Student Fitness

By: Joe Norton 

1. Don’t just hope to find time for going to the gym. Take the time to plan it. The college lifestyle can be hectic and plans/entire courses of the day can be changed with a decision. When you have plans in advance you can build your day around your fitness lifestyle.

2. If lines at machines at the college gym are annoying you then you might want to try going earlier in the morning or later at night. College gyms tend to have very light traffic till just before lunch, it will get more busy throughout the day usually peaking by 5-8 and die off the closer you get to closing time. With this in mind, you can have the whole gym to yourself if you go at one of the less busy time periods.

3. Don’t forget about all the old school bodyweight exercises you know of. You know exactly what I’m talking about: The Push-up, the sit-up, the pull-up (if you have a chin up bar to use). These are compound bodyweight exercises that are the basis for many fitness routines and it’s because they are some of the most effective excercises we know about. Pushups and situps can be done anywhere, any time. Why not do a quick set of each during commercials?

4. Hoof it a bit. Walking is a great form of exercise. Try to plan your day to allow for a few strolls. Even though they require little physical effort they cause serious health benefits. Take every chance you can to get out of the cramped dorm room and take a look around on a walk. Why take the shuttle to save 10 minutes when you could have just added in 10 minutes of light exercise…

5. Moderate your alcohol consumption. Alcohol is not going to help any of your goals – unless your goal is to pass out. Alcohol causes a decrease in testosterone and will negatively impact your ability to grow muscle. Alcohol is also full of empty calories and simple carbs, plus – a lot of people eat seriously unhealthy food once they have had too much alcohol (this is where most of the fat for the beer belly comes form). Read more about “Alcohol In College”

6. Get enough sleep. Atleast 6 for most people, 8 is recommended. Lack of sleep can cause many things, the worst of which is psychosis (that’s right, a psycho), including decreased cognitive ability. It will also completely screw over any kind of lifting / fitness plan. Your body needs time to rest and repair, if you never give it time it can’t ever rest & repair. Read more about sleeping…

7. Avoid the buffet. It is scientifically proven now that when you go to a buffet you definitely eat more. We all knew it, no one doubted it, yet for some reason people still go to buffets which tend to have the worse food on campus. Bleh, boo this buffet! Read more about buffets…

8. Put some Pilates into your fitness plan! Pilates are those core based bodyweight exercises that seems kinda somewhat similar to yoga but its not. Yeah those, they are amazing for abs and can be done anywhere. I suggest the floor because it has no give and works good as support. However, you can even do them in bed. Things like “the hundred”, leg raises, the saw, v situps, are all Pilates moves and there are many more – check’em out.

9. Stay busy. Join an organization or professional development club and participate often. Not only will this help out your resume and your skills in the given area, but also it means you are busy more and less time to sit around. Stay moving, stay burning calories.

10. Join a team or club, or atleast start a recurring physical activity (like Sunday basketball games, Saturday morning football games, whatever). Add something to your life that is going to continually cause you to do activities that benefit your goal. Deciding to run a 5k or hell, even a marathon – is a gigantic example of starting a recurring activity that will actually guide you to your goal.

Keep these tips in mind this upcoming semester.

By: Joe Norton 

There are many ways you can increase your metabolism, the best ways of which are to be active and to eat often. However, there are smaller, simpler things you can do to increase your metabolism a little. Every little bit helps.

Load up on hot sauce - capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot peppers, causes an increase in metabolism. Studies have found that capsaicin works in two ways to reduce cholesterol levels: it decreases cholesterol absorption by the body so that more is excreted in the feces; and it increases the enzymes responsible for fat metabolism in the liver, so that more triglycerides, the hard insoluble fat, are secreted by the liver rather than accumulated in the body.

Drink coffee -Anyone who’s had a few too many coffees and sufferred the shakes can tell you that caffeine is a serious stimulant that dosen’t get much negative press due to our cultures love of coffee. Just make sure to drink plenty of water (I drink a glass of water for every cup of coffee, in addition to my daily 64 daily ounces) to counteract the dehydrating effect of the caffeine.

Eat Some Ruffage – Celery is so fibrous that your stomach burns more calories digesting it than you gained by eating it. So what happens is a net change that is negative. You burn calories by eating stringy veggies like celery.

In order to make a significant change to your life you are going to have to have clear in your mind what it is you want. Decide whether you want to slim down, tone up or some combination of the two. Once you have this in your mind you have to consciously realize when making eating decisions and when making decisions regarding your own activity – you have think about how this will affect your goal. None of the tips below will help if you don’t have a strong commitment to your goal.

Don’t Starve Yourself
In order to not lose substantial amounts of muscle it is necessary to lose weight slowly, over months or years. If someone were to starve themselves right off the bat their metabolism screeches to a halt and the little bit of food they do eat isn’t processed like usual, instead it is immediately stored as fat because your body is running in “survivor mode” because you are barely eating.

Keep an eye on the scale, but know it doesn’t tell the whole story
Use body fat measurements to get a better idea of your situation. The simplest of which are skin fold calipers, however I find that measurements taken by amateurs can be wildly out of line. Best off with one of the newer nice electronic pulse BF monitor things.

Tell People
Gloat to your friends about how you are serious about wanting to change your situation. Wanting to prove yourself to those whose opinions you care about will give you more of a rooting into the goal. You just about have to do it now, lest you be ridiculed mercilessly for all eternity. Just kidding. But seriously. If you find a friend with a mutual goal then try to get them in on it with you, you will peer pressure each other into completing your goals. It’s college life at it’s finest.

Set Laziness Aside
If you want to lose weight, put aside any kind of notion you had that this would be easy and require no effort. If you want to be successful in losing weight you are going to have to make the choice to not be lazy again. Trust me, you gain energy and momentum as you progress towards your goal.

 Here are some of the most common ways of getting de-railed from your weight loss and fitness goals. You may recognize one or… all of them. Don’t let’em happen to you: 

          You Gained Weight!- You’ve been sticking to your brand new diet for a whopping 48 hours.  You check the scale and somehow you’ve managed to gain weight! Don’t be frustrated - it might not be fat. Many people experience muscle growth during fitness/health plans. As they say, muscle ways more than fat and it’s entirely possible you added muscle mass. “Well, I want to lose weight, not gain it” you say?

By gaining muscle mass you are increasing the amount of calories your body needs to run - it now burns more because of the additional muscle mass. This means the more muscle mass you have, the more calorie room. You will want to use a body fat analyzer to be able to precisely say what type of weight you are losing/gaing.

          Overwhelmed by your Appearance/Situation - What you look like today physically does not reflect who you are today. That’s right, because what you look like physically is the result of your past actions - it has nothing to do with your current actions.

Your future physical appearance is determined by your current and ongoing actions. Theres no reason to fret over the fact that you are not where you want to be right now. There is no way to instantly change your situation - you have to get yourself on the path to your fitness/weight loss goal. It’s all about consistency. Weight loss can quickly accumulate when you are consistently working towards your goal.

          All-Or-Nothing Attitude - This happens when somene breaks their diet and then decides “what the heck, I already screwed up my diet, I’ll just eat what whatever and get back on the diet tomorrow…”. You must avoid this attitude at all cost if you want to be successful in your fitness and weight loss goals.

The vast, vast majority of people who say this to themselves end up gorging themselves and not getting back on the diet weeks. The proper way to have handled a situation where you eat something you shouldn’t is to :

Damage Control - One you eat a cheat food, cut it off there. Don’t open the flood gates.

Then, to account for the increase in calories/fat you should Exercise It Off.