Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Monday, 20 May 2013
The Health Benefits of Yoga Training at Home
Yoga training at home is so revolutionary in that yoga can be practiced by individuals of all ages and all shapes and sizes, as well as by individuals suffering from a slew of complex health problems. This practice is accessible to everyone and can drastically better the life of whomever is practicing; it has even been shown to alleviate the pain associated with pregnancy and even mediate childbirth pains.
How Yoga Helps Women :
Not only has yoga training been shown to dramatically increase flexibility, but the core strengthening exercises associated with the practice have the ability to improve posture. Because yoga strives to make all participants more aware of their bodies and their sense of self, this increased self awareness prompts individuals to recognize when their bodies begin to slump and thus straighten up accordingly.
Currently, with all the stressors of modern living, more and more individuals are faced with high blood pressure. Yoga forces participants to stretch out their entire bodies, resulting in improved circulation and better oxygenation, resulting in lower blood pressure. Not only will yoga get you on your way to an ideal body, but also make your doctor more content during your next appointment.
Yoga has also been scientifically proven to improve the immune system and increase the metabolism. Women in particular are unfortunately faced with a slowing metabolism as they age, but engaging with yoga can help to balance out your metabolism and keep your system in check. This increased metabolism also has the potential to jumpstart your body into weight loss mode - women who practice ashtanga yoga have a tendency to burn more calories and shed any extra weight they may be carrying.
For those who may still be uncomfortable with the idea of practicing yoga in a group setting, consider investing in home personal trainers to get you started on the path to a fresh, svelte you. Do not let the anxieties of group exercise prevent you from drastically improving your health and well being.
How Yoga Helps Men :
The strength training associated with yoga enables men to create the shoulder muscles they have always desired. Yoga can aid in improving bone density and also has been shown to lower cholesterol, something that men are more prone to than women. The practice significantly aids in weight loss while simultaneously producing firm, well defined muscles that men traditionally crave.
Many chronic conditions such as arthritis and back pain can be alleviated, as well as mental health illnesses ranging from depression to bipolar disorder to obsessive compulsive disorder. Many men commonly express concern over the inevitable shrinking muscle mass that is unfortunately a part of the aging process. Yoga can reverse this process by utilizing resistance training.
How Yoga Helps Everyone:
Many times, investing in a diet and exercise program can get tiresome after a month when tangible results on the body cannot be seen. Hiring home personal trainers can provide you with a professional to give you an objective opinion about the progress of your training. Many trainers chart progress using circumference techniques, changes in body mass index, and aerobic testing; therefore, you will be able to specifically see the changes that your body is making. With this approach, if you aren't satisfied with the results, you and your trainer are able to modify your practice to get to a point where you feel happy and healthy.
From a mental health standpoint, many individuals praise the stress-reducing qualities that yoga provides. Yoga training is usually made up of breathing techniques and the occasional meditation tactic, leaving practitioners with an increased sense of serenity. This revolutionary practice has also been shown to improve concentration and mental stamina, as the movements boost the oxygen levels to the brain.
Yoga has also been cited as strengthening memory and the ability to learn, an ability that usually fades with time. Because the practice increases a person's self-acceptance, regular practitioners are able to go through life with a better understanding of themselves and the world around them, something that many individuals spend their whole lives seeking.
Elizabeth Crutchfield is the owner of HomeBodies, a NYC Personal Training Service. Learn more about all the services HomeBodies offers by visiting their website at: NYC-Personal-Trainers.com.
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Weight Lifting Diet
If the question is asked - what do you need in your diet to gain muscle and at the same time, lose fat, then the answer is almost always the same. Protein!
The fact is that protein consumption can add muscle bulk. Protein consumption also means you reduce your appetite, thus no need to stack up on the calories.
In reality however, protein is only one part of the puzzle. A diet for weight lifters and people in general begs a comprehensive intake of more than just a lot of protein.
According to scientific studies, the level of testosterone in men within the western world has dropped by 20% in the last 20 years.
Here are some nutritional basics you should understand in order to craft a hormonal balance that is worthy of a true alpha status male.
Carbohydrates
Carbs are very often the focus for diets, particularly the fat-loss diets. Ever since Doctor Atkins decided that we should not indulge in eating doughnuts any longer, carbs have taken a huge beating. Before Mr Atkins got involved, doughnuts were an accepted form of nutrition, but it had to be the reduced fat type. So, if we decided to partake in the lower fat version, we felt a lot better about ourselves.
Doughnuts aside, carbs tend to get a bad rap - much worse than they deserve. They come to us in a variety of forms - some are not so good, where others are much more beneficial.
The bad carbs come in the form of highly processed foods. In reality, they should not really be considered as foods, other than the fact that they are edible. For some people, they are delicious, but fact of the matter is that they've undergone some crazy scientific process.
Obviously, if you process the good stuff out of our food, then there's a point where it's not healthy any longer.
Getting down to basics, carbohydrates are merely a collection of sugar molecules. Once consumed, your body attempts to break this down into a source of fuel. Fiber, sugars, and starches are all basic forms of carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates are made up from two main types: simple as well as complex. There is another type, and that is fibrous carbs. Fibrous carbs come from green vegetables such as cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cucumber, peppers, and more besides. Nevertheless, for this discussion, we will not focus on fibrous carbohydrates.
Simple Carbs
What are simple carbs? Well, simple carbs include foods such as syrup, sweetened soda, table sugar. In an ideal world, it's best to avoid these types of carbs, other than on the "cheat" days whereby some may indulge themselves.
This type of carb is the "bad" carb that the fitness pros talk about on a regular basis. Included on this list are things like beer, cookies, puppies, snuggles, cakes, candy...
So, for most people, the very idea of fun eating is now off-limits.
So what is allowed, you may be wondering?
Complex carbohydrates such as apples, peas, oatmeal.
A Slightly-More "Complex' Point of View
For a long while most people considered that complex carbs were far better, but now we've changed over to believing that simple carbs are often the ones to fit the bill.
But it's not so much about healthy hormones and healthy metabolism that matters. It is about how quickly the body breaks the carbs down and also about how much the carb intake will spike your blood's glucose levels.
A more sophisticated way to qualify carbohydrate quality is by using the glycemic index (GI).
What the GI does is that it attempts to classify foods in terms of how fast they break down and also by how high they boost sugar levels within the blood.
For some time, people would argue that you could maintain insulin levels at a lower rate even if you eat a lot of carbs.
Well, for sure, this in some ways is true, the fact remains that there will not be too much difference to the size of your waistline if you stick to eating French fries instead of potatoes.
Both low-carb diets as well as low-GI diets are not going to provide a magic pill in order to lose weight. The idea though is that you eat the right amount of the "right" foods, in order to fuel your metabolism.
What's more however, you do need to consume carbohydrates, regardless of what some dieting gurus will tell you. If you don't consume carbs then your body will turn to breaking down muscle tissue in order to fuel your energy needs.
As a general rule, the ideal is to avoid simple carbs and high-GI foods.
The worst thing to do is to eat carbs on their own. Eating carbs with protein will slow down the rate of digestion of the carbs, and also lowers the glycemic or insulin response, as well as off-setting a number of the negative connotations that comes with the consumption of too many carbohydrates.
Fats
For a very long time, fats have been blamed for every food-related health problem you can think of. For almost 20 years in recent times, low-fat was regarded as being healthy. It's how many people determine if food is safe or not - if it's low fat, then it surely has to be good for you. Or, if there's no saturated fat content, then that's about okay.
Oddly enough, within North America, as the word spread around about the "fact" that fats were bad for us, and as the consumption of fats decreased drastically, the rates of obesity increased.
There's no single reason to be piling the blame on here, but there are some reasons that do stand out. Higher frequency of snacks and meals. Larger food portions. Too much sugar consumption - regularly in the form of "low fat" foods and drinks.
What's the bottom line though?
Fat is a necessary part of our diet, and it's very possible that you are not consuming enough fats. Fat in general is good! It's good for the heart, it's good for testosterone production, and it's also good for building muscle.
But these things aside, fat also plays a very important role in your overall body functions. It coats the nerve tissues, thereby making them more "productive" and efficient. Fat also serves as a substrate for a group of hormones termed as "eicosanoids". Eicosanoids help to regulate functions such as blood pressure, blood clotting, and inflammation. Fat is a requirement for basic human physiology, so it's a most thoroughly necessary constituent of our daily dietary needs!
What's more however, not all fats are the same. So here's some info about the different types of fats, and why they should be a part of your diet, with the exception of one - the trans fats.
Good Fat - Monounsaturated Fat
Monounsaturated fats are to be found in nuts like almonds, walnuts, cashews, pistachios, and also in high-fat fruits like avocados. It's also found in olive oil.
This type of fat helps to raise good cholesterol while lowering the levels of bad cholesterol. They're said to also be beneficial in helping to lessen weight gain.
Good Fat - Polyunsaturated Fat
Similar to monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated help to fight against bad cholesterol. They can be found in foods like sunflower oil, various seeds, fish oil, and salmon. Polyunsaturated fats include omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which are also termed as essential fatty acids, or EFA's.
EFA's have to be ingested because our bodies are unable to manufacture them. The body requires these nutrients in order to remain healthy and function optimally.
Good Fat - Saturated Fat
Saturated fats are one of the most misunderstood substances that we consume. And this is partly because a number of studies linked saturated fat to heart disease.
Nevertheless, in more recent times, it's been concluded that the findings of those early studies were in fact flawed and there is no link between heart disease and saturated fats.
There are several more recent studies conducted on hunter-gatherer tribes that gained 50-70 percent of their daily diets from saturated fats, but yet they did not suffer any health issues. Oddly enough, when the original studies were conducted, these tribes people were totally ignored.
After a 20-year review, the chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard - Walter Willett, publicly claimed that saturated fats have no link to heart disease and are not responsible for the high rates of obesity currently seen in North America and beyond.
Saturated fats are one of the very best sources of energy that your body can get, and that is why carbohydrates are stored naturally in the form of saturated fats.
Research has shown that foods that are higher in saturated fats are often the ones that are actually lower in total calories. And what's more, saturated fats have the ability to boost testosterone levels.
So, assuming that you are not vegetarian or vegan, you should make sure you eat lots of red meat, dairy products, as well as eggs in order to get enough saturated fats in your diet.
Bad Fat -Trans Fats
Trans fats are the only bad fat available for consumption. They are in fact one of the worst types of food that can be consumed. They are found in foods such as potato chips, French fries, in addition to a variety of other fried foods.
You will find trace amounts of trans fats in meats and some other foods - they occur naturally. However, most trans fats to be found are not naturally occurring at all. They are man-made so to speak, and they are manufactured through a process called hydrogenation. What happens is that a good monounsaturated fat, in the form of liquid oil, is packed full with hydrogen atoms, and thus the original oil is converted to a solid fat.
It possesses a high melting point as well as a smooth texture, and may be reused over and over in the deep-fat frying process. And this is what makes it an ideal product for the food industry.
So, the main concept behind trans fats is that they are over-processed foods which offer the vendor and consumer an oil that has a long shelf-life. In reality, you should try to avoid these oils as much as you possibly can. The health risks far outweigh any benefits.
Nevertheless, if you must partake in consuming junk food, then so be it. After all, most of us like the occasional binge on our junk food. And in which case, it's best to also make sure that overall your diet is good, and that you also achieve a good amount of regular exercise.
Protein The Alpha-Macro
Both fats and carbohydrates have been rated as number one and number two in terms of the public enemy, whereas protein has enjoyed a slow and steady rise up the charts and now sits prominently right at the very top.
Definitely a favorite among bodybuilders, and pretty much everyone who is involved in fitness and health in some way, protein is used within the body to repair damaged tissue - muscle, hair, teeth, bone. It has other functions too of course - you can think of it as mortar for which to lay bricks upon - a foundation, in a sense. Without protein, your body will begin to break down.
Protein is also good in aiding fat loss and building muscle. It helps to create an anabolic hormonal environment, and provides "materials" in order to build muscle bulk.
Protein is made from amino acids. From the 22 standard amino acids, only nine can be obtained through the consumption of food, and the body manufactures the remaining 13. The ones that have to be ingested are called "essential amino acids", and these include:
Threonin
Methionine
Valine
Leucine
Tryptophan
Lysine
Phenylalanine
Isoleucine
Histidine
A whole or complete protein will contain some amount of each of these essential amino acids, whereas an incomplete protein lacks one or perhaps more essential amino acids.
Amino acids play another role - they help with the creation of hormones within the body. These hormones aid in the regulation of blood pressure as well as blood sugar levels, which is, in turn, responsible for muscular growth and metabolic rate. Thus, proteins are immensely important, particularly those to be found in eggs, cheese, fish, red meat, and poultry.
In Conclusion
As something of a brief conclusion, do you, if you read through this article, sense some sort of trend going on here? Processed foods that are sold with the words "healthy" or "natural" printed on the side of the packaging - well, it's pretty much downright lies being told here!
Getting back to nature is the way that we should proceed, so it's far better to build your diet (and your health) around nature's own food - whole foods that are unprocessed. Although, the addition of something like whey-protein is not such a bad thing either.
Lift smart at http://www.howtoliftweights.comArticle Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kelly_Coggins
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Best Anti Aging Creams
While you can control many of the causes of aging skin, such as using sun protection and not smoking, you can't control everything, and you may need help repairing past damage and slowing natural biological changes. Looking younger is important in today's youth-oriented society, so there is intense pressure to use the best anti aging creams available to combat the visible signs of aging such as sun damage, rough, uneven skin tone and wrinkles. Here's what to look for when selecting an anti aging cream.
As we age, the fibers that support our skin, called collagen, begin to diminish and shrink. This causes skin to lose plumpness and firmness. The best anti aging creams include collagen boosters that slow the reduction in collagen production and help to replenish lost collagen. To ensure that your anti aging cream boosts collagen, look for products that work on the cellular level to boost your body's collagen production. Ensure that your anti wrinkle cream provides clinical proof that it increases collagen, and look for ingredients that include the words "collagen," "kollagen" or "cytokine." Nut oils such as almond oil also help boost collagen production while moisturizing and smoothing skin.
Photo aging, or sun damage, is one of the leading causes of older looking skin. In addition, sun damage contributes to the possible formation of dangerous skin cancers, so it's important to prevent and reverse sun damage whenever possible. You should start immediately to take precautions such as always using sunscreen and wearing a hat that shades your face when you are outdoors, but you also need to take steps to reverse the cumulative effects of years of sun exposure. Rough patches, brown "age spots," loss of brightness and uneven color can all result from sun damage. Retinol is one of the best ingredients for reversing sun damage, so look for "retinol" or "Retin A" on the list of ingredients. Fruit acids or glycolic acids also help to reduce visible sun damage. The best anti aging creams include one or more of these ingredients. As a key benefit, reducing sun damage helps smooth the skin's texture and increases its brightness, making skin look younger immediately.
Dryness makes fine lines and wrinkles more noticeable, so the best anti aging creams include moisturizers and ingredients to plump and smooth the skin's surface. Moisturizers work by preventing the skin's natural moisture from evaporating. Lipids, peptides and nut oils are the ingredients to look for to ensure that your cream has adequate moisturizing properties. The best anti aging skin creams have moisturizers that penetrate the skin to moisturize from the inside, while also preventing evaporation from the outside. Moist skin has a brightness and a natural youthful glow to it, and the increased plumpness of the cells fills in crow's feet and fine lines.
Some anti wrinkle treatments can cost hundreds of dollars for a single jar, and a three to six month supply costs over a thousand dollars if you buy the entire line, including the special eye reams and lip plumpers. The best anti aging creams, such as Kollagen Intensiv, are much less expensive, contain all the key ingredients, and can be used on the face, neck, lip and eye areas, so you achieve maximum anti-aging benefits at a much lower cost.
MyReviewsNow.net offers information regarding selecting the best anti aging creams. For more on anti aging products, please visit us at MyReviewsNow.net.
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Ten Tips to Losing Weight
You can lose weight only when your calorie expenditure is higher than your calorie intake. Dietary changes and regular physical activities are usually sufficient for balancing the calorie intake and expenditure.
The goal of a fat loss diet is to reduce the calorie consumption without causing nutritional deficiency. Exercises help the body to utilize the fat reserve of the body for meeting the energy requirement during activities. Regardless of your age and health condition, you can easily shed the excess flab with the help of appropriate physical activities and diet.
Tips to Lose Weight
1. Reduce Calorie Intake
We gain weight by eating high calorie low nutrient foods and by eating large portions. To lose weight, count the calories. Reduce the portion sizes and include nutritious low calorie foods in your diet.
2. Eat Complex Carbohydrates
Carbohydrate is the major energy source of the body. About 50 to 55 percent of your daily calorie requirement is met from carbohydrate foods. To lose weight, add only complex carbohydrates such as brown rice, brown bread, vegetables and fruits to your diet. Complex carbohydrates by keeping you full for a longer time, helps to reduce hunger.
3. Avoid Added Sugar
Sugar increases the calorie value of your diet. Sugary treats are rapidly digested, making you hungry easily. To lose weight, avoid foods and beverages containing sugar and processed carbohydrates.
4. Limit Saturated Fats
People on low fat and low calorie diet should stay away from saturated fats. The calorie loaded animal fats increase the fat reserve of the body.
5. Eat Healthy Fats
However, you can consume a small amount of plant fats such as olive oil and avocado. Fish oil is also good for health. Moreover, the unsaturated fats help to drive away unhealthy fats from the body.
6. Exercise Daily
Moderate intensity cardio workouts at least for 30 minutes, five days a week, help to burn fats. As you become accustomed to your workout schedule, consider increasing the difficulty level and duration of the workout to lose more weight.
7. Strength Training
Strength training helps to maintain healthy body weight by reducing body fat and increasing the lean muscle mass.
8. Sleep Well
The metabolism rate of the body is affected by the quality of sleep. Your body needs sufficient sleep to maintain the healthy metabolism rate that helps it to burn fats.
9. Drink Plenty of Water
Dehydration can slow down the metabolism rate of the body. Drink plenty of water to maintain the normal metabolism rate.
10. Do not Skip Meals
The body switches into hoarding mode when you fast or skip meals. To lose weight, eat four to six small meals throughout the day.
Joshua "Coach" Kozak has been a fixture in the world of health and fitness for over 10 years. My favorite website for I Loved This and the best Read Full Article online
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Lack Of Sleep And Weight Loss
Belly fat, and gaining weight is a sign that something isn't working properly in your body. It's so unfortunate that overweight people are blamed for gaining weight by people say it's the result of them overeating and under-exercising.
The thing in common people suffer when they have gained weight is STRESS. It is stress that causes emotional eating. Stress also depressed the metabolism in a normal body, and can make you gain weight while still eating your "normal diet". And stress can also prevent restorative sleep, which in turn, slows down the metabolism.
Sleep and Stress
People under stress are oftentimes sleep deprived. Think about how stress affects your sleep. Even if you are exhausted, oftentimes your sleep is disturbed with thoughts about the issue that is stressing you. This can result in disruption of your normal sleep patterns and keep you from getting restful restorative sleep.
Sleep Deprivation & Weight Gain
Recent findings are showing the relationship between lack of sleep, and weight gain. Research from the American Heart Association showed that even 1 hour and 20 minute difference between two groups of subjects was enough to make the sleep deprived group eat an average of 549 additional calories each day! In another study, it was found that subjects had a correlation of body fat with their sleep patterns. Those who slept the fewest hours per night weighed the most.
Lack of sleep is associated with the hormones that control your hunger and satiation cues. Not enough sleep will turn down your Leptin levels and cause Ghrelin to rise. Increased Ghrelin, stimulates appetite and makes you feel unsatisfied with the amount of food that you eat. Leptin, which is produced in your gastrointestinal track turns off the hunger by sending signals to your brain that you've had enough.
This is a perfect combination to make you over-eat, adding additional calories that you don't need!
Lack of sleep can become part of a vicious cycle. If you are sleep deprived, and have started putting on weight a frequent problem is Sleep Apnea. That's a condition where abnormalities, thought to be caused by overweight cause the soft tissue in the rear of your throat to collapse, closing off air passages many times during the night. It stops you from breathing and causes a tendency to snore. The end result is disruption in your sleep. Even when you've given yourself what would seem adequate time to sleep, you only get half as much actual deep sleep. You not only feel tired all day, but it affects your Ghrelin and Leptin levels, adding weight, and contributing to the sleep apnea!
Cutting back from the standard eight down to four hours of sleep each night also was shown to produce striking changes in glucose tolerance and endocrine function. These changes resembled the effects of advanced age or the early stages of diabetes: after less than one week!
Similar to the problems with Insulin resistance (Metabolic Syndrome, or Syndrome X) some people have been shown to be Leptin Resistant. It's like when your body is telling you stop, but you brain doesn't pay attention. And this is NOT under your control.
Rather than telling yourself that "pushing it" to stay awake longer and work by filling yourself with caffeine; you are sabotaging your efforts at weight loss, AND aging your body and brain!
If you don't get enough sleep because you are working too hard, or playing to hard, your efforts may be "waisted" into belly fat (pun intended).
Best selling author and Coach-sultant, Lianda Ludwig, M.S. works with overwhelmed, frustrated dieters who have been burned out by repeatedly losing weight only to gain it back time after time. For most dieters, she reports, stress has precipitated weight gain and must be addressed before permanent weight loss it possible. Losing weight is not just about what you eat; it's about what's eating you.
Learn about the Mentabolism Mindset Transformation Program < http://www.MentabolismMakeover.com > that creates a successful mindset to eliminate cravings, binging, starving yourself and vanquish the stress, so you can lose weight, and keep it off without naturally, without ever dieting again.
Get her free report: 5 Dirty Secrets the Diet Industry Doesn't Want You To Know at http://www.MakeItSoMindset.com/reportArticle Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lianda_Ludwig
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Sunday, 19 May 2013
Smart Eating And Weight Loss
The pounds have piled up; the pants are
getting too tight. It is high time to start losing off the extra weight.
Planning right from the beginning makes it easier to succeed in your weight
loss plans.Keep track of what you eat and the type of exercise you do every
single day. Write everything down in your journal. This gets things organized
and you will be better motivated to continue on.
Cooking your own
meals let you have total control over what to put into your body. No more extra
oily, salty or sweet food from cafes and restaurants to tempt you and make you
stray from your diet.Get some good cookbooks promoting healthy
weight loss recipes, some basic cookware and you are well on your way to
healthy cooking. You might be pleasantly surprised at the results.
When shopping for groceries,
be sure to check the calories count and list of ingredients listed on the food
packages. Do not be misled by advertisements such as natural, sugar-free and
non-fried. Look at the fine prints. Every little bit counts towards your weight
loss goals.
Eat smaller portions at each meal. Invest
in smaller size plates to make sure you are not tempted to eat more. Less food
on a bigger plate might give you the impression that you are not eating enough
and end up taking more food. Just make sure you are having well-balanced meals,
even though smaller portions.
The occasional deviation from
your diet is no big deal. Being too strict might lead to stress and this is not
good for your weight loss plans. You might get so frustrated and just give up.
Stress can also lead to binge eating.
Sticking to the same old food day in and
day out can be boring and uninspiring. Try healthy food from around the world
right at home. Some of them can be easy to cook in your home kitchen.
Eating your main meals in front of the TV,
work table or computer screen is a typical bad habit among some of us. It is
difficult to be eating healthily this way and besides it is bad for your
digestion. If you must be munching on some food while working, munch on carrot
sticks instead.
Poor food choices, unhealthy snacks and
too much fast and processed food not only lead to an expanding waistline but
also clogged arteries. Taking control of the way you eat can lead to positive
weight loss and a healthy body.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7548065
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