The Fitness Maven

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.

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.

Whenever you exercise you create a situation which demands more of your body. This is no different if you are improving the look and feel of your bust line with the easy curves method.

The perfect nutritional supplement which not only protects your cells with its anti-oxidant properties is green tea. Green tea contains EGCG, vitamin C and E which all act to protect cell membranes from the ravages of time and free-radicals (oxidants) which have been proven harmful to cells.

Green tea also boosts energy levels, prevents the absorption of excess fat, and helps the body burn fat more efficiently.

Since green tea itself only contains low levels of EGCG and its other healthful ingredients, it is recommended to take green tea extract so that the desired results are obtained from the necessary concentration of EGCG.