The Fitness Maven

Your core – the muscles around your stomach, back and chest, is essential to good posture, good looks, and overall good health. It is worked when you move your body in sports and daily activities.

By sitting on an exercise ball, you can wiggle your middle in a way that works all the different core muscle groups in a pleasant, fun motion. It is possible to do this while working or reading, so you can fit it into your busy schedule.

A healthy core means a healthy life, so get on that exercise ball and wiggle it, if only a little bit!

It happens to the best of us. You get on a good exercise program, and then about a month or two into it, you come down with a miserable cold. You are tired and sneezy, and sleep nonstop for a few days. When you come back, you have lost all your energy and it takes a while to get back with the program.

Here’s a radical idea – it may actually be worth exercising when you are sick! Not an aerobic workout that will strain your respiratory system, but at least a light stretching and stressing of all your muscles, to keep them from getting stiff or atrophying. By doing this, at a comfortable level, you can minimize the detrimental effect of the illness on your muscles.

OK, let’s come out and say it – if you want to be healthy you have to part with junk food.

And don’t tell me about ‘healthy’ candy bars, ‘vitamin’ drinks, or ‘organic’ soda.

It’s all marketing and nonsense, so just accept it, OK?

If you want to be healthy, learn to like food that is actually nourishing your body, like whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and even some meats and dairy products. The more you exercise, the more you can eat, so if you like a big steak, be sure to pump iron and hit the treadmill.

As the great Michael Pollan said: ‘Eat food, mostly plants, not too much’. Everything else is just a distraction.

Aerobic exercise is exercise that works the cardiovascular system – your heart and lungs, which draw oxygen into the body and circulate it through the bloodstream.

Any exercise that makes you winded and out of breath is aerobic.

A good aerobic fitness program is critical to your overall fitness. The body’s level of aerobic fitness has a substantial impact on physical endurance in day to day activities such as walking, carrying heavy items, climbing stairs, and the like. Regular aerobic exercise also influences the body’s metabolic rate, inhibiting accumulation of fat. In sufficient quantity, it can also contribute to weight loss.

Aerobic activity also has a substantial impact on mood – it releases hormones that stimulate a positive state of mind.

To achieve maximal benefit, most exercise physicians recommend that you engage in moderate aerobic exercise for at least ½ hour, three times a week. But recent research findings dispute this widely held belief, and suggest that engaging in more strenuous aerobic activity for shorter periods may achieve similar results.

When selecting an aerobic activity, consider several factors. First, look for an activity that you can participate in regularly. Consistency is important to achieving the benefits of the exercise program. Ideally, make it part of your daily routine, like biking to school or running immediately when you return home from work.

Second, especially if you are older or have a history of joint pain, look for a low-impact exercise. Running on pavement, for instance, jolts the skeletal system with each step and can contribute to bone and joint pain. Smoother motions like cycling and swimming are far better in this regard.

If you choose to run, be sure you wear athletic footwear that provides adequate cushioning, and also do your best to run on gravel, cinder or grass rather than hard pavement. Most of all, choose an aerobic activity you enjoy – you’ll find it much easier to stick with it if it’s fun!

We strain our achilles tendon when we run, jump, and bounce in sports. And an injury there can be career-ending, as any NFL or NBA fan knows all too well.

So what can we do to keep our tendons flexible and healthy? Before exercising, stand about 3 feet from a wall. reach one leg out behind you, keeping the foot flat on the floor, and placing your hands on the wall for balance. Lean your body forward and gently stretch the foot further back.

You will feel mild tension in your achilles tendon. Doing this for about one minute before playing ball will help ensure that your tendon is limber during play.

There are many forms of exercise, and each type has its advantages and disadvantages.

consider the following when choosing an exercise program.

1. Privacy – some people prefer to exercise in a gym or at home, whereas others prefer to exercise outdoors.

2. TIME – How much time do you really have and can commit.

3. Dedication – How dedicated are you in anything you put your mind to.

4. Lifestyle – Some people have a very structured exercise routine, whereas others simply incorporate exercise into their lifestyle. for example, by walking rather than driving, parking farther away from their destination, or walking up stairs rather than using an elevator.

5. Comfort Zone -  Exercise should also offer some degree of challenge; if not, then the benefits will be few.

All of us try to get the most out of our workout. While we might have the best of intentions, this doesn’t mean that these intentions translate to action. Here are a number of suggestions to to improve your cardiovascular workout so that you can increase your glucose metabolism, lower your heart rate, blood pressure and cholesterol.

Do your cardio workout either on an empty stomach, ar 21/2 hours after a meal. This will ensure that your blood glucose levels are not so high that you are only burning carbs during your workout.

More isn’t always better when it comes to cardiovascular exercise. Limit your exercise to between 20 and 45 minutes. After 45 minutes the catabolic hormone cortisol will increase and you’ll risk losing muscle tissue.

Sometimes, you may find certain products can also enhance your workout. Companies like Mannatech, GNC, BioGenetix and many others have nutrition shakes, vitamins, supplements and more that can help to boost your metabolism, add energy for your workout, and enhance your exercise experience.

Certainly, there are more healthcare plans on the market today than we can possible evaluate in one post. Here, we plan to feature a few healthcare plans and to explain their main benefits. This will allow those who are searching for a new healthcare company to get a glimpse at a few choices and to evaluate their options.

Coventry Healthcare Inc – Coventry Healthcare Inc with CEO Alan Wise operates health palns under the names: Coventry Health Care, Coventry Health and Life, Carelink Health Plans, Group Health Plan, HealthAmerica, HealthAssurance, HealthCare USA, Southern Health and WellPath. They serve 14 states, primarily in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Southeast regions and their health plans are located in small to mid-sized metropolitan areas.

Assurant Health – Assurant Health with CEO Don Hamm has been in business since 1892. They are a brand name for products that are underwritten and issues by Time Insurance Company, John Alden Life Insurance company and Union Security Insurance Company. They provide health insurance nationwide for individual coverage, small business, short term health insurance and student health insurance.

Cinergy Health, Inc. – Cinergy Health, Inc. with CEO Daniel Touizer is a nationwide provider of innovative and affordable health and life insurance solutions. They recognize the current financial climate in America and offer affordable and quality health coverage to deliver maximum value at a lower cost.

About a million American today have limited health insurance plans. These are a type of health insurance that gives limited coverage. They are a great answer for the unemployed or for the self-employed, since they are certainly a better option than having no insurance at all.

These policies charge far less than traditional insurance. They cap what the insurer has to pay towards medical care, however, so the insured may end up paying for hospital visits and emergency room care that they wouldn’t have to pay for with a traditional plan.

These polices have been gaining interest, as of late. They used to be an option mainly for self-employed people or for those who buy their own insurance. Today, however many employers with low-wage, part-time or contract workers are using them. McDonald’s, the Hair Cuttery, and Friendly’s restaurants all offer coverage of this sort.

Some mainstream insurers such as Aetna, Cigna and Blue Cross Blue Shields have gotten into these plans as well. UnitedHealth has such policed for university students; Healthmarkets has them for self-employed individuals through its MegaLife and Mid-West Life companies; Cinergy Health offers a number of plans for all ages.

There are many weight loss programs, each one unique and best suited to different types of people with a variety of needs. If you are in a hurry, let’s say you have a wedding coming up, or some other occasion, and there really isn’t time to lose weight slowly, you might want to consider a great program called Shapely Secrets. Strictly speaking, this is not a “weight-loss” program, but really a fitness program. This program helps you slim down and look your best in a mere 7 minutes each day. That is because of a revolutionary technique called Diametric Resistance. This fitness program is for anyone who doesn’t like counting calories and can’t spend much time exercising. Combined with the 7 secrets to being thin and shapely, Shapely Secrets will help those extra inches around your waist disappear.

Another interesting program is well suited to those that like to use their computers for everything, even for helping them to lose weight. Check out “Train with me Online” and see what this web site has to offer by way of variety and convenience so that you can lose weight as effortlessly as possible. Train with me Online has over 400 challenging video exercises and more than 100 workout routines, and is just like having a personal trainer, but easier.

If you are more interested in dieting than in exercise, consider trying Dr. Kushner’s Personality Type Diet.
Based on the popular book by Dr. Robert Kushner in partnership with his wife Nancy, this program bases its methodology on discovering the potential dieters character traits which cause us to have the eating habits we have, and why it’s so hard to change them. The dieter fills out a 70 question survey which reveals fears, feelings and attitudes in an effort to overcome the weak places that keep us from having a healthy relationship with food, exercise and coping.

Those were just three of the almost endless number of unique programs with which you can achieve your goals of recovering health and reaching your ideal weight.