Quick To Fit

Fitness for a fast paced world

Archives for June 2009

Core Strengthening Exercise For Hip And Knee Pain

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Hip and knee pain are often the result of weakness in the abdominal and glute muscles.

Your abdominals (a.k.a “core”) work to keep your upper body stable while your arms and legs move and your glutes extend your hip by bringing your leg back like when you walk or run.

But, when your abs and glute muscles are weak other muscles must compensate. This happens when your quadriceps (thigh muscles) and your hip flexors try to perform the work your abs and glutes are supposed to be doing. This is also why you can have knee pain when squatting.

The result is often one or more of the following:

-lower back pain
-hip pain
-knee pain
-foot and ankle pain

I use many different types of core strengthening exercises to eliminate hip and knee pain quickly.

Using exercises to strengthen your core muscles help to strengthen weaker muscles to reduce painful symptoms.

In the video to the right I’ll show you a simple, yet really effective core strength exercise to strengthen your abdominal muscles immediately and reduce hip and knee pain.

Try it out and leave me a comment here and tell me how it worked for you.

Will Exercise Help You To Rev Up Your Metabolism?

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One thing that I remember hearing from multiple sources when beginning to research options for weight loss plans, was that when you begin working out, you’ll give your metabolism a jump start, and your body will essentially take over and become a fat burning machine. Many believed that your body would burn calories more effectively for up to 24 hours after working out.

A new report published in the journal Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews suggests that our bodies may not work that way, and that you need to rethink your dietary intake so as not to undue your exercising.

The notion that exercise somehow boosts the body’s ability to burn fat for as long as 24 hours after a workout has led to a misperception among the general public that diet doesn’t matter so much as long as one exercises, says Edward Melanson, an exercise physiologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver.

People think they have a license to eat whatever they want, and our research shows that is definitely not the case,” he says. “You can easily undo what you set out to do.” In the new report, published in the journal Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, Melanson and colleagues discuss research to date on the issue of burning fat during and after exercise. The authors conclude that while people do burn more fat when they are exercising than when they are not, they have no greater ability to burn fat over the next 24 hours than on days when they are couch potatoes.

“If you exercise and replace the calories you burn, you’re no better — with regard to how much fat you burn off — than if you didn’t exercise,” says Melanson.

So what does that mean for all of us out here working out, trying to lose weight?  Maybe  that we need to be more careful about our diet and exercise regimen, and not count on our exercising to allow us to eat whatever we want.

“Bottom line is that we once thought that exercise would burn calories, especially fat calories, for a long period after a bout of exercise,” says exercise physiologist Gerald Endress, fitness director for the Duke University Diet and Fitness Center who was not involved in the research. “This does not seem to be the case.”

But both Melanson and Endress say it can’t be ruled out that longer, harder and possibly different types of exercise performed regularly on consecutive days could lead to a more lasting post-workout fat burn. In Melanson’s research, for instance, participants all cycled for under an hour, burning up to 400 calories.

All this isn’t to say, however, that you should not exercise to help lose weight and keep it off. “It’s not that exercise doesn’t help with weight loss,” says Melanson. “It’s that it’s harder to lose weight with exercise than diet.” That’s not surprising when you consider that it might take an hour to burn 400 calories but just five minutes to consume them.

So there you go.  Don’t count on your exercise plan alone to help you lose weight. Make sure you have a good plan of exercise and diet that will help you to lose weight.

What do you think about this study?  Does it challenge your beliefs about exercise and metabolism, and  how our bodies work?  Will you be changing anything because of this?

10 Free Iphone Apps To Help You Lose Weight

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Just a quick link to an article I found this morning that might be helpful to some of you out there, its top 10 free Iphone Apps to help you lose weight!  From the website:

Even if you didn’t make a resolution to lose weight this year, you probably have some fitness goals you would like to achieve in the new year. To help, we’ve put together a list of the top 10 free iPhone apps to help you lose weight and get into shape.


Top 10 Iphone Apps To Help You Lose Weight

Enjoy!

Interview With A Weight Loss Champion and Ultra Marathon Runner

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A few days ago I discovered a blog that I found to be  inspirational in my own adventure in weight loss. The site was Run4Change and it details the weight loss journey of the site’s owner Jason.

Since 2006 Jason has lost over 130 pounds, and went from being overweight and un-athletic, to fit and trim and running ultra-marathons. That’s quite a switch!

jason

Here’s a quick bio from his site:

My name is Jason. I have lost 130lbs and have transformed myself from a roly poly to an athlete. I am married to an absolutely wonderful woman named Audrey.  She inspired me to be more creative and start this blog. Since I am a former fat guy who has lost 130 lbs I hope to inspire you to become healthier and happier. I am a new person, I might say I am an old person since I weigh the same as I did 16 years ago.

Although I have lost all of my excess weight, I still have fat guy fears..I am moving and running on to enjoy my life even more. I have found a new love called running. I once feared this activity as painful, hard, and boring. Now I see it as an outlet, an emotional and physical recharge. I will never be the same since I started running. I guess you could say that I am running away from my old self.

My blog is my unique angle on health, running, weight loss, and life. My blog, is here to inspire you. To let you inside a regular guy who yearns to do amazing things and live an amazing life. Hopefully you can learn about health, running, weight loss, and me.   Life is an adventure.

I contacted Jason and asked if he might be interested in a quick interview about all his success on this blog, and he was kind enough to oblige. I know his story will inspire and motivate all of  you!

Interview With Jason, 130 pounds later!

Quick to fit: Tell us a little about yourself, and your fitness & weight loss journey?

Jason:  Well, I started weight watchers in Dec. 2006 and I have lost 130 lbs using that program.  It took me about a year and I have kept the weight off for a little over a year also, but I don’t plan to go back to deep fried burritos any time soon.  My exercise started with 12 minutes on a stationary bike 3 times a week.  Every time I lost 10 lbs I would increase the time and variety of exercises that I did. I started running after I lost 60 lbs.  My life has been completely changed by losing this weight and starting to run.  I have learned so much on this journey and I hope to inspire others that it is possible for them too.

Quick to fit: On one post on your blog you said, “Getting to the starting line is the biggest victory.  After that, if you can just endure the ups and downs of the journey you will end up at the finish line.”  To me this really is a profound comment, and speaks to how so many people just never get to that starting line, and then don’t stick it out.  What was it that finally got you to the starting line, and what helped you to endure?
Jason: My sister was the one who got me walking towards the starting line.  She invited me to weight watchers.  I had to overcome some serious fears to get to that first weigh-in.  Common fears too like:
  • I might fail
  • If I do lose the weight I probably won’t keep it off.
  • What will people think to see someone so fat like me.
  • Will I be the only guy at weight watchers.
  • It is going to be so boring and hard.

Anyways, I overcame these fears by accepting the fact that change is uncomfortable. There was no way I would ever attain weight loss if I was not willing to be uncomfortable.  So I dove right in.  I endured the journey until now by setting written goals for weight loss as well as running, not letting guilt pull me down if I messed up, and understanding that it is not cheating if you count what you eat.

Quick to fit: Did you ever find yourself discouraged or frustrated while losing weight, and how were you able to overcome those feelings?

Jason: Oh yeah.  I couldn’t even count how many times I got discouraged and wanted to give up.  To beat this I talked about it.  I talked to my sister, my wife, my WW leader, and God.  I also learned so much from running.  Being a person who never exercised to finishing marathons, I learned that feelings (although very real) really have nothing to do with our ability to keep going.

Quick to fit: Now that you’ve lost the weight that you wanted to, what kind of a maintenance regimen do you follow to make sure you don’t gain it back?

Jason:I still follow weight watchers the same way I did when I started except I eat my extra points and activity points now.  I still go to the meetings faithfully because if I could have done it by myself I would have done it a long time ago.  This is a big factor in making it through those hard ups and downs we face during our journey.

Quick to fit: What prompted you to start running long distance races, and what is the longest distance you’ve run?  Could you have imagined yourself doing those things a few years ago?

Jason:  Since about 1996 I wanted to run a marathon and ultra-marathon.  I read a magazine article about a guy who ran 50 miles and I thought to myself, “Wow, I did not think that a human could do such a thing.”  I started running at that time but quit very quickly.  So after losing 60 lbs this time I started to train for my first marathon and I accomplished my first finish 7 months later.  I feel in love with the long runs.  They made me feel good mentally, physically, and spiritually.  My confidence went up a lot and I started to believe that I could do things that I never dreamed or imagined were possible.  My long runs grew.  In February of 2008 I ran my first ultra-marathon (31 miles) and in July 2008 I finished the White River 50 miles trail running championship race.  I did it in around 11 and 1/2 hours.  It was a great experience.  All in all, I finished 7 marathons and 4 ultra-marathons from Oct. 2007 to Oct. 2008.

Quick to fit: What helpful advice would you give to others out there who are trying to lose weight, whether its 30 pounds, or 130?

Jason:  I think that there are two things that are totally essential for us to understand as we walk in this weight loss journey.  First, we need to change how we think about “cheating”.  Cheating is the use of deception.  If you eat something that is not “on plan”, just count it however you count in your program and it is not cheating.  Finish the day off accordingly.  You have your whole life ahead of you and 1 day of bad eating is just a blip on the radar.  This thinking will free you up and finally allow you to have that “life change” perspective so that you can live the plan.  The second thing is to never give up.  So what if you mess up.  I know it is depressing, angering, maddening, etc. (it is for me at least), but it is not the end of the world and it certainly should not be the end of your program.  I learned in the ultra marathons this:  There is a guarantee that when things are going great, watch out because they are going to get bad.  When things are going bad, all the better because they are going to get good again. This happens over and over and over during an 11 hour race. You cannot escape these surges of good and bad.  If you just take one foot and put it in front of the other, regardless of the pain or guilt or mistakes, you will make it to the finish line.  Good luck.

Now That We’re Properly Motivated..

Thanks again to Jason for agreeing to do the interview, and for sharing his amazing story.   If his story won’t get you motivated, I don’t know what will! I think I’m going to go and run a few miles now!

Don’t forget to check out Jason’s site at  http://run4change.wordpress.com.  Subscribe directly to his RSS feed here.