Why Physical Education in Schools is Important

Thank You LiveWell Colorado

Go Outside and Play!

Thank You Organic Consumers Association "Un-glue those eyes from the screen! With rapidly evolving technology readily available at your child’s fingertips, it's more important than ever to encourage them to play outdoors." Read more: http://orgcns.org/1qD1HBy

Fun Way to Change Behavior

"We believe that the easiest way to change people's behaviour for the better is by making it fun to do. We call it the fun theory."  http://www.thefuntheory.com

When to Exercise!

Thank You Live Well Colorado

Smart is the New Dumb

 We have been a fan of Exuberant Animal for a long time. Here is another fantastic article from Frank. Here he discusses something we think about rather frequently, that is, is technology causing us to lose the sensory of experience of being alive? Are we losing a sense of body, joy in moving, interaction with our natural enviornment? Are we becoming digitally numb? Read on.

Roaring Fork Wellness

"Smart is the New Dumb"

by Frank Forencich on March 29, 2014

Note: This essay was first published in Paleo Magazine

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”

Pablo Picasso

“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”

Karl Marx

 This will come as a surprise to many of our so-called “digital natives,” but back in the Paleo, people actually experienced their bodies and the world directly, with no outside intervention. We used our nervous systems to feel our flesh, our habitat, our movements and each other. We used our inborn proprioceptors, interoceptors, chemoreceptors and other sensory organs to know our experience and our tribe.

And it worked.

For several million years in fact.

But today, we stand poised to throw it all away and replace our innate physical intelligence with artificial sensors, “wearable devices,” “heads up technologies,” “smart fabrics,” “FitBits,” “Body Media” and “personal informatics.” Apparently, the human nervous system–the most sophisticated system in the known universe–just isn’t good enough anymore.

The consequences of this mindless love affair with all things digital will be immense. The mammalian nervous system is without question the most sublime creation in the known universe; we are just beginning to scratch the surface of its structure, function and potential. New discoveries in neuroplasticity and epigenetics reveal the power of training and practice to shape our bodies and behavior; we know how learning and skill development work at the cellular level. We know that transformation comes with concentrated attention and high quality repetitions. But rather than building on these discoveries with actual experience, we are taking a wild leap over our native capability, diving head first into a synthetic, disembodied future.

To be sure, some of these “smart” devices will be put to good use, in clinical, therapeutic or scientific settings. But when they’re mass-marketed to the general public, these technologies will simply serve as prosthetic devices for people who don’t need prosthetic devices. As a consequence, the body’s innate intelligence will begin to atrophy.

This effect will be similar to what happens when we consume substances that are normally produced by the brain or body. That is, exogenous substances tend to displace their endogenous counterparts. If you’re taking large amounts of morphine, cocaine, marijuana or testosterone, the body will cut back on the production of its native analogues. Similarly, once we strap on external sensors, our native capacities for sensation will begin to fade away.

Our culture seems fundamentally incapable of learning from experience. From stone tools onward, every technological invention in human history has come with an upside and a downside. But today, we are infatuated with flashing lights and drunk on our own cleverness. Our new technology, so small and clean and perfect, appears to be neutral and nearly free. But the downside will be even more distance from our bodies, from the land and from our experience.

In particular, advocates of “smart” devices seem to be either ignorant or in denial of the social consequences of their inventions. The human body comes pre-wired with mirror neurons and a social resonance circuit that allows us to transmit and understand human emotion. We have an innate, physical capacity to feel what other people are feeling. This system allows us to synchronize and coordinate emotion and behavior, a crucial factor in both Paleo and modern settings.

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Losing Weight May Require Some Serious Fun

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

If you are aiming to lose weight by revving up your exercise routine, it may be wise to think of your workouts not as exercise, but as playtime. An unconventional new study suggests that people’s attitudes toward physical activity can influence what they eat afterward and, ultimately, whether they drop pounds.

For some time, scientists have been puzzled — and exercisers frustrated — by the general ineffectiveness of exercise as a weight-loss strategy. According to multiple studies and anecdotes, most people who start exercising do not lose as much weight as would be expected, given their increased energy expenditure. Some people add pounds despite burning hundreds of calories during workouts.

Past studies of this phenomenon have found that exercise can increase the body’s production of appetite hormones, making some people feel ravenous after even a light workout and prone to consume more calories than they expended. But that finding, while intriguing, doesn’t fully explain the wide variability in people’s post-exercise eating habits.

So, for the new study, published in the journal Marketing Letters, French and American researchers turned to psychology and the possible effect that calling exercise by any other name might have on people’s subsequent diets.

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The Colorado Get Movin' Challenge

Thank You LiveWell Colorado

The time to kick-start a healthy habit is now! Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, Civic Center Conservancy, Kaiser Permanente Colorado, the LiveWell Rally Man and Colorado Get Movin' Challenge Ambassador Courtney Oldham invite you to get active this May.

Watch the news this week for more information or visit http://www.GetMovinChallenge.org/ to get started.

Foam Roller Basics

Two good videos highlight one of our favorite tools, the foam roller. Excellent for self-massage, recovery, releasing connective tissue.....watch and learn.

Letting Go of the Power Sucks

Highly recommended website and blog, Exuberant Animal, here is a sample:

by Frank Forencich on March 12, 2014

“The truth is revealed by removing things which stand in its light, an art, not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.”

Alan Watts

Everyone wants to be stronger and more powerful. And these days, a lot of us have a strategy for making it happen. Our most typical approach is to do it directly, through physical training and by developing the knowledge and strategies that make us more effective in the world. We build our power by, well, building our power.

It’s all good, but there’s also a flip side to this whole enterprise. That is, we can also increase our power by removing those things that get in the way of our strength and our skill. In this practice, we act as sculptors of our mind-body-spirit experience; we create by eliminating the unnecessary things that weigh us down.

Of course, there’s lots of baggage that we carry around with us, baggage that inhibits our ability to be strong. These are the attitudes, ideas and beliefs that distract us and displace our ability to function effectively. These things act as power sucks, drawing away our energy and our ability to enjoy the beautiful adventure. They obscure our view of the world and inhibit our ability to see clearly.

Opinions vary of course, the list of classic power sucks usually includes things like resentments, bitterness, anger, blame, hatreds, hostility, complaint, grievances and expectations.

At the root of it all, the victim orientation sucks away our power right at the source. When we adopt the role of victim, as many of us do, we spend our days blaming perceived perpetrators or wishing for salvation from rescuers. In the process, we simply perpetuate and deepen our weaknesses. By attributing all of our woes to outside forces and agents, we effectively give away our ability to function in the world.

And so, the burning question. How do we relinquish these power sucks? How do we let go of all the baggage that inhibits our ability to be strong and powerful in the world?

One short answer is meditation. By training our attention, we learn how to relinquish unnecessary thoughts, images and negative emotions. In this practice, we reverse our effort. We turn our conventional flow of striving upside down and start letting go of those heavy, onerous weights that we carry around with us. We relax, we forgive and we let go of attachment. It’s not always easy, of course. After all, many of us have built entire identities and world views around these very things.

Above all, we adopt the creator’s orientation and take full responsibility for who we are and what we’re doing in the world. We are the authors of our behavior and our trajectory. This may feel like a burden, but it actually works the other way. The more responsibility we take on, the more powerful we become.

And we don’t even have to pump any weights.

Although that would probably be a good idea too.

5 Tips to stay on top of your 2014 fitness goals.

 

You vs February: Running low on fitness motivation? Don’t give up yet.
It hurts. You’re tired. It’s too early. You’re sore. The gym always plays obnoxious music. You hate getting sweaty. You feel ridiculous dressed like this. You look silly to all of these skinny, fit people. You never liked gym class anyway. Is this even making a difference?
Go ahead: Add your reason to quit working out to the list. You set a goal to get fit, lose weight and improve your health last month, and now you’re into the month where New Year’s resolutions go to die: February. This is when your workout stops feeling new and fun, and starts feeling downright hard.
Want your New Year’s resolution to survive February? Want to keep it up long enough to see actual results and really change your life? Yogi Berra said, “Baseball is 90 percent mental; the other half is physical”—and the same goes for your workout routine. Whether your exercise habit survives is going to depend more on what’s going on in your head than what’s going on in your aerobics class. So how do you get your head straightened out?

Find a Fitness Nemesis … er, Buddy
Having a fitness pal can be a positive, but it’s not for everybody. How do you know if it would be a good thing for you? Well, if your fitness friend outperformed you, would you
a) feel discouraged and quit working out?
b) feel competitive and try to get the upper hand by the next workout?
c) not even notice?
d) get angry and smash one of those large mirrors against the gym wall?
If you chose b) or c), go get a workout partner. If you chose a), keep working out solo. If you chose d), go see a psychiatrist. Having a partner keeps you accountable and gives you additional motivation. If that’s not enough, you could ask your workout buddy (or buddies) to publicly shame you with embarrassing pictures on a website or social media if you fail to show up for your workout. (For reference on how to do this properly, visit November-project.com/ category/we-missed-you/)

Get a Mantra
This trick comes from marathon runners and endurance athletes, but there’s no reason you can’t take this same strategy into the weight room or indoor cycling class. Choose a phrase, or even a single word, and repeat it when times get tough. One marathoner told The New York Times he repeats the phrase “pain is inevitable; suffering is optional” over and over again as he taps out 26.2 miles. Need a few more examples?
“You don’t have to feel good to run fast.”
“Sweat is your fat crying.”
“Bigger, stronger, faster.”
“Go hard or go home.”
“Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

Buy a Box of Access Bars
Yes, the Access Bar® will help you burn fat more efficiently, but that’s not the point of this particular tip. Purchase one box of your absolute favorite flavor of Access Bars and commit (pinky swear if you have to) to only eat a bar before a minimum 30-minute workout. There are 10 bars in each box, and that means you’ll have to do 10 workouts (or two and a half hours of exercise) this month.
If you’re already working out more than 10 times per month, double it and give me 20! That’ll be five hours of exercise per month. The point is, you’ll get a reward for deciding to do your workout, and you’ll have the added benefit of feeling less sore, which will help with your motivation to go do it again next month.

Keep a Workout Calendar
There’s an old saying about planning: “Plans are useless but planning is invaluable.” What does that mean? At the start of every week, write out your fitness plan. (If you want extra credit, you can write out your nutrition plan too.) Every time you fulfill a scheduled workout, draw a happy face over it on your calendar.
But suppose your planned workout doesn’t come through—the weather doesn’t cooperate or your workout buddies bail on you. If you replace your planned workout with another 30-minute workout, draw your smiley face anyway. If, on the other hand, you miss a workout, draw a sad face … or an angry face … in red ink … baring its teeth at you. You get the point.
Hang your workout calendar in a public place where your entire family can see it. At the end of the week, you and your family can look back to see what you did—or didn’t—accomplish.

Focus On The Process
Say you want to lose 15 pounds. When you step on the scale, will it inspire you to work harder? Or will it remind you how far you have yet to go? And how many nagging reminders can you take before you throw your hands up and quit?
If standing on the scale every day motivates you to get better, by all means, do it. But if measuring yourself every day leaves you feeling discouraged, for goodness’ sake, stop doing it. Instead, focus on what you have to do to achieve your goal: exercise and eat better.
Real results come when you execute your plan over the long term. In an ideal world, you’ll even come to enjoy it. And when that happens, goal or no goal, you’ll keep doing it.

SOURCE: The Melaleuca Journal

Weight Loss Yoga Routine

Relax your body, calm your mind and lose weight with yoga! Tara Stiles' weight loss yoga routine is the perfect workout for this holiday season! Burn tons of calories while feeling centered and refreshed with yoga!

Glenwood Springs Moms fof Moms Monthly M&M

When: January 22nd 10-11:30am

Where: First United Methodist Church

(Parlor Room)

9th & Cooper, Glenwood

Guest Speaker: Kim & Megan Henrie, of

Roaring Fork Wellness

Topic: Join personal trainers as they present Real Life Workouts - quick, simple, effective exercises you can do at home around your schedule and your kids.

  Learn:

- how to squeeze fitness into 20 minutes per day or less

- how to get an effective workout with no specialized equipment
- 6 tips for better health

Call for Vendors, Glenwood Springs

Call for Vendors for Health & Wellness Expo

Glenwood Springs, CO - Vendor and sponsorship applications are currently being accepted for the third annual Health & Wellness Expo in Glenwood Springs.  The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 26, at Ramada Inn & Suites.

The Health & Wellness Expo is being produced locally in hopes of providing information and education about integrative health and preventative wellness solutions that are available throughout the valley.  The event will feature more than 30 educational vendor booths, informative speakers and interactive activities for all ages.

For more information about this event or to obtain a booth vendor application, visit www.healthandwellnessexpogws.com.

What’s So Special About 45 Minutes? Exercising to Lose Weight

 

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 50 years, you probably already know exercise is a crucial part of a healthy lifestyle.

There’s a mountain of scientific evidence showing that exercise can help you age more gracefully, get stronger, feel more energetic, lose weight and reduce your risk for dozens of diseases and conditions. Your question probably isn’t “Should I exercise?” but rather, “What sort of exercise should I do?” and “How much of it do I need?” Vitality: Simple Steps to Your Ideal Weight™ recommends 45 minutes of exercise per day. In the paragraphs ahead, you’ll read why that is the ideal workout length and what you should do with your 45 minutes.

The Science of Exercise & Weight Loss

When your muscles contract during exercise, they release hormones that help you reduce body fat. These hormones kick off other healthy processes in your body—increasing muscle, bolstering your immune system, and even healing and protecting neurons in your brain.

Both high-intensity and moderate-intensity exercise can help you lose weight in a variety of ways. High-intensity exercise (think sprinting, resistance training, football, wrestling, etc.) burns through large amounts of calories quickly, and builds and strengthens muscle.

Moderate-intensity anaerobic or any aerobic exercise (think jogging, cycling or lap swimming) can grow the number of mitochondria (cellular power plants) in your cells, increase the volume of blood in your veins and arteries, and boost your overall cardiovascular health.

Aerobic exercise also directly taps your body’s fat-burning furnace—your aerobic metabolism—and clears sugar from your blood. An aerobic workout will start off using your body’s natural source of stored carbohydrates (called glycogen), but as you keep the workout going, you’ll increasingly use fat.

Most people’s bodies don’t surrender fat easily. A natural substance in your body called adenosine blocks your body from burning fat. But the unique blend of ingredients in the Access® Bar turns the key on adenosine, unlocking your fat stores and enabling you to use them right from the beginning of your workout.

Since the Access Bar’s introduction 20 years ago, Melaleuca customers have purchased 125 million bars and relied on them to lose weight, avoid soreness and make their workouts more enjoyable. Access Bars have also helped dozens of long-course triathletes, ultra-marathon runners, distance cyclists, and marathon swimmers to run, swim and bike thousands of miles while accessing more of their fat stores along the way. Tammy Van Wisse, for example, fueled a swim across the English Channel with Access Bars and lost 12 pounds in the process!

But most exercisers aren’t swimming the English Channel or competing in the grueling Hawaii Ironman® Triathlon. If you’re like most people, you just want to lose a little weight and get healthier, not spend an entire day swimming or cycling.

Ultimately, of course, the right exercise is the one that gives you the greatest health benefit and that you enjoy enough to keep doing

Getting The Dose Right

If it’s been a while since your schedule included regular exercise, it’s a good idea to take things one step at a time. A study of 20-to-30-year-old men who started exercising from nothing found that they lost more weight starting with 30 minutes of exercise than 60 minutes all at once. If you’re like them—starting from zero—doing 45 minutes might be too much at first. And even a daily exercise habit of 20 or 30 minutes can bring tremendous health benefits.

“A daily exercise habit is the single most powerful therapy for improving both the quality and quantity of your life,” cardiologist and researcher James O’Keefe told Runner’s World. “Getting just 30 minutes daily of moderate or vigorous physical activity can cut your risk almost in half for premature death, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, depression and heart attack.”

One study found that runners had a 19 percent lower risk of death than non-runners. But the data also indicated that running has a “sweet spot” with regard to health benefits: Those who ran between 10 and 20 miles per week and who ran at a pace of 8:35 to 10 minutes per mile had an even lower risk of death than those who ran less or more, or faster or slower.

That information is great if you’re a runner. But what if you prefer to ride a bicycle, swim, hike or cross-country ski? What’s your sweet spot for getting the greatest exercise benefits?
“The latest data from our studies and others strongly suggests that the ideal dose of daily vigorous exercise is about 30 to 60 minutes,” Dr. O’Keefe says. “If you do more than 60 minutes of strenuous exercise daily, you start to lose some of the health benefits seen with lesser amounts of physical activity.”

Exercising for 45 minutes can also increase the number of calories you burn throughout the day—through the “afterburn effect” or “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.” One study showed that men who intensely rode stationary bicycles for 45 minutes would burn 190 more calories within the next 14 hours. Another study found that exercising for 45 minutes could significantly reduce your appetite.

One additional benefit of a daily 45-minute bout of exercise, particularly for diabetics, is that it clears sugar from your blood and lessens the amount of insulin circulating in your veins and arteries—which ultimately means you’ll store less sugar as fat.

So once you’ve built up to 45 minutes of exercise per day, the next step, instead of increasing the amount further, is to bump up the intensity.

So once you’ve built up to 45 minutes of exercise per day, the next step, instead of increasing the amount further, is to bump up the intensity.

Interval Training

Interval training combines aerobic and anaerobic training to give you a shortcut to some of the fitness you’d normally achieve through long aerobic exercise. For intervals to be most effective, they should be done at high intensity, hence the term “high intensity interval training” or “HIIT.”

As little as six 15-minute sessions of HIIT in two weeks can improve your muscles’ capacity for using oxygen and fat, boost your afterburn and increase your endurance. Your body will become more efficient at storing energy for workouts, and that will make it easier for you to do more exercise later.

Often, you’ll start out with a shorter “work” interval (say 10 seconds) balanced against a longer “rest” interval (perhaps two minutes). As your fitness improves, you can reduce the “rest” interval and increase the “work” interval.

“If intervals and strength training are so effective,” you’ll be tempted to ask, “should I do them all of the time?” The answer is that if your exercise regimen includes both intervals and resistance training, which can be very taxing on your body, you can wind up exhausted pretty quickly. Mixing in aerobic exercise, or “cardio,” with high-intensity interval training can help you avoid overtraining and the symptoms that come with it (irritability, interrupted sleep, injuries, delayed recovery, etc.).

Somewhere, you’ve probably heard the argument over whether intervals or cardio are superior. But the truth is that intervals and traditional aerobic exercise are not mutually exclusive; there’s no reason you can’t do both. If you don’t feel like doing a lung-searing, muscle-burning interval session, you can go for a jog, take a spin on a bicycle, enjoy a leisurely swim or do some other activity. To achieve the same results as the interval session, you’ll need to do more jogging, biking or swimming (closer to the top end of those 45 minutes), but a steady, nonstop workout is still an option.

Source: The Melaleuca Journal

Five Creative Ways to Use a Stability Ball

The stability ball is a great tool for strengthening the core, but there are so many other exercises you can do with it. Here are five fun exercises that you can use to work the entire body using this incredibly versatile piece of equipment.

The Exercise: Rollouts

Targeted Muscles: Abs, back, chest and ats

The Movement: Bend your elbows at 90 degrees and place them on the top of a stability ball. Place your knees on the floor so that your knees, hips and shoulders are in a straight line. Engage your abs and open your shoulders, pushing the ball forward away from your body. Roll the ball out as far as you can without breaking the straight line between your knees and shoulders. Engage your abs and upper body, and then roll the ball back toward your body.

Challenge: For an added challenge, place your feet on the floor instead of your knees.

The Exercise: Bulgarian Split Squat

Targeted Muscles: Glutes and hamstrings

The Movement: Place the ball against a wall. Stand facing away, about 2 to 3 feet from the ball. Place the top of your left foot on the ball, so that you feel a slight stretch in your left hip flexor. Keep your shoulders square and chest up, and engage your core. Once balance is established, bend your right knee, keeping your right knee directly over your foot so that your shin remains vertical. Go as low as you can. Push through your right heel and stand back up. Repeat 10 to 15 times, and then switch legs.

Modification: To modify the exercise, start with a half squat, just to establish balance. You can also place the ball in a corner to prevent lateral shifting of the ball.

Challenge: If you have great balance and want an extra challenge, try this exercise without a wall behind the ball. As you lower, push the ball back with your foot, and then as you stand back up, pull it back in to starting position. You can also try holding on to dumbbells for more glute/hamstring activation.

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Russian Subway - Exercise for a Ticket to Ride

As a promotion for the upcoming 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Moscow subways have added machines that calculate your squats, apparently 30 earns you a ticket to ride.

Make Your Workout a Meditation

High Intensity Training

One of Randy's Favorite Workouts

 Simple workout of only 10 exercises, 1 set per exercise, 8-12 reps per set.

Choose 10 exercises that you can do, 1 for each major muscle group. For example:

1. Calves
2. Hamstrings
3 Quadraceps
4. Abdominals
5. Lower Back
6. Upper Back
7. Chest
8. Triceps
9. Biceps
10. Forearms

After warm-up, you do ONE set per exercise of 8 - 12 reps. The key to this workout is quality, not quantity. Your approach to each exercise is like meditation.

Perform each repetition very very slowly with absolute focus, pay attention to the form, the movement; be present with every aspect of the workout, be in tune with your body. Observe and feel, but don't judge or get emotionally involved, keep the tension out of your face, relax except for the muscle group being worked. Again the movement is SLOW, at least 5 seconds for the positive and negative movement of each repetition. Weight selection should be medium, a weight that allow the 8-12 repetition such that the very last one you muscles simply cannot move the weight another inch.

Enjoy.  

No Time To Exercise? Think Again

Source: Dr. Andrew Weil

Reposted by popular demand

 

Thursday, March 28, 2013 at 6:34AM

You don’t have to sweat through a 30-minute workout to get the health benefits of exercise. A study published in the January/February 2013 issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion adds to earlier findings from Queen's University in Ontario, Canada that short bouts of activity several times a day can do the trick and a small study from Arizona State that showed that three 10-minute aerobic exercise sessions daily was an effective alternative to longer bouts of exercise to reduce the risk of heart disease in the study for participants who were prehypertensive. The researchers, from Bellarmine University in Kentucky, found few differences between “less than 10-minutes” exercisers and those who spent more time working out. But you do have to log enough of the short bouts to add up to 150 minutes per week. The data for the study came from a national survey of more than 6,000 people ages 18 to 85 whose activity levels were measured along with their blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose levels. The less-than-10-minutes crowd had improvements in blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose levels similar to those who exercised for longer periods of time. You can squeeze exercise into your day by taking the stairs instead of the elevator and exploring similar opportunities to be active, noted Bellarmine researcher Paul Loprinzi, Ph.D.

Sources:
Paul D. Loprinzi and Bradley J. Cardinal (2013) Association Between Biologic Outcomes and Objectively Measured Physical Activity Accumulated in ≥10-Minute Bouts and <10-Minute Bouts. American Journal of Health Promotion: January/February 2013, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 143-151.

Dharini Bhammar et al “Effects of fractionized and continuous exercise on 24-h ambulatory blood pressure,” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 2012 Dec;44(12):2270-6. DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3182663117

Beat the Holiday Bulge - 10-Week Weight Loss Program

Take Control with 4 Simple Steps
to Achieve your Weight Loss Goals

Saturday, September 28, 2013 at the Glenwood Springs Community Center, 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

• Reach your ideal weight as little as $3.55 per day!
• Sample our delicious weight loss product line - Gluten free!
• Work with certified fitness professionals
• No monthly fees!

A portion of the proceeds from this program benefit
The Glenwood Springs Center for the Arts and Sunlight Mountain Ski Patrol.

CLICK HERE TO JOIN

101 FITNESS & HEALTH TIPS, REMINDERS and MOTIVATIONS

101 FITNESS & HEALTH TIPS, REMINDERS and MOTIVATIONS
(Back by popular demand!)

These fitness tips were written during 2009 and 2010 while working as a personal trainer, gym owner, and as always, observing myself. I have always exercised, but find my modality changing from looking good to feeling good. Beginning to appreciate living in the moment, and exploring how my body is a vehicle in which to experience life. I hope you find something useful here, go forth and find joy, peace, simplicity, and wellness. –Randy

1. Why share this? I really care about your peace, presence, & joy. Fitness is a strategy that works for me. All that I share I have done or do. Notice I didn’t say this was about weight loss?

2. You can do any fad program or diet short-term. I say….. do something that is sustainable for a lifetime and brings you joy.

3. YOU live with your body. If you are not taking care of it, who will? Your body is the vehicle in which you experience life. What kind of vehicle do you want to drive?

4. Think image editing software and a lot of make-up isn’t used in glossy magazines? Think again. Never compare yourself to anything or anybody else, you never know the situation.

5. Muscles might mean much, maintaining maximum mindfulness might mean much more.

6. Folks, forget fighting fat! Focus fitness for feeling fantastic!

7. Smile.

8. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it fell apart fairly quickly.

9. Want cardio but need variety, and baby, it’s cold outside?! Spend 15 minutes each on 4 different machines: treadmill, elliptical, stair machine, bike,…..

10. Forget all the lose weight hype and changing you beer store to a six-pack. Develop fitness instead as a means to wholeness and personal peace.

11. Exercising when sick is counter-productive, recover and allow yourself to heal before you resume your activities.

12. Your bodyweight and a foam roller or medicine ball is very good for self-massage of sore, tight, & knotted muscles.

13. Goal Setting: Hard - "I will lose weight this year." Better - "I will adopt healthier habits this year".

14. When you go to the gym, leave your ego at the door.

15. Which is better? “I’ve been exercising, I can eat whatever I want.” OR, “I’ve been exercising, I need to eat the best nutrients and fuel I can.”

16. Something to ponder. Are you concerned with looking good, or feeling good? How will the answer impact your workout?

17. Just run. Can be done just about anywhere, anytime. No technology required.

18. FORM FORM FORM! Your body always wants to find the path of least resistance to make things easier. Always focus intently on precise and proper form to ensure the proper muscles are being worked. Also a great tool for living in the moment.

19. Remember recess from grade school? Treat your "workout" like recess.

20. K.I.S.S. Keep-It-Simple-Stupid; or silly, or Sally, or Sam, or sasquatch, or sweetness. 

To continue reading, (FREE) please visit: 101 Tips Free

or order the EBook ($5.00) at 101 Tips $5