Posts Tagged ‘healthy’

October21

Staying in shape, feeling healthy, what’s it all about?

By: RirianProject

I was looking through some health magazines the other day, reading the articles, and started thinking about my own heath. First, if you are going to read those magazines don’t bother looking at the pictures because I don’t know anyone my age who looks like the pictures, I’m never going to look like those pictures, so what’s the point? My twenty one year old nephew looks like the pictures in the magazines but he eats McDonalds seven days a week, and in none of those article could I find anyone saying McDonalds seven days a week leads to better health. So, I thought about what it means to be healthy and fit, and how to stay healthy and fit. My first thought was smokers, forget it, you will never be healthy and fit until you quit. So Quit! Quit cold turkey, take a pill, where a patch, get hypnotized, go to the desert for a month and isolate yourself but quit. I know its a nasty addiction and near impossible to quit, but quit. I know, I know, you’ll put on ten pounds, so be a little fatter cause sooner or later cigarettes will kill you and its better to be fatter than dead. Ok, now that we have smokers out of the way lets talk about you and me. I don’t know about everyone but most people I know don’t want to run a marathon, they don’t want to spend two and half hours a day in the gym, lifting weights and running the treadmill. And even if they did they don’t have the time. And if you are like me then you like to eat, and not little rabbit portions, but you enjoy a good meal. In fact I enjoy good meal far more than I like working out, I look forward to going to good restaurants, I never look forward to going to the gym. And I like sitting on my couch watching sports, and when I do I like to munch on things, Nacho’s, wings, popcorn, in fact one of my favorite things is watching football on a Sunday and munching out.

And despite that I like eating far more than working out, and it is an effort to get me to leave my couch when a good game is on, I am very healthy. And I just don’t say so, I get all A’s from my Doctor. When I was younger I loved playing sports, but I just can’t do that all the time anymore. As an adult you just can’t find the time or even energy to do what you did when you were younger, but you need to find something you enjoy doing, or at least can tolerate and try to do it for at least an hour five or six times a week. For me, I play basketball in a league once a week, and we practice once a week on weekends, I also have found while I don’t love spinning ( bicycle class indoors) I don’t hate it, so I try to spin three or four times a week at my health club. My wife tries to walk/run on the treadmill at least five times a week for an hour, usually before the kids wake up. I have friends who get up and run a few miles everyday, totally not for me, but they love it. I have other friends who do Yoga or Pilate’s, the simple truth is there is some form of exercise out there that everyone can participate in to maintain good health. Am I in great shape? No! Do I have a six pack of abs? No! But I am healthy and I feel good and I have the energy, and I know that exercising the 5 to 7 hours a week is the main reason.

Eating, ugh, my main weakness. I love to eat, and I love crap. I would rather eat a hamburger, milkshake and fries than do anything else. And I love Pizza and candy, and Italian food, and Coca Cola and the aforementioned Buffalo Wings. And I am never giving any of them up, I’m just not going to eat them that often. Temptation is the root of all evil, so whenever I can I just stay away from the places that serve them. And that’s the best advice I can give, if you love to eat like me, don’t give it up just stay away. Because the truth is for most people diets don’t work, even when they do they eventually end and people go back to the bad eating habits they had before. The simple answer is develop better eating habits, try to eat salads, and chicken, and fish. Drink as much water as possible, try to stay away as much as possible from bread and butter, eat fruit and vegetables. I’m not saying anything that anyone does not know, we don’t need all the magazines and the pictures to show and tell us what to do, most intelligent people already know, its just hard. What I am saying is I am probably going to eat Pizza and wings on Sunday when watching football, but that means the rest of the week I’m being careful. I’m going to have my burger, shake and fries but probably only about once a month. I’m going to come home at night and eat the healthy meals my wife cooks and not complain because I want to stay healthy. If I go to a restaurant I am going to have my roll and butter, but only one not the whole basket, and nine out of ten times I am going to order chicken and fish. This is the life I have carved out for myself, I get to eat the foods I love just not as often as I would like, I don’t diet but they don’t work for me anyhow, they just make me hungrier. I get in my workout five to seven times a week and while I don’t love it I have made it part of my routine. My picture isn’t going in any magazines anytime soon for my body, but I am not overweight and I feel great. And at the end of the day, that’s what it is all about, feeling good and getting a clean bill of health. So workout, go easy on the crappy foods, stay healthy, but do the things you enjoy just in moderation.

Posted in: Featured, Health & Fitness5 comments

December23

The Pros and Cons of Getting a Flu Shot

By: RirianProject

Influenza (“the flu”) is a respiratory illness that affects millions of North American’s every single year. There are a variety of strains of influenza that circulate world wide throughout the year, and in North America, the flu season generally runs from November to April. It’s estimated that up to 25% of the population get the flu each year.

Flu vaccines have been available since sometime in the 1940’s and it’s made from fragments of inactivated influenza viruses. Since the flu virus is capable of changing from year to year it is very important that the vaccine is updated on an annual basis.

The term flu is often used to describe illnesses that may be a cold or a case of food poisoning. True influenza begins with a headache, chills, cough, and are accompanied by loss of appetite, a general achy feeling, fatigue, fever, runny nose, sneezing, watery eyes and an irritated throat. Although uncommon in adults, children can also experience nausea, vomiting and diarrhea as well.

There are certain classes of people who are deemed to be high risk and, according to the experts, should get the flu shot regularly. They are as follows:

People over the age of 65
Residents of nursing homes
People with serious illnesses such as HIV, cardiac illnesses, asthma, diabetes, and cancer
Those traveling to destinations where influenza is prevalent
Anyone who work or come into contact with those listed above
Children between 6 months and 23 months of age

It is not recommended that children under the age of 6 months or those with egg allergies get vaccinated.

Although getting the flu shot can reduce your chance of contracting the virus by 70-90% in healthy adults, there are some groups of thinking that believe that we should avoid receiving the flu shot.

The vaccine does contain mercury from Thimerosal which is a preservative that is added to the vaccine to prevent bacterial contamination. One of the problems associated with Mercury is the toxicity to the brain and the link to Alzheimer’s disease, memory loss and birth defects. In fact, according to one immunogeneticist, if an individual has had five consecutive flu shots the chances of getting Alzheimer’s disease is 10 times higher than if they had no shots.

Another reason that people avoid vaccinations is the list of toxic ingredients that are found in them such as ethylene glycol (antifreeze), formaldehyde, and aluminum.

Regardless of which side of the fence you sit on, there are things you can do to reduce your chance of contracted the flu this year. Strengthen your immune system by eating a healthy diet including lots of fruits and vegetables, wash your hands frequently, exercise regularly, get adequate sleep, and increase your intake of Vitamin C.

Posted in: Health & Fitness1 comments

December21

Fad Diets – Why they work, and why they don’t

By: RirianProject

Have you ever wondered why on Earth people would try some of the fad diets that are knocking around? I once knew someone who swore by The Marshmallow Diet. She insisted that it was a tried and true diet where you only eat marshmallows. In case you are wondering, I do not recommend that you only eat marshmallows. However, being the diligent reporter I am, I did Google the diet and found absolutely nothing on this so called diet. You may not have ever been tempted to try The Marshmallow Diet, but some of the following diets may have caught your eye.

The Low Fat Diet sounds reasonable enough. Eating fat would make you fat, right? That’s why a lot of people try the diet, and in theory, it should work because there is actually 9 calories for every gram of fat; but carbs and protein are probably closer to 4 calories. So why doesn’t the diet always work the way we had hoped? Because the chances are, you won’t replace it gram for gram. Eating a reduced fat diet is a good idea, but please remember not to add two helpings of your low fat replacements to your plate!

A Mini Fast (also known as the Hollywood Diet) sounds like it could work for a lot of people. Most of the people I know who are trying to lose weight give up because they don’t see results quickly. A mini fast sounds like it would be right up their alley especially when they find out that the diet is only 2 days long! The problem is that the weight you are going to lose in those two days is all water weight. You see, if you don’t eat food, or if you take a diuretic, your body will flush out water. Since our bodies are made mostly of water, you can see how you can drop “weight” quickly.

Magic Food Diet is a category where a diet consists of eating one type of food. There’s the cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet, and I’m sure this is even where we could add the infamous marshmallow diet. The general problem with all of these types of diets is that by severely restricting your intake of healthy foods, even over a period of only 7-12 days, is just not healthy. The weight you take off in that time will never stay off because you will resume eating the way you did before the fad diet started.

Each and every one of you knows exactly what it takes to lose weight. Reduce calories and/or increase activity. It’s the only sure fire way to lose the pounds and the inches and keep them off.

Posted in: Health & Fitness2 comments

October15

Project Build Muscle- How to eat anything you want, anytime you want and never worry!

By: Ririan

Project Build Muscle- How to eat anything you want, anytime you want and never worry!
Okay, so it’s not quite that simple! You can’t eat just anything you want- after all, stuffing your face with four bags of Chips Ahoy is not the best way to build quality muscle. Can you do it? I don’t know, who’d want to try! What happens if you fail? You’ve got a bowling ball stomach and that glazed zombie look from a walking sugar coma!

So let’s stick to some tried and true methods. If you want to build sick muscle, I mean slabs of beef hanging off the bone muscle, you need to do two things- lift heavy weight with low repetition and eat protein. Lot’s of protein. Sure, that’s an oversimplified method to what is really an artful science, but you get the basics. You need to stress your muscles and break them down, then give them the fuel they need to rebuild. By adding stress (weight) to the muscle, you will force it to grow.

But what if you don’t want freaky huge muscles, what can you do? Same thing, just on a modified scale. Think about your basic push up. Let’s say you can do 50 pushups with little strain. How can you build the pectoral muscles involved in a properly executed push up? Two ways: increase reps or increase the weight on the push up. Increasing reps is easy, and you can increase the amount of weight you control by shifting your body at an angle. But the increased stress on the muscle will cause the tissue to break down, and by replenishing with protein, you can rebuild it back. Stronger. Faster. Leaner.

The awesome thing about muscle building routines is the ability to control the shape of your body. No one ever thinks of this, but you really can change how your body is shaped through exercise. You can’t control your height, but you can control how you look. Wide arm pull ups can build a broader back, which can make a thick waist look narrow. Hanging knee crunches and oblique exercises can trim the waistline even further. Add to that a diet low in fat, and high in lean protein, and you can literally build a broad shouldered look for any person.

This is simple to accomplish through modeling. No, I’m not talking about you on the runway, I’m talking about finding someone with a physique you admire (preferably an athlete, I mean, if you’re admiring Carmine at the pizzeria for his squatty pot belly, that’s up to you, but you may not be too into this site!) Pick an athlete you like, and model your workout routine after theirs. Like a swimmer’s body? You may not be able to put in the hours in the pool they do, but you can imitate the exercise forms they perform. Focus on shoulders, pulling exercises with the back, mid range repetitions with body weight. Think long lean muscle building routines. That’s modeling. Just find someone successful at their muscle building and use them as a platform for your own routine.

And drink water. No one ever drinks enough water, then complains about headache, butt-ache, body ache. Hydrate! It’s important enough to say it twice. Drink more water. Plain, easy to handle water. About one to one and a half ounce per pound of body weight per day. Trust me, this will help you build muscles too!

Posted in: Featured, Health & Fitness1 comments

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