Habits

I apologize for the long stretch with out a post. It is my general goal to get some good information up here once or twice a week. Just lost my consistent flow, which leads me to my thought for this day.....

It takes 21 days of consistent effort to build a new habit. Just 21 days of doing something different or new every day to get a new habit. There are changes that I have been working on but nothing that I have done for 21 days in a row.

It is important to pick one or two things that you want to change or start a new, otherwise you will lose momentum trying to change everything all at once. So for example instead of trying to quit smoking, save money every week for retirement, eat less than 2000 calories a day, make sure the kitchen is clean every evening and work out more pick one or two items from that pile and work on those until they are a habit.

For me I think the biggest habit I would like to start is being able to plan out all of my meals for the day. I often skip packing a lunch for the day if the left overs don't look good which either causes me to eat too little for lunch and thus over eat at dinner, or I go grab some type of fast food, which almost always has more calories than if I had made it at home.
What habits would you like to work on?

3500

Half way through and we are still looking good. Just wanted to remind everyone of some things Orlando said to us our first night. It takes burning 3500 calories to lose one pound. We have to burn 3500 in excess of what we eat to be able to lose that one pound. When broken down that is only 500 calories a day or 30-45 minutes of intense cardio activities a day. To get to 2 pounds a week it is easiest to cut 500 calories from your daily intake as well as burn 500 calories. The weight loss is simple math, the rest is a little harder. I have an article published with www.livestrong.com titled How much should I exercise to lose weight. Feel free to take a look at that for more specific information.
Keep up the good work.

Stress Supplements

Those who have a stressful day job may start to notice weight loss becoming more and more difficult. Weight loss is absolutely effected by stress hormones. These hormones will make it harder to lose the weight around the middle of our body and even make it harder on feeling like we want to go to the gym. Most people start to lose the desire to work out when stressed out, even though exercise is a natural stress reliever. We all have a tendency to pull away from the hobbies and activities we love when pain or stress set in, when in fact that is the time you need it more. Making yourself go to the gym when you don't feel like it, will actually make you feel better when you are done. Part of that will come from accomplish something and the other part, is from the natural release of endorphins.
If you find you need a little help decreasing the stress, there are two natural supplements that help and have little side effects. The first one is Cordyceps, it is a natural fungus (not quite a mushroom) that has been used in eastern medicine for years. The other is Rhodiola, an herb found only in high elevations. Both of these supplements are called adaptogens. It helps your body to naturally overcome the increased stress in life (adapt faster) and remain more calm. You will find you have more energy and sleep better. Either one of these supplements works well with stress related weight gain and helps to combat those effects. I have added a widget to the right of this blog that shows my top picks for those supplements. I have also created a health store just for us, that we can look through and shop at. This is all through Amazon. Just know that every product I have recommended is one that I took time to look at and find the best cost for the quality. Look for a post later this week on other stress relieving techniques.

Mediterranean Diet

It's week four and it looks like we are still doing a good job and plugging away at working out and watching what we eat. There are not many diets and trends that I support since most of them are hard to maintain over a long period of time. I would like to give a thumbs up to the Mediterranean diet. On a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being the hardest to comply to and 10 being the easiest) for an ability to maintain as an eating lifestyle this diet gets a 7/10. This diet is based on eating large amounts of vegetables, fruits (as in more than five servings a day of both), nuts, whole gains and fish. There is no dairy or red meat in this diet. A four year study was done in Spain on this type of eating. An interesting find was that those who followed this diet had a 30% less chance of Depression. While the study would be more helpful in different populations and a stronger control done, it is helpful information. How this translates to all of us.... a diet high in fruits and vegetables and whole grains is good for you! Ta Da! Ok not a true eye opener but science is catching up with common sense. :) Keep up the good work.

Metabolism

What is metabolism? Basically stated it is the process our bodies use to burn the calories we eat. Everyone wants to know how to increase metabolism. The rate of it is effected by age, hormones, what we eat and what we do in terms of activity. While we cannot change our age, we can work on everything else. If you are concerned about your hormones, talk to your doctor about having them tested first. Otherwise we cam change our eating and our activity to keep the thermal effect up.
Eating lean proteins and eating meals every 3-4 hours will keep your body happy. The best form of lean protein is wild caught fish.
Two types of exercise that help the metabolism are strength training and cardio. The two types of exercise that don't help with metabolism are balance exercises and stretching, while both are very important they do not turn on the furnace. If you have yet to add strength training just know that adding 3-5 pounds of muscle will burn an extra 100-250 calories a day! Your metabolism also increases after cardio and stays increased for a while after, so make sure to take the stairs at work or get up every 45 minutes and move around to get the heart rate up a little, even if it is just to go up and down a flight of stairs, start using bathrooms on different levels in your building if you can.
Want to know if you metabolism is burning right? Test yourself. It is a simple self test, and not 100% accurate but gives you a good idea. First thing upon waking in the morning, don't get up right away stick a thermometer under your arm and test the temperature. It is most accurate if you test for a month so we can take into account the hormones that increase our body temp during our female cycle, but if not 7 days of testing gives you an idea. Your underarm temp upon waking should be 98.6 or higher. If it is off, it lets you know your body is slowing down a little. Again if you think your issues might be hormonally related, please contact your doctor.

Cravings

What does it mean when we have constant cravings for certain foods? There are many answers to that question.
I want to briefly discuss a few places that those cravings come from and any possible ways to address them.
A simple reason for cravings is simply habit. Are we used to having dessert after dinner every night? Is it something you cannot give up? Do you always have a glass of wine with each meal? Think about little habits that have become ingrained. We don't always have to stop them if it will make it hard to stay health focused but rather look at replacing that with some other healthy habit. What if you did have dessert but it was more fruit based and fewer in calories. You could still have your cake and eat it too. Or having smaller portions of what ever it is.
Sometimes a food craving is emotionally based. This is a large discussion area. I would not do it proper justice to just briefly describe it here. There are several great books on emotional eating by Doreen Virtue. You can even read a excerpt on this webstie http://www.innerself.com/Behavior_Modification/Food_Cravings.htm.
Some people have the same food cravings, it is always for one type of food. If you tend to have the one type of food craving ie I can never pass up a soft chocolate chip cookie and I seem to crave it often, don't band yourself from eating them just because you are trying to lose weight. I find that if I allow myself a cookie on the weekend or have it as a reward for losing some weight, I do not break my diet and buy a batch of cookies and eat them in one sitting. Also remember if you do give in to a food craving, try to limit what you eat and get back on the healthy kick. Many dieters prescribe to an all or nothing motto and that is often why they fail. Just go back to the healthy eating the next day.
Also remember to do the work to burn off that cookie or piece of chocolate. There is roughly 50 calories in two Hershey's Kisses milk chocolate and just five minutes on the stair machine will burn that off. Five minutes of work to have two delectable kisses in your mouth... well worth the effort.
Keep up the good work ladies!

Simple Science to Help Your Body

Morning,

I wanted to remind you all of something very simple, and sometimes we needed to be reminded of the simple things, like sitting up straight, looking both ways before crossing the street and chewing with our mouth closed. The simple task I am going to remind everyone today is, chewing your bites of food 30 times before swallowing. Maybe you have heard this before, maybe you haven't.
The interesting point behind it not only has to do with better digestion, but better energy overall. Why is this you ask? Well, our body uses at least 10% of our body's energy to digest our food. You heard me right, at least 10% of our energy every day is taken up by eating. While eating and the energy to digest is important, why not take a little more time to chew it up properly so we use less energy to digest it? That way we might have the energy at the end of the day to get a little more cardio in. Plus chewing 30 times burns a few more calories than chewing how you normally chew. ;)
Digestion starts in the mouth, so the more we chew the more the enzymes in our saliva break the food up and the more nutrients we get with less work. Start counting the number of times you chew, you may realize you chew much less than you think and it becomes quite a bit of mush by chewing 30 times. Not only does this help you digest better but it slows you down and teaches you to focus on your eating, which will also give your body the full signal sooner and you will end up eating less at every meal. Give it a try and see how it works for you.