Bloating 101: How To Beat A Bulging Belly

Nothing can sabotage a flat belly faster than bloating. In addition to the dreaded stomach bulge, this familiar ailment results in terrible …

Setting Short Term Fitness Goals

Losing weight and getting healthy is a lifelong commitment, however, for some people, thinking so far ahead and realizing that they may very

 well have to spend time at the gym, for the rest of their life may be way too intimidating to deal with.  This is one of the reasons why setting shorter term goals,  with very verifiable results, after only a few short weeks or months, is a wonderful way of sprucing up your workouts as well as your eating plan.

 

A lifestyle change is difficult, especially if it involves radically changes activities that have been so thoroughly ingrained in the first place.  It is truly amazing to see how easily our bodies and minds are programmed to stop at the local fast food joint – instead of at the local grocery store or farmer’s market.

 

Indeed, choosing to eat healthy and nutritious foods can almost feel as though it goes against our very nature and spending quality time at the gym, walking or running on the treadmill, may very well be one of the most difficult things to embrace – ever.  However, the truth is that if you want to live a healthy, lean and happy life – you WILL have to change your eating habits and you WILL have to visit your local gym or workout from home.  There is simply NO WAY AROUND IT.

 

However, handy little tricks, such as setting out short term goals can make the entire process a little bit easier – especially as you find yourself meeting more and more of these goals and then, in turn, setting new ones with enthusiasm.

 

In reality, human beings, in many cases, are incredibly goal oriented – we like to be successful and have that feeling of having truly accomplished something.  By setting realistic short term fitness goals, you can actually get this feeling, on a regular basis, which, in turn, will motivate you to continue on.

 

However, short term goals need to be carefully monitored – so, creating some kind of recording of your progress, towards these goals, is essential.  Consider writing down your goals – but also the “means” by which you plan on getting there – and be detailed and specific about this.  Each time you achieve a milestone, record it and celebrate it – you will be amazed at how quickly you get to where you want to be.

 

MICHAEL GREEVES

 

Fitness and Exercise Tips for the Beginner

As we age, our bodies lose muscle tissue and our metabolism slows down. Exercise is the best way to get physically fit and lose weight. Starting an exercise regimen at any age is extremely beneficial and can add years to your life. Working out takes discipline and should not be painful. “No pain, no gain” is just a myth and is not good advice to follow. Exercise should make you feel healthy and fit, not looking for the ibuprofen and ice packs.

Experts advise that 20 to 30 minutes of aerobic activity at least three times a week is beneficial for both men and women. Select the best plan that is favorable to your lifestyle, whether it is at home or a fitness club. Opt for a form of exercise you will enjoy the most and start out slowly, increasing your activity and work out-time gradually. Consider adding basic weight training to build muscles, burn calories, and control body fat.

 

Aerobic Activity Training :

Bicycling, Brisk walking, Dancing, Jogging, Jump Rope, Roller-skating, Skiing, Swimming and Tennis

 

For beginners, try increasing personal fitness in your everyday life by walking more, doing some yard work, painting, and parking your car further from your destination. Not only will you have the satisfaction of getting things done, you’ll enjoy the benefits of being physically fit.

You don’t need to lump your exercise all in one session. Try it in 10 minute increments if this is easier for you and as time allows. While there’s no plan or guarantee for everyone, get started and find out what works for you.

Consult your physician before starting any exercise routine and understand that diet and nutrition will play a big factor in your overall results.

 

Exercising Tips: 

Get busy at home. Clean your house more frequently, do more gardening and yard work.

Walking is one of the most popular forms of exercise, and for a reason. It’s easy to do and comes naturally.

Begin exercising at least 20 minutes a day. Start slow.

Don’t jump right into exercise. Warm up and stretch first to get your blood circulation flowing. Use your free time to try new routines.

Take it one day at a time, with realistic goals.

Always have a bottle of water and a towel on hand when exercising.

You don’t need to invest in fancy fitness equipment.

Treadmills and exercise bikes and Excercise DVD Videos are great aerobic activity tools for cold months indoors.

Don’t allow yourself to watch your favorite TV show unless you do it on a treadmill or exercise bike.

Add entertainment such as music or tv to your indoor activity.

The more muscle you gain, the higher your metabolism.

Get family and friends to exercise with you.

Add hand weights gradually to your routine.

How Healthy Is Your Diet?

When it comes to nutrition, too much enjoyment often means sugary and fatty food with little nutritional value. So you vow to eat healthy, but

 often “eating healthy” is very vague and subjective. However, one way to measure the “healthiness” of your diet is by examining its vitamin and mineral content. Nutrition expert Dr. John Berardi is here to help us determine the amount of essential vitamins and minerals needed for a healthy diet.

The US government has figured out the rock-bottom amount of essential vitamins and minerals (micronutrients) needed for a healthy diet. They used to use recommended daily allowances (RDA); now they’ve moved to a new term: reference daily intake (RDI). RDI isn’t optimal; it’s just the baseline that you need in order to prevent malnutrition. That’s important to remember! In the chart below, check out the American Dietetics Association’s RDI recommendations for the listed micronutrients.

A few years back Johnwrote about a study that analyzed 70 people’s diets, and there wasn’t a single person meeting all their nutritional requirements. Wow!

Obesity and Nutrient Deficiency
Since most obese people eat more food than lean people, you’d think that this extra food would give them more nutrients. Therefore, obese people would have much fewer nutritional deficiencies but that’s not so. Overweight and obese people are over 80% more likely to have micronutrient deficiencies compared to lean people.

In a recent study titled “The Prevalence of Micronutrient Deficiency in Popular Diet Plans,” the researcher looked at suggested diet plans from four well-known diets: the South Beach diet, the Atkins for Life diet, the Diet Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) and the Best Life Diet.

He asked, “If you followed a given diet perfectly, what percentage of the RDI of 27 essential micronutrients would you get? Would you get all the vitamins and minerals you need?”

For those unfamiliar with these diets, here’s the low-down: The South Beach Diet replaces “bad” fats and carbs (like trans fat and white bread) with “good” fats and carbs (like olive oil and whole grains). You could liken it to the Mediterranean diet. The Atkins for Life diet is a low-carbohydrate plan with a maximum of 20 grams of carbohydrates a day. DASH is a diet developed at the Mayo Clinic to reduce high blood pressure and limits sodium to about 3000 mg a day. The Best Life Diet comes from Oprah’s trainer Bob Greene – it’s a low-fat diet plan.

The researcher analyzed 15 meals from each diet to see how many essential micronutrients the plan contained, then calculated each diet plan’s content of these micronutrients using the US Department of Agriculture Nutrient Database for Standard Reference.

Let’s pretend that you haven’t read the title of the research article. None of the four diets provided the RDI for all 27 micro-nutrients. Actually they barely meet the requirements for half the micro-nutrients. The Best Life Diet has the most sufficient levels of micronutrient requirements. If you followed the Best Life diet perfectly, out of 27 micronutrients, you’d get 100% of 15 micronutrients. But you’d lack 12 micro-nutrients. Yup, this was the best diet of the four as far as getting your nutrients.

Second was the DASH diet, which provided sufficient levels for 14 of the 27 micronutrients. Atkins offered 12 of the 27. The South Beach Diet was way behind. It provided sufficient amounts of only six micronutrients. Six! If you include micronutrients that were over 90% RDI, then you can get to nine micronutrients.

Conclusion
Popular diet plans, including medically reviewed (DASH), have some major micronutrient deficiencies with the biggest deficiencies happening in chromium, Vitamin B7, Vitamin E, Vitamin B5, iodine and Vitamin D. Though the researcher recommends a multivitamin, you should take his advice with a grain of salt since he is the CEO of a company developing a multivitamin. (Although, don’t throw out the advice completely. A multi-vitamin is a good backup plan in certain situations).

My advice is either track your micronutrients with a nutritional program or consult with a professional to review your intake. By doing so, you’ll be able to focus on getting your micronutrients from whole food instead of a multivitamin, since there are many chemical compounds covered by one vitamin name and since your body is better at absorbing nutrients from whole food.

The bottom line is, whether you’re eating to maintain or to lose weight, make sure you’re getting the micronutrients you need from whole food. Eating more brightly colored fruits and vegetables will help you get the nutrients you need without many more calories.

Dr. John Berardi is recognized as one of the top exercise nutrition experts in the world. His work has been published in numerous textbooks, peer-reviewed journals and in countless popular exercise and nutrition books and magazines. Through his company Precision Nutrition, Dr. Berardi has worked with over 50,000 clients in over 100 countries. He now has free fat loss courses for men and women, a free nutrition course for athletes and a free course for fitness pros on his website. 

Shakeology and the Glycemic Index

Shakeology was recently tested and measured for it Glycemic Index (GI) and received the amazing score of 24 by Glycemic Index Laboratories.GI is a way to measure how carbohydrates react in your blood. When you eat carbs, your blood sugar level rises anywhere from a little to a lot. The GI uses a scale of 1 to 100, with higher numbers given to foods that cause the most rapid rise in blood sugar. These foods give a quick energy boost, often followed by a crash as your blood sugar drops rapidly, leaving you feeling sluggish, tired and even irritated.

The body needs carbs for fuel, but you need to feed it the right kind of carbs – ideally, foods found with a low rating on the Glycemic Index. Included on this list are whole grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables and, now confirmed… Shakeology.

Anthony Stewart – www.blueprintlifestylefitness.com

Why Maintain a Healthy Weight

Reaching and maintaining a healthy weight is important for overall health and can help you prevent and control many diseases and conditions. Maintaining a healthy weight is so important and it helps you feel good about yourself, and gives you more energy to enjoy life. 
 Here are some reasons to support maintaining a healthy weight.

• Live Longer
• Have more Energy
• Look Great
• Improve Self-esteem
• Better Quality of life
• Sleep better
• Strong memory
• Healthy cardiovascular system
• Avoid complications from diabetes
• Manage blood pressure
• Reduce chance of stroke and heart attack

Here are some tips to maintain a healthy weight.

Healthy Diet – Eat a balanced diet of healthy foods from all food groups and if you are overweight or obese, reduce your daily calorie intake by 500 calories for weight loss. Be sure to portion your food and if necessary, use a calorie counter or a meal planner brogram like the one on this site.

 

Be Active – Aim for 30 minutes per day of physical activity. If you are overweight or obese, you will need to be active longer and be more intense with your workouts.

Eat Breakfast – Without a doubt, eating this very important meal kick starts your metabolism, gives you energy for the rest of the day.

Drink water – Water is essential for weight loss and maintenance. A healthy increase in water assists with nutrient absorption, skin hydration, metabolism, detoxification and other necessary functions.

Eating out – This is a sure way to gain weight or sabotage your weight goals. If you eat in restaurants, learn how to order your food and take home a “doggy bag”. Restaurant portions are much larger than the recommended portion size.

Avoid eating sugar, drinking alcohol, eating in restaurants and piling too much food on your plate.

 

Anthony Stewart

www.blueprintlifestylefitness.com

 

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When, what, how you eat will impact your fitness goal in more ways than one. You can work out like a crazy person, it doesn’t matter, if your diet is wrong you wont see the inches come of. Recommended is that you eat small meals often to keep your blood sugar at a stable level and it’s an easier way to make sure that you do not overeat, extra protein and carbs after weight lifting, no carbs before bedtime, lots of vegetables, fruits and whole grain and always stay away from fad diets though you will need all macronutrients to get to your fitness goal.

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How to Lose the Gut

Dozens of crunches, on their own, are not likely to help you lose the gut. What does work is a full-body exercise routine that builds lean muscle all over. Since muscle burns calories even at rest, having more muscle helps to melt fat all over, including the belly. The best plan is regular cardio (aerobic) exercise, resistance training, and a healthy, calorie-controlled diet.

 

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Nutritional Programs!

Take a look around the nutrition world. Confusing, isn’t it?

Conflicting advice is everywhere, and you’re stuck in the middle. You wonder whether anyone out there even knows what they’re talking about, or whether the experts will ever reach a consensus on anything. You start to wonder whether you’ll need a degree in nutritional biochemistry before you can lose that stubborn abdominal fat.

So what’s the deal? Why so much confusion? Why does one expert suggest that high protein is best for everyone, while another expert suggests high carb and yet another expert suggests high fat? Besides, what exactly do high protein, high carb, and high fat really mean? And why are other experts telling us that food choices should be based on our “metabolic type,” our “blood type,” or our “ancestry”?

One expert says to eat like a Neanderthal and another says eat like a Visigoth, or perhaps a Viking. But while searching for nutritional Valhalla, most people just get lost and eat like a Modern American-and end up looking more Sumo than Samurai.

These days, we have a cacophony of expertise: lots of confusing noise from the experts drowning out the signal of truth. On the surface, it appears as if today’s nutrition technology is quite advanced. After all, we have at our disposal more nutrition information than ever before. More money is being spent on nutrition research than in any time in history. Every day, impressive strides are being made in the field. Dozens of nutrition experts are rising to prominence. Yet simultaneously we’re witnessing a steadily increasing rate of obesity, an increase in nutrition-related illness (Diabetes, CVD, and Syndrome X), and an increase in nutrition-related mortality.

Part of the problem is that much of the information hasn’t reached the people who need it. Part of the problem is that even when it does reach those people, they often don’t use it. And certainly, the problem is multifactorial-there are probably many more reasons than I can list here.

How much more information do we need?

But the curious thing is that many people try to solve the problem by seeking out more information. They know it all and still want more. If there’s one thing of which I am absolutely convinced, it’s that a lack of good nutrition information isn’t what prevents us from reaching our goals. We already know everything we need to know. Sometimes the real problem isn’t too little information but too much.

All the fundamental principles you need to achieve good health and optimal body composition are out there already, and have been for years. Unfortunately, with 500 experts for every fundamental principle, and very little money to be made from repeating other people’s ideas, experts must continually emphasize the small (and often relatively unimportant) differences between their diet/eating plans and the diet/eating plans of all the other experts out there.

In the world of advertising and marketing, this is called “differentiation.” By highlighting the small distinctions and dimming out the large similarities between their program
and all the others, they’re jostling for your next nutritional dollar.

Now, and let me be clear on this, I’m not accusing nutrition experts of quackery.

Yes, some programs are utter crap. Those are generally quite easy to pick out and don’t merit discussion here. But most experts do know what they are talking about, can get results, and wholeheartedly believe in what they’re doing. Many of the differences between them are theoretical and not practical, and on the fundamentals they generally agree completely.

It’s all good – sorta

In fact, many of the mainstream programs out there, if not most of them, will work. To what extent they work, and for how long, varies. As long as a program is internally consistent, follows a few basic nutritional tenets, and as long as you adhere to it consistently, without hesitation, and without mixing principles haphazardly taken from other programs, you’ll get some results. It’s that simple, and that hard (as you can see, results depend as much on psychology as on biochemistry).

But if you’re like most people, you’ll first survey all the most often discussed programs before deciding which to follow. And in this appraisal, you’ll get confused, lost, and then do the inevitable. That’s right, you’ll revert back to your old, ineffectual nutrition habits.

Instead of parsing out the similarities between all the successful plans out there, the common principles that affect positive, long-term change, you get thrown off the trail by the stench of the steaming piles of detail.

The Atkins program works for all patients under the direct care of the Atkins team-as long as patients follow it. The Zone program works for all patients under the direct care of the Sears team -as long as they follow it. The Pritkin Diet works for all patients under the care of the Pritkin team- as long as they follow it.

Yet, not all three plans are identical. How, then, can they all get impressive improvements in health and body composition? Well, either each team somehow magically draws the specific patient subpopulations most in need of their plan (doubtful) or each system possesses some basic fundamental principles that are more important than the ratios of protein to carbs to fats.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Nutritional Programs

Here’s my take on it. I call these principles, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Nutritional Programs,” a shameless and possibly illegal play on Steven Covey’s book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” (Great book, by the way-you should read it sometime.)

These aren’t the newest techniques from the latest cutting-edge plan. Rather, they are simple, time-tested, no nonsense habits that you need to get into when designing a good eating program.

1. Eat every 2-3 hours, no matter what. You should eat between 5-8 meals per day.

2. Eat complete (containing all the essential amino acids), lean protein with each meal.

3. Eat fruits and/or vegetables with each food meal.

4. Ensure that your carbohydrate intake comes from fruits and vegetables. Exception: workout and post-workout drinks and meals.

5. Ensure that 25-35% of your energy intake comes from fat, with your fat intake split equally between saturates (e.g. animal fat), monounsaturates (e.g., olive oil), and polyunsaturates (e.g. flax oil, salmon oil).

6. Drink only non-calorie containing beverages, the best choices being water and green tea.

7. Eat mostly whole foods (except workout and post-workout drinks). So what about calories, or macronutrient ratios, or any number of other things that I’ve covered in other articles? The short answer is that if you aren’t already practicing the above-mentioned habits, and by practicing them I mean putting them to use over 90% of the time (i.e., no more than 4 meals out of an average 42 meals per week violate any of those rules), everything else is pretty pointless.

Moreover, many people can achieve the health and the body composition they desire using the 7 habits alone. No kidding! In fact, with some of my clients I spend the first few months just supervising their adherence to these 7 rules-an effective but costly way to learn them.

If you’ve reached the 90% threshold, you may need a bit more individualization beyond the 7 habits. If so, search around on this site. Many of these little tricks can be found in my many articles published right here. But before looking for them, before assuming you’re ready for individualization; make sure you’ve truly mastered the 7 habits. Then, while keeping the 7 habits as the consistent foundation, tweak away.

Of course, if you want a complete guide to doing this yourself, I strongly recommend you pick up a copy of Precision Nutrition, where I’ll show you in great detail exactly what to do.

Dr. John Berardi is the founder ofScience Link, Inc. and is the founder of Storm Training Systems.