LOOK AND FEEL GOOD!

  • ********

HEALTHY TIPS by Jackie Warner
  1. Be a smart consumer and read labels carefully
    Fat free products are loaded with sugar. Fat does not make you fat – SUGAR DOES! When grocery shopping, meals should have no more than 400 calories and snacks 150 calories – buy nothing with over 9 grams of sugar.
  2. No overcomplicated routines/no overcomplicated diets
    They have the highest failure rate because they don’t teach you how to live in the real world. Get back to the basic, common sense principles.
  3. Never skip meals
    All of my morbidly obese clients have one thing in common – skipping meals. The moment you allow your blood sugar to drop (when you feel hunger pangs) you become a fat storing machine. You must eat small meals or snacks every few hours.
  4. Don’t ever juice-blend
    Always eat the whole fruit, not just its sugary juices. Juicing takes out the fiber but leaves you with the sugars. However, blending fills you with the whole fruit (fiber) and a lot more nutrients.
  5. Sugar is the devil
    Sugar throws our body into an immune suppressed, non-working state of chronic fatigue, depression, and hormonal imbalance. It is the leading cause of disease and depression in this country. To break the sugar addiction, get rid of refined sugar (anything that isn’t fruit or veggies) for 5 days in a row, then allow yourself to have one cheat meal on Saturday and one on Sunday. You will have curbed the chemical addiction for sugar and your brain will desire less.
  6. Clean House - Remove ALL junk from your kitchen
    Stop buying addictive junk foods, then hating yourself for not being able to resist.
  7. Deprivation does not work
    When starting a diet, for the first two weeks add healthy, nutrient filled foods (low sugar fruit/veggies/lean protein and a multivitamin). Your body will begin to naturally reject sugars and processed foods.
  8. Crunches are a waste of time
    If you carry weight in your midsection, you will just build muscle under fat – thus making you appear bigger! The only way to get a true 6-pack is to combine a healthy diet with resistance training.
  9. Eat the Good, the Bad, then the Ugly
    Classify the food on your plate in the following: Good = veggies/fruit/lean meats, Bad = starches/bread, Ugly = dessert/alcohol. Be sure to fill up on the good first.
  10. Satisfy oral fixation with herbal teas
    Curb late night cravings with your favorite flavored herbal teas. They have anti-oxidants and will satisfy oral fixations.
  11. Water helps you lose weight
    Three liters per day can burn 50-75 calories and double your energy, as well as clear your skin.
  12. Eat natural foods
    Research connects food additives that are present in many diet products with increased sugar and carb cravings.
  13. Don’t be afraid to lift weights
    Cardio is the slowest way to lose weight. It’s all about resistance training. This will burn more calories faster, and also add much needed muscle to speed up metabolism. Concentrate working out on the bigger muscle groups like the chest, back, gluteus, hamstrings, and quadriceps.
  14. ONLY do intensity cardio
    Forget about the heart rate monitor. Unless you have a heart condition, your cardio should be intense enough to feel your muscles burning. Raise ramp to maximum uphill and slow walk (almost a lunge) for 2 minutes. Then lower the ramp and run for 2 minutes. Take 1 minute to bring your heart rate down and then start over. Repeat 4 more times (equals a 20 minute session). It’s less boring too!
************************************
How many Calories do you have to burn to lose a pound?
About 3,500. That means you can eat 100 fewer Calories a day for 35 days, or 500 fewer calories for seven days, or walk an hour a day for 22 days, or do a combination of the two by eating less and moving more. Remember, even if you're exercising more than usual, the Calories-in, Calories-out rule still applies: If you take in more than you burn, you'll gain weight.
Source: ShapeMagazine.com
***********
WORKOUT MYTH: "I’m not sore today so I must not have had a good workout yesterday".
If you are sore in the days following a workout, that might mean you have a good workout; however, not being sore in the days after a workout has nothing to do with whether or not you had a good workout. The factors you should be paying attention to are the intensity level and productivity. Were your sets done with 100 percent intensity? In other words, did you take your working sets to failure using proper form? Did you make any gains? Did you increase the amount of weight you used or did you increase the number of reps with a particular weight? How you felt while training is another factor. Did you feel sluggish or did you feel energized and ready to push it? So don’t worry if you’re not sore; pay attention to your intensity levels, productivity, and how you feel instead. If any of these factors are lacking, you need to change your routine.
***************