advantage of. The average lifter doesn’t see it as a worth while investment. But the most successful and best built bodybuilders in the world see it differently and wouldn’t think of training without it.
People think nothing of dropping hundreds of dollars monthly on gym memberships and supplements when in truth you could do bodyweight exercises at home and eat right, and for most people their physique wouldn’t suffer at all. The benefits of belonging to a gym are easy to see, and the supplement manufacturers advertising sees to it that their products are viewed as necessary, which, depending on your level of seriousness, may or may not be true. So the value for these expenditures is justifiable. Athletes the world over though have another must use product.
Massage.
When I tell people that I would rather spring for two one hour massages a month instead of the same dollar amount of certain products people think I am crazy. But the best and most fit people in the world agree with my thinking. If you are a regular, serious lifter, runner or athlete and ever have a full body, deep tissue massage, you understand the long term benefit that it can provide. All professional athletes get massages almost daily. I was fortunate enough to stumble onto a person that used to be Dennis Rodman’s personal masseuse, and they told me that at the height of Rodman’s athletic success he was getting a massage twice a day!
Everyone knows the benefits of stretching relative to exercise, well massage has a similar effect. We all know how lactic acid builds up in your muscles (which is what causes the soreness), and that a massage “works” that out, but did you know that it also lengthens muscles as well? This provides for a larger range of motion that in turn translates into better, more efficient workouts, not to mention the injury prevention that comes from less “tight” muscles.
I am a firm believer in protein and creatine supplementation, and I own my fair share of “fitness” aids. But the next time you are trying to decide on what to buy to help your muscle building efforts, treat yourself to a massage. You may find yourself re-evaluating how you want to allocate your fitness fund in the future.
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June 27, 2009 No Comments
Exercise And Wellness:Weight Loss Excuses To Avoid
A lot of people complain about how difficult it is to lose weight. They allege that no matter how much exercise and healthy eating is done, their skinny jeans still do not fit and the number on the weighing scale has barely changed. More often than not, the reason behind the inability of many to shed pounds is due to a number of misconceptions about exercise and dieting. Below are some weight loss excuses that you need to avoid if you want to eliminate excess fat.
Strenuous Exercise Is Bad For The Joints
People who are overweight and obese usually have problems with their joints so they are advised to shed some pounds first before running or performing strenuous exercises. However, they can still perform other forms of exercises that can help them trim down extra fat. Several minutes of brisk walking and doing low impact exercises will often do the trick. Furthermore, weight training is important because strong muscles help strengthen the bones. Thus, not exercising because of fear of endangering the joints is just a lame excuse for people who simply do not have the conviction to be healthy and stay slim.
Complete 100 Crunches For A Flatter Tummy
You might have heard celebrities claiming to perform 100 or more sit-ups or abdominal crunches before shooting a sexy revealing video or a scene that requires baring some flesh. In reality, these stars do not only do these crunches, but also scanty diet and other high intensity workouts.
If you want to get rid of your beer belly, you need to do much more than 100 sit-ups. You need to start watching what you eat, do high-impact exercises, and squeeze in weight training to at least three days a week.
Exercise Should Be Done In The Morning
There are many people who think that they can only benefit from exercise if they performed it in the morning. Although there are some who really prefer exercising in the morning, you can actually exercise anytime you want. In fact, it is much better to schedule your gym visits to a time that is most convenient for you so that you don’t have to be in a hurry to finish your sets. The key to successful exercise plan is consistency. For example, if you start to perform your weight-loss exercise program in the afternoon, it would be best to do succeeding sessions in about the same time of the day so that exercising will become a habit.
Lifting Weights Can Give Women Very Muscular Body
Body builders, both men and women alike, end up with big muscular body because they wanted to. They lift very heavy weights and train very hard to achieve their chiselled body. However, not all weight training programs can lead to big muscles. If you do not want to accidentally have biceps like Popeye, then you need to tell your trainer or gym instructor what you want to achieve. These people are trained and certified fitness instructors so they know what program and weights to give you in order to achieve your goal.
Skip Carbs In The Evening To Shed Pounds
No matter what time of day you eat, you are likely to continue gaining weight if you eat a lot, particularly unhealthy foods. There are really no studies to confirm if the habit of eating nothing after six in the evening can burn more fat.
However, some people really lose weight when they eat early dinner and skip midnight snacking because they end up eating less. Thus, if this should work for you, then go ahead and do this diet plan. Just make sure that you still reduce your intake of sugar-rich foods.
If you have been having a hard time losing weight, you can always couple your weight-loss training program with some diet aids, such as Zylorin. If you want to know about this product, go to http://www.zylorin.com/.
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June 26, 2009 No Comments
Exercise And Wellness:Your Beauty and Diet Fitness Guidelines
With fitness, there is a lot a person can do such jogging or walking in the morning, playing basketball or any other sport with friends but if a person wants to have muscles and look lean, the best thing to do will be to sign up and workout in a gym.
Physical exercise is beneficial because it helps maintain and improve ones health from a variety of diseases and premature death. It also makes a person feel happier and increases ones self esteem preventing one from falling into depression or anxiety. It has also shown to make a person with an active lifestyle live longer than a person who doesn’t.
Focusing on certain portion in the body can help make it improve. A good example is going to the gym and doing a workout more often in a specific area such as the abs can give one a chest pack.
Here are two important things one can do to stay beautiful and healthy;
Pollution is something people cannot control given the size of the problem. when one goes out, it is best to put some form of protection such as beauty products that contain antioxidants that protect the skin from damage. there are also other beauty products Available and choosing the right one with the Help of a dermatologist can Help the person.
another way to stay healthy is to Give up some vices. most people smoke and drink. Smoking has been Proven to cause lung cancer and other diseases as well complications for women giving birth. Excessive drinking has also shown to do the same.
Diet fitness
Even on television exercise machines, weight loss products, and other paraphernalia to improve fitness have more or less gained control over the airwaves and made their way into the households. But exercise is not the only way to build that body beautiful. It also entails certain amount of responsibility on the foods one chooses to eat. Being healthy and fit requires one to observe diet fitness.
One last thing to know would be the fundamental differences between these two diet approaches. As the name implies, high carb diets concentrates on taking in carbohydrate-rich foods while high fat diets endorses fat-rich foods. High carb diets are utilized to glycogen stored in the liver and muscles. Glycogen is a glucose complex that provides large amounts of energy ready for use in anaerobic exercises. Fat on the other hand is well-known for being the richest source of calories. It actually contains 2.5 times more calories than carbohydrates and proteins alike. Studies also show that it takes the body 24 calories to metabolize carbohydrates while it only takes 3 to burn down fat. So which one to follow? A person can follow a high carb and low fat fitness diet or the other way around. It is absolutely not recommended to follow both at the same time; unless of course if you want to gain body fat.
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June 25, 2009 No Comments
Exercise And Wellness:Diet Pills : Do Diet Pills Really Work?
Slimming pills, appetite suppressants, diet pills - all of these are meant to take away your fat. This is the new trend in our society. Have you ever tried to take some of these? And what happened to the result? Are you happy? If you are, congratulations! You may have been doing the right things and you have picked a good one that is suitable for your body. If you are not, maybe the one you are taking is not right for you, or there are still some things that you might be missing.
First of all, it is bad to skip meals while you are on a diet. This is the first common mistake that people make. You think you will not gain weight if you will not eat. Well, yes that is true. But this is also a fact; you will not lose weight if you will not eat.
Let me explain. When we are hungry and yet we don’t eat, we put our body in “starvation mode.” This means that our body is thinking that it needs to keep the fat reserves in case you decided not to eat for a long time. This is our way of coping for survival. And if our body decided to keep our fat reserves, guess what? We will not be able to burn them, thus, we will not lose weight.
This goes both ways. If we eat so much (especially junk food, get away from them), even if we are taking diet pills it will not work. In this case, the fat burning action cannot exceed the fat that you keep on taking in. What we have to do is put our body in “ketosis mode,” which means we eat a little to continue our daily activities and to prevent our body from going into starvation mode. If we do this, the diet pills can burn more fat than the ones we put in. We are burning our reserve fats as well, therefore losing a lot of weight.
Another thing that people miss out in their weight loss plan is exercise. You cannot just take a magic pill that will make you lose weight even if you are sitting around the house doing nothing. No, you do not need to enroll in a gym or to hire a personal trainer to get some exercise. But if you want to do it, go ahead if you have the willpower to do so and if you are willing to pay the price. What is needed is moderate movement, the best example of which is walking.
So, do diet pills really work? Yes they do. They are convenient and easy to use. They are painless compared to surgery, and cheaper too. Just make sure you are responsible enough to take it together with proper diet and moderate exercise. Taking it just by itself will make you lose weight for sometime, but you will gain back everything that you have lost if you will not develop these good habits.
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June 24, 2009 No Comments
Exercise And Wellness:How To Lose Weight & Keep It Off
How to lose weight and keep it off can be an elusive goal, especially if you have been using crash diets which deprive the body of vital nutrient, and make it crave more food when you come off the diet. It is not that hard to lose weight, but sustained weight loss needs a well thought out plan.. If you need to know how to lose weight and keep it off, here are some important tips.
Idea-1 The concept of a diet is really one that we need to move beyond. Although diets can help people achieve short term goals, there is usually a reaction afterwards. Sustained weight loss needs a permanent, consistent change of lifestyle! To lose weight safely and consistently you need to be burning off more calories than you are taking in. You can achieve this by dieting, or by exercise, but a combined attack on two fronts will usually produce the best result.
Idea-2 Practice a sport or leisure activity which keeps you active. Or maybe it doesn’t have to be strictly a sport, but take up some kind of active pastime. Working out at a gym will do perfectly well, if you can fit it in to your daily routine. Make sure you choose something you can sustain, because it is consistency which brings results.
Idea-3 Get your body trained to burn fat. Losing weight purely by dieting is difficult, because the body adjusts to the lower number of calories by storing more fat. There is always this unavoidable aspect of self defeat when you try to lose weight by diet alone. If you exercise as part of your weight loss program, you are training your body to burn fat, and not to store ever greater amounts of it.
Idea-4 Work your weight loss program into a routine. You need to get your body used to expecting both the diet and exercise programs which you are using. You will then arrive at a place where you do what needs to be done without even thinking about it. Formed habits are your greatest asset in your quest to achieve consistency.
How to lose weight and keep it off is something which can be approached scientifically, and if you set up the right causes, the effects will follow, and it will get easier as you go along. Click the links below to discover some useful hints and resources.
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June 23, 2009 No Comments
Exercise And Wellness:Stay Healthy - How To Stay Healthy With Fitness Walking
Fitness walking? No thanks man! Unfortunately, that’s the attitude that way too much of our population has when it comes time to fitness. Americans, on the whole, are fatter than just about any other group of people in the world. They also have some of the highest rates of Type-II Diabetes and heart problems in the world. Why are we so fat? Weight gain is usually a combination of two things: an unhealthy diet and a lack of exercise.
Most people, when they decide to try and lose weight, only tackle part of the problem. They try dieting, or taking pills, or living off of lemon juice and cayenne pepper for awhile, but it never works. Though a healthy diet is important to losing weight, it’s still only part of the equation. If you cut down your calories but still sit on a couch or in an office every day, you’re not going to lose much weight. Interestingly enough, though many people are happy to try dieting, there aren’t many who only work at the other side of the equation: exercising.
So why don’t people exercise? Part of it is attached to our mentality about exercising. “Exercising” brings up images of sweaty, unhappy people pumping iron in a smelly gym, and it sounds like a lot of work. However, exercising doesn’t mean you’re going to have to break your back lifting weights for a few hours every day. In fact, lots of things are considered exercising, from playing a pick-up game of basketball to gardening to just taking a walk around the block.
Most studies have found that a half hour of exercise every day is enough to keep you healthy, and that half hour doesn’t even have to be all at once. You can skip rope for ten minutes in the morning, take a walk for ten minutes after lunch, and take a walk around the block for ten minutes when you get home and night and take care of all of your exercise for the day.
But wait a minute, you say, “How can walking be good for you? I walk every day!” The average American walks for only about 1/3 of a mile every day. However, fitness walking is a great way to lose weight, especially because it’s so available. If you want to go swimming you have to go to a pool, change clothes, swim, change again, and go home or to work, but if you’re taking part in fitness walking all you have to do is walk out the door of your office.
Fitness walking is also an attractive exercise choice because it’s low-impact and virtually injury-free, and serves as a nice warm up for running or jogging. Fitness walking is also easy to incorporate into any schedule, since if you walk fifteen minutes to work every morning and fifteen minutes back every evening you’ve already taken care of your exercise for the day, which will help you lose weight and stay healthy. Go ahead, put some level of fitness walking into your schedule today!
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June 22, 2009 No Comments
Exercise And Wellness:Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diets:3 Tips on Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diets
Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diets promotes healthy sensible eating.
It’s 11 day meal plans includes variation in meals that are packed with lean protein, good carbo and fiber rich foods - all necessary in our daily diet.
But to make it work for you, look at adding these key steps to the Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diets -
Focus on One Day at a Time.
If you do have any cravings, say for a biscuit - Ask yourself the following:
‘Is it worth it?’
‘Can you opt for a piece of fruit or go for a walk instead?’
Think about why you have bad eating habits, such as eating leftovers because you hate waste. Why not change it to a helpful habit - and feed you dog with the leftovers. With practice, it soon becomes automatic.
Staying Motivated with Exercise.
Staying motivated can be a struggle, however it is important you’re in it for the long haul.
And in order to keep on track, keep these in mind :
- Choose the kind of exercises or activity you enjoy, anything from pilates to softball. If it’s fun, it disguises the effort factor.
it has to fit in with your lifestyle. in other words, make it convenient for you to Exercise. you will stop Exercising, If you need to Go out of your way to do it. consider joining a gym close by, Exercise with friends or during lunch break.
your Exercise Program needs variety.
Like the Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diets, it’s important that you ‘mix it up’ on a monthly basis to avoid plateaus.Small changes to a workout like varying the intensity or changing the routine can make a huge difference.
Set Smaller Goals.
Ignore Fat Loss 4 Idiots headline ‘Lose 9lbs every 11 days’ - Because you won’t and it ain’t healthy. However you will lose weight with the Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diets. But promise yourself to stop obsessing on the pounds you want to lose. Instead, set smaller, achievable goals daily to give yourself a sense of achievement and momentum.
For example -
- Eating 2 fruits a day - Do interval training (not cardio) 3 days out of seven - Swim 3 more laps at the pool
By focusing more on the things you will do, rather on the weight, you will be surprised with your level of motivation and progress. Follow the above points and you will lose more body fat. It’s the key to ensure success with Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diets.
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June 21, 2009 No Comments
