Hello hello hello! Coach Jimmy here and I’m back with another round of the best and brightest health and fitness articles from last week. For the newbies, I grab five of the best articles I ran across last week that have useful tips and information to help you all on your weight loss journeys. It’s one less thing that you have to keep up with and if it helps you hit your goals, I’m happy!
This week we cover training tips for a 5k, whether you need a recovery week or not, how to get out of a mental rut, identifying childhood obesity, and how to cook super healthy without being a good cook.
Best Health & Fitness Articles from Last Week
How to Train for a 5K
More than eight million people finished a 5K running event in 2014, up 44 percent from the year before, according to Running in the USA.
If you’re a running or thinking about getting into running for your cardio, competing or completing a 5k has definitely been a blip on your radar at one point or another. Whether it’s just completing or competing for a fast completion time, using a 5k as a goal to motivate and drive your workouts is awesome, phenomenal even. Regardless of what your goal is, if you don’t prepare correctly, you’re going to have a bad time.
So be sure to do your research, adjust your workout regimen and schedule to focus on running and endurance, get plenty of rest, and be sure to mix things up with some cross training to avoid injuries from the repetitive motion. Check out the full write up after the link below for more tips and tricks to get ready for that next 5k.
Ask The Expert: Do You Really Need A Recovery Week?
When you submit your body to stimulus, over time your body adapts to that stimulus and its effect on your body starts to wane.
The answer is a resounding yes! And no! Maybe…alright, resounding may be a stretch. This is one of those long debated subjects amongst the fitness community as it totally, 100% depends on you. What’s your workout regimen? What are your workout goals? Are you starting to get exhausted faster without the same amount of effort? Do you feel like you’re still improving? These are all important questions that you need to ask yourself and the best advice that anyone can give you is to 1) Listen to your body and 2) Let performance be your guide.
However, on the flip side of that coin, there are specific workout regimens out there that have recovery weeks built into them to give your muscles time to heal after high intensity cycles and you may switch to working out your core, balance, and mobility instead of building muscle. Though this is technically more of a transition week than a recovery week, the end effect is the same.
Two Quick Tips to Get You Out of Your Mental Rut
It is incredibly easy to look at a specific event or situation in your life through a pessimistic lens and be worn down by by the regret, guilt, or shame. This negativity can bleed into other aspects of your life and have a major impact on your overall success. When it comes to succeeding at anything in life, your frame of mind and attitude will determine whether or make it or not. I know this is one of those easier said than done situations, but you truly need to be cognizant of your mindset.
Instead of fixating on “coulda, woulda, shoulda,” maybe it’s more beneficial to set your mind on moving forward.
Obsessing over your progress, or lack thereof, can cause you to get tunnel vision as you key in on the wrong area and become discouraged over it. Things like only focusing on the number the scale shows if you’re trying to lose weight rather than how much more you’re able to lift, how much longer you can run, or how many inches you’ve lost compared to when you began. If you’re having trouble setting goals or keeping up with them, this article has some great tips that can help you get out of your rut.
Is Your Child Overweight?
A recent study published in Childhood Obesity showed many parents struggle to correctly identity if their preschooler was overweight, underweight, or within a healthy weight range. 95 percent of the responses from parents of overweight children were incorrect.
As a father myself, I know that this is a touchy subject because we all want what’s best for our children. We want them to be healthy, happy, and have the greatest chance at success. That being said, there is an obesity epidemic in America and our children are part of it. If we don’t want our kids to be at risk for high blood pressure, cardiovascular conditions, and Type II Diabetes as they get older, we are the ones that must take action and the first step is identifying if there’s a problem.
Recent studies have shown that parents aren’t seeing their child’s weight problem as they’re chalking it up to them “going through a phase” or that they’re comparing their child’s weight to their peers at school who may also be overweight or obese rather than a using growth chart as a guide. Now, it’s entirely possible that our children are just going through a phase, but there is a difference between run-of-the-mill development and being overweight. The way you determine that is going to a healthcare professional who can perform tests for body fat percentage.
9 Reasons Fixate Will Help You Cook Like a Pro
Just because you aren’t a trained chef doesn’t mean that you can’t cook. Most modern workout regimens come with nutrition guides, but Autumn Calabrese created FIXATE for those of us who don’t think we can cook, but still want to eat healthy. The great thing about FIXATE is that you don’t have to think about what you’re going to have for a meal. There are dozens of recipes for every meal broken down to be easy to follow and guaranteed to be super healthy!