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Weight Loss Exercise

Reasons Why Treadmill Workouts Are Great Exercise


Treadmill workouts are a very popular activity, but why teadmill workouts you may wonder? While it is true that exercises come with many benefits, not all of us are able to keep up with our regular workout routines, sometimes out of lack of time, and at other times out of plain lethargy. In this article I would offer you one workout idea which would virtually make fitness as easy as pie for you.

Why Treadmill Workouts Are Great Exercise

Treadmills are one of the most popular home exercise equipments out there. It should be in the house of anyone who cares even a little bit about their health. Okay, I know that the treadmill needs no introduction, but are you aware of all its benefits? If not, then this article is for you.

Huge time saver: Many people cannot workout regularly because of lack of time. They have a job to handle as well as a family to look after. Add social pressure to the mix and you could get an idea of how much stressed and busy an individual could be these days.

Thankfully, with treadmill workouts, lack of time won’t hinder your fitness routine. Being a home-based equipment, you can exercise whenever you want. You can choose your workout routines flexibly. For example, if you are supposed to exercise for 30 minutes per day, you could do 15 minutes of workout before going to office and the other 15 minutes just before bedtime.

Reasons Why Treadmill Workouts Are Great Exercise

treadmill workouts

Less boring and strenuous: Exercises like aerobics bore the hell out of you because you need to do them for hours in order to derive any decent benefit from them; plus they also command your concentration all the time; naturally, by the time you are finished with them, you feel as if you would never be able to repeat the exercise again.

On the other hand, if you do intense workouts like weight training, they would take much less of your time but are too strenuous for an average individual. If you have never done it before, you would find weight training and boring.

Treadmill workout is however one exercise which fits the bill perfectly for almost everyone. It is neither too boring nor strenuous. If you run or walk on the treadmill, it won’t be any different than plain walking or running on road, except that the treadmill workout would command much less attention and time from you than the latter. Being less demanding compared to other exercises, it doesn’t bore you either.

Secure and private: Many people feel uncomfortable at the prospect of going to a gym or hiring a fitness trainer. They believe that their proactive approach towards health and fitness would be perceived wrongly by their peers and relatives; they would think that they are doing all these in order to get rid of obesity. It is not unusual, especially at backward societies, to notice a group of people poking fun at someone who is heavy on workouts.

However, a treadmill, being secure in the privacy of your home, is safe from the prying eyes of your neighbors and buddies. You can exercise for as long as you want and whenever you want; no one would ever know about it.

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General Weight Loss Tips

Weekly Weigh-Ins Start Today

 

teaplease Weekly Weigh Ins Start Today

Caramel and vanilla Bigelow tea to the rescue! This is exactly what I needed last night. And my favorite quilt too.

Around 10:30 I was starving. That’s what happens when I eat dinner at 4:30. Six hours later, I’m getting close to bedtime, but my stomach is growling. I settled on two graham crackers, eaten pretty slowly. They tasted really sweet to me, and I think it’s because I haven’t been eating real sweets lately. I can remember thinking in a not too distant past that they weren’t sweet and adding peanut butter. I also had a clementine and more water before bed.

weeklyweighin2 12 121 Weekly Weigh Ins Start Today

So here it is! I’m reintroducing weekly weigh-ins to the blog.  I need the structure of a weekly weigh-in and the accountability of posting it publicly. I’ve been losing and regaining the same weight for way too long now and I’m just way over that. I’m so over being fat. Not that I was ever for it, I’m just done justifying it and making excuses.  Done convincing myself that I don’t look that fat. That I can pull it off.  Done convincing myself that I eat well for a fat person. And all of the millions of other rationalizations I’ve come up with to make being this big okay. Done. Done. Done. You can follow these updates on the left-hand sidebar.

turkeysandwich Weekly Weigh Ins Start Today

This morning I had a turkey sandwich. Nitrate/filler/antibiotic-free turkey with organic mixed greens on oatmeal bread.

Weigh-in: Is it obnoxious or helpful to mention when my food is local/organic/nitrate etc. free? I don’t always mention it and I’m not at all trying to say bacon is health food because I’ve found a healthier alternative. Eating this way is important to me and I like to share when I make that choice. I’m not perfect, just always trying to be a little better. What do you think?

Today I’m going to do another resistance band workout and do some jabs and punching for exercise. I imagine it will be a good two weeks (if not longer) before my knee is fully recovered. I’m seriously thinking about making a morning trip to the indoor pool with Josh on Valentine’s Day.

51TBH6Q4ZPL. SL500 AA300  Weekly Weigh Ins Start Today

And now I’m hungry again. Time for lunch, what are you having?

 

Fun and Interesting Stuff:

California Chef Forages a Feast (I would love to learn how to do this without poisoning myself)

Peanut Butter Qunioa Cookies (going to try these this week!)

This dress is making me crave warmer weather (and brown leather sandals!)

Guess what? Me and my mom are going to BlogHer this year in NYC. Are you going!?

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Weight Loss Exercise

Sleep, Rest and Relaxation and health | sleep and rest



Sleep, rest and relaxation are a very important part of your daily ritual. I know that in the past I have gotten reved up with many projects and before long something has to be let go and it is usually the sleep that I need for a while. Don’t do it! As your sleep and rest start dropping you lose focus and can be lured into bad habits, sugar, coffee, and bad food. The worst thing about a lack of rest is that your body will not have a chance to heal from your earlier workouts, this can be very bad as you not only will feel sore longer but it will also suck your optimism for your new lifestyle.

How Much Sleep to Get

How much rest is enough? You probably already know this. I myself do not wake up with an alarm clock or clock radio anymore. I am fortunate to have a flexible start time and know that I will not sleep in past 8:00 in the morning. Try going to be earlier in the evening for a few nights and see when you wake up. In the fall and winter I always tape the TV shows that I watch so that I can get a chance to watch them when it is convenient to me not when it is convenient for the TV networks.

Another thing that pro bodybuilders do is have a nap in the afternoon, a nap can be great in cleansing your mind and letting you learn to relax better but you will probably find as I do that it si almost impossible to do except maybe on the weekends.

You can probably see from the tone of this information that I am delivering here that you must stop treating sleep and rest as something that takes away from something and instead learn to treat it as your own personal time, something a little more sacred than just something unavoidable that has to be done.

The Effects of Sleep

According to leading sleep researchers, there are techniques to combat common sleep problems:

  • Keep a regular sleep/wake schedule
  • Don’t drink or eat caffeine four to six hours before bed and minimize daytime use
  • Don’t smoke, especially near bedtime or if you awake in the night
  • Avoid alcohol and heavy meals before sleep
  • Get regular exercise
  • Minimize noise, light and excessive hot and cold temperatures where you sleep
  • Develop a regular bed time and go to bed at the same time each night
  • Try and wake up without an alarm clock
  • Attempt to go to bed earlier every night for certain period; this will ensure that you’re getting enough sleep

According to sleep researchers, a night’s sleep is divided into five continually shifting stages, defined by types of brain waves that reflect either lighter or deeper sleep. Toward morning, there is an increase in rapid eye movement, or REM sleep, when the muscles are relaxed and dreaming occurs, and recent memories may be consolidated in the brain.

No Hitting the Snooze Button

The experts say that hitting a snooze alarm over and over again to wake up is not the best way to feel rested. ‘The restorative value of rest is diminished, especially when the increments are short,’ said psychologist Edward Stepanski, PhD who has studied sleep fragmentation at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. This on and off again effect of dozing and waking causes shifts in the brain-wave patterns. Sleep-deprived snooze-button addicts are likely to shorten their quota of REM sleep, impairing their mental functioning during the day. (New York Times, October 12, 2004)

Certain therapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy teach people how to recognize and change patterns of thought and behavior to solve their problems. Recently this type of therapy has been shown to be very effective in getting people to fall asleep and conquer insomnia.

According to a study published in the October 2004 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, cognitive behavior therapy is more effec