Holiday Eating Help

Family gatherings, celebrating with friends, office parties--the holiday season is upon us!  This is a fun, loving time of year.  And it can be very challenging to those of us who are trying to live healthy.  I have a few suggestions to help enjoy celebrations with family and friends without burdening ourselves with guilt.


Don't skip meals on the day of a special occasion!

• Keep to your normal eating schedule, preferably healthy meals with a snack in between; be sure to consume lean proteins, carbohydrates and healthy fats each time you eat.
  
• Skipping a meal will cause you to store proportionately more body fat the next time you eat and, since you'll be extra hungry, you'll  likely over-eat and store even more fat.
• Skipping meals also slows your metabolism, causing you to burn fewer calories and store more fat.

Eat some protein and healthy fat before diving into the sweets, treats and alcohol.  This will slow the absorption of the carbohydrates, keeping your blood sugar more steady and hindering extra fat storage.

Alcohol is a carbohydrate.  Choose vodka over other spirits and avoid mixes full of juices, sodas and creams.  Wine is a nice alternative as well, and tends to be sipped more slowly.

Protect your workout schedule.  If you have a day when you are just too busy to go to the gym or don't have time to perform your complete workout:

• Go for a walk, even if it's a short one.
• For a simple, full-body workout, perform these exercises in a circuit:
  
• squats
• push-ups -- if you are unable to do a full-body push-up, go on your knees or place your hands against a wall or table top instead of the floor
• a back row with tubing (inexpensive and easily found at Target and sporting goods stores).
•  Complete as many circuits as you can.

Sleep well to keep your stress levels down; higher stress causes higher fat storage.
 
Don't try to loose weight during the holidays.  The most realistic (and sane) goal is to maintain!

Enjoy the people you're with and have a fun and tasty holiday! - Jeanie

Reduce Breast Cancer Risks

As October Breast Cancer Awareness Month closes, I'd like to pass along this information.

To limit your risks of breast cancer, essentially you need to control your estrogen levels to limit or slow cancer cell growth and boost your immune system to fight disease.

Achieve a healthy body composition

• Extra body fat produces more estrogen which can stimulate cancer cell growth in the breast.  Estrogen levels tend to be lower when you are at a healthy weight, and loosing weight will lower the risk of developing breast cancer.

Exercise regularly

• Activity helps control body weight, lowers estrogen levels, and supports your immune system.

Eat a healthy diet

• Good nutrition helps attain a healthy body composision, supports normal estrogen levels and boosts your immune system.
• A daily healthy diet includes at least five servings of vegetables and fruits, three servings of whole grains and restricted consumption of processed meats.  Also, be sure to limit saturated fats, so stick with lean meats (including lean red meats that are not seared when cooked) and fat-free or 1% dairy products--some people prefer to consume hormone-free meats and dairy as well.
• A couple of things to consider:  green tea has been found to slow breast cancer growth by protecting cells from damage and premature aging (I recently heard three cups a day suggested), and vitamin D3 can stop cancer cells from dividing (try 1,000 to 2,000 IUs a day).
• Eating to stabilize blood sugar levels, as promoted by Venice Nutrition, and myself as a nutrition coach, helps to keep your endocrine (hormone) system in balance.  If you're interested in more information, please see the Venice Nutrition link listed under My Favorite Sites--or contact me! (click on: My complete profile (in the upper right corner)).
  

Limit alcohol consumption

• Limit yourself to one alcoholic drink per day to help your liver regulate blood estrogen levels. 
  

Don't smoke

• Research shows that smoking increases the risk of developing breast cancer.

Please know your own risk factors and keep up to date with regular screening with mammograms and breast exams at your annual check-up!  --Jeanie

10 Super Foods!

One of my favorite nutrition sources, Nutrition Action Health Letter, has named 10 super foods:

• sweet potatoes
• grape tomatoes
• fat-free or 1% milk
• broccoli
• wild salmon
• crisp-breads by wasa
• microwavable quick cooking brown rice by Uncle Ben's (my personal favorite is Trader Joe's frozen pre-cooked brown rice--it microwaves perfectly!)
• citrus fruit
• pre-diced butternut squash
• spinach and kale

Interested in more of this kind of information?  Check out their website listed under My Favorite Sites--Jeanie

How to Weight Train to Increase Metabolism

How to take advantage of weight training's fat burning benefits?

• Avoid non-active rest periods between each set of repetitions.
• The idea is to work one muscle group while allowing the another muscle group to rest.  By removing the inactive rest periods, you boost the intensity of the workout.
• You also shorten your workout time!

Here are a few ways to accomplish this: 

Perform your exercises in a circuit. 

• A circuit is a group of exercises performed in a row one set at a time.  A set should consist of 8-15 reps.  Typically, when you complete the circuit once, you will go back to the beginning and repeat the sequence one or two more times.

• For example, an upper body circuit might include the following exercises:  chest press, back row, shoulder press, bicep curl and triceps extension.  You perform one set of the chest press, one set of the back row, one set of shoulder press and so on.

Alternate between upper and lower body exercises.

• You can alternate between upper and lower body muscle groups in a circuit like this:  leg press, chest press, squats, back row, leg extension, shoulder press and hamstring curl.  Do one set of each and then repeat the sequence.
• Or you can alternate sets between two exercises:  leg press with chest press; leg extension with back row; and hamstring curl with shoulder press, and so on.

Perform supersets.

• With supersets, you alternate between two opposing muscle groups for two or three sets.
• For example, you perform one set of the chest press followed immediately by one set of the back row.  Then go back to the chest press for one set, followed again by the back row. 
• When you finish this pair, you move on to two other opposing muscle groups like the quadriceps leg extension and the hamstring curl.

These suggestions are just snippets--they are not complete workout plans.

Don't forget to warm up first and stretch at the end! -- Jeanie

Metabolism & Weight Loss

I recently attended a seminar on metabolism and weight loss and gathered some great information.  Here are some highlights:

Eating breakfast increases metabolic rate by 5% while skipping meals slows down metabolic rate.

Eating too little (=deprivation) triggers your body's survival mechanism, dropping your metabolic rate by an average of 15%. With consistent deprivation over time, the body becomes very efficient at storing body fat, i.e. a larger percentage of the food you eat is stored as fat.

Eighty to ninety percent of weight loss is due to how and what you eat; the remaining 10-20% is exercise.

Exercise is crucial to maintaining weight/weight loss.

The more fit you become, the more efficient you become at burning calories and fat; a fit person will enter the fat burning stage sooner in her or his workout than a non-fit person.

Trained v. untrained individuals use more fat at rest (saving glucose stores), burn more fat at any level of intensity, and mobilize fat sooner and more efficiently while exercising.

Weight training, when performed correctly, prevails as the higher intensity exercise over moderate aerobic exercise.  Studies show that more calories are spent during weight training, and more fat is burned during the recovery period.

An effective workout schedule (for those who have time): Five to six days a week for about 45 minutes; weight training three of those days and aerobic exercise the other three days.

The best combined workout: Research now shows that weight training first followed by aerobic exercise will give the best results. Yes--it's better to have a stronger weight training session and a weaker aerobic session than the other way around.  I suggest 30 minutes of weight training followed by 30 minutes of aerobic exercise.

Please remember that maintaining or increasing lean muscle mass increases your metabolic rate!

The thyroid controls metabolic rate by releasing the hormone thyroxin. For as many as 20% of women, thyroxin may be too low, reducing metabolic rate. This may cause weight gain as well as depression and high cholesterol. When the thyroxin count falls into the normal range, but is approaching outside of normal, doctors have started to prescribe medication with positive results. You need to keep track of your numbers; don't expect your doctor to do this.

Exercising for an hour a day with no other activity (sitting the rest of the day) will burn less calories than not exercising for an hour and spending the rest of your day actively. Bottom line: everyone should increase their activities of daily living.

Happy fat burning! -- Jeanie