Throw Away Your Pain Pills
If you find yourself constantly reaching for pain pills, it may be time to look for a different solution for your problem. Pain pills were meant for temporary relief, but some discomfort can last for years because pain pills don’t address the underlying cause of the pain, just the pain itself. They often come with a high price to pay for that instant relief,which can include further injury or physical reactions to long term use.
Small muscle tears can cause big problems.
If you’re constantly finding yourself reaching for aspirin or even stronger pain medication, you may have a small problem that grew to a much larger one because it was never addressed properly in the first place. When you over use a muscle, it can cause micro-trauma, multiple small tears, over time that build scar tissue, which can shorten the muscles, pinched nerves and tendon problems. Besides the pain, many people find their muscles aren’t as strong as they were and may even have tingling and numbness. Pain pills can’t address those problems, but ART—active release technique—can.
Consider massage therapy as an alternative.
Massage therapy not only feels good, it can help eliminate pain. A massage can increase circulation that brings oxygen and nutrient laden blood to the area. It can loosen tight muscle tissue and relax the entire body in the process. You’ll see your range of movement improve, while also relieving pain from stiff muscles and injury. There are several different types of massage and the type used depends on the root of the pain.
Pain comes from both misalignment and injury.
Your nerves send a message to the brain that you’re experiencing pain. Sometimes, misalignment can cause those nerves to send messages of pain to the brain because the nerves are pinched and the body isn’t free to maintain it’s natural good health. Realigning the body through exercise and chiropractic manipulation is one way to bring pain relief without the side effects caused by drugs. They locate the problem and correct it, not mask it.
Even the most gentle and commonly used pain medications, aspirin, can cause problems, which include such things as stomach problems, gastritis and bleeding. You may be exchanging one pain for another.
Stronger prescription pain medications run the risk of dizziness, nausea and even addiction. They also make it more difficult to focus on tasks.
Returning the body to it’s natural state allows you to heal. The body was meant to heal itself and will if give the opportunity.
While massage therapy is a good way to relieve pain, it also can help relieve stress. The effects of stress can be just as disabling for the body as an injury.
Staying Healthy
It’s far better to focus on staying healthy than it is to spend thousands of dollars fighting disease. When you look at the term disease, you notice two things. Dis means not and ease means absence of difficulty. Put them together and it’s something that is not right which makes it more difficult for your body to function properly. By taking proper care of your body and eliminating those things that don’t allow it to function its best, your body can heal itself of almost any problem.
A healthy diet is one way to improve your overall health.
Your body is a machine and like any type of machine, it needs the right fuel. Sugary foods and highly processed foods offer nothing except problems. You wouldn’t put sugar in your car’s tank, why would you do it to yourself. Whole foods, foods that have minimum processing, have nutrients the body requires to function at its best. Being aware of healthy eating habits and practicing them is ultimately important to keeping your body at its best. Make sure you have plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables every day and keep junk food to a minimum.
Your body needs to move to be functioning at its best.
People don’t wear out, but they do rust out. If you aren’t involved in a program of regular exercise, you need to start one. Regular exercise offers so many benefits besides building muscle tissue and burning fat tissue. It helps boost the immune system and has been proven to lower the potential for serious illnesses, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. Exercise can also help prevent misalignment by holding your skeletal system properly in line.
If it hurts too much to move, you need to seek help.
Some people don’t exercise because they simply hurt too bad after they do. That’s not normal unless you’ve overworked muscle groups or aren’t properly aligned. Small injuries to muscles can create scar tissue that leads to big pain. Misalignment can also lead to excess pain. If pain is stopping you from everyday activities or exercising, you need to seek expert advice to eliminate it and get back on the road to good health.
Make certain you drink plenty of water. Adequate fluid intake is ultimately important to all organs from the skin to the kidneys. You’ll flush your body of toxins with adequate fluid intake.
Learn to deal with stress. You can’t eliminate stress. It’s everywhere. Stress plays a huge role in disease. Meditation, massage and mental gymnastics can help you deal with it. So can exercise.
Get plenty of sleep at night. Sleep is one of the most forgotten keys to good health. It refreshes the mind and the body.
Learn to laugh and enjoy life. Laughter is one of the best medicines. Studies show people who have a happy social life live longer than those who don’t. Find a way to give of yourself or a project you love.
Make Health A Lifestyle Change
When you make health a lifestyle change, you’re doing more than just exercising and eating healthier. You’re focusing on all the things that help keep you healthy and fit. Whether you want to lose weight, build your strength and endurance or just tone your body, exercise is just the beginning on your road to fitness. Eating healthier is also mandatory, just as getting adequate sleep and learning to calm your mind. Don’t forget to increase your daily intake of water. That’s often a neglected area when people talk about good health.
You may need help knowing where to start.
Before you start any fitness program you need to check with your health care professional to insure you don’t have any condition that could be exacerbated with too much exercise. That will allow you to comfortably take on any stress from exercise without worrying it’s too much. If you need the help of an expert, our personal trainers will identify your level of fitness and create a program designed especially for it. If you have any physical problems or special needs, they’ll make adjustments to the form to accommodate them.
Losing weight may be as simple as learning to eat healthier.
Eating healthier doesn’t mean dieting. Diets always end and then you go back to old eating habits that made you gain weight in the first place. Diets are also restrictive and difficult to live with on a daily basis. Eating healthier simply means making wiser choices when it comes to food. It might mean learning to cook food differently or eliminating most processed foods and replacing it with whole foods. Some small changes, such as swapping out some of the avocado in guacamole for cooked zucchini may seem small but they save calories. Avocado is a healthy food, but it’s high in calories. You’ll get the benefit of the avocado, but have a lower calorie count with this swap.
Learn how to do each exercise correctly.
If you start your new year determined to lose weight and begin a routine of exercises that minute, you need to make sure you know how to do each exercise correctly or face the potential of injury. Sometimes inhaling when you should be exhaling or turning your wrist wrong can cause an injury that sets you back for months. Sometimes it just minimizes the benefits of exercising. Get help from a personal trainer to learn how to do each exercise correctly for a healthy start for your workout program.
Get plenty of sleep. Exercise will help you sleep sounder, but you need to make sure you’ve carved the time out for it. Somewhere along the line, getting fewer hours of sleep has become a badge of courage, when in reality it’s a health risk.
Make sure drinking extra water every day is on your list of musts for a healthy life. If you’re exercising more, you’ll need to replace the water lost in sweat. Water helps flush your system, keeping you healthier and making your skin look fabulous.
Take care of stress. The hormones created by stress can kill you unless you burn them off with exercise. However, learning to cope with stress helps. Learn to meditate or get a massage to help you eliminate the stresses of the day.
Make whole foods a primary way of eating. Whole foods are the least processed foods and contain the most nutrients. Eating an apple is far better than eating a dish of applesauce.
What Is Your Resolution
Everyone starts the new year with a resolution. It may be to save more money, but in many cases, resolutions have to do with fitness. What is your resolution? Do you want to be thinner, fitter or just feel better? Resolutions are nothing more than wishes unless you change them into goals. That means you need to first identify whether they’re achievable, provide a time frame and create steps to reach the goal. For instance, saying I want to be a millionaire by the end of the year may be a resolution and it has a time frame, but how are you going to do it? It’s also so big, it’s not really believable by your mind, so you need to break it down to smaller achievable goals and identify how you’ll achieve those.
Fitness can be a resolution, but you need to make it a goal to achieve it.
If you want to lose weight, you first have to know how much you weigh or have some other benchmark, such as skinny pants that fit way too tight, to get a starting point. If you use a scale, you can watch the weight drop and the skinny pants fit loser the closer you come to your goal. You also need to make the goal specific and provide a time frame for it. Breaking a huge goal down to smaller ones that are more easily achieved will keep you on track and give you a sense of accomplishment along the way.
Don’t feel bad about asking for help.
Sometimes achieving a goal requires the help of others. Some of the greatest and most successful men in history reached their goals with the help of experts in their field of endeavor. Finding and expert for a fitness goal can be as easy as securing the aid of a personal trainer. In fact, a trainer can help you set goals and show you the steps to achieve them. I love helping people do this and watching how excited they are when they reach their first mini-goal and move on to the next one.
Raise the bar each time.
One of the problems of getting fitter is that most people forget to raise the bar as they achieve each step and find themselves stuck at a certain level. That’s another reason to get help from a trainer. I love watching people achieve goals but also know that they have to take on the next challenge to improve their fitness and health even more.
Get an overall goal and break it down to smaller achievable goals. Then set steps you’ll take to achieve those goals.
Find a way to celebrate your success. You might want to treat yourself to a new outfit or a night on the town when you achieve it.
Make sure you check with your health care professional before you start any fitness program.
Learn to do each exercise correctly to avoid injury and maximize the benefits. Injury can set you back and prevent you from working out for months.
Planning Helps Your Heart And Your Budget
If you plan meals ahead of time, create a shopping list and make sure you’re taking advantage of all coupons and specials, you’ll not only have more money in your pocket, you could be making wiser choices when it comes to eating. You can save both your health and your money by taking a little time. If you think you’re overwhelmed with work or it doesn’t pay that much to do it. Consider the fact that one hour a week could save anywhere from $25 to $60 dollars in groceries. You’ll be averaging $42.00+ an hour, just for doing it, maybe even more.
Plan your meals and your leftovers.
How many times have you come home from work, too tired to even think about what to have for supper. It’s those days you’re tempted to stop at “Burger Quickie” or other fast food place to get your family burgers and fries, even though you know it’s not only unhealthy, it often costs a $20 for just that meal. If you plan meals ahead, or better yet, make big pots of healthy foods on the weekend and freeze meals ahead for those late work nights, you’ll be saving a bunch. That $20 could be enough for several meals when you plan ahead and make your own quick meals.
Look for sales on healthy foods, like fresh produce and clip those coupons.
Having healthy food available doesn’t have to cost a fortune. You’ll often find manager specials in the produce department and coupons that can make healthier food items more affordable. Avoid premade food, since it’s not only more expensive, it can contain unhealthy ingredients. If you get a managers special on produce or find a super buy, buy extra. Cut up some of the fresh fruits or veggies as quick snacks in the fridge and cook the rest, packing some away for later use.
Stop at roadside stands or farmer’s markets if you see them and have time.
Many times people selling produce at a roadside stand are just trying to make a few extra dollars or prevent their extra garden bounty from going to waste. Prices are often extremely inexpensive. Going late in the day to any farmers market often gives big rewards. While much of the produce is picked over, most farmers are willing to sell it cheaper rather than letting it go to waste.
Make homemade snacks and get the rest of the family to help. Whether you want to create rutabaga chips for your snack or baked pumpkin seeds, kids will enjoy helping.
Package your food for your family size or in individual containers. Some people freeze soup in ice cube trays and then repack them in a big freezer bag. When they’re ready to cook, they just take out what they need. Muffin tins are also good for this.
Get an app for your phone from your favorite groceries. Most stores let you sign up for an app that either loads coupons onto your shoppers card or sends you coupons via texts. Sometimes stores offer both. Go to their website and see what they offer.
Don’t forget the coupons when you shop and the ones at checkout. Keep a container or file for coupons. You can put them in order of expiration date or file them by category. If you check your coupon file and match it to sales before you create your menu you’ll save a lot.
Best Nuts For The Holiday And Your Diet
Losing weight over the holidays is quite a challenge. There are delicious desserts, holiday cookies and an array of delectable dishes that are sure to send your calories counter into overdrive. There are also bowls of nuts in shells to tempt you. But wait, sometimes nuts can be your best ally in the fight against the fat. That means the type of nut that grows on a plant, not crazy Aunt Ethel that tells you that you have such a pretty face…but! Some of the best nuts not only fight fat, they also add extra benefits to your diet.
Try a Brazil nut as a weight loss booster.
Some foods can actually help make you thinner. Brazil nuts, the ones often left in the bowl after all the cashews and pecans are long gone, are those types of nuts. They contain a nutrient called selenium that not only helps boost your immune system and makes your reproductive system stronger, it boosts metabolism too. That’s a great help for weight loss. A Brazil nut also helps by providing heart healthy fats, magnesium, potassium, zinc, copper and riboflavin. Even though Brazil nuts are healthy, don’t eat a whole package. Plus cracking these nuts can provide an excess amount of exercise to open just one!
Crack those walnuts and feel no guilt.
Nuts contain a lot of fat, especially the walnut, but it’s good fat. It’s polyunsaturated fat that actually signals your body to active a gene that shuts down fat storage, while improving your ability to use insulin. It provides scarce and powerful antioxidants, promotes heart health, fights cancer, fights diabetes and promotes brain health. Eating a handful a day will increase your feeling of fullness, thus making you eat less. Sprinkle them on salads for protein or on your cereal in the morning.
Almonds help the weight loss challenge.
One study showed that people who added a quarter of a cup of almonds to their calorie-restricted diet each day improves the potential for weight loss after just two weeks. In fact, if you eat these little miracle foods right before you workout, it’s even better. They contain L-arginine, an amino acid that aids in burning fat and carbs during exercise. They also can boost your energy level during the workout, so you accomplish more.
Pistachios are power packed for dieters and can help reduce the BMI when eaten daily as a snack.
Considering peanuts as part of the nut group. Even though they official are rhizomes and part of the legume family, not nuts, peanut butter can help you keep your sugar levels from dipping. Use the all natural type made strictly from ground peanuts. You’ll have to stir it before using it.
Cashews can make you feel full and be a great midday snack. The high fiber content and difficulty of digesting the cashew prevents many of the calories from “sticking.” You often “flush” them away, so even if a handful is 160 calories, you will have the effect of fewer calories on your body.
Be aware that roasted nuts, with the oil still clinging to them, are more fattening than fresh or shelled nuts without extra ingredients or oils. Sugar coated nuts or other flavorful types are also higher in calories and less beneficial for your diet.
What Kind Of Exercise is Right For You?
Any kind of exercise will help you be healthier, unless it’s just lifting a spoon to your mouth. Getting your body moving is one of the most important things you can do for yourself. If you can’t start a formal exercise program right now, make an attempt to increase your activity by parking further away from the store when you shop, taking the stairs and dancing while doing household chores. Every little bit helps. To reach specific goals, using the services of one of our personal trainers can make reaching that goal faster and easier.
Everyone needs four types of exercise.
You need four basic types of exercise, cardiovascular, flexibility, balance and strength. Every program will include those four types but in varying amounts and intensity. Building strength without building flexibility is a recipe for injury, since the flexibility training improves the range of motion. Most trainers will use exercises that work on several of those things at once, such as functional fitness workouts that may combine strength, cardio and flexibility in one exercise.
Improve the strength of weaker muscle groups.
A personal trainer first identifies your fitness level and any weaker muscle groups. Weak muscle groups can be one reason for injuring the same area repeatedly. If a larger muscle group is too weak, the body compensates and uses a smaller muscle group to do the same job. That causes the large group to remain weak and sometimes get weaker. Many of the movements required of the large muscle group require more strength than the small group should have to perform and often ends in injury. A personal trainer will work with you to build those weaker muscles so your body is working the way it was meant to work.
Burn fat, build endurance or just tone your body.
No matter what your goal, there’s a group of exercises that are perfect to help you achieve it. Even though many of these are used to help clients accomplish different goals the number of reps and intensity will vary based on the clients goal. Knowing not only the various exercises, but the best way of applying them to the client’s goal is the job of a personal trainer and the reason a trainer’s services are invaluable. Trainers also can work with you to improve your performance in almost any sport.
All types of exercise improve your health, but specific types improve specific conditions. Osteoporosis, for instance, responds to strength building and weight bearing exercises.
No matter what type of exercise you get, you’ll be able to lower your blood pressure and control your blood sugar level better when you workout regularly.
Trainers can show you the best type of exercises to help you burn fat rapidly.
Building bulky muscles may be your goal or just toning muscles. A personal trainer has workouts to accomplish both goals.
Dieting doesn’t work. That’s because it always ends and you go back to your old eating habits. Strict dieting can also put your body into starvation mode, which slows the metabolism. You’ll gain weight easier when you end the diet. Instead, eat healthier and more frequently. Smaller more frequent meals can keep the calorie burning ovens on high.
Add fat to your diet.
Not all fat is bad. In fact, some is quite healthy and will help you lose weight. Omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish oil and flaxseed oil actually help burn off fat. A study done with rats on an exercise program showed that those fed omega-3 fatty acid supplements lost more weight than those that just exercised. You don’t have to stick with fish oil , you can eat walnuts and eggs to get it too.
Get plenty of sleep. While it may sound counterproductive, adequate sleep can help you boost your metabolism. You’ll have more energy and burn more calories.
Drink plenty of water. Even if you aren’t trying to lose weight, drinking adequate water is important for all parts of your body. It flushes out toxins and rehydrates your system.
Try green tea for water retention. Green tea is a powerful diuretic that can help eliminate water-weight. Just like drinking regular water, green tea will flush your system while the catechin in green tea also helps burn fat.
Stick with the program. It’s tough at first to believe you can control your body’s metabolism, but after a short time, you’ll be a believer. Stick with the program and you’ll see results.
One Step at a Time
Getting fit is a matter of taking one step after another toward a fitter healthier life. You don’t have to change your life all at once to become the healthiest person you can be. One reason people fail to start a fitness program is they think they have to sign up at a gym, throw out all their old foods and start eating rice wafers and celery. That’s simply not true. No matter what your fitness goal, you can start anywhere you want making one small change at a time.
Eat healthier by making small changes.
Eating healthier isn’t dieting. Diets don’t work. They restrict your eating and often leave you hungry. Those that cut calories severely can even put you into starvation mode, where you body slows metabolism to conserve calories, making it harder to loose weight and easier to gain it once the diet ends and they do end. That ending is the real reason they don’t work, you then go back to your old eating pattern that put weight on in the first place. Eating healthier can occur by making small changes, such as eating wild rice instead of white rice or using Greek yogurt to substitute for sour cream. It might mean having healthy snacks ready for mid-afternoon or morning to stave off hunger so you don’t overeat at your next meal. These are all small changes that add up to big calorie savings.
Move more and more frequently.
Make it a point to move. Rather than circling the parking lot until you find a parking space close to the door, park further away and enjoy the quick walk. Take the stairs at work rather than the elevator. If you’re building is tall and you’re on a top floor, start by getting off the elevator a floor or two below your office and taking the stairs the rest of the way. Have fun and play with your children, cats or dogs. When you go to the mall, walk all the way around the mall first and then start your shopping trip. As you build strength, wait until you have a load of packages, then walk the mall. These are all ways to start exercising before you have a formal program.
Sign up for group training if you’re not sure you’re ready for a personal trainer.
Group training cost less than private sessions, but you still get all the benefits of having a personal trainer. Choose an option that allows you to go two to three nights a week and one that doesn’t last long, such as a six weeks course. Most of the time, people love the results they see after just a few weeks, they’re ready for a private program.
Have fun when you workout or get exercise. Exercise shouldn’t be grueling. Dancing is exercise and it’s fun!
Say no to an unhealthy treat at least once each week. If you’re in the habit of eating a donut each morning, substitute an apple one day a week for a while, then go to two days a week until you no longer have a donut during the week.
Shut off the television or put it on music videos and dance to the music for at least one or two songs. It doesn’t have to be a fast dance and you don’t have to be able to dance. Just move to the music joyfully.
Try something new and healthy each week when you eat. Try a new recipe, such as using Spaghetti squash instead of pasta or making a cauliflower crust pizza.
Start Some Healthy Habits
You can improve your life when you give up some of your old habits, such as being a total couch potato, and replace them with some healthy habits. Let’s face it, you go through half of the day in a mindless blur, doing the same old thing. It’s time to change that and add a new dimension in your life. Maybe it’s just as simple as climbing the stairs at work rather than taking the elevator or parking in the first parking spot you see and walking into the building rather than driving around the lot for a half hour trying to find a closer place. That small change can help you become fitter.
Be healthier by being more adventurous at mealtime.
Shun the fast foods and start being creative in the kitchen. You don’t have to work hard to achieve healthier. For instance, you can make delicious spaghetti with a squash. Just cut the spaghetti squash in half, rub a little olive oil on it and season it with garlic, salt and pepper. Bake it cut side down and when you take it, it shreds with a fork into yummy spaghetti style strings you can eat plain or with other ingredients. It’s healthier and a lot of fun to introduce to your family. They’ll love it. Eating healthy is an adventure.
Start making movement a goal.
No matter what you do for a living, adding a little more movement to your day can reap rewards. If you work at a desk, try some isometrics to tighten your stomach or just stretch when you get a chance. There are plenty of ways to add more exercise to your day. It doesn’t have to be formal exercise to benefit you. It makes adding a formal exercise program even easier.
Regular exercise becomes addictive. Part of the reason is the hormones the brain sends when you do it. Endorphins and dopamine are two of the feel good hormones that will make you want to go back and exercise more.
When you start healthier habits, you’ll find them so rewarding you’ll start dropping old unhealthy habits and search for more ways to improve your life.
You can prevent serious conditions or make them more manageable when you adopt a healthier lifestyle. High blood pressure, osteoporosis, diabetes and even depression are more easily controlled when you exercise regularly.
Living healthier can help you burn off hormones created by stress and build your self confidence. You’ll walk taller and have more presence. Others will notice and treat you with more respect.
Find Your Endurance
If you think you’ve lost all your get up and go, you can find your endurance again with a little bit of work. While all types of fitness are important, whether it’s flexibility, strength, balance or endurance, stamina and endurance seems to disappear faster than the others. If you’re huffing and puffing after one flight of stairs, you need to work to get back the energy and stamina of your youth. It’s not magic, it’s a labor of love you can have for your body that will reflect in every area of your life.
Exhaustion is no laughing matter.
You might joke about your backside dragging, but it’s really not funny when you don’t have the energy to do everything you want to experience that makes life worth living. You’ll get more out of life the more you work on building back the stamina and endurance you once had, or never had and wish you did. It takes perseverance but is well worth the effort. You’ll be able to do all those things you’ve dreamed about but didn’t have the energy to tackle.
You’ll build more than just endurance when you workout.
Working out and regular exercise does more for you than build strength, endurance and flexibility. It gives you a new lease on life and improves your self image. You’ll see a dramatic change in the way you think about other challenges and be willing to take the risk to achieve other life goals that may have intimidated you previously. Others will notice the change in your demeanor and you’ll notice they treat you with more respect.
You’ll have energy to do more and cut your doctor bills in the process.
Many of the illnesses in today’s society come from inactivity and obesity. In fact, obesity is the number cause of preventable illnesses and death today, surpassing smoking several years ago. When you workout on a regular basis to increase your endurance, you do even more than that. You lengthen the telomeres that protect the chromosomes, stimulate the brain to increase antioxidant production, shed weight, burn off the excess hormones from stress and stimulate the production of hormones that make you feel good.
You can combine a healthy diet with exercise for endurance to shed pounds faster.
You’ll build your self-esteem just by starting a program, consider how great you’ll feel when you start seeing results.
A personal trainer can show you ways to exercise that get faster results.
Your libido will improve as your endurance improves. That’s a good reason to workout as a couple if you have a significant other in your life.