Leticia's Blog

Nutrition

2005-03-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

Exercise is very important to either reduce your risk of diseases or to help you lose weight, but you could never accomplish it properly if you don't have a healthy diet. So, for example, if you want to lose weight and do a lot of exercise,and then you eat more calories than the ones that you spent, you are going to continue gaining weight. In order to lose weight, you have to check that your number of expended calories is higher than the number of calories consumed. Now, if you only want to maintain a desired body weight, the number of calories expended should be equal to the number of calories consumed.

It is also important to take in consideration that diet doesn't mean stop eating; it means eating a balanced diet. I would recommend you to eat a variety of foods from the different groups. Some groups are the group of bread, pasta, cereal,etc; other group would be fruits; other, vegetables; then, dairy products; meat, eggs, poultry, beans; and oils. I would recommend you to eat 65% of carbohydrates, 25% of fats, and 10% of proteins from the total calories consumed. Also, it is very important to try to avoid saturated fats and trans fats, since they are very bad for your health.

Click here for more information about nutrition:

Tennis

2005-03-10T09:42:00.000-08:00

Exercise is very important to improve your health and to help release stress and avoid depression. I would recommend you to do exercise at least 6 days a week to reduce the risk of chronic diseases. Sometimes it is very hard to do it everyday, but if you do something fun it would result easier to accomplish. For example, tennis is a very fun exercise and it helps you improve your strength and improve your coordination, as well as balance. The only thing you need is a tennis racquet, 3 balls, and a partner; or in the case that you don't have anybody to play with, you can go to a club and sign in a tennis clinic. There, you are going to have a professor and many people to play with. You can either play singles or doubles. Playing tennis will help you realize that exercising for 6 days a week is not that hard.

To know more about tennis, click here:

Pilates

2005-03-08T17:45:00.000-08:00

Pilates is a very fun exercise, but a very tough one as well. It is a very good exercise for toning your muscles and working your abdominal muscles. You could buy a pilates DVD and do your exercises while watching it, or you could go to some friends to a gym where they offer pilates classes. If you have never done pilates before, don't worry because they have pilates for beginners, for intermediates,and experts. Besides toning your muscles, pilates is also good for improving your flexibility and for improving your balance.

Check this for more information:

Swimming

2005-03-07T10:15:00.000-08:00

Personally, I do not like swimming that much because I like running or riding the bike better, but swimming is a great exercise for improving your aerobic endurance or help you lose weight. The reason why swimming is a great exercise for losing weight is because it makes you work all your arms and legs muscles. However, you have to swim for at least 20 minutes for at least 3 days a week to see some changes in your weight. In addition, swimming might be a good rehabilitation exercise after an injury or surgery, because it is kinder to your body than any other exercises.

If you want to know more about swimming, click here:

Spinning

2005-03-05T21:56:00.000-08:00

If you want to lose weight, but you think that riding the bike for more than 30 minutes is very boring, try to do some spinning. Spinning is not like the regular bike manual mode. You can go to a gym where they offer some spinning classes and there you are going to be in a group of people riding the bike at the same time as you. You will also have an instructor that tells you what to do. You can ride the bike sitting down, or standing up, and you will go at the rhythm of the music. Because you are going to be accompanied by a lot of people, music, and an instructor that constantly motivates you, you are not going to get bored and you are going to get a great workout done. You'll see that you would not want to stop going to your spinning classes.

If you want to have more information about what spinning is and does, check this website:

Stationary Bike

2005-03-03T21:20:00.000-08:00

This exercise is the most boring of all, but it can help you improve your aerobic endurance and help you lose weight. I like running better than riding the bike when I want to improve my aerobic endurance or when I want to lose weight, but sometimes it is good when you are injured and cannot run, or when you just want to add variety to your program of exercises, so your body doesn’t get used to it. You can ride the bike for 30 to 60 minutes in order to lose weight. You might want to make sure that you get a bike with a comfortable seat, so you don’t get pain in your gluteus maximus. Also, if you think riding the bike for that long is extremely boring, you can listen to some music while you do your exercise, or put a TV in front of you and watch your favorite show. This way, time will fly by.

You can also do some bike intervals for 20 to 30 minutes in order to improve your fitness. This is a very tough exercise, but it is not as boring as riding the bike under the manual mode. Doing 15 seconds of 80% maximum speed and 45 seconds of rest at 60% of maximum speed would be tough enough.

This site has more information, visit this site.

Weight Lifting

2005-03-02T22:30:00.000-08:00

This type of exercise is very good whether you want to increase your muscle mass or just tone your muscles. If you want to increase your muscle mass, I would recommend you to do low repetitions with heavy weights. It would be best to do 3 or 4 sets of 6 repetitions. Now, if you just want to tone your muscles, it is better to do high repetitions with light weights. For example, you could do 3 or 4 sets of 15 repetitions.

It is very important to watch your technique while doing weights in order to avoid injuring yourself. One thing that is extremely important to remember is that when you pick up a weight from the floor, you MUST lift from the legs, NEVER FROM THE BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That could cause severe back injuries. Also, it is important to keep your back straight while free weight repetitions without back support. Since almost all gyms have mirrors everywhere, it is easy for you to check that you are having the proper technique. When you are lifting heavy weights, it is strongly important to have a spotter in case you drop the weight by accident.

One thing that you could implement to your workout is abdominal exercises, better known as abs. This will tone your abs. It is better to do 4 sets of 12 abs with better technique, than 100 improperly. Good technique would imply doing effort with your abdominal area instead of pulling with your neck.

It is recommended to do weight lifting 3 days a week.

Check this out!

Running

2005-03-01T16:15:00.000-08:00

Running is one of my favorite exercises. It can be aerobic and/or anaerobic, and it can help you to improve your physical fitness or just to obtain a desired body weight. If you want to lose weight, it would be better to do running as an aerobic exercise. I would recommend you to run at least 30 minutes. I know that this might sound boring, but you can bring your CD player with you and listen to your favorite songs while you run. You could also tell some friends to go running with you and that way you won’t feel like you have been punished. I would also strongly recommend you to go running to a nice park and limit your runs to small parks where it is easy to count the laps.

Now, if you are interested on improving your physical fitness, you are going to have to run at a pace that is above your lactate threshold mentioned in the aerobic exercise log. This way you are going to work on your slow oxidative muscle fibers. Now, you could also do some intervals, where you first run at 50% to 60% of your maximum speed at a given distance, and then you run at 80% of your maximum speed for 50m, and then you go back to your 50 to 60% speed, etc. I would recommend you to do this exercise from 15 to 30 minutes. This is going to make you run above your lactate threshold for sure, since it is a tough exercise. It will also help you to train your fast oxidative-glycolytic muscle fibers.

Now, if you want to run in a more anaerobic way, you could do some sets of short or medium sprints. This will help you to train your fast glycolytic muscle fibers. You could do that for 20 to 30 minutes.

For mor info, go here.

Anaerobic Exercises

2005-02-25T20:28:00.000-08:00

Anaerobic exercises are the ones that last less than 2 minutes. This type of exercises is good if you want to have power in your muscles and have a strong heart. These exercises last for a very short time because they are maximum effort exercises that use mainly carbohydrates as a fuel and once the muscles run out of glycogen, we feel fatigued and cannot go any longer. Our intensity decreases and the exercise will no longer be anaerobic; it will become aerobic.

Anaerobic exercises are associated with fast oxidative-glycolytic muscle fibers and fast glycolytic mucle fibers. The fast glycolytic muscle fibers are the biggest muscle fibers and are the most dependent on carbohydrates. In my opinion, that’s why sprinters have huge muscles; they have a big percentage of fast glycolytic muscle fibers.

For more information go here to this site.

Aerobic Exercises

2005-02-23T20:16:00.000-08:00

Aerobic exercises are the ones that last longer than 2 minutes. This type of exercises is good because they reduce the risk of heart diseases. This is due to the fact that with aerobic exercise you are training your heart to be more resistant. However, you have to train above your lactate threshold in order to do this. Lactate threshold is the level where you start accumulating blood lactate.

Now, if you only want to maintain or lose weight, aerobic exercises are also very good. However, in order to start using fat as a fuel, your exercise must last longer than 2 minutes. This is because during the first period of exercise, your muscles use mainly carbohydrates as a fuel. Once you run out of those carbohydrates, your body starts using the fats stored in your body.

Aerobic exercises are associated with slow oxidative muscle fibers, which are very expensive to keep. Therefore, you have to keep training them constantly. This is why I would recommend doing aerobic exercises at least for 30 minutes from 3 to 6 days a week.

For more information click on this site.