Jul
27
10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #7, healthy breakfast.
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Exercise | 1 Comment
One of my readers asked for a list of 10 steps to good health. I provided it, but now I want to break each of these items down and give you more useful details. So here’s step 7, a healthy breakfast.
This is something I learned when I was already well along in my health recovery. Simply put, it means starting off every day in a healthy way. If you do this, your entire day will tend to be healthier. You’ll be less inclined to snack or gorge and you’ll have more energy throughout the day.
Here are the three main parts of a healthy breakfast:
- A nutritious meal without too many calories. That could mean fruit, vegetables, a small sandwich, an egg or a variety of other items. Stay away from the sugary cereals, they’re nothing but empty calories. Also stay away from the large restaurant style breakfasts that include multiple eggs, potatoes, bacon and so on, those have way more fat and calories than you need in the morning. I usually like to grab a couple of pieces of fruit and a hardboiled egg. If I have more time, I might eat a small salad instead of the fruit. If I’m in a rush, I’ll grab a piece of fruit and some cheese. Whatever your preference is, keep the calories low and the nutritional value high.
- Some exercise. Did you think a healthy breakfast is just about eating? Nope, getting a good start to your day also involves being active. I always make sure to do some physical activity in the morning. This could be as simple as your walk to work or it could be a quick weights workout. Just do something to wake your body up and get your metabolism going. Personally, I used to do a 5 minute weight workout every morning. However, I recently switched to biking to work so that took the place of the workout. Pick something that’s quick and fits into your morning routine. The point here isn’t to get a complete workout, just to start off the day on a high energy note.
- A supplement. Yep, I usually recommend that everyone take a vitamin supplement of some kind. It’s almost impossible to make sure you get the right daily dose of every single vitamin and mineral unless you carefully track every meal. Since I have no intention of doing that, I take a vitamin supplement every morning. It’s my nutritional insurance policy. I usually use this One-A-Day Men’s Health Formula Dietary Supplement
, but feel free to use different ones.
That’s it, follow these three steps and get a healthy start to your day. Once you learn to do this every single day, I think you’ll find that the rest of your day feels much better.
For more information on starting your day right, check out this series of articles.
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Jul
30
One of my readers asked for a list of 10 steps to good health. I provided it, but now I want to break each of these items down and give you more useful details. So here’s step 8, getting enough sleep.
It’s funny how people who are trying to get healthy view sleep. They tend to see it as being lazy, as time that is not being spent productively. When I had my own little health meltdown, I was the same way. I thought to myself “wow, I spend too much time in bed. I need to cut that down and start doing something!” Well, the truth is a bit more complicated.
Yes, you might be spending too much time in bed but you also might be spending too little time sleeping. That sounds counter intuitive but it’s true. Many overweight people have problems getting a good night’s sleep. So they might spend 10+ hours in bed but they’re still not getting the 7 to 9 hours of deep sleep that they need to be healthy. Yes, you heard that right, you need 7 to 9 hours of good sleep a day. That’s about a third of your life spent in bed, sleeping.
Benefits of sleep
Sleep is not completely understood by medical science. We still don’t know why our bodies need to enter this odd state in order to recharge. Why can’t we rest by simply sitting down but remaining awake? However, what we do know shows that sleep has a number of profound affects on our bodies. One of these affects has to do with eating, overeating to be specific.
When you sleep, your body secretes a hormone that’s used for signaling your body that you are full and sated. If you don’t get enough sleep, your body doesn’t get enough of this hormone. This means that you feel hungry and keep eating even when your body doesn’t need anymore food.
Sleep can also have an impact on your energy levels. Without enough sleep you feel tired and lethargic. This means your metabolism is running low, you’re burning less calories and retaining more fat. It also means you’re unlikely to workout or do anything active. In short, sleep makes you eat more and burn less calories.
Getting a good night’s sleep
A few things you need to do if you want to get a good night’s sleep:
Light proof your bedroom - Our bodies are very sensitive to light. If you let sunlight into your room then it’s a signal to your body to wake up. Make sure you have curtains or blinds on your windows and that they’re shut before you go to bed.
Go to sleep on a regular schedule - Try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day. Varying your schedule confuses your body.
Take care of snoring problems - Snoring by itself can be a serious sleep problem for you and those around you. It can also be a sign of sleep apnea, another serious sleep disorder with very bad health risks. There are a variety of ways to deal with this, from losing weight to sleeping on your side. Make sure to consult with a doctor.
Don’t eat before going to bed - Eating right before going to bed can lead to acid reflux and other digestive issues that will keep you awake. Also stay away from caffeinated drinks before bed for obvious reasons.
Do some light physical activity - No cardio before bed since that will just wake you up. However, a very mild weights workout, some stretching or even a short walk can calm you down and get you ready to bed. In case any of you are curious, yes, sex is a very good light physical activity to do before bed.
Do some light intellectual activity - Alternatively, some people prefer to read a book. These are essentially two different ways of clearing your mind and getting ready for some stress free sleep.
The bedroom is for sleep - Keep work and stress out of the bedroom. Use it for sleep and that’s all. Well, aside from other bedroom activities which I won’t get into but can be a very healthy way of going to sleep 
Summary
Spending time in bed doesn’t necessarily have to mean you’re lazy. Your body needs sleep to be healthy and you should try to provide it with 7 to 9 hours of good sleep every night. Just make sure those 7 to 9 hours are spend well and that, once they’re done, you’re out of bed.
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Jul
31
10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #9, smaller and more frequent meals.
Filed Under Eating Healthy | 1 Comment
One of my readers asked for a list of 10 steps to good health. I provided it, but now I want to break each of these items down and give you more useful details. So here’s step 9, eating smaller and more frequent meals.
I’ve talked about this sort of meal plan before, but I’d like to get into a bit more details this time. Seems like every time I mention this people say it doesn’t make sense to them. Why would spacing out the same amount of food over time make a difference? After all, you’re still eating the same amount of calories. Well, the best way I’ve found to explain this is to compare it to money.
The budget analogy
Today is July 31st, which is a perfect date to start this. I’m going to give you $20 today and $20 every day from now until the end of August. This money is meant for food, your other expenses are taken care of. How difficult would this be to budget? Well, if you’re like me, not too difficult. Sure, there would be days where you paid a bit more than $20 and days where you paid a bit less, but on the average they would balance out. Plus it would be easy to budget for this since you know exactly how much you’ll be getting each day. You know that you’ll have another $20 tomorrow, so spending your money today is fine.
Now let’s think of another example. I’m going to give you $20 and $620 dollars sometime between August 1st and August 10th. Now how easy would it be to budget? Seems a bit harder, doesn’t it? You might need to stretch that initial $20 out by not spending much of it for the first ten days. After all, you don’t know if you’ll get more money until the 10th. Even worse, what happens if you get the money on the 10th? Now you have an average of $30 to spend every day until the end of the month. However, now you remember the tough time you had in the first ten days. You tell yourself that you need to save this money for the beginning of next month. That way you’ll have a bigger reserve come September and won’t have to live on $20 for ten days. The end result is a little savings account with some money in it just in case you don’t get cash early next month.
Switching in calories
Now think of that same example but using calories. Your body has a little biological budget it keeps. It needs to keep you running. All those heart beats, the blood movement and the thinking uses up a lot of calories. If you keep your body fed at regular intervals then it has an easier time making a budget. It doesn’t mind spending 100 calories now when it know 100 more are coming soon. However, if you feed your body once a day, then it tries to stretch that budget a bit more. It saves on calories because it doesn’t know when the next bit of energy will come in. Once it gets some food, it stays a spend thrift. Just like in the budget example, your body doesn’t want to go through another lean period. So it saves some of this new calorie windfall in a savings account.
What, you didn’t know your body had an energy savings account? It absolutely does and it’s called fat. Fat is your body’s way of storing energy for that day when food might be scarce. Back before food was plentiful, fat was absolutely necessary. It was your protection against drought, a bad harvest or a failed hunt. It was your emergency savings account for when you ran out of other food. In fact, some fat is still healthy. Your body wants to know that it can survive in an emergency. Without a certain percentage of fat, your body will begin shutting down various system in much the same way that people with no money begin trimming out portions of their life. So a certain percentage of fat on your body is good, but too much leads to obesity and we know that’s bad.
Getting to the point
So what does all this have to do with eating smaller and more frequent meals? Well, think of the difference between many small meals and one big meal as the difference between that $20 a day or $600 dollars a month. Both are about the same amount of money, but one is much easier to budget for. That makes it less necessary to keep a savings account. In other words, feed your body at regular intervals, and it won’t get scared of famines and keep around a lot of fat as an emergency reserve.
Start your day with a small but healthy breakfast to let your body know that today is going to be fine. No need to conserve energy, no need to put away fat, there’s plenty of food around. And keep your body thinking that way by feeding it small meals throughout the day. I usually split up my daily food into a breakfast, a lunch, a small afternoon meal at around 4 and an evening meal at around 7 or 8. That way I’m eating once every 4 hours on average. Toss in the occasional piece of fruit as a snack and my body is perfectly happy to spend those calories. Remember, a large savings account is good for your financial situation but not so good for your health.
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Aug
1
10 steps to getting healthy and losing weight. #10, eating less meat.
Filed Under Eating Healthy | 3 Comments
One of my readers asked for a list of 10 steps to good health. I provided it, but now I want to break each of these items down and give you more useful details. So here’s step 10, eating less meat.
Before I go into detail here, I will mention that I am a vegetarian. I did not choose this lifestyle due to moral or ethical issues, I have no problem with human beings consuming animal meat. Instead, I chose to limit my meat consumption first, due to health reasons and second, due to environmental concerns. However, I don’t recommend that people interested in just healthy lifestyle go veg. It’s actually easier in my opinion to get a healthy and complete diet with some meat in your diet than it is with no meat. So this post is not meant to an endorsement of the vegetarian lifestyle. However, I will say, and the medical community agrees with me, that people today consume too much meat, and specifically, too much highly processed beef, chicken and pork.
Meat in and of itself does not have to be unhealthy. It has many healthy nutrients that our bodies need. From protein to omega three fatty acids, meat can supply us with a variety of our daily necessities. Eaten in a healthy manner, meat can be a valuable part of a healthy diet. Eaten in an unhealthy manner, it can be a leading cause of obesity, heart disease and high blood pressure.
Carbs vs. Protein
By the way, anytime I mention meat, there’s always an Atkins diet follower who adamantly insists that protein is good. So let me just say that I agree, protein is good, in moderation and from healthy sources. You’ll note that I’ve already mentioned in this series of articles that people should cut out the junk carbs in their diet from things like sodas and bad snacks. However, I also think people should cut out the junk protein from things like fast food. So if you want to follow a high protein diet, just get that protein from healthy sources like lean meats and plants, rather than the latest creation from burger king. And yes, that also means cutting down on the steaks at dinner and the bacon at breakfast.
Again, note that this is similar to some previous advice I gave about vegetables. Eating vegetables doesn’t necessarily have to be healthy. Twinkies and mashed potatoes are vegetarian but I wouldn’t recommend you eating them on a regular basis. The reason I say all this is because as soon as anyone mentions eating less meat, you hear a lot of negative feedback from people who assume you’re taking some kind of moral or political stance. So let me be very clear, I’m not. I believe that meat can be healthy. However, just like plant matter, there is healthy meat consumption and there is unhealthy meat consumption.
So what’s healthy meat?
Chicken, turkey, lean beef and fish are all excellent meats. There are also other red meat options like buffalo and venison which are much healthier than the factory raised beef we typically eat. If you can, try to get the organic varieties of all of these. They’re much healthier than the factory raised ones. Also, the less processed the meat the better. That means a chicken breast you bought fresh and cooked yourself is much better than chicken McNuggets which are 50% chicken and 50% god knows what.
Healthy meat consumption also means eating meat in moderation. Western culture promotes meat as the central item at every single meal, or at least as an addition to things like eggs. However, meat should only be eaten once a day at most and even then in moderation. Meat contains an enormous amount of calories for its volume and eating a lot of it will quickly lead you to exceed your daily caloric requirements. Yes, that means that 32oz steak you just ate was unhealthy.
Finally, healthy meat consumption also means healthy meat preparation. Forget about deep frying, go for grilling instead. No more breading which just adds calories and junk carbs. No more soaking the meat in heavy sauces like ranch or some types of BBQ sauce. Try seasoning with various spices instead. And stop pouring on the salt, meat is salty enough as is and you’re overloading your body with the amount of salt you eat.
Summary
Meat can definitely have a place in a healthy diet. However, like anything else, it should be eaten in moderation and obtained from healthy sources.
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