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Sugar seems to be added to almost all foods. In fact, if you grab for that low fat yogurt, thinking it’s a healthy option, read the label first. It probably contains sugar to make it more palatable. Barbecue, soft drinks, fruit juice, ketchup and even protein bars and granola all contain hidden sugar. Too much sugar in your diet has a detrimental affect on your health, so to combat those problems and reset your taste buds, a 7-day sugar detox could be right for you.

What are the problems you face with a seven-day sugar detox?

Depending on your normal eating habits, giving up added sugar can be difficult. It seems like sugar is in everything that’s processed, so it requires more cooking from scratch, so you can control the ingredients. Sugar is also addictive and you’ll find you crave sugary treats, especially after a meal of for a snack. Some people experience depression, anxiety, difficulty sleeping and even the inability to focus. Others may experience dizziness, nausea and fatigue. It all depends on how much sugar you normally consume.

While it isn’t a traditional detox with a strict menu, it does require planning your menus.

The only way to ensure the food doesn’t contain added sugar is to read packages and plan meals ahead. There are at least 65 different names for sugar, and even more if you count artificial sweeteners, which also need to be banned, so unless you know them all, stick with homemade and simple ingredients. Avoid tortilla shells and make a lettuce wrap taco instead. Yes, they contain sugar. Make your own salad dressing and avoid bottled dressing, since it has added sugar. Make your own vinaigrette and use fruit in the salad to sweeten it.

Don’t give up fruit, but limit the intake.

Fruit is naturally sweet, but that doesn’t help you kick the sugar habit if you eat too much. Luckily, sugar also contains fiber, so it doesn’t cause a spike in your blood sugar level. You can use fresh fruit as a snack but limit the amount or mix small amounts in a salad for flavor. If you are having severe withdrawal symptoms, an apple or mashed frozen or fresh fruit with nuts in yogurt is a good dessert to help you get past the craving. It becomes easier and easier the longer you cut out sugar. Eat a higher amount of fat and protein. Nuts are the greatest for snacks and contain absolutely no sugar. So are fresh veggies and hummus.

• Fruit juice often has added sugar and those that don’t still have a high amount of natural sugar. You’re better off eating the fruit that has fiber, to slow the absorption of sugar and the sugar high.
• You also have to watch more than just what you eat. What you drink is important, too, which includes soft drinks and performance drinks.
• Focus on simple meals. A salad with homemade dressing, baked fish, Buddha bowls from leftovers and soups are easy dishes. There are so many recipes without added sweetener, your choice is almost unlimited.
• You’ll be amazed at how much your taste seems to change after just a week. Natural fruit tastes sweet and food with added sugar tastes too sweet. After a strict week of no sugar, you may find you like the flavor of natural foods.

For more information, contact us today at Prime Fitness

It may sound hokey saying that exercise puts more years on your life and life to those years, but it’s absolutely true. Not only does exercise help you live longer, it makes those extra years a blessing, allowing you to live on your own and function fully. There are benefits of regular exercise besides longevity. For instance, it can help you deal with giving up bad habits like drinking too much, quitting smoking and even drug addiction. The stress from quitting those things is reduced and you’ll get a high from the workout to replace the stimulation from the addictive substances.

Most people consider exercise as a way to aid weight loss.

That’s very true. It does help you control your weight. Not only does exercise help increase the calories you burn, it also can permanently boost your metabolism. You’ll build muscle tissue when you workout and muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain than fat tissue does. That means it boosts your resting metabolic rate, burning more calories around the clock, even when you don’t exercise.

You’ll increase your heart health and help manage diabetes with regular exercise.

Exercise gets your blood pumping and makes your heart work more. Just like any muscle, it gets stronger. That extra effort improves circulation, which increases the oxygen levels in the body. Exercise lowers the risk of heart disease, lowers blood pressure, regulates cholesterol levels by reducing bad cholesterol and reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke and a heart attack. Exercise also reduces insulin resistance, a precursor of diabetes. In fact, one of the treatments for insulin resistance is to switch to a healthy diet and get regular exercise.

You’ll improve your attitude and reduce stress with exercise.

Stress kills. It causes the brain to send chemical messengers, hormones, to parts of the body to make changes to prepare it for fighting or running. When you don’t, those changes actually affect your health if they’re not burned off with exercise. Studies show that exercise can also be beneficial in reducing anxiety and depression. In fact, mental health specialists often use it as a complementary therapy. It also increases circulation, sending nutrients to the brain and stimulates the body to increase the release the chemicals and proteins that improve brain structure and functioning.

• Osteoporosis causes weaker bones, particularly in seniors. Exercise helps improve muscles that tug on the bone and make the bone uptake calcium to strengthen it, reducing the risk of osteoporosis and even reversing some of the effect.
• You can reduce your risk of some types of cancer when you exercise. These include breast cancer, uterine cancer, lung cancer and colon cancer.
• Sleep is important for heart health and mental health. A program of regular exercise can help you sleep at night and get a higher quality of sleep.
• If you want to be better in the bedroom, consider exercising regularly. It can help reduce the risk of erectile dysfunction in men and improves sexual arousal in women.

For more information, contact us today at Prime Fitness

If you think you need a lot of equipment to create the perfect, healthy body, you’d be wrong. You don’t need any extra equipment, like weights to workout. People have been building fitness and muscle for years without added equipment. Weights, kettlebells and other exercise equipment just add variety to the workout and provide a few other benefits.

Think bodyweight exercises.

You carry weights with you. It’s the weight of your body. Upper body exercises using bodyweight include push-ups, pull-ups, rope climb, dips and muscle-ups, to name a few more popular ones. You do need a bar or rope to do these, but a tree limb or go to the playground and use the monkey bars.

Lower body bodyweight exercises work the glutes, hamstrings, quads and calves. All types of squats, mountain climbers, high knee runs, donkey kicks, bridges and planks are examples that will get you fit and build muscle, too.

If you want to maintain strength without equipment, try isometrics.

You may not build muscles or added strength with isometrics, but you can maintain your strength. While they can build muscle tissue, they aren’t the most effective way to do it. You don’t move during isometrics, so you’ll only build strength when the muscles are in that particular position. The good news is that there are a variety of isometric workouts to do and you can do them almost anywhere. Stomach suction and planks are good examples.

Make your workout a non-workout.

It’s amazing how much exercise you can get when you throw your whole self into something. Consider daily tasks as a workout, but instead of using your same normal slower way, throw your whole self into the job. Scrub the floor with vigor. Wash the windows enthusiastically. Run through each task if you can and if you’re doing something in place, keep your feet moving to music. Tidy the room with music and dance your way through it. Enjoy every movement and marvel at how magnificent the body is.

• Make your own equipment and do your workout. If you don’t have weights, fill milk jugs or laundry liquid bottles with sand until you get weights that challenge you. Use soup cans for dumbbells.
• Swim. It’s harder to move your body against the resistance of the water. That means you’ll build strength and burn calories, while making it easier on joints.
• Try this circuit workout you can do anywhere. Do 10 body-weight squats, 10 supermans, 10 push-ups, and 20 crunches one following the other. Take a short breather and start the circuit again. Do the rounds up to ten times.
• Take the stairs and go as many flights as you can. Just taking the stairs instead of the elevator can help you get fit, without going to the gym. Climbing eight flights of stairs a day lowers mortality by 33%.

For more information, contact us today at Prime Fitness

Is weight loss your goal? Do you want to build muscle? Maybe you want to lose fat. You can do all three things at the same time. It all starts with a healthy diet, no matter what your goal. A healthy diet can help you lose weight, lose fat and gain muscle. In the gym, it’s time to turn to the right type of exercises. While building muscle mass may be your focus, for weight loss, you want a workout that burns the most calories, while preserving muscle mass. The same is true for burning fat.

How do you start eating healthier.

The simplest way to improve your diet is to cut out sugar, refined or processed food and eat more whole foods, such as fresh and colorful fruits and vegetables, lean meat and whole grains. Simply cutting out food with added sugar and other refined carbohydrates like processed grains. Limit saturated fats and omit trans fats from your diet. What you drink makes a big difference, make it water, unsweetened tea or black coffee.

It’s all about working out and the right type of workout.

Again, any type of exercise you do is good—as long as you’re doing it correctly. However, you’ll see quicker progress when you do specific types of workouts. Workouts that provide full body exercise and high intensity interval training—HIIT—provide the most benefit in the shortest time frame. Kettlebells are full body exercises and HIIT can be full body ones. You won’t get the benefit you want from just doing aerobic workouts. While you will burn fat, you’ll also burn muscle tissue, too.

You’ll build more muscle tissue when you shorten your workout.

Working out harder and at a faster pace, taking short breaks between exercises, not only burns more calories and sheds fat, it also boosts muscle development, too. You can increase the number of reps in a specific time or increase the weight you lift. Building muscle and burning fat isn’t all about the number of hours you spend, but how you spend those hours. Sometimes, less is more when it comes to building muscles and burning fat.

• Never underestimate the power of sleep. Adequate sleep can boost your energy level, so you’ll burn more calories and help keep your hunger and satiety hormones balanced so you won’t overeat.
• Make water your best friend. Staying hydrated is important for a number of reasons. It helps you stay fuller so you don’t over eat, while also ensuring you are working at peak energy levels to burn more calories.
• Eat adequate protein and healthy fat. Both healthy fat and protein are important for weight loss. Protein is important for building muscles and both are necessary for the body to function at peak performance.
• If you’re trying to lose fat, remember, it’s not all about weight loss. Fat loss is more about losing inches than checking the numbers on the scale. Even if you don’t shed a pound, the more muscle you have, the thinner you’ll look.

For more information, contact us today at Prime Fitness NJ

With everyone trying to pick up speed and get more done during the day, I have a lot of clients at Prime Fitness in Totowa, NJ, asking for some quick and easy workouts to use on those days when there’s more work than hours left to do it. It happens and as I always say, “something is better than nothing, even though a complete workout is best.” If you don’t have the time for that complete workout, here are some exercises you can do when you’re rushed.

You don’t have to do everything at once.

Is your workout 30 minutes or longer? Break it down to several sessions throughout the day. Studies show that doing three 10 minute workouts are as beneficial as one 30 minute session. In fact, there was a study that put people into four groups. One group didn’t exercise. One group did a half hour a day all at once. The third group broke their routine down to two sessions of 15 minutes each and finally, the last group broke it down to three 10-minute sessions. Three of the four groups had the same benefits for weight lost and improved endurance. The group that didn’t exercise was the only one that didn’t benefit. Use smaller windows of time and get the same benefits.

Boost your intensity or weight to make workouts shorter.

You can cut your workout time when you increase your intensity. You can make it harder on yourself and workout less. By increasing your pace and/or amount of weight you lift, you cut your workout time. In fact, it’s imperative that you do to avoid overworking muscles. Pushing yourself to the max means workout time is shorter. Reducing the rest time between sets on interval training is another way to get more for your exercise time.

Do the four-minute nitric oxide dump.

What is nitric oxide? Nitric oxide is a vasodilator. That means it helps to increase the blood flow by relaxing the blood vessels, causing them to widen. That lowers blood pressure. Nitric oxide is boosted by exercise, and there’s a specific four-minute workout that you can do several times a day to help. It’s perfect when you just have a few minutes. Do it three times a day. It was created by Dr. Zach Bush and includes four simple moves, squats, arm swings, arm circles and overhead presses. If you’re trying to lower your blood pressure, combine it with your regular routine.

• Compound moves ensure you workout more of your body in far less time. Compound moves involve several muscles and joints and can be just one exercise, like a basic squat or a combination of exercises done together, a lunge combined with a tricep extension.
• Whether you’re breaking up your workout into sections or just trying to cut back time, writing the workout on paper so you have it in front of you is one way to do it.
• Turn your chores into a workout. Speed up your workout. Do it with vigor. Exaggerate the workout to get more movement into it. Do deep knee bends as you’re washing the wall or march in place when doing dishes.
• If you still don’t have the time, make sure your day is more active by taking the stairs, walking to lunch or parking further from the store to walk more.

For more information, contact us today at Prime Fitness