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February 21, 2022 By Luke Coutinho 12 Comments

Exercise Is Good For You, But Exercise SMART!

exercise smartIn our zeal to get fit, sculpt an attractive body or lose weight, we may tend to overdo it when it comes to the exercise we choose. When you find yourself struggling to get the body results you want, one enrolls themselves for more complex and intensive training, longer hours in the gym, fad diets and crazy supplements.

What we need to remember, like everything else, is that our body parts and organs have a life. There will be natural wear and tear as we age and that principle remains the same for all of us. It’s true that the right amount of exercise can delay this and keep degeneration at bay and that’s what ensures us a better quality life as we age. A life free of knee, back and/or joint pain.

The media including Hollywood and Bollywood have blown the whole concept of exercise way out of proportion. Everyone wants to read about diets or exercise regimes of these super stars. Spending 2 hours in a gym or working out thrice a day is apparently what you need to get a model like a body or that of your favorite actor.

Extensive spinning, extremely heavy weights, running more than a marathon in a year, MMA mixed with weight training, kickboxing integrated with weights, etc. all require special nutrition plans if you are really into all of this.

These are great forms of exercise and we would all like to think of ourselves as long distance runners but, is your body prepared for it? Are your knees ready to take the massive stress? Is your back strong enough to brace impact and support you for the rest of your years without giving way?

Getting involved in intensive exercise is not your solution or compensation for binge eating over the weekend.

Your knee has a fluid (synovial) that runs around it and as this dries up due to stress (exercise) improper sleep (recovery) and poor nutrition, you will be left with excruciating pain that will severely alter your lifestyle.

Exercise Smart Is The Way Forward!

Short but productive workouts. 1 hour is a number. Break away from it. The best workouts get over in 25-30 minutes, saving you valuable 30 minutes of your day to use it for things that are meaningful to you. Tough to break from it if you have always been a “1-hour” gym person but, try.

After 45 minutes of exercise, your body generates ‘cortisol’, a stress hormone, that tells your body to ‘STORE FAT’. This becomes counterproductive to your whole goal or working out. Body builders and athletes have longer training schedules because they have supporting sports nutrition plans and they sleep over 8 hours for recovery.

Exercising smart is:- 

  • Keeping a day of recovery between intensive workouts or allowing for enough muscle recovery time
  • Doing max sets with minimum rest between sets (depend on your fitness goal)
  • You should be maxed out post 30 minutes and you should feel energetic
  • Warm up and cool down will allow you to be more productive

Break away from traditional exercise methods. Mix it up, challenge and push your body. Consistent walking, is one of the best exercises ever, something that works beautifully with a balanced nutrition plan and great sleep. You can lose fat and tone up if you exercise smart!

Remember that consistency is key! 

Meeting and exceeding the 10,000 steps daily is one of the best benchmarks when it comes to your walks. Re-evaluate your exercise schedule and how you feel after each workout. Don’t just think ‘ NOW’, consider the future years as well.

We hope this article helps you exercise smart for great results! For more on fitness and home workouts, check out Healthy Reads or ask an expert by subscribing for GOQii’s personalized health coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

#BeTheForce 

November 19, 2015 By Vrushali Athavle 1 Comment

Do you know about NEAT (Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis)?

a-woman-standing-at-an-office-desk

Are you one of those who know the importance of exercising but still give excuses for not working out regularly? Several research reports have indicated that like “Cigarette smoking is injurious to health”, there is a new saying in the health industry “Sitting is injurious to health” Sitting in one place for a long time can cause serious health issues.

Here is a quick fix for all the people who have sedentary lifestyle and job and do not get time to work out.
NEAT – also known as ‘Non-exercise activity thermogenesis’ include those activities which require to move the smallest muscle of the body due to which some energy expenditure occur. These exercises will not include very minimal movements like those while sleeping or eating and also will not include activities like sports where there is lot of calorie burning. Basically, it includes activities like walking to office, gardening, standing rather than sitting, gardening, doing household chores, carrying grocery bags in hand instead of using a trolley etc.
For more clarity on NEAT let’s take a peek into the various daily examples:

  • Brush to burn calories:

Instead of lazing around with a brush in your mouth stand near the wash basin with one leg lifted. This will help you strengthen your core and at the same time improve your concentration and balance.

  • Serve yourself:

Next thing which we usually do is to call out loud for tea/coffee or breakfast from the living room to the person in the kitchen. Instead, go ahead and serve yourself.  This will ensure your sluggish metabolism is waking up slowing to burn more calories.

  • Catch up with some exercise on the way to office:

** Take the stair wherever possible and skip the elevators. This could be your building stairs or railway station stairs if you travel by train or walk up to the office in your building which is on the 7th or 8th floor. If climbing 7 floors seems tiring, climb 2 to 3 floors and take a lift for remaining. Climbing stairs is a great way to burn calories and strengthen your legs.”

** Sitting at the desk for long hours is the most dangerous thing as we just discussed in the beginning of this blog. Here is the solution- get up from your chair every 1 hour, do certain stretches, instead of asking the office boy to fill up your water bottle take a stroll and refill it yourself, talk to your friends and come back to your seat and continue with your work.

  • Stand up and stretch every time you hit ‘send’ on an e-mail.”

Use “Walk n talk method” i.e start walking while you are on long conversations on call.
(i)  While sitting on a chair, raise one heel or both the heels then one leg and then both the legs while seated. This turn outs to be the best exercise for lower body, Similarly stretch out arms and do some free hand arm exercises or pick up water bottles and do some bicep curls which can be some good upper body workouts.
(ii) To strengthen the core, sit on a ball which forces you to balance yourself keeping your core engaged full time. If this is not possible in office, try out this ball method at home while watching television or eating dinner, playing video/mobile games or reading.  

  • 4) Get a Pedometer

Pedometer like GOQii band can be best used to motivate you by tracking the steps and kms everyday. To make this more interesting decide on certain weekly targets to completing steps target.
In a nutshell the above proves that there is no way you can say ‘I have a sedentary job’. NEAT exercises help you to shift your sedentary job to a bit active one with very simple efforts. Once you incorporate these activities, lot more will come to your mind.

 Let me know “How do you squeeze extra activity into your day?”

January 21, 2015 By Vrushali Athavle 1 Comment

What time is the best time to exercise?

exercise

Today, everybody is well aware of the importance of exercising. People want to come out of their sedentary and a very uncertain lifestyle routine due to constant travelling but, how and when to invest this 30 to 40 minute for exercise regime in such hectic schedules is a BIG QUESTION??

If you ask me, when is the best time to exercise, my answer would be in the MORNING, for several reasons such as

  1. It boost’s your metabolism and keeps it elevated for several hours; meaning you are burning more calories all the day long
  2. You psychologically feel healthy because you started your day in a healthy way which motivates you to make the remaining day healthy as well.
  3. If you have a fixed exercise time in the morning, you are eventually motivated to develop the habit of sleeping on time to wake up on time.
  4. Many a times it happens that people don’t find time to exercise. In such cases best thing to do is to sleep half an hour earlier at night then you usually sleep and wake up half an hour earlier in the morning and utilize that time to exercise. Research shows that people who exercise regularly have a higher quality of sleep and hence require less sleep.

But, friends this is not the end. If at all you miss exercising in the morning or many are not morning people and do not prefer to exercise in the morning, for them the next good time is in the evenings after office. Exercising in the evening can act as a stress reliever after a hectic day.

Due to erratic work schedules, keeping a fixed time for evening workouts can be difficult for some people and hence they end up missing the evening workout too. People end up saying Ohho, yet another day is over and I missed my workout once again. Can I go for a walk after my dinner? The answer is definitely YES but you have to take care that you keep a gap of 2 hours between your dinner and walk. The reason behind this is that, when you go for a walk immediately after your dinner, the blood flow is diverted towards your legs instead of stomach and then digestion is hampered which is not what we aim for.

A new interesting and fun part of exercise comes in when you have a large group working out with you. Start a healthy trend in your office. For some people, lunch time is the best time to exercise, especially in the office along with their colleagues. We do this at our workplace at GOQii . On the days, I am not able to exercise in the morning, I am not much worried as in the office we have developed this habit of working out together just before our lunch.

People who are still confused which time can be best, try to exercise in the morning for a few weeks, then try at noon and then evening. Find out for yourself which is the time you enjoyed the most and which time made you feel the best. Also consider the type of exercise and other daily commitments.

One day, you’ll reach a point where daily exercise comes as naturally as breathing. At that point, you may want variety. But, if you’re still at the point where exercise is hit or miss, scheduling it for the same time each day will help you make it a habit. Whether you choose morning, lunch time, or after work to exercise, make it part of your routine.

To conclude, any time is good time to be active , its just that you need to find out for yourself and be consistent till it becomes a habit for you.

 

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