Healthy Resolutions

Every year thousands of people resolve to eat better, exercise more, or lose weight. Yet, a month or two into the year, their resolutions seem to fade away. Below are some tips to help you maintain your healthy resolutions throughout the year.

• Baby Steps: You want your goals to be challenging, but not over-ambitious. Setting your goals too high can be overwhelming when you don't see immediate progress.
• Milestones: Set monthly milestones. Have short-term goals that you can celebrate along the way.
• Make it Real: Working towards an actual event with a deadline rather than an arbitrary goal can be helpful. For example, register to run a race, schedule a difficult hike, or plan to attend a fancy event where you want to fit into a specific outfit.
• Be Flexible: Life is constantly changing. Be willing to make changes to your goals and your plans also. If you aren't seeing the progress you'd like, don't just throw your goals out the window; instead, modify them as needed.

Quality Holiday Time

The holidays are often about traditions and spending time with family and friends. Many traditions involve parties and rich foods. But quality time can also be spent with friends and family doing a variety of physical activities.

For those that live in colder climates, there's a host of fun winter activities, such as skiing, snowboarding, sledding, or ice skating. For warmer climates, strolling through areas filled with Christmas lights, jogging, rollerblading, or rock climbing. For indoor enthusiasts, try the Wii interactive sports or dance games as a group activity.

Memory-making traditions can be entertaining and healthy!

Avoiding Holiday Pitfalls

The holidays are here, and so are all the parties and yummy foods. While we all want our holidays to be plentiful, the one thing most of us don't want more of is pounds! Below are some tips for maintaining weight during the holidays.

• Watch what you drink. Sodas, hot chocolate, eggnog, and alcohol are full of sugar and calories. Drink them sparingly and mainly stick with water as a beverage.
• You don't have to eliminate treats, but mind your portions. Take small amounts of the foods you'd like to try and don't go back for seconds.
• Avoid temptation. Don't leave snacks and treats out in the open. Put them away where you can't see them, so you'll be less tempted to snack every time you walk by the food.
• Don't linger by the food. At a party, don't hang out by the food table. Take your plate and move to another end of the room. After a dinner, put the food away or move away from the table so you won't be tempted to keep eating.

Proper Posture

If someone was to grade your posture, what grade would you receive? Having good posture during everyday situations is important. Poor posture can be the cause of a headaches, a stiff neck, sore back and shoulders, and tight legs, knees, and ankles. It can put strain on your joints and ligaments, and even lead to injury.

Think about your standing posture. For example, while you are waiting in line do you slump your shoulders? Lean on one leg? Arch your back? All these are common characteristics of poor posture.

To have proper posture while standing:

• Stand up straight and tall
• Lift your head from the crown, not the chin
• Place feet shoulder width apart
• Roll your shoulders down and back
• Distribute weight evenly across the balls and heels of your feet
• Tighten your abdominals and tuck in your gluteals

Overall Fitness

When working on your physical fitness, it is important to take into account ALL the components of fitness. Below are ways to improve in each area of fitness:

• Cardio: Perform activities in which you are constantly moving and you maintain an increased heart rate. Examples include walking, jogging, cycling, and swimming.
• Muscular Strength & Endurance: Work your muscles against resistance, such as weights, resistance bands, or gravity. Examples include bicep curls, push-ups, and squats.
• Flexibility: Stretch at the end of every workout!
• Body Composition: Eat a diet low in fats and sugars and exercise to increase muscle mass.

My Pyramid

The recommended dietary intake has evolved over the years from the Four Basic Food Groups, to the Food Guide Pyramid, to the latest My Pyramid guidelines.

My Pyramid follows the same basic concepts as the Food Guide Pyramid. However, it is customized to each individual based on gender, age, height, weight, and physical activity level. Get your own personalized food plan by visiting mypyramid.gov.

http://www.mypyramid.gov

DOMS

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) can set in 2-48 hours after exercise. DOMS often occurs after very vigorous exercise or when trying something new. As your body adapts to specific exercises that are done consistently, you will notice that the after-exercise soreness will lessen.

How to reduce DOMS?

• Stretch well immediately after exercising, while your muscles are still warm
• Stretch your muscles 2-3 times a day after exercising
• Massage
• Ibuprofen or other pain reliever/anti-inflammatories

Extreme cases of DOMS may require additional rest. However, generally, moderate exercise, even when sore, is okay and can actually increase the blood flow to your muscles to decrease stiffness and promote healing.

Goal Setting

It is important to have fitness goals to give you something to work towards. Here are some tips for effective goal setting:

1. Make sure your goals are realistic. If you’ve never run a mile, it is probably unrealistic to set a goal to run a marathon next month. However, a 5K may be perfect. Take into account your current fitness level, where you would like to be, and what it will take to get there.
2. Make a plan & be specific. Rather than just stating that “I am going to get in better shape,” create a plan for how you are going to do it. Setting, dates, times and activities on your calendar can help make your plans more solid.
3. Involve your family & friends. Asking your family and friends to encourage you can be great motivation when you “just don’t feel like it.” And, if you can involve your family or friends in your exercise plans—even better!
4. Celebrate your accomplishments! When creating your fitness plan, don’t forget to set milestones and rewards. Keep in mind that rewards do not necessarily need to involve food or money. For example, a reward could simply be taking time for yourself to do something you enjoy—reading a book, watching a movie, going out with a friend, or whatever!

Caloric Balance

Whether you gain, lose, or maintain your weight most often comes down to your caloric balance, or how many calories are consumed compared to the calories burned each day.

• If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight.
• If you burn more calories than you consume, you should lose weight.

Keep in mind that in addition to calories burned through exercise, your body requires a certain amount of calories every day just to function. This is known as your basal metabolism.

For more information about finding the right balance for you, go to http://www.mypyramid.gov/STEPS/stepstoahealthierweight.html

Components of Fitness

There are Five Components of Fitness:

1. Cardio: ability of your heart to sustain physical activity over time
2. Muscular Strength: how much you can lift or move at one time
3. Muscular Endurance: how long your muscles can sustain a contraction or activity
4. Flexibility: how flexible your joints and muscles are
5. Body Composition: % of body fat to lean body mass (bones, muscle, tissue)

To be wholly fit it is important to take into account all five areas of fitness when setting goals or choosing workouts. For example, if Jack regularly runs long distances but does not stretch, strength train, or eat well, he may have a higher level of cardiovascular fitness, but his overall fitness level may be poor.

Try to include all components of fitness for a well-rounded exercise and nutrition plan.

Interval Training

Interval Training involves alternating bursts of high intensity exercises (1-4 minutes) with lower intensity activities (active recovery). For runners, speed training, is a form of interval training.

The benefits of interval training include:

• Increased calorie burn. The high-intensity intervals increase the heart rate and amount of calories burned. Even during active recovery, when you are performing lower intensity exercises, your heart rate remains higher overall and you burn more calories overall.
• Increased muscle fatigue and faster results. The high-intensity intervals fatigue your muscles more rapidly, meaning you have to work harder, even during lower intensity movements. This leads to more rapid results.
• Decreased time. Adding bursts of intensity decreases the amount of time you must work to equal the same results as a longer, moderate-intensity workout.

Weight Loss Tips

If weight loss is your goal, here are some tips to losing weight safely:

• 1-2 pounds per week is considered a safe weight loss goal
• Programs that promise rapid weight loss are often dehydrating and generally unhealthy
• A regular exercise program AND a healthy, moderate diet are both necessary for healthy weight loss
• Cardiovascular exercise is important for calorie burn and weight loss (it is also great for your heart!)
• Strength training increases your lean muscle mass, which increases your metabolism—causing you to burn more calories even while at rest!

Hydration

Staying hydrated throughout the day is very important, particularly when exercising regularly. Dehydration can increase fatigue and soreness, among other things.

Here are some tips for staying hydrated:

• Avoid caffeinated sodas. Caffeine is a diuretic—meaning it actually dehydrates you more.
• If you drink juice, read the label--many juices are only 10-15% juice. Try to stick to the 100% juices.
• Gatorade and sport drinks can replenish lost electrolytes. However, this is really only needed when exercising vigorously for more than an hour.
• If you are thirsty, it means you are already slightly dehydrated.
• Keep a water bottle handy to sip on throughout the day.
• Try to drink at least 6-8 glasses of fluid per day.
• Two cups of water = one pound. Every pound lost during a workout session represents fluids lost. Be sure to replace lost fluids!

Warm UP

An often neglected, but very important part of a workout is the warm up. A warm up prepares your heart, lungs, muscles, bones, and joints for exercise. It also prepares you mentally for what you are about to do. Starting out with vigorous intensity exercise when your muscles are still cold can set you up for injury.

Tips for warming up:

* Low intensity cardio is a good way to increase the temperature of the body and the muscles
* Start slowly and progress to harder or faster exercise over a 5-8 minute period of time.
* During a warm up, your heart rate should be 40-60% of your max (max HR is about 220-age).
* Some light stretching can be done towards the END of your warm up. Save any deep stretching for the end of your workout

Exercise Recommendations

Are you getting enough exercise? The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) provides a minimum weekly exercise recommendation. While more is ideal, strive to get at least the recommended time.

• Children & Teens: 1 hour of moderate to vigorous activity daily
• Adults: 2 ½ hours of moderate to vigorous activity per week

For more specific guidelines, go to http://www.health.gov/paguidelines/factsheetprof.aspx

Starting an Exercise Program

When beginning an exercise program, one mistake many people make is over doing it. You don’t want to do too much too fast. This can put extra stress on the muscular, skeletal, and cardiorespiratory systems. Soreness from an overly vigorous workout may actually deter you from exercising for a few days after.

Although you may be motivated to go full speed, it is important to start gradually and build up to higher intensity and longer periods of exercise over time.

If you have been previously inactive, you may want to start with just 15-30 minutes of light to moderate activity daily activity. Slowly increase your time and intensity until you can perform 30-60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise.

Online PE?

Carone Fitness is a curriculum development company. We offer online health and PE courses for grades 6-12. "Online PE?" you might be thinking. Yes, it's true! We realize that it may sound like an oxymoron, but it is not just a virtual workout!

Taking PE online is a good alternative for many students, and actually provides some great benefits. Students can view lessons that provide health and fitness information, participate in online class discussions about health & fitness topics, assess their own levels of fitness, design their own exercise programs, and keep strict logs of their workouts.

Here are some of the benefits:

• Students focus on their OWN level of fitness and try to improve themselves. They are not comparing themselves or being compared to others. It is truly personalized fitness!
• Students can choose physical activities they enjoy! By doing something they enjoy, they are more likely to stick with their exercise program long term.
• Students must create their own workout schedules--figuring when, where, and how they are going to exercise. This sets them up for the "real world" where they also have to figure out how to incorporate health and fitness around work, family, and other activities.
• Students are learning the principles and guidelines behind fitness, not just the rules of a game; thus empowering them with the knowledge they need to maintain a healthy lifestyle long after class is over!

For more information about Carone Fitness or online PE, visit our website at http://www.caronefitness.com/or contact us at information@caronefitness.com.