Practice Eating Less Every Day

A friend of mine is about to embark on an ambitious plan to have a ‘six pack’ by the time he turns 40. Although I say ambitious, it is by no means unachievable if he has the discipline to alter some of his existing habits. In order to achieve his goal a number of factors will need to be addressed including ;

• A structured eating plan
  
  
  
• Regular exercise with intensity
  
  
• Resistance training to build lean muscle tissue
  
  
• Core strengthening program

Now I know this friend pretty well and of the above points, the structured eating plan is most definitely going to be the most challenging for him. He loves his food and lots of it! As with almost anything ‘practice makes perfect’, and there is no exception to the rule here.

For most people, going ‘cold turkey’ on something rarely works. This can apply to smoking, drinking, exercise, drugs and also eating. It would be very difficult for a 30 cigarette per day smoker to wake up one day and just stop smoking. They need a plan to gradually reduce their intake over time until they are ready to stop completely. This type of plan is much more likely to result in a successful long term outcome, rather than a short term fix and then falling back into old habits.

So relating this back to eating, it is imperative to practice eating less every day. We, as humans, are conditioned to eat (and drink) certain amounts, for example, finishing all the food on your plate, having 2 slices of toast for breakfast, drinking a whole can of soft drink, eating a whole packet of chips. When was the last time you consciously left some food on your plate? Do you need 2 slices of toast in the morning? Could you have a small glass of soft drink if you ‘must’ have soft drink at all? Do you order a large coffee every morning? Try changing to a small coffee and do you HAVE to finish it all?

The mind and body are very powerful pieces of machinery. Gradually reducing the amount you eat at each meal will become easier over time as your body adjusts to the changes. This will allow you to ‘get in touch’ with your hunger, and question your hunger. Am I really hungry? We often eat because we are bored or because we are dehydrated or in some cases because we are stressed. So get to know your hunger signals and don’t be afraid to question them before you go to the fridge or the shop and who knows you may get that ‘six pack’ you always dreamed about!

Will A Food Diary Help Keep You On Track?

Most people, at some stage of their lives, will try a new diet or eating plan in an attempt to lose weight. There are numerous different diets doing the rounds these days and all of them have varying success rates depending on the discipline of the participant. One method that may assist your weight loss endeavours is to keep a food diary.

Again, with food diaries, there are many variations available but I find that the simpler they are the more likely they are to be completed. Some food diaries are far too complex making you measure everything that goes into your mouth

and counting each and every calorie as well as recording specific exercise details. These diaries are great for someone who is highly motivated and prepared to spend a lot of time monitoring their energy in versus energy out quantities. Most people however will find these too complex and won’t have the time to dedicate to them.

A simple food diary is often enough to identify some key areas of improvement in your diet whether it is in relation to;

• what you’re eating,
  
• when you’re eating
  
  
• or how much you’re eating (or drinking).

Making the commitment to write down everything that goes into your mouth can often be motivation in itself to cut out those junk food snacks that so often let us down and lead to unnecessary weight gain.

Of course you need someone to be accountable to, wheth

er it be your Personal Trainer, Partner, Best Friend, Dietician or Doctor. Accountability helps with self discipline and if you can combine these two traits then you are on the right path toward reaching your goals. If you don’t have someone else to be accountable to, you are more likely to’ fall off the wagon’, so to speak, or allow yourself some ‘cheat’ foods.

Here at Lifestyle Improvers we have developed our own F

ood Diary which is available to any of our members and we will also provide coaching tips to help guide you through the process. For more information go to our website http://www.lifestyleimprovers.com/contact.html or contact us on 1300339685.

Is Diabetes ‘Stalking’ You?

Most people are blissfully unaware if diabetes is sneaking up on them. The facts are that almost 900,000 Australians have been diagnosed with diabetes and scarily the most recent national data indicates one undiagnosed case for every diagnosed case according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s ‘Diabetes : Australian Facts 2008’ report.

The same report notes that the proportion of people diagnosed with diabetes between 1989-90 and 2004-05 more than doubled from 1.3 per cent to 3.3 per cent, largely driven by an increase in type 2 diabetes.

If you’ve got the condition, you’re three times as likely to have a stroke and twice as likely to have a heart attack, cataracts or glaucoma, yet up to 60 percent of cases could be delayed or prevented by maintaining a healthy weight and exercising.

So do you think you’re at risk?

Your chances of developing diabetes are higher if you;

• have high blood pressure
• have heart disease
• have a family history of diabetes
• are overweight
• are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and over 35
• are over 55
• are diagnosed with impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glucose
• are of Chinese, Indian or Pacific Islander heritage and over 35

If you have any concerns regarding diabetes or even if you just want to get checked for peace of mind, please consult your registered Health Practitioner or comple

te one of our Lifestyle Improvers Health Diagnostics and let us assess the risk for you and work with you to develop a long term sustainable solution that w

ill keep diabetes from ‘stalking’ you. To complete a Diagnostic please go to our newly developed website www.lifestyleimprovers.com.au or phone us on 1300339685 and we’ll send one to you.

How Your Blood Sugar Works

Your body has a finely tuned system for controlling blood sugar. One of the key players is insulin,a powerful hormone that’s essential for helping move sugar from your blood into your cells. Below is a brief outline of how the process works – and how it can go wrong.

1. The basics – When you eat food that contains carbohydrates, most is absorbed as glucose into your bloodstream. As your blood-glucose level increases, your pancreas reacts by secreting the hormone insulin. Insulin then travels to the capillaries that deliver blood and nutrients to your muscles and brain. Once it’s in the capillaries, insulin is attracted to the receptors that reside on the outer membrane of your muscle and brain cells. It then binds to these receptors, like an electrical cord being plugged into a socket.
   
   
2. Healthy Response – In a person with normal blood sugar responses, the connection of insulin to its receptor sends a signal to a pool of glucose transporters – called GLUT -4 proteins – inside the cell. When the signal is received, these GLUT -4 proteins move out of their vesicle towards the surface of the cell, where they help glucose move across the cell membrane. This causes blood glucose to decrease and provides your muscle cells with sugar for fuel.
   
   
3. When the System Goes Bad – In a person with insulin resistance, the insulin receptor sends out a garbled signal. This is tantamount to a disconnected mobile phone call. Some or all of the GLUT -4 proteins never receive the message to move to the surface of the cell. As a result, glucose has no way in. The fewer GLUT -4 proteins on the surface of the cell, the higher your blood sugar remains. Ultimately, much of this excess blood sugar is diverted to the liver, where it’s converted to fat and can lead to increased insulin resistance – and higher blood sugar.
   

Often people with insulin resistance will struggle to lose weight despite making a concerted effort to exercise more and eat less. The damage is already done as per point 3 above. Only a committed approach to exercise and dietary change (under the supervision of a health professional) over an extended period of time will see the effects of insulin resistance nullified.

If you need assistance with developing an exercise program, Lifestyle Improvers would be more than happy to help you out. In fact go to our webpage www.lifestyleimprovers.com.au and claim your FREE Personal Training Starter Pack. Don’t procrastinate get started right now and take control of your health and your future.

Are You Braking or Accelerating?

After a few years in the fitness industry I have met a variety of people who want to achieve certain results by attending a gym. They are wide and varied as follows ;

• weight loss
• weight gain
• managing stress
• improving health
• having time to themselves
• wanting social interaction

just to name a few.


Everyone has extreme motivation when they first arrive and join a gym. Their foot is well and truly on the accelerator in the car of life.

But then something changes and they appear to slow. Why all of a sudden does the other foot slide onto the brake?

Why are they now sabotaging their goals?

I had no idea until reading a recent article about people taking pharmaceutical drugs for medical reasons.

Patients who take medicine for recovery from major operations have low adherence after 12 weeks – some pharmaceutical companies say as much as 80% of patients stop medication! And here is an example why . . .

A patient was told he needed to lose weight for maximum benefit from his medication. He was very successful initially – foot on the accelerator! But then he got worried that his fellow workers (who were overweight) would start to dislike him and that would make for an unhappy workplace, adding stress to his life. Stress he did not want! So he stopped losing weight and returned to his initial weight.

These people to him were unconsciously ‘enabling’ or ‘empowering’ him to remain overweight – at the risk of his own good health. This meant while one foot was on the accelerator, the other was on the brake.

The brake was his protection mechanism.

Whether you are trying to lose weight, reduce your stress, start an exercise program or create better balance in your life your foot must be on the accelerator – this allows you to create change.

What you do with the other foot is your choice but putting on the brake will either slow your progress or stop your progress, thus testing your resolve.

The key is to surround yourself with support. Whatever your goal in life or work, have the right people surrounding you to achieve your goals . . . make sure your enablers – conscious and subconscious – are positive ones, as you accelerate your way along a new healthier and happier superhighway!

Is Cortisol Harming Your Health?

Cortisol and Adrenalin are both hormones which are triggered in the body during times of stress. Whilst constantly high levels of cortisol can be detrimental to your health (and your waistline) it is actually an important hormone which is involved in a number of important functions including:

• Proper glucose metabolism
• Immune function
• Regulation of blood pressure
• Inflammatory response
• Insulin release for blood sugar maintenance

As you can see from the above list, stress isn’t the only reason that cortisol is secreted into the bloodstream, but it has been named ‘the stress hormone’ because it’s secreted in higher levels during the body’s ‘fight or flight’ response to stress, and is responsible for several stress-related changes in the body.

The reason cortisol is important in stressful situations is because it provides the following positive effects:

• A quick burst of energy for survival reasons
• A burst of increased immunity
• Heightened memory functions
• Helps maintain homeostasis in the body
• Lower sensitivity to pain

Unfortunately, as I covered in a previous article, today’s modern ‘stresses’ don’t require the same ‘fight or flight’ response as we needed back in our caveman days and so as a result, we tend to remain feeling stressed for longer and don’t go back to feeling relaxed during which cortisol levels would eventually normalise. As a result we could find ourselves in a state of chronic stress which has been shown to have negative effects, such as:

• Impaired cognitive performance
• Blood sugar imbalances such as hyperglycaemia
• Higher blood pressure
• Decreased muscle tissue
• Decreased bone density
• Suppressed thyroid function
• Lowered immunity and inflammatory responses in the body
• Increased abdominal fat
• Increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, the development of metabolic syndrome, higher levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and lower levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL)

To keep cortisol levels healthy and under control you can learn to relax your body with various stress management techniques including guided imagery, journaling, yoga, exercise, self hypnosis, listening to music, breathing exercises, meditation and sex.

Cortisol secretion does vary amongst individuals as people tend to be biologically ‘wired’ to react differently to stress. If you do find that you are more sensitive to stress, it’s especially important for you to learn stress management techniques and maintain a low-stress lifestyle.
Lifestyle Improvers offers all our clients a ‘non-sweat’ coaching program to assist you with managing the day to day stresses of our lives. For more information visit our website http://www.lifestyleimprovers.com/.

Do You Have Self Control?

One thing that goes a long way to helping you with your eating plans is self control. Do you find yourself sneaking a chocolate biscuit after dinner and then thinking ‘that was good’ and going back for another and then before you know it you’ve knocked off the whole packet? It is a common occurrence in most households, I suspect, particularly if competition is high for the so called ‘yummy’ food in the cupboards.

The problem with this scenario is that most of us have never learnt the art of self control when it comes to ‘treat’ style foods so whenever we have access to them we over do it. If though, we are to learn how to ultimately control our food intake and our weight for life, we also need to learn to self regulate ourselves even as adults.

So how do we do this? Below I have outlined a number of points that may assist you in learning how to implement self control when it comes to eating ‘treats’ ;

• The best practice of course is not to have treats in the cupboards or fridge in the first place however this is sometimes easier said than done.


• Allocate portions that will spread out the eating of the treat over the whole week rather than demolishing it in one sitting – an example of this would be if you had a small block of dark chocolate in the fridge that had say 14 pieces. Break it up into those 14 pieces and allow yourself 1 or 2 pieces per night as a maximum.


• Keep your treat foods in a container that is not readily in sight so that when you go to the fridge or cupboard the treats are not the first thing you see.


• Have ready made healthy alternatives such as fruit or vegetables in plain sight so you can easily grab an apple rather than a packet of chips.


• When you feel like something sweet, drink two large glasses of water, brush your teeth or chew some sugar free gum instead.
  

Like anything in life total avoidance is usually not the answer and will often lead to ‘binge’ eating if you have deprived yourself of something totally for a long period of time. Self management is what we ultimately need to master if we are to be in control of our eating and in turn we will be in control of our weight.