health fitness

5 Ways to Ease Sore, Stiff Hips

While the hips are often overlooked by fitness-minded individuals looking to tone areas like the abs and glutes, they provide a vital foundation for many of the most common movements we make each day. Consider walking, bending over to pick something up or climbing a set of stairs — all involve adequate hip flexibility and range of motion. Whether you’re heading out for a jog or simply loading your kid into the car seat, poor hip mobility and mechanics can cause unnecessary pain and stiffness, thereby limiting a whole lot of common activities.

Consider low back pain, for instance. Research suggests most people suffer from it at some point in their lives. Interestingly, hip range of motion, or rather the lack thereof, has been linked to low back pain. What’s more, studies have also attributed patellofemoral pain syndrome to hip instability. Also known as “runner’s knee,” this is one of the most common running and walking injuries.

Whether you have a regular exercise routine already or are thinking about jumping into one, you’ll want to consider the health of your hips as you move forward. Try doing these five exercises 2–3 times per week, and you’ll notice a difference not only in workouts but also in everyday life.

1. Spiderman Stretch

This move will help stretch your hip flexors, which are essential to the flexion of the hip joint. Assume a push-up position, supporting your weight on your toes and the palms of your hands. Pick up your right foot and step it forward, planting it on the outside of your right hand. Hold for 3–5 seconds, flexing slightly forward to enhance the stretch. Return your foot to its original position, and repeat on the other side. Alternate sides 3–5 times.

2. Cross-Legged Forward Fold

This stretch gets at the back of the hips and glutes to open up your hips. Sit on the floor in a cross-legged position, with one ankle crossed in front of the other. Sit up straight with good posture, ensuring that your butt bones (or sit bones) are directly beneath your torso. Reach your arms out in front of your body as you lean forward to stretch toward the floor. Fold over as far as is comfortable, hold for 10 seconds and sit back up. Repeat 5 times.

3. Leg Swings

Leg swings help improve hip mobility, as well as train proper movement patterns. Start with forward leg swings to help mobilize your hip joint. Simply stand next to a wall for balance, and swing your right leg forward out in front of your body and then back behind your body. Keep your leg straight as you do this, and avoid swinging past the point of comfort. After repeating with both legs, switch to the sideways variety. Similar to forward leg swings, simply swing the right leg toward the left, sweeping your foot across the front or your body, and then back to the right. Repeat 15 times in each direction on each leg.

4. Walking Hip Stretch

This is another great active stretch. Walking forward, every two steps, alternate pulling either your right or left foot up toward your waist with the bent knee rotated outward. Hold for 1 second, and plant that foot back on the ground as your step forward. Repeat 10 times on each side.

5. Yoga Squat

This move is good for not only for hip mobility but also for loosening up the lower back and hamstrings. With feet shoulder-width apart and toes slightly pointing outward, squat your backside down as far as possible. Place your palms on the floor in front of you, and straighten your legs until you’re in a forward fold. Squat back toward the ground, and slowly raise your body upward to the original position. Repeat 10 times.

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Zucchini-Hummus Chicken Wrap

This hassle-free wrap makes healthy eating easy. Simply slather a heap of hummus onto a big whole-wheat tortilla, and pile on the fresh ingredients! These keep well in the fridge, so you can make them in advance for on-the-go lunches, or cut them in half for party appetizers.

Zucchini-Hummus Chicken Wrap

Ingredients

1 cup (5 ounces or 140 grams) shredded boneless, skinless rotisserie chicken breast
1/4 cup (40 grams) crumbled feta cheese
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano
1/2 teaspoon coarse black pepper
2 medium zucchini (10 ounces or 390 grams)
1/2 cup (120 grams) plain hummus
4 (10-inch or 60 grams each) whole-wheat tortilla
2 cups (60 grams) spinach
1/4 cup (30 grams) thinly sliced red onion
1/4 cup (40 grams) sliced roasted red pepper

Directions

Stir together chicken, feta, oregano and pepper in a large bowl. Set aside.

Slice ends from zucchini, and cut lengthwise into thin ribbons using vegetable peeler or mandolin.

Spread 2 tablespoons hummus on each tortilla. Divide spinach and zucchini equally over hummus. Divide chicken mixture, onion and roasted red pepper equally among tortillas. Roll tightly; wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Nutrition Information

Serves: 4 | Serving Size: 1 wrap

Per serving: Calories: 248; Total Fat: 8g; Saturated Fat: 3g; Monounsaturated Fat: 2g; Cholesterol: 38mg; Sodium: 556mg; Carbohydrate: 16g; Dietary Fiber: 13g; Sugar: 3g; Protein: 18g

Nutrition Bonus: Potassium: 172mg; Iron: 11%; Vitamin A: 35%; Vitamin C: 28%; Calcium: 13%

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Health at Every Size: What Does “Healthy” Really Look Like?

People seek weight loss as a means to improve health and reduce their risk of chronic disease. But, does looking skinny really equate to better health? An emerging body of research is actually suggesting quite the opposite. Glenn Gaesser, PhD, an exercise physiologist and author of “Big Fat Lies: The Truth about Your Weight and Your Health,” says “the number on the scale may be a poor predictor of health as it fails to consider cardiovascular fitness, physical activity and diet.” That is: Being fit and fat can be healthier than being skinny and out of shape, aka “skinny fat.”

The Link Between Weight & Health
As they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Just because someone is overweight doesn’t mean their health is at risk. In fact, according a review by Linda Bacon, PhD, author of “Health at Every Size,” except in extreme cases, body mass index “only weakly predicts longevity.” Her review discovered that most studies following large groups of participants over many years “find that people who are overweight or moderately obese live at least as long as normal weight people, and often longer” with the greatest longevity in the overweight category.

New research has revealed yo-yo dieting or weight cycling to be associated with increased markers of inflammation, high blood pressure, low HDL (the “good” cholesterol) and premature death from heart disease. Obesity may not be the underlying cause of disease, as traditional medicine and health policy suggest. Diet quality, exercise and sleep habits have more impact on health than weight. Instead of fighting the war on fat, focus your efforts on eating healthy, being active and forming good sleep habits.

“Diet quality, exercise and sleep habits have more impact on health than weight.”

The Alternative to Weight-Centric Goals
The alternative approach to weight-centric health goals looks at health holistically and through a different, body-positive lens, which can be very motivating for many people. The Health at Every Size movement promotes weight acceptance and addresses the stigma and cultural obsession with weight that makes it challenging for many people to be healthy. Some experts even believe that the focus on fat and obesity is making the population more obese. How? Research has shown a potential relationship among weight stigma, emotional eating and poor self-esteem.

Shifting the paradigm in how we view weight can be an effective way to encourage small tweaks to lifestyle that makes health even more achievable. This doesn’t mean that you can throw in the towel, sit on the sofa and eat potato chips all day long. The Health at Every Size approach is about being the best person you can be no matter what you weigh. It’s about seizing the day and working toward health — physically and emotionally. Instead of making weight loss the goal, allow it to be a side effect of a healthier lifestyle.

If you want to challenge the status quo and face these weighty issues head on, find further reading about the Health at Every Size movement at LindaBacon.org, or check out Gaesser’s book, “Big Fat Lies.”

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How to Enjoy All Foods Without Guilt

My absolute favorite food in the world is pasta. White-flour-based, gluten-filled pasta. That’s right, a food with virtually no health benefits and a nightmare for anyone with a wheat allergy or sensitivity. I continue to admit it loud and proud—pasta is my love and my Achilles’ heel.

Now, consider this: I’m sitting at a restaurant, famished, and I flip the menu open to be faced with two dramatically different choices. On one page they’re featuring the daily special: delicious pasta! A mountain of noodles swimming in one of my favorite sauces accompanied by nothing green or of any sort of nutritional value. The flip page offers me something quite different—steamed kale, lentils, no sauce. Straight-up medicinal food that will fuel me, nourish me, and make me feel complete, yet …

The pasta! The pasta will make my belly sing for joy, beg for more, ask to be whisked away to Italy where we can live happily ever after. Meanwhile the kale and lentils are wooing me with their health benefits, and I know I’ll digest them well. The pasta might make me feel fat and bloated, but the kale still can’t hold a candle to it. Do I want to stay healthy or go all out? Do I behave and eat the kale, or is it okay to splurge and have the pasta? This debate continues in my mind until the waiter arrives at the table, at which point I gaze up with confused doe eyes. To be healthy or not to be healthy — is that the question? Here’s my answer: Order the freakin’ pasta.

Our lives are short and sweet, and how tragic would it be if you ordered the kale only to get hit by a car on your way home with your last thought being, Why didn’t I order the paaaaasssstaaaa?!

I want you to be a warrior of health, but I want you to balance that out with being a warrior of balance and love. Eating a bowl of pasta (or whatever your favorite food is) bears no shame. Our taste buds exist to be awoken and tantalized! Food provides a symphony of flavors to experience, remember, and relish. When you order or prepare your favorite food, you’re treating your belly, heart, and soul. It’s a simple treat to reward your body for showing up every day and allowing you to function properly. This is how I want you to view food—as the beautiful gift that it is. Clearly, food is here to nourish us and keep us alive. I also believe we can use it as medicine — to heal our bodies naturally and fully. I also view food as a platform to create friendships, bonds, and alliances, and as an unspoken way to share joy, passion, and love.

How You View Your Food

A huge number of food neuroses come from the emotions we project onto food. I joke about my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde conversation over pasta versus kale, but this isn’t as uncommon as you might think. We’re taught that certain foods will make us fat, while others will make us skinny. Once you have this association with foods (think of words like fat, oil, butter), you steer far away from them so as to not experience the guilt of crossing over onto the dark side. It always feels good to plow into a pint of ice cream, but afterward we often sit remorsefully rubbing our soft (but happy) bellies.

My question is this: What if we could eat food without regret? What if we could drop the labels associated with certain types of food and just view them as experiences? When you associate a specific food with negativity and fear, it takes on that energy. For example, if you want to eat a chocolate chip cookie, but your guilty conscience is weighing you down, it will be a horrible experience. You’ll eat the cookie, crying on the inside, knowing each bite will add an unwanted bulge somewhere. At this point, what’s the purpose in even eating the cookie? There’s no enjoyment, just judgment and pain, when all you wanted was the simple pleasure of eating a cookie.

This negativity infuses the food, and this attitude (whether we’re convinced we can’t eat something or that a bite of something will send us off the deep end) makes us physically and emotionally sick. We have the power to change this by altering the way we look at food. You can sit down with that cookie and realize with a knowing smile that this cookie might be one of the highlights of your day. All those small little chips of chocolaty goodness are going to give your belly a hug. They might even throw a dance party in your stomach once they get there. Point being, it’s going to rock. Next thing you know, you’ve eaten a “bad” food with a loving attitude, and guess what? You feel fine. Actually, you feel great. Guilt-free, satisfied, and satiated.

My caveat to this would be don’t live off a steady diet of cookies. It’s still crucial to eat smart and to have balance in everything that you do. There’s the famous joke, “I do everything in moderation, except moderation.” While this always puts a smile on my face, moderation is key. You’re out to dinner — order some pasta. Special occasion — have the cake. Celebrating — drink up! Day-to-day basis? Be smart. Eat organic non-processed foods. Choose colorful foods full of nutrients to heal and fuel your body. Want a glass of wine (or two) with your beautiful, nutritious meal? Cheers to your health and sweet, sweet balance.

Get inspired with Kathryn Budig’s book Aim True, and learn to love your body, eat without fear, and discover true balance. Enter here for a chance to win her book or order now.

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Pork Cutlets with Butternut Squash

Cooking Light’s pork cutlets with butternut squash is a simple and satisfying dish that’s sure to please the entire family. Butternut squash and dried cranberries balance out the hearty pork tenderloin by adding sweetness and fiber. If you don’t have butternut squash on hand, easily swap it out for sweet potato.

Pork Cutlets with Butternut Squash

Ingredients

3 cups cubed butternut squash
1 cup dried cranberries
1 (1-pound) pork tenderloin, trimmed and cut into 12 thin medallions
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon olive oil, divided
1 cup unsalted chicken stock
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium Granny Smith apple, peeled and chopped
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Directions

Place squash and cranberries in a microwave-safe dish. Add water to a depth of 1/4 inch; cover with plastic wrap. Microwave on high 7 minutes; drain.

While squash cooks, place a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle pork with 1/2 teaspoon salt and black pepper. Place flour in a shallow dish; dredge pork in flour. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons oil to pan; swirl to coat. Add half of pork; cook 2 minutes per side. Transfer cooked pork to a platter. Repeat with remaining oil and pork.

Add chicken stock to pan; cook until liquid is reduced by half, stirring occasionally.

Melt butter in a separate skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion, apple, sugar and red pepper to pan, and toss to coat; sauté 4 minutes. Add squash, cranberries and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt; toss and remove from heat. Pour pan sauce over pork, and serve with squash mixture; garnish with chopped parsley.

Nutrition Information

Serves: 4 | Serving Size: 3 pork medallions + 2 tablespoons sauce + 1 cup squash mixture

Per serving: Calories: 379; Total Fat: 9g; Saturated Fat: 3g; Monounsaturated Fat: 3g; Cholesterol: 81mg; Sodium: 310mg; Carbohydrate: 45g; Dietary Fiber: 4g; Sugar: 25g; Protein: 27g

Nutrition Bonus: Potassium: 498mg; Iron: 8%; Vitamin A: 231%; Vitamin C: 43%; Calcium: 6%

Find more low-calorie dinner meals like this from the new Cooking Light Diet, where you can lose weight without giving up the foods you love. Learn more at CookingLightDiet.com.

Follow Cooking Light on Facebook for daily recipe inspiration.

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Your Guide to Decoding Common Fitness Class Lingo

Do you ever find yourself confused during a workout class? You’re not alone—even though it may seem like everyone else knows what the teacher means by, “engage your abs,” and “tuck your pelvis.” Understanding Self these, and other common fitness phrases, will help you avoid injuries and get the most out of your exercise routine every time.

Thankfully, most of them are as simple as they sound. We spoke with a handful of trainers to uncover exactly what these common fitness class phrases actually mean. Get to know them, and you’ll be ready to crush it during your next workout.

1. Engage your abs.
According to Flywheel master instructor Holly Rilinger this is a simple reminder to contract your core. To do it, tighten your abs by pulling your navel in. “Bringing your focus to your center and contracting your abs helps create stability and a foundation for better movement,” she explains. Plus it will help keep you balanced.

2. Tighten your quads in plank.

plank

Maskot / Getty

Planks are great for your core, but when you do them properly they engage way more than just your abs muscles. To master this move, The Fhitting Room instructor Simon Lawson tells us you must first straighten your legs so there is no bend in your knees. Then, tighten the muscles in the upper front part of your legs, he explains. This ensures that you’re engaging the muscles of your legs as well as creating a solid, rigid plank with your body.

Doing this will keep you stable and, according to trainer Thea Murphy of DavidBartonGym. “By tightening your quads, you are allowing all of your lower muscle groups to engage and help hold the weight of your body,” she explains. “If one muscle group is lagging, other muscles will have to work harder.” And planks are already tough enough.

3. Push your shoulders down.
“We carry a lot of stress in our upper body,” says Rilinger. “When you tense up your shoulders it causes you to waste energy.” Keeping your shoulders low is an easy way to conserve that precious energy during tough workouts. And, according to Murphy, it’ll help ward off injury. How do you know if your shoulders are inching upwards? Well, first try raising your shoulders as close to your ears as possible. Now try not to do that during your workout. Instead, think about pushing them down, making your neck as long as possible as well as rolling them back, to help open your chest.

4. Chin up.
Positive mantra connotations aside, keeping your chin up during a workout is essential. Murphy tells us that during most strength workouts you want to have a neutral alignment with your neck. When your chin is “tucked down towards the chest, it puts stress on the neck and does not allow for proper breathing,” she explains. The fix is simple, just lift your chin and aim for a relaxed, straight neck. “You are allowing for easier breathing and proper form,” she adds. If you frequently find yourself short of breath while exercising, this may be just the trick you need. Don’t jut the chin out or force it up, either. The goal here is to keep your spine long and aligned from head to toe.

5. Hinge at your hips.

squat

HeroImages / Getty

Often heard during exercises like good mornings, kettlebell swings, or deadlifts, this technique will ensure the muscles of your posterior chain—which include your calves, hamstrings, and lower back—are getting worked, explains Lawson. To master the hinge movement, start standing and place your hands on top of your hip bones. Before you bend your knees, keep your spine long and push your hips back a few inches so that your butt is sticking out. Then, if you’re doing a squat, start to bend your knees to lower your butt toward the floor. And don’t forget to keep your weight in your heels!

Related: 50 Amazing Butt Exercises

6. Root through the ground.
Though you may be a master of all things downward dog, this common cue isn’t quite as clear. According to New York City based yoga instructor Lauren Taus, when it comes to following this instruction, it’s all about your mentality. “When you hear your teacher say this, they are asking you to be mindful of any body part that’s making contact with the ground,” she explains. By consciously activating your muscles at the base, she explains that you’re, “creating the structural integrity to grow tall, grounded, and secure in your practice.”

7. Tuck your pelvis.
This is something you’ve probably heard in all your classes, and for good reason. Murphy explains that this technique helps engage abdominal muscles and protect the lower back from pain or injury. Check your form by “placing your hands on your waist, and practice a neutral stance. Then lift the belly in and up to tuck the tailbone,” Taus says. This way your pelvis is directly under your torso.

8. Stand in neutral position.
“A neutral stance is somewhat of a misnomer since most of our bodies are not fully symmetrical,” explains Taus. But this cue is intended to bring awareness to your alignment—you want to have your joints stacked one on top of the other, she explains.

Related: 10 Yoga Poses For Beginners

To do this in mountain pose—a standing position that focuses on alignment—she explains that you simply, “stack the joints by aligning ears over shoulders over hips over knees and finally over ankles,” to the best of your ability. Nailing this technique will help solidify your yoga practice. “When you move into more advanced shapes like handstand, you’re simply flipping the geometry and finding a clean, stacked line,” she says.

9. Square your hips.

yoga

Klaus Vedfelt / Getty

Squaring your hips is a common phrase you hear during yoga class, and it’s simply another way to cue a neutral stance. Taus says it’s when “you can place your hands on your hips and make sure that BOTH hip points are pointing straight ahead of you.”

During Warrior I and III poses, when square hips are especially difficult to maintain, she advises all yogis to, “bring your hands to your waist and make sure that both hip bones are pointing in the same direction like parallel lines.”

—By Audrey Bruno

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Short on Time? Squeeze in a Run With These 6 Tips

Time constraints are one of the biggest barriers to exercise. Sure, it’s easy to think of working out as a “luxury” when your boss is breathing down your neck, the kids need to be shuttled to their activities and the house is a mess. But when you consider what’s at stake — your physical and mental health — it’s clear that exercise should be a priority.

Fortunately for runners, your activity of choice happens to be one of the easiest to squeeze in even when time is short. It doesn’t require special equipment or a fancy gym — just a good pair of shoes and a sweat-worthy ensemble. The key to fitting your running routine into your busy life is to remove obstacles that stand in the way. By eliminating logistical hurdles and employing clever time-management strategies, you’ll find that even the busiest running enthusiast can fit in a workout most days of the week. Here are a few tips to help you hit the ground running.

1. Always Come Prepared
Discovering you have an unexpected hour of downtime between appointments — only to realize you don’t have your running shoes handy — is the worst. While sporting activewear 24/7 often gets a bad rap, it’s one of the easiest ways to ensure you’re ready for a run at any given moment. If your schedule is unpredictable, consider donning your running duds instead of, say, jeans and a sweater. If you have a job that requires a more formal ensemble, have a running bag at the ready in your car or stash one at your office. This may mean keeping a separate pair of shoes and clothes at work and home so you don’t ever find yourself without when you’re ready to run.

2. Emphasize Quality over Quantity
There is no such thing as “junk mileage” when it comes to fitting workouts into a busy schedule. Something — even a 20-minute run — is better than nothing. If you find you’re short on time, consider ramping up the intensity to get more bang for your buck.
Research has found similar benefits related to muscle health and exercise performance when comparing sprint interval training to traditional endurance workouts. These results are particularly notable when you consider the fact that the sprint interval group spent 2.5 hours working out over the course of the two-week study, while the endurance group spent 10.5 hours. Simply put, when you up the intensity of some of your runs, you can build fitness in less time.

3. Get Creative with Commuting
As anyone who has sat in rush-hour traffic knows, commuting can be a time suck. If you live close to work, consider running to and/or from the office. A growing number of employers support healthy habits by doing things like providing shower facilities and bike racks.
There are also plenty of other opportunities for swapping four wheels for running shoes — to do errands, for instance. Instead of taking 15 minutes to drive to the drugstore to pick up a prescription, why not run there? Or try running an extended loop that ends at the supermarket, then walk home with your essentials. That dwindling supply of milk may just provide the perfect excuse for you to get out the door.

4. Get Social
Exercise and social lives are both prone to falling to the bottom of the priority list, so combining them allows you to kill two birds with one stone. Next time you’re talking to friends about meeting up for happy hour or dinner, suggest a run instead. Not only will this allow you to catch up on each other’s lives, studies (have shown that people tend to perform better and perceive exercise to be easier when they are working out with a buddy.

5. Involve the Kids
When it comes to finding time to run, parents with young children are one of the groups who struggle the most. This is why recruiting your little ones to come along for the ride can be a great way of squeezing in a quick workout. Whether this means getting a jogging stroller or having older kids bike beside you, the effort is well worth the payoff. What’s more, you will be directly modeling healthy behavior that your kids will likely adopt. Indeed, research has shown a strong link between the activity levels of moms and their kids. So while it may be more effort to bring the little ones along for your morning jog, you can rest assured you’re doing something good for everyone involved.

6. Plan Ahead
If you want to commit to exercise for the long term, research says it’s important to schedule it. The act of planning a run ahead of time puts you on track to actually complete the workout — more so than simply telling yourself you’ll get it in at some point during the day. This means sitting down for a few minutes once a week or every evening and looking at when you’ll actually have time to run in the coming days. By scheduling a run the same way you would a work meeting or doctor’s appointment, you’ll be less likely to allow other obligations to get in your way.

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