Posts Tagged ‘exercise to ease pain’
Eating for Smarter Brains
An insider’s guide to the most potent brain foods available at your local supermarket.
Learning and growing smarter and more aware isn’t always easy. It takes hard work, studying the latest findings of whatever piques your interest, and a third ingredient that makes the other two possible: food. But if you think all food is equal when it comes to powering up your gray matter, think again. If you’re feeding your belly the wrong foods, your brain may be paying the price.
How It Works
“Input, output, what goes in is what comes out.” The old children’s song holds many truths, including the fact that what foods go in your body affect what goes on in your brain and ultimately comes out of you. Just like your heart, your brain requires lots of oxygen to function properly. When oxygen-rich blood has a hard time getting to your brain for one reason or another, it becomes difficult to process information and remember events.
Other problems can also arise in the brain due to your diet. One is the build up of free radicals. Free radicals are damaged cells that roam free in your body and harm surrounding healthy cells. The best protection against excessive free radicals is eating plenty of antioxidants. If you don’t provide this protection, your brain can suffer as a result.
Brain Food No-Nos
As if they weren’t seen in a bad enough light, research has found trans-fats and saturated fats to have a bad effect on your ability to think. So avoiding foods high in these fats will help your heart stay healthy and your brain strong and ready to think for years to come. Other foods to avoid for a stronger brain include fast food of all kinds and anything that falls into the “junk food” category. In case you’re wondering, that includes greasy potato chips and just about anything you’ll see in the checkout aisle at the store.
On top of watching certain foods, you should avoid eating too much of anything – good or bad. By eating extra calories, the synapses in your brain that help you think can become less flexible, reducing your ability to learn at your maximum potential. It can also result in damage to damaged cells in your body, forming free radicals that have no regard for what cells it damages, whether they’re located in your arm or your brain.
Powered Up for Success
If you’re ready to beef up your brain, eating the right foods is essential. By including the proper foods in your diet, you enable yourself to learn better and enjoy better memory.
Foods that boost your brain’s potential include the following:
- salmon
- walnuts
- kiwi
- blueberries
- spinach
- orange juice
- strawberries
- other foods with omega-3 fatty acids, folic acid, and vitamin B
In addition to helping your brainpower today, researchers have found that eating the right foods can also help you ward off many frightening conditions, including dementia, schizophrenia, depression, and mood disorders. Don’t eat these foods, and you could actually be increasing your risk for these conditions and others. For the most effective brain-boosting diet, try eating smaller food portions at each meal, even if that means you have to consume more meals than the usual three a day.
Bad Breakfast Foods
A fattening, unhealthy look at some of the worst foods you can eat for breakfast.
Bacon!
Doughnuts
You knew it was coming, so may as well get it over with. Whether glazed, powdered, or cream-filled, doughnuts were made to be delicious ways to begin or interrupt your day. What they were not created for was to be a healthy way to get your day started right. Many companies have made it their mission to create the ultimate healthy doughnut, but every attempt has come off less tasty than the original. Instead of settling for something that tastes less than the best, leave doughnuts of all shapes, sizes, and health on the shelf.
Kids’ Cereals
You never want to grow up. You love your big-kid toys and your big-kid video games, and you’re still eating the same cereal you were when you were in elementary school. Unfortunately, those brightly colored, sugary sweet cereals have not become any healthier over the years. In fact, researchers from Yale University state that these kid-friendly cereals that are full of sugar and artificial flavors are usually less healthy than any cereals made for adults. So if your kids are eating the same colorful cereals as you, you’ll all need to change. Instead, look for something with four grams of fiber and less than four grams of sugar per serving.
Energy Bars
They’re crammed full of protein and go-get-em, and they fit in the palm of your hand. So what’s the problem? The problem is that alongside all that energy-boosting protein, there is also a lot of fat and calories. If you don’t spend adequate time each day to get rid of these extra fats and calories, your whole body is going to feel the extra pounds piling on. Instead of grabbing an energy bar for breakfast, only eat them right before or after an intense workout. That way you’re keeping your body fueled properly, but you’re also burning off most of the stuff you don’t want stuck to your hips.
Front Seat Foods
The mother of all bad breakfast foods is breakfast on the go. While fast-food breakfast is convenient and relatively inexpensive, it is also one of the worst ways to fill your stomach in the morning. Some of the most common options are sausage or chicken biscuits; biscuits and gravy; or bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits. Make any of these items at home and you’ll be on the border of unhealthy. Pick them up at a fast-food restaurant and you’re guaranteed a dose of artery-slowing, fat-producing food, served in a Styrofoam carton with a side of orange juice. And no, the 100% natural orange juice doesn’t magically turn gravy into a harmless or healthy substance.
Runners Up
Think your breakfast doesn’t need a face lift just because your favorite fattening breakfast treat snuck by without making the list? Think again. Here are a few other fattening breakfast foods to avoid.
- Sausage: Just as high in fat as it is in flavor, sausage can put a hurting on your good health.
- Pancakes: Whole-wheat pancakes aren’t too terribly unhealthy, but out-of-the-box pancakes doused in syrup is anything but healthy. In fact, anything doused in syrup is a bad idea. Paleo? don’t think so…
- Ham: For all the reasons to avoid bacon and sausage, keep your salivating mouth away from ham. Tastes great, more filling for your waistline.
Losing the Pregnancy Pounds
Don’t think it can be done? You’re about to be very surprised.
When you walk into the labor and delivery room, your belly is bulging. If the baby stays inside you one more day, you fear your stomach will simply explode. And when the contractions are over and your new little one has arrived, you look down and realize a shocking fact: your baby didn’t take all the extra weight from your body.
You can lose the weight!
Want to shave off 40 weeks of weight gain? Read on to get a few tried-and-true methods to get you back on the road to light.
Breastfeed. You may plan to have your baby feed on a bottle when you go back to work, but if you really want to see pounds fall by the wayside, nothing works as well as breastfeeding. Okay – so the jury is still out about whether breastfeeding will really get rid of those pregnancy pounds, but it’s definitely worth a try. Even if it doesn’t work, it won’t cause you to gain weight, and you’ll boost your newborn’s immunity and reduce your likelihood for breast cancer in the future in the process.
Eat. Before you got pregnant, you had to watch what you ate to maintain a healthy weight. Now that you’ve had baby, the same watchfulness is needed to lose pregnancy weight. If you’re breastfeeding your baby, do not cut back on your calorie intake. Regardless of whether you’re breastfeeding or using the bottle, don’t eat high-calorie or high-fat foods. Rather, go for anything stuffed with lots of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. Need more information on nutrition? Check out our Killeen Fitness Boot Camp Nutrition page.
Sleep. Though sleeping doesn’t sound like something that is going to help you shed pounds, not getting good sleep is a sure way to hang onto pregnancy pounds. According to research, insufficient sleep increases stress levels, which can in turn increase your weight. On top of the stress-induced weight gain, feeling sleepy also makes you less likely to feel like exercising – a major way you can help your body fend off the weight that doesn’t look quite as cute now that it isn’t accompanied by a pregnant belly.
Exercise. Though you don’t want to jump headfirst into an intense workout regiment immediately after giving birth, you should begin implementing exercise into your daily routine as soon as possible. During the first few days after giving birth, go for a short walk. If it hurts of you get tired, stop and take a rest. Giving birth is a traumatic event on your body, and it can take a while to recover. Allow your body to recover in its own time, but don’t stop trying to help it along. 6 weeks after baby comes, jump back into working out at the boot camp.
Exercise Some More. Even if you breastfeed, eat right, get nine hours of sleep each night, and take a walk around the block each day, you may still a few pounds that cling on for dear life. If this happens to you, you will need to increase the amount and intensity of your exercises. For fun ways to exercise, check into “Mommy and Me” exercise classes that allow you to spend time with your child and get fit at the same time. You may also want to make your way back into the gym as soon as possible for some weight training. To make sure your routine isn’t putting you at risk, talk with your physician before beginning anything strenuous.
It Takes Time, Baby!
Though you may want to shed those pregnancy pounds the day after delivering your new bundle, you’re going to have to wait. You may even have to wait until next summer to wear that adorable new swimsuit you picked up with intentions of showing off your sleek abs weeks after giving birth.
In most cases, it only takes a couple of months to work off the pounds that baby brought on. However, research has shown that if you don’t lose the extra weight within six months, you may be stuck with it for the rest of your life. With that in mind, it becomes a little bit easier to get off the couch and hit the gym between breastfeeding sessions.
Ready now? Call Jim at Killeen Fitness 254-247-4999 to schedule a free workout and body composition assessment!
New: More Boot Camp Hours Coming In July!!!
Our classes are maxing out! We are adding TWO MORE time slots for you!!! Starting July 1, 2010:
Early AM M-W-F
Noon M-W-F
…You must preregister for these slots, we only have space for 10 folks per class.
If you are an existing athlete and want one of these, contact Jim for details.
Don’t delay or you’ll lose out!
New Athletes!
Welcome our new athletes!
Alisa Kirkland
Sara Bracamonte
2 New Boot Camp Athletes!
Welcome the following folks to our athletic family!
Kristi Everett
Primrose Ferere
Is Your Back Straight?
From Mark’s Daily Apple: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-importance-of-thoracic-spine-mobility/
Here is a great article on Spine mobility! We harp on this every workout. Now you can read more about it.
Another Healthy Recipe From Primal Mama!
Primal Mama's Fajitas
Welcome New Boot Camp Athletes!
We want to welcome the following new athletes!
Necole Rivers
Heather Delwisch
New Boot Camp Athletes In Killeen’s Best Fitness Boot Camp!
We would like to welcome new athletes into our boot camp family!
Leslie Inman
Amanda Hall
Lisa Sweeny
