Walking for wellness

Doing either of these things could help you to get and stay healthy
• Do some modest activity for at least 30 minutes every day. Moderate activity may consist of cycling about 8 to 10 miles per hour (mph), a brisk walk, and swimming, shooting hoops. During the course of your exercise you will notice that your heart is beating faster.
• Do some forceful activity for at least 20 minutes twice or thrice a week and every day if possible. Vigorous activity may comprise of cycling at least 12 mph, jogging, playing a hockey/football game (which will keep you running). During the course of your exercise you will breathe faster and your heart will beat much faster.
Alternatively you may stay active in several chunks of 10 to 15 minutes or more and it will equal the above recommendations. You can choose either type of activity recommended above which will increase your stamina and help you loose weight.
Apart from above recommendations, you may choose walking. Walking is one of the easiest ways to improve your overall health and increase your physical activity while loosing weight. Regularity is the key to success in any case of life walking is no exception. Not only does it strengthen lungs, heart, muscles, bones, help loose weight but it builds and increases the resistance power of body to fight illness. Walking benefits almost every part of body, it increases your energy levels which makes you feel “the feel good factor”.
Some key points:
• Plan to walk a for certain number of minutes daily.
• You should begin with small achievable and or short-term goals, such as increasing the number of minutes your walk by 5 daily. Regularity is the key and after you begin to feel energetic and loose weight you will follow the routine yourself.
• You may begin walking with a warm-up, speed up the pace in the middle, and again slowing down at the end.
• You may stay motivated by walking with your family members, neighbors, and friends. Taking dog for walks will help up to follow your walking routine.


What more about starting a walking program?
Try to make walking an important part of your daily routine just as you take meals! It is not a hard and fast rule that you must walk for an entire 30 minutes at a time; adding more activity in your day could do just as good.
Activities such as using stairs instead of the elevator or walking into a nearby market for your daily purchase can add up quickly. Just use your thoughts and try to add as much of physical activity as possible in your daily life. You may choose to talk to someone while walking rather staying inside the home.
You should try to walk briskly which will speed up your breathing and increase pulse to get the healthy benefits of walking for your heart, but only until you are comfortable.
Why should I walk for wellness?
Walking is an exercise, which helps you by increasing your heart rate, makes your heart to pump more blood per beat; this increases blood circulation throughout the body. This results in more oxygen and nutrients being sent to your brain, this increases the ability of your lungs to intake oxygen, lower down blood pressure, and helps to reduce body fat.
How to stay motivated with a walking program?
One of the easy and best ways to stay motivated to walk is to include others along with you. Ask family members, neighbors, friends to join you. You may take dog for a walk every day; join a walking group or club. Some other tips you can try:
• Ask and get others to join you and set goals as a group.
• Try to fit a walk in everywhere you can. Instead of gong to a movie or watch Television or going out for a dinner, go out for a walk.
• If you can’t go out try to walk have laps inside.
• Walk to the market, work, school, etc.
• Walk in streets or in a park.
• Schedule a fixed time for your daily walk.
• Make walking a part of your daily work schedule.
• Wear shoes that are comfortable so as to cushion your feet.
• Drink lots of water. Take a water bottle with you when you walk.
• Plan family outings. Walk together. This will set an example for kids to stay healthy by walking which they will follow as they grow older.

Weight Loss Tip 1 Taking the Stairs

Do you know that by using the stairs rather than elevator you could burn more energy and is more beneficial to men as compared to women? In a study conducted by WHO (World Health Organization) it has been recently found that there is a correlation between taking the stairs and BMI (Body Mass Index) for men. Where as there was is no correlation for women.

Men who prefer to take stairs instead of the elevator at their offices, their home seem to have lower BMI than those who don’t. However the same is not true for women, results are not seen for women is unclear. It may possible that the weight of men on average appears to play a factor.

So, start today using stairs even if there is an elevator so as to loose body weight. So does this mean that women should stop taking stairs? Of course not, you should find different ways that you can follow in your daily routine to loose body weight. In the long run you will loose body weight and gain confidence.

Anywhere and Anytime Exercises for Body Building

Following are the simple type of Exercises that will make you raise your health to new levels it will keep your body Strong, Loose weight, Firm and increase your strength. Either you are exercising for Muscle Building and or, for Body Building these exercises are quite easy and will help you a lot.
Here are my favorite anywhere and Anytime Exercises:-
a) The Crunch
This is a common exercise for abdominal muscles also called abs (used by be for weight loss). For this exercise lie down on the floor on your back and keep your knees bent. The exercise begins by curling the shoulders towards the pelvis with hands supporting or placed behind the neck i.e. try to slowly raise your head off the ground just a few inches. Try to hold on to the raised position for at least 2 secs and then slowly come down. Do not exert force on the neck since this my cause injury to you, use the hands only to support the weight of you head. Keep your neck straight and chest up and abdominal muscles tight. From your sternum, crunch your weight up and forward. Keep lower back flat on the ground. You may if you wish support the neck by placing a cushion under it.
Try to hold on to the raised position for 2 secs and then slowly come down.
Repeat this exercise 20-25 times to make one set. It will build dream abs for you and you will Loose weight and while will feeling (abs) it.
b) Raising Toes and then coming down
Stand on a floor flatfooted with your toes pointing straight. You can hold something to support or balance yourself. Now VERY SLOWLY, try to raise your toes as high as it has is possible. Try to hold on there for 3 secs and come down very slowly and gently. Repeat it 20-25 times to make a set. Just keep that image of the perfect body of your dreams as your target to get yourself motivated and loose your weight.
c) Push ups
This is a common strength training exercise. Lie down horizontally and with face facing towards the floor .Now look forward and put your body weight on your palms and Exhale as your arms straighten out, slowly push your body up and keep the spinal cord straight. Pause for a moment and then slowly bring your body back toward the floor. Lower body until chest touches the floor, keeping your knees off the floor, and inhale as you bend your arms. Wait for a moment and repeat the entire process.
Repeat the exercise 5-10 times in the beginning and later increase it to 20 times per set.This is a great exercise that will help your body to loose weight.
d) Wall Squat
The wall squat is a bodyweight exercise. Stand straight with your back touching the wall. Keep your feet slightly away from the wall. Now, Keep your abs tight and gently move your body down to the sitting position. Look straight ahead and make sure your back is still against the wall. Exhale while coming down, hold on for 10-15 secs and inhale and gently move up keeping your back against the wall again. This exercise will strengthen core muscle strength and build up the stamina of your knees when increased gradually it also helps to loose weight.
Repeat the exercise 5-10 times in the beginning and later on increase the practice to 20 times per set.
Yoga or Aerobics could also be tried if you are serious and want to loose weight. Muscle Building is one of the great ways to burn those extra calories and keep your self in shape.

The Most Effective Fat Burning and Muscle Building Workout

If you are like most other people who want to burn off excessive fat, Build muscles, shed pounds and tone and tighten their bodies you might complain that you don’t have 2 hours a day to do workout in the gym performing the body building style workouts that most "fitness experts" recommend.
Also, these workouts consist of those exercises and techniques that do not exercise the body in the way it is normally used and so they end up building a some what unusable strength. In my opinion, most people shouldn’t perform the traditional style workouts, unless and until their main objective is body building.
I am of the opinion that machine and free weight strength training is the best choice for fat burning and body building, but not when the best choice when general fitness goals like strength, endurance, flexibility, etc are taken into account.
Each person has different body shape and body fat so fat burning and muscle building workout varies from person to person so I can’t say about you, but I can bet that just in only 15 minutes you will get the result of workout for 2 hours and like other people I am personally not interested in muscle building alone (which doesn’t mean strength and usually leaves you stiff and inflexible)! I have free and the most effective fat burning and muscle building plan for you. I’m sure your schedule is probably the same like me. The good news is that you can increase flexibility, build unbelievable strength, burn fat, and reshape your body, endurance and build a level of fitness that is truly functional.
I would like to share with you a workout that I do personally and delivers a great combination of flexibility, cardio and muscular endurance, strength and fat burning.
The following workout will not only surprise you, but it will likely go against everything you ever thought to be true about fitness. Also, it is recommended you consult your physician before beginning any exercise program.
Are you ready? Then here it is:
The following exercises should be performed with little or no rest between and you may need to adjust the number of repetitions or time depending upon your current fitness level.
• Jumping Jacks –1 minute
• Bodyweight squat (one-leg squat for advanced) – 15-20 reps
• Push-ups (slower reps for advanced) – as many reps as possible
• Kick butts (jog in place and kick your rear with both heels) – 1 minute
• Hamstring floor bridge (use Swiss ball or one leg for advanced) - 15-20 reps
• Superman (lying on stomach w/ arms out to side, lift legs and chest off floor) – 15-20 reps
• High knees (jog in place lifting knees as high as possible) – 1 minute
• Stationary lunge – 15-20 reps
• Torso rotations/twists – 20 reps each direction
• Side bends/reaches – 20 reps each direction
• Mountain climbers – 1 minute (if you can J)
• Wall sit – as long as you can hold it
• Dips (use chair/bench/stairs) – as many reps as possible
There you have it… sounds easy, right? That couldn’t possibly do anything, right? I personally challenge you… try it… no, try it right now! Drop what you are doing and give it a shot and see for yourself. If you find it a bit easy, which I doubt, perform it 2-3 times thru without rest.
This workout will deliver the fitness results and benefits than none of the traditional gym or health club workout could provide. You can follow this course anywhere and also this type of workout could be implementing in the gym and make it even better. The best part is that you can do it anywhere!
Note, that this is just one example (you can say a demo!) and as you can imagine, there are thousands of other exercises that you can add or replace. I recommend switching exercises every 2-4 weeks or even better is to put together 3 or 4 different workouts and then rotate them.
If you are not familiar with either of the exercises mentioned above just replace it with one you know that works on the same part of the body. So just keep going, Regularity, consistency and patience is the key to win here!

Weight Loss and the Importance of Low Body Fat

How do you feel When a doctor physician says, "Your body fat is too high, what do you think? Does it motivate you to lose weight?

With the scalable increase in obesity and diabetes cases around the world, keeping your body fat down become all that much important .Because health is wealth so you should be concerned towards your health. So, Weight loss plays an important role in having low body fat.

What is the meaning of being obese? This means that around thirty percent or more of your total body weight is composed of fat. When this is the situation, then your body has already begun to under perform in many areas. High levels of body fat affects blood pressure (B.P.), bone density, energy levels, immune systems, cholesterol, and the list goes on and on. These all are directly responsible for the increase in diabetes, and strokes, cardiovascular (heart) diseases. So you need to plan your weight loss program.

What is happening inside your body? The scene is that more calories are burnt as compare to the fat int your body by your muscles. Note that the fat being burnt inside you will be less per day if you don’t have big muscles. Aging demotes muscle mass naturally. Your goal should be to slow down that natural process. So, how do you do that? The answer is by “Having a balanced workout and eating plan”. A balanced workout will help you in weight loss, naturally. Your diet should be balanced so that it matches your workout plan and then you will be able to achieve low body fat.

Having a balanced workout plan is accomplished by adding fitness into all areas of your activities. Top Among them are strength training (weights lifting), heart exercising (cardiovascular), good eating habits, and stretching. When these are met you will have weight loss and low body fat, naturally. Remember I always insist to loose weight naturally because your body adopts is easily rather than having slimming pills or any such pills.

During this process of lowering your body fat levels your cholesterol levels, stress levels and blood pressure will lower down and this will raise your confidence, stamina, strength naturally.

So if you are obese start your weight loss program today and schedule your exercises while consulting your doctor or personal trainer. Start burning that fat in your body which will be the cause of the entire problem with your health in the near future.

Body Building for beginners

Body building or even starting up at a gym can be hard for a beginner. Below are some of the tips that might help you to get into body building:

Seek Advice from experts – In the beginning it makes no sense to learn by trying everything on you in the gym. Look at other beginners take some time and to talk to others experts who are experienced, and then try to learn from them. Always try to talk to the experts or other with some experience when using new equipment or a new exercise so as to make sure that you won’t get injured.

Sleep - When you are working out for the very first time then it is important to give rest to your body that it needs. Usually this will be more than what you used to take before exercising.

Diet – this is a vital and important aspect just as sleeping and giving rest to your body. Having a regulated diet ensures that you are keeping up with your exercises. This means to eat better and eat healthy. For example how would you expect to loose weight after exercising and taking a double meal. Our body is a magnificent creation of god and to keep it running we need fuel. To work more or exercise more you need to put more fuel into it to keep it going. So you must ensure that you providing your body with the proper fuel, only then you will be sure that it will work consistently and unto to the requirements.

Set Goals – No mission could be attained with setting proper goals. So set goals that you can achieve. Goal that could not be met would only upset you and the entire body building process would be a failure. Take some time to plan it, and celebrate on your achievements. Whether you set goal to loose 15pounds from your bench press or by working in the gym, you should set goals, otherwise Life is busy and you would have other priorities set above your Body Building Goal.

Be Positive – Be positive, it’s important to have a positive mind set which will help in succeeding even before you have begin working out. This positive mind set is the winning key you should have along with you and you will see yourself rising up to success!

Be smart and intelligent to find out the truth and secrets about body building so as to ensure that you make smart decisions which will achieve you success both mentally and physically.

Weight Loss and your Self Image

Losing the weight points to a simple question, "is it worthy to loose?"

Players, Athletes, obese (fat) individuals, movie stars, and kids. who ever the person is, much of success in weight loss comes to people believing in their hearts that it makes them feel good and ofcourse healthy and active. If you think about, this state of mind is really sad.

Our problem with obesity, diabetes and heart disease lies in the approach to them. Your have weight because of your thoughts, beliefs that follow your behaviors. Until you find them out, there will be no change in self image of yourself.

Here are some suggestions to change your self image in the long run.

1. Determine the motivating factor in you,

2. Determine the REASONS for your unwanted behaviors ,

3. Develop a great support system,

4. Eat for life i.e. fuel not for the taste,

5. Try being active.

Let me Explain this.

If you really want to loose your weight and change self image, you need to take some introspection not pills. It requires time, it is not a fast track,but patience pays. You might need

some encouragement, so get it . What ever is required. Just remember that:

There is just no one born on this planet that holds the right to take your self worth away from you. However, the choice is entirely yours to let them. Do it today and take your life back. Let me help you!

Cold Drinks and your health

There are Countless people who consume Diet Coke during their dieting thinking that it would support their dieting efforts. Cold drinks and the likes including Diet Coke, regardless of the number of calories it contains, dampens your fat loss efforts and will ultimately lead you to gain weight.

Two of the main reasons of concern before having Diet Coke are that

1)The sweet taste from Diet Coke elicits an insulin spike, which blocks your ability to burn fat.

2)Artificial sweeteners found in Diet Coke disrupt satiety, the feeling of being full.

The resulting actions of Diet Coke stand against a healthy life style. So understanding ensures us that we should think twice before consuming it.

In losing fat the concern is more about the quantity of sugar (or its substitute) that you consume rather than calories that you intake. Therefore, your goal should be to reduce the intake of sugar or its substitute as low as possible (this includes fruits, their juices). The reason being that sweet flavor elicits the release of insulin from the pancreas to enhance the uptake of sugar by the cells so that it doesn't linger in the bloodstream. Once insulin it is released then it inhibits your fat burning hormone called HSL (hormone sensitive lipase). This is the hormone that is responsible for releasing fat into the bloodstream to be utilized as fuel. If inhibited, your body is unable to burn fat and will then begin utilizing amino acids (from muscle) and carbohydrates as fuel. This will leave you feeling tired, grumpy, and sloth-like toward the end of the day. Also you will become abnormally hungry. And those with large amounts of HSL burn fat all day and look thin and slim. Those who inhibit it by eating or drinking the wrong substances grow fat throughout their adult years.

Artificial sweeteners disrupt satiety, the feeling of being full. When we consume artificial sweeteners we disrupt the body's ability to count calories based on sweetness. And those who drink diet coke will overeat without conscious awareness.

Diet coke contains an artificial sweetener called aspartame. Aspartame is the basis of NutraSweet and Equal, flavors Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, and other drinks, and sweetens other types of foods. Various articles on various sites claim that “If you are using aspartame ... and you suffer from fibromyalgia symptoms, spasms, shooting pains, and numbness in your legs, cramps, vertigo, dizziness, headaches, tinnitus, joint pain, depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, blurred vision, or memory loss - you probably have aspartame disease. The scientific evidence may fall well short of pinning an actual rap on the sweetener, but it is sufficient enough to raise a legitimate concern.”

Phenylalanine is another artificial sweetener found in Coke, Pepsi, or other soft drinks that contains whopping 600 calories.

So finally, either you intake Diet Coke, Pepsi, coke or any other soft drink you will gain weight. So, just stay away from these and other sugar sources if you're concerned and serious regarding losing fat. You may intake lemon water with some salt but without sugar and that is a great drink. In India we have Lassi (curd with water added and whipped) in salt or sweet flavours in summer. Now the Choice is yours!

Weight Loss, Fitness and Peace of Mind

My name is Arun Kumar, a Software programmer by profession with 9 years of experience. I grew well under the supervision of the best father, mother and brother in the universe. But a day About 15 years changed the shape of my body. I fell down form the roof of my house. There were no major injuries but the glucose injected into my body made me fat. Since then, I never had a Chance until recently to loose that fat. That fat grew with me and was the best friend of the body. I tried several times to exercise, change my routine, Change my over eating habits but all in vain. But fortunately I recently discovered that I was missing self-discipline, confidence and faith in myself. From my experience I find 3 big life changing words that meant a lot to me those were Hope, belief, and motivation.

Hope of getting better shape and fitness since my job work involved working 12 to 16 hours continuously while programming, I had no time for my life. I began each day with a ray of hope. Hope that I would change my life by exercising, hope that I could help someone else from my own experience. And hope that someday I could live a life that I ever wanted to. "You can work for hours without food, you can live a week without food and water, but you can't live without Hope". Even today, there are days when I do not exercise, take a balanced diet, and correct my bad habits. However, it's just the ray of hope for the future that keeps me going on. "All that you need is just a little bit of HOPE!"

Belief I had in my father. He taught me to work hard, and implement the saying "ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS", have faith In GOD, and treat elders and younger with respect, Speak only the truth and support it under all circumstances unless if manipulating the truth will do good for a group or community. I thought it was easy for him to say, but for me to follow. Life was very scary for me growing up without him (my father).In Dec 2005 I had the greatest loss one could ever had in his life, my father left this universe and went into heavens. I felt as he has left me in a jungle of this universe and all the animals here (people) would kill me. Some times in a busy street I would stand on some pillar and used to see all the people moving here and there and waiting that my father would hold my hand and take me home safely but that has never happened till today. He is not around me to guide me in taking the right decisions I didn't know what direction to take, what advice to follow.

My first step towards health and fitness was due to an inspiration from my cousin. He made me Jog 2 km in a play ground for my weight loss. I regularly followed the daily Jogging routine but I was also afraid that if I didn't loose weight I would be a joke in my family but that never happened. After a week of jogging I measured my weight and to my surprise I had a weight loss of 4.3 kg this made me gain confidence and with my fitness on the rise and that started positively affecting my attitude. It was one of the landmark days in my life that made me realize that it was my belief and my will power to loose weight that worked for me.

With a small ray of hope, added to some faith, thing really began to go my way.” When you know your potential there is no one who could ever stop you”. I began to understand the person in my body!

Motivation was the result of all the land mark developments in my life leading me to more confidence in my self. I realized that to change yourself you must change the person in you. Looking good, feeling better, fit, being more energetic and feeling your self physically stronger were great things to experience. I was grateful to my cousin for inspiration and will be always to my father whose practical approach made me stand apart in my own eyes. I felt great about myself. I had the will of doing something positive and that will was my real power like sword in my ammunition which has kept me going up all these years. What ever you do in life, if you have purpose, and is in some way related to helping some, one you will feel satisfied. This satisfaction may not even be met if you win jackpot in casino or luck goes with you in lottery. If there is a true sound from within you Listen and follow your heart.

To sum up for me fitness, weight loss and peace of mind is all that matters for your life not in words but in practice. For me the secret to fitness and weight loss is Regularity, Variety, and the will to loose plus Hope, belief and motivation is all that is needed for one to succeed.