Something that I have been doing a lot of research on lately is yoga. I was in the health and fitness section at the bookstore and started picking up books on the subject and looking over them.
What piqued my interest was a woman at work who started doing yoga a while back for chronic back pain that she's been dealing with for years. Now she says her back almost never bothers her, and she's lost weight.
I thought yoga was for stretching and stress-relief, but not really for losing weight. So I started looking into it, and I have to say I'm surprised. Firstly, I didn't realize how much fat-busting power stretching had! Because stretching makes your muscles work and hold positions, it is very effective at burning fat. On top of this, yoga gives you long, toned muscles that look great.
I also hadn't realized how effective yoga was at targeting certain parts of the body. If you have something you want to strengthen, you can choose workouts that will give that area a great workout. You can also work around any weaknesses you have. I was spending time looking up poses that I felt I could do without putting too much strain on my right wrist too soon. I figured that if a woman with an old back injury could improve it with yoga, it might work on my wrist as well.
So, I bought a couple books on the subject and a beginner's DVD since I don't have the money for classes right now, and I've been making sure to do 30 minutes of yoga at least twice a week. So far I've been very happy with the results. I've been at this about a month now, and while I'm not seeing weight loss yet (that I can undoubtedly attribute to the yoga anyway,) I am feeling good. I'm getting stronger and feeling more refreshed in the mornings. It really does help with stress relief too!
I would definitely recommend adding yoga to your weekly workouts. Even one or two workouts a week will give you more flexibility and less tension.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Getting fit one step at a time.
Fitness is very important, and more and more people are coming to realize this. It took me a long time of carrying around the “freshman 15” to figure out that my love handles were not going to leave on their own.
I made a few half-hearted attempts at losing weight, and it would start working, but then something would side-track me. I would put the weight back on, usually accompanied by a couple more pounds. It was the day I got brave and stepped onto the scale to discover that I was only a few pounds away from being medically ‘obese’ that something cracked. I took a good look at myself in the mirror and broke down bawling.
If it had just been the weight, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But there were other aspects of my health that I knew had to change, and it upset me that I had turned a blind eye to it for so long. After my tantrum, I got up and decided that something had to change.
But what?
I started looking around at fitness sites and books and felt completely overwhelmed! These things were throwing too much at me at once. So I sat down with a friend and wrote a plan that I thought would work for me.
The very first thing I would suggest is to find one little thing you can change in your life. Don’t try to do it all at once, because this just stresses most people out and is counter-productive. The first thing I did was to cut almost all soda from my diet. Removing most of the sugar and carbonation from your diet will make you feel better within a few weeks.
The second thing was to start taking walks every day. Just little changes spread out across weeks and months started adding up and turned into a big change.
I want to explore different aspects of fitness and different things people can do to get fit. I’m collecting ideas from my friends and fitness magazines, and I want to put it all here, to help somebody else who needs some guidance, but not a lecture. Please come back soon and see what’s new. I’ll be doing my best to give you relevant information.
I made a few half-hearted attempts at losing weight, and it would start working, but then something would side-track me. I would put the weight back on, usually accompanied by a couple more pounds. It was the day I got brave and stepped onto the scale to discover that I was only a few pounds away from being medically ‘obese’ that something cracked. I took a good look at myself in the mirror and broke down bawling.
If it had just been the weight, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But there were other aspects of my health that I knew had to change, and it upset me that I had turned a blind eye to it for so long. After my tantrum, I got up and decided that something had to change.
But what?
I started looking around at fitness sites and books and felt completely overwhelmed! These things were throwing too much at me at once. So I sat down with a friend and wrote a plan that I thought would work for me.
The very first thing I would suggest is to find one little thing you can change in your life. Don’t try to do it all at once, because this just stresses most people out and is counter-productive. The first thing I did was to cut almost all soda from my diet. Removing most of the sugar and carbonation from your diet will make you feel better within a few weeks.
The second thing was to start taking walks every day. Just little changes spread out across weeks and months started adding up and turned into a big change.
I want to explore different aspects of fitness and different things people can do to get fit. I’m collecting ideas from my friends and fitness magazines, and I want to put it all here, to help somebody else who needs some guidance, but not a lecture. Please come back soon and see what’s new. I’ll be doing my best to give you relevant information.
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