It seems everyone around here knows people who have lost sheds, fences, pets, animals and homes in the recent fires. Others have lost their livelihoods without a forseable return. It is only right that we at Healthfit are offering FREE SERVICE to those who have lost their house and/or livelihood until they get back on their feet sufficiently.   Exercise is very important for both physical and mental health.  Affected people are welcome to phone us on 4455 3063 to make a start on this promise.  AEP-designed programs, consultation and centre use are being offered.  Pass on the message if you think an affected person or family might benefit.

07 JAN Posted at 12:40h in Motivation & Goals by Exercise Right It’s a New Year, and for most of us, that means New Year’s resolutions. If you’re sick of hearing about making “SMART” fitness goals (cue eye roll), then this blog is for you. Accredited Exercise Physiologist, Deanna Niceski, gives you some practical tips that will actually help you to stick to your fitness goals and New Year’s Resolutions!

I’d sound like a broken record if I discussed SMART goals in this blog. We’ve all been going over that process since high school! But when setting your fitness goals, there are a few things that you do need to consider.
The key to any goal is painting a clear picture of what you want and why you want it. Think about all your deepest, burning desires… If you really want something bad enough, you’ll get there. So, let’s figure out what to consider when making your 2020 New Year’s Resolutions.

1. FIND YOUR WHY
Do you know why you want what you want? It’s important to really understand why you are doing something. Defining and recognising your values will help you through the process of achieving your goals. When you start with your why, your actions feel more important and therefore your adherence is greater.
This should be a priority and will help you crystallise your outcome. Before you get started ask yourself this question;

“What do you stand for and why do you want this?”.
“He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how” – Friedrich Nietzsche

2. DECISION MAKING
“The person who fails to develop their ability to make decisions is doomed because indecision sets up internal conflicts that can, without warning, escalate into all out mental and emotional wars.” – Bob Proctor
This might seem like common sense but becoming proficient at making decisions is the next step. An adult can make on average 35,000 decisions a day . We decide when we wake up, if we listen to the devil on our shoulder saying ‘5 more minutes’ or suck it up and jump out of bed. We decide what clothes to wear, what to eat and if we will go for a workout.
Remember, the buck stops with you and you have the power to change your actions.
Lastly, don’t forget that obstacles can and will create disruptions and you need to adjust your decision making around this. Just because you don’t hit the bullseye on the first go, doesn’t mean you have failed. Make the decision to try again!
“Failing does not make anyone a failure, but quitting does because quitting is a decision.”

3. IDENTIFY YOUR HEALTH PROMOTERS AND DISRUPTORS
Reflect on your current routines and break them up into productive actions and non-productive actions (or “promoters” and “disruptors”).

Promoters are physical, mental, environmental and lifestyle factors that contribute to enhancing your outcomes and goals. By identifying these we can establish a baseline to refer to whenever we need some motivation or to remember why we started. Think about when you implement and create a great sleep routine, it not only helps your body recover, but it also gives you energy for your day and helps with hormone regulation, a great health promoter.

Disruptors or inhibitors do the opposite. They slow and prevent our desired outcomes. These can include anything from work pressures, pain, anxiety, poor nutrition or leading a sedentary lifestyle.

4. THE HABIT LOOP
“You can’t extinguish bad habits; you can only replace them”. – Institute of Motion

A habit loop is made up of three essential parts: Reminder, routine and reward. This is a powerful tool to breakdown and understand the anatomy of a habit to create and change behaviour.

Reminder is a trigger or cue that initiates a habit. If we change our environment, we have a greater chance of changing our behaviour. It’s important to provide an atmosphere where external stimulus promote positive transformation and help in our achievement of reaching our goals. For example, switch a jar of cookies on your bench or at the office for a bowl of fruit or keep a foam roller or massage ball next to your desk or by your TV.

Routine is the automated behaviour created by our reminders that set into sequence regular actions that are repeated. Simply seeing the fruit or foam roller over time will force you into a habit of eating an apple a day or releasing those sore bits. This is creating healthy rituals within the loop.

Reward is when we start to see results and our habits are reinforced and begin to stick. The rewards are fuelled by our hierarchy of values. Who doesn’t love a good reward? By eating that apple instead of a cookie, you’ve lost 3kg. By frequently releasing the tension in your body you no longer have daily lower back pain… Winner!

5. FOCUS
Most times when we test our willpower, we can come off second best. This can get overwhelming, so to combat this, try and focus on one thing at a time and gradually build. Evidence suggests that sticking with creating or changing one habit at a time or selecting a habit that influences multiple behaviours at once are the best options.

Habits take up to 66 days to form , so don’t expect perfection and be kind to yourself. Life will always get in your way so keep it simple and stick to one thing at a time. You need to learn how to crawl before you can walk.

NEED A LITTLE EXTRA HELP?
If you’re struggling with your fitness goals, motivation or sustained behaviour change, it’s OK to ask for help. An accredited exercise professional can help you to create a plan and implement changes that you will actually stick to. To find a university-qualified exercise expert near you, click here.
Written by Deanna Niceski. Deanna is an Accredited Exercise Physiologist at Global Wellness Tracking.

We at Healthfit, Jude, Gregg, Patti, Sharon, Clair, Drew and Tess send our love and best wishes to all in these trying times. 
It is so saddening to hear tales of terror, destruction, displacement of people and animals that it is hard to think of anything else. The pause in the fires in our immediate vicinity has allowed me to think that what used to be normal in our daily lives is now going to have another edge to it for some time to come.
Many will have to rebuild property and finances, some will need to put off a well-earned retirement due to these needs.  Others will be busy supporting their families and friends in practical and emotional ways. The cost to the community overall is huge.  The toll on health and minds inestimable.  Those already affected by chronic disease may have added burden to contend with.
I just want to let you know that your wellbeing is at the forefront our minds here at Healthfit and our team will always treat you with compassion and practicality. Let’s look after each other. Stay well!

New Year Healthfit Centre Opening Hours
Closed from 4pm 23rd December 2019
Open for reduced hours 8.30 – 12.30am  Thu 2nd and Fri 3rd January 2020
Open for reduced hours 8.30 – 4pm Mon 6th to Fri 10th January
Normal hours and Daybreak circuit class from Monday 13th January

Gift vouchers
Plan ahead or do a last-minute gift decision to get a gift voucher for any of Healthfit’s exercise physiology, personal training or centre use services. Your gift may be a life-changer for your loved one.  We suggest though that this not be a surprise gift to ensure it is a keeper.  
New Decade. New You!
When we talk of the 20’s now it won’t refer to the art deco days of the 1920’s but to another period of constant change to our world and our lives.  Humans are clever at adapting to change in general. The pace of change is increasing so we have to keep up and this means keeping healthy.

Improving or even maintaining health is mainly dependent on:

• Eating healthily
• Good sleep
• Adequate physical activity
• Socialising
• Mental stimulation

Can you honestly tick off all these aspects?  Maybe some of them for some of the time is manageable in this busy decade. Optimal health is a dynamic state of being. It is something that most of us strive for and rarely ever fully achieve and this is because of its dynamic nature, ie, we cannot just tick them off and move onto the next item. It is a juggle with the other aspects of life that seem to have more urgency or priority and factors such as adequate sleep, satisfying socialising and time for sufficient exercise often suffer a reduction in our attention.

So, what do we need to do now to ensure our balance of health is beneficial and sustainable?  I feel that the first step is deciding what in your current lifestyle needs to change and when you determine to make a clear start on some new goals.

The next step is time management as this might have been the main problem to date. Look at your average weekly ‘commitments’ and decide if they are as important as previously thought or if you can make slight changes to suit and to gain back some strategic time blocks.

Maybe use a paper or electronic calendar that you can expand enough to include all weekly events including work, shopping, cleaning, children/grandchildren’s needs, regular clubs and dates, medical appointments, gym or outdoor exercise days and timeslots.  

You could then be even more incisive and allocate times to plan holidays or concerts and social events well ahead so you don’t miss out on having some fun and time for regeneration. 

What about times to focus on mental stimulation, working out when you are at peak intellectual ability, morning or evening? 

Meal planning is essential already in some busy households yet advance preparation for food shopping and cooking could be a great way for retirees to start on cleaning up your health habits.  Put it on the calendar or diary.

Sleep is rarely a calendar item as it is considered a routine thing that happens to most people every 24-hour cycle.  Apparently, we cannot really make up for lost sleep and it is best to wake at the same time every day, even on weekends. Planning for adequate sleep might feature on someone’s 2020 calendar since the demands on our time are ever-increasing whether by necessity or accident.

Time management is vital ‘going forward’ and there are many good sources of information on how to manage time effectively and not just for working people either. Those who have less-structured weekly lifestyles are often the most in need of managing their time for improvements to their health. The reason for this is the lack of perceived urgency, a lack of routine to work around and an attitude that any distraction is to be pursued so that boredom doesn’t affect them.

To revise this article so far:

1. Recognize important factors of staying healthy or improving one’s health
2. Decide what you need to change if health is important to you
3. Set some clear goals
4. Manage your time per daily and/or weekly cycles

 
Then there are two further steps which are the most important in this cycle of change:

1. Implementation
2. Adherence or ‘sticking to the new habits’

I’d love to have space in this article and for your attention span to describe what you can do to implement a health behaviour and persistently keep it up to feel a state of great wellbeing. However, the strategies will not be the same for everyone anyway. Yet if the seed has been planted for you to make the next decade of your life a healthier, happier one then get started on steps 1-4 and if the last two stages are still a major barrier come and see us at Healthfit for some expert advice in health and fitness.
We love to help people help themselves!
Gregg Orphin AEP AES 

When it comes to fitness and training it seems everyone is an expert either from their own experience or from what they’ve been told.  This has been the case forever but now we have the internet noise added to the mix. There are websites, blogs, social media pages and ‘fake news’ sources of information to either inform, advertise or possibly confuse the facts from fiction.
As it is for any field of knowledge we need to be able to have a sense of what is right or correct or factual and what is not.
Some clear examples of misleading claims and statements are evident on the television channels that are devoted mainly to infomercials and particularly those that promote fitness and health products like exercise equipment and skin care creams. The promoters of the product make claims that ‘research’ proves the efficacy of the product while a beautiful well-muscled model is demonstrating it’s use and sometimes with a ‘before and after’ photograph of them.  Even if they refer the watchers to a website for more conclusive proof one may find that their scientists are employed by the product manufacturer, hence have a conflict of interest.
Other television shows that seem more journalistic and are based on real science are also potentially misleading as they sometimes sensationalise a new fitness discovery which can distract us from the whole truth.  A clear example of this is the recent coverage of the benefits of High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT  for short.   Unless we listen very carefully and for the whole duration of the show we might miss the important points that although a person can get high cardiovascular fitness from very short periods of intense exercise (3x4 min) each week, they still need to firstly, have a good fitness base to start with and secondly, still have to warm up for 10 minutes at least in each session to prevent muscle strain or a dangerous cardiovascular event.
How do we then work out what’s true and factual amongst all the claims?
The internet can be the first place to look for well-researched and evidence-based information but you need to be trained in research methods then be able to decipher the jargonistic material and then make a decision whether it was strong evidence or not.  The usual requirement is a university undergraduate degree in a related field or have a way of finding summaries of meta-studies (overviews of many research papers done by very experienced researchers such as professors and their teams of students).
If just using a search engine like Google (not even Google Scholar) you are likely to see the first page taken up by popular articles and sites by companies selling their wares related in a vague way to the area you are interested in.  It doesn’t get much more specific or scientific in the next few pages of searching either. Books can be great but become outdated very quickly these days.
Allied health professionals are trained in providing evidence-based practice but also use clinical knowledge to provide the best treatment or education they can.  All have to do continuing professional development which means keeping on learning and staying up-to-date with new facts and methods. Keep in mind though that even this process has is misgivings as there is far more to learn than time to devote to it, yet if you want to separate fact from fiction AHPs are still among the best sources of information.   If what you need to know is important then probe deeply.

For most people, first impressions are powerful determinants of whether we are attracted to or not to another person, a place, an event, a book cover and so on.  Impressions of fitness centres can follow this rule of thumb too. The first walk in through the entrance can be confronting or on-the-other-hand, a comfortable, welcoming feeling.
At Healthfit we understand that the environment and ‘vibe’ is very important to prospective new exercisers and to those who have been attending for some time.  We understand also that there are many factors that have to be considered to get the environment just right and yet know that what is perfect for one person is not for another. For instance, some like to have music playing through our stereo while others prefer their own through earphones, and others to be exercising in the quiet. Some like to come when the atmosphere is busy, chirpy and socially engaging while others might have had a talkative day at work and just want to focus on their movements and breathing efforts in peace. The latter is more often the case in the afternoons at Healthfit Exercise Centre.  We do our best to adapt the temperature and airflow to suit who is in the centre at the time and yet cannot please everyone.  Most like it cool and therefore want the aircon on. 
We love the variety of ways our clients interact with and tolerate each other and it is facilitated by our friendly and sensitive team who are always on the lookout for our members’ comfort and safety.
It is heartening too that initially hesitant and maybe even nervous starters soon become accustomed to both their exercise program and the happy environment that they chose from first instincts to be their place of ‘getting fit’ and enjoying the process.  We hear from our centre users that their previous ideas about ‘gyms’ have changed and accept that our environment here is different and more inclusive.
Of course, our unique benefit is the qualified support and expertise of our staff and this will always be the number one reason that Healthfit has survived an onslaught of many new gyms and fitness centres in the area. We look out for you and are ready to update or upgrade your programs as soon as you need to.  And for those who definitely do not want to be active in a centre, home programs can be designed to suit and achieve your goals in a different way.
​

The amount and intensity of physical activity makes a difference.  Too much of either may lead to injury or illness. On the other hand, too little will produce minimal benefits and won’t slow the effect of ageing. 
Ultimate benefits or positive side-effects of physical activity depend on getting the mix right.
If you are doing the recommended minimum of 150 minutes of ‘moderate’ physical activity and 60-90 minutes of ‘vigorous’ exercise a week you will most likely have realised multiple benefits.  There is much more than just fitness to be gained from being physically active.  Health benefits for both your body and mind are well-documented and there are many.
Firstly, frequent activity often creates a feeling of wellbeing that in turn promotes happiness, a clearer mind, vitality and more energy for work and play. Mental processing seems to improve with adequate physical activity by increasing the flow of oxygen to the brain. There is strong evidence that this is the most important way to reduce the incidence of dementia.
Being more active enhances biorhythm or our own body clock to work better with improved sleep, regulated waking times and those other daily functions that are necessary for heath. There is a widening of lifestyle possibilities that results from improved stamina, strength, mobility and muscular endurance. By being fit we are able to participate in active recreation, enjoy holidays without restrictions and even socialise with more flair and interest.
The more obvious benefits of being sufficiently active are: improved resistance to disease; cardiovascular conditioning; vigour; stronger muscles but also bones, therefore less risk of osteoporosis; and a reduced incidence of diabetes and obesity. Did you know that the right dose and types of exercise can reduce the chance of cancer? Even sufferers of cancer can increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy by being active.
So, are you active enough to make a difference to your health, your life?
 
Gregg Orphin AEP AES
Accredited Exercise Physiologist
Healthfit Exercise Physiology Services
​