Losing Stomach Fat - Which vegetables can help?

0 Votes You may be aware that there are certain chemicals that make up part of the environment and food supply today that can generate more estrogen inside our bodies. Some examples of these are pesticides, herbicides and petrochemicals.

You may or may not know that these can cause an increase in stomach fat for both Men and Women. This is something that everyone should know, especially if you are trying to lose stomach fat.

The name of these chemincals are xenoestrogens (they even have a horrible name, don't they?), and when you are exposed to them through the food supply, water supply or the environment, they will stop your body from getting rid of stomach fat.

"No problem" - I hear you say. You can just stay away from the offending foods and that's it, right? Wrong.

Although you may be careful with what you eat and stick to organic food, it is very hard not to get some amount of daily exposure to xenoestrogens. They are found all over the place - even in the perfume you wear and the cleaning products you use in your house.

So, what can be done to battle the impact of the xenoestrogens in causing you to retain unwelcome stomach fat?

The great news is that there are certain types of vegetables that will assist you in your aim of losing stomach fat.

There are many types of vegetables, teas, spices, etc that have compounds which can help to fight the negative effects of xenoestrogens. Possibly the most effectual are cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, kale, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, etc.

These vegetables have very special and unique compounds (such as indole-3-carbinol - if you are interested) that can help to fight against the negative impact of of xenoestrogens on your body, and therefore, can assist you to burn off belly fat more effectively.

There are already loads of terrific reasons for consuming broccoli and cauliflower - now you can add losing stomach fat to the list!

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Healthy Foods That Help Burn Fat

0 Votes Have you woken up one morning realizing you are overweight and as hard as you try, you can't recall how you came to this state? You can't seem to track it back to any particular event or series of events, because its something that over years from eating poorly and leading sedentary lives. Because this is something that has built up over many years, its also something that won't go away over night.

Fortunately the reverse is true if you were to start eating healthy and getting some regular exercise. The situation is not out of your hands yet.

Anyone who wants to lose weight needs to watch their intake of food. It's important to eat healthy, because you are what you eat.

If you are going to watch what you eat, you need to focus on the key foods that will not only promote fat loss but are also helpful for your good health.

When you make the decision to start eating healthier, its better not to quit cold turkey as this can be a very stressful change, and stress isn't good for us. So start by making a few changes at a time, replacing some of the junk foods with the foods below slowly.

Soy Protein

As omnivores, we eat both plant and animal, and from these food sources we get protein. Protein is vital in building and repairing our bodily tissues (Muscles and Organs). Because many of the animal based proteins carry some unnecessary fats (some fats are good, and some are bad), and through the growing, feeding and slaughtering process may come in contact with chemicals or biologicals that we do not want, there is a growing push for the tiny but powerful soy bean. The soy bean is a complete protein which is not that common for plants or vegetables, and its protein is not as high quality as the whey or animal proteins, it comes about as close to a magic weight loss pill as we can get.

Proteins require a great deal of calories just to digest so by eating a clean light source of protein such as soy we are gaining a double benefit.

Whole Grains

You have a whole grain when you have bran, germ and endosperm present. Whole grains are a great source of key nutrients. They are one of the top sources of vitamin B, E, iron, magnesium and fibre.

Here is a list of some good whole grain foods...

Whole Wheat
Wild Rice
Oatmeal
Brown Rice
Whole Oats
Whole Rye
Barley
Popcorn (no salt or butter)

Not only do whole grains provide the benefit of decreasing the chance for heart disease, and the potential for blood clots, they are also good for fat loss.

The Grapefruit

You may remember the grapefruit diet, its remarkable fat loss properties being attributed to crazy and mythological qualities of the grapefruit, well crazy as all that sounds...the grapefruit is a great fat loss food, but for more realistic reasons.

The grapefruit has been shown to reduce insulin levels in the body by a very small amount, and this means that you will store less sugar as fat, not to mention lower insulin levels lower your appetite.

The grapefruit is also a highly fibrous food and low in calories and it actually takes more calories to digest it than there exist in the fruit itself. As a result the grapefruit is a great food to add to your morning breakfast or any meal.

Apples

Water rich fruits like apples contain pectin and this can limit how much fat your cells will absorb. There are other benefits to apples and small berries as they contain considerable antioxidants and are just plain good for you. The age old saying.

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Top 7 Tips To Stretch Your Back, Hip And Leg Flexibility

1 Votes How much time should you spend stretching? This is up to you. To do all the repetitions of all exercises in the following would take at least 30 minutes. It is encouraged to try all the stretches and then decide what works best for you. You may choose to do only a few exercises that seem most helpful for your back condition. Or you may decide to do fewer repetitions of each exercise. Or you may do everything. You are the best person to decide what works for you. The exercises do not all have to be done at once. You can do a little here and there over the course of your day. Here are some of the tips that you can consider to adopt.

1. Trunk Rotation

Lie on your back with your arms out to your sides. Bend your knees and either place your feet flat on the floor or pull your knees up toward your chest. Roll your legs to one side and then the other. Experiment with leg positions to find the one that is most comfortable for you. Move from side to side 20 times. Hold the last stretch to each side for 20 seconds while you relax and breathe easily.

2. Knees To Chest

While lying on your back, pull one leg at a time up to your chest. Then raise your knees and pull both toward your chest at the same time. Do 20 repetitions of each motion, holding the last repetition for 20 seconds.

3. Hamstring Stretch

Lie flat on your back in the neutral position. Keeping your left leg straight, bend your right leg, at a 90-degree angle so that the lower right leg is parallel to the ground. Clasp your hands behind your right knee, and begin to straighten your right leg. Do a gradual stretch three to five times, holding it for 20 to 30 seconds. Repeat the stretch with the opposite leg.

4. Hip Flexor Stretch

Kneel down on your right knee. Make sure that your upper body is straight and that your left leg is bent a 90-degree angle. Keeping your hips square and your upper body perpendicular to the ground, drive your hips forward. As you move forward, you should feel the stretch in your right hip. Hold the stretch for 20 to 30 seconds and repeat three to five times. Repeat with the other leg.

5. Quadriceps Stretch

While standing, reach back and grab your right foot or ankle with your right hand. Pull your foot up toward your buttock to stretch the muscles on the front of your thigh. Keep your knee pointing down and next to the other knee. Be sure to stand up straight and avoid twisting. Hold for 20 to 30 seconds and repeat three to five times. Repeat with the opposite leg.

6. Calf Stretch

Stand with one foot in front of the other or with your feet together. Keep your toes pointing forward and your heels on the floor. Lean forward to feel a stretch at the back of your ankle and calf. Hold it for 20 to 30 seconds. Relax and repeat three to five times.

7. Gluteal Stretch

Lie on your back with both legs flat on the floor. Grab your knee and ankle with your hands and pull it toward the opposite shoulder. Hold it for 20 to 30 seconds and repeat three to five times. Repeat with the other leg.

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A Treadmill Exercise Routine Provides Advantages for Your Health

0 Votes Studies have shown that walking is the premiere exercise. It can be done by almost anyone at anytime. Walking on a regular basis helps one live longer and healthier.

There are many people who do not exercise simply because they don't know what to do or exercise is inconvenient. A simple treadmill exercise routine is the answer for many people as it is convenient, readily can fit into one's schedule, offers healthy benefits anc can be fun too. Taking control of the exercise is important for a good treadmill exercise routine.

Treadmill exercise routines provide the typical benefits of a cardio exercise. A person walking on a treadmill can strengthen the heart and improve their cardiovascular fitness. This will improve one's blood circulation and maintain good heart blood pressure.

Of course using this exercise machine does not guarantee a longer life but the fitness benefits gained will provide a healthier and better overall quality of life. Additionally this exercise tends to play on a person's genetic traits and in this respect may prolong one's life.

The use of a treadmill exercise routine does not take a great deal of time to provide beneficial results. Many people are able to do their routines over a lunch break. Experts can recommend a complete series of plans for routines to do on different days to keep your exercise from becoming too routine and mundane.

A typical routine usually provides a mix of hill climbs, long slow easy walks, brisk power walks, and speed intervals. One can also add unique strength moves and perhaps use hand weights to create a cumulative effect for overall fitness.

One idea for a treadmill exercise routine is to create a 3 month plan. During each week within this plan create different routines and goals for each week. If you are just starting week one might just be slower walks to get comfortable on the treadmill. Then for the next few weeks you might designate some days of the week as cardio days, some as strength days etc. Then craft a plan so that each Monday you will be doing a particular routine until you get everyday planned for you 3 months.

You will want to have some days for inclines and some for intervals. You may choose to have one day that has a little bit of each technique. Write your plan down and keep a journal of your progress. At the end of your 3 months, evaluate your treadmill exercise routine and use your notes to create a new plan or just tweak your existing plan for use for another 3 months.

While this is just an example to get you thinking, remember there are internet resources and books that give additional ideas that you can use to create your own treadmill exercise routine.

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Diet-Heart Controlled Trials: a New Literature Review

Many controlled studies have measured the cardiovascular effects of replacing animal ("saturated") fats with seed oils (predominantly the omega-6 polyunsaturated fat linoleic acid) in humans. A number of these studies recorded heart attacks and total mortality during the following 1-8 years. Several investigators have done meta-analyses (literature reviews) to try to tease out overall conclusions from these studies.

I'm pleased to point out a new meta-analysis of these controlled trials by Dr. Christopher Ramsden and colleagues (1). This paper finally cleans up the mess that previous meta-analyses have made of the diet-heart literature. One recent paper in particular by Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian and colleagues concluded that overall, the controlled trials show that replacing animal fat with linoleic acid (LA)-rich seed oils reduces heart attack risk (2). I disagreed strongly with their conclusion because I felt their methods were faulty (3).

Dr. Ramsden and colleagues pointed out several fundamental flaws in the review paper by Dr. Mozaffarian and colleagues, as well as in the prevailing interpretation of these studies in the scientific literature in general. These overlap with the concerns that I voiced in my post (4):
Omission of unfavorable studies, including the Rose corn oil trial and the Sydney diet-heart trial.Inclusion of weak trials with major confounding variables, such as the Finnish mental hospital trial.Failure to distinguish between omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids.Failure to acknowledge that seed oils often replaced large quantities of industrial trans fats in addition to animal fat in these trials.
Dr. Ramsden and colleagues accounted for all of these factors in their analysis, which has never been done before. They chose inclusion criteria

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Interview with a Kitavan

Kitava is a Melanesian island that has maintained an almost entirely traditional, non-industrial diet until very recently. It was the subject of a study by Dr. Staffan Lindeberg and colleagues, which I have written about many times, in which they demonstrated that Kitavans have a very low (undetectable) rate of heart attack, stroke, diabetes and overweight. Dr. Lindeberg described their diet as consisting mostly of yam, sweet potato, taro, cassava, coconut, fruit, fish and vegetables. Over the seven days that Dr. Lindeberg measured food intake, they ate 69% of their calories as carbohydrate, 21% as fat (mostly from coconut) and 10% as protein.

I recently received an e-mail from a Kitavan by the name of Job Daniel. He's working at the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research in Madang, studying the social and economic impacts of malaria and related health issues in Papua New Guinea. He recalls many details of Dr. Lindeberg's visit to Kitava, which Dr. Lindeberg has confirmed are correct. Job generously offered to answer some of my questions about the traditional Kitavan diet. My questions are in bold, and his responses are below.

How many meals a day do Kitavans eat?
People on the island eat mostly two meals a day. But nowadays, breakfast is mainly comprised of tubers (yam and sweet potato and greens all cooked in coconut cream and salt) and dinner is the same with the inclusion of fish as protein most often. In between these two meals, lunch is seen as a light refreshment with fruits or young coconut only to mention these two popular ones. In between the morning and the evening, we mostly eat fruits as snack or lunch. Generally speaking, there are only two main meals per day, i.e breakfast and dinner.

Do Kitavans eat any fermented food?
There are fermented fruits and nuts like you've said for breadfruit, nuts, yams and not forgetting fish. We ferment them by using the traditional method of drying them over the fire for months. And this fermented foods last for almost one to two years without getting stale or spoiled. Food preservation is a skill inherited from our great grand fathers taking into consideration the island's location and availability of food. Foods such as bread fruit and fish are fermented and preserved to serve as substitutes to fresh food in times of trouble or shortage. Otherwise, they're eaten along the way.

Is this really fermentation or simply drying?
To your query about the fermentation methods we use, apart from drying food over the fire, we also use this method like the Hawaiians do with taro

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Squats and deadlifts after 40: Don't do it

0 Votes I am one of those persons who think that squats and dead lifts, two compound movements, should ideally be used as the foundation of any high-intensity resistance training program. Compound movements combine several large muscle groups as opposed to isolation movements (such as arm curls) which concentrate on a single muscle (or part thereof). For those of you who are not familiar with these two very popular exercises, you can refer to these Wikipedia articles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlift

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_%28exercise%29

UNIQUE BENEFITS OF WEIGHT-BEARING EXERCISES

Many believe that the benefits of squats and dead lifts go beyond developing the muscle groups specifically targeted by these movements, i.e. quadriceps (front leg muscles), gluteus (buttock muscles) and hamstrings (back leg muscles). The theory is that because these movements are the most intense of all resistance training exercises they induce the most hormonal response from the body, especially in the form of increased production of growth hormone. I would add that such movements provide the most intense workout in the least time and can therefore be considered as the most efficient of all exercises.
Finally, movements that put direct downward pressure on the spine, such as squats and dead lifts, are proved to be effective in preventing osteoporosis. When pressured is consistently applied top down on a bone like the
femur, this bone will react by creating additional mass. By the same token, swimming and riding a bicycle, while excellent aerobic exercises are not weight-bearing activities (very little pressure is applied downwards on the spine) and thus are not efficient in preventing osteoporosis.

As an avid biker, I am very aware of this limitation and have thus included weight-bearing exercises (leg press, see below) in my weekly training routine.

UNBEARABLE RISKS

In an ideal world then, everybody should include dead lifts and squats in their weekly resistance training routine.
I WOULD HOWEVER RECOMMEND NOT TO USE SQUATS OR DEADLIFTS if you are a typical reader of fitandwise. There are two reasons to this:

First and foremost, for even the youngest and most proficient resistance athlete these two movements are the most dangerous of any resistant training exercises I know. They demand an extreme degree of accuracy in their execution to avoid serious injury risk. I have stopped counting the number of times I have seen even experienced body-builders destroying their spine in front of my eyes by incorrectly executing these movements. They would typically bend too far over, creating a deadly (no pun intended) lever between their upper and lower body, thus exerting a huge pressure on their lumbar region.

Second, around the age of about 40, physiological changes appear that make conjunctive tissues more vulnerable to injuries. If you sprain your ankle in your 40's or 50's (which I did last year) your body will therefore take a longer time to heal and the healing may be less complete than when you were younger.

The only (relative) exception I can see to this recommendation of not using dead lifts and squats would be a life-long athlete (typically a competitive weight lifter) using a flawless technique who would still accept to reduce the weight lifted compared to when he was younger. I doubt this kind of person is a typical reader of fitandwise.

THE SENSIBLE ALTERNATIVE TO SQUATS AND DEAD LIFTS

So is there an alternative to these two sacrosanct movements for the over-40 crowd? Yes there is. Since the 1970's Fitness equipment manufacturers have developed machines that mimic the squat exercise while greatly reducing the risk. These are called leg presses of which there are several variants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leg_press

To be perfectly honest I do not believe that a leg press exercise is 100% as efficient as its equivalent using a barbell because it does not involve stabilizer muscles (also called "core" muscles). Having said that, the choice is a no-brainer for me: I much prefer getting 80% of the benefits of a squat movement with 10% of the risk. So I never squat. I use a bench press once a week (among other leg exercises).

If you start using a bench press, be very careful though in using good form as incorrect exercise technique may also lead to injury. Never use a leg press if you have existing back pain and always consult a physician first if you are over 45.

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