Get A Good Night’s Rest
There are times when you absolutely are up against the wall and have to work late into the night, but those times shouldn’t be every week. You’re either trying to do too much or have poor planning. You need a good night’s rest to get the maximum accomplished in the hours you’re awake and unfortunately, too few Americans do that. Even if you’re eating healthy, drinking plenty of water and exercising regularly, you’ll still be putting your health at risk and your efforts to lose weight when you don’t get enough sleep.
You need sleep so your body can do repairs.
You may be sleeping, but there’s still a lot going on in your body. It’s a time for repairs to take place. Not only do you feel sleepy if you don’t get adequate sleep, you’ll also put additional stress on your body. You might be able to make it through the day with loads of extra caffeine, but that adds to the stress. You probably won’t feel like working out or if you do, won’t be nearly as effective at burning off the hormones of stress. Stress makes changes to your body that are linked to inflammation. Inflammation is thought to be the cause of serious conditions like heart disease, Alzheimer’s and cancer.
If weight loss is eluding you, maybe you don’t get enough sleep.
While stress boosts cortisol levels that can pack on weight around the middle, lack of sleep does something else to sabotage your weight loss efforts. It affects your hunger and satiety hormones, leptin and gherlin, and not in a good way. It boosts the hormone that makes you feel hungry and reduces the amount of hormone that makes you feel full. It also increases your desire for sugary treats as an energy booster. That spikes your blood sugar, but what goes up, must come down, leaving you exhausted and starved for more.
Your body isn’t all that suffers.
Just like your body, your brain is busy while you sleep. It’s processing and organizing everything that occurred throughout the day. Those memories are organized with neural pathways created to link your memories to feelings, associations and sensory input like smells and sounds. It helps you maintain a good memory. Lack of sleep causes memory lapses.
- Some people don’t require as much sleep and can do well on as little as six hours a night. Those people are definitely not the average. Most adults require between 7 and 9 hours. A few at the opposite end of the spectrum only feel refreshed with ten hours of sleep.
- It’s important to sleep in a dark room away from electronic devices. Falling asleep in front of the television might provide some rest, but it’s not quality. You need it completely dark to get the best sleep.
- If you can’t sleep well at night or find you wake up too early, consider learning how to power nap. It helps make up deficits and boosts your energy levels.
- Getting more too much sleep can indicate an illness. If you find you’re exhausted and are getting over nine hours a night, see your doctor. It can also be a sign that you have mild depression. Working out can help with that.
FOWO—fear of working out—might sound silly to those who don’t face it, but it’s real. There are various aspects to this, with one being fear of the gym. However, other situations, such as a after a serious condition, like a heart attack, can cause fear of overdoing or serious injury. For situations like that, making sure you have the okay from a doctor and a qualified personal trainer to help you is not only reassuring, it’s the smart and the right way to get back to fitness.
When you come to Iron Fit here in San Antonio, expect to do strength training. Whether you’re a man or a woman, there are huge benefits that aids a healthier lifestyle. If you’re working out to shed weight, it’s the top type of exercise for results. However, even people that don’t need to shed a pound benefit from it. Weight training provides benefits regardless of gender. Even though some women consider it as a workout for men, that’s just not true. More recent studies show that women may actually get more benefits from strength training than men do, both as a weight loss tool and an aid for maintaining good health.
I’ve seen it too many times. People set a fitness New Year’s resolution and wait until the stroke of midnight on December 31st to begin. The problem is, they only plan to begin their fitness goal, but often fail because the moment of passion passed. If you know anyone that smokes and planned to give it up for their New Year’s resolution, you probably have seen them puffing away, smoking more than normal the last few weeks of the year, making it harder to quit. The same is true of people who plan on shedding those extra pounds. They eat like there’s no tomorrow, in anticipation of feeling hungry and deprived. It just doesn’t have to be that way.
At one time or another, everyone has set up a workout program, going into it with fury, only to abandon it a few weeks later. Sometimes, life got in the way. Sometimes, the program was far too ambitious for the level of fitness. Working out for a few days may help a bit, but won’t give you the results you hope to achieve. The key to any fitness program is consistency. It’s not like writing a paper or reading a book, where you can do it in one day and its done. It’s more like keeping a kitchen or other room clean. It takes consistent work.
If you’re trying to get fit, you might feel a bit overwhelmed by all the changes you need to make. Don’t be caught in that trap! You can make fitness easier by following a few easy rules and just modifying the things you do everyday a bit. Of course, eating healthy is part of the program and so is regular exercise. You can make doing those two things easier once you get in the groove. Here are a few tips that can make you feel better about healthy living and help you make the adjustments you need to make to maximize fitness benefits.
One thing that definitely will help you shed weight is strength training. If you’re already working out regularly, you’re probably doing it two or three days a week and working different body areas. However, you can boost the effect with a few simple exercises you can do every morning and by changing a few habits you do every day. If you’re like me, you love to stretch the first thing in the morning. I feel like a dynamic stretches get me ready for the day. I also love to add a few quick exercises to the mix, which also boosts my readiness for the day.
You probably already know that working out can make you feel better emotionally. It burns off stress hormones and can lift your spirits. What you eat also makes a big difference in your mood. Some foods promote feeling good and others can sabotage that good feeling. Sugar, for example, can get you feeling energized by spiking blood sugar levels, but drop your mood like a rock off a cliff just a few hours later. Simple carbs, like sugar, when eaten frequently can cause you to feel constantly depressed.
One of the biggest causes of preventable deaths in the United States is obesity. It affects all parts of the body and has surpassed smoking as the leading cause of preventable illness and death. However, too often we fail to look at another problem faced by many and that’s a sedentary lifestyle. Even if you workout regularly, if you sit for hours at a time at a desk job, without a break every 55 minutes, you’re damaging your health. You need to make moving a habit and schedule a time to get out of your chair and walk across the room or even do exercises next to your desk.
If you haven’t noticed, fall is upon us. With the coming of fall, comes the thoughts of the holidays at the year’s end. Rather than wait to make a New Year’s resolution, it’s time to start now and get what you want this year instead of focusing on what you want for the next year. You can look great for the new year and celebrate in style in San Antonio this year. You’ll also boost your energy level to help make the holidays more fun this year celebration more fun for everyone.