Archive for the ‘Body Hacks’ Category:
Execise Helps Prevent Illnesses
With the winter months coming up, we are all a little wary of catching a cold (especially H1N1, the dreaded SWING flu) because we’ll probably be spending more time indoors. A recent study by the American College of Sports Medicine states that 45 minutes of exercise at moderate intensity for most days of the week will lead to a 25-50% decrease in illness. It’s better than any drug or shot.
Exercise Prevents Colds [Outside]
Subscribe to the comments for this postDealing with Itchy, Dry Skin
There’s been a tremendous response to my article on itchy legs when running or walking, especially when it’s cold out, so I figured I could write a little about how I deal with itchy and dry skin when I’m not walking or running in the winter. You all probably know what I mean, you get out of the shower, you towel off, and your skin ends up being dry and itchy. It’s infuriating and it seems to only happen in the winter! The reason this happens is because most heating systems blow hot air (duh!) and that hot air is typically very dry. That dryness makes the air in your house very dry. When you combine that with a hot shower and a towel, you end up with skin that is very dry and thus itchy. So, how do you deal with this?
- Lotion. A bit of an obvious answer but lotion is the best response, especially for those designed for dry skin. You want to use it liberally because you need your skin to be healthy and well moisturized.
- Bundle up. The cold air does an excellent job of drying out your skin. If you have a hat and gloves, be sure to put them on even if you don’t think you’ll need them because the cold air can strip your skin of that moisture. This is why your hands are often drier than other parts of your body.
- Shave less frequently. Pulling a razor across your skin is bound to dry it out, you won’t notice it in the summer because there’s more moisture in the air, but it’s very obvious in the winter.
What’s your favorite tip for dealing with itchy, dry skin?
Proper Hydration: Clear Urine Is Best
With a double header softball game this afternoon in what will undoubtedly be a hot day, hydration is always on my mind. Dehydration can hit pretty quickly when you’re running around outside in the sun and it can affect your mood and athletic performance in insidious ways. You’ll get moody, cranky, and miserable to be around. Your reaction time will slow, your body will feel more sluggish, and you’ll find yourself preferring to sit out rather than play the next inning. Proper hydration is crucial.
So, what’s the best barometer of hydration? Your urine. Your urine is yellow because of bile. Bile is produced by your liver and used to help break up fat. Afterwards, that bile is broken down and urinated out of the body. Urochrome, a pigment in bile, is what turns your urine yellow. The darker yellow it is, the less water you have in your body. The lighter the better and a dark yellow is a sign of dehydration.
Drink more liquids and pee clear!
Don’t Break The Streak
I’ve been going to Body Pump every Tuesday and Thursday for the last two months without skipping a single day. Now, I haven’t gone regularly on other days but every single week I’ve at least gone to two Body Pump classes. Some people mark it on a calendar, I remember it in my head, but that’s a pretty good streak for someone who had a hard time regularly going to the gym. That streak gives me strong motivation to go tomorrow (it’s Monday night and I’m already reserved in the class) and to ensure that I don’t miss a day and break the streak.
Sometimes I’m tired, sometimes I haven’t woken up yet, and sometimes I feel just plain crappy… but I know that to keep the streak alive I just need to persevere for an hour. I can take little microbreaks and slack off on weight for a muscle group during that hour, but I need to go.
Magically though, when I’m there I always go full out. I could take a break in a set, I could lighten the load, but I always manage to push myself whenever I’m in class because I’m already there.
So, start looking at it like a streak and don’t break the streak!
Microfitness Exercises: Little Nuggets of Body Joy
In another life I’m a personal finance blogger, which means I write a lot about dollars and cents and saving and all that wonderful jazz. Well, personal finance and fitness are very very similar. In personal finance, one of the mantras is “spend less than you earn.” If you follow that rule, you’ll accumulate money. In fitness, it’s the same mantra except it’s “eat fewer calories than your body burns.” If you follow that rule, you’ll not accumulate more fat. There are plenty of parallels between the two but today I want to talk about a personal finance idea known as snowflaking (or micropayments, depending on how cool you want to sound).
Snowflaking is making small payments towards a debt or towards savings whenever you can. It’s the idea that “snowflakes,” however small they may be, will eventually accumulate into a nice “snowball.” How does this apply to fitness and weight loss? Microfitness exercises.
Going to gym can often seem like an insurmountable task. You have to change, you have to get into the car, you have to drive over and spend an hour or two or whatever there, then you come back, shower, change, etc etc. While it’s really not that bad, it’s certainly a bigger task than just pounding out a few push ups or cranking out a few sit-ups. My suggestion is that rather than just keeping all your exercise for the gym, start doing little things during the day to improve your fitness. Here are a few ideas for micro-exercises:
- Pushups – Do 10-20 pushups during the day, enough to get your blood pumping but not so much that you break out in a sweat or hit muscle exhaustion.
- Sit-ups – Crank out a few sit-ups, again enough to work your abs but not so much that you start sweating a ton.
- Take a ten minute walk – If you’re sedentary most of the day, this will help get the blood flowing, burn a couple calories, and give you a break. Some people take smoke breaks, you take anti-smoke breaks.
- Stretch – Touch your toes, arch your back, give yourself a little break during the day and stretch a little. This will improve your flexibility if you do it regularly and can take only a few minutes to do.
- Hit the stairs – Walk up a few flights at a brisk pace and enjoy the slight burn you feel in your legs, let your legs know that you’re thinking about them even though you’re on your butt all day!
There are plenty more but those should give you a nice head start during the day. A few extra calories a day that you can burn through small microfitness exercises and you’ll have fewer calories packed onto you.
How To Improve Circulation
One of the things I noticed as I grew older was that circulation to my legs was becoming worse and worse. If I cross my legs or raise my knee above my hips, within ten or fifteen minutes my foot will fall asleep. To figure out how I could improve my circulation, I turned to the internet. It’s amazing the number of herbal supplements you can take to improve circulation! (though I wonder how many actually do improve circulation!) So, the only suggestions I have are those having nothing to do with herbal remedies.
- Be hydrated: Did you know you’re supposed to have eight glasses a day of water? I know I wasn’t getting quite that much and I’ll be drinking more to see if it’ll improve my circulation.
- Wear proper shoes: Your feet swell during the day so be sure to purchase shoes when your feet are the fattest, near the end. If you wear uncomfortable shoes or shoes that don’t fit, it’ll affect the circulation to your feet and thus affect your circulation overall.
- Exercise regularly: This is a no brainer as the more you move the blood around, the better it is at getting around. However, even small exercises, like walking around during the day, can improve circulation to your feet.
- Consume high-bioflavonoid foods: Bioflava-what??? Actually, bioflavonoids improve the strength of your veins in terms of tone and elasticity as well as promotes healing and reduces swelling. The net effect is that your veins and arteries are stronger and thus better able to pump blood, thus improving circulation. This has a side effect of reducing the incidence of varicose veins. High bioflavonoid foods include berries such as blueberries and raspberries.
- Consume omega-3 oils and protein: Walnuts, fish, and flaxseed oil are all good sources of those components which have anti-inflammatory effects. These are also good for circulation.
Split Multivitamins In Half
If you take a multi-vitamin, here’s a tip that I read (or saw) somewhere: cut the multivitamin in half and take it twice a day. By splitting up the vitamin and consuming it twice, you even out the “dosage,” and thus the effectiveness of the vitamin, throughout the day. When you consume it all at once, a much higher percentage of it is expelled as waste as the vitamin travels through the body. By taking it twice, the assumption is that more of it is processed and absorbed by the body rather than expelled.
Incrementally Adopt A Diet Plan
You might have picked up a hot new diet plan that calls for a complete overhaul of your entire lifestyle. Rather than eat how you’ve always eaten your entire life, they call for a total change to a system you’re not accustomed to. While you might be tempted to try the program full tilt, chances are you are going to drop it after a week or a month or a few months because the change is too drastic to maintain.
Rather than adopt the entire plan, try adopting bits and pieces and introducing them incrementally into your regimen. Rather than drop sugars completely, drop sugars on Mondays. After several weeks, drop it on Mondays and Wednesdays. Or drop sugars on weekdays except with your morning coffee. Or drop sugars on weekdays after 6pm. Simply change one minor thing about your regimen and one that won’t flip your world upside down. You don’t want to have to review a book to see if you can do something, that’s not the point to a healthy lifestyle, you want to do things that make sense and do them incrementally so you can adjust to them. Before long you won’t crave sweets after dinner and you won’t want dessert during the week, then you start adding (or subtracting) other things.
What I’ve been doing it starting to take classes on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays (if we’re in town). At first I did only a Thursday, with a week off to let my body’s soreness subside, but now I’m on the full Tuesday/Thursday/sometimes Saturday routine after a month. Next will be introducing some night-time walks or cardio as I get the schedule down and before long I’ll be back on track with everything in line.
Rome wasn’t completed in a day.
(Photo by djdau)
Save On Electricity & Lose Weight
I recently started working from home and haven’t changed our programmable thermostat to start pumping out heat during the day, so sometimes it gets a little cold around here. One solution would be to move the space heater from the basement up to the office on the second floor, but I found an alternative that not only saves us electricity (space heaters are notorious energy hogs) and helps me work out, albeit only a little bit.
I find that if I’m cold, the easiest way to warm myself up is to do twenty push-ups followed by twenty crunches.
Over the course of a day, I figure I can crank out a minimum of a hundred of each, which is a hundred of each more than I would’ve gotten normally. As an added bonus, since the physical exertion gets my blood flowing and my body temperature up, I won’t need to turn up the heat!
Win-win!
