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Employee takes health message to heart
Suzanne Levan sat in a meeting with other benefits managers brainstorming ways to reduce health care costs for their companies and school districts. Inevitably, the conversation turned to obesity as the leading cause for ballooning insurance costs. If they could get their employees to exercise and eat healthy, the managers reasoned, they could cut those costs. But there was one problem with Levan taking that message of health and fitness back to the Northside Independent School District, where she is the director of employee benefits. Levan was 65 pounds overweight. "How do we sit there and tell our population that we have to take control of our health if you yourself are not serving as an example of trying to take care of your health?" she remembered thinking.
Mason/Deerfield Township Briefly
DEERFIELD TWP. - Residents can cash in on their holiday light displays during Deerfield Township's fourth annual Outdoor Holiday Lights Contest. Prizes of $250, $150 and $75 will be awarded. Entry forms for the contest are at http://www.deerfieldtwp.com or at the Deerfield Township Administration Office, 3378 Townsley Drive. .
Tips to ease aches, pains in new exercise program
Question: Last year for my New Year's resolution, I was going to start exercising. I started out with two group exercise classes and was so sore, I quit. A couple months down the road I started again and I was sore. Why do I get so sore and how can I move past it to start again with exercise classes? - Regina, Edgewood .
Work Up a Sweat in Less Time
No time for exercise? Pick up your pace, and you can work less and still get better results. University of Alberta researchers reported in September that a group of healthy people who wore pedometers and made an effort to take an extra 5,000 steps a day (about 50 minutes of walking) showed no improvement in their physical fitness after six months. But another group that hit the gym only four days a week for 40 minutes of moderately intense workouts (visualize walking as fast as you can without actually running) significantly increased their endurance levels. In essence, the harder you work, the more efficiently you can increase your fitness. A study published in the September Journal of Physiology compared two groups of cyclers who engaged in six exercise sessions over two weeks and found that those who did 30-second sprints mixed with four-minute rest periods for 30 minutes had the same improvements as those who biked at a moderately intense pace for more than 90 minutes.
Trails top survey on home amenities
Four months ago when Shanon Blackburn decided to relocate from Kern County and purchase a house in Irvine's Woodbury development, one of the amenities that influenced her the most was the area's proximity to trails. "It's a tremendous plus," said Blackburn, 55, a junior high math teacher, who will move into her Four Quartets townhome in May. "I'm looking forward to walking, biking and being outdoors." Blackburn is one of a growing number of homebuyers who want to be close to nature. According to the National Association of Homebuilders, the most desired amenity of prospective buyers is walking and jogging trails over swimming pools and exercise rooms. The group surveyed people nationwide and found that trails were preferred 57 percent of the time. "Trails were No.
Let not the years condemn
Ask anyone who has competed in a fun run and there is every chance they remember the moment they were overtaken by a person in their 60s. As you clock up another birthday, it's not so much age that decides what you can and can't do, but how you've used your body in the preceding years. Pitted against a seasoned 50-year-old runner, an untrained, desk-bound person in his or her 20s is likely to run out of steam first, which is why exercise physiologists no longer pigeonhole people according to age. "We think in terms of a person's functional age - meaning how active they are and what they can do physically - rather than chronological age," says exercise physiologist Chris Tzar, who is the manager of the Lifestyle Clinic at the University of NSW's faculty of medicine. There are few physical activities that chronological age stops us from doing, he says - it's more about identifying health problems or factors that increase the risk of injury and getting expert advice to help you exercise safely.
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