My Weight Loss Journey: Click here to read my entire blog

Dear Heather, I enjoyed reading your Dear Heathers when you published them, but it seems like it's been a while since you posted one. Also, I have been doing my own workout at home for a few years now, I alternate strength training and cardio and it seems to be a good system. But I do sit-ups every morning before I shower (I know they are strength training, but I have a phobia about my middle) and even though I can do 50 at a time and it's easy, I still do them. Is there a way I can make it harder so I can improve the results from doing them? - Thanks, Arizona Fan

Dear Arizona Fan.

Thank you for the kind words. I appreciate it. Yes, Dear Heather has sat idle for a time now, life seemed to be unexpectedly busy, specifically with my dental issues. I thought they would be resolved by now, but my insurance wouldn't pay for the procedure (or to be more precise they offered to pay $77 of the $1200 - what a bargain, eh?) I have an appointment with a local dental college that will do the work for cost, but they were pretty packed on the appointments, so I can't see them until the middle of August.

In the meanwhile, let's talk about your sit-ups. If you are doing standard sit-ups (50 are impressive) and they're easy, consider varying the types of abdominal exercises you do. For example:

• Monday - Bicycle Crunches - this requires that you pump your legs and twist your torso as you crunch and reach left elbow to right knee and right elbow to left knee
• Tuesday - Do 7-7-7s - this is a form of crunch that requires that you do 7 crunches towards the left, 7 towards the center and 7 towards the right
• Wednesday - Reverse crunches - instead of lifting your torso, let your legs do the work. Lay on your back, toes pointed towards the ceiling and knees slightly bent, control the gravity and bring them down to you and the push up again - you'll be engaging your core to hold this position
• Thursday - Standard Sit-ups if you want or return to bicycle crunches, you can also add a five pound medicine ball that you hold to your chest while doing the sit-ups to increase the resistance
• Friday - Day Off

Now you may change this around so you are doing an alternative method of abdominal exercise every other day while your body gets used to it. This is important to keep from tearing or causing injury to an abdominal muscle. I spoke with a mom just a week ago that lunged across the room to scoop up a toddler who'd fallen and she tore two muscles in her abdomen, so it can happen. Be careful.

Good luck with your workout.

It was a quiet and simple week here in the Fitness blog. Look for some serious ramp up next week as we get ready for the Back to School rush and tackle things like what you can do for your local P.E. programs and how to manage your fitness schedule around work, school and much more. In the meanwhile, let's take a look at our week in review:

Monday, July 30th

U is for Uniforms and we all have our own specific fitness uniforms. They serve a dual purpose: making you comfortable while you work out and putting you in the right mind set to work out.

Tuesday, July 31st

In V is for VO2 Max we take a look at the measurement of oxygen consumption necessary to perform at a maximum effort. It's a measurement of fitness and you can improve the VO2 Max if you lose a few pounds too.

Wednesday, August 1st

W is for Walking takes a look at walking, one of my favorite forms of fitness. Walking is a great sport and anyone can do it and there are any number of ways you can jazz up your walking routine and make the best of it.

Thursday, August 2nd

X is for eXtreme Fitness takes a look at what happens when you go to far with your fitness plans. In the case of fitness, moderation is your best course of action. If you do too much or you go to far, you are more likely to injure yourself or set yourself back.

Friday, August 3rd

Finally, we rounded off our week with Y is for Yoga and yes, it was the simple way out for the letter Y, but there are a lot of reasons to do yoga and a lot of benefits you reap from performing it.

What was your favorite article this week?

For more great fitness articles be sure to check out our previous weeks in review. Also, be sure to check back in next week as Dear Heather makes a return to answer your fitness questions.

You had to know that I was going for the obvious when I got to Y - X was harder to deliver on, but in fitness, Y almost always stands for yoga. You don't have to be in perfect shape or uber flexible to do yoga. In fact, yoga is not only a great way to get in shape, it's also a great way to calm your mind and increase your sense of personal focus.

As a workout form, yoga is more than 5,000 years old. You use a series of positions, poses and postures to stretch, shape and tone your body. You can perform mantras or not at your own discretion. Many modern yoga classes have abandoned any religious aspect and simply focused on the physical.

Core Strengthening

Yoga is more than a flexibility exercise. It also builds core strength. There are poses that require you to hold a certain body position, one foot firm on the floor, one leg extended behind you and slightly elevated with your arms raised upwards on a diagonal palms facing each other. It's difficult and holding this pose for longer than a minute can actually make me ache, but you are using your entire core to create stability so that you can hold this pose.

The deep stretches associated with yoga also utilize all the major and minor muscle groups - engaging and releasing them. There are multiple styles and levels of yoga to provide for you whether you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced yoga enthusiast. Many fitness clubs offer yoga classes to their members and you can buy a standard, beginning yoga DVD for less than $12 at Wal-mart, Target or other super center.

The primary gear you need for yoga is loose clothing and maybe a yoga mat if you work out at a club where they have hard wood floors. At home, I don't use the mat at all.

Check out more great articles on yoga.

Everyone has to stretch for a good X word when you do a list of alphabet tips and in our case, we're doing exercise tips. I could have gone X is for eXercise, but eXtreme fitness is a topic we don't talk about here as often as we might. The idea of extreme fitness is that you push yourself to your limit during every single workout that you do.

The idea is based on no pain, no gain. Extreme fitness buffs want to feel the pain from their workout, believing that without that pain they won't achieve their fitness goals. The danger of extreme fitness is that it can lead to over training, especially when amateurs just pound pavement and pump muscle day in and day out without allowing for recovery or alternation of muscle groups. The idea that more is better is just a bad idea and you can get fit and get a great workout without punishing yourself in some brutal workout.

Too Much Of Anything Is Bad

Just like you shouldn't stuff yourself on a diet of chocolate and soda day in and day out, so you shouldn't be pumping iron day in and day out without proper recovery. It's also important to realize that when you punish yourself in these kinds of workouts that you run the risk of injury (which can lay you up and defeat your fitness plan) or exhaustion (which can lay you up and defeat your fitness plan).

Reactions to Extreme Fitness

When you engage in extreme fitness, your body goes through a few specific things:

• Damaged muscles - this is normal because the point of strength training is to tear up your muscles so that during repair (24 to 48 hours), they grow stronger
• Shock - if you don't give your body the time it needs to repair itself, you can create a shock or alarm in your body
• It will try to adapt - pushing past the 'pain' may give you a momentary boost, but the constant damage can lead you to overcompensating with other muscles that can lead to injury in their muscles
• Exhaustion or collapse - you may begin to feel ill or exhausted, not only are you combating pain, but also the need of your body to collapse because it will demand recovery

Generally by the time you get to the exhaustion stage, chances are increased by 50% that you will abandon all future workouts with a defeatist attitude. So if you're a beginner or intermediate level exercise buff - avoid the eXtreme workout - instead, make sure you take the time to alternate your workouts to focus on different muscle groups and take the time for proper recovery. Your body and your workout will thank you in the long run.

Related Articles:

T is for Total Body Workout

20 Minutes A Day Can Change Your Life

As per a new study in Economic Inquiry, an individual's body weight depends not just on physiology and economic circumstances, but also on average body weight of the population at large. The study is the first to quantitatively model body weight distribution based on the combined outcome of economic, biological and social influences.

The findings complement those of a recent, high profile study that found direct evidence of social contagion of obesity within social networks. Eventhough Burke and Heiland studied trends in the aggregate weight distribution, rather than following specific individuals over time, the evidence of person-to-person contagion provides strong support for their modeling approach.

"Behavior governing weight depends not just on health considerations but also on the desire to appear normal and attractive," say authors Mary Burke and Frank Heiland. As a result, any change that causes average weight to increase, such as a decline in food prices, will lead to additional weight increases because the weight level considered "normal" will rise. This is an example of a "social multiplier" effect. The authors find that their integrated model, describing the effects of economic and social change on a physiologically heterogeneous population, does a better job of explaining changes in the weight distribution over the past thirty years than do models based on economic change alone.

The authors also observe that a measure of weight dissatisfaction-the gap between average actual weight and average desired weight (controlling for weight, height, age, and education) fell significantly between 1989 and 2000, despite the fact that average weights increased over the same time period.

"Some people have objected to our claim that social norms governing acceptable body weight are on the rise, on the grounds that the idealization of thinness in popular culture appears as pronounced, if not more so, than ever," say Burke and Heiland. "While we do not dispute this last fact, we believe there is good evidence that a gap exists between the cultural imagery and the weights that most people consider acceptable for themselves and others."

The research points to a long-term process of social adaptation to population-wide shifts in the body size distribution. The authors think that this adaptation occurs with a time lag, and that the response to past declines in food prices may extend well into the future.


Posted by: Evelyn    Source