Category Archives: Fitness

These Books Can Help You Keep Your Fitness Resolutions Even If You Only Have 15 Minutes for Exercise (And I’m giving them away)

How are you doing with your new year’s resolutions? I’m betting that one of them included a commitment to exercise on a regular basis. It’s only four weeks into the year, but if the thinning crowd at the gym is any indication, this is the time when you see who’s serious about their fitness and who isn’t. If you’re in the latter camp, you MUST watch this engaging 10 minute video that explains why exercise is the single best thing you can do for your health. If this doesn’t motivate you to get with the program, nothing will.

If you do watch the video by Dr. Mike Evans, an Assoc. Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of Toronto, you’ll learn that even a half hour of daily exercise can be meaningful. Consider these recent research findings that he explained more fully in his talk:

• Just one hour a week of activity reduced the incidence of heart disease by almost half in one study.
• For every increase of 10-minutes in your walk to work, there’s a 12 percent reduction in your likelihood of getting high blood pressure.
• Compared with persons who watch no television, those who spent a lifetime average of six hours a day watching TV can expect to live five years less.

If exercising at least 30 minutes a day seems out of the question, given home and work responsibilities, take a look at Joan Pagano’s exercise books. Joan specializes in full-body strength training that can be done with minimal equipment at home, in the gym or on the road. They’re illustrated with step-by-step photos … [Read more]

A Wallet-Friendly Approach to Fitness. No Gym Required.

January is a time for setting new goals…and crowded gyms. It happens every year. Resolved to get fit and healthy, new members (or those who have been MIA) fill up group classes and the wait for using the cardio equipment becomes too long for my schedule. So, I’ve learned to be patient because I know that in just one month, most of them will be gone and I can return to my own, stress-free pace. Until then, I hit the outdoors for long walks and do Pilates floor exercises at home. It’s always a fresh reminder that there’s really no excuse for not exercising especially when there are so many fitness resources available on the web to help plan workouts and monitor how we’re doing. Here are just a few examples:

Visit the website of the American Council on Exercise and click on “Get Fit” to view their exercise library and illustrated workouts. You can indicate your target body part, experience level, equipment needed and workout type. This is the website for the organization that certifies fitness trainers, so you’ll find good instructions here. While you there, try out their handy fitness tools and calculators for estimating percent body fat, daily caloric needs, heart rate zone and BMI (Body Mass Index).

For Pilates enthusiasts of all levels, there are plenty of online videos by master instructor Elizabeth Larkam (whom I’ve taken classes with) as well as podcasts that you can download onto your phone or tablet and take with you anywhere. And you’ll find excellent instruction videos on YouTube including this one.

If you enjoy working out with an exercise ball, you’ll find tips and workout ideas in a series of free videos on this website. For core exercises using the fitness ball, watch these slide show demonstrations produced by the Mayo Clinic.

For a more individualized approach, check out Daily Burn, a new “personalized fitness platform” that delivers HD-quality, daily video workouts that are tailored to fit your unique fitness needs and goals. The videos are streamed to your computer, smart phone or other mobile device such as iPad or Android. There’s a membership fee of $30/month, but if this works for you, it’s considerably less than paying for a personal trainer.  They offer a free, 7-day trial if you want to give it a test run.

Finally, if you want to monitor your progress, check out the Free Fitness Tracker, where you can set fitness goals, track and measure progress and access their workout library of 300 exercises. As a member, you can even upload your own exercises to share with others.

If you’ve discovered other no-cost or low-cost online resources for fitness workouts, please let me (and other readers) know in the comment box below.

Here’s a Way to Practice Yoga on Your Terms

If you’re a Yoga devotee but find yourself often missing classes because you don’t have the time to travel to the gym to participate in a scheduled class, you should check out Yoga Tailor. It’s a website that customizes the site’s online yoga classes to fit the viewer’s expertise and available time.  Here’s how it works:  Once you’ve registered, every time you log on you’ll be asked how much time you have that day as well as your level of experience and whether you are pregnant or have back pain. Then you click on “customize” and the site creates a custom video that can be streamed immediately.  The programs change from day to day so you won’t get bored with one routine.  After a free trial period, it costs $7.99 a month or $59.99 a year.

Your Lovely Bones

Note from Wendy: Numerous studies have clearly established the benefits of exercise on bone density as we age.  But what kind of exercise?  For this guest blogpost, I asked Joan Pagano, an authority on the benefits of exercise for women’s health issues such as breast cancer, menopause and osteoporosis, to describe the basics of a bone-strengthening program.  She’ll follow-up later this week with a second blogpost that provides a more detailed plan that you can integrate into your workouts.  Joan is the author of six books, including my own favorite resource for strength training; Strength Training for Women.

Think about your strong, healthy bones and how they support you as you move through your day.  Picture your skeleton as the infrastructure of your body, a framework for your muscles and joints, and just imagine how life-changing it could be if the struts in that framework became weak and fragile, at risk of collapse.

Osteoporosis – which literally means “porous bones” – is a bone-thinning disease caused by a loss of mineral (primarily calcium) that weakens the bone structure.  It is a silent disease, with no apparent symptoms until a fracture occurs.  Exercise is a key factor in both preventing and treating this condition, but the strategies are completely different.  This column will highlight exercise for prevention and next week we’ll look at modifications if you’ve been diagnosed with osteoporosis. … [Read more]

Your BMI Score: Are You Fit or Just Acceptable?

Do you know that you don’t have to be overweight to have too much body fat? You can weigh in at what you think is your ideal range and normal body size, but still be considered obese and thus, at risk for future heart problems. This phenomenon of “normal weight obesity” is the focus of a report by the Mayo Clinic, whose authors estimate that as many as 30 million Americans fall into this category.  An informative feature story about this appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s HeartBeat Column this week.

Apparently, what’s most critical in evaluating whether you’re really fit or just acceptable is not your BMI score, the traditional measure for obesity,  but how much body fat you’re carrying around. … [Read more]

A Wallet Friendly Approach to Fitness

January is a time for setting new goals…and crowded gyms.  It happens every year.  Resolved to get fit and healthy, new members (or those who have been MIA) fill up group classes and the wait for using the cardio equipment becomes too long for my schedule.  So, I’ve learned to be patient because I know that in just one month, most of them will be gone and I can return to my own, stress-free pace. Until then,  I hit the outdoors for long walks and do Pilates floor exercises at home.  It’s always a fresh reminder that there’s really no excuse for not exercising.

For one thing, there’s so much available on the web to help us plan our workouts and monitor how we’re doing.  Here are just a few examples. … [Read more]

Do You Have an Attitude About Exercise?

I often write about the findings of research studies of interest to women in mid-life. However, I’ve recently learned about an opportunity to actually participate in one and I’m passing this information to you so you can sign up too.

It’s an internet study that is being funded by the NIH to explore ethnic differences in midlife women’s attitudes towards physical activity.  The goal is to “reduce health disparities in physical activity programs that serve ethnic minority women through the internet.”

The researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are seeking a total of 500 participants, 125 for each ethnic category (White, Hispanic, Black, Asian). To participate, visit their website  to learn more and see if you qualify. If you are eligible, you’ll receive a gift certificate of $10 per internet survey and an additional gift certificate of $50 for participating in an online forum for six months.

Exercise is the Best RX for Many Perimenopausal Symptoms

Daily exercise (and eating less) is certainly the best way to combat menopausal weight gain. But did you know that exercise also can help reduce more serious perimenopausal symptoms like heart disease, depression, and even bladder problems? An article I found on medpedia explains that in the case of heart disease, “a reduction in the heart-protective HDL cholesterol is common in perimenopause. Regular aerobic exercise elevates HDL and lowers triglycerides, glucose and blood pressure, thereby reducing heart-disease risk.” … [Read more]

RX for Belly Fat: Strengthen & Tone with Exercise

Can diet and exercise really eliminate belly fat? Recent research has shown that eating fewer calories, no matter what program you sign up for, will contribute to weight loss and thus, a smaller paunch.  But what about exercise?  Will just burning calories help eliminate the “muffin top” that a lot of middle-aged women (and men!) carry around?  Or do we need to target ab muscles with 100 crunches every day to do the trick?

… [Read more]

Shake Up Your Normal Exercise Routine!

Not only is it fun to find innovative ways to shake up your normal routine, but all the body’s systems need to be surprised with diverse patterns of stress in order to continue to improve.  When I’m out for a run, I automatically look for inclines to run up, stairs to hop down and places to throw in 20 jumping jacks.  One man out for his morning walk said to me in passing recently, “You look like a kid with nothing better to do.”  Little did he suspect I was working on building bone, tuning up my cardiovascular system and burning off extra calories.

… [Read more]