Month: August 2022

The Best Belly Fat Exercise – Expert Tips For Stripping That Fat & Creating Your Dream Body Fast

Have you pushed yourself to the limits doing stomach crunches and sit ups just to get the Keira Knightley six pack abs of your dreams? Does it seem that all your efforts are nothing but an epic failure? Have you been struggling with the same love handles since high school?

That’s disheartening, indeed. But sulking will further put your efforts to waste. First mistakes are always forgiven but it doesn’t mean you should stop trying. Rise above the challenge!

Every second attempt is your chance to correct the wrongs and prove yourself. With the right attitude, proper diet and an effective belly fat exercise, those washboard abs hiding beneath your stomach will expose themselves quicker than you think.

You have to recheck your methods. Whoever said that you can lose fat on a specific section of your body is misinformed. If you want to shed off those layers of fats in your stomach, you have to eliminate your entire body fats altogether.

Crunches will only shape your abdominal muscles but they don’t really burn your fats. If you want a flat stomach, you should remove the flab covering your muscles by changing your eating habits. You have to supplement your meal plan with cardiovascular exercises and resistance training. Doing this will help the body burn more calories than what it consumes. Eventually, your body will have to burn your stored calories in the form of fats.

Generally, men need to lower their body fat to 10% while women should have as low as 14%. You must calculate your calorie intake until you reach this goal. Once you do, you can start crunching your way to that celebrity-like chiseled stomach.…

How to Teach Your Child About Bike Safety

Your goal: have your child grab a helmet with a smile, get on the bike, pedal a few times and test the brakes before reaching the road where they are traffic-aware. Here’s how.

Helmets

Make wearing helmets easy. Hang them right next to the garage door. If the bikes stand when stored, then helmets can hang on the handle bars. No helmet, no bike. Make it a hard and fast rule. As a parent, wear your helmet. Let kids pick colors for theirs. Tell stories of helmets saving lives in crashes. If a child rides bear headed, lock the bike up for a week.

Extra gear encourages a cyclist “look”. The look always includes a helmet. Gear is expensive so this tact is not for everyone. Jerseys, bike shorts, and bike gloves are among the assortment. You could put photos of “real” cyclists (who wear helmets) up somewhere near your bikes.

Safety tip: Helmets are made for one crash. Throw a helmet out after any head impact.

A Bike In Good Working Order

Start with you. Make a “parking spot” for bikes. Purchase an air pump. Pump up the tires yourself a few times. We bought an air pump with a gauge and instructed our children not to let the neighborhood children use it. Inadvertently, we gave immediate importance to all facets of bike safety. We pumped up a lot of neighbor’s tires ourselves!

Safety tip: Adjust your child seat so that it is hip high.

Good Habits

Ask your child to grab their helmet because you want to see them ride. As soon as they are pedaling, tell them to brake. Then ask how the tires feel, to raise their awareness. Remind them to always brake once before they reach the road. If your house is on a hill brake in the garage. Don’t test breaks when you need them! Most people hear or feel flat tires. Hence, the pump.

Traffic awareness

Keep very young riders off the road. Give them the safety of a circle, empty parking lot or park with supervision. When the rare car comes along shout ‘Get to the side.” to your child. It will become a reflex for them.

Get ready for the road. Walk a bike on the “right side”. Look over your left shoulder to check traffic. Now, let your beginner practice while riding. Watch for swerving when they glance over their shoulder. Do you have several riders? Set a single file order. No passing! Plan to pull over to the side when a car passes if practical.

Safety tip: Never let your child shoot out your driveway (its downhill and really fast) into traffic.

Road safety is HUGE. This is just awareness!

A safe, happy, ready bike and rider are waiting for you (likely impatiently).…

Diet For Constipation That Helps

Knowing the best diet for constipation can relieve a person of the inability to expel the body’s solid waste.

Increasing dietary fiber and water intake is effective in treating circumscription and also promotes intestinal health. Whole grains, fruits and vegetables are good sources of fiber.

Cereals like bran and oatmeal are also rich in fiber and fresh fruits like cantaloupe and watermelons have high water content that help fight difficulty in bowel movement.

There are foods that needed to be avoided though like cheese, eggs and meats since they are considered as high fat foods that are low in fiber. Increasing fiber intake generally helps keep the digestive system health.

Why is fiber important in a person’s diet for constipation?

Fiber-rich foods increase the size of the stool and speed up its passage through the body. If you find it difficult to digest foods rich in fiber, then choose to eat soluble fiber since it is easier to digest. An excellent source of soluble fiber are dried fruits like figs, prunes and apricots. It is also found in apples, lentils, breads and barley.

Is a high-fiber diet enough to relieve infrequent bowel movement?

It is also important to drink lots of water and exercise regularly. Fluids help soften the stool making it easier to excrete. Coffee and carbonated drinks must be avoided or taken in minimal amounts.

An early morning glass of water helps maintain normal bowel movements. Regular exercise helps keep feces soft and easy to pass through the intestines.

In addition to the regular diet for constipation are laxatives that may be in the form of capsules or pills. They increase stool mobility and improve a patient’s condition however too much use of it can result to muscle weakness. Laxatives are only recommended when natural remedies fail.…

The Danger of Crash Diets – Why Crazy Diet Plans May Harm You

Often people remember to lose weight only when they have a very short period of time to do so, like before a reunion or a wedding. This leads people to try crash diets: weight loss programs which make you eat very little in order to generate a fast and furious weight loss. While this may be just what you want to achieve, know that these crazy diets may cause you long term health damage and even disrupt your long term weight loss efforts.

Why can crash diets actually be bad for your long term weight loss efforts?

The reason is metabolic slowdown. When you cut down your calorie intake drastically, your body reacts by burning less and less calories. This is an internal survival mechanism which has developed over the course of our existence since the time when our forefathers lived in the wild and food was scarce. Our body doesn’t realize that you’re dieting. It believes that you’re starving and in fact have no choice in the matter.

What your body does to protect you when you use crash diets is to slow down your metabolism so that you burn fewer and fewer calories each day. This means that you need to eat fewer and fewer calories to continue losing weight since you’re burning a lot less as well. It also means that once you stop following this crash diet and begin eating normally again, that you may gain all the weight back and more.

This wouldn’t have happened if you followed a more sensible diet plan with a more gradual weight loss.

In addition, going on one of these low calorie ultra-strict crazy diet plans may cause you health damage in the form of fatigue, skin damage, irritability, hair loss, and simply make you look tired, unenergetic, and even ill. This may not be the kind of look you wish to have when you get to your event.

Therefore, I recommend sticking to a more sensible weight loss plan. You can still lose weight fast, just not crazy-fast. You will look better and be able to more easily maintain your new weight for many years to come.…

Are You Spinning Your Wheels? 3 Tips to Motivate You to Move

Stuck. Frustrated. Guilty. Restless. Lethargic. Sedentary. Disappointed.

These are some of the words many of us use to describe how we feel when we are in a rut and don’t take action–or don’t even want to–although we know we should. And one area that all too often suffers is exercising for health.

These days, we are all so busy. Getting out of the house, pushing away from the computer, leaving the office to do something physical–it just seems too unimportant and hard to bother with when we’re overbooked and overwhelmed. And once those excuses and procrastination settle in, we decide it’s too late. Better luck tomorrow, we say. Yes, tomorrow for sure is the day I get some exercise.

Sound familiar?

Make today the day, friends, not tomorrow. I, for one, believe that spinning on a bicycle is preferable and much more productive than just “spinning my wheels” with inaction and frustration. Ready to get those new wheels? Here are a few motivating thoughts to move you along.

1) “The hardest part is putting on your sneakers.” That’s what I often say to my patients and coaching clients. So often, once you take the first step, the follow-through is easy.

Action step: Buy new sneakers. Also get yourself some workout clothes you’ll enjoy putting on. Not expensive, just new will do it. Comfortable, breathable clothing and correctly fitted shoes can make all the difference. Feeling good is great motivation to do even more for your wellbeing.

2) Make an appointment with yourself. Leaving exercising for “when you feel like it” will usually result in a lack of action and a plethora of excuses why today is not the day.

Action step: Treat exercise like any other important commitment. Write it in your calendar or appointment book. Set your computer to send you a message or reminder at the appointed time. Program your phone to ring. Get an accountability partner to call you. Hire a trainer to come to your house, or plan to meet someone at the gym or for a walk.

3) Visualize the high and low–then choose the high. Imagine how invigorated your body and mind will be at the end of a good workout (yes!). Now picture how disappointed and lethargic you’ll feel if you skip it (darn!). Wouldn’t your energy be better spent on revving up your circulation and working to meet your health goals than remorse?

Action step: Start slowly, but start! Got to begin sometime, so how about now? It doesn’t matter that it’s a small step. It’s the beginning of something bigger.

Don’t be overly self-critical; it just becomes an excuse. Not feeling that you look good enough to even show up at the gym? OK, skip the gym and spend thirty minutes on a brisk walk instead. And when you meet a commitment milestone, don’t forget to reward yourself, too–just not with junk food!

Spring is around the corner, and it’s time to release winter lethargy and pounds. Let’s all begin to get in shape and prepare for increased activity, slowly but surely.…