I know i haven’t posted in a little while but things have been rather quiet on the hair front as i keep it in twists over the winter.

But i have been trying to get fit this winter and have decided to do a post on the benefits of exercise and hair. So I’m going to be digressing a little from hair in the next few posts as i delve into the world of Health.

Benefits of Exercise To The Hair

Exercise is beneficial to the body for so many reasons and different exercises bring different benefits.

• Toning and resistance exercises strengthen the muscles and bones helping to keep your body nice and tight and your bones strong and healthy.
• Cardio/aerobic exercises help to strengthen the heart and cardiovascular system, reduce stress and flush out toxins from the body. They also increase blood circulation to carry more oxygen and nutrients throughout your system.

The benefits exercise has on hair is mainly the increase of blood circulation to the scalp which carries along with it vital nutrients to help promote healthy hair growth. If your body is sluggish and weighed down with toxins then you will feel the effects of it in the way you generally feel and will manifest in dull skin and slow hair growth. But getting your system moving through exercise will reverse these to give you nice clear skin and will help to maximise hair growth.

What I’ve Been Doing

Walking/Jogging

Last year summer i took up walking/jogging. Now i have to admit that my fitness level is quite atrociously low! I started out by walking to prospect park early in the morning which is about 1.2 miles in terms of distance from my house. So every day i walked to the park and back making it 2.4 miles. After a while my sister-in-law told me she was part walking – part jogging to help increase her fitness and help her reach her goal of jogging all the way to the park and back. I thought this was an excellent idea and so decided to walk part of the way and jog part of the way. Every day i would increase the amount of time i spent jogging until i jogged all the way to park and back.  Nevertheless winter came and it got dark. Now i know i should fear no evil but i believe in being wise. I jogged at about 5am in the morning so it was just way to dark outside for me to continue. And so exercise fell by the wayside.

Workout DVD’s

This winter i decided to take up the baton once more. I’m tired of the soft, pudgy belly and cellulite-y bum and thighs. I’m tired of the jiggley arms and my overall level of unfitness. I can’t go to the gym because mine opens at 6.30am which is too late for me. I have three children and have to do the school run so the earlier the better.

I decided to buy some DVD’s to help me reach my goals. I browsed Amazon and finally bought three ‘10 Minute Workout’ DVD’s that focus on toning and trimming and one total body toner from ‘The Firm’. As you can see i’m focusing on toning mostly as i walk to and from my children’s school 3 times a day so i get plenty of cardio even though the DVD’s do cover some as well. I decided on the 10 minute workouts because they are split into five 10 minute sections so if you’re pressed for time you can still fit in something good. You can also mix and match the sections or do all 5 for a 50 minute workout session.

I’m trying to do them everyday, rotating the DVD’s and focusing on different parts of my body so as not to strain any one area. I’ll be doing them throughout the winter and into the spring/summer (hopefully). I hope to have a firmer, tighter body by then and to have lost my pregnancy belly!

After each workout i drink 1 large glass of water (about 500ml) with half a lemon squeezed into it. Lemon water has so many great benefits that i’ll write a quick post on that later.

Other Things I’m Doing

I’m adding other things to the mix to help raise and maintain my health. One of them is body brushing to help flush out my lymphatic system and the other is healthy eating. I’ll give these their own posts so i can talk more about them.

As for my hair, i’m still washing it once a week (mostly) as i’m not sweating ridiculously. If i feel the need to, then i’ll co-wash to get rid of excess sweat but i haven’t really needed to yet.

Stay tuned for more on health!