While it seems like ankle weights should help our leg muscles tone faster than without the weights, our legs aren’t designed to carry around heavy feet. There is more risk for injury of tendons and ligaments than toning leg muscles. If you want to focus on leg toning, your best option is some body weight workouts or exercises such as lunges with weights.
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is where you exert maximum effort through quick, intense bursts of exercise followed by short recovery periods, and it’s a great way to amp up your weight loss. If you’re currently only using doing steady state cardio workouts like jogging or elliptical weight loss exercises, for example, you could benefit from incorporating HIIT workouts to your regimen. Because the intervals get your heart rate more elevated, they help you work harder, not longer. Studies show that HIIT also burns more fat than other workouts. If you’re looking to try HIIT for the first time, check out these HIIT workouts on Get Healthy U TV!
When you’re under-rested, your appetite-regulating hormones get short-circuited, so your appetite goes into overdrive, but the hormones that tell you you’re full don’t kick in promptly. Studies also suggest that when you’re sleep-deprived, it alters the way you think about food, so you have stronger cravings for sweets and other less healthful eats.
1. Eat less added sugar, processed food and refined grains (white bread, bagels, pasta, white rice, you know the drill). A lot less. According to the sugar science department at UCSF, added sugar is hiding in 74% of all packaged food. And, the majority of carbohydrates in the typical American diet is made of refined grains. This means reading labels folks and knowing how many different names there are for sugar. Just because it’s called “agave nectar” or “cane juice crystals” doesn’t mean it’s any better for you than the white granulated stuff. Your body doesn’t know the difference and once you eat it, it’s all the same to your pancreas (the organ that produces insulin in response to sugar). Click this link to see 61 different names of sugar then run to your pantry and read the ingredients on your packaged food. Prepare for a rude awakening!