Archives for August 2012

Sitting Kills, Moving Heals Review

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Some time ago, I received a review copy of Joan D. Vernikos’ book Sitting Kills, Moving Heals: How Simple Everyday Movement Will Prevent Pain, Illness and Early Death – and Exercise Alone Won’t.

I’ve been reading the book on and off for weeks and it has already had a positive effect on how willing I am to do household chores. 🙂

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Joking aside, Sitting Kills, Moving Heals is a book about an important topic: the deleterious effect our sedentary lifestyle has on our health and our quality of life. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Review Tagged With:

Workout Clothes for Petite Plus Women

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These long figure-hugging yoga pants are a big NONO.

For a couple of days I’ve been surfing the Internet looking for workout clothes for women.

Specifically, I was looking for workout clothes that would suit women who are built like me – women who are short and busty. 🙂

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I have never been a great dresser like my younger sister Hanna, but I do like clothes and during the last 20+ years I’ve learned a thing or two about what not to wear.

The fact is I’m 5ft 1 inches (155cm) tall and weigh approximately 154lbs (70 kg), and most of the extra fat has been deposited on my upper body.

If you’re built like I am, you just can’t go and wear tight jeans that taper down and expect to look good – unless you like to look like an upside down bowling pin that is about to fall down…

That said, if I  didn’t have all that extra fat in my upper body I would probably be pretty well proportioned – but now I have that dreaded – and unhealthy – apple shape.

I chose the clothes in my collection based on  what I’ve learned from Susannah and Trinny and from my own observations. Also,  when I picked the clothes I tried to take into account the fact that you want to hide some disagreeable parts of  your anatomy like bat wings (I have huge ones) or spare tires.

A couple of rules for choosing workout clothes for women who are short and busty

  • No pants/bottoms that taper down – tight carrot-shaped, full-length pants are a big no-no
  • If you have “an ample bosom”, you need to wear tops that have open necklines – neck hugging thingies and turtle necks are out because they make your bosom look *huge”.

Below is a collection of tops, bottoms and other exercise clothes you want to use when you go to the gym or take a group class. Click on the product pictures to get more information about sizing and available colors.

Workout Tops
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I especially love the Zella Short Sleeve Hoodie from Nordstrom. It’s perfect for women who have short arms and who want to cover their flabby underarms.

Workout pants / bottoms

[captionpix imgsrc=”https://bodycapable.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/chaturanga-pants-form-athleta.png” width=”170″ align=”left” theme=”Crystal” imglink=”http://athleta.gap.com/browse/product.do?pid=819707&locale=en_US&kwid=1&sem=false&sdReferer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.athleta.com%2Fproducts%2Fworkout-clothes-for-women.jsp” captiontext=”Chaturanga pants from Athleta”] [captionpix imgsrc=”https://bodycapable.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/xtraining-knee-pants-from-lucy.png” width=”170″ align=”right” theme=”Crystal” imglink=”http://www.lucy.com/X-Training-Knee-Pant/214259,default,pd.html?cgid=Bottoms_Crops&dwvar_214259_color=LUCY%20BLACK” captiontext=”X-training knee pants from Lucy”]

For workot bottoms I have two options.

The Chaturanga pants form Athleta or the capri length x-training knee pants from Lucy. The Chaturanga pants are perfect because they flare at the ankle, and balancing the top-heavy look.

In the beginning, I put an example of the worst possible workout pants for a short and busty woman. 🙂

Knee-length tight capris are ok, but those figure-hugging long yoga pants that I featured in the beginning of this post are a kiss of death.

If you throw in a pair of Nike free trainers, you have a perfect outfit for a workout. 🙂

Filed Under: Workout Clothes

Stress Is the New Fat?

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I stole today’s title from Jan Bruce and the original quote goes like this:

Busy is the new fine and stress is the new fat.

My first thought when I saw the quote was “Yes indeed”.

I stumbled upon Jan Bruce’s stress solution called meQuilibrium when I was watching an episode of Jonathan Fields’ GoodLifeProject TV the other day. (The video is more about building businesses but I discovered some very interesting stuff there.) [Read more…]

Filed Under: Psychology

Nine Easy Exercises to Do at Home

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Squatting at the supermarket. Photo credit: Flickr / Pam loves pie.

I made up a list of easy exercises to do at home. These exercises could be a basis for a simple at-home workout routine.

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My list of easy exercises consists mostly of bodyweight exercises that either require no equipment or dumbbells.

I included several compound movements because they give you more results in a shorter time frame. Besides, compound movements are more fun to do than boring isolation movments like biceps curls, leg raises or sit ups.

There are reasons I picked these exercises and left some out. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Fitness

Flexible Personalities, Weight Loss and a MizFit Quote

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If my personality gets this flexible, will I lose weight too? Photo credit: Flickr / jessicamullen

At first glance, flexible personalities, weight loss and a MizFit quote can surely have nothing in common? Just wait and see. 🙂

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What got me thinking about flexible personality was Karen’s recent post where she mentions a discussion with her husband about addictive personalities and how easy it was for her husband to quit smoking and drinking coffee.

He just decided to stop and dropped the habit.

Very unnatural, if you ask me, but then I’m an addictive personality and can’t even play Angry Birds because I would get addicted before I have time to say “oink”. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Psychology Tagged With: