Tips and Advices
Finances, Cost of Health Care, Savings Account, Budget and Talking to Your Kids
Posted by
admin 14 December, 2008
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Our finances and our health are two of the most pressing issues that we face throughout all of our adult lives. It’s not too coincidental that health care and the state of the economy are two of the biggest issues facing both presidential candidates in the 2008 United States presidential elections. Most adults, whether they are single, married or married with children have two huge issues constantly facing them right now, the economy and cost of health care.
What about our kids? Are they shielded from all of this? Is ignorance bliss? Or do they have concerns too? A survey of 500 U.S. teenagers released recently found that almost 70 percent feared an “immediate negative impact” on the security of their families (Brigid Shulte, Washington Post). That’s a huge figure. This shows that there is anxiety about this among our kids. Children and teens are aware of the fact that many of them are not getting as many things from their parents as in the past and the family is not going on that nice vacation. They know that something is going on. Here are a few tips on talking through the economy with our kids.
- The importance of a savings account. The first thing we should discuss with our children is the importance of starting a savings account early and the compound of value of money. The earlier they get into the habit of saving money, the better. As they see their money start to grow it will (hopefully, at least) inspire them to continue building and not steal from the account. It wouldn’t hurt to “wow” them with a couple of figures. For youngsters tell them that if they invest $10 per month and are able to earn 8% interest in 30 years they would have almost $15,000. For teens, if they invest $100 per month and are able to earn 8%, in 30 years there would be $149,000. And maybe for your college students that if they invest $200 per month at 8% it would turn into $298,000 after 30 years! Certainly, this could be a nice help toward early retirement.
- The importance of a budget. This principle can be taught very early in life. If you give your children an allowance give them a few jars to go along with it to divide the money into. This would include a jar for charity, a jar for fun, one for special items, etc. Once again, if this ideal is instilled early in a child’s life, it is much easier to maintain. Knowing where your money goes and allocating it sensibly is important for anyone of any age.
- Don’t avoid talking about the economy. Even if you don’t understand everything that’s happening nationally, talk about the fact that you don’t know and try to figure it out together.
- Don’t panic. If money is tight, talk with your children about how you can reduce the grocery budget. Discuss ways that they can help. Involve the kids all the way through the decision process.
- Don’t talk over their heads, don’t ignore your kids, and don’t treat them like idiots.
- Discuss the use of credit cards. Don’t be afraid to tell them the truth about credit cards; they can be used properly or they can be the worst nightmare a person has ever experienced. They can totally shatter a person’s finances and send him/her to straight to bankruptcy (without passing GO) if misused. Warn them about not paying their credit cards in full every month and the exorbitant interest rates that are charged. Remind them that these interest rates keep compounding every month if not paid off.
- A discussion on health is critical too. Make sure that your children know how precious their health is. Even with the rising costs of health care it is absolutely necessary for everyone to make every attempt to obtain health care. Help your children to understand that health insurance is mostly for the effects. They also should set some of their budget aside each paycheck for prevention in the form of nutritional supplements, vitamin supplements and exercise.
Good solid discussions like this with your children can relieve much of the anxiety they are experiencing. You will be teaching some excellent life long habits as well. What about us adults? What about our anxiety? The biggest bit of advice that I can give adults (myself included) is to get out of credit card (or anything like it such as home equity) debt as fast as possible. Once we are out of this kind of debt, don’t fall back into it. Pay your credit cards off in full every month and enjoy the peace of mind that will come from doing so, especially in times of economic uncertainty.
Tom Thorne
www.Feelingoutstanding.com
Categories : Tips and Advices
Don’t Be Too Hard on Yourself
Posted by
admin 6 December, 2008
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No one eats perfectly all the time, so don’t give up if you have a bad meal, a bad day, even a bad week. The same is true with exercise. There are going to be days when you may not feel like doing your A.M. cardio workout or lifting weights later. If that happens and you miss a day, don’t give up and tell yourself it’s hopeless. Just try to make progress the next day.
Once again, keep in mind that the first few weeks of anything new can be difficult. You’re trying to change a lifetime of habits, and it can’t be done in a single day. It’s crucial to look at your new fitness lifestyle as just that—a lifestyle. Trust that you are taking control of your life and changing it for the better. Look to the future with a sense of eagerness and excitement!
Categories : Dieting, Men's Health, Tips and Advices, Women's Health
Take Photos
Posted by
admin 6 December, 2008
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No matter how out of shape you think you are, take a “before” photo prior to beginning your workout regimen and additional snapshots every two weeks until you reach your goal. This practice can be nerve racking, but nothing beats it when it comes to keeping your mind on your goal. It provides a starting point and biweekly reminders of your progress. I find it difficult to notice improvements on a day-to-day basis, which wreaks havoc on my motivation. When I compare periodic photos and notice the benefits of my efforts, however, I feel much more satisfi ed and strengthen my resolve.
Categories : Dieting, Men's Health, Tips and Advices, Women's Health
Make Fitness a Priority and Readjust Your Mind-Set
Posted by
admin 6 December, 2008
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Everyone complains about time limitations. People justify not working out or eating healthy by saying, “I don’t have time.” If this is the case, you have to make time.
It’s not that hard to do. Think of fitness as a priority, something that you must fit in, like going to work, eating, sleeping, or even using the bathroom. It should be that much of a staple. Everyone has 24 hours in a day. That’s a lot of time. What matters is how you fill those hours. Take a moment to list all of the things you’re doing now that you make time for and ask yourself how important they are to you and your happiness. Are they more important than improving your health and getting the body you want? More important than feeling better? When I used this simple technique, I couldn’t believe how many ridiculous, habitual things I was unknowingly filling my days with and putting ahead of my fitness pursuits.
Just write down your short-term and long-term goals as well as what you planned to do to accomplish them. Writing things down just makes them seem more real.
Categories : Dieting, Men's Health, Tips and Advices, Women's Health
Best way to handle food cravings during the day
Posted by
admin 6 December, 2008
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- Have lots of crunchy vegetables, like broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots, around whenever you get that cheating feeling. Bulky, fibrous veggies are unbelievably filling and nutrient-dense, but they’re exceedingly low in calories.
- Keep sugar-free Jell-O on hand to avoid late-night binges. Jell-O is tasty, fun to eat, and almost devoid of calories. Splurging on the entire box adds only a minor 40 calories to your daily plan.
- Third trick involves sugar-free gum. Sometimes on long car rides or during very stressful days you just get the urge to chew something, even when you’re not necessarily hungry. At this time a stick of gum works wonders to get your mind off cheating.
Categories : Dieting, Men's Health, Tips and Advices, Women's Health
Drink Lots of Water
Posted by
admin 2 December, 2008
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Muscle is made up of more than 70 percent water. A high-protein diet requires more water as do intense workouts since these both are dehydrating activities. Water is also needed to transport vitamins, minerals, supplements, and even foods throughout our bodies. If our water intake is too low, our muscle fullness decreases, and a toxic buildup of ammonia, urea, uric acid, and other bad stuff can start to accumulate in our bodies. That’s why, to stay hydrated and pumped throughout the day, we should make it a point to drink about a gallon of water each day with and in between our six meals.
Those are the basic nutritional principles in the Fitness Made Simple program. Following them will help build muscle and burn fat. However, if you are particularly concerned with fat loss, you need to consider one additional factor.
Categories : Dieting, Men's Health, Tips and Advices, Women's Health
Eat Foods in Combination at All Meals
Posted by
admin 2 December, 2008
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Combining protein, carbs, and fat at every meal slows down the absorption of food, which makes you less likely to gain weight.
Here’s why: fats and proteins both lower the glycemic index of carbs so we don’t get a big fat-producing insulin surge, which leads to weight gain. Fat especially slows down the absorption of anything combined with it. That’s why one nice trick is to put a little all-natural peanut butter—and I stress only all-natural peanut butter, which lists peanuts or peanuts and salt as the sole ingredients—on our bread or rice cakes and why adding a teaspoon of flaxseed oil to a protein drink or fat-free yogurt is a good idea. This way it takes our bodies a while to absorb these foods and the nutrients are parceled out over time.
As many of you may already have guessed, this technique also allows us to eat some of the higher GI foods without being limited to meal after meal of low GI carbs like oatmeal.
Adding fat to our protein or carbohydrate meals also gives us a greater feeling of fullness in our stomachs, so we feel more satisfied at the end of a meal. Fats and carbs eaten in combination with protein also have another benefit—they are “protein sparing.” When eaten in moderation, carbs and fat will be preferentially broken down by the body and used for energy so the body will be free to use the protein sources for more important activities, like muscle growth.
Now, as always, there’s a slight exception to the rule of avoiding the big carb-induced insulin surge: that’s immediately after a workout. After hitting the weights for an intense hour, our muscle cells are begging to refill their depleted energy, or glycogen, stores with nutrients. So after our workouts we can deliberately elicit that insulin surge by eating a meal of 50 to 80 grams of carbs—mixing both simple or highly processed carbs and lower glycemic carbs along with about 30 to 40 grams of easily absorbed protein, like whey protein. This is where one of those meal replacement drinks often comes in handy. But right after our workouts is really the only time we want to have that insulin spike and gorge our muscle cells with goodies.
Categories : Dieting, Men's Health, Tips and Advices, Women's Health
Eat a High-Protein Diet
Posted by
admin 2 December, 2008
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If you’re trying to keep fat off and muscle on, eating protein is second to none. Proteins, like chicken breast and egg whites, build muscle and are the least likely nutrients to be converted to fat and increase fat stores. Protein will also help our fat-loss efforts because, as clinical studies have shown, it causes a greater increase in our metabolisms than any other macronutrient. In other words, the body burns a substantial amount of calories just in the process of breaking down protein. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, protein is also a very potent appetite suppressant. No need for those over-the-counter appetite control pills when we’re on a high-protein diet.
Now the big question is, how often and how much protein should we eat each day? Well, it’s a fact that muscles grow because of net protein synthesis, which is the difference between protein degradation and synthesis. In the average couch potato, this net difference is zero. He or she isn’t causing any muscle damage, so protein requirements are the same day in and day out. If we’re bodybuilding or weight training intensely and correctly, we should be causing a good deal of muscle fiber damage, and thus we need extra protein to repair this damage.
As to how much protein we need, some studies show that to elicit muscle growth beyond what we’d normally achieve, we need quite a bit more than the RDA of 70 or so grams. I personally make sure to get at least one gram per pound of my lean body weight. For example, if I weigh 200 pounds and have a body fat percentage of 5 percent, my lean body mass is 190 pounds, so I’d make sure to get at least 190 grams of protein, preferably more, each day divided among my six meals.
Categories : Dieting, Men's Health, Tips and Advices, Women's Health
Watch Those Carbohydrates
Posted by
admin 2 December, 2008
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Unlike protein, which we now know dramatically decreases our cravings, carbohydrates, especially those simple carbs, have been shown to dramatically increase our appetites.
We experience a big blood-sugar surge when our meals are primarily carbohydrates and hardly any protein or fat. This rise in blood sugar often causes mood swings, and the subsequent rapid drop in blood sugar leads to a lethargic feeling that makes many high-carb eaters just want to take a nap. Even worse, when our body’s energy reserves or glycogen stores are filled with carbs, the majority of the extra blood sugar floating around just gets converted to body fat. Carbs are our bodies’ preferred fuel source. As long as we continue eating a lot of them, our bodies won’t tap into fat stores at all. Why should they? They have all those carbs floating around. Burning body fat for energy happens when blood sugar is low.
Eating a diet too high in carbs can also lead to that bloated appearance since excess carbs tend to cause water retention. That’s why some of the high-carb proponents have a sort of puffy look and aren’t as toned and defined as their diets would suggest.
Excess dietary carbohydrates can lead to a chronically high insulin level. That, in turn, can cause insulin resistance, high cortisol levels, and, possibly, type 2 diabetes. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone—it breaks down muscle and other tissues. It is the enemy of a lean body. Moreover, high insulin levels are antagonistic to testosterone and growth hormone production. Those two substances are the body’s best muscle-building hormones. That’s why I maintain that food is only as relevant as the hormonal and biochemical pathways it affects. If you stay on a high-carbohydrate diet, you can go to the gym, work harder, and still remain a whole lot fatter.
By the way, the reason for those cravings is an evil little hormone called neuropeptide y. It signals the brain to crave more carbohydrates, and high GI dietary carbohydrates trigger this devil. Protein and fats don’t. In other words, high GI carbohydrates signal the body to want more carbs.
So to keep your cravings in check and keep your body in the fat-burning zone, eat carbs in moderation. They constitute about 30 to 40 percent of my daily calorie intake. Eat enough to keep your glycogen stores loaded, and always eat them in combination with other foods.
Categories : Dieting, Men's Health, Tips and Advices, Women's Health
Have Four to Six Small, Balanced Meals a Day— Every Day
Posted by
admin 2 December, 2008
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Eating four to six small, balanced meals a day, meaning every three to four hours, fights hunger and prevents you from cheating with fattening between-meal snacks. It also keeps your metabolism and energy levels high throughout the day. Our bodies are being trained to stay in a constant food burning mode with a steady but not overwhelming flow of nutrients.
With only two to three large meals a day, your body gets overwhelmed from the relatively large amount of food it takes in at one time. Whatever the body can’t use at the time gets stored as—you guessed it—fat. Remember, anything that is not used by our bodies for energy or excreted as waste will be stored as fat for use later.
Eating by the clock will take some discipline and it will require you to take some food to work. However, you’ll find it to be a simple adjustment, and your wallet will also thank you. Bringing some food from home is a heck of a lot cheaper than those saturated-fat, sugar-filled, and calorieladen fast-food lunches we’ve all fallen victim to. By simply eating four to six small, balanced meals a day, you’ll satiate your hunger, you won’t feel like you’re starving yourself, and you’ll be raising your metabolism so that you burn more fat than you ever thought possible.
Categories : Dieting, Men's Health, Tips and Advices, Women's Health
