Nutrition Health and Fitness

Marlina Toblianski is our fitness center manager here at Siena in Las Vegas. Siena is an age restricted community for all of us over 55 seniors and baby boomers. Marlina often puts an informative article in our community magazine “Siena Style”. Recently we asked her if she would allow us to share some of her articles on our site as a guest author. She was delighted. The following article is a combination of her first two articles. It fits so well with choosing a healthy lifestyle and maintaining youth that we think all of our readers will enjoy it. Read on!

Eat Right !

Nutrition is one of the key components to health and fitness that is often overlooked. The fact is if your nutrition does not agree with your goal, doing all the exercise in the world will not help you. Any health and fitness goal needs to have the appropriate nutrition program to complement it. What is proper nutrition? The answer is it is different for everyone. There is no way that one diet is going to work for everyone. You need to pick the best diet for you. How do you do this?

When choosing a nutrition program, consider this, “Does it satisy what my body needs?” Lets look at what your body needs. Your body needs vitamins,minerals, proteins, fats and carbohydrates on a daily basis. The amounts of these ingredients vary individual to individual. Only a licensed dietician can tell you exactly what you need. However, there are many sources out there that can give you a good estimate of how many calories you need as well as where those calories come from. When looking at this information check several sources as many sources will disagree with each other. A good website to go to is the American Dietetic Association’s site, www.eatright.org. You will find a plethora of information on many types of diets. Remember success happens when you do something you enjoy and can do for a lifetime. Choose your nutrition program carefully.

Get Strong Bones !

You know that your muscles get bigger and stronger when you use them. Bones are similar; they get stronger and denser when you make them work. And “work” for bones means handling impact, the weight of your body, or more resistance. Currently, we know that weight bearing exercises are important for building and maintaining bone density. These exercises include activities that make you move against gravity while staying upright. Aerobic and recreational activities can also play a role. Hiking, jogging, tennis and dancing are good choices. Intensity is important here, too. The activities must create moderate to high stress on the skeleton to cause the bones to adapt. Swimming and bicycling, while beneficial in many other ways, are not weight bearing and do not significantly strengthen bones.

Try to use a variety of exercises. The improvement of maintenance of bone strength is specific to the involved muscles and bones. Repeating the same exercises, even if performed at high intensity, will lose some bone building effectiveness over time. Your bones need to be stressed in different ways.

Information obtained from National Osteoporosis Foundation.

by Marlina Tobianski

Stay Fit, Eat right and Happy Anti-aging !

Chuck and Gayle