Having a Happy Heart is Important

Every morning I am up a little bit early to be sure that I have enough time to workout.  The reason I get up early is that I know, historically, that life will interfere in some way during my afternoon and my workout gets pushed aside.  Often I am not overly enthusiastic about going upstairs to workout but then I think of the benefits; how good I feel after, how healthy my body looks and how much healthier I actually am.

If you have been reading this blog for awhile you are most likely aware of my family history and that my father suffered from heart disease from his early twenties, he didn't do much to reverse his condition or mend his heart during his life, he died at 57.  My mother spent her lifetime functionally obese until her late 50's then became, for the most part, incapacitated by obesity and diabetes.  My whole life I have worked to not fall prey to their legacy and to inspire others to do the same, it is working for me and I hope it works for those that follow what I am doing.

I read an article in Men's Health, one of my favorites reads, regarding the 5 new rules to a healthy heart and I wanted to share with all of you. 

People who live by Factory Farms are prone to Sickness, here's why:

Photo Via: Grist.org by Steve Wing

An EcoInteractive post this morning brought another factory farm issue to my attention.  The fact that flies and cockroaches spread disease to the communities living around these large factory farms.  This article has a lot more information concerning MRSA that I was not aware of like: MRSA kills more people annually in the U.S. than that of AIDS and that of course the fact that the H1N1, or Swine Flu, didn't actually originate anywhere foreign but right here on U.S. soils, in the state of N.C. reports Wired.com.  The irony in the fact that the factory farms that raised pork petitioned to have swine flu renamed to H1N1, so as to not give pork a bad name, isn't missed.

In this article titled: "Flies and Cockroaches carry drug resistant bacteria from Factory Farms" you can read all about the issue along with links verifying their information.  There is a pop up, a practice which I hate BTW,  when you first load the page but once you close that window you are free to read uninterrupted.

Here is a blurb from the article:

Weekly Snippets

Body:

• Salads are wonderful when you keep an eye on the toppers and use a simple dressing.  Take out salads can be higher in calories than their meatier counterparts.  Check out this list of bad salad choices by "Eat This Not That".
• Are you experiencing extreme chapped lips?  It is reported in Men's Health that Hydrocortisone reduces inflammation.  Use 3-4 times a day, after application cover an unflavored lip balm with moisture control.
• Four years in a row Vermont is ranked the healthiest state in the union. Qualifiers are access to medical care, prenatal care, insurance and 22 other areas.

Soil: 

• I just read an article about how making casual observations that you believe can change how things are done even when you are bucking common trends can be wonderful.  Please read "Bring the outliers inside" from Ode magazine and see how people are making positive changes.
• A local writer takes on a CSA for a year to see how she does eating local farmer products.  This will be an interesting venture to follow.  See Farm Fed by Sally Pollak
• Living in Vermont proves to be, yet again, easier to be green as our state comes in first place for being Greenest State in America.

The Future is Now

Saving for the future, you have heard people talk about it since you were a small child, what are you doing for your future?   The general scuttlebutt is that you should save as much as you can when you are younger to get your dollar working for you early in order to capitalize on compounding interest.  That is wonderful on paper but when the younger generation is fresh out of the gate old age seems really far off and the bills always outpace income, the end result is that most people have to wait to work on their future retirement.   In this period of economic downturn it is harder for the younger generation to find work or even keep their heads above water so what should you do? I would suggest starting small then build from there.  Start putting away $10.00 a week and do it through auto withdrawal, you will never notice that amount missing, each year increase it by half of any pay increase you get and soon you will be well on your way.  This not only applies to financial fitness but it applies to your physical fitness as well, how, let me explain.

When we are young it seems that the present is where it is at and worrying about the future is for later on when it gets here.   That theory works while in your 20’s and into the 30’s but suddenly reality sets in when you realize that youth is falling to the wayside, 40 is coming sooner than expected and those carefree days of the past are gone by.  A run to the mailbox exhausts you; the mirror shows the results of the carefree eating style in the form of added weight.  Your diet of processed foods and lack of exercise has left your skin blotchy, hair limp, a fully rounded belly and we won’t mention the cottage cheese like droopy derriere you have going on.  Those fun flirty vacations wearing a bikini, remember those, now you wouldn’t be caught dead in anything less than sweats and a tee-shirt.   At one time you loved having chicken wings as appetizers but now you have bat wings on your arms that flap, what is a person to do?

Fitness and Me: How I am reaching my goals one day at a time.

 I am in week 16 of Turbo Fire and loving every minute of it.  I have a new focus on my physical self.  I used to use a scar on my right hip as a guide to tell me how I was coming along with my fat loss.  At this time I am looking at the definition of my quads to let me know how my fitness is improving.   I have always carried a lot of weight on my lower body but ever since starting Turbo Fire my legs look stronger and leaner.  This, I am sure, is due in part to the Turbo Fire but also how my husband and I start each and every day.
 

Debunking the cookie diet (Via Men's health)

photo via cookiediet.com 

We have all read the headlines while waiting in the checkout lines, you know the which ones I am talking about right.  These headlines try to get your attention with salacious promises like "Eat all you want and still lose weight" or this one "The Cookie Diet" to shed pounds while eating junk foods.  Sadly many misinformed people buy into this mistaken belief that they can lose weight by not changing the eating habits that created their weight gain in the first place.  These magazines sell because people don't want to face the fact that if you want your body to change you have to change how you are treating your body by making changes towards a healthy style of eating that you will be able to maintain long term.

I just read this great article about the cookie diet, its premise and really want to share this information with you.  Please don't take this post as me backing this diet as I feel that it is the wrong approach to long term weight loss.




I noticed that at one point during the interview Maria Master, an editor from Men's Health, describes her experience on the diet by saying that by mid afternoon she has only consumed 240 calories and feels like she is underwater or drowning.  She is frustrated by the lack of food and can't wait to get to her dinner of a 500-700 calories salad even though she knows it will not be satisfying.  Considering that the diet keeps you at 1000-1200 calories a day with the majority of those calories in the evening you can imagine that you are consuming very little during the day, this has to have a negative impact on brain function and must facilitate cravings seting in.   This is not a good approach to weight loss, Maria comments that she can't wait for the end of the diet and states "It will be a good weekend" which leads me to believe that binging in response to this diet will occur.  So even if she loses a few pounds on the diet, which may be due to the bowel emptying out, she most likely will regain it quickly over the course of the weekend. Not any cookie will do as you need to purchase a weeks supply of cookies from the Cookie Diet company, this costs $59.95 for 42 cookies, sorry Mr Elf... 

This is a great article, please take a moment to read it in its entirety by clicking here

5 Ways to Get Off a Weight Loss Plateau - (Via:That's Fit)

(photo via That's Fit)

I read this great article this morning regarding breaking a weight loss plateau. I wanted to share this with everyone as it is something we all go through from one time or another, this article has some excellent points..

Here is a blurb....

"There is nothing more frustrating than when you have been cruising along doing everything right, losing weight steadily and BAM!, suddenly the brakes slam on and your weight doesn't budge for days, weeks and, eventually, more than a month. It's tempting to give up and walk away -- straight toward the fridge. But nearly everyone who attempts to drop pounds -- even doing it the right way by going slowly and making moderate changes -- will experience hitting the weight loss wall at some point. Experts theorize that as your body adjusts to eating and burning habits, it reaches a new set point weight and decides to settle there.

Surprisingly, there's little research on weight loss plateaus. Not surprisingly, there's plenty of advice about how to get past one. Let me offer you five methods I think are worth considering. Try them all separately, in some combination or all at once, and see what works for you."

click this link to read the 5 methods they suggest to break the plateau..
5 Ways to Get Off a Weight Loss Plateau - That's Fit

Flexible Fitness: MS patients can benefit from exercise (Via: The Daily News Tribune)

 I read this article this morning and wanted to share with my follows: 

By Kate Gebski/DAILY NEWS CORRESPONDENT

GHS

Posted Jun 15, 2010 @ 02:00 PM

We all know that regular exercise is important for our health and general well-being. Despite public knowledge and the advice of health care professionals, most of us don't look forward to hitting the gym and working up a sweat. Even though "exercise" can be as easy as a 15-minute routine on your living room floor or a brisk walk outside, there often seems to be more important, or easier, things to accomplish in a day.

Now, imagine your doctor recommends eliminating exercise entirely. This advice has been given to people living with multiple sclerosis (MS) for years to avoid aggravating their symptoms. Recent evidence suggests, however, that regular exercise can improve quality of life and help to alleviate many MS symptoms.

MS is a chronic neurological disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. The body's own defense system attacks the outer layer of healthy nerves and interrupts the impulses being sent from the brain to other parts of the body. This can result in symptoms such as weakness, poor balance, fatigue, heat sensitivity, loss of sensation, difficulty walking, incontinence and double vision. Symptoms vary from person to person and can change over time in the same person. No one is quite sure what causes MS, but medications can help to slow the disease and physical therapy and regular exercise can help control the symptoms.

The entire article can be found here..  

Weekly Snippets

Body

• Sitting all day at work elevates your risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers which can cause an early death.  You don't break down fats in your blood when you don't keep this large muscle group( legs) active.  (Via: NYTimes)
• Soaking in an Epsom salt bath is more than relaxing, it helps reduce muscle soreness, increases magnesium in your body (most people are deficient), relieves stress, helps with nerve function and helps with a multitude off health issues..  Now go soak in the tub as it is good for your health (Via: Epsom Salt Council)
• Get your cup of green tea in every day, studies still show that it helps to reduce your risk of certain cancers, helps lower cholesterol and reduces free radicals.  (Via: University of Maryland)

Soil

• Cleaning up your home and reducing chemical wastes in our waterways has never been easier now that we have ActiveIon to the rescue.  Cleaning without chemicals also helps reduce toxins indoors and leaves no chemical residues on surfaces also; cleans, disinfects and has an H1N1 kill factor  (Via: BodynSoil)

Weekly Snippets

Body:

• Compared to cereals marketed to adults, those marketed to children have 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber, and 60% more sodium. (Via: Cereal Facts ) 
• YoYo dieting and sugar binging studies have shown in animal models that cycling between periods of eating sweet and regular-tasting food can activate the brain's stress system and generate overeating, anxiety, and withdrawal-like symptoms. (The Scripps Research Institute Via: The Medical News )
• Shocking calorie report: 1,440 = number of calories in Olive Garden's Chicken Alfredo.  It would take a 185 lb male 2 hours of circuit training to burn off that one meal.

Soil:

• Concerned about the safety of your family and pets playing on your lawn after spreading fertilizers.  Worry no more and still get a beautiful lawn with corn gluten.  An accident in 1986 led researchers at Iowa State University to discover that corn gluten meal possesses the ability to prevent seed germination then acts as a fertilizer as it breaks down greening up your yard.  (Via: NCAP) 
• Compost is the building block of the organic garden and can be made right in your back yard with materials you might be paying your garbage hauler to take away.  Start making yours today by following these simple steps.  (Via: Organic Gardening )
• Interesting in organic but you are afraid you don't have the time or space available.  Patio planters are the perfect way to introduce yourself to the process in a smaller controlled environment. (Via: EasyOrganicGardening )

America's Deadliest Sweetener (Via Mercola.com)

America's Deadliest Sweetener Betrays Millions, Then Hoodwinks You With Name Change

Aspartame producer Ajinomoto is launching a new initiative that will rebrand the sweetener as “AminoSweet”.
Aspartame is used in many foods and beverages marketed as low calorie or sugar-free. However, its reputation has been clouded somewhat by studies that have investigated reports of ill effects.
Just to remind you, the side effects of aspartame can include:

• Headache
• Change in vision
• Convulsions and seizures
• Hallucination
• Nausea and vomiting
• Joint pain

It can cause many, many other problems as well.

click here:  You need to read the balance of this article from Mercola.com

What I tell people just starting and looking for advice

When first starting out on the road to good health and  trying to figure out your nutrition it is helpful to log what you eat and drink. Counting calories is a great way to get a better idea about your daily intake.  I have always gone back to calorie counting whenever I needed to lose, for me this has been very successful.  There are a lot of free programs that are easy to use with easy to navigate menu's that do the job for you like fitday.com and sparkpeople.com.   Fitday.com has indepth reporting is quick and easy to use with only a few windows to learn.  Sparkpeople has workout plans and videos plus has excellent learning tools & support groups that are very active.   Support groups are a very important during the process of changing habits and weight loss.   Sharing experiences with others working toward the same goal and helping each work through times of doubt can make a huge difference; you are not alone in your journey.

I can give you a few things to work on now but not being familiar with your eating style I can't be more specific. Sorry if that makes these tips seem random or don't apply.. So with that said here I go.. 

Tips:

1. Soda, juice and alcohol go against weight loss due to the way your body processes the processed sugars and the signals sent to the brain. Both soda and alcohol interfere with metabolism, alcohol sugar interferes with nutrient absorption in the gut. Replace it with water, tea and a small amount of coffee (if needed). (a little lemon in the water is a nice change, many people swear by lukewarm lemon water first thing in the morning for weight loss)

2. Keep well hydrated. When our body is dehydrated the brain doesn't always send cravings to drink; signals will get mixed so instead the signal will be hunger.

3. Try to increase the amount of fiber in your diet; fiber fills you up and it also attaches itself to some fat grams that will then just pass through your system. Great for digestion..

4. Say no to processed foods whenever you can as they are not engineered with human health in mind. Processed foods are loaded with sugar, fat and salt; in various combinations for palatability and to increase sales for the company. Food company do research into human behavior for marketing and for creating food combos to entice increased usage of their product. 

5. With each meal (logging your foods makes this a breeze) try to get a good balance of macronutrients; carbohydrates, proteins and fats, when you do that your metabolism burns the best. I keep my macronutrients at 40/30/30 (percent); which works well for me and for many people, those percentages can be adjusted. This is where a computer tracker is helpful, there are apps for that too.

6. Carbohydrate sources are important as well. This topic has a lot of twists and turns, it can be confusing, I will touch on a few of many aspect on this topic.

• I mentioned in tip one to eliminate processed sugar and alcohol carbs., I can't stress the importance of this enough.
  
• Vegetable carbs, excluding white potatoes/corn, are free carbs in a sense that you can have as much as you want as they are low in calorie high in fiber. (raw or cooked but without dressing, sauces or dips)  Fresh vegetable tend to have a low calorie content with a lot of fiber.   If you must have dressing try: oil & vinegar, pinch of salt, pepper & herbs, this is better than you remember and will be fresh too.   (Use oil/vinegar dressing in moderation) 
  
• Fruit is also a carbohydrate, eating the whole fruit is very important; processed fruit in the form of juice removes the healthy benefits only to leave the fruit sugar.  The recommended amount per person is 1-1/2 to 2 cups of fruit a day.  One half cup of dried fruit equals one cup of fresh.  The USDA includes juice in their pyramid but for weight loss I would not recommend it due to the high sugar content. 
  

• Breads, crackers and flour products will also hamper weight loss and digestion so they should be limited.  Look at the labels and purchase breads with whole grains and few preservatives.  Remember, bread is made up of flour, water, sugar, fat, little salt, and yeast; if you can't pronounce it or understand it you shouldn't eat it.  Once you find a good wholesome bread you will wonder why you bothered to eat that gut binding processed stuff before. 
  

7.  I almost forgot fried foods, I always advise to avoid them all together.  The added oil, salt and sugar will not help you to reach your goal at all and certainly will not benefit your health..

These are a few good ways to adjust your intake to get the scale moving in the right direction.  I hope I haven't overwhelmed you with information but also wanted to be as helpful as possible. I certainly could go on with more detail, if you want to know more or have more questions feel free to ask.. Try not to think of it as a diet but instead a way to feed your body to get healthy into your future. I focused on nutrition with this post, exercise is important and if you are trully looking to get healthy and lose weight you should work towards at least 30 minutes of activity each day.  

My Perfect Storm

In the last weeks of December I saw Food, Inc, the movie was discussed on various boards and was excited to watch it.  The documentary was about the industrialization of our food industry,  the driving forces behind it, genetic engineering and so much more.  Actually, I think they could have and should have made a mini series out of this topic due to the depth of information per topic not touched upon with the time they had available.  I also read "The Food Issue - An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief" written by Michael Pollan for the New York times in 2008.  Mr. Pollan discusses much of the same topics from Food, Inc. with more focus on the production of our nations food and the impact it has had on us and the environment.  These are about the quality of the food that we eat and how our nation is now consuming poor quality foods in our food markets and restaurants in larger quantities for less money, you get what you pay for folks. 

At the same time I am reading "The end of overeating" written by David Kessler, former commissioner to the FDA and currently professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.  In this book the habits of eating, the emotions behind them and how the food industry utilizes this information to manipulate the population to desire their products is discussed.  In the midst of all of the above information a good friend posted this TED.com talk with Robert Lustig, MD Prefessor of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology also from the University of California, San Francisco titled "Sugar: The Bittle Truth."    The first half of this lecture discusses how low fat diets came to be and the shift to eating higher percentages of carbohydrates, particularly fructose.  The second part of the lecture is the biochemistry of how our body processes sugars like fructose, glucose and ethanol; an extremely interesting topic for me.  

These four topics have been absorbing a lot of my time in the last few weeks.  I have multiple blogs in the process as I try to organize my thoughts while processing all this information at once.   I hope to get them posted as soon as I can so I can share these things with all of you..  I want to add that I am extremely thankful to my wonderful friends that have provided me with this information..  Thank you, Thank You, Thank You..

National Cancer Institute links certain cancers to obesity

What have scientists learned about the relationship between obesity and cancer?

In 2001, experts concluded that cancers of the colon, breast (postmenopausal), endometrium (the lining of the uterus), kidney, and esophagus are associated with obesity. Some studies have also reported links between obesity and cancers of the gallbladder, ovaries, and pancreas (4).

Obesity and physical inactivity may account for 25 to 30 percent of several major cancers—colon, breast (postmenopausal), endometrial, kidney, and cancer of the esophagus (4).

Preventing weight gain can reduce the risk of many cancers. Experts recommend that people establish habits of healthy eating and physical activity early in life to prevent overweight and obesity. Those who are already overweight or obese are advised to avoid additional weight gain, and to lose weight through a low-calorie diet and exercise. Even a weight loss of only 5 to 10 percent of total weight can provide health benefits (4).

The balance of this story here.