 Want a nice mixed green salad with out all the heavy fattening dressing? Well here is my version of light spring time salad that will be a weekly favorite!
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 Ingredients: • 1 cup of cashews blended until smooth or cashew butter • 2 tablespoons of raw honey • 1 tspn vanilla extract • 8 dates (pitted and soaked for at least 4 hours) • 2 tablespoons raw cacao powder • 1 cup of desiccated coconut for coating Method: Place all the ingredients except for the coconut in a blender and wiz until smooth. With your hands roll the mixture into small balls. Then pour the desiccated coconut onto a chopping board and roll the balls in it to top. Place the balls on a plate and refrigerate until hard.  If your like me and have a high metabolism, active lifestlye, and do intense fitness- hard gainers typically find it difficult getting enough calories to gain weight and build muscle. The secret to consuming enough calories is to choose calorie dense foods. You have to be eating lots of high calorie foods and beverages or you will be fighting an uphill battle. Gaining weight doesn’t have to be a struggle if you are eating the right kind of calories. This can be changed if you begin to analyze your daily diet plan to include more calorie dense foods. Let me explain more about calorie density. What are High Density or Calorie Dense Foods? High density foods are foods which (measure by volume) contain a high number of calories per serving. Calorie dense foods tend to be high in fat and/or sugar due to the fact that all proteins and all carbohydrates contain four calories per gram whilst all fats contain nine calories per gram. Moreover, some foods are more “calorie concentrated” then others as they contain less water content etc. Let me explain. Visualize two kitchen measuring cups side by side (both the same size); one filled with chopped cucumber and one filled with raisins. Each cup now contains exactly the same VOLUME of food, right? But did you know that the cup of raisins has 37 times more calories? That’s right! The cup of cucumbers contains 14 calories, while the cup of raisins contains a whopping 520 calories. If cucumbers and raisins both have four calories per gram, then how could this be? The answer has to do with calorie density. The cucumbers have a lower calorie density because they have a higher fiber and water content. The calories in the raisins are more “concentrated”. Typical calorie dense foods include things like fatty meats, salami, candy bars, rice crackers, cookies, potato chips, anything which is fried, cola, beer (although there is low calorie beers on the market nowadays) and ice-cream. These are all examples of high calorie foods and drinks because they are high in sugar and/or fat. When making adjustments to your weight gain diet plan to include more calories, do so in a healthy manner. Don’t just look to be consuming more calories, look at the nutrition value of foods! Let me give an example. We all know fruits and vegetables and nutritionally very good for us. Fibrous carbohydrates and vegetables such as lettuce, asparagus, cucumber, and broccoli are very low calorie foods. This is because these vegetables are high in fiber and your body has a hard time absorbing the caloric content of fiber. These types of vegetables also have a high water content. So now let’s look at some “calorie dense” foods which will help pack on Leave the vegetables in the pantry if you want to gain weight, and replace them with simple carbohydrates such as fruits which have a higher calorie density. This is because simple carbs are more concentrated and they contain less fiber. Fruit juice is even more concentrated then eating the fruit itself. Instead of having the one medium size orange, which contains about 60 calories, drinking a glass of orange juice will serve you better as it contains about 160 calories. But for those who are vegetarian here is a list of Vegetable calories:http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calories_in_vegetables.htm Complex carbohydrates (starches) such as whole grains, pasta, cereals, beans, potatoes and rice also have higher calorie densities than fibrous carbs. A typical serving of pasta contains about 800-1000 calories. Pasta and other complex carbs are great foods for gaining weight. Now that you know what carbs to eat, let’s talk about fat. There is a common misconception that all fats are bad for you and they should be removed from your diet. This is untrue, there are good and bad fats. Fats have a major impact on the calorie content of foods, so they are an important consideration. Just keep in mind that fat should consist of about 15-25% of your total calories. You want to be getting most of you calories from carbohydrates and protein. In small amounts, unsaturated, “healthy” fats are not only good for you, but they can help you gain weight more quickly. Just one tablespoon of flaxseed oil and two tablespoons of peanut butter, cashew, or almond butter would add nearly 500 calories to your daily diet and you’d hardly notice that any extra food was added. In addition, you can supplement your healthy diet with protein supplements. It is often difficult to eat enough protein each day from normal foods, so supplementing with a weight gain supplement such as a soy or whey protein shake can help increase overall caloric intake. You want to make sure the weight gain supplement is a good mix of both protein and carbs and doesn’t contain too much sugar. For example, a post workout shake containing 40 grams of protein, 80 grams of carbs, and 2 grams of fat would provide almost 500 calories. If you wanted even more calories, you could mix the powder in juice instead of water and also add flaxseed oil.  So, let’s summarize your plan for quickly and easily adding more calories to your diet. Continue eating the same healthy foods, just eat more of them. Healthy high calorie snacks are a great way to increase calories. Replace low density foods with high density foods. You could eat salads all day until your face hurts, but it won’t do much good for weight gain. Eat plenty of starchy carbs including whole grains, pastas, rice, and potatoes. Don’t be afraid of adding some fat to your diet, just ensure it’s no more then 15-25% of your total calories. Some of the “good” fats will actually help you to gain weight. Most importantly – just because you need to eat more calories doesn’t give you permission to stuff yourself with unhealthy foods. Here’s a List of Healthy Calorie Dense Foods: • All natural peanut butter, almonds, cashews & other nuts • Fruits, especially fruit juice & dried fruit • Whole grains, pastas, rice & high calorie breakfast cereals • Potatoes, yams • Dips & spreads • Beans & other legumes • Avocado • Dairy such as whole milk, cheese, yogurt • Oily fish such as salmon or tuna • Red meats • Cooked vegetables/meats/etc in olive oil  Here is a quick breakfast that is perfect for the Zumba lifestlye - rich in calcium and protein. Muesli is a popular breakfast meal based on uncooked rolled oats, fruit and nuts. It was developed around 1900 by Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner for patients in his hospital. It is available in a packaged dry form, ready made, or it can be made fresh. Perfect for people who cannot tolerate milk, either because of a protein allergy or lactose intolerance, can enjoy yogurt. The culturing process makes yogurt more digestible than milk. The live active cultures create lactase, the enzyme lactose-intolerant people lack, and another enzyme contained in some yogurts (beta-galactosidase) also helps improve lactose absorption in lactase-deficient persons. Bacterial enzymes created by the culturing process, partially digest the milk protein casein, making it easier to absorb and less allergenic. Try this it's yummy! -Natural plain yogurt with out sugar -Museli ( I used a Gluten Free version ) -Banana, peach and strawberry ENJOY!!!  If you’ve begun Zumba dancing as part of an overall conversion to a more active life, you’ve taken up half the battle. Zumba Fitness classes can help you burn 400 or more calories an hour, depending on how energetically you perform the cumbia, salsa, samba, reggaeton and similar international dance steps and routines. The rest of the equation involves eating nutritious foods in moderation to support the fitness aspect of your dancing. The founder of Zumba Fitness, fitness trainer Beto Perez, teamed up in 2009 with nutrition author Maggie Greenwood-Robinson, author of “The Biggest Loser,” to design meal plans that would augment Zumba Fitness dance classes. The result was their jointly authored book, “Zumba: Ditch the Workout Join the Party! The Zumba Weight Loss Program.” Its meal plans are built around whole grains, complex carbohydrates, lean proteins and foods rich in fiber and calcium. Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/462581-about-the-zumba-diet/#ixzz219usbtai Getting Started Perez and Greenwood-Robinson describe a five-day express diet to get started. You have a choice of breakfast menus including either toast, an egg, fresh fruit and tea or coffee with no sugar, cream, milk or honey; or 1 cup of high-fiber cereal and skim milk in lieu of the toast and egg. Lunches for the five days rotate through soup and salad, spinach salad with low-fat feta cheese, chicken salad sandwiches, tuna-stuffed tomato and fruit salad. For dinners, you have a choice of grilled steak with steamed broccoli, pork chops with steamed mixed vegetables and baked fish with a half-cup of cooked brown rice. In an interview with the online site That’s Fit, Greenwood-Robinson said the express diet can lead to a weight loss of between 2 and 9 pounds in five days. Maintaining A chapter on “Meal Magic” provides 14 days of breakfast, lunch and dinner suggestions, followed by a chapter on recipe details. The Zumba Fitness meal plans include some breakfasts similar to the those of the express diet, while others allow you to branch out with turkey bacon, low-fat granola, cooked oatmeal and Western omelets. Lunches include grilled chicken breast, quick-fix fajitas, lentil soup with salad, chickpea salad, gourmet spinach salad and tuna nicoise salad. Dinner options include crab cakes with brown rice and a vegetable medley, or lamb chops with green beans and sweet potatoes. Eating Out Perez and Greenwood-Robinson recommend eating in during the express diet phase to stay with your meal plan. If you need to go out, stick carefully to baked, broiled or grilled chicken or fish with vegetables, they advise. Avoid alcohol and ask the server not to bring the bread basket. Ask for a salad without dressing. You can even combine diet and exercise if you can find an innovative restaurant that combines a healthy lunch with a Zumba Fitness class, as Crow’s Cantina in Galveston, Texas, does. So keep these important guidelines in your mind and make sure that you perform some kind of aerobic work out at the very least 3 times per week. In almost no time at all you'll have the body which you dream about.   On the surface it seems that not eating junk food and eating only healthy, living, unprocessed foods would do the trick. But in order to fuel your fat burning engine when you are physically active, you need to take it a step further. You need to eat smaller meals more frequently. Eventually, you'll want to eat 5-6 small meals per day, with protein and carbs combined in each meal, and about 50 percent or more of your calories should come from healthy fats like avocados, coconut oil, butter, eggs and animal fat (if you are not vegetarian) that is not heated at high temperatures and is organically- and humanely-raised. In order to get the most results from your fitness routine you must: 1. Learn about the timing of your meals in reference to your wake-up and bed time, and your workout time. 2. Learn about your macro-nutrient totals. That's just a fancy word for the optimal percentage of carbs, proteins, and fats in each of your meals. 3. Use good sources of acceptable proteins and carbohydrates. 4. Determine your nutritional type, which will indicate the ideal ratio of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats that your body needs for optimal performance. Beneficial sources of protein include: • Organic chicken (dark meat for protein types) • Fish (as long as it is free of heavy metals and other contaminants.) • Organic free-range eggs • Lean, grass-fed red meat • Whey protein • Nuts and seeds • Quinoa Beneficial sources of carbohydrates (fibrous veggie type) include: • Any vegetable (the more colorful the better) • Dark green, leafy vegetables such as spinach • Apples • Grapefruit Good sources of starchy carbohydrates are: • Brown or wild rice • Yams/ sweet potatoes • Bananas A Typical Workout Plan An effective, time efficient workout plan should include two cardio sessions per week, and two resistance (weight lifting) sessions per week.The cardio sessions are for fat burning. The resistance training sessions are for building muscle and sculpting your physique. It is important to combine a quality protein and a carb (fibrous veggie type) together in every meal, no matter whether it's a resistance training day, an interval cardio day, or a non-workout day. In fact, there's a well kept nutritional secret in the competitive bodybuilding and fitness world. It is called carb cycling or zig-zag dieting. It works very well for building muscle and losing fat. It is a very simple concept. You simply add a small serving of starchy carbs to two or three meals throughout the day on resistance training days.This helps your body and muscles to have more fuel on days that you are burning lots of energy with the resistance workouts.For many, it's also comforting to know that you can eat some starchy carbs two or three days per week (on the days that you exercise intensely with weights). This can make it easier to avoid eating starchy carbs like breads and pastas at other times of the week when you are more susceptible to having them stored as fat due to low physical activity. This approach seems to help give most of our clients the mindset that they can stick to this nutritional approach as a long-term solution and a lifestyle. How to Achieve Greater Health Benefits in Less Time Incorporating high intensity interval training such as that advocated by fitness experts Phil Campbell or Dr. Doug McGuff, can further improve your fitness regimen. These types of exercises dramatically cut down on your exercise time while producing greater benefits—simply because you're using your body as it was designed to be used. When doing high-intensity anaerobic exercises, you can literally be done in about 20 minutes, compared to spending an hour running on the treadmill. And according to Dr. McGuff, if you're doing Super Slow strength training, which is another form of high intensity type training, all you need is 12 minutes a week. Yes, you read that right: 12 minutes a week! High-intensity exercises sequentially recruit all the different types of muscle fibers in your body, starting with the smaller motor units made up of slow-twitch fibers—which are primarily aerobic in metabolism, have a lot of endurance, and recover quickly—to the intermediate fibers; followed by the fast-twitch fibers. The key to activating your fast-twitch muscle fibers is speed. Your fast-twitch fibers are largely glycolytic and store a lot of glucose. When these muscles are recruited, it creates the stimulus needed to grow muscle. At the same time, it enlarges the glucose storage reservoir in the muscle, which in turn enhances your insulin sensitivity. Normalizing your insulin is one of the primary health benefits of exercise, and this is particularly true in the case of high-intensity exercise. Conventional aerobics does not do this as efficiently.  How to Perform Super-Slow Weight Lifting Essentially, by aggressively working your muscle to fatigue, you're stimulating the muscular adaptation that will improve the metabolic capability of the muscle and cause it to grow. Use four or five basic compound movements for your exercise set. These exercises can be done using either free weights or machines. The benefit of using a quality machine is that it will allow you to focus your mind on the effort, as opposed on the movement. 1. Pull-down (or alternatively chin-up) 2. Chest press 3. Compound row (A pulling motion in the horizontal plane) 4. Overhead press 5. Leg press or squats Here's a summary of how to perform each exercise: 1. Begin by lifting the weight as slowly and gradually as you can. The first inch should take about two seconds. Since you’re depriving yourself of all the momentum of snatching the weight upward, it will be very difficult to complete the full movement in less than 7-10 seconds. (When pushing, stop about 10 to 15 degrees before your limb is fully straightened; smoothly reverse direction) 2. Slowly lower the weight back down 3. Repeat until exhaustion 4. Immediately switch to the next exercise for the next target muscle group, and repeat the first three steps.When done in this fashion, your workout will take no more than 12 or 15 minutes. While this may sound ridiculously short, once you've tried it, you'll likely realize that it's really all you can muster. This super-slow movement allows your muscle, at the microscopic level, to access the maximum number of cross-bridges between the protein filaments that produce movement in the muscle. Once you reach exhaustion, don't try to heave or jerk the weight to get one last repetition in. Instead, just keep trying to produce the movement, even if it's not 'going' anywhere, for another five seconds or so. If you're using the appropriate amount of weight or resistance, you'll be able to perform four to eight repetitions. Dietary Influence If you're like most people—including many athletes—you're probably eating too many carbs. Your body's need for sugar is, biologically, very small. And when you consume more than you need, your body turns it into fat. You do not get fat from eating fat—you get fat from eating too many carbs (sugar). "Your skeletal muscle – if you're lucky – can hold maybe 250 grams of glucose, and your liver holds about 70. If you take 320 grams of glucose as what your storage capacity is, you can kill that with a single trip to Starbucks. Once you go beyond that, your body is going to find some sort of way to deal with those excess carbohydrates. If your glycogen storage is full, your body has nowhere else to put it. So instead of going all the way through this metabolic pathway, it… produces body fat. That's called the novel glycogenosis. We are in the midst of a very bizarre, evil-scientist type experiment because we are dumping into our bodies an amount of carbohydrate and, in particular, refined sugars, that are way above the capacity of our metabolism to handle normally." The result of our modern diet, which is loaded with grains and sugars (especially fructose), is a large percentage of obesity, and people that are overweight. This can be turned around, however, using a wise combination-approach of a high-fat, low-carb diet and high-intensity interval training."Through an amplification cascade, when you're doing a high-intensity exercise, you very aggressively empty sugar out of your muscle cells. By doing that and combining over the low-carbohydrate diet, you start to heal the metabolism,"You're able to access your energy source finally. That's how you can turn things around....So please remember: you cannot exercise your way out of a bad diet, and the first step toward improving your diet is to cut out as much sugar/fructose and grain-carbs as possible. What to Eat After Your Workouts After a cardiovascular workout (fat loss day), wait 30-45 minutes, and then consume a high quality source of protein (whole food) and vegetable-type carbohydrate. An example would be a spinach salad and some chicken. The reason why you'll want to wait a bit after the session to eat is to ride the fat burning wave of your cardio session. However, waiting more than an hour is typically too long, and can start to slow down your metabolism because your body goes into starvation mode. After a resistance workout (muscle building day) you need a different approach. The meal after a resistance workout is the only meal that you ever want to be absorbed rapidly. Why? Because typically, when a meal is absorbed fast because of high glycemic or simple carbs, there is a good chance your blood sugar will rise too fast, and the carbohydrates will be stored as body fat. But after a resistance workout, you've just primed the pump with an intense workout (with weights), and you have a one hour window of opportunity to shuttle in nutrients, amino acids, glycogen, and other anabolic nutrients to help repair your damaged muscles. If you miss this one hour window after your intense workout, the chances that your muscles will be able to repair themselves, which makes them bigger and stronger, diminish significantly.Keep in mind that after a workout, your stomach and digestive tract do not function as efficiently. The reason is because your digestive tract is incredibly vascular and uses significant amounts of blood to do its job. The problem arises because much of your blood is in the muscles that you just finished training. So an adequate amount of blood is not available to digest food eaten after a workout. For this reason, the best post workout meal on resistance training days is whey protein and a higher glycemic (fast released, starchy) carbohydrate. You can use a banana as your carb. The potassium in the banana seems to help with recovery. The whey protein is already pre-digested so it is absorbed rapidly. You'll want to consume your fast released post workout meal 15-30 minutes after an intense weight training session. Start to implement these rules of proper fitness nutrition, and you'll likely start to feel your clothes fit better within a couple of weeks. Everyone has the power to change. Many people get in the best shape of their life in their 40's and 50's. You can too! A healthy fitness lifestyle is the only true fountain of youth that exists. Train hard and expect success!  If you feel yourself coming down with a cold or flu, this is NOT the time to be eating ANY sugar, artificial sweeteners or processed foods. Sugar is particularly damaging to your immune system -- which needs to be boosted, not suppressed, in order to combat an emerging infection. So if you are fighting a cold, you'll want to avoid all sugar like the plague, and this includes sugar in the form of fruit juice and even grains (which break down as sugar in your body). Ideally, you must address nutrition, sleep, exercise and stress issues the moment you first feel yourself getting a bug. This is when immune-enhancing strategies will be most effective. So when you're coming down with a cold, it's time to address ALL of the contributing factors immediately, which includes tweaking your diet in favor of foods that will strengthen your immune response. Good choices include:
And what about the old wives' tale of chicken soup for your cold? Chicken soup can help reduce your symptoms. Chicken contains a natural amino acid called cysteine, which can thin the mucus in your lungs and make it less sticky so you can expel it more easily. Processed, canned soups won't work as well as the homemade version, however. For best results, make up a fresh batch yourself (or ask a friend or family member to do so) and make the soup hot and spicy with plenty of pepper. The spices will trigger a sudden release of watery fluids in your mouth, throat, and lungs, which will help thin down the respiratory mucus so it's easier to cough up and expel. Three Cold-Busting Lifestyle Strategies 1. High-Quality Sleep- And plenty of it! Pay attention to how you are sleeping. If you aren't getting enough sleep, or enough restorative sleep, you'll be at increased risk for a hostile viral takeover. Your immune system is also the most effective when you're not sleep-deprived, so the more rested you are the quicker you'll recover. Also too much visual stimulation at night before bed such as the Tv, Ipad, and computer disrupts the release of melatonin, diminishing the regenerative benefits of sleep. The body needs time to shut down naturally. 2. Regular Exercise - Regular exercise is a crucial strategy for increasing your resistance to illness. There is evidence that regular, moderate exercise can reduce your risk for respiratory illness by boosting your immune system. In fact, one study found that people who exercised regularly (five or more days a week) cut their risk of having a cold by close to 50 percent. And, in the event they did catch a cold, their symptoms were much less severe than among those who did not exercise. Exercise likely cuts your risk of colds so significantly because it triggers a rise in immune system cells that can attack any potential invaders. Each time you exercise you can benefit from this boost to your immune system. Ideally, establish a regular fitness program now, such as Zumba Dance fitness classes! and help youself ward off colds and other illness. However, if you're already feeling sick don't overdo it. Over-exercising can actually place more stress on your body, which can suppress your immune system -- and you don't want that either. You might just go for a walk if you are coming down with a cold, or simply tone down your regular workout. Any rise in body temperature will be an unwelcome climate for a viral invader, though, so some exercise is likely to be beneficial. 3. Reduce Your Emotional Stress - Emotional stressors can also predispose you to an infection while making cold symptoms worse. Finding ways to manage daily stress as well as your reactions to circumstances beyond your control will contribute to a strong and resilient immune system. Some of my favorites include massage, meditation, deep breathing, yoga, walking out in nature, and anything that will help you in reducing stress.  In this day and age, technology and the promise of instant gratification can really make getting fit appear as aninsurmountable task. How do people with those rock hard bodies do it? Is there a secret to having a life, job, family and whatever else you can manage to pile on, all while having a body Hollywood would buy up? Well listen up, and let's dig into the "Fit person's mentality" and find out the secret! Make getting / being fit your "lifestyle" Fit people who get fit and more importantly stay fit, treat it as a long-term lifestyle. They see the long-term reasons and use those rather than any short-term reason. Thinking like this makes it seem like a smooth, gradual, grass covered hill, rather than a mountain covered in sharp, jagged rocks with lightening cracking at every step you take. Let's say you want to switch up your personal style, you would go out buy new clothes and try new things to really make that style believable and a part of who you are. Do the same with fitness. Enjoy having a cart filled with healthy foods and that trusty water bottle by your side! http://www.theartfengshui.ch/health--nutrition.html Fall in love with Fitness Fit people love working out. Believe it or not after awhile working out becomes fun. As you head to gym after a long day's work, you know the stress will melt off, and the usual crowd will be in doing the same. Soon you will find yourself recognizing the faces and even make friends. Fit people can't wait for their workout because it's a time they can give to themselves and feel great about it. So let's say you gained a some unwanted weight; it happens if your human. Instead of excercise to lose that weight, fall in love with that tired, sweaty, accomplished feeling that your workout is done and you earned it! http://www.glocals.com/#/groups/lausanne-fit-and-fab-group.htm You're not made of glass; you just think you are Workouts and soreness go hand in hand. Fit people know and accept this, and work out anyway. Imagine how satisfied you will feel once you are done. Fit people take pride in this. Try working out just to be sore. They will be the proudest aches and pains you have ever had. Try it for yourself. Let's say you believe that running for four blocks is simply out of your reach. Try hill running or even speed walking one block, and make getting up to four blocks your journey. On your way to that four-block battle, you will discover you can do it, and that you're not made of glass after all. A superfood that reduces recovery time and provides long-lasting energy is spirulina. It supplies nutrients that are lacking in most of our diets. It nourishes people who have digestion, assimilation, and elimination problems; it satisfies the appetite as it provides essential nutrients to weight watchers. http://www.theartfengshui.ch/1/category/spirulina/1.html Learn to make and keep short- and long-term goals Becoming fit is a journey of long- and short-term goals. Fit people make both of those in a realistic manner. They do this to keep the flame, or love alive. By doing so, they have meaning for working out and keeping their bodies hard and toned. Learn to set short- and long-term goals and see your toned body just around the corner! See working out as an investment rather than a burden Fit people see working out as an investment in their health, not only short-term but also long-term. Picture yourself playing sports with your children, enjoying life with your spouse and how happy you will be looking back at your choices. Fit people see the long-term and it makes the workouts and healthy diet have purpose and meaning. So on your hard, stressed days, stop, take a breath, and really reflect on why you're doing what you're doing short-term. See the long-term goal and remember why you fell in love with it and why you're not going to give up. Stand tall and proud! The mindset of a fit person is to live the lifestyle and look good while doing it. Regardless of who you are, you deserve to love yourself and feel good in your own skin. Life was made for living. Live it long, live it strong, be proud of who you are!  Ever wonder how people who always seem to be in great physical shape got that way? More importantly how do they stay healthy, fit and in-shape? Adopt these seven, simple habits of really fit people and realize the benefits of a healthier body. Below are the seven healthy habits that almost all fit people seem to have in common: Healthy Habit #1: They Eat No one ever dieted their way to long term fitness and health. Despite the disturbing trend toward fad diets like Master Cleanse (which involve extreme calorie restriction or striking entire food groups from a person's diet,) well-conditioned, in-shape people eat. And they actually eat a lot. The difference between fit eaters and fat eaters, is that highly fit people eat differently - they tend to eat more whole, unprocessed foods; have higher lean protein intake; consume the bulk of their carbohydrates in the form of complex carbs like whole grains, vegetables and whole fruit; and avoid the "fat free food" trap. They also tend to eat more frequently (as many as six to seven meals a day), but make those meals smaller. The result is that they have more stable blood sugar, more consistent energy levels, and are less prone to gaining body fat because they rarely eat more calories in any given meal than their body can utilize. Healthy Habit #2: They Move People who seem to be perpetually in good shape not only eat frequently, but they move a lot. This seems elementary, but in a sedentary society, we are moving less than ever before. Highly fit people don't shy away from physical activity in their daily lives, whether that is walking when they could have drove or taking the stairs when the elevator would have been more convenient. If we walked more, and drove less, we wouldn't have to spend as much time on the treadmill at the gym. Yet our daily lives are often arranged in such a way to discourage physical activity. Highly fit people consciously go out of their way to find opportunities to move. Whether that is parking a greater distance away from the shopping mall, taking the stairs at work, or even picking up their pace when walking from meeting-to-meeting, you'll always notice that fit people seem to be on the move. They also find ways to get exercise that doesn't always require spending time at the gym. Whether that's recreational sports, walking the dog, swimming, running, yoga, pilates or even stretching at their desks, they understand that staying in-shape is a lifestyle, not just a "kick" you go on. Healthy Habit #3: They Make the Time for Exercise "I don't have time for exercise" isn't something you'll hear from a highly fit person. Everyone is busy and everyone has career, family and community obligations. But highly fit people make time for exercise. Indeed, they often hold their exercise time sacred and will always figure out a way to meet their other commitments, while still meeting their health, diet and fitness needs. The truth is that most people have far more time available in their day then they think. They spend time watching tv, playing video games, surfing the Internet, going to the movies or even sleeping an extra hour or two. Exercise doesn't require that much time. In general, less than 60 minutes a day. Most people easily have that time available to them, they just choose to use it differently. Highly fit people, on the other hand, make exercise a priority. They make a choice to watch an hour less of TV in the evening in order to take care of their body and health. And with all of the studies that show the tremendous benefits to regular exercise, it's clear that more people should follow their lead and make it a priority as well…..www.zumbamania.ch Healthy Habit #4: They Drink Water Highly fit people understand the benefits of water. When you see them, whether its at the gym, at home or in the office, a bottle of water will often be close at hand. Study-after-study has shown that proper hydration isn't just important to athletes and runners, but everyone. Water can blunt fatigue, improve concentration and thought clarity, discourage the formation of kidney stones, improve digestion and improve performance in the gym. Highly fit people drink a lot of water and they are healthier for it. Here's the really good news: fit people don't just drink tap or bottled water, they also consume plenty of green and black tea. Recent research has actually indicated that consuming tea not only counts toward your daily hydration requirements, but may actually be more healthy overall than plain water. Healthy Habit #5: They Don't Diet! This is related to Habit #1. Highly fit people don't "go on diets" - they are on a diet every day. That doesn't necessarily mean they are restricting calories every day. It means that they understand that long term health and fitness requires consistently eating smart. And smart eating for a highly fit person is just part of their every day routine. You can often spot a highly-fit person because they don't skip breakfast, they will often bring their own lunch to work and they seem to always be snacking on healthy foods like apples, vegetables and nuts. It's also rare to see them eating fast food or drinking soda - arguably two of the worst types of foods a person can consume and a leading cause of obesity. The one exception to this rule is competitive male and female bodybuilding. Competitive bodybuilders will often diet (drastically, some times) leading up to a competition in order to drive their body fat down to very low levels (for men the low-single digits and for women, the mid-teens.) It's very difficult for any person, no matter how well-conditioned they are, to maintain these extremely low, competition-grade body fat levels for any significant amount of time. Still, even most competitive bodybuilders will admit that if it weren't for their sport, they would never utilize these diet tactics. Healthy Habit #6: They Have Goals Highly fit, in-shape people always have a goal. After all, you can't improve something unless you know what you are trying to improve it to. Those goals can be small and incremental, or large and ambitious. In either case, they act with a sense of purpose when it comes to their health and physical fitness. Whether that goal is to maintain their current physique, improve it, reduce body fat, gain additional muscle, increase their endurance or stamina, become more flexible, improve their coordination, or develop a better golf swing, they will always have a goal that they are shooting for. If you ask a fit person what they are currently working on, they will always be able to tell you their goal. And if you observe them exercising, you'll be able to sense that they have purpose. They rarely sit still between sets, they minimize socialization in the gym during their workout, and again, they always seem to be on the move and "in the zone." In other words, they won't just be going through the motions, they'll be striving for something. Healthy Habit # 7: The Record Their Progress Healthy, highly-fit people keep track of their exercise so they can determine whether they are actually making progress toward their goal. You can't improve what you don't measure. Write it down and review it daily. Most highly-fit people keep an exercise log of some sort or another. It may simply be a notebook where they write down each exercise, the weight and completed reps. Or it may be more formal, for example a store-bought exercise and fitness log or a sheet provided by their gym. There are even programs available for cell phones or PDAs that can help track progress. One of the first pieces of advice I give someone who feels like they aren't making progress with their workout routine or diet is to start an exercise and food log. Often, people aren't working as hard as they think at the gym or they're eating more calories than they originally estimated. By keeping track of the details of your diet and workout regimen, you can have better visibility into potential stumbling-points and improve them. Fitness-conscious people understand this, since meeting their goals means understanding that progress from the little improvements you make each workout. Unless you are tracking those improvements, you'll find yourself stalled and frustrated. Make These Habits Your Own Remember, you don't have to be an athlete, competitive bodybuilder, aerobics instructor or fitness model to take advantage of these seven healthy habits. Regardless of your level, experience or personal health and diet goals, you can can live a healthier and happier life by adopting some of the same habits as highly-fit people. | CategoriesAll ArchivesMarch 2013  |
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