Archive for the ‘Healthy Lifestyle’ Category

Using Exercise to Help Prevent Diabetes

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

What is Diabetes?

Diabetes Exercise

As you may or may not know, diabetes is a metabolic disorder by which the body either fails to produce adequate amounts of insulin needed to properly break down glucose in the blood, or cells in the body are simply unable to react properly to the insulin that is created, leading to the same results.

Those who suffer from this disease may have side effects like frequent urination and thirst, but it can also lead to more serious complications like:

  • glaucoma
  • infections
  • ulcers
  • neuropathy (nerve damage)
  • heart disease
  • an inability of the body to heal wounds
  • and in extreme cases, amputation of extremities

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Setting Health and Fitness Goals for 2013

Tuesday, January 1st, 2013

Set Goals

New Year Resolutions – there, I said it.

The most common New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, but you might have noticed in years past that declaring a commitment to this end rarely results in a comprehensive plan that will actually help you to reach your goal. Perhaps you sign up for a diet program and even attend a few meetings before getting too busy to go. Or maybe you take advantage of Obama care and see a doctor. Or maybe you join a gym and shell out major money for access to equipment that you never end up using.

Whatever you have done in the past, you can make 2013 the year you turn it all around.

The trick, in many cases, is not to put such an emphasis on the number you see on the scale, but rather to address your health and fitness in a way that provides you with other forms of success. So here are just a few things to consider when setting your goals for the coming year.

First and foremost, forget about weight!

Okay, so there is a lot of hubbub circulating about the obesity rate amongst adults and the concurrent rise in heart disease, diabetes, and more. But these aren’t necessarily a byproduct of your weight so much as your lifestyle.

What you really need to address is not the readout on the scale, but rather the bad habits that brought you to this pass.

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Is There Really a “Best” Time of Day to Exercise?

Monday, December 31st, 2012

When Should You Workout?

Tired Woman The short answer here is yes, there is a best time of day to exercise. The longer answer is that you may face some difficulty when it comes to finding that magical hour in which you’ll get the most out of your workout regimen. The problem is that we are all different and thus, what works for one person may not be at all ideal for another.

For example, you may hop out of bed in the morning the minute your alarm goes off, raring to go and ready to throw on your jogging shoes. On the other hand, you might have no frame of reference for people who can rise even earlier than usual to get in a workout before a full day of work.

It could be that you prefer to exercise after work as a way to refocus and relieve stress. Maybe you like to head to the gym late at night when no one else is around to get in your way. Or perhaps you enjoy the hustle and bustle of other active adults moving all around you. The point is that everyone has different wants and needs when it comes to exercise, and they could play a role in finding the best time of day to workout.

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Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle is Important for Optimal Vision

Saturday, December 29th, 2012

Your Lifestyle WILL Affect The Health of Your Eyes

Sexy Eyes Everyone knows how important it is for all of us to have a healthy vision. It is equally important to identify ways through which we can keep our vision healthy all our life. The eye specialists’ training in most countries is becoming more comprehensive and this particular medical field has experienced major advancements in eye diseases treatments and laser surgeries to correct farsightedness, nearsightedness and astigmatism. However, the underlying problem that initiates or causes the problem is not yet addressed to.

The type of degenerative change that occurs in our eyes in older age is known as age-related macular degeneration (AMD). It is one of the most prominent reasons vision impairment occurs in aging population, affecting 1 in every 4 people who are 65 or older. Macular degeneration occurs as your retina degenerates as a result of aging, causing you to face visibility problems, especially during night.

Fortunately, today measures can be taken to prevent such changes from taking place. Preventing macular degeneration related with aging is basically a science known as anti-aging. The common knowledge of this science is that we must adopt a healthy lifestyle in order to improve our health condition. But to your amazement, adopting a healthy lifestyle can even have a positive impact on your vision too.

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5 Simple Health Tests You Can Perform at Home

Friday, December 28th, 2012

Home Health Tests

Home Health Girl

Not every cough and sniffle calls for a visit to the doctor’s office, nor does every scrape and burn necessitate an expensive trip to the emergency room. In most cases you can tell if a home remedy will do the trick or if professional medical care is advisable, but you will certainly have occasions where you’re just not sure if the symptoms will pass or if you need professional help.

Many people would probably appreciate having ways to determine their relative state of health between annual physicals or check-ups in order to see if they need additional care or alternately, if their efforts to improve health and fitness are paying off. So here are just a few simple health tests that you can perform on your own at home to check yourself out.

  1. Temperature

    Fevers are indicative of an infection, or rather, they are the result of your body fighting an infection. In most cases there is no cause for concern. Although a fever will make you feel pretty awful, the majority are low-grade and break within a matter of hours or just a couple of days.

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Merry Christmas!

Monday, December 24th, 2012

Jacked Santa

Today there will no tips, advice or workout routines. Just eat sensibly during the holidays and you won’t have to implement a damage control protocol on January 2nd.

If you want to hook up with your own fun monthly Santa, you can check out Jacked Pack. They’ll send you a box of supplement gifts every month. It’s like Xmas year-round. Peep the goods!

Jacked Pack Banner

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Consume More Water or I’ll Find You and Kick Your Ass

Sunday, December 23rd, 2012

If you don’t know about water, here is the 411. Read some previous articles like:

How much water should you drink in a day?

How to increase water absorption.

When you are done with those, take a look at this fun graphic:

Drink Water

So if you don’t know, well now ya know. Planet Fitness may judge you as being a Lunk if you carry a gallon of water around, but have you seen their employees? Yeah, if you want to be a pasty skinned ShitFitness employee, don’t drink water. Otherwise – carry your gallon jug around with pride. =)

Shit Fitness Muscle

w00t! Lift w8 every day

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Strategies to Avoid the College Freshman 15

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

The Dreaded Freshman 15 is Real!

Fit Freshman

You might think that the notorious freshman fifteen is nothing more than a fairy tale, but consider for a moment the contributing factors. For one thing, most college students are away from home (and the watchful gaze of mom and dad) for the first time in their lives. And without parents around to make sure you’re getting three square meals a day, you might fall into bad habits like scarfing pizza and burgers at the cafeteria for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, skipping fruits and veggies, and snacking from vending machines the rest of the time.

Pile on top of that plenty of stress, a distinct lack of sleep, a lot of high-calorie alcoholic beverages, and likely, little to no exercise. The true surprise is that the standard fifteen pounds are not double that. So if you’d like to avoid the unwanted extra pounds that plague the average student, here are just a few strategies to maintain your weight, keep your energy levels high, and ultimately look and feel as good exiting your freshman year as you did going in.

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How to Lose Weight Without Losing Essential Nutrients

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

Lose Fat, Stay Healthy In today’s society, many people put premium on being thin. Many factors, especially the media, contribute to the notion that what is beautiful is a well-sculpted body that doesn’t show the slightest hint of fat. This has led many people to interpret fitness as looking like those sexy models as an epitome of ideal body. Some has been into different weight loss plans, such as the Medifast, and other crash dieting just to get rid of their extra pounds.

The results of crash diets are dire. Those people trying to lose weight by sacrificing their nutrition are actually punishing themselves. They are constantly living in a condition of hunger which eventually leads them to feel exhausted all the time. Worse, it can lead to collapse and many other health risks. Crash dieting can literally make someone crash.

Those who intend to shed those extra fats in their body must realize that there are weight loss plans which do not lose the essential nutrients of the body. Healthy choices in food and proper exercises are the major keys in losing weight the healthy way.

For beginners, it must be understood that a variety in the foods a person eat is actually essential. One should not be easily taken by the low carb/high protein diet mindset which some fitness people propagate. Maximizing protein intake, in and of itself, is not a balanced diet. Sure low carbs and high protein can help retain and build muscle while simultaneously losing fat, but a diet consisting of, for example, 5 meals of chicken and broccoli each day, is not a healthy diet and can actually make you sick.

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Top 5 Fitness Careers

Friday, November 16th, 2012

Careers That Require Good Physical Fitness

Job applicants who enjoy working with their hands and keeping physically fit can explore different career options. One of these career options is a correctional officer. Other careers include fire fighters, ground maintenance workers and roofers. There are many other job choices for physically fit employees, but these give an idea of the kinds of jobs available. Each career requires good physical health to prevent self-injuries or injuries to team members.

As a software engineer, I don’t get much exercise other than walking to and from my vehicle, and my lunchtime gym session. Some jobs require a high level of physical fitness. Some jobs are a day-long workout session. The significance of this is two-fold:

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Hooksett Pedophile Joel Dutton Arrested Again!

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

At the risk of alienating Project Swole readers with off-topic articles, I have to take a moment to update my previous posts about Force the Pedophiles to Run for the Hills and Continued Vigilance Against Sex Offenders in Hooksett.

(more…)

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The US Obesity Epidemic in Recent Years

Saturday, February 4th, 2012
Obesity in the US
Obesity in the US

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Stay fit Stay healthy: Exercise daily

Monday, November 7th, 2011
Healthy Couple

The growing health issues like heart issues and obesity can be curbed by keeping your body fit through daily and proper exercises. Getting into a habit of regular exercise can lead you good health and increase your energy levels. It also alleviates your stress level to a large extent keeping you fit and fine.

Ironically, despite all the importance, exercises are still not considered as a must activity in daily schedule since people find it hard and boring. Regardless of the hard and easy thing you see in the exercises, putting into its proper habit is important rather than doing it haphazardly. There are couples of benefits of having a daily exercise schedule. Let’s explore them.

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Proof That Doctors Don’t Know Everything

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
Doctors Smoke

No offense to doctors, but in my experience, when it comes to fitness and nutrition…

Scientists > Doctors

And then of course there are the scientists who ARE doctors. Usually you can’t go wrong there.

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Book: Robert Cheeke – Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

OK, so here’s the deal. I have some fitness books and equipment that I want to get rid of. My options are:

  • give it to Good Will or some other charity
  • sell it on eBay or half.com
  • throw it in the trash
  • sell it really cheap on Project Swole

Given those options, I’ve decided to attempt to sell them cheap on Project Swole. Here is what we are going to do:

  1. I’ll tell you about the product.
  2. You decide if you want it.
  3. If you want it, place a bid for it.
  4. If no one wants it after 14 days, I’ll give it to Good Will.
  5. If you win it, send me the money via PayPal.
  6. The I’ll send you your new merch.

The starting price will be $5 for books, which covers my shipping and handling costs.

Robert Cheeke – Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness

Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

This is a book about a vegan ‘bodybuilder’, and I use the term loosely because Mr. Cheeke isn’t much of a bodybuilder. However, he is very inspirational to vegan and vegetarian fitness folks. The book itself talks about how and why he became a vegan, with some tidbits here and there about vegan bodybuilding.

I can’t stomach Robert’s ego or storytelling ability, so I couldn’t make it past page 50, but meat-hating dieters might appreciate veganness of it. There are a bunch of reviews on Amazon. The vegan crowd praises this book with 5 star rating, while everyone else pretty much makes fun of Robert’s tiny muscles. You will just have to accept Robert Cheeks for who he is.

Here is the Amazon link.

Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness

Read the description. Peep the reviews. Buy it there if you want, or qualify to win one for free on Project Swole.

You can get this book for $12 and change on Amazon. It retails for $19.95.

I’ll start the bidding at $5.
Bid using the comment form.
Highest bidder wins.
Auction ends in 14 days.
Submit questions and comments below.

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Nutrition Tips For Beginners

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

Starting Off Slow With Basic Nutrition Tips

Many trying to maintain a healthy diet struggle to understand how good nutrition works and/or how it should be applied. This confusion is often compounded by conflicting “expert” nutritional advice. However, the simplest approach to good nutrition is remembering that all nutritional substances should be ingested to promote health and prevent disease.

Nutrition Tips

It’s also important to remember that food choices aren’t just about weight, as food choices can greatly reduce or increase the likelihood of a person developing cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. As far as overall health, food plays a major role in energy, memory, mood, and sleep.

Since good nutrition hinges on life-long lifestyle choices, it will never involve starving, cutting out vital food groups, or completely depriving yourself from food that is enjoyable. None of the above is congruent with sustainability, and is the main reason that “fad diets” never result in good nutrition or a maintainable weight. Good nutrition has everything to do with eating smart foods…in a smart way. Try the following nutrition tips to get you on the path to smart eating:

Start Slow and Simple

Don’t abandon unhealthy choices all at once, as this will usually lead to binge eating. Focus on slowly replacing unhealthy food sources with healthier choices. For example, one might gradually replace tater chips with fresh vegetable chips. Try to take existing unhealthy recipes and alter unhealthy ingredients one at a time. For example, a recipe that calls for butter or vegetable oil might be amended to utilize olive oil. Even a simple sandwich can be altered to be more nutritious by changing white bread to whole grain, ham to turkey breast, and mayo to mustard. Eventually, you will be able to make every food choice nutritionally sound.

Don’t Mindlessly Eat

Stop and think about the food – Am I eating this to sustain me or soothe me? Food is too often used as an emotional crutch or mindless action. It can be helpful to disassociate food with cars, television, and computers. It’s easy to just gulp something down when your mind is on driving vs. actually eating. It’s also easy to mindlessly eat when distracted by a television and computer. Whenever possible eat at a table and take the time to properly chew and savor food. Keep in mind that it takes 20 minutes for the brain to realize that the stomach is full; so, eat slow and stop eating before actually feeling full. Plan meals out to include several small meals throughout the day, which will help keep energy and metabolism up for weight loss.

Think of Fitness as an Essential Food Group

Fitness training is just as essential as any of the food groups and dieting tips. Optimal health can’t be achieved through exercise without healthy eating or healthy eating without exercise. A simple routine strength training program should be included in all exercise regimens. It’s important to start the training with the proper resistance size. A good guide is a size that fatigues you after about 12 repetitions. If you aren’t able to use correct form, that too is a sign that the weight is too heavy. Start out with a twice a week fitness plan with 4 to 5 sets of 12 reps with or without fitness equipment. Many professional trainers recommend aiming for muscular failure, where the muscle can’t possibly do anymore, after the first month of strength training.

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People Should Drink Low Fat Milk

Friday, September 16th, 2011

If you drink milk, and you’re not a hard-gainer trying to pack on muscle mass, your milk should be low fat – skim or 1%. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said recently that nearly 73% of kids and teenagers consume milk, which is good, but then only around 20% of them tend to consume the low-fat variety. In fact, about 45% of them choose reduced-fat milk (2 percent), while 32% claim to regularly consume whole-fat milk.

Drink Milk
Drink Milk?

I’ve been complaining about this for years, and I’m glad someone is finally echoing my sentiments. For babies and toddlers I can see using whole or 2% milk, because they need a ton of good nutrition to grow up strong. However, I have always believed that kids in pre-k, k, and elementary school should switch to 1% or skim milk. There really is no need to add extra milk fat into a child’s diet, not when American kids are clearly, on average, the most obese children in the world.

Researchers and experts collectively agree that the low consumption of low-fat milk implies that most kids and teenagers don’t live by the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the American Academy of Pediatrics, who state that kids ages 2 and older should drink low-fat milk. Recent efforts by both First Lady Michelle Obama, and the Surgeon General promote the consumption of low-fat milk and water over sweetened beverages. Adhering to these suggestions will help you and your child avoid dangerous conditions such as obesity and diabetes.

(more…)

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5 Unexpected Health Benefits of Bodybuilding

Thursday, September 8th, 2011
Benefits of Bodybuilding
Health Benefits of Bodybuilding

The Many Unexpected Benefits of Body Building

There are many reasons to build a stronger body that most people wouldn’t think of when they picture bodybuilding. Bodybuilding can be a very healthy hobby for both your mind and your body.

Despite the misconceptions of the general public, bodybuilding is not necessarily all about eating whey protein, lifting heavy weights, and oiled-up posing in a thong on a stage. There are a ton of great health benefits as well.

These are just some of the many unexpected benefits of bodybuilding:

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What Causes Strokes in Healthy People?

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

The prevalence of stroke victims in the US has increased in recent years. A study analyzed the history of over 8 million hospital patients from 1995 to 2008 has identified a 33% increased risk of suffering from a stroke if you are between the ages of 5 and 44.

Strokes Caused by Blood Clots

Contributing factors were found to be diabetes, high blood pressure (hypertension), blood lipid disorders, tobacco use, and obesity. People with one or more of those factors have a greater chance of developing an ischemic stroke, which is caused by blood clots. High blood pressure was reported in 50% of the stroke victims, and being male and over the age of 35 puts you at an even greater risk than anyone else. Great!

Brain Stroke

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Important New Medical Innovations

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

I don’t have the time or patience to write a new article today or for the past week, so here are a couple links you can read with decent info about recent medical advances that might help keep you healthier. These new gadgets range from stem cells that can rebuild damaged heart tissue, to intestinal liners that restrict the absorption of excess calories, to bacteria that will keep you from ever getting tooth decay. As you read this great news, just imagine the kinds of devices and genetic tools we’ll have in just 10 more years.

5 Medical Innovations That Will Build Muscle or Burn Fat
5 Medical Advances That Sound too Good to be True

Also, I’m sorry I haven’t been answering questions lately or posting any good new content. As always I have many great plans in the works, but life is just taking precedence over maintaining a blog right now. Hoping to get back at it full time really soon.

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