Health, fitness and Diet informations

With the summer holidays approaching, it’s time to get into shape – here are a few easy ways to shed the pounds.

Sadly, shaking off the excess lard you accumulated over the brutally cold winter can be a tad more difficult than watching the winter snow melt in rising temperatures. Will power is necessary to lose weight – merely wishing it away won’t do you any good. There is no substitute for healthy eating and a disciplined exercise routine.

Fitness trainers say that it is normal for people to put on about 5 pounds over winter. The challenge is to get rid of the extra weight before the summer and then maintain the weight-loss throughout the rest of the year.

The glorious days of early summer are the best excuse to head out for some fresh air and outdoor activity. Taking up an outdoor sport, running or cycling can help increase your metabolism too. Swimming and aerobics,in particular, are excellent ways of getting in shape.

Eating healthily is an important part of your weight-loss programme. Exercising yields the best results when combined with a healthy diet. Increasing your daily protein intake, while minimising the amount of carbohydrates you consume, helps fight fat accumulation. Most dieticians recommend smaller meals at regular intervals rather than eating two large meals a day. Increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables in your daily diet can help fill your stomach while keeping the unwanted calories away.

You can also easily incorporate exercises into your daily chores. Take the stairs instead of the escalator for a mini cardio workout and choose to walk to and from work instead of taking the bus. Gardening can also be a pleasant way to exercise – you could rake the yard or mow the lawn to keep your body active throughout the summer.

For those who love working up a good sweat, the best solution is to head straight to the nearest gym. While you’re at it, hiring a personal trainer is a good investment. Following a tailor-made workout regime can mean faster progress and more focused exercising, for example on problem areas such as the arms, hips, thighs and stomach. Most fitness centres also recommend spa treatments to complement an exercise routine, to restore valuable vitamins and minerals as well as to keep muscles relaxed. A couple of spa days every month can work in tandem with your weekly workouts to help you get in shape and stay healthy. If it’s your partner trying to get in shape, experience gifts can be a good way of spending some time together at a health spa, and you’ll leave feeling recharged. Whichever method you choose to stay fit, always remember to set yourself targets. Getting fit in time to wear that bikini with confidence is as good a thing as any to aim towards when planning your summer health routine.

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I woke up this wonderful Sunday morning, casually sauntered down to my kitchen, opened my fridge and found a dismal sight. On my shelves sat a couple of slices of bread, a half-eaten jar of marmalade, and half a litre of milk. None of these things will fully satisfy my Sunday brunching needs.

A quick shower and some jeans get me out of the door and to the super market. While musing about the veggies I wanted to put in my omelette, it occurred to me that the majority of these things in my grocery trolley were covered in the same things, labels. From sticky barcode labels to my nutritional information, my food was covered in electronic information.

As I gingerly ran my finger across the barcode of an unsuspecting carton of a dozen eggs, I tried to imagine what it would be like without technology.

It seemed to me, in that moment, that the modern world was composed of layers. The topmost layer was occupied by consumers like myself who ran out for breakfast items, and underneath me was the barcode labels whose series of black-dashed lines not only made it easier for the cashier to ring up my bill, but were also involved in keeping track of inventory in stores and monitoring the movement of goods across the country.

The very label I held in my hand after reaching for a carton of orange juice contained all of the nutritional information I needed, told me where my juice was from, who made it, how long before it goes bad, and even the percentage of pulp I would find when I tipped the fruity beverage into my mouth.

How many people were involved in the making of my brunch? Clearly, this was no farmer-consumer relationship. There were scientists figuring out the calories in all of my food, marketers designing the attractive coffee grinder graphics for the bag of coffee grounds next to my purse, barcodes printers creating the closely-lined barcode that tells the clerk, ?Two quid for these free-range eggs? on my dozen eggs.

Without these innovations, not only would businesses not be able to connect with the consumer so easily, but it would also means that I might find myself going to the shop only to realise that the grapefruits I wanted were out of stock. A mistake in a ledger without the automatic tracking of barcodes could mean that my food doesn’t get ordered and shipped to the store.

I also might find that my allergy to peanuts flares up because I don’t have labels that tell me which foods were processed in factories with nuts.

While it may seem silly to consider all of this, standing in the aisle 9 among bags of flour, sugar and baking chocolate, I am not bothered. Shopping without labels would be a nightmare! I am far too used to the conveniences of today.

That being said, perhaps it is better to get back to my breakfast.

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Everyone knows that the cardinal rule of dieting is to cut down one’s intake of fats and sugars, basically all of those things that make French cuisine flavourful and bacon so amazing.

What people neglect to tell you is that completely cutting out fats and sugars from your diet can be counterproductive. Consuming small amounts of the foods that may have contributed to your increased waistline can keep you from binge eating those foods later when tempted.

To help you indulge but keep your diet on track here is a list of ‘good’ fats and sugars.

Dark Chocolate – It has been argued that this sugar can lower blood pressure when consumed in moderation.

Nuts – this high-calorie, high-fat snack is considered by some to be a dieting no-no. BUT in actuality nuts are full of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. So try a handful of these a day, to take advantage of their health benefits without feeling the hurt of their calories.

3. Olive Oil – Cooking with a small amount of this instead of canola oil can makes all the difference in terms of getting a nutritional bang for your fatty budget. AND to boot, it tastes better in many of the cooking recipes we regularly use.

In addition to these substitutes, the continued quest for healthy food has meant that more cooks are looking for healthier versions of those sinful pleasures that we all enjoy.

My personal favourite baking substitute for all those chocolate cake and lemon drizzle delights?

This cook book: Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache.

This book uses vegetables as substitutes for a lot of the fats that normally go into baking, but the amazing thing is that you can’t tell the difference. I had the best chocolate cake made with aubergines, which tasted like a really rich German chocolate cake! The best part: my slice of cake was under 200 kcals. Absolutely brilliant!

So remember, a little indulgence when dieting can keep you from craving what you can’t have. Just don’t get derailed with eating too much of these sugery and fatty substances, and always look for ways to make your indulgences healthier.
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Revive Energy Mints have been called The Most Innovative Fitness and Energy Product to be unleashed into Food & Beverage industry for ages. Maybe it’s the healthy, herb based energy blend equivalent in strength to a cup of coffee, energy shot, or canned energy drink. Perhaps it’s the fusion of exotic super-fruits, which are packed with healthy antioxidants packed super-fruits. Maybe it’s the smooth mint taste that leaves your breath fresh and mouth feeling clean. Whatever it is about Revive Energy Mints, it’s leading many to call it the most unique and effective Energy Supplement of the Twenty-First Century. Revive energy mints  combine a potent herbal energy blend, which includes guarana-caffeine, ginseng, and green-tea, with Mangosteen, Goji Berry, and Acai Berry – Thee Truly Amazing Superfoods.

If you ate too many chocolate-covered cherries, or indulged in more eggnog that you shoud’ve, you’re not alone. If you fell off your diet wagon over the holidays, don’t panic. Jump back on and get rolling again with these great ideas to recover from your indulgences.

The most basic way to lose weight is to slash calories. That’s Diet 101. But how many do you really have to cut or burn to see results? It’s simple: You can drop a pound a week by trimming 500 calories each day. (Calories burned are based on a 150-pound woman.)

In fact, do a couple of swaps a day and you can drop 10 pounds in five weeks! So try these 50 easy tweaks—and get the slim body you want in no time.

1. Shake your groove thing. Dance for just two hours and torch 500 calories. (A little air guitar will burn a few extra calories, too.)

2. Get enough sleep. A lack of shut-eye can make you snack, new research from the University of Chicago shows. People who got only 5 1/2 hours of sleep noshed more during the day. Snooze more and save about 1,087 calories.

3. Don’t eat in front of the TV. You’ll eat up to 288 calories more, according to research from the University of Massachusetts. Instead, eat at the table, and trade one hour of TV for a casual walk. Together, that’s 527 calories burned.

4. Get in tune with your tummy. Pay attention to how full you feel, and put down your fork when you’re satisfied. Listen to your body’s cues—instead of looking at whether the plate is clean—and save up to 500 calories a day.

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New research suggests that certain breast cancer patients who take the drug Herceptin during chemotherapy, instead of taking it afterward, fare better, leading one of the study authors to say patients should routinely take the drug with chemo.The patients at issue are those with HER2-positive breast cancer, which accounts for 20 percent to 25 percent of all cases of the disease.

Researchers looked at the outcomes for hundreds of women who underwent different treatment regimens. Their findings were to be released at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, sponsored by the Cancer Therapy & Research Center of the University of Texas, the American Association for Cancer Research and Baylor College of Medicine.

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The electronic cigarette or electric cigarette is a truly ingenious product that enables the smoker to actually smoke but without having to inhale any of the 4000 plus chemicals found in the standard cigarette. It provides the smoker with a healthier method of enjoying a real smoking experience. Also known as an electric cigarette, it looks just like normal cigarettes, tastes like normal cigarettes even provides smoke when inhaled (in the form of vapour), and provides the smoker with a hit of nicotine but without the smell, tobacco, tar and many thousand chemicals that can harm our system.

A bit more about this ingenious product…. We understand how hard it is to quit smoking, after all most of the staff here are former smokers, the electronic cigarette has been found to help you cut down and eventually quit – that’s the feedback we get from our customers. Our SmokeTip Electronic Cigarette Kit are high quality, we know what it’s like to want a smoke and the last thing you need is something that lets you down – very frustrating. http://www.smoketip.com guarantee all our products for quality and satisfaction.

If you are skeptical then please be assured that an electronic cigarette is a useful way of quitting smoking, it doesn’t leave you smelling of smoke but does have all the flavour and nicotine of regular cigarettes, they do not have all the chemicals and poisons found in traditional cigarettes but an electronic cigarette does save you a lot of money and is extremely realistic.

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