On Monday we had a photographer come to our house to take our pictures. I can’t say that this totally fits our personalities, but we have family that would like a copy for Christmas. All told, it was a nice hour spent with my husband, and the kitties make their appearance as well. I feel like I should give a shout-out to June from Junebug Photography here in Floyd. She did an excellent job and made us feel relaxed.
Thanksgiving Eating Tips
Thanksgiving and Christmas are my favorite eating days of the year, with Thanksgiving eating being the bigger one I think. Thanksgiving dinner is now only a couple of days away in Canada and the Turkeys and Hams have already been bought and are waiting to be eaten. This thanksgiving maybe you can be more careful about your eating and well being and I hope that looking at these tip will keep you feeling better the day after as you get to go on your post Thanksgiving day shopping spree.
1. Decide what you are going to eat each day in the morning before you start. Think about 3 meals and 3 snacks. No one says you can’t have a snack, then dinner a while later and then desert a while after that.
2. Get some exercise right after you get out of bed. This will help you focus on your fitness and make you aware of how your body feels that day.
3. Drink lots of water throughout Thanksgiving day starting in the morning. We all know how important it is to drink water and to stay hydrated. Also the Water will keep your body from feeling hungry throughout the day and let you feel a little fuller.
4. Eat a small breakfast to set up a slow eating day. Maybe some All Bran or something else filling would be good.
5. Again you should have a fairly small lunch. Thanksgiving eating may be a big eating day but you still need to keep eating a few meals to keep your metabolism up and to make sure that you are not too hungry when dinner comes around.
6. Try to have some kind of snack a couple hours before dinner and then a walk. This is your first real chance to make a difference in your eating for the day that may normally be bad. Try making something interesting and out of season. I love fruit salad so you could always make a fruit salad and have it over low fat frozen yogurt.
7. Eat everything at dinner but only small portions of each food. For Thanksgiving eating it is not the amount of food that matters but the trying of all of the foods at the table. Remember you can have leftovers for days in small servings as well.
8. Go for another walk if the weather is good. The worst thing to me is that after having a great Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner there is no energy outlet so you end up just sitting and almost falling asleep from the tryptophan in the turkey (actually all those carbs and fat…) and then you don’t want to get up at all. Why not instead take a little walk around the neighborhood?
9. Dessert. If at all possible try to make a dessert yourself as then you can be sure how good or bad it is for you. My wife is always the designated dessert person for family get togethers as she makes Thanksgiving eating stuff that is not quite as bad for you but always different and always really great tasting. One of the favorites these days is angel food cake with strawberries and Cool Whip
10. Try to keep things interesting for the evening by having an interactive game to play or have the kids put on a play. What you want to do after dinner and dessert is keep away from the regular habit of snacking even though you are full.
Thanksgiving is a day that people always associate with a lot of Thanksgiving eating food and what i have in mind is not to have you starve yourself on thanksgiving but instead just make sure that you have a great day and eat some healthy snacks to keep yourself from eating too much heavy food and to feel a bit better about yourself the next day.
So can you do body building at home? That is, can you effectively work and build all of the necessary muscles to have a toned, sculpted and overall big muscular body without all of the specialized equipment that you will find at a gym?
Of course, you could set up a home gym with your own equipment and then there would be no problem following a routine for body building at home. But let’s assume that you do not and cannot have a fully equipped home gym. What are the bare essentials that you need for effective body building?
Unfortunately you are not going to be able to do body building at home successfully with no equipment at all. There is no way that you can hope to build serious muscle mass without some weights.
Dumbbells are cheap and easy to store in the smallest apartment or dorm room. If you really do not even have the money for those – for example if you are a teen with no job and a tiny allowance – then you could start out by using plastic water bottles, the kind that you can easily grip in the middle. However, you will soon want to move up in the weights, so plan on saving your allowance or asking for a set of dumbbells for your next birthday, Christmas or as a random gift from any family member who is feeling generous.
Hint: you will find that family members are much more likely to buy stuff for you if they can see that you are going to use it and get the value out of it. If you ask before you even start working out, they may say no automatically. If you ask after you have been working out regularly for a month, the answer may be very different.
The next thing that you will need is a flat/incline adjustable bench. This will cost you a little more and it takes up more storage space too but it greatly increases the number of exercises that you can do. The bottom line is that an adjustable bench is going to be essential if you plan on doing any serious body building at home.
Finally, a barbell with a set of barbell weights completes the basic equipment. You can manage with either dumbbells or a barbell, you do not strictly need both, but if you have the space and a few more dollars this can add variety to your workout.
Your workout can then include bench press exercises with and without weights, and the full range of dumbbell or barbell exercises (rows, curls, extensions and raises). Be sure to plan your routine so that you are covering different muscle groups each time. Do not work out every day but have two or three rest days in the week.
So how long will it take before you see results? It would be great if we could bulk up overnight, but that simply does not happen. Be patient, keep to your routine as you planned it for body building at home and you should start to see results in a couple of weeks.