Benefits of Hula Hooping. Q&A

Can Hula Hooping help you lose belly fat?

If you hoop for 30 minutes, you'll burn 210 calories. The heart rates of research participants elevated to 84 percent of their maximum heart rate, sufficient for burningfat as fuel. To lose abdominal fat, calories must be burned. Hooping contributes to overall weight loss, including the extra fat across your core.

Is a hula hoop good for abs?

Fat Loss. While the claim that you can spot train to lose weight in one area is a myth, it is possible to lose fat wherever it is in excess on your body. Since working out with a Hula-Hoop is a very good aerobic exercise, it burns more calories than other ab-building anaerobic exercises.

What is a hula hoop good exercise for?

Using a hula hoop works your arm, leg and core muscles. Hula hooping is a total-body workout that not only tones your muscles, but also improves joint flexibility and balance. The rocking motion of hula hooping is also relaxing and fun, which can relieve stress.

Is a weighted hula hoop better?

In fact, any type of hula hooping, using a weighted hula hoop or a regular hula hoop, can help you meet your exercise goals and provide aerobic activity. And it can be fun! Weighted hula hoops are bigger and heavier than are traditional hula hoops. ... The weight of the hoop is up to you

What are the benefits of hula hooping?

Hooping will make you feel the (calorie) burn. Hooping has been proven to burn over 400 calories per hour by the American Council on Exercise, although thecalorie-burn from hooping may be as high as 600 calories per hour when other parts of your body, such as your arms and legs, are engaged

How many calories do you burn with a weighted hula hoop?

The American Council on Exercise (ACE) funded a study completed at the University of Wisconsin, and found that a 30 minute weighted hula hoop workout which consisted of hooping moves and twirling motions around the arms, waist, and legs burned roughly 7 calories per minute.

I Lost 85 Pounds By Hula Hooping

Cori Magnotta, 32, was the kind of person who couldn't stick with a workout routine. But faced with stubborn extra pounds after the birth of her son, she decided it was time to make a change. She lost 85 pounds in a year doing an exercise she loved: Hula-Hooping. 

When I was 5, Hula-Hooping was my party trick. I was really good at it. As I got older, I Hula-Hooped less and less and eventually joined the real world, put the hoop aside, and forgot about it.

I'm 6 feet tall and I've always struggled with my weight. I just didn't find working out fun. I would join a gym, go once, and never go back. When I was pregnant with my son, I developed preeclampsia, or high blood pressure, and had to be on bedrest for 2 months. Being sedentary contributed to my weight gain during my pregnancy. At my heaviest, I was 265 pounds. My son was a big baby—10 pounds!—so I attribute some of that to him. But I struggled with getting the rest of it back off. I developed hypothyroidism after my pregnancy, and my metabolism had slowed, making it easier to gain weight and that much more difficult to lose it.

In October 2014, I was down to 250 pounds, and I started searching the internet for fun workouts. I came across FXP Fitness, which uses a weighted Hula-Hoop in a routine that borrows from barre, yoga, and pilates. I remembered how much I loved hooping as a kid and signed up for a class. I drove from my home in Portland, CT, to Massachusetts, the only place classes were available at the time. "Let me go see what this is all about," I remember thinking.

I immediately loved it. It's impossible to not smile while Hula-Hooping. I wore a fitness tracker and a heart rate monitor and watched my heart rate spike like I was doing a high-intensity interval training workout. I could burn as much as 800 calories in an hour, doing the class's combination of ballet movements, yoga poses, strength exercises like squats, and of course traditional waist hooping. We even hooped around our arms and our hands to give our waists a break. We used the weighted hoop to do stretches and hooped while we did dance routines like the YMCA and the Macarena.

I took the 2 lb hoop home with me to Connecticut and started hooping on my own. I started with just 10 minutes a day and built up my stamina. It was easy to stand in front of the TV and whip it around my waist, even if I had toys all over my living room floor from my son. It didn't take me long to decide I wanted to become an instructor myself. I decided I was going to push my fears aside, and I went to Boston to get certified.

Hooping helped me slowly and steadily lose weight, and in about a year, I was down 85 pounds to 165. It helped that I now have a 2-year-old I have to chase everywhere! Once you start exercising, there's a snowball effect: You have more energy to do more things. I started eating a little bit better, because I now had the energy to cook instead of going to the drive-thru. I had the energy to play with my son instead of watching him at the playground. Now, I teach hooping three times a week

I competed in pageants when I was young, and 20 years later, I gave it another shot: I was recently crowned America's Fit Mrs., and I Hula-Hooped as my talent. I was even recently featured as Trainer of the Month with FXP Hoop Fitness. If you told me 2 years ago I would now be a fitness instructor, I would have laughed at you.

The most important thing is that it's fun. Most people crack up when I tell them I'm a Hula-Hoop instructor and tell me they can't hoop. But I have yet to meet someone I can't teach to hoop! I have 21-year-olds and 65-year-olds in my class, petite people and tall people, couch potatoes and marathoners—it's for anyone and everyone.

Source:prevention.com/weight-loss/i-lost-85-pounds-by-hula-hooping

The Mind Exercises That Can Help You Stay Slim

Every year we spend millions on diets and gym membership, but obesity specialists increasingly believe the problem doesn’t lie in what we eat or how much exercise we take, but how we think.

‘There is a non-stop communication between your mind and body, but the mind is the most important because it drives your behaviour,’ says nutrition and exercise specialist Janet Thomson, author of Think More, Eat Less.

She is convinced we become overweight as a result of confused messages from the brain sabotaging our attempts to slim

So, if we have been told we are ‘well-built’ or ‘chubby’ or that ‘dieting is a waste of time’, the messages can stick. Without even realising, our emotional link with food can become toxic and we will no longer eat only when hungry and stop when full.

However, she maintains this can be changed and has devised a programme of mind exercises that she believes can boost our chances of getting, and staying, slim.

• THINK about how you will look and feel a month after you have achieved your weight- loss goal — slim and healthy. Now, visualise yourself three months after that and six months later. Commit to spending one minute just before you go to sleep each night and one minute when you wake each morning (while you are in a sleepy, trance-like state) visualising yourself like this. Creating powerful positive emotions helps generate faith in your ability to succeed.
• WRITE down exactly what you want to achieve — to be comfortable in size 12 jeans? To run a marathon? — and what you are prepared to do to get there — ‘I will eat less’ or ‘I will stick to a training regime’. Read this mission statement out loud twice a day.
• IDENTIFY the thoughts and behaviour that may have kept you from achieving your goals in the past. Make a list of all the things that could have been making you fat (too many takeaways, too much wine), then write a list of alternative behaviours that you intend to do instead (planning meals, drinking alcohol only at weekends).
• KEEP a food diary: write down everything that passes your lips. Studies show that even if you don’t consciously restrict your food intake, a diary makes you more conscious of what you eat. Being aware is a step forward.
• SPEND time with like-minded people who have already achieved or have similar goals. Who you spend time with directly affects your attitude because your unconscious mind  will be continually processing their shared experiences as well as your own.
• FOLLOW two simple eating rules: never use food as a reward or treat — eat only because your body needs fuel, then give it the best quality fuel possible. Never ban yourself from eating something. This will only make you want it more.

Source:dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2108360/Yes-CAN-think-thinner-.html#ixzz4CzWU7xzr