Friday, September 7, 2012

I’ve found it!

You’ve just got to see this movie: “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead”. 
This documentary has changed my life. I think I have found the answer to my diet problem. The story of how Joe the Juicer found such dramatic change in his life due to juicing, is nothing short of inspiring.
Yes, I’m talking about juicing.
So I did a little research, and I’m not sure I’m ready to spend 400 dollars, or 100 dollars, when I can spend 50 dollars.
I found the Hamilton Beach big mouth juicer. Thank heavens for youtube. I was able to see a lot of juicers compared side by side. The Hamilton Beach juicer compared exactly with the more expensive juicers. The only complaint people had was with the loud motor.
I ordered my online, and when it got here, I was in love! I juiced a juice immediately, and I loved it! I’m now making a juice a day, and I’ll tell you all about the things I learn and how it affects me.
Right now I’m juicing carrots, zucchini, limes, ginger, apples, pears, kael, spinach, celery, and all at the same time. It tastes great!
Updates coming! Stay tuned.


 

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Dumbbells are essential!

If there was only one piece of weight lifting equipment you could own, it would be dumbbells.
Even a single dumbbell provides dozens of potential exercises for your routine.
Dumbbells are not expensive, and you can even get high quality components second-hand. Dumbbells don’t take up a lot of storage space, and you can work out with dumbbells in a very limited amount of space.
A pair of dumbbells doesn’t take up much more room than a single dumbbell, and isn’t any harder to acquire.
Dumbbells are extra effective because they are less stable than a barbell, and require your muscles to stabilize the apparatus at the same time that the exercise is being executed.
I have three pairs of dumbbells that I love.
My light dumbbells are great for warming up and learning to exercises that I want to add to my routine.
My medium weight dumbbells are my work horses. I do most of my workout routine with my medium dumbbells. They are heavy enough to provide a challenge, but not too heavy to do multiple reps.
My heavy dumbbells are a great challenge for exercises when I really want to push myself.
My favorite exercise of all is the dumbbell fly. I use my light dumbbells to do a variety of flat bench and inclined bench curls and flys and presses. I use my heavy dumbbells to do flys that I do lying on the floor.
If you haven’t committed to a weight lifting program yet, go get some dumbbells.





Tuesday, September 4, 2012

I give up!

People who take up new exercises always seem to give up eventually anyway. Why can’t I give up?
I’ve always hated running anyway. I’ve always been the worst runner you’ve ever seen. Even as a kid playing little league sports, I was the last little shuffler around the track when we ran laps.
But I’m not giving up on running. I’m giving up my excuses to NOT run.
I wasn’t running at all when I first started working out. After working out for a few weeks, I realized that working out with weights left me feeling constricted.  Sometimes I would get charly horse cramps in the middle of the night after working out. It was suggested to me that I should stretch out after my workouts.  But I instinctively knew the answer to this problem.  I had to face my old nemesis, running.  And I was right! Running after working out with weights felt absolutely fantastic.
A lot of my running is really walking. But I push myself to run as much as I can. I go twice around the mile track at our local park. I go as soon as I’m done with my weight routine.
As much as I don’t like running, whenever I did run I could always feel immediately that running was a great thing to do and has important results.
I’m also giving up on obsessing about doing the exercises correctly. Zig Ziglar used to say that anything worth doing was worth doing POORLY, until you can learn to do it well. Well, I’m going to do my exercises poorly, but consistently until I learn to do them well.
So if I’m letting my body sway too much, or bending my elbows too much or doing the reps too fast, that’s okay. I’ll work on it, and soon I’ll be performing these exercises correctly.  The trick is to keep trying, and to keep increasing the amount of weight I’m lifting.
If I’m going to give up on trying to do my exercises perfectly, I’m going to have to give up on avoiding information, because although I want some lea way in learning to do my exercises correctly, I also don’t want to hurt myself. I need to know when my poor form is dangerous to my body. 
Maybe the next thing I need to give up is my diet. I have horrible eating habits. I need to give up. I need to give up second helpings, and large pieces of birthday cake, and most of all I need to give up cola drinks.