Eggs - Bad Rap

Eggs have gotten a bad rap for years as a maker of "high cholesterol" and we should not eat them. NOT! Knowing the facts about eggs will make them seem like a much healthier food, which they are.

I want to just give you some facts about eggs. Of course, the best are the ones from free range chickens and are organic. The organic part has to do with what the chickens are eating or being fed. Obviously, free range chickens are eating more natural food instead of just the food given them with all kinds of things to make the eggs bigger and the hens to produce more eggs.

SO what's in an egg nutritionally. There are about 70 calories in a large egg. Eggs are a great protein source, containing about 6 grams of protein mostly found in the white of the egg. There are about 5 grams of fat with 2 of those grams being saturated fats and this is all found in the yolk. One of the things that I often recommend to people is to do 1 whole egg and 1 egg white to make a small omelet. If you want a slightly larger omelet, just add another egg white.

More on eggs tomorrow.

High Blood Pressure

You may be surprised to learn that in 2007, the American Medical Association indicated that 30% of US adults have hypertension or high blood pressure. I believe that number is quite a bit higher today. The interesting part is that they also reported the 70% of people with high blood pressure do not have it under control.

While medicine may be necessary to get your blood pressure under control, there are somethings you can do to get it under control without medication. Cut down on the amount of salt in your food and certainly remove the salt shaker from the table. Get on a good balanced diet that will help you attain your appropriate weight. There are a lot of extra miles of blood vessels for every pound of extra weight that you are carrying. Start exercising on a regular basis. If you can find a hundred excuses why not to exercise, go pick up my free ebook and making exercise simple.

Low Back Pain and Exercise

Many people who have chronic low back pain do not exercise because they feel that exercise will make their pain worse. Studies have shown that exactly the opposite is true. People with chronic low back pain who worked out 4 days a week had a reduction in pain of 28% compared with those who only did 2 days a week and had 14% reduction in pain. The exercises that were done were strength training exercises. Increasing the strength of the muscles helped alleviate the back pain.

There are some other things you can do for lower back pain besides exercise, although I am not telling you to avoid exercise. If you can find an energy medicine practitioner, they are often able to align energies from within which will help alleviate your lower back pain.

More on Massage

Massage can help some chronic illness problems that you may have. One of the most common in our society today is hypertension or high blood pressure. Before all of the drugs to treat hypertension, the way that hypertension was treated was by putting someone to bed. Putting you at rest will decrease your blood pressure naturally. In our society today, that is usually not an option.

Stress is usually at the root of hypertension and although you may not feel stressed, there are many more things that come at us today to stress our systems. Massage puts you at rest for an hour which can really make a difference for you. Taking away the stress for an hour so that you become relaxed can be a huge boost to your wellness.

Massage

Massage is a wellness therapy that many feel is just a luxury. In fact massage is a therapy which can help not only someone with an illness but also be used as a wellness practice as well.

Massage promotes blood flow which can really help if you have muscle soreness, or you've had an injury or surgery and are in rehab. Blood flow to an area will help alleviate swelling and pain. In addition to increasing blood flow, massage helps stimulate the lymphatic system. Most people don't know much about the lymph system, but it is the system which removes the waste products from your body. If you've had cells that are injured, the blood flow into the area helps new cells to generate and the lymph system cleans out the damaged cells and contents.

When you increase blood flow throughout the body with massage, you also decrease the heart rate and breathing slows as you move into a more relaxed state. This can improve sleep for you as well.

More on Mosquitoes

Finding a natural way of combating the biting mosquitoes is healthier for you than using toxins such as permethrin or DEET. The issue with these is that you will need to apply them more frequently. Oil of lemon eucalyptus provides about the same amount of protection as low concentrations of DEET. If you have a formulation of 40% or higher, the lemon eucalyptus will work against ticks.

Cutter Insect Repellent contains oil of lemon eucalyptus as it's main ingredient. Repel is another form of the effective ingredient.

Lastly, blow them away. Mosquitoes are less active in windy conditions, so you are less likely to be bitten if it is breezy. Try a fan, it does wonders if there is not a natural breeze present!

Bug Bites

We are well into summer and depending upon where you live, the bugs are out. My parents always said that the mosquitoes only came out when I came home to northern Wisconsin! We have it pretty easy here in the Denver area, because bugs are just not a problem, but go to the mountains and there are legions of them.

Some things you can do to prevent or lessen the number of bites is to first wear light colored, loose clothing. Mosquitoes are often attracted to dark colors, and especially reds and blues.

My recommendation is to NOT use any of the insecticide treatments for clothes. Some clothes come pretreated and there is permethrin out there that you can treat your own clothes. Know that you are putting yourself at risk. These insecticides are neuotoxins which can be absorbed from the cclothing into your skin and hence your body. These insecticides have also been found to have a carcinogenic affect and may result in cancer cell formation. Use extreme caution if you are going to do this and know the risk that you are taking. there are better ways.

Decreasing Sodium Tips

Yesterday I mentioned reading labels carefully. Add up all of the sodium from the foods that you eat and if you're over your limit of 2300 or less, cut something out.

But there are other ways to cut sodium. Most of the sodium as I mentioned yesterday comes from processed foods. the other place that we get a lot of sodium is in restaurant food. So if you eat out a lot, ask about low sodium items on the menu. You can also ask to see nutritional content for the menu items you're thinking of choosing. If you're doing fast food, not to pick on McDonald's, but a Big Mac has 1040mg. So almost half of your day's allotment is taken in that one thing. If you do the large fries, you're adding about 300mg, so now you would definitely be over half way to your daily limit. Wendy's Baconater has 1880mg!! The Burger King Whopper has 1020mg.

If you're eating out, either stay away from foods with sauces or eat very little sodium at any of your other meals for the day.

When cooking, do not add salt to the food. My mother had heart disease, so I learned to cook without salt and while my mother-in-law was a big user of salt in food, my husband is just fine with very little salt. We use other spices for flavor so no sodium is required.

Know Your Sodium Limit

Sodium is becoming more and more of a problem within our society. This is because we have a large portion of the population with high blood pressure, heart disease, and/or stroke. People at risk for these diseases are anyone over 40 years of age, African Americans, and anyone with high blood pressure. Almost 70% of the US population is at risk.

So how much sodium should you be getting each day. Most of the federal and nutritional guidelines indicate that 2300 mg of sodium each day is the right amount, as long as you are a healthy, normal adult without heart disease, stroke or hypertension. If you have high blood pressure, then you need to decrease the amount of sodium intake each day to 1500 mg.

Now the first thing is how much is 2300 mg. In the form of salt because that is how we get most of our sodium, 1 teaspoon = 2300 mg approximately. If you have heart disease or hypertension, the 1500 mg is about 2/3 of a teaspoon of salt per day. Now this means total intake. This does not just mean you can add that much salt each day to the food you eat.

Read the labels. Especially processed food contains large amounts of sodium. Tune in tomorrow for some tips on deceasing sodium in your diet.

Bursts to Burn More Calories

One of the things that research has shown is if you add a short interval to your workout, you can burn more calories. What do I mean by that?

If you are a walker, add 20 seconds of walking very fast to every minute that you walk. What this does is help burn up the glycogen stores in the muscles and the body then begins to burn fat. If you keep increasing this, over time you'll begin to see overall improvement of the muscles as well.

If you are a jogger, add a sprinting interval into your jog.

The best part of this is that once you burn the glycogen stores and you start burning fat stores, the fat stores continue to burn for up to 24 hours.

Tips for Happy Feet

High heels have been around for centuries and they're not going to go away. So here are some tips about wearing them that will keep your feet happy.

Tip 1: a 2 inch heel or less is less problematic than a 4 inch heel. A thinner heel will give you the appearance of height.

Tip 2: Wear heels when you're not going to be on your feet for extended periods of time, like a sit down dinner or a concert. If you're going dancing, wear flats.

Tip 3: Make sure that the toe box is big enough for your toes. You can always have it stretched to give you more room.

Tip 4: While we're talking about room, let's talk about size. Heels should be a size larger than what you wear in a flat - this will help give your foot more space for movement. Use inserts to help fit the shoe to your foot.

Tip 5: Opened toed shoes give your toes more room to move, so they are often more comfortable.

Take care of your feet. They have to carry you around the rest of your life!

Exercising Perfection

Have you ever been exercising and just felt like you couldn't get the exercise down right. You weren't able to do it the way someone showed you or the way the trainer taught you. Sometimes we get hung up trying to do the exercise "perfectly" and we lose the fact that it really doesn't matter if you are perfect, what matters is that you are moving and doing something.

I'm not talking about only half trying, I'm saying to do the best you can, but to not be to critical or hard on yourself. We all have times when we don't perform as well as other times. It is OK. Let go of trying to be perfect.

For tips on fitting exercise into your day, get my free eBook on making exercise fit into your schedule.

Breathing and Fitness

We all know that breathing is essential to life. What you might not be aware of is that when you exercise, you need to be even more aware of your breathing. Athletes who don't perform up to their ability usually do so because their minds freeze rather than their body failing them. The important link here is that when you are exercising, concentrate on your breathing as well. Taking slow deep breaths will help keep your brain well oxygenated and functioning.

The things that happens to many of us is that we will take a gasp of air when we are trying to do something physically difficult and then we hold our breath. This doesn't help you perform at your best, so remember to concentrate onn breathing.

If you need a quick boost stop, take 10 slow deep breaths. On the inhale, say to yourself "I feel calm and powerful." On the exhale, say "your name."

Thinking Yourself Fit

Now you may be asking, does this mean I don't have to exercise? No, that is not what it means. What it does mean is that what we think profoundly affects our body and our performance. So start small with a goal that is attainable. Thinking you'll have washboard abs next week is not realistic. So start with something like being active 2-3 days a week or losing 2 pounds. Go slow so that when you accomplish this goal it is reinforcing and helps you change your self image.

You can accomplish great things by accomplishing little things.

If you're not sure where to start on the fitness track, pick up my free eBook, Too Busy To Exercise. This will give you lots of helpful hints to get you started on being fit.

Food Journals

I know keeping a food diary can be a drag, but it can also be very enlightening and help you figure out your habits. As you are eating, write down what you're eating, how much and when. Also think about what emotions you're feeling and who you are with as you're eating. Sometimes other people can be a trigger for you to eat more.

Try it for a week and see if there are insights for you to glean from this. It just may help you identify when you are an emotional eater and what your triggers are. For more support, see Laurie's blog on refuse to diet.

Another Way to Walk

There is another way to walk which will increase the amount of calories burned and includes working out more than the legs. It's called nordic walking. Using light weight nordic walking poles or you could use cross country ski poles, relieves some of the stress on joints such as the knees, hips and ankles and transfers it to the upper torso. This give you more of a full body work out when you walk.

You will burn up to 45% more calories than when just walking the same distance without poles. This is an exercise that is great for those of you who are just beginning to exercise, rehabilitating from an injury, or senior who have been sedentary with mobility and balance issues.

Exercise Muscle and Fat

So if you stop exercising does muscle turn into fat? Understand that muscle and fat are two entirely different tissues and one cannot become the other. What does happen when you stop exercising is that the caloric intake of food that is not needed to sustain the current demand for energy is stored in the fat cells. Muscles that are not worked regularly, will begin to atrophy or decrease in size, requiring less calories to maintain them.

Your goal is to maintain a higher ratio of muscle to fat. To do this, you need regular activity or exercise that is consistent and has an intensity to maintain the muscle mass. To increase intensity, increase the work load, the number of repetitions or the speed of the movement. You can also try some new type of activity. Most important is to find an activity or exercise that you enjoy, or you will not stay motivated to do it.

From a diet perspective, eat more fruits and vegetables. These are ususally the lacking components in most diets. Remember to get some protein with every meal, but really increase fruits and vegetables.

Ice Water to Lose Weight

Dose drinking ice water help you lose weight? While drinking ice water does increase your metabolism in order to maintain a normal temperature, the amount of calories burned in this process are not going to be significant for you to lose a great deal of weight. Remember a few days ago I mentioned that you had to burn 3500 calories more than your intake to burn a pound of fat. Drinking a half gallon of ice water a day will burn about 70 calories. So it does burn some, but really it is a "drop in the bucket" as far as burning enough calories for weight loss.

I'm not advocating to not drink water here, or even ice water for that matter. The bigger problem that most of us suffer from is we are slightly dehydrated most of the time because we do not drink enough water or we think we're doing OK with liquids because we're drinking soda, tea or coffee. Remember that most of these contain caffeine which make you even more dehydrated. Water is the best thing for you to be drinking.

Fitness Myths and Facts

There are some myths out there around diet and exercise. One of these myths is that we gain body fat as we age and that this is an inevitable fact. While our metabolism does slow down slightly after age 40, the reason that we see people gaining weight after age 40 is not because they are aging. The reason is that those who are gaining weight after 40 do so because they decrease or have no exercise in their life. This will lead to a decrease in muscle mass and an increase in fat mass over time. Incidentally, this decrease in muscle mass and exercise also resulting in a decrease in bone strength as well.

The less muscle mass and bone mass that we have, the fewer calories that we need. Most people do not decrease their caloric intake until they reach their late 80s or 90s. It's interesting, that most people who live into their 90s are not particularly obese. This is because if they were obese earlier in their life and did not do anything about it, they don't live into their 90s.

So to live longer, you want to live stronger. Start now to increase your metabolism with some resistance training at least 2-3 times a week. This will help ward off the osteoporosis issue and increase the muscle mass. Be sure to work all the major muscle groups, legs, arms, back chest and shoulder. Remember that the area that the body tends to deposit fat as we age is in the middle or abdominal area, so keeping this area strong will do a great deal to help you live long and strong.

Burning Calories

I'm not particularly an advocate of counting calories, although we all know that if we are looking to lose some weight, we need to have fewer calories in than we burn each day. So how many calories do you have to burn to lose weight?

Of course, the answer here is first eat less calories than you burn. To lose 1 pound you have to burn 3500 calories. Keep in mind that this means if you eat 2000 calories a day you have to burn 5500 calories to lose a pound. This feels a bit futile in my estimation. Also, keep in mind, to calculate how many calories you burn depends upon your current weight, the activity and the duration of the activity. For example. for a 170 pound person with 30 minutes of walking at 2 miles per hour ( so you walk a mile in the 30 minutes) you burn about 97 calories. That really feels pretty disheartening. To burn 3500 calories, you would need to walk 36 miles! That's not likely to happen.

Now you can see why I'm not an advocate of calorie counting. Best to eat sensible, stay away from the high fat and sugar foods and exercise regularly.

The Dog Diet

Having a dog can be a good thing for several reasons. One is to help you lose weight and help you stay in better shape. Dogs need to be walked. If you walk your dog twice a day for 30 minutes, this is an hour of walking for you and you get the benefit as well as the dog. While we sometimes will not walk for our own health, we are more likely to walk the dog. You do get the benefit here.

This one hour of walking a day can not only help you in dropping some pounds, but it will also help you in terms of giving you some space to think and in some cases if you start running or playing with the dog to get out some of the pent up emotions within you. This is also a good thing for relieving some stress.

Get a dog and get some fitness into your life. To get a free copy of my book on Too Busy To Exercise click on the book title.

Belching or Burps

There are lots of comedy routines out there about belching or burping. While the routines make us laugh, for many people the burps are unpleasant and they would rather keep them to a minimum. Gas production is a normal part of our digestive process, so you will always have a few burps here and there. But you can minimize the number that you do have.

The only control you have over the digestive process is to be aware of what foods cause you to have more burps. I'll mention a few of these in a moment. The part that you do have control over is the amount of air that you swallow into the stomach. Things that make you swallow more frequently will increase the amount of air that you swallow. Some of the things that make you swallow more air are chewing gum, drinking through a straw, smoking, eating fast, and sinus drainage.

Carbonated beverages add a great deal of gas to the stomach. So minimize the amount of carbonated drinks that you have. Also minimizing chewing gum nad eat more slowly. Keep a list of the foods that cause you to have more gas and minimize your intake of these foods.

Some Final Thoughts About Sleep

Some other questions to ask yourself about your sleeping patterns, do you take medication to help you sleep? How long does it take you to fall asleep? How long do you sleep before you waken and can you go back to sleep? How do you feel in the morning and do you have trouble staying alert during the day?

Taking prescription medication to sleep is not the best thing to do. Yes, most of it will put you to sleep, but it does interrupt the nature sleep biorhythm. This is one of the reasons that many people become dependent upon medications. If you are using a sleeping medication, I would strongly advise you to wean yourself off of it. I know that many of them say they are not habit forming, but in fact they really are because of the chemical changes that occur in your body.

For many of you the problem will be that you can't turn off your brain to go to sleep. Try telling yourself a story of where you would like to be or some peaceful scene that you can play in your head. You can also use relaxation tapes/iPods to help you focus into a relaxed state.

For those who go to sleep the minute their head hits the pillow, the problem may be that you sleep for a while and then waken and can't get back to sleep. Again the relaxation piece can be helpful to get you to focus on relaxing.

Remember that you will want to be shooting for that 7-8 hours of sleep each night.

More on Insomnia

The second thing you want to ask yourself about sleep is what is the environment you try to sleep in. What I mean here is do you turn off the lights, TV, stero? Is your bedroom actually ready for sleep? The bed should be comfortable, the room cool, dark and quiet.

If you're going to bed with the TV or the lights on, you will wake up earlier than you want and even though it may be considered a white noise, you may not be getting down into the lower levels of sleep. If you are only in levels 1 and 2, you can easily waken, just by turning or moving, or if there is an increase volume from the TV as with what happens when a commercial comes on. Because you have not gotten down into deeper sleep, you may think that you have not even been asleep.

When I had some stress issues and cuold not turn off my brain at night, I found that listening to a relaxation tape would help me drift off easily. With the advent of iPods, it is even easier today to listen to a relaxation piece without the click of the cassette tape.

Insomnia

Working with older people, I often get the complaint that they are having trouble sleeping. There are some things to ask yourself about your sleep patterns to facilitate what might work better for you to get a better night's rest.

First, what time do you go to bed? Being consistent with you bedtime helps your body. The occasional late night is not a bad thing, but being all over the map or clock if you will as to when you go to bed, will make a difference in your sleep. So set a fairly consistent time every night, like between 10-10:30 p.m. Now this will also be dependent upon when you get up. My internal alarm clock wakes me at about 4:15-4:30 a.m. every day, so I shoot to be in bed by 9 p.m. Once I'm awake, I'm up. You may wake up but go back to sleep, so the question to ask is not just what time do you wake up, but what time do you actually get out of bed.

More tomorrow on this subject.

Lasting Weight Loss

There is one thing that those who have lost weight and keep it off do. The one thing is that they are willing to face their demons and continue to deal with their issues. Changing your attitude and being proactive about your issues will help you in your journey. Running from the issues, just makes them grow larger. One of my clients is like the poster child for this, after years of up and down weight and never being able to sustain a weight loss, she has faced her demons and continues to deal with her issues and best of all she is sustaining her 100+ pound weight loss.

If you want to read more about Laurie's story, go to Refuse to Diet. She will help give you some wonderful insights into how to go about facing those demons and dealing with your issues.

A good place to start is to begin journaling and writing down your negative thoughts about yourself and why you haven't been able to reach your goals. Learn to create positive thoughts and let go of the negative ones. Remind yourself that you are worth the effort! Move forward, love yourself for who you are now.

Sugar Load in Drinks

I just read an article about an idea to add a specific tax on sodas and energy drinks. I think that is probably not a bad idea. Research has shown that sodas and energy drinks are contributing to obesity in this country. Obesity is linked to heart disease, arthritis, cancer and Type 2 Diabetes.

Even the sodas and energy drinks with artificial sweeteners are contributing to the obesity. People believe that because it says there are no calories that it is safe to drink as much as they want. Not true.

One of the reasons people need to be aware of this problem is that sodas and energy drinks are the largest source of added sugar to the diet of young Americans. Teenage boys consume on average 1 quart a day.

The other misconception is that energy drinks or juices are OK. Look at the calorie load from sugar. Cranberry juice coctail has 200 calories and 12 teaspoons of sugar in a 12 ounce serving!

Better drinks to be drinking, try water with a little lemon or lime. Unfortunately, the soft drink industry is not going to change their drinks any time soon because this is extremely profitable for them.

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy 4th of July!! Enjoy some watermelon today in honor of the 4th! You can get a couple of fruit servings in while enjoying this nutritious treat!

Cheating on Your Diet with Drink

There are a couple of things about drink. First is the one that probably came to mind when you read the title. alcohol. If your treat is to have an alcoholic drink, then have it after you have eaten a good meal or while you are eating a good meal. Then just sip at it. If you drink it afterward, you can think of it as your dessert. It is better not to combine drinking with happy hour as you are likely to overindulge in alcohol and in junk snack foods.

The second kind of drinking I want to talk about is water. Sipping water between bites of your "cheating" food will help it last longer and let you savor it. In addition, you will be giving your body some much needed water.

Not related to drink, but often goes along with drink are munchies. Be smart about which munchies you choose. Pretzels and baked potato chips are 2 of the better munchies. I would recommend that you put a limit on how much you munch. In other words, only put out a small bowl. Better yet, use raw nuts as munchies!

More Healthy Ways to Cheat on Your Diet

Yesterday I talked about ice cream. I forgot to mention one thing about ice cream. One of the things you can do is to top your ice ream with fresh fruit or nuts. This will help you get a fruit serving in, make the ice cream taste better and you'll feel like you're really "cheating."

I also mentioned yesterday to have one day a week when you get to eat what you want. I want to add to that a bit and say, select a reasonable sized portion. If you are really craving a cookie, then pick one that is a reasonable size, don't go for the biggest one you can find or make. I had a friend once who said she ate just one cookie, but it was one of those the size of a 12 inch pizza! Make whatever you choose something special. If you want a candy bar, choose your favorite one rather going for a bag of bite size candies. The adage is true here as it is with potato chips, you can't just eat one, so if you only have one candy bar, you won't eat the whole bag.

Healthy Ways to Cheat on Your Diet

I shuddered a bit when I wrote diet in the title, because of the many negative connotations that brings up. But the reality is that many of you out there are on a "diet." Many of you are likely feeling deprived and if you do slip then you really let it all go. So here are some tips for "cheating" in a healthy way.

Keep your cheating to occasional. I like to say give yourself permission to eat whatever you want one day a week. You could do this as often as once a day depending upon your overall health, weight, activity level and overall diet.

First, eat real things. If you are a big ice cream fan, then eat ice cream where the ingredient list is basically cream, sugar and milk. Avoid those ice creams with lots of additives. Also keep in mind that low fat may mean very high sugar. You are better off to do real ice cream made with cream as you will get less sugar. Be reasonable about how much you eat. I know you could eat half the carton, bu this is a treat, so spoon out 1/2 cup and celebrate that 1/2 cup and enjoy every bite instead of just shoving down.