Move Your Butt For Body and Mind.

Regular readers will know I hate exercise (find out more in the blog link). It sounds so dull. I prefer “activity”.

And I DO move my butt for the benefit of health – physical health and mental and emotional health.

I believe that you need to move your butt for overall health and happiness. And exercising or activity, help hormone balance. Great for us girls.

So what ARE the actual benefits of activity or exercise?

Move Your Butt For Weight Management

Activity raises your metabolism. Aerobic activity like walking , jogging, swimming, cycling, dancing help us lose weight. Especially interval training.

Weight training to build up or maintain muscle is also important. Muscle is leaner than fat, so we look better. Muscle also burns more energy that fat.

But you don’t have to become a body-building, Gym Bunny. There are lots of way to build activity into your daily life and some fun ways to start doing more.

Walking (hey what about Pokemon Go and Geocaching?). Gardening. Vigorous house work. Dancing.

You could even use free hand weights doing “step ups” on an exercise step watching your fave soap.

Or join the kids on the trampoline in the garden.

Move Your Butt To Spice Up Your (Sex) Life

Did you know that exercise or activity can boost your sex life? Heck, yeah.

Exercise keeps you healthy and gives you more energy. Healthy and more energetic people tend to have more sexual energy. Women who stay active, have an active sex life for longer.

Who knew?

Of course, exercise supports better body confidence. In turn, that could boost your interest in sexy time.

Move Your Butt For A Better Brain

You’re reading and wondering how can exercise improve my brain, Kathy? Have you gone bonkers?

No. Physical activity can help your brain. If you are active,your brain function is less likely to decline as you get older. Studies have shown it’s the more active you are, not how hard you exercise.

So little and often.

And it can reduce our risk of dementia in our senior years.

Move Your Butt for Better Bones

Any impact exercise is good news for bones. It builds up bone density.

Think aerobic exercises again like walking, dancing or jogging.

Building muscle also helps, so do some weight training. It builds muscle and bones.

Core strength and flexibility exercises like yoga or tai chi support better bone health, because they too build muscles. They can also help improve balance and coordination. Maybe that reduces the risk of falls and accidents?

Move Your Butt For A Healthy Heart

Get the old ticker pumping with aerobic exercises can lower bad cholesterol and raise the good cholesterol.

Active people are less likely to have high blood pressure, generally and better circulation. Moving your butt help blood flow and help more toxins out. Through sweating and the lymph system.

Move Your Butt To Beat Menopause Symptoms

Studies show that exercise helps reduce menopausal symptoms as we get to our late 40s and 50s. It helps with hot flushes and the nasty night sweats.

It also help with better body image. It helps brain function so you might reduce or avoid any brain fog and memory issues.

Move Your Butt To Prevent and Alleviate Depression

Activity raises the feel-good chemicals in our brain called endorphins.

These boost our sense of wellbeing and help relieve pain. Yes, really. This can help lift mood and also help keep depression at bay.

Move Your Butt To Balance Hormones

Exercise helps balance hormones. FACT.

Do it for this reason, if no other.

It helps regulate your hormones in so many ways – stress hormones, metabolic hormones and more.

Move Your Butt To Boost Immunity

Here’s another great reason to build more activity into your days. Regular, moderate exercise raises white blood cells, which help insight infections.

So activity helps boost your immune system.

Begone you coughs and colds!

And my final words are these…

Reduce risk of major illness by up to 50% and lower your risk of early death by up to 30%. Move. Your. Butt.

Love,

5 Popular Misconceptions About Weight Loss …

… OR 5 Fibs About Fighting A Muffin Top

Is there a little more of you to love these days?

It’s hugging tightly to your tummy?

And it’s STUCK there – your chuffin’ muffin top.

Have you tried e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g?

In my clinic, I see many gorgeous 30s to 50s women who are trying to get their tummy roll to jog on…sometimes even by jogging.

They may be too young for menopause or they may be approaching it, but the pesky paunch is just not shifting. I have to admit in recent months, mine had been spreading a bit and enough is enough for this Perimenopausal Princess.

So, it’s time for me to share some fictions, fallacies and fibs about losing weight. Here are just FIVE of the common mistakes women make when they are trying to lose the tummy tyre.

Quick Fix Diets

They don’t work. One of the popular misconceptions about weight loss.

It always reminds me of that Peter Kay sketch (he’s a UK comedian for my overseas friends)

“This is the diet right, I’ll tell ya now. If ya wanna lose weight, this is the diet. My mate, she’s a nurse, she got it photocopied. I swear to God, I’m not sh**in’ ya. You have a Tuc cracker and a cup of beetroot, right. You drink your own p**s. Tracy’s on it, she’s lost 14 stone in a day!”

Funny as.

But weight lost quickly is often just water and muscle, not fat.

And crash diets make your body think there’s some kind of “famine”. When you start to eat normally again, your body hangs on to it’s fat stores to prepare for another famine. So you can end up with more fat than you started with.

This is the cycle called yoyo dieting and it mucks up your metabolism.

Stop dieting. Choose healthy eating habits you can stick with at least 80% of the time, for life.

Dodging Fats

For many years, fat has been the bad boy of food. Another of the misconceptions about weight loss.

We’ve been told that fats harm our hearts. And fats make us fat. They’re responsible for the world’s obesity crisis.

And now we know that’s not really true.

Sure, the terrible trans fats – those processed fats in processed and fast food – are health harmers. Check your food labels for “hydrogenated vegetable oil” and give it the widest of wide berths.

And maybe choose the saturated fats in meat and dairy in moderation.

But eat plenty of good fats – the unsaturated fats in oily fish, nuts and seeds, avocado, extra virgin olive oil.

We now know that fats are important in the battle to manage our weight.

Fat helps us burn fat. REALLY.

They are also essential for growth and development. Fat provides energy. It helps protect our organs. It helps maintains our cell membranes It helps us process and absorb nutrients.

Eat good fats.

Dodging Breakfast

I know many a breakfast dodger. They skip brekkie because they’re too busy or running late or they just want to try to eat less. Skipping meals? One of those popular misconceptions about weight loss.

BIG mistake. Eating breakfast boosts your metabolism after a nights sleep when your fat-burning slows down.

Choose a healthy, keeps-you-fuller-for-longer breakfast like porridge with some fruit, nuts or seeds or some eggs. Read more here on healthy breakfasts.

We should all try to eat regularly to keep our fat-burning steady, our blood sugar steady, our energy steady and our hormones …yes STEADY.

Eat little and often. 3 small to medium meals per day plus 2 healthy snacks. Include good quality protein with each meal and snack.

Fuelling Up On Refined Carbs

There are some diets that are pretty much NO carbs and other diets that are all about the carbs to keep you full. I have seen many a lady scoffing a jacket potato as big as her own head smothered in baked beans (with added sugar?) whilst “on a diet”.

I’m not saying never eat another jacket spud, but here’s the deal with carbs.

Insulin is the fat storing hormone. Anything that causes insulin to be raised, causes more fat storage. Foods that increase insulin tend to be sugar and any foods that contain sugar and refined starches like white rice, white bread, white flour, white pasta, potatoes.

So think low carb.

Eat good quality carbs in moderation – brown rice, wholemeal flour/pasta/ bread, spelt, rye, buckwheat, oats etc. Get carbs from your veggies, legumes and a little fruit.

Dodging Exercise

Exercise boosts metabolism. End of. Don’t dodge it, if you can.

Not really, end of. For weight loss and weight management, combine healthy eating with moving your butt.

Vary your activities. You’ll avoid boredom. Especially if you make them fun activities you can fit into your life.

Combine aerobic activities like walking or dancing with weight bearing exercise. Weight bearing exercise builds muscle. Muscle looks leaner than fat AND muscle burns more fat.

If you’ve been falling foul of these fictions and fibs, try my tips and see if it makes a difference to your weight loss or weight management.

Ler me know how you get on.

My battle with the meno muffin top is underway. Keep fighting the good fight.