Butt Lift with Swiss Ball

Way back I blogged about a standard exercise where you lift your hips from the floor. Want to make it harder? Try it with a small- or medium-sized Swiss ball!

Lie down on the floor. Have your arms by your side or a little away if you want to support yourself with your hands. Keep your lower back on the floor. This will engage your abdominal muscles. Put your feet flat on the ball. They should be about shoulder-width apart. Keep your knees at a 90-degree or close to a 90-degree angle. Lift your hips off the floor in a steady pace. Repeat for five sets of ten repetitions. Trying to keep the Swiss ball in place will engage your abdominals as secondary muscles while you work your gluteus maximus.

Do you want to make it more difficult? Use one foot and leg at a time to lift your hips. Your other leg can be straight or almost straight up, or have the ankle of the passive leg rest over the knee of your more active leg. Repeat for five sets of ten repetitions for each leg.

Sitting at Work Promotes Obesity

See link for new research

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0019657

New York Times Article Bikini Ready? Who's Judging?

Catherine Saint-Louis wrote a great article in yesterday's New York Times about bikini season preparation. Health is number one. After that, feel good about yourself. Don't go to extreme (or any really) diet or exercise plan. Have integrity in health and connect with yourself and intuition to know what is good for you. Feel energetic and love how you look whether you are there yet or on your way. If you really feel bad about an area of your body and want a procedure or surgery, that is your call. But first be healthy, feel good and be in action. Then silence yourself and know what you want.

Remember, many people out there feed off people whose lives are not going how they want. Many life coaches, plastic surgeons, etc. are good people and want to help other people. But money is always a motive and sometimes the number one motive. So be careful. Feel good about yourself!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/fashion/the-bikini-as-a-badge-of-fitness.html

Side Lunge

Conduct a lunge to the side. Start with the right leg. Keep your head and spine centered and back straight. Keep your left leg straight. Do not lock your knees or put the toes of your right foot beyond your right knee. Come back up slowly. Repeat to the left.

You can incorporate arm exercises with free weights. For instance, do biceps curls or overhead press, butterfly or chest press while you lunge.

Do four sets of ten repetitions.

Never Too Old to Lift

Check out this 86-year-old gal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9baGr99bvA&feature=share

Check out my Facebook book page for Pocket Guide to Fitness!

http://www.facebook.com/louiza.patsis#!/pages/Pocket-Guide-to-Fitness/194203747271646?sk=wall

Video on Human Being Dietary History

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dw1MuD9EP4

Check out my Facebook book page for Pocket Guide to Fitness

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Study by American Academy of Physicians Shows That Exercise Boosts Children's Adademic Success

http://www.aap.org/advocacy/releases/pas2011/movementsun.pdf

Check out my Facebook book page for Pocket Guide to Fitness

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Ten Health Tips from Mayo Clinic

http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=508705466&gid=134566&type=member&item=53115222&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stonehearthnewsletters.com%2F10-fresh-health-tips-from-the-mayo-clinic%2Fproactive-prevention%2F&urlhash=U-JE&goback=.gde_134566_member_53115222

Check out my Facebook book page for Pocket Guide to Fitness

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I Recommend the Insanity DVDs

I saw [most of] an infomercial on this. I rarely watch them. Many fitness equipment infomercials are for gimmick products. You can exercise well on a mat. I have not bought these products, but, judging from the infomercial, they are excellent training DVDs. One must be fit to do the exercises and will only get more fit, all other factors like diet remaining the same or being enhanced. Many exercises involve interval training and plyometrics. If you are a beginner, get a physician's approval before you start. Do not forget to stretch before and after the exercises.

http://blog.extremefitnessresults.com/workout-guides/insanity/

Fat Returns

There is an interesting story in the New York Times today about fat returning after liposuction. This may have something to do with a gene from the caveman times where food was not so plentiful. Our body wants to be ready for cold or days of little food. I am sure people differ here, too. It seems that, after liposuction, the amount of fat cells will increase in other areas. If one has had liposuction in the hips and thighs, the fat usually appears in the abdomen. I recently read that fat stores increase in the abdomen for menopausal women. These fat cells make estrogen as the hormone's levels decrease. In this article, physicians explained that fat cells do not reappear in the thighs because liposuction destroys the surrounding structures that would allow that.

To read the article, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/weekinreview/01kolata.html

Goals and Statistics

A very early blog post was about acceptance. Yes, accept yourself and your body how you are: If you are angry, get a pimple, gain or lose weight. Feel fabulous! You are!

As a personal trainer, I support people to have healthy goals without being at a too skinny or a fat extreme, and without excessive dieting and exercise. Then it is up to them to choose. I then support that. There is again a yin yang balance between flow (yin) and goals (yang). Acceptance with commitment can be the context.

Once you have your goals, you can have the goals be strict and hard or not depending on your personality, wanting to set a firm time schedule, etc. Once you create that (and it can change), choose measures. These can be heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, waist-to-hip ration, BMI index, tape measure and caliper measures, weight, strength, flexibility, energy and more. Any of these measures alone mean nothing. Together, and with your intuitive connection with yourself, you will know if you are progressing or not.

There is nowhere to get, but don't just stay there. If you consciously want to maintain and stay at the same level, that is fine. But I recommend not to do it for more than a few months at a time. A healthy human nature is to grow spiritually, intellectually and physically. If you are on a plateau (see very early blog post), do something different like yoga, Pilates, jogging, dance, martial arts, or something else you have not done.

Orthorexia

Great post: When does too much dieting or caution become a sickness?
http://health.yahoo.net/experts/dayinhealth/new-eating-disorders-are-they-real

Myths of Aging

This is a great Oprah post. There is a difference between number age and biological age having to do with health, energy, and yes, looks! One can be 40 and younger than a 25-year-old, or 60 and younger than a 40-year-old.

http://www.oprah.com/health/Aging-Body-Changes-Aging-Myths

Push Ups with a Step

Do you think that push ups are hard? Try this: Use a step, on other little steps to make it harder. Do push-ups. Go for four sets of ten repetitions. Or do four sets of five repetitions if that is all you can do. If you must at first, have your knees be on the floor. Breathe out when you go down and in when you rise.

NY Academy of Science Talk on Cancer by Dr. Siddharta Mukherjee

I attended a great talk by Dr. Mukherjee, author of the new book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. I attended part of his talk, but liked
what he said about medicine encompassing everything from psychology to nanotechnology. I believe in integrating ideas.

Some MD/PhD students later told me that he said that he met a man he needed to meet in India, when it was more logical they would have met at Harvard. That may be synchronicity. For instance, I like balancing science with religion, synchronicity, intention etc.I thought when I was an undergraduate that medical school education needs to encompass genetics, and that it would take years to do so, especially in such a developing field, and alternative medicine.

Some interesting points are that diet probably affects some cancer not all. As I thought, the extreme of dieting or eating organic in order to prevent cancer is a not a cure-all strategy. In addition, there are some links to certain cancers and obesity but not certain links from obesity to all cancers. It was mentioned that one twin studied got cancer while another did not get it. there are spontaneous mutations. Unfortunately, cancer cells are usually not found until there are several in a tumor. It would be great to find a cell as soon as it turns cancerous and pinpoint the processes more.

I have not read the book, but it encompasses stories of many cancer patients and the history of cancer from what was found in early hieroglyphics. It is interesting how science and medicine, at a certain level, are very creative, and one can use both left and right brain for ideas and cures.

Science Times: Rabbis and Anorexia

Rabbis are reporting increased cases of anorexia and other eating disorders among young Orthodox Jewish women. This may be in response to the pressures of 1. being asked by prospective suitors or their families what their sizes, or even their mothers' sizes are, and 2. needing to start families early while pursuing careers. This happens in spite of their concealing garb.

Read about it here:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/eating-disorders-among-orthodox-jews/

Articles on Social Theory and Women's Plastic Surgery

These are by sociology professor Victoria Pitts-Taylor at the City University of New York. I have not read them, and thought she was a little too left for me (to be general) at one talk I heard her say, but they do sound very interesting! I am sure I back some of the points!

http://soc.qc.cuny.edu/faculty/pitts/

My third book, Pocket Guide to Fitness, is available on http://www.authorhouse.com and http://www.amazon.com. If you look up my name on those Web sites, you will find my other books The Boy in a Wheelchair and Life, Work and Play: Poems and Short Stories. 

City University of New York Body Image Meeting Saturday

I went and it was good. It was the first such event there and could have been organized better. For instance, in the schedule, people were not listed in the order they would speak for each room. Some did not show; that happens, I guess. The very last speech was a little too post modern for me. Lectures encompassed everything from disability to [a lot on] pressure on women to be thin.

An interesting questions was raised in a room: To what extent are we free to have the body WE want. I talk about this in early blog posts. First comes health, then look like you want, and don't try to look like anyone else. (You probably won't anyway.) We can pose similar questions like to what extent are we free to be ourselves, have the life we want, etc. People stressed how women are supposed to be thin, even in an unhealthy way, or way where they are pre-pubescent or pubescent, like some Macy's commercials in New York City I see lately. One woman did a study where she showed breast implants to women in Senegal and they thought they were atrocious. They'd come here if they had money to talk sense into us. they believed women, especially mothers, should let their natural breasts be, even without a bra. Many Western women, asked why they wear a bra, had no answer. (That is another discussion.)

I believe in the natural look myself: hourglass for women, and toned for men if you can have it.

Check out my books:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=louiza+patsis&x=0&y=0

Video How to Do a Sit Up

This was done at about 2:00 am with an old camera. The content is simple and true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGHNbrlefAE

Globalization of Fat Stigma

http://www.thirdage.com/news/fat-stigma-spreading-across-globe_3-30-2011