Our webinar with Ask Dr Bride was great.
We finished up in about 30 minutes, and covered important information. If you missed our webinar, I have attached the PDF file (with links to video) on The Healthy Bride website. We will be doing more webinars! Check out our facebook events page for details!
New study shows that the 220 – age 
Max Heart Rate. A new study shows this is not accurate for women. The female formula is 206 – 88% of age.
For a 30 year old bride, this means your predicted maximum heart rate is 206-26.4 = 179.6 or rounded 180. (the old formula would put you at 190).
Read more about the study in this NYTimes article.
Good news that women get their own research!
Join us for a Webinar on July 28
Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/581837650
Is your wedding getting close? Are you counting in days instead of weeks? Do you want to give your body that final “edge” that will leave your guests in awe?
Then you want to attend this webinar. We will cover top tips for putting the final touches on your bridal fitness body and discuss how to flawlessly handle that mounting pre-wedding stress.
Join Christi Masi of The Healthy Bride and Kristina Smith of AskDrBride for expert advice for your final countdown to the wedding.
Title: Refining, Defining and Finishing touches – Wedding Fitness Count Down
Date: Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM PDT
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.
System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP, 2003 Server or 2000
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer
I heard a great tip yesterday from Ask Dr. Bride. We will be hosting a webinar together on July 28 at noon. We will be giving our top “last minute tips to shape up and feel fantastic on your wedding day”.
for those of you who are nearing your wedding day.
Save the date of July 28 at noon PDT. The webinar will be 30 minutes of our advice covering fitness, health and sanity then 15 minutes for your questions. Hope you can join us!
Ask Dr. Bride suggested that to feel great in the days leading up to your wedding, it will help reduce your stress to do something for someone other than yourself. You’ve been the bride for nearly a year by now and you have been thinking about you, you, you (as you should). For one day or even a few hours, go do something for someone else. It will ground you, refresh you, and take some pressure off of being a bride….for just a short while.
Nutrition: When reading a nutrition label, note that ingredients are listed by weight. If crackers contain mainly flour, flour will be listed first. Try to stay away from items – and beware of seemingly “healthy” items, like granola – that have sugar or sweeteners listed as the first ingredient!
Fitness: How much is too much? Symptoms of overtraining are decreased appetite; muscle tenderness; head colds; allergic reactions or both; occasional nausea; sleep disturbances; elevated resting heart rate; elevated blood pressure. Rest is part of every workout program.
Have some time for a great workout this weekend? Try this one:
Warmup: 2 x 1 min of jax, squats, plank, lunges and inchworms
Tabata: 20 seconds on, 1o seconds off for 4 minutes each exercise:
1) pushups
2) jump squats
3) bicycles
4) Triceps dips
5) prisoner squats
6) v-ups
7) alternating one-arm pushups (make sure your feet are wide)
alternating side lunges
9) plank jax = Get in a plank position. Forearms on ground, and toes on ground supporting the body. Keep body in line, shoulders, hips, knees and ankles should be level. Contract abs. Look down at the ground with head up, not hanging to support neck. Legs should start together, jump them apart, hold, then jump them back together again. Repeat. Tighten abs and move legs in a fluid motion.
Whew!!
Nutrition: Drinking diet soda and diet beverages may actually make you hungrier and more prone to eat excessively, as some studies have shown. In fact, many women who drink diet beverages may be just as overweight as their regular-soda-drinking counterparts. Please evaluate whether or not you really need to drink these beverages during the day. They do not contribute and vitamins, minerals, or other important nutrients.
Fitness: After vigorous aerobic exercise it is important to take 10 minutes or so to cool down gradually. Do not stop abruptly and bend over. For example, after a long run or jog, walk around and keep moving, rather than just stopping.
Cooling down properly (moving around) redistributes the blood that may have pooled in your extremities when you end your workout, and it prevents muscle stiffness because it allows the metabolic wastes to be worked out of your muscles.
By Denise Mann
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
May 28, 2010 — Short bursts of vigorous exercise — the kind that makes you really break a sweat and increases your heart rate — may help buffer the devastating effects that stress can have on cellular aging, a new study finds.
Brief bouts of vigorous physical activity reduced one of the key signs of cellular aging: telomere shortening. Telomeres are tiny strips of genetic material that look like tails on the ends of our cells. Telomere shortening is a known indicator of aging in cells. The study appears in the May 26 online issue of PLoS ONE.
In the study, 63 healthy older women were divided into an inactive group and an active group, based on their exercise levels over a three-day period. Many of the women were highly stressed caregivers for spouses or parents with dementia. The women in the inactive group who reported high stress levels had shorter telomeres; the active women in the high-stress group did not have shorter telomeres.
Put another way: the women who engaged in brief vigorous physical activity — at least 40 minutes over the three-day study period — and were stressed had longer telomeres than their inactive, stressed-out counterparts. The authors conclude that 13 minutes or more of vigorous exercise daily appears to be the critical amount correlated with longer telomeres.
“Physical activity is so good for you and stress is bad for you, but the new study shows the stress-buffering effects of physical activity in those who are chronically stressed,” says study author Eli Puterman, PhD, a health psychologist at the University of California at San Francisco.
“People know stress is bad for the heart and makes you look tired and haggard and makes us more vulnerable to infections,” Puterman says. “And there is so much accumulating evidence that links stress to health, so to show that there is something we can do when we are stressed that can delay or buffer the impact is exciting.”
As far as a stress-busting exercise prescription goes, Puterman says that the CDC recommendation of 75 minutes of vigorous activity or 150 minutes of moderate activity, plus weight-bearing exercise every week for adults, will suffice.
“That is a great prescription in my mind,” he says.
Nutrition: Is eating a low-carb diet good for you? No. Carbohydrate foods, like whole grains, fruits, and starchy vegetables (such as squash and potatoes) all contain a whole host of essential nutrients. Processed carbs, like refined white sugar, white bread, and white rice, have been stripped of many of these essential nutrients and contain just carbohydrate. Granted, this carbohydrate is good fuel for the body and brain, however, eating these whole grain brown counterparts instead (like whole wheat bread and brown rice), is a healthier choice because these foods have not been stripped of essential nutrients and fiber.
Fitness: After vigorous aerobic exercise it is important to take 10 minutes or so to cool down gradually. Do not stop abruptly. For example, after a long run or jog, walk around and keep moving, rather than just stopping.
Cooling down properly (moving around) redistributes the blood that may have pooled in the extremities when you end your workout, and it prevents muscle stiffness because it allows the metabolic wastes to be worked out of your muscles.
Last night Lisa (a bride class member) was talking to me about how tough it is to “get going” with her workout program – at least on a regular basis. She feeling stuck in a “start, stop” routine and wants to get out of it. I know this is true for many people. Staying consistent with a workout program is the only way to see real results, but staying consistent is also the toughest part. (A bit of disclosure here: Lisa is a bridesmaid in another wedding; so does not have quite the focus on the wedding day that the other brides in the class have.)
In trying to help Lisa come up with some ways to stay more consistent, we discussed the following topics. I hope she feels motivated today and that these are helpful to get her on track…..and staying there.
1. Try to be realistic on the number of days you can workout. Don’t say “I am going to workout 5 times this week”, when you only were able to squeeze in one workout last week. Go from one workout, to two workouts. When you have made two workouts (or three, etc) a regular routine for at least two weeks, only then add another day.
2. Make the goal do-able, and something you DON”T DREAD. Don’t “force” yourself to go run a mile, when running a mile is a complete dread! If you want to run, but running is so hard for you that you can hardly force yourself out the door to do it, make it EASIER! Go do a run/walk. Run 2 minutes (or 1 minute) then walk 2 minutes (or 1 minute). It will be much easier on your body, your psyche, and you will not dread your next outing.
3. Figure out your “why”. Why are you trying to exercise regularly? Getting to the why will help you uncover a passion (0r at least a “like”) for your workout routine. It’s important to have positive feelings toward your workout routine, otherwise you will continue to be challenged. We all make time to do what we love, and we know why we love it. If you can find the positive reasons WHY you want to be consistent with your workout program, it will help you get consistent, and stay there, and feel ever so great in the process.
4. Be nice to yourself. Do things you like. If you like skating, dancing, swimming, hiking, dodge ball, baseball – then go do those things and make it a fun activity. Lisa mentioned wanting to play basketball again. I thought “aha!” that’s what she loves to do – ok, so Lisa, GO DO THAT. 
It might be tough for the first few times out, but in no time, you will be back into something you have loved for years. Re-connecting to past passions is another way to make working out fun, consistent and easy.
