For years now it’s been the same routine- get up; go to work; drive straight to the gym and follow simple, mundane weight lifting instructions on a notepad. This was up until about a year ago, when I discovered that this habitual practice was demoralizing and ultimately making me miserable. Sure, life can be routine, but it’s in that routine that we can exercise our creativity to conjure up new ways to make fitness exciting.

For some people, this could mean simple tweaks in their written/routine free-weight exercises, starting with chest and ending the week with arms. For others, it’s about hopping on that bike and/or treadmill and running that extra five miles a day. It’s my strong recommendation that you immerse yourself in a solid mix of cardio and free weight exercises as not to create boredom, or lack of will. BUT, don’t make your schedule the same each week; spontaneity is key! Sure, there are those who say they’ve come to learn to love what they do, charming the same weight-lifting regimen weekly while avoiding anything irregular as not to “tarnish” their workout. Learning to love however, is different from naturally engaging in something that’s enjoyable.

Routines can be easy, and not very strenuous; but after all, they are just routines. So it’s with my dear advice that as practitioners of exercise and fitness we teach ourselves new things, while also teaching our body the same. This is inherently true with things like dance. More specifically, Zumba is an excellent example of something different, fun, and unique. The ability to genuinely enhance cardiovascular function and endurance, while practicing muscle memory routines effectively exercises the whole body. And simply put, it’s fun.

The most practical and enjoyable way to stay in shape undoubtedly is by playing sports. Joining a soccer league on Sundays or perhaps playing something as simple as intramural dodge ball or kickball can successfully burn thousands of calories in just one day. The sheer competitive nature of these athletic activities drives the body further and beyond, and although strenuous at times, people crave the struggle and willingness to become better. There comes a certain rush that comes with fast paced activities, which brings me to my next point.

These could include anything from dance to karate and MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). Again, most of these practices are very difficult to mimic at an ordinary Gym. You can certainly find out more from top trainers/classes at pristine establishments like MMA Industries.

Things like mountain climbing, biking, quad-racing, fishing, golfing, etc… – These are all great ways to actively stay in shape, and they’re quite enjoyable as well! A sudden increase in endorphins will surely make anybody’s day brighter. Also, almost all of these activities take place outdoors, which captures much needed vitamins from the sun, further enhancing the overall experience. Keep in mind however, it is important to get your heart rate up every now and then, so switching on and off amongst these and cardiovascular exercises (i.e. – treadmills) will keep your body guessing while enhancing overall fitness.

Sports and Dance are both a leisurely and/or competitive practice, but can also be the most effective way to exercise. Treadmills and Ellipticals will shed weight and enhance muscle strength/endurance, but will never capture the soul and rhythm that dance makes so enjoyable. Meanwhile, the competitive nature and drive that comes with playing sports will always be an important part of everybody’s lives. But again, it’s important to diversify your fitness, and be able to incorporate pleasure and strain. Attempt to pull one’s self away from everyday fitness equipment and home gyms; pick up a class of zumba and/or sign up for an intramural softball league and you’ll be on your way to a healthier, more enjoyable lifestyle.

Jim Rollince is a representative from the web relations department of Gym Source. He currently oversees all creative writing efforts and is an expert in http://www.gymsource.com/.

We’ve been added to the lovely Alltop website’s health category by Guy Kawasaki and co. Go check it out. It’s your place to catch up on everything that’s going on around the web – and world.

What is it?

Food combining is eating foods together that require the same enzymes for digestion. From a scientific standpoint, we know that in order for meats to be broken down, an acidic environment in the stomach is needed. If you drink milk with your meal, which is alkaline, that neutralizes the stomach environment and can hinder proper digestion of the meat.

Think about all of the people that experience indigestion. It is now so common that it is seen as a normal fact of life. We spend in excess of 2 billion dollars a year on antacids (substances which counter stomach acidity). Wouldn’t it be better if instead of having to choke down an antacid all you needed to do was eat foods the right way? Eating the correct food combinations can help end indigestion and improve health and vitality because you will be getting the proper nutrients out of your food.

A Brief History of Food Combining

The idea of food combining for optimal nutrition was introduced in 1911 by William Howard Hay. Food combining was based on the current ideas of that time as far as the requirement of alkalinity to digest food the proper way in the stomach whilst taking into consideration the pH of the food you are eating.

This then lead to a need for a classification system of foods, and this was created by Herbert M Shelton. His classification system looked at food and grouped it together by the nutrients that each food produced. This broke foods up into three groups, those that are considered “neutral”, those that are carbohydrates and those that are proteins. Herbert M. Shelton went as far as to recommend that you eat proteins and carbohydrates at different meals.

How It Works

Each type of food is digested differently. They each require different enzymes and different environments to be digested properly. It is equally important that different foods digest at different rates. Combining food incorrectly can cancel out the specific needs of those foods for proper digestion.

For example, it has already been stated that meats/flesh foods or more appropriately proteins require an acidic environment. As stated enjoying a glass of milk with your steak dinner has just cancelled out the acidic environment due to the neutralizing effects of milk. The same goes for fruits as they produce an alkaline secretion when digested which will also neutralize the acidic environment needed for digestion of proteins.

Noting the rate of digestion of food is also important. Take the example of fruits, which digest quickly and combining them with foods that take longer to digest, such as the proteins can cause the fruits to ferment. So when you are eating fruits you will want to combine those with starches or carbohydrates, both of which digest quickly. Vegetables and fruits both require different enzymes for digestion and these enzymes also tend to cancel each other out.

Proper combination of like foods or compatible foods will aid in proper digestion and optimal health. Do not go over board though and focus on eating only one food or one type of food because that is just as bad for the digestive system. Variety and proper combination is key.

What Have Results Shown?

The results show that proper food combining does help decrease indigestion and improve overall health. Your body is getting the nutrients that it is meant to get from the food that you are consuming. You will notice that you feel “lighter” and have more energy. Food combining has also been shown to help those recovering from eating disorders. The proper combination of foods is easier on the stomach.

As with any theory, the food combination theory and practice has its share of critics. The complaints aren’t due to science, but due more to the fact that they consider food combining to be a boring way to eat after awhile.

How to Get Started with Food Combining

Pay attention to your food. Know what category each food that you eat falls into, protein, carbohydrate or neutral. Once you know what food falls in what category you can easily follow the following simple steps:

• Make sure that you eat all kinds of citrus fruits, leafy veggies, eggs, fish and meats so that you can safely avoid any nutrient deficiencies. Notice there is no mention of carbohydrates, they are an “eat only if you have to” food.

• You do not want to combine any pure fats with high starches in one meal. In other words, that baked potato with butter and sour cream is out the window.

• Avoid combining acids such as citrus, vinegar and buttermilk with any high starch at one meal.

• High starches should also not be combined with any high proteins.

• Fats can be eaten with proteins and acids.

• Foods such as meat, fish, fowl and eggs should be eaten one serving of each per day or two servings of one per day with a fat.

• Eat buttermilk, cheese and other dairy: Having two glasses of organic milk or two and half ounces of cheese per day.

• Have two servings a day of raw, low starch fruits and raw green and yellow vegetables a day.

Photo from lalla-ali

Exercise is something we all need to do. But it may not go correctly all the time. We might start – feel we’re getting nowhere and then just give up. When that happens, what we need is a bit of remotivation.

We need to do something that’ll make us get up and get back on the exercise path. Sometimes remotivation happens spontaneously when we just have the urge to exercise. Sometimes the worst needs to happen to us – we put on weight and no longer look like our ideal weight. Sometimes we just have to have some near-death experience to start rebuilding our ideal life. Sometimes a simple stock take on our life and ideal look is all it takes.

Here are three steps:-

1. Take stock of where you are. Answer questions such as how do you look now and is it how you wish to look? Where do you want to lose weight? Where do you want to gain weight? Where do you want to build muscles? What have you done so far and how do you look?

2. Devise some realistic goals. Within 4-6 months, where do you want to see yourself? Where do you see the muscles and what do you look like? How healthy are you and what does it feel like?

3. Come up with creative ways to achieve those goals. Make a list of things you could do, have or be in order to get remotivated with your health and fitness goals. 

Here are three ideas to pick yourself up again:

• Set up a reward system. Come up with BIG rewards – rewards that will literally blow you away like a big vacation, a shopping spree, a weekend away, a spa retreat, whatever it is that takes your fancy. Give yourself these rewards once you reach a particular milestone that you set.

• WHY. Answer the why for your goals and you’ll have bigger emotional wants to get up and take action. That’s what Tony Robbins says: come up with as many reasons as you can for wanting to achieve your goals.

• Create your fitness playlist. I like how iTunes have created fitness playlists so you could download them and listen through them when you’re exercising.

Congratulations to James. 

Photo from kecko

The workplace and busy lifestyle of employees isn’t the easiest way to live if you want to eat healthy… but it has to be done if you want to earn a decent living, right? 

So what can you do at work to eat more healthier? Grab a sheet of paper and jot down some things you could do during the day to improve your work. Here are five ways to get you started:

• Keep a bowl of nuts on your table. Eat a handful of nuts daily around 3-4 pm to boost afternoon productivity.

• A bowl of fruit. Keep a bowl of fruit on or near your desk and reach out to have one every few hours. Try to get through at least 3-4 fruits a day. Have your favorite ones and put them on your shopping list for each week.

• Keep a water bottle or filter system near your desk. Reach over to your bottle very often, at least every half hour to have a big sip. Keep hydrated and your cells will flourish.

• Take a walk during lunch. Don’t drive to the shop – walk. Do the same if you’re going to the post office or bank if it’s local. Keep your blood pumping.

• Cut down on caffeine. You can actually ban the coffee from your cubicle. Get rid of the bottle. Settle for juices or water instead.

Share your ideas too…

For example, if I get an investment of one million pounds for my business having showed a successful investor my business plan, the return on investment for a particular product line could be 5 times that, making five million pounds in two years. That would be my ROI.

When it comes to health, is it possible to have an ROI that pays dividends for whatever you put into your body and how much time you dedicate to it.

I like to think so.

Take, for example, the benefits of a fruit and vegetable diet. If you consume healthy amounts of fruit and vegetable on a daily basis, providing your body with the vitamins, minerals and nourishment that it requires, do you think you will have a ROI that will pay you back with greater health for long periods of your life?

You bet.

If you follow the “rules” in business, a proven path to success, will you reach your goal? I’d bet that you’d be very likely to do so. If you didn’t follow a proven path and didn’t stick to many of the foundational business rules, you’d not succeed very easily and will have to overcome more challenges along the path.

It’s the same for your health and wellness. If you follow the “rules” of greater health, you will be far more likely to reach a stage of greater health than if you didn’t follow them.

So what are the “rules” of health to follow?

By all means, the list of rules is not going to be definitive. No-one is going to sit down and tell you that there are a set rules to follow for outstanding health. But there are a few that if followed will put you in great standing.

Drink lots of water. Hydrate yourself and never let yourself get to a point of dehydration.

Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetable daily.

Exercise daily. Get your blood pumping. Increase the circulation.

Smile. Positive energy is contagious. Read about psychoneuroimmunology for more information. 

Keep an eye daily on a blog like 

zenhabits.net

Create your set of rules to follow. Make sure you stick to them daily. And ultimately, you will see a return on your investment. In a matter of just days.

Create your set of rules to follow. Make sure you stick to them daily. And ultimately, you will see a return on your investment. In a matter of just days.

I must say this… in business, if you make one big bad mistake, go off path, don’t follow the rules you’ve set and mislead your team, you may not make a return on your investment.

It’s the same with your body. If you put in time and energy to eat well, sleep well and exercise well, and then one day decide to “have a day off” and go beyond acceptable – drink alcohol, eat junk, consume drugs, etc – then you may not see a return on investment for all your previous hard work.

Your body can change in a matter of hours. Forget days.

So as always, the ball is in your court.

Nutrition bars are great to have during meal times and on busy days, however most of the nutrition bars on the market are full of hype and contain lots of sugar, and even low-quality sugar mixed up together with a small amount of protein.

Now you can get them ready made to your requirements thanks to mother and son, Ava Bise and Anthony Flynn. They both started an internet-based order system called YouBars.com at www.youbars.com and you can make your own bar. You can even name your bar whatever you like.

The beauty is that you can experiment until you create the perfect bar. You can try as long as you like and the prices are really reliable. You can get a box of 12 bars for around $30. And they offer you a risk-free experience. So if you don’t like the bars, let them know and they’ll ship you another box for free. That’s a great guarantee.

Go check it out and order yourself a bunch of bars… YouBars.com. And let me know what you think of this.

Following on from part one: What do food cravings mean and why do I get them?, this article gives you 15 ways you can curb your food cravings next time you feel them cropping up.

Photo from papalars

One of the biggest challenges to stop smoking, quit alcohol, while you’re on a diet or are pregnant is to curb your cravings. Some people manage to sail through the cravings not having a problem, but there are many who succumb to the pressure and satisfy their needs whilst also then having to deal with the side effects.

Willpower alone is not enough. Smokers who have quit only to go back and restart within a few days are examples of willpower not being enough. However, whatever cravings you have, there are ways to curb it and that’s what we’re going to explore here.

Here are 15 ways to curb your food cravings:

1. Recognize the feelings. The first step is always to be aware and know when your food cravings are coming up. Identify what causes the craving – does it happen just after you get bored, have nothing to do or when you’re working? Once you identify it, you can immediately work on creating another trigger when it happens.

2. Get a glass of water. When you have a craving, drink a glass of water. It’s usually good to have a bottle of water with you as the feeling of laziness can easily creep in.

3. Eat some fruits. When you get a craving that wants something sweet, have a juicy apple, orange of fruit of your choice. Bite away, take your mind of the craving and indulge in the fruits knowing they’re giving you natural sugars, vitamins and nutrients.

4. Get enough sleep. When you’re hungry, get some rest.

5. Adopt a never give up approach. In the big scale, cravings only last for a very short period of time. Adopt a can-do approach that will keep you going when you get a craving.

6. Exercise. When you feel a craving crop up, get up, stretch, do some exercise, occupy yourself, get your blood flowing and increases feel-good endorphins that cut down on cravings.

7. Eat in small amounts throughout the day. Spread your meals out throughout the day in 5 to 6 sessions but also decrease the amount you eat each time. This keeps your appetite spread in the day and also allows you to have shorter time periods in which you’re not eating.

8. Beware of medications. Certain medication can stimulate appetite so if you’re on medication, then ask your doctor how to decrease the cravings its giving you.

9. Get rid of all the junk in your house. Clear out all the things you have and would junk on from the store, the cupboard, cabinets and fridge. When not in the house, you can’t have it, so help yourself and make it easy for you to beat cravings.

10. Put healthy foods in the fridge. Opposing the last point, when you get rid of the unhealthy stuff and make space in your fridge, get some healthy foods you like and put them in your fridge for when you get hungry.

11. Eat breakfast. Don’t skip breakfast. Having a healthy breakfast will set you up for a better day, less cravings and more fuller and healthy body.

12. Natural appetite suppressant. Some people opt to suppress their appetite taking something like Hoodia Balance to overcome cravings and sleep well.

13. Chew gum. Keep something in your mouth and exercise by chewing gum. Sugar free is best and gives you something to chew on.

14.  herbal tea. Different teas have different health benefits. I like herbal teas at night and have them with just hot water, no sugar. It’s a great way to fill your tummy with something warm without sabotaging your weight loss.

15. Take up a hobby. You usually get cravings when you’re couching in front of the TV or doing nothing. Take up a hobby whether it’s playing a particular game, arts and craft, music or whatever. Do something you enjoy. Boredom is one of the biggest reasons why people raid their fridges late at night.

How have you reduced your food cravings, if ever? Do tell…

Photo from aprilandrandy

Food cravings aren’t just for women, it’s totally natural for men to get them as well. Cravings could be for sweet things, savory foods, carbohydrates, smoking and alcohol amongst other things. Food cravings means that the body has its signals mixed up. In other words, when our body is depleted in resources such as sugar levels, serotonin levels, etc the brain needs a quick pick-me-up and so turns to satisfy itself with cravings.

If you eat a diet that is biased and unbalanced, you will likely suffer from cravings until you learn to deal with them. For example, if you eat a low-fat diet in the hope of losing weight, you will make the problem worse as you may have become insulin resistant and when your cells don’t get the insulin they need and so turn to satisfying their cravings in order to get the quick and unhealthy sugars from junk food.

And if you think that’s bad, read this: insulin resistance and then a whole surge can lead to obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Most people diet incorrectly and in the process become the opposite of what they are aiming for and that’s why it’s important to understand nutrition before you diet or detox.

Put simply, a food craving is an intense desire for a particular food and they are commonly found in people with a diet that is one-sided as well as in pregnant women. If you ever thought, “I really want chocolate cake, triple-decker and with cream in the middle” and its a feeling not going away and you really want to have it, that’s a craving. Smokers have the same thing when they try to quit smoking without replacing it with something and within a few days find they go back to have a cigarette.

Let’s look at two main types of cravings individually:

Sugar Cravings

We usually have sugar cravings when we try to get off sugar and haven’t had it in a while. The fact is, we’re only trying to stop processed sugars and not natural sugars. So when we decide to stop having sugars, we should instead turn to having lots of fruit to try and replace the sugars our body requires.

One of the reasons we have sugar cravings is because we have low adrenal functions. The adrenal glands sit about our kidneys and they secrete adrenaline which provides us with energy. If we don’t have enough sugar in our body to secrete this, it becomes depleted and can lead to stress which then leads to cravings as a quick pick-me-up to satisfy our body.

Carbohydrate Cravings

These cravings can simply result from hunger if your blood sugar levels are low. Most people don’t really crave only carbohydrates – you don’t find people craving bread, pasta and wheat often, it’s usually accompanied by sugar cravings.

Look out for part two of this article which shares 15 ways to curb your food cravings in a few days time.