Do You Have Sufficient Healthy Sleep?

Let’s look at an incredibly important factor that plays a large part in your overall quest for fitness.

How satisfactory is your sleep?

Many people face problems in trying to achieve a satisfactory sleep. To maintain the best hormonal balance within your body and keep your metabolism high it’s extremely important to get the right quantity of good sleep each night.

This quality sleep is, of course, very beneficial in maintaining a slimmer you.

Conversely, if you sleep for too short a period, or don’t sleep well enough to properly rest your body, this poor quality sleep pattern tends to increase your weight! This lack of sleep tends to cause fat storage in the body and hormonal imbalance. The sad facts are that many of us don’t sleep as correctly and soundly as we could.

Apart from disorders in their sleeping pattern, many people are unable to relax sufficiently enough to enable them to forget their everyday worries and stresses.

Are you one of them?

Here are some tips which I’ve used personally to help fall asleep more readily each night.

1. Getting regular exercise during the day will help you to feel tired at night time. However do not exercise too much approximately 2 hours before you retire.

2. It’s best not to be hungry when you go to sleep. You will not be adding to your body fat just because you eat after say 6 to 7pm. Many very trim people eat small meals right before they go to bed each night. To satisfy your hunger a light healthy meal 30 to 90 minutes before you retire will ease your hunger pangs and help you relax and sleep better.

3. Any time after late afternoon, avoid stimulants like caffeine.

4. An hour or to before bed time try chamomile tea and/or mint tea. These calm you down at night and have a relaxing effect. A small addition of honey seems to help also.

5. Try a little ground nutmeg an hour or two before going to bed. Nutmeg is supposed to have a calming effect on the body. It’s not certain if this helps or not, but it doesn’t hurt and nutmeg is a good source of antioxidants also!

6. Clear your mind of stress and things to do. A tip to help is to make notes of things you need to do the next day. This clears the mind and helps you to feel happier that will not forget important needs. Instead of thinking of the next day’s itinerary, your mind is clear. Picture a favourite relaxing scene, e.g. on a beautiful beach, or in relaxing countryside with friends. Once your mind is on this, you’ll find sleep coming a lot more easily.

Many people use a lot of other ways to help them fall asleep, but remember to keep it natural. Taking sleep aid drugs will nearly always have side effects.

So try to sleep a little earlier from now on and forget the late night TV shows. Think of a leaner you, relax and clear your mind before sleep. Good luck and enjoy a more energy filled day, every day!
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Eat Out and Eat Healthy

Dining out is a major part of most people’s social life. Possibly you have to entertain clients frequently. Eating out may not appeal to you. Nevertheless, eating out frequently is a big challenge if you wish to keep a trim figure In fact, eating out at restaurants is a major factor in upsetting your “trim target”.

Here are a few things you can do to combat the “restaurant challenge”

Avoid the following which are readily available at almost all restaurants

• deep fried foods
• starchy refined foods
• Sugary foods, sodas, and juices, (Whole fruits however are very beneficial)

When you avoid these foods, you’re avoiding the most damaging foods, refined vegetable oils, refined starchy carbohydrates, trans fats and processed sugars.

Try not to eat the table bread and the French fries that seem to arrive with every single sandwich, and reduce the portions of pasta and rice that are often heaped on the plates also.

Ask for just meat and side vegetables, and maybe salad, instead of French fries, pasta, or rice.

Almost all restaurants will allow these substitutions without quibbling.

Some people will find these changes difficult at first and the odd complaint might be heard!

However, the plain facts are that by following these tips you will achieve your slimming targets far more quickly and be feeling a lot better also.  

Let’s examine how these simple substitutions can help.

This is a sample meal which many will eat

• French fries
• Burger or sandwich
• soda or other sweetened drink (don’t be fooled into thinking that diet drinks are healthy!)

A far better choice for your body and health is the following:

• Burger or Sandwich
• Salad or veggies
• Unsweetened iced tea or water (NO diet drinks)

400 - 900 calories are saved every time by this change when you dine out (depending on drink refills and portion sizes)... In addition, by avoiding trans fats and high fructose corn syrup from the fries and soft drinks, you are eliminating harmful foods.

One way to eat full portions of pasta, rice, and breads without packing on body fat is to have, before your scheduled meal time, a high intensity full body resistance training workout (can be body weight training or free weights).

Your body can handle a higher amount of carbs than normal following a high intensity resistance training workout, helping to replenish the muscle glycogen depletion you had during the intense workout.

It MUST be a high intensity resistance training workout to deplete enough muscle glycogen to handle servings of carbs. A moderate intensity cardio workout is not sufficient.

These tips will definitely help you to achieve a leaner, fitter you!
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Lose Weight Quickly With a Healthier Diet

To lose weight, eating a healthy diet should be your first priority.  Certainly, exercise is important, but diet is number one when it comes to prolonged weight management.  It is hoped that this article shows you some simple but effective ways for you to eat a daily healthy diet.

1.  Ensure you eat at least some healthy fats in most of your meals.  Eating enough healthy fats is very important for maintaining proper fat burning and muscle building hormone levels in your body.  The correct amount of healthy fats in your diet also helps in keeping a controlled appetite.

The best sources of dietary fats are raw nuts, seeds, egg yolks (from organic free range eggs), avocados, extra virgin olive oil (highest antioxidant content of olive oils), coconut oil (a great source of healthy saturated fats in the form of medium chain triglycerides), and grass-fed meats (a great source of the healthy fat, conjugated linoleic acid, which also helps burn body fat and build muscle).

Take this tip -- eat a handful of raw nuts (pecans, walnuts, almonds are great choices) 3 times a day approx 30 minutes prior to meals.  This can help to reduce your appetite and give your body some protein, fibre, and healthy fats, therefore you eat less calories overall at your meals and get more nutrition also due to the high nutrient density of most nuts.

2.  Try to consume a high quality protein source with each meal and snack that you eat.  Quality proteins from grass-fed meats, grass-fed raw dairy, and even from plant sources such as nuts and beans provide good appetite suppression, you can therefore more easily control your calorie intake.

Getting ample quality proteins additionally helps you build lean muscle (if you're working out hard regularly) so that your metabolism can run at a higher rate from increased lean muscle on your body.

Eating sufficient protein at most of your meals also helps your body in controlling blood sugar and insulin levels by helping to slow the breakdown of ingested carbohydrates.

3. Although I do not fully agree with extremely low-carb diets, I certainly believe that one of the main reasons that so many people struggle to lose weight for most of their lives is due to eating excessive processed carbohydrates such as refined grain-based starches and refined sugars on a daily basis.

The natural sugars in whole fruits and berries are fine because the fibre in fruits helps to slow the blood sugar response in your body.   Avoid fruit juices, which are mostly sugar and have the fibre removed in processing the juice.

In my experience, when people start to minimize their grain consumption (from cereals, bagels, breads, pasta, etc), they start to lose body fat much easier.  What I usually recommend is for people to minimize eating grains and focus their carbohydrate intake on fruits and vegetables alone.  This simple step helps people to start managing their weight more easily.

Try to implement these 3 tips for eating a smarter, healthier diet and you'll start to see a leaner body and more energy in no time.

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3 Vegetables That Help Burn Stomach Fat

Certain vegetables help to stimulate the burning of stomach fat?  Sounds a little strange?

Read the following article and you'll see why it's not so strange.

Certain chemicals in our food supply and in our environment, such as pesticides, herbicides, and petrochemicals have an estrogenic effect in our bodies.  This unfortunately can increase belly fat on both men and women.

Exposure to xenoestrogens from these chemicals in our food supply, water supply, and the environment is one factor that can actually encourage your body to retain belly fat.  The problem is that today, even if you eat organic food and live in a fairly low-pollution area, it is almost impossible not to get at least some degree of daily exposure to xenoestrogens.  They also found in household cleaners and cosmetics!

So how can you combat these xenoestrogens so that they are not forcing your body to retain stomach fat?

That's where these specific types of vegetables can help.

There are numerous classes of vegetables, teas, spices, etc that have compounds which can help fight against the effects of xenoestrogens.  However, one of the most powerful classes are cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, kale, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, etc.

These types of cruciferous vegetables contain very unique compounds (phytonutrients) such as indole-3-carbinol (I3C) that can help to combat the effects of xenoestrogens in your body, and therefore, can help you to burn abdominal fat more effectively.

You knew how beneficial it was to eat broccoli and cauliflower... Now, you know another great benefit - losing stomach fat!

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