I work with clients every day to help them reach their goals. It doesn't matter if the goals are weight loss, weight gain or sport specific---many times the clients' goals are hindered by "something else" going on in their lives. Of course, the ultimate goal is for you to have a healthy, lean body and not just weight loss.
Optimal health involves making lifestyle changes to improve your:
a. health
b. fitness
c. energy levels
d. quality of life
This takes hard work and many adjustments along the way.
Here are 10 Steps you can take today toward a healthier body:
1. Have the right attitude. Negativity affects every thing you do in life. Always look for the best in every situation and get rid of the "negative vampires" in your life. Hang around positive people. We all need all the help we can get.
As it relates to health, an attitude such as, "I will do whatever it takes to have the best health and body," will always lead to positive changes.
2. What motivates you to get healthier? Having the right motivation will help keep your attitude positive.
In a 2008 Men's Health Magazine article, it list 5 different motivations that you can have for losing weight. Many times, New Year's fitness resolutions die by the end of February because you had the wrong motivation for working out. Here they are:
a) AMOTIVATION - You don't really have a reason to work out. Its more of a fad for you. Your workouts won't last long.
b) EXTERNAL REGULATION - You're motivated to workout because other people like the way you look when you're in shape, but no internal motivation exist. How long do you think you'll be able to please people? Then what will motivate you?
c)INTROJECTED REGULATION - You feel bad about yourself when you don't workout. This is a type of motivation, but its based on negative motivations.
d) IDENTIFIED REGULATION - You workout because its good for your health and lifestyle. This is a very positive behavior and will lead to permanent lifestyle changes.
e) INTRINSIC MOTIVATION - You workout because you enjoy it! Probably the best motivation of all.
In my opinion, a combination of the motivations listed in items "c" through "e" lead to permanent lifestyle changes (with heavier weight attached to items "d" and "e"). And, the motivation listed in item "b" will probably be mixed in somehow. Did you find yourself anywhere in this motivation list?
3. Do you have limiting behaviors? Are you sabotaging your health, fat loss and weight loss efforts? For example, if you are trying to break bad eating habits, why do you keep junk food and sugary foods in your kitchen pantry? If its there, you will eat it. You have to believe you can change and really want to change.
4. Healthy, managed nutrition is critical for a healthy body. You need a meal plan you can maintain over time. Fad diets and starvation diets cannot be maintained. You quickly regain the weight when you begin to eat regularly.
The primary cause of weight gain is consistent calorie surpluses, or eating more daily calories than you burn. A slow metabolism is not the main cause of weight gain.
Add healthy foods to your menu that you like. You are more likely to stay with a menu loaded with foods you like. Replace the foods that are bad for you with whole, natural foods. This eliminates foods in a box or bag.
Set your daily calorie intake based on your basal metabolic rate, your activity level and your goals. This way, you won't eat too much or too little. Maintaining the right amount of calorie deficit on most days (burning more calories than you consume) is the key to burning fat and losing weight.
I don't recommend any diet that omits one of the macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, fat). Your body's metabolism needs all 3 macronutrients to work efficiently.
Control your hunger during the day so you don't overeat when you do eat. Do this by eating small meals every 3-4 hours to keep your energy and metabolism active.
5. Regular strength training and interval cardio sessions are a must if you want to change your body. Fat loss is more important than weight loss.
When you continue to build muscle mass and burn fat, your body will change to lean and toned. This will also speed up your metabolism because your body has to work harder to maintain muscle mass. A faster metabolism helps you burn more calories during the day, during workouts and at rest. This is the main key to help keep you from regaining weight.
6. Adopt an active lifestyle. Walk as much as possible every day. The health-related benefits are numerous when you remain active on most days.
So, if you have a "sit-down" job, I would recommend that you move more. When you sit, your fat-burning enzymes basically shut down. When you stand during the day, those fat-burning enzymes go to work for you.
Try to stand as much as you can during the day and take walking breaks and lunches to activate your fat-burning enzymes. Any activity is good to go along with your regular workouts. All movement burns calories.
7. You can be skinny and still be fat and unhealthy. If you just lose weight without exercise, your body has not changed to lean. And, this can lead to yo-yo weight loss and weight regain.
From a Mayo Clinic article by Katherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D., “Can you be considered obese if you have a normal body weight?” it states:
“Yes. You can have a normal weight, but if your body fat percentage is high enough, you may be considered obese — a situation known as normal weight obesity. Normal weight obesity means you may have the same serious health risks as does someone who's obese. Obesity is defined as having an excessive amount of body fat — not as weighing too much.”
Katherine explains the dangers of depending on body mass index (BMI) to determine your risks for health related problems such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol level and metabolic syndrome.
8. Practice weight management. On the surface, it is a simple process---if you do it day in and day out. When you reach weight loss goals, you have to manage your new body to remain successful. In other words, keep working out and eating right!
According to Christopher Sciamanna, M.D., the problem comes with what you do after the diet. Sciamanna discovered this the hard way: After losing 30 pounds, he described his new, lower weight as "shockingly challenging" to maintain.
He and his colleagues at Penn State University's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center decided to study weight loss maintenance.
Part of their study was to examine results found at the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR). For the past two decades, NWCR has focused on a single group of people. To qualify, they have to lose at least 30 pounds and keep the weight off for at least a year. The findings aren’t surprising. The participants were successful primarily because of the following habits:
--Exercise at least an hour a day, almost every day
--Follow a low-fat, low-sugar, low-calorie diet
--Eat, more or less, the same foods all the time
--Minimize TV watching
--Eat breakfast
9. Healthy lifestyle habits produce a healthier body. This is a no-brainer. If you get adequate nightly sleep, limit excessive stress, don't smoke, limit excessive alcohol consumption, exercise regularly and eat healthy you will have a healthier body. Practice these type of healthy habits on most days.
Here's a quick healthy habit you can do today: drink enough water. Your body is about two-thirds water. Drink water and unsweetened drinks (like tea) most of the time. It will help you eat less and help your body function better.
Drink about half your weight in water every day. So, if you weigh 160 pounds, drink 80 ounces of water each day.
Remember, certain foods contain large amounts of water. This counts toward your water intake. For instance watermelon is about 90% water and lettuce has about 95% water. Some meats contain as much as 70% water.
Water also helps your body flex muscles, remove wastes, cushion joints, carry nutrients and oxygen to your cells and helps convert food into energy (although water doesn't provide energy).
You may be experiencing dehydration if you have dry lips/mouth, dizziness, headache, nausea or muscle cramps. When you exercise, drink about a cup of water every 15 minutes.
10. You may need professional advice in certain areas of your life.
A personal trainer can help you visualize success and individualize your fat loss and nutrition program. Its hard to change your body all by yourself.
You may also need help with things such as depression. And a full physical exam will show you where your health stands.
You can start taking positive steps today to improve your health. Don't procrastinate!
Be sure and download your FREE 14-Day Accelerated Fat Loss Program from My Fitness Hut!
Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
Your Fitness University
My Fitness Hut
Her Fitness Hut
Sports Fitness Hut
Rapid Fat Loss and Six Pack Abs
Friday, June 1, 2012
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Sugar - The Fat Promoter and Drug
by Yuri Elkaim, BPHE, CK, RHN and Amy Coates, BSc., RHN
The average person in North America consumes 150 lbs of refined sugar per year! This is astronomical in contrast to the 5 lbs per year consumed by the average person at the turn of the 20th century.
Sugar, especially in its refined state, has many detrimental effects on the body. First and foremost, it is highly acid-forming. This means that sugar consumption throws off your pH balance so that your blood and other important become more acidic. The more acidic your body becomes, the greater the likelihood for disease to flourish.
Arthritis, asthma, headaches, psoriasis, cancer, stomach gas, intestinal gas, osteoporosis, heart disease, weight gain, PMS, candidiasis, tooth decay, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, cancer sores, cataracts, gallstones, kidney stones, and cystic fibrosis are all diseases and conditions that are negatively affected by the intake of sugar.
Download your Free book, "5 Detox Scams to Avoid" and learn how to really detox your body with whole, natural foods.
Sugar - The Fat Promoter and Drug
When you consume sugar, insulin is released from the pancreas, causing your muscle and liver cells to take up glucose from the blood and store it. A diet that includes lots of refined sugar goes hand in hand with mood swings. When blood sugar is abnormally high, as it is when sugar is ingested, the sugar acts like a drug, and you become elated.
But once insulin packs the sugar away into the cells, your mood begins to head south and your brain signals that more sugar is needed to regain the high. This is exactly when you find yourself reaching for that chocolate bar or sugary treat.
When a low-sugar diet is consumed, you will find your moods are even throughout the day, and your body will actually tap into fat as a source of fuel, a process that stops the second you eat something sugary. Since toxins are stored in fat, this is something you want to get rid of!
Sugar = Toxic Acid
Excessive sugar consumption throws your body’s pH levels out of balance. The sugar, and the acidity that it creates, provides an internal environment that is ripe for the overgrowth of dangerous yeasts, fungi, and bacteria - ultimately making it much harder for you to lose weight and maintain optimal health.
In turn, these nasty little critters feed on the sugar, multiply, and expel toxic wastes that make you feel and look even worse. Because these critters feed on sugar, your body begins to crave more sugar in the form of sweets, breads, pastas, and so forth. You end up feeding these microorganisms and fuel their growth, placing additional toxicity acid into your body.
As this vicious cycle continues not only do you feed these toxin-producing microorganisms but you also intake huge amounts of calorie-rich, nutrient void, sugar-laden foods. Over time, an excess intake of calories through sugar obviously leads to weight gain (considering everything else remains equal).
The other aspect of sugar that increases toxicity is the fact that as you fuel more and more of these “bad” microorganisms, the toxins they expel create more acid in your blood and pose added stress on your liver.
Since excess acid in the blood will eventually be stored in fat cells, it is imperative that you reduce the acid load in your body - if you want to lose weight and achieve great health. Only once you rid your body of excess acid and restore its proper pH balance will you be able to shed excess fat. If fat isn’t needed to store acid, then it can more readily be metabolized.
Make sense?
Similarly, if your liver becomes stressed and compromised as a result of having to filter tons of toxins floating through your blood, your weight loss attempts will be in vain. This is because the liver is not only the body’s major filter but it also regulates sugar and fat metabolism.
If your liver is not functioning properly then its ability to metabolize sugar and fats will also be compromised. Elevated blood sugar and blood lipid levels are usually the result.
Download your Free book, "5 Detox Scams to Avoid" and learn how to really detox your body with whole, natural foods.
Sugar is a Now a Processed Food Ingredient
The manner in which sugar is processed exacerbates the problem. More than 60 chemicals are used in the processing of natural sugarcane’s thick beige stalks into the fine, white granular table sugar that we’re all to familiar with. Many of these chemicals, including bleaches and deodorizes, are still present in the final product.
At same time, the naturally occurring minerals and vitamins in the sugarcane plant are completely removed. One such mineral is chromium.
Chromium is a critical player in your body’s ability to uptake sugar from the blood and into the cells. The fact that chromium is not present in refined sugar poses a serious problem for sugar uptake and metabolism, which imposes further stress on your body’s ability to burn fat and control blood sugar effectively.
Sugar Upsets the Mineral Balance in Your Body
There are so many reasons that sugar is bad news that simply it’s impossible to go through all of them right now. But one reason we will hit on is the fact that sugar can single-handedly impair the mineral balance in your body.
Researchers have found that ingesting sugar increases the rate at which we excrete calcium. Essentially, calcium is removed from the bones, teeth, and tissues to neutralize the consumption of acidic sugary treats!
Since minerals work in relation to one another, when you consume sugar, you are starting the dominoes falling.
And it’s not just the refined table sugar that is the problem. In fact, the majority of our sugar intake comes from hidden and unexpected sources such as processed and packaged foods. Sugar is used as an additive in foods ranging from meat to ketchup to salt. In packaged foods sugar can take the form of glucose, dextrose, sucrose, or the ever-present high-fructose corn syrup.
The major concern is that sugar provides no real nutritional value, while wreaking havoc on your blood sugar levels (promoting diabetes and weight gain) and leading to excess caloric consumption. It suppresses the immune system, disrupts normal mineral relationships, compromises the health of your vital organs, and keeps your body incredibly toxic.
Obviously, you must not only eliminate sugar from your diet, but also avoid other antinutrients such as alcohol, sweeteners, caffeine, rancid fats, drugs, and food additives and colourings to ensure your immune functioning is up to par. Of course, you must also eat a diet full of fresh, whole, colourful, and nutritious fruits and vegetables!
Don't waste money on detox pills, detox supplements and detox potions that will not work. Instead.......
Download your Free book, "5 Detox Scams to Avoid" and learn how to really detox your body with whole, natural foods.
Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
Your Fitness University
My Fitness Hut
Her Fitness Hut
Sports Fitness Hut
Rapid Fat Loss and Six Pack Abs
The average person in North America consumes 150 lbs of refined sugar per year! This is astronomical in contrast to the 5 lbs per year consumed by the average person at the turn of the 20th century.
Sugar, especially in its refined state, has many detrimental effects on the body. First and foremost, it is highly acid-forming. This means that sugar consumption throws off your pH balance so that your blood and other important become more acidic. The more acidic your body becomes, the greater the likelihood for disease to flourish.
Arthritis, asthma, headaches, psoriasis, cancer, stomach gas, intestinal gas, osteoporosis, heart disease, weight gain, PMS, candidiasis, tooth decay, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, cancer sores, cataracts, gallstones, kidney stones, and cystic fibrosis are all diseases and conditions that are negatively affected by the intake of sugar.
Download your Free book, "5 Detox Scams to Avoid" and learn how to really detox your body with whole, natural foods.
Sugar - The Fat Promoter and Drug
When you consume sugar, insulin is released from the pancreas, causing your muscle and liver cells to take up glucose from the blood and store it. A diet that includes lots of refined sugar goes hand in hand with mood swings. When blood sugar is abnormally high, as it is when sugar is ingested, the sugar acts like a drug, and you become elated.
But once insulin packs the sugar away into the cells, your mood begins to head south and your brain signals that more sugar is needed to regain the high. This is exactly when you find yourself reaching for that chocolate bar or sugary treat.
When a low-sugar diet is consumed, you will find your moods are even throughout the day, and your body will actually tap into fat as a source of fuel, a process that stops the second you eat something sugary. Since toxins are stored in fat, this is something you want to get rid of!
Sugar = Toxic Acid
Excessive sugar consumption throws your body’s pH levels out of balance. The sugar, and the acidity that it creates, provides an internal environment that is ripe for the overgrowth of dangerous yeasts, fungi, and bacteria - ultimately making it much harder for you to lose weight and maintain optimal health.
In turn, these nasty little critters feed on the sugar, multiply, and expel toxic wastes that make you feel and look even worse. Because these critters feed on sugar, your body begins to crave more sugar in the form of sweets, breads, pastas, and so forth. You end up feeding these microorganisms and fuel their growth, placing additional toxicity acid into your body.
As this vicious cycle continues not only do you feed these toxin-producing microorganisms but you also intake huge amounts of calorie-rich, nutrient void, sugar-laden foods. Over time, an excess intake of calories through sugar obviously leads to weight gain (considering everything else remains equal).
The other aspect of sugar that increases toxicity is the fact that as you fuel more and more of these “bad” microorganisms, the toxins they expel create more acid in your blood and pose added stress on your liver.
Since excess acid in the blood will eventually be stored in fat cells, it is imperative that you reduce the acid load in your body - if you want to lose weight and achieve great health. Only once you rid your body of excess acid and restore its proper pH balance will you be able to shed excess fat. If fat isn’t needed to store acid, then it can more readily be metabolized.
Make sense?
Similarly, if your liver becomes stressed and compromised as a result of having to filter tons of toxins floating through your blood, your weight loss attempts will be in vain. This is because the liver is not only the body’s major filter but it also regulates sugar and fat metabolism.
If your liver is not functioning properly then its ability to metabolize sugar and fats will also be compromised. Elevated blood sugar and blood lipid levels are usually the result.
Download your Free book, "5 Detox Scams to Avoid" and learn how to really detox your body with whole, natural foods.
Sugar is a Now a Processed Food Ingredient
The manner in which sugar is processed exacerbates the problem. More than 60 chemicals are used in the processing of natural sugarcane’s thick beige stalks into the fine, white granular table sugar that we’re all to familiar with. Many of these chemicals, including bleaches and deodorizes, are still present in the final product.
At same time, the naturally occurring minerals and vitamins in the sugarcane plant are completely removed. One such mineral is chromium.
Chromium is a critical player in your body’s ability to uptake sugar from the blood and into the cells. The fact that chromium is not present in refined sugar poses a serious problem for sugar uptake and metabolism, which imposes further stress on your body’s ability to burn fat and control blood sugar effectively.
Sugar Upsets the Mineral Balance in Your Body
There are so many reasons that sugar is bad news that simply it’s impossible to go through all of them right now. But one reason we will hit on is the fact that sugar can single-handedly impair the mineral balance in your body.
Researchers have found that ingesting sugar increases the rate at which we excrete calcium. Essentially, calcium is removed from the bones, teeth, and tissues to neutralize the consumption of acidic sugary treats!
Since minerals work in relation to one another, when you consume sugar, you are starting the dominoes falling.
And it’s not just the refined table sugar that is the problem. In fact, the majority of our sugar intake comes from hidden and unexpected sources such as processed and packaged foods. Sugar is used as an additive in foods ranging from meat to ketchup to salt. In packaged foods sugar can take the form of glucose, dextrose, sucrose, or the ever-present high-fructose corn syrup.
The major concern is that sugar provides no real nutritional value, while wreaking havoc on your blood sugar levels (promoting diabetes and weight gain) and leading to excess caloric consumption. It suppresses the immune system, disrupts normal mineral relationships, compromises the health of your vital organs, and keeps your body incredibly toxic.
Obviously, you must not only eliminate sugar from your diet, but also avoid other antinutrients such as alcohol, sweeteners, caffeine, rancid fats, drugs, and food additives and colourings to ensure your immune functioning is up to par. Of course, you must also eat a diet full of fresh, whole, colourful, and nutritious fruits and vegetables!
Don't waste money on detox pills, detox supplements and detox potions that will not work. Instead.......
Download your Free book, "5 Detox Scams to Avoid" and learn how to really detox your body with whole, natural foods.
Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
Your Fitness University
My Fitness Hut
Her Fitness Hut
Sports Fitness Hut
Rapid Fat Loss and Six Pack Abs
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