Your Lifestyle Matters

Your Lifestyle

Matters Make the Other 23 Hours of Your Day Count!

By Fernando Paredes

Everyone is always in search of the “super” exercise, routine, stretch, food, diet, etc. to get them to their goals. And, yes, the workout is important to making or breaking your results.

However, the workout takes up how much time of your day? One hour?

What about the remaining twenty-three hours of your day? What you do the other twenty-three hours of the day what you do outside your workout time is what will make or break your success.

Here’s a cold, hard fact for you: Your lifestyle, how you live your life outside your workout, matters.

Your lifestyle habits determine if the workout you did was in vain or if it will lead to a transformation.

So, my question to you is: Does your lifestyle support your training goals? If so, keep going! If not, keep working on it!

Here are top three lifestyle habits that get overlooked the most and, in my experience, matter the most to health, fitness and performance success.

Get these three wrong, and you make your progress that much harder to attain.

1DRINK ENOUGH WATER. Yes, I know that you’ve heard this over and over again. There’s a reason for that – it’s the truth. Water is a critical yet overlooked nutrient. It’s nature’s super-tonic! Over seventy percent of your body is water and your brain is eighty-five percent water. The kidneys need enough water to manage electrolytes, blood pressure and flush out waste properly. When you don’t drink enough water, you get dehydrated. And when you drink too much coffee and soda, you dehydrate your body even further.

Dehydration causes: brain-fog, water-retention, poor circulation, muscle tightness and cramping, digestive issues, constipation, poor skin elasticity and slows down fat loss! Though water needs can vary, the general range most people need to drink every day is between sixty-four to one hundred ounces.

Here’s a quick self-test: if you’re urine is consistently deep yellow in color, you may not be drinking enough water. Make sure you drink enough water every day for vibrant health, fitness and energy.

2GET ENOUGH SLEEP. Quality, restful sleep is critical for the body to recover and repair itself. During sleep the body releases seventy percent human growth hormone (HGH) helping it to repair the heart, blood vessels,muscles and eliminate waste from the brain. Not getting enough sleep on a regular basis is dangerous, leading to increased risk of heart disease, blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, lower immunity and slower brain function.

Getting six to eight hours of sleep every night will ensure that your mind stays sharp and your body continues to become healthier, stronger and leaner.

To ensure you get a good night’s sleep you must prepare the body to sleep.

Try these simple practices thirty to sixty minutes prior to bedtime: slowdown and stop doing work-stuff, do something relaxing like reading a book, deep breathing or performing some easy stretching; turn off electronic devices, dim bright lights and try drinking chamomile tea.

In time, you’ll be waking up refreshed and raring-to-go every day.

3BREATHE. Proper breathing is one of the simplest yet most overlooked habits that can improve your overall health and fitness success. Most people are “high-breathers” incorrectly using their neck and chest muscles to breathe. Breathing using the diaphragm is critical for proper core stability, cardiorespiratory function, relieving stress and fat-burning.

Improper breathing becomes very apparent when I see new clients unconsciously hold their breath during simple exercises. A dead-giveaway there’s a breathing problem affecting the function of the deep core. Not good. You see, holding your breath during exercise locks the diaphragm creating intraabdominal pressure to stabilize the torso.

contents MAY/JUNE 2021 5 8 10 12 14 16 18 22 26 28 32 34 35

Your Lifestyle Matters Publisher’s Page Letters to the Publisher Core Training for Runners Making Moves to End Ovarian Cancer How to Make a Perfect Smoothie

Preggerize Hey CEC, What’s Your Secret Philly’s Fittest Great Bucks County Rice and Beef Skillet

Why Life Insurance New Products Feature

Continued from page 5 This causes torso stability via pressurization and not through the proper activation of the stabilizing muscles.

One of the things I usually need to do with new clients is take some time to train proper diaphragmatic breathing during exercise. This helps the body relearn how to breathe and properly stabilize the body.

One way to train diaphragmatic breathing is with a simple floor exercise called crocodile breathing. Here’s how it’s done: • Begin by positioning yourself face down, so that your stomach is on the floor with your forehead on your hands, both palms down, one covering the other. Make sure the chest and arms are relaxed, and you are as “flat” as you can get; your neck should be relaxed and comfortable. • Breathe in through the nose and feel the air move down past the chest into the belly area. When this happens, you will feel the abdomen push out against the ground. This should happen naturally without you forcing

your stomach out. • Exhale fully before beginning the next breath cycle. Repeat five to ten times.

And there you have it - the most most overlooked lifestyle habits that will get you more results. Practice them consistently every day and see the positive impact they will make in supporting your workouts and attaining your results that much better and faster.

Fernando Paredes, NASM-CPT, CES, PES, FMS a 25-year veteran of the fitness industry, is a sought-after health, fitness and performance expert in the Bucks/Philadelphia region. He has been featured on Comcast Network’s “Your Morning” show, “It’s Your Call with Lynn Doyle”, WFMZ Channel 69 News, CBS/CW Philly and The Philadelphia Inquirer and because of his innovative Core-to-Strength Training™ approach. Fernando owns, Fusion Fitness Studio, a personal training facility in Doylestown, Pa. Visit him online at www.fusionfpstudio.com

PhillyFIT Magazine is part of Jalynn Concepts, LLC. based out of Southampton, PA. We are a bimonthly magazine serving Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties since 2004. We are also a marketing services company for local businesses. Contact us a 267-767-4205 / jami@ phillyfit.com

PUBLISHER/OWNER

JAMI APPENZELLER

EDITORIAL

HEATHER HOEHN, JOHN BEELER

ADVERTISING

FAITH LAROSSE JAMI APPENZELLER LINDA BULLA

DISTRIBUTION

MAGAZINES CAN BE FOUND AT LOCAL WAWA’S.

SPECIAL DISTRIBUTION TO LOCAL BUSINESSES

DARION GRIGGS, DEREK EXNER, SAVANNAH YANCEY

RIP James and Beverly Appenzeller, forever in our hearts and missed.

PhillyFIT_Magazine

PhillyFITMagazine

PhillyFITMag

PhillyFIT Magazine

PhillyFIT App

Jami Appenzeller