Sleep Your Way to a Healthier Weight

Cutting calories and working out are well-known ways to lose weight. Recent research shows, however, that another factor could significantly affect weight loss: sleep. Here are the ways that better sleep can lead to a healthier weight, and how to achieve it.

Avoids overeating

Missing your ZZZ’s can cause decreased levels of leptin, the hormone that gives a sense of fullness or satiation. This can increase appetite, often resulting in overconsumption. Similarly, levels of the hormone that makes you feel hungry, grehlin, increases when you are sleep deprived. This combination is what causes most tired people to eat an additional 300 calories a day than those who are well-rested.

Leads to better food choices

When people are tired, they’re more likely to reach for the easiest, tastiest food available, often in the form of high-fat snacks loaded with carbohydrates. This “eating for pleasure” sense is heightened in the afternoon for those who are sleep deprived and can lead to significant weight gain over a prolonged period of time.

Helps process sweets faster

Sleep deprivation can cause the food processing parts of your cells, the mitochondria, to shut down. This means that the sugar in your comfort foods just sits in your blood, raising your blood sugar levels. Your mitochondria are also what regulate your metabolism, or the number of calories burned for energy every day. Getting sufficient sleep can help maintain healthy mitochondria, and therefore, prevent weight gain.

To get better sleep…

Pay off your sleep debt. Most Americans don’t get the recommended eight hours of sleep every night, but it can be mostly made up over the next few nights. Over the weekend, go to bed at your usual weekday time, but then sleep until your body naturally wakes up the next morning. You will probably sleep for longer than usual, but it should go a long way in calibrating your sleep schedule.

Make sure you’re supporting these efforts with the best sleep essentials possible. Use a high-quality mattress and top it with pillows that are soft but supportive to help prevent waking up in the middle of the night.

Weight Loss vs. Happiness

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So you are struggling to lose weight because you know once you achieve your goal you will be happy right? Well, let me be the bearer of bad news; that’s not going to happen!

Happiness is not determined by a measuring tape or a weight scale.
Photo by Jeanne Claire Maarbes

Shocking Revelation on Why You Quit Exercise!

You could be exercising and eating right and still not getting the results you should. You know why? The surprising answer could be that you are suffering from the “nocebo” effect. It’s the evil twin brother of the “placebo” effect.

Women vs. Men: 9 Exercise Facts You Probably Don’t Know but Should

Men and women have different fitness needs.
by photostock

1. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only 6% more men engage in regular exercise than women. It’s high time gyms became more “female-friendly”.
2. Women are not “female-men” and men are not “male-women”(I bet you didn’t know that) so they need a completely different training regime, nutrition plan, and amount of hydration during exercise.
3. I had to talk specifically about squats because women love their squats.  Women should use a wider stance when doing squats as their pelvises tilt more. The feet should also face more outwards and the practitioner should avoid going too low. Failing to do so could cause serious injury.
4. Men may have better upper body strength but women have better lower body strength.
5. Women exhibit a higher lactate threshold during long distance running thanks to their slow twitch fibre percentage. The longer the distance the more advantageous it becomes.
6. The heart responds differently to exercise when it comes to men and women. The American College of Cardiology recently declared the “220 minus age” to be flawed. The formula was developed 40 years ago based on a group that was predominantly male.
7. Women tend to burn more fat than men during workout and men burn more fat than women post workout.
8. One of the best ways for men to subjectively track fat loss is to measure their waist. Women can use both the waist and the bust to distinguish fat loss from weight loss.
9. Men who lift weights grow primarily type II muscle which make them bulk up. Women grow primarily type I muscle fibers that are not able to grow as big.

A Fit and Healthy 2018 Starts With Your Mind

 

Bridge the gap between your fitness goals in 2018 and where you are today. Image by stockimages

Well, here we are again – New Year’s resolutions time! It’s that time when we resolve to do all the things we know we should do in order to live the better life we imagine for ourselves. And for most of us, those resolutions last all of ten minutes! Then we’re back doing the same old things that have brought us to a life that we’re less than happy with. And as the old saying goes: If you want things in your life to change, you have to change things in your life.

This is true for all areas of our life, but specifically we’re going to look at health and fitness in this piece. Most of us aren’t exactly where we want to be in terms of our health and fitness level. We want to be healthier, more trim and toned than we are at the moment.

We start off with the best of intentions. We decide that once and for all: We’ll eat more healthily, we’ll go to the gym and do all the things we know we need to do in order to get fit and healthy this year. So we do that stuff for a while, and then we stop.

What usually happens is that we reach a point where the temptation to eat or drink what we know we shouldn’t becomes too strong. We succumb to the bad weather blues when it comes to going out for a run, or we stay in bed for that extra hour instead of getting up and going to the gym for the workout that we committed to a few weeks ago. Then we gradually slip back into our old patterns of too little exercise and too much of the wrong kinds of food.

So how can we avoid slipping back like this and keep our new healthy eating and fitness regime going?

If Hell Had a Workout Boot-camp

If people in hell were forced to work out as a punishment it would probably resemble what me and my teammates went through during the 1998 Coast Open Karate Championship preparation.

Our coach – Sensei Yetoo – used to call it the blue balls workout because we would all feel like someone kicked us in the nuts when we were finished due to the intensity of the workout.

The workout takes a little over an hour to complete. Mombasa is a beautiful island and we trained on the beach on soft sand which made it even tougher.

Today I would like to share this workout from the depths of hell so you can enjoy it as much as I did.

When it’s OK to be Fat Your Mind Will Tell You

I am sure many of you have felt like giving in to a lifestyle where you do not have to drive to the gym after work to exhaust yourself for another hour. Where you can eat everything and not feel guilty. Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world in which you don’t criticize yourself constantly for having little extra fat around your waistline?

Should there be a tax on junk food but subsidies on healthy food?

The tobacco industry claims that the purchase of cigarettes has fallen worldwide since heavy taxation and advertising restrictions have been implemented. The idea of taxing junk food in the same way as tobacco and subsidizing healthy food is a combination that could guide people to choosing healthier food (which will be cheaper after subsidizing) instead of the poisonous junk food (which today is way cheaper than healthy food but will be more expensive after taxation). In the long run, billions spent on healthcare due to the outcome of an unhealthy diet can be put to better use.

Should the government subsidize healthy food…
photo by Ambro

Those who oppose this idea claim that the government and the food companies are two different entities. Adjusting food prices will interfere with the free market and create a false economy. In fact the term “junk food” lacks a consensus on its definition. Some perceive junk food as anything that is processed, others define junk food as food that has certain sugar content or that contains preservatives. Same goes for how people define healthy food; is being organic good enough or does diet soda also fit the category?

… and tax Junk food?
photo by Ambro

Update:

Fun is the Secret to Efficient Weight Loss

Why are you killing yourself with all that labor and toil in order to lose weight? What if I told you there is an easier and more efficient way to lose weight and that it consists of having fun? According to a new study, your attitude towards exercise can influence what you eat post-workout and ultimately whether you lose weight or not.

You might be one of the many millions of people who are frustrated because of the ineffectiveness of exercise and efforts to lose weight. You may be gaining weight and eating more despite or even due to the fact that you are exercising.

10 Rules You Can Break and Stay Healthy

Please click on the first image below to start slide show:

10 Rules You Can Break and Stay Healthy

Eat sugar. Dr. Mark Hyman, New York Times best-selling author of the Blood Sugar Solution 10 Day Detox makes the point that everyone loves sugar because it’s programmed into us. So you shouldn’t worry if you find yourself craving sugar sometimes. It’s normal! Eat sugar once in a while and don’t eliminate it completely and forever.

Enjoy your caffeine. Dr. Sarah Gottfried, best-selling author of The Hormone Cure, advocates a caffeine detox to reboot, but she allows coffee. If you are consuming more caffeinated drinks than water, consider seriously cutting back. But have a cup of coffee daily because it’s good for you.

Eat carbs. Stop demonizing carbs. Paleo pioneer Robb Wolf recommends increasing carb intake for endurance athletes. Almost all health experts allow themselves carbs, even if it’s occasionally. So you have no reason to feel guilty when devouring carbs.

Don’t work out If you are trying to build muscle-mass then you already know that muscle grows faster while you rest. Not getting enough rest may cause injuries that will set you back weeks if not months. So make sure you get enough rest days in between workout days.

Don’t put eating right and exercising on a pedestal. Chris Kresser says, “There’s more to health than food, and there’s more to life than health.” Part of being truly healthy is realizing that it’s a total mind-body pursuit.” Jillian Michaels says, “A healthy lifestyle is not as much about losing weight but gaining happiness”

Stop counting calories. What matters most is food quality, not calories. Obsessing on how many calories you consume a day will drive you crazy. I suggest you do it at the beginning so you understand how your eating habits contribute to your daily calorie intake. Once you have an idea you will be able to control what and how much you eat without feeling the need to count every single calorie in your diet.

Don’t follow a 21-day diet. You become truly healthy by changing your lifestyle for the better. There’s no such thing as a 21-day quick fix.Long-term commitment is not an idea that sells easily but it’s the only thing that really works. ((Source: 10 Habits Of People Who Break The Rules But Stay Incredibly Healthy BY DR. AMY SHAH ))

Get rid of the super-fit celebrity poster.If you want to look like the person on the poster you will need more than just discipline and hard work. You will need to be air-brushed and seeing that Photoshop doesn’t work in real life, it does not make sense to use such images for motivation.

Don’t compete. Stop competing with the number on the scale, with your gym partner, or with Jason Statham. Just like everything in life, comparing yourself to others will only make you feel worse. All you have to do is be better than the person you were yesterday.

Don’t always sleep 8 to 10 hours. Sleep expert, W. Christopher Winter, recommends mini-naps, if possible, to recharge on the days you don’t sleep well. It’s OK to be a little sleep-deprived sometimes as long as you’re getting enough power-naps most of the time.