Tag: Couch Potato

Train Hard Rest Well

As an aspiring athlete (I think anyone trying to get in better shape is an aspiring athlete), your need to recover from your workouts and let your body heal. Resting, not relaxation becomes critical. As you sleep your body recovers instead of just recovering from the food that we eat and the quiet times that we are not working out.

For people that live a quiet and mostly sedentary life resting tends to mean sleeping. Hopefully this was just a past life for you but one of the main things that people do in a couch potato lifestyle is just exist, you probably know what I mean, wake up groggy, coffee, maybe food, work, watch TV, eat lots of snacks and then sleep.

As an active, health concious person a lot of this gets turned on its head. We wake up feeling more rested and before or after work we will workout and find different ways to fill our time. I always find though that I am questing for a better way to get the rest that I need.

Why Do We get Muscle Soreness?

I find that my main recovery problems are muscle soreness and muscle weakness after my workouts. There is a major food component in this but I wanted to deal with rest and recovery today only. After any kind of overload to our muscles they are broken down and we lose the glycogen and at the same time the stress on the muscles can cause some pain.

The main problem that you are dealing with when you have muscle soreness is lactic acid buildup in your muscles and the microtrauma to your muscle fibers. Everyone that has worked out has felt this and although it can be painful, you will recover in a few days after resting correctly.

Rest and Recovery after Exercise

There are a few ways to recover after a good workout of any kind, we it a cardio or a muscle workout.

1. Stretching – Stretching should not be done before working out as it can cause you to pull cold muscles. What I find works best is to warmup the muscles and do my workout and then after every workout I stretch all of my muscles for 5 to 10 minutes. This really is the minimum as it helps build flexibility and you are in much better shape when you are flexible.

2. Sleep – as we know sleep is really really important. I know that I need 8 hours of sleep a night and the more you workout the deeper your sleep will be. There are a few things that we can do to get better sleep. I find that having quiet time for the hour before I go to sleep helps, studies actually show that if you have no TV, computer, or iPhone then you will fall asleep easier and I have to agree even though I will usually listen to a podcast as I am falling asleep. Also the darker your room is the better you will sleep, and keep the temperature down in your room.

3. Baths – Having a warm bath after you have cooled off will work well for your muscles. Baths are very soothing and many people say that having a bath with epson salts will help soothe sore muscles even better.

4. Meditation – I am very bad for neglecting this but there are many great changes in your physiology that happen when you meditate on a regular basis. The act of meditation also puts your mind in a more sleeplike beta level which helps concentration and restfulness as well.

These are a few of the things that you can do to improve recovery after your workouts. Why not add some of your own in the comments below?

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Weight Loss Exercise

Can You Slow Down Aging?

The aging process can’t be stopped in its tracks or slammed into reverse gear but it can be tricked into slowing down. So what can you do right now and in the future to live longer and look good while you’re doing it?

There are some obvious tricks to slowing down Old Father Time and some that are a little more obscure, but your attitude is just as important as the actual methods themselves. Some people have a very positive outlook on life, always get things done and get going when things get tough. Others let life and circumstances dictate their lives and are likely to age much more quickly.

Let’s have a look at some of the important ways in which you can, starting today, start holding back the aging process. Clearly the order in which these appear will have a different impact depending on your priorities. Let’s start with the killer?

Smoking
This is definitely a no-no. Smoking not only makes you look older by adding wrinkles to your face, it has a huge impact on your health and longevity.

A Healthy Diet
Eating in moderation will keep you much more fit and able to do the other things which will keep you younger-looking and with a younger outlook on life.

Exercise
If you exercise on a regular basis it can keep you younger looking for many more years than being a couch potato. Being active and occupied is clearly a major factor in defying the aging process since you’ll be more fit and less susceptible to illness and disease which can strike people down before they’ve lived their lives fully.

Drinking Alcohol
Imbibing, which may be an enjoyable pursuit, should be tempered with moderation. Too much alcohol ages appearance and may even have an effect on the brain.

Cutting Down/Out Fast Food
It puts on weight real fast, and a gym membership isn’t always the answer if you are too tired to attend the classes!

Cultivating Friendships
Being social shouldn’t be ignored as this life activity keeps you active and feeling younger. Friends get you outside of yourself and remind you to laugh… which also makes you feel and look younger.

Supplements
Do your research and find out which supplements are best for you. Vitamin E and Vitamin B are two thought to be very beneficial in slowing down body and mind aging problems.

Dealing with Stress
Too much stress is known to make people look older than they are, and have negative affects on the body too. Learn how to de-stress as much as you can and try not to get into situations that will stress you in the first place.

Drinking Water
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea? but water is really good for you. And while you’re upping your water intake, cut back on the coffee and sodas.

So what are you waiting for? Follow these tips and use common sense to not only stay younger-looking but feel younger as well.

Weight Loss Exercise

Dietrine carb blocker

What is the Dietrine carb blocker?

As you know I am a big proponent of using a good diet and exercise to lose weight although a carb blocker is an interesting idea. There is no such thing as taking a pill to lose weight and even if a pill did the job I am not sure that in the end it makes you any healthier than a classic couch potato.

Most of the time we can just exercise and have a good diet and will lose weight easily that way. Sometimes this does not work though. I get emails every week from people that seem to have trouble losing weight, if they just have two pieces of bread they seem to gain weight easily the next day. I have looked around for a long time for something that would help everyone with this problem.

I have just run across a type of diet supplement known as a carb blocker.

The Dietrine Carb Blocker works with your body’s own natural processes to prevent carbs from being stored as fat. The effective ingredient works by neutralizing the alpha amylase enzyme, effectively limiting the breakdown of carbohydrates into glucose and fat, meaning that your caloric intake can be dramatically decreased, even with carbohydrate-rich foods.

This all may seem a little technical, but the upshot is fairly simple. The Dietrine Carb Blocker will prevent your body from turning carbs into excess fat, safely and easily. It starts working immediately, so you simply need to take two capsules before eating any especially starchy meals.

Are carb blockers a scam?

So my next step was to look around and find something that would work and would not be some kind of scam. I had a few qualifications for a good carb blocker:

Had to be natural – Who wants to pollute their body with chemicals?
Had to be cheap – Health food stores always seem to charge a ridiculous amount for what you get
Had to be proven effective – There are far to many scams in the diet industry and I didn’t want to get ripped off.

I found a bunch of products out there and the trouble was that many are fly by night operations that you can not get hold of by phone, or they exagerated claims (if you could lose 30 pounds a month wouldn’t every have used your product?), and finally most of the products were some kind of crazy dangerous ephedrine product that didn’t actually block carbs at all but could instead cause heart problems.

Dietrine is a carb Blocker

In the end I did find one product that seemed to be a good carb blocker and that is a product called Dietrine. Dietrine seems to give me all of my qualifications. It is made out of beans, you can only buy it online so there is no five layers of middlemen selling to the health food store. And the company has been around for a long time, you can even phone them to ask about that.

If you are one of those people that seems to gain weight far to easily from Italian food or can not seem to lose weight even with diet and exercise than it seems like this Dietrine carb blocker product may be exactly what you are looking for.