First get a clearance from your physician. Never begin an exercise program without it. Then, start easy. Don't jump into a vigorous weight program which involves health clubs and special periods out of your working day. It has a 95% risk of failure. It takes too much of your time. It becomes an added life burden.
And its no good loading all your exercise into one day a week. It doesn't work. To be successful, exercise must be incorporated into your normal daily routine. Fifteen minutes a day when you rise in the mornings, is far better for your health than three hours at the gym on Saturdays.
You dont need complicated machines or fancy gadgets. You can exercise anywhere. Your own body weight and gravity provide ample resistance. Gradual, progressive exercise is best. There is no reason to steam, no need to work to your limit.
Never strain. Anytime you ache the next day, you are going to hard. THE BODY DOES NOT NEED TO BE INFLAMED IN ORDER TO IMPROVE. Inflammation is counter-productive. Over-training is de-training.
Remember, you are limited by the rhythms of Nature. Adaption is slow-but sweetly sure. The first day you begin exercising, even after doing none for thirty years, your body starts to rejuvenate.
Your exercise program has three goals. First and most important is to maintain and increase your muscle mass. Second is to maintain you cardiovascular system. Third is to maintain your flexibility. Mr. Average stiffens as he ages, increasing the risk of all sorts of strains and tendon, ligament and skeletal disorders.
Once you have your physician's clearance to exercise, there is nothing wrong with a little aerobics, especially to warm up the system and get your blood pumping. And twenty minutes even at mild intensity will have cardiovascular benefits. I advocate aerobics to begin exercise for everyone because you should never pick up weights cold. Then 5-10 mins spent stretching after your muscles are warm, is all you need to maintain flexibility lifelong.
Okay..on to muscles. Your program should include resistance exercise for shoulders, arms, chest, back, legs, and abdominals. If you are doing three days per week, which is the starting level and the minimum for consistent benefit, then do: DAY 1- Shoulders and Arms/ DAY 2-Chest and Back/ DAY 3- Legs and Abdominals. If you are doing five days per week, the optimum program for health, then do one bodypart per day: Shoulders, Arms, Chest, Back, Legs & Abdominals.
Some secrets that will give you faster progress and a better body than most people you see in the health clubs...
1. No matter what the gym trainer says, Never do more per exercise than one warm up set of 12-15 easy repetitions, followed by one medium heavy set of 6-10 repetitions to exhaustion.
2. Work a body part only once per week. Exercised muscle takes about 48 hours to breakdown worn cells, then about 48-72 hours to build new, stronger replacements. That's five days. From 5-8 days strength remains at a maximum and then slowly declines. So exercising a muscle every 5-8 days is the optimum program for progress.
3. Do not train with weights for more than one hour per workout. Your anabolic potential, that is, your ability to gain lean muscle mass is limited by your hormone levels. After 45 mins to an hour, hormone levels decline. You may be able to will yourself to continue but it will not do your body any good.
4. Increase your protein intake by drinking a protein drink daily within one hour after workout. Much new research shows that weight training puts subjects into protein deficit, despite the high-protein level of the American diet.
5. Take daily antioxidant supplements. All exercises increases oxidation in the body.
6. Eat an alkaline diet. All exercise increases body acidity.
7. Sip a cold, light carbohydrate drink (7-10%) throughout workouts. drinks containing a little glucose, glucose polymers are the best, It will trickle carbohydrate continuously into your blood and spare your muscle glycogen, thereby maintaining your energy level. It will also prevent dehydration. Believe it or not 3% dehydration can reduce strength by 10%. Your drink will keep your body temperature down, thereby reducing the amount of blood diverted to the skin for cooling, thus leaving more to supply your muscles with oxygen and nutrients.
**It takes a bit of puff and stickability to grow a high-performance body. But once you've done it, the modicum of exercise necessary to maintain it is one of life's greatest bargains**
An informative blog on nutrition, clean eating, mental health and healthy lifestyle choices for men & women. In less than 20 years the overweight population increased drastically, for adults as well as children obesity carries heavy consequences. The problem is so severe that some experts believe obesity will soon beat out smoking - if it hasn’t already as the number one preventable cause of death. I'm here to share my knowledge and resources to help close the gap of obesity in America.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Foods Affect Your Bones.
Common foods have a big influence on your bones. Normal levels of protein for example, do not affect bone calcium, but I do know now that some forms of purified protein do cause calcium loss, Notably, case-in-point, lactalbumin, and egg whites that are commonly used in meal replacement drinks, can seriously deplete your calcium stores, if they are used as the main source of protein in your diet.
Very high protein intakes as used by many strength athletes, and by folk on those idiotic high protein diet plans, suck calcium out of your body like a sponge. So these folks should always be aware of their unique need for increased calcium intake. Salt also robs your bones. Our diet is spiked with twenty times the salt that occurs in natural food, and that is twenty times the salt required for optimal health. The sodium overload inhibits normal calcium metabolism in complex ways, all of which are detrimental to a wide range of bodily functions including blood pressure and bone formation. So ditch the salt cellar and the chips.
FIBER DOESNT HELP EITHER: High intakes of fiber dont rob your bones, but they do inhibit calcium absorption from the intestines. So when you take fiber for good health, as you should, always be aware that it increases your need for calcium.
WHAT ABOUT VEGETABLES: Numerous tables of calcium sources list spinach as one of the best, containing 120-150 mg of calcium per average serving. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! I've known for years that spinach also contains high levels of chemicals called oxalates, that completely bind the calcium so that not even a milligram can be absorbed. So spinach is useless. Much better are green cabbage, kale, broccoli, bok choy, dark green lettuces, seaweed greens, arame, hijki, and nori.
Other good food sources of calcium are salmon and sardines canned with bones, well-cooked soybeans, tofu, and soymilk. But most people dont get enough of them. The average calcium intake is way below the RDA of 800-1200 mg per day. Low RDA is not healthy.
Even if we did get sufficient calcium, its only a tiny piece of the bone puzzle. For the last 4 decades, the dominant medical advice, delivered with much pomp and pretension, has been: drink two large glasses of milk a day. That amount of milk contains 600mg of calcium and what could be more innocuous than milk- right? Wrong! For many folk, the medical advice to drink milk to prevent osteosporosis is self-serving bs!
How do I know? Simple. After decades of milk promotion, osteosporosis has become epidemic. Milk just doesnt do the trick.
Animal milk was designed by the miraculous hand that guides nature specifically for nourishing infant animals, not human adults. As we grow, we lose much of our ability to produce the enzyme lactase, which digests the lactose in milk.. Three out of every four American adults have some degree of lactose-intolerance they cant touch dairy foods without severe discomfort.
The biggest lifestyle problem in America today is couch potatoism. Its deadly to your bones. Bones are constantly remodeled throughout life in exact response to the stresses placed on them by activity. But not any old activity will do. Every day millions of old bone calls die off. In order to form new replacement cells, bones requires weight-bearing stress on each microsopic point where fibers of the bones matrix join together, much like the zig-zag connections of the griders of a bridge. Pressure on these stress points causes the essential electrochemical "sparks" that stimulate growth of new bone cells. No pressure, No sparks...NO BONE.
**Stay active, do not sit in the same spot and watch tv for more than one hour, you must move your limbs in order to keep them..dont use it and you'll LOSE IT!**
Very high protein intakes as used by many strength athletes, and by folk on those idiotic high protein diet plans, suck calcium out of your body like a sponge. So these folks should always be aware of their unique need for increased calcium intake. Salt also robs your bones. Our diet is spiked with twenty times the salt that occurs in natural food, and that is twenty times the salt required for optimal health. The sodium overload inhibits normal calcium metabolism in complex ways, all of which are detrimental to a wide range of bodily functions including blood pressure and bone formation. So ditch the salt cellar and the chips.
FIBER DOESNT HELP EITHER: High intakes of fiber dont rob your bones, but they do inhibit calcium absorption from the intestines. So when you take fiber for good health, as you should, always be aware that it increases your need for calcium.
WHAT ABOUT VEGETABLES: Numerous tables of calcium sources list spinach as one of the best, containing 120-150 mg of calcium per average serving. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! I've known for years that spinach also contains high levels of chemicals called oxalates, that completely bind the calcium so that not even a milligram can be absorbed. So spinach is useless. Much better are green cabbage, kale, broccoli, bok choy, dark green lettuces, seaweed greens, arame, hijki, and nori.
Other good food sources of calcium are salmon and sardines canned with bones, well-cooked soybeans, tofu, and soymilk. But most people dont get enough of them. The average calcium intake is way below the RDA of 800-1200 mg per day. Low RDA is not healthy.
Even if we did get sufficient calcium, its only a tiny piece of the bone puzzle. For the last 4 decades, the dominant medical advice, delivered with much pomp and pretension, has been: drink two large glasses of milk a day. That amount of milk contains 600mg of calcium and what could be more innocuous than milk- right? Wrong! For many folk, the medical advice to drink milk to prevent osteosporosis is self-serving bs!
How do I know? Simple. After decades of milk promotion, osteosporosis has become epidemic. Milk just doesnt do the trick.
Animal milk was designed by the miraculous hand that guides nature specifically for nourishing infant animals, not human adults. As we grow, we lose much of our ability to produce the enzyme lactase, which digests the lactose in milk.. Three out of every four American adults have some degree of lactose-intolerance they cant touch dairy foods without severe discomfort.
The biggest lifestyle problem in America today is couch potatoism. Its deadly to your bones. Bones are constantly remodeled throughout life in exact response to the stresses placed on them by activity. But not any old activity will do. Every day millions of old bone calls die off. In order to form new replacement cells, bones requires weight-bearing stress on each microsopic point where fibers of the bones matrix join together, much like the zig-zag connections of the griders of a bridge. Pressure on these stress points causes the essential electrochemical "sparks" that stimulate growth of new bone cells. No pressure, No sparks...NO BONE.
**Stay active, do not sit in the same spot and watch tv for more than one hour, you must move your limbs in order to keep them..dont use it and you'll LOSE IT!**
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