HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

Your well-being should be a priority in your life, yet so many of us place our health on the back burner, leaving it unattended until it boils over on us. Health seems to be something that's largely taken for granted. We feel invincible until it fails us. This is clearly the wrong attitude. If you take preventative action, you'll not only feel better, but your body will thank you by adding years onto your life!

Improve your Health for the Right Reasons

Nowadays many Americans are overweight. As a result, more people than ever are trying to slim down. The problem is a lot of us aren't trying to lose weight for the right reasons. If you need to lose weight, be sure to do it for yourself, not for anybody else.

Losing weight goes far beyond the superficial. Don't lose weight only in order to look good, but for your overall health and wellness. When you try to improve yourself for other people, you can lose sight of your motivation if your relationship changes. The motivation needs to be within you, not someone else. The deeper your commitment to your health, the more difficult it will be to cheat on your diet or forego exercise.

It's also important to realize that you must love yourself first before anyone else will. People are drawn to others who have self-confidence and self-respect. When you care about your well being, not only will you take better care of yourself, but others will be more likely to do the same.

Here are some ways you can put yourself first and take better care of your health:

1. See your doctor. If you haven't been to see a doctor in a while or are in need of an annual checkup, start by making an appointment to get your health evaluated. This will give you a good foundation for what improvements you need to make.

2. Find an exercise routine you can incorporate regularly into your lifestyle. It can be as easy as going for a walk. Just put on your shoes and get outdoors. The fresh air and the walk will do wonders for your health.

3. Make changes in your diet. Try reducing red meat, refined sugars and alcohol for starters. Increase your fresh fruit and vegetable intake. Be sure to start off each day with a healthy breakfast and don't skip meals. Drink plenty of water throughout the day as well.

Remember, when you eat poorly, you're doing a huge disservice to your body. You are what you eat, after all. If you eat unhealthy foods, you'll likely end up unhealthy with chronic health issues like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes, just to name a few. Routinely eating healthier foods won't just make you feel better but you'll actually become stronger. Healthy diets effectively protect us from many illnesses and diseases.

4. Find time to relax. It's imperative to take care of your mental health, also, by incorporating relaxation techniques into your lifestyle. Regular relaxation helps reduce stress and anxiety and recharges you so you can bring more energy and passion to all areas of your life. Consider taking up yoga, pilates or meditation. Find time to pursue hobbies you enjoy to help bring you contentment and happiness.

Use these tips every day to improve your health and put yourself first. Following a good wellness plan will help keep you fit and boost your energy. If you take good care of yourself, you'll be able to enjoy your life to the fullest.

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Five Basic Rules Of Staying Injury-Free In The Gym

Let's face it- if you want to build muscle, you have to use enough weight to make it worth your while. Walking into the gym and simply going through the motions without a sweat just isn't going to get the job done. You have to overload those muscles with heavy weight and high intensity if you want to see real results. This is without a doubt the most effective means of stimulating muscular growth. Muscles grow due to a natural adaptive survival response, and if you don't give them a really good reason to grow, well- they just won't.

Though training hard and heavy may be awesome for your muscles, if you're not careful, it can be trouble for the health of your joints and connective tissue. While there are no guarantees that you'll never injure yourself lifting weights, you can certainly take specific steps to lessen the chance. An injury is the absolute last thing you could ever hope for, as it will stop you dead in your muscle-building tracks.

Most serious weightlifters will experience some form of injury at one time or another throughout their training careers. Below are five golden rules to follow that will minimize the risk of injury to yourself. If you can honestly say that you implement all 5 of these rules into your training program, then your risk of getting hurt will be much lower than someone who does not.

1) Always perform a thorough warmup.

A proper warmup is the single best thing you can do to minimize your risk of injury. This simple 15-20 minute process will prepare your mind and body for the hard work to come by increasing blood flow into the surrounding connective tissue and by lubricating your joints. At least 5 minutes of light cardiovascular exercise before each workout followed by 4-5 warmup sets for your first major exercise of the routine is recommended.

2) Always train with proper form.

This should go without saying. Every exercise that you perform in the gym should be done with proper form and technique in order to keep the stress off of your joints. If you start squatting or deadlifting with a rounded back, jerking the weights around in a ballistic manner or performing dangerous exercises you are almost guaranteed to hurt yourself at some point.

3) Always train within your own personal limits.

Weightlifting is a personal battle, and letting your ego take over is almost always a recipe for disaster. It doesn't matter what the guy next to you is benching and it is completely irrelevant to your training program. You must always use weights that you can handle and control with proper form, and if you start piling on the plates to impress the people around you, you'll be stretching your limits and putting yourself in a very vulnerable position.

4) Always know when to quit.

If you cannot complete another rep of an exercise using proper form, the set is over, plain and simple. Put the weight down and rest up for your next set. If you start using huge amounts of momentum and jerky body motions to crank out a couple of extra reps, you'll be on the sidelines before you know it.

5) Never ignore your aches and pains.

This is a critically important point that cannot be understated. When you're motoring along through a training program and are making progress from week to week, the idea of quitting just often seems impossible. This can sometimes lead us to ignore those obvious injuries and pretend as if they aren't really there as we often "work through" the pain and hope that it magically disappears. More often than not, it will only get worse. If you feel that something definitely isn't right and can sense that you probably shouldn't be training, listen to your gut and take some time off. Get the problem checked out by a professional and then take the proper measures to heal. While it may hurt your progress in the short term, the overall long-term effect will be a positive one.

So there you have it, five basic rules to follow in the gym to keep those joints healthy and to keep you training for years on end. Follow them closely, because if you don't, your chances of ending up with an injury due to your own bad judgment will be greatly increased.

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