Health & Fitness

Get More Out Of Each Workout Session

Published by superadmin on 19th February 2024 | Leave a response

Working out can take a lot of effort. Getting the maximum benefits from that time is important to people from Louisiana and everywhere in the US. You can get more from your workout session using these tips and tricks that burn extra calories or help you get fit faster. If you’re spending the time, you may as well reap the maximum rewards for your efforts.

Have a cup of Joe before you start.

A pre-workout snack can fuel your workout so you don’t hit the wall mid-session. Eat a snack containing a combination of carbs and protein about 45-60 minutes before your workout. You can wash it down with a cup of coffee, also improving your productivity. The caffeine in the coffee increases endurance, strength, and power. It helps boost the use of fat for energy and improves overall focus to boost your performance.

Compound exercises work more muscle groups and burn more calories.

If you’re focusing on bicep curls, you’re only working one set of muscles, ligaments, and joints. However, doing squats or lunges exercises several muscle groups at once. The more muscles you work at once, the more benefit you’ll get! Isolation exercises only work single joints, so fewer muscles put forth effort. You’ll work more muscle groups in less time with compound exercises.

Make your workout a HIIT workout.

HIIT stands for high intensity interval training. It’s not a specific exercise but a way of doing any exercise. You alternate between peak intensity and a moderate recovery pace, HIIT training burns about 30% more calories than running, biking, or weight training according to one study. It elevates your metabolism for hours after the workout, burning even more calories. It boosts fat loss and can improve oxygen consumption.

Stay hydrated throughout your workout. Drink water before you workout and sip on it during your workout. Even mild dehydration can diminish your performance.
Include kettlebell workouts in your fitness program. Kettlebells build endurance, flexibility, strength, and balance. The offset center of gravity makes your core muscles work harder to maintain stability.
Take fewer breaks and make them shorter. Cutting the rest time between sets and exercises makes better use of your time, but it also works your body harder. Remove distractions and cut all breaks short.
No matter what type of exercise you’re doing, adding weights to your workout makes you work harder. Ankle weights can add a challenge to running. Holding weights while doing squats increases the calories burned and builds muscles faster.

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Common Fat Loss Mistakes

Published by superadmin on 12th February 2024 | Leave a response

Losing weight isn’t easy and losing fat is even harder. There is a difference. If you’re shedding pounds, those pounds aren’t always from fat. It can be from muscle tissue, making it even harder to lose additional pounds. You may be working your hardest and staying true to your path but still see slow or no change. You may be making fat loss mistakes that are setting you back. It’s time to make changes and turn your weight and fat loss efforts into a success.

Are you just focusing on a diet without including exercise?

Eating healthier will help you lose weight, but it won’t give you all the progress you may desire. By creating a calorie deficit, the body gets calories from burning both fat and muscle tissue. Muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain than fat tissue does, so the less you have, the slower your metabolism. Include strength training in your workout and build muscle tissue as you burn fat. The more muscle tissue you have, the higher your metabolism, the easier it is to lose weight and the more success you’ll have.

You may cut your calories too much.

If cutting your calorie intake by 500 is good, then would cutting it by 1500 be three times better? In most cases, the answer is no. Cutting calories too severely can make weight loss harder. A severely calorie-restricted diet can cause the body to go into starvation mode. That’s when it slows metabolism so there are calories for vital life functions or organs. Keeping your metabolic fires burning is vital. It’s one reason people include cheat days in their diet plans.

You might be eating low-fat diet food.

You’ll find diet foods in every grocery. They’re low-calorie or low-fat alternatives. If you want to lose fat, eating less fat sounds sensible. It doesn’t work that way. First, you need fat to burn fat. That has to be healthy fat. Second, when manufacturers remove fat, they replace it with something else to maintain taste and texture. That something else is often sugar that is far worse than fat.

Only doing cardio is a big mistake. Include strength training to build muscle and burn fat. Cardio burns calories from both muscle and fat.
You may think you can exercise away those extra pounds of fat, but that’s not enough. You can’t out-exercise a bad diet. Combine a healthy diet with an exercise program to burn fat.
You focus too much on counting calories and don’t focus on eating healthy. Eating healthier means eating lower-calorie foods like fruits and vegetables and cutting out highly processed food or food with added sugar.
One big mistake is burning the candle at both ends. Too little sleep affects your hormones. It causes the body to create too much ghrelin—the hunger hormone—and too little leptin—the one that makes you feel full.

For more information, contact us today at Wellness On A Dime Coaching

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Get Your Abs By Summer

Published by superadmin on 5th February 2024 | Leave a response

Potbellies, muffin tops, and spare tires aren’t a good look and definitely not impressive in swimwear. There’s still time to get ready for summer. Creating the beach-ready version that both men and women want takes a double-edged attack. Whether it’s just a flat tummy or washboard abs, you need both diet and exercise.

It all starts in the kitchen.

When you think of great abs, you normally think of hours of leg raises, planks, and crunches. Exercising is part of it but it takes more. If a pot belly, dunlap belly, or muffin top is a problem, you have to lose weight first. Exercise will help tighten the muscles and help you lose weight, but when you lose weight, it comes off the entire body equally, not just in the spot you exercised. Focus first on losing any weight necessary by eating healthy. You need healthy fat, protein, and carbohydrates. Filling your plate with leafy greens and other vegetables can fill you up and provide fiber to help eliminate bloating.

Make sure your exercise program includes exercises for upper and lower abs and obliques.

Your abs are three distinct areas. Your obliques run along the sides of the abs. When they’re toned you have a waistline that forms the V and no spare tire hanging over. Doing side planks and twists can tone them quickly. Most ab exercises work both the upper and lower abs, but curl-ups worked the upper abs more, while the reverse crunch worked the lower abs the most. A hanging pull-up works the lower abs and a standing cable crunch works the upper abs. Doing a wide variety of ab exercises will target all three areas.

Include weights in your exercise program.

Strength training goes a long way to build abs. It offers two solutions in one type of exercise. Strength-building workouts burn tons of calories, so you’ll eliminate that layer of fat that hides those newly toned abs. It also helps build the core muscles, which includes the abs. You don’t need weights to do strength training. Bodyweight exercises will do. Planks, push-ups, pull-ups, and crunches all help build rock-hard abs.

Cut out food with added sugar. Eating food with added sugar increases insulin levels. Higher insulin levels can pack on belly fat. Food like oatmeal provides fiber that can slow the absorption of sugar, which causes insulin to rise.
If you don’t workout at the gym and want affordable workout equipment, resistance bands, and a stability ball are good investments. The stability ball will work all core muscles.
Spend a few minutes every night doing planks. Keep your body straight with your feet aligned with your head. Place your forearms on the floor with your elbows bent directly beneath your shoulders. Hold your body straight with your weight on your hands and toes.
Don’t forget to check your posture. Your posture plays a big role in whether your tummy looks flat and tight or hangs down like a deflated balloon. Work on improving your posture and building stronger core muscles.

For more information, contact us today at Wellness On A Dime Coaching

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The Benefits Of Yoga For Mind And Body

Published by superadmin on 26th January 2024 | Leave a response

If you’ve read other blogs, you already know one of the benefits of yoga is stress relief. That can help both your mental health and physical body. When you learn to calm your mind, you’ll be able to deal with stress immediately. The breathing techniques from yoga help calm the mind. At the same time, they also help lower blood pressure, slow heart rate, relax the body, and improve overall outlook and good health.

Yoga can help protect your muscles from injury.

Yoga boosts flexibility, which increases the range of motion. An increased range of motion helps prevent muscle pulls and tears. Many of the flexibility exercises are also yoga poses. The warrior pose of yoga is similar to the Western exercise, the lunge. The bridge pose is also a bridge exercise. Yoga can help relax muscles, reduce lower back pain, increase flexibility, and build strength.

Yoga helps reduce chronic pain.

Like traditional stretching exercises, yoga increases flexibility and relaxes the muscles. That can help reduce chronic pain like back pain. It helps reduce the pressure on the joints to relieve joint pain. You’ll burn extra calories to help you lose weight, but for weight loss, the biggest benefit is the mindfulness yoga creates. You become more in touch with your body, and more aware and careful with what and how much you eat.

As noted before, yoga is a stress buster.

Stress plays a role in all aspects of health, both physical and mental. It causes the production of stress hormones that increase inflammation. Cortisol, one of the stress hormones, is associated with the accumulation of abdominal fat, the most dangerous type of fat because it crowds the organs. The reduction of abdominal fat can help prevent insulin resistance. Stretching the body with yoga can help increase lymph flow to boost the immune system, it can help prevent bone loss from osteoporosis and even reverse it.

Yoga helps you sleep better at night. A good night’s sleep reduces stress and helps balance the satiety-hunger hormones. Lack of sleep reduces satiety hormones and increases hunger hormones.
Doing yoga can reduce the number of headaches and their intensity. It also helps lubricate the joints by increasing the circulation of synovial fluid that lubricates the joints.
Yoga can improve functional fitness and help older people remain independent longer. It helps lower blood pressure, reduce inflammation, and aids in strengthening the body to perform the functions of daily living.
Even though yoga is a gentle exercise, always check with your healthcare professional before starting any exercise program. There are yoga classes for people of all fitness levels. Find one that’s right for you.

For more information, contact us today at Wellness On A Dime Coaching

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The Most Effective Stretching Exercises For Flexibility

Published by superadmin on 21st January 2024 | Leave a response

Stretching exercises are the most effective way to increase flexibility. Include them in every workout to warm up and cool down. Dynamic stretches are best for warming up. Static stretches are best for cooling down. The difference between the two is movement. Dynamic stretches move the body like the exercise you’re about to do. Static stretches move and hold, like toe-touching. They prevent blood from pooling in the extremities and increase the range of motion when the muscles are warmed and flexible.

Stretch to the sky.

This stretch is simple and effective. When you first awaken and are still in bed, stretch your arms to your sides and back. Get out of bed and lift your hands, attempting to touch the ceiling. You’ll feel the muscles in your back relax. Keeping your hands outstretched, lean to the right, back up, and then to the left. Lower your arms and stretch them to the side as you twist your upper arms, keeping your lower body stationary.

Make your stretching more effective by doing them when your muscles are warm.

Your muscles are more flexible and stretch further when they’re warm. Start with the easiest to warm the muscles. Cross your arms and stretch them behind your back. Move to the child yoga pose. It begins on your hands and knees with your palms on the floor. Move your body back and down, keeping your hands stationary. Your bottom is on your heels, your chest is on your thighs, and your forehead is on the floor. Follow it with a cobra pose.

Relieve back pain, boost flexibility, and work your core muscles with two yoga poses.

Two yoga poses that stretch and relax your muscles combine to create a stretch that boosts flexibility. The cow pose starts on hands and knees. You raise your head as you relax your abdominal muscles, allowing your belly to drop. Hold that position for a few seconds, then return to the starting position. Combine that with the cat pose. Begin on your hands and knees, but arch your back like an angry cat, pulling your stomach in tight. As you do, lower your head. Hold then return to starting position. Alternate them, moving from cow pose back to start and into cat pose.

Hamstring stretches are effective ways to warm the muscles for running. If your hamstrings are tight, you can increase flexibility by laying on your back, looping a towel over one foot, and pulling it as high as you can, keeping the other leg on the floor.
Stretch by bending over and dropping your hands in front. Bend at the waist and go as far down as you comfortably can.
Including stretching in your workout not only helps improve range of motion and warms muscles, but it also boosts posture. That can improve digestion, reduce constipation, improve breathing, and prevent back and other muscle issues.
An outer hip stretch can help prevent muscle injury and relieve back pain. Lay on the floor with your arms outstretched, knees bent, and feet flat. Drop your legs to one side, lift the arm on that side, and touch the other side, twisting your upper body in the opposite direction.

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The Importance Of Rest Days For Optimal Performance

Published by superadmin on 12th January 2024 | Leave a response

If you’re hitting the gym daily and pushing as hard as you can until you can’t move, you aren’t doing yourself any favors or gaining any ground. You need rest days to achieve optimal performance. Your body needs a day or two of rest to heal and recuperate from intense workouts, especially strength-building workouts. When you do strength training, it causes micro tears in the muscles that require 48-72 hours to heal. When they heal, the scar tissue makes them stronger. If you don’t rest, the muscles continue to tear and break down.

Rest days don’t require you to sleep in or lay on the couch.

Rest days include active recovery. Active recovery is a mild exercise that increases circulation but doesn’t push your body hard. You might go for a brisk walk, ride a bike, swim, or do stretching exercises. The mild exercise and increased circulation help remove toxins, boost healing, and aid in reducing muscle soreness. It’s a good time to work on flexibility to increase the range of motion.

Burnout can occur if you don’t rest.

Have you ever dreaded going to the gym or felt too exhausted to start your workout? You probably pushed ahead, hoping you would feel better once you started. In most cases, that’s exactly what occurs. If you suffer from burnout, that feeling of dread never ends. Your workout suffers and you experience mental and physical stress. An intense workout stresses your body. If you do it consistently, that physical stress extends to mental stress. It can cause muscle weakness, injury, sleep disturbances, a higher heart rate, and reduced immunity.

Cut down the number of rest days by alternating the muscle groups you work.

Taking one day a week as a rest day is always good, so don’t omit rest days completely. To avoid overuse injuries and damage from working muscles before they heal, consider alternating the groups of muscles you use. You can do intense strength training every day and don’t have to wait 48 to 72 hours if you alternate among muscle groups. Create workouts that focus on different muscle groups. If you’re working your upper body one day, it won’t hurt to work your lower body the next day.

Track your heart rate if there’s a chance you need rest days. It’s better to slow down your workout than to give it up for several weeks to recover.
You’ll boost your focus and concentration when you take rest days. Lack of focus, one sign of burnout, can lead to injury or minimize the benefits of the workout.
Rest days let you rebuild your store of glycogen. It’s stored in the muscles and used for energy when you workout. Lack of glycogen not only causes fatigue but also can cause muscle soreness.
If weight loss is part of your goal, rest days are vital. If you stress your body too much, it leads to an overload of cortisol. Cortisol, a stress hormone, is linked to the accumulation of belly fat.

For more information, contact us today at Wellness On A Dime Coaching

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How To Set Realistic Fitness Goals And Achieve Them This Year!

Published by superadmin on 5th January 2024 | Leave a response

If you’re like many other people in Louisiana, you set fitness goals for the New Year. These goals must be realistic if you want to achieve them. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have big goals. It does mean they should be healthy and possible. Trying to lose 60 pounds naturally in a month isn’t possible. It’s not a realistic goal. Trying to lose 60 pounds in 8 months is realistic and very possible.

You have to have a 3500-calorie deficit to lose one pound.

The average calorie intake for weight maintenance for women under 50 is between 1800 and 2400 for women and 2200 and 3000 for men under 50. Even if they ate no food for a month, a man who burns the most calories—3000—could only lose 25 pounds. If you exercised at maximum intensity for an hour a day and burned an extra 1000 calories daily, you could lose another 8 ½ pounds to a total of 33 ½ pounds. It’s not possible or healthy either. Understanding what it takes to lose one pound helps you make realistic weight goals.

Make big goals and break them down into smaller, easier-to-achieve goals.

Set a timeline to reach each mini-goal. For instance, break down a 60-pound goal into 30 mini-goals to lose two pounds weekly. You have a timeline and specific weight loss goal. All you need is the “how.” How are you going to lose that weight? Eating healthier and exercising regularly should be your answer.

Make your measuring tool relevant to your goal.

If your goal is to lower your blood pressure naturally, use your blood pressure readings to indicate success. If having more energy or endurance is a goal, create an endurance test, such as how many stairs you can climb without getting winded or how far you can run in ten minutes. For weight loss, weight is the test, but you can also add measurements when you work out. When you exercise, you build muscle mass. Muscle mass weighs more than fat tissue does. When you exercise, you build more muscle tissue. When you have more muscle tissue, your weight may not change, your measurements will be smaller.

Look at other ways to meet your fitness goals. If good health and weight loss is your goal, include strategies like eating slower and chewing your food longer. If it’s endurance, increase daily activity besides exercising. Park further from the store and walk. Take the stairs.
Start with a small goal, like giving up food with added sugar, then reevaluate once you conquer that goal. You could move from there to eating whole foods and eliminating highly processed food.
Don’t forget to get adequate sleep. Your body heals when you sleep. If you lack sleep your body creates more ghrelin—the hunger hormone—and less leptin—the one that makes you feel full.
Track your progress. Track the number of reps and sets for each exercise you do. Track the food you eat and the number of calories. Record your progress whether it’s blood pressure numbers, weight, or miles you run.

For more information, contact us today at Wellness On A Dime Coaching

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Yoga Poses For Stress Relief

Published by superadmin on 29th December 2023 | Leave a response

Relaxation is difficult to achieve. The needs of your family, your boss’s orders, and even traffic jams can be stressful. Exercise helps burn off the hormones of stress. Yoga can help reduce anxiety, increase energy, and help you learn how to focus. You may not even need a pose for stress reduction if you learn yoga breathing techniques. They can slow your heart rate and calm your body. Focus on breathing. Slowly inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth helps in stressful times.

A child pose relaxes your muscles and brings quick relief from stress.

A child pose is easy to do. Get on the floor on your hands and knees. As you slowly exhale, rock backward, lowering your hips until your buttocks touch your heels and your chest is on top of your thighs. Your hands will remain firmly planted, with your arms outstretched, and your forehead touching the floor. Hold the position for a minute or two.

Relax with the cobra pose.

You’ll eliminate stress quickly when you use the cobra pose. Start on your stomach with your hands beneath your shoulders and your elbows close to the body. Press your lower body down, spreading your toes as you press your feet. Lift your head as you exhale, keeping your lower ribs on the floor. Push your shoulders back, pushing your chest forward. Straighten your arms as you lift your chest off the floor, pressing down on your thighs. Push your shoulder blades together, holding for 30 seconds then lower your body slowly.

You’ll reduce back pain as you relax using the cat/cow combination of poses.

The combination of poses reduces back pain and stress. Start on all fours with your palms and knees on the floor. For the cow position, lift your head as you allow your belly to drop, creating a valley between your shoulders and rump. Hold for a few seconds. Return to the starting position. Drop your head for the cat position and arch your back. Hold as you breathe deeply. Return to the neutral position.

In a sitting position, lift your arms above your head with your palms up. Interlock your fingers. Push your palms toward the sky and lean slowly to the left as you inhale. Hold for a count of 10 and return to the starting position as you inhale.
The uttanasana is a standing, forward bend that helps you relax. Exhale slowly as you bend forward, trying to touch your fingers to the floor and press your head against your thighs. Bend as far as you can without stress. Hold for 8 breaths.
A bridge can build core muscles and help you relax. Lay on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Inhale as you lift your hips and trunk off the floor to create a straight line from your head to your knees.
Get instant relaxation at your desk. Sitting on the edge of your chair with your feet flat on the floor and spine straight, reach backward, grabbing the back of the chair. Lift your chest as you pull your shoulder blades back as you inhale. Breathe deeply and return to the starting position.

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Why Women Should Strength Train

Published by superadmin on 21st December 2023 | Leave a response

You don’t have to live in Louisiana to know that strength training is beneficial for both men and women. In the past, women often omitted it from their workout, fearing they’d end up looking like the Hulk. Hormones make that difficult to do. Unless you workout daily for hours with a specialized workout, take specific supplements, and follow strict dietary rules, you won’t end up looking like a female bodybuilder. What strength-building exercises can do for you is ease menopause, build stronger bones, give you a curvy look with toned muscles, and slow the aging process.

Strength training helps ease menopause symptoms.

One of the side effects of menopause is hot flashes. Approximately 2/3rds of menopausal women experience them. One study found that women who performed 15 weeks of strength-building exercises three times weekly for 45 minutes had half the number of hot flashes as women who didn’t. The theory was that the body releases neurotransmitters during weightlifting that also help the brain maintain body temperature, controlling the number of hot flashes.

Strength-building workouts make weight loss easier and aid in keeping bones strong.

Strength training burns calories and builds muscle tissue. Muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain than fat tissue does. The more muscle tissue you have, the more calories you burn. As people age, the body naturally loses muscle mass. Muscles tug on the bone. It stimulates recalcification that strengthens the bone. Loss of muscle mass causes bone weakness. It’s worse for women during menopause since estrogen helps maintain bone strength, adding that factor to the loss of muscle mass. It’s estimated that active women lose 10% of bone mass during menopause, while inactive women lose 20 %.

Exercising reduces the chance of complications during childbirth.

You can prepare your body for easier delivery and eliminate many of the issues faced during pregnancy, such as back pain, an achy body, and pelvic discomfort if you exercise before and during pregnancy. Building core and lower body strength with squats, lunges, windmills, and other muscle-toning workouts reduces the risk of some complications when giving birth. Exercising before pregnancy prepares the body for a healthier baby and safer delivery. It reduces stress and makes it easier to get pregnant, too.

You can prevent or improve chronic conditions with strength-building exercises. It helps diminish obesity, which lowers the risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Strength-building relieves back pain, arthritis pain, and chronic depression.
Strength training lengthens telomeres. Telomeres protect the chromosomes, preventing them from unraveling. That can cause cells to be damaged or die. The more cells that die, the more you age. Exercise keeps you looking and feeling younger.
Strength training can improve cognition. It also burns off stress hormones that can lead to depression and anger. You’ll not only live longer when you exercise, you’ll feel happier.
Regular exercise helps you improve balance and prevent falls as you age. The stronger you are, the longer you can live unassisted.

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What To Eat After A Workout

Published by superadmin on 13th December 2023 | Leave a response

What you eat after a workout does make a difference. You need the right type of fuel to build muscles and improve recovery. Your body needs to replenish glycogen stores that you depleted. It requires amino acids for muscle repair and building new tissue. If you had an intense workout you also need to replenish your fluid and electrolytes. Healthy post-workout snacks fill those needs and fill the void in your stomach so you won’t be tempted by every sweet treat you see.

It’s all about timing your meal and what you eat.

Timing your food intake is just as important as what you eat. You need a post-workout snack as quickly after you finish as possible if you’re building muscles. If you’re doing aerobic or flexibility training, you can wait for an hour after you exercise. If your workout is right before lunch, breakfast, or dinner, skip the snack and make sure that the meal contains all the nutrients you require. Don’t forget to drink extra water after a workout. Sip it. Don’t gulp it.

Post-workout snacks can be simple.

Greek yogurt and berries make a good post-workout snack. The yogurt provides the protein to start recovery and muscle building. The berries provide the carbohydrates to replenish the glycogen and increase energy. A sliced apple with nut butter is another excellent post-workout snack. So is a small tuna salad or chicken salad roll-up.

You can use post-workout shakes or create your own with the help of a blender.

Commercial protein shakes may be convenient but they’re often costly. You don’t always know the contents since many aren’t quality-controlled. Some contain impurities that can harm the body. Use milk or yogurt if you make your post-workout shake from scratch. A chocolate, banana, and peanut butter protein shake has all the ingredients to build muscle while providing a tempting taste treat. Mix half a chopped banana with a cup of milk, two tablespoons of peanut butter, two teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa powder, and a teaspoon of honey. It’s a yummy way to build muscles.

Create peanut butter balls with dark chocolate chips, toasted oatmeal, and honey. Mix the ingredients together and store the mixture in the refrigerator. Pop a couple in your mouth for a post-workout treat that builds muscles, too.
Use leftovers from the previous night’s meal. A slice of chicken breast on toast and some sweet potato wedges make a great post-workout snack.
Healthy meals that are high in protein are excellent post-workout meals. If you are trying to lose weight, exercise right before a meal, skip the snack, and choose the meal.
A dish of cottage cheese topped with unsweetened applesauce makes the perfect post-workout snack. A hard-boiled egg with a small salad containing lettuce, grapes, nuts, and veggies is also simple.

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