Create New, Healthy Habits While at Your Desk!

V4 Fitness Preview Photo, www.balancedstrength.com/v4fitness/

Most of us have set health & fitness-themed New Year’s resolutions, as we have in years past. Many of us have had difficulty meeting those goals…

I’m plugging a little shameless self-promotion in this blog post, since a project that I have been working on for nearly 6 months will finally go live this week–just in time to give you tools to achieve success in conquering those pesky resolutions!

Balanced Strength, Inc. presents V4 Fitness…a members-only, one-stop, total fitness community that provides you with resources and expert advice on exercise, clinical and integrative nutrition, Habit Reprogramming™, weight loss, injury prevention, and stress management.

We strive to help the busy working professional learn how to get and stay healthy and fit when time is your endangered resource. Your membership entitles you to:

• Communicate with experts in fitness & wellness at your convenience.
• Interact with others in the private blog, “Coaches Corner”.
• Access the comprehensive Exercise Library.
• Receive daily exercises that you can do in your office and at your desk.
• Receive healthy lifestyle tips.
• Be accountable for a daily healthy habits checklist.
• Track your wellness progress.
• Register for online fitness competitions that help you get fit fast.

Sign up on our preview list at http://balancedstrength.com/v4fitness/ before January 1, 2009, and you will receive a free one-month membership upon our launch!

For more information about V4 Fitness and your membership benefits, visit http://balancedstrength.com/v4fitness/.

For the month of January, I am also offering my workshop, “Ready, Set, Fit” free to your corporations! After attending this workshop, you will have the tools to overcoming the obstacles that keep you from meeting your health & fitness goals and set milestones toward achieving your successes. Contact christine.kwok@balancedstrength.com for more information and to book your event.

It’s True! Exercise Suppresses Appetite.

In a study, published in the online edition of the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, published by The American Physiological Society, researchers found that 60 minutes of exercise can suppress one’s appetite.

In this study, authors, David R. Broom, James A. King and David J. Stensel of Loughborough University, and Rachel L. Batterham of University College, London, observed levels hormones ghrelin, which stimulates hunger, and peptide YY, which suppresses hunger. With cardiovascular exercise performed on the treadmill, peptide YY levels while ghrelin decreased, resulting in a greater appetite suppression. 90 minutes of strength training resulted in reduced appetites, although not as strong, since ghrelin levels were decreased, but peptide YY levels remained unchanged.

With vigorous exercise, especially endurance activities, it is important to replenish your body with nutritious food within 30 minutes post-exercise. However, regular exercise is a fantastic strategy to help you avoid over-eating.

Get Your Workout in the Boardroom

In this morning’s NBC news in Dallas, it discussed walking conference rooms in NYC. I encourage everybody to go for walking meetings. After all, physical activity spurs creativity. However this morning’s news is quite the boardroom breakthrough.

This company’s conference room is equipped with projectors, telephones, and computers, similar to our “mainstream” conference rooms. However, instead of tables and chairs, it has treadmills. Instead of going to meetings in suits and dress shoes, you get to wear walking pants, t-shirts, and sneakers. In an hour-long meeting, an attendee can burn anywhere from 150-400 calories. Incidently, Dr. James Levine published a study with Mayo Clinic that concluded that “thin” people burn 350 calories more per day than those people who are obese.

Photo courtesy of http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/health/nutrition/18fitness.html?no_interstitial

If you find it difficult to go for that three mile walk per day, or 10,000 steps per day. A treadmill workstation is a great multi-tasking alternative. See the above photo of walkstations at Mutual of Omaha.

For those of you who are interested in creating your own walking workstation, I found an online DIY treadmill desk. While actively working, I recommend walking on the treadmill workstation at a pace of about 2 mph. Also, keep the ramp between 1-2%.

Recipe: Lighter Leftovers

Although slightly unrelated, this photo is too cute not to post. Found this courtesy of the Twinsline Flickr stream, http://www.flickr.com/photos/twinsline/2048353476/

Thanksgiving Turkey Wrap

This may be arriving late for some of you. However, I have a few more bits of turkey and Thanksgiving sides left in my fridge.

The idea of a Thanksgiving sandwich sounds great, but the thought of turkey, cranberry, mashed potatoes, stuffing, stuffed inside bread, with gravy smothered over it, gives me food coma…and a stomachache screaming for some Pepto Bismol.

Here’s a suggestion to lighten the caloric load and to keep the food coma at bay. It’s the collard green wrap revisited, with a Thanksgiving twist.

Start with an organic collard green leaf, stem cut off. Add your stuffing and/or mashed potatoes, turkey with a cranberry sauce smear, fold it up like a burrito, and omit the gravy. Using the collard green leaf adds more nutritional value to this lunch. Omiting the extra bread and gravy keeps, at least, 250 extra calories off your waistline.

Enjoy!