Category Archives: Lifestyle

Build a Better Body by Building a Better Lifestyle!

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 Everyone seems to be looking for a quick fix these days, an easy way to do everything. We are all guilty of this. However when it comes to our health and fitness there is no truly quick fix. You can look up any diet on the internet these days and using it for a period of time may shed a few unwanted pounds, but in the long term you’ll gain them back, perhaps more so.

The main goal we should strive for to improve our bodies is consistency in our lifestyles. We all know what we should and shouldn’t eat; we just often choose to ignore it. A long day of work and its easy to say, “Lets get take out!”, instead of cooking a healthier choice of meal. We all know that we should exercise a little bit each day, but we sit in front of our tv instead. We all know what we are supposed to be doing we just talk our way out of it.

To successfully improve how we look it takes a multi pronged attack. We need to be consistent with our nutrition, consistent with our exercise and consistent with our attitudes. Let me break this down for you:

1.     Nutrition – We need to focus on healthy options for our food. This means cutting out fast food, cutting out sugar and sweets etc. and focus on basic foods such as fruit, vegetables and meat. If you can eat right most of the week (at least 5 out of seven days) then there is no reason not to indulge a little. (Sensibly)

2.     Exercise – We need to make a little time at least 5 days a week to squeeze in some form of exercise. I’m not telling you to run out and join a gym or to hire a personal trainer. Think about your lifestyle and you’ll see times to train. Walk your dog for an hour, take your kids for a bike ride, stop watching TV and go for an afternoon stroll with your partner.

3.     Attitude – This is paramount to everything, I’ve already said. Stop saying “I’ll start tomorrow”, stop thinking “It’s to hard.” It isn’t hard it’s just easier to sit back and think about it. There is plenty of free information on exercise, nutrition and health out there but there’s plenty of time to find it. Get up and start doing something, ANYTHING, It is a step in the right direction no matter what it is. Go To it.

Eating Whole Foods With a Busy Lifestyle

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Most people instinctively know that the standard American diet is unhealthy. They realize that fast food, processed food, and a few fruits and vegetables is not the correct diet to be eating. Unfortunately, they have bought into the myth that a healthy diet is expensive and time consuming to maintain.

They continue eating the processed food because they are afraid that a whole food diet will be difficult and time consuming. Fortunately, that does not have to be the case. Here are some ways that you can integrate a vegetarian whole foods diet into a busy lifestyle.

It is an inescapable fact that a vegetarian whole foods diet does require more work than processed food. It takes more time to cook vegetable soup from scratch than it does to heat up a can of soup. While obviously the nutritional benefits make this time well spent, many people have difficulty finding that time. One option is to plan ahead so that you can cook on days when you have time. Plan simple meals such as sandwiches or salads for busy days, then set aside some time to cook on days that you are less busy. This will allow you to maintain a varied diet and free you from feeling like you have to cook every single day.

One way to drastically cut the amount of time that is required to prepare whole foods is to do all of the prep work at once. When you get home from the grocery store try to wash and bag all of the fruits and vegetables at once. You can even chop or dice some of the fruits and vegetables and store them that way. This reduces the amount of time that will be required when you do want to cook. After all, it is much easier to think about making a salad when the lettuce and tomatoes are already washed and chopped and the dressing is made. After that all you need to do is put it all together and add a few toppings. Doing this prep work ahead of time makes it easier to put together meals when you are ready to cook.

Along the same lines, it is often less time consuming to cook ahead when you do it in batches. There are a wide variety of foods that lend themselves to being cooked ahead of time. One easy food to cook in bulk is beans. When you are starting with dry beans it is just as easy to cook one cup as to cook ten cups. If you cook large amounts of beans you can store them in containers or bags and freeze them in small amounts. That way when you need them all you need to do is pull out a container of beans that is already cooked. Rice can also be cooked this way. Cooking five cups of brown rice is not any more difficult than cooking one cup, but the other four cups can be saved for later use.

One last solution for busy people is to cook so that they have leftovers. If you make a salad one day, take the rest of it to work for lunch the next day. If you make vegetable soup or a rice dish, make enough to have some to eat the next day. This will allow you to stretch your time in the kitchen so that you can get more than one meal out of each cooking session.

Starting a Healthy Lifestyle to Lose Weight – Where Do I Begin?

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Obesity is a problem across America and the whole world and it does not seem to be improving. There is a problem with lifestyle where most people are used to being sedentary throughout the day. It is not uncommon for most people to drive to work, then sit at their desk all day, and finally go home and sit on the couch watching television.

Even though this is the case a great deal of people with weight problems have a strong desire to get in shape but do not know where to start, A lot of diet plans seem very complicated and unclear when you look at them. They require you know a lot about your calorie intake and are are active already.

Rather than dealing with the complexities of most of these plans it is easier to start with some simple steps that will get you going. The food you eat is very important but you do not need to change everything you eat overnight. You are much more likely to succeed if you just make some changes. So if you are going to eat chicken then just grill it and do not have any rich sauces and this is already a big improvement.

These small changes will make it much more likely you will stick to your diet and this can also be applied to exercise. Rather than force yourself to go to the gym everyday if you are out of shape, why not start with walking and stretching. This is a simple step but if you can implement it you will be able to make a smaller step to jogging or cycling shortly afterward.

This concept of make small changes, gradually will make you more likely to stick to your diet and you will lose weight gradually which will be much more healthy for you.