No Excuses!

An article in the Montreal Gazette written by columnist Jill Barker called Turn Excuses Into Action talks about the main excuses that couch potatoes use to get out of exercising. 

One of the biggest excuses, especially for busy moms, is that they are already wound up from chasing after kids all day.  This can no longer be an excuse. For one thing chasing kids all day can be stressful. The purpose of exercise is to release stress, not create more of it. 

If you need to be with your kids all of the time then consider exercising with them.  Play games on your front lawn or in the park with them such as ball, Frisbee or hide and seek. You can also do things like play hula hoop with your kids, hop scotch or jump rope. Yet another thing you can do is just take your kids out for an exercise session based on simple workouts. Do ten sets of simple exercises as a group.   Other athletic activities that kid love are hiking, swimming and climbing. 

Sometimes it is not the kids that are in your way when it comes to getting an exercise program off the ground. An excuse that a lot of people use is 'I'm not a gym person.' You don't have to go to a. Biking, canoeing, swimming, running or even taking a walk in the park count as legitimate forms of exercise.  This way nobody is staring at your body or if you are wearing the latest in spandex fashions.  And unless your kid is a teenager he or she is probably not going to care what you are wearing if you decide to go through a jog in the park with them. 

One of the main excuses that people use is 'I am not in good enough shape to exercise.' This of course is a self-defeating excuse with no way out of the dilemma.   This includes people that feel too fatigued or too stressed to exercise. Unfortunately the more you lie around the more you are just going to want to lie around. This is a vicious circle because it can lead to depression, obesity and other problems.

 Once you feel that you are getting out of shape the best thing to do is nip the problem in the bud before it gets worse. For one thing you are setting a bad example for the kids by lying around all dyad. Barker suggests that the only way out of this one is to keep your goals attainable and start out slowly.  If you are so fatigued that you can't do much more than walk around the block then by all means get up off the couch and walk around the block.  Ask one of your kids to take that walk around the block with you. Every little bit you do will help. In other words, get off the couch and exercise anyway! 

Parenting Tips
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Debunking Designer Running Shoes Again!

I know I have mentioned this before but you are wasting your money on fancy designer brand name running shoes and yet another research study has proved this.  I have suspected that you have been paying for nothing more than a name for many years. Now an article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine called “Do you get value for money when you buy an expensive pair of running shoes?”  has confirmed those suspicions for me.

Research has shown that you don't have to spend a big bundle of money to get good runners. Christian Nordquist, the author of the article discusses a research study where nine separate brands of running shoes were tested to see which was the best brand for the money.  They tested the shoes for durability and also in terms of being anatomically good for the fit by measuring how much pressure was put on the balls of the feet when they were worn.  

I was not surprised to find out that researchers found that there were no significant differences in plantar pressure between different brands and there were no major differences between the expensive and cheaper shoes.   The pressure was measured by sensors planted on the soles of the feet of 43 different people who were wearing the shoes to test them for durability and other factors.  It seems that even a shoe that was designed to be really sophisticated and good for your foot was not really that different from the 39 dollar running shoe in the first place. 

As many people have always suspected, you may be paying for brand name and status rather than performance when paying for a pricey pair of cross trainers. However even though we now know this there are some truths when it comes to buying quality running shoes. For one thing there are definitely some shoes out there that are knock offs and are made out of cardboard. You should still look for durable comfortable shoes that are made out of a long lasting material and that have a molded sole so that you do not damage your arch when you wear them. You should also look for running shoes with thick soles with the appropriate treads for what you are planning to do while wearing them. For instance you may not need a really thick sole if you are just walking in them but you might need it thicker if you are hiking through the woods in them. 

The hardest thing I find is talking my kids out of wanting some name brand running shoe they have seen on television. Sometimes they will settle for a knock off of a more expensive brand and sometimes not. It depends on your kid. Usually it is a less expensive designer brand that they will settle for rather than the purchase of the imitations. This is because kids at school nowadays are really good at spotting 'fakes!' 

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