Tag Archive for: healthy lifestyle

Foods to Avoid During Pregnancy

/in , ,

Pregnancy is a time when most mothers to be are concerned about their health, and about how what they eat, will affect their unborn baby. Public health agencies make many recommendations and one of those, in fact the most important one, is for women to avoid foods that have a high potential for disease causing bacteria or that are dangerous to the fetus.

Here’s a list of foods that public health agencies recommend you avoid during your pregnancy.

pregnancy

  • Alcohol – It is recommended that you completely stop drinking alcohol during your pregnancy as it is directly linked to fetal alcohol syndrome and other conditions.

  • Caffeine – You should limit your consumption of coffee, tea or cola to no more than 0-1 per day. Caffeine is linked to low birth weight as well as miscarriage.

  • Freshly caught fish – this includes tuna, swordfish, shark, marlin, etc., which may contain unsafe mercury levels. You should limit your intake to 150 grams per month. Canned white tuna and albacore tuna contain some mercury, so you should limit your consumption to no more than 300 grams per week.

  • Herbal tea, such as sage tea, Chamomile tea, pennyroyal, parsley tea, lobelia, coltsfoot, teas with aloe, juniper berries, comfrey, Labrador tea, buckthorn bark, and sassafras should all be avoided during pregnancy. There are others so make sure to read the packaging before purchasing.

  • Liver

  • Non-dried deli meats – cold cuts, refrigerated pate, hot dogs, refrigerated smoked seafood and fish, and meat spreads

  • Raw fish – clams, oysters and sushi. Avoid smoked fish that is kept in the fridge such as smoked salmon.

  • Raw or undercooked eggs – this includes foods that are made with raw eggs like Caesar salad dressing. Raw eggs can potentially contain salmonella and therefore should be avoided throughout your pregnancy.

  • Raw sprouts – especially alfalfa sprouts

  • Undercooked meat or rare meat, seafood and poultry

  • Unpasteurized juices

  • Unpasteurized milk products – also foods that are made from using raw milk cheese, especially soft and/or semi-soft cheeses. This includes Bria and Camembert. All unpasteurized cheeses have the potential to be infected with Listeria bacteria, which can be harmful to your baby.

If you are unsure about a certain food, it is best to avoid that food until you can find information regarding it. You should feel free to ask your doctor about any nutritional concerns you might have.

What Is A Fitness Tracker?

/in ,

Technological advancement has given rise to many smart applications that not only improve efficiency
but also make tracking and monitoring of different activities easier. It’s always important to monitor
your progress as far as your health and fitness regimen is concerned. A fitness tracker is therefore that
application or device used in tracking and monitoring fitness goals.

It measures metrics such as distance run or walked, rate of heartbeat, calories consumed and sometimes even the quality of your sleep. Most of these tracking devices are wirelessly synchronized to a smartphone or computer for the purposes of regular data tracking and reporting.

fitness

In many cases, people have fitness goals or targets, whether monthly or on a daily basis, that they hope
to achieve. Monitoring the progress of your fitness regimen can be a challenge especially if you are not a
certified fitness trainer or health practitioner. Fitness tracking devices give you the capability to monitor
your progress and determine how far you are from meeting your targets, or if indeed you achieved or
exceeded them.

Most of them are wearable and can also serve as regular digital watches. Some people wear them as accessories because of their fashion forward designs. These devices have become so main stream that some firms have decided to use them in encouraging consumers to live healthily.

The electronic fitness trackers are basically an advanced version of pedometers. Apart from counting
steps, they also use accelerometers to determine distance covered, graph general physical activity and
calculate calorie usage. In some cases they also keep track of and graph quality of sleep and heart rate.

As you go about your fitness routines, there are various activities that you engage in such as walking,
running, swimming, jogging, bike rides and normal house chores. It is important that you stay true to
your goals and monitor your progress because that is the only way you’ll be able to achieve your
objectives.

A fitness tracker is an ideal way to easily monitor your activity with great accuracy. You can imagine it to
be an electronic finger on your pulse, measuring your vitals on a regular basis. These trackers have made
use of the latest technology to enable fitness enthusiasts monitor their activities and keep track of their
progress. Most people spend so much time on their smartphones or tablets which is why fitness trackers
are synchronized with these devices for report displays.

Trackers can also be connected to social media apps like Facebook but one has to be careful since there are some instances when private information has ended up in the internet and public domain. There are different trackers available in the market and people can therefore make buying decisions based on prices, functionality and personal style.

A Look on Diet Fitness

/in , ,

Many people nowadays are very much conscious about their own health and fitness. In addition to that, these people, and many others as well, are now having that desire to sculpt their bodies to achieve that magazine-cover look. As a result, gyms, health spas and other fitness centers have proliferated all over to cater to the needs of the fitness buffs and aficionados.

Even on television exercise machines, weight loss products, and other paraphernalia to improve fitness have more or less gained control over the airwaves and made their way into the households. But exercise is not the only way to build that body beautiful. It also entails certain amount of responsibility on the foods one chooses to eat. Being healthy and fit requires one to observe diet fitness.

fitness

Diet fitness is as essential as exercise itself. Diet for fitness provides the essential nutrition one needs to restore worn-out muscles and for healthy growth. Diet fitness should never be taken for granted. With the popularity of keeping fit, many different views, methods, programs and dieting strategies have been formulated by many professionals. Among these are high carb diets and high fat diets. Whih one is more effective and which one should one choose to follow?

First thing to know would be the fundamental differences between these two diet approaches. As the name implies, high carb diets concentrates on taking in carbohydrate-rich foods while high fat diets endorses fat-rich foods. High carb diets are utilized to glycogen stored in the liver and muscles. Glycogen is a glucose complex that provides large amounts of energy ready for use in anaerobic exercises.

Fats, on the other hand, is well-nown for being the richest source of calories. It actually contains 2.5 times more calories than carbohydrates and proteins alike. Studies also show that it takes the body 24 calories to metabolize carbohydrates while it only takes 3 to burn down fat. So which one to follow? A person can follow a high carb and low fat fitness diet or the other way around. It is absolutely not recommended to follow both at the same time; unless of course if you want to gain body fat.

But then diet fitness is not all about losing fat, one must also consider his diet in order to keep fat away. Research shows that sustainable loss of weight can only be achieved on a diet which suits the individual food preferences, lifestyle, medical profile and satiety signals.

Diet programs all over can help you shed off excess pounds, but only one diet can help you stay sexy, and it is the one that satisfies you most. Other important aspects of having a fit diet are moderation, balance and variation. One must be careful not to leave out important nutrients and other substances necessary for healthy body functioning. health organizations are clear about the amounts of nutrients an individual should have in the body.

Low fat high carbs, high carbs low fat; the question is not which diet program will work out but which is it that will work for you. Striving for a sexy and healthy body does not have to burden an individual, diet fitness does not have to mean sticking to the same kind of food for life. One may even try to be adventurous and try out new foods out there. Who knows? one may even discover spinach interesting.

10 Things You Should Know About Stretching

/in , ,

Before fitness training, one must give importance to doing warm-up or stretching exercises to prevent accidents or to enhance the output during the training. There are also a number of precautionary measures and tips to serve as guidelines when doing fitness exercises.

Here are some of them.

stretching

  1. To increase your flexibility and to avoid injuries, stretch before and after workout. Almost everyone knows that stretching before workout prevents injuries during the exercises, but only few people know that stretching after workout, when muscles are still warm, can increase flexibility.

  2. Hold your stretching position for more than 60 seconds to increase flexibility. While holding your position for 20 seconds is enough for warm ups, holding each position for at least 60 seconds will develop the body’s flexibility.

  3. Do not go into a stretching position then immediately return to the relaxed position, and do it repeatedly. This is more appropriately termed as bouncing while in a position. When stretching, hold that position for several seconds, and then slowly relax. You may do this exercise repeatedly this way. Bouncing or forcing yourself into a position during stretching can strain or damage some joints or muscles.

  4. Work slowly in increments instead of immediately proceeding to doing the hardest exercise or position.

  5. Make sure that you have stretched or warmed up all muscle groups. For some people, even if they have strong bodies, they tend to neglect the neck when working out of stretching. Stretching the neck muscles can be as simple as placing the palm of one’s hand against the front of the head and pushing it. Then, do the same to the sides and the back of the head.

  6. Stretch regularly to continually increase your range of movements and your level of flexibility and strength.

  7. Workout considering only your capabilities and not of others. Do not force yourself to do exercises that you are not yet capable of just because there are people who can do it. Increase your limits slowly. Listen to your body. There are days when your body may be too tired that you may have to consider reducing your range of motion.

  8. Learn to rest. Rest in between sets and stations to make sure that the body has enough time to recover its energy. Also, it is advisable that you don’t work the same muscle groups consecutively for two days. The muscles grow during the period when you rest and not when you are working out.

  9. Do aerobic exercises to strengthen your heart. Aerobic exercises are those physical activities that much oxygen for fuel. This includes cardiovascular exercises such as skipping rope, running or swimming.

  10. Music may help you when you want to train for longer periods or to increase your intensity. You can use mp3 players, CD players or lightweight am radio receivers for this. Just make sure that you brought your headset with you so you wouldn’t disturb people who don’t prefer music while exercising.

Apart from preventing injuries and increasing one’s limit, it is also said that stretching is good for a tired body and also for a stressed mind and spirit.

 

Why Does Exercise Feel Bad?

/in ,

A lot of people will try and tell you that exercise will feel really good. Normally these are people with something to sell but they can also include friends and colleagues who seem to have an unhealthy love of exercise and want to recommend it to everyone that they meet.

The rest of us know different. When you first start trying to exercise on a regular basis it is far from fun. Sure, there might be some ‘runners’ high’ effect, but most of us have never lasted long enough to encounter it. Instead, we get the feeling of sickness, the ‘burn’, muscle cramp and more. exercise

Why does this happen?

The Burn

Let’s look at the ‘burn’ sensation first. Often you will hear bodybuilders talking about this sensation as though it were magical and highly desirable. Some even go as far as to say it’s highly pleasurable (cough Arnie cough). Whether or not that is true is somewhat debatable but where exactly does it come from?

Specifically, the burn is caused by the build-up of metabolites in the muscles. This is partly the result of blood and oxygen being pumped into the muscles to provide fuel and nutrients. The more you use your muscle, the more this build-up occurs. Simultaneously, the contraction of the muscle also ‘traps’ the blood in that area, causing it to pool.

Meanwhile, by-products are created as a result of the glycogen lactic acid system. All this can eventually result in a painful sensation that some people believe is a key indicator that you have done enough to trigger growth.

Sickness

The other thing you’ll notice and particularly when taking part in cardio workouts (HIIT even moreso) is that you start to feel somewhat sick. This is again due to the build-up of metabolites and lactate, this time in the bloodstream.

It is thought that the body responds to this increased lactate by feeling sick and that this might even be a signal that the body uses to force you to reduce the intensity of your workouts. Lactate is only really created during very intensive training sessions and as such, it is most likely to occur when you push yourself. Eventually this leads to the ‘lactate inflection point’ which is the most lactate you can manage in your bloodstream. When that happens, you’re ready to slow down and return to an aerobic state.

DOMS

DOMS stands for ‘Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness’ and is the pain you get the next day following intense training. Again, there is some debate over what precisely causes DOMS but it’s generally agreed that it has to do with ‘microtears in the muscle’. That is to say that making small tears in the muscle fiber not only trigger subsequent repair and thus growth but also cause discomfort as essentially these are very minor injuries!

Regular Old Pain…

And of course workouts can also just hurt. When you’re curling weights, you’ll find that you rub the skin on your hands painfully. When you’re jogging, you’ll jolt your joints and also your feet inside your shoes…
Training hurts… But the more you do it, the less it will start to hurt!

5 Best Healthy Foods For A Longer List

/in ,

Living longer is about exercising and eating only healthy foods. The healthier the foods that you eat, the more likely you are to live a happy life for a very long, long time. Obviously there are thousands upon thousands of healthy foods. Almost all vegetable that you may come across is likely healthy, as are the majority of all fruits. Natural grains tend to be in the upper pinnacle of healthy eating, etc.

But what are the healthiest foods – the foods that if you eat them regularly you are guaranteed to get the most nutrients you can from your meal? What are the foods that everyone should be eating in order to live a long and healthy life?healthy

The Healthiest Foods – a Countdown

5. Quinoa (Whole Grains)

Whole grains are vital for healthy living, and quinoa is one of the healthiest of those whole grains. A rather bland food overall, quinoa is very easy to flavor with things like lemon, garlic, oils, salt, and other flavors that make it taste significantly better. It is extremely high in both protein and fiber, and it is also a good source of iron and magnesium.

4. Cranberries (Berries)

Berries are another extremely healthy food. They have a number of antioxidants that are vital for healthy living. Cranberries are just one of several berries that are extremely high in antioxidants, but all berries have their benefits and should be eaten regularly.

3. Spinach (Greens)

Greens are a great source of protein, fiber, calcium and other important pieces of nutrition. Spinach is actually not quite as good for you as Kale and Collard Greens, but Spinach is more versatile and can be eaten in far more ways that just salad, so it can easily become a staple in your cuisine even when you want to mix it up.

2. Soy

Soy is simply a fantastically healthy food. It has fiber, vitamins, Omega-3, protein, calcium – almost everything that you could need from a meal. It can also be found in almost every different type of food, as vegetarians can find soy meats, soy cheeses, tofu and other food types that can all be used to get soy in every meal.

1. Salmon

Salmon, however, is like soy on steroids. Loaded with Omega-3 fatty acids, protein and other beneficial nutrients, salmon has almost everything that you need all in one grilled piece of fish. It is also low in fat and cholesterol (high in good cholesterol), and is a great addition to anyone’s diet.

All five of those foods are considered some of the healthiest foods in the world – but beyond that, they are all also incredibly versatile, so it is not too difficult to get them into your daily diet regularly. For anyone who want to improve their overall health and wellness and planning on eating a significantly healthier diet regularly, these foods are the first place you should go. They are simply loaded with all of the necessary ingredients that you need in order to improve your health.

Why You MUST Eat Your Vitamins if You Want to Lose Weight

/in ,

Too many people who are trying to lose weight will focus purely on their macronutrients. These are things like carbohydrates and proteins – the basic food groups that we can break all food down into. While this might appear to make sense though, the unfortunate reality is that it misses out some very crucial details.

Specifically, focusing purely on carbs vs fats and the calories therein means that you miss the importance of micronutrients. Vitamins, minerals and other nutrients such as amino acids, fatty acids and enzymes all play very important roles in our diet and they can make all the difference when it comes to losing weight. Read on to find out why and what you can do about it.lose weight

Energy

When you try and fail to lose weight, you might well find that you blame the amount of time (or lack of time) that you have in a day.

In other words, you don’t have time to exercise and you don’t have time to prepare the right food.

In reality though, time is not often what is really to blame.

More likely is that it is energy that is the problem.

If you have low energy, then you’ll find that you struggle to bring yourself to exercise at the end of the day or that you struggle to stay motivated in order to make healthy foods rather than just binge on chocolate and sweets.

Think about it: if time is the problem, then why not just wake up half an hour earlier? Because your energy levels won’t let you.

Eating vitamins is crucial then because it helps you to get your energy levels back.

If you want to feel more awake and more alive, then eating more vitamin C and B complex vitamins is perhaps the very best strategy and can bring instant benefits.

Metabolism

The other reason that micronutrients are so important is that they will actually help you to speed up your metabolism to help you burn more fat and feel more energetic as a result.

Take something like lutein for example. This is a nutrient that is often thought of mainly for its ability to prevent degenerative eye disease. What is less well known however, is that it is also capable of speeding up the rate at which you burn fat.

Lutein helps to improve the function of the mitochondria, which are the tiny ‘energy factories’ found in our cells.

Other nutrients that can do the same thing (through similar or completely different mechanisms) include coenzyme Q10, PQQ, B vitamins, resveratrol and others.

What you may not realize is that most of the supplements that you consume to lose weight or perform better in the gym are simply vitamins and minerals.

The best way I recommend to get more of this in your diet is to focus on foods that we would have eaten naturally in the wild. Foods like meats (especially organ meats), vegetables and fruits contain everything we need to survive.

 

Top Exercises to Use With HIIT

/in , ,

HIIT is high intensity interval training. By now, most of us will know what this term means and be familiar with how to go about using it. Simply put, it means that you are going to be alternating between periods of high intensity (normally at around 90-100% of your MHR) and periods of relatively low intensity and recovery (at around 70% of your MHR).

What this does, is to deplete your stores of glycogen and ATP, so that the only way your body can get the energy it needs to carry on with the low intensity training is to burn fat. You thus burn more fat both during the workouts and also continuously after the workout has finished! 

But HIIT doesn’t just have to mean running. Actually, there are a number of different exercises you can use in order to burn more fat and build more muscle and these work perfectly when combined with a HIIT workout.

Here are some great examples:

Kettlebell Swings

The kettlebell swing is an exercise that involves swinging a kettlebell up in the air and then letting it fall back down again. The momentum generated by this allows you to continuously exert yourself and ultimately, it’s a great way to provide a cardio challenge that burns fat while at the same time challenging and building up your muscles as well.

This is the perfect example of ‘concurrent training’ and will not only burn more fat but also tone and build muscle and generally help you to see amazing results.

Pull Ups

Pull ups are very well suited to HIIT, as long as you can perform enough of them with good technique. When you start to tire, you can always try to use a bit more momentum, at which point they become ‘kipping pull ups’ like those taught in CrossFit classes.

High Knees

If you can’t get outside to run, then another way to burn a lot of calories with a similar motion is to perform high knees. Stand on the spot, hold your hands up high and then run so that your knees hit your hands.

Tuck Jumps

Jump up in the air and then hug your knees in toward your chest each time you reach the apex of your jump.

Jack in the Box

Here, you squat down into a huddled position and then jump straight up in the air and kick your hands and arms out like a starfish. This not only challenges your legs to deliver a lot of explosive power but also involves your entire body in the movement!

Clapping Push Ups

HIIT works best when you involve your fast twitch muscle fiber. Fortunately, clapping push ups are a type of exercise that do exactly that thanks to their plyometric nature. These are much harder and more ballistic than regular press ups and can be used to burn through calories as a result.

Other CV

Of course running is just one example of a CV workout. Just as good is rowing, swimming, bike… Try them all and see what works best for you!

How Food Affects Your Mood

/in ,

Few things affect our state of mind, aka our mood, as profoundly as food. Women being propelled by some mysterious hormonal force to eat chocolate during PMS is one good example. There’s just something in that chocolate that makes them feel so good!

Aside from the emotional ties around food, such as associating it with celebration or entertainment, there is also the physiological side that affects our mood. We’ve all seen children throwing fits in the cereal aisles or at the checkout stand where all the sweets have been placed for impulse buying. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen such outbursts in the broccoli aisle.mood

People crave almost instinctively comfort foods which are high in carbohydrates, which the body immediately converts into sugar in the bloodstream upon consumption. Consuming processed and refined foods which contain exorbitant amounts of sugars and artificial ingredients and practically no dietary fiber renders the eater into a blood sugar nightmare.

Even cooked starches that some consider healthy such as potatoes, rice and pasta are converted into simple sugars quickly in the body. This gives an immediate burst of false energy and a short-lived sense of well being, followed by a nasty letdown and what some call ‘self induced hypoglycemia.’

In order to feel better after the letdown phase, which can make people feel exhausted, cranky and unable to focus, the body compels one to simply eat more of the substance that gave it that happy rush in the first place. Now we see how we get set up for addictions. Ever tried to be in a good mood, feel jubilant about life or get lots of work done when you are in the throes of caffeine withdrawal?

The main function of most anti-depressants on the market is to enhance the uptake of that famous ‘feel-good hormone’ serotonin. When this brain chemical is low, people crave carbohydrates and comfort foods in order to get it.

But if we learn how to nourish the brain properly, we need not suffer from nutrient or serotonin deficiencies and consequently we can avoid the addictions that keep us bound to the constant highs and lows. There is a sound and foolproof way to accomplish this.

One of the main reasons a raw vegan diet is so helpful in maintaining stable moods is due to the fact that there are no toxins, addictive substances or artificial ingredients in living foods. Moreover, raw foods are loaded with fiber to keep the intestinal tract and colon in tip top shape as well as clean.

If the colon is overloaded with waste, this waste is recirculated in the bloodstream again and again. How peaceful and blissful do you think you can feel with your body’s own waste nourishing your brain? Consumption of foods that are high in fiber and natural sugars also eliminates the wild roller coaster blood sugar swings which are notorious for ultimately depleting our serotonin supplies.

After a period of detoxification, which may sometimes be a bumpy road as our emotions are detoxified as well, the mind becomes clearer and sharper. Better health also brings an improved outlook on life and renewed hope that other improvements are possible. When we begin to look better, perhaps by dropping a few pounds or our skin clears up, we definitely begin to strike a more cheerful tone.

On a raw food diet, our brain becomes cleansed and nourished on a cellular level, our senses sharpen and we begin to see the sun come out in our life once again. Won’t you join me in eating naturally?

What Not to do if You Want to Lose Weight

/in ,

Nearly everyone you speak to wants to lose weight. This is not to say that they are necessarily obese or seriously overweight – but just that most of us are less active than we should be and possibly overindulge on the sweeter things in life.

But if so many people want to lose weight, why are so many of us still not in the shape that we would really like to be? The answer comes down to a number of very common mistakes that tend to hamper our performance. In this post, I’m going to break down a number of those mistakes and demonstrate which behaviors you should look to change in order to make your next diet successful.lose weight

Be Overly Ambitious

One of the biggest mistakes that we will often make when trying to lose weight is to be overly ambitious in terms of our diet plan and our exercise.

A common example of this might be planning to exercise 5 times a week for an hour at a time. This is a big mistake because it is unsustainable. Even if it works for the first few weeks, the reality is that it is going to eventually become too much at which point you’ll return to your old shape.

When looking at any diet plan, ask yourself whether it’s something you can realistically do forever. If not… what’s the point?

Forget Drink, Butter and Others

Another common mistake is to overlook the role that certain less obvious things have in your diet. That is to say that it is easy to remember to eat the right dinner or to avoid cake… but less obvious things like soda drinks, butter on your sandwiches and more can all also have similarly disastrous effects.

Wait

When I speak to people who want to lose weight, they will often tell me that they’re planning to use a certain diet plan or a certain exercise regime but that they’re waiting until life is less busy, until they have bought a fully-written training program from a fitness guru etc.

The point is that losing weight is really not complicated. There are some methods that are more effective than others but ultimately, as long as you are eating a little less and exercising a little more, you will begin to improve.

If you want to lose weight and you haven’t already started, then it suggests that you are putting it off or procrastinating – that you don’t have the motivation. That’s what you should focus on.

Overlook Lifestyle

What’s the best way to lose weight? Quit your job! Imagine it: you’d suddenly have much more time, much more energy and much more inclination to train and to eat correctly.

Of course most of us don’t have the luxury of being able to walk out of our offices, but what we can do is to pay more attention to the role that our work plays. Likewise, focusing on sleep, on our emotional state and on our routine is also important if you really want to make a big difference in your health.