Tag: exercise

Not Having to Set a Target Weight for Weight Loss

by hkatz, posted in Self-Development

There are many reasons to eat healthier and exercise more, though weight loss is often the top reason people give for wanting to get into better shape.

Even if weight loss is your main goal, you may not want to set a target weight. Maybe you aren’t sure what it should be. Or maybe you don’t want to focus too much on a particular number, especially if you think you’ll start weighing yourself obsessively and anxiously. You may also want to make a more holistic assessment of your progress, including improvements to your health-related habits.

Whether or not you’ve set a particular target weight, there are alternative goals you can keep track of, such as:

  • Reducing or eliminating unhealthy oils from your diet.
  • Reducing the amount of added sugar you consume each day.
  • Increasing the amount of time you exercise each week.
  • Increasing the number of steps (or miles) you walk each day.
  • Increasing the number of servings of vegetables you eat each day.

Using these kinds of alternatives as fitness goals will still contribute to healthy weight loss, but you won’t have to focus only on a particular number. Even if you have no target weight in mind, you can start getting healthier now. You’ll be placing your emphasis on establishing habits that are good to maintain for your overall health.

Streamlining Better Habits

by hkatz, posted in Struggling Striving Healing

When it comes to getting things done, the hardest step is often the first one. We want to exercise, but getting off the couch is tough. We want to start writing, but we put off opening up a new document on our computer or grabbing a pen and notebook. That first step, the shift towards a new activity, is often the one that defeats us.

I’m writing this around the time when many people make resolutions. If you want to increase the chances of keeping yours, one thing you need to do is streamline the path to better choices.

Here are some examples involving exercise:

  • To make it easier for you to go to the gym, pack your gym bag the night before and place your sneakers and bag by the front door. 
  • If you’re exercising with a YouTube video, open a browser window with the video ready to go. Have it be there, waiting for you to press play. Create a playlist with your exercise videos, so you have them all in one place and can easily find the routine you’re looking for.
  • Reduce decision fatigue by picking a particular time each day for exercising. Maybe you want to do it first thing in the morning, or maybe you prefer right before dinner. Pick a time (or times) you can stick to fairly consistently. This way, you waste less energy deciding. After a while, you barely have to think about it at all; it becomes habitual. If you need to change your schedule for a given day, don’t wait until the last minute to pick a replacement exercise time; make your decision in advance.

You want to reduce the number of steps you need to take between being in a sedentary state and exercising. You also want to reduce the energy you spend wrestling with conflicting choices and desires. The more you streamline, the greater the chance you’ll exercise.

On the flip side, you want to place obstacles on the path to less desirable choices. For instance, if there’s a type of junk food you can’t resist, such as miniature candy bars, chocolate pudding, or chips dusted in cheese, don’t keep those foods in your house. Sure, you can answer a craving by heading to the nearest supermarket, but it will take more effort to do that than it will to open a cupboard or fridge and gorge yourself on the goodies within.

YouTube Exercise Channel Recommendation: Koboko Fitness

by hkatz, posted in Struggling Striving Healing

I recently discovered Koboko Fitness, and while I haven’t tried every workout video, I like the ones I’ve used so far.

– There are a variety of exercises and routines.

– The routines vary in length. Some may be 5-10 minutes, while others are half an hour. I like that, because sometimes if I have a free 10 minutes or just want to take a break from work, I can fit a shorter routine into my schedule.

– For some of the exercises, you may want to have dumbbells, but they aren’t strictly required. A yoga mat or towel can be helpful for floor exercises, but you don’t need to go out and buy any equipment to participate.

– You sometimes get presented with low-impact and high-impact versions of the same exercise. Depending on your fitness level or how you’re feeling on a given day, you may want to go with one or the other. You can also introduce your own intensity level – for example, instead of doing a wall push-up, do a regular push-up on the floor if you can. Or if you don’t want to jump your feet out during a burpee, maybe walk them out and then back in.

– The instructor and creator of the channel is a positive, encouraging person who is dedicated without being a fanatic.

– Although the channel is geared towards women, there are many exercises (maybe even all of them?) that men could benefit from. So if you’re a guy who wants to try out some of the routines, go right ahead (during a workout, you might get called a “beautiful goddess,” but maybe you can cope with that).

Here’s one routine I did today:

Here’s another good one:

And if you’re wondering, no, I’m not affiliated with Koboko Fitness, and I haven’t been paid anything for this post.

Notes from a New Year’s Day Fitness Fair

by hkatz, posted in Self-Development, Struggling Striving Healing

In what is a promising way to start 2020, I went to a fitness fair at a health club and community center. All of the classes at the fair were free, and it was a fun way to try some different activities. Here are my notes:

MELT method for improved neck and shoulder posture and pain relief

– I didn’t know what the MELT method was, and unlike in a regular class, the instructor didn’t have time to explain. She kept using certain terminology (like “shearing”), and she mentioned how this was about connective tissue.
– The particular exercises she used were supposed to help with the healthier position of the neck and shoulders and a release of tension in those areas, which is important for me, because when I write I have a tendency to get a tortoise neck (where my head pushes forward towards the laptop screen). So I thought maybe this could help.
– The exercises involved lying on a mat and using a cylindrical tube, a roller, made of foam that sometimes didn’t feel soft at all, like when it was digging into my spine.
– Some parts of me did feel genuinely more relaxed – not numbed, but truly more relaxed. But I also developed a pain in a part of my upper back. So, mixed results.
– Maybe it would have worked better with a smaller class where the instructor can stop next to each person and make sure their technique and roller positioning are good.

Nia Dance

– Ok, this was fun. So happy I signed up for this one.
– It was an hour-long workout combining dance, martial arts moves, and other types of movements (free-styling too). The warmup and cool down were effective, and the workout itself was energetic and called on the whole body.
– Also, the energy in the room was fantastic. A friendly vibe, people enjoying themselves. This was seriously a great activity.
– I felt happy, relaxed, and at peace with the world after.

A lecture on sleep

– Some of the stuff I learned kept me awake at night. (Just kidding, somewhat.) Anyway, sleep is a critical part of good health.
– It’s important to consider both quality and quantity of sleep.
– The lecturer talked about some things I’d like to look into further, like blue light from various screens and light fixtures (fine during the day, but could disturb ability to sleep when exposed to it at night before going to bed).
– Low-quality sleep can arise for multiple reasons, ranging from anxiety to problems in the physical environment. Also, the lecturer brought up a disturbing attitude towards sleep, where some people consider it unproductive or a waste of time.

Meditation

– Really low-key instructor. A relaxed, quiet guy. You could tell he meditates.
– The first meditation, which was just breath-focused, was pretty good, but I also felt impatient some times. The instructor talked about how to gently note the impatience and gently return attention to breathing whenever attention slips.
– The ticking of the clock sounded like a caterpillar munching on a leaf.
– The second meditation was more successful for me. It was focused on breathing and on a single word of your choice. I chose “mayim” (pronounced “mah-yim”), the Hebrew word for water. This also got me to imagine water flowing over me (including on the MELT-induced upper back ache), and to picture myself at one of the best beaches I’ve ever been to – the one at Halibut Point State Park near Rockport, MA. This is a photo I took when visiting there in the summer of 2017:

IMG_0136

– The third meditation involved focusing on a feeling of warmth and closeness. That one was good too, but for meditating on a regular basis I think I’ll do the second one most frequently.

Assessing total cognitive burden

by hkatz, posted in Neuroscience, Psychology, Research, Self-Development

Here’s an interesting post to read about assessing and possibly reducing your risk of age-related cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s and other kinds of dementia.

Some questions posed there:

Do you have ongoing stress in your life, or have experienced significant amounts of stress at some period during middle-age?

Do you rarely engage in exercise?

Do you spend most evenings blobbed out in front of the TV?

Reading through the possible risk factors you see some that you can’t control, such as genes and family history and your early childhood circumstances (for instance if you grew up in a very stressful home), but the list also emphasizes modifiable risk factors: amount of exercise, drinking habits, sleep habits, mental stimulation, etc. How all of those interact is still an open question. But when you think about it there never seems to be one trick, one magic way (or magic pill), that improves your long-term cognitive and physical health (which are closely intertwined). Instead it’s about making your life as healthy as possible all around, in multiple areas.