Health & Fitness

While going to the gym or doing a workout at home is ideal, you can also exercise during the workday. That can be especially important when you have to work late or attend a function at your child’s school right after work. One way to avoid the problem is to exercise the first thing in the morning, but in a busy household, that’s not always an option. Even when you do work hard to keep a workout schedule, sometimes things go awry. You can have a handy list of ways to exercise during the work day when that happens.

Create the emergency option for those tough days.

We offer hundreds of exercise videos, which also include routines you can do. Look for ones you can do in the office. They might be exercises that are familiar, like squats and lunges or stretches that aren’t as familiar to you, so learn to do the routine at home so you’re prepared and can breeze through it easily with the right form.

You don’t have to do a full half hour workout at a time.

You can break it up in session, as long as you get your body moving. One study showed that people who did twelve five minute workouts throughout the day actually got better results than those who worked out a straight hour a day. In another study, high intensity exercise in short bursts helped people lose body weight compared to those who did nothing. That’s the key. You have to keep moving and moving fast with more intensity is even better.

Do some exercises at your desk.

Chair dips are excellent for the upper body. Working out the kinks in your shoulders and triceps with head rolls immediately afterward gets you ready to go back to work. How do you do a chair dip? Slide your bottom toward the edge of the chair, make sure it’s one that’s stable and not on rollers. Your palms should be on the edge of the chair or holding the sides. Lift forward and slowly lower your body off the chair. Holding it suspended for a count of five and then return to the chair and repeat.

Never underestimate the power of walking. Just getting your body moving is important. You can walk during lunch hour to get in exercise. Vary the speed of your walk, pushing it hard for a minute and then going at a recovery pace for four and back to high intensity walking.

• Whether you’re sitting at a desk or standing, making arm circles boosts your circulation and can relieve muscle tension to make the day better.
• Two exercises you can do at your desk that are subtle are sitting bicycle and seated leg lifts. Just lift your legs and hold them straight out for as long as you can, then slowly lower for leg lifts.
• Practice posture and do isometric exercises for a flat stomach. Sit up straight with shoulders back, then pull in your stomach as far as you can and hold. Doing it throughout the day improves your posture and builds core muscles.
• If you have a private place at the office, do some jumping jacks, wall sits, squats or lunges, five repetitions each, one right after another. Aim for several sets at a time. Take time to make time to move whenever you have a chance. It’s all good.

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Whether you live in Louisiana, Texas, or any other part of the country, eating healthier does mean giving up foods with added sugar, but that doesn’t mean you should put in artificial sweeteners instead. While there are a lot of health issues from eating too much sugar, there are different ones that occur when you substitute the chemical artificial sweetener. Some of these may actually be worse! In fact, a recent study showed that drinking diet drinks with artificial sweeteners may actually be worse for you than drinking ones with regular sugar.

Each type of sweetener has different side effects.

There’s no one answer to the side effects of artificial sweeteners because each sweetener has different side effects. The amount you ingest also makes a difference. Side effects also depend on the person’s sensitivity. Some sweeteners tend to give people rashes, while others may give digestive symptoms. In fact, one sugarless gummy bear sold on the internet had the side effect of explosive diarrhea as noted in the product reviews. While it was advertised as sugar free, it had sugar alcohol, which also spikes blood sugar levels, besides causing digestive upsets.

Recent studies show that drinking diet drinks may be dangerous to your health.

Visceral fat is fat around your middle that’s the most dangerous type of fat. New studies show that people drinking the most diet drinks using artificial sweeteners had the most visceral fat, compared to those who never drank diet drinks or seldom drank them. The measure was of the waist circumference, a good indicator. Scientists believe it may be because artificial sweeteners interfered with metabolic functioning. In fact, tricking the body into reacting the same way it does with sugar might also be the issue.

While Xylitol and erythritol are alcohol sugars that are made from fruit, they’re not considered natural sugar.

There are natural sugars that aren’t as harmful as sugar substitutes and aren’t artificial. The juice from the Stevia rebaudiana plant is one of those. It’s called Stevia and is used as a medicine by some. It’s 100 times sweeter than sugar but has been used to help lower blood sugar levels in diabetics, plus known to lower blood pressure by as much as 14%. If you have artificial sweetened food that contains xylitol and a family dog, beware. It’s extremely dangerous for dogs to consume it.

• There are some scientific links that indicate some artificial sweeteners may contribute to diseases like cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, Alzheimer’s, autism, MS, systemic lupus and Parkinson’s.
• Simply giving up sugar is difficult, but very worth it. It takes a while, but eventually your taste buds will go back to normal and you can taste the natural sweetness of fruit or a delicious dessert.
• As each artificial sweetener is found dangerous, companies replace them with new ones. When aspartame’s safety came into question, companies replaced it with sucralose and Ace-K, which now are under scrutiny for serious health concerns.
• Check labels thoroughly to avoid ingesting artificial sweeteners. They’re in everything from children’s vitamins and cough syrup to toothpaste.

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I have clients in Louisiana, that love the variety offered in our workout videos. It helps them prevent boredom. There’s another reason to mix up your workout and that’s to avoid plateauing. At one time or another, everyone has faced plateauing. It can occur for a number of reasons, including lack of variety in your workout. It also can occur when you lose weight, which causes you to burn fewer calories, since you’re not carrying around all those extra pounds like weights on your body.

What causes plateauing?

Plateauing occurs when your body becomes efficient at doing any exercise. Even though efficiency is normally good, when you’re talking about burning calories, it’s not. It requires fewer calories to perform the same action, so you won’t create the calorie deficit you had previously from the same workout. By switching your workout every month or so, you can avoid that and keep those calorie burning fires burning at their peak.

You’ll avoid overworking certain areas of your body.

When you mix up your workout, you’ll also ensure all muscles are worked on all planes. It can help you build symmetry and ensure that each muscle group is strong, which can help avoid injury, especially if a smaller muscle has to do the work of a larger one. It’s important not to work one muscle group too often or too hard, it can cause stress that leads to injury. There are over 600 muscles in the body and it should be your goal to work them all.

Learn a new physical activity and boost your brain as you improve your body.

While doing traditional exercise regularly is important to ensure you get adequate exercise for all muscles, you can benefit from other types of exercise, too. For instance, learning a new physical activity, like a new dance style, can help boost your brain power. It increases neural pathways and boosts the growth of brain cells by increasing BDNF—brain-derived neurotropic factor—in the brain and causes an increase in executive functioning. The more you vary your activities, the more you lower your chances for dementia and Alzheimer’s according to a study by The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Pittsburgh.

• If you’re doing strength training, it’s important to give the muscles you worked a rest for at least 48 hours if you’re working at high intensity. The way to avoid a problem is by alternating muscle groups you’re working.
• Have fun with the kids, family and friends. Getting fit is all about getting more out of life. Take a day away from working out to do something active like biking, running, dancing or swimming.
• If you’ve done a routine for a long time and are switching to a new one, take it slower at first. Make sure your form is perfect, since doing an exercise wrong can diminish the benefits or even cause injury.
• When judging a workout, use the acronym FITT. It stands for frequency, intensity, type and time. If you change at least two of those factors in your present workout every six weeks, it can help keep it fresher and aid in weight loss.

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