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Technorati Tags: Personal Training in Washington DC,Washington DC fitness,Fittest Cities,Fattest Cities

Men’s Fitness magazine just released their annual list of fittest and fattest cities in America, and out nation’s capital comes in ranked #13.

I would like to think that it is a result of our world-class personal trainers. Unfortunately quality of personal training available wasn’t one of the judging criteria. Instead they looked at things like.

• how much residents are excising

• how healthfully they eat

• how much they use gym memberships

• how much junk food they consume

• how much alcohol they consume

• how much time they spend sitting in traffic.

Men’s Fitness also talks to mayors and city parks departments to learn about local exercise venues, programs designed to get citizens off their couches and moving, and civic leadership.

Washington would have ranked a lot higher if it wasn’t for alcohol comsumption and time spent in traffic. We received a grade of “F” when it came to booze and an “F+” when it came to traffic.

The Top 10 Fattest Cities in 2007

1. Las Vegas

2. San Antonio

3. Miami

4. Mesa, AZ

5. Los Angeles

6. Houston

7. Dallas

8. El Paso

9. Detroit

10. San Jose

 

The Top 10 Fittest Cities in 2007

1. Albuquerque

2. Seattle

3. Colorado Springs

4. Minneapolis

5. Tucson

6. Denver

7. San Francisco

8. Baltimore

9. Portland

10. Honolulu

Complete list of Fittest and Fattest Cities

Due to the high demand for free fitness ebooks, I have designed and launched a new website www.Free-Fitness-Ebooks.com.  These free fitness ebooks seperate good health and fitness information from the bad, and are hand-picked by me, a fitness professional.

 Enjoy.

Everywhere you turn,  people are telling you to exercise. You doctor tells you to exercise, George Bush tells you to exercise, now even McDonalds is telling you to exercise.  Why should you do it?  What should you exercise?  Here are the top 10 reasons to exercise.  

1)To look Better
Face it.   You look better when you are in shape.  You look better in clothes and you look better naked. 

2)To feel better
Exercise is addicting, because it improves your mood and the way you feel about yourself. Researchers have also found that exercise is likely to reduce depression, anxiety and stress.

3)To make more money
Studies have shown that you are more productive when you exercise.  One study found that 80 percent of employees believed their exercise program was helping them become more productive at work, and 75 percent thought regular exercise was helping them achieve higher levels of relaxation and concentration.

4)To reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke
Daily physical activity can help prevent heart disease and stroke by strengthening your heart muscle, lowing your blood pressure, raising your high-density lipoprotein (HDL) (good cholesterol) and lowing your low-density lipoprotein (LDL) (bad cholesterol), improving blood flow, and increasing your heart’s working capacity.

5)To lower your blood pressure
Regular physical exercise can reduce blood pressure in those with hypertension. Physical activity can also reduce body weight and body fat which contributes to high blood pressure.

6)To prevent type II diabetes
By reducing body fat percentages, exercise can help prevent and control adult-onset diabetes.

7)To prevent osteoporosis.
 Weight-bearing exercise promotes bone formation and may prevent many forms of bone loss associated with aging (especially in women).

8)To prevent obesity
Exercise helps reduce body fat by building muscle mass, burning calories, and improving metabolism. When physical activity is combined with proper nutrition, it can help control weight and prevent obesity, a major risk factor for many diseases.

9)To reduce lower back pain
By increasing strength and endurance and improving flexibility and posture, regular exercise helps prevent back pain.

10)To improve your confidence and self-esteem.
Studies have shown that exercise brings about significant increases in confidence and self-esteem.

 

So you have been working out for a while, seeing great results and loving the difference you see and feel in your body. But what happens if, for some reason — injury, vacation, burnout, or something else — you have to stop for a while.

What happens?

Well first, let me tell you what doesn’t happen. Your muscle does not turn to fat. That would be like saying if you stop driving your car, your tires will turn to marshmallows. You may lose muscle mass and gain some fat, but your muscle does not turn to fat.

Here is what does happen:

• Cardio: You begin to lose aerobic endurance in as little as two weeks.

• Muscular Strength: Studies have shown that muscular strength will return to pre-exercise levels after four to 12 weeks off.

• Muscular Size: Muscles will shrink after 4-12 weeks off.

• Metablism:  As your muscles atrophy, your metabolism will slow.  This means that if you eat the same amount, you will gain weight. 

When is the best time to workout?  

Many popular diets insist that the best time to exercise is first thing in the morning, before you eat breakfast.  The theory is that your body doesn’t have the fuel it needs to complete the exercise, so if goes to the only source of energy it has…your stored body fat.  There are two problems with this theory…

1)All that matters when it comes to weight loss is total caloric intake.  Are you eating less than you burn. If so, you will lose weight…simple as that.  Your body can’t tell time.

2)You need energy to exercise.   And to have that energy, your body needs food.  If you exercise before eating, you will not perform as well and your workout will suffer. 

 So what is really the best time to exercise?  The simplest answer?  Whenever you will do it.   Are you a morning person? If so workout in the morning.  Are you a night owl?  If so, you are better off exercising at night.  If you need to do it on your lunch break, do it the.  Do whatever works for you.

For those of you out there who are driven by winning, one of the most effective ways to lose weight is to be part of a weight loss competition. Competing against other people provides something that traditional weight loss programs fail at: motivation, accountability and incentive.

There is a website, WeightLossWars, that will run your competition for you, so all you have to do is worry about losing weight.

From Weightlosswars.com:

The site allows you to create weight loss or exercise competitions among your friends and family. You can compete belly to belly, or team against team. It is your competition, you build it how you want, and compete against who you want, for the prizes you want.

For every competition you receive a personalized “Arena” that displays the status of everyone you invited into your competition. The “Arena” includes:
• A Leader board to show up-to-the-minute who is leading the pack
• A Discussion board where you can post motivating or trash talking messages
• Interactive graphs to chart the progress of your competitor or to compare them to movie stars or barn yard animals
• The treasure chest that everyone is competing for
• Links to weight loss professionals and best of all…
• the “Sabotage” button

Each competitor also receives their own “Personal” page where they can record their exercise and food intake into helpful logs. The “Personal” page includes:
• Exercise and Nutrition Logs
• Goal management center
• Weight loss history
• Personalized progress graphs

Each competitor also has access to other helpful tools, including:
• The infamous “Sabotage” feature. Finding yourself behind in the competition? Find out how the WeightLossWars “Sabotage” can help!
• Access to Personal Trainers and Dietitians that can help personalize your weight loss efforts.
• The WeightLossWar Store! Filled with helpful weight loss products for your competition.

“Welcome to McDonald’s, can I help you?”

“Yes, I would like a 10 piece Chicken Selects, one large order of fries, and a Chocolate Triple Thick Shake”

That one meal at McDonald’s will cost you 2900 calories and 123 grams of fat. For some people trying to lose weight, that is more than two days worth of calories.  You would have to spend 8-10 hours on the treadmill to make up for that indulgence.

 With all the fast food and junk food out there it doesn’t take a lot to undo the progress you make through diet and exercise.  The Center for Science in the Public Interest a think-tank in Washington DC has a great list of 10 best and worst foods.   Take a look, it is pretty eye opening and pretty scary.

One of the easiest and most effective ways to lose weight is to keep track of everything you put in your mouth. Keeping a food diary will help you realize exactly how much you’re eating.

By the time you account for each little nibble here and there, snacks, meals, alcohol, cookies, etc. you’ll be surprised (and maybe horrified) at how much you can consume without even knowing it.

MyFoodDiary.com gives you the tools you need to make good, healthy decisions about food and exercise (including a food diary, an exercise log, powerful charts & reports, a body log, and a discussion forum).

The online food diary is easy to use. Simply search the food database of over 30,000 items and add your items to the food diary. They take the information that you have entered and give you suggestions about how to improve your diet or how to stay within your calorie goals. They count more than just calories. They also track fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugars, fiber, sodium, cholesterol, vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, calcium, and water.

Their exercise log lets you keep track of the calories burned through physical activity. Select from a list of over 600 activities or enter the information from your exercise equipment or heart rate monitor.

For all you type A’s out there, there are dozens of motivational charts & reports. Each report or chart is customized to your individual needs. You can view your progress over time, receive personal tips, and even see what you would weigh in 3 months.

I could, but I don’t think I need to!  Congratulations, what you are doing is working for you. You have already lost the majority of the weight you wanted to lose. The key is to keep going. Keep exercising, keep eating right, and keep losing. Right now, the best thing you can do is reconnect with why you are losing the weight in the first place.

• Are you exercising for better health?

• To reduce your risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, colon cancer, high blood pressure?

• Do you want to look better in your clothes?

• Or, better yet, do you want to look better without clothes?

Whatever the reason, it helps to find your motivation, because there will be times when you want to quit. There may be times every day when you want to quit. Without something powerful to keep you going, in good times and bad, you’ll find any excuse to say “enough.” You may have to constantly remind yourself why you are working so hard to lose the weight.

So you go to a personal trainer for weight loss and he or she wants you to lift weights.  Sounds counterproductive doesn’t it?  Why are they having you lift weights?

 Simply put, because they’re evil.  No, I’m just kidding. It sounds like your trainer knows what he’s doing. There are a few reasons why I have clients lift weights, especially when they’re trying to lose a few pounds:   

• Weight lifting turns you body into a calorie burning machine – It’s simple, muscle burns more calories than fat.  So adding muscle speeds your metabolism which allows you to eat the same amount of food and still lose weight.

• Lifting weights also reminds you to eat right — When you lift weights, you are probably going to be sore.  And soreness in your muscles is a great reminder to eat right.  Why waste two days of soreness for one doughnut?

• And finally weight lifting shapes your muscles so you look wonderful when you lose the weight.  I look at the big picture, so I get my clients bodies ready to look good when the weight comes off.

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