Entries Tagged 'Fitness' ↓

Yes, believe it or not, your waist size can tell more about the state of your health than you think. It’s obvious that a bulging waistline is far from aesthetically pleasing. However, just as unpleasing could be the hints it’s giving you about the state of your health. To get right down to it, there are links between increased risks of morbidity, cardiovascular disease, and other serious heart conditions and the fat around your waist, the visceral fat.

Visceral fat is the fat that is packed in between the organs in the abdominal area. Excess visceral fat pushes the organs out and leads to a pot belly. One of the dangers of visceral fat is that since it is between the organs in the abdomen and underneath the muscle, it can go undetected until there are large excesses of it and the pot belly forms.

Visceral fat is a very dangerous threat. Now you may ask, isn’t all body fat a threat? First let me say that there are two kinds of body fat. There is subcutaneous fat, which is fat that is underneath the skin. Then there is visceral fat. What makes visceral fat so dangerous is that, according to Donovan Baldwin,

Unlike “subcutaneous fat” which is found below the skin, visceral fat secretes inflammatory hormones which can cause organ damage (heart, kidney, brain) at a cellular level. So, while obesity in general is a problem to be dealt with, visceral fat (belly fat) in particular demands immediate and special attention.

So exercising and eating better to trim down that pot belly won’t just make your clothes fit better, it will also decrease your chances of serious health conditions. And you can also say that your slim stomach isn’t just sexy on the outside, but it’s healthy on the inside.

Are There Benefits Of Practicing Yoga?

Absolutely! There are so many physical benefits of practicing yoga that it can be hard to name them all. The primary emphasis of yoga is on well-being of the self. It is not considered to be therapy for specific illnesses or injuries. Instead, it gives a broad holistic approach, where practitioners learn a new lifestyle and way of thinking and being in the world. A byproduct of this “new life” is the healing effects of yoga. As a person practices yoga, they often find that some benefits of yoga are the fact that some of the specific difficulties he or she has will tend to go away. These effects have been verified clinically. Let’s look as a few of the benefits of yoga as they pertain to specifics.

Healing Effects – Benefits Of Yoga

One of the most important benefits of yoga is its ability to relieve fatigue and stress, to invigorate the body vitality, and the fact that it is anti-aging and a wonderful relaxation therapy.

Yoga has been shown to improve asthma in approximately 75% of cases. Also, asthma attacks can be preventing using yoga instead of drugs. Other studies claim a 93% improvement rate.

For severe breathing problems like chronic bronchitis and emphysema, studies have shown that yoga helped with the ability to exercise, and in ways that traditional physiotherapy did not. Most of them increased their tolerance for exertion and recovered after exertion more quickly than before. They also gained the ability to control their breathing problems.

High blood pressure (hypertension) can be treated and prevented with the relaxation and exercise aspects of yoga.

Yoga is believed to reduce pain, by helping the brain’s pain center regulate the secretion of natural painkillers in the body. Breathing exercises also help with reducing pain. These can be a one of the most wonderful benefits of yoga, since all of us have pain at one time or another.

Back pain has been cured and prevented by using yoga. Yoga will enhance strength and flexibility. Also, reducing the muscle tension can reduce back problems.

Diabetes has also been shown to improve while practicing yoga, so that their blood sugar lowered and they needed less oral medicine. However, the patients in this study were also put on a vegetarian diet, so the yoga alone might not have been responsible for the improvement.

According to one study examining the benefits of yoga, yoga can give one a positive outlook on life and raise one’s energy level, even greater than the other options chosen for the study – relaxation and visualization. The yoga group had much greater increase in mental and physical energy and feelings of enthusiasm and alertness. (Relaxation made people more sleepy, visualization made them more sluggish and less content with life.)

Because yoga is a gentle form of exercise, it is a good way to get relief for arthritis – what a benefit of basic yoga! Exercise has long been recommended for arthritis as a treatment, but now, as long as it is not too much of a strain, yoga can help with arthritis. Yoga does not need to cause pain or strain. Even if you can only move an inch and hold the position for about five seconds, you are enhancing your body’s flexibility – though slowly. Be careful not to overdo yoga on a hurting body!

Each of these benefits of yoga can be yours if you become a yogi – or practicer of yoga.

It’s March Madness! Men’s Health has a unique twist on it, Muscle Madness. Go vote to for your favorite exercise and check back to see which one is voted best.

We’ve all been there, trying to lose some weight, and all the sudden the scale stops moving down. For a while now, we’ve seen it steadily move south, but all of the sudden it stops. After a while, we starting thinking to ourselves, what are we doing wrong?

We’re doing what brought us success before, but now it doesn’t seem to work. Seeing the weight drop make the struggles of a weight loss regimen feel worth it. Now that the most commonly accepted measurement of success stops changing, we start to feel that the struggles aren’t worth it anymore.

Well, before shooting yourself in the foot and going off your plan, take a look at this article at Men’s Health. It’ll give you some tips on other ways to measure the success of your weight loss plan other than the scale.

Some people will have you believe that in order to get fit you have to have a gym membership and spend large amounts of time of there. Now, depending on your goals, that may be necessary, but for the average person, maybe not. Just small little changes in your daily routine, over time can have a large impact on your health and fitness and overall well-being.

The article goes to show just that. These people, instead of driving to work, take public transportation and walk a portion of the distance. This means walking a mile or more twice a day. One person stated they lost 30 pounds over 9 months.

These people were not looking for huge, quick gains. The results of these small changes began to add up as time went on. Some decided to do it for other reasons, like to save money. It was when they felt changes, like clothes fitting better, did they realize the full impact of the changes of their habits.

In terms of money, a colleague of mine has gotten me very familiar with the saying, “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.” In terms of nutrition and fitness, I believe something similar can apply. If you look after the small habits you have, you can see large gains over time.