Thursday, August 30, 2012

Health and Fitness Magazines

Today, maintaining health and fitness have become more important than ever before. With illnesses becoming more often, we have to equip ourselves with everything necessary to maintain health and have a good quality of life. One of the best ways to jumpstart your way to better health is through reading health and fitness magazines. These magazines offer helpful tips, advice and recent discoveries about health that should come handy. Note that although fitness magazines are aimed mainly at body- and health-conscious audience, everyone will surely benefit from all the information they provide. Here are some of the most popular health and fitness magazines today:
Muscle & Fitness Magazine
This magazine was released mainly for bodybuilders. However, if you are conscious about your health and do workouts, you can use vital information on this magazine. There is a version of this magazine called Muscle and Fitness Hers aimed mainly towards health-conscious ladies. This magazine contains tons of information that can range from bodybuilding foods, diet programs, weight loss strategies, workout information, supplements, and other recent discoveries.
Shape Magazine
Shape Magazine has been edited to help you get a better understanding of fitness. It features articles from experts in the fields of nutrition, exercise, beauty and psychology. Shape is mainly geared towards fitness enthusiasts who surely will benefit from each and every bit of information that the magazine contains. It highlights news, step-by-step guidelines, recipes, and tips in beauty, fashion, style, and everything in between.
Men's Fitness Magazine
Men's Fitness is also a magazine designed for the modern health conscious men. It contains articles containing important details on maximizing workout, optimal diet and nutrition necessary for perfect fitness. Each issue is aimed at showing you how to properly workout your specific body parts, look better, unleash your sexual drive, and essentially put adventure back into your life.
Subscribing Health and fitness magazines cover everything a health and body-conscious person needs to know. If you are aware of the importance of maintaining tiptop health, and are actually doing something about it, a subscription to these types of magazines will provide you great discounts than buying them at the newsstand. Health and fitness magazines are usually offered in an attractive price package through websites.
Consider subscribing to a health and fitness magazine as an investment for your health and yourself. There is nothing more important than valuing health. Today, it may seem like an added financial burden but the long-term benefits that reading about health can give are far worth it. Besides, you can get subscriptions at rock bottom, discounted prices. However, be careful with the website you will subscribe to. Trust only the most reliable website that has a good reputation online.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Health and Wellness Jobs For Everybody

In my last article, I brought up work ethic.
Being an adult, you need a great work ethic to be successful at nearly anything, including health and fitness. So how will you develop a health and fitness work ethic? Begin a career in health. With this, I don't mean leave your job and become a nutritionist or fitness instructor. I mean take on a part-time job of eating healthy and working out and keep it up. Think about it... if we all had health and wellness jobs, would obesity exist? I know this might sound somewhat crazy, but I have developed this mindset over the last couple of years and it works.
How does it work?
One word. Accountability. When you've got a job, you happen to be kept accountable for your effort, generally and at a minimum, showing up and doing what you must do. How frequently does the average Joe compromise doing things he enjoys including seeing close friends or watching TV because he has to go to work? Probably weekly. But how often does he sacrifice these same things for a training session? Probably never. If you don't show up to work, you'll get let go. The good news is that people can't get let go from their self-made health and wellness jobs. The not so good news is that this will make it even more challenging to hold themselves accountable and remain motivated.
In our careers, we're motivated by money.
I'm sorry to point out the obvious, but if everybody was a billionaire, what percentage of us would actually continue in our jobs? With the exception of people who absolutely love their career, I'd venture to say no one. People work to provide for themselves and for their households. They need money in order to achieve this. If they fail to accomplish this, they and their loved ones will suffer. This is quite strong motivation for anyone. Think about that for a minute. "If I don't go to work, my family and I will suffer." No wonder many people stay in jobs they can't stand.
Clearly, motivation is key for individuals to remain in their jobs.
So how does one get motivated for a job that doesn't pay money? Well guess what? Remember that thought that pops up with your real job? "If I don't go to work, my loved ones and I will suffer." This applies to your second job in health and fitness as well. It's just not as noticeable because there may not be immediate repercussions. However, think about the following facts I picked up from an episode of The Biggest Loser a couple of years ago:
• Overweight individuals pay $500 - $1,000 more on medical insurance each year
• On average, obese people make $7,000 less per year than their peers
• Americans spend $4.4 billion each year on gastric bypass surgery
• Americans spend $147 billion annually on obesity related health problems
• The average person will save $1 million over four decades by going from obese to their ideal weight
Therefore you may not necessarily make money from your wellness job. But you will save a lot of money. And you know what people say regarding a penny saved... Not enough motivation? How about this? Obesity cuts the average lifespan by two to four years and by as much as eight to ten years for those people who are extremely obese. Needless to say, the quality of life of obese people will be much lower than it is for non-obese people. It's not going to be easy to care for all your family members if you're in a hospital bed.
I'm not trying to freak anyone out.
I just want to push home the message that your part-time job as a healthy, fit individual is as vital, if not more so, than your full-time job. In fact, if your full-time occupation is a sedentary one, your part-time job will become even more important. I think it's important to shed some light on this because the fact is with no concrete benefit or strong motivating factors, people will not take action. The consequences of obesity and the benefits of a healthy lifestyle are significant, however are not at the forefront of people's immediate focus.
This is a breakdown of my 15 to 20-hour weekly part-time job of being fit and healthy:
• 8 hours per week - cooking and preparing healthful meals, doing dishes
• 3 - 4 hours per week - resistance training
• 3 - 4 hours per week - high-intensity cardio and/or soccer
• 1 - 2 hours per week - low-intensity aerobic exercise (walking)
Just like it's imperative that you have a work-life balance in your full-time job, it's important to achieve a balance with your part-time job in health and fitness. You don't want to devote 60 hours a week and overtrain, however, you don't want to do nothing either. My friends like to go out a lot. During the week, I'll opt out of happy hour quite frequently in order to stay in and get in a high-quality training session and meal because once again, I treat this as my job. It helps me stay lean and healthy. On the weekends, I'll indulge and party along with them because it's also important to have fun and enjoy life. I'd love to hear comments on your weekly routine. Do the men and women you know take on part-time health and wellness jobs?

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Health and Fitness Success

You know weight loss shouldn't be about sacrificing everything that we love to eat and the good news is that it is not. When you are trying to lose weight your really attempting to just become healthy. The problem is that most people focus only on the dieting part of getting healthy or sometimes just exercising to get healthier. The truth is that you shouldn't focus on just one aspect of becoming healthier, you need to look at all areas of your life if you are going to succeed.
Dieting is an important aspect to becoming healthy, the whole point of dieting is not necessarily to lose the weight but to focus on what we eat and how much of the food we are consuming. This doesn't mean you cant eat chocolate or doughnuts or any of your favourite foods. What it means, is that you should reserve those foods as treats for the odd occasion and not as a regular part of your diet.
When you start your weight loss journey, don't think of it as a chore but rather as an opportunity to explore. Think about how big this world really is and how many different kinds of foods are out there. This is the best time to move away from fried chips and pizza's and to start exploring the different kinds of foods other cultures eat.
Try taking a boring bit of chicken and adding different spices to it and mix them up, through in some new and different vegetables and see how the food can be transformed into something new and amazing. Try mixing up everything you eat with new fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices. Instead of going home thinking I have to eat plain old boring white meat, think tonight I think we might try Indian food and tomorrow we are definitely going Mexican.
Once you get into a new habit of looking at different foods and flavours, I can guarantee you wont miss most of the old foods that you used to eat. Plus now there is nothing stopping you from having some of the old faithfuls once in a while and adding them in to a much larger diverse of meal choices. The best news is this though, now that you have started to try new healthy and interesting foods in moderation, you have been naturally losing weight, feeling much better. You can also impress friends by hold dinner parties cooking some of these new wild and great tasting meals they might not ever have thought of themselves.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Exercise, Health and Fitness

We all know that cigarettes are bad for us. But did you know that there's evidence showing that a sedentary lifestyle can be just as detrimental to our health as smoking? Several other studies also found that prolonged sitting increases the risk of heart disease - America's leading killer - as well as cancer, obesity, diabetes, and even premature death. We've always known that sitting for long periods of time can make us more vulnerable to serious diseases. These findings are all the more alarming because they come on the heels of other recently released studies indicating that long periods of time spent sitting in our cars and offices are significant contributing factors in the obesity epidemic sweeping the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and a third of the population is considered obese.
It's all an unfortunate chain of events: sedentary lifestyle leads to obesity, which, in turn, is a well-known factor in heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer, which render us even more inactive. Statistics show that 40 to 50 million Americans have sedentary jobs, which don't allow them to get the recommended amount of at least 30 minutes of moderately intensive physical activity five days a week. Add this to research indicating that 60 percent of Americans don't exercise enough and over 25 percent are not active at all, and what you get is a recipe for disaster.
Since it is not always possible to avoid situations where prolonged sitting is necessary - for example, in a workplace, try to sneak some exercises in to offset inactivity.
Finding time to exercise, be it in the morning, evening or at lunchtime, can literally be a real lifesaver. Here are some examples of mini workouts that can help you battle a sedentary lifestyle:
Stairs - Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Better yet, run up and down. If you do it several times a day, every day, it adds up. In fact, take 2 breaks a day for 5-10 minutes where all you do is walk the stairs.
Avoid your car - Especially for short distances, resist the urge to take your car. Walk to your destination and back quickly enough to get your heart rate up.
The "Idiot Box" - So you're finally home from a long day at work, sitting in from the computer? Don't go "relax" in front of TV for another 3 hours. If you finally have a bit of free time, use it for some form of physical activity, not to sit around some more. I currently live in South Carolina and a study done not too long ago said that SC is the #1 state for hours of TV watched. Guess I have my work cut out for me.
OK. I know I was the bearer of bad news here, but the good news is that there are easy fixes. Just make up your mind to help yourself and keep moving!
Ian Hart is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) with 2 kettle bell certificates and a certificate in integrated stretching techniques and is an FMS specialist (among other qualifications). He has also been featured in Men's Health Magazine, on the Men's Health website, was a featured Health Expert on New York 1 News and was a guest on the Mike and Juliet Morning Show. Ian loves training, and helping people reach their fitness goals. Not just physically but also mentally.
K. Clifford has worked in the field of finance until 2009 when K left the field to pursue a different route into the world of fitness and business management at a fitness center in South Carolina. Helping clients reach their goals and managing a great business are the main focuses in K's life.