7 - Strengthens & tones muscles and improves appearance

When we exercise, we improve our strength, increase tone and improve our appearance. But how? How does this work? Why does it occur? When we exercise our heart rate increases with the added work load of supplying oxygen to the working muscles. As well as promoting circulation, exercise provides nutrients throughout the whole body.

As we exercise, our muscles due to added work load, suffer from micro tears to our muscle belly. This is a good thing. If you have ever woken up sore the next day this is one of the reasons we are sore. Our body has an amazing ability to fix these tears, and each time is repairs the damage, it makes that muscle a little bit stronger. Therefore doing this repetitively is why men have the ability to grow muscle and get stronger. Females have this ability too, except due to the way female are made it is a lot harder for females to get bigger muscles, but females are able to get stronger. While the body is healing, this uses more energy hence why males don’t seem to put on weight as easily. If we are looking to lose weight and tone our bodies, doing resistance training is a fantastic way of doing this.

Defining and toning of our muscles is done through repetitive movements. If we look at professional dancers, they always have incredible definition lines and toned muscles. They do not lift heavy weights; they do the same thing over and over again repetitively. If we go for a run or swim or cycle, this repetitive action will cause the same effect to our bodies. Remember consistency is the key; we need to focus on doing something towards our end result every day, no matter how small, to get results. If we keep focusing on moving forward, this will develop momentum and create habits, teaching us to thrive on these actions.

The largest organ we own is our skin, if we do not exercise, it will not be able to flourish. Exercise increases our blood flow and promotes higher blood levels throughout our bodies. This is remarkable, being able to do this increases the amount of nutrients we can deliver to our skin, and as a result, it helps to heal our skin faster as well as remove harmful chemicals from deodorants and spray ons more effectively. This in turn makes our skin feel smoother and become tighter to our physique, creating an enhanced appearance naturally. This is exciting, when we achieve this it’s like a self-made drug. We want more of it to drive our endeavour to exercise more and create positive attitudes. This allows us to think clearer and act fast.

Yes, exercise improves our strength. Yes, it increases tone and yes, it improves our appearance. But it does a lot more than this. Below are some great related articles to help inspire us to achieve, understand and learn about our potential.

Cheers, Xenus Fitness

Chestnuts - What a great snack

Who knew Chestnuts were so good for us? The health benefits of chestnuts are outstanding! If we are looking for a great snack that’s light, easy to carry with us and is healthy, chestnuts meet these requirements and are cheaper compared to junk food like chips and lollies, costing less than $1 dollar for 200g. Regular packets of chips like Grain Waves and Thins chips, cost between $2 and $3.50 for 175g. Even though they meet our required tastes through artificial ingredients, these products do not have any health benefits. Below is a list of the remarkable health benefits of chest nuts.

·         Chestnuts are a good source of dietary fibre, providing up to 8.1 g per 100g (about 21% of our Recommended Daily Intake). Putting Fibre into our diets helps increase our High density cholesterol levels. This promotes the removal of excess cholesterol in our intestines, arteries and brain.

·         Being strong anti-oxidants, chestnuts offer protection from harmful free radicals.

·         Chestnuts, compared to other nuts and seeds, are relatively low in calories. They contain less fat and provide rich minerals, vitamins and phyto-nutrients that benefit our health.

·         Chestnuts are also rich in many important B-complex groups of vitamins. 100 grams of chestnuts provides about 11% of niacin, 29% of pyridoxine (vit.B-6), 100% of thiamin, and 12% of riboflavin.

·         Chestnuts, like hazelnuts and almonds, are gluten free and therefore a popular ingredient in the preparation of gluten free food formulas for gluten-sensitive, wheat allergy and celiac disease persons.

·         They are rich source of mono-unsaturated fatty like oleic acid (18:1) and palmitoleic acids (16:1). Monounsaturated fatty acids, omega fatty acids and antioxidants help prevent coronary artery disease and strokes by promoting healthy blood lipid profiles.

·         Contains high quality protein.

·         Standing out from other nuts and seeds, chestnuts are exceptionally rich in vitamin-C. 100 grams of chestnuts provides about 0.43 grams of vitamin C (72 % of our Recommended Daily Intake). Vitamin C is an essential compound in teeth, bones and blood vessels.

·         Nutritionally, chestnuts possess almost a similar nutrition composition as that of other staple foods such as sweet potato, sweet corn, potatoes etc, consisting mainly of starch.

·         Being rich in folates, a salt of folic acid. 100 grams of chestnuts provides 0.62 grams of folates (or 15.5% of our Recommended Daily Intake). Folic acid is required for the formation of red blood cells and DNA synthesis, that is, making new proteins.

·         Chestnuts are an excellent source of minerals such as iron, calcium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus and zinc. They provide very good amount of potassium with roughly (518 micro grams per 100 grams). Potassium helps counter hypertension from of sodium, lowers our heart rate and blood pressure. Iron helps prevent microcytic-anaemia. Magnesium and phosphorus are important components of bone metabolism.

What great benefits from chestnuts. Also chestnuts are a vegetable? How? Click the link below to learn about it. Also feel free to read any other related articles below, to understand more about the key points in this article. If you wish to order chestnuts please feel free to call or email John Morton, an Australian producer of chestnuts.

Cheers, Xenus Fitness

Find John Morton at:

http://chestnutproducts.com.au

6 - Improves breathing efficiency.

At rest we breathe as little as 8-12 litres of air per minute. Breathing involves using our diaphragm and chest wall muscles (Respiratory muscles). These muscles act together like a mattress foot pump or a bellow, to create air flow in and out of our body.

To inhale, these muscles contract to expand the chest cavity, stretching our coastal cartilage, creating a drop in pressure to cause the air to flow inwards. To exhale, our respiratory muscles relax, causing our coastal cartilage to pull back into a relaxed position, forcing air out of our lungs.

During exercise our abdominal muscles support our respiratory muscles as we exhale. This is why when we are short of breath, we struggle to breathe in, but we can exhale more effectively. Our abdominal muscles are always working to help us walk, keep balance and sit; causing them to be more alert and efficient when helping us to breathe.  During exercise we can burn as much as 150 litres of oxygen per minute and for elite male athletes, even up to 240 litres per minute.

This huge work load is why our breathing efficiency improves. This is the same as our efficiency rate improves when we do something more repetitive and it will continue to improve if we do something more repeatedly. For example, a chef will be able to chop 100 carrots more effectively and efficiently than we will, simply because the human body naturally adapts to repetitive movement.

Therefore breathing from exercise will improve, if we exercise more regularly. Also our inspiratory muscles will grow stronger from the increased resistance, promoting a trend of increasing breathing efficiency.

To improve the rate of our efficiency, we need to focus on inhaling as much air as possible. This will improve the strength of our respiratory muscles; thus allowing us to get more oxygen to the working muscles a lot more effectively. Overall our fitness will improve, getting us one step closer to our potential.

Cheers, Xenus Fitness

5 - Helps lose weight and keep it off.

Exercise helps lose weight and keep it off. Why does exercise help and how does exercise play a vital role in keeping off those unwanted kilo’s? Below we discuss these essential reasons to get ourselves one step closer to our health and fitness goals.

What we aim to promote is the level of knowledge and understanding about how our bodies break down fat, as well as what prevents us. Many of us have heard the “how to lose weight” slogans but right now we need to get past these fads and concentrate on how we were created.

Our bodies are the most incredibly, advanced machines on the planet, and even though we can cope with making unhealthy food choices, there are consequences. Much like if we have a gas car and decide to fill it with diesel, this may allow us to drive a few kilometres but eventually the car will run out of existing fuel and break down. Starving our system of the vital nutrients it needs is the same as the car example and will cause our bodies to break down.

 When we consume food, it is broken down into its three main elements: Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats. Carbohydrates are then broken down into Glucose.  Glucose is a simple sugar and is our body’s main source of energy, also known as (blood sugar).

For glucose to be used as energy, the cell needs to have insulin present. Insulin is automatically produced by our body to match the amount glucose (sugar) levels in our blood stream.

The reason why exercise is so important in our daily lives is because we use the glucose in our cells as fuel for energy. Without exercise, our bodies store the remaining glucose in our fat cells. If our bodies have glucose present in our blood stream, then our bodies won’t use our fat cells for energy production.

To gain the ability to burn our fat cells we must exercise to remove glucose from our blood. This process occurs in the first 15-20 minutes of exercise, and after the first 15-20 minutes of exercise, our bodies then start to use fat cells for energy production.

Now that we know why exercise is so important in the process of losing weight, we can now combine the understanding of how our bodies lose weight with our health and fitness goals. This will improve our knowledge for why we should exercise. Creating a stronger Motivation and producing results. Your body is our temple, treat it right and we will become unstoppable on our way to achieving your health and fitness desires.

 

For more reasons about why exercise is important in our daily lives,

      Please feel free to read the related articles below:

1 -          Strengthens heart muscle.

2 -          Decreases the incidence of heart attack.

3 -          Reduces risks for heart disease, reducing bad LDL cholesterol and increasing good HDL  cholesterol.

4 -          Improves circulation and oxygen/nutrient transport throughout the body.

Cheers, Xenus Fitness



4 - Improves circulation and oxygen/nutrient transport throughout the body.

-          Increased blood flow is a direct result from exercise; our hearts beat faster to support the workload of oxygen to the working muscles. Our hearts do this through red blood cells via the blood stream. However our circulatory system does so much more than just transfer oxygen, our circulatory system is our body’s whole transportation system. It is the freeways and roads of our body. Our organs are like the major cities and our fingernails and toes are like the outer suburbs and towns. The cars we drive in with all our precious passengers are like our blood cells.

-          Through exercise, our bodies produce new blood cells at a greater rate to support more oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. This not only increases the density of emergency services in our body, like your police, fire brigade and ambulance, but it also grows new employment in the trades industry, like our plasterers, plumbers, electricians and car mechanics much the same as in our cities and major towns.

-          So now imagine we are sitting in our car on our way back to work at the heart, we are currently traveling down the axillary vein about to merge into the superior vena cava. Just before we enter into the turn off lane a drunk driver narrowly misses our car and crashes into the car in front of us. The shock alone causes us to stop. Superior vena cava is much like Melbourne’s Monash Freeway and is known to hold most of the hearts traffic flow into the city. Because of the crash in front of us this starts to slow down and delay traffic flowing into the city of heart. Cars start to bank up and just as we thought the worst was over, cars with people high on artificial substances start to crash into cars behind us causing our car with its precious passages to be wedged in the mess. This problem is quickly fixed though, (unlike our small country towns) and the emergency services soon come to the rescue and clear this chaos. The superior vena cava is equipped with 24hr emergency services and is able to clear the damage in seconds. The body system we have is so powerful that it doesn’t seem to affect the greater human body. There is much worry for our outer suburbs and country towns though, because there is less density of emergency services.

-          Picture this event, in our country towns there are a lot less emergency services and tradesmen available. Even so, some tradesmen reduce the amount of employees working for them during the night shift to save on extra costs. This causes problems, say we cut our foot and we notice that it takes longer to heal; this is because there is less density of emergency services and tradesmen available to help patch up the cut to our skin. This is a simple problem.

-          Imagine we decided to fill our bodies with alcohol and artificial substances all night from our food and drinks. We drank so much that we had a blood alcohol reading ‘0.05’. This means that 1 in every 20 cells of our body are intoxicated. So imagine now we get a cut to our hand, there are thousands of cars traveling down our Brachial artery every second and because it is further away from the main organ cities, emergency services and tradesmen have to travel further to get the cut, hence we will bleed for longer. If we were sitting in our car in the digital arteries of our hands (these are the arteries of our hands), the road would clasped below us, as the blood flows out of the cut, we would have no time to say goodbye to our families and friends and hundreds of lives would be lost in the collapse, caused by the cut. Emergency services would have to risk their own lives to fix the wound and save the people. But remember that in having the alcohol and artificial substances in our system, it means that 1 in every 20 emergency services will be drunk. Imagine the police officer trying to redirect traffic while drunk, the fire brigade trying to rescue people while under the influence of alcohol and artificial substances and our ambulance teams trying to bring people back to life with a blood alcohol reading of 0.05. Our system would go into turmoil! Then as this problem is being fixed, reports are coming in that the major cities are in mayhem because there are so many crashes from the 1 in 20 drunk drivers and thousands of drivers that are already under the influence of artificial substances on our roads, and sadly, the emergency services are forced to retreat. This becomes increasingly harmful because we are then compelled to bring in less skilled workers. The tradesmen are not as qualified but have to start helping to fix the problems, keeping in mind that 1 in every 20 of them too, are drunk. The towns are getting clogged up, there is nowhere to run. Yet mostly importantly, the body is losing its ability to transport the most vital fuel for our system. Oxygen. Like fuel for our cars. When we say we are tipsy, this means that we are getting light headed because there is a reduced amount of oxygen flowing through our bodies. Eventually there are no survivors in these country towns, causing our blood, the cycle of life, to stop flowing through these areas. This is when some people get tingles in their hands and feet. From here we decide the feeling is good, so we keep drinking, and the density of all drunk people on our roads, including emergency services, is increasing, this alcohol war is starting to win over our body and slow down vital organs so much that they almost stop completely. Once it stops entirely we are known as a statistic. This is when people say they are drunk and feel on top of the world. But then something happens to our night, the pollution of the density of drunks on our roads gets too thick and starts affecting the capital city, Heart. There is an emergency signal in our body called intuition that tells the brain whatever that is causing this agony needs to be removed immediately. This signal is like a flare on a boat as a last stitch effort to be noticed before we drown. When the brain receives this its first reaction is to create a surge of energy that is so powerful throughout the body that it causes us to vomit, causing the density of drunks on our body’s roads to go down. If we did not have this ability of intuition the chances of survival through a drunken night would be slim. Vomiting is a common sign of alcohol poisoning and if vomiting persists after drinking seek medical attention immediately.

-          So how do we fix this problem if it has already been created, and how can we clean up the mess? The human body is impressive because it gives us the ability to exercise, it gives us the ability to produce more blood cells and it gives us the choice on how we want to live our lives. This gift is amazing; we have the power to control one of the most sophisticated organisms on the planet. And if we have acted wrongly, it allows us to clean up the mess we have caused. The best thing is we don’t have to be in our systems, working endless hours to patch a small graze or direct traffic back to the city heart. All we have to do is make sure we eat and drink natural foods and fluids that our body desires and maintain a routine of doing some form of exercise every day. The body is so powerful that it will go out of its way to create endorphins, which is the same as getting a medal every second of the day when we do something good towards our body. Endorphins also promote us to be happy, and at the end of the day all we need to do is respect our bodies and our body will respect us with great skin, lean muscle, great energy and lower the risk of disease.

Cheers, Xenus Fitness

Make your Choice

It’s never too late to learn something new; it’s never too late to take your first step towards a dream. In just starting you have become one step closer to your goals than you were yesterday.

 

Imagine there is a bank account that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the balance you have failed to use during that day.

What Would You Do?!

Withdraw out every cent? Of course you would! Each of us has this bank account, its’ name is ‘time’. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds or 1,440 minutes. Every night your time is written off as a loss. Whatever time you failed to invest into a good purpose, has been lost forever. Your time carries over no balance. It allows no over draft. Each day it burns the remains of your day away. If you fail to use your day's deposits, it is your loss. There is no drawing against Tomorrow. You must live in the present on today's time deposit. Invest with it wisely, to get from it the utmost in health, happiness and success. Your clock is running. So make the most of today!

Time is the most precious thing we have. It comes free to use, and the more we invest in it wisely the more we will be given in return. So ask yourself, what do you want to do with your $86,400 today?

Cheers, Xenus Fitness