Work Life Tips

Using a Balance Ball at Work – Women’s Training Tips

To maintain good posture and keep your core muscles from atrophying while you sit at your desk all day, try sitting on a balance ball, a method that is known as active sitting. Using the balance ball will not only help you gradually strengthen your core muscles and burn a few extra calories, research shows that the posture active sitting encourages is more ergonomically correct. This means sitting on the ball may help prevent the wrist, forearm and eye strain that can accompany long hours of sitting at a computer. Women especially can benefit from ergonomically correct active sitting because they generally start with weaker muscles and ligaments and as a result tend to suffer higher rates of tendonitis and other office-related overuse injuries.

Taking Advantage of the Mood-Boosting Benefits of Exercise – Women’s Training Tips

Women often times overeat in response to psychological stress, whether it is bad news, work-related pressure, boredom, or feelings of loneliness or sadness. Research has shown that exercise releases endorphins, which is a chemical that elevates mood and alleviates psychological stress. By working out in the morning, you can take advantage of the mood-boosting benefits of these endorphins to help keep you from overeating all day. This is one of the ways you can help control negative emotions through healthy activities like exercise instead of indulging in excess food.

Making the Most of Office Workouts – Women’s Training Tips

Office workouts tend to be crammed into an incredibly short period of time. You may only have 45 minutes or an hour to get changed, workout, and get cleaned up before you have to get back to work. Make the most of the time your boss allows you by doing a high intensity workout during your break. Research shows that high intensity exercise causes the body to create more growth hormone (GH). One of the benefits of growth hormone is that it helps keep metabolism high. High intensity exercise is important because it can help counteract the natural decrease in growth hormone production and the resulting decrease in metabolism that women can experience as early as the age of 30.

Getting the Most Benefit from Short Training Times – Women’s Training Tips

Setting aside an hour everyday for cardio exercise, as is suggested by the USDA, can seem daunting at best. Instead of focusing on getting an hour of cardio, try to fit in exercise a little at a time. For example, you may consider taking up jump roping. Jump ropes are cheap, light weight, extremely portable and skipping can get your heart rate up in a hurry. It is a great way to get some high intensity work when you only have a few minutes to spare and you can jump rope from almost anywhere. Furthermore, jumping rope is a great weight-bearing exercise, which studies show can help prevent some of the degenerative diseases that plague women later in life like arthritis and osteoporosis.

Making Your Workouts Work for Your Schedule – Women’s Training Tips

Don’t paint yourself into a corner when it comes to scheduling your workouts. A night owl should not schedule 5 a.m. workouts nor should an early bird exercise at night. Although there are many benefits to exercising in the morning, you can reap the rewards of exercise no matter what time of the day, so schedule a time that works for you.

Secret tip that will help women sculpt a lean and sexy body – Women’s Training Tips

Combing both cardiovascular and weight training will increase your metabolism. Most women I find just do cardiovascular which is good, but if you really want to turbo-charge your metabolism you need to do weight training too. I recommend at least 3 times a week. Weight training helps tone and sculpt your whole body and creates more lean muscle. The more lean muscle you have the faster your metabolism will be.

Set Realistic Goals and Reward Yourself – Women’s Weight Loss Tips

If you are trying to lose weight, it is important to set realistic goals. When you reach a goal, reward yourself. If you set realistic goals, you will be more likely to stick with them and be successful. This in turn increases your motivation to lose more weight or improve your health. Instead of trying to lose 60 pounds in three months, shoot for one pound per week or four pounds per month. It can also help to have broader goals like running a 10k or bike seven miles without stopping.

Give yourself an incentive to reach your goals by rewarding yourself. Dieting can be exhausting, but resist the temptation to reward your new healthy habits with a calorie-laden meal or dessert. This will just put you on track for another treadmill workout. Instead, put away money for every pound you burn so that when you reach your weight goal you can buy yourself something. You could also go get a manicure or pedicure, massage, see a movie or go to the beach and enjoy a good book in the sunshine. A reward will serve as a reminder for all the hard work you put into reaching your goal. It is an opportunity to throw out the calorie chart for a day, relax and enjoy your success.

Don’t Think of it as a Diet – Women’s Weight Loss Tips

You’ve been on a diet since you were 14. You’ve tried the grapefruit diet, the low-carb diet, the no-carb diet, the starve-myself-until-dinner-and-then-binge diet and perhaps even the popcorn diet. Throw all the fad diets out the window and re-think the way you lose weight. Diets have been proven to cause compulsive eating and give you a sense that food is forbidden or dangerous. If you deprive yourself of something as natural as eating, you will only want to rebel and eat more.

When you yo-yo diet you put your metabolism through a loop, making it impossible to keep weight off. Change the way you look at your nutrition and rely on your natural hunger to do its job. Eat (healthy) food when you are hungry and stop eating when you are full. Trade the ice cream, fries and candy for fruits and vegetables, and all you will have to reach for in the refrigerator are healthy things. If you change the concept of the way you exercise, lose weight and feel about yourself to focusing on what you can do and can eat, you will no doubt be more successful at your weight loss goals.

Calculating Body Fat with Fat Loss Scales – Women’s Weight Loss Tips

There are a few things you should consider when using the dreaded scale as a method of determining your weight loss.

* As you exercise, you will be adding more muscle, which can weigh significantly more than fat.
* As you continue to work out, your bone density will increase. While this might mean that you will see a few extra pounds on the scale, the added bone density has an important benefit: It may protect you from developing osteoarthritis.

When you want to measure your progress in a fitness and weight loss program, your best bet is to keep track of your body fat percentage. Body fat is lost through diet and aerobic exercise. Losing body fat will not only improve your appearance: It can protect you from health issues such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Here are the most common methods of measuring body fat.

Body Fat Scales: Some companies, such as the Tanita, manufacture a body fat scale for home use. These scales make use of a method known as bioelectrical impedance to measure your body fat percentage. This method involves a low-level electrical current is passed through your body. Then, the “impedance”, or opposition to this current is measured. The result is calculated in conjunction with your weight, height and age to determine your body fat percentage. While this may sound like the easiest way to calculate body fat, there are some caveats. For example, the amount of water in your body, your skin temperature and recent physical activity might influence the results. To ensure accuracy, do not eat or drink for four hours before taking the test, and avoid exercise or 12 hours prior to the test.

Vary Your Veggies – Women’s Weight Loss Tips

OK, vegetables may not top your list of fun or exciting foods. But if you make an effort to buy and eat a variety of veggies, you’ll probably end up eating more of them as part of your diet. Many women’s weight loss successes can be maintained with some dietary changes.

Think of going to a salad bar; you wouldn’t just load up your plate with one thing when there is so much variety. Make variety your mantra when you are shopping for vegetables. Don’t just buy broccoli and force yourself to eat a huge plate of it. Instead, choose broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower, cut them into small pieces and dip in a light vinaigrette dressing.