Interview with Angela Tiedemann and a Get Active Giveaway!
This week is National Women’s Health Week and every day this week I have been posting various tips from the Office on Women’s Health to help us all on the quest towards better health.
I can safely say that I saved the best tips for last, as today I am sharing with you an interview with Angela Tiedemann. She is a personal trainer, health coach, and Founder of an incredible organization called Four Legged Running. I asked Angela some of the most common questions health professionals get regarding getting active and she has shared some of her personal insights and professional experience with us!
We have also partnered to provide an incredible giveaway that will help you on your path to wellness! So read on to learn more about Angela, how you can get active, and of course, how you can win an awesome prize pack!
A little about Angela and Four Legged Running
Four Legged Running was started in order to combine Angela’s love of running and helping animal rescue organizations. FLR hosts virtual races for animal rescues in order to raise funds. Racer’s sign up, walk/run anywhere and anytime, post their results online, receive their finisher medal in the mail. When they sign up, $20 of their entry fee goes to the rescue group that they choose to race for! Four Legged Running gives people motivation to get out there and move whether you are new to racing 
Four Legged Running will also be hosting it’s first road race in Mascoutah, IL on November 12th. Sign up for a half marathon or 5k and $20 of your entry fee will be divided and donated to the 9 different animal rescues that FLR has teamed up with for virtual races. You’ll get some great race swag and be able to meet some great rescue animals at the finish line! Visit www.FourLeggedRunning.com for additional information on the road race and current virtual races!
And now for the good stuff!
Do you have any tips for finding time to get active?
Time is probably the biggest barrier when it comes to exercise! Almost everyone I talk to mentions that they just can’t find the time when it comes to exercise. I encourage anyone to try their best to get creative. Start with small bouts of exercise just to get into the habit – 10 minutes is better than 0 minutes of exercise.Try using your break at work to walk for 10 minutes, you can walk circles around the parking lot – you may even inspire your co-workers to get moving too.
Start your exercise goals on the weekends (or your days off of work). There is almost always at least 10 minutes of extra time on your days off. Do you find yourself watching TV to relax in the evenings? Spend at least one half hour show doing some exercises. I suggest using the first half hour so that you feel you have plenty of time to relax after.
I don’t want to pay for a gym membership – is there anything I can do to get active that doesn’t cost any money?
Absolutely! Walking, jogging, running is free. You can find great exercise routines on YouTube to follow. Other low cost options are fitness magazines, exercise DVDs, exercise books. You could even check out your library, you may be able to rent books and DVDs for free as well. I personally love exercise DVDs. As a certified personal trainer with a degree in exercise physiology, even I like to be told what exercises I need to do next. Plus you get to do it in the comfort of your own home, you don’t have to factor in drive time (when time is already an issue). Choose a program that looks fun to you, that way you are more likely to stick to it. DVDs always have modifications too, so you can start slow and progress with the DVD as you become stronger and more fit.
I’m pretty happy with my weight, so I don’t need to exercise, right?
Not true! I love anyone who is happy with their body weight and image, but we still need exercise in order to stay as health as possible. Exercise has so many additional benefits besides helping you lose weight. Exercise helps manage blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar. It can fight of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. Even if you do not have a family history of any of the above mentioned, age eventually becomes a risk factor for each of the above. So it is important to focus on prevention as early on as possible. As we age, we also naturally begin to lose muscle mass. Muscles are so important for every day tasks like carrying in groceries, playing with your kids or grand-kids, walking your really strong dogs! You can very easily combat that muscle loss by exercising regularly!
Running gets boring – what else can I do?
This is a great follow up question to my response above! Running is great for cardiovascular (heart) health and it does aid in building muscular endurance, but it is important to include all types of exercise in order to achieve optimum health benefits! That means you also want to include strength, flexibility, and balance exercises. Another great resource for finding free exercises is your smart phone! You can download all kinds of great apps to help teach you how to exercise. I suggest you look for a strength or personal training type app and a yoga or Pilates app. You may need to invest in a resistance band and or some weights as you get stronger, but there are a lot of body weight exercises you can start with to begin to increase your strength. Yoga and Pilates are excellent for working on both flexibility and balance!
How do I get/stay motivated?
This has to come from within yourself. You need to decide what changes you would like to make for your health and why you want to make them. Anyone can tell you what you should do, but until you are ready to make that change, you won’t. Sometimes it helps to have an external motivator – do you have a vacation or celebration coming up that you want to look strong and healthy for? That is great if it motivates you, but after that external factor is removed, you have to stay motivated.
Your personal health should be a motivator as well. Do you have a family history of and health conditions like blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes? Use healthy habits to combat each of those conditions. Exercise costs less than medication and treatments. Also give yourself a small goal to start with. Say that you will commit to exercise for one week. Often times, you’ll start to feel great even in that short period of time, so great that it motivates you to keep going! Focus on one day at a time too rather than constantly thinking about your long term goal.
How much activity do I need?
I always give the American College of Sports Medicine exercise guidelines. They suggest at least 5 days a week of at least 30 minutes of moderate activity for health benefits. If you are looking to lose weight you need to increase that to 60-90 minutes of activity. They suggest at least 2 days a week of strength training (targeting the major muscle groups on those days) and cardiovascular exercise on the other days. They also suggest working on your flexibility most days of the week. This can include your warm-up and cool-down stretching!
If you are not in any kind of a routine at all right now, you must start small and work your way up to these guidelines. I would suggest starting with 2-3 days a week of 10-15 minutes of exercise. It is ok if all you do is walk to start. This gets you into a habit of fitting exercise into your schedule. As that becomes easy, increase the duration or the frequency with which you exercise. As that becomes easy, start adding new types of exercise. Continue to build upon your routine every 2-4 weeks!
Someday I want to run a marathon, but I’m not sure where to start – any suggestions?
Start small!! I hated running and everything about it until one day I wanted to challenge myself to do something I didn’t like. I challenged myself to walk/jog one mile. That’s it – one mile! I did it and it wasn’t terrible, so the following week I tried for two miles. I continued this every week until I was jogging 10 miles. It felt so great to overcome something that I disliked that I actually began to enjoy it. I coupled this with other forms of exercise, so I was fairly fit to begin with.
For anyone who is not in a routine at all, I would suggest looking for a “beginner” training schedule. You can find some on my website for several different race distances. If you are just getting started, I would start with beginner in the shortest race distance for newbies and work your way up until you find a distance you enjoy. I have run 5 full marathons (26.2 miles) and while I can’t say that I “enjoy” the distance, I definitely enjoy the feeling after the race is over that I accomplished something very difficult. I much prefer the half marathon distance (13.1 miles), so I stick primarily with half marathons. Everyone is different – do what YOU love to do, not what others are doing just because they are doing it.
GIVEAWAY!
To help you put these tips into practice, Angela and I have partnered up on an awesome giveaway for you! You may enter up to 10 times via the options below! We will select and notify a winner on Friday, May 26.
The prize package we have put together includes:
- Free Virtual Race Entry
- Four Legged Running Swag
- Yurbuds Inspire 100
- The Bikini Body 28-Day Healthy Eating & Lifestyle Guide: 200 Recipes and Weekly Menus to Kick Start Your Journey by Kayla Itsines
- Fruit Infusion Water Bottle
- and MORE!
Good luck!!
