Creating Health and Happiness

womenshealthmag:

8 New Superfoods!

Eating healthfully just got a lot more interesting. Introducing eight fresh cancer-fighting, age-defying, energy-boosting ingredients to add to your plate now.

Learn why they’re awesome and how to incorporate them into your diet:

1. Kefir

2. Jicama

3. Chia

4. Sprouts

5. Black Garlic

6. Kelp

7. Nutritional Yeast

8. Barley

(via healthylivingforyou)

muffintop-less:

“I’ve tried eating right and working out, but I’m not losing weight! What am I doing wrong? Please help!”

It’s basically impossible for me to determine what is off in regard to your diet and exercise because I cannot SEE what you’re doing. Do your own evaluation… Here is my checklist… =)

1) Are you eating below your caloric maintenance? Find out how many calories you need to maintain your current weight, and lower that by 300-500 calories. This is a caloric deficit. Do not go below 1200 calories, there is no need to starve to lose weight. Logging your food intake in a journal or phone app is a good way to keep track. If you have been eating super low calorie for a long period of time, your metabolism might have adjusted to that. Cycling carbs/calories is a good way to overcome this.

2) Are you exercising intensely enough? 100 jumping jacks or 15 minutes of jogging does not make much of an impact on your daily calorie expenditure. You don’t need to spend hours in the gym to get a good workout. Lift heavy weights and incorporate HIIT cardio into your exercise routine if you have not already. Both can be done effectively in a short period of time.

3) Are you eating the right portion sizes? It’s extremely easy to go overboard on portion sizes without realizing it. Until you get good at eyeballing it, measure your portions (especially with healthy fats). You can use measuring cups & spoons, and a food scale (can be purchased at Wal Mart or other inexpensive store with cook-ware).

4) Are you truly choosing wholesome, healthy foods? Be honest with yourself.. were those “healthy whole wheat crackers” really what you should have been snacking on, or would some fruit or veggies been a better choice? Avoid packaged, processed foods like crackers, chips, cookies, and candy. Choose wild/organic lean proteins, fruit, vegetables, and healthy fats like nuts, olive oil, avocado and natural nut butters.

5) Are you frequently using condiments and other adders? Ketchup, mayo, half and half, milk, salad dressing, marinades, sugar and other things people add to food add up FAST. The calories in these things are just as fattening as calories from regular foods.

6) Are you consuming a lot of sugar? Sugar is terrible for weight loss. While consuming simple carbs & sugar post-workout is a good idea, consuming sugar and simple carbs any other time of the day is a “no-no” when it comes to losing weight. Sugar spikes insulin which promotes fat storage and basically shuts off fat-burning processes. Read labels and choose foods low in sugar. 

yogi-health:

Debunking the Milk Myth: Why Milk is Bad for You and Your Bones -

Excerpts from article linked above. Click the link or photo to read the full (interesting and informative) article. Also, I thought that photo was funny so I used it.

• Milk Depletes the calcium from your bones. Not only do we barely absorb the calcium from cow’s milk (especially pasteurized), but it also increases calcium loss from the bones.
• Cows milk is custom-designed for calves. Thanks to our creative ingenuity and perhaps related to our ancient survival needs, we adopted the dubious habit of drinking another species’ milk. Unlike humans, once calves are weaned, they never drink milk again. Each mammalian has it’s own “designer” milk, and cows’ milk is no exception.
  Cow’s milk contains on average three times the amount of protein than human milk which creates metabolic disturbances in humans that have detrimental bone health consequences.
• Scientific studies show that milk increases fracture risk.  Many scientific studies contradict the conventional wisdom that milk and dairy consumption help reduce osteoporotic fractures. Surprisingly, studies demonstrating that milk and dairy products actually fail to protect bones from fractures outnumber studies that prove otherwise.
  The 12 year long Harvard Nurses’ Health Study found that those who consumed the most calcium from dairy foods broke more bones than those who rarely drank milk. This is a broad study based on 77,761 women aged 34 through 59 years of age.
• Shocking statistics ignored by mainstream medicine. Amy Lanou Ph.D., nutrition director for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, D.C., states that: “The countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis are the ones where people drink the most milk and have the most calcium in their diets. The connection between calcium consumption and bone health is actually very weak, and the connection between dairy consumption and bone health is almost nonexistent.”
• Milk is an acidifying animal protein. Like any other animal derived protein-rich food, milk has a positive potential renal acid load (PRAL) which triggers a protective biological reaction to neutralize all the damaging acidic protein before it reaches the kidneys.
  The body is designed for survival, so it sacrifices bone density to protect the kidneys and urinary tract because the latter are essential to survival. And the most readily available source of acid neutralizer is in the bones. So even though milk contains calcium, it ends up sapping your bones of that crucial mineral.
• Today’s milk is a processed food. Until the end of the 19th century in Europe and the beginning of the 20th century in the US, milk was consumed unpasteurized or raw. Later on, homogenization became the industry’s standard. These processes further alter milk’s chemistry and actually increase its detrimental acidifying effects.
  Nowadays, milking cows are given antibiotics and most are also injected with a genetically engineered form of bovine growth hormone (rBGH). A man-made or synthetic hormone used to artificially increase milk production, rBGH also increases blood levels of the insulin-growth factor 1 (IGF-1) in those who drink it. And higher levels of IGF-1 are linked to several cancers.

muffintop-less:

You have to workout your willpower as if it was a muscle. Train yourself to stop eating when you are full.

While I understand there are certain circumstances that can make this extremely difficult (such as eating disorders), it is important to at least put forth the effort. If you have a choice between a bowl of M&M’s and a tray of veggies… either reach for the veggies or walk away. If you are able to do this enough times, it will become a habit. You will have trained yourself to think before you act and to control the cravings. That is not to say on occasion you can’t have those M&M’s….. but let those times, be the times where you are in control of your emotions…. do not let your mood determine what you eat, let your own conscious decision making do that.

(via lilblonderunnergirl)

discoveringnay:

*From the Publix Supermarket Pamphlet :)

muffintop-less:

“It may seem counterintuitive, but eating more fat can help you shed bodyfat. Researchers found that when subjects boosted their fat intake to about 50 percent of their daily calorie intake while reducing carbs to around 30 percent, they burned more fat during workouts than when on their normal diets. Apparently, eating fat makes your muscles more efficient at extracting oxygen from your bloodstream. More oxygen facilitates better conversion of fat to energy, and your muscles turn into fat-burning turbines. So if you go lower carb, increase your intake of good fats, like those in nuts, fish and avocados, you’ll get leaner faster. Incidentally, that finding may be why researchers in another study found that taking conjugated linoleic acid—a good fat—prior to workouts burns more fat and builds more muscle. Try about five grams.” - Becky Holman

Opt for NATURAL nut butters. The ingredients should just read “peanuts” or “almonds” and there should be oil sitting on the top.

Almond and peanut butter are staples of my diet, yumm.

(via fitsparrow)

goawaytummy:

Green Smoothie - 1 cup baby spinach, 1 cup kale, 1 pear, 1 ½ cup of orange juice, and 1 frozen banana.

Chocolate Peanut Butter – 2 TBL unsweetened cocoa powder, 2 TBL peanut butter, ½ banana, 1 cup almond milk, ice. 320 calories total.

Mango Ginger — 2 cups frozen Mango, 1 cup frozen raspberries, 1 banana, ¼ cup chopped ginger, squeeze of lime, yogurt.

Strawberry Date — 1 date, 1 ½ cup frozen strawberries, 1 cup almond milk. Optional: 1 scoop protein powder or 1 TBL of flaxseed oil.

(via phitness)

(via phitness)

gettingto125lbs:

inspirefitness:

Breakfast Green Smoothie

1 banana
1/2 cup frozen mango
1/2 cup greek yogurt
1/2 cup vanilla almond milk
1 cup spinach
1 tbsp honey 

LMFAO, for a second I thought this said “1/2 cup frozen mayo”.

I was like “huh?!?! ewwwww.”

(via tired-of-excuses)

this is scary :l