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I'm sure you've heard the saying, "a calorie is a calorie," and that when weight loss is the goal, you can probably loose weight on a 1,200 calorie/day diet whether it is 1,200 Twinkie calories or apple calories. At this point, you might be thinking, "Cool! I'll go on the Twinkie diet!"   Our bodies are smarter than that though, and I say, thank goodness. I know - I'm no fun at all :-). Last week at the grocery one of my kiddos held up a box of Twinkies and had the audacity to ask me to purchase them. I nearly burst a vessel in my forehead trying to restrain myself from smashing the box with......
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Being that it is summer, and there are vacations, kids home from school, camps, a lot of running around in circles...sometimes a workout is hard to knock out, even when intentions are high. When that happens, I have a 30-minute, total body workout that requires very little equipment, yet will leave you dripping in sweat. Wanna hear it? Here it is... You'll need:  a set of 10 or 12lb wts (lighter if you like), a resistance tube 5-10 minute warm up @ 40-50% max heart rate Set 1: 10-14 Burpees (also called pop squats) 3-way lunges w/ dumbbells: Start with weaker leg leading. Take one lunge forwa......
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Stumbled upon a few deals I'd like to pass along: 20% off planners! For all of you planners out there (you know who you are, planning each workout weeks in advance), get a head start on school year planning at MomAgenda. MomAgenda is offering 20% off small School Year books (use code: schoolyearsmom) Visit MomAgenda.com, offer expires 7.31.2011 *P.S. I LOVE MomAgenda planners. Seriously, love them - totally created by moms, for moms. Enough said. EatingWell magazine has a new book out: EatingWell 500-calorie Dinners for $22.45 (10% off the regular price). While you are planning workouts in you......
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Check out this video if you are unfamiliar with trigger point therapy... TPR Therapy, Ironman competitor Have you ever wished you could afford a personal masseuse? One who could come to your home, preferably daily, to help relieve you of the knots and muscle tightness that inevitably occur from daily workouts and, well, being a mom? In search of a solution to my IT band issues, I tried a chiropractor (not money well spent), stretching, massage therapy (therapist too gentle to release deep tissue), and my O.D. The O.D. provided the most valuable information: without proper biomechanics, the bod......
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The mysterious " fat burning zone " continues to confuse many gym-goers. The theory goes something like this: working out in a "zone" of intensity that is less intense for at least 20 minutes will burn more fat calories than calories from carbohydrate. Is this true? Yes and no, but mostly no. You actually burn more calories from fat right now, sitting still, reading this post, than you do on the treadmill. That is because in the resting state, the body burns a higher percentage of fat calories. As you crank up the exercise intensity, you burn a little less fat per calorie. However, it really c......
May

22

I recently posed this challenge to one of my clients, and for her, it worked like a charm. Hey, some of us are motivated by having the ante upped, including yours truly. Do more (exercise) this week than you did the week before.

So here is how it works:

For one week, tally the number of minutes you spend doing physical activity.

1. Record time spent doing cardiovascular activity, such as walking, jogging, swimming, aerobics, and so on.
2. Record the time spent doing other activity, such as gardening, housework, painting a room, or whatever.
3. Record time spent sitting.

Then, create a chart with a weekly goal. For instance, you might list physical activities separately, followed by “household chore” activity, job-related activity, and sedentary activity.

In the next column, record last week’s minutes spent doing those activities and non-activities, then up the ante for this week. A good rule of thumb is to add 2-5% more to each physical activity (if you want to be conservative), or up to 10% of you really want to challenge yourself.
In addition, make one goal to reduce time spent doing sedentary activity, like TV watching.

Create a column for each day of the week and at the end of each day, tally your minutes. On the last day of the week, do a quick tally to see if you will reach your goal. If you are at risk of falling short, see if you can squeeze in extra minutes of activity to help your reach your goal.

Refer to my simple chart here if you need a visual. You might have more activities on your own chart, and be sure to include all 7 days  (i.e, don’t think weekends don’t count, ’cause they do!)

goalchartHopefully, if all goes well, you will see your hard work paying off. Each week, you can create a new goal. Obviously, you can’t add time to your minutes forever, but you could eventually create a goal for, say, adding a new activity, or maintaining max heart rate for a certain number of minutes, and so on. It is a little hard to see the numbers on this chart, but I basically added time to each physical activity, and reduced the time spent in sedentary activity. For example, if I ran 120 mins last week, this week I’d aim for 130 or 140. If I sat and watched TV 200 mins last week, I’d shoot for 180 or less this week. Hopefully this all makes sense.

If you try this, let me know how it goes…
And if you have your own chart that you’d like to share, fire it my way and I’ll post it here on the blog.



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