Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Workout Success: Consistency

While you always want to be on a good diet and workout program, the specific program you're on isn't going to decide whether or not your goals are realized -- it's your consistency in following it that will get you the results you're after.

The greatest factor regarding your success is how well you are able to maintain consistency in the program. After all, even the best-thought-out program in the world isn’t going to get you any results unless you actually follow it with consistency.

Here are some tips on how to improve your consistency so you can maximize all the rewards your program and diet have to offer.

Set the right goals

The type of goal you choose can have a significant impact on your motivation, and is important in maintaining consistency.

In general, intrinsic goals tend to work better than extrinsic ones because they are set for yourself. Intrinsic goals include improving your cholesterol profile, maintaining a body weight that decreases your disease risk, feeling the euphoria that many people experience after intense exercise, and providing a good way to relieve stress during your day. Extrinsic goals, on the other hand, include losing 10 pounds before your beach vacation, getting that six-pack to show, and increasing your bench press to 200 pounds.

After a while, extrinsic goals become less important or fade away, and your workout consistency is ruined. Once that beach vacation is over, you won’t be motivated to hit the gym every morning after work. That’s not to say you should never have extrinsic goals, however; they are fantastic motivators for the short-term, but you should also try to set some intrinsic reasons for improving your health and fitness.

Follow the right dietary plan

Increase your consistency by setting a health and fitness plan. Consider what will actually be possible for you to do. For example, if you’ve tried very low carbohydrate diets in the past and felt terrible on them, don’t try another one. This will only lower your motivation and further decrease your chances of succeeding in the future. A moderate carbohydrate approach can work just as well, provided you are still tracking the total calories consumed.

The best dietary plan is one that supplies you with enough protein and an appropriate number of calories.

Give yourself a break

While you want to maintain consistency when it comes to your diet and workout plan, don’t berate yourself if you cheat on your diet one time or miss one workout. Those who tend to do this have a very black-and-white mindset and let one slipup throw them off track.

Getting out of this all-or-none thinking will help you get right back on the horse rather than struggle for a few days or abandon the program altogether.

Identify problems early

To maintain consistency with your program, always monitor your results and identify any potential issues early on. For example, if you are already starting to feel a buildup of fatigue after only two weeks on the program, imagine how you will feel in another few weeks. The sooner you can modify the program or get a personal trainer to look it over and make some adjustments, the better.

If you let fatigue go on too long, your body will start crying, and once physiological factors combine with psychological factors, it will be really hard to maintain consistency.

By adjusting things early on, you keep any issues to a minimum and make the whole process of achieving your goals that much easier.

Modify your workout

If your workout is effective, you should be improving your fitness level; this means that, after a while, what was once challenging no longer should be. Sure, you can add more weight to the bar to increase intensity, but it’s far more beneficial to completely revamp your program every so often to ensure maximum results and maintain consistency in your workout.

Keep in mind that your primary goal will change as times goes on. Maybe you’ll start winding down in the summer months, or maybe the doctor has told you to get into better cardiovascular shape. Whatever the scenario, be sure you keep your workout current.

Incorporate variety

Finally, incorporate as much variety into your workout as possible. It’s hard to stay consistent with a program when it never offers any new excitement. Whether you change your exercises entirely or simply perform your workout in a different order, making changes will help to keep you interested and maintain workout consistency.

Take advantage of the changing seasons; why spend the summer months inside on cardio equipment when you could be enjoying a run outside or playing sports?

keep it consistent

The next time you find yourself analyzing different program options and dietary approaches, making sure every single calorie is balanced and your rest periods are worked out to the second, stop to consider whether you are maintaining consistency.
If you spend a little less time program-planning and a little more time getting motivated, you’ll be ahead of the game.

By Jeff Bayer
Resources:
www.efit-today.com

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Brainwave Entrainment” Can Help You Dramatically Improve Your Mental Abilities!

I am a great fan of Stephen Pierce and recently I came across his website in which he talked about Brainwave Entertainment. I think it will be worth while to disseminate such a crucial piece of information with people who are interested in good health.

I have just taken the few facts from this website in this article for everybody,s benefit:

Recently, professionals in the areas of psychology, neurology, medical health and self-help have begun utilizing the power of brainwave entrainment in their work with patients.

What is brainwave entrainment? It is a relatively young but rapidly growing field that involves the study of how altering brainwaves naturally can allow people to easily enter states of increased intelligence, creativity, relaxation, pure energy and more!

Here’s the science behind this incredible breakthrough: The brain is made up of billions of brain cells called neurons, which communicate with each other using electrical signals.

All of these neurons sending signals at once produce a large amount of electrical activity commonly called a Brainwave pattern, because of its “wave” or cyclic-like nature.
Researchers and scientists have found that different bands of brainwaves are associated with different mental states. For instance, the brainwaves of a sleeping person are much different than the brainwaves of an individual who is wide awake.

Years of research has shown that brainwaves not only provide insight into an individual’s mind and body, but they can be stimulated to actually change that person’s current state.

By causing the brain to produce or decrease specific types of brainwave frequencies, it is possible to bring about a large variety of mental states and emotional reactions.

How does this work? “Entrainment” is a principle in physics, where two cycles synchronize naturally with each other in order to work more efficiently. Entrainment is applied to chemistry, astronomy, electrical systems and much more – but can also be applied to the brain.

When the brain is provided with a stimulus, through the ears, eyes or other senses, it emits an electrical charge in response. This is called a Cortical Evoked Response. These electrical responses travel throughout the brain to become what an individual sees and hears.

When the brain is given a consistent, repeating stimulus, such as drum beats or flashes of light, the brain responds by synchronizing, or entraining, its electric cycles to the external rhythm. This is commonly called the Frequency Following Response (or FFR), and it can be used to effectively alter the brainwave pattern of the audience.

This I personally realised after listening to the scientifically proven Beta Brainwave Entertainment to understand that we have an all access pass to the high performance peak state that our world’s greatest achievers know intimately.

The EEG visual shown at the beginning of this article was taken while observing the effects of Beta Brainwave Entertainment on an independent listener. This visual reading not only proves that Beta Brainwave Entertainment works, but powerfully demonstrates how quickly your mind can be optimized and your cerebral functioning accelerated.

The Baseline (left-side) illustrates the listener’s brainwave activity prior to listening to Brainwaves. The Beta Increase (right-side) shows the considerable increase in beta activity after just 20 minutes of listening to Beta waves.

Brainwave research on cognitive performance has pointed to the mid Beta brainwave frequencies as the zone to create a super focus mental state, intellectual endurance, and optimize your brain to handle intensive task with high levels of mental stamina.

As you listen to your brainwaves will be entrained into the Beta brainwave zone and have you mentally fine tuned for success.

If you have ever dreamed of realizing your full potential and receiving all the benefits that will help you to quickly and easily unleash your mental powers and achieve your dreams. Listen to this audio and you will:

Sharpen your mental focus, attention, and concentration
Enhance your thinking speed and clarity
Improve your ability to remember and recall information
Increase your mental energy and alertness
And much, much more

you can be experiencing acute concentration, accelerated cognition and amazing mental states that the most focused and zoned achievers on the planet know.

Think of the tremendous impact this could have on your life! and improving your mental efficiency could:
Help you excel in your career
Improve the quality of your life
Improve your marriage
Make you more content
Make you more confident
And much, much more!

by: Sonika Gandotra
source; www.articlecity.com