Spunk Fitness Golden Ring

August is Stress Awareness Month, a time when the health and wellness community focus on raising the public’s awareness of what causes stress, how dangerous it is to our health, and how to beat it. The American Institute of Stress’s 2014 research shows that, in the U.S., the effects of stress are serious: 77% of people have physical symptoms linked to stress, and at least 73% have psychological symptoms. The top causes of stress? Job pressure tops the list, followed by money, health, relationships, poor nutrition, media overload, and sleep deprivation. Everyone knows that stress is bad for your health, but it’s something you can simply quit like any other unhealthy habit. Stress is the body’s response to what it perceives as a life-threatening situation. While we aren’t often required to run from a predator or escape a burning building, we do face constant sources of low-level stress at work, on our commutes, at home, and in our relationships with others. The tricky thing is that our ...

August is Better Sleep Month, so it’s a good time to consider the relationship between the time you spend in your bed and the time you spend in the fitness center. Many of us have heard that exercise improves sleep, but is that all? Let’s look at three important keys to understanding and making the most of the exercise-sleep connection. 1.     Exercise helps you sleep. Numerous studies have shown that people who exercise regularly sleep both longer and better than people who are mostly sedentary. In fact, exercise is the most natural, doctor-prescribed way to improve insomnia without sleep medication. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Think of a day you were especially active and how you “slept like a baby” that night. That’s not to say you need to work out at the gym to the point of exhaustion every day just to have a good night’s sleep. Get in the recommended 30 minutes a day, 3 or 4 days a week, and you should see improvements in how long and how well you sleep. Keep in...

August is high blood pressure education month, so we’d like to take some time to talk about it. Maintaining a healthy blood pressure directly ties into your pursuit of a healthy lifestyle at the fitness center. First, you may have heard that high blood pressure (also called hypertension) is one of the leading causes of stroke, and that stroke is the 5 th leading cause of death in the United States. But, what you may not realize is that high blood pressure doesn’t just show up in older adults – it affects roughly 1 in 4 men and 1 in 5 women ages 35 to 44. Do you have high blood pressure? Let’s look at the symptoms and how to both treat and prevent it, whatever your age and health condition. The symptoms? The worst thing about high blood pressure is that’s very hard to detect. The American Heart Association affirms there are no hard-and-fast symptoms or tell-tale signs. No wonder an estimated 11 million adults with high blood pressure don’t even know it! That’s why it’s often referred t...

There’s been plenty of hype about food allergies over the last few years. People are going gluten-free, dairy-free, and looking for other things in their diet that might be hurting their health or even hindering their fitness goals. If you’ve wondered if the foods you eat could be affecting your health and fitness, here is some gathered insight from the medical community. Food Sensitivities Versus Food Allergies If someone claims to have a food allergy but can eat food that contains it without an immediate allergic reaction (known as an IgE response ), it isn’t technically an allergy. It’s more like a food sensitivity. Food allergies are life-threatening realities for many people and shouldn’t be confused with the mild digestive problems or inflammation that’s more typical of a food sensitivity. In other words, if you have a food allergy, it will be obvious. Food sensitivities or intolerances, however, cause less immediate reactions in the body that are much less severe and may even be...

Losing weight and getting in shape takes discipline, hard work, and time. Although, ultimately, what we do or don’t do is most important, many of our actions start with mindsets and ideas we have about exercise, healthy eating, and fitness. Thought processes can be powerful motivators (just ask anyone who has run a marathon!). In many ways, the mind is stronger than any other muscle in the body. Just as thoughts and mindsets can help us accomplish things we never dreamed we’d be able to do and help us through tough workouts at the fitness center, they can also hinder us from seeing the results we’re working for. To make sure what happens between your ears is a help and not a hindrance, avoid these faulty fitness mindsets. 1.    Impatience with the process Medical professionals set a healthy weight loss rate at 1 to 2 pounds per week. If you have many pounds to lose, this can seem like a slow process, especially if the scale doesn’t budget at all for weeks at a time. Besid...

Half the battle of getting into shape is finding the motivation to establish new habits like eating healthier and working out regularly at the fitness center. Many people have found that the best way to get that extra push of motivation is a workout partner: someone who is there to sweat, cry, laugh, and groan about DOMS with you, while encouraging you along the way. Gym partners can be a great benefit to helping you reach your fitness goals, but they can also be a hindrance. How do you know if your gym partner is helping or hurting you? Check out these 3 areas to see how your workout buddy measures up. What’s their attitude most of the time, and how does it affect you? When it comes to motivation, attitude is important. Staying positive despite missed goals, bad workouts, or feeling less than energetic makes a big difference in whether you’re able to stick with it for the long haul or end up abandoning your pursuit of a healthier lifestyle. You might have a positive attitude, but does...

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 If you’ve been going to the gym for any length of time, you’ve experienced days when you just didn’t feel like you had enough energy for your workout – especially if your routine is to hit the fitness center early in the morning. Times like these, it can be tempting to reach for a pre-workout supplement that promises to boost your energy levels, give you greater endurance, and help you power through to better results. Before you do, ask yourself these questions. 1. Is the pre-workout formula full of potentially dangerous or high-dose ingredients? Doctors consider supplements like creatine, beta-alanine or whey protein relatively harmless, but some pre-workout blends contain energy boosters and stimulants that haven’t been fully tested, or are linked to health risks. Subjecting your body to these substances places your heart and other body systems in danger, so question anything you aren’t familiar with. Caffeine is another common ingredient in pre-workout formulas. Although many c...

 If you’ve decided it’s time to get serious about losing weight and getting healthier, you’ve probably noticed there are scores of diet plans to choose from. To help you navigate the process of choosing a weight loss plan that will complement your fitness center workouts and health goals, here are a few tips. 1. Recognize That There’s No One-Size-Fits-All Plan for Everyone. There are many things that play into which diet plan is best for each person: physique, genetics, health conditions, weight loss needs, etc. Just because a friend has success with a certain plan doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Trying every plan that’s out there until you find the right one isn’t advisable, either. Yo-yo dieting can wreak havoc on your metabolism and make it even harder to lose weight. Your body and your need are unique, so don’t fall for claims that any one diet is guaranteed to work for everyone. 2. Consult with a Health Professional or Certified Trainer. The best way to determine which weight...

You may be acquiring it tougher to physical exercise although beneath lockdown or even a stay-at-property purchase. However you can continue to uncover methods to generate motion an element of your respective day-to-day program. With most of our day by day motion restricted over the coronavirus pandemic, it can be hard to keep up an physical exercise program. When you take pleasure in fitness courses, you’re probably missing the camaraderie along with the atmosphere with the gym. And Even when you are getting some motion in, you will be emotion discouraged that you choose to’re not at your typical level of exercise. But now, greater than ever, physical exercise is very important. It may have an enormous effect on stress and anxiety you’re experience due to coronavirus and support relieve strain and melancholy. It’s standard to really feel stir mad, but additionally significantly less enthusiastic to exercise since your schedule has been turned the other way up. But don’t be...

Imagine this scenario: you’re stiff and sore from yesterday’s lower-body work during your fitness gym session, you think you might have tweaked something in your lower back, and you didn’t sleep well. Despite these warning signs, you agree to your friend’s invitation to check out a new killer boot camp class after work. Does this sound like someone who’s listening to their body? Of course not. And it’s a recipe for burnout, plateaus, and –worst of all – injury. Intuition about what’s going on in our bodies is something all of us need to cultivate both in and outside the gym, and that’s why more and more trainers are encouraging fitness gym regulars to practice intuitive training . What Intuitive Training Means Rather than blindly following a program or jumping on every new fitness fad regardless of its safety or required fitness level, intuitive training caters each workout to what will best suit your current (as in, daily) condition and abilities. In our example, that might mean promi...