Why is warming up very important? The word warm up must be the most over used word for athletes since it’s a given fact that we need to warm up before you kick a ball, hit a shuttle cock, before we sprint, or do a few swimming laps. Before engaging oneself into any strenuous activity a good warm up is needed to prepare the muscles and other parts of the body. This starts with a slow and systematic way of exercising the muscles and other body parts so it won’t strain during an exercise routine. By doing any activities warming up can also have a physiological benefit, that’s the reason why the importance of warming up prior to any exercise cannot be overemphasized.

Warm ups or stretching are very essential routine that any athletes should undergo since it reduces the chances of injury. According to sports experts, a warm up raises the body temperature and prepares the muscles, nervous system, tendons, ligaments and the cardiovascular system for upcoming stretches and exercises. And by doing so it increases the muscle elasticity as it allows the body to be more adaptable to muscle strain. In fact by doing some warming up it can increase the blood flow of the working muscles, increase the metabolic rate, and boost the activity of neuromuscular pathways. A tailored warm up to a specific activity is also important since it concentrates on the specific part of the body to be used in the specific activity.

Here’s a few useful warm up tips that everyone should know before doing some strenuous activity:

1.    Slow paced running is the first warm up routine for loosening up the hips, strengthening the butt and hamstrings as well as improving the leg drive. When doing this, always bear in mind to chest up as you look ahead with the coordination of your arms and legs.
2.    For hip flexor and ankle strength, a proper high knee lift is needed. If you activity needs a hip flexibility then an elbow-to-inside-of-ankle lunge is needed. This warm up routine is the same with slow paced running but you need to extend your trunk forward over the front leg in order to develop the hamstring strength.
3.    Other warming up routine is calf walk for lower limb strength and Achilles flexibility. This could be achieved by extending the ankle on each step. While a sideways/backward skipping and sideways/backwards running can improve the agility and flexibility if the lower limb.

So the next time you do a demanding exercise make sure you do thorough warm ups to have an effective workout.

Tired of the efforts in trying to lose thigh fats? Do not discourage yourself in the very slow improvement of thigh toning. It’s a slow start but the results are great and can be  permanent with proper diet.

Having fat thighs is common and the problem most especially for women, thighs have a tendency to accumulate fats and it can get very unsightly. The way to eliminate these fats is to burn it and tone up the muscles in it. Although the thigh could be huge and will look like it only have fats, it has actually a collection of several distinct muscles and muscle groups. Such muscles are responsible for the movement of the hip, from extension to abduction. And since thigh is a body part that is involved in mobility of a person, the most essential connection of the thigh is within the legs, of course. So therefore, the thigh is more powerful because it is connected to a lot of muscles in some parts of the body. Performing thigh exercises do not benefit the toning of the thigh alone, in fact, it is also essential in shaping up some body-parts connected through it such as the butt, hips and legs.

Given here are the effective thigh-toning exercises. Remember that thigh exercises make your flabby thighs firm, sexy and shapely.

1.    Leg extentions- doing this thigh-toning activity will have to include an equipment called the leg-extension machine. If this thing is not available in the gym or in the work-out area, a weight bench with a leg extension attachment will do. Begin the activity by sitting down at the machine with the back flat against the seat and the shins hooked behind the lifting pad. Lift the weight up with your thighs alone by pressing it against the pad until the legs are straight but not locked as well. Wait for a moment as you hold the position and then gently lower the legs back to the starting position.

2.    Squats- it is considered as the best exercise in toning up the thigh muscles. You can do the squatting activity with or without any of the equipments, but for most toners a barbell or dumbbells are very essential in performing this one. To begin with, stand up straight and slowly lower down the body by bending both knees so to achieve a squat position, slowly stand back up and return into a previous standing position and continue repeating this procedure. Keep in mind that squatting can be adapted by changing foot position and length in between of the feet to target different portions of the hip. Squat is proven to be the most effective exercise in toning up the thigh muscles, as well as the butt’s and it is also considered as one of the most adaptable exercises.

Jogging is one of the best and the cheapest exercise that you can do anytime. All you need is the proper jogging shoes, some bottled water to keep you going and you’re on your way to control your weight. There are not proper training on how to jog and there shouldn’t be any. As long as you can lift your weight without any clear physical pains you’re on your way.

For weight control, you’ll also have the ability to control your weight through jogging. The calories will easily be shed off from your body if you just follow a 30 minute jog three times a week. You don’t have to go to a gym, buy instructional videos or have those expensive “as seen on TV” exercise equipments to get those excessive fats off our body. You may have even tried weight loss pills but the side effect will scare you away.

There are also the downside of jogging. The most obvious of them all is from the fact that it can cause ankle injuries. This will usually happen if the stress to the ankle is too much. So if you’re overweight, better stick to walking first before graduating to jogging. If you really wanted to stick to jogging in spite of your weight, be as light as possible and  stretch before and after every exercise.

Another disadvantage of jogging is that it’s not really the answer of weight loss. As we have said, jogging is perfect only for weight control but not necessary for weight loss. In jogging you will be losing calories which is perfect for weight loss. But on the other hand, there are also precious carbohydrates that will be lost in the process. This is because you don’t have the energy to keep up with this type of exercise and along with calories, carbohydrates will be also lost for weight loss.

Before you consider jogging, at least get yourself into weight training first. The proper weight loss training should at least start in lifting weights to develop muscles and increase the energy of the body. With a proper weight exercise, you’ll be able to loss the calories and while preventing the precious carbohydrates that are important in building muscles. If you can hold off for on jogging for a few weeks, that will be even better. Stick to weight loss first and when you achieve the weight that you really want, you can go ahead and hit the road with your jogging shoes.

Losing weight is one of the big issues for those who are shaping up. But in case you’re still not aware,  the term “metabolism” will pop in a lot of your conversation when you want to lose weight and get in shape. It’s an ability of our body to burn calories. Now that you know it, boost it up! Boosting your metabolism simply means that you will make your body work a little faster to digest the food that you ate, thus making you lose more weight. There are always good ways in maintaining the weight you have always wished for. But for those who were born to have a hard time in shaping up, it is often tempting to blame it all on metabolism.

As indicated metabolism is obviously related and pertained to a biological process that allows the rate of calories in the body to be are burned out. In the end it tells how much the weight do we loss or gain . It basically involves complex systems of enzymes and hormones that facilitate the conversion of fuel to energy. We can’t really tell how much do you burn since we have different rates by which our calories burn. That’s why it is important to initiate metabolism for better loss of reserved fuel if our main aim is to shed off some extra pounds.

This is a reference that will help you give ideas on how to promote better metabolism.

It is always recommended to eat often and burn more. This is not the same as eating more foods and burning more in the end. This recommendation is often misinterpreted though. However, what we want to imply in this reference is that the greater the amount of food you have, the more you will encourage your metabolism rate.

When you eat a little but frequent, your metabolism running and eventually, you will be able to burn more calories. In fact, when you delay your meals, your system would compensate the foods with slower metabolism. Thus, skipping meals would do you more harm than good. This would not alter the slow metabolism that has been functioning since you starved yourself and another thing, your body would maximize every calorie that you take. Initially, this system of slower metabolism through starvation would not manifest at all. But, making this habit will warrant you with difficulty of facilitating better metabolism.

Bear in mind that fat-burning foods is healthier. There are calories in most of the foods that we eat and that exemptions are rare and too minimal. However, you may always try to avoid much larger calories by keeping you stored through eating fat-burning foods.

Swimming, jogging and walking are some of the aerobic exercises that are really good for your body, especially when you are aiming to lose weight. These types of exercises may look simple, but then, it does wonders. There are people who claim that their exercise machine will be revolutionary but you only see those in infomercials. On the other hand, weight loss pill could even be dangerous as you will suffer the side effects, which is sometimes fatal if taken incorrectly and unsupervised. Besides, it will still require exercise and diet for maximum results.

With aerobic exercise, we can easily burn the fats in our body since the air that we give to the cells requires some calories as our body tries to work out and sweat more. It’s even better if you do the exercises in a more exaggerated manner. But the way you do it is not important. Any aerobic exercise will only work for you if you have the conviction to do it. Your mental state is important to perform well in your quest. Lastly you should do your exercises daily and longer to get the maximized results.

However, watch out in exerting too much energy in our body. Our body could easily burn all the energy in our body that our body will naturally resort in using carbohydrates. Instead of losing fats which is your goal, you are losing carbohydrates. Don’t get me wrong with this; an aerobic exercise can also be described by an exercise where the person places too much effort and naturally burns the fat but then results to carbohydrates. Instead of running on air as energy, anaerobic focuses on the carbohydrates.

You have to appreciate the effects of carbohydrates in our body. It will help us in developing muscles which will burn calories once they are developed. However, as someone who wants to burn off fate and lose weight fast, you have to control that you have to burn calories instead of carbohydrates more. At this point, you need to shed of those extra pounds as much as possible and the best way to remove them is to remove then directly. Doing something indirect is not what you need right now. What you need is strong exercises that will not leave you out of air as this is required to burn fats.

Continue to exercise and pace yourself. That way you’ll have a rhythm in losing weight and losing them good. There you can develop your anaerobic for maintenance.

Do you think advertising influences children? If you don’t think so you be me surprised.

In a recent research study children were asked to taste the same foods - some with simple wrappers and the others with MacDonald’s wrappers.

Guess which one the children picked most? Yes, the MacDonald wrappers. Almost 60% of the tastings, the kids preferred the MacDonald’s wrappers.

The kids were aged between 3 and 5 years old. Even though the foods were exactly the same, the kids mention that the meals with the MacDonald’s wrappers tasted much better.

McDonald’s have worked for years to win theminds of pre-schoolers everywhere. It seems they have succeeded.

Maybe it’s time for parents to start serving there kids broccoli in a McNuggets box.

Many people have asked me If the Subway diet works. My answer to that is Yes. Why? Well, Its simple, the subs are very low in fat and have few calories. If you do that diet right you should be consuming around 1,200 to 1,500 calories per day, which is superb for any type of diet program. The subway diet goes like this, eat one apple for breakfast then eat a small sub for lunch and do the same for dinner.

Of course If you add some type of exercise to that diet program you will see much faster results, not to mention that you are going to build muscle mass. I’m sure you may have heard of Jared Fogle who has lost more then 245 pounds with the subway diet.  He appears in commercials all the time.

Another person who has been very successful with the subway diet is Jennifer Cooper. She claims that she lost over 110 pounds.

So now you know that the subway diet is indeed effective. The downside to this is that it is very expensive. To be on the subway diet it would cost about $8 a day. If you multiply that by one month that’s a total cost of $240. Its not the cheapest diet program, but hey, it works.

Trust me, If Jared Fogle and Jennifer Cooper reached there weight loss goal, you can too.

OK, by now I’m sure you have seen all over the news that diet soda can increase the risk of heart disease. Why do i hate this news? Well for one, i like diet soda very much, also it helps me cut hundreds of calories per week.

I may have to find an alternative to diet soda. One drink i have found to be good is Diet Ice Tea. It has only 5 calories and 0 sugar, so maybe this will be my substitute.

So how did they find out about this?

Many researchers had some idea that diet soda was bad for you, they had done some small test, but this time they went all out.

They took more then 6,000 participants who were free of any metabolic syndrome, and told them to drink diet soda for a period of time. What they found was that consumption of one or more soft drinks a day was associated with almost a 45 percent higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome during a follow-up period of 4 years.

So i guess people are now going to find other alternatives like me. Let me know what diet drinks you like.

McDonald’s has long been trying to get healthy foods on its menu. Like many of us know, the real money is on the fries, sodas and most importantly the burgers. Now MacDonald’s is releasing a new drink called Hugo, the 42 ounce (1.24 liters) and almost 500 calories.

But wait, didn’t they stop the super size products a while back?

Well, it looks like all they are going to do is replace the name super size with Hugo. So in other words, MacDonald’s doesn’t think this is a super size item.

In my opinion they are just lame, how in the world can they say its not a super size product. I mean common, were talking about almost 500 calories in 1 drink alone, why in earth would someone need 42 ounces of soda, i hope this product gets banned in the future.

This is not even the worse part, by the looks of it, the drink only cost about 90 cents in most outlets, what does this mean? It means that the Hugo item is going to appeal to many young folks.

What is your opinion about this Hugo product?

A modern variation of the “laying on of hands,” therapeutic touch is one of the most controversial forms of alternative therapy. Practitioners say that it heals by correcting imbalances in the energy field that emanates from the body, while mainstream critics respond that there’s no evidence that such a field exists, or that it would have anything to do with health if it did.

In any event, proponents say therapeutic touch can heal wounds, relieve tension headaches, and reduce stress. According to Nurse Healers, the therapy’s leading advocacy group, it also reduces pain and anxiety, promotes relaxation, and facilitates “the body’s natural restorative processes.”

Therapeutic touch is usually employed as a supplement to, rather than a replacement for, standard medical therapies. For example, it is sometimes used to relieve discomfort between scheduled doses of pain medication for hospitalized patients. It is also employed by hospice nurses to relieve pain in terminally ill patients, and to help the family accept the impending death of their loved one.
How the Treatments Are Done

Despite its name, therapeutic touch rarely involves physical contact between practitioner and patient. Instead, the therapist will move his or her hands just above your body.

You’ll be asked to sit or lie down before the procedure begins. No disrobing is necessary. The session is conducted in four steps:

Centering. The practitioner begins by “centering” himself –attaining a quiet, meditative state in which he’s focused on and attuned to the patient’s needs. Experienced practitioners can usually complete this process within a few minutes.

Assessment. The practitioner will then move his hands from head to foot along your body, holding them 2 to 4 inches away. This is done to assess the condition of the energy field that is thought to surround the body. Clues to the status of the field include feelings in the palms of the hands and “other intuitive or sensory cues” that signal areas of “congestion” or “blockage.”

Treatment. Once he discovers a “blocked” area, the practitioner will move his hands in a flowing motion from the top of the location down and away from your body. This action is repeated until the practitioner no longer feels the blockage, or until you feel relief.

Evaluation. After you’ve had a chance to rest, the practitioner will ask you about your response to therapy and reassess your “energy field” to make sure that no blockages remain evident.

Some practitioners add another step to the treatment. Called energy transfer, it calls for the therapist to place one hand on your back, in the kidney area, and hold the other hand 2 to 3 inches from the corresponding location on your abdomen. He then visualizes energy passing from the hand on your back to the one held above you.

Treatment Time: Most sessions take 10 to 20 minutes; few exceed 30 minutes. Treatment stops when the practitioner no longer senses problems in the energy field, or feels you’ve had enough.

Treatment Frequency: The number of treatments needed varies according to the problem and the patient. A headache in an otherwise healthy person may require only one session; a person with a chronic illness may require multiple sessions. For frail, sick, and very young or very old patients, proponents recommend keeping the sessions short and conducting them more frequently.

What Treatment Hopes to Accomplish

Therapeutic touch was developed in the early 1970s by Dolores Krieger, PhD, RN, a professor of nursing at New York University, and Dora Kunz, a “natural healer.” Krieger and Kunz first taught the technique to Krieger’s graduate nursing students, and it remains primarily a nursing intervention today. It has been taught at more than 100 colleges and universities since the 1970s, and is currently offered in about 70 health care facilities nationwide. All told, Krieger says she has taught the technique to more than 43,000 health care professionals and several thousand lay persons.

Controversy over therapeutic touch focuses on the “energy field” that its practitioners seek to balance. Krieger claims that the field can be sensed through “hand chakras,” centers of consciousness posited in Indian mystical writings. As proof of the field’s existence, other proponents cite images of an energy aura taken with Kirilian photography, a technique in which the hands are placed on film and a low-amp electrical current produces the picture.

Critics dismiss the entire energy theory as mystical, and ascribe any benefits of the technique to a positive psychological response to the care and attention provided by the practitioner. They argue that Kirilian images of the energy field are nothing more than the result of increased pressure or moisture. They also cite a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in which 21 self-described practitioners of therapeutic touch failed to detect energy from the nearby hand of an investigator when their view of the hand was blocked.

Advocates of therapeutic touch charge that the study was seriously flawed. They point out that the participants’ credentials were never checked, that the number of participants was inadequate, and that one of the authors (a coordinator of the National Council Against Health Fraud’s Task Force on Questionable Nursing Practices) was hopelessly biased. They add that therapeutic touch is not simply a mechanical manipulation of energy fields, but an act of compassion that requires personal interaction between patient and therapist.

Some proponents of therapeutic touch now speculate that mechanisms other than an energy field may be at work. In fact, Krieger herself states that the procedure conveys a “sense of deep peace that presages a rapid (two-to-four minute) relaxation response,” thus laying the groundwork for positive changes in the patient’s immune system.

Whatever the explanation may be, a number of studies have detected genuine improvements following administration of therapeutic touch. In one trial, in which the patients didn’t know whether or not they were being given the therapy, skin wounds healed significantly faster in those who received it. Another trial found that therapeutic touch effectively reduced headache pain, and a third investigation found that it reduced the time needed to calm hospitalized infants and toddlers after stressful experiences such as examinations and surgery.

Nevertheless, other studies have failed to show conclusive results. In one trial for postoperative pain, therapeutic touch reduced discomfort by only 13 percent, versus a 42 percent reduction afforded by standard pain medication. Researchers were forced to conclude that although the technique might reduce the need for drugs, it cannot be used to replace them. Likewise, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association has admonished patients to “refuse to pay for this procedure until or unless additional honest experimentation demonstrates an actual effect.”

Who Should Avoid This Therapy?

There are no medical conditions that preclude treatment with therapeutic touch. However, some people seem more susceptible to it than others. Among those best suited to it are pregnant women, newborns, children, older adults, and people with psychiatric disorders. Mainstream critics of the procedure warn everyone to avoid it, saying that there’s no reason to believe that it will have any effect.

What Side Effects May Occur?

There have been reports of nausea and dizziness following the procedure, although it’s unlikely that therapeutic touch was the cause. In addition, one expert warns that directing too much energy into a person’s energy field can cause “discomfort and irritability.”
How to Choose a Therapist

Look for a practitioner who has completed a workshop in therapeutic touch and has used the technique consistently for at least 1 year under the guidance of a mentor. Some practitioners hold continuing education credits granted by a state nursing association. Others have taken an invitational workshop offered by the procedure’s developers, Krieger and Kunz. There is no formal certification program.

Nurse Healers, the procedure’s leading advocacy group, offers a list of its roughly 1,500 members, but recommends checking the individual practitioner’s background. If you are offered therapeutic touch at a health care facility, you might want to ask whether the organization follows Nurse Healers’ policies and procedures.

When Should Treatment Stop?

Treatments can continue as long as your symptoms persist. However, if the therapy provides no relief, don’t hesitate to seek an alternative.