Fitness & Wellness

What are hormones? Immediately, you probably think of the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone, but there are far more types. Hormones are the body’s messengers. They bring the messages that start the chemical processes. That puts them in charge of everything from growth rate and mood to how your immune system functions. Your hormones affect weight loss and fat storage, too. Not only does that include sexual differences on the storage of fat, but also the storage of fat in the abdomen, belly fat.

Every cell in the body is affected by hormones.

Hormones do more than just bring messages to the cells. They can affect your overall health. Whether it’s weight gain or feeling sick, it could be caused by hormones. The production of insulin, which is a hormone that controls the amount of sugar in the blood, is also controlled by hormones and its secretion. Sex hormones, determine where fat is distributed. In the case of sex hormones, stimulates fat

placement on the hips and bottom, while inhibiting belly fat.

It’s not one specific hormone, but the balance of hormones.

There is a give and take of hormones. If you have higher levels of insulin, you’ll have lower levels of glucagon. These two hormones do opposite jobs. When the amount of insulin rises, glucagon go down. Higher insulin levels not only regulate sugar, they increase fat storage in the abdominal area. If you have a higher level of glucagon, your body tends to burn the fat.

Even if your weight is from hormonal imbalances, you still have some control.

You do have some control over the secretion of each. The more sugar and white refined flour you eat, the higher the insulin levels. The more protein you eat, the higher the glucagon levels. However, those aren’t the only hormones that affect belly fat. Cortisol, a hormone create when you’re under stress, also contributes to belly fat by increasing insulin. Instead of grabbing a Danish, opt for unsweetened yogurt and fruit. Simply eat more protein and avoid the pastries and white bread. Burn off that cortisol with exercise to lower your insulin levels and include more healthy fat in your diet with nuts, avocados and fatty fish. Healthy fat supports hormonal health.

• Another way to help control your hormones is to get adequate sleep. Lack of sleep causes the body to overproduce ghrelin—the hunger hormone and under produce leptin—the one that makes you feel full.
• Drink at least eight glasses of water a day. It helps lubricate the digestive system, joints and skin. It boosts your metabolism. Dehydration can occur because of hormonal imbalance, and dehydration can affect weight gain by boosting cortisol levels.
• Increase your metabolism by drinking green tea. It contains L-theanine, an amino acid that makes you feel calmer and reduces the level of cortisol in your body.
• Increase your oxytocin, the happy hormone and reduce your cortisol levels by taking time to appreciate everything around you. Give your family a hug. It’s good for the waistline.

For more information, contact us today at Reggie C Fitness

I have clients all over the world, many are from Houston, TX, and other towns near me. Most of my clients want that toned, lean look that’s so sexy. Most people are historically predisposed to hunting for a mate that looks healthy. It’s part of the evolutionary past that might have occurred because a healthier-looking person was more likely to provide healthy off springs. While trends for what is considered attractive change, one thing is certain, working out with small weights can help you get the healthy, curvy look that’s so popular now. Not only does it make you more attractive, it also makes you stay healthier.

Using lighter weights is great for HIIT—high intensity interval training—workouts that burn calories.

Some people believe that heavier weights will help you build muscle faster, but there are benefits to using lighter weights. You can modify your moves to work your muscles on all planes and do more repetitions. In fact, lightweight workouts are great for HIIT workouts, where you work at top intensity for a short time to get your heart rate at peak performance and then lower the intensity for an equal or longer period for recovery, volleying between the two throughout the workout. It burns tons of calories and continues even after the workout ends. Cutting back on the rest time between sets and reps can also build muscle faster as it burns fat.

You can do combination moves with lighter weights.

If you’ve ever tried to do a squat while you had weights in your hands, you know that lighter weights are important. It’s pretty tough to do shoulder press as you squat down if the weights are too heavy. Trying to do that, with weights are too heavy, can cause your form to suffer and having the proper form is the most important part of any exercise, followed by actually doing it. Using lighter weights lets you work your upper body as you do lower body exercises, getting a full body workout at one time.

People who want a toned look benefit from lighter weights.

Studies show that people who use lighter weights can build just as much muscle as those who use heavier weights. You can get just as much benefit, but have to sue them differently. They’re just another versatile tool that can help you get fit. Lighter weights are probably more versatile for the average person, since you can add them to more exercises.

• What constitutes a lighter weight? It all depends on you. If a five pound weight is easy for you to lift, it’s a light weight. If a twenty pound one is well within your range to lift easily, it’s a lighter weight.
• You’ll be able to learn a movement easier and have good form if you’re not struggling to lift a weight. That’s why lighter weights are good for the beginner. Once your form is perfected, you can add more weight.
• Part of learning form is learning proper breathing. That’s more easily done when you use lighter weights. Taking deep breaths, through the belly and not the chest, helps you exercise longer when you use lighter weights.
• You need to lift until you are fatigued and feel like you could do just one more move, but nothing beyond that. Don’t workout until you are completely fatigued. Don’t wait until your form suffers.

For more information, contact us today at Reggie C Fitness!

Whether you live in Houston, TX, or any other part of the country, stress is real. Sometimes, just turning on the TV and listening to the news can cause stress. Instead of watching TV, you’re better off exercising. You’ll feel great in a short time. Sometimes, just running up and down stairs can make you feel great. That’s because exercise relieves stress. While it can be addictive, it’s a great addiction and the only side effect is a fabulous buff body and loads of energy.

When you workout, your body reverses the changes of stress.

When you’re under stress, your brain creates hormones to prepare your body for running or fighting. It’s called the fight or flight response. Stress during the times of early man came from being attacked or seeing enemies or predators. When confronted, the brain created hormones to help man do one or both of those. The hormones caused the body to send more blood to extremities for running and fighting, dilate the eyes to see better, and increase the heart rate and blood pressure. All these changes diverted blood from other areas that weren’t necessary for either running or fighting, like the stomach. It explains why you often feel sick to your stomach and may even tremble.

What stressed cavemen is different than your stressors.

Times change and so do things that cause stress. While early man may have been stressed by a saber tooth tiger, angry customers, traffic jams and running late are the stressors of today. Even crowds can be stressful. In most cases, running or fighting isn’t appropriate. Sometimes, things perceived as dangerous aren’t even real, like waking up from a nightmare or watching a scary movie. Your brain doesn’t differentiate between the real or perceived danger. It simply sends out stress hormones that make the changes.

Just get moving, since exercise not only burns off hormones, it has other benefits that help you.

All types of exercise, whether its running, doing calisthenics, pressing weights or simply pacing the floor help burn off stress hormones. Even better, the brain creates happy hormones that make you feel good to replace the stress hormones. The activity simulates the movements you’d make during fight or flight, tricking your body and brain into relaxation. Exercise also increases circulation, as it sends nutrients and oxygen laden blood throughout the body. It allows you to relax by relieving muscle tension. It helps to bring you to a relaxed state, with muscle tightness gone and a wider range of motion.

• Healthy eating can also help prevent stress. Try going sugar free for a while. It can level out your blood sugar so you don’t have a sugar high that makes you on edge or the ultimate sugar crash where you get cranky.
• If you have a serious problem that just has to play out and you have no control, exercise can help you take your mind off it. While you can’t control everything in your life, it helps you control your thoughts, at least for a while.
• Psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists now include exercise as a complementary treatment in conjunction with medication for anxiety, depression and stress. Studies show it is sometimes all that is needed to treat these symptoms and as good for some patients as medication.
• If you’re emotionally out of sorts, it may be the result of an imbalance of beneficial gut bacteria. Studies show the digestive microbes play a role in your emotions and exercise can boost the growth of beneficial bacteria.

For more information, contact us today at Reggie C Fitness

My clients in Houston, TX, are really all over the world, know I love strength training for women and men. While many people don’t do strength training after a certain age, particularly women, the benefits of strength training in older women is extremely important. Older women tend to avoid it because they often believed it was not only unladylike, but dangerous and built bulky muscles. Those things are not true and luckily, people are finding out that strength-training can make a big difference in health and physical appearance.

You won’t build bulky muscles, but will build more muscle mass.

Women often see female bodybuilders and think that doing an hour of strength-training each week will make them look like that. It’s simply not true. You will build muscle mass, but it will mean toned, svelte muscles. It’s extremely difficult for women to get the muscular look of bodybuilders and takes hours and hours every week, plus a dedication to diet and other lifestyle changes. Older people, male and female need to work on building muscle mass, since it wastes away as you age. It’s estimated that a sedentary person loses about forty percent of their muscle mass between the age of 30 to 80. That can destroy the option of independent living as you age.

You need more muscle mass to avoid bone loss.

When you’re building muscle tissue by lifting weights, you’re also helping your bones. Working your muscles hard tugs on the bones. It causes the body to begin the bone building process and send more calcium to the bones Just doing strength training two to three times a week helps maintain calcium levels in the bones and avoid osteoporosis.

The stronger you are, the more you’re protected from severe conditions.

Building strength does more than help you live on your own longer. It helps you the prospect of diabetes and even help normalize blood sugar if you already have it. Strength-training can help people with osteoporosis, arthritis, back pain and depression. It can relieve symptoms and in some cases reverse them. If you have a precursor to diabetes, insulin resistance, it can reverse it by increasing the protein responsible for regulation of blood sugar levels.

• Falls account for many people losing their independence as they age. Strength-training helps improve your balance and prevent life altering accidents.
• Do you want to sleep better? It’s important for heart health and weight control. Try strength-training. It helps you sleep and achieve the deep sleep that is important for health.
• Are you turning into a grouchy old person? Depression and anger is one of the problems faced by older people. Exercising can increase the hormones that make you feel good and lift you out of depression.
• Boost your metabolism with strength training. A number of health issues occur or get worse when your metabolism slows and causes weight gain. You’ll also look years younger with pep in your step and a body younger women will envy.

For more information, contact us today at Reggie C Fitness

If you’ve heard about how healthy a juice cleanse is, you may be listening to the proponents that believe it helps detox the body of harmful chemicals. Others may use juice cleansing as a way to start a program of healthier eating and preparing for cutting calories. A juice cleanse can be ongoing, choosing to drink only fruit juice, vegetable juice and water for three days a week, instead a one time option. The type of juice is normally made from organic fruits and vegetables and made at home. It isn’t from processed juices found on the grocery shelves.

There’s no magical reset to the juice cleanse that’s often touted.

It’s the function of the body’s organs, like the liver, kidneys and colon, to remove waste and toxins. It functions on its own quite well. According to the NIH—National Institute of Health—there isn’t much evidence to back up the claim that a juice cleanse works to detox, even though it would be nice to think it could work. However, juices are rich in vitamins and minerals, so it could provide extra nutrients. Juices also contain healthy enzymes that can improve digestion. What they don’t contain is fiber.

Juicing is not the same as creating smoothies.

When you juice, you remove the pulp and that removes an important nutrient, fiber. Fiber is also necessary for a healthy body. It also aids in digestion and keeps the food moving through the system. It’s a prebiotic, which means it feeds the healthy bacteria in the digestive system. Fiber also fills you up and slows the absorption of sugar, which helps stabilize blood sugar levels. It can cause digestive issues if you eat too much without getting your body adjusted to the change. Juicing doesn’t allow that. Leaving in the fiber is a true cleanse, since it acts like a scrubber to aid the body in removing toxins from the colon.

There are pros and cons, but the biggest test is what you do after a cleanse.

If you do a juice cleanse expecting to lose weight, you’ll be disappointed later. Any weight loss you noticed, normally disappears the minute you start eating normally. However, one study found that people who used it as a way to start a healthier diet actually kept the weight off. It can also affect your gut bacteria. In some cases, the effect was beneficial, improving the population of healthy ones. One explanation was that it eliminated unhealthy junk food, which negatively affected healthy bacteria.

• Rather than opting for a juice cleanse, consider making a blender option that blends the whole fruit and vegetable. You’ll get any benefits juice cleanses offer, plus feel fuller, control blood sugar better and still give up the junk food and highly processed food that affect your health.
• If you cleanse, keep it short and only a few days. Studies show that prolonged juicing has the potential to damage kidneys.
• You may not feel good on a juice cleanse. The super low calories and high fruit sugars that cause spiking and dropping of blood sugar can cause that.
• If you want to find a way to lose weight and stay healthy, plus provide many health benefits, besides normal healthy eating, try intermittent fasting. It’s been proven to provide health benefits and just requires you limit your eating to eight hours a day.

For more information, contact us today at Reggie C Fitness