10 Top Fall Fitness Tips!
1. Set Goals
Set short simple goals, such as exercising for 20 minutes as soon as you wake up on Mondays. This makes achieving them realistic and allows you to progress to longer-term goals.
2. Make a Motivation Board
Grab a bulletin board, or go digital using Pinterest, and attach a list of your goals, progress photos, inspirational sayings, updates with your accomplishments and more. Place your motivation somewhere prominent – like your bathroom mirror or your office at work — so you’ll see it regularly.
3. Adopt the 3 “C’s”
Commitment, Convenience and Consistency: Adopt these three strategies into your lifestyle to help you stay active and eat right for good.
4. Stock Up on Healthy Food
Keep your kitchen well stocked with unprocessed, whole foods that are quick and easy to munch on. Cut-up veggies, lean meats, olive oil, coconut oil and nuts are all great options.
5. Moderation is Key
It’s OK to indulge once in a while with your diet, just be sure to keep your goals in mind each day. If you do veer off course, don’t beat yourself up over it. Simply make better choices at your next meal or try the 80:20 rule (eating right 80 percent of the time and being more lenient for the other 20).
6. Snack Right
Rather than letting unhealthy snacks sabotage your diet, keep healthy snacks like apples, almonds, whey protein powder, hummus and carrots handy. Focus on what you should be eating, instead of what you shouldn’t.
7. Try Fruit for Dessert
If you’re in the mood for something sweet, a piece of whole fruit provides vitamins, minerals and antioxidants without an overload of sugar. A piece of dark chocolate is another healthy treat option.
Benefits, like help with indigestion, heartburn, headaches, and preventing water weight gain.
8. Get Proper Sleep
Lack of sleep is strongly linked to weight gain, low energy and fatigue. Without adequate sleep, you’ll have a harder time sticking to your diet and your exercise plan.
9. Take Time for Recovery
Overdoing exercise is counterproductive and can actually damage your muscle tissue and cause injuries. Give yourself adequate recovery time between workouts and be sure to alternate muscle groups or body parts in your exercise sessions.
10. It’s All Up to You
You have to make the decision to get fit. When you commit to it, you’re making a contract with yourself. Be the change you want to see in your life!
For more, visit http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2013/09/27/25-fitness-tips.aspx
Superfood Spotlight: The Incredible Health Benefits of Apples
If you’re lucky, you will soon be walking to your backyard apple tree and picking off a delicious local apple, just in time for the Fall and Winter seasons. Nothing summarizes the feeling of the Autumn and coming holidays quite like apples.
There is more than just a little credence to the “apple-a-day-keeps-the-doctor-away” dictum. It’s no secret that fruits and vegetables are superfoods capable of staving off the most serious of illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other chronic ailments. As a superfood, the apple’s abundance of phytochemicals, including phenolics, flavonoids and carotenoids, play a central role in lowering the risk for chronic diseases.
Like most superfoods, the apple is full of phytochemicals. It also contains all potent antioxidants. There are a variety of apples and their phytochemical content changes from one to the other. While storing them has little effect, commercial processing can negatively affect the health benefits of apples.
It was found that the apple peel has antiproliferative effects against cancer. Apple flavonoids can inhibit the growth of human colon cancer cells, which makes the fruit an effective way to avoid cancer.
Aside from internal health benefits of apples, the superfood is also good for skin health and protecting against sun damage. In the Fall and Winter, we often forget that we are at risk of sun damage. Just because it is cold does not mean the sun stops sending harmful UV rays to your skin.
Eat apples for their taste, but appreciate them as a superfood even more knowing the nutritional boost they are giving your body.
http://www.organicauthority.com/health/superfood-spotlight-incredible-health-benefits-apples.html
Fall Steps for Healthy Living
As the days get shorter and the temperatures drop, change is in the air. That’s what makes fall a great time for renewal and fresh starts. It’s time to fine-tune your health by making one or two small changes that yield big results.
Let Beans Be a Part of Your Diet
If you do one thing to improve your diet this fall, eat 3 cups of beans each week. Besides being a comfort food, beans add flavor and texture to soups, chili, and casseroles. They’re also a great salad topper.
Defuse Stress with Friendship
Fall is a good time to come back together after the summer scattering of vacations and busy schedules — a great time to relax with friends.
Soothe away stress by making contact in person or by phone with someone you care about, someone you haven’t talked to in a while because life got in the way. The positive emotions will make you feel good, and when joy and stress meet up, the joy wins out.
Be Tender with Your Teeth
If you do one thing to improve your dental health this fall, turn over a new leaf by ditching habits that are hard on your teeth.
That means no more chewing on ice or popcorn kernels. Ice is a crystal and tooth enamel is a crystal — when the two meet, one of them has to give. Sometimes it’s the tooth. Popcorn kernels can break teeth or fillings too, and the hull, if lodged in gum tissue, can irritate and cause bacteria buildup.
Have Fun with Fitness
Improve your fitness this fall: Try a less-conventional workout to spruce up your regimen.
Warm Up with Wine
Diversify your alcohol choice with a room temperature glass of table wine. The warmer drink will take the chill off and the wine, especially red, has heart health benefits.
Remember a standard size glass of wine is just 4 ounces. Pregnant women and others with health reasons who should not to drink should abstain.
Synchronize Your Sleep
Manage the more demanding fall schedules by synchronizing your internal sleep-wake clock to the outside environment.
In the morning, get outside within 5 minutes of getting up and expose yourself to bright light for 30 minutes. At night, avoid bright light within two to three hours of bedtime because it might delay your sleep onset. This will keep you alert in the morning and make you sleepy at bedtime.
It’s time to renew yourself! Try these eight easy health-boosting tips — they’re sure to give you a fresh start this fall.
For more tips on healthy living: http://www.webmd.com/women/features/8-fall-steps-for-healthy-living?page=2
Healthy Transformations
Ingredients
• 1 oz cheese, cheddar- low fat
• ½ cup Quinoa
• 2/3 cup broccoli
• ¼ cup vegetable broth
Spices/Flavourings
• ¼ tsp salt, lite
• ¼ tsp black pepper
PREPARATION:
Combine broccoli, broth, and quinoa in a saucepan, bring to a boil.
Reduce heat to medium-low, place a cover on the saucepan, and cook at
a simmer until the broth has been absorbed and the quinoa is tender, 15
to 20 minutes.
Stir Cheddar cheese into the quinoa, replace the lid, and set aside until the
cheese melts, 2 to 3 minutes, season with salt and pepper.
Per serving: 306 calories, 23g protein, 10g total fat, 31g carbohydrates.
Source: Healthy Transformations Recipes
