Gym Etiquette 101

How many of you have ever been witness to rudeness in the gym? Someone jumping on a machine you are using, slamming weights or talking on their cell phone. Gym etiquette usually gets neglected even though there is signage all over the room. Here are some tips to help keep you on a 250 lb. power lifter’s good side.

1.) Ask. If you would like to use a piece of equipment that someone else is using, simply ask how many sets they have left and wait your turn. If you are in a rush you can ask if you can work in. Meaning using the machine or weights when the other person is resting in between sets.

2.) Courtesy. If you see someone working out with headphones on, more than likely they do not like to be bothered while working out. Wait until they are done, and if you need to talk to them just wait until they are done with their set. Nothing is more annoying than having someone tap me on the shoulder when I have my music blaring and working on my heavy set of triceps pushdowns. This has often happened to me where I will have my eyes closed and are focused on the set at hand only to feel a tapping on my shoulder asking how many I have left. Just wait a minute, really that’s about how long it takes someone to crank out their set.

3.) Bring a towel or get a paper towel from the bathroom. Nothing is more disgusting than getting ready to use a bench only to find it slathered in sweat. I usually lay a towel on the bench I am using to avoid getting sweat all over it, as I know someone would not like to lay in that puddle. Practice your gym etiquette and wipe down your machine or bench after you are done.

4.) Leave your cell phone in your locker. Cell phones are great, just not in the gym. With the emergence of the blue tooth and other wireless cell phone accessories we never have to hold our cell phones to our ears anymore. I once worked in a gym where someone talked on the phone more than they worked out. I remember him coming in and talking to someone the whole time. It was extremely annoying and distracting. Are you really that important that you cannot be without your cell phone for a half hour?

5.) Don’t monopolize the equipment. Its ok to superset or do tri-sets, but do so when it is not too crowded. During peak hours (I.e. before work and after work) try not to hog the equipment. Remember others are trying to work out too. If you are doing a circuit and hogging a couple of machines they have to wait and work around you. If at all possible if you are planning to do a workout like that, try going later in the evening or when the gym is not too crowded.

6.) Don’t Slam your weights. This tip is twofold, it is a disturbance and a safety issue. If you cannot put the weight down properly maybe you should get a lighter weight. I cannot count how many times I have sat next to someone on a bench where they have just dropped the dumbbells on the ground causing the ground to shake and others to turn and see what the noise was. I have also had a couple of close calls where a dumbbell almost landed on my foot. Practice courtesy as well safety.

7.) If you use it - put it back where you found it. This has got to be one of the worst gym violations. It is extremely aggravating to go to the dumbbell rack looking for a set of weights and not being able to find them, either because someone took them across the room to use and never re-racked them or put them in the wrong place.

The gym should be a time of release, a time to get the blood flowing, a time to physically work out the stress from the day. It should not be a place that causes stress or arguments. Follow these 7 tips and I assure you that you will be well on your way to a healthier and happier you.

Free Fast Weight Loss Program

There are a lot of programs out there that promise you that you will lose x amount of weight in x amount of time. Anyone who has tried many of these programs quickly realize how skewed they really are. Weight loss, weight management and healthy living should be a life choice, not just a one time deal. I believe that getting to a certain body weight and fitness level is the easy part. Maintaining it is the tough part. For example you could go on a reduced calorie diet for a few days and lose a few pounds, but once you start getting eating like you normally do, the weight loss goes out the window. The older we get, it seems the more reasons we come up with for wanting to lose weight. How many of you have heard someone or yourself say “I want to lose weight to fit into …” or I want to lose weight before my next class reunion.” These are some motivational reasons to get us going, but really it should be a life choice. Once it becomes a life decision to eat healthy, think healthy and live healthy, then we have already “won.” There are a lot of things you could do to kick start the weight loss. You could seek out a personal trainer, nutritionist, buy a gym membership, join a cardio kickboxing class, etc. I, on the other hand like to take baby steps. The following is my gift to you. A short program you can start that incorporates daily activities in your weight loss success. 1.) Starting in the morning, if you live close enough to work or school you can either bike or walk. If you are one of those people that have to commute, then I would suggest not choosing the closest parking stall. You know these people, they drive around forever and a day just so the can get the closest parking stall. If you park in a lot, park as far away as possible and walk. If you park in a parking garage, then park at a higher level and take the stairs. 2.) Stop taking the elevator. You will be quite surprised how quickly you can build your endurance by taking the stairs. It works a lot of your leg muscles (quads, hamstrings, calves). And burns a ton of extra calories. 3.) Take a 20 minute walk on your lunch break. Most breaks are for an hour, so there should be no excuse that you could not take some time out to go for a walk. Also, most companies allow you a 15 minute break in the morning and then another in the afternoon. This could be extra time you could squeeze in walking around your building, office or area you work in. If you did that 5 days a week, that would be around 1,500 calories. (This example is for a 150 lb person walking at a slow to brisk pace) That’s a ton of calories just for a little bit of extra walking. 4.) Start eating more frequent meals, not only does this speed up your metabolism, but it also keeps you feeling satiated throughout the day and not hitting the roller coaster spikes of hunger. 5.) Cut back on caffeine, soda and snacks. Cutting back on sugary drinks that carry extra calories is a plus. Stick with water, its good and good for you. 6.) Replace TV time with some form of physical activity that you enjoy. For instance if you like skipping rope, you could do that for a 10 minutes or if you enjoy basketball you could dribble the ball for 15 minutes. It’s all about being creative. Sometimes we use the excuse of age for our weight gain. Stop making excuses and get started today! You are never too old. How fast you want to lose weight is up to you. If you have read any of my articles you know that I like to plug in motivational sayings, and this one will be no different. Make Healthy living a life choice and remember that “Your attitude will determine your altitude.”

Weight Loss Without Exercise

We all have had a hard time with weight loss. It is something that most of us will struggle through, but with a little help and determination we can beat the battle of the bulge. I have been where you have been, gone through the ups and downs only to come out more knowledgable. I hope in this article I can show you that it is not all about running on the treadmill or jogging for miles. You can take simple steps to help control or reduce your weight. 1.) Start eating Breakfast. I know that this sounds like common sense, but you know the saying…”Common Sense is sometimes not so common.” For the life of me I could never figure out why I was eating so much, so late at night. I would eat dinner and then find myself stuffing myself with more food as the night went on. I remember being in college and raiding the vending machine at midnight for cookies and chips. Feeding my face with anything and everything I could get my hands on. At the same time I was not eating my first meal until about noon. I never put the two together. When you think about it logically, you are fasting for 12 hours. That was the reason for my late night binges. From midnight until noon I would not eat anything. Think about that for a bit. Have you ever skipped lunch and dinner? I am sure you have. Remember how hungry you were? I am sure you do. Now think about doing that everyday, not eating for 12 hours on a regular basis. Once I started eating breakfast I stopped having those late night binges. I sometimes would eat late at night, but not nearly the amount I used to. If you need more guidance Click Here! But please read on… 2.) Stop eating out so often. I can guarantee that you will see a difference not only in your weight, but also in your pocketbook. How many of you actually know the nutritional content in a cup of coffee? How about in a greasy fried hashbrown? How much fat is in that breakfast sandwich? Most of us don’t know and I venture to guess that we don’t want to know either. A lot of food that we consume when we are out are sautéed in butter, fried in oil or baked with tons of sugar. While it does taste good, it keeps us coming back and keeps the weight coming as well. When we prepare our own meals we can monitor what goes into it. Instead of frying something in oil we can try an alternative such as non-fat cooking spray or instead of tons of salt we can try another seasoning. By preparing our meals we can give our body what it needs and less of what it wants. If you work all day, taking a little extra time the night before to pack your meals can pay off greatly. Not only on your health, but your finances as well. Lets add this up, lets say that you have fast food for breakfast and lunch 3 days a week. I am guessing $3.50 for breakfast and $6.00 for lunch, now that’s being conservative, we all now that that it could be a lot higher. That’s 3 times $3.50 and 3 times 6.00 = $28.50. Now lets look at this grocery bill, lets say we get some fruit such as bananas and breakfast bars that would be about $5.00, a loaf of bread and a package of turkey breast sandwich meat and some carrot sticks for lunch would run about $9.00. Those groceries alone would last you a week for breakfast and lunch, would be a lot healthier and would be half of what you were spending eating out not to mention half the calories and fat as well. Now do the math for your own situation. We live in a great country, everything becomes convenient for us, even gaining weight. We can have food delivered to us, we can go to a restaurant and order without leaving our cars, but if you take a little extra effort and time you can be well on the way to a healthier and lighter you. Learn more about what you are putting into your body Click Here! 3.) Make a better choice when you do eat out. I know what it is like when we are busy, sometimes we don’t have the kind of time we would like to prepare something. I know the feeling. So what I propose you do is to make the better choice. With the fast food industry getting sued left and right for “helping” others gain weight as well many other afflictions that come with obesity, a lot of places are offering healthy alternatives. I love places like these. Instead of a burger you can get a grilled chicken sandwich, instead of fries you can get low fat or baked chips, instead of a soda you can get juice or water, instead of a side high in fat we can get choose steamed vegetables. Taking a common sense approach, we can make the better, healthier choice when we eat out. Want to get a Physician’s expertise on weight loss? 4.) Start eating more frequently, don’t wait to get hungry. What??? You want me to eat more meals??? I thought this article was about losing weight. Yes it is. If you are like the typical person, I bet you probably eat 2-3 large meals a day. And I do mean LARGE. A lot of people I talk to hit the drive throughs pretty early on the way to work. It is so easy, convenient and cheap. You can get some coffee, a breakfast sandwich and a side for just a few dollars. All of this adds up in excess fat, sugar and calories. Of which we all know where those go. I am asking that you start eating 5-6 smaller meals. As I mentioned earlier, preferably these would be meals that you prepared yourself. The body’s natural reaction when it does not get something constantly is to go into “Storage” mode. If we are eating 2 large meals a day, it will try its best not to metabolize it as quickly, on the flipside if we are eating smaller meals our body goes into “burn”mode. Our metabolism speeds up and so does our ability to lose weight. You will also find that you will not be getting those bad hunger pangs like you used to. When you are hungry you tend to overeat. Try going to the grocery store when you are hungry and see all the goofy things you end up leaving with. Eating smaller meals every few hours offsets our bodies’ tendency to overindulge when we do sit down to eat. 5.) Drink more water. Whenever I go to a restaurant I always have water instead of a soda or alcohol. It is good for me and keeps me hydrated, it also has other added benefits. When we don’t drink water regularly our bodies naturally store it. Often we carry the water weight around our bodies. When we drink water more regularly, our bodies shed that excess water weight because it knows that there will be a constant supply of it. 6.) Cut back on alcohol consumption. This one is pretty obvious. Alcohol such as beer has a lot of empty calories. It is also a diuretic which causes us to have to urinate more often. Not only can this be annoying, but it can cause us to become dehydrated. If you have ever been dehydrated before you know the fun that comes with it: Nausea, Cramps, Diarrhea. This alone would cause me to cut back. Cutting back on alcohol also will have a great affect on your health, pocketbook and waistline. I hope that this article helped. For some fool proof methods and tips on losing more weight check out Fat Loss For Idiots where they can help you lose 9 lbs. in 11 days. Please come back often as I am constantly adding new articles.