Exercising Long Term at Home Vs the Gym

Exercising Long Term at Home Vs the Gym

Exercising for the long haul is a great way to improve your health, strength, and mobility as you begin to age, feel as though you want to change, or have medical reasons for improvement.

Deciding where to exercise – whether in the safety and convenience of your home, or at the gym where you have a bigger variety of equipment can be a tough decision to make.

Let’s start with your home, since that’s the most convenient place to work out if you have the room to do it. Just about any exercise can be performed with bodyweight alone, and some can even be done with a chair, couch, or affordable equipment such as a pullup bar and dumbbells.

Instead of shelling out hundreds of dollars on a trainer, you can look to sources such as YouTube and other workout programs on DVDs to show you a variety of workouts that can be done at the house.

Because of convenience, budget friendliness, and privacy, the home workout routines can definitely be a competitor with any gym out there. Speaking of the gym, there are some unique advantages that the gym has as well.

A variety of equipment at your disposal is perhaps the biggest benefit and main reason that everyone gets a gym membership in the first place. Some gyms are very price efficient at only ten to twenty dollars a month and include a variety of machines, weights and tools that would take up too much room at your house.

Other gyms may have more amenities such as saunas, pools, and sport rooms at higher prices from thirty to a hundred dollars per month. It really comes down to what you’re looking for in a gym and what your budget is at the end of the day.

Personal trainers on the floor are also a great perk of having a gym membership because they will be more than happy to assist you with any exercise to make sure you have proper form.

And for an additional fee, they can write your whole program and stick around your workout to make sure you’re always progressing safely. Gyms can be crowded at times however, so make sure that you go when you feel comfortable.

Home workouts – although are great – can be limited in the variety of exercises you can do compared to what’s available at the gym. Try working out at home for a couple of weeks first so that you can get in the routine of working out, then once your body has adapted to the change, try asking for a free one week trial at a gym to see which style works best for you – and don’t be afraid to enjoy both if it helps you adhere to your program for the long haul.

How to Keep an Active Lifestyle Without Working Out

How to Keep an Active Lifestyle Without Working Out

Working out is a great way to stay in shape, but many people don’t want to dedicate time in their life to paying membership to access a building where they can pick up weights and put them back down, or run endlessly on a treadmill facing a wall.

Staying healthy doesn’t mean you need to go purchase the nearest gym membership, but instead aim for a more active lifestyle. A great goal for the average person is to walk about ten thousand steps a day.

That may sound like a lot at first, but if you were to get a step tracker such as a Fitbit, you’ll find that it isn’t quite as hard as it sounds. Fitness trackers such as the Fitbit are affordable, comfortable, and tell you other indicators of health such as sleep, heart rate, calories burned and other really cool features that assist in tracking health.

Getting in extra steps in your day is much more convenient than buying a gym membership or working out, and it can even motivate you to be more productive throughout the day.

If you find yourself having trouble reaching ten thousand steps, try little tricks such as taking the long way around a building, using the stairs instead of the elevator, or even walking the dog more frequently.

You’re walking more now and that’s a great start to a more fit life, but there are other things that you can do besides walking more that will continue to take you down the path of a healthy lifestyle.

Picking up an active hobby such as dance lessons, sports, or whatever has you walk and move more - such as volunteering - is great way to supplement the gym atmosphere with something more tailored to your lifestyle and interests.

If you were having trouble with getting in extra steps, picking up a new hobby will also assist you with that as well. Weight loss is another side effect from a more active lifestyle because you are now burning more calories per hour than you were before, and a better cardiovascular system is great for your metabolism’s ability to burn fat.

You’ll find yourself more flexible, with better cardiovascular health, and stronger if you make the effort to do more with your day and stay away from a sedentary lifestyle. And the best part is that you won’t have to ever walk into a gym if you don’t want to!

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Improving Your Workout Over Time

Improving Your Workout Over Time

The human body is meant to adapt to certain conditions, which is why the human race is superior, and also why you should keep an eye out on the intensity of your workouts. Progressing your exercise regimen is extremely important to avoid plateaus because as you keep repeating the same exercises with the same weights for the same amount of time, your body will begin to change in order to make the workload easier.

If you’re tracking how much weight you’re lifting, for how many repetitions, and for how long, you’ll be able to better see the changes your body is making in order to compensate for your workouts.

Even with no weight at all, you should be counting elements such as time when exercising, speed, and any other form of progress that you can track. Increasing load and repetitions when it comes to lifting weights is the easiest way to track progress, and you should increase it by five percent once you can fully count twelve repetitions.

Cardio is often tracked by time, speed, and incline for those who are running on a treadmill so that the intensity of the cardio can gradually increase as your cardiovascular system improves.

Bodyweight exercises such as a plank, sit-ups, and pushups can easily be counted by repetitions for strength, or amount of repetitions given in a certain amount of time such as a one-minute interval.

There are other forms of progressions – such as learning how to do a proper pushup. Pushups aren’t easy for a majority of people, and doing a perfect one on your hands and feet can be quite a challenge.

Begin with doing a pushup standing next to the wall, using the wall to push off of instead of the floor. Gradually increase the angle of your feet so that you will perform a harder push at a higher angle.

Eventually, you can move onto the floor using your knees to rest on instead of your feet until you get the hang of that and you’re ready for your first real pushup. This method of assisted progressions from a regressed state to proper form can be used with squats, sit-ups, and just about any exercise.

Keep progressing through your workouts so that you don’t hit plateaus or get bored of your workout and you continue to see improvements in your strength and composition. Don’t try to level up all at once – slow progress helps prevent injuries and burnout.

Long Term Workout Motivation

Long Term Workout Motivation

Unless you’re one of the few who love to workout, unlike the rest of us, it can be challenging to commit to fitness and health long term because eventually, old habits emerge and might be tempting enough for you to leave your healthy progress behind.

Most everyone who begins a workout regimen is motivated for a change in their life, and is ready to start seeing a change in the way they look or feel. The tricky part is to stay motivated when you don’t see any change – when you’re sore or when staying comfortable seems better than doing any hard work.

It’s times like these that are the toughest and it makes a difference between those who simply wish they were better than they currently are, and those know that what they want in life and that they won’t always have it given to them on a silver platter or it may not go the way they expect.

What you should expect are obstacles. Writing down what you think those obstacles might be in the future and writing down two or three ways to overcome those challenges is a great way to mentally prepare yourself for them.

Tracking progress is another great indicator of success. This doesn’t mean stepping on the scale every day. If you have a scale that only calculates weight, only use it weekly because there are many other elements such as water, food, muscle, and fat that all affect your weight.

You could lose body fat, gain muscle and more water, but the scale still wouldn’t budge – making you believe you made no progress that day. Aside from weight, measure your body composition and invest in a tape measurer or even a cheap pair of calipers to track body fat.

These types of measurements, along with tracking the amount of weight, number of repetitions, and time completed are all great ways of tracking progress, and could be used as a huge motivator.

Now that you’re tracking your progress, overcoming obstacles and beginning to feel the momentum pick up each week, try to help a friend or family member. Having a workout buddy can be competitive and encouraging, and it’s a great source of accountability to drive each of you to improve your health.

Arming yourself with resources and tools to adhere to your program long term is something that even the professionals do, and should be included in your workout program before you even begin.

Don’t start by yourself without a game plan, or the day you decide to quit your new healthy lifestyle may come easy for you – and you don’t want to get back on that hamster wheel.

Save Money and Get Your Diabetes Under Control Before Insulin Is Necessary

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Save Money and Get Your Diabetes Under Control Before Insulin Is Necessary

When you learn that you have diabetes, it can be a shock. Most people don’t know that diabetes is not only a manageable disease, but that it doesn’t have to lead to all the serious complications you hear about.

The key to avoiding long term complications as well as preventing it from progressing to the point where you need insulin is to make sure that you keep it under control because if you don’t control diabetes, you will end up on insulin – and that can add a lot of stress to your life thanks to the expense.

Some insurance companies have higher deductibles, so you could end up paying a lot more to get the diabetic supplies that you need – and that includes insulin. And unlike taking oral medications, when you go on insulin, you can’t afford to skimp on the dosage.

Insulin poses more complications for someone who has diabetes. You can end up with sudden drops in your blood sugar, which can cause seizures or unconsciousness. Surprisingly enough, taking insulin can also lead to weight gain in some people.

You want to do everything that you can to try to stay off of insulin because the cost of it is continuing to rise and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Studies have shown that more than 50% of those who take it could end up having to pay manufacturer’s prices for it and you can bet it’s not cheap.

If you have a moderate to high insurance deductible, you’re looking at paying right at $400 to $600 every month. That’s between $5,00 to over $7,000 per year. While pharmaceutical companies profit from the sale of insulin, it still costs money to make the drug.

As the costs of making it rises, it will trickle down to those who need to use it. Steps have been taken to make new insulin drugs available and while these do work as well if not better than animal or human insulin, they can still be expensive – depending on what type of insurance you have if any.

The cost of the medication has led people to try to find ways to make their insulin last longer. That includes dangerous practices such as skipping doses, or using out of date insulin drugs.

If you have type 2 diabetes, there are steps that you can take to get it under control so that you avoid having to take insulin. It’s been said that diabetes is a progressive drug, so eventually ending up on insulin is a given – but that’s not true.

If you control it, you won’t end up having to take this expensive drug. And you can reverse it if you’re currently on insulin and want to get off of it. You can control it by undergoing a lifestyle change.

Start with what you eat. Make sure that you eat healthy, balanced meals that are created with diabetics in mind. This means watching your carbs and cutting back on foods that are bad for glucose control.

Add exercise to your life. Even doing a little something at first is better than nothing because exercise helps your body to be able to effectively use your glucose. Monitor your glucose levels several times a day every day – especially after a meal.

You want to aim to keep your numbers within the guidelines established by the American Diabetes Association. With careful lifestyle changes that help you control your diabetes, you can end up with an A1C reading that’s well below even the pre-diabetes stage of 5.7 to 6.4.

Could Artificial Sweeteners Cause Type 2 Diabetes?

Could Artificial Sweeteners Cause Type 2 Diabetes?

In an effort to keep their weight down, many people are using artificial sweeteners. While these additives don’t have calories, they do contain something that actually increases your potential of developing a serious disease.

Artificial sweeteners have been linked to type 2 diabetes. One of the reasons for this is because – contrary to what many people believe – the use of artificial sweeteners can cause weight gain rather than weight loss.

Millions of people gave up sugar and replaced it with artificial sweeteners in the belief that doing so would inhibit their desire to consume sugar and high calorie snack foods or meals.

But studies have shown that just the opposite is true. People who use artificial sweeteners are more likely to gain weight because they interfere with how the body controls blood sugar levels.

This happens because the sweeteners act as a trigger within the body’s digestive system, making the person crave sweet foods. They also scramble the hormone responses in the brain that are responsible for feeling hunger.

So if you’re using artificial sweeteners as a way to try to lose weight to help manage your diabetes or avoid it, you’ll want to try a different approach. Not only will these cause you to want to eat and make you put on weight, but in an overall review of multiple studies, it was determined that sweeteners will also put you at risk for problems relating to your health.

Among these are things like developing diabetes or high blood pressure. In addition to studies determining that artificial sweeteners can cause weight gain, it was also revealed that they didn’t provide any type of boost for the health of the person taking them.

In further research into how artificial sweeteners affected the body, it was discovered that they can raise BMI numbers and cause something that’s known as metabolic syndrome.

While this is not a disease, it is still a health complication. It means that the consumption of artificial sweeteners can not only cause type 2 diabetes but it can greatly increase your risk of having a heart attack or a stroke.

Metabolic syndrome is also known to increase the risk of additional fat in the abdominal area, which leads back to an increased rate of diabetes diagnoses. For those who consume artificial sweeteners, they have a 40% risk factor of developing metabolic syndrome, but a 70% chance of developing type 2 diabetes.

One reason for the risk factors is thought to be that when someone tastes a product containing artificial sweetener, it causes a trigger response in the body that disrupts the way insulin is released. Because of the risk of diabetes that’s linked with the consumption of artificial sweeteners, more people are pulling away from use of the products.

Broccoli Could Greatly Benefit Diabetics

Broccoli Could Greatly Benefit Diabetics

Diabetes is a disease in which a person’s body can’t make or react to insulin correctly. As a result, glucose levels stay at a higher than normal level. This increase can cause a lot of damage to the person’s health.

More than 29 million people in the United States have the disease and if you add in the amount of people who don’t know they have it, more than 37 million people are diabetics.

Those numbers, which increase every year, are one of the reasons that studies are ongoing in the hopes of finding something that can either slow or reverse diabetes. Now, thanks to a new study, one vegetable is standing out as promising in helping those with diabetes – and that vegetable is broccoli.

It contains something called sulforaphane. This compound is a powerful antioxidant with anti-cancer capabilities. Patients who were heavily overweight were part of a study using sulforaphane.

When taking the concentrated compound, the results showed that diabetics have better control over the level of glucose in their blood. The compound also lowered the production of glucose.

This two-fold health boost meant that side effects of having diabetes – such as heart problems, neuropathy, and eye damage – could be reduced or even avoided altogether. For diabetics, the sulforaphane study means a potentially improved way to keep diabetes under control so that long term complications don’t negatively impact their health.

In people with diabetes who have a BMI of over 30 or their weight is 20% above the normal healthy range for their age and height, they’re considered to be obese. It’s this extra weight that makes the liver unable to be as sensitive as it needs to be with insulin.

As a result of this, the liver can’t help the body keep glucose levels normal. That’s one of the reasons why those in the medical field urge people with diabetes to change the way that they eat.

By losing weight, you can increase your liver’s ability to function properly with insulin production. Still, just losing weight isn’t always enough – especially if someone has been a diabetic for years.

While there are standard medications (such as metformin) used to treat diabetes on the market, many of them come with side effects such as fatigue, stomach cramps or bloating.

Because of these side effects, the study focused on finding relief for diabetics that didn’t cause pain or discomfort. The research of the study led to the finding that sulforaphane was the most helpful in lowering glucose levels in those who were obese.

When sulforaphane was tested during a three month study, it showed that by giving diabetics powdered broccoli extract, it could even reduce fasting blood sugar levels. The good news is that by lowering fasting blood sugar levels, it means that it also lowers the odds of developing diabetes related health problems.

Plus, the broccoli compound didn’t cause the same unpleasant side effects that diabetes medication causes. Superfoods that prevent and reverse disease are abundant, but for diabetics, broccoli may be the answer to your search for nutritional help.

Will Your Fitbit Now Be Able to Monitor Your Blood Sugar?

Will Your Fitbit Now Be Able to Monitor Your Blood Sugar?

Making sure that you take care of your diabetes is one of the keys to controlling it. The first step is always with self-monitoring and there are many ways already that you can do that, but new technology is being brought to the marketplace.

If you don’t watch it carefully, you’ll end up with complications. You should check your glucose levels frequently every day throughout the day and make any adjustments that are needed.

With millions of people having diabetes and that number continuing to rise, technology is needed to help promote better management of self-care. Thanks to the technology available today – a new and improved way to keep your glucose levels at a healthy number is at hand.

You can wear this technology right on your wrist and be able to effectively monitor your diabetes. Studies have shown that people who can easily track their diabetes numbers tend to stay in range more often than not.

Fitbit is now working to help those with diabetes to be able to better manage the condition. In conjunction with Dexcom, the company has created a smartwatch that will provide the necessary information and lead the way in diabetes management.

It’s easy to make the watch one of the tools in your self-care routine. All you need is to get one of the Dexcom G5 sensors to go with the Fitbit Iconic and you’ll soon be able to see your readings at a glance using either your smartphone or the watch face.

The new Fitbit will work with a variety of third party apps – including the one that can help you keep your diabetes under control. You’ll have access to immediate information concerning your glucose levels, thanks to the smartwatch, which will be released closer to the end of 2017 and the sensors working with the smartwatch will make an appearance sometime the following year.

The sensor has an approximate $900 price tag for the device that has to be inserted below the skin surface. However, the cost is well worth it as in investment in both your short and long term health.

Because it will have the ability to check your levels rapidly and as often as every five minutes, you’ll be able to stay on top of your diabetes and immediately correct any glucose reading that’s out of range.

The continual monitoring can give you real time information that can help you know when you need to adjust and knowing that can be one of the keys to weight management, which improves diabetes as well.

The smartwatch and sensor combo will allow those who have diabetes to understand the complete overview of their glucose levels. They’ll be able to get a picture of when their numbers were up and when they were down.

This is good information to relay to your doctor at your next visit. This will allow people to make improvements on how they care for their diabetes. These improvements lead to better care than you get from old fashioned meter monitoring.

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Smart Contacts May Help Diabetics Control Their Disease

Smart Contacts May Help Diabetics Control Their Disease

Controlling diabetes is the best step to making sure that the disease doesn’t leave you with any serious long term health complications. But to do that, it means that anyone with the disease has to constantly monitor their glucose levels to make sure that they’re staying within a healthy range.

Numbers that go up too high have to be treated right away. The constant monitoring can be a problem at times. You have to prick your finger often or rely on electrodes to test yourself.

But now, thanks to smart technology, there might soon be a way to monitor glucose levels so that diabetes can easily be controlled. Smart contacts are on the horizon and what these do is monitor the glucose levels but without the pain, complications or irritations from pricking the finger or from under-the-skin electrodes.

These contact lenses are made with a bio sensor that can pick up on the amount of glucose that’s in a person’s tear production. Trial testing for these contact lenses are slated to begin in the next year.

Further good news about the bio sensors is that they can be developed to be able to tell when a person has other problems with their health besides diabetes such as cancer. By the time the contact lenses do come to market, they’ll be designed in such a way that no one will know that you even have these sensors in the lens.

The technology is comparable to the type that you would find in a cell phone and when the lenses are available, they should work in conjunction with smart technology linked with your phone or tablet.

The contact lenses will be designed with comfort in mind and the sensors won’t be felt within the eye because they’ll be placed within layers that won’t touch the eye. The way that the lenses will work to test the glucose is through the use of a small opening.

The sensors will be able to access tears and determine what the glucose levels are without having direct contact with the eye. As for how the information will be delivered between your eye and the smart technology, there will be a small antenna within the lens.

This lens is thin enough so that it’s not easily detected and can’t be felt, either. But this part of the lens will be used to transmit your information. This information can be used by people with diabetes to alert them when their glucose levels reach unhealthy levels.

As for how often the lens will be able to check how high the glucose is, it can do it second by second. After it’s transmitted to the app, you’ll be able to check your device to see what your levels are. If there’s a situation where your levels are too high or too low, the app will alert you to that information.

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