Dealing With Stress

There are many reasons why both teens and adults experience stress in their everyday lives. It may be because of health, emotional struggles, relationships, major life changes, or stress within your family or friends. It is important to learn how to minimize the stress in your life because it can have many negative effects on your body.
So how do you know if you are having stress? Common symptoms of stress include:

• increased heartbeat
• headache
• stiff neck or tight shoulders
• back pain
• fast breathing
• sweaty palms
• upset stomach or nausea

Over time stress can have more harmful effects on you body. Stress can cause you to have a weaker immune system. Any exposure to germs could potentially make you sick, and when you get sick your symptoms could be worse than if you were not stressed out. 

Stress could also cause problems with your heart. Stress has a correlation with higher blood pressure, abnormal heart beat and blood clots. It is also linked to heart disease and heart failure. 

Too much stress can cause problems with other organs as well. If you have stomach problems, like reflux disease, or irritable bowel syndrome, stress can make your symptoms worse. It can affect your reproductive organs. Stress has been linked to lowered fertility and pregnancy problems. Stress causes many people to have trouble keeping clear skin, they have more acne breakouts. Lastly, it affects the lungs by making diseases such as asthma worse.

Sometimes, if you have a large amount of stress built up over a long period of time, you can have something called a panic attack. People who experience these can't always determine why they occur but they often feel out of control or as if they are experiencing a heart attack. 

Stress often times affects people emotionally. Most people know at least one person that has been cranky or upset just because of an overload of stress in their life. However, stress can affect people different emotionally depending on their personality and coping strategies.

It is important to know how to deal with stress. It can be harmful to your body and to people around you. Too much stress can change your personality for a long period of time, making it hard for people to be around you. Learn to minimize your stress as much as possible to make you and everyone around you much happier.

There's an App For That

Today's society has placed a priority on the latest technology. It is something that has become part of our everyday lives, and it makes things easier. Well, it can also make calorie counting and monitoring our fitness much easier. There are many apps that are designed to help us with our fitness goals, however, not all of them are user friendly or highly beneficial, but here are a few that are.

My Fitness Pal Diary

1. My Fitness Pal
My Fitness Pal is an app that my family members, friends, and myself use daily. It allows you to calculate calorie intake for each meal of the day. You are able to scan the bar code of any food package and it will add up the calories. It also allows you to submit any type of workout that you did during the day and it lets you know how many calories that workout burned. It takes those calories off of your total calories for the day. I also find it handy because it tells you how many calories you've consumed throughout the day and how many calories you have remaining.

                                                         2. Six Pack Abs

Six Pack Abs

This app has nearly 20 core strengthening exercises that have life like animations demonstrating the correct form. This is helpful in ensuring you are doing to exercise correctly and it prevents injury. The app also allows you to choose music to sync to your workout, making your workout slightly more enjoyable. Also, it connects to "MyFitnessPal",  allowing it to automatically submit your workouts.

Sleep Cycle

3. Sleep Cycle
I believe that this app is such a good idea. The app tracks your sleeping patterns and can wake you up during a light stage of sleep to create an easier transition while waking up. It allows you to choose which music you'd like to wake up to. It can also tell you when you were awake or in deep sleep or light sleep throughout the night. Lastly, you can take notes on your day such as if you had coffee or were stressed out to see how it affects your sleeping
patterns.

These are all apps that I have used myself and are popular worldwide. I would recommend them to anybody from their teen years or older.

Celebrity Fitness Regimes

Dwayne Johnson

Celebrities in today's world know that media critiques every piece of their lives, especially their appearance. Celebrity women want to stay thin and fit while men want to stay fit and muscular. In order to maintain their ideal body shapes, they must keep a strict diet and workout plan. Dwayne Johnson, also known as "The Rock" is known for his massive gains in muscle over the past couple of years, how did he get so strong? Another celebrity that is praised for her slim figure is Jennifer Aniston. You may think that they have fitness trainers and access to every kind of fitness equipment so it is easier for them to lose weight or stay in shape. However, you can try some of their fitness techniques and see if they also work for you.

Jennifer Aniston

Dwayne Johnson has to have a large amount of muscle for the majority of the movies he stars in, so he works out 6 days a week, every week. No exceptions. He uses a pyramid technique to maintain his muscle mass. He starts with a low amount of weight and a high amount of reps at the beginning of the month. Then, throughout the month he keeps adding weight, while doing a lower amount of repetitions. Each month he starts over, with low weight (however higher than last months starting weight) and a high amount of reps. He does pretty much every kind of lift, every day. Dwayne Johnson also does a cardio workout before he lifts, for about 50-60 minutes.

Like Dwayne Johnson, Jennifer Aniston works out almost every day. She does about 40 minutes of cardio, such as spinning, running, or using the elliptical, or sometimes a combination of all three. She also does yoga and Pilates throughout her week. When she stays at hotels she always brings 8 lb weights with her, they are great to use if you are watching TV or talking on the phone. She also sticks to the strict 40 30 30 diet. This means that 40% of your diet should be carbohydrates (fruits and vegetables), 30% protein (any kind of meat or fish), and 30% fats (olive oil or fish oil).

It may seem like it is easier for celebrities to stay in shape, but it is equally as challenging as it is for anybody else. It requires a strict workout and dieting plan, however you can make it easier by following these celebrities fitness plans to get started.