We have all heard of a type if not a number of therapies that are available; some are quite commonly known; others may appear a bit far fetched.

It can be a minefield knowing what we need and which therapy to explore to improve our health, well-being, and mindset.

More now than ever, people are turning to therapies as an enhancement of their being.

Here is a chance to overview 7 therapies that cover improving health, wellbeing, and mindset.

1. CBT – Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is known as talking therapy. This therapy helps you manage your problems by changing the way you think and behave. It is regarded to help anxiety and depression, mental and physical health problems. The concept is that your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and actions are all interconnected, and negative thoughts and emotions, feelings can trap you in a vicious cycle.

2. Acupuncture

Acupuncture is seen as an alternative medicine (Traditional Chinese Medicine) in which needles as thin as a cat’s whisker are inserted into the body. Most commonly used to treat pain and used for overall wellness, including reducing stress. Acupuncture examines the flow of energy around the body and uses specialised techniques to improve or correct problems that have caused disorders, pain, or illness.

3. Yoga

Yoga may not be regarded as therapy as such; however, the health benefits are high. There are various schools of yoga, including hot, Bikram, Hatha, and vinyasa, all, however, increases flexibility, muscle strength and tone, energy, vitality, and balanced metabolism. Its main components focus on posture and breathing to boost physical and mental wellbeing.

4. NLP – Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Neuro-Linguistic Programming is understanding how people organise their thinking, feeling, language, and behaviour to produce results.
Neuro – relates to how you have formed your mental map of the world – how you see it.
Linguistic – is the personal meaning linked to the information you have received from the outside world; this is in the form of feelings, tastes, and smells.
Programming – is the behaviour from the filtering process of how you see the world. It has been applied as a therapy for phobias, depression, and anxiety.

5. Reflexology

Reflexology is applying different pressure to the hands, feet, and ears on the theory that certain points are connected to specific organs and body systems. The idea that applying pressure to these points can reduce pain, anxiety, promote circulation, relaxation, and healing of the body.

6. Mindset Coaching

Mindset Coaching is an inside out approach, the rewiring of the mindset from negative disempowering thoughts to positive, achievable actions. The coach avoids giving advice or solving problems as the client has the solutions in the subconscious; it is the process of question and dissolving mental blocks, which then enables the person to get clear on what they want, gain a new perspective, and the ability to reframe their thoughts.

7. Meditation

Meditation is not about emptying the mind, but bringing an awareness and getting a healthy sense of perspective, observing your thoughts and feelings with detachment. It increases calmness and relaxation, improves psychological balance, and coping with illness, and enhances overall health and well-being. It is making the connection between the mind, body, brain, and behaviour.

What should you be interested in depends on what you want to get out of it and your end goal, be it health or a general improvement of well-being, or maybe you want to achieve a deeper understanding of yourself?

Whatever your desire is, there is certainly a whole chocolate box of therapies to choose from; however, do your research, ask questions, and have fun exploring what is on offer.

Weight loss is a topic many people struggle with. Whilst it may be easy to diet for a week or two; you cannot keep this up forever. The idea behind losing weight is to have a solid plan and lifestyle change that you can stick with.

Weight Loss Ideas

The only way to lose weight is through a calorific deficit. In summary, the deficit is consuming fewer calories than you burn. When this happens, the body will begin to burn its fat as there is no more food left in your body to burn.

In general, to lose 1kg of weight, you must reduce the deficit by 1000 calories. So if you were to cut your meal sizes by 500 calories for 20 days, this would lead to approximately a 1kg weight loss. This may not sound like a lot, but remember, weight loss is a marathon and not a sprint. There is no point cutting weight, only to put it back on right away.

So in summary, there are 2 ways to lose weight:

• Eat Less Calories Than Normal Burn More Calories Than Normal
• or, Eating Less

Everyone could do themselves a favor and eat healthier. However, whilst this would improve your internal health. If your calorie intake remained the same, you would just become a healthier version of yourself- being the exact same weight. This is why the aforementioned calorific deficit is needed.

One of the more common ways in the modern age is to go on a Ketogenic diet plan. Whilst this is called a “diet,” you can actually stick to this for life if needed as your body does not have to rely on carbohydrates for energy. If you do not eat carbs, your body will take approximately 2 days to reach ketosis. After this time, your body will begin to burn fat and create ketones, rather than rely on carbohydrates for energy. As your fat is being burned instead of bread, pasta, or rice, you will begin to lose weight.

Burning More

Burning more calories is done by exercising. Ideally, exercise should be a habit and something you enjoy. This way, you will continually do it and not think of it as just a way to lose weight.

One study found that in a single 1.5-hour session of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a man was able to lose 872 calories. This is really quite a lot of burn, considering an average male needs 2500 calories per day. The recommended calorie intake for a woman is just 2000 calories. Although this makes sense since women generally have considerably less muscle mass.

Another study found that you can burn 50-150 calories (depending on your starting weight) from walking just 1 mile. Whilst this is quite considerably less than going to the gym and doing high-intensity exercise. It would still make a difference if you were to walk to work, for example. If we average the numbers to the reason you will burn 100 calories per mile, walking 1 mile to work for a month would burn 3000 calories. This is approximately a 0.4kg weight loss and would also improve your general health.

Final thoughts

Although many people still often link weight loss to working out, it should also be added that losing weight relies massively on losing calories through a healthy diet.

For instance, you can lose calories that can be achieved by running or swimming, which are great forms of cardio. However, making simple replacements in your diet, such as switching processed sugary snacks with natural sugar foods such as apples and bananas, will also lead to healthy, sustainable, and quick weight loss.

Remember, a large factor of weight loss depends on will power. It may be doable to lose weight for a couple of weeks based on the novelty of a new workout or diet.

However, it is several months in when things may become stale, and temptation kicks in. With this in mind, it’s important to stay focused on your task – whether that relies on cardio or diet to lose weight, you need some form of will power.

In conclusion, if you follow the above guidelines, then you should be able to lose weight in a happy and healthy way. Whilst it’s important to be able to successfully lose weight if desired, you should also be content whilst doing it and avoid being miserable for the sake of creating a calorie deficit.

Not only this, but you should also make sure the deficit is done correctly; for instance, if you literally ate one apple a day, then you would lose weight.

However, this is also incredibly unhealthy and unsustainable. Because of this, a combination of a good, enjoyable but healthy diet and an exciting exercise regime is recommended if you are serious about losing weight in an efficient way.

Strength is how much force you can put out or how much weight you can lift. 

Endurance is how long or for how many repetitions you can sustain that strength.

On what women should focus more – building muscles or yoga?

They’re equally important. In order for your body to be well supported, you need a strong system of skeletal muscle and connective tissues to hold everything in place. But there is a balance between strong skeletal muscle and flexibility that is important in maintaining a healthy range of motion. Most people will have a natural tendency towards either strength (muscle building) or yoga (mobility and flexibility). Also, keep in mind that yoga can be strength building and stabilizing to a certain extent.

Best exercises for building muscle strength?

Compound movements are the best bang for the time-investment return. These are multi-joint movements that work for several muscle groups at once. Exercises like squats, pullups, deadlifts, and push-ups are examples of compound movements,

Tips for beginners in muscle building?

Work on strengthening stability muscles first. This helps protect the body from injury when performing dynamic movements and other exercises. Then work on correcting muscle imbalances so you don’t exacerbate any issues by over strengthening muscles that are already overactive. Once these first two steps are achieved, you can move through endurance, then muscle building.

The body is really good at adapting, so it’s always good to keep the body guessing or to surprise the body with new exercises. This can help prevent a plateau in your training and results.

Make sure to strike a balance in your muscle-building training with proper stretching, foam rolling, and recovery.

Fuel your body properly, try to get all of your macros and micros from your food and invest only in the supplements that are really needed.

How does building muscle help lose weight?

It costs more for the body to maintain muscle, so building muscle increases the body’s metabolic rate. The more muscle you have the more calories you burn, even at rest.

And obviously, if you maintain a workout routine, you’ll be burning more calories than if you were sedentary.

The more work you put in, the better your results will be. Just don’t over train.

What mistakes or things one should remember When building muscles?

Resist the urge to go right into hypertrophy (muscle building) training. Make sure to work stability and correct imbalances first. 

Training with an improper diet won’t yield the best results.

Free weights, cables, and bands are great because they take the stability assistance out of the equation and also provide force in the negative of a movement (an example of a negative is the lowering motion in a push-up).

Building muscle takes a lot of time. Be patient and don’t try to take shortcuts.

How does increasing muscle mass increase metabolism  

Muscle mass requires more energy for the body to maintain, so increasing your muscle mass will increase your resting metabolic rate or the rate at which your body burns energy at rest.

Muscle strength is essential for good health. And, striving to gain muscle strength becomes increasingly vital as your age and start to gradually lose muscle mass and gain fats.

A 2014 study conducted at the University of California reveals that Muscle mass correlates with lifespans. In the study, researchers followed 4000 healthy adults for over a decade. The findings were clear; those with the highest muscle mass enjoyed the longest lifespans and vice versa. This correlation remained even after the traditional disease markers had been accounted for. The study also revealed that muscle strength is a more reliable predictor of early death than obesity.

Besides, having strong muscle improves your cardiovascular health, cardiorespiratory fitness, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol levels and reduces the risk of cancer, diabetes, mild depression, and joint pain.

Here is what you need do to gain muscle strength and forestall the age-related decline:

1. Conduct Multi-Joint Exercises

The most effective way of building lean muscle mass is through performing multi-joint (compound) resistance training exercises like pull-ups, bench press, squats, and lunges.

You can build muscle through other types of exercises, but you should first create a strong foundation through multi-joint efforts. Besides, research shows that compound exercises spur the highest upsurge in testosterone levels.

2. Increase Weights Gradually

For your muscles to grow further, you need to challenge them. However, you should be prudent when increasing the weight you lift. If you increase weight too slowly, your gains will plateau. If you do it too fast, you’ll increase your likelihood of getting injuries. Therefore, you need to strike a balance. If your last reps feel like your first reps, it’s time to shift to a heavier weight.

3. Include Low-Weight High-Rep Exercises in Your Regimen

Lifting heavy weights and engaging in explosive exercises such as sprinting impact your first-twitch (type II) muscle fibers. Research, however, shows that slow-twitch (type I) fibers (the type that your body relies on during endurance activities like running a marathon) great growth potential.

Ensure that you on work building them. Once a week, target your slow-twitch fibers by doing high-rep, low weight work (for instance, you can do 4 sets of 20 reps for each exercise).

4. Get Adequate Sleep

You should aim for seven to eight hours of sleep each day. If you don’t get adequate sleep regularly, you’ll accumulate sleep debt. Research shows that sleep debt can lead to an increase in protein/muscle degradation and limit protein synthesis/muscle growth.

Additionally, if you don’t get adequate sleep, you won’t be able to fully utilize the human growth hormones which spike during sleep.

5. Set Aside Time for Recovery

Muscles strengthen in between exercises. You should, therefore prioritize recovery. Dedicate at least one day of the week to rest and recovery.

Besides, avoid overtraining. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t push your body to the limit. But, you should limit intense training to about three days spread throughout the week – don’t do it back-to-back. If you push your body to its limit daily, your muscles won’t get a chance to recover and grow.

You can get the most out of your recovery days by engaging in light cross-training (for instance, cycling or hiking) and activities like yoga or foam rolling.

6. Include Carbs in Your Pre-Workout and Post-Workout Meals

In 2001, a study conducted by the University of Texas researchers revealed that weightlifters who drank a blend of carbohydrates and amino acids pre-workout improved their protein synthesis compared to those who took a similar drink after working out.

According to Dr. Kevin Tipton, a nutrition and exercise researcher who was part of the study, “Because exercise boosts blood flow to tissues, taking a carbohydrate-protein drink before your workout will likely improve the amino acid uptake in your muscles.”

Conversely, research reveals that you’ll rebuild your muscles faster during your downtime if you eat carbohydrate-rich meals. Carbs-rich post-workout meals increase insulin levels, and as a result, slow the rate at which your body breaks down protein. So have a peanut-butter sandwich, a banana, or even a sports drink after your workout.

7. Eat More Proteins

Amino acids are the building blocks of the body. If you don’t include enough protein in your diet, you won’t have enough nutritional resources to repair and build your muscle tissues.

You don’t need to overdo it, but if you’re striving to get stronger and to build muscle, here is a rule of thumb:

• Decide on the bodyweight you want to achieve. Then, for each pound of your target weight, eat 0.8 to 1 gram of protein. For instance, if your target weight is 160 pounds, the quantity of protein in your daily diet should range from 128 to 160 grams. Ideally, the protein should come from whole foods.

Studies reveal that including an adequate amount of proteins in your diet helps you to gain muscle strength as well as accelerates fat loss.

This works for both genders; women and men. Results of a clinical trial that included premenopausal women showed that those who combined a high-protein-diet with resistance training lost considerably more weight compared to those who only dieted or only exercised.

You can lose weight and build muscle with a wide range of diets, as long as they contain enough protein. Just talk to professionals and experiment to find what works for you.

In a Nutshell

Gaining muscle strength comes with immense health benefits. For you to gain or keep muscle strength, you should gradually increase the amount of weight you lift, focus on compound exercises, get adequate sleep, and include the right balance of carbohydrates and protein in your diet.