Fit Talk

I have a passion for exercising that most people can’t comprehend. I love to workout; I love the challenge of surpassing my personal records. I have belonged to a gym near my house for about three years. Throughout these years, it has been interesting to observe the four types of gym members: the passionates, the faithfuls, the sporadics, and the never-goers.

The first type, the passionate group, consists of fanatic people who basically live at the gym. Like me, the people who belong to this group love to workout. You can see them sweating away one night and the next morning they are back at it; it’s as if they never left the gym. These people are talented; they can read a magazine and listen to music while running on the treadmill. They can talk on the phone, watch TV, and burn calories on the elliptical machine all at the same time. These enthusiasts don’t just exercise for twenty minutes and call it quits; they exercise for at least an hour, seven days a week. When they exercise, the passionate group really exercises. They challenge themselves to go the extra mile—literally. These people were not always as passionate about exercising as they are now; they were once a part of the faithful group.

The second type of gym members is the faithful group. These individuals are very dedicated to exercising and visit the gym at least three times a week. They are determined to achieve their goals, but they don’t go to huge extremes to attain them. They exercise for a reasonable amount of time—usually 30-40 minutes per session. Some of them even lift weights. Most of the faithfuls joined the gym to lose some weight and shape up. Sometimes, once the faithfuls are satisfied with the outcome, they relapse to the sporadic group.

The third type of people who exercise at a health club is the sporadic group. Every once in a while the members of this group step foot into a gym. At first, they do a great job of exercising on a regular basis, but then they start to skip a few days here and there. Soon, instead of running on the treadmill, they are watching re-runs of their favorite TV shows while eating a bag of Doritos. These people will continue to vegetate until something or someone motivates them to take action. It may be their doctor’s warning about the health risks of a sedentary lifestyle or the ten pounds of stuffing they ate during Thanksgiving dinner that ignites their willpower. Once the benefits of exercising outweigh the comforts of staying at home, the sporadic type is back at the gym. The individuals who belong to the sporadic group go through a cycle of emotions related to inspiration, lost momentum, and apathy. They start by exercising on a regular basis, then skipping a few days, and finally they stop going altogether.

The last group is the never-goers. In order to fulfill the first step in their New Year’s resolutions, these individuals join a gym, but that’s as far as they get. When February rolls around, their first bill is opened with a puzzled look. They exclaim to themselves, “What? I belong to a gym?” Still, they pay the bill thinking that someday they’ll take the time to hit the gym.

Next time you are in a gym, take time to evaluate the people who are working out. You will see the passionate group—the fanatics who bike to the gym, exercise for an hour, and bike home. You will also see the committed group trying to lose a few pounds after Christmas. You may see the sporadic group finally taking Dr. Phil’s most recent advice. On a rare occasion, you may run into a new member of the never-goers who just joined the gym. One characteristic of all four groups is that they have started their journey of a healthier lifestyle.

I thought you might enjoy a few Pilates workouts for free!

Here are four workouts to help you achieve your goal of a fit life:

1. Pilates: How to get legs to die for

2. 10 min Pilates abs

3. 10min Pilates butt & thighs

4. Advanced Pilates: Rollovers

1. Improved posture
Your spine supports the weight of your body and allows your body to move with ease and comfort. That’s the theory anyway. But in practice, hours spent sitting in front of a computer screen or slumped in front of a TV means that the spine’s natural S shape is lost, resulting in back pain and rounded shoulders. Pilates helps to re-align the spine and with that comes better posture.

2. Relief from back pain
As mentioned above, a great deal of lower back pain comes from poor posture and our daily mistreatment of our spines. By re-aligning your spine and imprioving your posture, lower back pain can often be eliminated entirely.

3. A good night’s sleep
Ask anyone to name three things essential for life and you will be told, water, air and food. Few people will mention sleep and yet it too is essential to life. A disturbing ten million prescriptions for sleeping pills are issued every year in England alone - a figure that gives you some idea odf the numbers of people who suffer from insomnia. Pilates can help stretch muscles, releasing tension and pain, and oit can also help trigger natural sleep responses.

4. Increase your strength and stamina without adding muscle bulk
Pilates helps increase both your strength and stamina without adding unwanted bulk because it focuses on developing your “core” muscles - muscles found in your abdominal and pelvic regions as well as in your back. By toning and stretching these muscles, and by correcting your posture, your nantural strength and stamina will improve in leaps and bounds.

5. Pilates can help prevent osteoporosis
One in two women and one in five men over the age of 50 in the UK will break a bone, mainly because of a bone disorder called osteoporosis. Osteoporosis affects three million people in the UK every year, with bones (and particularly those of the spine, wrist and hips) becoming thin and weak and susceptible to fractures. By promoting good posture and balance, pilates can actively help you avoid becoming one of those people.

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10 Reasons to try Pilates

These days, it is hard to know which exercise programs are fads and which are here to stay. And it is equally hard to know which offer real benefit for your particular needs. If you have a spine condition or are concerned about keeping your spine healthy, you may have heard of Pilates. You may have wondered, “What is it?” and, “Could it be good for me?”What is Pilates?
Pilates has been around a long time and has recently received popular attention. More importantly, the key concepts and principles of Pilates are backed by current scientific knowledge. It is a low-impact form of exercise that focuses on spinal range of motion, abdominal and back strengthening, flexibility, and breathing patterns. For a variety of reasons Pilates has become an exercise program recommended by many healthcare professionals for those with certain spine conditions, as well as for the prevention and wellness benefits it offers.

History of Pilates
Pilates is not a newly created form of exercise; ballet dancers have been using it for decades to keep in top physical condition. Pilates is named for its developer, Joseph Pilates. Born in Germany in 1880, Joseph was a sickly child. His childhood experiences with rickets, asthma, and rheumatic fever stimulated his abiding interest in physical fitness later in life. In early adulthood, Joseph was a boxer and circus performer. As a nurse in a war camp in Germany during WWI, he worked with wounded soldiers doing physical training to help them recover. It was during this time that he began to develop the exercises and equipment now identified as “Pilates”. He immigrated to the United States in 1926 and opened a studio in New York City offering his clients the unique and specialized form of fitness training that he developed. Joseph Pilates described his method as one that “makes us responsible and in control of our own bodies and health.”

Six Basic Principles
Pilates is a dynamic and total body exercise program that focuses on 6 basic principles: concentration, control, centering, fluidity, precision, and breathing. While performing any of the more than 500 exercises, these principles are applied whether you are on the mat or on one of the five specialized pieces of equipment used in Pilates.

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http://www.spineuniverse.com/displayarticle.php/article2700.html

Joseph Pilates

Pilates was formed by Joseph Pilates during the First World War with the proposal to improve the rehabilitation program for the many returning veterans. Joseph Pilates believed mental and physical health are essential to one another. He recommended a few, precise movements emphasizing control and form to aid injured soldiers in regaining their health by strengthening, stretching,and stabilizing key muscles. Pilates created “The Pilates Principles” to condition the entire body: proper alignment, centering, concentration, control, precision, breathing, and flowing movement.Pilates sessions help increase strength and flexibility, lengthen the body, and align the spine. The method does not build muscle mass. The fields of fitness and rehabilitation ^{[citation needed]} often encourage Pilates for its focus on the muscles of the abdomen and lower back. The focus on strengthening the core muscles and improving postural awareness especially relieve and prevent back pain.

Joseph Pilates wrote two books concerning the Pilates method: Return to Life through Contrology and Your Health: A Corrective System of Exercising That Revolutionizes the Entire Field of Physical Education.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilates

HOW TO QUIT CAFFEINE

Before you really make the choice to quit an addiction, you must first understand the reasoning. If you are simply doing it because DLM said it works, you are going to fail.

In humans, caffeine is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant, having the effect of temporarily warding off drowsiness and restoring alertness. Beverages containing caffeine, such as coffee, tea, soft drinks and energy drinks enjoy great popularity; caffeine is the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive substance, but unlike most other psychoactive substances, it is legal and unregulated in nearly all jurisdictions. In North America, 90% of adults consume caffeine daily. - Wikipedia

So we already get a glimpse into the fact that caffeine messes with you. Are there any naysayers? My personal choice to quit was because I hated the constant need for a pick-me-up. I wasn’t twitching each time I passed a Starbucks or anything crazy like that, however, I honestly felt a major energy drain as the hours passed by each day. Grabbing some coffee was always the quick fix. In my opinion, any time you need to consume something as a quick fix, you have a problem.

So, let’s wean ourselves off. These steps will get you off coffee, Mountain Dew, or any caffeine-laden drink that you are hooked on.

* Reasons: What are the reasons? I explained mine but really what are the reasons you want to quit? Are your teeth brown as bark, do you have coffee breath? Your reasons are personal so don’t rely on me to tell you what to do and why.

* The count: As a baseline, you have to identify how much caffeine you are drinking today. Is it 9 Mountain Dews, a pot of coffee, or 16 Cokes? This baseline count will be your indicator of improvement.

* The Wean: If you are drinking 5 cups of coffee per day, start by replacing 1 cup with a caffeinated tea. Yes, you read that right. I am all for slow transitions and the taste alone is enough of a change in the beginning. I did this for 3 days and then each day after, I replaced another cup of coffee for a cup of caffeinated tea. It took a while, but soon I was drinking all tea.

There are 90 different teas on the market so experiment a little and find something you really like. The key is to find a brand or flavor that comes in decaffeinated and caffeinated varieties. This process will be SO much easier if you actually like the taste of the replacement. You should also be aware of the varying health benefits of tea as you choose a replacement beverage.

* The De-Caffeinization: Yes, I made up that word but this is where we really start making some chemical changes. Using the process I mentioned above, start replacing the caffeinated tea with decaf tea. This is why I told you to pick a brand with both varieties. The taste will remain the same, but the caffeine is obviously going to decrease.

* DON’T Change your sleep: During this entire process, it is critical that you don’t make changes to your sleep schedule. If you currently take power naps at 1:00, keep doing it. You don’t want to replace caffeine with sleep, you want to get rid of the need for a supplement altogether.

As mentioned, this approach can be used with any caffeine drink you are hooked on and it doesn’t have to be replaced with tea. Drink water, flavored water, or anything with a 0% caffeine content.

So that is how I did it. Now I will mention the effects:

* I am never groggy. I have the same energy at 1:00PM as I do at 6AM or 4PM. This is THE largest benefit by far.

* I don’t have coffee breath and I can actually still taste my toothpaste at 11AM when I brushed at 6.

* Stress and anxiety have plummeted although I took on more assignments at work. I am simply not as edgy.

* I am asleep within 5 minutes each night

* My blood pressure is perfect now. It had previously been a little high.

* I don’t seem to get as many headaches. In the past, I would get 2-3 headaches per week and take some Advil. Now, it’s down to 2 times per month.

So that’s my story. I am caffeine free and yes it was difficult. I think the toughest thing was making the tea and finding a flavorf that I liked. However, once I got over those hurdles it was simple and I am glad that I did it. The key is planning.

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Only 11 percent of the French population qualifies as obese, while we almost triple that percentage mark here in the land of plenty. Furthermore, the French eat three times as much saturated animal fat as Americans do and only a third as many die of heart attacks.

I have long heard about this French Paradox, and after a month of fluffy croissants full of almond paste and copious amounts of French rouge du maison, I was certain it was all a bunch of bull. To prove the point, I immediately mounted my bathroom scale upon returning home. Imagine my shock when I discovered that after a month of French gastronomic debauchery (and no organized exercise regimen) I only gained one pound!

So if it isn’t Splenda, no-carb PowerBars, or an obsession with spinning classes, what’s their secret?

I consulted Santa Barbara’s own expert on the subject, Laurence Hauben, herself a lovely Frenchwoman who actually helps people learn about the French way with food in her Market Foray classes (marketforays.com). According to Laurence, it’s all about the lifestyle.

“The French don’t traditionally wolf down a meal at their desk or while commuting in traffic,” she said. “They sit down with family or colleagues at a table, taking the time to relax and share conversation. When you are talking, you are not eating, and because you are relaxed, the hormones released help in the assimilation of calories, unlike the stress hormones we are riddled with here, which trigger hoarding of fat. In other words, eat 800 calories while sitting at a café in Paris, and they will get spent. Eat 800 calories while sitting in your car in traffic on the freeway, and most of them will settle in your hips or gut.”

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