That equates to millions of women who’ve lost an important part of a healthy life, year after year.

And unlike the male libido, a woman’s sex life is often dismissed by doctors when brought up during a medical visit. Big Pharma is making huge profits by helping men carry on in the bedroom, but they seem to care too little about helping women.

Maybe you don’t really think it’s a big deal, but here’s something you should know…

Your sexual energy can make you feel more positive. Sexual intimacy produces the brain neurotransmitters dopamine, the “pleasure” neuro-hormone, and oxytocin, the “intimacy and belonging” neuro-hormone that is released when you kiss someone, have sex, breastfeed and give birth.

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If you’re not enjoying the active intimate sex life you’d like, you may be surprised to find that exercise may help you bring the romance back.

The best tip for libido-boosting exercise is to build your exercise around things that move your hips. Increasing blood flow to the very target of your waning desire can help immediately.

Take an idea or two from the following list. You don’t have to do them all. Pick one or two that appeal to you and do them consistently if even for minutes a day.

1. Pick up a hula-hoop and give it a go for a few minutes a day.
2. Try pilates movements that emphasize articulation of the spine and pelvic tilts. Roll-ups and roll-downs or side-lying leg raises are good ones to try.
3. Even gentle yoga moves like cat-cow back can get you in touch with your libido again.
4. Do simple hip bridges lying on the floor with your knees bent and feet flat.
5. Take a jazz dance class. The isolation moves you’ll do will do wonders for you.
6. Add a foam roller (see my demonstration here) to your exercise recovery routine and roll your bum, hip flexors, and the sides of your hip.
7. Perform core exercises that truly target the entire core, not just the abs.
8. Try stretches for stiff hips.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

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Lift weights

In addition to getting your hips in action with lower body exercises, weight training does two more things for you…

First, you’ll be boosting testosterone levels naturally, which is important since you produce less testosterone as you age. According to my colleague Dr. Michael Cutler, testosterone is the most abundant biologically active female hormone, even more abundant throughout a woman’s lifespan than estrogen. So no longer can we refer to it as a “male” hormone.

Secondly, you’ll feel better about yourself with some power in your workout that increases both tone and confidence.

Find your exercise sweet spot

Over-training will kill your libido due to the increase in cortisol levels. Now, most studies on this focus on men, but it makes sense it would have the same effect on women, so don’t let that dissuade you. Unfortunately, most studies on libido focus disproportionately on men.

On the other hand, undertraining won’t get you enough stimulation, pun intended. Your ideal training level is unique so you may need to assess what’s happening now and increase or decrease for a trial period of time to see how it affects you.

Eat high-quality protein

You’ll be helping those testosterone levels and boosting the results of your weight training by getting adequate protein into each of the three meals.

Reduce or eliminate alcohol

Alcohol can reduce testosterone levels. Try giving it up, at least temporarily, if you’re drinking regularly.

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Sleep in bed first

If you’re sleep-deprived, your body is under stress and pumping out cortisol. Stress beyond a certain point is not going to help your cause. Some individuals find intimacy helps relieve stress, but again you’ve got to find that sweet spot where you can relax enough to partake. Work on your sleep hygiene. That is, create a bedtime routine that helps you get a few good nights’ sleep to reduce cortisol. Optimal sleep will also enhance growth hormone which will help that weight training pay off in a fitter body you’ll feel good in.

Exercise with your partner

There’s some proof that active men and women (may I suggest doing some of the exercises above that involve your hips) enjoy an active sex life as well.

Reduce your stress levels

Stressful days don’t lend themselves to playful nights. If you’re under stress from physical stressors like exercise, hormone changes or from emotional stressors from work and finances or you’re simply a worrier, your bedroom activity can suffer. Exercise is one of the best ways to reduce stress.

Check your hormones

Many midlife women feel their sex drive beginning to tank starting in peri-menopause. Whether you’re in midlife or not, you might be surprised to find how many women suffer from low libido. There are many options regarding hormone therapy and it’s a personal decision. But if you need some information, Dr. Klodas provides some helpful information on HRT myths and breakthroughs.

The post 16 ways to ‘get in the mood’ appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

As warmer weather becomes the rule and not the exception, chances are you’ll be more active than ever. And who wouldn’t like a more toned summer body for those spring and summer clothes?

To enjoy an injury-free and higher-performance summer season, follow these few tips to adjust your summer routine… And get out the door and into the sunshine.

When you’re in a hurry to get results, you might be surprised to find less is more.

The post 8 tips to spring into that summer body (slideshow) appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Instead, reduce your exercise, eat more, and stress best (yes, not less, but best) and the results are balanced hormones that make weight loss possible.

These seven ways to weight loss after menopause are not random. They each impact the next. You don’t have to go for them all at once. These seven components have helped midlife women finally lose weight and feel great.

Hint: The feel great happens first. It’s your sign you’re shifting that internal environment. Don’t let the scale predict your happiness.

The post 7 steps to lose weight (even after menopause) [slideshow] appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Instead, I advise my clients to reduce exercise, eat more, and stress best (yes, not less, but best) and the results are balanced hormones that make weight loss possible. If you focus on improving your internal environment, your external environment can’t help but come along for the ride.

These seven ways to weight loss after menopause are not random. They each impact the next. You don’t have to go for them all at once. These seven components have helped my midlife clients finally lose weight and feel great. Hint: the feel great happens first. It’s your sign you’re shifting that internal environment. Do not let the scale predict your happiness.

1. Get more of the right food

Eat more vegetables. Eat more fat. Eat more high fiber foods. If you’re a woman, be sure you’re getting adequate protein at each of three meals. Whether you choose to eat vegan or Paleo or some “flexitarian” style in between, protein will preserve your lean muscle tissue. Eliminate or severely reduce your intake of sugar and simple carbohydrates. Yes, you wine drinker, that’s you. Assess your own daily nutrition for the area where you could improve.

2. Exercise less and with more purpose

While we’ve been messaged by media and the old (yes, old and incorrect) “calories in-calories out” equation to think that the more exercise we have the better, if you’re doing it and it’s not working, stop! Fewer minutes and miles flipped for every exercise session assigned a specific goal could mean your exercise takes as little as 10 or 20 minutes a day. Focus on moving more all day every day. That is, take the stairs and get up frequently from your chair if you sit at work. This all counts, more we’re finding, than that 30 or 60 minutes at the gym that makes you exhausted or sends you to the kitchen immediately after where you overcompensate.

3. Best your stress

It’s not going to go away as long as you have a heart rate. Learn to harness the power of your stress and the stress hormone cortisol. It is after all, also the energy hormone. Exercise early when cortisol is highest. Allow yourself to chill in the evening when stress hormones should be coming down. Embrace the idea that stress is a natural part of a meaningful life. If you have family and friends and events you love and look forward to stress is coming to the party, so you may as well invite it.

4. Sleep deep

When you sleep well you give your body the hormones it needs to be at it’s best and you also decrease the potential hormone imbalance that happens when you’re deprived. Get into a wake up routine and establish nighttime hygiene that you follow like clockwork. That means, no more sleeping in and no more staying up if your eyelids are drooping. Listen to your body telling you what it needs at night, and override that impulse to push snooze in the morning. The sooner you establish a balanced hormones that control your optimal weight. To be sure, check your signs and symptoms of hormone habit of rise and shine, you will.

5. R & R on time

Rest and relaxation are under-appreciated in our society. We’ve got adrenal burnout and metabolism slowing as a result. The ultimate in rest is sleep. Few of us can deny ourselves of sleep for long. Yet the less-obvious ways of resting and relaxing are often neglected. Women who listen to other’s needs first, are especially poor at this. Plan your rest days in as much detail as you plan your work days or your exercise. Assign yourself two hours of a VIP meeting… on a massage table or in the hammock with a good book. Write in that time to take a hot bath (and lock the door). Put your feet up (even if under the desk) after a long exercise session.

6. Heal your hormones

If you heed the advice in one through five above you may be on your way to imbalance. Assess with this list of questions.

• Are you digesting and eliminating on a schedule that feels good?
• Are bloating and gas rare for you?
• Do you have steady energy all day?
• Do you feel resilient to stressors that crop up unpredictably?
• Do you have strong ties to people you confide in?
• Do you sleep well most nights?
• Do you wake rested?
• Do you love the body you’re living in?

If you said no to any of these questions look back to the most closely related item above and focus.

7. Integrate it all well

This may be the single most missed item of all for women who struggle to get to their “loving life again” mojo. You are an integrated whole of all these pieces. If you for instance, have a lot going on at work or in an emotional family crisis, this IS for your body going to feel like a “workout.” Reducing your exercise to avoid additional stress is warranted. Unfortunately, if you’re not doing well with this integration your approach may be one of feeling guilty if you haven’t exercised, or trying to work through the same punishing exercise routine.

Give your body exercise, but realize that turning your 45-minute workout into 20 minutes may serve you better during busy days and stressful times. Your hormone balance will improve and you may stave off weight gain that seems to come with stressful times.

Weight loss after menopause doesn’t have to be hard. Using these tips and the wisdom of your own body will help you bust through hormone plateaus. If you’ve been pushing (harder exercise), pulling (your hair out), and exhausting all the old bag of tricks that used to work, try a new approach and watch what happens.

The post 7 ways to weight loss, even after menopause appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

For any of us over 50 that’s never been truer. We’re busier, we’ve got more hormones going haywire and we feel this sense of urgency about improving our physical fitness — and physical health — not getting any easier to effect as we get older.

If you’re feeling there is no time like the present, you have an arsenal of secret weapons to help you get better results. More and more research is being done not just on best practices for exercise but with mid-lifers as subjects — that’s us!

Here’s one such secret weapon…

This protocol takes exercises that you’re probably doing already and simply sequences them in a way that will give you better results in less time.

Three to four minutes rest between exercising the same muscle group will allow you optimal recovery so that you can recruit more muscle fibers and use them effectively. In the demonstration provided, if each exercise is done for a minute, which would allow 10 repetitions that take 6 seconds each, then there will be three minutes rest before you get back to the same muscle group.

• Bent over row
• Squats
• Chest Press
• Core Exercise (plank was demonstrated)

For beginners, especially, this rest between exercises for the same muscle groups can be not only effective, but your perception of the work may be lower. You’ll be more likely to want to repeat it if you feel successful.

Beyond that, by exercising this way you’ll see and feel more results quickly which is usually a big boost in motivation to stick with it.

There’s one more incentive to this type of exercise. If you rotate through this sequence two or three times, each exercise requiring a minute, you’ve still used all major muscle groups in eight or 12 minutes.

Could you expand the list of exercises? Yes. Could you perform this set and then do another using the same or different muscle groups for an expanded workout? Yes. You have options. Start with a set of exercise you’re familiar with and expand from there.

And you didn’t think you had time to exercise.

The post Firm and burn in 12 minutes a day appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

The most common sources of agony in adults are hip, lower back, knee and shoulder discomfort. There are two equal but opposite reasons three out of four of those are lower body joints…

First, your modern day job may involve more sitting than is ideal. Second, as summer gets going in full swing you may be more active than the rest of the year. It’s worth mentioning if you have both of these going for you, you’re potentially more prone to a nagging joint. If you’ve ever overexerted, even exerted appropriately, and then had to sit for hours in a car or behind a desk, you know what I mean.

Now, let me be clear, activity is good! It just happens when we ramp up quickly and jump into a running schedule, golfing for hours, or a softball league after not having been doing much we can pay for it! Even when you’re wise about starting slow and progression, little aches and pains can occur.

Think of these two hip stretches as your insurance policy against injury and potentially secret weapons for better performance. If, for instance you do play golf, it’s all in the hips, baby. Get those hips lose and you won’t pay for those 18 holes by way of your lower back.

Start with the standing lunge. If your knees don’t tolerate this stretch, just move on to the next.

The “number 4” stretch can be done lying on the floor. If that is a limiting factor for you, you can also do this seated in a chair crossing one ankle over the other knee.

These two hip  stretches are two in a series of five of my favorite hip stretches that are the bomb for feeling your best whether it’s at work, at home or at play.

These hip stretches can be done daily. If you do have any discomfort or pain, daily is definitely your best friend. Treat it like brushing your teeth.

The post Hip stretches your lower back will love appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

A study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research had 81 previously sedentary premenopausal women walk 30 minutes three times a week without changing diet. The subjects showed no real weight or fat mass losses overall…

However, 55 of the 81 women were labeled as compensators and gained fat during the 12-week study. This is not typically a desired outcome.

Let’s say through diet and maybe exercise you lose weight. If a large percent of that weight is lean muscle your metabolism will slow. The rate that you burn calories at rest, and while doing everything else you do all day, will decrease.

This sets you up for weight gain in the future. Unfortunately, it’s like a two-for-one. You don’t just gain back what you lost. You get back more.

The only way to offset your newly slowed metabolism is to exercise more and eat less. In fact it’s well known that successful weight maintenance programs include more activity than weight loss programs. Forever. Your ever-plummeting metabolism will make you tired and still require fewer and fewer calories. Typically women both diet and exercise diligently for a short time and then end it and hope it works out for them. That’s a formula for weight cycling up every time it happens.

There’s a better way not to “weigh less” but to weigh ideal and look like you weigh less. You can stop being a slave to the scale and start to focus on your health and your happiness. You shouldn’t have to check with the scale in the morning to find out if you’re happy. Stinky shoes and more laundry are a better gage.

If you must measure something, measure your inches and your ability to lift weight. The blessing of strength training for a woman with weight to lose is that you will be more successful from the beginning than any time you’ve ever started aerobic exercise.

Your after-50 fitness formula includes a nutrient-rich, satisfying diet, proper aerobic activity and a good dose of the right resistance training. Dieting alone may result in weight loss, temporarily. The weight tends to be muscle.

The down side of weight training

If you’re a scale slave there is bad news. Resistance training will blunt your weight loss.

A 150lb woman who strength trains, however, is more likely to wear a smaller pair of pants than a 150lb woman who doesn’t. Proportions will change like they do not with aerobic-only exercise.

Despite the study mentioned earlier, you could lose weight or get slimmer temporarily with aerobic-only exercise if you’re not overeating. But the results make you skinny-fat. Studies show you will lose strength and bone density if you only do endurance exercise.  Lean, light and fragile is not a good combination.

Osteoporosis and osteopenia refer to low bone density that puts you at greater risk for fractures. Sarcopenia is loss of lean muscle tissue associated with aging. It’s not inevitable but it is more probable if you don’t lift and eat in favor of muscle. Dynapenia is a loss of muscle strength with aging. Sarcopenia and dynapenia set you up for risk of falling. Osteoporosis and osteopenia set you up for fractures if you do fall. You, at 50, may be overconfident about your fall risk. Yet, even your forgotten calf muscles predispose you for falls. At middle age a woman’s fall risk associated with weak soleus muscles increases. The soleus is the calf muscle underneath the larger gastrocnemius muscle. One of the only ways to work it is to do seated heal raises.

Your habits now determine what happens both now and in future decades. If your muscles go bye-bye you don’t get them back easily. It’s not impossible. The deck is just stacked against you.

Once you passed age 35, strength training became truly indispensable for maintaining muscle mass–along with adequate protein intake and the right post-workout nutrition habits. If that ship has been departing without you, it’s time to reevaluate your exercise routine and A-list weight training in your post-50 party plans.

Here’s the irony of the strength training gender bias. Men who exercise tend to spend more time lifting. Women who exercise tend to find aerobic activity more appealing. Women need strength training more than men. Overall you’re smaller, weigh less, and when you lose estrogen you lose bone at an even faster rate. Plus you’re more likely to live longer, losing little breadcrumbs of bone along the way. Weight rooms should be designed to appeal to women 35 and over and, in particular, 50 and over! Find a gym that feels comfortable or make one at home.

Your first rodeo with weight training might be a group fitness class. It’s a natural if you’re already comfortable in that environment. It’s potentially a good introduction but don’t hang your weight gloves on it. Group strength training classes with high repetitions won’t help you lose fat or gain lean muscle. High repetitions is defined as anything that you can do 15 or more times. Multiple sets of higher reps (at lower weight) do not have the same effect on fat, bones, or muscle, as sets of lower reps (of higher weight).

(This is an edited excerpt from You Still Got It, Girl! The After 50 Fitness Formula For Women, by author and Easy Health Options contributor Debra Atkinson.)

The post Get the body you want and bones you need appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But you’re probably also kicking yourself for not doing it sooner. No worries…

If you, like thousands of women I work with, name a flat belly as a big source of motivation you’ll appreciate this simple but very effective exercise I’m about to show you. But let me warn you…

It might surprise you.

It might frustrate you.

It might go against everything you’ve ever thought about core exercise. Because you are going to think it’s too easy to really tame your tummy. Nothing could be further from the truth!

It is without a doubt one of the most important things you’ll do. If you do it first before moving on to other more “wow” kinds of exercise you see everyone in the gym and on YouTube doing you will get better results. Here’s why:

• You’ll be less likely to get injured
• You’ll have built strong deep core muscles that are the foundation of a flat belly
• You’ll be more able to perform other exercise with intensity that too will contribute to a flat belly (or less injury if you’ve already got that flat core)

Watch the video. Then, here’s what’s NOT in it…

The next step is for you to achieve neutral position and still be able to hold your core stable while you lower the legs. You can test whether you’re in neutral by checking that your pubic bone and your hip bones (iliac crest) are on the same plane. If you’re pubic bone is lower you likely have an arch under your back. If your pubic bone is higher than your hip bones, you are likely still pressing that back into the floor. Make no mistake, maintaining neutral is more difficult than pressing your back to the floor where you can feel the target. If you’ve mastered the flat back, however, try it. You’re ready. You’ll be ready for any activity your social calendar can throw at you too.

The post If you do just one flat belly exercise, do this appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Whether that means more baseball games, gardening or golf and less weight training and stretching for you, or more cycling, running and walking, your needs will change.

To enjoy an injury-free and higher performance summer season follow these few tips to adjust your summer routine…. And get out the door and into the sunshine.

Active fun doesn’t need to squeeze out the things that keep you enjoying them pain- free. Set a few quick new habits for time efficient exercise and a no-excuses routine that provides a clean slate of active outdoor fun all summer.

1. Roll out the right tools

When you feel “tight” but haven’t lost range of motion self-massage using foam rollers, balls or other tools can help. If you’ve had an injury, or just a wake up call from a muscle that tends to alert you there’s something going on, this kind of self- release can keep your body functioning better.

You’re not completely symmetrical. If you develop too much asymmetry with long weak muscles coupled with short tight ones we’re at greater risk for injury. First signs are discomfort. Movement just doesn’t feel as good as it should. Even before that first twinge happens knowing where muscles are long and or where they’re tight can help.

More activity is usually better, but too much of the same if you’re compensating (and you won’t know it) can lead to a problem.

The foam roller can talk, or rather your muscles under it will. They can guide you to the right spots telling you just where they need more attention.

Set aside a few times a week, for just five-to-ten minutes to roll and you’ll clean up some potential imbalances. Many who use foam rolling before exercise report it improves range of motion. Following exercise roll to improve the benefit of stretching. Experiment with before and after to find what suits you best and roll with it.

2. Dust the cobwebs off joints and small muscles

This one follows rolling out the tight muscles for a reason! The other half of the symmetry equation is weak muscles you need to strengthen. Think of a sprained ankle for instance. When we sprain an ankle we end up limping to protect it. That causes a temporary overuse of the other side of the body and it’s often that side of the body then that has problems. It becomes tighter and the injured side first has to heal and then is weak due to disuse. To thoroughly recover we need to strengthen that weak side, relax some of those tightened muscles of the opposite and continue with some corrective exercises until we’re back in balance.

Even without a painful injury we have imbalances. As long as we’re not doing anything too strenuous we can get by. If you start to play golf four or five times a week, swinging 200 times each round? Or you begin to run and ride twice as much in the spring sunshine? You’re more likely to feel the imbalance.

A trainer can help you identify these areas with a movement assessment before it becomes a problem (or you can try a one-leg exercise to access yourself). As you perform left and right side exercises you’ll become more in tune with what’s going on so you can address it or ask for help.

3. Polish your cardio

Chances are you want to look your best, along with feeling your best this summer. If you aren’t sure of where your exercise intensity should be for three important types of cardiovascular exercise now’s your times to focus.

If your cardio workouts look the same every day it’s time for a new shine. Your overall fitness, fat metabolism, energy and weight management will improve with the right balance of three different kinds of exercise.

You want to mix some days that are longer and slower (that might be your hike with the dog), with days that include intervals on the treadmill or a hill you can repeat, and some days where your intensity is mid-range. When pressed for time, I do this anywhere-anytime workout.

4. Make a clean sweep of your fuel

Exercise takes you the last 20% of the way after your nutrition locks it in. You can’t make up for a bad diet with exercise. One of the biggest mistakes we make is not fueling with the right percentages of nutrients or at the right time.

Signs you might not be getting what you need at the right time include lack of energy, plateau in progress, inability to lose (or gain) weight, and workouts of your usual intensity that seem “hard.”

Your first step is to keep a nutrition log. Record not only what you eat, but when you rise, exercise and eat each meal and snack. Timing as well as quality of foods is often the problem and for most of us it’s easier to clean up than addressing portion control.

A personal trainer or nutritionist can help you look at whether your fuel plan is helping you reach goals. Is your protein adequate? Research suggests that 30gms of protein three times a day is optimal for muscle protein synthesis. Do you have the right ratio of fats, carbs, and proteins for your body and activity needs? Are you timing meals and snacks for optimal results?

5. Mop the floor with a yoga mat

More often stretching is the first to go. Busy and off to enjoy life, we’ll do it later, right? As you ramp up the activity overall do a self-check on whether you’re leaving the dirty work undone. Stretching doesn’t have to take a lot of time, and considering it keeps your brain and your body sharp, it’s important.

A few well-targeted stretches that you’ll find in the yoga room go anywhere. Three or four integrated stretches can help you cover the front, back and the side of your body in a way that will shorten your time and meet your needs effectively. No mat required.

Are you familiar with yoga? Think Warrior I, Downward Facing Dog and a third, Side Bending Mountain pose for a well-rounded efficient opening of your summer fun muscles. Not familiar but interested? Watch our videos.

6. Manage your metabolic speed bumps

If you sit at a desk the majority of your waking hours, it’s hard to overcome that with just an hour or so of activity. What you do those other 23 hours of the day matters. This is your metabolic profile. Studies actually show people more active throughout the day without formal “exercise” do better than those who workout one hour and then sit back down. Get the best of both with some small tweaks to your desk jockey life.

Focus on nutrition timing for fuel that keeps you perking right along (minus coffee). And get up from your desk. Try to sit for no more than 90 -120 minutes at a time without getting up. If you can get a standing desk, or use a slow-walking treadmill being introduced all over the country in university settings to do your work, you’ll change your activity level daily by hundreds of calories.

Take your lunch for a walk. Take your meeting for a walk. Encourage your co- workers with a friendly competition set up so that if each of you does more you all will win.

The post 6 ways to clean up your spring training appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But in addition, you’re missing out on an easy way to retrain your body to strengthen your core.

Simple fixes to your standing and sitting postures — that you may not even be aware of — can reduce your risk of back strain and injury, and provide bonuses that actually enhance your abdominal strength.

That’s good for your back integrity and doubly good if you want to get in the habit of something that could give you a tighter tummy.

Some of the standing and sitting saboteurs most of us are guilty of include:

• Standing with hyperextended knees
• Standing with your weight on one hip
• Bad stance during overhead exercise

You can make some simple changes that encourage a neutral pelvis and can turn your bad posture to a better core and stronger back. Let me show you in my video…

Make these simple changes that encourage a neutral pelvis to reduce your risk:

1. Unlock your knees
2. Engage your core
3. Stagger your stance

Doing overhead exercise increases the risk of arching the back compounded by hyperextension of the knees. And this is something that can happen even in the kitchen. Inevitably you’re going to put some dishes back up on the top shelf… or want to serve a volley ball or hit a golf ball with high speed. Learning how to make a neutral pelvis a regular part of your daily posture will improve all of these things and keep your back safe while you do them. Plus, when doing overhead exercise, your new and improved posture will give you the added benefit of also exercising your core.

The post Posture trick for a strong back and tight tummy appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Your exhausted system means no amount of exercise is going to give you a flat belly. The reason?

It wasn’t a lack of exercise that put belly fat there. It was your hormones.

But, and this is a big but (no pun intended) — you can give up or you can harness your hormones to get the results you want.

That means you’ve got to do things differently, starting with how you exercise…

You can’t exercise like you may have at 20 and get the results you did then. You also can’t eat like you did at 20. Nor can you reduce your caloric intake to the point your body has nothing to run on either.

I’ve watched Ironman athletes who train for hours daily still carry excess body weight across the finish line with them. That’s after months, if not a full year, of dedicated training and a hyper-disciplined diet.

Putting your body through any grueling schedule — excessive exercise or too little sleep — is a recipe for stress that will further throw your hormones into a downward spiral.

Without a balance of rest & recovery against the daily grind or the excessive training (elite athletes nap in the afternoon, they don’t go to 9-5 or 9-9 jobs), you constantly empty your cup and then try again and again to drink from it.

That makes trying to crunch or plank your belly fat away like trying to hammer a screw.

What are they doing right?

Yet some mature endurance athletes thrive. They seem to look younger, have fewer wrinkles and thrive on endless energy. And not so much belly fat.

Why did all the hard work pay off for them? You have to look at all the factors…

Is it that they aren’t over thinkers? They don’t stress or ruminate as much as others?

Is it that they ate fewer chemicals and more whole foods all along before we knew that was a secret?

Is it that they rested more and knew their limits?

Is it that they were selfish enough to say no so they could say yes to themselves?

Is it that they’ve always been long sleepers and knew when to say goodnight to have a good day?

It might be any or all of the above.

If you have dug yourself into a hole though and you’re experiencing:

• Morning fatigue that feels like a hangover,
• Lack of appetite in the morning,
• Upset stomach or nausea,
• Desire to do things but no energy to do them,
• Evening exhaustion that sends you to bed early,
• Exhaustion that doesn’t go away with sleep…

… none of these will be fixed with “more exercise” like what’s often recommended and strongly suggested on social media.

What is the answer then?

1. Identify your signs and symptoms something isn’t right, including the ones you’ve settled for as “normal.” Address your hormone issues with a doctor you trust.
2. Accept that your over-50 body can no longer exercise like it did at 30, and get with the right program for you, because you’ve still got it, girl — you’ve just got to find it.
3. Make proper nutrition a priority and overcome micronutrient deficiencies.
4. Stop taxing your body by making it run on insufficient or chemical-laden fuel.
5. Listen to your body so you know how to rest, to work, to play and to thrive instead of just surviving.
6. Allow your restored body to be at its ideal weight naturally: a healthy body will choose the easiest path so it can operate efficiently.

When you’ve handled the hormones causing the problem, the belly flattening can begin.

The post The after-40 flat belly secret appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Whether you desire a flatter belly, you’re overcoming a back injury, or you want better performance, it’s likely you too have thought about what you can do or whether what you’re doing is effective.

What limits some people from benefitting from core exercises is often an inability to get to and from the floor to perform them. If you’re overweight, or have knee, hip or back pain issues you may feel left out when it comes to doing core exercises.

Well, I’m here to tell you there are ways to do effective core exercises, without hurting or further injuring your joints…

These standing exercises can be more than a simple solution for someone who has an injury or limitation in getting to the floor. And the icing on the cake — they’re gentle on your joints, but hard on the muffin top!

Give these a try for painless results…

Given we’re all unique, they may not all work for you. Focus on the ones that do.

1. Push
2. Pull
3. Rotation
4. Squat
5. Plank with an elevated base – optional lift
6. Press forward
7. Standing knee chambers
8. Boxing moves
9. Standing lunge press
10. Standing wall press

Boxing is also a very effective way of combining cardio and core exercises in one fell swoop. Learn more about boxing’s benefits here.

The post Lose your muffin top without hurting your joints appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Yes, and here’s why…

Strength training can lengthen your life. In fact, in one study, people who strength trained outlived other people who did just about every other exercise under the sun but strength training. So there is definitely something special about boosting your strength…

Strength is required for a range of daily activities from opening jars and climbing stairs to lifting heavy bags of groceries. You need your strength to dig in your garden, do your yard work or and ride your bike up a hill.

Strength is even a component of getting out of a chair. Hopefully, you are far from thinking that’s a workout — but keeping what you’ve got now and planning for the future is important. It’s easier to build strength now than it will be in 10 years or 20, no matter what your age is at this moment…

By the time you’re 50, keeping your strength should be a big concern.  That’s because changes that lead to sarcopenia — defined as significant loss of skeletal muscle — began in your 30s and 40s.

So, if you haven’t thought about it already, it’s time to seriously look at stopping your muscle loss — or at least — slowing it down… and strength training is the way to go.

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Should you lift heavy or light?

Recent research has shown that as long as you lift to fatigue (tiring your muscles), lifting lighter weight can result in changes in hypertrophy — an increase in the size of your skeletal muscle. That means you will see muscle growth, but don’t let that scare you. As a female, particularly a female over 50, you don’t have enough testosterone to get big. Bulk, even if it was a challenge for you in your younger years, is highly unlikely.

So, if seeing the baby bicep bump on your upper arm when you’re sleeveless is your primary goal, then light weights may be your end game. However, if you also want to be stronger, it’s going to take heavier weight training regularly.

Considering all that, a reasonable progression is required to safely bring you to a point where lifting a weight so heavy you would fatigue at 10 or fewer repetitions is possible.

A recent study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning found that lifting at 80 percent of 1-rep max (you would fatigue at 10) and 30 percent (you would fatigue at approximately 35) increased hypertrophy in size but muscular strength in only the subjects that lifted 80 percent.

If that sounds complicated, check out this simple chart of progression from a recent episode of Flipping 50 TV.

Is bone density a goal? The path to bone density is specific and it’s not enough to simply lift weights or do weight-bearing exercise, though they are indeed a start.

There is evidence of bone density improvements in subjects using lighter weight during the first six months of resistance training. Once you’ve adapted to any stress, it will take additional stress (weight) to continue progress. This Minimal Effective Stress (MES) refers to the fact that if you, for example, walk regularly, simply walking more walking or continuing to walk does not increase the bone-density effect. That’s a basic fitness principle called overload. You need additional stress on the bones in order for them to positively respond.

Lifting light weights compared to lifting no weights will work for a period of time. In fact, it’s safer to begin that way. Then, however, you’ll need to increase the weight if you safely can, based on your personal joint and muscle needs, to overcome your new MES.

Reaching fatigue is emerging as the key to best bone and muscle response. A fitness professional can’t tell you how much weight to lift, but your body will tell you when you’ve reached fatigue and you can adjust your strength training as you progress.

The post Why strength matters most to women 50+ appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

If you’re not, you’re only working half of the equation that could keep you strong, sharp and independent. Here’s why…

Exercise is good for brain health as well as your muscles and bones. That may come as no surprise. Certain exercises are more valuable than others when it comes to brain health, however.

The novelty of exercises plays a part in the benefits you’ll receive too. The obvious is that if you’re used to walking, riding a stationary bike or other similar linear movements, they aren’t doing your brain as much good as something new or specific activities that require you to react.

The first time you do a new exercise, stretch or movement the more your brain stands to gain from doing it. That’s because the newness will wear off. Whether you’re learning a new ballroom dance or yoga pose, for instance, your brain will be be making different and unique connections the first time — or first few times — you go through the motions. So never be afraid to try something new, like this…

Think about it like this…

Reacting to catching flying objects like Frisbees or balls thrown by someone else and throwing them back to a moving target may be more beneficial than catching and throwing a ball while standing in the same spot.

That said reacting to a square dance caller might be more beneficial than rehearsing the same dance over and over again seeking perfection. Essentially, once you know a sequence well, the act of doing it may not be as beneficial to your brain. To engage both movements that cross over the midline of the body and that cause you to have to think quickly, try a boxing workout. If your trainer calls out the punches in 1-2 as opposed to telling you to jab-cross, for instance, you’ll be making the most of brain power as you tune up the rest of you.

Editor’s note: Did you know that cholesterol is essential to keep your brain firing on all cylinders? To learn more about cholesterol’s role as a “hidden nutrient,” click here for a preview of Dr. Cutler’s new book, The Cholesterol Super-Brain.

The post How stretching keeps your brain and body sharp appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Research has revealed that if there truly is a way to slow the hands of time, it means getting up, moving and getting physical.

But don’t worry, you don’t have to exercise till you drop. But you do have to be smart about it. These 7 tips will get you going so you can look and feel younger longer…

1. Walk 40 minutes three times a week. Walking helps avoid shrinkage of your hippocampus, once thought natural part of aging. A group of older adults who progressed to this moderate level of walking after a year actually experienced a growth in their hippocampus of 2% where the group that only stretched experienced 1.5% loss. If you’re not exercising currently, begin with 10 or 15 minutes three times a week. Gradually add three minutes a week to each walk to work up to 40. Don’t be tempted to do more on days you feel good. Slow and steady wins.
2. Strength train three times a week with moderate weights. Middle-aged men who did so had increased mitochondria, the “powerhouse” of cellular energy production. For even more energy production, combine resistance training and endurance training. Also once an “accepted” part of the aging, researchers believe increasing your mitochondrial function through exercise can slow or reverse the aging process.

To begin a strength-training program it’s best to seek advice of a fitness instructor for proper technique. Start with one set three times a week performing up to 15 repetitions of 8-10 exercises. After two or three weeks of adaptation increase to two sets. In another two or three weeks without complications increase to a third set. Next you’ll increase the weight slightly so that you reduce the repetitions to 10-12.

This video might help you get started…

3. Make your strength training count. Normal bone losses occur at a rate of 1-3% a year beginning at about age 35. Post-menopausal women are most prone to bone loss. Those who use a strength training protocol of heavy enough weights to fatigue at 8 or a minimum of 10 repetitions can prevent those losses from occurring.

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Lifting lighter weights more repetitions does work bone density pending fatigue is reached. This weight routine can also boost weight loss.

4. Eat to maintain muscle. Muscle losses occur at a rate of .8 to 1% a year after the age of 30. Though most Americans believe they eat plenty and take in adequate protein, studies show that self-reports are not accurate and protein intake is insufficient for aging individuals to maintain muscle. The exercising adult that thinks they are compensating for losses with strength training can be accelerating losses without sufficient protein intake. Research suggests that 30gms of protein three times a day is optimal for muscle protein synthesis. High quality proteins like lean meat, fish, and dairy are best. Start by reading labels and planning carefully.
5. Eat early like a king and late like a pauper. Studies in the Obesity Journal showed those who ate the majority of their calories early in the day and ate lighter at lunch and lightest at dinner lost more weight than those who saved the largest meal for late in the day. When and how much you eat also impacts your metabolism and reduces your risk for heart attack and stroke.
6. Continue to consume adequate amounts of calcium, not just for your bones, but for weight control. Studies show that 1200mg of calcium after the age of 50, along with 400 IU of Vitamin D can help with belly fat loss. Drinking milk is one of the easiest ways of accomplishing this and if you don’t tolerate dairy, alternatives like almond and coconut milk offer even higher amounts of calcium per serving. Consult your physician about a supplement if you don’t do either but food sources are usually best. To help direct calcium to your bones and not to your heart where it can become coronary artery calcium, don’t forget to get your vitamin K2.
7. Get plenty of sleep. Too little sleep could make you 30% more likely to be fat. Those who get between seven and nine hours of sleep are less likely to become obese than those with less than six hours a day. The amount of sleep time appeared a bigger weight determinant than genetics.

Avoid extended afternoon naps and late day caffeine. Both can reduce quality of nighttime sleep. Try to get plenty of sunlight and fresh air during the day. A warm bath or shower two to three hours before bed can prepare your body for sleep as your body temperature comes back down. Keep the room cool. Most of all establish a routine with same time to bed and to rise.

Sources:

1. Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory — National Academy of Sciences

2. Combined Training Enhances Skeletal Muscle Mitochondrial Oxidative Capacity Independent of Age — The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism

3. Exercise Interventions for the Individual With Osteoporosis — Strength and Conditioning Journal

4. Protein Requirements and Recommendations for Older People: A Review — Nutrients

5. Timing of food intake predicts weight loss effectiveness — International Journal of Obesity

6. Effect of Calcium Supplementation on Weight and Fat Loss in Women — The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism

7. Even your fat cells need sleep, according to new research — The University of Chicago News

The post 7 simple tips to feel, look and age better appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

If you don’t have knee pain, you want to prevent it, bottom line.

Strengthening the lower body is a challenge if you have knee pain. Yet, strengthening the lower body is key if you want to increase your metabolism or gain strength to enjoy so many other activities more.

Lunges by no mean are the only way to work your lower body. However, lunges are one of my absolute favorite exercises for so many reasons. Here are a handful:

• They can be done with body weight only and still be very effective.
• There are so many variations that almost anyone can find a variation that works, or several that target weak links.
• You can discover very quickly an imbalance between your right and left sides.
• You can work your core while you’re lunging thanks to the balance involved.
• You can work your balance thanks to the balance involved.
• Lunges are the perfect blend of strength and mobility.
• They open the hips after hours of sitting daily many of us do.

Yet, there’s a problem. For many people, lunges cause knee pain. If you lack cartilage in your knees you may not be able to enjoy the benefits of lunges. But if you’ve not been told that’s your fate, the pain caused by lunges might just be avoidable — especially if you follow my positioning tips below…

Positioning is everything, so focus on these tips:

1. Focus on the position of your knee over your heel. Keep it there so your lower leg looks like a table leg perfectly perpendicular to your foot.
2. Before adding stepping into a lunge try a more easy to manage stationary lunge.
3. Step back into a lunge instead of forward. Rear lunges just require you keep good position; you don’t have to decelerate when your knee is vulnerable.
4. Keep your torso upright.
5. Your back foot will ideally be flexed and your heel up off the floor.
6. There may be a pain-free range of motion for you. Find it and stay above the depth that causes pain.
7. Use a wall or back of a chair to help you stabilize if you need to when you’re starting.

The post 7 reasons painless lunges are essential appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Yet, if you won’t or can’t and you want to boost weight loss, there is a simple way to be sure your body can lose weight by other means…

But if you’re already exercising and still not seeing the results you think you should, this same simple trick may be what you need to get you over that edge, too.

What is “it?”

Hydration

Be sure you’re hydrated. That sounds simple enough but it’s easy to overlook or ignore the signals your body sends that it’s thirsty. And that can get worse as you age…

The hypothalamus center of the brain controls how a person perceives thirst. Mature adults may begin to fail to perceive they are thirsty and their health can suffer.

The most direct way to hydrate is drinking water. Below I’ll share some other methods of increasing your hydration level. First, though, I’ll share the reasons why hydration is so important based on a recent study published in Frontiers in Nutrition.

Diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s disease are all influenced by hydration status. But even mild chronic dehydration is associated with obesity.

That means the simple act of drinking more water may not only help you look better in those jeans, but enhance your disease-free longevity.

Two reasons cited in the study for weight loss associated with hydration:

• Decreased feeding
• Increased lipolysis

Decreased feeding

It’s not news that we often confuse fatigue, dehydration and hunger. We humans tend to eat more often than not when we’re not sure what the signal is we’re getting.

When we experience a state of low energy, naturally we seek something to boost it. Better hydration, specifically by drinking water, results in less frequent eating by better awareness of true hunger signals.

In many weight loss programs it’s recommended you drink a glass of water before a meal. This was definitely the case in many of the studies reviewed. There is a pronounced reduction of caloric intake when water ingestion precedes a meal.

Increased Lipolysis

This is the exciting part. Your body can breakdown fat better when it’s hydrated. So it isn’t that water increases fat burning, but it removes the obstacle of “inhibited ability” to burn fat which occurs when you’re dehydrated.

You also can boost your insulin sensitivity by being more hydrated. That is, your body will store less fat. The combination of each of these ultimately can help increase your metabolism, particularly one that’s been slowed by dehydration.

Obstacles to drinking more

The first biggest reason listed for not drinking enough water is lack of awareness of the benefits.

But let’s say this article reminded you of the importance of hydration and you’re already here… well aware of the health benefits. There’s another reason older adults don’t drink enough…

You’ll have to use the restroom more.

It’s true, temporarily at least, that you might. However, a solution to that is to ramp up your water intake gradually. Don’t jump from two glasses of water a day consumed mostly to wash down meals to eight glasses a day. Find your typical average and then increase your water intake by no more than a cup more daily and stick with that for a week. Split that evenly by increasing by a half a glass more in the morning and half a glass more in the afternoon.

Dislike for the taste of water is another reason given for not drinking enough water. Browse through the list below for some easy ways to bump up your hydration.

Tips to increase daily hydration (and ultimately weight loss):

1. Start with a glass. Commit to drinking a glass first thing in the morning.
2. Drink a glass before each meal. Not only will this potentially reduce the amount of food you eat at the meal, but it will interfere less with digestion than consuming excess water at your meals.
3. Enjoy more soup. Start meals with a clear broth-based soup. It can be bone broth alone or a veggie soup made with broth or water.
4. Eat more “watery” foods. Vegetables, fruits, even cooking your rice more can increase the amount of water you take in at meals.
5. Add ice to your smoothies.
6. Mark a water bottle and keep it with you so you have a visual reminder. Instead of marking with ounces, mark it with the time of day you want the water line at specific points.
7. Flavor your water with frozen berries, a squeeze of citrus fruit, and or a few drops of stevia to make it more appealing. Try this recipe for watermelon agua fresca…

How much should you drink?

Drinking six to eight glasses of water per day is “recommended” for adults … but by whom? That’s an oft-repeated phrase, but there’s no proof that this was ever shown to be effective by anyone.

The real advice from doctors in the know is to drink enough fluid so that it is in excess of your thirst. Which is a fancy medical way of saying don’t get thirsty in the first place, and drink more than you think you need to.

Equally important is limiting dehydrating foods and drinks like sugar, alcohol and caffeine, to help keep you well-hydrated.

The post Simple way to boost weight loss without exercise appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham found that over a 13-year study period, 30,000 Americans visited the emergency department for sprains, fractures or other injuries caused by their yoga practice. And that doesn’t count any injuries that weren’t treated in the ER.

Chaturanga, or chaturanga dandasana, is one of the trickier poses to master in even basic yoga classes, even though it “looks” simple enough. It’s also referred to as four-limbed staff pose. Since this pose is a transition pose, and is repeated often in a flowing yoga series, it’s important if you find yourself doing this move that you know what to do and what to avoid.

The starting plank position followed by lowering your body to the floor, to typically come into an upward facing dog, is a good example of why it’s important to get chaturanga right. These movements require significant strength and if done wrong — your shoulders will pay for it.

Watch my video to see what I’m referring to and be mindful of these tips:

• Keep your body strong and in alignment from head to heels as you lower.
• Maintain your head slightly higher than the shoulders which are slightly higher than the elbows.
• Keep your shoulders above or no lower than even with your elbows.

One of the best ways to determine if you’re ready to do chaturanga is your ability to perform push ups without stress to the shoulders. If you’re able to do five perfect push ups on your toes, you’ll be able to accomplish a single lowering phase of the movement during your flowing series.

If you find you’re in a flowing series that moves quickly or in a longer class than you’re used to, use caution as you fatigue. Modify by using the knee version until you regain your strength or adapt to the new challenge.

If you have a pre-existing shoulder injury or know your upper body strength could use improvement, request modifications from the instructor before you begin.

The post You, yoga and avoiding shoulder injury appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

When you’re in a hurry to get results, use these tips for faster fitness. You might be surprised to find less is more.

1. Trade quantity for quality

Ditch your “go-to” long run for some hill training or fast exercise. Anything you feel you “have” to do may need a refresh. Your mind wants the fix but your body likely needs the break.  Override.

Use this example: Susan walks 3-miles most days of the week. For a boost in her results, she can trade two of those 3-mile walks for 30-minutes of power walking every other block. Her goal is to be so out of breath she wants to slow it down between those fast walks.

2. Try something new

Pickle ball, hiking, paddle boarding, or suspension yoga might be calling. Answer. Don’t rule out low calorie-burning activities. If you love them, chances are they’ll be helping decrease your stress level. That will help you with weight management. There are likely things that have been around for years you’ve never tried. Take a Tai kwon do lesson or show up for badminton next week. Decide that you’re going to boost afternoon productivity by walking for 30 minutes of your lunch hour.

If we use Susan from the example earlier, we might suggest she do some kickboxing for a change. Walking is wonderful activity but it’s linear, meaning it only moves you in one plane of movement your body needs to be truly fit. A boxing workout will add some rotation and lateral movement that will really increase Susan’s overall fitness level.

3. Increase your overall activity and decrease “workouts”

Used to long workouts at the gym? Shorten your workout to 30 minutes and spend the afternoon hiking and exploring somewhere new instead. The exchange is an excellent hormone-balancing, stress-relieving flip that may burn fewer calories but result in weight loss faster because of happy hormones.

The sweet spot for exercise frequency is twice a week. It seems when you exercise enough to get stronger and boost stamina and endurance you will be more active in your daily life. That results in more energy expenditure. Be sure that your workouts aren’t wearing you out so much that you end up recovering on the couch.

4. Get the Goldilocks frequency for your weight workouts

In a recent study, lifting twice a week vs. once resulted in a lean weight gain of 3.1 pounds compared to the .7 pound lean gain in one time a week exercisers.

If you’ve gotten into the Monday-Wednesday-Friday habit just because that’s when class is offered or you think more is better, rethink. Data from the aforementioned study showed that lifting twice a week resulted in more energy expenditure. Researchers believed the more frequent exercisers compensated with more couch time while the twice a week lifters had more energy and were overall much more active throughout their days.

5. Avoid blowing your efforts with wrong nutrition timing

How you fuel after exercise also either positively or negatively impacts your muscle. Post-exercise meals high in protein with minimal carbohydrate supported more positive hormone response. Ingesting too many carbs post exercise negates positive hormone change in growth hormone and testosterone, both necessary for lean muscle production. If you’re older, consider waiting an hour after vigorous exercise and bumping your protein intake a bit. There’s a blunting effect after exercise that prevents you from using that protein, and older adults don’t synthesize protein as well so it takes a little more.

Remember our friend Susan? Say she plans her workouts after work. Once she’s back home she prepares dinner. If she’s timing things right she’ll be ingesting a high quality protein meal at the perfect time for her body to process protein. She may want to jump in the shower before she heads to the kitchen to prepare a quick meal so she can optimize the benefit of the walk for her muscles.

6. Try yoga as a fat burner

No, I haven’t lost my marbles. Yoga is not notoriously a big calorie-burner. Yet, it can be a big boost in your ability to burn fat by reducing cortisol. No, you don’t need to go into a heated room and start dripping sweat before you even down dog to get results. Just the mindful breathing in and breathing out can help.

If you’re an emotional eater (aka, have a heart rate), it might be especially helpful for you to start a yoga practice that happens right before your evening meal. A few minutes can make a big difference.

The simple awareness yoga gives you of your body may be to thank for slowing you down when you eat.  Whether you’re on the floor in a restoration yoga pose feeling your belly rise and fall with the breath, or doing a more vigorous flow actually using your core to move pose to pose, both are equally effective at bringing you into the moment. When you sit down at the table with mindfulness you’re more likely to make good decisions.

The post Spring training tips for better fitness fast appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

If you take that 60 minutes and toss the wasted time chatting, checking the cell phone or waiting for the machine you want at the gym, and replace it with a plan, like I’m about to show you, there’s a good chance you’ll find the time, workout more often and see great results!

Think of this as a make-your-own workout. It’s essentially the fast-fitness equivalent of ordering at a fast-food place. You can follow my routine in the video or just create your own. The process is below…

1. Choose your lower body exercises and your upper body exercises. You can do your workout with body weight-only or add some props if you’ve got them.

Lower Body Exercises

• Squats
• Squats – Plie
• Lunges – rear
• Lunges – side
• Lunges – walking
• Lunges to a kick
• Front kicks – singles or ladder
• Side kicks – singles or repeats
• Knee lifts
• Hamstring curls – standing
• Bridge on the floor – floor or ball
• Hamstring curls (ball)
• Side step (band)

Upper Body Exercises

• Chest Press
• Push Up
• Renegade Row
• Bent Over Row
• Bent Arm Pullover
• Scapular Push Ups
• Retraction from prone
• Reverse Fly
• Chest Fly
• Shoulder Press
• Triceps Press
• Biceps Curl

2. Sequence exercises so you alternate lower and upper body exercises and feature major muscle exercises early in the workout. If you’re really short on time, you’ll only do major muscle group exercises. Hint: your biceps and triceps are small muscles than your hamstrings, chest, or back muscles.

3. Decide how much time you have to workout. Subtract the 5-minute warm up and cool down you need to do (don’t skip this). You’re left with the amount of time you can perform the circuit of exercises. This is your main set.

4. Divide the time you have for your main set by the exercises you want to do. If it’s less than 30 seconds per exercise, remove your smaller muscle group exercises. You want ideally 30-to-60 seconds per exercise. Biceps and triceps, for instance, can drop out if you’re short on time.

Sample 10-minute main set:

• Squats – narrow stance
• Push Ups
• Lunges – to the rear
• Renegade Row
• Squats – plié stance
• Shoulder press
• Bridges
• Bent Arm Pullover (weight or use a book or other prop)
• Lunges – alternating side
• Plank

Option 1: Do each exercise for 50 seconds and transition to the next

Option 2: Do each exercise for 30 seconds and repeat twice

Consistency is the key to success. You’ll elevate heart rate and stimulate those major muscle groups in minutes. Yes, you do have time.

The post Punch and kick your way to fit, firm body in minutes-a-day appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

1. If you drink coffee, try having your java right before a workout. There is proof that a little caffeine boosts your fat burning ability. If not coffee, try Matcha — the tea that keeps you young, fit and energetic. The green tea powder provides a concentrated boost of antioxidants along with a little less caffeine than you can expect from coffee. Taken 90 minutes before a workout so that it’s peaking in your bloodstream when you’re doing your warm up, a recent study shows it boosts fat metabolism by 29%!

2. Use a foam roller during your warm up, cool down, or between sessions. Self-myofascial release is not nearly as relaxing as having someone else massage you, but it has benefits. Increasing circulation, and ironing out knots helps improve health of your fascia, something now believed to be responsible for that “tightness” you feel even when you haven’t lost range of motion. If you’ve had a massage you know getting up from the table can feel like you could do anything. That’s exactly the point. Stiff and achy muscles or joints don’t want to work out. When movement feels comfortable you’re going to want to repeat it more often. It’s also the best way to get rid of cellulite.

3. Before and after each strength training exercise, stretch the opposing muscle group. If you’re going to do an exercise for your back, stretch your chest, do the exercise, and stretch the chest again. Why? In this particular example, it will help improve posture by lengthening the chest muscles so-often tight and short from our desk jobs. If you, like many, are quad-dominant, and the back of your thighs are not as strong as they should be to balance the front of your thighs, you’d benefit from doing a leg curl, stretching the top of your thighs, and repeating the leg curl. This “exercise sandwich” also helps provide a little ease to the motion. You’ll find you have a heightened awareness of the working muscles. Any time you combine mind and body you have a better chance of improving results.

4. Recover more. Rest more between exercises, if you want to increase your lean muscle tissue. To recruit more muscle fiber and experience a greater boost in metabolism, you’ll need more muscle fiber getting into the act. Instead of quickly turning around to do that second or third set, rest that muscle two-to-five minutes. In addition to this during session rest, consider resting longer than the standard 48 hours before exercising the same muscle group again. This is true especially if you’re an older adult. Yet, the truth is that many overzealous exercisers start and want results yesterday. The over training that happens if you’re not fully recovered and workout hard again, keeps you from making improvements.

5. Turn off inflammation caused by exercise. Stock the kitchen with heart-healthy avocado, fish oil, salmon, and other omega-3 rich fats and reduce sugar, processed foods, and your intake of omega 6 fats — including nuts. You can have some, just don’t over do it. When you’re feeding yourself well you’ll experience fewer achy joints your body will more naturally repair after strenuous exercise. If you’re worried about your cravings for sugar, try increasing your fat, protein, and fibrous vegetables for a month and you may find without trying your cravings disappear.

6. Take it outside. This is obviously more easily done with some exercises than others. But it’s long been know that walking in nature compared to walking in a city or on a treadmill indoors has a much more positive impact on stress levels. That said it’s highly likely that exercise of any kind is better for you outdoors than indoors. Look for ways you can make that happen. Instead of putting your treadmill at incline, can you find a hill and repeat runs up and down? Instead of lifting those dumbbells in the basement, could you lift on the front porch or the deck? If you reduce your stress level, and the accompanying stress hormone cortisol, you’ll experience better results from your exercise since exercise itself can increase cortisol.

The post 6 ways to get better results without breathing harder appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

The exercises most commonly recommended often are just too much. Squats and lunges are exercises that can cause more harm than good. How then, can you exercise?

If you’re caught between a need to exercise so you can manage your weight, and your stress level, but are limited by joint pain or paying for exercise with worsening problems afterwards, this is for you.

This episode of Flipping 50 TV features a question from Lora, who in addition to suffering with hip joint issues, is also experiencing stress and fatigue because her busy schedule leaves little time for self-care.

I’m sure a lot of us can relate… so see what I recommended for her — which includes some personalized exercises, minute meal tips for breakfast and supper, and inflammation-dousing tips — and put it to work for you to achieve your fit life…

Though there may be things you can’t do, there are always things that you can do to achieve a fit life. Focus on those solutions.

Nutrition choices can help reduce your pain and improve your results even with less exercise. Don’t negate the fact that if you have joint issues, pain, or inflammation, your dietary choices can help turn off that inflammation and help you be more comfortable too.

The post Stop the pain and stress stealing your fit life appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

If you can great… I do tell my clients to lift as heavy as they safely can.

However, it often isn’t the prudent thing to do. You may have concerns about your joints that require you to lift lighter weights.

You may not feel safe lifting heavy weights at home alone without a spotter. Or you may simply prefer lighter weights.

There might however, come a time when you want more results and you’re unsure of how to do it without getting hurt. I’ve got the answer here today…

The first taught technique for weight training is lifting in 1-2 seconds and lowering in 3-4 seconds. The reality is lifters tend to do a 1–2 second lift and a 1-2 second lower. We’re all in a hurry!

Whether you maintain the slower option or know you rush it, changing your tempo is one way to change your results. Think of a four-part sequence with each number assigned as follows:

• Lift = the first number
• Hold = second number
• Lower = third number
• Hold = fourth number

Using this formula we’ve made a little change by adding a pause or hold at the top and bottom of the lift. But that little change can make a big difference. Why? By holding the weight longer, your muscle is under tension longer. It’s one way to make the same weight feel heavier without increasing risk of injury by actually increasing the amount of weight you’re using.

Try doing a chest press with your usual lift and lower in 1-2 seconds each method.

Then try 2-2-4-2. That is, lift in two counts, hold at the top two counts, lower in four counts, and hold at the bottom for two. This should feel much different.

Another one to play with is 3-2-6-2. See what happens when you make your muscles keep guessing!

The post How to get heavy-weight results lifting light weights appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Before you hit the treadmill for hours on end or register for the bootcamp that promised to torch calories, read this…

As a midlife woman going through hormone changes, you have a unique set of challenges. Mind you, you are not broken. I repeat; you’re not broken.

You do need something different than the most recent spewing of research on fat burning optimization, however.

You need research that directly pertains to you.

Cortisol levels rise with age and are elevated during menopause.  So it’s only natural that during menopause your body is much more susceptible to the negative impact of cortisol.

That makes exercise for women going through menopause tricky. Exercise increases cortisol levels, some exercise more than others.

Short intense bouts of exercise can increase human growth hormone (HGH) and testosterone, and these hormones help you increase lean muscle that boost metabolism. This includes short weight training sessions (ideally twice a week) and short interval training sessions.

Too much of a good thing, however, will backfire on you

What you need as a woman in midlife who wants weight loss is the exercise sweet spot where there is an increase of hormones that play a positive role in supporting lean muscle… and a decrease in the level of hormones, namely cortisol, that encourage fat storage.

Short intense bouts of high intensity interval training (HIIT) are good. Long intense bouts of high intensity interval training begin to increase cortisol levels.

But here’s where we mess up…

It’s not uncommon for us to think that if a little is good, more must be better. You know who you are. So, if you tend to think that 20 minutes of HIIT is good, it’s not a big leap for you to assume that 30 minutes would give you even better results.

But if you go for it and you’re not seeing results — try reducing your exercise time. It’s likely that the longer workout is pushing you into elevated cortisol levels where your progress is halted.

Long duration, moderate and high intensity activity also increases cortisol. In You Still Got It, Girl! I reported that at about seventy-five minutes of moderate activity, or shorter duration of sustained level of high intensity activity, cortisol increases.

On the other hand, relaxing activities that might be ignored because they don’t burn as many calories can reduce cortisol levels and therefore have a positive effect on fat loss.

Walking outdoors anywhere is helpful, but walking while communing with nature is most helpful at reducing cortisol, according to a study in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology back in 2007.

Enjoy biking, canoeing, hiking, paddle boarding? Go for it. Do your activity outdoors, in a natural setting if possible. The treadmill in your dark, dingy basement doesn’t have the same results. Head to the park if you’re in the city, and definitely take advantage of those country roads if that’s where you live.

Weight gain during menopause is a common complaint. The intuitive response is cut calories and increase calorie expenditure. Increasing exercise activity and decreasing caloric intake may backfire on you however. It is not just about the burning of calories but about hormone activity that results from activity, inactivity and your lifestyle.

Don’t choose your activities merely based on how many calories they burn, but on your joy factor.

The post So you want to lose that menopause weight? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

We’ve got so many things draining our energy, stealing our attention and vying for our time that we truly do need to take time to protect ourselves from being depleted.

The place to start is to first discover what’s draining your energy because to get it back, you’ll need to stop the leaks…

Imagine a siren going off right outside your window. It would be an obvious stressor that would get your attention in a big way — and you would have an immediate reaction to. You could close the window or go to the other side of the house.

A physical pain from injury is another big attention-getter. You’ll do something right away to reduce or eliminate it. You might try ice, heat or a bandage.

What about the more subtle drains on your energy? The every-day strain of muscles that are made tight or passively pulled goes more-or-less unnoticed, unless, that is, you’re a Medical Exercise Specialist.

I regularly see people who have repetitive action or posture discomfort they neglected for far too long. This can result in upper back and neck pain and strain—which are among the biggest complaints I hear from women.

And as my colleague Jenny Smiechowski pointed out, poor posture is a downer.  Sitting up straight is the easiest, quickest way to get out of the dumps, feel better and feel like you have more energy. But if your back and neck is strained, even just sitting up straight can cause pain.

I recommend reducing the pain by reducing chronic passive lengthening of muscles in the upper back and chronic tightening of the anterior shoulder and chest muscles. These two phenomena happen easily if you’re hunched over a keyboard for hours every day.

To relieve that tension you can include some simple pulling exercises that make up a good overall resistance training program. You’ll want to sequence these so that you stretch, then strengthen, and then stretch once again.  It’s a 2:1 ratio.

Use the following two videos to help you perform a posture-enhancing exercise routine. Begin with the chest stretch in my first video, and then follow with the row in the second one. Complete the sequence by going back one more time to the chest stretch in the first video…

If you perform multiple sets, repeat the “chest stretch, row exercise, chest stretch sandwich” for best results.

The post Stretch for less pain, better posture and more energy appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

2. Do have a snack before exercise. A small snack with protein and fat will boost energy during your workout and keep you from crashing or being distracted with hunger. Though there is a lot of talk about burning more fat if you exercise fasted, you’ll spend the most energy if you feel good. More energy spent will equate to more fat burned. But if you choose protein powder, choose wisely.

3. Don’t skip your warm up. The longer and slower you warm up, the more oxygen you’ll get pumping to your muscles during your exercise session. You’ll not only be more comfortable but potentially you’ll spend more energy. Energy expenditure is tied to oxygen consumed during and after exercise.

4. Plan your highest intensity exercise early and do more calming walks or yoga later in the day. Short intervals or weight training sessions in the morning can boost your metabolism all day, especially if you’re fighting stress or a hormone imbalance, without keeping you up at night.

5. Reach fatigue. Whether you go light on weight training or you can safely go heavier, you must reach fatigue to see the most development in lean muscle and in bone density that can help protect you from the crippling danger of sarcopenia as you age. You’ll know you’ve hit fatigue when you can’t quite complete your last repetition with good form.

6. Train fresh, not in a fatigued state. At first glance this may seem to contradict tip #5. To clarify, you always want to spend more time training with perfect form, not just more time training. If you have a history of low back pain for instance, you need to spend a lot of time training with perfect technique in non-fatigued states. You may want to do your core work in short sessions throughout the day instead of one long session after your cardio.

7. Add single-leg lower body work to your routine. It can be much more spine-friendly than bilateral (two-legged) work. Simply going to a split-stance on other exercises can be helpful for minimizing unwanted spine movement, too.

8. Bigger muscles matter most in metabolism. Focus first on lower body exercises that you can safely do. Squats and lunges are great if you can tolerate the weight bearing. If your knees or hips complain, try bridges and hamstring curls with a ball. Then add a push exercise and a pull exercise each for your upper body. On those busy days, this might be it. Because each of those three exercises uses many muscles, you’re covered.

9. Cool down like it’s your job! Stretch those muscles and do 5 minutes of light cardio before you finish and you’ll make your next workout better even before you’re done. The faster you recover, the faster you can do another high-quality session. Do everything you can to facilitate better recovery. That includes proper nutrition (see the next point!) and good sleep.

10. Plan a high protein meal 60-90 minutes after moderate to vigorous exercise when your muscles are ripe for repair and rebuilding. Studies show older adults don’t synthesize protein as well as younger adults. A higher amount of protein consumed post-exercise will help you keep the lean tissue you’re working so hard to create and spare muscle losses that can occur with age or following exercise breakdown.

The post 10 pro tips to make any workout count appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And if you want to watch the YouTube videos that suggest you should try for the record 8-minute plank hold — go ahead, just don’t try it yourself.

The truth is there is limited return on your investment when you exercise like that.

Why? With fatigue comes risk. Your best exercise form and function is at the beginning of an exercise. That’s going to make doing repeats of more short planks make more sense to you.

There’s another reason why six 10-second planks may be better for you than holding a plank for a minute…

If you’re just starting out, your muscles don’t have a very long attention span. The most important job they do is “turn on.” Think about any time you may have injured or strained a muscle. It’s either at the start or near the end of exercise. The muscles either don’t turn on or get sloppy and lose form with fatigue.

That’s why your focus should be turning them on as you’re beginning an exercise program. Endurance and stamina will come.

Repeats to the rescue

Start your plank with six 10-second repeats. When those get easy, move on to four 15-second repeats. As you increase the hold, decrease the repetitions. It’s still a minute any way you slice it.

Once you’ve reached a minute, try plank variations instead of longer holds. Challenge your body either with different exercises or by moving your limbs while holding the core stable.

The post One minute to a flatter belly and less back pain appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

You either want to find short exercise you can fit in to a busy schedule, or you want the optimum fat burning potential with your exercise. You can have both with interval training.

And it seems you can also slice and dice your interval workouts to suit you…

Would you rather go at it hard for 2 minutes or eight?

A study done comparing two interval protocols revealed it’s the total volume of work that mattered. Using a minute of high intensity intervals and a minute of recovery 16 times compared to doing 4-minute high intensity intervals with three minutes recovery four different times got similar results in subjects.

If you’re doing math you know that the total high intensity work volume in both examples is 16 minutes. That’s the key to results. The amount of high intensity exercise you do matters most. That said, you could play with the variables in the following way.

1. 16 one-minute high intensity intervals with 60-90 second recovery
2. Eight two-minute high intensity intervals with 3 minutes recovery
3. Four four-minute high intensity intervals with 3 minutes recovery
4. Two eight minute high intensity intervals with 5 minutes recovery

Consider that you will naturally be able to work harder during one-minute intervals than you can for four or eight minutes. Ideally, you’ll mix it up and have more fun, as you enjoy greater fitness. You will likely default to a favorite. Try not to over do it.

To grow your fitness tool kit, play with other numbers. How would you slice and dice 20 minutes of total interval training? The important thing to remember about intervals is keeping the total volume of time shorter than if you were doing slow steady state exercise is wise. The chance that you will truly achieve high intensity exercise is better when you keep the time short.

Motivation to keep you going

So you’ve decided how you want to time your high intensity intervals and recovery time. Now it’s time to choose some tunes…

That’s because it just might help you push yourself a little harder. According to a post by my colleague, Jenny Smiechowski, a study published by researchers from the University of British Columbia found that listening to music while you start a new HIIT routine makes the adjustment easier.

“Newer research has established that as little as 10 minutes of intense HIIT, three times per week can elicit meaningful health benefits,” says study researcher Matthew Stork. “For busy people who may be reluctant to try HIIT for the first time, this research tells us that they can actually enjoy it, and they may be more likely to participate in HIIT again if they try it with music.”

The post Burn fat better with interval exercise appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

On the other hand you may pull out those sleeveless tops and run screaming back into the dressing room.

Help is here. In just a few weeks, you can get stronger, sleeker toned arms that you’ll be proud to show off.

All you have to do is get busy! You’ll want to do these exercises in today’s video at least two times a week minimum and three times a week ideally. Try using weights that cause you to fatigue at 10 or fewer repetitions on one or two of your workout days, and then use slightly lighter weights that cause you to fatigue in 15 or 20 reps on the other day(s).

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Here are some tips to get the most from this workout…

Mix it up. Keep the muscles guessing by varying the weight you use mentioned above and also by changing the sequence of the exercises.

Just one set? You’ve got options. Because you’re using multiple exercises for the same muscle group, a single set may be enough for your first couple of weeks. When you feel you can tolerate more, add a second set. As long as you keep the weight heavy enough to reach fatigue you’ll see results even if you stick with one set.

Inevitably, you may not be able to do one or more of these exercises. That will still leave you with a handful of exercises that focus on the back of your upper arm.

1. Lying triceps press
2. Standing or kneeling triceps press
3. Eccentric triceps push-ups
4. Triceps kickback
5. Triceps long arm lift
6. Triceps combination

A few details

To improve visible muscle tone you can’t focus solely on a single muscle group. You need to target your other muscles and fat stores too. That takes some focus on adequate protein, reduction of sugar and foods that easily turn to sugar as you digest them, and a combination of cardio and strength training that focuses on major muscle groups.

The post 6 exercises for sleeveless, toned summertime arms appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Well, you’re not alone…

A cooled sex drive is common among women of all ages for quite a number of reasons, including body changes that can make your confidence levels plummet. Believe me, nothing tanks a libido faster.

The pharmaceutical companies have left us to fend for ourselves for the most part. But I’m not sure that’s a problem. Any time I can boost my health naturally and live without the dangerous or annoying side effects of drugs, I’d much rather take that route.

The good news is there’s a workout for everything — whether the desire is there, but the body’s not willing… or the body’s willing but the desire’s not there.

First and foremost, exercise is a great libido-boosting strategy because it can reduce the effects of cortisol, which can notoriously squelch your sex drive. But it doesn’t stop there…

Follow these tips and you’ll be on your way to renewed intimacy — and another source of motivation for sticking to your regular exercise routine:

1. Exercise vigorously early in the day if possible. You’ll help manage cortisol levels better by exercising when they’re highest. You can absolutely add calming exercises like yoga, stretching or walking the dog later in the day.

2. If you’ve been focusing on those big metabolism-boosting exercises like squats and lunges, continue them but add a secret weapon: Hip thrusts, or bridges, whether on the floor or with your feet propped up on a ball will increase blood flow to the pelvis and hips. That’s what happens during intimacy, so mimicking that with exercise can help you get things going down there.

3. Simply lift more weights. Whether that’s making sure you hit the weights twice a week or that you reach fatigue, lifting weights will help you with your body confidence. The better you feel about your body, the better you’ll feel with a partner, whether you leave the lights on or off.

4. Plan your workout strategically. It’s about feeling better with short, slightly more intense exercise, not feeling tired! You want your exercise to prepare you for performance whether you’re an athlete or a romantic. Give up long, slow exercise or anything that you don’t bounce back from within two hours.

5. Post exercise, remember to refuel with adequate protein to rebuild those muscles and help you feel lean and strong.

6. Evaluate your quality of sleep. Most people who find that sweet spot, or perfect “dose” of exercise, report they sleep more soundly — even if the quantity of sleep doesn’t increase. Too much or too little exercise may leave you tired from poor sleep. When you wake feeling fully rested, you’re going to be a lot more likely to want to play a little before bedtime than choose your pillow over your partner.

7. If hot flashes in the gym are squelching your motivation for working out, it’s potentially your stress hormones. Follow the six tips above to keep your cortisol lower. You may also benefit from a few natural intimacy herbs like maca, and rhodiola.

The post Libido-boosting exercises for every woman appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Core exercise is one of those things that you just can’t skip out on. So, if you’re begrudging them or finding your routine stale, here’s a fun solution…

But before you attempt to do any of these you do want to be sure that you’ve got a good core foundation already. If you’re unsure, watch the video through to the end (it’s barely a minute long), then go through the movements slowly if you need to get familiar with them. You’ll want to have already mastered these moves, so that when you string together for a quickie, their effective.

Once you’ve done that, adding a little choreography to your core workout can add challenge without adding time to your workout. Choosing moves that involve both upper body and lower body alternately make your core work a bit harder to stabilize. This kind of sequence will help your daily activities of life and you sports and leisure activities easier too.

Click start to get going. Add some music so you keep the beat and enjoy it that much more!

• Tap opposite shoulders 4x
• Lower to forearms and press back up
• Double knee to opposite elbow
• Tap foot to the side 2x each right and left leg

Make up your own sequence with movements you already use.  Trade dozens of repeats of the same move for a few and then add another move.

The post Fun one-minute core exercises that work appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But there’s research that counters that…

If you sit all day and you’re already fairly fit, and exercise regularly, you’re NOT at higher risk for weight gain, or disease than someone who has a more active job.

Though it might seem reasonable to think that someone who styles hair all day or teaches kindergarten would naturally be more fit than someone who sits at a desk eight hours a day, it’s not the case…

Unless, of course, you tell yourself that your job is killing you and you sit too much.

So stop. Look at the ways you are busy and engaged… already standing… moving… fidgeting… wiggling… and walking throughout your day.

I have a great example of what I mean…

A study done by Alia Crum at Columbia University proved that thinking the activity you’re already getting is beneficial to your health — without any other changes — improved physical status like weight, body composition and blood pressure.

One group of hotel maids was told just that about their job — that cleaning 15 rooms a day was exercise and that it counted as beneficial activity.

A group of identical maids was not told what they were doing was beneficial, though were given the message that exercise is necessary for good health.

There was no change in activity for either group pre and post study. That only thing that changed during the four weeks was the maids’ perception of what they were doing. The 44 told what they were doing provided the physical benefits of exercise experienced weight loss and other health improvements.

What does that mean? Your thoughts can change the physical response in your body.

Ellen Langer, Harvard researcher, calls this a psychological prime, a trigger that causes the body to take curative measures all by itself.

Of course, what you’re doing does have to be good for you. Believing that smoking is good for you would not override the physical damage science has proven smoking does to the body.

But your mindset about your lifestyle can have a major impact on your health.

How do you overcome your own negative thoughts and patterns? Surround yourself with a community or friends that are doing what you’re doing — or what you want to be doing — is key to changing your habits with less resistance and more support.

Your own internal resistance to change, whether it be adding a positive habit or stopping a negative habit, is natural. It applies to both your thoughts and to actions. Overcoming additional external resistance from others can make your need for willpower just too much. All of that creates too much swimming upstream.

You’ve got to counter that. And these four steps will support your positive mindset:

1. Identify negative self-talk and negative comments from others.
2. Shift your own words and recognize that you can’t change anyone else.
3. Acknowledge that you need positive, not negative, and also not neutral, support.
4. Ask for support you want and need in order to shift your exercise thoughts, and therefore your actions.

Making the change for more physical activity

Say you want to add some additional activity to your day in addition to positively thinking about your health. Imagine you’re starting a new exercise routine and you’re uncomfortable in a new environment. You may feel uncoordinated, like a fish out of water.

In addition to a supportive environment, use cues, triggers and rewards. One cue might be that you place your shoes by the bed in the morning. Pack your gym bag so it’s ready in the car after work.

Beware of triggers that either prevent you from making a positive change, or encourage a habit you’re trying to give up. If you’re hungry before starting exercise… if you can see laundry or piles of mail… or someone calls and invites you out for cocktails — these are triggers.

If you have a dish of candy on your desk or there’s pizza in the break room while trying to give up sugar or eat more healthfully, these are triggers. Try to increase your cues and decrease your triggers.

Incentivize yourself or make yourself pay if you miss. These tricks don’t actually change the way you think.  However, they may temporarily help you set a new habit in place long enough for intrinsic motivation to take over.

When people tie their big life values to changes that they want to make, they end up feeling better about themselves and also less stressed about making changes. Change is stressful even if it’s a change you’re choosing for yourself.

When you catch yourself saying, “I wanted to do ________, but life got in the way,” or you hear someone else saying, “ I can’t, I have too much to do,” what’s being said is, this is the tipping point, it’s too much and I can’t handle this right now.

You may not be able to do it all right now. You only have so much bandwidth. What can you do?

If you have an ideal, what I call a plan A, and you hold yourself to that being the only option, then you leave yourself few choices. You either win or lose. Success, though, is usually a continuum.

If you add a plan B, a second best, you give yourself room to still be successfully on the path.

Adding one more option, a plan C, means you can do what is most important to success in any area of life. You are consistent.

Maybe your ideal is a plan that involves morning interval training twice a week, weight training twice a week, two longer activities on weekends and a yoga class two evenings a week. Your morning exercise is typically about 30 minutes long. That’s your plan A.

Your second best, plan B, might be the morning exercise plus yoga at home with a dvd or a ten minute practice on your own when you don’t make it to class.

Your plan C, if-all-else-fails, option may be 10 minutes of something in the mornings during those crazy weeks.

Sources:

1. https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/44/6/1909/2572591/Associations-of-sitting-behaviours-with-all-cause

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17425538

3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17425538

4. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3196089/Langer_ReducingStereotyping.pdf?sequence=1

The post ‘Thinking’ yourself fit exercise works appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

If you dislike strength training or can’t find time to fit it in and you suffer from sitting-too-much syndrome (like many of us), there may be a simple solution…

Some yoga poses offer a great solution to strengthening the gluteus medius, which should be the target of your attention. Why?

Because a weak gluteus medius is often a factor in hip injury or pain.

Even if you’re exercising you may not be targeting this smaller muscle on the side of the hip (the gluteus maximus gets way more attention in most exercises). But with a few balance poses that you can do anywhere, you can work both sides of the hip at once. Watch my video to see how easy it is to get started…

If you’re worried your balance isn’t good enough, it’s okay to use a support — hold onto your desk chair if necessary. It won’t reduce the engagement of the muscles in your hip or the good the exercise is doing for you.

The post Strengthen your desk-bound hips and reduce injury appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Many of the problem solving skills that come with training come from covering sciences that include not just kinesiology, and physiology but also the endocrine system, nutrition and immunity. And much of it comes from life experience as well as a long history of either research or first-hand experience.

But when I present educational content to trainers about how to help during their clients during hormone transition, I have to share that — with some signs and symptoms — the best solution for a client is to temporarily stop exercise and focus on restoring energy.

Inevitably, at least one personal trainer will resist the idea — because arguably most of us are too inactive. It’s the truth. But the trainer that encourages someone in adrenal fatigue or cortisol burnout to exercise more or harder is only going to make a problem worse.

Eventually, the adrenals can be restored. They’ll bounce back and in less time with the right kind of attention to lifestyle habits. Finding the right personal trainer is key to boosting your results and getting going in the right direction from the beginning. You’re not a text book. So, a text book answer isn’t going to work.

That’s why it’s important to consider the big picture that most trainers do not…

1. Hormones, not calories control weight. Then it becomes not a matter of looking at how many calories you’re eating and how many you’re burning. You don’t need that resting metabolism test and it won’t help you reach your goals quite as simply as a math equation. There is an answer. It’s just in balancing your hormones to banish symptoms. By changing lifestyle habits and finding exercise of the right type and timing, based on your symptoms, you’ll see your goal faster.
2. Too much of a good thing could make you hold onto weight. Interval training is good. Long slow and low intensity exercise is good. Too much of either is not good. Even the best text book exercise could send hormones further out of balance. The best plan for you is based on signs and symptoms along with your goals.
3. You might need a complete exercise break to lose weight. If you’re hormones are out of balance or you’re experiencing adrenal fatigue, a rest before you begin to exercise might be your smartest decision. Dedicate time and energy to improving your lifestyle habits, ones you may have had for a long time and not realized they were having a negative impact on your health.
4. Exercise is stress on your body. Usually, when it’s well-planned it’s a positive stress. Yet, if you’re carrying a load of stress that’s too much- between emotional, financial, exercise, or nutrition stress from too few or too few of the right calories… your body is going to break down easier than it’s going to get stronger. Make sure you and your trainer are factoring in your whole life when you plan your exercise program.
5. The RDAs are potentially sabotaging your weight loss. If you’ve got thoughts and habits you’ve learned in the past they potentially are limiting your needs today.
6. So called “healthy” foods aren’t healthy for everyone. Food sensitivities become more prevalent during hormone upheaval. You may not even realize you’re settling for low energy, or fatigue, until you do some testing on yourself in a systematic way.
7. Every exercise is potentially “functional” for someone. Functional is a buzz word among fitness professionals today. Truthfully, any exercise can be functional. As with any exercise you should have a reason for doing it. It should directly tie to the benefits or outcome you want.
8. No matter how many sessions you have or calories you slash you won’t lose weight if you’re not sleeping or you’re uber-stressed. Lifestyle habits play a big part of your overall results. You can’t outrun a poor diet, or a habit of hacking your sleep to get more done.
9. If he/she gets you the fast results you want you’re going to lose as much muscle as fat and if you gain it back (because you can’t keep going at the same pace) you’ll gain back all fat. The extreme exercise programs that promise rapid results usually have extreme side effects.
10. He/she doesn’t really know if you need three meals and no snacks or five small meals a day. Trainers sometimes follow a philosophy they prefer, potentially the one that works for them. A thorough review of your needs, past experiences, current habits and signs and symptoms should determine what you do. Some hormones respond best with three meals and no snacks. It should be based on your needs and tested with you.

So how can you guard against advice that may not be personalized to you? Know yourself. As a woman flipping 50 you are unique and your approach to fitness is unique. Look for advice made especially for you, like my 10 ways to boost weight loss after 50, and more that I’ll be providing each and every week. And don’t forget to check out Flippin50TV.

The post 10 things your personal trainer won’t tell you appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

The truth is all that sitting that most of us do — at work, at home, driving and so on — puts pressure on your spine. So you may wake up after years of neglecting the muscles that should be supporting your body with pain and not understand why.

The core muscles are the ones that can take some of that pressure off of your back, and help you avoid the back pain and even debilitating injury that can impact your day to day activities.

But if your back hurts is it too late to work on strengthening your core? Absolutely not…

Here is a combination of exercises and stretches that are safe to do on a daily basis. These will strengthen the right muscles without additionally straining your back.

Included in this video are:

1. Bracing
2. Single Leg Marching
3. Pelvic rocking
4. Cat Cow Back
5. Thread the Needle

Remember, getting fit now is key if you want to be active and healthy during your second 50!

Not all exercise is appropriate for all people. Check with your doctor before beginning an exercise program particularly if you’ve had back pain.

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Imagine peeking in the window of a group training session. What you would commonly see is several different stations and individuals moving from one to the next moving fairly quickly with little rest in between exercises, and often with very fast paced repetitions during the exercises as well. Due to the speed of the activity and the short rest period between, the weight that individuals are lifting is typically lower than the weight they could lift in a more rested state.

Now imagine peeking in the window of the weight room. It’s fair to say you may also see some fast repetitions going on and a little momentum taking over the movement. When you watch a trainer teach a movement to a new exerciser, however, you’re going to see a slower, more controlled method.

Is one more beneficial than the other?

The ideal exercise protocol, or method, for you depends on several factors. Namely, you want to match your goal to the activity. Certain exercises lend themselves better to improving bone density, for instance. Others are best for energy expenditure (burning calories) during an activity.

For mature adults, the most common goals with exercise — though again every individual is different — include sparing lean muscle mass, increasing bone density, decreasing body fat and improving performance for both daily and sports activities. (My best exercises for women over 50 fit this bill well.)

For each of these goals, recent research suggests that using power (a combination of speed and strength) will help you achieve them, but there are a few rules you’ll want to observe…

Your optimal power is achieved with different loads for upper and lower body. High loads for lower body and moderate loads for upper body produced significantly more power than controlled speed training. So that’s a win for fitness bootcamp, or at least for progressing once you’ve got a good foundation of strength — from slow and controlled, to lifting as quickly as possible and then lowering in a slow controlled fashion.

There are some specifics that science suggests you want to adhere to as well.

Heavy loads of 80% with power for the lower body and moderate loads of 50% for the upper body were the most optimal for producing power. What does that feel like? That is a weight you can lift no more than about 10 times for your lower body, and a weight you can lift about 25-28 times for your upper body.

Meeting those guidelines is something easy to do with dumbbells or props in a bootcamp environment for upper body but not as easily accomplished for the lower body. Use of a machine weight of some type can assist you in doing that more safely and effectively.

The best advice before you choose your mode of exercise is to determine your goals. Then match the right protocol to them. You may be able to match a love for music, group camaraderie, and fitness with your personal goals knowing how to modify.

You can indeed make fitness bootcamp work for you if you love group training. It’s best for exercises of the upper body, however. You may find that supplementing your bootcamp-style class with a few exercises done in the weight room helps you get the lower body fitness you want however.

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But going deeper than cosmetic reasons let me tell you why I love hearing that as a personal trainer…

Nothing will reduce your risk of injury like a stronger backside.

Those gluteal muscles easily get lazy. When that happens you beg, borrow and steal from other muscles like your hamstrings, or strain your lower back. And often, an injury to knees, hamstrings or your lower back can be linked to weak glute muscles.

But, it’s easy to fix. If you’ve been doing basic exercises and you’re ready for a greater challenge give these a try… You’ll get the strength you need and a nice lift to boot!

Butt-lifting exercises

1. Step Ups
2. Lunge to Kick
3. Plie Squats

Do this set of butt-lifting exercises one time through — up to 15 repetitions, twice a week. To progress, add a second set. To further progress try adding weight by holding a dumbbell or wearing a weighted vest.

If your knees or hips need a bit more TLC, you can still firm your bum. Just try these 6 exercises for a toned rear and thighs that will target your glutes without stressing your knees.

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Do you finish a workout and then compromise the rest of your day trying to recover?

As a trainer who has worked with women for decades, I frequently see women seeking energy from exercise but actually digging themselves into a hole. That’s because in the early stages of adrenal fatigue most women don’t even realize what’s happening. We’re so used to pushing through, feeling tired, and constant to-do lists that low energy levels get swept under the rug. Who has time for that?

The first stage of adrenal fatigue is barely recognizable. The biggest problems don’t occur with the first stage. If you’re in good health, your body has reserves. If you don’t have those reserves initially and or you don’t get relief from the stressors and the situation progresses, that’s when your body is most likely to begin some breakdown.

There are four stages of adrenal fatigue that you want to know about so, as you dive into new fitness goals, you can understand the signs and symptoms your body is sending and handle them accordingly…

Stage 1

What’s Happening:

• Onset of a stressor (could be anything, i.e. job loss, family changes, loss)
• Elevated cortisol, DHEA, and insulin

Signs and Symptoms:

• Increased arousal and alertness
• Sleep may suffer

How to Cope:

When you have uncontrollable stressors, make changes that help reduce your self-imposed stress. For example, reduce the frequency, intensity, or duration of exercise. Why? Cortisol produces energy in emotionally, mentally or physically stressful situations in order to calm you down. When you exercise, you normally produce extra cortisol. So if your body is already producing it to help you deal with a stressor, you don’t need any extra from exercise.

Let some things go or get help around the house. Make meal prep easier with short cuts or making large batches of simple go-to make foods. That being said, make sure what you do eat is high quality whole food.

Stage 2

What’s Happening:

• Some drop in DHEA because of increased need for production of cortisol
• You’re tired but wired

Signs and Symptoms:

• Unhealthy reliance on coffee or sugar during this time
• Might be an unhealthy seek for control with routine, rigidity, or inability to shift gears
• You may be exhausted but have trouble sleeping

How to Cope:

Rely on support systems to help you identify when you’re mood is different. You won’t notice it as much as others when you’re caught in the storm. You may be exhausted but unable to sleep.

Get fresh air. Get time to yourself both with friends and alone doing something you enjoy. Buff up your nutrition through both food and supplements to target nutrient insufficiencies. Reduce your exposure to toxins in your environment.

Stage 3

What’s Happening:

• Further drops in DHEA and testosterone
• Sex hormone precursors shift to cortisol production

Signs and Symptoms:

• Increasing and constant tiredness
• Lack of enthusiasm
• Regular infections or illness
• Lower sex drive

How to Cope:

Shift gears into self-care to prevent a major bottoming out. Take a day off before and or after a weekend to extend your rest time. Unplug from social media. Elevate your nutrition game to add antioxidants (like astaxanthin) and boost overall food quality. Remove alcohol, reduce coffee, and remove any processed foods. Let rest and recovery precede exercise. Move, but primarily in recovery modes like yoga, walks, and outdoor activity. Do things that bring you joy.

Stage 4

What’s Happening:

• Your body is out of reserves
• The adrenals have already recruited other hormones

Signs and Symptoms:

• Extreme tiredness
• Lack of sex drive
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Weight loss
• Apathy

How to Cope:

Time off, patience and a complete change of lifestyle are required if things go this far: Consider changing a stressful job, especially if you have a long commute or too frequent travel. Nutrition needs to come to the forefront, with a focus on gut health. Stop exercise for now if you haven’t already. Add deep breathing and restorative yoga.

Get help bringing hormone levels to a balance as you make these lifestyle changes (an integrative or alternative physician can help).  Start listening to your body again. Shut down electronics whenever possible. Get outdoors daily for sunlight and fresh air. Guard your sleep and don’t let anything (pets, snoring companions, light) disrupt it. Set things in place to prevent this kind of burnout from happening again.

Your adrenals are linked to other systems in the body. Your thyroid levels can drop when your adrenals are going into high gear. That can be simply a sign of the body balancing itself. It’s not always a sign of thyroid problem initially.

Check in with your lifestyle habits. Prolonged and regular fatigue could be an early warning sign that you need to make changes now to reverse symptoms and prevent a more serious problem later. Time off, less but higher quality exercise and a reduction of overall stress load can lighten the load on your system.

We don’t take rest and recovery serious enough until we have to, and then often think the only option is a medication. Look first at nutrition, sleep, exercise and the presence of joy and peacefulness in your life. You have control.

The post When hormones drain your workout energy appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

About 40 million people in the U.S. suffer from arthritis. And when you hurt, the last thing on your mind is probably exercising.

But according to the Mayo Clinic, exercise is crucial for people with arthritis. It increases strength and flexibility, reduces joint pain and helps combat fatigue. So whether you suffer from osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis or another joint condition, moving will keep you feeling better. You’ve just got to choose the right kind of exercise…

If you suffer from knee, hip, or ankle pain, getting up and down from the floor to do exercises is a problem. Squats and lunges that focus on lower body can be painful. Water exercise can be an excellent way to reduce the effects of gravity and make exercise more comfortable, but it’s not always convenient.

I would recommend a plank-style exercise because it’s a great way to whip your core into shape. By adding core-building exercises into your routine, you can train your body to rely more on your muscles, and that can take pressure off your painful joints. And less pressure means less pain for you.

However you’ll need to practice a modified plank that won’t cause you more pain or injury. In my video, you’ll see a modified version you can try at  a couple of different levels. One should be just right for you, and hopefully you can work into the other levels.

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Give it a try and let me know what you think…

Start your plank with a high chair seat or the back of a couch.

Progress when that becomes easy to a lower chair.

To further progress, try the surface of a stable ottoman.

Tips for Plank Success:

• Focus on maintaining your core.
• Think of keeping the same space between the ribs and the hips throughout the exercise.
• The height of the leg you lift is not as important as maintaining that core and feeling the connection to your gluteal muscles in the hips.

For more ideas on how to exercise in your second fifty, watch the Flipping 50 TV show. Episode 1 shows you more ways to exercise so you don’t exacerbate lower body joint pain and episode 9 is all about how to reduce inflammation associated with arthritis. Start watching here.

The post ‘Train’ your body for arthritis pain relief, flexibility and strength appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

If you’ve got knee pain of any kind you will naturally compromise your gait to avoid it. That can cause a domino of other aches and pains elsewhere eventually.

In fact, your knee pain may not even be your knee pain. It may be from a weakness or lack of mobility in the hip or the ankle. Did you catch that? If you have joint pain often it’s the joint above or below where you feel that pain that is the culprit. So let’s start this new year by fixing or preventing a common weakness in those of us who sit too much during our workday and potentially extend that sitting into our time off.

The single leg squat, or even balance for you who are unable to move due to a lack of cartilage in the knee, can be a big vitamin for your lower body. That is, it can help prevent injury by enhancing alignment much like your daily vitamin helps prevent illness by keeping you nutrient sufficient.

To perform the single leg squat with proper technique, use the following tips:

1. Stand with your weight shifted back to your heel
2. Lift one leg up
3. Slowly lower 2-3 inches with an emphasis on taking your hips back
4. Allow the knee to go forward over the toes but not beyond
5. Looking down knee to toe ideally you’ll be able to see the toes at all points of motion
6. All motion should be pain-free. If you’re unable to move without pain simple try a balance in a slightly bent knee position for 15 – 30 seconds
7. Perform 15-20 repetitions per side
8. Add a second and third set after a week or two at each new progression

The post Knee pain? Exercise it away appeared first on Easy Health Options®.