You may feel more energized and better about your workout if you avoid the treadmills in front of the mirror. This study compared women exercising alone, in groups and in groups in front of mirrors. The group that worked out in front of a mirror "felt less revitalised afterwards, more exhausted, and more self-conscious." So avoid the mirrors if you can!
While many studies have found that exercise is key to a successful weight loss plan, new studies show that exercise does make you hungrier. So if you decide to use exercise to help you lose weight, you will have to be careful to not eat more!
Exercise is key to good health. However, if you don't enjoy it, you won't keep it up. Sadly, the British Heart Foundation found that only 4% of people find exercise fun! I've found a number of fun exercise options from:
But the one I was most consistent about was walking with a friend after work. We walked our dogs after work every day for about five years. We enjoyed talking, watching the dogs and meeting the neighbors so much I don't think we noticed we were getting exercise. Note that when we started running we were a lot more inconsistent - I think the running was work and so we made up a lot more excuses about why we couldn't go ...
Treadmills work really well for me. I've always felt like it was something besides the obvious and I figured it out when I read this study about interval training. Treadmills are helpful to anyone looking to exercise regularly because:
I started running on treadmills when I started traveling a lot for business. Running around strange cities at ten o'clock at night didn't sound very appealing so I discovered the hotel workout room - usually a lone treadmill and a nautilus in a converted hotel room. I decided they were a good addition to my normal workouts. Last winter between all the snow and having two kids, I finally invested in a good treadmill for the house.
And for those that say running on a treadmill is boring ... I say audiobooks!
New evidence is suggesting that one on one coaching may help many people lose weight and maintain their weightloss. Today's New York Times has an article Winning the Nutrition Game, With Help From a Coach. A typical coach charges $100-200/hour for personalized consulting. Coaches might plan meals, suggest exercise routines, or uncover hidden problems like food allergies. Diet coaches typically have degrees in nutrition, exercise physiology or medicine.
Cognitive Friday got some interesting data about who is always hot and who is always cold. As most of us would have guessed, women are much more likely to be cold than men. (As I type this my hands are freezing!) Thin people and young people are also more likely to be cold.
One related theory I heard is that women have a much smaller range of "comfortable" temperatures because their bodies need to be able to regulate a fetus' temperature. I no longer believe this one because the one thing I really loved about being pregnant was always having warm hands! So obviously I was much warmer when I was pregnant than when I'm not pregnant.
Cognitive Friday also discovered that exercise didn't change people's answers at all which surprised me. I wonder if you could measure muscle mass if that would coorelate to feeling warmer like being overweight does?
Do you fit the data? If not, how are you different?
Yet another reason to exercise! You actually grow more brain cells when you exercise. Researchers think they have figured out why exercise can help with memory loss:
Tests on mice showed they grew new brain cells in a brain region called the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus that is known to be affected in the age-related memory decline that begins around age 30 for most humans.
The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging scans to help document the process in mice -- and then used MRIs to look at the brains of people before and after exercise.
They found the same patterns, which suggests that people also grow new brain cells when they exercise.
So keep up the exercise!
Photo by cheetah100.
The secret to losing weight is to work like a sled dog. According to
Wired Magazine sled dogs burn 10,000 calories a day! Since there's
3500 calories to a pound, that means they would lose three pounds a day
if they didn't eat lots. So, work as hard as a sled dog running and
pulling a sled all day and you too could lose three pounds a day!
(Check with your doctor first!)
Photo by Ranger Gord.
Thinking you are getting enough exercise might be beneficial to your health whether or not you actually do get enough exercise. Housekeepers who all got the same amount of exercise just by working during the day were divided into two groups. One was told that they were getting enough exercise at work to see health benefits. The other group was told nothing. At the end of a month the group that was told they were exercising enough saw more health gains than the other group! They had lower body mass indexes, lower blood pressure and lower body fat. The researchers attributed it to the placebo affect. I bet just the fact they were now thinking about their movement as exercise might have also caused them to move more.
Photo by Mirando.
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