Workout Wednesday: Why it's never too late to start exercising

Whether you're young or old, it's never too late to start exercising.

Our local fitness expert Rhonda Muprhy explains all the benefits that come with staying active and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

If you were physically active at an early age that's great. However, if you didn't exercise regularly, it's never too late to start.Fitness may help with joint pain and stiff muscles. Exercise also lowers your risk of developing diabetes, heart disease and osteoporosis.It also helps control weight and melts belly fat. The effects of exercise are so potent that it influences every physiological system in the body for the better.

A healthy lifestyle can help keep you young in body and spirit.

(Copyright ©2018 KFSN-TV. All Rights Reserved.)

Read More

How to Set Yourself Up for Fitness Success in the New Year

The AskMen Acquire team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life.

After a holiday season full of indulgence, you are particularly motivated (or guilty) to start a healthy lifestyle.

Regardless of all that enthusiasm, most New Year's resolutions fall off by mid-February.

The statistics are grim.

So how can you change your success rate this year? This article will give you a simple blueprint to follow.

Start With Habits

You should play the long game and use the minimum effective dose of dieting and exercise to lose weight.

If the extent of your exercise plan to end the year involved frequent trips between the fridge and the couch, adopting The Rock's routine is not a good idea.

Instead, resolve to get in a 10-minute walk before bed.

The reason minor changes work is that they provide small wins that build momentum.

Focus on one area of change at a time.

If you focus on just one new habit at a time, they'll become second nature.

"Stop trying to be perfect because you're not going to avoid failure," says fitness coach BJ Ward of Born Fitness. "You're changing habits you've had for years and you will fail from time to time.

"And you know what? That's OK. Screw perfection. So many people quit because the moment they screw up they think 'I ruined it!' but that's far from the truth," Ward adds.

"You don't have to be perfect, but you do have to consistently pick yourself back up and get back to it. The only way you fail is if you abandon the plan."

To that point, make your good habits easy to achieve and put barriers in front of your bad habits.

For example, if working out first thing in the morning is your plan, have your gym clothes laid out and put them on first thing.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, make it harder to indulge in night-time snacking by keeping the pantry bare of junk food or hide the ice cream away in the garage, not the kitchen.

RELATED: Tricks To Improve Workout Motivation

Find the Best Diet for You, Not Mark

Everyone seems to have a diet team these days. Keto. Paleo. Vegan. Carnivore. You set up in one camp and then hate on everyone else. 2018 was the year of the keto diet. In a perfect world, 2019 will be the year of "Your Diet."

It's not sexy, but this is about discovering and learning your own metabolism and finding the approach that suits you best — not Mark at the office.

There's a reason no one study has conclusively found the perfect diet.

Every BODY is different.

It'd be great if we all worked like a calculator and X calories = Y weight loss, but we don't.

If you've been told to eat carbs, but feel achy and miserable after a slice of bread, that tells you something. Maybe low carb is a viable option.

The only rule is finding the approach you can get results from without hating your life while on it. A coach can help you navigate the process if you don't want to do the heavy thinking yourself, but it's worth testing and assessing how you respond to diets before closing yourself off to other options.

Quick Hiit Workouts

Last I checked, none of us are getting any less busy.

A lack of time is one of the most common obstacles I hear from busy adults looking to drop weight and get in shape.

Before I had kids, I'd have said it was a poor excuse. Now? Oh, believe me, I get it. So, how do you get the benefits of exercise without living in the gym?

It starts with one acronym that rhymes with a funny word: HIIT.

That's High-Intensity Interval Training.

You've probably heard of HIIT around the water cooler. But you assumed it was for athletes, right? After all, it has the word intensity in it.

Gulp.

Well, not so fast. A new approach to HIIT makes it manageable for anyone.

The typical rest-to-work ratios are max effort sprints of 15-30 seconds, followed by a short recovery period of maybe a minute. (Basically, a 1:2 work to rest ratio). Intense, to put it mildly.

But new research suggests intervals of one to three minutes at closer to 70-80 percent of max effort, followed by up to five minutes of lower intensity exercise to recover, led to significant weight loss in non-athletes (i.e. the average person!).

Here are a couple simple ways to implement this approach:

Tabata Circuits

Ditch the treadmill and use your own body in the comfort of your own living room. Each exercise is done for 20 seconds with 10-seconds rest in between. If you're fairly new to HIIT, extend the rest period to equal or double the work set duration (I.E. 20 seconds work followed by 40 seconds rest). This style of training was shown to be equally effective as traditional HIIT sprint workouts.

Here's a starting Tabata circuit you can try:

Jogging in place

Squats

Plank

Push-ups

Note: There's no need to duplicate the exact exercises used here. Full body exercises of any kind should substitute just fine. Incorporate weights for an additional challenge.

Bike Sprints

Using a stationary bike, you can go the traditional route of max effort sprints of 20-30 seconds, followed by a recovery period of one minute. However, to start with, go at a hard but manageable pace you can sustain for one to three minutes, followed by a slow-paced recovery period of three to five minutes. Repeat this pattern for 10 to 20 minutes.

Can't be bothered to get to the gym? Stream spin classes at home with the Flywheel:

Flywheel at-home bike

If you dream of the days of spin classes on a Flywheel Sports' at-home bike — no more schlepping across town or waiting in line to shower — check out this stationary bike that brings the classes to you.From $1,699.00 at FlywheelSports.com

RELATED: Four Ways To Hack Your Fitness

Get Some Accountability

You say you want to get in better shape. But when it comes time to execute, we humans tend to sabotage ourselves.

When you are the only person in the fight, it's easy to procrastinate, pass on a salad for sushi, and ditch the gym again and again.

You can use wearable technology to set you up with targets and reminders if you're the analytical type who needs a push to get going. (Wearable technology will be 2019's undisputed fitness trend, according to a new report by the American College of Sports Medicine.)

Apple Watch Series 3

Stay connected in style. Designed for users looking for the next generation of connectivity, Apple Watch Series 3 moves your iPhone's apps and functions to your wrist, so you can do more while leaving your phone in your pocket.$284.03 at Amazon.com

That said, you tend to gain the most progress from relationships with other human beings. When you off-load some accountability to a person with your best interests in mind, someone who checks in on your progress and calls you out on your BS, success follows suit.

Most fail simply because they haven't attached enough commitment to the goals they set on Jan. 1 and reinforced them with accountability.

Whether you need to hire a coach or find a workout buddy with the same motivations, this is often the missing ingredient between success and failure.

Mitch Calvert is a body transformation coach for men. He discovered his spark for fitness while slaving away as a 240lb line cook 13 years ago — and now works specifically with men like his former self who have weight to lose and confidence to gain. Get Mitch's handy two-page "Mansformation Cheat Sheet" to simplify your diet and drop stubborn fat.

You Might Also Dig

AskMen may receive a portion of revenue if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service. The links are independently placed by our Commerce team and do not influence editorial content. To find out more, please read our complete terms of use.

Read More

Exercise is medicine, and doctors are starting to prescribe it

There is a movement afoot (pun intended) to get more people exercising by involving their family doctors.

In the United Kingdom, the government recently released Moving Medicine — an online resource to help doctors talk to their patients about the importance of exercise in relation to conditions as diverse as cancer and dementia. This is a welcome initiative given that physical inactivity is the fourth leading cause of death in the world, according to the World Health Organization.

The benefits of exercise have been proven over and over again: Exercise reduces risk of depression, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and many cancers, and prevents early death.

If it was a pill, exercise would be a trillion-dollar money-maker prescribed to everyone.

Exercise as a therapy is mentioned in almost all prevention and treatment guidelines, which are written by doctors themselves. Still, most patients never hear their doctor talk about it. And fewer than one in four Canadians meet current guidelines for physical activity, which recommend that people participate in moderate (such as brisk walking) and vigorous (such as jogging, swimming or running) activity for at least 150 minutes per week.

Part of the reason is that most doctors in practice today received little, if any, training on the role of exercise in managing disease. Years ago I taught a 30-minute lecture on the topic at a Canadian medical school and this was all the students got over their four-year program.

This is about to change.

Free gym prescriptions

In recent years, Canadian medical schools — such as the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary — have revised their curricula to incorporate aspects of exercise in the prevention and treatment of disease.

This is one part of growing initiatives like Exercise is Medicine that advocate for the role of exercise and encourage doctors to prescribe it.

Similarly, the Prescription to Get Active program in Alberta allows doctors to prescribe free 30-day gym memberships to patients.

Doctors who exercise themselves are more likely to recommend exercise to their patients. (Shutterstock)

A grassroots program called Walk with a Doc has local doctors walking with their patients. The program was begun by Dr. David Sabgir, a cardiologist in Columbus, Ohio, who was frustrated with his inability to affect behaviour change in the clinical setting and invited his patients to go for a walk with him in a local park one Saturday morning. More than 100 people showed up, and there are now 400 chapters worldwide.

There have also been calls for exercise to be considered a vital sign, much like blood pressure and heart rate. Health insurance provider Kaiser Permanente requires doctors in the United States to record how much physical activity a patient does.

Patients who receive exercise prescriptions and counselling from their doctors are more likely to be active, so these initiatives are a good start.

More needs to be done, however, when only one-third of doctors talk to their patients about exercise.

Reactionary health-care system

Not surprisingly, doctors who exercise themselves are more likely to counsel their patients about physical activity. Therefore, targeting doctors to be more active may provide a substantial population effect.

At the same time, doctors say they need more and better training with respect to the benefits of exercise and how to counsel patients.

Exercise is an effective medicine for many patients dealing with heart disease, dementia, depression, stroke and cancer. (Shutterstock)

The need for this change in approaching health and disease comes from two key realizations. One is that there are a growing number of people with preventable chronic illness, and our health-care system is not adequately prepared to deal with all these patients.

Our system is reactionary; it is designed to wait until someone has a disease instead of preventing it. But chronic illnesses are not like diseases of old. They cannot be cured, although many can be prevented. Exercise is increasingly recognized as important to this change.

Exercise for cancer care

Second, we have greater knowledge about the benefits of exercise in treating disease in addition to preventing it. Exercise is used for cardiac rehabilitation, after a heart attack.

Exercise works as well as drugs that lower cholesterol and blood pressure in preventing early death. And diabetics who exercise require less medication to manage their blood sugar.

Even in treating cancer, exercise can reduce the side-effects of treatment, such as anxiety, depression and fatigue. This has prompted the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia to release a position statement recommending exercise as part of regular cancer care. It is believed to be the first of its kind in the world, but hopefully not the last.

Doctors would benefit from additional incentives such as specific billing codes that allow for prescribing of exercise as well as more continuing medical education sessions on how to do so.

Educating current and future doctors that exercise is as good, if not better, than many medications will be essential to prevent the increasing burden of chronic illnesses.

Scott Lear writes the weekly blog Feel healthy with Dr. Scott Lear.

Read More

How To Start Your Fitness Journey Off Right

Every year, millions of Americans start the year off by making resolutions to better their health and increase their fitness levels. As many as 92% of them actually fail. While there is nothing inherently wrong with making New Year's Resolutions, there may be a number of reasons why it isn't exactly the best way to get a fitness journey started off right. The truth is, the best time to start a fitness journey is today. Here are 5 steps to getting your fitness journey started off right - and how to keep it going. 

1. Set measurable and achievable goals 

The funny thing about weight loss is that you actually have far less control over your weight than you think you do. What you do have control over are your exercise and eating habits. This is why setting weight loss goals is actually a bad idea. What is a much better idea is setting goals that improve your overall health, that can also lead to weight loss. Some examples of this might be to set a goal to walk 20 minutes per day or stop drinking soda. Both of these will have a significant impact on your health and both can lead to weight loss. 

The other critical factor is setting goals that are both measurable and achievable. In other words, you want to set yourself up for success, not failure. There is nothing wrong with having a goal of running a marathon, but setting a goal to run a marathon in 6 months when you haven't run in years is just setting yourself up for failure. If you want to run a marathon and are in fairly decent shape, then a better goal would be to give yourself 6 months to run a 5K, then another 3 months to run a 10K, a year to run a half-marathon and 18 months to run a full one. It is far better to take longer than you would like to achieve your goals and make sure you get there than to set your goals so high you simply quit rather than achieving them. 

2. Start today 

Another problem with New Year's Resolutions is that people often set them in advance, but then procrastinate on actually getting started. One of the very best ways to start any journey towards change is to start immediately. As the old saying goes, the longest journey begins with a single step. Another problem with New Year's Resolutions is that they tend to be large, grandiose plans that are meant to be accomplished over the course of a year. Long journeys are only accomplished through the act of taking several thousand steps, but each of those steps can seem small and insignificant in comparison to the length of the journey. So don't start off with the long journey in mind, just think of the single step you can take today and take it. When you start to achieve forward progress, you gain momentum. When you gain momentum, you can start to set larger or more long-term goals. For today, however, set a measurable and achievable goal for today and do it. 

3. Find something you love to do and do it 

If you are not fit or in shape, the likelihood is, you have never found a fitness activity you truly love. Some people may think they love running, but the truth is running may have at one time simply been a convenient way to stay in shape, but you probably didn't love it or you would probably still be doing it. Most people who are fit or in shape have found something they love to do. They don't do it because it keeps them fit or in shape, they do it because they love to do it and it, in turn, keeps them fit and in shape. 

The best thing to do to find this thing is to try several different things. The likelihood is, the thing you love is something you've never tried or you would have found it already. In addition, the thing you love most may actually turn out to be something you have specifically avoided in the past. Weightlifting can be a great way to get in shape, but it is something a lot of women specifically avoid. Yoga can also be a great way to get in shape, but might be something many men avoid. Try and get out of the mindset that there are "good" and "bad" fitness activities and just give them all a try until you find one you love.

Read More