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Exercise Improves Sleep

If you’re one of the third of all Americans who suffer from insomnia — roughly 108 million people — put away your sleeping pills. Science has a much safer solution: Exercise improves sleep.

Exercise Improves Sleep

There has been more and more research in the last decade showing exercise can reduce insomnia. In one study, older women suffering from insomnia said their sleep improved from ‘poor’ to ‘good’ when they exercised. They had more energy and were less depressed.

“Sleeping pills are extremely hazardous,” says sleep researcher Shawn Youngsted. “They are as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Not to mention they cause…

What Is Metabolism?

What is metabolism? That word is thrown around a lot these days. You know that if yours is too slow, you gain weight. But what exactly does metabolism mean?

What is metabolism?

Well technically “metabolism” is the word used to describe all of the biochemical reactions in your body. It’s the process of taking in nutrients and oxygen, and using them them to fuel everything you do. Metabolism is the measurement of how much energy it takes to fuel your body.

Metabolism includes how the cells in your body:

  • Allow activities you can control (physical activity).
  • Allow activities you can’t control (heartbeat, wound healing, digestion, filtering toxins, etc.).

    • …

Motivation To Exercise

Exercise motivation – we all know we should exercise regularly, but only 20% of Americans do. How can you find the motivation to exercise?

Ways to find the motivation to exercise

  1. Focus on one or two baby steps and small changes that you can do consistently. A sure way to kill your exercise motivation is to set overly-ambitious or unrealistic fitness goals. Promising yourself that you’re going to do something every single day is not only unrealistic, but also unnecessary.

    In order to start losing weight, getting in better shape, or start leading a healthier lifestyle, you’ll need to begin doing things differently than you…

Fitness Trends and Fitness Duds

The fitness industry is overloaded with popular exercise trends, gizmos, and special diets. Fitness trends come and go. Some of the exercise and nutrition trends are helpful, and have a long lifespan. Examples of helpful fitness trends are high-intensity exercise, and low-carb diets. Others trends are fitness duds, and disappear into the waste bin of Miracle Cures Past. Popular fitness duds include food combining diets, electric muscle stimulators, and the ThighMaster. Here is my favorite fitness trend, and my #1 fitness dud:

#1 Fitness Trends:

Habits and Baby Steps, instead of Radical Detoxes or 180-degree “makeover” programs.

A typical diet,…

Scientific Ways To Lose Weight

Everyone has some advice about ways to lose weight – your best friend, your coworkers, your mother-in-law, your personal trainer, your yoga instructor. With an overwhelming barrage of information on diet and exercise available at our fingertips from the Internet, this generation should know more about how to lose weight than any other. But are we really any more knowledgeable?

The Lancet reports that worldwide obesity has tripled in males and more than doubled in women. There are actually more overweight people today than there are underweight people! Considering the amount of information we have about nutrition and health, why is the global population…

Easy Ways To Eat Less

We are bombarded by “hidden” messages from all around us that trick us into consuming more than we should. There are easy ways to eat less. Here are tricks to modify your environment and learn to make being slim more of a lifestyle than just a temporary target weight. These tips may surprise you.

Easy Ways To Eat Less

Skinny kitchen counter

A study (Wansink, B., Hanks, A.S., &Kaipainen, K. 2015) was made to determine whether what was on the kitchen counter had some influence on the owner’s body mass index or BMI. Skinny people have fruit on their kitchen counter while people with higher BMI have…

Training Your Brain

Exercise is not only for keeping your body in shape, but for training your brain as well! New and exciting studies show the benefits of neuroplasticity training, which incorporates mental drills into physical training, to combat the deteriorative effects of aging on the brain.

Neuroplasticity is the capacity of the brain to reorganize or reprogram itself in response to stimuli or experience. This is an ability of the brain that continues even into old age. Exercises in neuroplasticity training address different types of aging and involve the stimulation of both sides of the brain. Below are some drills to help train your brain to age gracefully.

What Can I Do To Lose Weight And Get In Shape?

Good news: You don’t have to be perfect in order to lose weight and get in better shape!

See if this sounds familiar:

You get fed up with feeling sluggish, you feel bad about how your clothes fit, and you’ve decided that enough is enough, and it’s time to do something to lose weight and get in better shape.

 

So you make some plans – diet plans, exercises promises, and other decisions to finally do something about this physical and emotional mess you keep getting yourself into.

 

And you actually do some of these new things! And for awhile, you feel great. And proud.

 

And then something happens.

 

You…

How To Fit Cookies In Your Diet

My mom makes some amazing chocolate fudge oatmeal cookies every Christmas. And you’d better believe I’m going to eat some.

how to fit cookies in your diet

I won’t be making some low-fat, gluten-free, protein-packed, zero-sugar, kale-or-quinoa “healthy” cookies.

I’ll eat the real thing.

Made with sugar.

And chocolate and butter.

The kind of cookie that makes you wipe the crumbs off your face after you eat it.

The kind of cookie a lot of nutrition experts will give you “5 Easy Tips for Avoiding”, like this:

how to fit cookies in your diet

Ending Diet Myths

There’s no magic formula for healthy eating and weight loss. All carbs, proteins, and fats come in good and bad forms. A smart food plan for good nutrition and sustainable weight loss won’t be found in a single “diet” or elusive Ultimate Eating Plan. Healthy eating doesn’t have to be hard! Below are diet myths you can get out of your head right now:

diet myths

Diet Myth #1:  There is one mythical diet that works; other diets don’t work.

If you have historically eaten like crap (please excuse the technical jargon), and then you start to eat…