Health & Fitness

Is Walking Enough Physical Activity?

Is Walking Enough Physical Activity?

Published by on 10th March 2022 | Leave a response

If you’re completely out of shape, have a physical problem or barely able to make it down the aisle of the grocery without stopping to rest, then walking is one of the best options for physical activity. It’s also a good exercise for those days you can’t do a regular workout. You can do it anywhere; it costs nothing and can even save money if you opt to do it instead of driving. Is it enough exercise to help you look your best? No. You have four types of fitness, endurance, strength, flexibility and balance. You need all four types of exercise. Walking is a cardio and weight bearing exercise.

Walking can be a good supplement to your workout while you’re working on each area of fitness.

In order to make your workout safe, you have to go easy at first, especially if you’re older or have a previous injury or health issue. If you’re focusing on getting a half hour a day to 45 minutes in exercise, alternate your days between walking and one of the exercise routines in our video sessions. The videos focus on all types of fitness, so you’ll get the full body workout you need. Take it easy at first, especially the first two weeks. Don’t try to overdo it, but focus on form and learning the routine.

Modify walking and make it a strength training workout, too.

Walking is important to help avoid osteoporosis, especially for older individuals. It’s a weight bearing exercise, so like lifting weights builds the arms, walking builds the legs. The muscles tug on the bones and that causes the body to send more bone building material to make them stronger. Adding arm weights and swinging your arms vigorously as you walk can boost upper body strength. Make sure you warm up and cool down before walking.

To be your best and avoid injury, you need strength training and flexibility training.

You’ll find exercises specifically for strength training and flexibility training in our collection. It’s important to have both. Strength and flexibility training both help prevent injury, but in different ways. Flexibility training improves the range of motion so you don’t pull a muscle by reaching too far or moving in an odd manner. Strength training boosts your muscle power, preventing injury when lifting or moving heavier loads. Standing quad stretch, standing side stretch and standing calf stretch are three examples of flexibility training. Planks, squats and push-ups are strength building exercises.

  • If you want to get maximum benefit from walking, make it a HIIT—high intensity interval training—workout. Vary your walk from a high speed one for a minute or two to a moderate recovery pace and back again. It will build your endurance faster.
  • To increase the benefits of walking, make sure your posture is good. Stand up straight with your chin level to the ground, shoulders straight, eyes looking straight ahead and back straight, neither arched forward nor backward. Try to push the top of your head toward the clouds.
  • If you make walking part of your permanent exercise program, modify it by going faster. Create a path, if you’re walking a half hour, turn around and walk toward home after 15 minutes. Try to get further every time you walk.
  • One mega study on aging found that people who walked faster lived longer. After analyzing the data of from 34,485 aged 65 and older for 6 to 21 years, they found there was a relationship between how fast your walked and how long you lived. The faster, the longer the life expectancy.

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Artificial Sweeteners Good Or Bad?

Artificial Sweeteners Good Or Bad?

Published by on 25th February 2022 | Leave a response

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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Health Benefits Of Oatmeal

Health Benefits Of Oatmeal

Published by on 10th February 2022 | Leave a response

We love to eat good food in Louisiana, and the cuisine is known worldwide as one of the best. However, not all the food is healthy. Sometimes, turning to something simple, like oatmeal is one way to boost your health benefits. That doesn’t mean you should add sugar to it or use it for topping on blueberry crisp or in cookies. To maximize the health benefits of oatmeal, just cook and serve for breakfast without lots of oils, sugars and flour. You can add nuts, fruit and seeds like chia seeds or make overnight oats or baked oatmeal.

It’s all about how the oat is processed.

That instant oatmeal you see in colorful boxes on the store shelves isn’t the best type of oatmeal to choose. The less processed the oatmeal, and the fewer additives when you buy it, the healthier it is. The instant oats with the added sugar may actually wipe out all the benefits by adding ingredients that aren’t healthy. Choose oat groats, the whole oat before any processing. Opt for Irish oats, which are the next in line of the least processed. It’s just the oat groats cut in small pieces. Those two have the most soluble fiber that feeds the healthy microbes in your digestive system and also keep you feeling fuller.

Oatmeal contains a lot of nutrients.

Oatmeal is higher in protein and fat than most grains, which is one reason you feel fuller longer. The other reason is the healthy fiber called beta-glucan that can lower you bad cholesterol level It also reduces your blood sugar level, improves insulin sensitivity and increases the beneficial microbes in your digestive tract. You’ll feel fuller longer and it can aid in weight loss. It contains substantial amounts of manganese, phosphorus, magnesium, copper, iron, zinc, folate, vitamin B1 and vitamin B5. It also has a smaller amount of calcium, potassium, vitamins B6 and B3.

Can oats help childhood asthma?

Asthma is an inflammatory disorder that occurs in the airways. Most children with asthma may have recurrent coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath. Some scientists think asthma occurs when solid food is introduced too early and that it’s an allergic style reaction. However, one thing is certain, the introduction of oats early isn’t part of the problem. In fact, it may actually protect children from asthma. While the research isn’t conclusive, it does indicate that children fed oats before the age of six months had a decreased risk of asthma.

  • If you have a problem going, oatmeal may be the cure. While drinking plenty of water is important, if it’s not working, try eating more oatmeal. It’s healthier than chronic laxative use and may be quite beneficial for the elderly or those with reoccurring constipation.
  • Healthy oats include Scottish oats, which are ground instead of cut, and rolled oats, which are steamed and then flattened. These are higher on the glycemic index than Irish oats or oat groats, but lower than quick oats or instant oats, which pack on pounds.
  • You can increase oatmeal in your diet by simply making a bowl in the morning or opting for overnight oats or baked oatmeal. While all three are delicious, they’re made even better by adding nuts, coconut, berries, bananas or other fruit.
  • Baked oats are simply rolled oats with egg, bananas and other additives. You can put the mixture in a blender to create a cake like finished product that tastes almost too delicious to be healthy, but it is.

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Ways To Mix Up Your Workout

Ways To Mix Up Your Workout

Published by on 25th January 2022 | Leave a response

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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Get The Body You Want

Get The Body You Want

Published by on 10th January 2022 | Leave a response

I have clients from all over the world, including the great state of Texas, they all seem to want several things. They want to feel better, have more energy and look better. While exercise won’t make you taller or change body type, you can trim your body and make it svelte and muscular. You can get the body you want, but it takes some effort on your part. It doesn’t come from hoping and wishing. Following a healthy diet and a program of exercise can make the difference in whether you’re successful or not.

Remember, change doesn’t happen overnight.

To get the change you want, you have to make many small changes and some big ones, plus stick with those changes consistently. It may mean giving up food that has added sugar or following a meal plan regularly. Increasing your activity level increases the amount of calories you burn and when done consistently, builds muscles. Muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain than fat tissue does, so you’ll be burning more calories 24/7. Effectively, you’ll be boosting your metabolism.

You just have to take charge and start.

Starting is one of the hardest things to do. Newton’s Law of Motion, an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will remain in motion, says it all when it comes to making changes in your life. The first step, the step that changes your life from inactive to active or from eating unhealthy to eating healthy, is hard, but there’s no better time to do it than now.

Focus on one day at a time.

Don’t think about how long it will take, just pledge to do what is necessary to be successful for that day. It will help if you schedule your workout at the same time every day. Put it on your schedule, so it becomes an appointment for your health. You’re more likely to keep an appointment. Use the meal plans to make meals ahead on the weekend, so all you have to do is heat and eat during the week.

  • Having the body you want is all about focusing on creating healthier habits, whether it’s exercise or dietary. After a while, your taste in food changes the longer you eat healthy and you’ll even crave exercise when you don’t do it.
  • Meal plans offer exchange foods, so you won’t have to eat food you hate. They’re based on your nutritional needs. They even include a shopping list so you’ll always have everything you need on hand.
  • When you eat food with added sugar, it tends to dull the taste buds. You have to eat more and more to get the sweet flavor. The longer you go without added sugar, the more you’ll be able to taste the natural sweetness of fruit.
  • Be kind to yourself. Praise yourself when you accomplished the day’s mission for a healthy lifestyle. Be your own best friend and cheerleader. If you have a slip up, don’t give up. Just immediately restart your program.

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