| Exercise. |
| Marathon Guide - not just for running, great calorie calculators and training tips. SYL Fitness Plan by Outside Magazine - very detailed roadmap to getting fit. Excellent weight training suggestions, with diagrams. Prevention Magazine - great tips for all levels of fitness, especially beginners! LA Fitness - a gym whose clientele consists mainly of people you will someday look like. YMCA - well equipped health clubs with a less intimidating clientele. I loved being a member of the East Lake Y in Florida. Outback Bikes - love 'em in the ATL Chainwheel Drive - my FL bike shop Back to Be Healthy. Back to Liz's Page. |
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| 30 minutes a day. 5 days a week. Good job. Regular exercise will make a very noticeable difference in your health. Time. You DO have the time to exercise. If the President can make time in his busy schedule, I assure you, you can too! Exercise can (and should) be very enjoyable. Did you love to ride your bike as a kid? Well, why not check it out again as an adult? Did you always love the water? Why not join the Y and go for a swim every so often? Have a dog in the house? Well why don't you be the one to take it on walks? Group fitness classes are a lot of fun and a good way to meet people if you belong to a gym. Love to golf? Walk 9 holes instead of getting the cart for 18. Walking. This is a very easy way to get your exercise in. Put on some shoes and go around the neighborhood after work. Start slow and small, like 20 minutes, and build up to an hour. Bikes. If your knees are bad, (or even if they're not!) ride a bike. You probably shouldn't use biking as your sole form of exercise, though. This is due to the use of your muscles in a confined position, and the fact that it isn't a weight bearing exercise (such as walking - weight bearing exercise is necessary for maintaining bone density). There seems to be no problem with biking as a primary form of exercise, it's only when it's used as the sole form of exercise that health concerns arise. The Gym. Joining a gym is a little more ambitious. But joining is pointless unless you really will use the facility. Pick a gym that is between your house and your office (or just very near your house). That way, when you drive by, you're reminded. Plus, you are much more likely to use it if it's convenient. Go to the group fitness classes, such as aerobics or spinning. I love step aerobics. My gym (LA Fitness) offers a lot of good group fitness classes. Some people enjoy just running the treadmill or climbing the stair machine. The nice thing about a gym is, YOU HAVE OPTIONS! Yoga. Yoga is an outstanding component to fitness. Everyone should do yoga! It's not what you think, they don't make you get into all these crazy contortionist poses or anything. It is a focus on the core muscles of your body, and it can be done as easy or as hard as you would like. Every time I go to class, there is someone new to yoga, and they never have a problem. If you belong to a gym that offers yoga, try a class out. If you don't belong to a gym, you can often visit a class (and take it) for free one time at a yoga studio. Check your yellow pages and call the studios to schedule an intro class. |
| Exercise Tip: pump some iron! Did you know that five pounds of body fat looks like about 3 grapefruits, but that five pounds of muscle looks like about TWO TANGERINES? Also, one more pound of muscle adds 500 calories to your base metabolic rate. It takes about a month to build a pound of muscle. 2 really good weight training websites: freetrainers.com and stumptuos.com - and you don't need to belong to a gym, they have at-home weight training options available. Both are totally free. Freetrainers sets you up with a specific program tailored to what you want and where you work out (home or gym). Krista at Stumptuous gives you general guidelines and some routines to follow in order to incorporate weight training into your exercise routine, whether at home or at a gym. If you are trying to burn fat, immediately follow your weight training session with a cardio workout. This info comes from a personal trainer, I'm going to relay it as best I can. When you lift weights, your muscles deplete their glycogen supply. Following a weights workout, your body has little glycogen left for fuel. Putting that glycogen depleted body into a cardio workout should, in theory, force your body to draw upon fatty acids for fuel. That is the theory, and I've heard it (or some form of that) from more than one trainer. I'm currently practicing this theory, and I'm not sure how my body fat has decreased over the past month, but I'm starting to keep a record so I'll keep you posted. Weight training is also very good for building (if you are young) and maintaining (if you are older) your bone density. This is especially important for women for whom osteoporosis runs in their family. The other obvious benefit is your body will look better. After just a month I notice a lot more muscle tone and definition from the past month. Vanity is as good a motivator as any. ;) Now that you have some reasons, find a personal trainer at your gym or in your area and sign up for a session or two to help you get started and learn the proper techniques. You can rent videos, too, and do excercises with rubber bands and dumbells, but make sure you watch the instructional part of the video so that you learn the motions correctly and don't injure yourself. Excercise tip: Avoid overtraining! Overtraining occurs when you exercise beyond the limits of what your body can handle. Those limits are different for everyone. At the end of July, I suffered from overtraining. It took me 2 weeks to realize that it was overtraining that was making me feel terrible. It's actually very amazing that I got myself into that state. I have known about overtraining and what can happen to you, and I just didn't realize that was what was going on. I mean, if you think about it, overtraining usually means that you are exercising at least once a day, every day, and possibly doing 2 or 3 workouts in one day. When you look at it like that, you may think "who the HELL has time to exercise that much?" It never occured to me that that was exactly what I was doing. I felt unbelievably tired. I had no appetite but was constantly hungry. My mood was low. I couldn't sleep well, if at all, despite the tired feelings. I was a walking zombie during the day, and couldn't concentrate on anything for more than 15 minutes. And I couldn't understand why this was all going on, because exercising regularly was supposed to help me avoid these exact problems! I was reading a cycling book one night, and it talked about overtraining, and the light bulb went off in my head. I pulled out my training log. One week had 5 morning runs, 3 rows, a bike ride, a yoga class and 2 step classes. 11 hard workouts in a 7 day span. Houston, we have a problem. Luckily, the solution to overtraining is simple. Take 2 or 3 days off ENTIRELY. Start your workouts again on the second or third day, and scale them back. Have at least one day off per week (entirely off!) and make sure you aren't pushing yourself too hard during your workouts. Cut back to one workout per day that you do exercise. Keeping a training log isn't a bad idea. You can check your progress and be able to see when you may be getting yourself into an overtraining situation. Your training log can be as simple or as detailed as you like. Click here to see my training log. |
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| Here are some useful exercise and training links: |
| Back to Liz's Health Home Page Tips on Eating Well Tips for Weight Loss My Recipes My Training Log My Weight Watchers Experience |
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| Weight Training. Building muscle mass speeds up your metabolism and increases bone density, which will fight off osteoporosis later in life. And ladies, don't worry, as long as you keep the weight low and the reps high, you won't start to look too masculine. There is no need to turn into Arnold Schwarzenneger, unless you want to. If you have never done any weight training, sign up for a session with a personal trainer. You can do this at your gym, or if you don't belong to a gym, you can look up personal trainers in the yellow pages. Weight lifting should be a component of your exercise regimen. I like all the exercises in the Shape of Your Life fitness plan done by Outside Magazine. You can get it on line by going to outsidemag.com and clicking on the Bodywork tab. You can also get a training program set up FOR FREE from the folks at FreeTrainers.com. But have someone show you how to properly do the exercises before you try them on your own! So, Get Moving! You now have lots of suggestions and ways to improve your health through exercise. I promise you, if you exercise 5 times a week for 30 minutes each time, you will feel better, sleep better, and be more able to concentrate! |