Make your Posture Perfect

Posture is a very important aspect of our daily lives often fogotten about. Many different muscle and joint problems can be attributed to sitting up straight. Check out this great article with tons of tips on how to make your posture perfect!

Crash Dieting

Dieting is a huge issue for thousands of women across the world. The most popular of all the odd tricks and techniques, is the crash diet.

For anyone who has ever been in the situation of "needing" to drop pounds fast before that special event, crash dieting has probably crossed your mind. However, doctors and nutritionists continue to find just how dangerous crash dieting can be.

Crash dieting causes a slew of problems for those who turn to it as a last resort. That type of dieting encourages women to cut extreme corners and often fails to include all the necessary nutrients.

Typical results of crash dieting include a weeks worth of a distinct loss, followed by yo-yoing. This is often because the weight lost was not real weight, but water weight, which fluctuates normally. However, most dangerous are the nutritional and mental health aspects to crash dieting.

Loosing your love handles for next week's high school reunion is just not possible. Turning to dangerous methods of weight loss only put your body at danger for future complications, as well as challenge the stability of your mental heath as well.

If you're interested in dieting, you should be interested in it as a health benefit, not particularly to renew yourself for an event to show off to others. Learn to be proud of who you are, which includes making smart lifestyle changes and taking care of your body responsibly.

Slow Food

Agreed, the name doesn’t thrill me either. When I got this in an email from my mom, I was at first concerned with who was keeping my food from me. However, that’s the point.

We’re a high speed society. Sadly, the essentials (proper diet/sleep/exercise) can be quickly skimmed or looked over to keep up with the rest of our hectic lives.

The concept of Slow Food tries to re-encourage savoring meals with friends and loved ones, while consuming quality foods. The name, cleverly, comes from its evil cousin- Fast Food.

If there is any reason to slow down in your day, food is a great start. Dinner time without a time constraint is beneficial to the entire family. Catch up with each other and enjoy the smells and tastes of good food instead of wolfing down a microwaved meal. Better yet- cook WITH each other. Make cooking a learning opportunity for children, to encourage them to pick up healthy habits. If you’re single, try setting time aside to cook as a stress reliever. Make yourself something fantastic, even if there’s no occasion.

More so, Slow Food encourages you to pay attention to food. What products are you endorsing by mindlessly buying them? Do you encourage the continued production of products that harm animals or use dangerous chemicals? Are producers compensated fairly for their work?

Be mindful of what you buy and consume. Taking time out to pay closer attention to our food, preparing it and enjoying it is a great baby step to distress and slowing down your day.

Low Carb vs. Low Fat diets

Here’s a great article discussing the differences in two popular diets for those interested.

Fat Free Fibs?

My second year of college marked a monumental step in my life- I started grocery shopping for myself. Coming from a family who has always been heath conscious and being custom to dinners just showing up on the table, this point in your life is an eye-opening one for anyone.

After putting on my share of the freshman 15 from cafeteria food, I did my best to go back to what I was use to- real fruits and vegetables, and controlling what I put into preparing dinner.

This year, as I re-start my promise to eat right (and less boxed macaroni and cheese), I have tried to stick to the basics I grew up on, plus some.

Labels selling fat free and low fat are often a draw for those looking to eat healthier. However, as this article explains, these promising terms aren't always truthful.

In reality, smart shoppers should be aware of a few other key numbers. First, is the number of calories. Eating to the correct number of calories in a day is your first step to a healthy diet. Next, compare the calories to serving size. If you typically eat a whole jar of pickles in one sitting, you’re most likely eating multiple servings at once. The low calorie jar you just bought is now doing nothing for you if you don’t obey the serving size.

This is harder said than done, many of us eat more than a serving size recommends, so keep that in mind and find products with serving sizes closest to what you consume with low calories.

While heading to the grocery store, make sure you bring in your rosy colored glasses. Don’t be swayed to throw promising products into your cart without making an educated decision based on the back nutrition panel!

Exercising to Harm

Picture this- It’s January 2^nd, you head to the gym for a typical workout, and it’s packed. Besides the New Years resolution crowd, you witness that just about everyone is going to town on every machine.

I’m no stranger to this either. When I slip on my workout routine, I’m more tempted to go in and go crazy, promising myself I’ll run many miles over my usual limit (which usually results in falling short, and exhausted).

We are all victim to working out too hard now and then. This article does a great job of setting some guidelines to keep in mind when pushing yourself during workouts.

A specific note from the article that I thought were great was the advice on weight lifting. I hope none of you ladies find that guy at the gym with the cutout shirt making horrendous moans while lifting one rep of twice his body weight. Working your muscles like the typical male gym rat is extremely dangerous.

The article points out in many occasions that even if you feel like you could do more, run to the point of no breath, do a few reps with a weight much too heavy, consider what you can do often- run at a slower pace longer, lift lighter weights for more reps and with correct technique.

Plus- check out my post on burst exercising. The value of working out in 15 minute increments proves to be valid!