People who get more exercise have higher levels of excitement and enthusiasm than people who are sedentary; this is based on a recent report by researchers at Penn State. The feelings are more prevalent on higher activity days.

David Conroy, a kinesiology professor at Penn State said, “You don’t have to be the fittest person who is exercising every day to receive the feel-good benefits of exercise,”. “It’s a matter of taking it one day at a time, of trying to get your activity in, and then there’s this feel-good reward afterwards.”

The prof also added that it’s frequently hard for us to commit fitness program for the simple reason that we usually will set long-term goals rather than short-term goals. And when there are slow results people will of course get discouraged and quit.

“When people set New Year’s resolutions, they set them up to include the entire upcoming year, but that can be really overwhelming,” said Conroy. “Taking it one day at a time and savoring that feel-good effect at the end of the day might be one step to break it down and get those daily rewards for activity. Doing this could help people be a little more encouraged to stay active and keep up the program they started.”

The study was done with 190 university students keeping journals, day by day, of their lives; writing about their fitness activities including sleep quality as well as psychological well being. The students recorded just the periods of fitness activity that happened for a minimum of 15 minutes.The research subjects turned in their journal each day for 8 days. The results are published in this month’s  issue of Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology.

The researchers found that the people who are more active walk around feeling better throughout the day than sedentary. And even better, an energetic workout can supercharge your feelings of well-being for much longer than the workout itself lasts.

It doesn’t take a scientist to know that a workout can make you feel great. Arnold Schwarzenegger remarked in the 1977 documentary “Pumping Iron” that working out felt better than sex. I wouldn’t go quite that far but I would bet that people have known about the effects of intense exercise for as long as there have been people.

Doing 3 quick sets of high rep squats can be a great way to wake yourself up in the AM. Beats coffee.

Check out this report on how to do squats for step by step instructions. Later.

Cardio is a fantastic fat burner but it can be super-charged if you watch you carb levels prior to the cardio session. One of the simplest ways to start industrial strength fat burning is to perform cardio in the AM before eating any food or carbs what so ever. Why? Simple, you will have very little glucose in the blood at this time

Glucose is broken down carbs, and what the body will prefer to use as energy given the choice. If you do your cardio in a “fasting state”, having not eaten (anything) in several hours, your body will burn fuel that has been stored up for energy. That fuel is ugly, disgusting fat.

As soon as you start cardio, your body searches for fuel and if it doesn’t find it’s favorite thing, glucose from carbs, it will start using body fat for fuel.

This is important, even the smallest bit of food can block the fat-burning process from starting. And it will keep it blocked until the small bit of carbs is used up. So maximum fat-burning requires a completely empty stomach. I usually have coffee, but that’s it. Coffee does not seem to effect the fat burning process with me. No sugar or cream (no non-dairy creamer either) of course.

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All posts for 2008 Archived in archive blog.

All posts for 2007 Archived in archive blog.