Month: September 2018

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Weight Loss Exercise

How to choose a gym

If you have not joined a gym yet then this article may give you some ideas on what to look for in how to choose a gym. My personal favorite things to look for are price, comfort, clientele and helpfulness of staff to the people there while you are checking it out. Everyone is attentive to your needs before you have paid, see how they are to people that have been there for a while

It’s the beginning of a new year and resolutions are being carried out with gusto. Getting fit and staying healthy are no doubt at the top of dozens of resolution lists. Joining a gym is a great first step to achieving one’s fitness goals, but with workout facilities popping up like wildfires, choosing the right gym can be a daunting task. However, just asking a few simple questions can make finding the perfect place to work out less of a challenge.

Questions To Ask Joining a Gym

 

When figuring out how to choose a gym, one should first ask, ” What equipment and amenities will I actually use?” Sure, there are mega-gyms that offer saunas, massage therapy, a lap pool, and rock climbing, but are all of these things what a person really needs in order to pursue a healthy lifestyle?

How to choose a gym

How to Choose a Gym

In reality, free weights, machines, and cardio equipment are more than adequate to support an effective workout routine. Gyms that are well-equipped, minus the “fluff,” are almost always the more cost effective choice, not to mention less overwhelming.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when first stepping foot in a gym, with all the strange-looking machines and fancy equipment. When choosing a gym, be sure to ask if an orientation (a guided tour on how to properly use the equipment) is available and if it costs extra. Is the orientation in a group setting or is it one-on-one? Finding a gym that provides one-on-one attention along with ongoing monitoring is definitely a big advantage to someone just starting out. Only a few gyms offer such a program at no additional cost, so this is a good way to narrow down your search.

Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Low fat eating does not always reduce health risks

This study below that I gleaned from the LA Times shows that just altering your diet may not be able to undo a life of bad eating. Maybe if they included exercise in these peoples lives it may have made a bigger difference to their health.

Overturning three decades of conventional wisdom, a new study of low-fat diets in nearly 50,000 healthy older women has shown that reducing fat intake alone does not significantly reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, breast cancer or colorectal cancer, researchers reported today. Results from the same study reported last month also showed that reducing fats without reducing calories does not lead to significant weight loss.

“Just switching to low-fat foods is not likely to yield much health benefit in most women,” said Marcia Stefanick, a professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, chairwoman of the steering committee for the Women’s Health Initiative study.

“Rather than trying to eat ‘low-fat,’ women should focus on reducing saturated fats and trans fats,” the so-called bad fats, while maintaining their intake of “good” fats, such as vegetable, olive and fish oils.

“Nutrition knowledge has progressed dramatically since the study began,” said Mara Vitolins, a professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., and a study co-author. “Today we know that reducing total fat may not be enough — we need to focus on the types of fat we eat.”

The 13-year study, whose results will be reported Wednesday in three papers in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., did hint at some possible benefits from reducing fat intake. Women on the low-fat diet who had the highest consumption of fats at the beginning of the study showed the biggest decrease in breast cancer risk. And those who achieved the lowest rate of fat consumption showed the lowest risk of heart disease. And those who reduced fat intake had a lower incidence of polyps, generally considered to be a precursor of colorectal cancer.

Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Pounds or inches?

Often as people lose they run into a plateau, often this plateau is not really a time to be bearing down because the is not coming off although it is always a good time to look at all areas of your life to see if there is a good reason that you are not losing weight. Sometimes it is food, sometimes it is inches and sometimes it is just your body adjusting.

If you are not losing then maybe it is time to remeasure yourself. You do measure yourself regularly don’t you? All you need to do is measure in inches or centimeters around your neck, chest, hips, waist, upper leg, calves, upper arm and forearm. Of course also record your as that is a nice thing to relate to your measurements.

This measuring does two things, it lets you know when you are losing inches around your hips or waist and also lets you know if you are gaining muscle and muscle tone in the other parts of your body. You can either keep this on paper or if you have Microsoft Excel or something similar you can put your measurements in a spreadsheet and then you can refer to your gains and losses over time and see how the different times of year affect your size.