Feel the Burn Thursday

Good morning, sweating & shrinking divas!

What workouts have you done this past week?  What do you have planned for this weekend?

One of the best workouts you can do for your body is.....SLEEPING!  If you don't get enough sleep (sorry, mommies of newborns, this might be impossible), then you're more apt to come down with illnesses or injuries in your workout regime.  This Bicycling article is pretty good. It suggests 8-10 hours!  Whoa! This RunnersWorld article says getting enough sleep (again, 10 hrs) will improve your reaction time and speed in running.  This WebMD article suggests that getting enough sleep actually affects 2 important hormones in our body that affect appetite, so if you don't get a good night's rest, the next day perhaps nothing you eat will be satisfying or perhaps you'll be ravenous.  And the thing we probably all knew, this AFPA article says that sleep is needed for our muscles to repair themselves (when you workout tiny muscle tears happen and then your muscles rebuild bigger and stronger).

The other great component to a successful weight loss program is....WATER!  We know that often our bodies confuse the signal for thirst for the signal for hunger.  Sometimes when you think you're hungry, your body is actually thirsty and dehydrated.  Being sure to drink enough water will decrease your hunger & probably the amount of food you eat b/c of that. It will also increase your energy, increase your metabolism, cleanse your body, be easier on stomach bloat than diet soft drinks, and will just overall make you feel better.  How much is enough?  The old, well-known recommendation is 8 8oz glasses of water + any you drink during a workout. This RunnersWorld calculator that I like a lot actually customizes that generic recommendation for your gender and body weight, so it results in a little bit less water intake for me than the 8x8=64 fluid ounces/day.  But this smaller calculation still has the addition of + anything you drink during a workout.  And another cool tip is that if you sip ice cold water throughout the day, you'll burn a few extra calories from your mid-section as your body spends energy to warm up the water temp in your stomach to an absorbable and usable temperature.  And I've heard that if your body feels thirsty, you're already dehydrated- so drink drink drink!  Any tips for how you get in your daily water?  There's actually a free iPhone app called "8" that tracks your intake of 8 glasses of water a day like a checklist- kind of fun :)  I like a big glass of Crystlal Light w/ dinner, too :)

So the point of this post is not just to hear about what workouts you're up to (which I LOVE hearing about), but it's also a SLEEP CHECK and a WATER CHECK!  How are you doing in both of those departments?