The Mighty Plank

This is my number one ab exercise.  The picture is self explanatory.  Best explanation that I have found.

The Mighty Plank

 

As a trained yoga instructor, I have come to value the benefits of the plank.  If done correctly, this is one pose that can help with multiple problem areas.  I especially love it to help focus on my abs and my guns (arms/shoulders).

If you have never done a plank and you find that you don’t have the strength to hold it very long, it’s okay!  Just do it as many times as you can, for as long as you can (even if it is just 5 seconds).  If you do it daily, you will build up your strength and be able to hold the pose longer.

It’s this simple!  What to do:

• suck in your tummy
• keep your back straight (not butt up in the air or sagging)
• squeeze your buns
• work your way up to 30 seconds, then to a 1 minute
• BREATHE!!!
• Focus on your body, how it feels, what it is doing

Once you have mastered this plank, there is an even more challenging level.  More to come…

 

At Home Workouts That Anyone Can Do

Below are some of my favorite workouts!  I have them easily accessible on my iPad so that I can refer to them when it is time to work!

Click on the picture (above) or the link (below) to see this great workout.  Remember, if you can’t do them the way they are shown, modify them and, eventually, you will be able to do it their way!

http://www.sparkpeople.com/blog/blog.asp?post=your_excuseproof_workout_plan

 

Commercial Breaks!  Wow!   It’s a video!

http://www.fitsugar.com/Home-Workout-Watching-TV-26950047

 

Great Yoga Workout with step-by-step instructions!

http://www.fitsugar.com/Basic-Yoga-Sequence-33065422

 

Some of my favorites:  (click on the pictures to go to the pages)

 

 

More to come!!!  So, what are you waiting for?  GET MOVING!!

What happens when you screw up?

Seriously?

You get over it, put on your big girl panties, and you don’t give up.

We ALL have bad days.  Some of us more so than others.  Today was one of those days.  On Monday, I finally reached my first weight goal. I was psyched.  I’d had good days and bad days but the secret is that after a bad day, I just picked myself up and moved on.  A perfect example would be TODAY. Teacher Appreciation Week.  OMG.  One day we get flowers, one day breakfast (I was good and chose fruit) and today, much to my dismay, all teachers received goody baskets, full of chocolate, cookies, you name it. Unfortunately, mine had dark chocolate with almonds and, at the bottom, a pile of York Peppermint Patties.  Not good.  Not good at all.  Then, a parent with the best of intentions, delivered 3 dozen doughnuts to my classroom door. Yes, I had to eat one, or two… They were in honor of me, right?  Of course, I shared  the rest with my class. 🙂

So, now, what do I do?

What I won’t do is beat myself up.  I won’t think about how I just erased the previous two days of hard work dieting and exercising.

Instead…

Tomorrow I will get up, I won’t look at the scales.  I will start over with zero points and zero calories and I will get back on my diet.  Then, tomorrow night, and the next and the next, I will work out like a mad woman.  That won’t make up for my sins of today, but it will be a step in the right direction.  I will wait a few days, maybe more, and then I will weigh again.  It will be okay!  I want to lose weight and I will.  One.Day.at.a.Time.

Just remember, we all trip and fall.  We all have bad days.  We just can’t allow it to pull us down. We wake up the next day with an I CAN DO attitude!  Don’t let one day here and there cause you to quit. NEVER!

Fighting the Beast – The War with Belly Fat – Part 2

Since posting my first blog on this topic, I have addressed a couple of other issues that are very helpful in this battle against belly fat:

• How to Track Calories in and Calories Out to Lost Weight:  http://midlifefrenzy.com/2014/05/01/how-to-track-calories-in-and-calories-out-to-lose-weight/
• Quick and Simple Ideas to keep you moving and burning calories:  http://midlifefrenzy.com/2014/04/29/quickies-get-moving-and-burn-calories/
• Using Runkeeper to Track Activity and Calories:  http://midlifefrenzy.com/2014/04/27/try-runkeeper-to-track-mileage-and-calories-burned/

All of these topics are things that I think are important and are factors that I try to focus on every day.  No one is trying harder than I am to lose this belly, so you can bet that I have a lot to share and hope that you can benefit from my thoughts and ideas.

I am just going to say it…I hate this belly.  I am miserable most of the time.  Yes, I run and walk, but taking the stairs, doing situps and crunches, anything out of the ordinary, and I am winded.  It’s the belly!  It is slowing me down and taking all of my energy just to carry it around.  It’s a huge belly, it is an uncomfortable belly.  My clothes no longer fit.  When I sit, I can feel that extra fat pushing up into my upper body.  When I did the belly fat (measurement) test last week, that is when I said “Enough is enough!”

Let’s just say this about belly fat:  I trained most of last summer for my first 5K.  I ran a lot.  I walked a lot.  The belly fat went nowhere.  I thought that running was going to do the trick but it didn’t.  I have learned that it takes MORE than just running or walking or swimming to beat this beast.  I am bound and determined to beat it.

Here are some things that you might want to consider:

1. You need to work longer and harder to beat belly fat.  Increase the length of time of your workout and the intensity of your workout (step it up a notch!) as you get stronger.

2.  Mix it up!  Don’t do the same exercises every day.  If you run or walk every day, add in some other exercises.  Exercises that help with belly fat are:  weight/strength training, abdominal work (situps. crunches, leg lifts, etc.), yoga, cycling, elliptical training, zumba, and so many more.  Look for new exercises to do.

Here are some very basic examples of how to mix it up:

Day 1:  Walk/run and work with weights                                                                                                             (*there are many ways to do weights even if you don’t go to the gym.  See my Pinterest                   Page on at Exercise:  Home Workouts)

Day 2:  Elliptical Trainer/Run and ab work (at home!).                                                                                        (*there are oodles of ab workouts on the internet, YouTube, Pinterest; see my Pinterest                    page on Exercise: Abs.)

Day 3:   Walk/run and weights

Day 4:  Yoga (lots of free workouts online, YouTube, Pinterest)

and don’t forget cycling, stairs, dancing….the list goes on.  Bottom line:  try to exercise at least 4-5 days a week for at least 45 minutes each time.  AND…MIX IT UP!

3.  I recommend ab work at least 3 days a week (skip days in between) and the same with weights.

4.  15 minutes on a bad day is better than nothing!  Some days, all I have time for is 15 minutes up and down my stairs or 15 intense minutes of stomach crunches!  That’s over a hundred calories in 15 minutes!

5.  ENGAGE YOUR CORE!  Basically, whenever you workout, whatever you do, try to focus on and involve your core/center/abdominals.  It feels good!  After all, isn’t that what we are working the hardest on?

6.  BE PATIENT!  This belly fat is one of the hardest things to get rid of.   It won’t happen overnight, or in a month, but with patience and persistence, you will feel your clothes getting less and less tight, you will be able do more without panting, and you will get stronger and exercise more.

7.  Eat MORE FIBER AND PROTEIN and less fat/carbs/sugar.  Fresh fruit and veggies are always good choices.

8.   Don’t let one bad day slow you down.  Get up the next day and start fresh!

9.  Avoid the “gimmicks”!  Hard work is the only thing that will give you the results that you want and change your lifestyle to make it last!

Refer to my last blog on calories in and calories out…to help you understand what it takes to burn a pound.  Today was an good day for me on the treadmill but a fairly inactive day at work yet I still burned over 2000 calories (thanks, FitBit). That means that I burned about 800 calories more than I took in.  You need to burn about 3,500 calories to lose a pound, so that  means that I could lose pound in 3-4 days at this rate.  That is NOT impossible nor is it that difficult if you put your mind to it.

YOU CAN DO IT!  You have to want it and you have to be dedicated!  And, while you are at it, make it a lifestyle change.

 

 

 

How to Track Calories In and Out to Help You Lose Weight

It is totally amazing what one can learn once you force yourself to stop and take the time to do a little research!  I have always known that you have to burn more calories than you take in if you want to lose weight, duh, but I never knew the bottom line.  I really wanted to know so I decided to do a little reading to enlighten myself.  I am hoping that what I have learned can motivate others and awaken the desire to work harder to become a much healthier, happier person!

This may sound like overkill, but I am currently using My Fitness Pal and Weight Watchers Online to help me lose weight.  Normally, I just plug in the numbers and try my best to do what it says.   Now that I know a little more, it is clearer to me what I, personally, need to do and know in order to help lose weight.  Please remember though, that you didn’t gain weight in a few days so you won’t lose it in a few days.  You must be patient.  I read this quote once:  “A diet is like a marriage, if you cheat, it will never work!”

I like to list my points because I feel that most people would rather read concise bullet points instead trying to find the meat of the message in a long paragraph!

• Find out how many calories you should take in each day if you want to lose weight.  My best suggestions for this is to do it through My Fitness Pal (I am telling you, it is the bomb!)

• If you are not tech savvy enough to get into My Fitness Pal to fill in your basic information for them to process, then a good rule of thumb to follow is 1,200 calories per day.  This is NOT necessarily the best for everyone, but it is a good place to start if you have no clue!

• Once you find out how many calories you need to take in, you need to find a way to monitor the calories that you burn.  If you don’t want to join Weight Watchers or another weight management program, My Fitness Pal is free!  I love it.  I have been very successful using it in the past.  So have many others!

• A good rule of thumb for “how many calories to burn to lose weight” is that you should never burn more than 1,000 calories more than you take in (for instance, if you take in 1,200 calories a day, never burn more than 2,200 calories that day).  This is important because it can be counter-productive and can adversely affect your health.  I have read that for menopausal women, you must burn at least 450-500 calories more than you take in in order to lose weight.

• How do I know how many calories I am burning in a day?  Here are some suggestions:

Option 1:  Purchase a FitBit:

1. You can get them in many places, like Walmart or Target, but I found the best price on Amazon.com.  I have seen them from anywhere between $85.00 and $99.00.   There are several different models so you would have to decide which one works best for you.  I use the FitBit One, which I clip on the waistband of my pants.  If you have trouble losing things this small, you might want to try to FitBit Flex which is like a bracelet or a watch.
2. The FitBit works extremely well because it keeps track of all of the steps you take each day (very eye opening!), the calories you burn each day (including in your sleep!), and how many miles you “exercise” each day.  The One also keeps track of the number of stairs you climb each day.
3. If you log in to the FitBit site (on your computer) and set up an account, you can sync your FitBit to your computer daily (and on your smartphone..free from the App Store) and see all of your statistics online too.

**This is a great way to make sure that you are burning at least 500-1000 more calories than you are taking in.

Option 2:  Use Runkeeper, it’s free!

See my ealier blog on this:  http://midlifefrenzy.com/2014/04/27/try-runkeeper-to-track-mileage-and-calories-burned/

Option 3:  Use a treadmill or other equipment that tells you the calories you have burned (and log them).

Option 4:  Just Exercise  (Even if you have no other way of tracking your calories burned throughout the day, at least make sure that you burn 400-500 calories through exercise.  You can easily find a calorie calculator online which allows you to input the exercise, time and intensity to give you the calories burned!).

A Few Helpful Numbers 

IMPORTANT NUMBER TO REMEMBER:  it takes 3,500 calories to burn a pound of FAT.  Think about this, to keep it realistic:  if you burn 500 calories per day more than you take in, it will take you approximately 7 days to lose one pound of fat.  If you want to lose it faster, then, as you can see, you will have to burn more than 500 calories more than you take in.  So, if you eat 1,200 calories, you must burn more than 1,700 calories.

TO GIVE YOU A BASIC IDEA:  I am a teacher so I walk a good bit.  In one day, at work only, I generally walk between 4,000-5,000 steps and I burn between 1,400 to 1,800 calories.  This, of course, is not enough for me to lose weight.  SO…I must go home and burn more calories!  However, I DO make an extra effort to walk as much as possible at work or to take the long route around!

On weekends, I may have an inactive Saturday and take only about 2,500 steps (this is a little high for being inactive because I go grocery shopping every Saturday) but I also can burn 1,500 calories if I am just getting up and moving around, cleaning house, or doing some activity throughout the day.  Actually, that’s not so bad.    Remember, it is just a snapshot but it should give you an idea of what you might burn in an average day.  However, walking fast or running, or engaging in other active exercise, depending on how fast you are exercising, will result in you burning more calories in fewer steps.  Keep that in mind.

• I measure my exercise calories through both my FitBit AND/OR Runkeeper.  Runkeeper measures calories burned through walking, running, cycling (stationary or a real bike), elliptical, weight training, skiing, hiking, skating, swimming, and the list goes on!   I find that Runkeeper helps me to be more successful in burning more calories.  The best part is that I can use my phone for this!  I turn on Runkeeper and take it on my walk, run or bike ride or whatever I am doing that day.  If I walk or run on the treadmill, I just use the treadmill numbers and plug them into Runkeeper after my workout.

• Want to know the coolest thing about using FitBit and/or Runkeeper along with My Fitness Pal?  You can set them up so that they SYNC with one another.  This means that whatever you log on FitBit or Runkeeper automatically posts to My Fitness Pal and logs in your exercise for you!  My Fitness Pal gives you an ongoing summary throughout the day of the difference between your calories in and your calories out!

I am sure that I forgot something super important but, if you have any questions, please ask in a comment and I will answer it the best that I can.

I hope this helps someone understand this whole concept better.  AND, I hope it motivates you to burn more calories!