Mindset

Are You As Healthy As You Think You Are?

Are You As Healthy As You Think You Are?

Published by on February 5, 2024

Many people in Honolulu, HI, take their good health for granted. They believe they’re healthier than they are. Most won’t visit the doctor and have the appropriate tests to prove they’re healthy or if they have a chronic underlying issue that needs to be addressed. These silent chronic illnesses are more dangerous or just as dangerous as any virus that spikes a fever or sends you to bed.

Do you have problems with chronic inflammation?

Inflammation is like fire. It’s beneficial in most cases unless it gets out of hand. It’s the body’s way of eliminating pathogens, damaged cells, and other irritants. It causes fevers that help destroy viruses and bacteria, preventing further damage. It helps speed the healing of wounds. Like fire, it can get out of control. Then the inflammation goes from acute to chronic. It is low-grade and can lead to serious conditions like cancer. Checking inflammation levels can identify problems earlier.

Are your belly bugs in balance?

Your gut microbiome controls more than just digestion. It plays a role in your overall health, including your mental health. Your microbiome is easier to control than several other issues in the body. Making lifestyle changes can help. The food you eat, medications, stress level, and weight can make a difference between a healthy microbiome and an unhealthy one. If your microbiome is off kilter, it can cause weight gain and other problems. If you’re chronically bloated and gassy, check with a doctor.

Are you getting the benefits of all the necessary minerals, vitamins, and nutrients?

Having a blood test can pinpoint any nutrient deficiencies, whether it’s vitamin D, iron, or other important nutrient. Having a blood profile can look at all the body’s nutrient levels and pinpoint areas where an improved diet could help. It also can show places where absorption isn’t adequate or some other health condition exists.

  • Your eyes can show when there’s an internal problem and so can your skin. Rashes, eczema, acne, and other skin problems indicate you may have an underlying health condition. Skin problems can also indicate digestive issues.
  • Are you getting a good night’s sleep without waking up several times throughout the night? If you sleep through the night and wake up refreshed, it’s a sign of a healthy lifestyle. Waking up tired is an indicator there’s a problem.
  • You don’t need a doctor to tell you that you’re getting winded doing simple tasks and that’s not good. If loading groceries into your car makes you want to sit and rest, talk to your doctor. You may need to increase your daily exercise, lose weight, or have a health issue that needs addressing.
  • Is your blood sugar stable? Do you go through super lows where your personality changes or you are ready to drop? Do you suffer from cravings that may indicate stress, hormonal imbalances, or instability of blood sugar?

For more information, contact us today at Hawaii Fit Camp!

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The Top Benefits Of Walking For Fitness

The Top Benefits Of Walking For Fitness

Published by on January 25, 2024

It’s so beautiful in Honolulu, HI, that it’s amazing more people aren’t walking to their destinations but using their cars instead. There are so many benefits for overall fitness, physical and mental. Walking may be inconvenient if your errand involves bulky boxes or is at a distance, but for short distances, it saves gas and improves your fitness. Barring physical limitations, it’s an easy exercise almost everyone can do, providing cardio and weight-bearing benefits.

Walking is an excellent supplement to a traditional exercise program.

Exercise is all about being more active. If you’re already pursuing a scheduled workout program, you can supplement it with walking. It increases cardiovascular efficiency, extends endurance, and boosts leg strength. Walking is also a good recovery activity. If you’ve overworked your body doing traditional workouts, resting the next day is advised. That doesn’t mean laying on the couch. It does mean doing light activity that stimulates circulation to speed recovery. That’s the perfect description of walking.

Walking can help prevent osteoporosis and slow or reverse it once it starts.

Weight-bearing exercises like walking can help prevent the bone-thinning of osteoporosis. Exercise causes muscles to tug on the bone. That tugging causes the bone to uptake calcium for strength to resist the tugging. If there’s no exercise, there’s no tugging. Calcium is leached from the bone causing bone thinning and osteoporosis. Walking builds muscle tissue to prevent osteopenia, the loss of muscle tissue that precedes osteoporosis.

You’ll reduce the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes when you walk.

Making your heart work a little harder is a good thing. If you don’t increase its efforts periodically, it becomes inefficient. Just like any muscle that you don’t use, it gets weaker. Walking keeps the heart pumping harder, boosting its strength. It also helps lower blood pressure by working large muscles in the legs. They produce nitric oxide that causes blood vessels to expand, making it easier for blood to flow and lowering blood pressure. It reduces bad cholesterol levels, helps you lose weight, and helps reduce the risk of insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes.

  • Walking improves circulation, sending oxygen and nutrient-laden blood to all parts of the body, including the brain. Research shows that daily exercise like walking reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s, improves dementia, and lessens the symptoms of depression.
  • Make your walking more effective by turning it into a HIIT—high intensity interval training—session. Just alternate the pace between peak intensity and recovery to do that. It burns more calories and gets faster results.
  • For people who are overweight or those with joint issues, walking is superior to running. It’s a low-impact exercise so there’s no pounding motion.
  • Walking also boosts your digestion, improves immune response, and reduces the risk of certain types of cancer. You can increase benefits by adding arm and leg weights when you walk.

For more information, contact us today at Hawaii Fit Camp!

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Most Effective Core Workouts For A Stronger Body

Most Effective Core Workouts For A Stronger Body

Published by on January 15, 2024

Your posture, digestion, and even your entire body are affected by the strength of your core muscles. That’s why workouts focusing on the core are so valuable. Every movement you make uses core muscles in one way or another. These muscles include the pelvis, lower back, hips, and abs. The abs and back muscles work together to keep you in balance, in an upright position. If one group is weak, it makes the other group work harder. It can force the back muscles to pick up the slack when the abs are weak. They must do extra work to maintain good posture. That can cause back issues and pain. It also affects your posture and makes you look heavier.

One of the best core workouts is the plank.

You’ll find a variety of plank modifications, but the basic plank is the most used for building abdominal and other core muscles. It’s simple enough. Get on the floor, lifting your body until your weight is on your forearms and toes. Keep your body straight, your arms bent at the elbow, and your upper arms at a 90-degree angle to the shoulders. That’s a low plank. For a high plank, continue lifting your body until your arms are straight and your weight is on your toes and the palms of your hands. Hold that position as long as possible, attempting to increase it as you get stronger.

Improve your core muscles by riding a bike and focusing on posture as you walk.

While it won’t give you flat abs immediately, riding a bicycle can work your abs and improve your core strength. The action of pedaling requires the use of several core muscles, but the real workout comes from balancing your body on the bike, especially during turns. You’ll only get that workout from riding a traditional bike, not the stationary bike in the gym. Combining bicycling as an aerobic exercise with ab workouts like the mountain climber provides the most benefits.

Do a glute bridge or burpees to build core strength.

A glute bridge starts by laying on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. You lift your buttocks, holding your abs and glutes tight until your body creates a straight line from your knees to your head. Hold that position as you squeeze your core muscles as tightly as possible, then slowly lower your body.

  • Consider doing walking lunges to improve your core muscles. Take a long stride forward as you lower your body into the lunge position. Raise your hands over your head to increase the effort to balance and work the core muscles more.
  • Walking and focusing on good posture can build core strength. Your head should be level with the floor, your shoulders should be back, and you should pull your abdomen in tightly.
  • Jump rope or use a hula hoop. You don’t have to have expensive equipment to improve core strength. Doing boxer jumps or high knee jumps can help.
  • We can create a workout program that increases strength, flexibility, balance, and endurance. It will improve overall strength and include the best core strength exercises that get fast results.

For more information, contact us today at Hawaii Fit Camp!

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The Best HIIT Workouts To Burn Fat Fast

The Best HIIT Workouts To Burn Fat Fast

Published by on January 5, 2024

If you want to burn more fat, you have to burn more calories. One way to do that is by using HIIT, workouts. HIIT is an acronym for high intensity interval training. It’s not a specific workout but a way of doing any workout. It modifies the intensity throughout the workout by alternating between high-intensity to a recovery pace throughout the exercise period. The high intensity session can’t be achieved for long periods, by alternating between it and a recovery pace, you can exercise at peak intensity longer.

Using HIIT for running burns more calories, but does it burn more fat?

While you’ll burn tons of calories when you run, not all those calories come from fat. Some come from burning lean muscle tissue. Muscle tissue requires more calories for maintenance than fat tissue does, so the more you have, the easier it is to lose weight. How do you ensure that you’re burning more fat than muscle, whether you’re doing HIIT workouts or steady-state workouts? Do strength training.

Using HIIT to do strength training can ensure you’ll burn fat while you build muscle tissue.

One of the easiest ways to change a strength-building workout to a HIIT workout is to shorten the rest periods. It prevents the heart rate from dropping down to resting mode and keeps it moderately high at a recovery rate. It increases heart efficiency, burns fat, builds muscle tissue, and improves your endurance. You can also use cardio between sets as the recovery exercise. Pumping iron for a minute and switching to jumping rope for a minute is an example of a HIIT workout using strength-building.

Add weight to your HIIT workout.

Wearing weighted vests, wrist weights or ankle weights can burn extra calories and more fat when you do cardio HIIT workouts. Adding kettlebells to your workout program is another example of increasing cardiac fitness as you burn fat. Several kettlebell movements combine intensity and strength-building. You can also add movement to your dumbbell or barbell workouts. The combination of movement and strength-building makes it perfect for HIIT.

  • Alternating between push-pull exercises is similar to HIIT and burns fat. You’ll burn extra calories from compound workouts. When the pressing muscles work, the pulling muscles rest. That keeps your heart rate high.
  • Add weights to calisthenics. Do lunges holding barbells, going as fast as possible, then slowing to a recovery pace. Doing goblet squats holding a kettlebell or dumbbells also can be an effective HIIT workout.
  • Modifying any strength-building or cardio workout by three sets at peak intensity for one minute, moving quickly from one to another, then taking a one-minute break and starting the cycle again.
  • The amount of time spent at peak performance and recovery pace varies for each person. Get your heart rate high for as long as possible and switch back to recovery. Modify the time you spend at a recovery pace by how you feel.

For more information, contact us today at Hawaii Fit Camp!

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Is There A Prime Workout Time?

Is There A Prime Workout Time?

Published by on October 25, 2023

Some people spend all their time procrastinating about fitness and never start a program. They worry about choosing the best diet as they continue to eat unhealthily. They worry about the best type of exercise and the prime workout time but never get off the couch. The truth is, there is no “prime workout time for everyone” or a perfect diet or workout program. Every person is different. Your prime workout time is when you’ll exercise most consistently.

Do you jump out of bed in the morning ready to face the day?

Maybe you’re the other type of person who hits the snooze alarm several times before reluctantly getting up. Exercising in the morning is perfect for the person who gets up early, filled with energy. It’s not for the night owl who isn’t fully awake until noon. Your best workout time is when you have the most energy. There are benefits to working out in the morning. You’ve spent hours fasting during sleep, so your body is more likely to burn fat for energy. That can help train it to burn stored fat.

You may need to warm your muscles.

Some people don’t function at their best until noon or later. They need time to get moving and warm their muscles. Others love working out after a long day at work. It helps them burn off the hormones of stress and leaves them feeling fantastic. The key is finding the time that you feel your best and can consistently work out. If your best time physically is later in the day, but you often have to work late, you won’t stick with it for long. Choose the best time for your body that works with your schedule.

Why are you exercising?

Are you training for an event, focusing on building big muscles, or just wanting to get into shape? Working out after lunch or later is your best time for building muscles. Your body’s temperature is lower when you sleep and increases as you move. Warmed muscles are vital for lifting. You’ll also need the fuel from meals to improve performance. People participating in endurance events, like marathons, also need their bodies fueled with adequate glycogen reserves. Exercising a few hours after a meal helps you do your best.

  • Schedule your workout like it’s an appointment. Make that appointment at the same time every day to make it a habit. Attending a bootcamp helps and holds you accountable for keeping the appointment.
  • If you workout at noon, make your pre- and post-workout snacks for your lunch. They need to be a combination of carbs and protein. An apple and peanut butter before and a turkey sandwich on whole wheat afterward is perfect.
  • If you exercise after you work or earlier in the evening, make sure you can still sleep well. Some people find it energizes them too much and they have problems sleeping, while others find it relaxes them.
  • The key to success is consistency. No matter what time of day you workout, be consistent. Even if you have a hectic schedule, take time out to exercise. You don’t have to do calisthenics or exercise vigorously, a brisk walk counts, too.

For more information, contact us today at Hawaii Fit Camp!

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Reward Yourself

Reward Yourself

Published by on April 25, 2023

No matter what your fitness goal is, achieving that goal is rewarding. Along the way, sometimes you need a little boost, which is when you should reward yourself. If you’re starting a fitness program, results aren’t immediate. A small reward for an intense workout or staying loyal to your plan can go a long way. Whether your ultimate goal is running an eight-minute mile or lifting twice your weight, sometimes just making it through the complete workout without stopping to rest can be an achievement. When you achieve that, you need to celebrate and reward yourself.

There are many ways to celebrate benchmarks.

A benchmark isn’t necessarily your goal, but a hurdle to overcome along the way. Most people have goals that take months to achieve and don’t see any physical changes from their workouts for several weeks. A reward helps people stay motivated, but it shouldn’t be food, especially if it’s a pint of ice cream or pastry! It should be a luxury, like a massage, a long soak in the tub, or a full hour for yourself.

Find your guilty pleasure.

Are there items of clothing that you consider out of your price range, but would love? Maybe there’s a cruise you’d like to take or a weekend getaway that sparks your interest. To achieve that goal, you need to pay yourself. Create a jar to hold your payments. If you had a normal workout, give yourself a small amount, maybe a dollar. If your workout was intense, increase the amount, going as high as $4 to $5. If you miss a workout, take out a dollar and donate it to charity or give it to a friend or family member.

Workouts don’t always have to be in the gym.

If you’re a beast in the gym one day, give yourself permission for your next workout to be something fun. Find something you love to do, like going dancing and dancing to every song. Make your reward for an intense workout a fun activity that’s physically challenging. Walk or ride a bike to meet a friend for dinner or do laps in a pool. Give yourself permission to flex those muscles you’ve created doing something fun that you couldn’t do before you started an exercise program.

  • Let others know your accomplishments. Don’t be shy about sharing your feats on social media. Whether it’s taking a before and after picture and sharing or just letting people know how hard you’ve worked, sharing your accomplishments can be rewarding.
  • Search for healthy snacks and find the ones you love. After a tough workout you deserve a reward and also need a post workout snack that’s a combination of carbs and protein. Save the special snacks for that reward.
  • Keep score. It’s rewarding. Take the time to track your progress. List the exercises you did, including the number of repetitions and sets. Record how easy or difficult it was so you can visualize how much you’re improving.
  • Take time to spend with family or friends just having fun. It doesn’t have to be formal. Play basketball with the kids or a rousing game of tag. Call a friend to meet you for coffee and enjoy the conversation and time with your friend.

For more information, contact us today at Hawaii Fit Camp!

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Reach Your Goals

Reach Your Goals

Published by on April 15, 2023

Do you want to live healthier? Is being fit one of your goals? If there is no plan to achieve what you want, you only have a dream or a wish, not a goal. To reach your goals, you need to create a plan of action and put forth the effort to follow that plan. If your goal is big, it may sound overwhelming, but you can change all that by breaking it down into smaller, easier-to-achieve weekly or daily goals. Identify what it will take to make your goal a reality, then determine the steps to get there. Before you know it, you’ll achieve your goals and maybe surpass them.

Create SMART goals.

SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. You can’t just say you want to lose weight, you have to identify how much you want to lose. You have to be able to measure your goal, whether it’s losing weight or lowering blood pressure, or you won’t know when you reached your goal. Is the goal achievable? If your goal is to grow 8 inches taller, but if you’re an adult and no longer growing, growing 8 inches is impossible. Is the goal realistic? Do you want to lose weight, but won’t commit to giving up junk food or changing your diet, it’s not realistic. Do you have a deadline? Without a deadline, you’ll always put off starting until tomorrow.

Design a plan of action and start with a healthy diet.

Know yourself. Are you better at making one change at a time, just “dipping your toes in first” or are you a “jump in with both feet” type of person? Know yourself and start by doing what will bring the most probable success. Maybe you start with just one aspect, like giving up food with added sugar or highly processed food.

Are you living a sedentary lifestyle?

Your body needs to move to be fit. If you don’t stay active, you won’t be able to be active when you want to be. Progress doesn’t occur overnight. Start with small changes and stick with them. Add an exercise program. You can begin by walking a half hour a day or break it up and do three ten-minute walks. Once you develop the habit, create a formal exercise program or stop in for a consultation. We create personalized nutrition and fitness programs and provide the support to stick with them.

  • Just focusing on increasing your daily activity, such as taking stairs instead of an elevator or walking more and walking faster, can be a place to start. We identify your level of fitness and create a program that matches it.
  • Eating slower is one way to reduce the amount you eat. It also aids digestion. Drinking an 8-ounce glass of water before a meal is another way to reduce caloric intake.
  • Create a sleep schedule to get adequate sleep. Lack of sleep causes a hormone imbalance. Your body creates too much ghrelin—the hunger hormone, and too little leptin—-the hormone that makes you feel full.
  • Big goals are exciting but can be overwhelming. Break them down into smaller, easily achieved goals to experience success quickly and stay motivated.

For more information, contact us today at Hawaii Fit Camp!

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