Fitness & Wellness

There’s a lot of hype about all the good a cleanse or detox can do for both weight loss and what ails you, but there’s very little evidence. One thing is certain, it does provide an opportunity to reboot your body, like you would a computer, and then start on a healthy diet adding new foods each day. It can be a way of finding food intolerance if you have problems after you eat and won’t really hurt you unless you have a medical condition.

Be aware of the best type of cleanse to use.

If you’re doing a fruit juice cleanse, you’ll be subjecting your body to a lot of fructose. That can set your body into a roller coaster of sugar highs and lows. Aside from that, a few days of drinking juice doesn’t have any long term negative effects. There are good effects from the fast type of cleanse where you simply sip on water. Unlike regular fasts that last for days, this is intermittent fasting, which means you fast for a period of time, such as 16 hours and eat during the 8 remaining hours. There are studies that show this type of cleanse won’t put your body into starvation mode and will help you lose weight and even live longer.

No matter what type of cleanse you choose, if you go back to unhealthy eating, it won’t do any good.

It all boils down to resetting your eating pattern and learning how to eat healthier. With a cleanse, you can reboot your body to eat healthier foods and shed those extra pounds. With intermittent fasting, you eat all your meals in a shorter time frame, so you often eat less than you would in the course of a normal day. Again, if the food you eat is cake, donuts and fried foods, you won’t get the beneficial effect you hoped to achieve.

Eating healthy and exercising is the best way to lose weight and keep it from returning.

While what you eat and when you eat it is important, exercising regularly is just as important for a healthy lifestyle and freeing you from the worry of extra pounds. Not only does exercising burn calories while you’re doing it, it builds muscle tissue in the process. Muscle tissue requires more calories for maintenance, so you’ll be burning more calories 24/7 and boosting your metabolism.

• Studies show that intermittent fasting can actually make you look younger for longer. It also can help you burn belly fat. It doesn’t require you go without eating, just start eating later in the day, noon for instance, and quit at about 8 o’clock.
• While there’s little evidence a cleanse helps, it can train your body to eat less. When you go back to eating, you’ll be more aware of how much you eat.
• The body naturally detoxes and cleanses itself, but if you’re feeling bloated and eating too much food, you’ll probably feel better after a day or two of a cleanse.
• Jack Goldstein wrote about a water fast and vegetarian diet he embarked. When he tested tongue scrapings, feces, perspiration and urine, he did find that their make up changed and even environmental toxins like DDT were eliminated.

If you crave something sweet after meal, it may be just habit, but there’s no need to quit eating a dessert. Fruits that make a sweet dessert can hit the spot and leave you feeling satisfied after a meal. While some areas of the country have a limited growing time, Texas has the benefit of fresh fruit almost year around, so it can be an inexpensive way to satisfy a sweet tooth.

Take advantage of seasonal fruit.

When fresh fruit is in season, it’s normally picked later in its growing cycle, at its peak, and local. The later its picked and the fresher it is, the more nutrients it has. The sweeter it is too! Spring and summer fruit includes cherries, grapes, berries, figs (which also grow in the fall), peaches, plums, nectarines and all types of melons. Fall fruit also include all types of melons, late grapes and pears. Pomegranate season is from October to December, while citrus fruit ripens from October to April. A dish of fresh fruit or mixed fruit doesn’t need anything extra. It’s sweet, delicious and healthy.

Spruce up that fresh fruit by making a sorbet.

Just cut up any combination of fresh fruit in chunks, put it in a covered plastic container and freeze it overnight. Use an ice crushing blender and blend until smooth and creamy. If I’m making enough to store in bags, I found that freezing the fresh fruit on a cookie sheet first to make sure the pieces don’t stick together, then transferring them to the bag is excellent. When you’re ready to use, just grab a handful. You can also create rich fruit ice cream with no milk or sugar by freezing a chopped banana and blending it with other frozen fruits. Bananas, grapes, jackfruit, mangosteen, papaya and persimmons are sweet fruits you can combine with others rather than sugar.

A little dark chocolate can be decadent and even good for you.

Making your own dark chocolate-dipped strawberries is simple and allows you to enjoy a bit of decadence that is rich in vitamin C, manganese and antioxidants. When you make it yourself you can select the healthiest dark chocolate option with the lowest sugar content and the highest concetration of cocoa solids. You also can control the amount of chocolate on each berry, dipping it midway up, rather than coating the whole berry to save calories. Eat just two or three, since the chocolate adds extra calories.

Keep it simple, save time and calories. A quarter cantaloupe filled with berries is a delicious filling dessert.

There’s no need to add sugar, but other healthy ingredients will do. I love celery with apples and pecans, sometimes in a dab of Greek yogurt. Fruit is naturally sweet, so creating a sugary sauce or adding sugar isn’t necessary.

Chilled citrus fruit is a treat when you peel it and remove the membranes around the flesh. It’s not that hard to do, especially for grapefruits and you can have a chilled treat ready in the refrigerator for dessert and snacks.

Create frozen fruit laden yogurt. Get healthy yogurt with no sugar added and mix with a generous portion of fruit. You can eat it immediately or freeze it for a special treat.

If you want fast results, you don’t have to be a millennial to benefit from the Millennials workout. These workouts are based on the latest scientific studies are just what the 20+ group loves. They use exercises and equipment to improve the effort and maximize the efficiency of the workout. The Millennials represent the age of information and finding the smartest way to accomplish a goal. That doesn’t mean other groups don’t do that too, but it’s just more prevalent in a group that grew up with a mouse in their hand and knew how to swipe a phone before they could walk.

Always looking for something new and better.

When you exercise, new isn’t always better, but it can be. Taking the best of the old and updating with newer techniques is one of the ways this trendsetting generation likes to roll. The kettlebells have a long history, but are relatively new to the fitness area in the US. They provide a total body workout that’s quick and produces fast results. That’s one of the types of exercises Millennials like, but also fits the active lifestyle of baby boomers and the GenX group.

Living healthier through regular workouts and healthy eating.

This is not the meat and potato generation of the past. Nor are they the body abusing love children of the 60s who took every drug they could find because….well, they could. You don’t have to be born at a certain time to qualify for millennial thinking. It’s the new attitude that you’re given one body and one life, so treat it nicely. In fact, some of those same hippies from the 60s now embrace the healthier lifestyle and tech savvy of Millennials.

Millennials get loads of info online.

No matter what the project or task, someone has made a YouTube video or blog about it. That’s not to say every word or video you find on the internet is legit and correct. People with a millennial attitude dig deeper, while also finding the newest workout techniques. Circuit training, for example, is one of those techniques that when used with weight training, can bring huge results.

If you have a support system through social media to help you stick with healthy eating and a program of exercise, you qualify for Millennial status, regardless of your date of birth.

People who consider a healthy diet and regular exercise is more than just for losing weight, but for feeling good too, have a Millennial mind set.

The less time consuming full body workout is now super popular. Getting strong, while building endurance is the key to the latest workouts.

No matter what your age, getting healthy involves more than just shedding pounds and eating right. It also includes keeping a positive attitude and enjoying each day.

If you’ve never heard of HIIT—High Intensity Interval Training—you haven’t read much on working out. It’s one of the hottest ways of maximizing your workout time. It involves a rotation between giving any type of exercise a 100 percent effort followed by a period of recovery for an equal or longer time. If you’re a runner, you’d run at top speed for a minute and then jog for one or two and back to top speed again. Not only is this great for achieving cardio fitness faster, since it gets the heart pumping at top speed, but it also helps burn fat fast.

HIIT does the job faster.

You won’t have to workout as long to get the same results. Studies on the HIIT exercise technique show that the results for middle-aged and young healthy individuals were better than other types of endurance training for improving the amount of oxygen brought into the body. It also helped reduce the risk of type II diabetes and improved muscle endurance in record time. While traditional cardio workouts using HIIT may not be great for weight loss, non-traditional ones are.

Circuit training is a combination of strength training and HIIT.

The original HIIT exercises were aimed at running and cardio, but that shouldn’t limit the uses of it. Consider circuit training as a whole body workout. You’re trying to get as many muscles worked in as short of time frame as possible, with a little rest in between. Unlike HIIT, which works to exhaust total energy in a short period, then rest for an equal or longer period, circuit training works one muscle group hard, then allows a quick breather between exercises and works another group of muscles, giving the first rest. It’s more of a total body workout.

The benefit of varying muscle groups and intensity.

By doing both, you’ll not only build muscle strength and endurance, you’ll boost your metabolic rate, too. It provides an afterburn of calories for up to 48 hours after the workout ends. The EPOC—excess post-exercise oxygen consumption occurs after a hard workout to counter-act the deficit of the workout. This deficit occurs with both types of training, so it boosts your metabolic while trying to normalize the body and eliminate the oxygen debt.

You can convert any type of exercise to HIIT training. You don’t have to run or jog. Lifting heavy weights rapidly and then doing the same exercise with lighter weights at a normal pace gives both cardio and strength training.

Do a short version of circuit training using HIIT. Kettlebells work well for this. Your trainer can show you some great exercises.

Why do dancers stay healthy and in shape for so long? They’re actually doing HIIT training on the dance floor. When the band starts up with a fast-paced song, the intensity begins. After two to three minutes, the band stops, allowing the dancer to rest a bit before the next intense session.

Want a HIIT routine you can do at the beach or pool. Swim laps and then rest a bit. Remember, Michael Phelps ate 12,000 calories a day to maintain weight, so it must burn calories.

The human brain is wired to find the easiest method of doing something. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t have all the labor saving devices. That’s one reason it’s so hard to start and stick with a program of exercise and also one huge reason most of America could use a program. In order to achieve success, you have motivate yourself to get fit. That motivation shouldn’t be in the form of food, particularly if that was always the reward for doing good when you were a child. You need to dig deep and find the perfect motivation.

Watch active kids have fun.

I had to preface with the word active, because too often kids today tie their fun to their cell phone, I-pad or computer. Many never get out and run in the sun or play basketball or dodgeball on the playground. When active kids are playing hard, you’ll hear squeals of laughter because they’re having fun. They’re also exercising. Take a cue from these kids and find something you enjoy doing and people who you enjoy doing it with. That’s one reason group training is so effective. It’s fun and social so you’re more apt to continue.

Do it for your family.

Sure, you should always create your own goals, but that doesn’t mean your motivation can’t be your family. Whether getting into shape is a way of having more energy to play and do fun things with them, live longer and watch them grow or set a great example of what you can achieve when you set your mind to something, your family is powerful motivation.

Set a goal…and then another…and then another…and then another.

I know that’s one of the things I asked you when you signed up was your goal. It’s extremely important to have one. It challenges you to continue even when you’re ready to take a break from working out. Have several goals that lead to the ultimate “OMG, I never thought I could do it” goal. If you want to make it dramatic, choose a special event to have the unveiling of the “new” you.

I love this motivation from one of my clients. She’s meticulous in her personal care and won’t let wash her hair unless it’s at the gym or after working out at home.

Write down the reason you started working out and look at it every day. Sometimes after a week or so, people forget their reason. It’s good to have a reminder available.

Work out with a supportive group of people. That’s one reason working out at Iron Fit gets such great results. Everyone is helpful, supportive and striving to reach a goal.

Take it one day at a time. When you first start working out, don’t think of how long it will take you to get back into shape. Focus on just that workout and doing it your best. Take each day at a time.