Healthy Eating - Diet doesn't have to be a four letter word

Healthy Snacks and Meals

Sometimes it's tough to figure out what to eat. Like, I am standing in front of the fridge and staring at the same things and just can't even start to form a plan of attack.

Planning snacks as well as meals is important when you are trying to eat healthy. If you pick up chips at the store expect that you are going to have some; don't try to fool yourself into the "these are jsut for the kids" line. Why would you want your children to eat them anyway? Healthy eating habits have to start young. So what do you do?

I start with the basics. Eat your way through the produce department. There are lots of strange looking things in there that you have probably never trid. I'm in the same place. There are still things that I just look at, pick up, smell and put back. What are we missing out on? Talk to the produce people, preferably the manager. She can tell you how to prepare, what you have to do, what it compares to. Spagetti squash is much different than regular squash. Granny Smith apples are a completely different taste than golden delicious.

Moving on to more complicated (although still simple choices, I really like fruit in cottage cheese. Simple and pretty well balanced. I buy frozen fruit and that makes it even easier. No chopping or slicing that way. Fresh is better, but in the morning I am usually pretty pressed for time (even though I get up way too early)

If you want a slight change on that one, adding yogurt instead of fruit gives your meal a whole different taste. Deb went into her apple pie recipe, so you can check that out as well. Oatmeal thrown into the mix gives you lots more combinations. If you have a favorite recipe, drop us a line or make a comment. the more healthy options we have, the less likely we are to get off track.

Another time I will get into another line of thought on this, which is meal replacement shakes. After years of trying different brands and adding a plethora of ingredients, we have some killer tasting shakes; you;d hardly know they were healthy.

Until next time…

Aerobic Exercise and Heart Health

I have talked before about burning calories is accomplished through the movement of mass over a given distance, and that means that running or walking two miles gives you the same caloric burn. That is just physics talking, and research has shown it to be true.

However that does not take into account the benefits of higher heart rate that will come with jogging, running or any other activity that raises your beats per minute. Aerobic exercise has been proven to reduce your standing heart rate and that is a good thing. Consistent aerobic exercise has also been proven to have a positive impact on blood pressure. Some folks have actually reduced or eliminated the need for blood pressure medication through exercise and proper nutrition. Proper nutrition for pretty much everybody includes taking vitamin and mineral supplements.

Although there still are many people who won't admit that supplements help your body's overall health, even the American Medical Association has finally come on board. According to an article written in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2002, "people who get enough vitamins may be able to prevent such common chronic illnesses as cancer, heart disease and osteoporosis."

20 years prior to that, they were still of the opinion that people could get all the nutrition they needed from eating healthy. With the depletion of our soils, this is no longer the case. The soils in this country, aided by artificial means, are growing beautiful looking plants, but the plants no longer contain the nutrition they once did. With the depletion of the micronutrients in the soil, there isn't much for the roots to draw up into the plants we eat. Some people think that they can bypass that by eating organic foods, but most of the farms that are growing organic, still have not been able to replenish the soil to the degree it had 50 years ago.

I have said in other articles, and I stand by this firmly, that unless you supplement your diet with quality nutritional supplements, your body cannot function to its highest levels. Quality supplements have both the quantity of ingredients you need, and those ingredients are obsorbed by your body in the digestive processes. Unfortunately many multivitamins don't meet those requirements. I urge you to do research on what you are taking, and don't take the manufacturer's word as gold. Anything you are taking should be independently verified as both containing the ingredients listed on the label and that those ingredients are bio-available.

Cardio

Did about 22 minutes of cardio this morning. This is the fifth day of the early rise gym routine. I have a lot of background with running starting with cross country in high school (about a million years ago) Part of running back then was beating back the dinosaurs with our clubs. It was more like today's biathalon instead of running and shooting, we were running and clubbing. Ok, diverted a bit there. It's my comedic nature...

anyway, I was recently training to run a marathon, when I twisted my ankle wicked bad. I was taking out the trash, so the injury was unrelated to the grueling running schedule, but since I was going back to a full time job, I decided not to get back into that time consuming cycle. A little divergent there, as well, but background helps.
My point is that I was asked how someone could increase their speed in their running routine. I suggested interval training, which is what I am doing now.

This is easier to keep track of on a treadmill. Every third minute, boost your speed up a few notches above your normal pace. When that minute is complete, drop the speed back down. Repeat through your run.
After doing that for a half dozen runs, switch it up. This means that the faster pace is kept for two out of every three minutes. After another half dozen runs you should be able to have the entire run at the new faster pace.

I am not talking about jumping a significant amount. If your normal pace is 5 mph, the increased pace might be 5.2 mph. If you keep the interval training going, after a few months the pace should be up to maybe 5.5 or 5.6 mph. Do only what you feel comfortable with, and always consult your doctor before starting any exercise program.

On another note, I have now lost 5 pounds since starting at the gym 11 days ago. This is a combination of eating better (not eating great, but better - more whole foods) and the exercise. Next week I am going to start the Reset program. The average weight loss on that five day program is 6 pounds. We'll see what kind of numbers I can put up.

Pursuit of Happyness

I recently watched an older Will Smith movie, Pursuit of Happyness, where his character lost mostly everything, but kept taking steps to reach his goals. It really has many life lessons built into it, yet stays entertaining and engrossing. (at least to me it did)

It reminded me that we all have goals and obstacles that we need to overcome to achieve those goals. How large are your goals? What do you hope to accomplish and what do you need to do to get there?

I've talked a few times about having specific steps to reach goals, but the thing is that in the middle of everything, life comes along and throws a wrench into the gears ( or a spanner into the works, for my English readers) then what you do defines you.

Do you shrug your shoulders and say, "Oh, well..." or do you grit your teeth and build a bridge over the barrier?

I have friends in the network marketing business who have taken years to build their business to a level where it supports great lifestyles, and I have some friends who took literally a couple months to get to the same level. What do they have in common? They didn't quit, they had a plan and they stuck to it. Fighting the good fight until you win.

I have to occasionally tell myself not to get discouraged and to know there are curveballs that get thrown at me. As long as I keep going, life gets better. Joining a business, you have to know that with mentors and a plan, with vision and tenacity, with hard work and persistence, you can be where you want to be. The pursuit of happiness will turn into living a life of fullness and happiness.

Vision and Action

How do you see yourself in ten years? Not a rhetorical question. Unless you can picture yourself in ten years and visualize the steps it will take to get there, how are you going to get there?

I truly believe the best way to attain goals is to believe that you have already attained them. What does that mean? It means holding a vision in your head and heart. It means having the feeling of accomplishment even before you start physically doing the things that will make it a reality. Create that new life, that new car, that new ________. Create it in your mind and it will come to be.

Lots of people have seen The Secret and Pass it On and movies of that nature and Create their vision and then are dissapointed that it doesn’t come to pass, but nothing happens unless you take action. Take for example the mastermind group (leadership team) that Deb and I are a part of. Deb and I had to work to become part of that team and we have to continue to work to retain our position on that team. That involved a detailed business plan.

That plan included a vision statement that had to be detailed and specific about where we are in the future. Not where we want to be in the future, but where we are in the future. All details present tense. It also included steps we have taken to get there and details of those steps. Blogging is one of my details; it keeps my path defined and is the stepping stones on that path.

Vision and Action - two huge parts of success.

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21 days

It takes 21 days to make or break a habit. Think about that for a minute. This could be going to the gym, quitting smoking, eating breakfast, quitting drinking, or whatever else you can think of.

When I quit smoking, it was cold turkey. (why is that so appropriate this time of year? I wish I had some cold turkey to make a sandwich)Back to the quitting smoking, the physical cravings are supposed to be gone in 5 to 10 days, but the mental ones are done at 21. Not that the feeling of something missing isn't there occasionally, but the mental 'habit' is gone.

What would you like to start or stop? For me, it's getting up early to go to the gym. Today was day 1 of that. I got on the scale the other day, and I weighed 202. Not good. When I was training to run the marathon (October 2007) I weighed in at 175. That was a lot of miles, but I have sworn to keep it under 200 ever since I was at around 220. Time to get it done. video version

Self Esteem = Success

No matter what anyone tells us, we most believe the things we tell ourselves. I am not talking about talking out loud, of course, but of the self-talk that we all have going on inside our heads all the time. How many times have you talked yourself out of something before you take the first step? Sometimes this really serves us, and sometimes it prevents us from achieving our goals.

Do you wonder why you don’t succeed when you see other people that seem less likely to succeed do better than you do? It’s not that you wish them to fail; you just wonder why they didn’t. Do you blame other people for your failure? Do you think they had a teacher that made the difference, and you missed out on that information? That may be the case, but the greatest teachers in the world do not make so much of an impact if the student is not ready for the lessons.

To be better prepared for the lesson, you need to be comfortable with yourself. Many people are putting on a front; showing their ‘best face,’ when all along their best face is their true self. Why do they do that? In most cases it is because we are uncomfortable with ourselves. You are more amazing and wonderful than you realize. No one else on the planet has had the experiences you have had, or can do all the things that you are capable of, yet when someone compliments you on a job well done, do you brush off the compliment? Have you ever said, “oh, that’s nothing” when you get a compliment? That is an insult to the person who gave it to you. You are telling them that they don’t know what they are talking about.

Perhaps it is you who doesn’t know. It is self-esteem raising its’ head. Think back on your life. You have had some amazing successes in your life, yet you may not like to acknowledge them. Maybe you have been ‘on your own’ since you graduated high school. Maybe you didn’t graduate, but are still making it in the world. Perhaps your successes are bigger or smaller than those. Think about your past and admit to yourself that you are special. There are people around you who are so grateful to have you in their lives, whether they say so or not. Maybe they have said so in the past, but you didn’t know how to handle that, or maybe you said thank you when you got the compliment.

The successes you have had, when added together and spoken aloud can greatly increase you self-confidence. Whether you think the world of yourself and go proudly about your business, or if you are a wall flower at a gathering, you can use a boost to your self-esteem and self-confidence.
Free tool to Build Self Confidence
Free tool to Build Self Confidence

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