Is Sugar that bad?
So we know sugar causes obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, bad skin, and dental decay. But it gets worse…. Refined sugar also helps pathogenic bacteria grow exponentially in the human body and will literally poison you over time. The thriving bacteria do this by releasing free radicals into your bloodstream. These free radicals can eat away at veins, artery walls, your heart, your joints, your liver, your pancreas and even your intestines and mouth. So basically, the more sugar you eat the faster your entire body breaks down. Between that and the fact that it’s the fastest way to lose weight, is that soda or candy bar really worth it?
Finally reach your goals!
Almost everyone out there has a long term weight loss goal… normally something like “My goal is to lose 20 pounds.”
That’s a great place to start, but now you need to set some short term goals that will help you reach your long term goal.
First, decide on how many pounds you want to lose each week. I would say one pound per week is a great place to start.
Now you need to set down how you are going to lose that pound per week.
Some examples: not eating after dinner, exercising for 30 minutes every other day, eating only fruit for snacks or even just drinking more water throughout the day.
The key is to make realistic goals that you can stick with! Start with some smaller goals and once you start losing weight that will motivate you to challenge yourself with more goals.
Small changes make a big difference so start thinking about what you can easily change in your lifestyle… and don’t keep putting it off… just do it 
Easy Diet Tricks to Jump Start Weight Loss
We all know that losing weight is one of the hardest things to do. One reason is because people focus more on what they are eating than how they are eating. Although choosing healthier foods is the best way to lose weight and live a healthier life there are also some small tricks you can do to start shedding a few pounds before you are ready to give up those not so healthy snacks:
1.) Everything in moderation! If you eat something with lots of calories, fat and sugars only eat a few bites just to fulfill that craving. If you lack the self control than buy those 100 calorie snack packs (although they aren’t the most substantial calories you’ll be much better off than eating an entire bag of chocolate or potato chips!)
2.) Eat small meals throughout the day. This makes it easier for your body to burn off those calories instead of storing them as fat. This means that you’ll eat throughout the day–the goal is to never be hungry and never be full–you always want to be satisfied.
3.) Eat a low sugar breakfast (and preferably low sugar all day.) Breakfast will jump start your metabolism early in the day and keep blood sugar levels low throughout the day. This will help you avoid the feeling of hunger when you crash from your sugar high
4.) Try to eat slowly. It always takes a bit to realize how full you are.
5.) Have dinner be your smallest meal. If you are sedentary after dinner that means your metabolism is too. This means that you are much more likely to store your dinner as fat. If a big dinner is unavoidable, then just make sure you are active afterwards. This doesn’t mean you have to go on a run, just do the dishes, take your dog on a walk, anything to keep your metabolism going for as long as possible.
6.) What you eat should depend on your activity level afterwards. If you are being more active than you are allowed to eat carbohydrates (meaning whole wheat, fruit, vegetables, etc.) but if you are going to be more sedentary than eat more protein (chicken, fish, lowfat dairy).
7.) Drink lots of water throughout the day. This will fill you up and keep your metabolism going all day.
8.) DON’T STARVE YOURSELF!!! This will just stop your metabolism which defeats the whole purpose…
9.) Find out what your metabolism is! It helps if you know how many calories you should be eating each day… everyone’s metabolism is different there is no magic number of calories for weight loss…
And let us know if we can help!
Increase your metabolism fast!
As our meal sizes get larger, more people have started to wonder if they have thyroid issues. Now there are plenty of people out there with an underactive thyroid and it certainly doesn’t hurt to get it checked. Unfortunately however, our bodies just don’t need that many calories a day to maintain weight. In fact the average woman only needs around 1200-1400 calories a day to maintain not even lose weight! Here are a few tricks to bump up your metabolism:
Pack on some muscle—muscle mass requires at least 5 times more calories per day than fat so for your metabolism’s sake pick up some heavy dumbbells!
Burn a couple hundred extra calories by throwing high intensity cardio intervals into your workout—these intervals take longer for your body to recover from so you’ll be burning calories even hours after your workout!
Get some sleep! The rate of calories your body burns at rest represents 60-75% of your daily calorie burning—don’t skip out on the easiest way to burn calories!!
Eat every two or three hours—If you eat frequently your body can use up the calories and not store it for fat—the key is you never want to be hungry, you never want to be full
Eat lots of fiber, fruits and vegetables—each is low in calories, high in nutrients and bumps up your metabolism
Drink as much water as possible—this will bump up your metabolism and fill you up—remember the human body is 60% water so one cup of water before just isn’t going to cut it!
How much exercise are your kids getting?
Do you remember the days where you came home from school and spent the rest of the day biking, rollerblading and chasing after your friends? These days kids sit for 7-8 hours in school only to go home and sit in front of the television playing video games. Physical Education in schools is basically non-existent at this point. Sports are getting so competitive that you basically have to be the best just to get any playing time.
These are just a few reasons why are youngest generation is now called Generation O[besity]. Since 1971 the amount of overweight kids under the age of eleven have quadrupled. The sad thing is that there’s a 70-80% chance that an obese child will turn into an obese adult.
So what’s the solution? Teach your kids good habits now, if a person goes their entire life without working out what’s the chance of them getting in shape when their life truly depends on it?
Because of our rising obesity epidemic, I am excited to announce that this the Hit Center will be having a “General Fitness Kid’s Camp” which starts June 1st. This camp will be 3 days/week for two hours at a time (12-2 PM). The camp will be geared to having fun while getting a great workout. My goal is to get kids to love working out because that’s really their only chance of sticking with it later in life.
The camp will be open to any child interested, we can accomodate all ages and fitness levels. If you or your child is interested, contact me at (480) 981-0600. I’m really looking forward to helping kids realize just how cool living a healthy lifestyle is
Fun Workouts!
Women must exercise one hour every day
A study done by the American Medical Association states that middle-aged women must exercise one hour every day to not lose weight, but to just minimize weight gain. Don’t sweat ladies, because in this study these participants certainly didn’t These participants engaged in light to moderate exercise which is indeed much more time consuming and not nearly as effective. If you don’t want to be stuck working out for 7 hours a week that’s ok, just crank up the intensity of your workouts. Instead have a hard cardio and resistance training workout just 3 or 4 days a week and I guarantee you can actually lose weight. You just can’t be scared to sweat
Calcium for Weight Loss
According to a study published by the British Journal of Nutrition, boosting calcium consumption spurs weight loss in people if they are calcium deficient. The researchers theory behind this is that the brain can detect their lack of calcium and seeks to compensate by spurring food intake.
This same research team also discovered in an earlier study that women who consumed diets low in calcium had more body fat, bigger waistlines and higher cholesterol levels than those who consumed the recommended amount of calcium each day. If that’s not a reason to drink milk I don’t know what is…. just remember if you’re looking for weight loss pick up the SKIM milk!
Celebrity Diet Tricks
1.) Eat Breakfast–It ramps up your metabolism and prevents overeating for the rest of the day.
2.) Cut out white foods–These foods are high in sugar so your body burns this off instead of fat
3.) Focus on watery veggies and fruit like lettuce, celery, cucumber, melons, oranges and grapes–banishes bloating by flushing out your system
4.) Eat Spicy–A Canadian study found that people who consumed hot red pepper ate less food and burned more calories (pepper increased their metabolism)
5.) Snack–Eat 150 calorie snacks every three hours, don’t let your blood sugar drop or you will overeat
6.) Count Backwards 3,2,1– Eat three meals, two snacks and drink a minimum of 1 liter of water per day. This trick will keep your metabolism up and avoid feeling hungry throughout each day.
Born to Run
Adults in our society today sit at a desk for eight hours at a time, just to go home and sit in front of the television for another two to three hours. So on your way home from work today, maybe think, “What are the repurcussions to my sitting all day?”
If you ever need motivation to get up and move I highly recommend ‘Born to Run’ by Christopher McDougall.
Excerpt: ‘Born to Run’
“The human body is not designed for that kind of abuse [running],” Dr. Torg replied.
But why? Antelope don’t get shin splints. Wolves don’t ice-pack their knees. I doubt that 80% of all wild mustangs are annually disabled with impact injuries. It reminded me of a proverb attributed to Roger Bannister, who, while simultaneously studying medicine, working as a clinical researcher and minting pithy parables, became the first man to break the 4-minute mile: “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up,” Bannister said. “It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle — when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
So why should every other mammal on the planet be able to depend on its legs except us? Come to think of it, how could a guy like Bannister charge out of the lab every day, pound around a hard cinder track in thin leather slippers, and not only get faster, but never get hurt? How come some of us can be out there running all lion-like and Bannister-ish every morning when the sun comes up, while the rest of us need a fistful of Ibuprofen before we can put our feet on the floor?
But maybe there was a path back in time, a way to flip the internal switch that changes us all back into the Natural Born Runners we once were. Not just in history, but in our own lifetimes. Remember? Back when you were a kid and you had to be yelled at to slow down? Every game you played, you played at top-speed, sprinting like crazy as you kicked cans, freed-all and attacked jungle outposts in your neighbors’ backyards. Half the fun of doing anything was doing it at record pace, making it probably the last time in your life you’d ever be hassled for going too fast.
That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they’d never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind’s first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle — behold, the Running Man.
Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn’t live to love anything else. And like everything else we love — everything we sentimentally call our “passions” and “desires” — it’s really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run.
