Holy Station

Archive for the ‘Fitness’ Category

We see it in the media all the time, reports telling us that kids today are at risk. The obesity rate for children is higher than ever and just getting worse. How can we teach kids today how important fitness is for their health? Kids today have more leisure time than ever before. It used to be that all members of the family had to work hard for everything. Kids worked gardens, tended animals, etc. The conveniences we enjoy today have made our lives easier, but it has also contributed to the rise in obesity of a generation.

There are so many television channels to choose from, countless video games to play, and hundreds of friends to email and text. Life has become wrapped around technology and the electronic age has a stronghold on our kids.

But there are ways to get kids off the couch and moving. The first step is restricting television time. I know many won’t agree with me, but so many kids think the television has to be on during every waking hour. They don’t understand the beauty of peace and quiet. If you turn off the television, soon kids will go off and look for other things to do on their own.

Get your kids involved in organized sports. Many communities have soccer and baseball teams. Swimming lessons may spark an interest in swimming competitively. Gymnastics and dance classes are fun and rewarding. Kids don’t even realize they are exercising! Not all exercise has to be competitive or costly. Take your kids for walks through your neighborhood or to the local park. If you are lucky to live near a nature area, go for hikes and nature walks. Go on bike rides as a family or put up a basketball hoop in the driveway and shoot hoops.

You can find fun ways to stay fit with technology as well. Many new video games are interactive and get kids up off the couch and moving. The Nintendo Wii and Wii Fit are two examples of fun fitness video games. Nintendo has taken video gaming to a whole new level by getting people involved in gaming at a physical level. Hats off to Nintendo for figuring a way to promote fitness!

There are so many options for getting everyone in the family fit. Make exercise a priority and find ways to make it fun. Your family will be healthy and happy – who could want more than that?

Have you tried your best to get into shape? You have eaten healthily and doing work outs, but it has become more difficult lately to get off the couch and be motivated. Why not hire a fitness instructor? All you need is someone to motivate you, and show the right way to get into shape. Fitness instructor training is one of the best ways one may consider. It can be expensive. Some instructors charge $50 or more an hour for their tutelage. However, knowing where to find, and what to look out for, will get you the ultimate instructor that will enable you to reach your goals you have been striving for faster.

Health Clubs

Joining a health club is one of the ways to find a fitness instructor. They often employ them to help in fitness training. The membership includes a certain extent of fitness instructor training. A health club is a great way to find the instruction and motivation needed. All equipments one needs are in the gym and there is no better way to be motivated – a fitness club environment. There are other choices for those who do not want to spend thousands on a gym membership.

The Internet

Scour the internet sites – sites where you find nannies, lawnmowers, cars and other cheap stuff, that allow people to advertise for free. These places are great if you want to find cheap fitness instructor training. Do take precaution about who you hire. Do not just select the cheapest. Select the advert that shows the person giving the fitness training, who knows what they are talking about. Make an appointment with them to determine their fitness level. A hint: Do not choose an instructor who is fatter than you, an instructor who gets tired after going up the stairs, or from anyone who does not seem like they have lifted anything for a long time. Be picky about who you hire, and you will be able to find a great fitness instructor training at a discount price.

Ensure that you stick with your fitness goals, and remain motivated. Never lose sight of the goals. Give time and persevere. Last but not least, listen to the instructor’s instructions.

When looking for a home fitness program, it can be hard to decide which one will work best for you especially with thousands of workout videos all claiming to help you achieve the same results. When it comes to choosing the right program, you need to look past the hard bodies and bright labels to see what types of fitness are included in the program. In order for a home workout program to improve your coordination, balance, and strength as well as your agility and speed, it needs to include four main components.

Strength Training

In order for a home fitness program to build up the amount of force each muscle can put out at any given time, it has to challenge each muscle constantly by including a variety of movements as well as an increase in resistance. A home workout program that utilizes the concept of muscle confusion is especially helpful. This method causes your body to adapt to different movements constantly eliminating the ‘plateau effect.’

Endurance Training

Instead of dealing with the amount of strength each muscle has, muscle endurance is how long a muscle can exert its force before it becomes tired and begins to weaken. For a home workout program to achieve this portion of your fitness goal, it has to contain a series of repetitive movements that will increase the amount of energy produced by your body. As a pleasant side effect, these movements are also responsible for improving the health of your cardiovascular system while getting rid of unwanted pounds.

Flexibility Training

Before starting to use workout videos or home fitness program, you should warm up in order to stretch the muscles and tendons in your body to allow them to move more easily and prevent injury. This means you are improving your flexibility, which is the extent of motion the joints in your body are able to demonstrate. In order to increase your level of flexibility, however, a home workout program needs to include specific stretches that challenge the joints and muscles to move more effectively.

Cardiovascular And Respiratory Endurance Training

Because your body uses oxygen and your blood to distribute the energy in your body, improving your cardiovascular and respiratory systems are vital to any home workout program. To improve these systems, the home fitness program will need to hold your heart rate at its target for at least thirty minutes each day. For the best results, be sure to include this component into your routine a minimum of three times each week.

An effective home workout program needs to improve the quality of your muscles, heart, lungs and flexibility in order to improve your body composition and make you physically fit. Taking an extra look at home fitness programs such as P90X will help to eliminate wasting time and becoming disappointed when it doesn’t work.

We’ve heard it before:

Eat slowly

Chew your food longer

Check in to see if you’re full before you go for the 3rd serving of stuffing

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Well, it’s easy to say, but when your eyes are bigger than your stomach (especially when it’s food you’ve been looking forward to all year!), it’s really hard to enact good ole portion control. Here are some practical, quick, and proven-to-work tips you can implement this season:

It’s easy to snack on cookies all day, but before eating a late afternoon feast with the family, make sure that you’ve had a few servings of protein prior to the meal. In other words, have eggs for breakfast, nuts, hummus, meat, and other protein filled foods as little snacks before gorging on the big meal. This will help you feel more full during the meal (as opposed to snacking purely on cookies, which is just empty calories with sugar tricking your body into being full when really, it’s not.)
Take sips of your beverage (water or even alcoholic) during your meal. I know there’s a lot of talk out there about NOT drinking (even water) during your meal, but I say that when you take a sip, you are slowing down. When you’re slowing down, your body has time (at least a few seconds) to signal to your brain that you might be getting full and that you should keep the fork down for a few minutes.
Take a bathroom break in the middle of big meals. Even if you don’t have to use the restroom, GET UP and walk away from the table. Reach your arms up as high as you can and get in a stretch (privately) in the middle of your meal. This will help you not feel like a blob of laziness after eating, AND it will get your digestive system working instead of letting all the food stay clumped in your stomach.
Let’s talk desserts, or more specifically, cookies. It’s so easy to shovel 5 cookies in your mouth before realizing what you’ve done. Instead of doing this, try taking BITES of cookies, again with sips of water in between. If you feel totally out of control with that plate of cookies, step away and get a piece of fruit or go to the veggie tray. Make yourself have something good before going back for round 2 with the cookie plate.

Despite the number of people flocking to fitness clubs these days Americans still continue to get fatter. There are numerous reasons for this but one of the biggest ones is the amount of food (calories) that we take in. Since the 1960′s portion sizes have gotten progressively larger. Even though we eat roughly the same diet we did back then we eat a lot more of it! Couple this with increasingly sedentary lifestyles and presto you have a society that is 60% overweight.

I was speaking to one of my clients the other day and she has progressed so far with the changes in her eating habits since we first met in September. I wanted to pass along some of the tips that have worked for her because she is losing weight and feeling great, so I thought these ideas would work for some of you!

1) The first change Lucy made was to use smaller plates in her home at dinner time. Many people have extremely large dinner plates that can easily measure nearly a foot in diameter. At the time I suggested she change to smaller plates, she hesitated and said to me, “but I only put food in the middle part–not all the way out to the edges”. Then she realized how much plate was still being filled as she compared the size of her usual serving plates to the smaller ‘salad’ plates. “I’ll try using these and see how it goes,” Lucy agreed. And ever since then she has been having her dinner on the smaller plates, feeling satisfied and not stuffed.

2) The other trick Lucy tried for dinner meals was to reduce the amount of food she was cooking. “It’s just me and my husband for dinner, but sometimes we cook enough for four or six people–then we just keep taking more helpings because the food is in front of us.” Now she and her husband start with just enough food for two, and they both get just enough and never overeat at dinner. What a lot of calories she saves by eating for one!

3) When dining out, Lucy and her husband share a main entree with an additional order of a side salad. Or sometimes they’ll each get an appetizer instead of a full meal. “They really give you so much food when you eat out, if you don’t stay aware of how much you’re putting away, it can be gone before you remember to ask for a take-out container!”

4) At the recent buffets Lucy has been going to around the holidays, she’s come up with a couple of tips of her own that she shared with me: “Since I can’t get a smaller plate wherever I go, I just leave more plate showing than I have covered!” What a great idea that is: Instead of saying to herself, “I’m at someone else’s house now so I’ll just fill up my plate like all the other guests,” Lucy remains aware of eating reasonable portion sizes to help continue her weight loss and meet her goals. She makes sure there is plenty of space on the plate because that means it’s not overflowing with food–translation, calories saved!

5) And the last tip she shared with me was another useful one when going through buffet lines: “I just take one spoonful of each item on the line–a spoonful of turkey, a spoonful of mashed potatoes, a spoonful of sweet potatoes, and so on. I’m not missing out on anything and it’s plenty of food by the time I reach the end of the line. It’s just so easy to take too much. Reminding myself to stick to one spoonful of each food works out just perfectly.”

So, Lucy is finding ways to stick to reasonable portion sizes no matter where her busy life takes her–friends’ houses, extended family’s homes, or office parties. It’s so great to see her able to come up with her own plans to keep on track with her healthy new way of eating. I’m sure you can too!