I’m sure that all of you have heard that you should eat better, exercise more, be less stressed, and on and on. Well, that is all pretty much common sense, but has anyone actually helped you to make these changes. If not, and even if someone has, I have put together 10 changes that you can make in your life, that will pay huge dividends in your overall health and help you to reach your health goals. So without further ado, here they are:
1. Eat Breakfast! – I can’t stress this enough. If you don’t eat breakfast within the first 60 minutes of waking up (30 is even better) you are setting yourself up for failure. This is the meal that anchors the rest of your day and without it you are bound to have a hunger that is insatiable for the entire day. Try to limit the grains and go big on proteins and fats. Think bacon and eggs, but remember to get free range organic eggs and unprocessed bacon. (Someday I’ll tell you all about why for both, but trust me, it’s worth the extra expense.) Also think breakfast burrito or scramble, just mix a bunch of eggs with some veggies and meat and viola! You have a super healthy great start to the morning.
2. 10,000 Steps per Day – Ok, so this number seems pretty big, but it isn’t as hard as you think. Go out and buy an inexpensive pedometer and count your steps (they sell them at Bestbuy for about $20). You’ll find out that you already take quite a few, but most likely not 10,000. In order to increase the number just start parking in the back of the lot, take the stairs, and take your kids or dog for a walk. You’ll see that adding this extra activity will quickly add up and you’ll be seeing the benefit in no time at all.
3. Eat 5 or 6 smaller meals a day – Our bodies are designed to eat and frequently. Split your meals into breakfast, lunch, dinner, and 2 or 3 snacks between. You should be eating every 3-4 hours in order to keep your blood sugar steady. If this is done you can keep your insulin levels in check as well. This is important because when insulin is being release you are not burning fat, you are making it. If you wait too long between meal you end up with a huge sugar fluctuation when you do eat, which is followed by a large dump of insulin. When you repeat this over and over, day after day, insulin resistance develops and you now have a very high risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
4. Instead of exercising long, exercise smart – Most of us have been convinced that spending 2 or 3 hours in the gym a day is not only good for us, but necessary to become lean and get that fit body that seems nearly impossible to get. Well we have all been lied to! When you actually look at how the body works, you can get unbelievable results with very focused exercise 5 or 6 days a week. You will see that I will talk about interval training or HIIT many times throughout my blog. Please search these posts out or just go to Beachbody.com
and check out their programs. They are all based on intervals and have some great dietary advice as well. I even have a plan that you can see excellent results with 60 minutes, from warm-up to the final stretch with only 3 days per week! Stay tuned I will be writing about it soon.
5. Eat a Plant Based Diet – There have been thousands of studies extolling the benefits of a plant based diet. I’m not telling you to become a vegetarian, but to adjust the ratios of the food on your plate. Every meal that you eat should contain at least 50% vegetables. That’s right half of your plate. The rest should be split up between lean meats, fruits, beans/legumes, seeds, nuts and if you absolutely need to some grains.
6. If you want to burn fat work out first thing in the morning – When you work out the initial source of energy is muscle glycogen, which generally lasts about 45 – 60 minutes before you have burned through it all. Once the glycogen is gone you switch to burning fat, which is what most of us are after. When you first wake up in the morning you have burned most of your muscle glycogen up while you were sleeping, so your body switches to fat burning mode within minutes of starting your workout.
7. Eat less Dairy - Yes you are reading that right. But I have always been told that dairy is good for me, you say? Well I beg to differ. We are the only mammal that continues to drink milk once we are weaned from our mother. In addition to this we choose to do it from an animal the weighs 2000 pounds! Just doesn’t seem right to me. If you need any other convincing, just google milk and radiation and see all the reports of increased levels of radiation in all the dairy products lately, that one should be pretty convincing. Don’t worry about calcium either, because if you are eating a plant based diet and including some green veggies you are getting plenty as broccoli and spinach are both sources. Stay tuned for more info on this one, because I personally feel that we all would feel significantly better with no cow’s milk in their life and I will be giving you plenty more information. (Oh yeah, you are getting this from someone who was born and raised in Wisconsin, with family that are dairy farmers)
8. If you want to build muscle work out in the afternoon - Similar to working out in the morning, but the opposite. After eating all day, your muscles are completely full of glycogen. This allows the muscles to work harder, resulting in increased muscle growth.
9. Eat less Grains – Grains are not good, even whole grains. They do have some heart health benefits, but the negatives are not worth it. As a species we have only been eating grains for about 10,000 years, which is a drop in the bucket for how long our digestive tracts have been evolving since we crawled out of a pool of goo. (Sorry if this offends anyone) This inability to adequately break down the grains results in inflammation and breakdown of our digestive tract. Not to mention that statistically 50% of all humans have some sort of sensitivity to the gluten protein that is found in wheat, barley, and rye. I am a big fan of a gluten free diet, which I will explain how to easily and successfully accomplish in an upcoming post.
10. Make your exercise fun! – This is much easier said than done, but why would you want to go to the gym and run on the treadmill day after day, like a hamster, if you absolutely hate it. This will result in tons of excuses about why you don’t really need to get any exercise today.
11. Enjoy your Life! – I know that I only said 10, but I feel that if you are not enjoying what you are doing, what’s the point. Find happiness in all that you do, and if you can’t find it, maybe you should reconsider what you are doing.
