Heat and Exercise: Keeping Cool in Hot Weather

May’s start­ing out HOT HOT HOT. Don’t for­get water!

From Mayo Clinic

Exer­cis­ing in hot weather puts extra stress on your body. If you don’t take care when exer­cis­ing in the heat, you risk seri­ous ill­ness. Both the exer­cise itself and the air tem­per­a­ture increase your core body tem­per­a­ture. To help cool itself, your body sends more blood to cir­cu­late through your skin. This leaves less blood for your mus­cles, which in turn increases your heart rate. If the humid­ity also is high, your body faces added stress because sweat doesn’t read­ily evap­o­rate from your skin. That pushes your body tem­per­a­ture even higher.

When you exer­cise in hot weather, keep these pre­cau­tions in mind:

Watch the tem­per­a­ture. Pay atten­tion to weather fore­casts and heat alerts. Know what the tem­per­a­ture is expected to be for the dura­tion of your planned out­door activity.

Get accli­mated. If you’re used to exer­cis­ing indoors or in cooler weather, take it easy at first when you exer­cise in the heat. As your body adapts to the heat over the course of one to two weeks, grad­u­ally increase the length and inten­sity of your workouts.

Know your fit­ness level. If you’re unfit or new to exer­cise, be extra cau­tious when work­ing out in the heat. Your body may have a lower tol­er­ance to the heat. Reduce your exer­cise inten­sity and take fre­quent breaks.

Drink plenty of flu­ids. Dehy­dra­tion is a key fac­tor in heat ill­ness. Help your body sweat and cool down by stay­ing well hydrated with water. Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink. If you plan to exer­cise intensely or for longer than one hour, con­sider a sports drink instead of water. Sports drinks can replace the sodium, chlo­ride and potas­sium you lose through sweat­ing. Avoid alco­holic drinks because they can actu­ally pro­mote fluid loss.

Dress appro­pri­ately. Light­weight, loos­e­fit­ting cloth­ing helps sweat evap­o­rate and keeps you cooler. Avoid dark col­ors, which can absorb heat. If pos­si­ble, wear a light-colored, wide-brimmed hat.

Avoid mid­day sun. Exer­cise in the morn­ing or evening, when it’s likely to be cooler out­doors. If pos­si­ble, exer­cise in shady areas — or do a water work­out in a pool.

Wear sun­screen. A sun­burn decreases your body’s abil­ity to cool itself.

Have a backup plan. If you’re con­cerned about the heat or humid­ity, stay indoors. Work out at the gym, walk laps inside the mall or climb stairs inside an air-conditioned building.

Under­stand your med­ical risks. Cer­tain med­ical con­di­tions or med­ica­tions can increase your risk of a heat-related ill­ness. If you plan to exer­cise in the heat, talk to your doc­tor about precautions.

Heat-related ill­nesses are largely pre­ventable. By tak­ing some basic pre­cau­tions, your exer­cise rou­tine doesn’t have to be side­lined when the heat is on.

Why Are Food Logs Important?

Check out the blog daily for health arti­cles, moti­va­tion tips, fit­ness tools, and nutri­tion advice… leave com­ments for all your new work­out friends!

Today’s arti­cle is from Kristin Kirk­patrick, a reg­is­tered dietit­ian and well­ness man­ager for The Cleve­land Clinic Well­ness Insti­tute, and pro­vides some moti­va­tion for food journals.

Here are few per­spec­tives on why food diaries are impor­tant (and effective):

Account­abil­ity: Writ­ing every­thing down and see­ing your daily intake increases your per­cep­tion of how much you actu­ally eat.

Makes you stop before you chomp: The extra help­ing of ranch dress­ing in your salad, the candy bar you picked up when you got gas for your car, even the sec­ond drink you had at din­ner. They could all add up to another 150–650 extra calo­ries through­out the day, yet we tend to for­get about these lit­tle food extras and instead focus on our main meals. When it comes to food, even a lit­tle adds up.

Helps to truly por­tion out your foods: When indi­vid­u­als are asked to keep a food diary, they often must mea­sure all their food for the most accu­rate assess­ment. I find that many peo­ple mea­sure food based on the bowl or plate the food is eaten on. For exam­ple, some­one may say they have a “medium bowl of cereal” in the morn­ing when in fact, after mea­sure­ment, it is deter­mined they actu­ally have a very large serv­ing. Once indi­vid­u­als use more accu­rate meth­ods of mea­sure­ment, they have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of their over­all por­tion distortion.

Ties in the con­nec­tions to stress, emo­tion, tim­ing and loca­tion: I often ask my clients to jot down not only their food choices and amounts but also the time of day, loca­tion and emo­tional level dur­ing their meal or snack. This can help peo­ple assess how stress may be con­trol­ling their food choices. For exam­ple, a client of mine real­ized that she con­sumed large amounts of choco­late and fried foods after inter­ac­tions with one of her fam­ily mem­bers. The fam­ily mem­ber was clearly a trig­ger to unhealthy eat­ing but only after see­ing the con­nec­tion on paper did my client real­ize this. Another client real­ized he was going six or seven hours in between meals and would gorge because he was so hun­gry. Many clients are shocked that dur­ing the entire day, not one meal was con­sumed at a table but rather on the couch in front of the TV or in the car. One of my clients real­ized after she com­pleted her food diary that she ate all her meals stand­ing up and because she was not focus­ing on her food but rather every­thing else around her, she ate much more than intended.

Wanna know more? Read the full article →

April Hustle Brings May Muscle

Con­grat­u­la­tions! You’ve com­pleted Day 1 of April boot camp. Only 15 (or 27 depend­ing how you’re count­ing) days to go…

Make the most of this month by fol­low­ing two sim­ple rules:
Log and Blog!

Log: You’ve prob­a­bly heard it hun­dreds of times: write your goals down. But do you know why this step is so impor­tant? When you put pen to paper, you turn your thoughts into some­thing tan­gi­ble. That’s why we strongly encour­age you to track your diet and fit­ness goals by writ­ing them down. You will quickly see how the act of writ­ing these things down helps keep you motivated.

Blog: Have you ever heard that work­ing out in a group is one of the best ways to stay moti­vated? It’s true! Hav­ing peo­ple there along­side you to share in your expe­ri­ence and encour­age you along the way is often­times the dif­fer­ence between a suc­cess­ful exer­cise plan and one that tends to fiz­zle out over time. Share in your chal­lenges and your suc­cesses with your fel­low BC4Cers, and be sup­port­ive of their efforts as well by check­ing this blog after every workout.

You can also stay in touch with your fel­low BC4Cers via our Face­book page. Go ahead… go there and Like us today!

Tell us how you’re doing on Day 1. Leave a com­ment by click­ing the “Com­ments” link at the top of this post.

App Thursday: Map My Fitness

Brought to you by Andrew

Andrew Says
Map­My­Fit­ness is one of those apps that lets you do an awful lot. It will not only help with your work­outs but will also help with diet, goals and achieve­ments. It allows you to work on the items you want to focus on and lets you share this infor­ma­tion with oth­ers on a spe­cific basis by “friend­ing” people.

Map­My­Fit­ness is like Map­MyRide, Map­MyRun, Map­My­Walk and a bunch more, in that — funny that — they all come from the same soft­ware com­pany! I like the fact that you have a num­ber of plat­forms for their appli­ca­tions, iPhone, Android and Black­berry. The iPhone ver­sion is $2.99 for any of their apps.

One of the things that I found quite inter­est­ing was the Group Friend­ing. And guess what? I just cre­ated a group for us! It is not like we do not have enough Social Media, but this is one of the many ways in which you can share your results with either train­ers or a fit­ness group.

Take a look and let us know what you think.

iTunes Descrip­tion
Every­thing you need from track­ing runs and rides to log­ging gym work­outs. This is your per­sonal train­ing log and friend.

Fea­tures

• Real-time track­ing that mea­sures and dis­plays time, dis­tance, pace, speed and elevation.
• An inter­ac­tive map that lets you view your cur­rent loca­tion and exactly where you have trav­eled along your route.
• Syn­chro­niza­tion with your online ‘Train­ing Log’ on Map​My​Fit​ness​.com.
• Man­ual entry of work­out data directly from the app so you can eas­ily record your indoor activ­i­ties like gym work­outs and car­dio ses­sions on the treadmill.
• Twit­ter inte­gra­tion that enables you to tweet your work­out data to friends and family.
• Voice Feed­back detail­ing dis­tance, pace, or speed infor­ma­tion. Get your run data in real-time through your headphones.
• Now with ANT+ support:
  • Mon­i­tor your heart rate dur­ing work­outs and track results over time
  • Power, Stride, Cadence and other Ant+ sen­sor types also supported.

Cost
$2.99

Com­pat­i­bil­ity
iPhone
iPad
iPod Touch
Learn more →

Sug­gest an App to Fea­ture
What fit­ness apps do you use? Let us know if you use an app that should be fea­tured here. Share it in the Com­ments, or email lauren@​bc4​c.​com with some details. Thanks!

Eat This, Not That: Stress Reduction

Eat This, Not That! by David Zinczenko puts the entire food indus­try under the spot­light, and arms you with the savvy tricks and insider infor­ma­tion it takes to eat well no mat­ter where you are. With Eat This, Not That! you’re the expert in every eat­ing sit­u­a­tion, from the frozen food aisle to your favorite fast food joint to your local sports bar.

The first line of defense against stress, fatigue, depres­sion, and so many other mal­adies is found in super­mar­ket aisles, not in the drug store. Research shows that the vit­a­mins, min­er­als, and active com­pounds spe­cific to cer­tain fruits, veg­eta­bles, and even choco­late and red wine have an imme­di­ate and last­ing impact on your mood, your health and your fitness.

Over the next three weeks, we’ll share six research-backed quick cures just wait­ing for you in the fresh pro­duce bins and super­mar­ket shelves.

When You’re Stressed…

Eat This:
1 Cup of Low-Fat Yogurt or 2 Tbsp of Mixed Nuts

Sci­en­tists in Slo­va­kia gave peo­ple 3 grams each of two amino acids — lysine and argi­nine — or a placebo and asked them to deliver a speech. Blood mea­sure­ments of stress hor­mones revealed that the amino acid–fortified pub­lic speak­ers were half as anx­ious dur­ing and after the speech as those who took the placebo. Yogurt is one of the best food sources of lysine; nuts pack tons of arginine.

Not That!
A Can of Soda

A study from the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Pub­lic Health found that peo­ple who drink 20 ounces of soda daily are three times more likely to be depressed and anx­ious, com­pared with those who drink less.