Health, Fitness and Wellness Blog

Xiaomi Mi Band 4 - The Best and cheap Fitness Tracker below $50

2020-07-26T18:54:00.012+05:30

Mi Smart Band 4 is a value for money and one of the most affordable fitness bands from Xiaomi. With this fourth line extension of the Mi Band category, Xiaomi this time has introduced a Fitness tracker that has a color display and swim tracker, and still, they claim to offer 20-day battery life.

The first Mi Band lineup product didn't even have a display and now we have got a device with an AMOLED color display with lots of watch faces, which are really nice to have.

If you talk about the price, the MI Band 4 costs a little higher than Mi Band 3. But the new features provided in this Fitness Tracker do justify the cost of this tracker.

To review this fitness tracker, we used it for a week to find out the best and worst associated with this fitness tracker and now we present you the same.

Price :

Between 25$ to 30$

Features :

Battery Capacity: Mi Band 4 comes with a strong battery at the given price range. The company claims the battery life of 20 days. However, with all features on, the batter is expected to drain faster. But, in that case also, even if the battery gives performance for 10 days plus, it's going to be one of the best in the industry.

Swimproof: The Mi Band 4 has 5ATM water resistance ratings which means it is water-resistant up to 50 meters and hence, you can use it during swimming and during shower as well.

Sleep Quality Tracking: Mi Band 4 uses software to track your sleep quality on the basis of your physical body movements. It does not track or read your brain activity and hence, its unable to track REM (Rapid Eye Movement) or NERM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. However, with the software's support, the band tracks the quality of your sleep on the basis of physical movement and differentiates the sleep pattern into a deep sleep and light sleep. Trust me this is not bad considering its price point.

Heart rate monitor: Mi Band 4 also has an HR monitoring feature that tracks your heart rate or pulse. However, it throws the data in the form of a high, low, or average level. The Mi Band 4 is a well-known device to track your heart rate accurately and hence, you can surely trust it.

Activity Tracker & GPS: It doesn't have a built-in GPS, though it does have a connected GPS feature (through your smartphone) for tracking your distance and pace using your phone's GPS. The Mi Band 4 has an inbuilt activity tracker and will track all the basic things like distance traveled, steps taken, calories burnt, resting and active heart rates, and sleep.

Compatibility with Android and iOS: Mi Band 4 is compatible with your IOs and android smartphones and displays incoming calls and app notifications. It has the facility to reject calls as well. Mi Band 4 does allow you to control the music of your cellphone through the band. This means the tracker lets you play, pause, control volume, or skip songs being played on your cellphone.

Six Workout modes: Mi 4 Band is enabled with 6 workouts modes including swimming.

Data storage capacity in days: Mi 4 Band can store activity and health data for up to 10 days. This means that you don't have to sync it every day to store your records and that you can sync it as per your convenience once in 10 days.

Demerits :

No guided breathing sessions: This means the band does not remind you to carry out the physical activity when you were idle for a longer span.

Doesn't have the ability for women to track menstrual cycles.

MI Band 4 doesn't have a built-in GPS, which means your data on distance traveled won't be very accurate all time if you're going out for a run with only your MI band 4.

No Inbuilt Music Option: MI Band 4 does not contain an inbuilt music option, but it does allow you to control the Music of your cellphone through the band. This means the tracker lets you play, pause, control volume, or skip songs being played on your cellphone.

The real concern or problem in Xiaomi Band 4 is the inferior proprietary charger this time around.

Unique Selling Point :

Value for a money activity tracker that does the basics right and offers minor smartwatch features as well.

Mi Band 4 provides the best balance between features of the tracker and its battery life. In fact, MI Band 4 has one of the best in class battery life performance.

Extremely good tracker for beginners.

Final Word:

Xiaomi Band 4 is the best entry-level fitness tracker available at the price point between 25$ to 30$ that provides a colorful AMOLED display with a multiactivity tracker including swimming, sleep tracking, and continuous heart rate monitoring.

Very few fitness trackers have the capacity to provide these features at a price point below $30. Hence, we recommend a strong YES for the beginners as there is no branded Fitness Tracker at this price point that offers so many must-have and essential features in a single piece at the given price point. Surely a must-buy for the beginners.

Best Fitness Tracker in 2020 - A Buying Guide

2020-07-14T16:28:00.007+05:30

Wow! So, finally, thinking of buying a Fitness Tracker? Here, we present factors that need consideration before you decide. Fitness Tracker is a must-have gadget and worth buying.

These bands act like your fitness buddy. They make you think of your health and fitness by throwing vital stats of your heart, steps count, activity tracking, sleep quality, calories consumed & burnt, and much more.

In some cases, these trackers serve as a life-saving device by throwing early signals on your deteriorating health.

But, that's all is subject to a right choice while you are selecting a one. Hence, let's take a deep dive into the factors that need to be considered before buying a fitness tracker depending upon your lifestyle, profession, and age.

Any wearable fitness tracker makes you input correct physiological details such as your gender, height, weight so as to support the tracker to make a better sense of the data that it extracts from the inbuilt sensors.

Before you Choose:

The process of choosing the right fitness tracker is crucial as you need to consider the various features that will affect your daily routine and workout output. We hereby present the various must-have features in a fitness tracker for you to understand before you finalize your fitness tracker. You may skip a few or think of a combination of other features depending upon your daily routine and workout style.

Here we go.

1) Budget:

Needless to say, that budget is the most important and deciding factor while selecting a Fitness tracker.

There is the tracker available from 50$ to 500$. We look at it as a life-saving fitness buddy and a must-have gadget. Hence, we recommend having a respected budget while you choose a tracker. Plan a budget somewhere between 50$ to 200$, if you are a beginner.

It's always advisable to plan a slightly higher budget as we look at these trackers as life-saving devices and not as show off gadgets.

2) Coach and Fitness Buddy:

Many fitness trackers act as a fitness buddy in your journey towards fitness.

They motivate you during workouts to complete the targetted tasks through friendly reminders or notifications. Whereas some trackers have the ability to remind you of no activity period if you are idle for a longer span.

Some advanced fitness tracker has got a guided breathing feature and indicates you to take a deep breath if your heart rate shows abnormality. This feature is extremely useful for those in the 40s and above.

3) Swimming Support:

Do not get confused between water-resistant and swim proof. Water-Resistant means rainproof, splash-proof. It also means sweat proof. Hardly matter how sweaty you get during workouts.

Swim Proof feature enables you to use it during swimming and track your swimming performance. It will auto-detect your swimming style like backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle. Besides, it will track your speed and time taken to cover a particular distance.

Some trackers have the SWOLF tracking feature. These are able to track no. of actual strokes taken during the swimming against the no. of optimum strokes to be taken to cover the distance.

The devices to be looked at for the swimming support feature are Fitbit Charge 4, Fitbit Inspire HR, Garmin Vivosmart 4, Xiaomi Mi Band 4.

4) Heart rate monitor:

Irregularities in the heart ( beats per minute) indicate problems related to heart disease. Any spike in your heartbeat per minute without a strenuous physical activity is alarming and needs care from experts. If the spike in BPM (beats per minute) is accompanied by pain in the chest, back, jaw, arm, belly, and breath shortness, you ought to take critical medical help immediately.

Thus, Heart Rate Monitor is a must-have feature in your prospective Fitness Tracker and due its importance has become the most common feature as well.

The devices to be looked at for this feature are Fitbit Charge 3, Garmin Vivosmart 4, Fitbit Inspire HR.

5) GPS:

Built-in GPS enabled trackers will set you free from the burden of carrying your smartphones during your workouts.

If you want your tracker to throw correct data on speed and distance covered (which is quite obvious), then your tracker ought to be GPS enabled. A GPS enabled tracker will give you accurate and REAL-TIME data on the distance covered and pace. Fitness trackers with connected GPS are best suitable to the brisk walkers, runners, and cyclists. They also help you to get a geo-map of your running or cycling.

Besides, a GPS enabled device will also be able to track the quality of your sleep and present you the data in a simpler form.

The devices to be looked at for inbuilt GPS features are Garmin Forerunner 245 Music, Samsung Galaxy Fitness Watch Active 2, Apple Watch Series 5, Fitbit Charge 4.

6) Battery Life:

The battery is the most important part of your Fitness Tracker. In fact, it serves as fuel for all the good things that your device does for you. It is strongly recommended to go in for a device with "Up to 7 days battery life" in standby mode or "Up to 5 or 6 hours with GPS + Music". However, if you can manage for a tracker with "Up to 10 hours of battery life", then it will help you to gid rid of the tension of frequent recharging.

The devices to be looked at for stronger battery life are Garmin Vivofit 3, Fitbit Charge 3, Moov 3D Fitness Tracker.

7) Music:

Music plays a crucial and motivating role in enhancing the quality of the workout output and its a must-have element during workouts. The fitness trackers with inbuilt music offerings help you to get rid of the burden of carrying your giant smartphones everywhere you go while running, walking, or cycling. That increases your flexibility and hence, the output quality during the workouts.

All you need is a fitness tracker with an inbuilt music component and a Bluetooth headphone to connect to and listen to music while doing your workout.

8) Auto Activity Tracker:

The main thing for the sensors in the fitness tracker is to understand the activity or workout being done by the user. There are two ways it usually happens. Firstly, you manually select the workout mode and log it. And, secondly, the inbuilt sensors in the tracker, sense the activity being performed and automatically logs you on to the activity.

Devices to look for: Various Fitbit devices (Fitbit Charge, Fitbit Inspire HR, Surge, Alta)

9) Sleep monitor feature including Sleep Quality:

The proper beginning of the day happens a night before. How much you slept and how did you sleep also plays a crucial role in making your day successful. Thus, besides, the hour we sleep, it's important to track the quality of sleep. Many fitness trackers today have got the ability to track how well you slept. They track the time you were asleep and split it up into the light, motionless (presumably deep) and restless periods.

The devices to be looked at for this feature are Garmin Vivo Active 4, Fitbit Versa 2, Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2.

Final Word :
The abovementioned are a few unique features that your prospective watch should have. However, it's quite tough to have all of them in a single piece.

Hence, one must make a wise choice about your tracker depending upon your profession, age, sex, and daily workout pattern and daily routine pattern. What say?

That's all from my side. Please let me know which other feature needs consideration, for my learning.

Fitness Tracker-A necessity or fashion statement?

2020-07-08T07:09:00.017+05:30

Fitness Trackers are becoming increasingly popular these days. These wearable devices change your mindset towards fitness by providing you the vital stats of your health in real-time all throughout.

Whether you are a working professional or a professional sportsman of any age or a retired person, these fitness trackers make fitness easy by providing the data related to your fitness with the help of sensors and algorithms used in them.

Needless to say, in the next 3 to 5 years these small gadgets are going to make the same revolution as being done by smartphones in the recent past. These small devices will be equipped with even better features and greater capabilities in times to come.

Why Fitness Trackers? :

Every year, a number of brands launch their products into the category of Fitness Tracker Bands or SmartWatch.

These devices are equipped with mobile sensor technology and inbuilt algorithms and throw real-time data about your physical health in terms of heartbeat, steps covered, time spent on the activity, calories burnt, sleep hours and quality of sleep, etc., which is vital for maintaining a healthy life. Some of them have got compatibility with smartphones through an application, thereby increasing the user interface of your fitness tracker and smartphone as well.

This information helps you to set the tone of your fitness program. Not only that they also motivate you like your fitness buddy to achieve the set goals on a daily basis.

What are the advantages of Fitness Trackers? :

Daily Motivation
Healthy Eating
Track your sleep
Monitor Heart Rate
Counting Steps made easy
Fitness Goal Setting
Get Accountable
Stay Connected
Data availability to see trends of efforts and output

On the contrary, there are not many demerits that can be attributed to these gadgets other than the fact that they are quite expensive. Besides, these raise doubts in a few on the stats provided especially in case of blood pressure, etc.

However, by far, these devices have performed pretty well and have always done value addition to its owner in many ways than one.

Fitness Tracker Alternatives & What to Choose in between?

There are 2 alternatives to the fitness tracker :

A mobile app which is inbuilt or available on Playstore
The second option is no fitness tracker & no mobile app and just a healthy routine full of exercise and a balanced diet

What to choose between a fitness tracker or a mobile app or no band and no app (& follow a routine exercise to achieve your fitness goals), is a relative thing. This is quite a complicated question. There is no fixed answer to this type of thought.

A fitness band provides you with the vital physical fitness statistics like steps count, distance run / cycled/swim, time taken to complete the task, calories burned, sleep hours, sleep quality, heart rate, and much more depending upon the fitness band you are using.

These statistics are very important in today's world where we know most of us can not stick to a daily healthy routine and have to undergo heavy stress throughout the day, sit on a desk to do our job for 8 to 12 hours a day. And, finally have to resort to junk food almost every day.

These things make it absolutely necessary (if, not compulsory) to have a real-time physician with us 24/7. Isn't that right? And, a fitness tracker exactly does that. It throws real-time stats on your physical health for you to think and act upon. Right?

On the contrary to this, you may skip the idea of owning a fitness band, if you are a passionate fitness freak and if you are high on self-motivation.

Many sports stars hardly used it when they were at the helm of their career. In fact, the fitness tracker did not exist only during the era of Mike Tison (Boxing), Pele (FootBall), Maradona (FootBall), Arnold (Body Building), Allen Border(Cricket), Michael Jordan (Basket Ball), Muhammad Ali (Boxing), Lance Armstrong (cycling). Hmmm... Right?

Final Word:

To go in for a fitness band ? or Is fitness band just a show-off gadget? The answer to these questions depends upon your thought process. There is no right or wrong theory for a fitness band.

As long as wearing a fitness band makes you think of the betterment of your health and fitness, it fits into the objective it was meant for. Based on the stats provided by the fitness tracker band, as long as you burn calories as part of routine exercise, the fitness band achieves the objective for which it is made. It is mainly intended to make you get up and move on in your fitness journey.

Besides, the added and micro details like heartbeats, blood pressure, ECG which is available in some unique fitness bands may help you to take special care of your health which is a must at a certain age.

Quite often we treat ourselves with a dinner at a 5-star hotel or an exotic vacation by spending money much more than the cost of a fitness band. Aren't we? Do we not spend on a costly sedan to pamper ourselves for whatever the hard work we did in life to reach this level? There is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

So, why hesitate when you spend something for your body? You, Your body an important part for your family members. Right? Then, why hesitate to spend on something very important for your family and something that motivates you to stay fit? It's quite justifiable to spend on the gadgets that help you stay fit or even think of fitness.

In case, you can not afford a costly fitness band, you may choose an economic one. There are many brands that offer low-cost fitness bands.

But, that time is definitely not far off when a fitness band will be as popular as a smartphone phone or a must-have gadget due to real-time health stats they give on account of the digital intelligence quotient being used it. Here, we recommend a strong YES for these Fitness Trackers. What do you say?

How to Manage Toxic Men in Work Situation and Home?

2020-07-05T20:32:00.005+05:30

Anywhere we go, we are going to be surrounded by Toxic men. Then, it can start from our own home to society and then the office. You can not have a club of like-minded people all time.

The Toxic men you face around do impact you negatively on your emotions and affect your ability to think correctively and the ability to make the right decisions. In a nutshell, they create a negative environment and thereby make you stressed, so that you are low emotionally. These low emotions reduce your self-confidence and break you from inside.

So, there are 2 things important in dealing with Toxic men.

How do we identify the Toxic men and,
How intelligent women need to handle these men without falling prey to the stress they create and without losing focus on life objectives.

All right? So here we go.

How to identify Toxic men around you:

These are the men who will not get happy to see your happiness. These will criticize you to hide their emotional insecurity. This will make you low on confidence and make you feel insecure.
Will leave no stone unturned to hurt you in some or the other way. Will try to use your weakness against you. Might abuse you emotionally and sometimes get violent as well.
If you are a working woman, these may have a problem with you going out for work to support the betterment of the future of children and family. These might raise fingers on your motherhood qualities also.
These are normally losers and can not see your success. These will hardly respect your education, the efforts you took so far to reach this level in life.
Normally do not accept their mistakes as it requires a generous heart. They love just themselves. They just know to take things and not give things.
Always try to project them as a victim. Will play emotional games if you decide to break the relationship.

How to handle Toxic men in work situations and homes?

Change of society we live in or change of job or a change of situation is certainly not the solution to this problem.

There are multiple ways of managing toxic people. However, there are no fixed formulae to be used in a given situation. We need to use them cautiously depending upon the situation.

Stand up for yourself: As the topmost priority, do accept that you have a toxic person around you. To maintain peace around, we start searching for the weakness in ourselves only. Need to understand here that nobody has a right to insult you or belittle you. Hence, there is a severe need to stand up for yourselves and resist the toxic behavior. Learn to say NO to this toxic nature.
Focus on your priorities and growth: The intensity of the negativity reduces when you are mentally occupied with your priorities and growth strategies.

Set up your boundaries and maintain physical and mental distance: Sometimes it's better to take decisions from the brain and not by heart. Do not let the toxic men cross their boundaries. The problem is in their thought process and not yours. Hence, do not let them cross limits and damage your mental peace. Try to maintain a distance from these men. If you can not maintain a physical distance, in case they are very close to you, then try to maintain a mental distance from these men.

Do not fall prey to provocation: A toxic person would normally use bitter and abusive language to provoke you so that you get angry and react negatively. It is their technique to damage your popularity. Hence, in the event of a debate breathe deep and stay cool. No need to get into a poisonous debate in between.

Change your mindset and Do not feel guilty: A Toxic man would normally portray as a victim in a debate or a tense situation. They would try putting the entire blame on you so that you start feeling guilty as if you did a blunder. This makes you feel guilty and stressed which in turn leads to anxiety and depression. Hence, stay away from such guilts.

Accept feedback from Toxic people, but do not consume the negative energy busted out through their criticism: Take feedback ( maybe negative) from the, but also take the energy coming along the feedback. Remember that your senior may be wanting to give you some genuine feedback. But, it can come with criticism or it may come with compassion. It depends on the upbringing and thought process of the person giving feedback. So, take the feedback and throw away the energy of criticism or negativity. But, if you consume this negative energy of criticism, you will feel insulted, disrespected and you will get hurt and will not be able to execute on the feedback as well. Keep in mind that the senior always in criticizing mood is not in the right frame of mind and is mentally ill and hence always throws tantrum.

Meditate: Meditation is the act of touching your inner-self to be able to live a healthy peaceful life without stress and anxiety. Meditation bestows us with the power to stay with Toxic people, but remain unaffected with their negative energies and behavior. It creates a bridge between you and the almighty that will help you attract positivity, success, and growth in all spheres of life. Hence, do meditate compulsorily, be strong spiritually, and be strong culturally.

Look out for a solution: Try to ameliorate the situation by finding out the ways and means to improve the situation. There always a blessing in disguise. Consult like-minded friends or relatives to seek a solution to the current situation. Time and experience are the best teachers in life. Be focused on your happiness. Try to extract happiness from within instead of other people's opinions.

Conclusion:

So, here we have to 2 conclusions:

Life (Toxic men) will always throw googly (criticism, conspiracy): As per the famous monk Shri. Gaur Gopal Das, life is like a cricket match between YOU & THE MIND. The mind will try to throw multiple GOOGLY (In cricket, a googly is a type of deceptive delivery bowled by a right-arm leg-spin bowler. ... A leg-spin bowler bowls in a leg-spin way but it goes in the off-spin direction, which ultimately confuses the batsman and he gets bowled out.) Same way, these toxic people are like googly's in life throwing multiple tantrums at you and we need not get distracted with their surprises. We need to learn correctly in multiple situations.

Stay Cool when getting sledged: When people do sledging against you in the form of criticism, pulling you down, politicking, conspiring in the game called life, stay cool, and do not let your emotions bust out. There is absolutely no need to react to situations, not in your control. Hence, we always will have a stimulus in our life and it's up to us to decide between stimulus and response, it is our choice. A person wins the game not for what he or she learns in an institute, but it's because of the choices he makes in life.

Please do share your thoughts on dealing with toxic people so that it will help those in stress and living a complicated life on account of these toxic men.

Why We Become Victim of Stress? How to Control Stress for Mental Health ?

2020-07-03T02:03:00.019+05:30

Jim Carrey is one of the most influential comedians in the world. He Had already achieved the highest peak of fame, glory, and success in his life. But in an interview with 60 Minutes, the ace comedian shocked the world when he accepted that he spent a major part of his life dealing with depression. Soon after the failure of his second marriage, Carrey resorted to psychiatric help, who prescribed him Prozac. Though Carrey admits the antidepressant helped him initially. But, he also realized the ill effects for him to be on those antidepressants for a longer period. "I had to get off [Prozac] at a positive point," stated Carrey. "You want to get out of bed each day and say that life is good. That's what I did, although at times it became very hard for me. Carrey credit a healthy weight-reduction plan and natural dietary supplements for his progressed intellectual health.

"Stress" is playing a damaging role in our life during present times. For sure, life is not a bed of roses. Hence, it is quite obvious to have some kind of tension and anxiety in our life while fulfilling our personal, social responsibilities and while aspiring for materialistic gains in life. Isn't that right?

So, it's quite obvious to have a certain level of tension and pressure.

But, during this journey, if you start feeling emotional stress then definitely it is not a healthy sign. An excess of stress can be an important reason for mental illness too.

Problems related to mental health soon convert into mental illness when its symptoms start creating stress, affecting your ability to take correct decisions and take cognizable action.

The excess stress on your mind starts adversely affecting your physical health as well by way of blood sugar, blood pressure, and cardiac disease.

Reasons or Factors Causing stress :

Unhealthy diet: Foods can help tame stress in several ways. An unhealthy diet can reduce the levels of cortisol and adrenaline, the two key stress hormones, that take a toll on the body over time. A healthy diet only can help you control stress by boosting up the immune system and subsequently lowering blood pressure.

Lifestyle Issues:

Yes..they are badly affecting the physical and mental health both. The modern urbane lifestyle clubbed with the digitization of the world has made us over-dependent on gadgets and now its totally impossible for us to live without them even for a single day. This creates irregularities in our daily routine.

Sleep deprivation: The irregularities in lifestyle have completely damaged our daily routines and making us socially isolated. We have gone a step ahead by isolating us into the digital world. We are spending more time with Netflix, Hotstar, Youtube than in the social circle of friends and relatives. All these things have a direct impact on sleep deprivation.

Financial problems: Americans are increasingly anxious about money. Money is the no. 1 cause of stress among Americans, claims a study conducted by States Northwestern Mutual's 2018 Planning & Progress Study. Financial stress is a situation that occurs on account of financial or economic issues leading to anxiety, worry, or a sense of scarcity, and is accompanied by a physiological stress response.

Loss of losing the social status on account of the failures in professional life: Needles to say people feel defeated in life if they lose jobs, fail to pay their bills on time. This is mainly because of the society we live in, which measures the success of a person by the size of the house he lives in or the car he drives. All these things create a hidden fear in their mind.

Loss of loved ones: Needless to mention, unexpected and sudden loss of loved ones is yet another reason creating emotional stress.
Stress caused by environmental factors like excess of pollution, excess rain, tsunami, flood, pandemic also affects stress as these have a direct impact on personal, social, and financial aspects of life. Failure to manage this and the adverse impact arising out of this results in emotional stress.

Bad relation among the family members: Many failed relationships in the family is yet another reason for stress. Conflicts in relationship and stress go hand in hand. A conflict in a relationship has an adverse impact on health in terms of blood sugar, cardiac issues initially, and then taking a toll on emotional stress.

Lack of best friends: Needless to mention that TRUE friends in social life are way more important than those on Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. The element of social life or social circle plays a crucial in every aspect of human health. Research shows that a strong social support system or stronger community bonds fetch us good quality of emotional and physical health and that is an important part of adult life.

Silent Symptoms of stress :

Stress affects you in more ways than one. Definitely, it starts affecting your mind, first. Then, it interferes in your life and adversely affects your routine.

Lack of concentration, lack of memory, changes in your eating habits is important among the symptoms of stress.
Makes you feel low on energy, tensed, and gives rise to bipolar disorder.
Unpredictable behavior, getting too much emotional. It may make you cry, and sometimes in general for no specific reason.
Geeting too much emotional or unpredictable aggressive.
It creates irregularities on your work front. One will reduce the work quantum or totally stop it if undergoing a high level of stress.
You get distracted easily and frequently. You try to leave under a hidden fear. The low energy level and lack of confidence can adversely affect your relationship.
One starts isolating himself or herself. Slowly even starts thinking of suicide.
Low immunity, headache, breathing problems, problems related to heartbeats, obesity along with hair fall, and skin disorders are some other important stress symptoms.
Stress makes your life highly difficult and also adversely impacts your health.

How to manage & get rid of stress?

To cure stress, we first need to understand this problem in depth. In today's competitive world, it is impossible to think of a person who does not experience stress in day to day life. This stress may be on account of personal, social, and financial factors.

Most people have to undergo stress while dealing with the problems associated with these factors. Mental tension or emotional stress can hurt the mental and physical health of a person, leading to multiple mental and physical disorders. Hence, experts suggest the following actions as STRESS RELIEVERs to cure stress :

Regular exercise: Exercise is the best medicine to manage stress. This does not necessarily mean heavy workouts in the gym. If you are already pretty consistent in your exercise, then there isn't a better thing than this. But, otherwise, routined brisk walk, running, skipping, aerobics, sun salutations, and other fat burning and cardio exercise is a must to control your physical and mental health as well.

Strictly avoid addictions towards alcohol, drugs, and caffeine: A person needs to know his / her limits in everything. Alcohol may seem to give a quick sleep, but rather it is an obstacle in quality of the sleep especially the second half of the sleep. Thus, it makes you more drowsy the next day affecting your ability to concentrate on things.

Healthy and balanced diet: A healthy, balanced, and nutritious diet helps in boosting your immune system normalizing your blood pressure. It quickly controls the stress-causing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that make an adverse impact on stress levels.

Prioritize your day: Following a routine to perform your daily task is the most important factor to control stress. When you follow a routine and complete your tasks accordingly, it creates positive vibes in your body and mind. It sends victory signals to your brain that further create positivity and feel-good factor in you.

Try finding some opportunities in life's challenges you are facing. The law of attraction does play a crucial role when you are low on emotions. You need to think positive and need to do logical planning to find out the opportunities from among the challenges.

Find ME TIME: Take a break from your routine and spend time with your inner self.

Meditation or Breathing Exercise for mental peace: Deep breathing can help powerful negative emotions feel a little less intense, and even help some people resist the urge to speak to themselves negatively. By fully expanding your lungs and slowing things down, you activate parts of your brain and nervous system that calm your body and mind.

Be vocal and speak out on things that trouble you emotionally: Recollect those days when a friend or a relative was low on emotions and came to you to seek help from you. Do you recollect how you supported them? How did you feel when your advice helped them beat stress or depression? Think about how it might have felt for them to receive your kind words. The next time you feel discouraged or bad about yourself, try talking to yourself in the same way you’d talk to your family or friends. See if you can feel the difference. Usually, it’s easier to show understanding and kindness to others. If you speak to yourself with that same compassion, it might start to change the way you think about yourself and the world around you.

Accept the emotional symptoms and get consultation through experts: When you’re sad, anxious, or angry, it’s normal to want to feel happier as soon as possible. But taking the time to recognize your emotions—even the negative ones—can help you understand and manage your feelings. Practice accepting your emotions as temporary, and see if that makes your feelings easier to handle.

Identify distressers like reading, walking, listening to music, spending time with a friend, playing with pets, rhyming, gardening, cooking, interior decoration. Do practice things that give you relaxation when you feel stressed. Rather make it a habit to imbibe them in your routine.

Massage for stress: Studies conducted revealed that massage is the best therapy to control stress, anxiety, muscle tension, and pain. It is always recommended to treat yourself with a massage at regular intervals, especially when you are stressed.

Conclusion :

Stress Management is a continuous and ongoing activity. As a result, the stress relievers discussed above need to be practiced 24/7. In fact, we need to make them a part of our life as these are mainly related to our lifestyle modification. It's Okey, if you had a cheat day, skipped meditation sometimes, had picnics, and parties for a couple days. But, soon after that pull up the socks and get back in action. Life is beautiful and makes the most of it. Do not waste it under stress. Be cheerful and say hello to life. What say?

Please comment below. Will be happy to hear your thoughts on ways to live a de-stressed life all throughout.

Why Most Weight Loss Program Fail? How to Make Yours Successful ?

2020-06-30T00:12:00.011+05:30

Eat, drink, and live free. There’s no telling what might happen tomorrow. A common thought most folks live with. Isn't that right?

And, then, when things go out of control, they panic and subscribe to a Weight Loss Program to reduce weight, belly fat, and blood sugar.

I frequently get to hear from folks that they began a weight loss program. They were much excited at the beginning of the weight loss plan. But, later on, got frustrated and started feeling demotivated when they realized that their progress is not as per their wish. Isn't that annoying?

These weight loss programs fail to get them the desired results. The reality is that maximum effort to lose weight through a weight loss program available for sale in the open market do fail after a certain period.

That's because there is a myth that just by subscribing to a weight program, one will get the desired results.

No weight loss program or a weight loss shop can reduce your weight. Not trying to raise any doubts on the intentions of these programs.

But, a weight loss plan is successful only when it is long term sustainable, executable to masses, and only when one goes for it wholeheartedly and gets involved in it physically and mentally.

Alarming facts about the failure of Weight-Loss Programs :

Needless to mention, this failure is completely the fault of the application or the program.

The aggressive advertisements and marketing strategies make people invest in these programs. There is no doubt that the people who joined this weight loss program, had a good deal of seriousness and obligation. But, they fail to get the desired results, as the program was not based on a Long Term Successful Sustainable Model.

A recent study on a weight loss program confirmed that...

43% of folks who joined the program dropped out before they could achieve the desired goals.

The study also states that 54% of the people left the program wished to reduce the weight without medical treatment or surgery. Whereas the drop rate among those intended to reduce weight through surgery was just 12%.

It has been found that people are more inclined towards the bariatric surgical method to reduce weight. The substantial, definite, and dramatic weight loss associated with bariatric surgery is the main motivation for the people to stick to the bariatric surgical method to reduce weight. However, it is beyond the reach of the common man and also recommendable only for a certain level of obesity.

The reason why most Weight Loss Programs Fail?

Following are several motives why most weight loss programs fail:

People want quick results. At the time of subscribing to a weight loss program, most folks fail to imagine the amount of patience, time, and hard work that need to be invested to get the desired result. The lack of patience results in disappointment when we do not get fast results we desire.

Corporate Weight Loss Shop: Many prevalent Diet Plan Shops are being operated as Corporate Houses and lack the personal touch towards the participants as they mostly intend to increase the subscriber base. Diet and Mental health are interconnected. Most diet plans fail to make up the mind of the participants related to the required physical work, diet adherence, and required time.

The success of a weight loss program is linked to diet plan as well: Participants fail to understand that a weight loss program is a combined outcome of exercise and diet plan. Most of the weight loss program won’t work if you are not doing the basic required exercise along with the recommended diet plan. A weight loss the program will never work without prescribed exercises and a recommended diet plan after a certain level.

Not a long term sustainable model: Most Weight Loss Program is not a long term successful sustainable model as they work on the principle of “Starving or losing weight by creating a calorie deficit”. These plans make people lose weight in the initial days only. And, later on, when the weight loss plan is stopped, they gain the same or more time in no time.

Costly weight loss plan and dependency on a trainer: Many diet plans are costly and beyond the reach of the common man and make you dependent on a trainer. A person can succeed in a weight loss program only when his brain understands in simple words the crux of the science of the combination of the recommended exercise and prescribed diet plan, behind the weight loss program.

We fall prey to social duties and temptations.
Many social functions and the availability of delicious food, frequently break the weight loss plan routine. Restaurants and domestic food delivery apps also create impulsive and poor eating habits as well.

Many fail due to the fact we are resistant to lifestyle modification to get us the consequences we want.

Others simply do not persist with the weight loss plan and might continue consuming alcohol or eating sweets. Some fail because they search for quick cuts or a simpler manner to obtain our desires.

Unrealistic dreams or no goals at all are yet another roadblock.
Perhaps the maximum frequent purpose for failure in a weight loss plan is that we surrender and by no means complete the program.

So, What's next? How to make your weight plan successful?

Certainly, Weight Loss is not an impossible task. Rather, it’s a planned, but time-taking activity. It's very much and easily possible if we keep a note of a few things in mind :

Do not follow a plan just because others are following it. Know your strength and limitations before joining a weight loss program.

The biggest key to weight loss is lifestyle modification and we should be mentally prepared for it.

We need to adhere to a program that is based on the “Longterm Successful Sustainable Model”. No point in joining a program that makes you do workouts for 2 to 4 hours every day. This way you are definitely not going to succeed for a longer span as you may have many other obligations equally important in life.

Strictly avoid programs that make you starve and are based on the principle of “Reduce calorie intake to reduce weight”.

Follow a weight loss plan that has a combination of a sustainable exercise plan clubbed with executable and proper diet plan.

And, lastly and most importantly, consult a dietician basis your BMI & other health complexities, before you take up a decision to avoid any complication to be on a safer side.

So, all the best for your weight loss plan. Make the most out of it. All Right??

Have you've attempted a weight loss program and dropped out?

Please share your thoughts. Your views are important to make the world health, wealthy, and free from obesity.

How Brisk Walk Can Help You Improve Physical & Mental Fitness?

2020-06-27T02:02:00.065+05:30

Ever thought of how Brisk Walk can be a lifetime companion for health, fitness, and mental health? Ever thought of how Brisk Walk can make you thin and slim and shed those unwanted pounds?

The competitive world outside and our quest for gaining the material things of life, makes us fall prey to excessive stress, fatigue, and depression resulting in irregular eating and sleeping habits and an undisciplined lifestyle. Thus, compelling a few resorts to smoke & drinking.

These things have a direct impact on our health in terms of depression, high blood pressure, and sugar problems. Hence, these challenges can be handled very well if you practice Brisk Walk and follow a disciplined life.

A regular brisk walk for about 45 minutes to an hour daily has a direct impact on your weight, belly fat, blood sugar, HBA1C, and undoubtedly, mental health as well. Brisk walk for 45 minutes a day to an hour is the best medicine for our physical and mental fitness. A healthy body keeps us much away from the possibility of heart disease and diabetes, and help you maintain independence as you age. Similarly, Mental fitness is important to deal with emotional fatigue and emotional health by way of positive thinking.

Brisk Walk – What is it?

Brisk Walk is a simple way of walking. However, it makes itself different from normal walking due to the speed factor associated with it. This speed and distance factor makes the brisk walk a relative concept.

A regular walk in the back yard for 30 minutes to 1 hour or a pleasant walk in the garden post-dinner in the garden is not the brisk walk. There is not a single fix and standard definition of brisk walking. If you cover a distance of 4 to 5 km in 40 minutes to 45 minutes by fast walking, it is termed as Brisk Walk.

At the end of your brisk walk, your heart will beat faster and you will be sweating and this will make your body warm.

Brisk Walk – How does it impacts body fat, weight?

You can reduce body fat and body weight and also have control over your mental emotions by doing a brisk walk as it tends to increase your metabolic rate. Means, Brisk Walking will increase your respiration and digestion, the two vital processes essential for a healthy metabolism.

As a result of this faster digestion and quick respiration, your metabolism becomes faster and the process of food break down (catabolism) is increased significantly. Ultimately, this leads to much faster and greater calorie burning and more calorie expenditure.

When already available calories are finished, your body starts burning off the available fat that is stored in your fatty tissues (such as belly fat, arms, thighs, and buttocks). The net result of this whole process is that you lose bodyweight by blasting fat.

Hence, a brisk walk is the most affordable, executable, time-tested, recommended, and simplest of the workout.

Brisk Walk – When to do?

There is no timespan to do your brisk walk. You can do it as and when you want to do it. The only thing is it should not be done one hour before or after consuming your food, as per the experts. But, yes, one needs to fix a time for your body to get accustomed to it and to start producing desired results.

Brisk Walk - Positive Impact on Health & Fitness?

It helps to maintain an optimum weight. The brisk walk has a direct impact on weight loss. There are chances of a minimum of 3 to 6 kg weight loss if practiced brisk walk continuously for 60 to 90 days (of course, need to have a balanced diet as well).
Reduces cholesterol
Burns Calories
Prevents or manages various conditions, including heart disease, control high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes.
Reduces the probability of heart attack
Strengthens your bones and muscles
Improves your mood, gives relaxation to mind. Thus increases mental health as well
It increases concentration on the work front as well
Makes you feel the energetic whole day
Improves your balance and coordination

Brisk Walk – Other Benefits:

The most important benefit of a brisk walk is that it is free cost. You need not join a gym to do complex workouts by paying hefty subscription amounts, for doing it every day. Thus, it also helps you save thousands of dollars.
Besides, you need not hire any professional trainer. Always remember that nobody can do exercise for you and thus, help you reduce your weight.
Brisk Walk is an Indoor & Outdoor form of exercise: Just select a park near your home or a path near your colony and start doing it.

Also, you can continue to do it on the treadmill in a rainy season.
There is no specific age limit to do a brisk walk. From the age of 25 till 80, any once can do it happily to stay fit mentally and physically. It’s because of this factor; a brisk walk is called “a lifetime companion” of a person.

It has been found that people who are doing brisk walk consistently for more than a year, are more happy, healthy, and agile. They are more energetic than those not practicing the brisk walk.

Brisk Walk- for you and your family :

A brisk walk is the best gift you can give to yourself and hence, to your family. On average, a person can reduce a minimum of 5 pounds if continued the brisk walk for 60 to 90 days religiously. Thousands of people have reduced more than 15 kg just by adhering to 45 minutes to an hour of Brisk Walk along with a healthy balanced diet.

There are many success stories associated with the brisk walk. It has a quick impact on your weight loss and pongee. Of course, you need to have control of eating too.

Besides the looks, it increases the probability of a healthy and peaceful life, unless there are major issues with your health.

Thus, we need to practice brisk walk every day to stay fit, healthy, and free from obesity.

What do you say? Please comment, share and spread your thoughts and ideas on the Brisk Walk and its benefit, so that we can contribute our bit to make the world healthy, wealthy, and free from obesity.

**************