Posts Tagged ‘meals’

How Long Should I Wait to Exercise After Eating?

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
athletes waiting to exercise after eating

There are numerous considerations when planning an exercise routine; what type of exercises will you partake in? What clothes should you wear during said activities? How hard you want to push yourself and for how long, among other factors. One concern many people may overlook is the importance of how long to wait to exercise after eating or snacking. 

Eating too much beforehand can make physical efforts seem unbearable, leading to pain and potential health hazards such as cramps or constipation.

So, how long should you wait after eating before exercising? Will exercising make it harder for your body to digest food? What are the benefits of waiting before taking a workout break? 

This guide will discuss how much time you need to wait between meals and working out.

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How to Structure Eating Habits For Maximum Workout Efficiency

Monday, January 10th, 2022
Eating habits to build muscle

Your workouts and meals are directly connected. What you eat and when you have it can impact the effectiveness of your exercise routine. Eating correctly based on your training is the best way to get the results you want to see. What we need to do is structure eating habits based on our sleep and training schedules.

Here are some tips to help you eat right to maximize the results of your workout sessions. 

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How to Cook Healthy During the Pandemic

Wednesday, June 10th, 2020
cooking healthy

This entry into our quarantine series focuses on everything we might be lacking in the kitchen while we’re locked down. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led all of us into isolation. The visits to grocery stores and in turn resources for cooking have been minimized. This is the real testing time for your cooking skills; cooking healthy and nutritious meals with what is available can be quite a challenge.

If you feel like you need to seek online couples therapy following exposure to your partner’s cooking, this blog post might end up saving your relationship!

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3 Ways to Make Meal Prepping Easier

Friday, May 24th, 2019

Living a healthy life is something most people strive to do. Trying to stay on an exercise regimen and a moderate diet can be challenging to say the least. Finding ways to make the process of getting fit easier is something you should view as a priority.

One of the best ways to keep your diet on track is by creating a meal prep plan. By meal prepping, you can avoid eating fast food throughout the course of your week. Taking the time to research the internet will allow you to read more about this process and the benefits associated with meal prepping.

The following are some of the things you can do to make meal prepping easier.

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How is a Meal Delivery Service Any Different From The Food You Make at Home?

Tuesday, April 30th, 2019
Performance Meals

If you’re someone that has a full schedule, chances are you’ve thought of signing up for a precooked meal delivery service that will allow you to save some time by delivering meals to your house. However, before signing up for such a service, you might be inclined to wonder whether there really is any difference between the meals you cook at home and the meals that will be delivered to you in a meal plan.

Here are some of the clearest differences below:

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Eating Habits That Are Detrimental To Your Liver Health

Thursday, August 16th, 2018

strong liverThe liver is the marvel of our body. It is a vital organ responsible for secreting bile and breaking down the fats along with eliminating toxins from the body. Weight loss is the prime concern for most people when they think about the food they consume. But what most fail to realize that they should be mindful of your food intake to save your liver from severe health problems.

Let us take a look at some common eating habits that are detrimental to the health of the liver. In our daily lives, we tend to adopt eating habits that gradually deteriorate our liver. A full liver cleanse can be helpful in reversing the damage to some extent.

 

  1. Excessive Alcohol Intake

 

You might not know what too much alcohol means as far as your liver health is concerned. From mild scarring to severe inflammation of the liver cells, an excessive intake of alcohol can cause a severely negative impact on the liver. It reduces the liver’s capability to eliminate toxins from the body. Moreover, if the negative impact of alcohol takes a toll on the liver, the ability to break down alcohol further reduces, thus, causing chronic damage. So, it is advisable to keep the consumption of alcohol at a moderate pace. A good rule of thumb is one standard drink for women and a maximum two for men per day.

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Top 8 Meal Preparation Bags for 2017

Friday, February 16th, 2018

Performance MealsA healthy lifestyle starts right from what you consume. Lucky enough, people are more conscious than ever about healthy living nowadays. They have greatly embraced the idea of food management for the purpose of saving money, losing weight, and healthy eating.

However, this comes at a cost, and many of them can no longer eat the cheap, low-quality food on offer in most restaurants. They have to pack their food in containers and tag them along, maybe to work in order to eat their favorite meal every few hours. With this in mind, several companies are solving this problem by manufacturing excellent meal preparation bags. So…

What is The Best Meal Prep Bag? The Answer is Right Here!

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5 Ways to Make Nutritious Food Tasty

Thursday, April 6th, 2017

By: Paul Jenkins CEO and founder of DNA Lean

Nutritious Food in a Nutshell

Fitness experts, medical doctors, psychologists and even venture capitalists recommend eating better every chance they get. But with fast-food chains readily available within walking distance of workplaces and whole, organic, fresh foods more expensive than their processed counterparts, it’s not easy to implement such expeditious advice.

veggies

If this weren’t hard enough as it is, farmers’ markets are sometimes located remotely from central areas, making it an entire adventure to fit a two-way trip in one’s schedule without missing out on an entire afternoon.  Moreover, healthy food always seems to taste… well, plain-old bland in comparison to ice-creams or the good, old-fashioned burger. Not even those venture capitalists would spend their life-earned investments on such odds.

Nonetheless, when it comes to the quality of one’s life, all of these problems fade away and turn into mere hindrances that are easy to deal with. Below, you’ll find some of the fastest and cheapest ways of delivering some richness to your healthy food. Using this advice, you can also improve upon 6 of the best pre workout meals you need to know.

Are you ready to make healthy food delicious again? (more…)

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Body Fat – How to “FairBurn” it Off and Live a Healthy Lifestyle

Wednesday, February 8th, 2017

Whether you want to lose weight, become more fit, feel better, or even add on some weight and muscle, nutrition is key!

Exercise is important and should not be forgotten, but in order to lose and maintain your weight, up to 75% of that will come from proper nutrition, while the other 25% will come from exercise. This is frustrating, confusing, and sometimes infuriating to many because nutrition is a discipline filled with complicated and conflicting information.

Dave and Elyse Fairburn Fortunately, nutrition and your “diet”, over time can become an easy and natural way of living, which is why a couple of my friends created the Fairburn it Off Nutrition & Fitness Plan. When you have a goal, a plan, and some motivation, progress falls right into place.

What is Fairburn it Off?

The Fairburn it Off Nutrition & Fitness Plan was created by husband and wife team David and Elyse Fairburn. Despite David being a certified nutritionist and Elyse being an instructor in the fitness world, they initially struggled themselves with trying to calculate the perfect amounts of food and succumbing to strict diets and several supplements. After finally taking a step back and using what they know and have experienced, they created a sustainable lifestyle nutrition plan to help people lose weight, maintain that weight loss, and not fall prey to some of the very pitfalls that the Fairburns experienced themselves.

The key to the plan is sustainability – the belief that when you simplify healthy living by making your lifestyle healthier and easier to maintain, that you will experience consistent and positive results.  To accomplish this, the Fairburns plans were designed to help you better understand proper nutrition through eating clean, nutrient-packed, whole foods, while still maintaining fitness through both cardio and resistance training. Through sustainability and this balance between nutrition and fitness, you can see positive progress and build new and healthy habits.
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To Drink Or Not To Drink

Sunday, July 28th, 2013

When it comes to consuming our calories on a daily basis, one forgotten area is in the beverage area. The amount of calories that we drink on a daily basis might shock most. In fact, this was a rather hot topic recently in the media after a poll that was done in jolly ol’ England.

In one can of Coke Classic, your looking at 143 calories. 108 calories in a tall non-fat latte at your favorite coffee shop. These are just a couple of examples of modest size drinks.

Now lets talk meal replacement shakes. I just do not get the concept of these. You drink a shake that has 300+ calories in order to skip a meal. Why not just have a proper meal/snack of roughly the same calories. You will feel fuller because you have actual food in your stomach.

Of course there is a time and a place for a well-constructed protein shake made with either water or skim milk. Usually a shake like this will net you 20+ grams of protein, some vitamins and other nutrients, and usually can be kept around 200 calories. A nice shot of aminos in this way, will aid in recovery and help keep excess calories off your mid-section.

Then there is the whole argument that it is far better to get your nutrients from real, whole foods than from a drink. Anything that is in that shake was put there by a person. That is usually a clue that you want to avoid it. On the flip side, the nutrients in a proper meal were put there by Mother Nature. How did that old commercial go? “Don’t fool with Mother Nature.”

So there you go; a few good reasons to try to get your calories in your food, and not so much in your drink. That is unless you’re into blending together multiple fruits and veggies into a whole-foods smoothie. Now there’s a drink I can fully support.

Cheers!

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Surprising Facts About Calories

Friday, June 14th, 2013

Surprising Things You Probably Don’t Know About Calories

Picnic Basket Chick
We are a calorie-obsessed country. We obsess about how many calories we consume on a daily basis and then we turn around an eat way too many of them. We know so much about calories and how they affect our body weight, but most of us don’t really know all that much. In fact, only about 12 percent of people in the USA can estimate how many calories they consume each day! Here are some facts about calories and how they work that just might surprise you!

Gym Machines Can’t Actually Accurately Measure Calories

Most people who work out hard at the gym have a mentality that they must sweat for their food. These people know that in order to lose weight they must work off all of the calories they have eaten in a day. This is great mentality to have, but you shouldn’t base what you can eat on how many calories you burned off on the treadmill.

Many people feel like they worked hard so they can eat whatever they want afterwards. This, sadly, is just not true. Don’t expect your gym’s workout machines to accurately predict how many calories you have burned off either.

You need to pay serious attention to how many calories you consume both before and after your workout, and you need to pay attention to how you are consuming those calories. For example, if you walk two miles on a treadmill, you might think you have done well and deserve a snack. But a very small handful of chips can quickly undo all of that work!

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Losing those last few pounds of belly fat

Monday, May 13th, 2013

How to drop those last pounds

Hot Chick on Scale

Anyone who goes to the gym knows the work that needs to be put into sculpting a fit body. Building muscle and cutting fat are the main goals of working out for many people, and one may be more difficult than the other. Gaining muscle mass is easy for some people, but often, there is a layer of fat obscuring the muscle that is much harder to lose than the muscle was to gain. Weight loss is a complex process, but there are many options available.

What are my options to lose fat?

It can be frustrating to lose fat. Cardio training, dieting, and other lifestyle changes are difficult to stick to, and can be slow to take hold. When exercising, it is ideal to maintain an optimal heart rate for 20 minutes to an hour at a time, and it may be impossible to see fat loss for weeks or months after beginning a solid exercise routine. In addition, eating with a mind to burning fat can be complicated and time consuming; maintaining good eating habits is difficult, especially with temptation at restaurants and parties.

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Maintaining Proper Meal Times Can Promote Weight Loss

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

Schedule Your Meals for Speedier Weight Loss

Meal Times Girl
For those who get awesome results from Intermittent Fasting, don’t bother reading the following article. This is for people, for whom fasting either doesn’t work, or doesn’t agree with their schedule. However, if you follow a regular 3-5 meals a day diet, pay attention to the following piece.

How do Meal Times Affect Weight Loss?

New research is being done that indicates that there is more to healthy eating than many originally thought: not only does what you eat play a role in overall health, but when you eat may play a significant role as well. Researchers working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital collaborated with Tufts University and the University of Murcia have released results of a study that has shown that when you eat throughout the day might have an impact on weight loss.

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The Best Weight Lifting Foods to Help You Build Muscle

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013

Diet = 75% of Progress

Healthy Muscle

Regardless of your fitness goals, your diet plays an important role in achieving the levels of physical strength, muscle tone, and overall health and fitness you desire. And since most of us have specific results in mind, it’s a good idea to spend just as much time and effort working out a targeted diet as working out at the gym.

For example, the dietary needs of a bodybuilder are very different than those of a person running a marathon. So if you’re looking to build muscle and your exercise regimen doesn’t seem to be delivered to your satisfaction, perhaps it’s time to do a little research and discover which foods will ensure optimum results in concert with your weight lifting efforts. In addition to food, you can use several testosterone products to build muscle faster too.

For today we will focus on nutrition. Here are a few foods that are sure to help you pack on the right kind of pounds.

You might think that any high-calorie foods will be sufficient when it comes to bulking up, but this is not true. Some will add fat as well as muscle, or only fat, and that’s definitely not what you’re looking for.

What you really need are foods that will repair and build your muscles as you add greater amounts of weight to your lifting routine, and your best bet is to use a combination of foods that make a complete and balanced diet that is nonetheless high in certain nutrients. You’ll need plenty of protein to build and maintain muscle, as well as carbs to replace all the calories you’re burning, but you’ll also need fruits, vegetables, and fats (yes, fats) to keep your body healthy and functioning properly.

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Healthy Breakfast Dos and Don’ts for College and Beyond

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

Set the Tone for a Healthy Lifestyle During and After College

College Breakfast
When it comes to health and fitness, many college students are too wrapped up in the demands of their academic pursuits to pay much attention. Even those that have been athletic in the past or are currently members of sports teams on campus might neglect their nutrition when they’re in a rush to get to class or they’re cramming for a test.

In case you hadn’t heard, unless you are practicing Intermittent Fasting, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The reason for this is that it sets the tone for your metabolism, your satiety, and your level of energy throughout the rest of the day.

What you eat (and how you go about eating it) could have a major impact on your overall health and vitality. Keep in mind on test day, that your brain operates on carbs. Having some fruit and oatmeal before a big exam is scientifically the best way to exam prep.

As you can see from the picture of the girl on the right, breakfast does a college body good.

Here are just a few breakfast dos and don’ts to observe in college if you want to optimize health and fitness during your time on campus. Practice these tips now, and you will be more likely to carry them through the rest of your life.

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Meals to Maximize Performance

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Meals That Maximize Your Performance

Performance Meals

Willpower is not enough. Food is what fuels your training and performance. Athletes make eating meals a conscious process, and they put knowledge of nutrition and planning into it.

I have found that performance outcomes can differ by seconds, which means the right muscle didn’t get the right fuel. Every bite that you eat counts. In working with athletes and their nutrition needs, I’ve found a few simple rules that help you keep food as fuel at the forefront of your mind and help ensure that you get the proteins, carbs, fats, vitamins, minerals and fluids.

Here we go:

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10 Reasons You Are Not Losing Weight Part 2

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
Female and Male Abs

A couple days ago I posted the first 5 reasons you are not losing weight. Here are 5 more reasons you are not losing weight. Check out the first article if you missed it: 10 Reasons You Are Not Losing Weight Part 1

Peep these second 5 five items in my list of 10 possible ways you could be sabotaging your diet.
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10 Reasons You Are Not Losing Weight Part 1

Monday, August 8th, 2011
Woman with abs

A Simple Diet Reminder

Everyone likes a good diet post once in a while. Something to remind us about those small dietary habits that ultimately sabotage our efforts to look good naked. This is one of those posts.

You want to drop a couple dozen stubborn pounds of fat. You know what to do and how to do it. You figure in about 2 months you can complete your transformation by eating healthy foods but fewer calories, and adding an extra hour of exercise each week. On paper and in your brain it all makes sense. But how’s that working for you?

Typical Diet Progress

Let me guess. After two months of eating fruits and veggies, and hitting the treadmill with fierce dedication, you step on the scale and find that you’ve lost a whopping… 2 pounds. What could possibly have happened? Would could have gone wrong?

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The Problem With Cookie-Cutter Diet Plans

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

Why You Can’t Stay Lean When You Get Off Your Structured Diet

Fad Diets

We have all heard of The Atkins diet, The Warrior Diet, The Paleo Diet and every other nutritional plan that promises to burn fat, build muscle, and allow you to achieve your physique related goals with minimal effort.

They make big promises, sound good in practice, but fail to deliver. Even if you do reach your goal, after you discontinue the diet, the fat piles right back on and you are back where you started.

What a waste of time.

Why does this happen?

It’s really simple. The proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” comes to mind…

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Dietary Fat is Bad for You

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Should Bodybuilders Restrict Their Intake of Dietary Fat?

Dietary Fat is Bad

We all know sugar is bad. It is fun to eat but it is bad for your body. It belongs on the bodybuilding blacklist, I’ve got no qualms there. We all know protein is good for bodybuilding. That is a simple and obvious discussion. But what about fat?

Possibly left over from the 1980’s war on fat, a common myth is that fat calories have no place in a healthy diet, let alone a bodybuilding diet. Around that time fat was demonized and carbohydrates were praised. The myth still lingers, but isn’t it time to let that battle go?

The Myth

A bodybuilding diet consists of lean meats like turkey, chicken, fish, egg whites, and fat free dairy products. Bodybuilding newbies learn this practice almost immediately. We must keep calories low, so we must keep fat consumption low.
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