Fall Color Exercise Tips to Burn Calories, Get Fit, and Improve Health

 

Chromotherapy is a centuries-old method of healing that uses the visible light spectrum (colors) of electromagnetic radiation to cure disease. Color vibrations support body and mind, strengthen natural immunity, improves outlook, and can help you get back on a healthful track.

Post updated 09/14/2022

To learn more about the history of color healing read "A Critical Analysis of Chromotherapy and Its Scientific Evolution" at the National Institute of Health Website.

To translate this concept into modern terms, explore easy, economical, fun ways fall colors can help you burn calories, get fit, and increase health below.

Fall Color Exercise Tips 

to Burn Calories, Get Fit, and 

Increase Health

1. Think of fall  foliage colors and envision rusty maroon, mustard, camel, sage, burnt orange, golden yellow, amber, smoky gray, and dusty brown hues. 

Use your imagination to see yourself frolicking through color-packed autumn leaves. If you prefer, imagine taking in the glory of a river birch, aspen, oak, or maple decked out in colorful autumn leaves. 

Whatever you choose, bring that color energy along with you as you get outdoors for a brisk, invigorating walk.

Here are my best Low Cost Colorful Ways to Create an Exercise Habit.

2. Visualize earth tones including deep brown, olive green, burgundy, copper, and other colors from the natural world (clouds, soil, vegetation, minerals, and living things) to ground, center, and calm yourself.

Earth tones are usually perceived as being friendly, inviting contemporary, and warm. They combine tones of browns and tans. They also can include richer colors containing some brown ( ex. coffee, red, jade, ochre yellow, eggplant, and deep ocean blue). Use earth tones to help you stay on task and persevere.

Use earth tone energy to motivate you to complete household chores. As you dust and vacuum, recognize you're toning muscles as well as enhancing living space. 

Turn on your favorite music and dance to the beat. Strut and shake as you make the bed, mop the floor, and have fun tidying up your house, apartment, or home office.

3. Meditate on red and the root chakra, because root chakra vibes can help fortify you, especially when you need courage, self-confidence, positive love, and resolve/will-power. 

Select those shades of red that appeal to you for an emotional and energetic lift. Crimson, bright red, ruby, or brick are examples of red colors. Wear articles of clothing in those colors to speed up metabolism and helps burn calories as you work out. 

4. Warm up gradually to rev up your cardiovascular system and increase blood flow to your muscles. Doing this may also help reduce muscle soreness and lessen your risk of injury. Cool down after your workout to allow for a gradual recovery of pre-exercise heart rate and blood pressure. 

Use slow motion (mindful) stretching and earth tones including shades of gray to connect with your core. Practice the exercise shown below daily, and before you know it, you'll be much more flexible. 

5. Eat red, orange, yellow, and green autumn fruits and vegetables including beets, pomegranates, pears, Brussels sprouts, squash, and apples to fuel your body and help it function at peak efficiency. Food is an important part of a healthful  fitness plan.

Colorful fruits and vegetables work throughout the year to heal injury, and promote and maintain health. Read additional tips to help you bloom into health here.  

6. Go apple or pumpkin picking to select colorful fall fruits and vegetables. Get a dose of extra exercise, when you park your car away from the crowds. Walk or bike to a cider mill or farmers' market.

7. Take a hike, play a ball game, or create a fall vegetable garden. Spend time in nature and participate in outdoor sports. 

8. Vary your exercise routine to stave off boredom. According to information from the Mayo Clinic a well-rounded exercise program includes aerobic fitness, strength training, core exercises, balance training, and flexibility and stretching.

9. Wear comfortable clothing and dress in layers. Shed or put on additional clothing as needed.

Remember to keep hydrated. Even though the sun's rays are less direct in autumn than in summer, you will sweat when you exercise vigorously. Drinking adequate water helps regulate body temperature, aids digestion and elimination, and lubricates joints. 

Water is a calorie free beverage that works to quench thirst and prevent dehydration. It's an appetite suppressant as well. In fact, a new study shows that adults drinking only 2 glasses of water before exercising can boost metabolism by 30% for at least 30-45 minutes. Isn't that great?

10. Check out this chart, 12 Exercises that Burn the Most Calories, and get the scoop on those calorie burning exercises.

11. Save time, money, and discover exercise tips at Move it Monday. Then read 8-cheap-ways-to-exercise.

Diet and exercise are good topics to discuss with your doctor before starting an exercise program or lifestyle change. This post is offered for entertainment and informational purposes only, and is not intended as medical advice.

No matter when, where, or how you fit it in, incorporate physical movement into your daily routines. 

Research shows those who keep active tend to do so, simply because it increases a sense of well-being. They feel more energetic throughout the day, sleep better at night, have sharper memories, and feel more relaxed and positive about themselves and their lives. 

Why not be part of this fabulous active group?

Let fall colors and my blog, Colors 4 Health, help you create easy, economical, and efficient ways to make your day livelier and healthier. 

I'd love to hear from you.

Do you yearn to exercise on a more regular basis? What helps motivate you? 

Any tips for my readers and me? 

Please take a moment to comment and re-share this post on social media with a link back to this site. 

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12 Items to Fit Into Every Day

Wonder what a Nutrition Researcher who is also an MD fits into his daily routine? We can gain insights into how to sustain a healthy lifestyle, by reading about the Daily Dozen Checklist below from Michael Greger, M.D. FACLM. 

Post Updated 5/15/2023

Dr. Greger wrote: "In my book, How Not to Die, I suggest we try to center our diets around whole plant foods. But, some plants are healthier than others. For example, you can apparently live extended periods eating practically nothing but white potatoes. That would, by definition, be a whole-food, plant-based diet—but not a very healthy one. All plant foods are not created equal.

The more I’ve researched over the years, the more I’ve come to realize that healthy foods are not necessarily interchangeable. Some foods and food groups have special nutrients not found in abundance elsewhere. For example, sulforaphane, the amazing liver-enzyme detox-boosting compound, is derived nearly exclusively from cruciferous vegetables. You could eat tons of other kinds of greens and vegetables on a given day, and get no appreciable sulforaphane if you didn’t eat something cruciferous.

It’s the same with flax seeds and the anticancer lignan compounds. Flax may average a hundred times more lignans than other foods. And mushrooms aren’t even plants at all; they belong to an entirely different biological classification, and may contain nutrients (like ergothioneine) not made anywhere in the plant kingdom. (So technically, maybe I should be referring to a whole-food, plant- and fungus-based diet, but that just sounds kind of gross.)

It seems like every time I come home from the medical library buzzing with some exciting new data, my family rolls their eyes, sighs, and asks, “What can’t we eat now?” Or, they’ll say, “Wait a second. Why does everything seem to have parsley in it all of a sudden?” or something! They’re very tolerant.

As the list of foods I tried to fit into my daily diet grew, I made a checklist, and had it up on a little dry-erase board on the fridge, and we’d make a game out of ticking off the boxes. This evolved, into my Daily Dozen: the checklist of all the things I try to fit into my daily routine. 

By beans, I mean legumes, which also includes split peas, chickpeas, and lentils. You know, while eating a bowl of pea soup or dipping carrots into hummus may not seem like eating beans, it certainly counts. We should try to get three servings a day. A serving is defined as a quarter-cup of hummus or bean dip; a half-cup of cooked beans, split peas, lentils, tofu, or tempeh; or a full cup of fresh peas or sprouted lentils. Though peanuts are technically legumes, nutritionally, I’ve grouped them in the Nuts category, just as I would shunt green beans, snap peas, and string beans into the Other Vegetables category.

A serving of berries is a half-cup fresh or frozen, or a quarter-cup of dried. While biologically speaking, avocados, bananas, and even watermelons are technically berries, I’m using the colloquial term for any small edible fruit, which is why I include kumquats and grapes—and raisins, as well as fruits that are typically thought of as berries, but actually technically aren’t, such as blackberries, cherries, mulberries, raspberries, and strawberries.

For other fruits, a serving is a medium-sized fruit, a cup of cut-up fruit, or a quarter-cup of dried fruit. Again, I’m using the colloquial rather than the botanical definition; so, I place tomatoes in the Other Vegetables group.

Common cruciferous vegetables include broccoli, cabbage, collards, cauliflower, and kale. I recommend at least one serving a day (typically a half-cup), and at least two additional servings of greens a day, cruciferous or otherwise. Serving sizes for other greens and vegetables are a cup for raw leafy vegetables, a half-cup for other raw or cooked non-leafy vegetables, and a quarter-cup for dried mushrooms.

Everyone should try to incorporate one tablespoon of ground flax seeds into their daily diet, in addition to a serving of nuts or other seeds. A quarter-cup of nuts is considered a serving, or two tablespoons of nut or seed butters, including peanut butter. (Chestnuts and coconuts, though, don’t nutritionally count as nuts.)

I also recommend one-quarter teaspoon a day of the spice turmeric, along with any other (salt-free) herbs and spices you may enjoy.

A serving of whole grains can be considered a half-cup of hot cereal, such as oatmeal, cooked whole grains, or so-called “pseudo grains” like amaranth, buckwheat, and quinoa, or a half-cup of cooked pasta or corn kernels; a cup of ready-to-eat (cold) cereal; one tortilla or slice of bread; half a bagel or English muffin; or three cups of air-popped popcorn.

The serving size in the beverage category is one glass (twelve ounces), and the recommended five glasses a day is in addition to the water you get naturally from the foods in your diet. I explain my rationale in my video, How Many Glasses of Water Should We Drink a Day?

Finally, I advise one daily “serving” of exercise, which can be split up over the day. I recommend ninety minutes of moderate-intensity activity each day, such as brisk (four miles per hour) walking or, forty minutes of vigorous activity (such as jogging or active sports) each day. I explain my reasoning for that in my video, How Much Should You Exercise?

This may all sound like a lot of boxes to check, but it’s easy to knock off a bunch at a time. One simple peanut butter/banana sandwich, and you just checked off four boxes. Or imagine sitting down to a big salad. Two cups of spinach, a handful of arugula, a handful of walnuts, a half-cup of chickpeas, a half-cup of red bell pepper, and a small tomato. You just knocked out seven boxes in one dish. Sprinkle on your flax, add a handful of goji berries, and enjoy it with a glass of water and fruit for dessert, and you just wiped out nearly half your daily check boxes in a single meal! And, then if you just ate it on your treadmill—just kidding!

Do I check off each glass of water I drink? No. In fact, I don’t even use the checklist anymore; I just used it initially as a tool to get me into a routine. You know, whenever I was sitting down to a meal, I would ask myself, Could I add greens to this? Could I add beans to this? (I always have an open can of beans in the fridge.) Can I sprinkle on some flax or pumpkin seeds, or maybe some dried fruit? The checklist just got me into the habit of thinking, How can I make this meal even healthier?

I also found the checklist helped with grocery shopping. Although I always keep bags of frozen berries and greens in the freezer, if I’m at the store and want to buy fresh produce for the week, it helps me figure out, you know, how much kale or blueberries I need.

The checklist also helps me picture what a meal might look like. Looking over the checklist, you’ll see there are three servings each of beans, fruits, and whole grains, and about twice as many vegetables in total than any other component. So, glancing at my plate, I can imagine one quarter of it filled with grains, one quarter with legumes, and a half of the plate filled with vegetables, along with maybe a side salad, and fruit for dessert. I happen to like one-bowl meals where everything’s mixed together, but the checklist still helps me to visualize. Instead of a big bowl of spaghetti with some veggies and lentils on top, I think of a big bowl of vegetables with some pasta and lentils mixed in. Instead of a big plate of quinoa with some stir-fried vegetables on top, I picture a meal that’s mostly veggies—and, oh look! There’s some quinoa and beans in there, too.

But there is no need to be obsessive about the Daily Dozen. On hectic travel days when I’ve burned through my snacks, you know, stuck in some airport food court somewhere, sometimes I’m lucky if I even hit a quarter of my goals. If you eat poorly one day, just try to eat better the next.

To help track your progress, volunteers created Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen apps for both iPhone and Android. You can download and use them both for free; no ads, no cost. 

Pick a day to eat the Daily Dozen. Download the free Daily Dozen app on iPhone and Android that features the checklist, as well as valuable tools to help you eat more mindfully. Read The Evidence-Based Eating Guide, The Daily Dozen Meal Planning Guide, and Daily Dozen Digest, and get a free 11-week email series.

Before you go, please take a moment to comment in the space provided below. 

Do you include the daily dozen into your eating and lifestyle plan? If not, which things do you think you need to add? 🌿🍅🍇🍏🌱

Are there any foods or lifestyle changes you'd like to make to feel healthier and happier? 

Please let me know that too.

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