Healthy Reading

Motivate Yourself To Do Exercise

2011-11-26T07:27:00.000-08:00

The goal of this article is to help you STAY MOTIVATED to exercise! It's not enough to just help you with the 'how' of exercise – we want to help you with the 'why' too!

So what can you do to stay motivated? Here are five great ideas to help us all keep that inner fire burning…..

Find A Buddy

Find an exercise buddy! When we know that someone else is going to meet us at the gym at a certain time, we will automatically be much more likely to show up ourselves. After all, who wants to abandon their friend? Don’t have a friend at the gym? Invite one along! She will appreciate the invitation, and will be much healthier for it!

Socialize With People In Gym
Get to know people in the gym! Visiting with friends and family while we're exercising makes the time go by so fast it hardly even seems like we're doing something good for us. It's great to get out of the house or office and just have some fun with other people!

Your Doctor Can Help You
Talk with your doctor! We all know that exercise is good for us. From helping to prevent cancer to lowering our blood pressure to helping us fit into that swimming suit, exercise is the best thing we can do for ourselves. Even with that knowledge, it's sometimes encouraging to hear about our progress from our doctor. Here's a hot motivation tip: ask your gym for a copy of your fitness records (monthly body fat analysis and measurements) and then share that information with your doctor. He or she will be so happy that you're exercising, and will encourage you to continue!

Track Your Progress

Chart your progress! The CEO of a Fortune 500 company once said "What gets measured gets done", and that advice is as good for us as it was for that business. Take the time to keep a food journal, an exercise log, or simply write down your fitness goals. Post it where you will see it every single day (on the 'fridge, in the car, on the mirror, etc.). Life is just so busy these days, a constant visual reminder of our goals may be just the motivational push we need.

Reward Your Self

Give yourself a reward! Sometimes the 'big picture' can be too intimidating. For example, if you have 80 pounds to lose it's tempting to think "It’s too much! I shouldn’t even try." That’s one of the biggest motivation-killers out there, so combat those discouraging thoughts by rewarding yourself for smaller accomplishments. Treat yourself to a manicure when you lose that first five pounds. Buy a new outfit when you've lost ten pounds. Take a mini-vacation when you're halfway to your goal. Give yourself small rewards for achieving smaller goals, and guess what.....many small steps make up a long journey! Before you know it, you'll have accomplished your overall goal!

There are many other ways to give yourself the motivation to succeed. Try some of these tips today – the only thing you have to lose is the fat!

Deal With Family Stress

2011-11-06T09:00:00.001-08:00

The major problems within your family isthat most working people consider home as a place where they can relieve theirstress. Moreover, the problem even serious for mother and wife since they fulltime homemaker because the source of their stress is there all the time. Infact, people who go out to work can have many chance to reliefe their stress. Sonow we gonna take a look on how to solve the problem all together.

Before we move to detail, we need tounderstand that home is not a place to rest or tranquility that is utterly freefrom all kinds of stress. If you don’t change your perception, you will neverachieve a happy family life at all even you try to contribute your best to yourfamily. Moreover, you need to be aware that you can’t fufill your families’expectation all the time, so be realistic. Now we will see how to deal thisevil all together.

Using Dinner Table

First of all, you need to spend time withyour families, and the best ways is using the dinner table. When you sit andhave dinner with your family, it will be the best moment to talk to them andshare everything. Make sure that your dinner table is not infront oftelevision. You can have dinner in the kitchen or dinning room where you cantalk to each other comfortably. At first, it would be quiet and there may notbe much to takl about,but this will com in time. As it slowly sink into yourfamily members' minds that there is nothing to do but talk to each other,conversation will start flowing.

Fewer Expectation

Second, you need to have fewer expectationof your family members. We always expect many things from our family such as weexpect them to be outstanding student, to listen to our advice, to behave wellat school, to wear what we like. The truth is that home is not a perfect placewhile every member never perfect. Accept the bad, enjoy the good, and leteveryone be human. Then everyone will have much less stress and, as a result,everyone will be much happier.

Accept Your Limitation

Next, accept the fact that you are not a superhero. Althoughyou have to work hard, you still want to spend time for your kids such as sendthem to school, to play ground and other place; however, you need to berealistic that it won’t happen. You can make every effort to be there all thetime and it is very important that you try, you cannot be everyplace all atonce. Learn to appreciate the fact that you are not going to be perfect. Youmay try and you may be largely successful, but you cannot be everything youwish you could be. So accept your own humanity and allow yourself to be humantoo.

Deal With Your Kids

Finally, when you want to relieve family stress, do notforce it. Yes, you want everything to come easy and you want to be able toconnect with your kids all the time, but that is not always possible. Childrenchange, often in surprising ways, and you need to learn how to accept that.This is especially difficult with teenage children, since they tend to bemoody, elusive, and sometimes even obnoxious. However, by accepting them forwho they are and dealing with the fact that they are not ready to open up toyou all at once, you will relieve a great deal of family stress. This isespecially true if you have not been able to reach them for some time, sincethey tend to be closed off and reluctant to open up to their parents. So acceptthat it will take some time for you to make some connections and understandthat things may not always be as easy as you hope. After all, if something waseasy, it wouldn't be worth doing, would it?

Family stress is difficult to deal with, but it is notimpossible. By accepting your own limitations, as well as those of your family,you can save yourself a lot of worry and concern by simply understanding thatyour family is composed of different people. Different people who have theirown lives, their own concerns, and their own unique way of seeing things. Byaccepting that, you can understand their points of view and come to grips withthe fact that family stress is, oftentimes, just a fact of life.

A Simple Tip For When You're Stressed

2011-11-06T07:51:00.000-08:00

Touchingcan also release your stress; you might not believe me, but after you try this,you will see how practical it is. Try holding your frontal eminences. These arebumps on your forehead which some people hold instinctively when they'restressful.

However, some people don’t do this, so now I’ll tell youabout this. First of all, you need to be able to locate them. From the middleof your eyebrows going towards your hairline, you can feel your forehead comesoutwards before it curves back in towards the hairline. Hold your forehead atthe points where it is furthest out - about 3cms (1.25 inches) above the middleof each eyebrow.

You can try to think of stressful events in your life whileyou are holding the mentioned point; let’s say, yesterday proble, or tomorrowproblem. You will notice that the level of stress will lessen.

You can use this method to deal with big and small events. Ifyou want to use it to deal with big problem, you can imagine that you watchingmovie from your laptop. Here, you arein charge, and you can do anything thatyou want; then, if you find it too stressful, imagine that you switch off thecomputer, and relax.

You may want to do it several times covering differentaspects of the problem. You can do them one after the other, or at differenttimes, whichever feels best for you.

As you hold the points and think about/imagine the event,you will probably start to feel calmer - you may even find that you start tofeel a little bored thinking about this scenario that previously stressed orangered you so much.

Why does it work?

These particular points on the forehead, known as frontaleminences, are reflex points with connections to the central meridian (involvedwith the brain), the stomach meridian (and your stomach often churns whenyou're anxious or angry), and the bladder meridian (trips to the loo/bathroomare often necessary when we're apprehensive).

6 Solutions to Reduce Your Stress

2011-11-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

You can choose one or two of these methods to deal with your problem. You may think that some of these techniques are strange, but they are applicable for some people. It’s really worthful to try. Try and then let see which one work out for you.
They're not in any particular order. Simply read through the list. See what "jumps out" at you. Don't try to do too many at once. (You may stress yourself out even more.)

1. Schedule Your Worry
if your stress comes from worrying, try this technique. You need to schedule an appropriate time for worrying. What does this mean? It means whenever you feel worry about something; tell yourself that you can’t worry at this time because you have already set up schedule to worry. When you’re worrying time arrives, you need to feel it. You need to enlarge your worry as much as possible; do anything, cry, sleep on the floor, worry like you never had. This technique is practical for many people, try it out.

2. A Toy with You
Keep a toy with you! What are you going to do with this? Whenever you have problem, feel that toy and tell yourself that “don’t take it too seriously”. Remember the happy time when you were a kid, a carefree life, and happy; then, relax yourself. Try this out, it’s fun and helpful.

3. Do something new or different

Once a while, change your habit such as hairstyle, breakfast, clothes, shoes…: D

4. Grab Your Pillow and Beat the Heck out of the Bed
(be sure to check for holes on your pillow first!) Beating on the bed is good for releasing stress that comes from anger. Some ladies who actually put a punching bag in her basement just for getting out her anger!

5. Get good at Procrastinating
You can put off your work if it doesn’t cause any trouble later. Give yourself some free time to relax. It helps you to decrease the stress level.

6. Say No to any Demand
Learn to say no to people who demand your help. This will decrease your burden.

Now try a few of them, and let see which one is best for you.

Stress and Concentration

2011-11-05T09:40:00.001-07:00

People tend to neglect their stressproblem, yet they never known the relationship between stress andconcentration. In fact, stress is an aid to concentration in short term;however, it will lead to big problem in the long run.

Some people try to put more pressure on themselves becausethey think that stress will help them concentrate more. However, they aredestroying themselves. In fact, stress does help concentration for a shortperiod of time because the body is dumping chemicals into the brain to help itfocus and throwing adrenaline into the bloodstream in order to heighten thesenses. This helps the body hone in on its tasks and helps it to focus. Short-termstress really does help your concentration at first, which is very helpful whenyou need to finish any task within a time constraint.

However, one’s ability to concentrate will be lessen when aperson endure long term stress. The brain will have fired off so many neuronsthat it cannot replenish its supply of chemicals that helps the neurons fire.As well, that boost of adrenaline that helps people focus will start toheighten the senses to the point where the brain notices every little thingaround, causing you to be easily distracted. Thus, the relationship betweenstress & concentration becomes an inverse relationship.

The problem, of course, is that the more stress you areundergoing, the more you need to concentrate in order to relieve the causes ofthe stress. This means that your brain is fighting against itself when you needto get work done. This is what we like to refer to as a bad thing and it canseriously injure your ability to get work done. Needless to say, the biggestcause of stress around is the fact that work needs to get done, so stressbecomes a self-defeating cycle.

Fortunately, you will be introduced some means to deal withthis problem.

Walking AWay

Walk awayfrom your work a while, and give yourself a break. You can just do somethingrelaxing activities such as watch television, taking bath. This will detachyourself from your work which causing stress to your brain. After all, your mind tends to get used to being stressed after awhile, making it less able to let go of its concerns. This means that you needto make a conscious effort to clear your mind, and the best way to do that isto clear all the problems out of your head before you drown in them.

QuickExercise

You can dosomething else beside walking away if you have to sit for your work. In thiscase, you can do some quick exercise. First, close your eye and take deepbreaths; then, concentrate on every exhale and inhale, and let the air fillyour lung. Keep doing this until you can concentrate only on your breath. Afterthat, you will be able to concentrate well; nevertheless, you can also practicethe same exercise again if you feel you still can’t concentrate.

The big problem with stress & concentration is thesimple fact that stress helps concentration in the short run, but hurts it inthe long-run. Unfortunately, most people do not notice this connection at all.So when you notice that your mind is racing too fast to allow your brain tofocus on anything, use the two mentioned methods to help you. Then, you will beable to escape the negative relationship between stress & concentration.