Fitness Maintenance

Fitness Maintenance

It is a lot easier to maintain your fitness than to try to regain it once it is lost.

The same applies to your muscular size and strength.

If you don't use your muscles they will become smaller and weaker and will require more effort building them back to their former condition than it would have taken to maintain them.

Fitness maintenance requires minimal effort once you have achieved a level that you are happy with.

If you are happy with the level that you have reached then there is no need to continue challenging yourself to reach higher goals.

Just by continuing on with fitness maintenance you will still be improving your overall health, as the more we exercise the better conditioned we get even if we are doing the same exercises with the same weights every week.

Naturally you will get more benefits if you strive to do better all the time, but sometimes it does a lot of good to have a break from trying to better yourself and just implement a program of maintenance for a while.

Generally people who do this find renewed enthusiasm after a while and either change or improve their training program.

Having a record of what you looked like, and what you were able to achieve when you started your fitness program, and where you managed to progress to, is often the best motivator to get back on a fitness program if you ever take a break.

Some people like to have a complete break for a short while before resuming whereas others like to continue with light training for a period of time.

Whatever works best for you is the action you should follow, keeping in mind that it is always easier to maintain fitness than to start again from a lower level.

Good Nutrition

Good Nutrition

Nutrition is a study in itself and there is far more than could ever be covered here. There are however some nutrition basics that will help you to get better results from your training.

Many people are against taking supplements, but fitness training does place additional demands on our body and sometimes this can only be addressed by taking good supplements.

There are many different brands of supplements on the market and these have been developed due to the growth of the fitness industry and the fact that more people are concerned about their health.

Eating the right food will go a long way to supplying us with the nutrition that we need however even the best foods can't always supply us with the requirements of our busy lives.

One of the main food items (if it can be called that) that needs to be eliminated from our diets wherever possible is sugar.

Sugar will add nothing to your health and can do a whole lot of damage and cause problems such as diabetes to occur even for those people who are following good fitness training programs.

You will need a level of quality complex carbohydrates to give you the energy to do your fitness training and also protein to help your muscles to recover and grow stronger.

These can be supplied through the foods we eat or by buying quality protein powders and nutritional supplements designed for people who train.

Recovery times can be shortened by supplements and taking supplements can enhance improvements in many aspects of fitness.

Good nutrition is probably the most important aspect of any fitness-training program, as it will ensure you are getting the maximum benefit from the work that you are putting in to your health.

It can be quite costly but the rewards can be quite impressive too.

Fitness is a Lifetime Investment

Fitness is a Lifetime Investment

The time we put into our fitness at any time throughout our life is an investment in our future.

Just as we try to build up our financial wealth, we should be doing the same with our health, as this will determine the quality of life we live as we age.

Consider the compound effect that smoking can have over the lifetime of a smoker and how detrimental it is to their health.

The opposite effect occurs when we do any form of fitness training even if it is only for a few minutes a day, or for short periods a few times a week.

We don't have to do hours of long intensive weight training 7 days a week to get fit. To lose weight we don't need to go on strict diets that are too hard to maintain.

It takes a long time for most people to get fat and this usually occurs from eating just a little too much of the wrong foods too often.

If we are to reverse that situation and only reduce our calories by 100 per day, which is something that most people can achieve without too much difficulty, then the effect after a year or so can be quite dramatic.

If we were to walk for twenty minutes three or fours times a week, we would be a lot healthier after a year of such exercise.

All these small changes won't encroach on our lifestyle to any extent but they can make the difference between normal activity when we age and the inability to get the most out of life.

The sooner we start to make these changes the more health we are investing in for our future. One of the best things about easy fitness like this is the fact that it gets even easier the more we do it.

When we make this type of on going fitness a part of our children's daily lives, they carry it with them into their adulthood. By laying the foundation now, as parents we are influencing the health of our grandchildren in a positive manner! That's a long term investment.

Is your child a bully?

One of the goals of our Momz Mean Business classes is to encourage mature females to bring a younger female to classes so that they will have the skills to avoid being bullied in school. It is a problem that is not going away. Many schools have instituted a ZERO tolerance level of aggression at school. The problem is that frequently both students are suspended, rather than looking at who was doing the bullying. That is insane!

Any way another issue that parents have talked to me about is how to tell if their child is the one who is doing the bullying. This is not an easy pill for any parent to swollow. To help identify those behaviors that may indicate a problem, here is a quick artical that I found. Hope it is helpful and we will see you in class!

If you suspect that your child is a bully, you should take steps to ensure that they do not harm others or start a habit of ridiculing people that will stick with them for the rest of their lives. Bullying can have serious consequences for children, including the bully. Children who bully are much more likely to get involved with drugs and crime later in life as well as have poor interpersonal skills. This is why it is important to stop them if they are bullies, not to mention all the damage they can do to other children.

If you think your child is a bully, there are some questions you can ask to determine if they really are, and behaviors you should look out for. If you know that your child has repeatedly hit, pushed, or otherwise hurt another child, this is a sign that they may be a bully. Not all children will exhibit this behavior in front of a adult or even admit to it, but habitually hurting others is a big bullying warning sign. If your child has ever ganged up with another child to hurt someone or asked their friends to hurt another person they may also be a bully.

If you have seen your child spread rumors about another child either when talking to a friend or through a note, email, or IM, then they may be a bully. Emotionally hurting other children is another common way that children bully one and other and is just as serious. If your child is a bully, they will use these methods to humiliate other children. Bullies will also exclude others from play and other activities to bully them so if you think your child is a bully watch for this behavior.

Good natured teasing does occur between children and chances are you will hear your child teasing their friends at one point or another. Teasing another child if it is unwanted or hurtful, indicates bullying. If you think your child is a bully, this teasing will not be good natured and between friends. It will be frequent and directed at children that they are not friends with. If you see your child doing this behavior make sure you let then know that it is not acceptable, and that it is not funny and will not help them to make healthy friends. Many times a bully does not understand the consequences of their actions and needs help understanding what can happen.

If you notice that close friends of your child partake in this type of behavior, it does not always mean your child is a bully but they may act along with their friends. It is common for a child to bully others because their friends do it, and even though they are not the one who initiates the bullying, they can suffer just the same. If you notice this type of behavior in either your child or their friends, make sure they know that bullying is not acceptable.