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Posts Tagged ‘healthy eating habits’

Welcome our newest Athletes!

Elizabeth Marshall

Alison Cruz

Welcome Yarixya Rivera and Diana Rivera

Looking for a cool salad to fill you up this summer? Here’s a delicious recipe from my partners over at Prograde Nutrition for you.

Roasted Red Pepper Chicken and Avocado Salad
1 medium ripe avocado, peeled, pitted and sliced

1 tsp.  lemon juice

1 bag (10 oz.) torn romaine lettuce (about 10 cups)

2 cups  shredded cooked chicken

1 medium tomato, cut into wedges

1 small  cucumber, sliced

1/4 of a medium Vidalia or Walla Walla onion, chopped

½ cup Red Pepper

1/2 cup  Light or Fat-free Italian Dressing

¼ cup Parmesan Cheese

Directions:
Toss avocados with lemon juice in large salad bowl.

Add lettuce, chicken, tomatoes, cucumbers and onions; mix lightly.

Add dressing; toss to coat.

Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

Serve immediately.

Hey, if you like that one they’ve got 196 more! Seriously, Prograde has a really cool 197 Healthy and Delicious Fat Burning Recipes ebook for just $4.95!

Check it out here: http://jimmahan.getprograde.com/prograderecipebook.html

I’m just saying…Fit Test results from last week.

Total increased push ups: 23

Total increased sit ups: 43

Total increased squats: 47

Total weight lost: 22.8 pounds

Total inches lost in waist, 19

Total inches lost in hip: 12

Way to go Boot Camp Athletes, You are awesome! Want results like this? Join Killeen’s Best Fitness Boot Camp today! Call Jim at 254-247-3668 for a free class and body composition assessment.

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.

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.

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.

Is your diet lending your heart a helping hand or kicking it to the curb?

When it comes to body parts your body can’t do without, the heart is king. But if you’re like many people, you may be treating your beloved heart like an ignored servant. How can you make sure your heart receives a kingly welcome? By eating right.

The Basics

First, it’s a good idea to know what heart-healthy eating actually is. Contrary to popular belief, a diet that is heart healthy isn’t going to keep you from eating anything with flavor. You’re not going to be miserable while on a heart-healthy diet. Actually, you shouldn’t go on a heart-healthy diet – at least not one that lasts for a few months and fades away with your New Year’s resolutions.

Rather, you should maintain heart-healthy eating habits every day of the year.
The simplest recipe for heart-healthy eating habits is to go natural. Most foods you find in nature and eat in their raw or cooked forms are very good for you and many of them actively work to strengthen your heart. On the other hand, manmade foods that are highly processed or infused with ingredients that add flavor and fat often put your heart in harm’s way.

The Battles

Fats and cholesterol can be very dangerous to your heart health. Hence why you should avoid them as much as possible. However, since it’s nearly impossible to rid your diet entirely of all types of fats and cholesterol, you’ll need to choose your battles wisely.

Battles worth fighting in the fat realm are those battles against saturated fat and trans fat. By carefully reading food labels and reducing the amount of butter and other fatty products you eat on a regular basis, you can sidestep the majority of these dangerous fats. Instead of saturated and trans fats, look for foods that contain monounsaturated fats or polyunsaturated fats. Believe it or not, these fats may actually help lower your cholesterol.

Reading food labels will also help you manage the amount of cholesterol you consume. Ideally, a healthy adult will consume no more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol each day. For even better health, try to get no more than 150 or 200 milligrams on a daily basis.

The Salt

A third battle that is often overlooked is the ongoing battle against salt. Though it adds immediate flavor to anything you’re eating, salt also adds to your risk for high blood pressure. As high blood pressure is a key risk factor for heart disease, you ought to pay careful attention to how much salt you eat each day.

According to the American Heart Association, you should consume no more than 2,300 milligrams of salt each day. One of the best ways to avoid going over the recommended limit is to resist the temptation to flavor your food with salt until you take a bite of the food. Some foods are naturally salty and have no need for you to add salt from the shaker. Taking a bite before adding salt may even help you enjoy the natural flavor of the food you’re eating. Over time, your saltshaker may be collecting dust in the pantry!

We would like to welcome new athletes into our boot camp family!

Leslie Inman

Amanda Hall

Lisa Sweeny

I would like to welcome Coleta Smith to our Athletic family!