Tag fitness

Before learning how to avoid hitting a strength training plateau, we have to first know what causes one; in a word adaptation.

The human body can quickly learn how to make the most of a situation. So if you are eating about the same number (and types) of calories and doing the same strength training routines, your body adapts to that scenario and trains itself to do the same amount of work more efficiently.

To avoid hitting a those strength training plateaus, keep these four things in mind…

1) Eating

Not getting the right number or types of calories can affect your strength training progress. If you are looking to gain muscle, getting the right amount of protein is very important. Experts recommend eating 1 gram of protein for each pound of body weight per day. Serious bodybuilders tend to eat five or six moderately-sized meals spread throughout the day rather than three larger meals. Eating this way keeps your metabolism functioning at a higher level throughout the day.

2) Resting

If you start to feel tired and you are seeing your motivation going downhill, you may need to take some time off from your routine. This doesn’t mean sit around and do nothing; instead use this time to go for walks, do yoga and spend time with your family. To help avoid hitting a plateau in the first place, plan to take about a week off training every three to four months.

3) Sleeping

The body repairs itself and builds muscle during the time you are sleeping. If you are not giving it enough time to accomplish its maintenance task, it can affect your progress. Most training adults need seven to eight hours per night.

4) Routines

Some bodybuilders use a training system called periodization where they break down their training year into three periods – each with a different goal. One period might focus on strength, another on endurance, and a third on muscle tone. Because each period focuses on a different goal, the strength training exercises in each period are different thus preventing their body from adapting to a specific routine.

Other athletes use their same strength training routine, but change the intensity of their workout or take shorter rest periods between sets. Or they may use less weight, but add a significant number of repetitions per set.

Some athletes make minor changes such as the order of the exercises in their workouts. The point is there are many ways you can change your routine – even if the changes are small – that will challenge your body so it doesn’t get accustomed to a specific one.

Hitting a plateau can be more emotionally draining than physical. To keep from hitting one, keep these four things in mind when doing your exercises, listen to your body and consistently change things up.

In our daily hustle and bustle of life getting in the way, climbing on board with a 30 to 40 minute a day exercise plan can be tough to do. But, it’s tough to make the excuse that you don’t have the time when you can do quick workout in as little as 10 minutes and still get the benefits of a good workout. This is done by increasing the intensity of your workout as you decrease the amount of time dedication.

With a high intensity workout, there’s absolutely no excuse for not finding 10 minutes a day to devote to your better health.

Have You Ever Tried Circuit Training?

While some people will workout specific muscle groups on specific days to the week, others what to cram in a complete full body workout routine in the little amount of time they have available for their workouts. A full body workout may entail doing upper body, lower body and ab or core strength training all in one swoop. They might start with the upper body first with a high intensity workout, working the muscles to complete exhaustion, take a very short rest and then move on to a high intensity ab workout; again working that muscle group to complete exhaustion and then move on to the lower body muscles with intensity.

Target Specific Muscle Groups One at a Time

Other people will choose to target certain muscle groups one at a time. Here you don’t want to be working your muscles to total exhaustion and failure but instead, by using two minute timed exercises with a short rest in between, you’ll workout only one specific muscle group in that session. You might go for working out your abs today, your lower body tomorrow, your upper body the next and then repeat the cycle.

Sample 10-Minute Workout Routine without Equipment

Here’s a quick sampling of what a 10-minute workout without using any type of equipment might look like. In a short five minute block of time you could, depending on your physical condition of course, do 50 jumping jacks, 50 knee raises, 50 pushups and 50 set-ups. Stop for one minute and have a few sips of clean, clear water and then do that same 50-50-50-50 five minute routine once again. If time or your physical abilities are an issue, you can even split this 10 minute workout in half and do it at least twice through the course of your day.

Increasing Your 10-Minute Workout Intensity

Now, even though you can get started doing 10-Minute Workouts without the use of any equipment, when your workout routine starts getting easier to do, you’ll need to increase your intensity if you want to continue to get favorable results. To do this, you might want to add some weight or resistance to your workout with something like a kettlebell, dumbbell set, a sandbag or resistance bands – all of which are relatively inexpensive. When you add these to your routine, they will make your muscles work harder and harder while burning more calories faster than you could without them.

Besides the minimal time consumption of doing high intensity 10 minute workouts, you’ll benefit by your metabolism staying revved up for a longer period of time as opposed to doing longer and lower intensity workouts. So, you’ll not only save time but you’ll be burning more calories at a faster; a great side benefit indeed.

Counting Calories to Shed Those Pounds

The Simple Guide to Weight Loss Math

Introduction – Why Count Calories

When you’re trying to lose weight and achieve optimal health there are many habits and weight loss paths to consider. Undoubtedly, it’s important to pay attention to what you eat.

The more you eat, the more calories you put into your body. If your body doesn’t burn those calories through the natural course of your day, it stores the energy as fat.

Not good.

The goal is to burn fat, to get rid of it and to never see it again. This is why some people turn to the process of calorie counting to lose weight – it works.

What is Calorie Counting?

Calorie counting is the practice of tracking the food you eat each and every day. You track not only the types of food, but also the amount of food, that you eat. For example, if you have some green beans it’s not enough to document “green beans.” You also need to measure the amount. Did you have a cup of green beans? A half-cup?

How you cook the item is important as well. For example, there are 31 calories in raw green beans, 44 in boiled, and 46 calories in microwaved green beans. With calorie counting, the details are important. If you’re 100 calories off each day that’s a pound at the end of the month, and when you’re trying to lose weight every pound matters.

As you track what you’ve eaten, and how much, you’ll also refer to your choice of calorie information tools. There are mobile applications, online tools, and books that you can use to help you track your daily calories.

Keep in mind that as you’re counting what you consume, you’ll also want to count what you burn. Again, there are tools for doing this. Using a variety of tools or devices that we’ll discuss in a bit, you can track how many calories you burn running errands, walking the dog, watching television and doing Zumba for an hour at the gym. This way you can look at your numbers at the end of the day and make sure that you’re burning more than you’re consuming.

So why go to such detail and why count calories?

We Overestimate How Much We Burn and Underestimate How Much We Eat

Counting calories will be a reality check. Most of us drastically underestimate the number of calories we consume. Much of that is due to portion size discrepancies. A half a cup of French fries is much smaller than you think, and a cup of green beans is probably more than you imagine. We also tend to overestimate the calories we burn when exercising and going about daily life. You might think an hour on the elliptical will earn you a hot fudge sundae – it won’t.

When a 150-pound person spends a half hour on an elliptical at a moderate intensity – meaning they’re at 60-70% of their maximum heart rate – they’ll burn around 386 calories. A two-scoop hot fudge sundae has almost 600 calories. And those are primarily empty calories too, but we’ll get to that shortly.

The truth is that most people aren’t going to exercise at that intensity for the entire time they’re on the elliptical. Your intensity will fluctuate with your energy levels, for example. You may start off very enthusiastic and then you’ll pull back when your heart rate begins feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Calorie Counting Is An Education

When you begin counting calories you’ll begin to realize how much you’re actually eating and burning. You’ll become smarter about what you eat. For example, you may quickly realize that a cookie you want just isn’t worth it because it’ll mean you cannot have as much to eat at dinnertime. You’ll learn to set priorities and eat more nutrient rich foods, which are generally lower in calories.

Calorie Counting Gives You More Control

Knowledge is power, right? The more you know the better your decisions can be. This is most certainly true for counting calories and losing weight. With good calorie counting tools and processes you’ll be able to tell at a glance whether you’re on track for the day or whether you’re busting the calorie budget so to speak.

While it may sound difficult, calorie counting is actually one of the easiest ways to lose weight. You simply track input and output. Assuming your output, or the calories you burn, is more than the input, you’ll lose weight. A single pound of fat is 3,500 calories and cutting calories can add up quickly. Let’s get started at what a calorie is and why counting calories is so effective.

A Quick Education on “Weight Loss Water”

Water is the basic component of all life, and is important for you to achieve your maximum health levels.

Human beings today have at their fingertips a wealth of information, and regarding fitness, health and weight loss, we are probably more informed than at any time in history.

It’s a good time to be alive but you have to pay attention to the new research and developments for living a healthy lifestyle.

But did you know these important statistics about water and the human body?

Important Statistic About Water and You

• The average adult human body is composed of 60 to 70% water.
• Your internal water levels help control your body’s temperature.
• A healthy adult needs 9 cups (women) to 13 cups (men) of water daily.
• Nearly every food or drink item you put in your body provides water.
• Blood is 92% water, and human muscles are 75% water.

Water is Important for Life and Weight Loss

It is easy to see that water is incredibly important to human life, and ingesting the right water levels is also extremely important for proper and healthy weight loss. The human body unfortunately can not differentiate very well between hunger and thirst. This is why so many individuals grab a snack or something else to eat, when the body is actually just asking for more water.

Then after eating, the body is still thirsty, so that individual believes he or she is still hungry. They eat more, they gain weight and fat, and their bodies are still unhealthy because they desire more water.

Research and Weight Loss Water

As an associate professor of human nutrition, foods and exercise at Virginia Tech University, Dr. Brenda Davy showed that when her research participants drank two glasses of water from 20 to 30 minutes before each meal, they not only lost weight more quickly initially, but they also lost a greater deal of weight than the test subjects that did not drink water before meals.

In another obesity study linked to water which Doctor Davy had published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, people drinking water just before a meal ate 75 fewer calories each meal on average. If would drink water before just lunch and dinner for one year, this could amount to as many as 14.5 pounds of weight loss!

And since when the human body is only 1% dehydrated it instantly decreases metabolism, weight gain immediately follows.

Get Those Liquids in You One Way or Another

Do not forget, as mentioned above, water is found in basically all foods and liquids that human beings eat and drink. So if you simply cannot stomach the thought of drinking several glasses of water each and every day, incorporate soups, vegetables and low-fat dairy products into your diet. These foods are very high in water content, and they assist water in losing weight because they lower the overall calorie density in your meals. This means that you cut calories, add much needed water, and lose weight all at once.

Metabolism is defined as the number of calories the body needs while at rest. In other words, the body needs a certain number of calories just to sustain bodily functions, like breathing and heartbeat. This number is usually referred to as the basal metabolic rate (BMR).

Is a Low Metabolism From a Sluggish Thyroid?

Because your thyroid controls your metabolism through the secretion of hormones, it is these hormones (and your physical fitness level) that control how fast (or slow) food is converted into energy. If you are having trouble losing weight, it could be that your thyroid is not functioning normally. Your doctor can check it with a simple blood test.

Build up Your Muscles for a Higher Metabolism

One fact we know is that a pound of fat burns about 10 calories while a pound of muscle burns almost 30 calories over the same given period of time. So it makes sense that the more muscle you have, the more calories you’ll burn just to sustain the additional muscle. Because of this fact, gaining lean muscle mass is one way to increase your metabolic rate.

Another way is through physical exercise; exercise triggers an increase in metabolism that can last for several hours after finishing your workout. By incorporating weight training into your routines, not only do you increase your metabolism in the short term, but also permanently through the building of lean muscle mass. A win/win situation!

Is Your Metabolism High, Low or Normal?

But how do you know if you metabolism is low, normal or high? First you have to know your BMR – the number of calories your body needs to function while at rest. If the number you consume is higher, but you are not gaining weight, then you have a high metabolism. To calculate your BMR, use these formulas:

• women: 655 + (4.3 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) – (4.7 x age in years);
• men: 66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) – (6.8 x age in years).

Note the formulas are based on a normal adult body. If you are extremely muscular or very obese, then your resulting figures will be underestimated or overestimated, respectively.

For example, let’s use a 30-year old, 5 ft. 10 in. tall male weighing 170 pounds. Plugging the numbers into the formula 66 + (6.3 x 170) + (12.9 x 72) – (6.8 x 30), we come out with 66 + (1071) + (928.8) – (204) = 1,861.80 calories per day to maintain his current weight. If our study is eating significantly more calories and not gaining weight, then he has a high metabolism. Because he burns calories at a higher rate, it will be easier for him to lose weight just from cutting calories.

While your thyroid basically controls your metabolism, you can help increase its functioning through healthy eating, regular exercise and building of lean muscle mass.

When you workout, you’ll want to incorporate a good diet for building muscles. But what exactly constitutes a “good diet for building muscle” anyway?

For some people the only adjustments they’ll need to make is to add in additional calories. Those calories need to come from food sources that are proven to build muscles. Common names are high protein diets and weight gain diets. So, it’s not as simple as just adding in additional calories; you need the right kind of calories that also provide much needed nutrients that aid in cell rejuvenation and muscle development.

The Purpose of a Diet for Building Muscles

The entire reason to adopt a diet for building muscles is to make sure that your are providing your muscles with the proper nutrients they need when they are being worked, torn down and in recovery. The nutrients that you feed your muscles will have a direct impact on how quickly and how effectively repair and build up.

Your purpose is to gain weight in the muscle department but at the same time you want to be careful that the calories you are adding are not going to pack the fat on. Nothing can hide muscle definition, and your hard workouts, more than excess body fat.

How Do You Know What a Good Diet for Building Muscle is?

A rigorous weight training workout schedule is taxing on your entire body. By making sure that you fuel your body with the right nutrients you will be helping ensure that you have the energy to start and finish your workout as well as the ability to repair your muscle afterwards.

Since your body uses the protein that you consume to build muscles, you need to eat enough lean protein such as salmon, trout, halibut, cod, eggs, chicken and lean servings of beef, pork or buffalo. These lower fat foods will help you get the protein calories you need while helping you to avoid packing on body fat.

Most people that want to put on weight should eat 500 calories more each day, some a little more, some a little less by 500 calories extra a day equates to about a pound a week in body weight gain. We’re talking about muscle weight gain here so you need those extra calories to be primarily protein.

If you find it hard to eat more protein foods, you can always reach for protein supplements or meal replacement shakes. A couple of shakes a day mixed with milk can easily get you to those 500 calories in extra protein a day mark.

What is The Single Best Diet for Building Muscle Mass?

Due to the fact that people’s body’s and food choices are so entirely different, it’s hard to recommend any one single diet for building muscles. You must have the additional protein but you must also have the many nutrients your body needs everyday. For example, you can’t use protein powders for meal replacement because mostly all that they provide is the protein. You would need a meal replacement shake in this case that provides the many different nutrients your body needs.

A good way to find what works best for you is to experiment a little and try different ones every two weeks or so and see how your body is responding. You can learn more about your choices and what to look for in the article “Why Protein Intake for Building Muscles” and look at http://MyFitnessNut.com for more information on protein, supplements, muscle building and fitness in general.

It’s commonly known by people in the bodybuilding world that protein is required to build muscle mass. What’s really important to know is that your protein intake amount is adequate enough to feed your hard working muscles. If it’s not, your muscles will not develop well in contrast to the amount of work you’re putting in.

One way to know how much more protein to eat is to first figure out the overall calories you need to be eating for optimal muscle growth.

Building your muscles is much like gaining weight it takes between 300 – 500 calories to put on extra muscle mass or weight. Eating 500 calories extra every day will have you putting on about one extra pound every week. Keep in mind that you must be working your muscles to burn these extra calories so that they don’t end up as stored fat opposed to built muscle mass.

Now, if your plan is to use these extra consumed calories to build your muscles then you’ll want to convert the 300 – 500 calories into mostly protein. You don’t want to be increasing the amount of fat that your ingesting, although some fat is important. Lean cuts of meat will contain some fat, nuts will contain some fat and well designed protein shakes will contain some fat.

So, at any rate, don’t go overboard thinking you have to avoid fat completely. You do want your protein calories to be the bulk of these additional calories that you are consuming in order to accelerate your muscle building venture.

Work Your Muscles Hard but Ensure Proper Protein Intake When You Do.

Learning the concept of consuming the correct protein intake for building muscle is to understand that protein is the foundational building block for gaining muscle mass. With these protein building blocks in your system, when you train your muscles, you are stimulating your muscle growth cycle to develop your muscles at a much faster pace.

So it makes sense to work your muscles really hard but only if you have good amounts of protein in your body to feed those hungry worked muscles.

Why Building Muscle Mass without Proper Protein Intake is a Bad Idea

You may have heard the saying “Turn fat into muscle” and while it is true that when you workout, you’ll be losing fat and as long as you are maintaining a good protein level in your body, you’ll be gaining muscle. But you’re not actually turning muscle into fat.

The bottom line is that if you don’t consume the right amount of protein based on how rigorously you work your muscles, your muscles will not grow no matter how hard you work them. And on the flip side, you never want to over eat if you’re not burning the calories you consume because you will pack on fat pounds and that’s the exact opposite of what you want to achieve.

Many of the weight training professionals will recommend not eating extra on your rest and recover days even if your body and brain are screaming to be fed more food. Instead, they advocate physically resting up more on your rest days. What this habit will do is create an energy surplus in your body without feeding it more.

The benefit is that when you re-engage in performing an intense workout, your body will draw upon this surplus reducing your body fat stores. And as we all know, the less body fat you have surrounding you, the more your magnificent muscle tone shows itself off. Many times, the muscle tone is there… it’s just hiding.

How to Add More Protein to Your Diet

There are no one-size-fits-all answers to how much protein you should add because it can differ greatly from person to person. While one person might want to simply shape up, the next person may be looking at competition bodybuilding. One might want to get their increased protein intake from food, others may want to supplement; others will want to do both.

Increasing Your Protein Intake with Food

Everyone wanting to build up their muscles will have protein requirements unique to them so it’s a good idea to start slower rather than too fast. Keeping in tune with what was said earlier, you’ll want to start out by adding in an extra 300 calories of protein each day that you workout for three months.

Take a step back and see where you are at. If you’re not seeing the muscle growth you were expecting, increase your protein intake to 500 calories and compare notes in three more months. A local bodybuilding coach can help get you on the road to reaching your goals much faster because they can personalize this task for you and your goals.

Increasing Your Protein Intake with Supplements

Most protein choices contain higher amounts of fat and research has shown that low fat protein choices work just as effectively in building muscle. While you can easily add in low fat dairy items, lean meats like chicken, fish and turkey; a good quality protein supplement is a convenient way to “beef up” your protein intake.

There are many protein supplements to choose from; some good, some great and some that are not so good – even downright bad for you sorry to say. The most important thing to glean from this article is to find a way to increase your protein intake when your goal is to build muscles.

Secondly, your goal is most likely to simultaneously lose fat while building up your muscle tone. So, as logic plays out in our search for a good quality protein supplement you will want to look for low fat, low sugar, no artificial ingredients whatsoever; basically you want as pure of protein you can get in the supplement you choose and avoid all the garbage so many manufacturers throw in their products merely for the sake of marketing buzzwords.

Read the labels and like anything you’re thinking about putting in your body, it there’s a word you don’t understand… find out what the heck it is before you consume it!

You can learn more about whole food protein and protein supplements at http://MyFitnessNut.com but the big takeaway for this article is that you must increase your protein intake if you want to increase your muscle mass. You can lift weights from morning until the sun goes down and still not build muscle mass. That would be sad.

Reason; if you don’t feed your muscles protein when they’re being worked, your muscles will tear down and feed upon their very own protein leaving your muscle building goals stuck in the mud. Increase your protein intake to the amount that works for you and you’ll be smiling at the results of your efforts instead of wondering why your workouts aren’t working as well as you like.

Introduction to The 15-Minute Fitness Guide

In our busy lives, it’s often a struggle to find time to get everything done. Inevitably, important things can sometimes drop off our to-do lists or get pushed off our schedules.

For many of us, finding time to exercise is something we know we should do, but it’s often the first thing to get dropped.

Part of the problem may be that we think we need to find an hour or two a day, five or six days a week, in order to exercise. Or perhaps that you have to join a fancy full-service gym in order to have access to the latest and greatest exercise equipment.

Fortunately, the reality is much more forgiving. In fact, it’s possible to significantly improve your health and fitness with 15-minute workout sessions.

That’s what we’re going to talk about in this 15-minute fitness guide.

To continue reading, use the page numbers below or the table of contents to the right. Enjoy!

Every dog needs exercising daily. Just keep in mind that exercising is not a one-size-fits-all when it comes to dogs.

The amount of exercise varies according to dog type. A little dog can’t exercise for as long or hard as a bigger dog. So don’t take your Chihuahua and your Rottweiler on the same run and expect the little one to keep up.

While no written guidelines exist, your veterinarian can give you sound advice on what is appropriate for your dog(s).

Just like you, your dog should have a physical and a clean bill of health before starting an exercise program.

Types of Exercise

There are several different types of exercise you can do with your dog. What comes to most peoples’ mind is walking or running. And while that is two popular types of exercising, there are several more, such as:

• doggy bootcamp
• chase me
• agility workout

Doggy Bootcamp

Doggy bootcamp is a combination of playing fetch with your dog and working out at the same time. Check to see if you can find a bootcamp already established in your area by searching Google; if none is available, start your own.

Basically, you throw a favorite toy of Fido and while he is running out to get it and bring it back, you are static in-place exercising, such as doing push-ups, sit-ups, squats, jumping jacks, jumping rope, etc.

If your doggy bootcamp is in a public park, you may soon find yourself in company of other dogs and owners who want to do the same thing.

Chase Me

This routine is a moving tug-of-war between you and your dog. Place two objects as markers, such as water bottles, 10 feet or so apart. With your dog’s favorite toy in hand and your dog trying to wrestle it from you, side shuffle (you in the squat position) back and forth between the two markers. Do these as many times as you can.

Agility Workout

As a dog owner, you have probably watched dog agility trials on TV. Now it is your turn to take the leash in hand and do your own agility workout. If no established course is in your area, make your own out of common items found around the house. Your dog will enjoy the challenge and both of you will get exercise at the same time.

No Dog – No Problem

If you don’t own a dog, there are a couple of ways you can still workout with one. Dog shelters welcome responsible volunteers to check out a dog and exercise it. Maybe you have a home-bound neighbor that can’t exercise his or her dog. Ask if you can take their dog out for some exercise.

Keep in mind that getting outdoors is not only exercise for a dog, but an enhancing social interaction for them. With their keen sense of smell, they are enjoying the outing even more than you while you’re conquering many of the 10,000 steps a day that you need to keep health and fitness in check!

The Benefits of 10,000 Steps Per Day

To get the point across as to why 10,000 steps a day are important, chances are that you are reading this from a laptop or desktop computer. And that is one of the dangers of modern day society. Our work and personal lifestyle habits tend to lead toward a very sedentary lifestyle which centers on a lot of sitting.

With heart disease, obesity, diabetes and even stroke and heart attacks directly correlated to a sedentary lifestyle, it is important that you understand the benefits of walking at least 10,000 steps per day.

How have fitness organizations and experts arrived at this 10,000 steps figure? With the average adult human covering 2.5 feet with every step, this means it would take a little over 2,000 consecutive steps to cover 1 mile in distance. Health professionals have stated that 5 miles of walking spread out over the course of a day leads to a significantly healthier individual, and that is where the 10,000 step number originated.

The good news is you do not have to walk this distance at one time. And if you maintain the average 3 to 4 mph brisk walking rate which most adults can, this means that between 80 and 100 minutes is all which is required to cover 5 miles, or 10,000 steps a day.

Taking your dog for a nice and enjoyable walk can burn through one third or more of those steps easily. About a mile and a half will take care of that quite quickly.

How Do You Count and Estimate Your Steps?

But without counting, how do you know just how many steps you are currently walking throughout the course of your day? If you sit down a lot, at work, at home, in your car, you only average between 1,000 and 3,000 steps a day.

To keep heart disease, obesity, several cancers and an early death at bay, this simply means adding an extra 7,000 to 9,000 steps to your daily routine. Time-wise this is just another hour of walking, and you can spread that out over the course of your day.

The benefits of those 10,000 daily steps are plentiful. The American Heart Association believes that 10,000 steps is a magic metric the average person can use to increase heart health while simultaneously decreasing the risk of developing heart disease.

The Surgeon General also agrees with this figure, and if it only helps you combat heart disease, the number one killer of both women and men in America every year, it would be a worthwhile undertaking. But the benefits of 10,000 steps per day also include an immune system boost, reduced waist size, lower body mass index, increased energy and less risk of developing diabetes.

Purchase a Low Cost Pedometer for Easy Tracking

Are you ready to get started yet? One of the advantages of walking 10,000 steps per day is that literally anyone can do it, and if you need to purchase a pedometer to keep yourself on track, a very low-cost step that you should take. You and your furry friends will look and feel better, and allow you both to live a much longer and happier life when you incorporate the 10,000 steps per day program into your daily life.

You can learn more about “How Much Exercise Do I Need Each Day” and discover many methods of exercising but the thing is that anyone can benefit from the act walking and for most people, it’s something they can accomplish.

Chances are, your job requires a lot of sitting. And thanks to the marvelous advancements which technology has given us, we do not need to be nearly as mobile as we used to as human beings.

We originally evolved as walking creatures, exploring and shaping our world by frequently moving. But for many, modern day “sit down” jobs have joined a remote control equipped, couch-centered home life which has led to a very sedentary lifestyle.

However, there are some easy-to-follow exercise tips for people looking to improve their health and fitness that do not include heavy weightlifting and running marathons. Incorporate the following simple exercises into your daily routine, and you will improve your energy and fitness levels in no time.

• Doctor David Dunstan, PhD, explains that we must be thinking about fitness all day long. Exercising during the lunch break is great advice, but you need to incorporate exercise throughout the day as well. You can easily do this on the job by alternating sitting and standing whenever you have the chance.
• And the next time that you need to contact your coworker down the hall, take a walk instead of shooting out an e-mail. You can also stand and even pace whenever you place or receive a telephone call, take the stairs instead of the elevator, and take regular breaks scheduled throughout your day which get you out of your chair.
• You can also adopt a NEAT attitude, and that does not mean cleanliness and more organization. NEAT stands for “non-exercise activity thermogenesis” in this case. People often forget that stretching, bending and turning are all very important for keeping us limber and avoiding injuries, and these simple exercises can be performed all day long by even the most sedentary individual.
• If you telecommute, walk outside in a sunny park during a conference call. And scheduling a brisk 10 or 15 minute walk in the afternoon close to your quitting time will not only help you become more productive at the end of the day, but also delivers wonderful fitness rewards.

As long as you embrace improving your health, you can turn your sedentary work and home environments into fun and active centers of fitness by taking very small steps. Stand when you can, schedule multiple breaks throughout your day for even small periods of physical activity, and do not forget to stretch and bend.

These simple tips for those with a sedentary lifestyle can have a wonderfully positive cumulative affect over time, and help you reach a better overall fitness level that leads to a longer, healthier and happier life.

7 Everyday Tasks You Can Turn Into A Workout

If you burned only an extra 100 calories a day, that would lead to 10 pounds of weight loss over one year. Ramp that up to an additional 200 calories a day over your current everyday activity level, and you just dropped 20 pounds in a year. But the problem with most 21st-century human beings is not the desire to lose weight and get in shape, it is the lack of having a significant chunk of time in a very busy and hectic daily lifestyle to exercise.

However, you can achieve the weight loss and fitness goals you are striving for by turning the following 7 everyday tasks into simple workout sessions which burn at least 100 calories.

1. Did you know that simply carrying an infant for 20 to 30 minutes can burn 100 calories? You probably never have thought about your crying newborn as being an alarm bell which can help you lose weight and get in shape, but this mini-workout can do exactly that.
2. When was the last time that you did your dishes by hand? This is a great task you can turn into a workout, and if it lasts for 40 minutes, you have just burned 100 calories.
3. Every household usually has a particular person that regularly walks the family dog. But you may want to take this task upon yourself, since a 26 minute walk with the household hound can help you burn at least 100 calories.. Bigger and more energetic dogs simply mean more calories burned, and a better workout.
4. Give your living room a quick makeover, and not only does your house have a whole new look, but you have just created an awesome new 14 minute workout. That is all the time you need to spend moving furniture to burn 100 calories.
5. If you live in a cold climate, you no doubt despise having to shovel snow. Not anymore, as a simple 15 minutes of snow shoveling raises your heart rate, and your calorie burning potential, making this previously dreaded task something to look forward to.
6. And while some people love to cook, at the end of a long, hard day, not everyone wants to prepare the family meal. However, simply cooking for 34 minutes can now be considered a workout as well as a daily chore, and it burns 100 calories to boot.
7. Finally, 20 minutes of mopping the floor, mowing the lawn or washing your car will also burned 100 calories.

By looking at these common (and sometimes dreaded) daily tasks as opportunities for becoming healthier and a little more fit, your attitude about accomplishing them will be much more positive. Now you can be happy about getting enough exercise when your dog begs for a walk, and mowing the lawn once a week all of a sudden does not seem like such a horrible chore at all since it’s now part of your exercise routine.