HOW TO START RUNNING

I have never liked running. In fact, I've always hated it. With a passion. I couldn't understand the appeal of getting all out of breath and feeling like I was going to die. I also lack any natural running talent whatsoever.

So why did I start running? Mainly because I wanted to see if I could like running.

I know that there are many people who love running. They experience the "runner's high" and it is almost like an addiction to them. I want to be one of these people. I want to want to run.

Running has so many great health benefits (strong bones, healthy heart, reduced risk of arthritis, increased life expectancy, etc.) plus it is so easy to do. All you really need is some running shoes and you're good to go.

I've been wondering if I've never liked running because I've never given it much of a chance. I've only ever really run when I've been forced to do it or during competitive sports. Maybe if I increase my cardiovascular fitness and run for a few weeks, I'll start to like it.

I made the decision to give running a try but then realized I wasn't really sure how to go about it. If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it the right way. I wanted to give it everything I had. So I did a little research and I'm going to share what I learned with you.

If you have been completely sedentary up to this point, you'll probably need to start a walking program before starting a running program. You can download a free walking plan here.

If you're ready to move up from your walking program, you can start by adding small amounts of running to your walks. For example, you could start with 5 minutes of walking (to warm up) and then alternating 60 sec of running with 90 seconds of walking for 15 minutes.

Don't start out too fast or too hard. You'll be more likely to injure yourself because your body won't be prepared for the exercise. Hello, shin splints. You want to finish your run feeling like you could go a little farther.

Don't run every day. Running is high impact and repetitive so it's easy to get injured if you do it too much. For new runners, aim to run 3 times per week.

Don't increase the time that you run during the week by more than 10%  per week. This way you'll be more handle the increase and won't put yourself in greater risk of injury (We meet again shin splints)

Get some good running shoes. Worn out shoes are the leading cause of injury and they can also cause you develop a bad running technique if they aren't giving you support in the places that you need it.

This could be you...

Focus on distance rather than time when you start running. If it's your first time out, don't try to beat the 100 m world record... cause you just won't. You'll just end up drop dead tired and will have only covered a tiny distance. If you focus on distance, you can take it as slow as you need to and can finish your running without feeling like you're going to pass out.

Keep motivated. Here are some ideas:

- Write a running plan and stick it somewhere that you will see every day

- Listen to fun music while you run

- Reward yourself. You could use daily rewards, like a yummy smoothie after your run, weekly rewards or one big reward when you finish your running prep for a 5K

- Make running a habit so you don't have to rely on willpower. Go out for a run every time that you've planned one, even if it's only for a few minutes.

- Work toward a goal. Aim to reach a certain distance or time or train for a 5K

- Keep a training log

3 KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL DIETING

I've never been a fan of fad diets. Cutting out an essential part of the diet, such as carbs or fat, never seemed like a good idea to me. If you try a diet in which you have to drastically alter what you eat, you're probably not going to stick to it. You can't keep not eating carbs forever. 

So what happens when you start eating carbs again? You gain back the weight.

Why? Because you have not made a maintainable, long-term change to your eating behavior. 

Fad diets make things complicated. The best approach to dieting is a simple one: keep a food journal and count your calories.

Your main focus should be setting a calorie goal and sticking to it. For more information about working out how many calories you should be eating, see here.

Let's get a little scientific for a minute. I promise it won't  be too horrible :)

Last year a study was conducted on the impact of a wide range of diet-related behaviors and meal patterns and their effect on weight change. These were the main conclusions of the study:

In the study, women who kept food journals lost about 6 lb more than those who did not.

It's pretty dang hard to change your eating behavior if you don't pay attention to what you're eating.

I know that there have been days in the past where I have assumed that I wasn't eating a lot of calories when I was actually eating a ridiculous amount.

Example: 

I love Chili's. When we go there John and I usually share a half order of Texas Cheese Fries and then I get a Classic Bacon Burger with a side order of fries. Yep, that's a lot of fries for one night.

I never really thought about how many calories I was eating. I guessed it was a lot but I wasn't sure exactly how much.

I decided to look it up one day. Guess how many calories that meal was.

2350

I could not believe this. I had been eating way more calories than I thought I was

Using a diet journal is easy. It doesn't take a lot of time. You don't have to use it every day for the rest of your life if you don't want to. It's good to track your calories for a few weeks every day. Then you will gain a sense for how many calories different foods contain. Then you can just use a diet journal every now and then to stay on track or you can continue to use it every day. 

Tips for using a diet journal:

Measure your servings. When you're counting calories it is important to pay attention to serving size. Don't just assume that you are just having one serving. Read labels and measure it out. For example, one serving of milk isn't a large glass of milk. It is one cup of milk.

Be honest. Record everything that you eat. Those fries that you stole off your boyfriend/husband's plate do count. Make sure you include toppings and condiments in your calorie count.

Be conscientious. Take your diet journal with you everywhere so you don't have to try to remember what you ate later. Use it every day for at least a couple of weeks.

Here a few printable food journal pages that I made that you are welcome to download.

 Blue Food Journal

 Green Food Journal

Pink Food Journal

There are also some good apps for counting calories. My favorite is MyFitnessPal.

In the study, women who skipped meals lost almost 8 fewer pounds than women who didn't. 

Skipping meals is a bad idea. We all know it's not very fun to be really hungry. Often when you skip a meal you end up binging later on in the day and making up the calories from the skipped meal. 

There's also the issue with your metabolism. You burn calories most efficiently when you eat at regular intervals throughout the day. The best thing to do is to eat five or six small meals a day. 

Skipping meals is also thought to cause you to respond more favorably to high-calorie foods. This means that  you will probably end up eating more calories than you would have if you hadn't skipped the meal.

In the study, women who ate out for lunch at least weekly lost an average of 5 fewer pounds than women who ate out less frequently.

I don't mean never eat out. It's fun to eat out every once and a while. Just make sure to limit how often you eat out. Also, when you do eat out, pay attention to the number of calories you are eating. Maybe only eat half of your meal that day. 

Kong A., Beresford S.A.A., Alfano C.M., Foster-Schubert K.E., Neuhouser M.L., Johnson D.B., Duggan C., (...), McTiernan A. Self-Monitoring and Eating-Related Behaviors Are Associated with 12-Month Weight Loss in Postmenopausal Overweight-to-Obese Women (2012)  Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,  112  (9) , pp. 1428-1435.

TIPS FOR PREVENTING EXCESS EATING

1. When you're craving an unhealthy food, tell yourself that you have to eat a healthy snack before you can have the unhealthy food. Eating the healthy food first will hopefully mean that you will eat less of the unhealthy food in the end because the healthy food will help to fill your stomach.

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2. Try to eat some protein in each meal that you eat. Protein helps you to fill full and will help to keep you feeling full for longer. Often if I'm hungry at the end of the day I will have a glass of milk because it's not a lot of calories and it contains protein.

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3. If you're trying to stave off a craving, try chewing some sugar-free gum.

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4. Prevent giving into food cravings by brushing your teeth or using mouthwash. Nothing tastes good right after you brush your teeth. 

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5. You can also try drinking water when you feel hungry. Apparently some people confuse being thirsty with being hungry. 

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6. Try distracting yourself when you're craving food. One way in which you can do this is forehead tracking. Tap your pointer finger across your forehead from temple to temple. Tap once per second, moving across one centimeter at a time. Follow your finger with your eyes and focus your eyes on the first joint of your pointer finger.

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7. Another idea for resisting food cravings is to start a stopwatch when your craving starts and then stop it when the craving subsides. Next time you feel the craving you will know how much time you'll have to wait before the craving will go away. It makes it a lot easier to resist a craving when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

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EXERCISE DURING PREGNANCY

In one of the last classes I took for my major in exercise science, we were put into groups and then had to chose a condition and research the effect that exercise would have on it. My group was all girls so we decided to research the effects of exercise during pregnancy. None of us really knew what the exercise recommendations were for pregnant women and since we all wanted to be mothers at some point, we thought that this project would be pretty useful. This assignment was particularly helpful for me as I was pregnant with Eve about a week after we gave our presentation.

Me when I was 8 weeks pregnant

Even though I had this new knowledge about exercise, I wasn't the best at implementing it. For the first half of my pregnancy I didn't exercise as much as I should have. It was summer, I was taking summer classes, and the school gym was closed. This was particularly bad because I needed to take two gym glasses in my next semester, when I would be 6-9 months pregnant. John and I started going on walks to prepare myself for these classes. I ended up taking water aerobics and yoga. I'm lucky that I had the option of less intense exercise classes.

Me when I was 36 weeks pregnant

I wish that I had exercised regularly throughout my entire pregnancy. I definitely saw benefits from the exercise I did in the last few months of my pregnancy but it's not a good idea to begin exercising this late in a pregnancy.

If any of you are in the same boat as I was in before I did my research project (wanting to become pregnant someday in the not too distant future and not knowing about how you should exercise when pregnant), this post will help you become informed.

Before I start, I should say that this information was gathered from a series of studies that we read about. When you become pregnant, your doctor may give you different recommendations about exercise. Some doctors still recommend not letting your heart rate get about 140 bpm (this is pretty outdated). This is because there aren't any hard guidelines on exercise during pregnancy. I believe that the recommendations that I am going to provide are pretty consistent with what most doctors would approve of. My own doctor gave me similar recommendations. If you don't feel comfortable using the information I'm providing, talk to your doctor and follow their recommendations. Okay, let's get started.

Is exercising during pregnancy safe?

Yes, the majority of research shows that exercising, even vigorously, during pregnancy is safe for both the mother and the fetus.

Why should I exercise?

Exercising while pregnant will prevent:

- excessive weight gain

- weight retention after you give birth

- gestational diabetes

- complications during labor

- pre-term births

- constipation

- having a very large or very small baby

- preeclampsia

- postpartum depression

It will also help you to recover faster from childbirth

What type of exercise should I perform?

- Low impact

- Non weight bearing

- Aerobic endurance

- Ones that focus on large muscle groups

Can I do strength training?

Yes, but you should use light weights and perform a higher number of reps. Make sure not to hold your breath (you don't want to deprive your baby of oxygen)

How intense should the exercise be?

It should be about as intense as the exercise you did before you got pregnant. If you were working out at a high intensity before you got pregnant, you can still continue to exercise at the same level while you are pregnant. If you didn't exercise before you were pregnant, you will need to start out at a very gentle intensity and gradually increase the intensity over time. The important thing is not to jump into exercise that was much more intense than you performed before you were pregnant.

On a scale of 6-20, you should feel like your level of exertion while exercising is 13-16

If I didn't exercise regularly before I got pregnant what should I do?

You should start out by exercising for just 15 minutes a few times each week. You should gradually increase your time by 2 minutes until you reach 30 minutes. Your goal should be to perform 30 minutes of exercise, 4 days a week.

A FEW FACTS ABOUT WATER

Lately I've realized that I do not drink enough water. I've been reading some books about beauty and these books all emphasize the importance of water in obtaining clear skin and healthy hair. These aren't the only benefits of being well hydrated either. It also improves your overall health and can help you lose weight and maintain a healthy body weight.

The problem is that I've always heard different things about how much water a person should drink. I decided to check the Institute of Medicine's recommendations for water intake. Here is what I found out and a few other facts about water as well:

It is estimated that 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated. I'm pretty sure that I'm one of them. 

How much should I drink each day?

Women should drink about 9 cups of fluids per day

Men should drink about 13 cups of fluids per day

Does all of this need to come from drinking water alone?

All fluids count toward the total, not just water

On average, food provides about 20 percent of your water intake

Do I need to drink more if I exercise?

Yes, to compensate for sweating. 

For short bouts of exercise you need to have an extra 1.5-2.5 cups of water 

For intense bouts of exercise you should have a sports drink containing sodium

Do I need to drink more if I am pregnant or breastfeeding?

Yes, in both cases. 

Pregnant women should drink about 10 cups per day

Women who are breastfeeding should drink about 13 cups per day

Can I drink too much water?

Yes but it's rare in healthy adults who eat an average diet. 

It is more common in endurance athletes

Tips for getting enough fluids

1. Drink a glass of water or other low-calorie beverage with each meal and between each meal

2. Drink water before, during, and after exercise