Tag Archives: healthy

Bryce Romig, Uncategorized

Columnist shares tips on getting fit

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By Bryce Romig

With prom season coming up, high schoolers are trying to increase their fitness fast to help them feel and look their best. With all of the weight loss and fitness myths, it can be confusing on where to start. Use these tips to help you get healthy and prom ready in no time.

Tip #1: Drink water consistently throughout the day. Not only will you feel better, but staying hydrated also helps you push harder through your workouts. Although this may sound gross, make sure your urine is a clear or light yellow color. This helps you decide whether you’re properly hydrated or not. Avoid sugary carbonated drinks; instead replace them with tea. Tea is a healthier alternative to soft drinks, and is great for people who don’t like the taste of water. Tea also provides antioxidants that can help get rid of toxins in the body.

Tip #2: Make small changes. Instead of quitting junk food cold turkey, try to make minor changes in your diet. For the first couple of days, slowly get rid of unhealthy snacks and drinks. Limit them to once a day the first week, and slowly cut them out of your diet. Just because you are trying to shed a few pounds doesn’t mean you can’t indulge every now and again. Save your favorite treats and snacks for one day a week, and savor every bite of it when you finally get to eat it. Not only will this make your favorite foods taste even better, but it helps keep you on track and avoid bingeing in the future.

Tip #3: Have a quick and easy workout routine. It’s no secret that exercising isn’t the most enjoyable activity, and is put on the back burner on most people’s agendas. Avoid this by keeping your workouts fast and intense, allowing you to still have free time in your daily schedule. This will also help keep you motivated by limiting the amount of excuses you have to avoid your daily workout. Choose at least one day at week to avoid intense exercising and do something you enjoy. Try going for a walk in the park or going to a local swimming pool. Anything that boosts your mood and gets you somewhat active is never a bad thing. Learn to enjoy exercising; your body will thank you in the future.

Tip #4: Keep track of your progress. Recording your progress with pictures will allow you to see the small changes in your body. Take a picture at the end of each week starting with Week 1, and place them side by side to see how rapidly your body is changing. Not only will this give you a confidence boost, but it will also boost your motivation even more when you see that all of your effort is making an impact. Ditch the scale, though, as muscle mass can sometimes be confused with fat weight and may actually trick you into thinking your gaining weight. Scales are misleading because they aren’t very accurate.

Tip #5: Have fun with it. If you hate lifting weights, don’t do it so often. If you hate cardio, try attending a Zumba or Turbo Kick class instead. Many gyms offer alternatives to traditional exercise, many of which are more entertaining and even fun. Don’t be embarrassed to get your sweat on dancing, either; everyone is in the class for the same reason as you. These classes are still tough, so don’t trick yourself into thinking you’re taking the easy way out. Check your local gym’s schedule to see when the next classes are.

Tip #6: Pile on the veggies. Vegetables are filling foods that provide you with a full stomach with a low amount of calories. Try vegetables rich in iron and vitamins such as kale or spinach. These power foods will also provide more energy to your body, allowing you to increase the intensity of your workouts even more. Your skin will also benefit, thanks to the many vitamins found within the vegetables. If you don’t like chewing your vegetables, try making a green smoothie. Put kale,spinach, and any fruit in a blender and blend until smooth. Try adding agave nectar for added sweetness with limited calories. Green smoothies are a great post workout fuel.

Blake Dykes, Columns, Forum

Motivational Monday: healthy recipe and sweaty cardio circuit

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By Blake Dykes

I know today is Monday, and it’s hard to do anything to get yourself to do anything, much less workout, so I have a quote for all the people that are considering skipping today’s exercise:

“You can’t get much done if you only workout on the days when you feel good.” – Jerry West.

With this being said, I hope you all were able to successfully complete the weekend challenge. If not, no worries, there are plenty of other weekends to come.

Today I want to give you guys one of my most favorite recipes. For all you health freaks that have tons of bananas, this one’s for you. Every once in awhile we forget that our bananas are ripe, and then when you go to eat one you realize they’re brown and overly ripe. DON’T  throw them away. Make some low calorie banana bread.

This weekend I was really craving some, so I threw some ingredients together to create this masterpiece:

– three overly ripe bananas

– one cup self-rising flour

– one cup whole wheat flour

– one tsp. baking powder

– ½ tsp. baking soda

– one tsp. cinnamon

– one tsp. ginger

– ¼ cup of Stevia or honey

– four tbs. peanut butter powder

– six tbs. almond milk

-½ cup pecans

one tbs. raw sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, or flax seeds

Preheat oven to 320 degrees. Combine dry ingredients, mix well. Mash up the bananas in a plastic bag and pour in a bowl. Add the almond milk and honey (if you use that sweetener), and mix together. Add pecans.  Mix the wet ingredients with the dry and pour into an olive oil-coated  pan lightly floured. Then sprinkle your choice of seeds on top. Bake for 1 hour. It will be very dense, but you will know when it’s done because the inside should not be too gooey, and the outside should be crunchy. Let the banana bread cool and sweeten before eating it, and remember to not cook it until the entire inside is set because it will set and get firm as it cools, if you cook it too long it will be crunchy bread and no one wants that.

Homemade healthy banana bread.
Homemade healthy banana bread.

Don’t forget to workout today, whether it’s a run, bike ride, or one of the workouts you have, just make sure you get it done.

Sweaty Cardio Circuit

  • two- minute high knees

  • two- minute plank

  • two- minute jump rope

  • two- minute wall sit

  • two-minute mountain climbers

  • two-minute wall pushups

  • two-minute jog in place

  • two- minute squats

After that, do round two with the same exercises, except only for one minute. Then, once you complete that, do the same exercise for 30 seconds.

Tips:

  • Go at your own pace, if you can’t do two- minute mountain climbers at a fast pace, slow it down, but do it for the full amount of time.

  • This is one of those workouts that you don’t get to have a few second break between, you need to go right from one exercise to the next. It’s completely doable, I designed the workout to where after each vigorous cardio exercise there is a more muscle specific exercise.

Be sure to let me know how you liked the banana bread, any suggestions you may have to make it better, and give me a rating from one to 10 on how hard the workout was.

Blake Dykes, Columns, Forum

Fitness Friday: Eating tips and weekend challange

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By Blake Dykes

Instead of giving you a list of recipes and workouts to do, to begin your journey towards a fit lifestyle, I am just going to give you some simple tips you can use to change for the better.

Tips:

  • Know your serving size. Seems self explanatory right? Wrong. For instance, don’t think that because you’re eating Wheat Thins doesn’t mean you’re consuming a low amount of  calories. When you just reach out of the box, which you should NEVER do, you consume on average around four times the recommended serving size. For the reduced fat Wheat Thins the serving size is 14 crackers adding up to be 140 calories. I’m not at all saying these are a bad snack choice, I am just trying to stress that you are probably taking in way more calories than you thought. Portion size is key.
  • Let’s face it, we all have those days where going on a run or doing a hour workout sounds absolutely dreadful. Well, I hate to tell you this, but it’s still not alright to skip on these days; however, I do have a suggestion. Make a list of five to seven exercises that you hate (what I mean by that is exercises that are extremely hard for you and leave you completely out of breath). An example of this list could be:

  • 50 jumping jacks

  • 15 push ups

  • 25 jumping squats

  • 45 crunches

  • One minute running in place

Post this list somewhere that you will see frequently throughout the day, such as in your room, bathroom door, or fridge (maybe that will make you think twice about that midnight snack). Every time you see the list complete the workout. The one I provided burns around 80-100 calories, if you see that eight times a day that’s quite a workout.

  • One thing that always makes me mad is when someone tells me, “You know peanut butter is really high in fat.” Obviously peanut butter is high in fat, but it also fuels your body and contains the right fats. Don’t let some ignorant person persuade you out of eating it. With this being said, most peanut butters contain a little ingredient that has a BIG impact on your body. Hydrogenated oils. There are tons of varieties of hydrogenated oils, but the ones most prevalent in peanut butter are: vegetable, rapeseed, and soybean. These hydrogenated oils thicken your blood, cause  higher cholesterol, and dramatically increases your chance of heart disease. Some other things you should be cautious of when picking out peanut butter is the sugar content. Peanut butter is not made to be sweet, so there should be no added sugar, yet companies continue to slip around 2-6 grams of sugar in per serving (two Tbsp). Not to mention that you should be not taking in no more than 15 grams of sugar daily. With this being said, peanut butter is a simpler item that should be kept with simple ingredients, here are a few brands that keep everything natural with strictly nuts and a hint of salt: KREMA, SMUCKER’S, Naturally More, and my favorite, simple truth organic.

I think that’s just enough amount of things to consider for today, but instead of a workout I am giving you a different assignment.

What I have decided to do is give you a weekend challenge, so from now on every Friday I will be including it in each Fitness Friday column I post, and you can give me feedback on how you do.

Challenge: Don’t eat past 8:30 this weekend. I know weekends exist so that we can stay up until the crack of dawn, but late night cravings are the downfall to healthy eating habits. As tempting as watching TV and munching down a whole bag of chips is, it completely ruins that “flat morning stomach.” You probably aren’t aware that on these late night binges you more than likely consume 500-1000 calories if not more. Besides just the high amount of calories, snacking late at night is hardly ever driven by true hunger, just cravings. If you must eat past 8:30 make it as light as possible, such as some fruit, greek yogurts, or a small handful of sunflower seeds. This sounds a lot easier than it is, but it is a great habit to get into.