Walk past any health food shop, open any magazine or have a click around the internet and you'll see that there are a vast number of supplements, teas and more all guaranteed to help you lose weight. As a personal trainer and someone with a keen insight into nutritional matters the majority of these supplements and what not have little effect, other than perhaps the placebo effect which helps you "stick" to your healthy diet and rev up your activity levels.
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Nutrition
Back in the 1970's a rather damning (and somewhat flawed as it turns out) report coming out of the MIT gave nitrates and nitrites a bad name. These two compounds natural occur in the human body and largely in vegetables. In a knee-jerk reaction to this report the FDA of the day cut the allowable levels of nitrates and nitrites allowed In food products. This especially had a knock-on effect on the reputation of cured meats.
Fats are the work of the devil, they should be shunned, avoided, banned from your diet... or not. While the old thinking suggests that all fats are bad, particularly for anyone engaged in an athletic routine personal trainers like myself, alongside labs full of researchers will tell you that not all fats are created equal and that people do indeed use them to boost their athletic performance.
Across the internet, magazines and fitness blogs you will hear people telling you that coffee is bad, or at least that coffee is bad if you have too much of it. There's that pesky caffeine, which at higher levels may, rather than give you the edge that you need be something that leaves you jittery. And those are the good points apparently. Realistically a few cups of your favourite coffee is not necessarily a bad thing at all, and a little of what you fancy most definitely does you good.
Nutritionists, health and fitness experts and many more interested parties have long-since debated whether cutting down or eliminating meat from our diets is the best choice for our short and long term health. As it turns out there are pros and cons to both plant-based diets and meat including ones. One of the main problems with the modern diet is the reliance on too many refined carbs, processed foods, artificial ingredients and a lack of adequate fruit and vegetable portions.
The chances are that you've heard the phrase "eight glasses a day" more times than you can actually remember. In actual fact, while it is good to have a goal of some sort to stick to research suggests that this standard amount might not be "right". If not eight glasses though, how much should you be drinking?
Move over lotions and potions, the best way to slow down and manage the natural process of aging is to look to your diet and how you choose to live your life. Overall a well-balanced diet, decent activity levels, cleaner eating and similar are what you need to be looking at, alongside adding these foods into your diet for maximum anti-aging power. Packed with nutrients and proven to keep you younger for longer from the inside out why wouldn't you enjoy them?
There are many reasons to adopt and enjoy a low carb (read as low carb NOT no carb) diet. What some are concerned about however is that with the proven popularity of the low carb diet has arrived a high protein diet to "compensate" for the loss of the energy carbohydrates offer. Could too much protein be bad for your health?
There are so many different benefits to so many different foods, vitamins, minerals and so on. Did you know that some are directly responsible for protecting and even improving your eyesight? Don't take your eyesight health for granted as once it starts to fail it can be a slippery slop and decreased vision is no joke. While this may occur naturally as part of the aging process when you can strengthen your eyesight and prevent decline there's no reason not to. It's all in the nutrients!
Nuts have featured heavily in many diets as the years have gone on, offering a quick energy boost and being hailed as a significantly healthier snack than some alternatives. This is fine however a snack portion and really going at the nuts are two different things. Have you ever, after a nut binge, found that your digestive system seems to be sluggish (at best), and that perhaps your stomach seems upset with you?
If you try and remember back to your science lessons at school you may remember fun experiments featuring magnesium however you probably won't have been told that magnesium is actually an incredibly important dietary mineral in terms of your health and well being. Not only is magnesium of critical importance, a damning report has revealed that as many as 80% of the Americans surveyed have some level of magnesium deficiency.
There are a number of trendy superfood and diet trick articles that pop up regularly which tell us what miracle item we should be using to boost our health and our weight loss. Largely these superfoods have been around and in use for many years however have only recently become popular in the media. Resveratrol is one of these little known superfoods.
Believe it or not herbs and spices can have a positive affect on your health and weight loss as well as make your food taste great. Not sure? Read on and discover how these ten ingredients could help you.
The world of health, nutrition and fitness is constantly evolving in order to keep up with the scientific breakthroughs those in the know achieve with regards how our bodies work. Every now and then researchers come up with new, interesting and current ways in which we can alter our regimes to make our bodies work harder for us, helping us reach our health and fitness goals.
Once upon a time we ate our food straight from the ground or the farm, drank water or milk and enjoyed a relatively chemical-free existence. Nowadays many foods and ingredients are chemically altered in order to make them last longer or taste better. Some of these additives as they are known are harmful and at the very least should be consumed sparingly if at all.
When it comes to diets most people who know a little about losing weight understand that a low carb diet can be a "good" diet. The problem is that a low carb diet is more involved than you'd think. This is not a diet plan that encourages you to simply drop carb consumption as there is a fine art to it. If you choose a low carb approach it is important to do it properly in order to see and feel real results.
Targeted exercises known as ab exercise are not going to help you reduce orget rid of stomach fat. If your current training regime includes these exercises with this goal in mind you need to think again. Examples of these types of moves include side crunches, crunches, weighted sits up and similar exercises which include higher impact examples ofyou having to twist or bend.
Every now and then there is a new and trendy product that hits the health and nutrition market that becomes the must-eat or must-drink product. This is the product that you see on all of the adverts, in all of the shop windows and all of the health magazines. Fast forward a few months and there is a brand new must-have product that is bigger, better and promises more than the last.
Ayurveda medicine is the Hindu traditional medicine system that is much respected on a global level. While many would consider Ayurveda an alternative medicine method more recent scientific studies have backed up many of the findings that practitioners advocate. One common kitchen ingredient that features highly on the Ayurveda hit list of go-to remedies is ginger. This earthy spice has been used for many years in many different ways with a great number of reports backing up claims that ginger does indeed help with health and well-being.
A "new" superfood? The foodie fad of the month? No, Kale is much more than the recent popular health food as for years many have ben enjoying its many benefits. While not actually a magic ingredient or a time machine Kale possess a number of anti-aging properties. As we know you are what you eat and so choosing the right foods will make you feel better and even look younger / healthier.