Hottest Fitness Trends

If you are tired of your usual exercise routines, why not try something new to keep your workout fresh and interesting? Trying a new workout will allow you to keep challenging your body. Here are 3 fitness trends you may want to try:

1.) Fusion Classes- aerial yoga, piloxing, cardioga, poolates and kayoga are just some of the newest fusion classes we have today. These combo workouts are conceptualized to get the body working in ways it wouldn’t otherwise. If you think your current workout routine is not doing enough for you then you absolutely need to try a fusion class.

Aerial Yoga. Anti-gravity Yoga.

Let’s say you are an avid spinner and you are missing a strength component, you can take a class that uses resistance bands and free weights to train a wider muscle group. Pick a class that has one of your favorite or current workouts in the name. If you are already doing yoga then try a yoga fusion class such as aerial yoga, piloxing (boxing with Pilates) or poolates.

2.) Dance Fusion Classes- Zumba and Masala Bhangra are great for those who are looking for a fun way to burn the calories. Luckily, they are not the only way to dance away the excess pounds. You can try hip-hop, jazz or striptease aerobics.

If you want a class that incorporates resistance training into different dance routines then you may want to consider house party fitness. There is also a new fitness trend called Pound which is a fusion of cardio, pilates, plyometrics and isometric movements.

The 45-miunute class will help you burn 600-900 calories per hour. With this dance fusion class, you use weighted drumsticks and rhythm to achieve a full body cardio jam workout.

3.) Wellness Coaches- fitness doesn’t stop in regular exercise and a healthy diet. Staying fit is a lifestyle and if you are serious about it, you may want to consider seeking the help of a wellness coach. They offer guidance on long-term changes that you can make so you can enjoy a healthy lifestyle for good.

The one-on-one approach is similar to that of personal trainers. The only difference is that a wellness coach looks at your lifestyle and habits holistically. They will then determine what strategies will help you achieve your fitness goals. Ask your doctor or personal trainer if they can recommend a wellness coach. Before meeting with a coach, make sure you are ready to commit to making positive changes in your life.

Eating Allows You to Avoid Other Things

You might realize that you have a relationship with food that’s not quite healthy. You might know that you overeat and that you use food to soothe emotions. What you might not know is that eating can be used as an avoidance coping skill.

Eating is more fun than doing many other tasks – and it satisfies you emotionally, while having to tackle things you’d rather not deal with stresses you out. It’s not a hard choice to make.

How Eating Becomes Avoidance Coping

Eating becomes avoidance coping when you use it to procrastinate. You might scoff at that thinking that eating only takes up your time when you have meals or snacks.

But there’s more to eating that the physical act of ingesting the food that leads to avoidance. Before you can get the food, you have to decide what it is that you’re going to eat.

So you spend time deciding on menus, pouring over cookbooks, scouring the web for new recipes to try out and don’t recognize that you could be using this to escape from doing what you don’t want to do.

Plus, you could also be using going to get the food items as an avoidance technique. It takes time to get to the grocery store and actually pick up the ingredients for the meals you’ve planned.

You might even convince yourself that you have to go to three or four different stores to get the “right” label or the perfect item. Then once you get the food, you spend time getting it ready to make.

Some food dishes call for more detailed steps than others so you could end up spending hours on food prep. Once you’ve prepared it, then it’s time to cook the food.

After it’s all ready, then you spend time eating the food. Since you can’t leave the kitchen a mess after preparing a meal, you’ll want to clean up the kitchen. You might decide that the pantry needs to be cleaned out as you put items away.

The stove needs to self-clean so you should handle it. Then while you’re at it, you check the refrigerator and see the food that you really should go ahead and throw out.

So you clean out the pantry, you clean the stove, you clear out the refrigerator. Then you decide that you need to sweep and after that, since you swept, why not go ahead and clean the floors so the kitchen will be completely clean.

By the time you get all those things done, the dishwasher cycle has finished and since you hate leaving the dishes in there, you might as well stay in the kitchen long enough to put them away.

By this time, you’ve turned the simple act of getting the food and making it into a full time job. After you’re done, you’re too tired to really concentrate so it’s time for a little relaxing television and then off to bed.

Keeping busy dealing with food related stuff has enabled you to push aside what you should deal with. Some people go through this same cycle every day. The only thing that changes are the chores that they use to keep themselves busy with.

Using Food Allows You to Avoid Decisions

Life is full of decisions and some of these decisions are difficult ones. They can make you feel torn up inside and that hurts. No one enjoys pain – whether it’s physical or emotional.

So if you can put it off, then that’s what you’re going to do and grabbing something to eat will occupy your hands and your mind. You won’t have to think about the decisions you need to make then.

People often avoid making hard decisions because they feel overwhelmed and unable to cope. You might recognize that making the decision you have to make will cause someone else to become upset and rather than deal with the drama, you’ll turn to food to help make yourself feel better.

You might be using food to avoid making a decision because you’re afraid of making the wrong decision. This can be especially true if the decision is going to change your life drastically.

Some examples of decisions like that could be ending a relationship. Quitting a job to take a new one. Or making the choice to uproot your life to move to another state and leave family and friends behind.

Fear of making the wrong decision can lead you to food and you’ll end up putting off making the decision. Some people use food to procrastinate themselves right out of making any decisions until the time to make the decision has passed and it’s too late to change anything.

Some people use food to avoid making a decision that could actually be a successful one. It’s common that people avoid decision making out of fear of making the wrong one but it’s equally as common to do the same out of fear of success.

Most people use eating to avoid making decisions that might lead to success because they fear change. It doesn’t matter if that change could be positive and give them a better life.

It’s going through having to leave their comfort zone, having to break out of their routine that trips people up. Eating doesn’t cause that same turmoil. So if you can just eat something, then all the turmoil will go away.

If you have to make a hard decision in your life and you find yourself wanting to eat to self-soothe what you’re feeling, that’s a good sign that you’re using food as an avoidance coping technique.

Eating Lets You Avoid Dealing with Work

There is a downside to every single career you can think of because there’s no such thing as the perfect job. Even if you’re in a job that you love and you’re good at your job, there can be issues that crop up that have you turning to food so that you don’t have to deal with whatever is going on.

Usually these issues can be found in three categories. Responsibilities, colleagues and promotions. You might be able to handle all the responsibilities that you have.

But the fact that you need to get them done within a certain time frame can cause the pressure to mount. So you turn to eating so that you don’t have to deal with the feelings of being overwhelmed.

When responsibilities pile up to the point that you can’t possibly get everything done without putting in overtime or having to stay late, this can cause people to turn to eating.

They use food to avoid dealing with the load of work and with the resentment that they feel from having to work so hard. Colleagues who are lazy and put the lion’s share of work on your shoulder for a project can cause you to feel angry.

But since you want to keep a good working relationship, you might not want to speak up. So you just do the work of two people and then you eat to avoid having to deal with the situation with your coworker.

The eating works as a way to de-stress you from the coworker’s actions. It puts a temporary fix on a situation that needs a solution. And as long as you don’t deal with the situation, you’ll continue to use food to avoid it.

You would think that being in line for a promotion would be so exciting it wouldn’t want to be something you would avoid dealing with. But the stress of worrying what will happen if you don’t get it can be taxing.

So can the stress of worrying what will happen if you do get it. A promotion often means you end up with added responsibilities and longer hours. You might end up getting the promotion without realizing what you were getting yourself into.

Because it’s something you really wanted and you could use the extra money that came along with the promotion, you don’t say anything if you feel overwhelmed by it.

Instead, you turn to food. When you eat, you don’t have to think about all the what-ifs. What if you can’t get everything done? What if you can’t motivate the people you’re now in charge of?

The stress of what could be as well as the stress of what is when it comes to work can make you seek food. When you eat, those brain chemicals are released that make you feel better.

Once you’re soothed, you feel okay about the promotion or whatever is going on at work until the feeling wears away and you’re back at square one.

Eating So You Don’t Have to Exercise or Clean

If there are two things in the world that most people would rather not do, it’s exercise or clean.  Neither one of those are particularly fun even if they are a necessary part of life.

There are hundreds of other things that are more fun you could choose to do. Getting ready to exercise takes the time to get into workout clothes, to head out of the house to walk or run or get to the gym.

If you exercise in the house, it takes to workout with the equipment or set up the exercise video. Then you have to take a shower and finish up the rest of the day. Sometimes, people can subconsciously resent the time it takes to exercise.

Knowing they should exercise, especially if they have any health problems can often drive people to eat.  This way, they can not only avoid the activity of exercise but can soothe the feelings such as guilt that come along with not doing what you feel you should be doing.

One way that you can change eating so you don’t have to exercise is to change how you look at exercise. If you hate doing it, if exercising is something you absolutely dread even the thought of, then it’s time to change what kind of exercise you’ve been doing in the past.

You replace exercise with eating because it taps into the reward center in the brain. You eat and get a release of the feel good chemicals so you feel better. By changing the kind of exercise you do and make it something you really enjoy, you can gain the release of the same chemicals and reach that same endorphin high you get from eating.

This same method will work when it comes to cleaning. If you hate cleaning, it’s easier to grab some food and turn on the television to catch up on your favorite show.

You feel satisfied when you do that. But the problem is that when you look around afterward the cleaning still has to be done, so you didn’t accomplish anything.

Avoiding things like cleaning and turning to eating instead can keep you trapped in a cycle of avoidance coping. Because once you’ve procrastinated with the food, you’ll go about your day and try to ignore what you didn’t get done.

The uncompleted cleaning chores, however, will be at the back of your mind, nagging you. Unfinished business has a way of causing stress to build up until it’s taken care of. You’re better off just getting whatever you hate to do over with first thing.

Eating to Avoid Dealing with Relationships

Relationships are tricky because emotions are involved. Interacting with people leaves room for misunderstandings, for hurt feelings and for the build up of stress.

But they also can bring plenty of happiness. Regardless of the emotion associated with your relationships, they can be triggers that push you to eat. Eating allows you to avoid having to deal with whatever is going on in a relationship.

You’re using food to try and drown out the hurt, the stress when a relationship is having difficulties. The act of eating offers you comfort and because you feel better, you see the food as a friend you can turn to when you can’t resolve or make sense of a relationship problem.

When you use food to cope with relationships, it never helps. All is does is give you a temporary feel good delay before the same emotions are going to rise up within you.

When you eat to avoid dealing with relationships what’s really going on inside of you is that you’re seeking help to deal with the stress that the emotions brought on.

It’s often much easier to reach for food than it is to deal with a relationship that makes you feel inside out. Discussing difficult issues in a relationships and often being called on to make a hard decision about it is the way to stop running to food.

You might even know the solution and how to solve what’s going on in the relationship that’s stressing you out. But the problem is that other people are the variable.

You don’t know how they’re going to react. That’s what keeps people from dealing with relationship issues. They’re not afraid of the truth or of speaking the truth.

They’re afraid of the other person’s reaction – of their anger, their hurt, or their silent treatment. Eating will temporarily solve whatever is going on but it never solves anything.

Using food to tamp down emotions only teaches you not to feel – to numb yourself – and this can open the door for the development of food related issues like binge eating.

Instead of turning to food, it’s always better to give any relationship and the issue with it a breather. When you have yourself under control and you have calm, then approach the issue to deal with it.

Food Has Become Your Closest Friend

You have to eat to survive. Food is fuel for the body and everyone knows that. However, food becomes much more than that when it’s used to try and silence emotions.

When we use food to silence emotions, this is called emotional eating. When it comes to eating this way, you might not even be aware that you’re using food as way to soothe.

Some people aren’t. They only know that when they eat, they feel better so they eat more. For those who are aware that they’re using food as an emotional crutch, they often find themselves in a cycle of deciding to stop using food that way and being unable to do it.

That’s because ending your habit of using food as a crutch isn’t simple an exercise in willpower. You have to first recognize what’s going on emotionally before you can fix what’s going on and put food use in its proper place.

What Is Emotional Eating?

When you’re an emotional eater, you’ll eat regardless of whether or not you’re hungry. Instead of letting your body’s signals guide you as to when you need food, you let your emotions decide when you want something to eat.

One of the key culprits behind emotional eating is having a lot of stress in your life. This is because stress is the umbrella under which a lot of emotions are found. Stress can lead to you feeling angry or grief.

It can make you feel irritated or anxious and cause you to reach for food to make those emotions feel better. When you engage in emotional eating, it means that the way you view food is out of its proper place.

You don’t see food as fuel, something that’s necessary for you to be able to live. Instead, you see it as a friend. It’s there to offer you comfort and it never lets you down. It’s always available and always takes your side.

This type of eating often lays the groundwork for eating disorders such as binge eating to develop. When your body gives off a true hunger signal and you eat, the hunger signal is appeased.

But that’s not the case with emotional eating. When you’re eating because you’re appeasing an emotion, you can end up having to eat bigger portions in order to pacify what you feel.

Then what happens is that the emotional eating leads to compulsive eating and it becomes almost like a drug habit. You have to eat more to be able to get the same satisfaction – the same pleasure that you got in the beginning of the emotional eating journey.

When emotional eating leads to compulsive eating, you can begin to experience health problems related to gaining weight. When you put on weight to the point that you hate the way that you look, this can make you feel worse about yourself. So then you eat even more.

Warning Signs That You’re an Emotional Eater

There are warning signs that can tell you if you’re an emotional eater or not. One of the first signs is that when things pile up on you at home or at work, in response to the accompanying stress, you want food to make you feel better.

Instead of thinking about going for a walk or doing something else to de-stress, you think of what you can eat. Stress causes a variety of emotions and if you crave food when you’re mad or hurt, when you’re feeling lonely or tired – that’s a sign that you’re an emotional eater.

The reason that emotional eating is so prevalent is because it’s not something that you plan to do. Emotional eaters have a subconscious drive to seek food when their emotions kick into high gear.

Food is the release from the emotions. Just like some people reach for alcohol, cigarettes or drugs to calm themselves, emotional eaters reach for food, especially food that’s not good for them.

Eating things like a piece of cake or a handful of cookies brings solace and after eating them, you feel better, even happy. But the problem is that the comfort the emotional eating gives you will not last.

Another warning sign that you’ve used emotional eating to the point where food has become your friend is when you are incapable of giving up food. The thought of not eating, of restricting yourself, makes you feel upset.

If you’re overweight, the thought of cutting back on food or eliminating certain ones is an impossible thought to entertain for long. You find yourself thinking about food even when you’ve just finished a meal or a snack.

Eating when you know you’re not hungry is a warning sign that the way you see food isn’t healthy. So is eating when you’re so full that your stomach is hurting yet you can’t walk away without eating the last bite.

You think about food to the point that if you have to, you’ll make an extra trip to the grocery store to get something. You begin to develop a close relationship to food. Relying on it to make you happy.

To comfort you when you feel down. To love you when you feel lonely. It’s also a warning sign if you associate food with positive emotions. Emotional eating isn’t just about the negative emotions such as eating when you feel down.

You can crave food when you’re feeling good, when you’re happy as well. Because you feel happy, you want to celebrate with food because it has become a friend to you. Obsessing about food is a warning sign of emotional eating.

You might have just finished having a big meal but you’re already looking forward to what you’re having next. You can’t wait until a certain time of the day or night if you spend that time with food.

For example, some people de-stress by watching TV in the evening. Along with watching TV, they eat. They associate eating the food with helping them to relax. Instead of dealing with whatever emotions make them feel, they bury those emotions under food.

How Does Food Become a Friend?

Food becomes a friend when we practice emotional eating to the point that it takes the place of the normal ways to deal with emotions. When you feel emotions that you want to shy away from, emotional eating shoulders that burden for you.

It steps in as a friend that you could talk to only there’s silent communication. The first step in food becoming a friend occurs when you decide to numb the emotions rather than experience them.

Some emotions can be overwhelming – especially if you’re dealing with a situation that’s difficult. Food becomes a friend when you turn your back on whatever emotion is going on. Instead of dealing with the emotion, you shut it down with food.

Because we’ve been taught that negative emotions are bad, it can be easy to want to hide from anger or sadness. It can be hard to open yourself up and let yourself feel emotions that you may have deliberately buried because it’s too painful to free them.

Food takes away the sharp edges of emotion and pushes them away. You end up feeling food is protecting you from emotional pain. So therefore, food is a kind, reliable friend that you can always count on.

When you don’t deal with emotions, when you oppress them instead, food is available to make sure that you don’t have to hurt that way. You don’t have to grieve. You don’t have to think.

Food can also become a friend when you see it as a reward, as something that you get to have. You completed something that was difficult to undertake so you reward yourself with food that’s high in sugar.

When you eat certain foods, chemicals are released in the brain. For example, if you eat chocolate for comfort, it releases endorphins and you feel happy. It takes away the stress and the negative emotions. Other foods have that ability, too.

So you learn to crave these foods like you would a drug. Because you feel so much better after eating, you think of food these foods in the same manner you would if it were a person helping you. You begin to associate feelings of friendship with food.

What Voids Does Food Fill?

Food is used to fill physical and emotional voids. These are places inside of us that are lacking. These voids are often created in childhood but because they’re not identified and dealt with, they remain with us, following us into adulthood.

We use food to fill a physical void that was caused by scarcity. If you grew up in a home where there was food scarcity, then you learned at a young age that stress was associated with not having enough food.

People who grew up in homes where there wasn’t always enough food, can develop an unhealthy relationship with it. The reason for this is because as kids, they picked up on the stress when their caretakers didn’t have the means to provide.

They might have witnessed the anxiety and felt the fear of the adults and they learned to internalize those emotions. Then when there was food in the home, they sensed the relief and the happiness their caregiver had.

Things became more pleasant. There was happiness because there was food. You witnessed that it could take away stress and bring happiness. So if you grew up without always knowing there would be food, it can be easy to think of food and not realize that you have a void associated with eating.

Subconsciously, you use food in the exact same way in your own life without even realizing that’s what you’re doing. You eat and the stress goes away and happiness is left in the wake.

Food can also be used to fill voids that are associated with a lack of emotions. If you grew up in a home where love wasn’t common place, it can create a void within you that wants to be filled.

Because we’re made to need love, we want to fill that void with something else. This can be something you do subconsciously. That’s why some people turn to avenues such as becoming a workaholic, becoming an alcoholic, using escapism and overeating food. They’re looking for whatever it takes to fill up that void.

Another void that food is often used to feel is the void of unconditional acceptance. When we don’t have that acceptance, it can lead to low self-esteem, a severe internal critic and depression.

Food fills that void because it never speaks harsh words to us. It brings comfort instead. It reinforces happiness. Instead of pointing out flaws or judging, food accepts us “as is” and we learn that no one else offers that complete emotional filling.

Why You Shouldn’t Let Food Be Your Closest Friend

It might seem like there’s no reason to change your relationship with food. You eat and you feel better. As long as you feel better, there’s nothing wrong, right? The problem is that this is creating a fake happiness. It’s not reality.

Food shouldn’t become a friend because when you use food to mask emotions, whatever it is that you’re really bothered by remains pushed inward. Suppressed emotions can cause you to carry stress around and this is bad for your health. Choosing food over dealing with your emotions keeps you from having to deal with whatever it is that’s going on.

This is a way of masking problems rather than exposing them. Masked problems can often cause bigger issues down the road because you’ll continue to eat to feel better but you’ll only feel better temporarily.

When you treat food like a friend, you get caught up in a cycle of eating to soothe emotions. Then you feel better. However, that feeling doesn’t last. As soon as the same emotions or the same problem arises, you eat to soothe again. You end up trapped in a cycle that will never break unless you address the real reason you use food as a friend to start with.

People were meant to emotionally interact and connect with one another, for positive relationships. Not with food. When food is used as a friend, you start to count on it to make you feel better. You look to it for happiness and comfort rather than turning to a real life friend.

When you treat food like a friend, you’re emotionally eating and you’re training your body to connect joy with food. What this does is to create feelings that are not authentic. Your true self is going through the motions of an authentic life but you’re not living it because you’re not experiencing it emotionally.

When food is your closest friend, you open your body up to unnecessary complications. An unhealthy relationship with food almost always leads to weight gain, which can be significant.

This type of gain can lead to obesity. Then you’ll have to deal with physical and emotional complications. You can end up with high blood pressure, heart problems and diabetes because of how a friendship with food will impact you physically.

Emotionally, you can end up with low self-esteem or body hate. Food is meant to be enjoyed and to be used as fuel for you to be able to live a happy, fulfilling life. It was never meant to become something you lean on as you would a friend.

Dieting Has Become Part of Who You Are

Everywhere you turn, you’ll see advice on how to lose weight. You’ll see tried and true diets touted from the front covers of magazines. Fad diets will also be heralded as the next new weight loss technique.

You see these things because we live in a diet culture. If you put twenty people together in a room, the majority of them will have been on a diet or are currently on a diet. Dieting has become the new normal and as a result, it has become part of who you are.

Chronic Dieting

Most people don’t realize how narrow their world has become when it comes to dieting. They don’t understand that they’re simply on yet another diet because they haven’t taken a step back and looked at the big picture.

If you’re someone who is a chronic dieter, it means that you have spent untold years on a diet. You might think that it’s no big deal to live the kind of life where you focus on dieting.

But what you don’t realize is that your life can be overtaken by one diet after another. You can become so focused on counting the calories, obsessing over food that it restricts your life.

You can focus on chronic dieting to the point that foods are identified as good or bad. That creates a mindset of food restriction which is one of the underlying causes of failure to lose weight.

People who are chronically dieting will often fail to see that their weight loss goals aren’t normal. Instead, when they decide to lose weight, they have a magical number in mind that they want to reach.

It doesn’t matter to them if that number is wrong for their bone structure or if that weight isn’t realistic for them. They are linking their self worth, their happiness to that number and they can’t see anything but reaching that goal.

This will cause you to fail at one diet and turn right around and start another. It will also cause you to consider and in some cases, get involved in fad diets that can damage your health.

When it comes to chronic dieting, some people mistakenly believe that if they “fall off the wagon” then they’re technically not dieting. During this time where they don’t see themselves as dieting, the past food deprivation feelings kick in and they will often binge eat what they didn’t allow themselves to have before.

If you’re someone who engages in chronic dieting, it means that your diets are open ended. You don’t set your focus on an end goal. You just keep dieting hoping to reach a number that will give you inner happiness.

Recognizing How Your Dieting Is Affecting You

When dieting becomes part of who you are, you’ll find yourself caught up in yo yo dieting. Some people think yo yo dieting is what happens when someone loses a lot of weight, gains it back and then loses it again.

But yo yo dieting is actually repeatedly losing weight regardless of the amount. If you lose five pounds, gain it back, then lose it again, that’s yo yo dieting. Any amount that’s lost and regained repeatedly qualifies as yo yo dieting.

You might think that the benefits of losing weight are what count regardless of whether or not you gain it back. But you would be mistaken. Yo yo dieting takes a toll on the body.

When you engage in this kind of dieting behavior, your body will start to fight back. It does this as part of a survival mechanism. When you lose and regain repeatedly, your body gets the wrong signals and tries to fight against starvation.

It holds on tight and makes it tougher for you to be able to lose any weight. So in the future, you might start losing less every time you try to diet because your body is working against you.

This can start to rack up the extra pounds and cause you to become heavier than you were before you ever started the diet. Most people who end up obese do so because they engage in state of constant dieting where they deprive themselves and then overeat.

Yo yo dieting can lower the amount of good cholesterol you have in your body and raise your risk of having a heart attack or heart related disease. When you focus your life around diets that have a yo yo effect, it can take a toll on your emotions.

You’ll feel happy and excited every time you lose the weight but then sad every time you see a weight gain. This can end up leading you to experience depression especially if you’re around other people who have dieted and successfully kept the weight off long term.

Yo yo diets take such a toll on your health that they can actually shave years off your life span. You can break the cycle of yo yo dieting so that it stops being part of who you are.

When you want to lose weight, don’t think you need a quick or big change. Instead, make small changes that you can incorporate into your life.
When we make huge changes in our eating patterns, we can rebel mentally especially if we have an emotional attachment to food.

Understand that you will have days when you’ll feel like you blew it with the way that you eat. Just remember that if you eat healthy and you exercise, you will lose weight without having to rely on one diet after another.

Societal Pressure Is Running Your Life

When everyone around you is doing the same thing, it can be hard to stand apart from the crowd. It’s more normal to be on a diet these days than it isn’t. You want to be accepted.

That’s normal. If being the person who isn’t on a diet threatens that acceptance, most people will change to fit in. Society has a picture of what the perfect weight is and it will tell you exactly what that perfect weight is.

It’s not you. You’ll see what society thinks about your weight in the magazine articles that tell women who wear a size ten how they can “shed those unwanted pounds.”

The average person wears a size between twelve and fourteen. Yet society tells us that if your weight is higher than what could qualify as a fever on a thermometer, you’re fat.

We buy into this pressure and it sends us into a frenzy of having to lose weight in order to fit in. What’s so sad is that the people who are making these claims aren’t people who have a perfect weight.

They’re just as caught up in what they think everyone should like as you are. So you give in. You cave to what society tells you that your body is supposed to look like.

Your last diet didn’t really work for you, so you start yet again determined this time to do whatever it takes to get the weight off. Before you know it, the diet has taken over your life.

It’s what you think about you, it’s what you dwell on, it’s what you and your friends talk about. You continue to chase the elusive vision of perfection because you believe that others must know something you don’t.

If they can diet and have a perfect weight, then surely it’s obtainable to you, too. With this kind of mindset, it becomes your new norm to be in the cycle of dieting and then off of it.

You see it as normal that you gain weight during one of the off cycles. When that happens, you hop into the on cycle and the process starts all over again. You need to take a long look at your life.

See how many years you’ve spent chasing a diet, chasing a perfect weight, trying desperately to fit in to what society says looks beautiful or looks healthy.
Those beautiful women in magazines have had every bulge airbrushed to perfection. It’s not reality. It’s time to say no to societal pressure and to allowing dieting to control your life.

The Diet Identity Crisis

You can tie your identity up in dieting and not even realize that’s what you’ve done. Every time you announce to your friends and family that you’re starting a new diet, you lose your identity.

Your life revolves around the diet announcement. The seeking of approval that you’re going to lose weight, strive for that perfect number. But what you don’t realize is that when you continue to make diet announcements every time you start a new diet, you’re setting the stage for failure.

When others know you’re dieting, you can experience some negativity. You’ll have people questioning you about the foods that you eat. You can end up feeling resentful or guilty, both emotions which can cause problems for you when you’re trying to lose weight.

Despite how well meaning others are, when you announce a diet, most people see that as deprivation. As a result, they’ll often put temptation in your way. “Oh come on. One bite won’t hurt.”

You might think that by announcing that you’re starting a new diet that it’s a good thing that you shared it with others. You could subconsciously be seeking approval.

But studies have shown that by not telling people you’re starting a diet, you can end up having more willpower than if you did. Plus, when you want to make positive changes in your life, if you’re among people who don’t have the same mindset, sometimes, they’ll resent the changes you want to make.

They’ll subconsciously work to get you to stay the same. Whether we like it or not, how people react to what we tell them can impact us and cause us to change directions.

Some people can end up with their lives revolving around diet announcements because they have a diet addiction. This is what happens when wanting to lose weight crosses the line into something that consumes their life and as a result, overtakes their identity.

Dieting and wanting to announce the news every time you start a new one can be a form of trying to bolster your self-esteem. You need the approval of others. When dieting causes you to lose your identity, it means that there are no gray areas with food.

You see what you eat as bad or good, therefore what you eat makes you bad or good. If you decide that you’re going to start a new diet, don’t announce it to anyone who doesn’t have the power to help you along the journey.

Of the people who need to know a diet announcement are your doctor, your weight loss trainer or a dietician. This can be a better support team for you than others can be.

What Happens When Dieting Becomes Part of Who You Are

The way that you think about food is altered. You won’t see food choices as healthy or not so healthy. Instead, you’ll food as either or. You can have it or you can’t.

There’s no middle ground. When you think this way, it can be easier to create a food obsession. This all or nothing mentality is at the basis of many eating disorders.

Instead of creating labels for what you eat and shoving them into one category of the other, eat what you want within reason. Practice eating healthy portions and stopping when you’re full.

Sometimes we get caught up in dieting because we have behaviors associated with food. One of these can be the mindset that if you don’t eat this particular food, it will go out of date and you’ll have wasted the money you spent on it.

Learn to let go of food and know that while it’s not the best thing in the world to waste, it’s not the worst thing in the world either. It’s better to throw food out than throw on the pounds that will trap you in a cycle of dieting.

When you get caught up in a cycle of dieting, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that eating was meant to be a pleasurable experience, not one we dread. When you label food as good and bad, you can create guilt and stress feelings in your body every time you eat that food.

So you learn to deprive yourself. You have to reach the point where you realize that it’s okay to enjoy food when it’s consumed in a healthy manner. Negative feelings with food can create food issues that cause people to diet and binge and repeat the behavior.

Learn to accept food as simply fuel and only eat what you need to get through your day. When dieting becomes part of who you are, it can make you limit your world to the point that everything must be rigidly controlled when it comes to food.

You’ll start to focus so much on your dieting that you cut yourself off from experiences. You won’t go out with friends to some events because you know there will be food there you might have a hard time not eating.

Or you start to spend so much time looking up the nutrition on every bit of food that you eat that there’s no longer any joy at all in eating. People who let dieting become part of who they are can feel threatened emotionally when something happens to disrupt their diet. They can become diet perfectionists and their happiness revolves around the diet.

You’ve Given Up and Given In to Hopelessness

When it comes to losing weight, there isn’t a magic fix. When you want to shed unwanted pounds, it’s going to take some work, determination and making changes in your lifestyle. But it can be done.

The problem is that many people give up. They give up because they see some results but then gain the weight back. Or they struggle for a couple of weeks, get on the scale, see minimal weight loss, and they get discouraged and quit.

There are five common thoughts people have that cause them to give up and give in to hopelessness when it comes to weight loss. These thoughts can become mental blocks that can prevent you from changing your life.

This Is Who I Am

You can reach a point in life where you’ve carried extra weight around for so long that you associated with your identity. You might not say it out loud, but you think it to yourself.

Instead of thinking of yourself as Jane Doe, you think of yourself as Jane Doe, heavy girl. Or John Doe, heavy guy. You can start to take on the persona of what you silently tell yourself you are.

What that means is that your thoughts become your acceptance. You think, “This is who I am” and your thinking will sabotage any weight loss changes that you ever attempt to make unless you change the way that you think.

The reason why this thought trips you up and keeps you trapped in the cycle of feeling hopeless about losing weight is because it’s an unfinished thought. The truth is that when you think that, you’re not really accepting yourself “as is.”

What you’re doing is raising the mental flag of surrender because you feel hopeless. The phrase isn’t finished. There needs to be a “because” at the end of it.

So instead of ending your hopeless thought with “This is who I am” you need to change it to “This is who I am because.” When you add the word because it becomes the link to the identifier.

This lets you discover the real reason why you’re thinking the way that you are. You can figure out why you feel the way that you do and why you struggle with weight or dieting once you know the reason.

So you might think, “This is who I am because diets never work for me.” Once you know that, you can take it to the second step and realize that diets never worked for you because and you can uncover why that diet didn’t work.

Then once you know why the diet never worked for you, you’ll be able to identify the problem and find the solution.

Guess I’ll Be Fat Forever

This phrase is covered in hopelessness. It reeks of disappointment. You’re disappointed in the efforts, in the diet, in the exercise, and in all of the hard work that you put into it.

But you’re also disappointed in yourself. When you say that phrase, it sounds like that’s what you mean but what’s silently being said is that you don’t want this. You want to make change and you wish that you knew how to make the changes

There are reasons that people reach this mindset. It usually starts because whatever weight loss effort they’ve made has simply not happened fast enough for their liking.

The progress is moving at a snail’s pace and when they don’t see results, they give up and settle back in hopelessness. The way to combat this line of thinking is to realize that when progress takes longer, that’s a good thing.

Studies have shown that slow, steady weight loss is much better and safer than fast weight loss. When you lose weight slowly, even though it seems to be taking forever, you end up keeping the weight off long term.

The key is being able to accept that it’s going to take time. Once you settle on that from the start, it will be easy to avoid the, “I’m going to be fat forever” way of thinking.

Something else that can trigger this line of thinking is a diet that’s too restrictive. When you plan a diet that’s very strict, you’re setting yourself up for failure. No one wants to be hungry.

It’s not fun and it’s actually detrimental to weight loss because it can lead you to feelings of helplessness. When it comes to meal planning, if you choose foods that keep you feeling fuller longer, you’ll be able to combat feeling hungry, which in turn will eliminate frustration and feelings of helplessness.

Another reason that you can fall into the trap of giving in to helplessness or giving up happens when you decide that you have to eliminate all the foods you like from your diet.

This always backfires because diets that take all the fun out of eating will push you to give up. The best way to avoid experiencing the “guess I’ll be fat forever” mindset is to focus on eating the majority of your meals and snacks based on healthy choices.

Choose lean meats and fruits and vegetables as your mainstay. And vary your choices so boredom doesn’t set in. But whatever you do, don’t completely eliminate everything that’s high calorie and considered junk food.

If you do that, you’ll pave the way to give up. The best way to take off the pounds you want to lose is to eat healthy and leave room in your eating plan for your favorite foods.

It’s My Genes

It’s a scientific fact that what your ancestors passed down through your family tree can affect your life today. Depending on the genes in your family, you can end up having certain health issues that can impact your weight.

Some people are predisposed to developing diabetes. Because of autoimmune conditions, their bodies are more insulin resistant. Or, you can have family genes that cause problems with the thyroid or other glands that can impede weight loss and make it more difficult regardless of your efforts.

However, that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to lose weight. It only means that you have to try a little harder. Sometimes, there can be a genetic reason that can lead to obesity.

But genetic causes of obesity are rarer than they are the norm. The number one cause of obesity is consuming more calories than is expended. If you struggle to lose weight, trying harder will bring you success.

One of the best ways to try harder when it’s in your genes does not depend on the type of eating plan you choose. It also doesn’t depend on your exercise routine.

What it does depend on is your determination. Having the mindset of not quitting until you get the results that you want is the key factor in losing weight when it comes to having family genes that make it more difficult to take off weight.

There’s no doubt that when your genes work against you, that you’re right when you say “It’s in my genes.” However, if you add, “so I can’t lose weight” to the end of that, then you’re not being honest with yourself.

Regardless of what you have going on in your family health history, you don’t want to use that as an excuse. When you do that, you’re actually seeking approval and a reason to let yourself down and to feel better for giving up.

Losing weight is hard even without having genes that won’t work with you. But you can do it if you decide that you want to do it. That’s why you see all kinds of weight loss success stories from people who have major struggles.

They struggle with their genes and still manage to lose weight. So even if you do come from a family that has genes that tend to keep the weight on, you can still have your own success story.

Success means that you’re going to strive to be healthy regardless of what shows up on the scale. It means that you don’t surrender to the mindset that you have no choice but to keep on the extra pounds.

I’m Tired of Dieting

There are hundreds of diets. Each of them will tell you exactly what you need to do or to buy to hit that magical number you’ve been searching for. Weeks. Months. Years. Decades.

Dieting keeps you in a time capsule of always searching for the next diet that’s going to help you lose all the weight you want to lose and keep it off forever and ever.

But as most of us have learned, the majority of diets promise much and deliver little. The reason why is because they create an obsession with food. Let’s look at the calories, the carbs, and the labels.

Let’s count, let’s measure, and let’s deprive. If you’ve reached the point where you’ve thought or said, “I’m tired of dieting,” then you’re in good company. Every single person who has ever been on a diet has reached the point where they’ve had enough.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying you’re tired of dieting. What’s wrong though, is when you say or think that and couple it with an, “I don’t care” attitude and you eat and eat and eat.

Because you’re upset. You’re mad and hurt and grieving that once again, dieting has failed you and you feel like you’ve failed you. The truth is that you haven’t failed until you give up and park yourself firmly in hopelessness.

And by its definition, hopelessness means without hope. Without having hope, you won’t try and the only one who suffers there is you. If you’re tired of dieting, the best piece of advice that you’ll hear is this: then don’t.

Sounds kind of contrary to think when you’re someone who wants to lose weight. But it’s true. If you reach the point where you’re sick and tired of dieting, then give up.

Give up dieting, but don’t give up trying.

Success is not found in adhering to a rigid set of eating plans. It’s not found in carefully measuring out foods. Or depriving yourself of anything that doesn’t take like blades of grass.

Success is found when you change your focus. Instead of focusing on weight loss and how much food you need to give up to reach your goals, change your relationship with food.

Food is not your enemy. It’s there to provide your body with everything it needs to run on. It’s there to give your body nutrients, to give you energy, to boost your immune system, to keep you alive. Look at it as something you can have when you need it and something you pass on when you don’t need it.

I’m Happy Being Fat

“I’m happy being fat” is a common thought in people who are overweight. Sometimes when this thought is present, it’s coming from a place of self-acceptance and truth in that person.

But other times, when this thought is present, it’s coming from a place of defeatism. When you reach that point, it means that you’re tired of fighting, that you’re giving up and you view the weight loss as hopeless.

If you have thought you were happier being fat, you need to do an emotional self-exam and ask yourself if you really do feel that way or if you’re just tired of trying. Because being tired of trying isn’t the same thing as being happy about it.

If you’re not truly satisfied with your weight and tell yourself that you’re happy being fat, what you’re doing by telling yourself that you are is a form of mental weight loss sabotage.

When you have thoughts like that, ones that can lead you to giving up and giving in to hopelessness, what you have to do is to start to challenge the thoughts. You have to look at what you’re silently saying to yourself and evaluate it.

What you tell yourself, whether it’s an actual truth or not, will affect your emotions and actions because it’ll feel like you’re giving yourself a truth. Regardless of whether what you’re thinking isn’t true, the mind doesn’t differentiate between the lies we tell ourselves and the truths.

The mind simple processes what you think as being factual. So what you think in turn leads to the emotional let down of giving up. Don’t take your thoughts at face value.

Question them. Challenge them. Dig deeper to see if you’re attaching emotion to what you’re thinking. If because you’re discouraged about the weight loss, you’re saying you’re happier being fat.

You can challenge your thinking about how you feel concerning weight loss by asking yourself some questions. The number one question to ask yourself is, “Where is the proof?”

When you tell yourself anything negative about weight loss, such as “I’m happy being fat” then turn around ask yourself for the proof. Too many of accept the way that we think and feel about weight loss because we automatically assume we’re telling ourselves the truth. It’s not that we deliberately lie, but emotions are not always indicative of what’s really going on logically.

Recommended: test your fitness level at any age

Do you have to test your fitness level or are you in such great shape that you don’t have to? Obviously if you’re working out regulary and at your ideal weight than this is something you don’t need but I would estimate 90% of people at all ages might well be advised to do this checkup and so I suggest you start by reading the article below:

A former personal trainer, Carol Nigut, 63, takes twice-weekly brisk walks, does strength training three times a week, keeps flexible with yoga and maintains an enviable body mass index.

Nigut doesn’t need to gauge her fitness level; she sees the results. “While friends are having joint replacements, I’m avoiding surgery,” said Nigut, of Oro Valley, Ariz. “I don’t need to take medications. And I’m able to try new ways to stay active. Bird-watching, dancing, whatever; I’ll try it.”

If training is not on your resume, though, how do you know if you’re fit? Google “How many sit-ups should a 30-year-old male do?” or “How long should it take for a 50-year-old female to run a mile?” and you get thousands of answers, mostly from random sources that have nothing to do with fitness.

Enter the gold standard, the Adult Fitness Test (www.presidentschallenge.org). It tells you if you are “normal” compared with a national, well-researched model. For muscular strength, it tells your percentile. If you’re in the 75th percentile, 75 percent of people of your age and gender are not as strong as you are. Many a gym uses a variation of this test — often for free, to get you in its doors — but uses the softer “assessment” instead of “test.”

How to stop procrastinating on your fitness goals

“Every trainer organization has its own assessment and we don’t advocate one over another,” said Joy Keller, of the IDEA Health and Fitness Association, which educates trainers through publications and conventions. “But we recommend using some assessment before you start a new exercise so you can track your progress. If you’re not assessin’, you’re guessin.'”..

Read on

Mindfulness Therapy For Fibromyalgia

Those with fibromyalgia often suffer from things like sleep disorders, cognitive issues, and emotional problems that go along with the chronic pain and tender point tenderness so commonly seen in patients suffering from fibromyalgia and other chronic pain syndromes.
Many of these individuals have never heard of mindfulness therapy and mindfulness techniques that can actually be very useful in overcoming pain, emotional distress, and cognitive issues seen in fibromyalgia.

Often pain medications and other Western medical therapies fail for fibromyalgia patients because they don’t address the overall picture of what’s going on with this complex disease. Instead, these people need a holistic approach that involves alternative therapies and techniques, and that take the entire patient and their symptoms into account. This is where mindfulness therapy can be very appropriate.

What Is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness focuses on here and now issues and attempts to draw away from past traumas, past issues, and worries about the future. In mindfulness, all that is happening is accepted and embraced as part of the living condition. In many ways, mindfulness can reduce the common symptoms of depression and anxiety, which are part and parcel of what it means to be a fibromyalgia patient.

Mindfulness can be practiced by anyone with or without emotional difficulties and is a good approach to life in general. It is all about acceptance of what is and not focusing on anything other than what is directly felt, heard, seen or experienced by the individual, regardless of their mental and emotional state.

The Purpose Of Mindfulness

The whole point of mindfulness and mindfulness therapy is the acceptance of how you feel, including the physical symptoms and mental symptoms you are experiencing. This is done on a moment-to-moment basis so that you are focusing on what is around you and within you rather than what has happened to you in the past or might happen to you in the future.

Mindfulness is all about being nonjudgmental and accepting the feelings that exist no matter how they exist.

In mindfulness, you are allowed to have the feelings, whether they are physical or emotional feelings, and then you can let them go. It results in less rumination over the physical problems that face fibromyalgia patients as well as the emotional trauma going on inside your mind.
Mindfulness therapy has been found in research studies to be extremely helpful in people who have cognitive and emotional pain syndromes including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and irritable bowel syndrome. These patients often suffer from symptoms that are very resistant to standard pain therapies and have symptoms that are considered medically unexplainable.
One Research Study
Researchers have been studying mindfulness therapy for people with somatization problems such as irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome for many years. In one study, researchers combined the results of many different smaller studies and discovered that, for the most part, mindfulness therapy can reduce stress and the perception of pain in patients suffering from fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome (which often goes along with fibromyalgia), and chronic fatigue syndrome (which can also be part of the fibromyalgia picture).
Some of the studies conflicted with one another but the researchers felt it was due to the multitude of ways the earlier studies were performed. Some of the older studies didn’t include control groups that were adequate so the placebo effect may have taken place, allowing other therapies to be just as useful as mindfulness therapies in the management of these chronic pain conditions.
The study showed, in particular, a reduction in anxiety when the individuals practiced the techniques used in mindfulness therapy. Anxiety is a common problem in patients with fibromyalgia and was relieved when mindfulness techniques were employed when compared to placebo treatments. Things like quality of life, depression, and fatigue were also found to be lessened when mindfulness was practiced.
Keys To The Effectiveness Of Mindfulness Therapy
The important factor to remember when it comes to mindfulness therapy is that acceptance is what it is all about. The symptoms themselves do not change but your perception of and acceptance of the symptoms is what actually changes.
When you learn how to accept the symptoms for what they are, you begin to cope better and your quality of life improves. The depression and anxiety experienced by fibromyalgia sufferers can be lessened by refusing to ruminate on them.

10 Ways To Be Happy Despite A Chronic Pain Condition

When you suffer from a chronic pain condition such as Fibromyalgia, you can find yourself in a never-ending cycle. This cycle involves feeling stressed because of the pain, the stress causing anxiety, the anxiety making the pain feel more intense and then pain in turn increasing the stress. Pain, anxiety and stress all make you feel unhappy. Although being happy will not take away your pain, it can make it more bearable.

It’s easy to give in to the stress you live with every day because of your chronic pain. However, there are many ways you can combat this stress and anxiety caused by pain. Taking a positive approach to life can help lessen the stress, anxiety and even the pain itself.

To help you deal with pain better, below you will find 10 ways you can be happy despite living with a chronic pain condition. These are things you should remember and implement in your life, even if you are not living with a chronic pain condition, but even more so if you are.

You Don’t Need To Be A People Pleaser

It is interesting to note that we often feel worse when we let other people down than when we let ourselves down. Even though the majority of people that really matter in your life will understand if you are unable to keep to appointments or do things. You need to remember that you do not have to please anyone and that no one is expecting anything from you. When you start adopting that attitude, you will feel happier and less burdened.

Not Everything In Life Is Always Easy

There is nothing worth having in life that doesn’t require work. Although it would be nice to just wish for something and for it to be so. To just go to sleep and wake up feeling free of pain and the stresses it causes. However, this is simply not the case. You have to actually work to change your mindset and attitude towards the positive. In addition, this may involve big and difficult changes in your thought process and a lot of effort. Just like anything – relationships, work, and even pain management – you are never going to be successful in life without hard work. Therefore, to be happy, you need to work on being happy. Positive affirmations can help, as well as being around positive people and actually learning the skill of seeing the silver lining behind every cloud and the positive side of even the worst situations.

Understand There Are No Guarantees In Life

Often the thing that stops people from really putting the effort required to achieve happiness is the lack of guarantees. When you are not sure what will happen, you don’t want to put the effort in. It is important though to understand though that there are no guarantees in life. Understanding there are no guarantees can help you to put forward the effort and take the risks that could make your life happier.

Avoid Comparing Yourself To Other People

It is only human to be envious or make comparisons to other people, but most of the time, it only makes you feel worse. You need to realize that it doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing and who they are – it only matters who you are. When you understand this, you can embrace your life and your experience and make the very best of what you have and you will feel happier.

Freeing Yourself Of The Need For Control

Although it is good to be in control of your life, when you have a chronic pain condition, you can often feel the need to have a control over everything. That need for control can make you feel anxious and stressed. When you let go of that need for control, not giving up but realizing that sometimes things simply aren’t going your way – you will be able to feel happy, no matter how much pain you are in, in one word this is called acceptance.

Celebrate The Small Things In Life

It’s good to celebrate the big events in life. However, putting too much focus on the big events can also mean that you avoid the smaller victories and happenings in your life. The small things that happen every day can be the greatest sources of joy.

When you start to take notice of those and enjoy them, you will feel happier on a day-to-day basis and not just on special occasions.

Make Your Own Happiness

We find it easier to rely on other people to make us happy, but in doing that we also give them the power to ruin our chances for happiness. For example, if your husband or wife comes home stressed from the day’s events at work, you can let his unhappiness darken your own great day. It is better to rely on yourself and take responsibility for your own attitude and feelings, which will not only prevent their unhappiness from rubbing off on you, but may in turn make them feel better.

Be Honest And Real

Often we try to invent and create a version of life that doesn’t exist, such as wishing that the condition that causes us pain did not exist. In an effort to avoid confronting things we don’t like about life, we avoid speaking truths. Usually we hold on to the truths until they explode.

This stress can have a monumental effect on someone with normal health, let alone on one who has a chronic pain condition like Fibromyalgia. Rather than pretending everything is okay, it is healthier to be honest – even if that means admitting, everything isn’t.

In this situation, if you are real and honest from the start, you can avoid the stress that has built up holding back these truths and sink into the calm and peace that goes with true acceptance of reality as it is.

No One Is Always Happy

Everyone has bad days. It is important to keep in mind that this is normal and okay. You are allowed to have a bad day and to feel happy. By thinking that you should always be happy, you can set yourself up with unreasonable expectations, which create more stress and more pain.

Live For The Moment

It is easy to be wrapped up in past errors and mistakes. Holding on to things that have happened though will not help you when you are suffering from a chronic pain condition. It is more beneficial to live in the now, to be glad of what you have and the good things that are happening now. Staying in the moment is one of the easiest ways to improve your level of happiness every single day.

Tips For Very Active People Dealing With Fibromyalgia Pain

If you are used to being very active and suddenly get a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, it can come as a big shock. Things that used to be easy to do become much more difficult and you will find that your energy level is much less than it used to be.

There are things you will have to get used to when fibromyalgia strikes and you find that you can’t do the things you used to do.

Learning to accept the condition and its effect on your life can be difficult, but it can be done. You will have rewrite your life in a sense, but you can certainly find pleasure and satisfaction in new activities better scaled to your condition and symptoms.

Here are some tips for active people who find that fibromyalgia pain is getting in the way of their activities:

•    Focus on what you can do. Acceptance comes easier with awareness and so making a list of all you can do, instead of focusing on what you cannot is helpful.
•    Learn how to rest. If you are used to being very active and are suddenly struck down by fibromyalgia, you may still be able to do some of the same activities you used to do but may not be able to do them at the same pace. Instead of exercising for thirty minutes straight in your exercise program, you may have to scale back to exercising ten minutes at a time, resting for a while before you go back to exercising. Listen to your level of pain and fatigue as guides to tell you that you need to rest a bit before going back to what you were doing.
•    Scale back the exercise. If you are used to running marathons or even a 5k run, you may not be able to do those things right away if you are suffering from fibromyalgia pain. You may have to scale back your activity level to include exercises that are easier on your muscles and joints, such as swimming or yoga. These are exercises that can be done by just about anyone with any kind of pain level and yet will be doing something active.

Join a health club that has a pool and take part in swimming aerobics. This is an easy form of exercise that will not be hard on your joints and yet will exercise your muscles in a much gentler way. Try to exercise in a pool that has relatively warm water in it as this will be soothing to your pain and will make it easier to exercise.
•    Get plenty of sleep. Even though many people with fibromyalgia complain that sleep is no longer restorative, you should try to get at least seven to nine hours of sleep per night. The sleep will hopefully allow your muscles to rest. When you wake up, do some gentle stretching exercises in bed in order to get rid of the typical morning stiffness seen in patients with fibromyalgia.

If you have difficulty getting to sleep, use good sleep hygiene techniques. This means sleeping in a dark and quiet room and going to bed at the same time every night. Use your bed only for sleep or sex. If you feel like you need some kind of noise, purchase a white noise machine, which will help lull you to sleep. Don’t drink alcohol or any beverages containing caffeine right before sleep and don’t eat a big meal before trying to go to sleep.
•    Do exercises that also relieve stress. Having fibromyalgia may spur you to find ways of exercising that will not exacerbate your pain and yet will improve your level of stress. Think about, for example, taking a yoga class. Yoga will teach you various poses, also called “asanas” that you will practice along with breathing exercises that will focus your mind and improve your balance.

If you choose a more gentle form of yoga, such as Hatha yoga, the poses will not be difficult and you will feel as though you have done some decent exercise. You can keep on taking the yoga class or you can bring the yoga home to do in your living room. Other forms of exercise that are easy on the joints/muscles and will relieve your stress include tai chi and qi gong. There may be classes for these types of exercises or you can buy a DVD and learn the exercises at home.

Why You Need Restorative Yoga For Chronic Pain

If you suffer from chronic pain in the form of fibromyalgia or some other kind of chronic pain, you will know how hard it can be to successfully and effectively treat it. A major part of the problem with finding a solution or treatment for chronic pain is that while acute pain is often a warning sign of an injury you may be suffering from; chronic pain is entirely different.

Chronic pain often lasts for months, possibly even years. In the following post, we hope to show you how restorative yoga can help in the treatment of chronic pain.

Understanding Chronic Pain

There is no special test that can be done to pinpoint pain and how intense it is, other than speaking to the patient and gaining some understanding of the location, timing, and type of pain based on their descriptions.

You may classify your pain as being one and off or constant, aching or burning, dull or sharp for example and these descriptions is what is known as your pain history. Pain is a very subjective and personal experience and one person might experience pain in the same part of the body or caused by the same condition in a very different way from another person.

As chronic pain may originate from any part of the body for various reasons, it takes medical professionals and patients working together to figure out the causes, symptoms and how it can be treated.

The fact that chronic pain can manifest itself differently from patient to patient and that one person with a similar condition to another, such as fibromyalgia may have a different perception of pain and how it effects their lives. This is why treatment plans are tailor made for individuals.

Aim Of Treatments

Obviously, with chronic pain, the aim of treatment is not so much to get rid of the pain entirely as this may not be possible. However, it is to help improve mobility, performance in every day activities, to decrease the intensity or frequency of the pain and to improve quality of life.

It can be something of a trial and error type of process finding the treatments that work best together to improve your day-to-day life.

Along with medications, nerve blockers, surgery and other less-invasive treatments, restorative yoga has been shown to be an effective treatment for chronic pain.

What Is Restorative Yoga

Yoga is obviously a very popular mental and physical practice that many people participate in to center themselves better both on the inside and outside.

Restorative Yoga is a particular form of practice that includes both breathing and meditative techniques to bring the practitioner a deep state of relaxation.

This practice was inspired by B.K.S Iyengar from India and perfected by Judith Hanson Lasater PhD, an American physiotherapist and notable figure in American yoga circles.

Similarly, to yoga in general terms, the purpose of Restorative Yoga is to create balance between breathing, blood circulation, energy, and organs within your body and bring your central nervous system to a very relaxed and calm state.

The theory is that when your central nervous system is balanced, calm, and extremely relaxed, your chronic pain will be greatly reduced.

How Does Restorative Yoga Work?

As with any form of yoga, RY uses specific poses, but it also makes use of various props to provide the utmost comfort to support and promote relaxation.

Each pose is linked to a specific system within your body.

Along with poses that alleviate head and back pains, there are even specific RY classes and poses designed for people suffering from cancer.

The goal of RY is to unlearn chronic stress and pain responses to give the mind or retrain the mind to healthier healing responses.

Relaxation specifically helps improve pain and reduces stress, which promotes pain and its occurrence.

Unlike other styles of yoga in RY, the poses are meant to be held for 10 minutes or longer. This is to attain a complete state of relaxation and elicit the relaxation response with gentle yoga poses and conscious breathing.

How Do You Find A Restorative Yoga Teacher?

It is always important to consult with your doctor or pain/care team before you start attending any yoga classes or practicing at home.

If it is recommended as something you should try, you should be able to find an RY class at nearby yoga studio or possibly at a community center.

Always check for certification to be sure they are qualified, so you know you are learning from an expert.

There are also many instructional yoga DVDs available to learn at home.