Emotional Overeating

Emotional overeating can rise up to attack during the Holiday Season. Self-defeating thoughts can be the stimulus that allows for suppressed emotional business to rise to the surface. Work hard to gain closure on any unfinished emotional business and learn new ways to cope without resorting to food.

• When feeling stressed, identify how you are feeling and why.
• Sometimes just acknowledging and/or talking about your feelings can help.
• "Freeze" your actions when you feel that tug to stuff and cover those feelings with food.
• Be confident that these feelings will pass or lessen as you learn to manage your reactions to those stressful, emotional situations.

Prevent Holiday Weight Gain!

On Thanksgiving Day, Americans eat 25% more than their usual daily calories. Add to that the other holidays of Christmas, Hanukkah and New Years, with 5-6 weeks of parties and extra "goodie eating" opportunities throughout each day! It's hard to get through and not gain weight without a plan.

People with a normal stomach capacity generally feel full with 2 to 2 1/2 cups of food. (The size of 2 fists)

• Remember that overstuffed, too full feeling from previous feasts and how unpleasant (pain) that feeling was? You want to avoid this!
• Take small portions of the foods desired, focusing on your favorites that you usually don't have available. Remember, bread and potatoes are available everyday!
• Share dessert or eat only 1/4 to 1/2, finishing by covering it with your napkin and beginning a conversation with someone.
• No second helpings, ever! Get into this habit! Second helpings add only more calories, and do nothing to help you reach your goals!
• Continuing now with your exercise regime is more important than ever!

Eating Well

Eating well isn't just good for your waistline: It's also crucial for your health and the health of your family. One recent study published in the journal Circulation of more than 72,000 women found those who followed a "prudent" diet (high in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish and poultry) were 28 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and 17 percent less likely to die prematurely of all causes. Those who were on a "Western" diet (lots of red meat, processed meat, refined grains, fried foods and sweets) had a 22 percent higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease and a 21 percent higher risk of premature death from all causes.

Ankle Weights - Good or Bad?

Ankle weights have their good and bad attributes. It is understandable and reasonable to use added resistance in the form of ankle weights to help in athletic training and rehabilitation. Ankle weights are best suited for adding resistance to an exercise regime, such as during calisthenics, leg lifts, and various stationary exercises that focus on individual muscle groups.

Where exercisers can run into trouble is when they wear ankle weights during aerobic activities, such as walking, running and aerobics class. They can create a strain on the joints and cause injury to the ligaments and tendons in the leg. Improper use of ankle weights during aerobic exercise can result in acute and chronic overuse injuries such as tendinitis. Since women tend to have slimmer and more flexible ankles, adding ankle weights to aerobic exercise increases the risk of sprained ankles or worse, torn ligaments.

Aerobic dance classes use open chain movements. This means that your foot is in a “free” position, and thus subject to shearing forces. The ACL or anterior cruciate ligament is very sensitive to these shearing forces. Therefore, adding weight may likely cause a tear.

A new leg weight has been designed by Ayaz Virji, MD, called Body Togs. These weighted sleeves are designed to be “anatomically correct”, distributing the added weight around the major muscle groups in the same way the body is used to feeling weight. When you examine your own lower leg muscles, you will feel the gastrocnemius and soleus, fleshy muscles of the calf. The leg Body Togs have the added weights sewn into place in similar anatomical structure, wrapping around the leg, very much like the placement of the major muscle groups in the lower leg, adding extra weight only where the leg is accustomed to experiencing weight.

If you look at the bones of the lower leg, particularly the tibia, notice that the front ridge of the bone actually feels rather sharp, almost like a spine. This is an area where a lot of ligaments insert and you are not supposed to have excessive weight distributed there. In the design of the Body Tog for legs, there are no additional weights applied in this area. The area just below the knee is called the tibia tuberosity and is the attachment point of the patellar tendon. This area is susceptible to injury and is protected by the Body Togs’ design, with a band of extra padding. No weights are placed in this area, which further protect it from injury.

Body Togs are designed to wear under your clothing during regular activities of daily living including exercise. They enhance muscle toning and fitness while at the same time they increase calorie and fat burning. This helps you to stay fit and helps your muscles stay more toned and defined. BodyTogs do this in a very easy way by just putting them on, almost like a sock, you basically forget about them. Wear them everyday under your clothing. No one will know you are wearing them.

Body Togs benefit many people, from the competitive athlete who wants to shave off that second in their 100 meter run or the new mother who wants to take off some weight after giving birth. By wearing Body Togs she will burn more calories and tone her muscles again. Even the working professional who during their day to day life doesn’t have as much time to hit the gym as much as they want can benefit from the enhanced calorie burning and muscle toning by wearing the weighted sleeves everyday under their clothing. No one will know they are wearing them.

Basically, BodyTogs are made for a far reaching group of people who want to safely add the extra calorie burn and muscle toning to their daily life in addition to eating an appropriate diet. They enhance calorie burn, performance and muscle tone without causing any undue strain on the body as ankle weights can.

Purchase Body Togs for Legs now at: http://www.womenspersonalfitness.net/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=76&products_id=181

The American Institute for Cancer Research Makes New Recommendations

New Research Confirms Staying in Motion at the Office Reduces the Risk of Cancer – TrekDesk Offers the Opportunity. Summary: Experts from the American Institute for Cancer Research sent out an urgent plea to employers and employees to rethink outdated notions regarding physical activity.  Noting that sedentary office environments increase cancer risks independent of leisure time physical activity the AICR recommended strongly that employees remain active and upright as much as possible during their workday.

This week at the Annual Research Conference on Food, Nutrition and Physical Activity the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) made one of the strongest science based pleas detailing the health hazards of sedentary office environments, urging employers and employees to incorporate activity into their workday as much as possible; citing a direct link between “sitting time” and rates of breast and colon cancers. TrekDesk treadmill desks allow employees to remain upright and active throughout the entire day reducing the risks posed by sedentary environments. In a news release, the AICR stated that 49,000 cases of breast cancer and 43,000 cases of colon cancer occurring in the United States annually were the direct result of a lack of physical activity. The report further related that daily walking   reduces a number of biological indicators of cancer risks, including insulin resistance, inflammation, obesity, and hormone levels. The challenge is finding a way to motivate employees to remain active during the day. Warning of recent studies in the field of “sedentary science”, the researchers warned that sitting for long periods of time dramatically increased cancer risks even among individuals that exercise daily. "Taken together, this research suggests that every day, we're each given numerous opportunities to be active and protect ourselves from cancer, not one," said AICR spokesperson Alice Bender, in a released statement. "We need to start thinking in terms of make time and break time." Ms. Bender went on to stress the need to change the mindset of American employers and employees regarding the difference between exercise and movement and its impact on health:   "A person who gets up in the morning and makes time by spending  30 minutes on the treadmill probably feels pretty pleased with himself – and he should. He's making excellent progress and doing a lot more than most Americans. For those  30 minutes, he's hard at work lowering those cancer risk   indicators. But what happens during the other 15 hours and 30 minutes he spends awake? If he's like most Americans, he sits – on his commute, at the office, and at home. So this person, who fits the traditional definition of someone who's physically active, is actually active just 3 percent of his waking day. By thinking in terms of break time, however, Americans can infuse the remaining 97 percent of their day with short periods of   activity that can protect against many cancers." “We have been warning employers and employees about the risks of sedentary office environments since 2008,” stated Steve Bordley, CEO of TrekDesk Treadmill Desks. “Just because the nature of employment is increasingly sedentary does not mean our office environments cannot incorporate movement into the workplace. We just need to re-think the distinctions between movement, exercise and our goals toward overall health.” Designed to fit any existing treadmill, TrekDesk is an affordable, full sized workstation that allows individuals the opportunity to gain the necessary amount of exercise   daily to maintain health, prevent disease, strengthen muscles, boost mood and productivity, without requiring additional time during the day or extra motivation. TrekDesk is currently available for sale online at WomensPersonalFitness.net for $479.00 including free shipping.