Artificial sweeteners – a healthy alternative to sugar??

I came across this article on the Wellness site: http://blog.wellnesstips.ca/blog/?p=117

I have to admit that I’m guilty of strictly using artificial sweeteners as a replacement to sugar and generally feel that I’m doing the right thing in terms of my diet. There has always been much debate about whether or not artificial sweeteners are good for you or in fact hazardous to your health but there’s never really been any concrete evidence proving them a danger and they still continue to be in high usage for many people.

This article lists some other alternatives to sugar and artificial sweeteners and really gets you thinking about the dangers of using artifical sweeteners.

I also recommend looking around the rest of this site for great wellness tips – enjoy!

Food Glorious Food!!!

There is so much information written on nutrition that it can be an overwhelming topic to research and the more you read the more confusing it can become.

Please let me help you with the basic principles that you need to keep in mind whenever you are looking into what you should and should not put into your mouth.

1. Is the advice coming from someone who has no financial interest in what they are advising/telling you?
2. Can you see yourself being able to follow the recommendations and suggestions long term because if not then STOP right there and move onto another piece of advice.
3. Does the recommendation make common sense?  – now I know you may not feel that you are qualified to make that call but in truth you really can, has this food been changed or manipulated in any way to change its natural purpose?

Let me give you some examples:

Fortified foods such as juice that has added Folate and Vitamin E – Orange juice is a source of sugar, Vitamin C, energy etc it does not have Folate or Vitamin E naturally occurring in its ingredients which begs the question – why are we adding it in? 

Foods that you would want to eat if you are wanting Folate are things like liver, dark leafy vegetables, asparagus, beans (mung, lima, kidney) lentils and chickpeas.  If wanting to increase Vitamin E things such as sunflower seeds, oils (sunflower seed, safflower, peanut, olive), almonds and peanut butter.

Milk is another great example – when we remove the fat out of milk we also remove the Vitamin D.  We need Vitamin D to be able to absorb the calcium in the milk.  To combat this, the manufacturer will now re-add Vitamin D to the milk to improve the calcium absorbing qualities of the milk. 

STOP PRESS – we drink milk for the calcium!

You could argue that with the fat content in milk it is very easy to drink large amounts of energy with very little effort (which is the thought regarding juice as well incidentally); however a small amount of common sense says that it is important to consume all foods in moderation – milk included. 

Next time you are in the supermarket look at the back of the milk containers – those that are promoting 97% fat free are in fact 3% fat – full cream milk is 4% fat, in other words full cream milk is 96% fat free.
So what is really being said here?  When all is said and done – the best way to eat and live is as close to Mother Nature as possible.  Remember the second golden rule which is everything in moderation so if eating less processed food is not always possible for you then so be it, just aim to make as many achievable adjustments as you can.

Next time you are in the supermarket look down into your trolley and ask yourself a couple of quick questions:

1. Does most of the food in my trolley look like it came out of the ground (or as close to nature as possible)?
2. Did I do the majority of my shopping around the outer perimeter of the shop (the less processed food)?
3. Is most of my food in packets, jars etc?

If you can answer ‘yes’ to the first two questions and ‘no’ to the third you know that you are well on track to improving the quality of what goes into your mouth.

My last tip regarding processed food is the high amount of sodium in that food. To only look at the fat and carbohydrate component of what we are eating is not a clear enough indication of eating for good health.  Highly processed food has large amounts of sodium (salt).  Your daily intake of sodium is 930 – 2300mg.  A 100 gram bag of vege chips has 760 milligrams of sodium and it is not hard to eat 100gms of chips!

You only get one body – make the most of looking after it.

Here is to common sense and nature based food that tastes great!

Jo Barr

Jeff Osbourne: How to rest your way to becoming a fat burning machine!

If you ask most people what is the best and fastest way to burn fat, the standard
response back is to do more cardio exercise, which is true. However it will be
rare that you find someone that says the best way to burn fat is to strength train!
Strength Train? I thought that strength training and lifting weights was for
muscle heads and for people who wan to get bigger. Wrong!
During the day, about 70% of the energy you burn is burnt at rest. One of the
best ways to increase the amount of energy you burn is to increase your Resting
Energy Expenditure or the amount of energy you burn at rest. The best way to do
this is to increase your metabolic activity by strength training.
When you strength train, you burn an enormous amount of energy, but the best
part isn’t how much you burn during your lifting session… the real benefit is in
the hours and days after your lift. The night after a strength training session, as
you go to bed, your body’s rate of energy expenditure is still firing! So much so
that in your sleep your body is a fat burning machine! And it doesn’t only work
when you sleep, now when you walk up those stairs, pick that object up, you are
burning more than usual, it’s like you have turned your little Daihatsu engine
into a V8!
If you like the idea of having your body burning fat all day and night then you
need to start strength training today, just starting out at once a week will have
you seeing great benefits!

Jeff Osbourne

Online Fitness Gold Coast Lecturer

More more articles from Jeff please see: http://ptbusinesssuccess.com/theblog/

Jo’s Motivational Thursday – Part 6

Welcome to the last chapter in this series:

How to have more fun and stay present – the ultimate gift in having a happy and motivated journey in life.

Next time you are driving in your car and someone cuts you off try this plan of attack to reduce your stress – ask yourself a few quick questions:

1/ Did they deliberately cut you off?
2/ Was this a personal attack?
3/ Are they by any chance running late for an important event?
4/ Is it really worth getting so steamed up about it?

If after asking these few questions you are still angry, upset and stressed then you need to ask yourself why.

Are you stressed because you have not been managing your time effectively?  You are now running late and most probably cutting other people off in the traffic!  Now how ironic is that?

Quite simply you need to try to look at life differently.  Things just happen and really… does it make things any better by stressing about them? 

Another great way to get the most out of every moment of every day is to stay present 100% of the time.

How often in a day do you find yourself wandering off and thinking about other things other than what you should be doing at that moment? 

A great quote comes to mind, “where ever you are be there”.  In other words if you are having a shower then focus on the task at hand, feel the water running over your body, enjoy having a wash and ‘be’ in that moment.

Thinking about what ‘should’ or ‘could’ have been is a wasted thought process because it is in the past.  Worrying about what ‘might’ happen is also wasted energy – what if it never happens?  You have just wasted an opportunity to enjoy the moment you were in by thinking about something that may never occur…why would you do that?

Learning to be present 100% of the time is the key to enjoying life.  Looking for opportunities to laugh, smile and have fun will appear to you more often when your mind is not pre-occupied with the things that are not in that moment.

Let me leave you with a wonderful saying:

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift that is why they call it the present.”

Have a happy and in the moment week.

Jo

Struggling to find ways to fit in physical activity to your lifestyle?

Hi all,

We came across this article on the website: www.kraft.com ‘Incidental exercise’ can burn more calories than you think!

Tips For Getting Enough Physical Activity

 
Being active every day helps you manage your weight. It helps you burn those kilojoules just a little more. Aim to accumulate 30 minutes of moderate intensity, physical activity as part of your daily routine. Gardening, washing the car, and taking the stairs all count. It’s easier to stick with a plan if you pick activities you like and enjoy. Here are some tips to help put some fun into your fitness routine:
• If you have kids, get them involved by finding activities the whole family can do – walk, bike, rollerblade, fly a kite, swim, play tennis or basketball.
• How about a weekly family fun night? Try bowling, skating, hitting the gym together, taking a walk after dinner or playing football in the garden.
• Plan active holidays. Head to the beach, river or countryside and go exploring!
• Weight-bearing exercise may help strengthen bones and slow the rate of bone loss. Exercises that are weight bearing include walking, jogging, dancing, playing tennis, soccer or basketball, skipping and aerobic dance.
• If you’re time-pressed, you can accumulate activity in 10 minute spurts instead of at one long session, however, at least 20 minutes continuous activity is better.
• If you are sedentary, gradually become active. Be sure to check with your doctor before you begin an exercise program.
• Find out how many kilojoules you burn when undertaking your favourite sports and activities, using our kilojoule burn calculator.

Jo’s Motivational Thursday – Part 1

Welcome to Motivational Thursday! Over the next few weeks I will introduce you to some of the simple concepts of human thought processes and how you can use these to help yourself and those around you.

Step 1:

It’s all about you – how do you treat yourself? 

Questions:

If you spoke to your best friend the way you speak to yourself, how long would they be your best friend?

How can you expect to achieve the things in your life that you value when you are self sabotaging through your daily self talk?

Did you know that everyone has days where they doubt their abilities? 

You can use this to your advantage to realize that you are not any different to anyone else and that your doubts and fears are normal. 

The key is to use these moments to make you stronger and determined to achieve what it is that is important to you. 

Step 2:

Identifying appropriate goals – ask yourself, ‘what are my core values?’

Keep reading over the next few weeks to determine what your true motivators are.

Goals set without connecting to your core value systems will either be unfulfilling when achieved or may never be completed as you will lose motivation before reaching the goal.

Step 3:

Setting yourself up for a successful outcome every time.

This will be a series of successful methods to help you deal with success and failure.

Step 4:

How to stay focused when life gets in the way.

The next step will focus on time management and how to prioritise your hour, day, week, month and year.

Step 5:

The last step will be how to have more fun and enjoy every moment – learning the skill of staying present and how this will reduce the stress in your life plus help you achieve the things you value and desire.

See you again next week for more on step 1.

Till then try this fun challenge:

Smile at every person you walk past – the gift you are sharing will make them feel better and costs you nothing (and the best part is it makes you feel better too!).

Bec completes her first training session!

Well….. There you have it…..  Bec has finally succumbed and completed her first personal training session with Jeff, one of our teachers here who runs his own personal training studio.  I know, it’s a bit of a shock for all involved, but it’s good to see that she is getting serious about the upcoming wedding and future lifestyle change.  I decided to have a chat with her after her session to see how things went.

Previously, Bec has not been a very active person with not much interest in participating in formal exercise.  She has been getting into a little bit of Wii Fit to increase her activity levels and start towards the ultimate goal…..  The Wedding Dress!  Now, she has set herself a realistic goal of 6 months to achieve this result and needs to ‘up the ante’ a little.  Hence the training sessions with Jeff.

Today’s session was the first. It lasted for 30 minutes and the session focused on the chest muscles.  Bec chose Jeff as her trainer due to their working relationship and also because she has heard remarkable things about his ability to assist people in achieving their results.  The exercises that they completed were: Bench Press, Flyes, Pec Deck and Vertical Chest Press.  While Bec was training, she said she felt fantastic but complained the entire session as Jeff was making her hurt.  A sign of a good training session!!! 

The interesting thing about the training session for Bec is that through all the complaining, the pain and the ‘jelly like’ feeling afterwards, she is ready, willing and able to go back and do it all again.  Well done Jeff; Bec is looking forward to her next session!

What to look for in a Personal Trainer?

Having worked in the fitness industry for the previous 10 years and with my current role as Careers Advisor for Online Fitness, I often get asked by people – What should I look for in a Personal Trainer?  After doing a quick survey around the office, we have come up with the top 3 aspects to look for when thinking of working with a Personal Trainer.

1. Qualifications- always check to see that your trainer has the appropriate qualifications, registration and insurance to be training you.  This will give you the peace of mind you need to focus on your training and achieve your results.  Ask around at a few gyms/studios to find out which Training Providers are being recommended and which ones to avoid.  You will always find Online Fitness being recommended.
2. Experience- what sort of experience does your trainer have?  Ideally you should be looking for the experience that your trainer has had working with clients that have had similar goals to yourself as you are the one wanting to achieve the results.  What sort of life experience have they had? You’ll be spending a fair amount of time with them!  If you have any physical or medical issues that limit your training, make certain that your trainer has had experience working with these issues.
3. Personality- make certain that you are comfortable with your trainer.  You will be sharing personal and sensitive information with your trainer so the need for comfortability is paramount.  Also, you need to enjoy training with them and look forward to spending time with them.  It’s easier to do this with someone you like.

There are plenty of other aspects to look at when finding a Personal Trainer such as client results, nutrition advice, their ability to look the part, training specialisations and the list can go on.  Essentially what it comes down to is what is it that you are looking for?  Make sure you have this set in your mind before you start your Personal Training journey.  Begin with the end in mind.

Stumbled across something…..

Was surfing the net, as you do, and stumbled across a really fantastic article about a 10 minute waistline workout.  It’s short, sweet and to the point with great technical cues.  Have a read of that article and any others that may interest you at http://www.fitforlifeonline.com.au/menshealthandfitness.html

Stop The Body Drought

Why Do We Need To Drink Water?

Water is the most important thing we put into our body!! You could live for 3 weeks without food, not a good idea!! But you could only live for 3 days without fluid, even worst idea!! Water makes up 2/3 of our bodies, brain cells are 80-90% fluid and muscle cells are 60-70% fluid.

Water is involved in nearly every body process including:

• Transporting and carrying nutrients between cells in the body
• Exchanging oxygen we breathe in with carbon dioxide
• Excretion of waste products in our urine

 Water keeps your skin healthy and helps reduce wrinkles!!

Water helps reduce your chances of a headache or helps get rid of a headache!!!

How much water do we need?

The simple recommendation is… “ More than your drinking now”

The “scientific” recommendation is… 1 litre of fluid for every 25 kilograms of body weight and 1 litre extra for every hour of exercise!!

We lose at least 1.5 litres everyday through our urine, sweat, our lungs and through skin. When we exercise or in a warmer climate this then increases dramatically!!

It is better to hydrate the body progressively during the day then tyring to re-hydrate it once it has already become dehydrated. As a general rule if you are thirsty and you have dry lips then you are already dehydrated.

Thirsty means you are already de-hydrated!!

Our water intake comes from

• Water
• Juice
• Soft Drink
• Cordial
• Milk
• Fruit and Vegetables
• Tea and Coffee

Water is by far… THE BEST source of FLUID!!!