Cooking Healthy Foods

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Warming up before exercise

Hot Stuff: Warming Up

When you have to fit an exercise routine into your already busy schedule, you might be tempted to simply skip the warm up routine, even though you’ve heard horror stories about people getting injured while working out. Three words: don’t do that. When you skip your warm up, you are not only putting your body as risk for personal injury, but you are also making the workout more difficult and less effective. For the best results, it is important to warm up every time you work out.

Warming up doesn’t have to eat up the time you allotted for exercise into your day. In fact, a decent workout only has to be 5 minutes long to do its job. It doesn’t have to be boring either—you can mix up a number of great moves to make your warm up as fun as the rest of your exercising. Remember that a good warm up gets all of your muscles moving, even if you don’t think that you’ll be intensely working out a set of muscles on any particular day. Warming up is also important regardless of if you’re doing cardiovascular exercises or lifting weights.

The moves you do for a warm up shouldn’t necessarily be difficult or make you break a sweat. The main goal of the warm up isn’t to become a part of your workout, but simply to slowly move muscles that you haven’t really thought about all day to wake them up. Good moves, therefore, include things like jogging in place, doing jumping jacks, lunging, and jumping rope.

A good warm-up can also including slowly stretching your muscles in a variety of ways, although this is usually more effective for a cool-down. Also consider exercises that work on balance and form in order to prepare you for the exercises you will be doing in the workout.

If you’re really short on time, why not try warming up before you even get to the gym. Slowly jog or power walk to the gym, park as far away as possible and lunge to the door, and take the stairs instead of the elevator. That way, when you get to the gym to workout your warm up routine is already half way done.

A good workout always builds in intensity. This is the best way to shed pounds and maintain a healthy weight. Weight loss workouts are only risky if you don’t warm up, because otherwise your body will respond to prevent injuries. Although you may be tempted to skip this step, that is never a good idea.

Get Fit in 2010 “5 Reasons To Take Dietary Supplements”

“5 Reasons To Take Dietary Supplements”

So if you eat your fruits and vegetables, expose yourself to adequate sunlight, get plenty of sleep, and stay well hydrated, your body shouldn’t really need a supplemental source of vitamins and minerals, right? Wrong. Here are 5 powerful reasons that you need to take a multi-vitamin, no matter how healthy your lifestyle may be (by the way, stay tuned towards the end of the article, where I tell you about a good way to read more on the best multi-vitamin sources).

1. Nutrient depletion in the soil. Modern farming techniques utilize fertilizers that actually deplete the soil of essential nutrients. Agriculture relies on the elements in the soil for absorption of proper amounts of minerals, and when this process is interrupted, the plant does not contain essential minerals and cannot form essential vitamins. And if the plant doesn’t have it then you’re not going to get it from eating the plant!

2. Your ability to absorb nutrients from food actually decreases as you age. So while growing children should absolutely be taking a multivitamin to support healthy tissue and bone formation, supplementation becomes equally important for the older population. Sure, you could just eat more food, but this introduces a problem with caloric balance. Beware that many medications also interfere with proper nutrient absorption.

3. Commercial harvesting, shipping processes, long term food storage, processing, and addition of preservatives degrades the nutrient content of food. Therefore, unless you’re eating a very fresh plant, it is a far different species at consumption than it was when initially harvested. In addition, compounds added to the food during many of these processes, such as MSG, saccharine, nutrasweet, splenda, colorings, and flavors will increase your body’s need for nutrients to deal with these damaging synthetic derivatives.

4. Pesticides, herbicides, and chemicals found in the modern food supply are combined with chemicals in water, environmental contamination from elements such as degraded plastic, air pollution from carbon monoxide, lead and mercury. These synergestic elements vastly increase our need for extra vitamins, minerals, and nutrients to combat formation of free radicals and the attack upon our metabolism and immune system.

5. Exercise increases nutrient needs. Are you an athlete or frequent exerciser? The vast amount of extra oxygen and energy used by active individuals will necessitate nutrient consumption that far exceeds the typical RDA of the average population. Consuming just the stated RDA can actually limit your athletic performance.

So what are you waiting for? Get your hands on a multi-vitamin and high quality dietary supplement today.

I’ve actually found a fantastic book that tells you exactly which types of multi-vitamins and dietary supplements will give you the most “bang for your buck” from a metabolic and health standpoint. It is called “100 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism” and you can get it by clicking here:

Nutrition

BASIC Nutrition – A Quick, Common-Sense Guide To What You Should Be Eating to Stay Healthy and Get Results Right Now
By Nick Nilsson

Think proper nutrition is complicated? It doesn’t have to be.
Follow these simple principles and you’ll never go wrong.

I would bet that without even thinking, you could name 4 or 5 diets or eating plans that are in the popular media…Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, Atkins, South Beach, etc. Every time you turn around, there’s a fantastic “new” approach to eating. It’s enough to make your head spin!

But it doesn’t have to be that complicated. I’ve got some easy-to-follow nutritional principles that will help keep you on the right track. Beginner or advanced, these will work for you!

1. Focus your eating on natural, unprocessed foods as much as possible.

While I know it’s not always possible to get fresh fruit and veggies and other unprocessed foods everywhere you go, your body will always respond best when you feed it foods that are not altered through processing. Your body has evolved over thousands and thousands of years to process foods in their natural state – it’s only relatively recently that processed foods have appeared on the scene.

Your body has the digestive mechanisms for efficiently processing foods in their natural state. When you add in the fats, salt, sugar, additives, etc., your body starts having a hard time digesting and coping. Think of it like trying to put regular gas into a vehicle that runs on diesel. It may run, but it’s not going to be very efficient with the fuel and it could cause problems down the road (no pun intended!)

Bottom Line: Eating foods that are not processed allows your body to function more efficiently. You’ll lose fat without even trying.

2. Get plenty of good quality, lean protein sources in your diet

When you’re training, your body has a much greater need for protein. During weight training and endurance training especially, your body is constantly breaking down muscle tissue. Protein is required to rebuild it. By regularly feeding your body good protein sources, you’ll be able to hold onto and build muscle mass easier.

Good sources of lean protein include meats (look for leaner cuts like sirloin), poultry, eggs (while not lean, eggs will not shoot up your cholesterol as many worry), fish, low-fat dairy, soybeans, and various legumes (beans).

As far as how much protein your body needs, this will vary according to how much you weigh and your activity level. A level of around 1 gram per pound of lean bodyweight is a good guideline (we don’t count total bodyweight because fat is not metabolically active and doesn’t require protein to sustain it).

3. Don’t be afraid of “good” fats

Fats can be extremely beneficial, even when you’re trying to lose weight! Fats are important in a tremendous variety of bodily processes including hormone production, immunity, joint and organ protection, and even burning bodyfat. Without the “good” fats, your body will not function as well as it could.

“Good” fats include sources such as fish, nuts, flax oil, borage oil, and olive oil (there are many other good sources as well). Increasing your intake of these good fats can help keep you feeling good and burning your own bodyfat more efficiently.

Your total fat intake should be around 30% of your daily calories. A good way to go about getting this is to try and keep your focus primarily on low-fat foods while purposefully adding the “good” fats into your diet (like eating a few almonds every day or taking fish oil or flax oil capsules).

4. Carbs are fine

Despite all the talk about carbs being the enemy, it’s important to note that carbs and foods that contain carbs can actually be quite good for you! It’s generally the refined sugar added to foods that is the problem, not the carbohydrate as a nutrient on its own.

5. Non-nutritious foods should be minimized

This is an easy one. More than likely, you already know that you shouldn’t be eating Cheesy-Poofs or chocolate bars 3 meals a day. The calories you get from these foods don’t come with any actual nutrients. When your body is missing nutrients, it craves more food (not to mention the insulin response to the sugar in many of these foods) and you tend to eat more of the poor food that doesn’t have nutrients in it.

It’s ironic to think that many overweight people are actually malnourished! When you eat nutrient-dense foods, your body gets the nutrients it needs and functions much better.

5. Salads, fruits and vegetables will give you lots of fiber, roughage and nutrition

Eat plenty of salds, fruits and veggies every day. This is usually one that everybody already knows yet doesn’t normally focus on. The fiber in the foods helps keep you from getting too hungry and helps keep your digestive system clean.

6. Just do the best you can

It’s not always easy or convenient to follow good eating principles. There are plenty of tasty temptations to be found every time you turn around.

The REAL key to proper nutrition is to focus on trying to do well MOST of the time, not all of the time. It’s what you do most of the time that will give you the long-term results you’re looking for. Determining that you MUST be perfect all of the time is a sure way to set yourself up for disappointment when the time comes that you don’t eat a perfectly healthy food choice.

Sometimes, you just have to eat those Cheesy Poofs and not worry about it.

——————

Nick Nilsson is Vice-President of the online personal training company BetterU, Inc. He has a degree in Physical Education and Psychology and has been inventing new training techniques for more than 16 years. Nick is the author of a number of bodybuilding eBooks including “Metabolic Surge – Rapid Fat Loss,” “The Best Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of,” “Gluteus to the Maximus – Build a Bigger Butt NOW!” and “The Best Abdominal Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of” all available at (Betteru). He can be contacted at betteru@fitstep.com.

Fitness Exercise.

Abdominal Exercises – How to Avoid Mistakes

Abdominal exercises are, in fact, done in order to rectify a series of past mistakes and ignorance.  These mistakes are lead to huge bulk on one’s abdomens.  It is critical to know how one can identify and avoid repeating the abdominal mistake in their exercise or training.  Inaccurate abs training can result in back pain and no results for one’s efforts at all. While the first concern becomes a cause of more worries, the latter will carry forward whatever worries once had at the start.

Abdominal Exercises Mistake #1 Having crunches on inclined benches are not recommended if one is starting off after forty years of age.  It may lead to faster abdominal fat burning but this could also lead to severe back pains. Since crunches are really effective on abdomen, it would be adequate to do it on thick rugs on flat surfaces or floor. One needs to avoid doing the crunches on couch or sofa. Couches and beds are softer than necessary.  It will not be able to support for your back completely.

Abdominal Exercises Mistake #2 Many people believe overdoing their exercises is working and effective by straining their whole bodies with workouts for abdomen. It is enough to clasp one’s hands behind the head and pull oneself up by their abdominal muscles. Having the hands stretched fully before the start is unnecessary as one will be drawing some force from hands which relieve the stomach muscles of their workouts to that extent. This simple gesture or exercise would make people wonder on the benefits or how it has flattened one’s stomach.  Improving the core muscles is the key and it will eventually see physical results if done regularly. 

Abdominal Exercises Mistake #3 Wrong judgment on the quantum of workouts of what the body can take or needs leads to undesirable and surprising results. One should need to work with a trainer in order to adjust the right amount of exercise needed for an individual. There are two noteworthy points here.

1. Overworking may over strain the vertebral column.  Back muscles may not only cause spasms but also dictates the abdominal muscles to temporarily stop the exercise routine. 
2. Under working may to nowhere as the soft belly tissues are not sufficiently stretched or compressed.

Abdominal Exercises Mistake #4 Rest pauses in between sets of crunches are essential. Many people are working out with insufficient or no pauses over enthusiastically but giving up later or learning the lesson in the end. However, take care to see that one’s rest pauses are not long enough to let the muscles reconcile or cool down completely, because in both these cases one will be losing out on the momentum that one has generated.

Abdominal exercises are the easiest of all physical training routines but for results to come one’s way, one needs to know precise steps.  Before improving and correcting the abdominal exercise, below are some guidelines to follow:
Perform several abdominal exercises 3-5 times a week. One should start with exercises and repetitions that are comfortable for one’s fitness level and as one improves, increase the number of repetitions. These exercises may vary from the side bends, Medicine Ball Sit Ups, and the cable crunch.  It is suggested to simply select those that work well for the person and vary the routine over the months.