Fitness Goals

It is Friday January 6th and unfortunately many of our new year’s resolutions have already gone by the wayside. I think that is wonderful that so many people want to make positive changes to their health at this time of the year and resist the temptation to be cynical about resolutions.

A survey done by National Public Radio, Robert Wood Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health found that baby boomers are for the most part unprepared for retirement both emotionally and physically. Only 13% of people over 50 said they expect their health to be worse in retirement yet 39% of retirees say they experienced health decline in retirement.

We have just updated the website to make it more user friendly, added in more information and tips about health and wellness for people over 50 and introduced you to the whole training team at Vintage Fitness.

The middle of December is a busy time full of holiday parties, great times with family and friends and a chance to give ourselves a break. The only piece of advice that I have for you is this- be mindful about how you are feeling and what you are eating. It is so easy to tell ourselves that we don’t have time for exercise and that we will worry about the extra calories over the holidays in the New Year. The problem is that most people gain about a pound over the holidays that they never manage to lose.

By all means treat yourself over the holidays, but make sure it really is a treat and not just mindless eating because it happens to be in front of you.
I look forward to the freshness of the New Year. I plan to blog about two fantastic clients that had challenging resolutions last year and succeeded!

Erin

Founder of Vintage Fitness

Resolution update
February 12, 2010 by vintagefitness

I just received a few questions from someone (Annette T. losing) that has successfuly lost 13 pounds with a treadmill walking routine and has hit a plateau. She is wondering about changing her program and wanted my opinion on the Wii Fit.

The most common mistake that regular exercisers make is doing the same routine or weekly plan over and over again and expecting new results. Your body is amazing at adapting to similar routines so exercise programs should change reguarly. The Wii Fit is a good program if you do it and choose both cardiovascular and strength training programs. You should do 30 mins of cardio most days of the week and strength train 2-4 times per week. Strength training will build lean muscle which will increase your metabolic rate so that you burn more calories at rest. The other piece of the puzzle is what you are eating. Keep a food log for a week and then enter the information into a website like nutritiondata.com.

Good Luck!
 

How is day twelve of your new years resolution going?
January 12, 2010 by vintagefitness

Good Morning,

Did you spend some time thinking about the underlying reasons behind your new years resolutions? A resolution that is general, not time bound and life-less will not stick.

The example that I blogged about yesterday was the common “I want to lose 10 pounds” resolution. To make this resolution really work you need to:

1. Think about an emotional, important goal that losing 10 pounds will help you do. For example: “I want to walk in a 5km fundraising event in the spring with my family”

2. Really commit to the goal. If you made a resolution because it seemed like the “in” thing to do in January than you are setting yourself up for failure. If you decided that you want to train towards a 5km event in the spring sign up today and recruit a few friends to join you for your training.

3. Take baby steps. Break down your larger goal into manageable weekly milestones and write down how you are going to correct your course if you are not achieving your milestones.

Today we have transformed the vague “I want to lose 10 pounds” goal to:

I want to lose 10 pounds by April 2010 so that I can walk in a 5km race in May. I have signed up for the race and have asked two friends to walk in it with me. There are six weeks until the beginning of March which means I need to lose just over a pound every week and walk 3 times per week for 30-60 minutes per session. If I haven’t started my walks and lost a pound by January 18 I am going to call X (my friend, Vintage Fitness) for some advice.

Good Luck,

Erin