Tips for Better Sleep

Sleep is an important aspect of our day-to-day lives. Not only does it help restore our energy levels, but sleep supports healthy brain function so you can protect your mental and physical health. In fact, ongoing sleep deficiency is related to a number of chronic health problems while also having negative effects on your thoughts, behavior, and concentration.

In other words, without proper sleep you risk problems at work, in relationships, and with your health. Fortunately, there are many ways you can improve your sleep so you are well rested and ready to take on anything that comes your way. The following tips for better sleep are easy to follow and effective.

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Listen to your Body

Mostly, you should go to sleep when you feel tired, but you also want to move toward a stable sleep and wake cycle. Especially if you’re a night owl, you should try to gradually move your bedtime earlier so you get sufficient sleep. Most experts recommend about 8 hours of sleep per night, but it’s actually more important to get good quality sleep than a particular quantity of sleep.

Avoid your Clock

Clock watching usually exacerbates sleep-related stress when you’re not able to sleep. So set your alarm to wake up, but turn your clock or watch away from you while you sleep. This way you’ll avoid staring at the clock and you’ll be less likely to stress about when you are going to finally fall asleep.

Avoid Caffeine

Many insomniacs are shocked to learn that their own behavior is a leading cause of sleep disturbances. Avoid caffeine drinks for at least 6 to 8 hours before bedtime.

Try Breathing Exercises

Concentrated breathing exercises can bring about a state of relaxation and promote sleeping. At the same time, breathing exercises can distract an overly active mind that prevents you from sleeping. Most importantly, breathing exercises needn’t be difficult. Simply concentrating on long, slow breaths in and out may be enough to put you to sleep.

Exercise

Regular exercise helps you to burn calories during the day so your body doesn’t have to do it overnight. Also, exercise helps to drain you mentally and physically so you feel more tired at night. Research shows that even morning exercise can help you sleep at night. Plus, exercise can ameliorate many conditions, such as restless leg syndrome, that are known to prevent a restful sleep.

Sound Therapy

Finally, sound therapies have also been shown to be highly effective in promoting sleep. In fact, sound products can reduce the time required to fall asleep while also concentrating the amount of restorative sleep you receive. Individuals who suffer from stress, anxiety, and pain may benefit from the relaxing nature of sound therapies that serve to reduce mental activity that may prevent sleep.

Using Protein For Women in Your Muscle Building Routines

Protein for women offer additional health benefits beyond using the supplements for weight training and physical fitness. This has been proven in various medical studies, with the effect of the correct utilization of protein has been used in fighting heart disease, and cancer which is still in clinical trial phase.

However in the context of someone that is physically training, the supplementation of protein is used to provide fuel, which in turn provides energy to the muscles enabling the person who is training to work out for longer periods of time, and contributing to their strength.

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For those seeking a more professional muscle building approach, one should bear in mind that there are in fact very little differences and that of the male and female bodies, and muscle groups. Therefore any preconceived beliefs of men and women being entirely different, specifically within the gym environment are in fact untrue.

What is true however, is that there is a difference in the chemical processes between the male and female bodies respectively, in that the female will have more of a concentration of estrogen, which typically stores fat, whilst the male body has a concentration of testosterone. Funnily enough this very testosterone has been linked to hair loss, but that is a different story altogether.

One of the main motivations behind the toning and definition of the muscles by which can be done via muscle building and training routines, is that weight loss. By effectively implementing the correct supplementation of protein for women, the desired result and objectives will in all likelihood be achieved.

This is due to be exercise routine burning calories as well as the intake of protein for women products significantly reduced fat content, and can therefore be combined for a suitable diet and eating plan. In this instance you will most likely be getting the best nutrition, in addition to the exercise which will benefit your overall health and well-being.

One should also furthermore bear in mind that the belief exists that once the training has ceased the built up muscle mass converts into fat on the body, this is untrue and one needs to realize that the storage of fat, on the body, is caused by excessive intake of calories that are now not being burned because of this cessation of the training routine.

This is fueled by incorrect eating habits, as well as the lack of training. Many professional muscle builders prior to cutting back on their training programs actually enter into a building down phase, before stopping their training programs.

Protein for women is a value added aid in your dieting and workout programs, and should be implemented correctly according to your desired objectives and goals, whether it was muscle building or general fitness training. As stated protein for women is not reserved for those working out, but is used as an effective dietary supplement too.

5 Cardio Workouts to Burn Fat

Everything you know about cardio is about to change. You’re about to discover the truth about 5 cardio workouts to burn fat and lose more belly fat in less workout time.

Let’s start by looking at the old, outdated way of burning fat.

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Cardio Workout #1 to burn fat: Slow cardio

The first cardio workout to burn fat is “Old School Cardio”. For years, we’ve been fooled into thinking that we need long, slow, boring cardio workouts to burn fat. However, too many men and women slave away on the cardio machines for 40, 60 and even 90 minutes per workout without burning fat. How is this possible?

To be honest, I don’t know exactly why it doesn’t work, but two recent research studies found that women doing 40-60 minutes of low intensity cardio, 3-5 days per week, did not lose belly fat after at least 12 weeks of cardio. Based on those results, slow cardio is not one of the best cardio workouts to burn fat.

In fact, in one of those studies, researchers tested high-intensity cardio, and found that high-intensity cardio was able to burn fat.

Cardio Workout #2 to burn fat: High-intensity cardio

The only problem is that high-intensity cardio requires you to work as hard as you can until you burn at least 400 calories in a workout. That will take you at least 40 minutes – so while this is one of the better cardio workouts to burn fat, it’s still not the best.

A better approach is to use interval training. This is the third cardio workout to burn fat.

Cardio Workout #3 to burn fat: Interval training cardio

In a study from Australia that compared 2 cardio workouts to burn fat, subjects doing 3 interval training workouts per week lost a significant amount of belly fat while another group doing 40 minutes of slow cardio per week did not burn belly fat.

So interval training is a much better workout choice for fat loss. To do interval training, you do a normal warm-up, and then you alternate between hard exercise and easy exercise, then you follow with a cool down. This routine only takes twenty minutes.

Here’s a sample of the interval cardio workouts to burn fat. Do a 5 minute warm-up, and then exercise for 1 minute at a pace that is 10-20% harder than your normal cardio intensity. After that 1 minute, decrease your exercise pace all the way down to cool-down level. Repeat that hard-easy cycle 5 more times. Finish with 3 minutes of cool-down.

Cardio Workout #4 to burn fat: Tabata Interval cardio

Since interval training became popular, personal trainers have been looking for other short cardio workouts to burn fat. A study from Japan used something that is known as the “Tabata Protocol”, and many trainers believe this is even better than cardio and regular intervals. The fourth cardio workout to burn fat is the Tabata Interval program.

I’m not convinced it is better than regular intervals, but it is a heck of a hard way to do a fat burning workout. After a warm-up, you 20 seconds of hard work followed by 10 seconds of recovery. Repeat that 8 times. This fat burning workout takes only 4 minutes!

Cardio Workout #5 to burn fat: Bodyweight circuit cardio

Finally, the fifth cardio workout for fat burning is bodyweight circuit training. Like intervals and the Tabata workouts, bodyweight circuit training is not really “cardio”, however, these are the three better cardio workouts to burn fat.

Whatever you want to call bodyweight cardio, here’s how it works.

First, you start with a quick, easy bodyweight exercise, such as Jumping Jacks.

After that, alternate between 3 lower-body and 3 upper-body bodyweight exercises, using squats, push-ups, lunges, pulling exercises like rows or chin-ups, split squats, and total body ab exercises like mountain climbers.

Finally, finish off the 8 exercise circuit with a tough total body exercise like jumps, burpees, or running in place. Now that’s fat burning cardio!

Those are 5 cardio workouts to burn fat. Only two are “traditional”, but those 2 are the longest, and least effective. The shorter fat burning cardio workouts are the best way to burn belly fat fast.