Ease into exercise slowly with caution after injury

Of the patients suffering from neck pain, back pain and other injuries, I would say that at least 50% of them ask, “what can I do for myself to make sure that this doesn’t happen again?” This question served as the inspiration for this article and I will address in this post.

To begin with, neck pain and back pain are great motivators.

When people are in pain they take a proactive approach to their health. People often inquire about what kind of stretches or exercises that they can start right away. Unfortunately, the best thing that you can do while your injury is new is to apply ice packs to the injured area and rest. I indicated that this is unfortunate because when injuries are new, motivation for proactive behavior such as exercising is high - later on, when the pain has decreased, so does the motivation.

Over my 15 plus years in practice I have seen a large percentage of enthusiastic patients ignore this advice and end up giving their conditions a major set back. The time to start exercising and stretching your back for most of us is when you are out of the acute stage of pain.

My biggest struggles in practice have been dealing with my patients exercise and diet habits. Exercise is one of the few things that a patient can do at home, outside of chiropractic care, to help prevent or diminish the chances of developing back pain in the future.

After an injury, you should approach exercise cautiously - almost to a point where the exercise that you are performing feels like it is doing nothing. If you can get through a few low intensity exercise sessions like this without aggravating your condition, you should slowly add resistance, repetitions or time to your workouts, allowing you to build confidence and strength at the same time.

You have to remember to incorporate a sensible approach to exercising after a back injury. Be sure to exercise and stretch under the advise of a health care professional. Strong and flexible muscles add strength and support to your spine and will provide much needed stability.

I have always tried to help the patients of my San Diego Chiropractic office with their neck pain and back by encouraging stretches and exercises. The combination of chiropractic care with stretches and exercise allows for quicker, more complete healing with decreased chances of pain in the future.

Dr. Steve Jones is a practicing chiropractor in San Diego California. He was licensed in 1991 and received his degree from Palmer College of Chiropractic - West. Dr. Jones has focused on the study and implimentation of ergonomics in the work place and holds a certification as a specialist in health ergonomics. Dr. Jones can be contacted through his websites at http://www.JonesPainRelief.com and http://www.ErgoNav.com

How often should you workout?

One of the age old questions, that has been asked throughout gyms for as long as anyone can remember has been, how many days a week should I workout? Too complicate things further comes the follow up question, how should I split my workouts? In either case, what essentially is coming into question is an individual’s training frequency. As it pertains to exercise, frequency is the rate at which workout sessions are occurring.

In my opinion this is the most overrated and over exaggerated fundamental principle of exercise. By that I mean this is the variable that people most heavily focus their attention on. It’s amazing how many individuals are caught up in having to be at the gym on a daily basis. As if missing a workout or even two or three is going to result in losing everything they have gained. This mind set often has negative consequences and can severely hinder your development. There are of course those at the other end of the spectrum who do not exercise nearly enough which as we know also has negative consequences. However much of our discussion here will focus on those individuals we first mentioned–the exercise addicts.

The reason why we go to the gym is to help us get in shape and look better, right? Wrong! The real reason for going to the gym or, working out in general, is to start a chain of events that will eventually result in us improving our level of health and fitness as well as looking better. Take a moment to read that statement again or as many times as is needed for it to completely sink in. The reason why it is so important to see exercise this way is because many people have a distorted view of exercise and how it works to make us more fit.

Many trainees believe that if they simply show up at the gym and perform the workouts, they will accomplish all they’ve set out to achieve. More often than not any results that are achieved through this mechanism are usually very small and/or short lived and the individual never fully realizes his/her potential. Very often people fail to change the way their bodies look even though they frequent the gym 5, 6 sometimes 7 times a week! Despite not achieving the physical changes they desire or further improving their level of fitness they not only continue to train frequently but may also increase the amount of exercise they perform in those workouts, ala the more is better mentality. Predictably this does not work either and their level of frustration grows with each passing week. But do not assume that based on these statements that anyone who has the same or similar profile to the one I described, can in no way see results. Some people achieve fitness success despite a ‘less than ideal’ training regimen. This however is usually because the person possesses superior genetic ability which will always be the ultimate determinant of one’s success.

For some trainees this amount of exercise may not be much of a detriment because their lack of activity outside of the gym (i.e. sedentary job) or because the demands of their daily workouts are so insignificant (in which case they will not see results no matter how many days a week they workout). But for the majority-the genetically average-an excessive amount of exercise can and will have negative consequences.

There exists a special relationship among all the components of exercise, but the success of your training program depends primarily on the relationship between 3 components in particular. They are intensity, volume, and of course frequency. When these three components are applied and balanced properly though training, performance and physical development will improve dramatically. When frequency is not properly balanced in conjunction with intensity and volume the demands of the training program will exceed what you can tolerate, resulting in a decrease in exercise performance, muscle loss, slowing of fat loss, decreased strength and endurance, and overall physical regression.

Ideally you should strive to exercise frequently enough to ensure that you are not overtraining (or undertraining), the consequences of which are mentioned above.

The overall goal of any exercise program should be to perform the least amount of exercise necessary to produce an optimum response.

Exercise should be intense, brief and infrequent. As stated in The Nautilus Book, by Ellington Darden, “You can perform brief and infrequent high intensity exercise or long and frequent low intensity workouts. But you cannot perform long and frequent exercise involving a high intensity of work. That will result only in total exhaustion.” (p. 76) As we’ve already covered, anything above what is necessary is superfluous and will ultimately result in diminishing returns. In layman’s terms this would translate to working out harder, working out longer, working out more, and having little or nothing to show for it. Training frequency should be reflective of what is an ideal period of rest following a bout of exercise, as per your individual needs.

For some this may be training 3 times a week, every other day, for others it may be training once every 46 days, for others it might mean keeping to their current schedule but lowering the overall demands. The options and combinations are infinite, but it is up to you to discover the appropriate training frequency based upon your training intensity and volume, goals, needs, rate of recovery, and preferences. Never forget, exercise is a means of starting a chain of events that will eventually result in you improving your health and fitness as well as looking better, so make smart choices about what you do and how often you do it.

One of the worst feelings you can have on your program is over-sleeping. You wake up and realize that you don’t have enough time to workout before work. You feel empty and dejected. You have a jam-packed day with meetings in the evening.

What can you do?

You can chalk it up to a missed day or you can get creative.

This scenario happened to me recently and instead of blowing off my workout all together, I did something about it. I was able to carve out 25 minutes at work to get away and do a cardio session. It wasn’t the best exercise ever, but it was much better than doing nothing.

How creative can you be? If you work at an office, maybe you can run up and down the stairs for 15-20 minutes. You can go for an extended walk at lunch. If you really want to jack up your heart rate you can do a quick circuit of 10 Push-ups followed by 15 Body Squats. Do 3 circuits of those and your blood will be pumping, I can guarantee that. These are just a few things you can do.

The bottom line is you can give in to waking up late or you can do something about it. You can continue to believe your excuses or not make them.

“If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” - Jim Rohn

So, if you wake up late one day, don’t panic. Get in a resourceful state and figure out what else you can do. Better yet, you can PLAN BEFORE this happens. Have a few “make-up” workouts at your disposal, so if you find yourself in this position you can do something about it. Don’t fall victim.

Take control.

-Tim

Two week update:
Lost 6 pounds
Lost 1 inch off my chest
Lost 1/2 inch off belly
Lost 1/4 inch off waist

Getting up and going to the gym is getting easier, I look forward to it more, because I can already see results.

My clothes are fitting better and my energy is increasing daily. I am in a “healthy” routine and am enjoying the progress day by day. The great thing about a routine is, after it is established, it is automatic! You don’t have to think about it.

I know it is important to keep track of what I am eating and what kind of workouts I am doing, so this week I started a Twitter account to track all of my meals and workouts. This has increased the accountability (again) and at the same time has created a network of supportive people. So, not only am I using it to track my progress, but I am also getting support. Support is an important vehicle as you continue on your mission for fat-loss.

In 2 short weeks I have improved my body and created a network of like minded individuals. I am ready for the weeks to come!

Whether or not you take the stairs or not today might seem inconsequential at a glance, however, our habits are what make and keep us healthy, or cause us to add extra weight. When a person gains weight, they did not gain it overnight. It did not pile on in one catostrophic day, it was gained bite by bite, meal by meal, day by day and decisions accumulated over time.

Those small decisions add up into the results you are now currently experiencing.

The great news is that by becoming conscious of those dozens of small decisions we make hour by hour each day, we can also change our results.

Small decisions when accumulated create your destiny.

What small changes can you make today?

If you expect to experience success in creating a healthy lifestyle, it is so very important to have deeply personal and compelling reasons for why you are embarking on this program (or any program).

After all, you are most likely going to be changing some things about your life, like your eating habits, your menu options, your schedule and even your exercise routines. You may be making small changes or you may have made a major committment to making drastic changes all the way around.

Good habits are easy to create when you have big enough reasons.

Either way, the more clear you are with why you are pursuing this new and healthier lifestyle, the easier it will be to stay on track or pick yourself up when you’re feeling down.

Here are some examples of deeply personal compelling reasons a person may have for creating healthy habits:

So I have more energy for myself
So I can be a better example to my kids
So I can feel sexy and attractive
So I can be a better lover to my spouse
So I can have more energy for my kids
So I feel happy when I look in the mirror
So I fit in fashionable clothes
So I can wear a bathing suit on the beach with pride
So I am happy when I look at pictures of myself
So I will live a long life and see my grandkids grow up
Better mental clarity
To manage my stress levels
To get off blood pressure meds
To reduce my blood sugar
So I can run up the stairs and not be out of breath
So I can run a marathon
Disease prevention
To inspire others (friends, siblings, parents, strangers)

As you can see, if these were some of your reasons, you would easily get your mind right if you had a rare moment of discouragement or setback. All you would have to do (or all your coach or buddy would have to do) is remind you of your whys and point you back in a positive direction.

Listen, life is full of ups and downs, some days we don’t feel we are going fast enough, other days, we drift off track, but it’s what we do about it that will absolutely make or break your success.

So make a written list of your whys and put it someplace you will see it everyday. Read it aloud several times a day.

Jill
http://www.WeightLossInfo.com

There are many ways to create incentives to reach your specific Goals, in weight loss as well as any area of your life.

One of my favorites is to wear a Goal Band. A Goal Band is a colored wristband you wear and do not take off until you achieve your Goal. It serves as a constant reminder to you and the people around you that you are striving towards a desired result.

Tim is harnessing the power of a Goal Band, but he has taken creative incentives a step further with his ‘weight loss beard.’

Tim does not want a beard. He doesn’t like it.

So to give himself a little extra incentive, he made a personal (and very public) commitment:

“I will not shave my beard or get a haircut until I am under 220 pounds.”

He created something that is uncomfortable and made it fun. When he reaches one of his smaller Goals of weighing under 220, he gets to celebrate by shaving off the beard as a reward!

It is important to recognize the smaller Goals and victories, that when accumulated, add up to the ultimate vision you are trying to achieve.

What creative incentives can you come up with to motivate yourself?

Let us know!

Jill and Tim

Weigh yourself daily for best results

Recent research shows that it is possible to maintain his weight by weighing every day and adjust as it improves. The research involved 314 participants who had lost an average 20% of their weight in the last two years, which amounted to 20 kilos (42 pounds).

The researchers helped the participants to put into practice a technique called self-regulation. Participants had to weigh every day and assess whether they should adjust their diet or their level of daily exercise. The goal was to maintain their weight with a margin of 2.5 kilos (5 pounds).

When participants exceed their starting weight of 1.5 to 2 kilograms (3 to 4 pounds), they were encouraged to make changes in their diet or their level of exercise.

If they had taken 2.5 kilos (5 pounds) or more they were encouraged to take active efforts of weight loss: use a pedometer, keep a food journal, draw on their previous weight loss, etc. ..

The results were encouraging. People are weighing all the days to adjust to need diet and were almost twice as likely to maintain their weight than the control group.

Among the participants overseen by group meetings, 54% had managed not to take 2.5 kilos (5 pounds) or more for 18 months. Among the participants overseen by the Internet, 45% were successful. And in the control group (comparison group), 28% were successful.

In the control group, will weigh every day had little impact on weight maintenance. Be weighed every day is a part of the solution. You must use this information to adjust, which does not happen spontaneously.

Weight control and better health does not come overnight. The program has helped people realize, says the author of the research.

Lose 9 Pounds in 11 days using Fat Loss 4 idiots. Check out http://www.fatloss4idiotsdietplan.info.

The first thing you need to do is script your day. Simply set aside 5 minutes today to plan out tomorrow. Write down what time you need to get up, what you’ll eat for breakfast, when you’ll do your workout, what foods you’ll have for snacks, lunches, and dinners.

It’s also important to write down when you might want to cheat on your diet and come up with two solutions to this problem. For example, if you know that on Wednesday you have meetings all afternoon Wednesday, but then you have to go right from your meeting at work into a family event, then you know you have an obstacle to healthy eating.

So you simply need to plan at least two solutions around that, whether it’s eating before the meeting and then having something ready to go in the car or on the bus on the way to their activity.

By planning ahead, you’ll know exactly what you should be doing for fat loss at every minute of the day. That way you won’t have to make any snap decisions on the spot, and you won’t give into temptation. Make a plan and stick to it and you will lose fat fast!

The second tip to help you avoid cheating on your diet is to simply “believe in yourself”. Basically if you have the self-belief in yourself that you aren’t a cheater, then you’re not going to cheat, but you have to have what they call honest self-belief in yourself.

So you can’t just say, “Oh, I’m not going to cheat,” but then not really believe it deep in your heart. You must truly believe in yourself. This is a mindset you must develop.

The third tip is preparing your food in advance and ties in with the planning tip I gave you at the start. You need to set aside time on the weekend or during the week to plan your meals, do your shopping, and prepare as much of the food as possible (cut up vegetables, batch cook chicken breasts, etc.).

Most people would be best off to do Sunday morning rather than Sunday evening or Saturday instead of Sunday depending on their day. You might also need to do a mini-session during the week.

Planning and preparing and doing the shopping and then scripting out the meals are essential to stop cheating on your diet. It’s a very serious thing. If you want to have great results, if you want to have advanced results, then you have to go beyond normal and do advanced things. So that’s a mind set that people have to understand.

The fourth tip is to get social support. I can’t recommend social support enough for people. You can’t do this on your own. You need help from others to stick to your fat loss diet. If you work in an office, then you need to get a nutrition buddy who will support your decisions but also hold you accountable.

Obviously the office can be an area of support, but it is also going to be the area of most temptations because you’re going to have those people who are just trying to be a good person by bringing in the donuts and shoving them in your face.

Then you’re going to have those people who really should know better than to be a jerk and tease you about your diet and fat loss goals. There’s always going to be those people and you just have to plan for those people.

You need to go back to the scripting idea I talked about earlier and come up with two solutions to these people that are just being a headache to you. You also need to seek out the social support nutrition buddies at work and find someone who you see is doing the same thing as you and has the same goals. Eat lunch with them!

You also need social support at the gym to avoid cheating on your diet. Find a workout buddy or just ask people that you know stuff because people that know stuff are very happy to help you stick to your diets and workouts.

Finally, at home, try and get your family behind you. That is a really big problem in some families where one - maybe for example the guy or the girl doesn’t have a hard time with weight and can eat whatever they want and it’s very hard for the other person. So, communication is big in the social support network there.

The fifth tip to help you avoid cheating on your diet is simple. I want you to brush your teeth after every meal when you think you might cheat. For example, most people are good all day till about 4pm, so make sure you brush your teeth after eating a healthy afternoon snack.

Eating after you brush your teeth just isn’t that much fun, so it should help you control your cravings. Chewing gum is another great option. So is having a Green Tea. You can also use these tips after dinner, because that is when the 2nd danger zone of diet cheating comes into play.

Those are all just routines that you need to develop in order to build the power over food, rather than allowing food to control you. Day by day, take baby steps to improve your power over food and you’ll stop cheating on your diet.

So believe in yourself, stay busy, keep your mind off food, and plan ahead for all the obstacles in your life and you’ll lose fat fast by sticking to your fat loss diet. This doesn’t happen overnight. This might be a two-year plan where you go from binging twice a week to taking it down to once every three months but you will be better off for life.

It might take you two years to do that, but you know what? If you’re 30, 40 or 50 now you’ve still got another 50 or 60 years left. You may as well start now and get that habit into place. So think long-term there. Even enjoy the small victories and you can pull it off. There are small victories every day.

You must try and make tomorrow better than today and don’t beat yourself down mentally about it because you’ve got a lot of meals over the course of your lifetime. Just try and make the rest and the next ones better. That is how you stop cheating on your diet and how you lose fat for life.

Grab your free workout at http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Craig’s fat loss workouts blog will help you lose fat fast with daily tips

You have permission to publish this article in your web sites, ezines or electronic publication, as long as the piece is used in its entirety including the resource box, all hyperlinks (HTML clickable) and references and copyright info

So what is the answer to losing the weight you want and looking your best? The truth is that is takes hard work and discipline to burn fat. You can use this two-part program to help you lose weight. And while it is not a magic pill, it is a scientific and proven approach that is the fastest way to lose fat quickly.

Before we reveal the formula, you need to understand how your body works. Your body stores excess calories as fat. So, in essence if you want to burn fat you have to limit your daily caloric intake to a level low enough that your body begins to use the stored calories for energy. Most people eat way too many calories on a daily basis and live a pretty sedentary lifestyle. Additionally, your metabolism or the rate at which your body burns calories for energy slows down with age.

Many young couples say that they gained weight when they got married and they never had a weight problem before. This is true for a couple of reasons. First, 20 is the threshold for your metabolism to begin to slow down. Second, when people get married eating becomes a way to connect and a social event. Instead of going for a romantic walk in the park, the newlyweds head for the freezer to get a bowl of ice cream and then to the couch to watch their favorite show. In order to turn the weight train around and burn fat, this couple will have to change their diet and exercise habits.

Here is the two-part formula for helping you lose weight quickly:

1. Diet: Decrease Calories to Burn Fat

To burn fat you need to know how many calories you body needs for daily functioning. This is called the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). You can probably find a calculator online to help you do the math here. But you can follow these simple steps to figure out your own BMR.

Use your goal weight (for example, 125 lbs.)
Multiply by 11 (women) or 12 (men): (125 X 11 = 1375)
Subtract 2% for every ten years after 20 years of age: 1375 - 1(1375 X .02) = 1210
Add 10% to account for the calories you burn during regular daily activities: 1210 + 121 = 1331 (This is the minimum daily calorie intake for a female between 30 and 39 years of age.)

Of course if you lead a very active lifestyle then you will need to add in additional values for the amount of calories that your burn during such activities as house cleaning for one hour (180) or running for one hour (800). But keep in mind that the idea here is to limit caloric intake so that you can burn fat.

With that said, you need to make healthy eating choices so that you will consume enough food to satisfy your appetite and get the vitamins and nutrients necessary. On the other hand, you also need to incorporate an exercise routine to help you burn fat from calories.

2. Interval Training: The Best Routine to Burn Fat

While it sounds like something that only professional athletes and body builders might do, this is the most effective cardio exercise that you can do to burn fat. Interval training is simply alternating high intensity periods of movement with rest or low intensity periods of movement.

To make this even easier, most elliptical and treadmill machines have an interval program that you can choose, built right in. Sadly though, people who are trying to burn fat choose the fat burning program because it sounds like the obvious choice. While you will burn fat with this program, the amount of fat burned for your efforts will be significantly less than it would with interval training.

Follow a basic interval routine of 85% maximum heart rate for high intensity and 65% maximum heart rate for low intensity. You will be sweating hard and breathing heavy, but you will burn fat fast.

For more information, click here: Burn Fat Quickly

Chris Jamison writes about life balance in the areas of Health & Fitness, Personal Growth, Financial Freedom, Relationship Advice, and Spirituality and Purpose. Visit Chris’ site at http://RoadmapsToSUCCESS.com. Roadmaps To SUCCESS, Your step-by-step guide to life balance