Month: March 2016

One of the reasons I love the 5K race distance is because it is inclusive of all types of runners. Head to a local 5K in your community and look around: You will notice runners of every age, sex, athletic ability, shape, and size. That is because at 3.1 miles, the 5K is the perfect distance for beginners and experienced runners alike. It is a short enough distance that it’s an attainable goal for even the most beginner runner. Yet, a 5K is just long enough that it is a challenge for experienced runners who truly like to race and push their physical limits. If you asked me who should run a 5K race, my answer would be: absolutely everyone. Here are just a few examples of who should run a 5K and why they should do it.

New Runner

It’s your first race!

A 5K is a perfect introduction to the racing world. From bib pickup to a starting corral, timing chips, and aide stations, a 5K typically has all of the components of a much longer race, but at only 3.1 miles. It is a great distance to “get your feet wet” (sometimes even literally, depending on the weather) in the world of running organized events. You’ll learn how to seed yourself at the starting line (you might start too far up or too far back), how to pace yourself from the beginning to finish strong (because the excitement might cause you to go out too fast) and how to grab and drink that cup of water from a volunteer while running (you’ll probably get water all over your shirt).

I didn’t add all of those comments to sound condescending, but more to demonstrate that one of the best ways to learn is through trial and error. Your first 5K gives you the perfect opportunity to learn through doing.

Experienced Runner

You are a dedicated long distance runner.

You put in countless miles per week training for half, full, or even ultra marathons. Your “short” runs are typically an hour or more. When was the last time you truly tested your lactic threshold outside of perhaps some Yasso 800 intervals? When was the last time you raced a 5k? Training for and racing a 5K can help mix up your training, both physically and mentally. You will tap into different energy sources and use different muscle fibers as you push for that finish line sprint. Plus, the shortened training schedule might give your body and mind a break from potential burnout. Lastly, taking time to focus on speed for a while might actually carry over into your marathon training, taking some time off of your long distance personal records.

Philanthropist Runner

You want to support your local community.

Countless local and national organizations host 5K charity fundraisers. From breast cancer awareness to the local pet shelter to raising funds for a local elementary school’s new playground…the possibilities are endless. A 5K is a great way to support your local community while simultaneously doing something that you love.

Share the Love Runner

You want all of your friends and family to experience the joy of running!

Let’s face it, trying to convince a non-runner that running is the greatest thing since sliced bread can be a difficult task. Most people think back to the days of struggling through the forced one mile run in high school or slaving away on a treadmill in the gym for weight loss purposes, and think “no way am I going to run for fun.”

But so many of those people change their tune once they are introduced to the fun and exciting world of road (and trail) racing. Having a specific event to train for makes those runs seem more purposeful and thus more enjoyable. So even if you feel your racing days are beyond 5Ks, doing one with some “I’m not really a fan of running” friends may be just the push they need to see why you love running as much as you do.

The “You Need to Have Fun” Runner

You’re burnt out, stressed out, and starting to forget why you love running so much.

Inflatable 5K. Color Run 5K. Glow in the Dark 5K. Donut (pizza, hot dog) 5K. Themed 5Ks are popping up all over the place with crazy, wacky, fun themes. Sure, some of these may seem absolutely ridiculous. But the truth is, even the most focused, disciplined runners sometimes need a break from their serious training schedules to let loose, ignore their pace, and laugh. If you are feeling stressed or burnt out with your training, give one of these silly races a try. It’ll put a smile on your face, and the non-competitive atmosphere may be just what you need to reignite that love-for-running flame in your heart.

So, don’t write off the 5K as simply a “beginners” race. For these reasons (and more), you should find a 5K to add to your racing calendar this year!

How To Lose Five Pounds In Two Weeks Without Starving Yourself
Our society is food-centric. Almost every celebration involves food of some kind. Even the simplest wedding typically has a cake, some type of beverage, and the ever-present Jordan almonds or mints. If you are dieting, navigating celebration foods can be maddening. What are you to do? Stop going to celebrations because there may be food there? Definitely not. You can attend celebrations, navigate the food options successfully, and still lose weight.
There is nothing wrong with having food at celebrations. Sharing a meal with others helps you connect on a different level than just standing around chatting. In fact, the tradition of having food at celebrations goes back to ancient times. Hieroglyphics found in Egypt show gatherings of people around tables filled with food—most likely a celebration or ceremony of some kind.
What can be difficult is when you have celebration after celebration to attend and find yourself constantly confronted with a smorgasbord of tasty delights that tempt you away from your weight loss plan.
That’s tough.
Although some weight loss gurus say to skip celebration foods completely, that’s not realistic for most people. Sure you can do that if you rarely have events to attend where tempting foods are laid out for you to enjoy. But if you regularly have weddings, baby showers, retirement celebrations, bar mitzvahs, or office parties to attend, you can’t always skip the food.
It’s just not practical.
The key to celebrating with food without gaining weight is developing the art of mindful eating.
Think back to the last party or celebration you attended. If you watched the people there, you may have noticed that many of them were eating and talking at the same time, standing around the food table sampling this and that, not really paying attention to how much or what they were eating.
That’s the exact opposite of mindful eating.
When you are at a celebration where food is present, you’ve got to get into the mindful eating zone to avoid the pitfalls and calorie traps sitting in plain view.
Here’s how you can get into that zone when faced with a shower, wedding, or any other celebratory event.
1. Know Yourself
Know your weaknesses when it comes to food. My weakness is chocolate. I’ve got to watch myself closely around chocolate goodies at parties because chocolate is a temptation for me.
If you know what foods you swoon over, then you can also know to avoid or severely limit those foods when at celebrations.
2. Detach Yourself
It can be exciting to see all the fabulous foods laid out at an event. Detach yourself from the excitement and emotion of the event and objectively look at the foods.
3. Choose Deliberately
Choose the foods you will eat deliberately and mindfully. Because you have taken the emotion out of the choices, choose based on what you like and what fits into your weight loss plan.
4. Savor Flavors and Textures
Whatever you eat, enjoy it. Savor the flavors and textures of each food. Eat slowly, taking care to concentrate on the act of eating rather than socializing. You will enjoy each bite more fully and avoid the tendency to overeat.
5. Remember Tomorrow Is Coming
Lastly, remember that after the event is over, you have to deal with the consequences of your actions. Being mindful of your choices at the party helps ensure tomorrow will be another great day for weight loss and not one filled with regrets over eating too much.

Yoga has many benefits, from relaxation and mindfulness to weight loss and flexibility. With so many forms of yoga, it can be difficult to choose which one is best for you. Whether you’d prefer a faster-paced yoga class or you simply want to touch your toes, here’s how to choose the right yoga for your personality.

The Benefits of Yoga

People come to yoga for many different reasons. Maybe you’re having back pain and you want to avoid pain medication. Or maybe you want a workout without the impact of running. Perhaps you want to learn more about deep breathing and the relaxation that it promotes. The original purpose of yoga was to exercise the body so that it could sit for long periods of time in meditation, but today people do yoga for exercise, flexibility, relaxation, spirituality, and a host of other reasons.

Spiritual Forms of Yoga

If you’re interested in the deeper spiritual benefits of yoga, forms like Integral and Kundalini yoga are good choices. Integral yoga is slow paced, using pranayama (breathing techniques), yogic diet, meditation, selfless service, and a love of the Divine to promote a healthy, balanced, quiet mind. Kundalini yoga is another intensely spiritual practice that focuses on using inner stillness cultivated from yoga postures, meditation, breath work, and chanting to expand awareness of the self.

More Active Forms of Yoga

Many forms of yoga are good for the physical body, but some are more active than others. For example, Power yoga moves quickly through the poses, using Chaturanga Dandasanas, or yoga pushups, to connect sometimes difficult postures. Power yoga is often done in the heat to further amplify the intensity of the workout. Ashtanga yoga is another physical practice that moves through a set series of poses daily.

Yoga for Flexibility

Yoga is wonderful for expanding the body’s range of motion, whether you’re trying to turn back the clock or you’re an athlete looking to heal or prevent injury. All yoga is focused on flexibility but Yin yoga takes it a step further—poses are held for 3 to 5 minutes in an effort to soften the body’s fascia, a sheet of connective tissue that’s located between the muscles.

Alignment-Based Forms of Yoga

Both Iyengar and Anusara yoga are alignment-based forms of yoga. Instructors tend to spend a lot of time on the technical structure of a pose to ensure that students get the most out of the posture while avoiding injury. Props like blocks and straps are often used to align the body correctly while in a pose. Both postures are good for alleviating chronic injuries.

Becoming an Activist with Yoga

Jivamukti yoga uses diet and a focus on environmentalism to promote activism. Yogis are encouraged to take up a vegan diet, and teachers often talk about the importance of environmental protection. The founders, Sharon Gannon and David Life, are both vegans who talk openly and frequently about animal welfare issues.

Yoga for Deep Relaxation

Stress is really harmful to the body; for many yogis, deep relaxation is just what the doctor ordered. Restorative yoga is less about movement and more about promoting the restoration of the body. Using props such as blankets, bolsters, and eye pillows, yogis enjoy a deep relaxation, holding poses for up to 20 minutes. Yoga Nidra is a deep yogic sleep that moves past the dreaming state. Students remain still while listening to a guided relaxation sequence from a teacher or recording. Once awakened, you should feel rejuvenated and vibrant.

No matter what you’re looking for, you’re sure to find a form of yoga that’s the perfect fit. Or you may want to become a yoga mutt who does a number of forms of yoga to fulfill various needs. In the purest sense, the practice of yoga is meant to connect the body and mind, which can result in many other welcome benefits. And although you may have started practicing for one reason, you may discover other perks that you weren’t even looking for in the first place.

Are you looking for ways to become a stronger runner? Perhaps the answer isn’t running longer distances or at a faster pace. In fact, the best way to improve your running may not involve running at all. That may sound counterintuitive, but believe it or not, there are alternative workouts that will not only help you develop a healthier and more balanced lifestyle but will have the added benefit of making you a better runner too. Here are five such activities that you may want to add to your fitness repertoire.

Cycling

It often seems like runners and cyclists are natural adversaries—one speeding down the road on the back of a bike while the other pounds the pavement on foot. But in reality, both sports can complement each other very well. For example, cycling is a great form of active recovery, allowing the muscles in your legs that are used for running to rest while developing others that are more bike-centric. Cycling also puts far less stress on your ankles, knees, and hips, which tend to take a real pounding if you run regularly. Changing up your running routine with energetic bike rides gives those parts of your body time to recover and heal, which will have the added benefit of making you a stronger runner too.

Yoga

At first glance, it would seem that yoga and running are diametrically opposed to one another in terms of the intensity of their workouts. In reality, however, yoga presents some surprisingly tough physical challenges of its own and can play a significant role in developing a well-balanced workout routine. Runners often find that yoga helps to keep their muscles loose and limber while also building strength in their core. Those qualities can be crucial not only for avoiding injury but also for speeding up recovery times. That alone should make yoga an intriguing option for runners looking to get stronger.

Swimming

Swimming is another form of exercise that burns a lot of calories and provides a good cardio workout while minimizing the impact on your joints. Additionally, swimming is a great way to work all of the major muscle groups, including the arms, shoulders, abs, and lower back. Runners recovering from an injury will find that hitting the pool is a great way to continue building strength and stamina while giving your body time to heal too.

Rowing

Whether you use the rowing machine at the gym or join a crew out on the water, this is another activity that can provide a surprisingly great workout that will complement your running routine. Not only does it provide good exercise for the upper body, building strength and lean muscle in the process, but rowing also allows you to work your hips and quads. We all know that strong legs are one of the keys to running better, but the core workout that rowing provides will have a lasting impact too. Although rowers don’t burn quite as many calories as runners, a good steady pace will still help you to work up quite a healthy post-exercise appetite.

Weight Training

Many runners avoid lifting weights as part of their regular fitness routine out of fear of building muscle that could potentially weigh them down and make them less flexible. But initiating a fitness plan that includes lifting lighter weights several times a week can help to tone and strengthen the core, arms, and shoulders. That can lead to increased performance as a runner, particularly over longer distances. Additionally, studies have shown that weight training can help make you a more efficient runner, lowering the amount of oxygen needed by the body to maintain a constant pace.
They say that variety is the spice of life. Any one of these activities can spice up your running workouts, giving you alternative fitness options that can still complement what you are attempting to accomplish with running. They’ll also bring a nice change of pace to your regular workout program and give your legs a much needed break. Rest and recovery are important to improving your performance as well, but that doesn’t mean you need to spend that time doing nothing at all.

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy when it comes to dieting. Although no one likes to admit sabotaging their own weight loss efforts, many people do it unintentionally. The results can range from a lack of weight loss for a while to a total abandonment of your diet. If you are having trouble staying true to your weight loss plan, self-sabotage might well be the problem.

Taking Ownership of Self-Sabotaging Behaviors

The concept of self-sabotage in a person who is dieting is rather disconcerting. At least it was for me. I certainly didn’t want to admit I might be messing up my diet on purpose. It wasn’t until I had been dieting steadily for about 9 or 10 years that I realized, finally, I was my own worst enemy when it came to dieting.

And just to clarify, when I was exhibiting self-sabotaging behaviors, I wasn’t doing it with the express purpose of ruining my diet. Instead, it was unconscious behaviors and old habits that ended up ruining my diet. But at the end of the day, those behaviors I demonstrated did sabotage my diet. I was the one in charge of my food choices, and ultimately I was responsible.

Identifying Self-Sabotage

It’s not always easy to identify the ways you might be sabotaging your weight loss. Here’s a list of behaviors and thinking patterns I commonly see in client coaching sessions and in myself.

Thoughts

• You blow up small mistakes into huge ones.
• You don’t believe you can do successfully lose weight.
• You call yourself negative names such as “fatty.”
• You constantly put yourself down.

Behaviors

• You fudge the truth about how much you eat throughout the day.
• You don’t give 100 percent when you exercise.
• You stop standing on the scale without another way to stay accountable.
• You buy foods you know you have a hard time refusing. (Think chocolate, ice cream, or chips.)
• You hide treats or secretly eat foods that aren’t on your diet when no one is looking.

Now before you get to feeling super guilty about possibly sabotaging your own weight loss efforts, let me assure you that these behaviors are very common—and easily remedied, if you’re willing to work on them.

Fixing the Problem

It doesn’t do any good to know you are doing it without knowing how to fix the problem of self-sabotage does it?

Even after I realized and admitted I was sabotaging my dieting efforts, I still did it every so often. It’s hard to change but it is possible—and not only possible but also necessary. Without fixing the problem of sabotaging your diet, you will be hard pressed to successfully lose more than a few pounds.

Here are some steps to take to fix the problem of self-sabotage.

1) Work on positive thinking.

I know it is depressing to feel as though you will never get to your healthy weight. But snarking on yourself, putting yourself down, and not believing you can do it makes the process 100 times harder.

Practice saying nice things about yourself while looking in the mirror. Write down positive affirmations on post-it notes and stick them where you can see them. Ask your spouse or significant other to gently remind you to be nice to yourself when you start down a negative path.

2) Bring secret behaviors out in the open.

Many self-sabotaging behaviors are secret ones. The buying of unhealthy food, eating in secret, and not being truthful with how much you eat are all done in secret.

Practice openness by making your food diary available to a trusted family member and truthfully recording what you eat. If you do not live alone, make an effort to eat in front of other people so you can break the cycle of eating more than you should when no one is looking.

3) Do your best every day.

A component of self-sabotage can be just half-heartedly trying to lose weight instead of fully committing. As you wake up each morning, commit to doing your best no matter what life throws at you.

Over time, with a lot of work, you will hopefully find the self-sabotaging behaviors slowing down and then stopping completely. You will slip up and make mistakes, but own them fully and move on.