Daily Healthy Living Tips

New Year's Healthy Living Tips

Winter has arrived. You're tempted to stay warm by eating fattier comfort foods and cranking on the heat, hibernating watching movies, being sedentary like a bear.

How then to get leaner during the holidays and winter?

Don't go Insane with a Diet

Allow yourself to cheat every once in a while. If pizza is your favorite guilt food, eat one slice per week. You'll end up going crazy if you eat only tofu and carrots everyday. If you enjoy artery-clogging fatty meat like brisket for example, eat only a fist-sized portion.

Find alternatives to foods laden with saturated fat and cholesterol; though keep in mind not all saturated fats and foods that have cholesterol are bad for you, such as coconut oil, excellent to cook with as it stays very stable at high temperatures.

Try eating a Mediterranean diet of lean fish, green salads, nuts, and fruits and vegetables, hummus, and whole-wheat pita, olives and olive oil. (Don't cook olive oil at higher than a medium flame, as it will alter the chemical properties of the oil for the worse.)

Eat More Often!

A sensible eating plan should consist of eating several small meals a day, say four or five. Combined with daily moderate-intensity exercise, eating more often throughout the day will speed your metabolism into overdrive. Some still think that the less often you eat the better for you. The exact opposite is true. If you're only eating twice a day, or spacing your meals five hours or more apart, your metabolism shuts down and body fat is preserved, not burned.

Replace fatty cuts of meat with fish, which is virtually free of saturated fats, contains heart-healthy Omega-3 fatty acids, is loaded with protein and low in carbohydrates.

Which Carbs Should I Eat to Stay Lean?

If you're going to eat carbohydrates, eliminate simple carbs, that is, anything with refined sugar or anything containing white flour. Try to eliminate flour in general as simple sugars will weaken your immune system.

To successfully avoid colds and flu during the winter, you should have your immune system running at optimal levels. This means avoiding simple carbs, as excess insulin spikes will weaken your immunity. The sugar might also exacerbate allergy symptoms.

So avoid doughnuts, white bread, and sadly, yes, bagels. Choose 100% whole wheat bread instead of white bread and brown rice instead of white. Eating foods with flour and processed or refined sugars will spike your insulin production levels, eventually resulting in a loss of energy and an increase of stored body fat.

So if you are hungry for carbs, try lots of vegetables and complex, slow-burning carbs like whole grains.

Unless you plan on hopping on a treadmill right after you eat a piece of candy, the unburned sugar will be stored as fat. If you know you're going to exercise at say five in the afternoon, eat some brown rice (along with a balanced protein/fat source) a couple hours earlier to fuel your workout. Although brown rice is a healthy alternative to white rice, if eaten late at night, it will be stored as fat for your body to use as energy. So if you're hungry late at night, try to eat something that is comprised mostly of protein. Speaking of protein�

...Was Dr. Atkins Right?

The late Dr. Robert Atkins is the most controversial doctor. Atkins advocated a high-protein, low-carbohydrate approach to weight loss. His book, Diet Revolution, became one of the 50 bestselling books in history. Atkins was right in the sense that our bodies don't store excess protein as bodyfat, as carbohydrates do (excess protein is secreted through urine). For people who are obese and don't exercise, the Atkins diet will help them shed significant weight. But life is too short to deny yourself of tasty carbohydrates. Your body prefers carbohydrates as a primary source of fuel. Much of the weight loss for the Atkins diet is from water. If you're on a very high-protein, low carb diet such as the Atkins diet, you will immediately gain weight if you have a portion of pasta, rice or other complex carbohydrate. If you exercise regularly, you will need to eat some carbs in order to have enough energy to perform. The Atkins diet worked for some, most likely because those people were born with protein-dominant metabolic types.

But for most people (those with mixed carb and protein-dominant metabolic types, or a heavily carb-dominated type), the Atkins diet, turned out to be just like all other tens of thousands of come and go fad diets.

The Universal Law of Thermodynamics and Exercise

Carbohydrates, fats and proteins react differently in your body, but what weight loss all boils down to is the Law of Thermodynamics. Simply put, you will gain weight (fat mass) if you consume more calories than you burn. So how do you burn calories?

Set an initial goal for yourself of performing moderate-intensity aerobic exercise three times a week and resistance training two or three times a week. Eventually you will get hooked and want to increase the exercise frequency.

What if I hate running?

Then don't run. Unless you're a well-conditioned athlete, your heart rate should not exceed (when first starting an exercise program) 70 percent of your theoretical heart rate, which is 220 beats per minute minus your age times 70 percent. There are other formulas for figuring your target heart rate, but this is the simplest. Not sure what your heart rate is while working out? Go buy a heart rate monitor (sold at sporting goods stores for approximately $80) and exercise at an intensity that is between 55 and 70 percent of your target heart rate. Remember to warm up and cool down for five minutes each. Initially, strive for 25 minutes of continuous aerobic exercise (including warm up and cool down).

Your metabolism will skyrocket when you add resistance training to your aerobic exercise regimen. One pound of muscle burns approximately 35 calories a day, compared with five calories a day for one pound of fat. How do you turn fat into muscle? Resistance training. The elderly and women need resistance training to prevent osteoporosis and build bone density.

Not sure how to get started with a resistance training program? Consult a personal trainer. You can also use your own body weight to build up strength, increase bone density, increase your metabolism and lose fat, however, getting motivated to perform these exercises on your own is a problem. It's best to train with a fitness professional or exercise with a fitness-savvy friend.

Don't forget to breathe!

The Hebrew word for breath, "Neshima" and soul, "Neshama" derive from the same root. Breathing properly helps us connect to our souls. Inhale and expand your rib cage and belly. Exhale the stale air and carbon dioxide out by deflating your belly when you breathe out. If you want to be on this Earth for a longer period of time and see your children and grandchildren graduate, get married and have their own children, then change your lifestyle. The most honorable, charitable and selfless act you can do is to adopt a healthy lifestyle so that you will be with your loved ones for a longer (and higher quality) period of time.

Carb: A dirty four-letter word?

Carbohydrate is one of the most dreaded words in America. With popular diets such as Atkins and South Beach criminalizing the carb, what does a person do to eat right, and yet still have their bread?

Basically there are two kinds of carbohydrates - "good" and "bad." Good carbs have a minimal impact on your blood sugar levels without causing them to spike or drop too drastically. When blood sugar levels fluctuate, that's when you end up feeling hungry, shaky, or even nauseous, and usually find yourself gorging on the nearest sugary, empty calorie snack. Good carbs are also full of vitamins, minerals and fiber, which are all necessary for a balanced, healthy diet.

Bad carbs, on the other hand, are full of sugar and white flour, which send blood sugar levels skyrocketing upwards. Although you may feel full briefly, soon your body will up the sugars and simple carbohydrates, resulting in more hunger. Because as your blood sugar levels fall lower than where they were before, it creates hunger pangs. It's a bad cycle.

This is where diets such as Atkins and South Beach step in. Although different from one another, each diet stresses the need to refrain from food items containing white flour or sugars. In this way the American public has become more aware to the differences in carbohydrates.

However, sometimes the diets take it a little too far. Complete abstinence from carbohydrates is not a healthy choice in the long run. A necessary nutrient, carbohydrates supply the body with energy and fiber. Bulkier carbs that are low in calories fill you up. Even the human brain reacts to the ingestion of carbs, releasing chemicals upon their absorption.

And sometimes it's those "feel-good" chemicals that make it so hard to say "no" to another cookie. For humans are programmed to dive straight into sugar; a quickly digested instant burst of energy, sugar is directly related with serotonin, the "happy chemical" in the brain. But sugar is also an instant diet breaker. White flour food items such as white bread, pasta, waffles, pancakes, cookies and baked goods are, essentially, nutritional wastelands. High in calories, low in nutrients, and usually delicious to boot, these "bad carbs" are guaranteed to be bad news for your waistline.

So, how to incorporate carbs in your diet? Become a fiber fiend and make sure that you're picking the correct carbohydrates. Read food labels - make sure that all bread and cereal products are made with "whole wheat" or "whole grain." Skip anything simply labeled "wheat" or "brown." And refrain from any food items made with white flour, which is simply empty calories, destined only to make your hungrier.

So what can you eat? Well, fruit and vegetables are always good options. If trying to limit your sugars, however, keep an eye on how much fruit you are consuming, as all fruit contains natural sugars. A good rule of thumb is to pick fruit that has a high fiber or water content, which will keep you feeling satisfied longer. Apples and berries are high in fiber. Melons are low in calories and full of water. Try an avocado or a tomato; these fruits are often overlooked but are simply packed with vitamins. Be wary, however, when picking up a peach or a citrus fruit, as these are loaded with natural sugars. Vegetables, on the other hand, are the perfect snack and meal option. Full of everything your body needs, from antitoxins to antioxidants, vegetables are high in fiber and naturally low in calories and sugars. The exception? Try to refrain from starchy vegetables such as corn and potatoes.

But what about baking? Use whole wheat flour. Grab a whole grain bagel. Brown rice, wild rice, millet, barley and oatmeal and quinoa are all good options. Try making oatmeal pancakes with whole wheat flour; load up on bulgur instead of white rice. Try food that mixes protein and carbs - legumes are a good idea. Lentils, chick peas, black beans, even fat-free vegetarian refried beans are an option.