A diet is changing your lifestyle. It takes will power and a lot of work to change your habits. Ideally, you should try to limit eating very late as it is best to spread out your calories throughout the day. If this is difficult, I would suggest substituting higher calorie snacks for a lower calorie snack. This may satisfy your cravings with very little diet sabotage.

This can seem daunting if you haven’t done it before, but try to start with small changes. No one can expect to completely change their habits overnight. Maybe you’ll be a little over in your first few days. Use the nutrition tracker and learn about your habits to see where you can improve. Creating an awareness of our bad habits is the first step to changing behavior.

Generally speaking, the vast majority of overuse injuries associated with running can be avoided by utilizing commonsense and not exposing your body to sudden, high levels of orthopedic stress. Here are some basic guidelines for sidestepping running related overuse injuries:

• Stretch before and after exercising. Proper stretching can mean the difference between pain and enjoyment, and can provide several potential benefits, including improving joint flexibility, enhancing performance and reducing injury potential. As a general rule, always precede stretching exercises with at least five minutes of low-intensity physical activity.
• Increase your mileage sensibly. Avoid doing too much exercise too soon. A general guideline is to limit any increase in weekly distance to 10 percent or less of the previous week’s total mileage. Contrary to what some people believe, more is not always better. Instead, limit your total weekly mileage to a reasonable level according to your fitness level, body size and training experience. Exercising too much substantially increases your chances of sustaining an overuse injury. Remember: Exercise quality is usually more important than quantity.
• Don’t subject your body to consecutive days of very intense exercise. Always follow a relatively “hard” day of exercising with an easier day. If you run considerably faster and farther than usual on a particular day, take the next day off or decrease the duration and/or intensity of your next workout.
• Incorporate an occasional “easy” week into your exercise regimen. Keep in mind that you don’t need to increase your mileage every week to continue to benefit from your training efforts. Some level of physical and/or psychological fatigue is natural following a steady diet of hard workouts. Fatigue may increase the likelihood of injury because it can diminish the precision of motor control and inhibit voluntary muscle-stabilizing activity.
• Don’t ignore sudden pain or discomfort. Pain is the body’s way of telling you that if you persist in what you’re doing, you will either injure yourself or exacerbate a relatively minor injury that has already occurred. You must learn to listen to your body and respond appropriately. The acronym “RICE” (rest, ice, compression and elevation) should serve as the basis of treatment for most minor injuries such as pulled or strained muscles and shin splits). If your acute pain does not respond to self-treatment within a reasonable period of time, see a physician, preferably a sports medicine specialist.
• Don’t try to “run through” pain. If you alter your normal running mechanics in an effort to accommodate pain or discomfort, you may place excessive stress on your joints, muscles and connective tissues (ligaments and tendons). Refrain from exercising until the pain subsides and no longer interferes with your natural running pattern.
• Periodically replace your running shoes. Proper footwear can have a significant impact on minimizing your chances of being injured. Record your mileage daily and replace your running shoes once the cumulative total exceeds 500 miles.

Vary your workout options. Give your joints and muscles an occasional break

We all age, our hearts beat more slowly with less blood being pumped, our oxygen consumption is less, and age related musculoskeletal changes start to occur. Good news, recent research shows that aerobic exercise can turn back your biological clock by 10 years. By increasing our aerobic fitness we increase our mitochondrial function. Mitochondria are little organelles located in our cells; their job is to transform energy into a form that our cells can use to produce even more energy. Activity level correlates with mitochondrial function. The harder we work the better our mitochondria produce energy reducing our biological age.

High intensity “all out efforts” efforts are needed to increase oxygen demands in order to slow the aging process. Most people can not tolerate an all out effort for long periods of time. Interval training where a short all out effort is followed by a brief recovery period allows the body to adapt in order to slow the aging process.

Incorporating interval training into your exercise program can be done manipulating some variables that fitness professional use every day.

• Speed- The most obvious way to increase intensity. Speed can cause injury and should only be used with conditioned athletes that are free of musculoskeletal injuries.

• Incline- Adding a incline along with resistance on a piece of cardiovascular equipment is a safe way to increase intensity.

• Resistance- The greater the resistance the harder the muscles must work. This can be manipulated by increasing the resistance on cardiovascular equipment or performing strength training exercises with a load. An example is performing a squat or lunge while holding dumbbells.

• Use gravity- Body weight exercises are safe and effective ways to increase intensity and with modification can be used with most fitness levels.

• Range of motion- Performing exercises through the full range of motion is much more difficult to perform because they involve more muscle and forces the heart to work harder.

• Alternating lower body with upper body-Performing alternating upper body muscle groups with lower body muscle groups allows for an increase in heart rate while muscle groups are recovering. This is helpful with deconditioned exercisers as it allows for modest increases in heart rate while still performing strength training exercises, creating active rest.

No one has ever drowned in sweat.
Lou Holtz

Food on a Budget: Protein

H

Write a comment: Post comment Cancel

Related Searches

foods with protein

list of foods with protein

protein foods

list of foods high in protein

foods high in protein

good protein foods

List of good protein foods

list of lean protein foods

low protein foods

lean protein foods

Hypertension and Stroke Special Report Get Moving To Lower Your Blood Pressure

If you are like many older Americans with high blood pressure, you probably lead a fairly sedentary lifestyle. But studies show that beginning a physical activity program at any age can improve your heart health. And the good news is that the studies also show that the level of physical activity does not have to be strenuous to reap the benefits.

Some of the heart benefits of physical activity are related to lowering of blood pressure. What’s more, getting moving will also help reduce cholesterol, blood sugar, and body weight and lower the likelihood of such hypertension complications as heart attacks and strokes.

Physical Activity and Blood Pressure – How does physical activity lower blood pressure? Part of the explanation is that exercise produces weight loss and increased sensitivity to insulin (a hormone involved in the control of blood sugar), which in turn decrease blood pressure. But more directly, physical activity makes the heart stronger, and a stronger heart can pump more blood with less effort. This means less pressure on the walls of the arteries as blood flows from the heart to your tissues.

Physical activity also appears to improve endothelial function, the ability of blood vessels to dilate in response to increased blood flow, and may decrease the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, which causes blood pressure to rise when you are under stress.

Getting Started — The key to getting started is to find a physical activity that is safe for your specific health situation and enjoyable enough to do on a regular basis. For most people, that’s a simple walking routine.

• Step 1: Talk to your doctor. The first step is to check in with your doctor. This is particularly important if you have any chronic health problems like heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, or arthritis; are over age 50; or haven’t exercised in a long time.
• Step 2: Start slowly. If that means you walk for only 10 minutes every other day for the first week, that’s fine. But over the next weeks and months, slowly increase the frequency and duration of your walks. Ideally, you want to build up to exercising five to seven days a week, for 30-60 minutes at a time. But studies show that less frequent activity (such as three times a week) and shorter bouts of activity (for example, three 10-minute sessions a day) can be beneficial as well, so don’t give up on exercise just because you are unable to do the ideal amount. Every little bit does count.
• Step 3: Keep it moderate. Walking and other aerobic activities should be at moderate intensity. You should be able to carry on a conversation while exercising. If you are gasping for breath, it’s not moderate. The actual definition of moderate intensity is based on heart rate. Maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age. For most people, moderate is 50–70% of that number. For example, if you are age 60, your maximum heart rate is 220 – 60 = 160. Then multiply 160 x 0.50 = 80 and 160 x 0.70 = 112. A moderate heart rate for you is between 80 and 112 beats per minute. However, if you’ve not been physically active in a while, moderate might be starting at 30–40% of maximal heart effort and building up slowly over a month or more. You can check your heart rate by finding the pulse in your neck or wrist, counting the number of beats in 10 seconds, and then multiplying that number by six. Alternatively, you can purchase a sensor to monitor heart rate.
• Step 4: Add some strength and balance exercises. Once you’re comfortable with a walking routine, you can start some light weight training and balance exercises two to three times per week. For sample strength and balance exercises, see the National Institute on Aging’s exercise guide at www.niapublications.org/exercisebook/ ExerciseGuideComplete.pdf. You can also obtain a free copy by calling 800-222-2225.

Posted in Hypertension and Stroke on November 11, 2008

We all make and break our annual New Years resolutions; I know this from my own personnel experience and those I have had the pleasure to work with. Behavioral change is very difficult, at times we are successful and other times we are tired and life seems to get in the way of our best efforts. The roller coaster ride begins. In order to reach our goals we need to establish a set of tools that bring us closer to our desired out come.

Here is my all time favorite tool- Daily resolutions give you the opportunity to make and break goals daily. It’s not copping out it just gives you time to keep trying. Self- improvement is an on going process and needs to be re-evaluated along the way to allow for life’s curve balls. Small changes made daily can change your life a year later. Stay positive and each new effort will bring you closer to your goal. In his best selling book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes how ideas, products, and group behaviors “tip” into the culture and take root. Research shows that behavioral change also has its own tipping point, the more times you change a habit the more likely you come that much closer to success. Keep trying!

Self- Forgiveness-. We are only human and to be 100% percent perfect 100% percent of the time is not humanly possible. Avoid negative mind chatter that self defeats our best efforts Identify what is working (give yourself a pat on the back) and what isn’t.

Work harder not smarter-Create an awareness of what changes really need to take place in order to reach your desired goal. If you need to knock off some weight count calories or record your food intake, need to improve cardiovascular fitness get that walk in. What ever your goal think about what you need to do to make it happen and start. It is less stressful to begin a behavioral change than to obsess about it endlessly. At some point you may just stop and think that change wasn’t so painful after all and question how much fulfillment you really got from that big chocolate cupcake.

Ask for help-Misery loves Company, two heads are better than one, birds of a feather flock together. A sense of community helps you reach your goals and encourages change. There is comfort in knowing that you have a support group to help you reach your goals. A community can make a difficult situation fun and the road ahead less hard. Don’t be shy and ask for help!

In today’s time crunched society a question that I am often asked is, with limited time available should I be spending my work out on cardiovascular exercise or weight training for weight loss purposes? In a perfect world my answer would be both, however there will be days that it is just not possible.

A key point I try to emphasize is that in the “big picture” weight training has many health related benefits. The more muscle we have the more metabolically efficient we are (you will burn more calories in a resting state).The second reason is even more important, through caloric deprivation (diet- that nasty four letter word) we can lose up to 30% of our muscle mass. A result your are not looking for, as the more muscle mass you have the more calories you will burn, muscle loss we shut down. Strength training is important for many reasons that impact the quality of our life, such as performing our activities of daily living without injury, increases bone density, and improves balance.  Self esteem improves when you feel good and look good.

Here is the answer- circuit training; this method the participant performs weight lifting exercises without a rest between exercises in order to keep your heart rate up. My favorite way to solve a time crunch problem is to perform a cardio-resistance program. This method meets both strength and weight lifting requirements. In between weight lifting exercise the participant performs a stationary cardiovascular exercise, such as jumping rope or jogging in place on a rebounder or even a Stairmaster. The goal is to keep your heart rate up and weight train each muscle group to fatigue. This can be accomplished in 30-40 minutes.

Bottom line- A great workout can be accomplished in minimal time if we stay focused on the quality of our workout and not the time spent!

Food manufactures are now offering smaller versions of their fat laden snacks designed to help resist the temptation of over indulging in a larger version. Kraft, Ben and Jerry’s, Pringles and Lays now offer these mini snacks. But do they help?

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Reports says quite the opposite. The reduced size snacks trick people that they can eat away without consequences. People who have problems with portion control are at high risk of overeating. Once self- regulatory concerns were activated consumers were twice as likely to start eating tempting snacks in mini packages as compared to the larger packages. They also ate twice as much!