Fitness & Wellness

It’s normal to want to maximize the benefits of any workout, especially when it’s cardio. Many cardio activities can require a longer workout. Running, walking, and riding a bike riding a bike are examples of a few that require more time to get the maximum benefit. That is, unless you use a HIIT—high intensity interval training—technique. There are other ways to max out your cardio and get more from every minute in the gym.

What is a HIIT workout?

The more intense your workout, the more you’ll benefit from it. HIIT workouts add to that theory. HIIT isn’t a specific workout but a way of doing any workout. You start at a moderate recovery pace for a short time, move to your peak intensity for half that time, and then go back to the recovery pace. By alternating intensity, you can go at peak intensity longer. You can use it with running, walking, or any type of cardio. Just continuously alter the pace. It builds endurance faster and burns more calories.

Use kettlebells during your workout.

Kettlebells provide four different types of workouts. They’re good for strength, flexibility, balance, and cardio. Swinging the kettlebell not only uses the muscles for breathing but also makes them work harder. The kettlebell isn’t centered, making the core muscles work harder to maintain balance. Kettlebell workouts also burn tons of calories, provide a total body workout, and are fun.

Don’t do the same old cardio workouts.

It might feel more comfortable doing the same type of cardio continuously, but it won’t give you the maximum results. If you only run as your cardio workout, your body becomes more efficient at it. That means it burns fewer calories. It also becomes a bit boring and less challenging. Alternate cardio workouts among several. Riding a bike, dancercising, running, walking, or rowing are a few ways.

• Take up an active sport or other activity that requires good cardio endurance. Cardio workouts prepare you for these activities, but the activities also provide a cardio workout while having fun. Have a weekly tennis session with a friend or join a group activity.
• Make sure you use the proper form to do each exercise. Doing an exercise wrong can minimize the benefits and even cause injury.
• If you’re at a sedentary job, get up and move for a few minutes every hour. Sitting for longer periods can reduce the benefits you get from regular exercise. Set a timer to remind you. Do stretches or just walk around.
• Eat a pre-workout and post-workout snack. The pre-workout snack provides the energy to keep you going at maximum potential. The post-workout snack helps boost recovery.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym

You may be using winter as an excuse to cover every inch of your body with clothing, including your legs. Spring and summer are just around the corner. Before you know it, it’s short and swimsuit season again. That means it’s the perfect time to start toning your legs and give them more definition. These leg workouts are the way to do it. You’ll get great results if you’re consistent. You can trim your thighs, tone your calves, and get rid of cankles in less than an hour every other day.

You can reduce cellulite and tone your thighs for a slimmer look in shorts and jeans.

Cellulite won’t completely disappear from exercise, but you can make it far smoother and less noticeable when you strengthen and tone the muscle tissues. Squats and lunges can help you do that. There are all types of squats to work different muscles and work muscles on different planes. A goblet squat starts with feet wider. Instead of knees going straight ahead when you squat, you push them out to the side. They work the inner thighs and regular squats work the outer thighs and the rest of the legs. Lunges are also good for the thighs and have several variations, like the side lunge.

Tone all parts of your legs, front, back, and sides.

Doing jumping plyometric squats is hard, but well worth the effort. It’s a variation of the squat. Jump up, then drop down into a squat position. Immediately jump up again and repeat in rapid succession. You’ll be out of breath but will work every muscle in your leg. Jumping lunges are similar to walking lunges, but instead of walking forward in a lunge position, you jump as you switch the forward leg to the back and the back leg forward.

You can tone your calves while you tone your ankles.

Many of the same exercises for your calves also improve the ankles. Calf raises can help tone the ankles. Calf raises can be hard to do at first. Start with simple calf raises, standing with feet shoulder-width apart. Push your weight down onto the balls of your feet while raising your body by lifting your heels. Once you have the technique, you can hold weights for weighted calf raises or do calf raises on stairs. You can even do seated calf raises.

To work the entire leg, leg circles are excellent. Lay on your back with your legs straight. Lift one leg, pointing the toe toward the ceiling, and make large circles, first clockwise and then counterclockwise.

If you’re overweight, losing weight should be part of your program to tone your legs. No matter how toned your legs are, if you have excess weight, it will make it impossible to see your hard work.

You can tone your legs by taking the steps instead of the elevator. You’ll also burn calories and build aerobic endurance. Running up the stairs may seem difficult, but don’t be fooled. Running back down tones your legs too.

Jumping rope is another at-home leisure activity you can do to tone your legs. It helps tone the ankles, thighs, and calves. Planks are also excellent for leg toning and toning the entire body.

If you’re frustrated because you can’t seem to lose weight, even though you believe you’re doing everything right, your hormones might be interfering with your weight loss. In many cases, people simply don’t realize how much they’ve eaten, which is why an exercise and food diary is so important. In some cases, however, the problem can come from hormonal imbalances. You can realign most imbalances naturally to help weight loss begin again.

You have far more hormones than just sex hormones.

Most people think of estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone when they hear the word hormones, but there are far more than just those three sex hormones. Hormones are messengers that trigger a variety of responses. Most hormones have another hormone that does the opposite job. For instance, glucagon increases blood sugar levels, while insulin decreases it. Leptin is the satiety hormone that tells you that you’re full and ghrelin is the hunger hormone that keeps you eating. Too much of one type of hormone can affect all areas of your body, including your weight.

If you don’t get enough sleep, you’ll produce more ghrelin and less leptin.

Since ghrelin makes you hungry and leptin makes you feel full, you can see how an imbalance in those two can negatively affect weight loss. To rebalance, you need to get more sleep. Too much insulin can cause insulin resistance. That makes it harder to open the cells to uptake glucose and causes even more insulin to rush to the rescue. It makes the problem worse. Excess insulin can cause the accumulation of belly fat. Higher amounts of insulin allow the body to store fat better, which accumulates on the belly.

An excess of the stress hormone cortisol can also lead to belly fat.

Just like excess insulin, there’s a link to an excess of cortisol and belly fat. You can control both cortisol and insulin by exercising regularly. It doesn’t have to be strenuous, although you’ll burn more calories when you do a HIIT workout or lift heavier weights. Cortisol is part of the fight or flight response. It prepares the body to do both. Exercise mimics fighting or running, so it burns off the stress hormones. Changing either one can help you lose weight.

• Cutting sugar and food with added sugar from your diet can make a difference in hormones. A high-sugar diet affects insulin levels, cortisol, and the thyroid. It can slow metabolism and add to weight gain.
• Sex hormonal imbalances can occur during menopause. Eating a Mediterranean-style diet and exercising can help. Cutting out coffee and food with added sugar, increasing fruits and vegetables, and consuming healthy fat also helps.
• Stress can affect all the hormones in your body. Learning ways to reduce stress levels can improve weight loss. It may be one reason yoga helps and is a reason exercise works.
• Dehydration increases the risk of hormonal imbalances, particularly cortisol levels. Hydrate frequently. Water and green tea are good. Green tea aids in weight loss and contains L-theanine, which helps reduce stress hormones.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym

There are so many different diets people in Houston, TX, recommend that it’s difficult to find one that’s best for you. One popular diet is the Keto or extremely low carbohydrate diet that puts your body into a state of ketosis. Other lower carbohydrate diets aren’t as drastic and allow the individual to include more carbohydrates in meals. Which one is the best? How many carbs should you have daily? There is no one correct answer. It’s all about individual needs.

Low carbohydrate diets use a percentage of overall calories to determine carbs.

There are three macronutrients. They are fat, protein, and carbohydrates. Typically, healthy diets allow between 45% and 65% of the calories to come from carbohydrates. The calories from carbs in low-carb diets are less than 40%. How do you translate calories into grams of carbs? It’s simple. One gram of carbohydrate is four calories. If you’re on a low-carb diet with 30% of your calories from carbs and you need to eat 2000 calories, multiply the calories by 30%. The answer is 600 calories. Now divide that by 4, since there are four calories per gram. The answer is 150 grams of carbs.

Your body needs carbohydrates.

The body uses carbohydrates for energy. The theory behind a low carbohydrate d is that it forces the body to use fat for energy, but you still need carbohydrates. Healthy carbohydrates provide nutrients your body requires. Carbohydrates offer fiber, phytonutrients, vitamins, and minerals often not found in protein or fats. Carbohydrates are a good source of fiber, which helps protect and improve the gut microbiome. Beneficial microbes in the gut that help the body function properly consume soluble fiber. Many healthy carbohydrates provide vitamins and minerals you can’t get from other types of food.

It’s all about the type of carb you choose.

When you consider how you calculate the number of grams of carbs necessary, it makes sense to that selecting healthier options is almost automatic. There are 3.9 grams of carbs in a tomato and.79.7 carbs in a slice of cake. You could eat 20 tomatoes and still have fewer calories than you would in that slice of cake. A healthy low-carb diet is about choosing the most nutritious option that’s lowest in carbs.

• If you wonder how many calories there are in the other two macronutrients, gram of fat contains nine calories. One gram of protein contains four calories.
• An average low-carb diet contains from 25 to 200 grams of carbs daily. That provides between 100 to 800 calories from carbohydrates.
• Most food is a combination of fat, protein, and carbs. You can’t find the number of carbs by simply dividing by 4. That’s because food like shakes and pastries also contain protein and fat.
• Cutting carbs too low can leave you feeling tired. Many people call it the keto flu. If you’re going on a low-carb diet, always check with your healthcare professional first, especially if you have a medical issue.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym