It’s actually better if you are somewhat hungry going into a workout, to make sure you get something small before your workout instead of eating right after your workout. The key word here is “small”. This is because as you all know, you can’t go into a workout with a fully belly and be comfortable or efficient!

I like to eat something like an apple before hand. This provides me with filling fiber and complex carbohydrates and sugars. It keeps me satiated and keeps my blood sugar even until well into my workout so I don’t start to feel that typical faintness that so many people feel if they go into a workout without adequate fuel.

Your body torches right through calories and carbs when you do any type of cardio activity. When you combine protein and a little bit of healthy fat (omega 3’s) with your pre-workout microsnack, then you are feeding your metabolism exactly what it needs – high octane fuel for a tough period of time where the body will be taxed.

Another reason to fuel up BEFORE your workout

Here is another compelling and important reason you should fuel up before your workout as opposed to after it. Studies have shown that if you eat food after your workout, you are actually likely going to interfere with your body’s naturally increased post-workout production of HGH.

HGH is Human Growth Hormone, and it plays a vital role in keeping you fit, keeping your muscle to fat ratio healthy, and in keeping you youthful and healthy (and good looking to boot!)

Evidence shows that eating any carbs after your workout actually slows this natural HGH production and defeats the purpose of working out to increase your natural levels of positive, healthy hormones circulating in the body. So if you can keep from the fridge or pantry after your workout, you’re really doing yourself a favor in boosting your routine’s effectiveness.

Jennie Garth is someone that a lot of people in my generation feels they sort of grew up with. She essentially grew up in front of the camera as her innocent and well meaning angelic looking character on Beverly Hills 90210.  She took a long break from Hollywood and did more of a behind the scenes sort of thing when she married the hunky actor Peter Facinelli and had three beautiful daughters with him.

However, as with so many other numerous Hollywood marriages, hers busted up about a year ago and she was left to figure out what she wanted to do next in life. A sort of fresh start if you will, particularly if a marriage has really run its course or a person just no longer belongs in a situation any more.

She did a really interesting interview lately where she talks a lot about her body totally reshaping after her divorce. She talks about all the fad diets she went on and how they really didn’t work for her, but how now she’s found the answer through religiously exercising and eating healthy and according to common sense.

I like the fact that she emphasized never beating yourself up if you take a step back, but the importance of getting right back on the wagon when you fall off. Her weight loss is pretty drastic, especially considering she wasn’t really “overweight” to begin with.

She lost around 30 pounds. It’s actually a little more than I think she needed to lose, but hey if she feels great then all the more power to her.  She shared a really simple piece of advice that I thought I’d share with you because it’s extremely simple but also very important.

She said that she puts her workout clothes on in the morning so that she makes sure she gets her workout out of the way and that she does it. She brought up a good point that if you’re already in your workout gear, you tend to not make as many excuses for not getting around to it.

You also tend to get this part of your day done early so that you can be relaxed and more alert the rest of the day, which is a proven effect of exercise. I love this simple yet very effective piece of advice.

So, what are panic attacks anyway?  They are commonly misconstrued as many other things other than what they really are, which is a physiological response to stressors that are occurring in life.  Panic attacks are caused by surges of adrenaline that occur when the body and mind are under stress.

It often makes the person feel like they are having a cardiac episode or makes them question whether they have problems with their heart.  That is because the response includes a rapid heart beat and sometimes may even include a missed heart beat or an arrythmia, which feels like they heart is pulsating at a very fast rate.

Since exercising regularly is such a strong stress reliever (in my opinion it is way more powerful than any drug that’s ever been developed for chronic anxiety), it can also be a powerful weapon against panic attacks.

Exercise helps you get out a lot of aggression, anger and frustration that you couldn’t normally vent out of your system if you didn’t work your body hard every week.  When you do this, it really serves as a powerful outlet to help the body relieve stress naturally instead of letting it all build up inside.

Exercise is also a great way to condition your heart to DEAL with stress like this.  When your heart is in tip top shape you can much more easily deal with stress and also with physical strain, so it is much more likely that your  heart won’t react so violently to these types of situations.

I know I went through a period where I was having panic attacks. Things were just really busy and it seemed like the weight of the world was on my shoulders.  Well, I also happened to be slacking on my exercise, which was the worst time to be doing that.  Incidentally we often tend to slack off our workouts at the times we most need them because “we don’t have the time”.

When in reality, working out would make us a lot more productive, energetic and oh yeah, able to maintain the calm and peace that is such a cornerstone to our well being and functioning.

With the onslaught of crazy weather that hurricane Sandy has seemed to bring so much of the country, it seems that good old cabin fever has already started to eek its way into American households. Many people already feel as though they have weathered the storm of winter so to speak after picking up huge pieces of trees and other debris out of their yards in the bone-chilling cold and rainy dampness.

Ok, so maybe I’m injecting a little too much of my own personal story there, but you get the picture. It seems like the sunny and unseasonably warm days that we had just a week and a few short weeks ago in many parts of the northeastern half of the US are long forgotten.

I remember actually being able to wear shorts in October for heaven’s sake!  Now that’s what you call a real Indian summer my friends!  But now suddenly, after only a week of harsh weather that hasn’t even shown us snow yet, why am I already (along with a lot of other people) craving the days where I could comfortably step outside, take a long jog, or go muck around in the flower beds?

I don’t know what the exact psychology of it all is, but I can tell you some ways that I can help beat it myself that may help you out of it.  First off, and I realize this is probably controversial to say, but I like to visit a tanning bed here and there.

I personally believe that if you use it wisely and only go for a few minutes at a time and NEVER burn your skin then a  tanning bed can be extremely therapeutic for those that go months without seeing a whole lot of sunshine in their climate.

It helps lift your mood and gives you a much needed dose of vitamin D. It helps take away some of the drudgery that is often associated with the shorter, colder and darker days of summer and the longer nights due to the time change and natural darkening that time of year.

I make sure I get my workouts in, and I really try to change them up more in the winter time too. I might add some yoga in a little more, or some fun new dance-type of workout to kind of change things up and make me feel alive again as well.

Whatever works for you, try it.  Also make sure you GET OUT OF THE HOUSE when those rare days come along that you get a brief respite from the weather. You usually get a few warm sunny and unseasonable days every winter, so take full advantage when this happens and get your butt outside.

I work a desk job like so many other millions of Americans today.  It can be extremely challenging for me to get up and move enough during the day. My back and neck get really stiff, and sometimes I look at the clock and realize I have barely moved and it’s been over an hour. That is unacceptable!

Research has shown that it only takes about a half hour of us sitting and being sedentary for our metabolisms to go into a total slowdown mode.  This means every minute that we’re sitting is another minute we’re giving to the predisposition toward weight gain and disease – and ultimately an early death as we’ve talked about in previous posts about too much sitting.

Ways to Fit Some Exercise In During Your Desk Job Day!

1.)  Bring in a small set of hand weights and throw them in a drawer.  Take them out when no one is around and do some quite bicep curls, tricep   extensions, or whatever your little heart desires as long as you’re pumping up some muscle and getting your blood flowing.

2.) Sit on an exercise ball for part of your day. The constant little adjustments your body does when you are balancing your weight on a balance ball instead of a typical office chair is a lot like standing. Research has shown that standing more every day improves health and prolongs your life. Plus you may just end up with a killer set of abs from using them to constantly stabilize your body.

3.) Take about ten minutes every hour and stand at your desk instead of sitting down.  Not only will it wake you up, it will also relieve back and neck pressure by releasing the vertebrae that get compressed from prolonged periods of inactivity in the sitting position. Many companies actually offer their employees ergonomic “standing” setups that can be used interchangeably for standing and sitting at your work station.

4.) Take frequent walks.  Make them brisk.

5.) When you go to the restroom, work in a quick set of about 20 squats each time.  These can be hindu style squats, which take barely any space and are easy to do in confined spaces, or they can be wide legged squats if you have the space.

6.) When sitting at your desk, do a series of ab squeezes.  This will help to tone your abs even as you sit and will help to combat that awful feeling of “muffin top” where you’re rolling over your pants since you’re tightening your muscles the whole time.

7.) You can also do some backwards pushups on your chair as long as your chair has arm rests (it should).  Put your hands on the arm rest and push yourself up with your body weight. Many of these moves may make you feel ridiculous, so just wait til no one’s around. If someone happens to pass by you can always make it look like you’re just stretching!

Cinnamon has gained quite a good reputation for stabilizing the blood sugar. So why would this help you to work out any better? It’s not like it’s a protein that can help to repair muscle tissue faster, or an energizing ingredient that can help you power through your workouts by using stimulants, right?

Well, no it’s no per se. But the fact that cinnamon has proven quite an effective all natural blood sugar stabilizer is excellent for the implications to your exercise program.  Have you ever started a workout without having a ton of food in your stomach, and started to feel a little weak because your blood sugar begins to waver thanks to not having enough food in your system?

Well taking as small an amount as a fourth teaspoon of cinnamon can help to stabilize your blood sugar right from the get-go so that you don’t have to worry about losing your steam 20 minutes in and giving up.

I actually keep cinnamon in my desk at work to take a little before my work gym workouts because I know that it’s usually been a few hours since I ate lunch (I work out in the afternoon usually) and I may actually get a little light headed if I don’t stabilize with something – but I don’t want to actually eat something of substance so it doesn’t weigh me down.

Cinnamon has actually been studied for it’s blood glucose stabilizing abilities, and it has been found to be very effective at reducing blood sugar levels naturally, so it’s well worth a look into.  I’m the type of person who has to graze all day long just to keep my blood sugar even, so it’s been a great savior to me and my workouts.

Keeping our muscles lithe and bendable is one of the surest ways to keep a young, flexible body and one that can stay in motion rather than become a useless tool that we can no longer adequately utilize to get around.  Too many times I’ve seen people sit too much and lead a very sedentary life, then wonder why they have constant aches and pains or seem to get injured relatively easy.

The answer is simple. You must move your body and stretch it out in order to maintain peak physical wellness as well as to maintain maximum flexibility with age.  If you sit, it’s almost like an old car sitting. It eventually forgets how to run. It needs to be oiled and greased and tuned up after a long season in the garage not running.

Our bodies are much the same way. They very much conform to that old saying “use it or lose it” and will rebel against you if they are left idle for too long. I’ve seen this concept at work in my life a lot. I notice that if I even have a few days of relative lethargy and inactivity that it seems much harder to get around without becoming out of breath.

It also seems that I feel very tight and sore easily, even though I have no reason to be. That’s because if you don’t stretch your muscles they become contracted and begin to feel tight. They also become much more prone to injury because they are too tight and constricted.

Muscles that are “warm” and stretched most of the time have a really good chance of suffering some sort of strain without becoming seriously injured for a very long time.

Stretching is the only way to keep back pain at bay as well. Back pain is mostly caused by tightness due to sitting for long periods of time. This causes the vertebrae to become impacted and causes nerves to be pinched and strained, all of which can lead to unbearable and chronic back pain, reportedly one of the worst pains you can feel because it is so encompassing.

I tend to be a loner when it comes to working out. I like to occasionally do the buddy thing but I actually don’t like the distraction of having someone there with me.  I would love to do an actual workout class with a partner, but that’s different to me.

When I get on a treadmill or an elliptical machine or even a bike or some other piece of caridio equipment, I zone out and get very serious about making sure I get the right amount of intensity so I can get in and out in the shortest amount of time while getting the biggest bang for my buck, so to have someone with me while doing my own individual workout would really make me feel guilty about not paying enough attention to them.

I think that going to dance classes, yoga classes, and other types of things that are held in groups forums are ideal for going with a partner. They can be very motivating, and you can just make it into a fun social activity.

When you attend these types of classes together with someone who you’re close to, you “rub off” on one another, and tend to have healthy habits fro the rest of the day after your class. you also motivate one another by seeing that the other person is going through the same thing you are during the class, especially during the harder times that you don’t think you can get through.

Working out with partners is definitely not for everyone though.  Most women do like to work out with partners. Somes guys do, but it’s not as common. Men usually need workout partners to spot them if they are weight lifting.

Making sure you stay hydrated during a workout – with nothing other than water, is very important for several reasons. First off, when your muscles are working hard, they demand water. Your muscles will seize up if you’re sweating profusely and your body becomes dehydrated due to an electrolyte imbalance that occurs when water is scarce in the body.

A very important electrolyte, potassium, can be depleted quickly when we sweat a lot and this can affect not only our muscle performance but our mental capacity and our ability to feel clear minded and able bodies.  A great way to fortify with additional electrolytes is to drink an ionized water, or buy Smart Water at the store, which contains additional electrolytes to help keep you balanced.

I’ve found Smart Water to be not only great for doing grueling workouts, but also as a great way to prevent a hangover.  Let me explain. My husband and I took a couple of the large bottles of Smart Water to our buddy’s annual fourth of July party the past few years. We always do indulge in alcoholic drinks when we’re there, and sometimes we lose count because we’re having too much fun.

If we stay hydrated with the Smart Water, we’ve noticed that we don’t wake up in the morning or during the night with that foggy headed, dehydrated and cotton mouthed feeling, it’s quite an amazing remedy for us.

Another reason is to keep the metabolism up.  When you drink water, it helps to keep your metabolism revved up, and really helps keep those calories torched while you’re working up a sweat.  It helps prevent muscle fatigue and helps you keep going strong.  Water also helps to keep the body temperature reasonable so you don’t get overheated while doing a strenuous workout.

Additionally, make sure you aren’t drinking any sugary energy drinks or “replenishing” drinks during or after your workout. The carbs in them actually hinder your body’s natural ability to produce HGH, or Human Growth Hormone. This hormone is very important in maintaining solid muscle mass and reducing body fat.

It is called the hormone of youth because it really helps you feel better and look better, like you typically did when you were younger and had more of this hormone.  Of course, if you’re working out regularly, then you’ll look that way forever!

It’s spring time. Heck, it skipped over spring time and went right into summer for most of us. If you’ve been experiencing the same unseasonably warm and gorgeous weather that we have been here in northeast Ohio, then you know it’s easy to get out of the house and go do your exercise where you can actually enjoy it.

Take advantage of it while you can, instead of feeling chained up to some hamster wheel in the basement or some other windowless gym or room (most workout rooms are windowless, which isn’t very motivating).

Most people think of jogging in this weather, but there is much more that you can do to get your share of fresh air and to also get in your cardio and your enjoyment of nature.  You can take long hikes for example.  This is great because most trails offer you a range of hills and inclines as well as declines, which means your heart gets more work and you actually get to experience a real workout simply from walking at a fast pace rather than being all at one level the whole time.

Playing tennis is a really excellent way to stay in shape. It uses your hand eye coordination, so it take mental work as well and counts as a sort of “brain workout” on top of a great cardio workout. You have to run back and forth and back and forth on the tennis court to hit the ball, and you also have to make quick stops and reversals to figure out where the ball is going, which keeps you mentally engaged and makes the sport more exhausting and a better workout.

Basketball is the same way.  You’re constantly running up and down the court and chasing after the ball. Why do you think there’s not a single fat professional basketball player!?  They all stay in tip top shape because they’re constantly on the run and using their brains as well, which burns calories too.

Other more unvonentional outdoor activities can include roller blading, skate boarding and a really interesting if not crazy sport called parkour. This is a really unique and creative fitness trend that is also somewhat of a lifestyle called parkour.

You creatively leap and bound over, under and around obstacles in order to get further. It’s excellent for your muscle conditioning and also gives you a killer cardio workout in most cases.  It’s somewhat of a novelty, and you have to get good at it to really enjoy it, but it could really be a fun way to blow off some steam outdoors.