Make Moving A Habit
One of the biggest causes of preventable deaths in the United States is obesity. It affects all parts of the body and has surpassed smoking as the leading cause of preventable illness and death. However, too often we fail to look at another problem faced by many and that’s a sedentary lifestyle. Even if you workout regularly, if you sit for hours at a time at a desk job, without a break every 55 minutes, you’re damaging your health. You need to make moving a habit and schedule a time to get out of your chair and walk across the room or even do exercises next to your desk.
If there’s a will, there’s a way.
Think about the things you can do that keep you standing and moving, particularly if you have a desk job. There are some two to four minute workouts that don’t make you sweat or require any equipment, but which also get your blood circulating. If you have a sedentary job, think of the things you can do standing up and moving around and then schedule them once an hour. One study showed that just walking around for two minutes every hour could improve health significantly.
The study published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, April 30th edition addressed the issue.
This study followed 3200 people and found that while most people did not meet the required 2.5 hours of physical activity, short amounts of exercise throughout the day in two to five minute bursts did help keep them healthier. Merely standing and doing work did nothing to improve their health. That activity could include anything from cleaning, walking, climbing steps or even doing a few simple exercises. Taking those two minutes of mild exercise every hour reduced the potential premature death by as much as 33 percent. That’s significant.
You still need moderate to intense exercise in addition to your two minute break.
Don’t let those numbers fool you. Even though it’s important to break up bouts of sitting with light exercise, it doesn’t mean that a program of moderate to intense exercise for two and a half hours a week isn’t important. You still need that for your bones, heart and muscle tissue. You need that type of exercise to feel your best. The two minute workout simply supplements the good job you’re doing at the gym.
- If you’re at a desk job, make it a point to stand and pace when you’re talking on the phone. You’re still getting your work completed, but adding a bit of healthy exercise while you’re doing it.
- If you have privacy, take a minute or two to do some exercises, like jumping jacks without the jumping—just the arm movement, deep knee bends or air push ups—raising your arms to the sky.
- When you’re at home, use the commercials of your favorite program to get some exercise. Run in place, do a few push-ups or get a two-fer by running to the wash machine and starting a load of wash, vacuuming the floor quickly or any active, but quick task.
- Road trips can take their toll, especially if your job requires you to be in your car for extended periods. Schedule a break every hour and walk for a short period. That few minutes will keep you healthier and also keep you more alert.
If you haven’t noticed, fall is upon us. With the coming of fall, comes the thoughts of the holidays at the year’s end. Rather than wait to make a New Year’s resolution, it’s time to start now and get what you want this year instead of focusing on what you want for the next year. You can look great for the new year and celebrate in style in San Antonio this year. You’ll also boost your energy level to help make the holidays more fun this year celebration more fun for everyone.
If you started a program of regular exercise to help you lose weight, good for you. You’re doing something extremely positive to change your lifestyle and ensure a healthier existence. However, regular exercise not only burns calories and builds muscle tissue to help you achieve weight goals quicker. It has some other amazing benefits for the body that not only extends your life, but makes those extra years even better. It adds years to your life and adds life to those years.
Dodging common fat loss mistakes can be difficult. Too often people start on a weight loss program, believing they’re doing everything right only to fail or slow their progress. The most common mistake when losing weight is to go on a super low calorie diet or fad diet. Sure the weight comes off quickly, but it doesn’t stay off. Extreme diets can’t be maintained for a long period if you want to remain healthy and when you quit and go back to normal or even moderate eating patterns, the weight comes back with a vengeance. If a diet is below 1000 calories a week, it can actually slow your metabolism and make you lose muscle mass not fat, making it more difficult to keep weight from returning.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could eat certain foods and you’d lose weight automatically. Well there are some foods that burn more calories than they contain. These top fat burning foods won’t make up a balanced diet, but they can be added to any diet to boost the results of healthy eating and regular exercise. These foods may have few calories and require more calories to digest than they contain or be thermogenic and build up heat in the body and boost the metabolism for hours after eaten.
Have you ever had one of those days when everything goes wrong. It may start innocently enough, maybe by spilling coffee on your work clothes or getting a call from an angry client. From that point on it builds until you’re ready to scream. One way to enhance your mood and shift the whole day to a better track is to change your mind. That’s right. So you spilled your coffee, that doesn’t mean you have to stew about it forever. If your boss or a client puts a bummer into your mood with complaints, focus on fixing the problem or getting to the root of things, rather than how unfair they’re treating you. It’s all about state of mind. Looking for the positive in every situation helps.
If you have a relationship with your body, you probably know things that other people don’t know. That’s because your body knows before your mind does. There are often visual cues, tell-tale signs people see, but the processing in the brain is slow. Even scents can create quick emotional responses. The nervous system, your somatic body, doesn’t think. It simply sends signals to react. Paying attention to body cues that range from hair raising on the arms or a feeling like a punch in the gut to feeling good when talking about taking a new job all are giving you important cues.
If you’ve read much on health issues, you’ll notice the focus has changed. Now longevity has overtaken the “Anti-Aging” mantra for most people. Living longer means doing everything necessary for a healthier life. It means eating healthy, getting adequate exercise and sleep and avoid negative behavior such as drinking too much, smoking, using illegal drugs and stress-giving behavior.
Kombucha has been around for a long time, but it’s never been so prominent in Western civilization as it is recently. It’s a probiotic drink that is made from a sweet green and black tea that’s laced with “a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast,” often referred to as SCOBY. Let’s say, it’s not pretty when it brews. It looks a bit like a flat mushroom pancake floating on top and smells a bit vinegary when you drink it. In fact, I’ve found a few Kombucha looking leftovers in the recesses of my refrigerator when I’ve given it a thorough cleaning. The SCOBY ferments the tea and the final product is Kombucha.
One of the amazing things about studies, is that they often come up with contradictory results. While one study found that people who used supplements were often healthier, other studies show they have no effect. What’s the reason for that contradiction? A third study showed that people who used supplements also exercised regularly, ate healthy meals and did other things, like not smoking or drinking in moderation, that kept them healthier. There is logic to the reason that supplements are not the answer. It comes from the chemical interactions that occur when you eat whole foods and the way the supplements were made.