Fitness & Wellness

Dodging common fat loss mistakes can be difficult. Too often people start on a weight loss program, believing they’re doing everything right only to fail or slow their progress. The most common mistake when losing weight is to go on a super low calorie diet or fad diet. Sure the weight comes off quickly, but it doesn’t stay off. Extreme diets can’t be maintained for a long period if you want to remain healthy and when you quit and go back to normal or even moderate eating patterns, the weight comes back with a vengeance. If a diet is below 1000 calories a week, it can actually slow your metabolism and make you lose muscle mass not fat, making it more difficult to keep weight from returning.

You don’t combine diet and exercise for weight loss.

Exercise will not only help maintain muscle mass, it also burns extra calories and helps build muscles. The more muscle tissue you have, the more calories you burn, since muscle tissue burns more calories than fat. Even though it’s important to exercise, you can’t out exercise poor eating habits. What you eat and how much you eat is important for weight loss.

You choose strictly aerobic exercise to shed pounds.

While running and other aerobic exercises can help you lose weight, you really need all types of workouts to get fit. If you don’t have strength building as part of your workout routine, you’ll be sabotaging your efforts. Strictly sticking to running or other aerobic workouts can reduce the amount of muscle tissue in your body, but if you add strength building exercises to your routine, you’ll be building muscle tissue and boosting your metabolism to help shed pounds faster.

You faithfully stick with a low fat diet and skip higher calorie protein.

You need both protein and fat to be healthy. Remember, not all fat is bad. There are healthy fats, such as those found in avocados or fatty fish. Many of the “low fat” foods you find in the stores also use sugar to make the food more palatable, adding more calories and leaving you feel less full. You also need protein for maintaining muscle tissue. It also leaves you feeling more satiated and less likely to grab a quick snack or higher calorie foods.

• Not having enough healthy fiber in your diet can sabotage your weight loss efforts. Fiber not only keeps you going, it also leaves you feeling fuller and reduces the number of calories you absorb.
• You’re using a ketogenic diet, but add too much fat. No matter how good the diet, calories still count.
• People often eat, not because they’re hungry, but for some emotional reason, such as boredom, anger or sadness. Watch that mindless snacking and pay attention to what your body tells you before you eat.
• While eating too much is part of the cause of overweight, what you drink makes a difference, too. If you drink three 8-oz containers of a soft drink each day, in less than two weeks you’ll gain a pound.

Have you ever had one of those days when everything goes wrong. It may start innocently enough, maybe by spilling coffee on your work clothes or getting a call from an angry client. From that point on it builds until you’re ready to scream. One way to enhance your mood and shift the whole day to a better track is to change your mind. That’s right. So you spilled your coffee, that doesn’t mean you have to stew about it forever. If your boss or a client puts a bummer into your mood with complaints, focus on fixing the problem or getting to the root of things, rather than how unfair they’re treating you. It’s all about state of mind. Looking for the positive in every situation helps.

Blow off steam at the gym.

Exercise is a true stress buster. It burns off the hormones of stress and messages the brain to create hormones that make you feel good, like endorphins. When you workout, focus on how much better you’re feeling with each pull-up or set. By the end of the workout you’ll find you may even have a smile on your face. If you can’t make it to the gym, go out for a quick ten minute brisk walk. In fact, for those horrible days, skip lunch with co-workers and walk or walk to the restaurant and meet them there. No time for a walk? Run up and down the stairs at work a few times to clear your brain.

Get adequate sleep.

If you’re not sleeping at night, you probably won’t have the emotional stamina to make it through a tough day without letting the stress get to you. People with insomnia often show signs of depression. Switch rooms, cut out coffee after three in the afternoon (but a cup or two in the morning helps your mood) or create a schedule for going to bed and getting up in the morning. On the other end of the spectrum, one study actually showed that staying up all night and starting from scratch could boost your mood for up to a month. Scientists believe it was from resetting the inner clock.

Eat healthier.

What you eat does make a huge difference in your overall mood. One study showed that boosting your intake of Omega-3 fatty acids also boosted your mood and reduced the likelihood of depression. Foods that contain omega-3 are fatty fish like mackerel and salmon, walnuts, black beans, kidney beans and flaxseed. A healthy balance of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids is 4 parts omega-6 to one part omega-3. The average American eats a ratio of approximately 25 to 1, rather than 4 to 1. One prison study showed that changing the ratio to 4 to 1 by changing the prisoner’s diet reduced the violence and fights in the prison.

• Fake it until you can make it. Smile and laugh. You don’t have to be with someone to do it either. Try it. Smile big and laugh out loud. You feel better don’t you.
• Break up the monotony and do something different. Instead of making a face and turning down ideas to do something different, take a shot and try it. Who knows, maybe just breaking out of your rut will change your mood.
• Cut out sugar from your diet. High sugar intake gives you a roller coaster of highs and lows that just get worse as you succumb to them. Cut out sugary treats and replace them with healthier snacks.
• Make sure you have adequate B vitamins in your diet. While all vitamins are important, B vitamins, folate in particular, tend to improve your mood if you initially have a shortage. Another supplement, chromium picolinate was also found to stave off depression.

If you’ve read much on health issues, you’ll notice the focus has changed. Now longevity has overtaken the “Anti-Aging” mantra for most people. Living longer means doing everything necessary for a healthier life. It means eating healthy, getting adequate exercise and sleep and avoid negative behavior such as drinking too much, smoking, using illegal drugs and stress-giving behavior.

It’s not all about genes.

You may have won the genetic lottery, but that doesn’t automatically guarantee longevity. In fact, longevity only plays approximately a 30 percent role in the length of your life. More and more the research shows that what you do, your attitude and your environment play a major role in just how long you live. Something as simple as getting adequate sleep can help prevent serious conditions that affect your longevity. Often the habits we establish as children with parents as examples have the biggest effect on our health, rather than the actual genetic makeup.

It may be all about telomeres.

What are telomeres? They’re like aglets—those little plastic tubes at the end of shoelaces. Aglets help prevent the shoelace from unraveling and telomeres cap off DNA strands and prevent it from being damaged. As each cell replicates itself, the telomeres get shorter, creating the potential for cell death or damage more probable. The length of telomeres dictates the biological, not the chronological age, of a person. If cells are damaged or die, they can’t replicate and that’s how aging or disease takes place.

Strong mitochondria are also important for longevity.

Your cells get all their fuel from mitochondria. It’s like the battery pack for the cell or the tiny furnace. The stronger your mitochondria is, the stronger your body and brain is. When the quality of the mitochondria or activity declines, you see the changes in the body that are associated with aging and diseases You can lengthen telomeres with habits like exercising regularly, reducing and controlling stress, eating a healthy diet and practicing mindfulness or meditation.

• HIIT is one way to help boost the production and efficiency of mitochondria. So is eating anti-inflammatory foods. The simple four-minute nitric oxide dump exercise may also give your mitochondria a boost.
• Simply taking a walk in the sunshine can also boost longevity. While there are dangers of too much sun, you need some to create the vitamin D necessary for healthier functioning. Smart exposure is important.
• Get social. Good relationships, laughing and smiling more are also linked to longevity. So is an active sex life.

One of the amazing things about studies, is that they often come up with contradictory results. While one study found that people who used supplements were often healthier, other studies show they have no effect. What’s the reason for that contradiction? A third study showed that people who used supplements also exercised regularly, ate healthy meals and did other things, like not smoking or drinking in moderation, that kept them healthier. There is logic to the reason that supplements are not the answer. It comes from the chemical interactions that occur when you eat whole foods and the way the supplements were made.

Whole foods contain many different nutrients.

Consider the blueberry, its chemicals and nutrients have been studied as a tool for helping with a number of conditions. One study showed the anthocyanin—the phytochemical in blueberries that makes them blue—helps prevent cancer, but isolating it proved to be not as effective. The reason for that contradiction? I’m not a chemist, but logic tells me it isn’t just one phytochemical or phytonutrient in the berry that makes it work, it’s the synergy amongst all the nutrients. Rather than popping a vitamin, pop a few blueberries in your smoothie.

Fiber isn’t part of many supplements.

Fiber is so important for both weight loss and good health. It gives you a feeling of fullness. Dietary fiber also helps you eliminate toxins and takes the bloat away. It lowers the risk of many different types of cancer too. Supplements like a multivitamin, simply don’t provide that fiber the body requires. They often lack the micronutrients that are known to be important substances to improve health. Even more so, every day new studies discover the importance of these micronutrients that often aren’t found in multiple vitamins.

Whole food contain antioxidants that help prevent aging.

Antioxidants protect cells and cell death and damage leads not only to illness, but also aging. While whole foods contain these health giving nutrients, many supplements don’t. Even though vitamin A and vitamin C are antioxidants, whole foods contain other substaances that can boost their effect or change the way the body uses them.

• Many of the nutrients provided in vitamin supplements are manmade and not easy to digest. They often fail to break down in the system and are often flushed away in the toilet.
• It’s far easier to overdose on supplements than it is to overdose on the same nutrient in whole foods. You’d simply have to eat far too much. Vitamin A, for instance, comes from beta-carotene. The body will only convert as much as it needs.
• Some dietary supplements are beneficial for people with special dietary needs. You need to remember that their name says it all. It’s a supplement, not a substitute for whole food.
• If you’re trying to boost your nutritional intake, toss extra herbs and spices into your dishes. They’re relatively inexpensive compared o supplements—especially if you grow your own. You can also add them to vinegar, allow it to sit and use that as a lower calorie dressing.

Give Yourself a Fitness Summer Surprise Create Healthier Meals with Herbs and SpicesSupplements Are Not the Answer (ATTN: Not for Long Island Guy that sells them)

It’s summer and traditionally the time to have fun. Sure, we all have a work week yet, but our minds still remember the fun of summer vacation when we were still back in school. Just because the boss says you can’t take the summer off, it doesn’t mean that you can’t make it more fun. You can give yourself a fitness summer surprise that will make this summer more memorable and help you reach your fitness goals.

Take up a new sport!

I have an older client that tells about his summer of hang gliding, as though it were yesterday. It happened quite a long time ago when the sport was young. He and a group of others would carry their kites up a large local sand dune, jump off and soar in the wind. This guy is pretty muscular and gives the credit for building his muscles to carrying that fifty pound kite up the dunes thirty times a day. It got him started on the path to regular exercise. You don’t have to hang glide to do something different. Just make it active and something you might end up passionate about. Make your summer surprise a pass to several new adventures that help you get fitter while having fun.

Go on a weekend safari.

Put on your pith helmet and get out the butterfly net. It’s time to stalk big game, or maybe birds and butterflies. Take adventure walks to spot local wildlife or search for rock specimens for a collection. Rent or borrow a metal detector and hunt for hidden treasures. I know of an older man that used to go out early in the morning and walk to the area where there are drive through windows, searching with his metal detector for money and other finds. He also used it under the bleachers after sporting events. He walked everywhere he searched, which was his way of getting exercise.

Give yourself a fitness gift for motivation.

It can be as simple as purchasing a low cost wrist band that identifies your heart rate, which is perfect for anyone doing HIIT workouts or a pedometer. These are relatively low cost items and often cheaper than a Starbucks a day for a week. If you aren’t already working out at Iron Fit signing up for circuit training could be a great gift. For those mothers who are members, signing up your children for Youth Summer Camp could be a great way to free your workout time and get the whole family fit.

• If you’ve reached a fitness goal, even if the goal is just to workout for four weeks, buy yourself a new workout outfit. Looking good can boost your confidence and provide more incentive to go to the gym.
• Give yourself the ultimate summer fitness surprise. Start eating healthier and working out. At the end of summer, you’ll see a whole new you.
• Create a summer buffet of healthy food. Spend just an hour planning quick, but healthy summer meals you can make ahead. You’ll sometimes find them already planned on the internet. Surprise yourself every night with a new meal that only takes minutes of work to get from refrigerator or freezer to the table.
• Treat yourself to a luxury. You don’t have to accomplish anything, reach any goal or do anything special to give yourself a gift of luxury this summer. Consider a day at the spa, a massage or anything you’ve always wanted but didn’t consider it a necessity. Make it a Christmas gift to yourself from yourself in July.