Five Keys to Exercise and Burn Fat on a Busy Schedule

In my health and wellness consulting business, I get the opportunity to talk with people from all walks of life about their health, fitness, and weight loss goals. Whether their goal is to lose weight, gain muscle, stick to a diet plan or program, improve their cardiovascular health, or simply to maintain their current fitness level they all have one common enemy---TIME.

For most of us, the #1 challenge in the quest to stay in shape and/or lose weight is not exercising itself but being able to actually fit an exercise program into our busy schedules.

So how do you do it? How do you balance the demands of family, career, important errands, relationships, organizational responsibilities, and working out? I have found that there are five keys that will help you to be able to fit a consistent workout plan into your already hectic life.

Commit to a specific schedule

When you fail to plan you plan to fail. Don't try to haphazardly fit your workouts into your schedule without any rhyme or reason. Don't think you're guilty? If you've ever told yourself "I'll workout as soon as I get some time", you were in direct violation of this key principle.

In order to set yourself up for success, you will need to take the time to literally write your workouts into your weekly schedule. In order to be effective, you will want to follow your exercise program at least 3 days per week. Anything less would be kidding yourself.

Therefore, right in the midst of all of your appointments, "to-do" lists, etc., should be a written plan for your weekly workout routine, so that you will never be in the dark as to when you committed yourself to sweat!

Utilize the weekend

Take advantage of the fact that it only takes 3-5 days per week to put together an effective, results-producing workout. One trick to help you pull it all off is to workout on the weekends. One of the benefits to this course of action is that your schedule is more flexible and under your control during this time.

What it also means is that when the hectic weekdays roll back around, you will only be responsible for working out 1-3 days during the work week. (This worked for me back in the day when I worked outside the home.)

Keep your workouts as a high priority

One of the biggest mistakes that even many people who have scheduled a workout program into their schedule make is allowing it to be bumped off of their schedule too easily.

Although things will occasionally come up that will cause you to have to reschedule the workout you had planned, you must be vigilant in making sure that only the most important emergencies are allowed to temporarily take you off of your plan.

In the event that one of those important emergencies does happen and you can't make it to your workout, reschedule with yourself to make it up on the next possible day that you are available to do so. If your own health, fitness, and efforts to lose weight are not a priority to you, they certainly won't be so to anyone else.

Enroll others in your goals

Don't go at this alone. Let the important people in your life know what you are up to. Your spouse or love interest, parents, children, co-workers, and close friends will often pitch in and help you to meet your fitness or weight loss commitment to yourself if you make them aware and ask for their support.

Leverage these relationships to delegate some of your normal responsibilities or even allow you to shift appointments that you have with them as you restructure your schedule for your workout. If any of them are into exercise or trying to lose weight themselves, don't hesitate to form a buddy system with them as you move forward with your program.

Don't beat yourself up

No matter who you are, there will be times in your workout program that you just aren't able to keep it up as you would like due to outside demands.  Don't be too tough on yourself when that happens.

Remember that it is what you do consistently over a long period of time, not what you do in spurts, that truly counts. Just make sure that you get back on the horse full force as soon as you can and continue to press forward, doing your best to avoid slacking off again.

No matter what goals you have for health, fitness, or weight loss, you CAN fit an effective exercise program into that hectic schedule of yours and be amazingly successful at getting the exact results that you want!

How to Lose Weight At Home Without Starving Yourself

Many people believe that weight loss is a painful thing. To shift those stubborn pounds, you must go hungry all the time. Many are afraid to even set a weight loss goal because they can’t stand the thought of going hungry and the frustrations that it brings.

For a lot of people, it's just better to be overweight than to suffer hunger pangs. 

Well, who can blame them? 

If the only way to lose weight or stay slim was to go hungry all the time very few people would be at their ideal weight and the vast majority of the planet would be extremely overweight! It isn’t necessary.

Our body is a marvelous device. It is truly amazing! Its natural rhythm and internal workings tell us when we are hungry. It has a self-protection mechanism that lets you know when you need to stock up on fuel. A hunger signal is the body notifying you that you NEED to eat in order for you to sustain a healthy level of energy and have the reserves necessary for healing, repair and maintenance of your cells. Serious hunger pangs are a strong self-preservation signal from the body that it is in danger and needs food immediately to restore its balance. These signals should not be ignored!

Your body has no idea that food is in plentiful supply and that it is one of the cheapest commodities of the 21st Century. Your body is acting the same way your ancient ancestor’s bodies worked. The general design of the human body hasn’t changed one bit since then. When your ancient ancestors were living in caves they relied on their ability to hunt for food to feed themselves. Sometimes they would go days or weeks without a kill and the body would send them warning signals that they were in serious danger. When they did eat, the body immediately, being still in self-preservation mode, stored as much of the energy as it could in reserve as FAT! Your body works in exactly the same way today.

Starving yourself just doesn’t work. It goes against nature to think that you can starve yourself and lose weight. Of course, there are people who just don’t take in anywhere near enough food to sustain themselves, but we all know the effects of this kind of dieting! When you’re done starving yourself and resume eating normally, you can gain up to twice as much as the weight you lost in half the time. In fact, starving yourself could be a sign that you have an eating disorder. Please seek help from a medical professional if you find yourself skipping more than 2 meals a day on a regular basis.

So, we know that starvation diets don’t work, and you don’t want to spend 2 hours a day in the gym. How do we lose weight then? Well, the good news is you do not have to go hungry to lose weight. Nor do you need excessive amounts of exercise. The truth is, eating regular nutritional meals and allowing your body to fill itself to satisfaction is the key to reaching and maintaining a healthy, slim body. By not allowing yourself to go hungry you will in fact avoid overeating - which is the very thing that usually happens when you break a starvation diet.

One method is to eat five or six, fairly small, healthy meals divided up throughout your day. Instead of eating three large meals at breakfast, lunch and dinner, divide the same quantity of food into 6 meals instead and eat an extra small meal between a small breakfast and lunch, one between lunch and dinner and if you are hungry later have another one. Try to avoid having the last meal close to bedtime, anytime up to 2 hours before bed is all right. 

Don’t wait when you feel hungry. Eat as soon as you can. If you wait for a long period of time before you eat your body will go into panic mode, thinking that you don’t have enough resources to feed it and you will overeat! Therefore, eating frequent yet smaller meals will help to keep your body satisfied and you will be less likely to over-indulge.

Do not miss a meal in the hope that it will help burn some extra calories. You may believe that by skipping a meal you will save some calories or fat intake, but, as you have seen, the opposite tends to happen. In addition, if you go for a long period without a meal, you are much more likely to over-indulge when you get fed-up and can‘t take being hungry anymore. 

Did you also realize that by skipping meals you are actually slowing down your metabolism? Because your body thinks there is a food shortage it not only stores extra fat but it also slows down the amount of fat it burns. The body’s natural survival instinct is triggered, you put on extra weight and burn fewer calories and fat. As the body burns fat to convert into energy you will find that you become lethargic and tired. Starving yourself just doesn’t work!

In addition to eating smaller, more frequent meals, you should also teach yourself to eat slower. Place your knife and fork down between every bite and chew for a few seconds longer than normal. It can take us up to twenty 20 minutes to realize that the body is full and completely satisfied. When you eat at a fast pace “stuffing“ food into you before you have time to recognize the “full“ signal your body is sending your brain. When you eat at a slower pace you start to recognize these signals from your body and train yourself to identify them at an earlier stage.

Get a few minutes more of non-exercise activity (outside of your regularly scheduled work out session). To some of you this may sound like a lot. But all you have to do is split it up throughout the day. Leave for work with an extra 5 minutes to spare and walk to a bus stop further away from or park the car 5 minutes further away than you usually do. At lunch, take a 5-minute stroll or take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk to the local shop instead of driving. It is easy to complete 15, 30 or even an hour of extra exercise everyday if you split it up like this. And remember don’t starve yourself, it just doesn’t work! Again, starving yourself could be a sign that you have an eating disorder. Please seek help from a medical professional if you find yourself skipping more than 2 meals a day on a regular basis.

Consider Making Sushi Your Best Friend When Losing Weight

If you're not making sushi at home, you're missing out on a delicious and extremely diet-friendly meal. It's easy to make, fast, nutritious, and the raw fish you may be afraid of is completely optional.

First, let's have a brief overview of sushi for those who've never had it or those who have tried it but want to know more.

Sushi is the catch-all name for a wide variety of Japanese dishes. The word sushi actually refers to rice with rice vinegar added. Since this is a very basic and lightly flavored food, it is the many ingredients added to it that really define what dish you are eating. The raw fish you have heard of is sashimi - an ingredient of many types of sushi - but you can create sushi with virtually any ingredient that goes with rice.

In America, by far the most common type of sushi is Maki-sushi, or rice wrapped in seaweed. The seaweed is called nori and forms the green skin you can see around sushi pieces. For this reason, maki-sushi are called nori rolls on many menus. Also popular is Nigiri-sushi, small bars of rice topped with wasabi and sashimi. 

It's easy to include sushi into a healthy diet. Think of the ingredients: rice, vegetables, and fish. Not exactly a heart-attack in the making, just the opposite in fact. As long as you don't go overboard on the rice it is extremely low calorie in addition to being low fat. Where we chomp pork rinds and potato chips, the Japanese have sushi. Care to guess which country has a longer average life span?

Let's learn how to make a California roll, easily the most popular nori roll (and my personal favorite) in America today. You will need the following items, all of which should be easy to find in your supermarket's Asian foods section or at your local Asian market:

Bamboo rolling mat

Sushi rice (short or medium grain)

Nori (squares of roasted seaweed)

Salt

Sugar

Rice vinegar

Imitation crab meat

Avocado

Cucumber

Wasabi

Soy sauce

Directions

Prepare the rice according to the directions on the package. You will need about 3/4 cup cooked rice for each sushi roll, and most people will be full after eating 1 or 2 rolls. 

In a small pan, place a tablespoon of vinegar and 1/3 tbsp of sugar and salt for each 3/4 cup of rice you are cooking. Heat the resulting mixture briefly and stir until the sugar dissolves. When the rice is almost done cooking, begin cutting your vegetables. Peel a cucumber and cut it into long thin strips, about a 1/4" around. Same for the avocado. If you bought powdered wasabi prepare it also (just mix in tiny amounts of water until you get a thick paste).

Once the rice is done, remove it from heat and slowly fold in the vinegar mixture. Then lay the rice out on a sheet of foil or a baking sheet and allow it to cool (traditionally this is done by fanning the rice while slowly stirring it). The rice should be slightly damp and sticky, but not wet and mushy. Getting the rice right is the most difficult part of making sushi, but a little practice will teach you what works.

Once the vinegared rice has cooled off, you are ready to put it all together. Lay your bamboo rolling mat in front of you horizontally (the bamboo sticks should run left-right). Take a sheet of nori and lay it on the rolling mat. Spread a layer of rice on the nori, covering about 3/4 of it. The part of the nori not covered in rice will hold the roll closed (think of the glue strip on an envelope or the gum on a cigarette paper). 

Place a strip of avocado and a strip of cucumber on the rice and top it with crab meat. Now wet your fingers with cold water and dampen the part of the nori you left uncovered. Carefully roll the sushi using the mat, starting with the rice side and rolling it up (don't roll the mat into it, silly). If this sounds complicated, don't worry. It is as simple as rolling up a sleeping bag or a beach towel, and it will be obvious to you once you actually have the ingredients in front of you.

Take the resulting roll and cut it into bite sized slices, usually 6 per roll. If you are having trouble cutting the roll without damaging it, try dipping your knife into water between each cut. Lay the pieces flat and they will look like little colorful discs. Serve with wasabi and soy sauce on the side.

If you feel brave and want to try sashimi, here are a few safety tips. First of all, understand that millions of people eat raw fish every day without getting sick. However, most of them live right next to the sea where fresh fish is abundant. For many land-locked Americans this isn't the case. Fish that is prepared for shipping to a grocery store in Boise is not handled in the same way as that bound for a San Francisco sushi bar. Look for fish that is specially labeled as sushi-grade. Avoid freshwater fish, with the notable exception of Salmon, which spends much of its life at sea. When buying whole fish, make sure the gills are bright red and not slimy, the eyes should be transparent and not cloudy, and there should be no fishy odor.

Take up a healthy and nutritious sushi addiction today. It may take you a while to get the rice and the rolling right, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to whip out several nori rolls in minutes.

How to Eat to Live and NOT Live to Eat

Eating is an essential part of life. We cannot sustain life for long without eating, so it is important that we take the time to learn how to eat well in order to have the best life possible. Our views of eating and the eating practices we adopt will affect our lives and our health in significant ways in the months and years ahead. Eating well can literally change everything.

Eating can be both a blessing and a curse. Many people struggle with eating because they cannot keep it in balance. They end up eating too little or too much and do not live healthy lives because of it. We all know the dangers of eating too little. Probably everyone has at least one friend that struggles with an eating disorder of some kind. That friend just cannot seem to get a grip on their eating patterns and they are unhealthy because of it. They think about or talk about food almost constantly.

Other people struggle with eating too much. Eating more food than we need to live is something that the majority of people, at least in the West, struggle with. Eating is associated with most kinds of social activities and events and therefore people learn to eat for reasons other than to satisfy hunger or prolong their health. Eating becomes a way to experience pleasure or to numb the pains of life.

The bottom line is that whether people struggle with eating too little or with indulging on food too much, they are not using food in ways that are healthy and life-enhancing. Eating, while it is definitely meant to bring people pleasure and satisfaction, is primarily to be a means of sustaining a healthy life. Our problems begin anytime eating is neglected or indulged in beyond what is necessary.

Take a look at your eating patterns. You may be surprised to see that you have established unhealthy eating habits over the years. Perhaps your schedule for each day is centered around when you can have meals or a snack. If so, there is a high chance that food has become a bit too high of a priority. Anytime that your thoughts are consumed with food, whether with restraining yourself from it or with consuming more of it, you are thinking of eating and of food in unhealthy ways.

Giving eating a rightful place in our lives without allowing it to become consuming is the key. Make an effort to keep your perspective about eating balanced and healthy. Your life will be better and longer because of it.

Did you know cayenne pepper could help stomach ulcers?

If you suffer from a peptic or duodenal ulcer, the last thing you might consider eating is hot cayenne pepper. This goes against everything you've ever heard about what aggravates an ulcer, the facts are that most "spicy" foods do just the opposite. Capsicum can reduce pain which serves as a local anesthetic to ulcerated tissue in the stomach and can even help to control bleeding in the stomach.

Some individuals may be bothered by eating "Red Pepper" or spicy foods, these foods do not cause the formation of gastric ulcers in normal people. An interesting note is that people suffering from ulcers usually avoid cayenne pepper, in fact those people may actually benefit from its therapeutic action. 

Taking capsicum may significantly reduce the risk of ever developing a peptic ulcer. A Chinese study published in 1995 stated, "Our data supports the hypothesis that the chile used has a protective effect against peptic ulcer disease."

Another 1995 study found that capsicum can even protect the stomach lining from aspirin induced ulcers. Aspirin can cause stomach ulceration in certain individuals especially if taken with too little water or juice. Researchers have concluded after experimenting with human volunteers that the capsaicin content of capsicum has a definite gastro - protective effect on the mucous membranes of the stomach. Eighteen healthy volunteers with normal gastrointestinal mucosa took chile and water followed by 600 mg of aspirin and water. The study was conducted over a period of four weeks. Endoscopy results showed that taking 20 grams of chile before the aspirin definitely demonstrated a protective action on the stomach lining. Capsicum has the ability to rebuild stomach tissue.

Capsicum has the ability to bring blood to regions of tissue at a faster rate and boosts the assimilation of foods that are consumed with it. Several clinical studies support this phenomenon. It has been thought that capsicum stimulate the release of substances which increase secretions in the stomach and intestines plus can increase an abundance of blood to the stomach and intestines. In fact, capsicum can increase the flow of digestive secretions from the salivary, gastric and intestinal glands.

References:

J. Y. Kang, et al. "The effect of chile ingestion of gastrointestinal mucosal proliferation and azoxymethane-induced cancer in the rat." Journal of Gastroenterology-Hepatol. Mar-Apr. 1992: 7 (2): 194-98.

K. G. Yeoh, et al. "Chile protects against aspirin-induced gastroduodenal mucosal injury in humans." Dig-Dis-Sci. Mar. 1995: 40 (3): 580-83.

L. Limo Wongse, et al. "Effect of capsaicin on gastric acid secretion and mucosal blood flow in the rat." Journal of Nutrition. 1979: 109, 773-77. 

Understanding Carbs and Glycemic Load: A Beginner's Guide

You may have heard about the glycemic index and wondered what it is all about. The glycemic index is a ranking of carbohydrates based on their immediate effect on blood glucose (blood sugar) levels. It compares foods gram for gram of carbohydrate. Carbohydrates that breakdown quickly during digestion have the highest glycemic indexes. The blood glucose response is fast and high. Carbohydrates that break down slowly, releasing glucose gradually into the bloodstream, have low glycemic indexes.

Foods with a high glycemic index convert into sugar very quickly, with negative physical effects. Foods with a low glycemic index turn into sugar gradually, helping maintain your body's chemical balance. In general, foods with a low index are preferable.

Glycemic Load measures the amount of sugar a food actually releases in the body. Foods with a low glycemic load usually have a low glycemic index, yet still have a low glycemic load. Other foods have both a high index and a high load. You should avoid high load foods as a regular part of your meal plan.

When you choose carbohydrate foods, check both their glycemic index and glycemic load. Detailed tables with this information are widely available. When you join my next Empowerment Zone, you will gain access to meal plans that balances your glycemic load without you having to give it a second thought. Leave a comment for FREE Glycemic Index chart!

Simply eating more fruit and vegetables is not the answer - they must be the right fruits and vegetables. Starchy vegetables such as peas or lentils (200 to 250 calories per cup) are healthy, but they contain more calories than you may want. If you need to eat more to satisfy your hunger, add low glycemic load vegetables. For example, spinach and asparagus are better choices than higher calorie corn and peas. A cup of spinach topped with 1/2 cup of tomato sauce has only about 90 calories, but it gives you nutrients from two color groups.

Color code your food

When considering which foods to enjoy sparingly, also use color as a guideline. Many brown and beige carbohydrates, like pasta, beans and potatoes, while healthy, also tend to be high in calories.

Can Nutrition Help Slow Down the Aging Process?

We all age. That fact is inevitable.  But a lot of the negative changes that take place in our bodies are not. As we age, we become more susceptible to such things as heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, and arthritis. However, medical research has shown that proper nutrition can slow down and even prevent many of these ailments.

It is estimated that nearly one half of all health problems in the elderly are directly related to poor nutrition. The elderly are by and large some of the most poorly nourished people. Some reasons for this are as you age your sense of taste and smell decreases, it is harder to chew, and you just don’t feel hungry.

In some cases, financial reasons may affect the food choices you make and it may be harder to get out and shop for food due to various physical factors. In addition, as you get older your body may not be able to absorb some of the nutrition from food as well as it could when you were younger. In some cases, a good multivitamin(preferably in liquid form) could help offset this. Your doctor or a good nutrition coach can help you find one that’s right for you.

Here are a few things that you can do to plan for better nutrition in your diet and a healthier life as you get older:

1. Plan out regular meals for each day and try to include vegetables in at least 2 of them every day. If you must snack, use fruits and vegetables rather than junk food like potato chips and candy.
2. If you have problems chewing meat, try going with things like fish and ground meats. Also try to eat more soups as they can have plenty of nutrition in them and they are great choices if you are on a budget.
3. Make meals more interesting by inviting a friend to lunch or dinner once in a while. Sometimes it can get boring to always eat alone and having someone over can entice you to get more creative with meals than you might when eating alone.

One thing you can do to ensure that you’ll be getting better nutrition is to make each plate colorful. Different color vegetables for example generally contain different nutrients so the idea here is, mix it up.

Growing old may be inevitable but that doesn’t mean you can’t grow old gracefully and healthier and with a steady diet of proper nutrition, you can maintain better health well into your golden years.