Rami's Blog

Like the Yin-Yang, Eastern Martial Arts and Western medicine are two halves of a whole. My mission is to preserve the ancient mind-body tools and pass them on to you.

 

The Power of Water for Weight Loss

Water is one of the most powerful wellness tools, and drinking it is a great way to begin a healthy habit. But, it is much more important for weight loss than you think.

Exercise nuts always claim that exercising makes them feel great. This is probably true, because exercising increases the production of endorphins, which activate the pleasure centers in our brain. However, there are plenty of people who feel tired, grumpy, and just physically and mentally bad after exercising.

These people are dehydrated.

It's as simple as that. Sweating in the gym, even for just half an hour, can cause you to lose enough water to actually be dehydrated, especially if this is your first week into a new exercise routine. Normally, your body will automatically make you more thirsty over the first few days of exercising, and you'll be able to make up for the water you lost.

The down side is, you may give up on exercising completely before you can make up for that lost water. Dehydration has some awful side-effects including headaches, muscle soreness, dizziness, negative mood, and many others. If those aren't enough to make us quit exercising, I don't know what is!

But you can easily avoid these post-workout hangovers by simply drinking plenty of water for a few days before you exercise. If you are't drinking any glasses of water during the day, definitely start. If you are getting at least one glass per day, why not bring that up to 2 or 3 glasses a day before you start your new weight loss routine? You want your body to have extra water going into the workout, so that rehydrating after the sweat session is fast, and the side-effects are minimal.

Here's a funny way to know if you have enough water to exercise: your pee should be totally clear. Clear urine means that your blood is free of waste (which is what normally turns your urine yellow) and it means you have absorbed as much water as you can, so your body is releasing the excess.

So go drink some water and good luck with your exercises!

The Attitude of the Body is the Attitude of the Mind

As humans, we are deeply connected to body language. Slumped shoulders, a stiff posture, wide eyes, these signs communicate things to us about the emotions of the people who carry them. For a long time, it was believed that this connection between your mind and your body only went one way: the way you felt changed the way your body looked.

But recent research into nerve and muscle feedback has provided evidence for a two-way connection: your body language can change how you feel. So far, the research has focused on making people smile more, or frown less, and then having them report their mood throughout the experiment. As you could probably guess, doing either one makes people feel happier and emotionally lighter.

But if you ask me, you can already extend this kind of body-to-mind therapy to your mind-body routines, and for more than just smiling. Think about how you want to feel, and then picture what body language goes along with that. It's like being an actor.

If you want to feel strong and confident before a workout, stand up straight and puff out your chest. If you want to calm down, lay down and let your shoulders relax. If you want to feel good about your new weight loss routine, smile! Maybe you could even hold a chopstick between your teeth like they did in the experiment to create an artificial smile.

Most importantly for your wellness, be mindful and pay attention to the emotions that your body language is communicating. Not just to others, but to yourself as well. Subconsciously, your mind will pick up on your shoulders slumping, or your back hunching, or your feet dragging. Flip those signs of sadness around into body language of happiness and confidence, and your mind will catch on sooner or later. 

Happy Stretching!

The Long and Short of Weight Loss Motivation

People are notoriously bad at keeping their eye on the longterm goal. When it comes to motivation, if we don't get results soon, we feel like giving up.

Sometimes, we get good results soon, and then they taper off. And when the going gets tough, our desire for results isn't met, and our ability to commit tapers off as well.

While health and fitness are about perseverance, there are ways of thinking about your goals that make them easier to reach.

If your ultimate goal is weight loss, you can't feel closer to that goal every day. Our bodies simply cannot burn pounds of fat that quickly, so if you are measuring your daily achievements with a scale, you are going to be disappointed.

However, with a little mindfulness, we can measure how we feel after we workout. We can pay attention to how our body feels, and how our energy level is, and how well we sleep. Those things all happen within hours of our workout. If those feelings are your goal, and you pay attention to your progress toward them, then you will feel rewarded every day that your exercise.

Focus on the immediate rewards that come with working out. If you value those results more and more, you will be motivated enough each day to stick to your routine. And when you stick to your routine, you lose weight. It just takes a while.

Happy stretching!

Mind-over-Matter Weight Loss: Walk Like A Warrior

This will be the first installment in our new Weight Loss Workout Series! We will be releasing the exercises every Tuesday, and at the end of the first half (the Yang half) we will release a detailed routine. The Yang half of the workout is focused on burning calories and building strength. The Yin half will be focused on stretching and relaxation. When combined, these two halves of a workout form my Mind-over-Matter approach to weight loss. I believe that weight loss is equal parts exercise and will power. This workout series is aimed at helping you develop both your body, and your mind.

The first exercise is called Walk Like a Warrior. It's a great warm-up that will saturate your muscles with blood and oxygen so that you can perform the rest of the exercises more effectively.