Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

Many of you might be thinking about starting an exercise program to get in shape, It can be overwhelming for a beginner and many people end up getting discouraged and quitting after the first few weeks of exercise. I would like to encourage everyone to stick with an exercise program, so I thought it would be helpful to read what a fitness expert has to say on the subject. I'd like to thank Mat Montgomery, Health & Wellness Director at the Torrington branch of the Northwest CT YMCA, for providing answers to the following questions.

Somebody please remind me… why do we live in New England? I forgot the reason… maybe I don't remember why because it's like 0 degree temperatures outside right now. Maybe it's because we warm up for a day, go back to severe cold weather, then warm up again, then the snow melts, then we get extreme cold, then we get snow again, then it warms up again, then back to freezing cold! I guess there's a lot of good reasons to live in New England… I just can't think of them right now!

I thought I would offer some tips on shoveling snow and staying warm. Remember to take it easy when shoveling. Every now and then we hear of people having heart attacks while shoveling snow. According to the American Heart Association, those that are at risk are people who are in poor physical condition, or those with existing heart disease or a personal history of stroke. We also have the danger of the extreme cold weather.

The following list of foods are what I feel are the most unhealthy and should be avoided. This isn't just for those looking to lose weight, but for everyone that would like to avoid diseases as well. I've researched many of these foods and they should be limited, if not eliminated from your diet altogether.

1. Aspertame. I know aspartame has been in the news recently, with some experts saying it's not dangerous in small amounts. I question this as I've read many different views on the subject. At the very least, it causes headaches and some severe cases have been reported about links to MS. This is a chemical discovered in a scientific lab. It doesn't sound very safe to me, and I would rather avoid disease than listen to the occasional reports that say it's okay to consume. I recommend trying stevia, a natural sweetener instead.

You know how it is near the holidays.  Life overwhelms you to the point that everything becomes a fire fight and somethings fall by the wayside. I've neglected my weight-loss updates so here we go!

In my last post... about a month ago I had announced that I won the weight-loss challenge held at the Torrington YMCA from mid September through mid November.  In that time I lost nearly 30 pounds in 8 weeks.  As of today I am down an additional 12lbs.  That is a total of 40lbs since mid september when the challenge started.  The holidays have made it tough with my new eating habits as I find myself indulging frequently.  But I am still losing.  I will fall back into my routine after the holidays are over and hope to see some more aggressive weight-loss as I still have 44lbs to go until I reach my goal.

As Rich pointed out in his last post, goal setting is a key to success and achieving one goal can allow other goals to be met at the same time without much effort. So why don’t people achieve their goals? Well one reason is people are not correctly setting their goals. The simplest way to create good goals is to make your goals S.M.A.R.T.

S = Simple. Specific.