Fitness & Wellness

Is Paleo Right For You

Published by superadmin on January 3, 2018 | Leave a response

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard of the Paleo diet. The concept of the diet is intriguing. Simply put, it’s eating the foods your ancestors would have eaten. That doesn’t mean your grandpa who loved his fried bologna or your great grandparents. It goes back centuries to the very beginning. If we go back far enough, humans were eating like other primates, fruit, bugs and leaves. Then they evolved to hunter-gatherers and finally moved onto the concept of agriculture. Is Paleo right for you? Let’s take a look at what they ate and how it fares against today’s diet.

The paleolithic diet was better than today’s American diet in a number of ways.

Early man ate plenty of fiber, lots of protein and unsaturated fat. They didn’t eat chemicals in their food, either. They had more fresh greens and other produce that we eat today. In fact, they ate three times more. The paleolithic diet contained more vitamins and minerals, too. While we tout omega-3 fatty acid as something new and amazing, the paleolithic diet contained far more than ours does. They also didn’t have a salt shaker to season their food or any problem with trans fat.

You probably won’t eat exactly like your ancestors on a paleo diet.

There’s no doubt you won’t be living off the land and eating wild greens on your walk to work, but you can increase your intake of meat. Paleo diets include eating the whole animal approach, which includes organs, cartilage and bone marrow. Bone broth soup has become quite popular even among those not on a paleo diet. That’s because it contains a number of nutrients. Paleo diets also contain other animal products like honey or eggs. It contains fruits and vegetables, raw seeds and nuts and some added fat such as coconut oil, avocado and butter—from grass fed cows. Paleo diets don’t contain legumes or grains.

Some of the logic of the paleo diet is true.

If you like grain and beans, you’ll miss them in the paleo diet. The same is true for many dairy products. While a paleo diet contains many healthy foods and is far superior to the way the average American eats today, it’s simply not for everyone, nor is every justification in the diet true. Beans contain phytates or lectins that supposedly wipe out the nutritional benefits of legumes. That’s not true. It does wipe out some of the benefits, just as oxylic acid interferes with the absorption of the calcium in spinach. Unlike the spinach, much of the nutritional benefits of legumes benefit the body.

You may not be able to stick to the Paleo diet if you can’t handle a strict dietary plan or have a schedule that doesn’t allow you to prepare all your own meals.
While a paleo diet may not be for you, adopting some of the diet can still help. Improving your intake of fresh fruits and vegetables is a start.
Animal organs are extremely good for you, but don’t fit the taste of everyone. If you can’t “do” the livers, heart or other organs, consider at least bone broth. It’s good and healthy for all parts of your body, even your teeth.
No matter whether you opt for a paleo diet or not, eliminating processed foods from your diet can go a long way in improving your health.

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Tone Those Abs

Published by superadmin on December 29, 2017 | Leave a response

Losing belly fat requires you to lose weight all over your body, but you can tone those abs to give a flatter appearance, even when you have a little more weight than you wish to carry. Strengthening your core and abdominal muscles can also provide some great benefits, such as relief from back pain, better posture and a boost to the metabolism. Here are some traditional methods, some not so traditional ones and a few you may never have considered, which will help you look flatter and fitter quicker.

Don’t hold your breath for results.

Seriously, if you’re doing a crunch or situp, inhale on the way down and exhale on the way up for the best results. Learning to breathe properly when doing abdominal exercises makes a huge difference in your results. Also keep your rib cage closed on the way down in the crunch for the most results. Focusing on the workout will also help boost the effects of these old favorites.

Do the old favorites but with more zest.

Your muscles were made to move in lots of ways, so to get the most out of a workout, you need to work them in various positions. Do more than mere crunches or situps to make your abs flat and firm. Use ones that engage all the muscles of the abdomen and cause you to turn and twist getting all the muscles involved. Side twists, windmills and other exercises engage several groups of muscle that also need toning.

Get active!

It’s not all about a specific exercise. Sometimes daily tasks, such as raking leaves, vacuuming and mopping floors can give you a good workout. Riding a bike uses the muscles to stabilize your body, which improves muscle strength. In fact, anything that involves balance works the core muscles. Get a load of abdominal exercise and have a great looking house at the same time, paint a room or even the outside of the house and you’ll see not only your stomach flatten but your arms and legs toning, too.

Suck it up. Use isometrics to tone your muscles. Slowly pull in your abdominal muscles as you exhale. Hold and release.
Improve your posture. Walk as tall as you can. You’ll find your stomach automatically starts to disappear.
Stretch your way thinner. There was an old nursery song called “Bend and Stretch.” The first line was “Bend and stretch, reach for the stars.” Do as the song says, bend with arms outstretched to touch your toes (or as close as you can get) and then stand up and reach as high as you can.
Hold weights while doing ab toning for even quicker results.

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Tailor Your Diet For The Holidays

Published by superadmin on December 16, 2017 | Leave a response

If you’re concerned that all your hard work to lose weight will go to the wayside as the holiday season approaches, you need to tailor your diet for the holidays. That can mean a number of things. While some people say save calories before you attend a Christmas dinner and others say eat before you go, there’s a better way to do it. If your meal is a late lunch, like most people have, have a late breakfast that’s filling. Scrambled eggs with veggies and mushrooms, nut butter on toast with a tiny bit of honey and oatmeal with some nuts and fruit will do the trick. You’ll feel full for quite a long time and can dodge the hunger bullet that leads you to high calorie meals.

You don’t have to change your diet, just what you eat first.

Don’t start by loading your plate with all the food, you can always go back for more. Start first with the veggies and low calorie options. Go light on the dip, because that can add pounds. Eat a big salad, then wait for a while visiting with others or walking a bit, to give your body time to tell the brain it’s almost full. Take small portions of the main course and heavier foods, like those mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese. If you have a smaller plate for the salad, use your salad plate for the main course. It will make you think you’re eating more food.

Allow yourself a small dessert.

Seriously, it’s the holidays and sometimes there’s food you won’t get for another year. You can eat those desserts, but in limited amounts. Cut a piece of pie in half as a portion or just get a sliver of it if you’re going to sample all the sweets at the table. Indulge in fresh fruit as much as you please. In fact, start your dessert portion with it. It will taste far sweeter eaten first than it will if it’s following a rich sugary dessert.

Get some exercise with the family.

Whether it’s before or after a meal, taking a walk is a good idea. Walking before the meal can help prevent you from snacking until everyone is there or the meal is completed. Walking afterward not only helps your digestion, it also helps burn off a few calories and gets you away from the tempting food. Again, too often grazing is the real problem. It sometimes comes from boredom, so engage in conversations with others.

There’s always carbonated drinks and sometimes alcohol at holiday celebrations. Save your calories for food and opt for black coffee, unsweetened tea or water.
Help keep the whole family fit by making a delicious dish to share that’s both healthy and low in calories.
Eat slowly. Not only does chewing each spoonful completely help your digestion and slow your food intake, it helps get the message to your brain of fullness and you feel fuller eating less.
If you find you’ve tried but failed and simply ate everything in sight, remember that tomorrow is a new day and get back to healthy eating again.

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Are Multi-Vitamins Beneficial

Published by superadmin on December 3, 2017 | Leave a response

Are multivitamins beneficial to your health or a waste of money or even worse, harmful. I have mixed emotions on this, but I will say they provide a dangerous placebo that make people think they can eat junk food and solve any damage by popping a pill. Multivitamins are not a substitute for healthy eating. That’s one of the fallacies that too many people have. Not only does it not provide all the micro nutrients you’ll get from whole foods, if you’re eating junk food, you’re also filling your body with toxins and substances that can harm you. You can’t overdose on carotene, which turns into vitamin A, but you can get too much vitamin A. (There are cases where people got an orange tinge to their skin from eating too many carrots, but nothing more lethal.)

One long term study showed multivitamins had no effect on memory and some benefits for health.

One study followed 6,000 male doctors age 65. One group had a multi-vitamin and the other had a placebo that looked exactly like it. Of the two groups, there was no significant difference in memory loss over a 20 year period, but there was a small difference when it came cancer and cataracts. It lowered the risk of each by 8 to 9 percent. However, other studies show multi-vitamins can increase your risk for cancer.

There’s no difference for those suffering from heart disease.

A third study compiled the information from 27 other studies, which followed a total of 450,000 people. While they also found a small benefit for reducing the risk of cancer, they found there was no appreciable difference for heart disease. However, all the evidence from scientific studies show that you can reduce the risk of heart disease with a healthy diet and regular exercise. That not only saves money buying useless pills, it helps you stay fitter in other ways.

If you have a nutritional shortage, you should consider taking vitamins.

While taking a multivitamin for general health may be a great deal like taking antibiotics for general health, there are some people that need to do just that. If you have a nutritional shortage, which can occur even if you eat a healthy diet due to illness or a chronic condition, then a specific vitamin is beneficial. However, for those who simply take it to be on the safe side, it can actually increase the risk of a serious disease or shorten your lifespan. While some supplements are good for a specific condition, they may increase the risk for another. Vitamin A in its natural form is known to be helpful for COPD, but may increase the risk of lung cancer.

If you’re going to supplement, consider seasoning your food more liberally. Herbs and spices are powerhouses of nutrients and won’t affect your body like manufactured vitamins.
One of the best things you can do is drink the full glass of water if you’re taking a multivitamin. The water will do more good than the vitamin.
One of my clients was a construction worker and built a building on a sewage dumping site used by the city in the past, before regulations stopped it. Not only were there hundreds of volunteer tomatoes, you could also see many almost completely undigested multivitamins on the ground. Many just pass through the body without digesting.
One huge exception is the supplementation of folic acid for women of child-bearing age. It’s proven to help prevent birth defects in babies when taken early enough before the pregnancy.

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Winterize Your Workouts

Published by superadmin on November 23, 2017 | Leave a response

Even in a warm area like San Antonio, you may need to winterize your workouts. While a low temperature like 40 to 41 degrees is like a warm spring day to someone in Minnesota, Wisconsin or Northern Indiana, it’s still chilly when you’re not used to the cold. For people in colder climates, adjusting your workout to the winter is of utmost importance and can be crucial to your health. If you workout outside, such as running in the morning, you have to take a few precautions to account for the cold.

Warming up needs to really warm you up.

In the winter, you’ll need to do more warm up exercises to insure your muscles are thoroughly warmed and ready to begin. Warming up effectively reduces your potential for injury and is far more important in the cold winter months, even though you need to do it year around. Dynamic stretching, also known as a dynamic warm-up can get your body ready for a good workout in the winter.

Dress in a lot of light layers, rather than a few bulky ones.

Layering keeps you warmer, plus as your workout continues, allows you to adjust for body heat. If you have several light layers, when you warm, you can remove a layer. Make sure the material wicks moisture away from your skin, which makes you colder and for those in a cold climate can cause hypothermia or freeze the material to your skin. Wear a hat to retain more body heat and if it’s really cold, make sure you have gloves, cover your face with a scarf and if there’s ice where you live, make sure your shoes have good traction.

Work up to working out on really cold days.

If you don’t exercise outside while the weather is turning colder, you need to pace yourself if you suddenly decide to take up running in the middle of winter. Your body needs to acclimate to the cold weather, so increasing your outside exercise time little by little is important. For those in more frigid climates, I can’t stress this enough.

Your joints are more prone to injury when it’s cold since tendons are less elastic and tight.
Drink plenty of fluids. Your perspiration will evaporate faster and you won’t realize how much fluid you’ll lose. If you’re running, carry a bottle of water and sip it along the way.
Have reflective clothing when running outside. It stays dark later and gets darker earlier, so your normal schedule of exercise may take place after dark.
Be aware of the outside temperature and on really cold days, turn to inside workouts in the gym or even in your own home.

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Tune Into Your Body

Published by superadmin on November 17, 2017 | Leave a response

Learning to tune into your body can help you become healthier and stay that way. Some people just know when they need to change their diet or need more protein or vegetables. They’ve learned to pay attention to the subtle cues that the body offers and follow through with the request to feed it right. If you’ve ever felt out of sorts only to realize later that the reason is all the junk food and lack of fruits and veggies in your diet, you have a clue how your body communicates with you.

Learn to judge whether you’re hungry or just want to eat out of habit.

Sometimes you’re not really hungry, but you eat any how. You may find yourself substituting food to eliminate boredom. Eating mindfully means more than just knowing if you’re hungry. It’s deciphering what your hungry for and why. Do you need the nutrition? Do you really enjoy the food? Savor each bite and appreciate how it helps your body. It’s not only a way to listen to your body, it’s a way to get in touch with it so you can listen.

Is that hunger really thirst?

So many people fail to identify the difference between thirst and hunger. Sometimes, when you think you’re hungry, your body is really craving more fluid. Learn to know the difference between the two. If you think you’re hungry but you’ve recently eaten or shouldn’t be, it’s probably thirst that’s driving you. Try a tall glass of water first and wait to see if the craving is gone. Chances are, you’ll be more likely to recognize thirst easier each time you do.

Do you feel stress?

Not everyone knows when they’re stressed out, some people keep on functioning, barely realizing that the sick feeling in the pit of their stomach comes from stress. A quick way to learn what this body cue means is to do things to help offset stress and see if you feel better. Meditation can help, but so can exercise. In fact, most people find that exercising makes them feel better, but seldom realize it’s because that feeling comes from it relieving stress.

Listen to your body when it tells you that you’re tired and worked out enough. Trying to workout beyond your point of exhaustion is dangerous. Know the difference between true pain and normal muscle soreness.
Pay attention to each movement when you exercise. It helps you learn the language of the body faster.
Are you accustomed to going all night and ignoring that tired feeling? That actually slows the process of knowing your body better. Learn to rest when you’re tired or at least take a few minutes to meditate and rest your brain.
Remember the more you ignore the messages from your body, the harder it becomes to listen or understand the signal it sends.

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Set Reminders

Published by superadmin on November 6, 2017 | Leave a response

No matter who you are and what you’re doing, when you first start out toward any goal that requires a change in your behavior, it’s not easy. You automatically revert to your previous behavior out of habit. In order to see real change, you have to set reminders out for yourself to keep telling you to make that change. It isn’t that you don’t want to change your lifestyle, it’s just too easy to go on automatic pilot and revert to old behaviors, such as unhealthy snacking or forgetting to exercise.

Create a menu at first and clean out the refrigerator and cupboards.

If you’re used to snacking on chips at night, don’t buy them. It’s just to easy to forget your grand plan of eating healthier. Instead, leave yourself a reminder to air pop some popcorn or do a few exercises to help overcome the urge for chips. Most of the time you’re not really hungry, but looking for something to do and eating has filled that void. Keep healthy snacks in the refrigerator, just in case you really are hungry.

Schedule your workout.

Make an appointment with the gym in your schedule. You’re far less apt to miss something if you have an appointment. That’s one reason people often stick to a plan of exercize when they workout with a personal trainer. Set a reminder on your phone to leave for the gym, just as an extra nudge to ensure you go. Follow your reminder, don’t ignore it. If you’re normally the type that hits the snooze button on the alarm, have a second reminder set to go off five minutes later.

Put pictures and quotes up to remind you why you want to live healthier.

Maybe you have just had a health scare and your doctor said start living healthier. Even if it was bad, every day that passes, lessens the fear just a tiny bit, taking away a bit of incentive to workout. If you want to lose weight, take a picture of yourself now and one to represent you afterward. Photoshopping your head on to a body you want can be encouraging. Put up encouraging quotes throughout the house and become your best cheerleader for your own good health.

Sometimes you have to take more action than just setting a reminder. Always eat before you grocery shop and carry a list of foods to buy.
Pick a task that you struggle to do, such as running up several flights of stairs or lifting buckets of kitty litter. Every week, try that task as a reminder. One day you’ll be able to do it with ease.
Carry a bottle of water with you everywhere to remind you to drink more water. Sip on it frequently throughout the day.
Set your bedtime alarm. You have an alarm to get you up in the morning that has to work overtime if you procrastinate getting sleep at night. Set an alarm to remind yourself to go to bed. It’s much healthier for you than watching that rerun of “Friends” or “Golden Girls.”

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Running On Real Food

Published by superadmin on October 28, 2017 | Leave a response

I’ve had people come into the gym dragging. They workout regularly and think it’s enough to keep them functioning well. Exercise is great and does boost your energy level, but if you’re not running on real food even that benefit will soon fade. Eating healthy provides the body with nutrients to build new cells and keep all parts of your body in top operating condition. Some foods actually make you feel tired, and not the sleepy, good type of tired like the tryptophan in turkey does.

Spiking your energy level with sugar has disastrous results.

If you’re diabetic, you have to watch your sugar intake closely and know all about drops in your sugar level, but for the vast majority of people, they don’t have a clue about the drain sugar takes on their body. Sure, if you’re tired a sweet treat will boost your energy level, just like a cup of Jo will. However, within a few hours, you’ll be right back down to the basement and maybe even more tired than you were before you ate. Avoid sugary treats to keep your body healthy, happy and running at full steam.

Seriously, can you pronounce all the ingredients in your meal?

If you’re eating processed foods, you won’t be as healthy. Many processed foods contain ingredients you can’t even pronounce and some that are made from the same ingredients as plastic, petroleum oil. Making sure your car has oil is one thing, but that doesn’t make it healthy for your body. Some of the ingredients are preservatives, artificial color and even some “flavor enhancers.” When you switch to real food, whole foods or dishes that you make from whole food ingredients, you know exactly what it contains and it’s all healthy.

Avoid refined flour products and stick with whole grains.

Refined flour has had the nutrients stripped out of them and then added back into them. They’ve had up to 25 extra chemicals adding to them, such as bleach or oxidizers. These types of additives are not allowed in countries like Germany. Chemicals are added to keep the bread soft and fresh feeling, while mono and diglycerides make it fluffy. Dough conditioner can include a mixture of chemicals that resembles anti-freeze, too. As one nutritional saying goes, “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead.”

Eating a wide variety of colors at a meal helps balance nutrition, as long as those are the natural food colors, not artificial ones. Bright yellow cake frosting doesn’t count, but yellow squash does.
Real foods from animal sources need one further step. You need to know what the animals ate. If it was hormones and antibiotics, that’s not good. Grass fed beef, that’s excellent. In fact, butter from grass fed cows is heart healthy.
Real foods contain lean meat cuts, but in smaller portions and more fruits and veggies than meat.
If you’re eating in fast food restaurants, chances are you’re not eating real foods. That can be also true in even more expensive restaurants unless they’re known for healthy foods.

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Revitalize Your Health

Published by superadmin on October 17, 2017 | Leave a response

There are so many stressors in our environment, from the food we eat, pollutants we breathe and the toxic stress at work or home, it’s important to revitalize your health and learn to live a healthier lifestyle. It won’t change the environment around you, but it can make you more able to live longer and with less stress. Even when the day is crazy, some of these tips can get you back to normal in no time at all.

Revitalize yourself with regular exercise.

Talk about a stress buster, there’s nothing better than exercise to do that. Of course, learning to be mellow with meditation also helps prevent the stress. Exercise does more than burn off the hormones of stress. It improves circulation, sending oxygen and nutrient rich blood to all areas of the body. It can improve your complexion, make you look years younger, help you stay healthier and even boost your energy level—just to name a few benefits.

Eating healthy will get you back on track.

If you’re out of sorts, it could be the food you eat. Highly processed foods often contain sugar that can set your blood sugar levels on a roller coaster ride. You’ll get cranky hungry quickly and then seek more sugar to level off, only to have it occur repeatedly. Lack of nutrients can set your body on a collision course. Try eating some baby greens to boost your nutrition. These are often called microgreens. They’re bigger than sprouts, but not yet matured. These nutritional packed powerhouses can have as much as forty times the amount of nutrients as the fully matured types. You don’t have to eat a full salad of them, just add a few to boost the nutrition.

Supplement your sunshine.

Even though Texas has plenty of sunshine, not everyone’s schedule allow them to bask in it. People who live in Northern areas don’t have the advantage of as much sun, so they have even more of a problem. Studies show that the vast majority of Americans have low vitamin D levels. A shortage of vitamin D can cause mineral shortages, since it affects the absorption. Vitamin D helps boost your immunity, keeps your body weight healthy and can help prevent serious diseases, including osteoporosis. It’s also mandatory for healthy teeth. A vitamin D3 supplement can help.

Hang your head and improve your mood. Whether you do shoulder stands or finding a yoga position that sends blood rushing to your head, you’ll get results that improve your mood, improved digestion and better skin. Just hold the position for at least thirty seconds.
Switch to other types of nut butters and vary the type frequently to boost all types of nutrients. You can create cashew butter at home by using a food processor, just as you can several other types of nut butter. However, some natural food stores have machines that process them for you. You just pour them into the processor, grind, then pay for the container of nut butter based on weight.
Get some healthy fat. Not all fat is bad, some is super good for you. Butter made from milk of grass fed cows is actually heart healthy. So is the fat from avocados. Healthy fat also helps lift depression.
Get more sleep at night. Americans are taught at an early age that a good work ethic that burns the candles at both ends is good. Well, it’s not. It deprives you of the chance to let your body heal and rest your mind and makes you work slower and harder.

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Minimalist Cooking

Published by superadmin on October 8, 2017 | Leave a response

Choosing who has to cook or being stuck with the job because you’re the only one in the house can be a tough job. If one person enjoys cooking, that’s great, life should be filled with things you enjoy. However, for everyone that hates to cook, but enjoys eating, minimalist cooking should be at the top of your list. Not only is minimalist cooking easier, it has many other benefits, which can include eating healthier than you did before you started. Minimalist cooking does NOT mean buying prepared frozen meals. Even though you’re doing less, you’re also getting less nutrients.

Use common herbs and spices to spruce up your dishes.

If you’ve opened your cupboard to find hundreds of spice bottles, it’s time to do some housecleaning. In most cases, you’ll probably use only just a few. You can also improve both the flavor and the nutrition of the dish by growing herbs in your garden and plucking a few to add to dishes for flavor. This is actually fun. Lemon balm can substitute for lemon. Cinnamon basil is great for chili. Add some chives, oregano or basil to most vegetables and get a great flavor with little effort.

Minimalist cooking means less kitchen clutter.

You don’t need all the fancy machines and cookware when you switch to this type of cooking. You do need high quality ingredients, such as fresh veggies or good quality olive oil. Keep your spices to a minimum and get rid of the clutter in your cabinets. You’ll find that cooking is more satisfying when clean up is at a minimum and you don’t have difficult recipes to follow. In fact, you can create substitutions for recipes to keep prices low or make it more convenient by using what’s in the fridge or the cheaper seasonal vegetable.

Whole foods, those less processed or not processed are a great way to start.

What’s wrong with serving a one ingredient dish? Absolutely nothing. In fact, single ingredient whole foods are far better for you than a gourmet, “healthy” dish that was cooked, frozen and comes in a box. Eating fruits, vegetables, fish, eggs and nuts are just a few examples of whole foods that taste good in their natural state or with just a minor amount of preparation. They’re filled with nutrition and don’t require a lot of effort or extra ingredients. You can make them even healthier without breaking a sweat by adding some healthy herbs and spices.

You can take one recipe and make a number of meals. For instance, combine noodles with various vegetables you have on hand.
It’s even easier to cook if you wash and chop veggies ahead of time and have them ready to add to meals, whether cooked or eaten raw.
What’s better than soup on a cold day? Whether you have homemade bone broth ready in the freezer or use the natural juices of tomatoes for the soup. It’s delicious, nutritious and easy to whip up a fresh pot of soup.
If you have left over veggies, either throw them in a soup or get creative with stir fry. You can stir fry almost any veggie and it tastes delicious.

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