Exercises NOT to Do

There are exercises -- and then there are EFFECTIVE exercises. The two are not the same thing. Some exercises can actually be detrimental to burning belly flab.

If a killer set of abs is your goal, there are seven exercises that you have to avoid. They are:

1. Lying straight-legged leg raises (first 45 degrees off of floor, one leg at a time or both at the same time)
2. Hanging leg raises with an arched back
3. Sit-ups with the feet supported
4. Straight legged sit-ups
5. ANY machine-based ab exercise
6. ANY machine-based twisting exercise
7. Torso twists

Remember that the point here is to BURN the belly fat and DEVELOP the abdominal muscles. You aren't working on your arms, your legs or your neck. Exercises need to target the abs and the supporting areas of your body, like your core.

Let's talk about these bad exercises that you should avoid if your goal is to develop really great abs.

1. Lying straight-legged leg raises: An excellent exercise -- but NOT for your abs. The lying straight-legged leg raises are great for exercising the LOWER abdomen... but not the classic six-pack abs are. Sure, any exercise is a better than no exercise, but you're wasting your workout time on lying straight-legged leg raises if your goal is to develop your abs.

2. Hanging leg raises with an arched back: Hanging leg raises with a STRAIGHT back are terrific ab exercises. But when the back is arched, the leg raises do zero to build the abs.

3. Sit-ups with the feet supported: Here again... sit ups with the feet NOT supported are very good ab exercises. But when the feet are supported, that kills all of the advantages to your abs.

4.Straight legged sit ups: When the legs are kept straight out during sit ups, the muscles that are being used are in the back and lower abdomen... not the abs!

5. Any machine based ab exercise: No machine is going to build your abs. Great abs are earned the hard way. Get over it and pass on the machines.

6. Any machine based twisting exercise: Twisting doesn't work the abs. Twisting exercises are good exercises to reduce the size of the waist, but that's all they do.

7. Torso Twists: Again... twisting doesn't work the abs or burn belly fat.

Make your exercise session time work FOR you. If you goal is to burn off that sagging stomach and build your abs, squeeze the most advantage out of every minute of your exercise program.

Doing exercises that are not designed to develop your abs is simply a waste of your time and energy, plain and simple.

Benefits of Fitness 2

Benefits of Quitting Smoking

If you are a smoker, the best piece of fitness advice someone can give you is to quit. Surprisingly, the benefits of quitting smoking happen immediately. For example, 20 minutes after your final cigarette, your blood pressure and pulse rate will drop and the body temperature in your hands and feet will increase. After eight hours, the carbon monoxide level in your blood will drop towards normal, while the oxygen level in your blood will increase to normal. When you’ve made it to 24 hours without a cigarette, your chance of a heart attack has already begun to decrease. At 48 hours, you start to re-grow the nerve endings that have been damaged by smoking and your ability to smell and taste begins to improve.

Between the periods of two weeks to three months without a cigarette, you will start to notice that your circulation is improving. You will be coughing less, and you will have less of a tendency towards sinus infections. Shortness of breath will gradually disappear, which means that you will actually enjoy your aerobic workouts.

Hopefully, this has motivated you to substitute your smoking habit with your new exercise habit!

Exercise Increases Mental Agility

Exercise over the long term has been proven to improve brain function. It increases oxygen levels and blood flow to the brain while increasing levels of chemicals such as serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, which are associated with cognition.

Fitness workouts are also proven to prevent “senior moments.” After the age of 30, the brain starts to lose tissue in areas associated with cognition and memory. Exercise increases neurogenesis, the production of neurons, and thus prevents loss of tissue, improves memory and keeps the brain young. Physical activity has also been proven to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease.

If you can’t fit in 30 minutes of exercise a day, make sure that you exercise for at least 20 minutes on most days of the week to ensure peak physical fitness and increase brain function.

Benefits of a Healthy Diet

Although this book is primarily about fitness advice, the benefits of a healthy diet should also be addressed. Your diet is your fuel for your fitness program. Without a healthy diet, your fitness performance will be less than optimal. Let’s look at some of the benefits of a healthy diet.

Weight Control: This is perhaps the most obvious benefit of a healthy diet. It stands to reason that if you feed your body food that is loaded with nutrients, you will use these nutrients for energy. In contrast, if your diet is loaded with empty calories, these calories will not be used. Instead, they will be converted to fat.

A diet rich in whole grains and fiber will prevent constipation, and thus aid in weight loss. Furthermore, the B vitamins found in whole grains help release the energy from protein, fats and carbohydrates. This will in turn speed up your metabolic rate. The result: You will burn more calories throughout the day.

Water is perhaps one of the most overlooked nutrients that aid in weight control. Water aids in elimination and makes us feel full after eating. Additionally, staying hydrated will give you more energy during your workouts.

Disease Prevention: A healthy diet will help prevent diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers. A diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as those found in salmon may alleviate the symptoms of inflammatory diseases such as ulcerative colitis.

Be sure to read the section of this book about nutrition for women.

Health Benefits of Running: Weight Loss

It’s a warm summer day. You look out your window, and you see a women running up a hill. The glow of perspiration soaks her body. You wonder, “Why does she do it?” There are many good reasons. The health benefits of running far outweigh the initial discomfort that you might feel when you first begin a running program.

Many women’s health and fitness experts suggest running as an ideal activity for weight control. Provided that you do not have any chronic muscular-skeletal injuries, this is perhaps the best fitness advice you can get! Depending on your speed, a 130 pound woman can burn between 114 and 200 calories in a 20-minute running workout. If you add hill training, this number can be even higher! Running will also boost your metabolism, thereby elevating your metabolic rate for up to two hours after your workout. This means that you will be burning more calories even if you are sitting at your desk!

According to the National Weight Control Registry, an organization that tracks the progress of people who have successfully maintained a 30 pound weight loss, running 25 to 30 miles a week is the optimal mileage required for weight loss. Depending on your speed, this will amount to about 30 to 45 minutes daily.

Benefits of Fitness

Lose to Win: Benefits of Weight Loss

If you are more than 10 pounds overweight, losing weight will have significant positive effect on your health. Some of the benefits of losing weight include a reduction of susceptibility to the following health risks:

Health Risks of Being Overweight:

Heart Disease and Stroke

If you are overweight, you might have the following conditions that may leave you susceptible to heart disease and stroke:

• High Blood Pressure, which is a major risk factor for both heart disease and stroke.
• High blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, which can also lead to heart disease.
• Angina: Being overweight contributes to the possibility of angina since the extra weight can cause the chest pain created by decreased oxygen to the heart.

Type Two Diabetes

Type Two Diabetes has been associated with being overweight.

Cancer

Being overweight is associated with a higher risk of cancer of the uterus, gallbladder, cervix, ovary, breast and colon cancer.

Osteoarthritis

Since women tend to gain weigh around their lower bodies, one of the benefits of losing weight include relief from the knee and back pain caused by osteoarthritis. In fact, exercise may even be able to prevent osteoarthritis.

Psychological Benefits of Aerobic Exercise

Back in the 1980s, scientists discovered a brain chemical that exhibited remarkable morphine-like qualities. In minute amounts, this chemical (beta-endorphin), was found to reduce sensations of pain. Studies also showed that beta-endorphins could promote feelings of euphoria and exhilaration while reducing feelings of depression and anxiety. The good news is that you do not have to take beta-endorphin pills! This miraculous chemical is synthesized during aerobic activity. For this reason, cardiovascular exercise is now an important part of stress reduction programs, pain management programs, and self-care for depression, anxiety and other mood disorders.

Other studies have shown that moderate aerobic exercise can also enhance performance on memory and thinking tasks including addition problems, recall of numbers and words, perception and discrimination of geometric figures, and organization. Although it is still unclear as to why cardiovascular exercise has this effect, some researchers think that the rhythmic, repetitive motion of cardiovascular activities might offer a meditative quality to exercise. It is possible that these activities are capable of shifting dominant brain activity from the left to the right side, which results in increased mental receptivity, as well as a greater imagination and creativity to apply to problem solving.

Beginner

Getting Excited:Getting Started

These days, if you open any women’s fitness magazine, you can’t help but get excited about the idea of getting into shape. In the past, the idea of starting even a basic exercise program would be met with a series of moans and groans. However, in recent years, fitness programs have become a whole lot of fun. If you plan to start a beginner fitness program, there are a few things you should do in preparation.

First of all, if you are over the age of 45 and have been inactive, prior to beginning an exercise program, you should confer with your doctor. Your next step is to determine your goals. However, you want to make sure that they are realistic. Additionally, your goals will determine the type of program to begin.

For example, if weight loss is your primary goal for beginning an exercise program, you might be interested in a beginner running program or a beginner treadmill program. If you are significantly overweight, or if you have several injuries, you might prefer to start with a walking program or a beginner swim workout.

In general, aerobic workouts are best for weight control. You will want to begin by devoting three 20-minute sessions a week to your cardiovascular routine. Eventually, you should build up to 30 minutes for six days a week.

When you are first staring out in an aerobic exercise program, you will want to be aware of your heart rate. To find your maximum heart rate subtract your age from the number 220. Your target heart rate is anywhere between 60 to 80 percent of this number. There are two ways in which you can check your heart rate during exercise.

Some women’s fitness magazines advertise a heart-rate monitor that you can strap around your chest. It gives you feedback that is displayed on a digital watch, which will tell you exactly what your heart rate is at any specific moment in your aerobic exercise session.

The second way to find your heart rate is by feeling either your carotid artery or your radial artery. The carotid artery can be found by gently placing your index finger on your neck, between the middle of your collar bone and jaw line. The radial artery pulse check is performed by placing your index and middle finger on the underside and thumb-side of your wrist.

The easiest way to take your heart rate is to take your pulse for six seconds and multiply that number by 10. There is one caveat. Many people find it difficult to find the right place to take their pulse. Also, in recent years, researchers have discovered that the 220 minus your age formula is not always accurate. As such, many women prefer to use a perceived exertion scale, which is rated 1 to 10. Ten is the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest while carrying your groceries. One is the equivalent of lying on your coach watching the Lifetime Movie Network. Your perceived exertion should be between a level six and a level eight. Researchers have found that when testing people’s perceived exertion, a level six to eight corresponded with a 60 to 80 percent target heart rate.