Thursday, January 26, 2006

Learn to Listen to Your Body!

The blog of November 4, 2005 reviewed the importance of getting to know your body through working out to know if pain you may feel is real pain or just an excuse. If it is real pain, you should stop working out or rest. See a physician or physical therapist if the pain is excruciating or preventing you from doing what you want to do. Spirituality, meditating, martial arts and more can have you learning to know yourself more. Working out is key. Just as we often do not listen to ourselves or to other people “cleanly”, we do the same with our bodies. For instance, if your mother tells you to wear a coat, you may think she is being a nagging old woman. She barely has a chance to tell you that she heard something informative on the weather channel.

People may listen to their bodies like their bodies do not know what they are telling them or they may ignore their bodies. Through working out, you will learn to listen to when you are really hungry, you need to eat what, when you are really in pain and when you need to work out what.

For instance, a person who has muscle and is not sleeping much, is undergoing stress, or is using lots of glucose for their brain may be able or even need to eat something sugary while studying at night. This energy may be burned. I have skipped a meal or two while studying for my PhD courses. I end up regretting it. At least twice I was nauseous because acid in my stomach wanted something to digest. At other times I became drowsy while driving home. Many times while studying and staying up late while maintaining my workout schedule of about every other day, at least 65 minutes working out at the gym, I can eat late at night, including sugary foods, and I end up losing weight!

Learn to listen to yourself. Months ago I saw that I was dreading doing squats, which I usually did on Mondays. I know that I will make sure I work out through most pain and will not let myself get lazy. But this was a real dread that my physical intuition was telling me. I found from a physical therapist and a Rolfing person that I have slight arthritis in my knees, especially right one which I suspected for years I am not doing squats for some months now. If I see that my legs are losing muscle or strength, I will make sure that I up my leg exercises or reinstate squats with less weight and more repetitions, perhaps.

You will understand this blog fully by experience. Learn to listen to your body.

Don't forget to check out www.louizapatsis.com!

Disclaimer: Information on this blog is posted for information purposes, not as a substitute for professional medical advice.

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