Good news! It’s time to dust off that passion that you can’t seem to find time for. Pursuing your hobbies for as little as 20 minutes a week is good for your heart. Even better news, it doesn’t matter what your hobby is as long as you enjoy doing it. Here are some tips and tricks for finding those elusive 20 minutes and putting them in your schedule. https://happyhealth.ca/2022/01/habit-2-schedule/
Hobbies are just as good for your heart as exercise
Heart disease is the leading cause of death. Unmanaged stress is linked to heart disease. Stress causes us to release the hormone cortisol which raises our heart rate and blood pressure. How we manage our stress will help us prevent heart disease.
Sometimes we don’t know what to do with our free time or we want to get the most out of our limited free time. Here are the top tips for relaxing hobbies
Happiness is a feeling, and what makes me happy might make someone else feel something else entirely. So can we build a happy habit the same way we develop our healthy habits? Health is a clinical measurement, while happiness is constructed from individual perception and cultural values. Most adults struggle to name what makes them happy. How do we make a happy habit when we aren’t sure what they are made of?
Serotonin is linked to happiness
Happiness is linked to the chemical serotonin in our brains. So the happy habits I’m going to explore increase serotonin. I’m going to explore different ways of cultivating happiness, and some things will work better than others. One of the keys to improving your happiness is to explore what works for you. Let’s stay curious.
Make Going Outside into a happy habit
Going outdoors for a walk will cause instant physiological changes: lowering blood pressure, increasing serotonin, and an increasing sense of purpose. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317451 Ideally, your trek will be in a park or natural setting to get the full benefits of the physiological effects. It doesn’t need to be a long walk 15 min daily is enough to get the benefits.
Winter Blues
Many of us are going through the mid-winter blues coupled with feelings of lethargy from the pandemic effects on our lifestyle. Getting outside will bring a much-needed boost to our moods and energy levels. It doesn’t have to be an epic hike. Just get outside and walk around the block. It will be extra beneficial if you can do it in the middle of the day, especially if you live in a cold wintery place. moods.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210108084121.htm
It’s tough to get going so make it a regular short walk that you use some of the scheduling tricks from habit # 2 https://happyhealth.ca/2022/01/habit-2-schedule/ to make sure it fits into your busy day.
There are many different ways to get fit, so it can be overwhelming to know where to start. I like to begin by considering the basics. The most fundamental questions I want to know before building a get fit plan for a client are who, what, where, when and how. You might know the answers to all these questions, but you’d be surprised how often people skip one of these steps when building their plan.
Rethink What You Measure
Your weight isn’t a measurement of your fitness
Of course, what brought you to this blog is concern over your weight, and I get it. I will explore different diets and their effectiveness, but it really shouldn’t be your first concern.
Let’s start with answering the question: Who? You know who you are. But let’s take a second to consider your current fitness level and take some measurements. Most people only consider their weight when starting a fitness journey, but we can’t lose weight indefinitely. Sooner or later, we’ll have to maintain our weight or get sick. So rather than get on the rollercoaster of losing and gaining weight and thinking you are failing because you aren’t losing weight, here are best the measurements for you to care about. They will give you an accurate measure of your current fitness level. It doesn’t make sense to start a healthy journey without knowing where you are when you start
Measure your Blood Pressure, this is a number most people don’t know and it is a really easy way to measure your overall health. Great news is that it responds really quickly to regular exercise.
Exercise is a fantastic way to lower your blood pressure but you need to know where it is before you start. Most pharmacies have free machines to measure your BP. Please see your doctor before you start any exercise program, especially if it’s elevated.
3 Cardiovascular Measurement.
This is a super simple test to do if you have a watch that measures your activity but you can do this old school as well. You need to walk a mile (measured out).
Start your stopwatch and immediately start walking as fast as you can. Make every effort to push yourself, but avoid jogging.
At the end of the 1 mile, stop your stopwatch and record your time in decimals. For example, 11 minutes plus (30 seconds ÷ 60 seconds) = 11.5 minutes.
Take your heart rate immediately. If taking your own pulse, count the heartbeats for 15 seconds and multiply by four. For example, if there are 40 heartbeats in 15 seconds, your heart rate would be 160 beats per minute (bpm).
Calculating Your VO2 Max
Upon completion of the test, you will need to do some math to determine your VO2 max. In addition to your heart rate, you will also need to measure your weight in pounds. The formula is as follows:2
VO2 max = 132.853 – (0.0769 x your weight in pounds) – (0.3877 x your age) + (6.315 if you are male or 0 if you are female) – (3.2649 x your walking time) – (0.1565 x your heart rate at the end of the test)
For example, if you are a 33-year-old man who weighs 160 pounds and completed the test in 11 minutes, 30 seconds with a post-exercise heart rate of 160 bpm, you would calculate your VO2 max as follows:
132.853 – (0.0769 x 160 pounds) = 120.549
120.549 – (0.3877 x 33 years of age) = 107.7549
107.7549 + (6.315 because you are male) = 114.0699
114.0699 – (3.2649 x 11.5 minutes) = 76.52355
76.52355 – (0.1565 x 160 bpm) = 51.48355
Rounding off to the first three digits, your VO2 max would be 51.5 ml/kg/min.
If you aren’t comfortable with long math, there are a number of online calculators you can use that allow you to plug in the individual values.
