Spring Has Sprung – Have you?

Appraising Your Success
The end of the week is a good time to review the past week of your SWEET Life and count up your accomplishments. Your goal is 5-6 times per week for each aspect of the SWEET Life: Sleep, Water, Eating, Exercise, and Tranquility. If you didn’t achieve some of your goals for the week, then next week, focus on those areas more and think about how to fulfill them more consistently.
How do you feel at the end of this week? Are you better rested? Do you feel relaxed? Are you more energetic? Do you feel generally healthier? Continue with the SWEET Life and you’ll experience all of these feelings!

Topic of the week --Spring Has Sprung – Have you?

Daylight Savings Time means it’s lighter later, which gives us more time for outdoor exercise! The wonderful spring weather is a reminder that now is the time to tone up your body for summer’s skin-revealing clothing.

Shorts & short-sleeved tops show off your calves, thighs, biceps, and triceps. To tone those muscles, you’ll need to do a variety of exercises. Do heel raises for your calves. Any exercises that cause you to bend and straighten your knees will tone your thighs, like leg extensions and curls, squats, or lunges. Any exercises that cause you to bend and straighten your arms will tone your biceps and triceps, such as bicep curls and triceps extensions.

Sleeveless tops reveal your shoulders, in addition to your arms. Add any kind of exercise where you lift your upper arm, such as overhead presses, front raises, and lateral raises to tone your shoulders.

Tank tops, spaghetti straps, halter tops, etc. also show off your chest and upper back. To tone those muscles, you need to do exercises where your arms are up at shoulder height and you are pushing them forward (for the chest) and pulling them backward (for the back). For example, you can do flyes and reverse flyes or chest presses and high rows.

Swimsuits additionally reveal your hips, glutes and abs, which means you need a full body toning workout. However, the most important thing you need, in order to look good in a swim suit, is confidence. I’ve seen overweight women look great in a swim suit because it was the right suit for their body, in a great color for their skin tone, and they had a lot of confidence wearing it. I’ve also seen women who had good bodies but didn’t look very good in swim suits, mostly because they lacked confidence, although swim suit style and color also played a role.

Therefore, start springing into spring, toning up, and building confidence in yourself, your body, and your swim suit.

Suzanne
Weekly Encouragement history: http://sweetlifeweekly.blogspot.com/
The SWEET Life of Suzanne blog: http://thesweetlifeofsuzanne.blogspot.com/
Website: http://livingthesweetlife.net/

Copyright © 2008 Suzanne Fong. All rights reserved.

How to Add Tranquility to Your Daily Routine

Appraising Your Success
The end of the week is a good time to review the past week of your SWEET Life and count up your accomplishments. Your goal is 5-6 times per week for each aspect of the SWEET Life: Sleep, Water, Eating, Exercise, and Tranquility. If you didn’t achieve some of your goals for the week, then next week, focus on those areas more and think about how to fulfill them more consistently.

How do you feel at the end of this week? Are you better rested? Do you feel relaxed? Are you more energetic? Do you feel generally healthier? Continue with the SWEET Life and you’ll experience all of these feelings!

Topic of the week -- How to Add Tranquility to Your Daily Routine

The “T” in the SWEET Life is for Tranquility. It’s really about tension-reduction or stress-relief. As much as it would be nice to live in a constantly tranquil world, no one does. We all have stress in our lives; some of us have more stress than others. At the same time, some stress is within our control, but some is not. Because of that, it is important to have multiple methods of relieving your stress. Some people just accept that their lives are extremely stressful; those are the people who need methods of relieving stress the most!

Excessive stress over time can contribute to a variety of ailments, such as hypertension, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, ulcers, neck or low back pain. Stress can negatively affect many aspects of the SWEET Life as well. Stress can cause insomnia, as you think about what is stressing you, rather than sleep. Stress can cause you not to pay attention to drinking your daily water. Stress can cause you to eat “comfort” foods, especially those high in salt, sugar, and fat, rather than eating a variety of nutritious foods. Stress can cause you not to exercise, convincing yourself that you don’t have time for it. And thus the downward spiral of stress makes you not live any aspects of the SWEET Life.

Everyone needs multiple, healthy methods of relieving stress because, depending on the situation, we can’t always do our preferred method. Personally, exercise is my preferred method of relieving stress. A 3-mile run can solve all my problems because it gives me time for my mind to wander, absorb whatever’s on my mind, and find solutions to any problems. However, if it’s night time or raining, I can’t run, so I need other methods. Journaling also works for me; writing down whatever is on my mind helps me clarify what is causing stress and work out solutions. Some people prefer calming types of stress-relief like a bath, yoga, listening to relaxing music, meditation, etc. Others prefer hobbies, such as knitting, baking, painting, etc. to help them relieve stress and find tranquility. Others prefer more active pursuits, like exercise, playing with their kids, driving, gardening, etc. What’s important is to find healthy things to do, rather than alcohol, drugs, shopping, etc. It’s also important to find a variety of things that will make you feel tranquil to do in different circumstances.

Lastly, it’s important to spend time every day in tranquility. A mere 30-minutes a day will go far in helping you relax, relieve stress and find tranquility. An hour a day is even better.

The following web pages are excellent sources of information about stress:
http://www.stress.org/americas.htm
http://www.stress.org/topic-reduction.htm?AIS=6934505de631c228b165483c7f4652c7

Have a SWEET week!

Suzanne

Exercise in Bad Weather

Appraising Your Success

The end of the week is a good time to review the past week of your SWEET Life and count up your accomplishments. Your goal is 5-6 times per week for each aspect of the SWEET Life: Sleep, Water, Eating, Exercise, and Tranquility. If you didn’t achieve some of your goals for the week, then next week, focus on those areas more and think about how to fulfill them more consistently.
How do you feel at the end of this week? Are you better rested? Do you feel relaxed? Are you more energetic? Do you feel generally healthier? Continue with the SWEET Life and you’ll experience all of these feelings!

Topic of the week -- Exercise in Bad Weather
Welcome to autumn. The weather is changing and the days are getting shorter, which make it more difficult to exercise outside. It’s important to continue your moderate intensity activity most days of the week, no matter what the weather is. It’s especially important to keep moving as the holidays approach, and we tend to eat more food and more, unhealthy, holiday foods.

If you belong to a gym, of course, that’s an obvious place to work out without needing to worry about the weather or lack of daylight.

If you have indoor exercise equipment, like a treadmill, elliptical machine, stair stepper or stationary bike, now is the time to pull it out, dust it off and start using it. I recommend hopping on it while watching your favorite TV show so that you get both exercise and the pleasure of watching a show you like at the same time. During commercial breaks, increase your intensity and really push it for those 2 minutes.

Another option is exercise shows, which include TV shows, internet videos and DVDs. The benefit of exercise TV shows is that they are on a schedule, which can motivate you to do it at a specific time each day. Of course, the internet and DVDs, on the other hand, give you more flexibility in scheduling. I suggest trying various shows and finding a few different ones that you like. Be sure your collection includes both cardio and toning workouts. If you belong to a DVD rental service (Netflix, Blockbuster, etc.), rent some exercise DVDs and try each a few times before deciding to purchase any. If you already own exercises videos, dust them off and try them, but if they are old or on video cassettes, it’s time to look into some new ones because exercises and exercise combinations improve as we learn more about how the body works.

Don’t let the weather turn you into a sloth; think about the best way for you to continue exercising as the weather changes.

Have a SWEET week!

Suzanne