Schedule: Monday- Friday 5:45 am- 9:00 pm | Saturday 5:45 am- 2:00 pm.
Blog Layout
Burn Extra Calories this Holiday Season
Erin Mellinger • Nov 25, 2022
We can all be realistic about the fact that we consume more calories during the Holidays. No matter how much we try to overcome all the temptation, it is nearly impossible. For me, it is impossible!
A realistic goal through the holidays is to maintain your weight. Consuming extra calories means you need to burn more calories. Here are some tips on ways to increase your calorie burn this season.
Don’t cancel your workout! You must make your workouts a priority. This time of year can be very stressful and busy. But you must find a way to prioritize your workouts and schedule everything else around that. You should be scheduling at least three 45-minute workouts per week.
- Move for 8 minutes every couple of hours. This is a hard habit to get into but give it an honest try. Set a reminder on your phone if you need to. Here are some ideas of different bodyweight movements you can do. Just be sure to move your whole body and exert yourself. If you do these movements for 8 minutes at a time, just four times a day, you can burn an additional 500-600 calories per week.
- March in place or do high knee marches
- Bodyweight squats
- Air boxing
- Planks with punches
- Planks with knee tucks
- Stair climbs
- Lateral shuffles
- Do a 20-minute walk at least five evenings a week. Everyone has 20 minutes in the evening they can spare. It is very possible that you can learn to love your cold winter walks in the evenings too! But walking for 20 minutes, 5 days a week can burn an additional 450- 550 calories per week.
- Combining the three suggestions above should result in 1300- 1700 calories burned per week! Along with increasing your calorie burn, be mindful of making healthier choices between holiday meals. Knowing you have days you will indulge on holiday goodies should motivate you to stay in control and eat lighter between those days.
- Being surrounded by all the temptation doesn’t mean you should just give up on the exercise and go all in on the junk! You got this! If you need help avoiding weight gain this Holiday season, Axio Fitness trainers and dietitians can help!
Share Post
Our Recent Blogs
There are so many apps available to us today that allow us to track our food daily. At Axio Fitness, we use My Fitness Pal with our clients, but there is no shortage of options for anyone looking to begin tracking their food intake and totaling their calories for the day. If you have a goal of weight loss, logging your food each day has proven to be extremely effective in helping you make better choices and eat better options. What is even more effective than simply tracking is allowing someone else access to your food log. This is added accountability and motivation that we all need for our nutrition. At Axio Fitness, we ask our clients to track everything they eat for their first six weeks with us. This allows us to educate the client, make suggestions on different adjustments, and help them find ways to eat right for their goals. But the most effective thing about tracking everything our clients eat is the accountability that comes with checking the food logs. Whether you are an Axio Fitness client or not, simply logging your food is a great way to get on track with your nutrition goals. Try committing to tracking your food for the next six weeks and see if you notice better eating behaviors.
At Axio Fitness, we are big fans of cardio! With the weather changing and the ability to get outside and be more active, we hope you are motivated to do more walking or jogging around town, in the parks, or on the trails. You may be motivated to lose weight and you want to spend your time outdoors efficiently, therefore being motivated to run or jog. However, if you haven’t been very active in the last several months, it may not be a good idea to go right into jogging. Most physical therapists suggest being able to walk pain free for at least 45 minutes before attempting to jog. Meaning, if you get knee, ankle, foot, or hip pain after a 30-minute walk, you may not be ready to start running. When you do start jogging, be mindful of your cadence. If you have a smart watch, you can enter your runs in there and it will automatically give you your cadence. Suggested cadence to avoid injury is 160- 180 strides per minute. If you do less than 160, your stride is too long, and it can cause injury or joint pain. If you need help getting on a structured cardio plan, or if you need the accountability to do more walking and jogging this summer, Axio Fitness is here to help! We offer a service called Axio Cardio where we can structure a customized, personalized cardio plan for you based on your ability and your goals.
Most people have health and fitness goals. Even if they do not officially fill out a questionnaire or answer specific questions, everyone has ways they would like to improve their health and change their physique. Whether it is getting off medication, going down a shirt size or feeling toned, many people have something related to their health and fitness on their mind each day. However, in our experience, many clients come to us with specific goals and desires and the wrong understanding of how to get there. For example, someone may tell us they wanted to lose belly fat, so they bought a BowFlex. Others may tell us they want to be stronger with more muscle in their arms and legs, so they bought an exercise bike. We even see people do lots of stomach crunches and sit-ups because they want a flatter stomach, not knowing there are better ways to achieve that. Most commonly, people join a gym and only end up using the treadmill because they are too unfamiliar with what else they should be doing. Although all exercise is good for weight loss, toning, building strength and reshaping your body, many people do not understand the ways they should be exercising based on their body and goals. At Axio Fitness, we do thorough, scientific assessments with all clients. After that, we set 6-week goals, and we train the clients based on those goals. We also give them a cardio prescription and nutrition plan specific to their six-week goals. All exercise is good! But goal specific training will obviously be the quickest and best way to get you where you want to be. If you need personal attention and professional guidance, call Axio Fitness!
A unilateral exercise is resistance training or weight bearing exercise when you only work one limb at a time (one arm or one leg). Examples of unilateral exercises for your lower body include step-ups, split squats, or lunges. Upper-body exercises include 1 arm dumbbell or cable row, and a 1 arm dumbbell or cable press. Unilateral exercises are great to include in your workout routine because they improve stabilization and reduce the risk of injury. When you are only working one side at a time, your body is forced to use the muscles that keep you stable and balanced. This translates into better balance in everyday life. These exercises are also great to improve muscle imbalances. We all have a dominant side or one arm and leg that is stronger than the other. When doing exercises that involve both sides at once, your dominant side can carry more of the workload without you realizing it. If it is a squat or bench press, your stronger side can actually be lifting more than half the weight. Unilateral exercises ensure both your strong and weak side are getting equal work and help to balance out any differences in strength. For more understanding of the proper ways to exercise for your health and your goals, contact Axio Fitness today!
Leave a Reply
Your email address will not be published.
Required fields are marked *
