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Does Meal Planning Really Save You Money?

Does Meal Planning Really Save You Money?

If you’re already a member of Rising Fitness in Houston, Texas, you know that the right nutrition is important for a healthy body. That’s why eating healthy is important. One way to ensure a healthy diet is through meal planning. You may think it’s expensive and uses special food, but it’s actually pretty easy and can really save you money. In fact, once you establish your pattern of shopping on one day a week and prep on another, you’ll find it’s quicker than a drive through and you’ll be healthier.

Protein sources don’t have to cost a fortune.

Try a meatless Monday, Tuesday or both. One of the biggest expenses for a meal is usually the protein source, particularly if it’s animal protein. Over the last year animal protein has increased in price more than other types of food. So how do you control your budget and still eat healthy? Eat meals with plant-based protein sources. Plant-based proteins often lack of complete amino acids, so you have to combine them to ensure you get the daily required nutrients. Examples, such as black beans and brown rice, combine to create a complete protein source. Add a vegetable and salad and you have a nutritious, well-balanced meal that’s also inexpensive.

You may think carryout and frozen foods are quicker and time is money.

If you cook all the week’s meals at once, you save time. Planning allows you to make a grocery list, so you shop all at once and when you cook, you can cook several things at one time, saving more money using the oven. Double up recipes and freeze the extra meals and you can build a store of meals and take a week off or be ready for unexpected company. It’s just heat and serve, cheaper and quicker than a drive through line.

Use the same food for several meals.

That doesn’t mean you’ll serve the same dish several times, but create a several dishes using the same food source. If you’re having chicken breasts, buy a whole chicken and use the other parts for chicken salad and soup. Boil the extra parts and you have a broth base for the soup with the chicken, all you need to add are vegetables. Those can be the left over fresh veggies you prepared for snacks or leftover veggies from other meals. It’s like having a free meal. Nothing goes to waste, including celery tops. Left over beef can be shredded for taco salad or power bowls.

  • When you plan meals, you can check your cupboards and fridge before you shop, to see if you already have the ingredients. It helps use up the food on the shelf and in the fridge before it goes bad.
  • If you have a stock of food already on your shelves, check the use by label and use a marker to make it more prominent. Organize your shelves so you use the oldest food first. Mark freezer bags of prepared meals with dates.
  • Plan around seasonal fresh fruits and vegetables and sale items. Most groceries offer coupons online that you can download to your loyalty card. Take advantage of it. Make it a game. It can be fun to see how little healthy, yet delicious meals can cost.
  • Planning meals not only saves money on the food, it saves time at the grocery if you only go once a week and gas wasted waiting in lines at the drive-through. You won’t have food go to waste, which saves more money.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym


Pros And Cons Of Meal Box Delivery Services

Pros And Cons Of Meal Box Delivery Services

Meal box delivery services seem like a great idea. USPS or other shipping service rings your bell or knocks on the door and you have meals for several days. Some are just for convenience, but still nutritious, others are focused on special needs, like weight loss. There are pros and cons of both types of meals, so you have to find out if they’re right for you or if making your own meals is a better idea.

If you hate to cook for one, a delivery service might seem like a good idea.

If you’ve considered options like Hello Fresh or meal box delivery services that help you lose weight, it might seem like an easy option that can keep you on a healthy path for eating. These services do encourage healthier eating, since you’ll be eating at home, but you don’t have control of what goes into the food. If you’re trying to learn how to eat healthier, cooking the food yourself and storing meals ahead in the refrigerator is a better tool. You can make several weeks’ worth of meals at once if you live alone or if there’s just two of you. It can save a lot of money.

If cost is no option, then one downside is eliminated.

If you hate spending extra money or are finding your budget a little tighter, meal boxes cost more than meal planning does. It all depends on the company you use. Meal boxes can average around $10 per meal and meal planning meals can average around $4. That’s a savings of 150%. Even if you get a great intro offer, you still have to make sure you cancel before it gets expensive and that’s not always easy to do. Freshness is a problem, too. If you’re shopping, you know how fresh the food is, but some meal box meals don’t arrive fresh as they should be and you’re stuck with the meal.

What’s the trade off?

On one hand, you can meal plan, have fresh produce, cook the meals yourself and spend less. On the other hand, you can simply debit out of your account, pay more and have someone else prepare the meals for you. It all depends on which one suits your needs. If your household has more than one person, meal box delivery services can become quite expensive. If you’re single, you can still save money making meals yourself by making extra and freezing for later.

  • You can use one ingredient several ways when you plan your meals. That saves money. You also can make healthy snacks, which can help you lose weight.
  • Whether you’re doing meal planning or using meal kits, you’ll learn how to eat healthier. Since you create meals from scratch with meal planning, you’ll learn all the healthy ingredients that go into food.
  • If you have special needs like a food allergy or intolerance, you may be better off choosing meal planning. You have more control of the ingredients and can learn alternative ways to make certain foods.
  • Making your own food doesn’t have to be a task. Once you start experiencing how good it tastes, you’ll learn how to expand your knowledge to new taste treats that are healthy and lower in calories.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym


Tips For Dieting On A Budget

Tips For Dieting On A Budget

If you’re like many people, you dread dieting and think it has to cost a fortune. Here’s a news flash! It can be far cheaper than fast food, better for you and even more rewarding. In fact, dieting on a budget can save you a lot of money! How can that be? First, consider what you’re presently eating. If you’re eating at a “cheap” fast food joint, one meal can cost $10 or more. If you purchase a week’s worth of groceries for one when you meal plan, it can cost as little as $35, depending on what you’re eating. That’s half the cost and you’ll get a healthier meal.

Food doesn’t have to be right out of the garden.

You can use frozen and canned fruits and vegetables when you make your own meals. Canned or frozen food not only saves you money but be fresher. Frozen food is picked and immediately processed and frozen, unlike the produce in groceries that are picked early, transported to market and been on the shelf for a while. Canned food has slightly fewer nutrients but is still a good option. Always read ingredients to make sure there are no additives.

When you plan meals ahead, you reap savings.

Meal planning is a huge benefit for your budget. There’s no waste. Are chicken breasts on the menu? Buy a whole chicken and use the rest of the parts for other meals, like tasty healthy wings, chicken salad or soup. Soup is the great budget saver. You can use the extra parts from the chicken for the broth and chicken bits and any leftover veggies from the week for a delicious, just add salad meal. You also can double up the recipe and freeze for later, using the stove less.

Find less expensive types of protein.

Sure, steak is delicious, but eating it every night can be expensive and isn’t really that healthy. Use plant-based sources of protein to save money. A meatless Monday can include brown rice and red beans for a complete protein. Canned tuna is also another savings that’s healthy. Always read the label and make sure it’s just tuna and water. It’s a healthy option that’s versatile. Eggs, turkey, chicken, cottage cheese, hard cheese and yogurt are also good protein sources. Buy a whole chicken and cut it yourself for various meals during the week or freeze part of it for another week.

  • One rewarding way people save money is by growing some of their own food. You don’t have to have a lot of land, just a sunny area for a container. Container gardening can provide many ingredients for pennies.
  • Find in-season bargains on fruits and vegetables on the grocery shelves, since many local farmers sell to local grocers. If you drive through a country area with roadside stands, stop and shop for bargains.
  • Choosing organic can help prevent ingesting toxic chemicals and pesticides, but not all produce needs to be organic. Choose non-organic food from the Clean 15 list created by the EWG. It’s the list of non-organic produce with little or no pesticides.
  • Buy in bulk and freeze the extra. You’ll be amazed at what can be frozen, including butter and nuts. You can also spend a morning with the family at a You-Pick farm for more savings and get a good workout at the same time.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym


Workouts That Tone Legs Fast

Workouts That Tone Legs Fast

No matter what the weather, getting muscles toned is important for your overall health and safety. It can help functional fitness. It can help prevent falls and aid with getting up if you do, help with lifting things and reaching in high places. Here are workouts that can help you tone your legs quickly. You’ll look great, feel stronger and have more flexibility and endurance.

Bodyweight exercises are great for toning your legs.

You don’t need equipment for bodyweight exercises. One of the best to tone legs is squats. This versatile exercise can be modified to tone all the muscles in your legs. Traditional squats target the glutes, quads and hamstrings that support the body. Feet should be slightly wider than shoulder width. Lower the body keeping the back straight, then raise it again. For a sumo squat that works the inner thighs more, feet are wider apart and toes pointed outward. You can do a walking squat, squat jump, split squat and a number of others to work other muscles for total toning.

Lunges are another favorite you can do anywhere.

Again, lunges are modified to work muscles in different ways. They improve functional fitness by improving your balance and hip flexibility. All lunges start with learning the traditional lunge. You put one foot forward with your knee bent and feet flat to the floor. The other foot remains behind and as you put weight on the forward foot, bending the knee, you lower the back knee to the floor with the heel lifted and toe touching. Then step back to starting position and move the other leg forward. There are dozens of modified ways to work different muscles and in different ways.

Plank leg lifts and a glute bridge are two of the exercises that work core and leg muscles.

Plank leg lifts build upper leg strength and so does a glute bridge. A glute bridge starts by laying on your back with knees bent and feet hip width apart and flat on the floor. Contract your stomach muscles to flatten your back, pushing your hips upward as you exhale and squeeze your glutes. Lower back to starting position as you exhale. Step-ups, single-leg deadlifts and box jumps are also good for toning leg muscles.

  • Mountain climbers are excellent for the legs. Start in plank position, then alternate bringing one leg to your chest at a time, like you’re walking or climbing a mountain. Slowly increase your pace.
  • Try a one-legged squat called a Belgium split squat. You simply put one foot on a coffee table or chair behind you as you lower yourself into a squat on one leg.
  • Don’t forget your ankles. You can go up on toe and do calf raises, stair calf raises, plie squat while raising your heels and walking. Jumping jacks, jumping rope and riding a bike also help.
  • Alternate leg days. You can spend one day doing regular exercises and another day doing fun things that work the whole body, like swimming, dancing and skiing. Challenge yourself more and record your progress.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym


Is Cardio Or Strength Training Better To Burn More Fat?

Is Cardio Or Strength Training Better To Burn More Fat?

If you’re trying to lose fat and doing nothing but running, you may be sabotaging yourself. While cardio training, like running, burns tons of calories, some of which come from fat, some also come from muscle tissue. You can do strength training and also burn tons of calories to lose weight, but you’ll be building muscle at the same time. So does cardio or strength-training burn more fat? Both are good for weight loss, but for fat loss, in some ways, strength-training is better.

You need a variety of workouts for the best results.

Cardio is important for more than just its calorie burning ability. It improves your endurance, so you can workout longer and harder. Strength training, however, builds muscle tissue. The more muscle tissue you have, the more calories you burn, since muscle requires more calories to maintain than fat does. Strength training gets most of the calories from fat. You also need flexibility and balance training to prevent injury.

Strength training continues burning calories even after it’s finished.

Afterburn is a term used to describe the extra calories burned after a tough strength-training workout. It occurs because the body is trying to get back to its normal state. It’s not a huge amount, but it does raise your metabolism for several days after a workout, burning approximately and extra 10 calories every hour, even with a relatively moderate workout. If you multiply that by just 30 hours, it’s 300 calories. Over the long haul, that can really add up on a monthly basis. Cardio does the same thing, but the amount of calories burned in after burn is lower and doesn’t last as long, unless you’re sprinting at a high rate. With strength training, like weightlifting.

Weight training also helps shape your body and tone it.

Even if you lose a lot of weight, if you aren’t toned, you won’t look nearly as good. When you use strength training to help burn fat, you’ll also build muscles and get the toned, attractive appearance. Cardio may help you lose calories, but it’s just shrinking your body and making it narrower, not sculpting the body for a toned lean appearance. In fact, the more muscle tissue you have, the slimmer you look even if your weight doesn’t change.

  • To burn fat, you also need to make sure you have a healthy diet that contains fewer calories and adequate protein to build muscle tissue.
  • HIIT workouts—high intensity interval training—isn’t a specific workout, but a way of doing exercises where you vary the intensity. Whether you do HIIT strength-training or cardio, it burns more calories.
  • You need to vary your workout to burn more fat. Your body becomes efficient at specific movements and uses fewer calories. It can cause fewer calories to be burned.
  • Some types of strength-training, like kettlebells, burn tons of calories, build muscles, provide a full body workout and improves strength, flexibility, balance and cardio.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym


Best Arm Workouts

Best Arm Workouts

You don’t have to suffer wearing long sleeves in the summer heat of Houston, Texas, when you do arm workouts that make your arms look fabulous. Whether you have batwings, no muscle or just flabby arms, when you get into shape you don’t have to hide them. You can show them off in Do you want big guns? While women won’t get the bulk, they’ll get the shapeliness that’s sexy. For men, working the bicep’s brachialis and brachii will do it.

Dumbbell curls and hammer curls are exercises that will get the biceps you want.

While a complete training program ensures you have a balanced approach with amazing results, there are a few great exercises to build the biceps. The dumbbell curl starts with holding a dumbbell with arms to the side and body straight. With palms facing forward, keeping upper arms still, exhale and curl the dumbbells by contracting the biceps, raising them to shoulder level, holding and inhaling while lowering them. Hammer curls start in the same position and are done the same way, but the palms of the hands face the body.

Throw a punch to knockout batwings.

Toning your arms can be easy, you have to throw a punch. Use dumbbells while you punch at the air. If you want to work forearms, do palm up and palm down wrist curls. An overhead press with weights can tighten the muscles and eliminate that flat in the wind looseness of batwings. Sit on the floor in upright position, with legs crossed over in diamond position, upright on the floor with knees bent and soles of the feet touching. Hold weights in each hand at chest level, pull shoulder blades down, push weight upward and away, move weight at an upward diagonal line away from the body, keeping the body straight.

No need for equipment with bodyweight exercises.

Go old school for great arms with bodyweight exercises. You can do them anywhere, and they sculpt and build arms. Traditional push-ups can be used in multiple ways. Just modify the hand position to work a variety of muscles. If you do a push-up with hands closer together, directly under the chest, it helps eliminate bat wings. When you have hands at shoulder-width, it works the triceps and small muscles in the forearm. Holding hands wider than the shoulders works the shoulders and triceps different ways.

  • Keep it simple with a plank. A plank may look simple, since you’re just remaining stationary, but it’s tough. It’s all about holding the body in plank position as long as you can. You can modify it based on fitness level and modify the position to work different muscles.
  • Lift something heavy. Make sure you lift correctly, using your legs, not your back. You can rearrange your living room every other day and build your muscles, while changing the scenery.
  • Don’t attempt to start with heavier weights or too many reps when you first start. It’s all about form and working your way toward heavier weights and sometimes lifting to failure.
  • Give muscles at least a 48-hour rest between workouts. When you first start, getting the help of a personal trainer can help you make progress faster and safer.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym


Should I Become A Vegan?

Should I Become A Vegan?

If you use the nutritional services of Rising Fitness Gym in Houston, TX, you’ll get a diet that’s based on your needs and goals. It might be a vegan diet, vegetarian, semi-vegetarian, pesco-vegetarian or omnivorous diet. What’s the difference? Vegan, vegetarian and semi-vegetarian diets focus on a plant based diet with vegetarians and semi-vegetarians including animal products like eggs or milk. There are also pescatarian diets that include seafood and omnivorous ones that eat both plants and animals. The vegan diet is the strictest one that only includes plants and the hardest one to follow.

A vegan diet provides loads of nutrients.

Plants contain loads of nutrients and phytonutrients. Legumes, seeds, nuts, fruits and vegetables all contain antioxidants in the form of phytonutrients. Plants also contain magnesium, potassium, folate, vitamins A, E and C. If you’re vegan—strictly plant based—getting all the essential amino acids is trickier. Most protein sources in plants aren’t complete. Luckily, you can pair them to ensure success and you don’t even have to eat them at the same time, just within the same day.

A vegan diet can help you lose weight and prevent serious conditions, such as type 2 diabetes.

Many people come to the gym to get healthier and often to lose weight. Studies comparing people on different types of diets show vegans tend to be thinner than those who aren’t. One study compared vegan dieters to those on traditional control diets and showed they lost about ten pounds more in 18 weeks. Even eat-until-full vegan diets were more successful. Whether it was the weight loss or the switch to veganism, there’s a distinct benefit for people with insulin resistance. It not only made people more insulin sensitive, it reduced the risk of type 2 diabetes by 78%. In diabetics on a vegan diet, it improved kidney function, too.

Vitamin B12 and other vitamins may be missing or low in a vegan diet.

Not only are getting complete proteins a problem, so is getting adequate vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 is necessary for good heart, nerve and muscle health. It’s an important nutrient to keep your metabolism running properly. There are foods supplemented with B12 to help solve that problem. Another nutrient often missing is vitamin D, which is necessary for a strong immune system, healthy bones and strong teeth. While it’s easy to get adequate vitamin D from the sun, since the body synthesizes it with exposure to the sun, during the winter it’s not that easy in more northern latitudes. Mushrooms and fortified soy or nut milk can provide it.

  • We focus on your individuality, so not all diets may be right for you. Learning more about the nutrients in food is what’s important and listening to your body, personal preferences and needs. No one diet is right for everyone.
  • You can get complete proteins in food like quinoa, hempseed and buckwheat. However, you still need to balance omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, just as non-vegans should. Flaxseed, chia and walnuts are omega-3 sources.
  • One danger when starting a vegan diet is getting too much fiber at once. Increasing fiber too fast can cause bouts of gas until your body adjusts to the increase. Focus on getting adequate B12, zinc, iodine, iron and calcium.
  • Studies on arthritis pain show that vegan diets can help, particularly raw food vegan diets, which are rich in pre and probiotics. It helps minimize joint swelling, pain and stiffness from rheumatoid arthritis.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym


Does Intermittent Fasting Really Work?

Does Intermittent Fasting Really Work?

One of the latest diet crazes isn’t really new and actually works. It’s intermittent fasting—IF. There are all types of IF. Some require you fast for a day or two and then eat normally. Other types, the more popular type, is eating all your meals in a specific 6-8 hour window and fast the other 16-18 hours. Fasting has been around for centuries. It was used as part of religious ceremonies and even an early treatment for epilepsy before medications. Fasting was part of early man’s normal life. Food wasn’t always available. Then it became part of religious ceremonies for centuries. Today it’s being popularized for weight loss.

Early animal studies in the 30s and 40s showed fasting may slow aging.

Animal studies in the 1930s and 40s focused on mice and the effect of fasting by eating just once a day, 30% calorie restricted feeding twice a day and on demand food. Mice that fasted lived longer, had a darker coat compared to their counterparts as they aged and remained more active and youthful. The calorie restricted mice lived 11% longer than those on demand and the fasting group increased their life span by 28%.

IF health benefits, besides looking younger.

IF not only helps you lose weight, it helps you lose fat around your middle. It can boost insulin sensitivity, increase HGH—human growth hormone, boost your metabolic rate and reduce inflammation. Chronic inflammation is a major cause of serious illness. During those fasting times, it allows for cellular repair and waste removal, which is known as autophagy. The body removes old cells and replaces them with new ones. However, this normally occurs after 24 hours, so it requires the type of fasting where you eat one day and not the next. IF helps reduce the risk of cancer and improves brain health and concentration.

Does intermittent fasting work for you and your body?

That all depends on you. If you have diabetes, intermittent fasting isn’t an option without a doctor’s supervision. People with reactive hypoglycemia should be careful when trying It can interrupt your sleep cycle if you eat too early, so beware if you have insomnia. People with eating disorders shouldn’t use it, neither should pregnant and lactating individuals. If you’re working out hard at the gym, don’t fast that day. People with digestive issues may have more problems on the days or times they eat. People with a compromised immune system or those who take meds that require food first should also avoid fasting.

  • One mice study showed fasting caused the body to produce Beta-hydroxybutyrate, a molecule that reversed vascular aging, while building more cells to line the interior of blood vessels.
  • When you do eat on an IF program, make it healthy. Even though it’s all about timing, it doesn’t give a license to consume junk food either.
  • One reason IF may work for weight loss is that it restricts the time you eat to a smaller window, which means you’ll normally consume fewer calories than you would in a full day. It also boosts your metabolism.
  • Some more recent research shows IF can boost the fat burning of a keto diet and speed up ketosis for maximum weight loss.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym


How Alcohol Causes Weight Gain

How Alcohol Causes Weight Gain

A study shows that drinking a glass or two of wine may be heart healthy, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for weight loss. In fact, alcohol causes weight gain when too much is consumed too often. Every part of your diet, including what you drink, plays a role in whether you’ll shed those extra pounds or not. Alcohol does have many negative effects on your body, too. It not only causes diminished performance physically and mentally, it can increase your risk of diabetes and liver disease. Like any food or drink—except water, it has calories.

There are some benefits from some types of alcohol.

There’s no doubt there are extra calories in alcohol that aren’t good for your diet and when too many drinks are consumed too often, will definitely cause weight gain. However, when consumed in moderation there are a few benefits. For instance, used in moderation, some types of alcohol may aid with improving immune functioning, lower the risk of dementia and even provide heart healthy benefits. No studies show it aids in weight loss, because it doesn’t.

Alcohol is the very definition of empty calories.

Aside from resveratrol, there are few nutrients in alcohol unless you get a fancy drink with juices that are also loaded with sugar. The body uses the calories in alcohol first, since they can’t be stored. Anything with the alcohol is stored as fat. If you’re past menopause and estrogen levels drop the excess weight from alcohol starts to form around the middle as belly fat. It’s all because of an enzyme called Aldh1a1.

Alcohol also slows the fat burning process.

If your body is burning the alcohol, it impairs how glucagon—the hormone that elevates blood glucose levels and breaks down fat. Since the body doesn’t recognize alcohol and considers it poison, the body puts the liver to work to get rid of it, it doesn’t perform other tasks and breaking down fat goes to the sideline. Your blood glucose levels drop and that can make you feel starved. Everything looks delicious and it stimulates your appetite. If you drink less, you’ll probably eat less at that meal.

  • Alcohol can cause insulin spikes which may cause insulin resistance, weight gain and even impede weight loss. While you can still drink alcohol and lose weight, it makes weight loss far harder to do.
  • Alcohol can reduce testosterone levels, which puts a block on building muscle tissue. It can lower metabolism by interfering with muscle gain. The interference with testosterone levels both directly and indirectly affect weight loss.
  • One study shows that people who had an alcoholic drink before a dinner or with a meal, compared to those who had a soft drink, ate far more than their counterparts.
  • Alcohol has two times the calories for each gram than protein and even more than most carbohydrates. It has 7 calories per gram compared to fat at 9 calories per gram, but fat is necessary for your body to function right, including for weight loss.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym


Saturated And Unsaturated Fat What's The Difference?

Saturated And Unsaturated Fat What’s The Difference?

Part of our program is educating you in all areas of fitness, including nutrition, so you can make the best possible decisions yourself. One of most often asked questions is whether all fats are unhealthy and the difference between types of fats, such as saturated and unsaturated fat. First, fat has a place in your diet. You need fat for many of your bodily functions, including weight loss. The unhealthy fats are trans fats, which are often found in baked goods or fried foods.

The key to knowing which fat is saturated and which is unsaturated is right before your eyes.

Check out the fat at room temperatures. Saturated fats are solid, but unsaturated fats are normally liquid. Fats are in four classes, saturated, unsaturated, monounsaturated and trans fats. As mentioned earlier, the trans fats are bad for you. The type of bonding with hydrogen makes a difference whether the fat is solid or liquid at room temperature.

There’s a myth about saturated fat being unhealthy.

If you consume the right amounts of saturated fat, it’s perfectly healthy. In fact, one study that was published in 2019 showed that decreasing the amount of saturated fat in your diet offered no health benefits. The reduction in saturated fat didn’t even reduce heart disease. So why is it so vilified? It’s all about one mega-study done in the 1960s that was paid for by the sugar industry. They bribed the three Harvard scientists that did the study with an extra $50,000 each, which is more like getting $470,000 today. They ask them to ignore the studies that pointed to sugar as the culprit and focus only on those that said saturated fat was the cause of heart disease.

You need saturated fat in your diet.

Each type of fat does something different. There are basically four types of saturated fat that are normally in diets, stearic found in foods with animal fat, lauric from foods like coconut oil, palmitic that’s in palm oil, dairy and animal products and myristic acid that’s in dairy and coconut oil. For instance, the body can’t build cell membranes without saturated fat. Cell membranes are 50% saturated fat. Myristic acid boosts the immune system and aids in fighting tumors. Lauric acid has antimicrobial properties. You need saturated fats to absorb fat soluble vitamins and saturated fats for healthy bones, proper growth and to prevent colon cancer and multiple sclerosis.

You also need unsaturated fat.

Unsaturated fat lowers inflammation and aids in preventing heart disease. There are basically two types of unsaturated fat, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. The polyunsaturated contain omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. They both play a role in heart health, building better skin, hair bone and reproductive health. Unsaturated fat is important for both the nervous system and metabolism. It increases the good cholesterol and reduces the bad cholesterol. Monounsaturated fat also helps control blood sugar levels.

  • You’ll get polyunsaturated fat when you eat salmon, Brazil nuts, walnuts, flaxseed, poppy seed and chia seeds. Monounsaturated fats are found in pecans, cashews, Brazil nuts, avocado and olive oil.
  • Fat free foods, foods where the fat is removed, are often unhealthier than the full fat originals. That’s because the fat is replaced with sugar to give it flavor.
  • You need about 20 to 35% of your caloric intake to come from fat. It should include 15 to 20% of caloric intake from monounsaturated fat, 5 to 10% from polyunsaturated, 10% from saturated and 0% from trans fats.
  • Coconut oil, butter and dairy from grass fed cows, yogurt and fish. Many of these foods also provide heart healthy benefits.

For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym