As summer quickly approaches, improve your metabolism and tone up your body. Train to enjoy summer activities rather than for the "perfect" summer body.
3 tips to start now:
1. More weights, less cardio:
When the time comes to drop your winter coat, many of us immediately start thinking of the endless hours of sweat we will need to put in on the treadmill. Well, it’s time to change your thinking and switch up your workouts! Adding weight training to your daily fitness routine not only benefits your weight-loss goals, it also provides your body with the strength it needs to fight injury and build a better posture. When we add weight training to our workouts, we can burn up to twice as many calories we would have in a typical cardio workout. Also, the lean muscle your body is building, will continue to burn calories for hours after your workout.
2. Avoid Crash Diets:
These days, many people want a quick fix or magic pill to solve their health needs. The unpopular truth is you’ve actually got to put some work in to get results. Crash diets do not promote healthy balance and have us putting on more pounds than we started with. These diets tend to slow down our metabolism and send our bodies into a fat-preserving survival mode. They also can cause our brains to suffer from a lack of nutrition causing headaches, foggy thinking and exhaustion.
3. Get More Sleep:
Your body is meant to rest and recharge during the night. Lack of sleep can cause our hormones to go crazy and our weight-loss dreams to fail. When we operate under little sleep we cause a hormone called Leptin to fluctuate in an unhealthy manner, increasing feelings of depression, anxiety along with increased emotional eating. Our bodies are suffering so they start craving sugar and different types of carbohydrates to keep us going.
Shannon M. Pulsipher
NASM CPT, CES, PES, BCS, CNC
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