Archive for July, 2009

Exercise and lose weight – Part 6

At the beginning of every year, a surfeit of programs offer different approaches to successfully losing weight gained during the holidays. We are entering the second week of March and many have begun evaluating their New years resolutions. We are bombarded every day with ads and messages about the importance of losing weight for a healthy lifestyle. Each year, we resolve to be healthier than the last.

How To Get And Stay Healthy

Here are six tips that are guaranteed to work, if you follow them all religiously. There’s no point eating well, then taking drugs and staying out late!

1. Eat Wholesome Food.

Eat plenty of fruit, fish and vegetables, drink clean water. Depending on where you live, you may need the bottled stuff, or the tap water could be OK. Avoid chlorinated water. If you’re in a First World country, and the tap water looks clear, and doesn’t taste of anything, it’s probably OK.

Whos sexier – Jennifer Lopez or Olive Oyl from the old Popeye cartoons? Most people would emphatically reply, J-Lo! Some of us are naturally endomorphs, and have difficulty losing weight. At the other end of the spectrum are ectomorphs, who are thin and actually have trouble gaining weight. Being skinny can be emotionally difficult. That may be hard to believe, especially for women, given our current thin-is-in culture of beauty. Others who may want to gain weight include body builders and those who are overcoming eating disorders.The three primary nutrients for the human body are protein, which supplies amino acids; fats, which supply fatty acids; and carbohydrates, which supply glucose. These three primary nutrients are also the foods to gain weight with! Heres a snapshot of how to optimize your diet with healthy high-calorie foods for weight gain.Enjoy hearty whole-grain carbohydrates. This does not mean white, highly processed carbs such as potato chips, white bread and bagels! Think brown. Whole-grain carbs include items such as multi-grain crackers, whole wheat bread and basmati rice. People who are watching their weight avoid highly processed carbs and reduce their intake of whole-grain carbs to one or two servings per day. Since your goal is to gain weight, feel free to eat whole-grain carbohydrates with every meal. Seven-grain crackers dipped in hummus makes a hearty snack!Enjoy healthy fats. Fats encourage nutrient absorption, facilitate nerve transmission, and maintain cell integrity. This does not mean eating greasy french fries! Not all fats are created equal. There are good fats and bad fats. The good guys are monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Monounsaturated fats lower LDL, or bad, cholesterol and they also increase HDL, or good cholesterol. Tasty examples are nut, canola and olive oils. Polyunsaturated fats lower LDL and total cholesterol, too. Those healthy omega 3 fatty acids that youre always hearing about are polyunsaturated fats. Salmon, fish oil, and corn, soy, safflower and sunflower oils are high in polyunsaturated fats. Dip your whole-grain bread from a local baker in gourmet olive oil! Make a big, creamy batch of guacamole from hearty avocados–throw in some chunks of tomato and onion. These are delicious, healthy, high-calorie foods for weight gain! Avoid bad fats, as they instigate heart disease and certain types of cancer. The bad guys are saturated fats and trans fats. Saturated fats raise LDL and total cholesterol; theyre found primarily in animal products, including meat, dairy and eggs. Trans fats come from hydrogenated oils. Scientists whip hydrogen into any type of oil, even originally healthy oils, to give processed foods a longer shelf life and a creamier mouth feel. French fries and buns, stick margarine, vegetable shortening and countless packaged foods contain partially hydrogenated oils. Read the labels, and avoid them.Another method you can use to supplement healthy foods to gain weight is by focusing on anaerobic exercise rather than aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise is moderate activity performed over an extended period of time, such as running and bicycling. Aerobic exercise burns fat. However, if youre trying to gain weight, retain a little fat to sculpt into lean, attractive muscle, and turn to anaerobic exercise. Anaerobic exercise is high-intensity with short bursts of action, such as weight lifting, sprinting and jumping. Weight lifting is the perfect anaerobic exercise for someone whos trying to gain weight. Body builders use this type of anaerobic exercise to build muscle mass, and non-endurance sports athletes use it to build power. Weightlifting creates a hard body for men that women love, and it sculpts those curves on women that men appreciate! Once you attain your desired weight, you can supplement anaerobic exercise with aerobic exercise for overall cardiovascular health.

In addition to these diet tips, you can supplement your healthy diet with protein supplements. It is often difficult to eat enough protein each day, so supplementing with a soy or whey protein shake can help increase overall intake. Everyone who is too skinny wants to gain weight, look great, and build strength. Take the next step today, and enjoy the benefits of a fit, healthy body.

The quest for the fountain of youth and the desire for vitality, robust health and ageless skin is a flame that burns bright in each of us once our youth begins to fade and we begin our inevitable journey into middle age. Staying young is an inescapable fact that is brought to our attention every time we pick up a magazine, watch a television commercial or go shopping. As medical science brings us the affordable miracle treatments for trimming the extra fat and minimizing the look of aged skin and correcting sun damage. We have all begun to pay closer attention to our bodies and look forward to our natural aging process with a brighter future and less dread of our mortality.

 

 

Your smile and the appearance of your teeth are an important part to making a good first impression. After all, your smile is the first thing people see. What most people do not know is that your oral health is also a very important part of your general health. Your oral health can also be a good indicator of other health issues throughout your body. Grinding and clenching your teeth at night can be an indication of temporomandibular joint disorder and can cause fatigue, make you irritable, and cause a variety of other health problems. It is the job of your general dentist to help you achieve and maintain optimum oral health.

While keeping a well-balanced diet everyday remains to be the best thing in order to maintain a healthy,disease-free body, nutrient supplements will help we succeed in having the kind of body that we we want. Our fast-paced busy schedule leaves us very little time to think about healthy meals well.

Instead, we give in to the temptation of eating with convenience food which have empty calories.

Though filling and unusually tasty, these packaged mixes unfortunately lacks the nutrients that your body really needs.

Nutrient supplements are widely available to assist us in getting the balanced nutrition and that added healthy boost to keep us going.

The key to effective & permanent body toning lies within the definition of the word itself. In short, it means to form, reshape and modify the composition of the body that you currently have. The main focus being on fat-reduction/skin tightening and muscle firming (maybe even a little bit of muscle building). Unfortunately, there are many myths and mis-perceptions that put a more confusing, and often times harmful, meaning behind the simple concept of body toning.

Having the ideal diet means not exceeding the appropriate weight for your height and build. How important is it to have the ideal weight? You cannot even begin to imagine that. Let’s just say that a lot of health hazards are related to obesity, and this condition is unfortunately way too frequent all over the world. Bad eating habits and complete lack of physical exercises are just two of the factors that lead to being overweight. This in its turn can lead to serious medical conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, arthritis, and so on.

We all know that optimum health is now achievable through the vast categories of vitamin nutritional supplements available off the shelf and even over the Internet. We also know that these nutritional supplements are needed to replace the vitamins we know are lacking in the modern diet. Its true that many foods today are lacking in nutrients – are junk food – but what about the nutritional supplements we take? Is there such a thing as a junk supplement? That is, something that fills our need for optimum health, just as junk food fills our need for a full stomach, but that doesnt actually provide the health we crave. The answer is yes: and this is why all health consumers should be informed in how to choose the correct nutritional supplements or vitamins for them. The key is to think healthy, and particularly think in the same way you do when buying healthy foods. After all, if we can choose a healthy diet, we can choose a healthy vitamins regimen.We are constantly becoming more conscious of the ingredients in our food, looking for hidden ingredients and scrutinizing every fat-free claim with cynicism. But how much do we do the same for our nutritional supplements? There are many vitamins companies out there who would try and falsify claims in order to make a quick buck. At the moment, nutritional supplements are not as strictly regulated by the FDA as food and medicines are. Always check the labels, claims, and gold-standards of every health-vitamin or nutritional supplement you are thinking of buying.Food has a shelf-life and so do multivitamins. Nutritional supplements, especially those containing herbs or other botanical ingredients can lose their potency with time. Many vitamins, especially vitamin C, are also prone to being degraded with time.Even ignoring a products expiry date, we all know that fresh food is better than pre-packaged meals stuffed full of additives and preservatives. Vitamins are the same, and it might surprise some people to find out that a large number of store-bought nutritional supplements contain preservatives for a longer shelf-life. Freshly made health supplements do exist, but are not as common as the mass-produced multi-vitamins, so shop around. Many minerals and vitamins that get exposed to light and air lose their health-giving attributes and are rendered no good to us. So make sure that when you do by fresh vitamins and other nutritional supplements that you keep them in cold, dark place and in an airtight container to retain potency.Eating healthily often costs more in time and money, yet we all know that the investment is worth it in terms of overall health. Nutritional supplements are the same: there are a lot of junk vitamins out there that do not work properly. Getting a custom-made nutritional supplement is like getting a home-cooked meal using fresh ingredients. Its better quality, better suited to what you want, better tasting, and ultimately better for your health.There is nothing wrong with dairy products, and they contain many health benefits. However people can still be born with, or develop, allergies to common-place foodstuffs making them something to be avoided. While allergies to vitamins are not possible, it is possible for people to react badly to certain herbs that show positive health benefits when taken by others. Make sure youre not allergic to any botanical or herbal ingredients in your nutritional supplements.Overeating can lead to weight gain and related health problems such as heart disease, liver disease, and high cholesterol. Excessive use of nutritional supplements can have an even more dramatic effect on the body so care should be taken. In fact, it is better to compare vitamin supplements with medicine: both have side-effects, and with both there is a danger of overdose. Always consult your physician or health practitioner about safe usage of nutritional supplements for your personal health.

Todays mantra is you are what you eat. But it is also true to say you are what you take. Dont just practice healthy eating; ask the experts about healthy supplementation too.

Healthy Living – The Quality Of Life

The importance of dieting to healthy living depends on what you mean when you think diet. Do you want to feel healthy as you grow older each day? Living healthy means more than keeping away from junk food. There are four crucial components to healthy and balanced living: eating well, getting enough sleep, exercising regularly and daily meditation.

Your best approach to healthy living involves both watching your diet and getting adequate exercise, rather than trying to control one at the expense of the other. Exercise, a healthy diet and avoiding stress are the three most important ways you can ensure you are living a healthy lifestyle. Here are some suggestions for living a healthy lifestyle consistently, easily and permanently. Applying these simple tips for living a healthy improve your health and consequently the way you feel.


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