Snacking at Work Can Be Hard

We all know how hard it can be to eat healthy at work. The constant supply of sugary, trans fat loaded treats sitting on the breakroom table requires too much will power to avoid. Key to a successful day is planning out your food for the day, so by having healthy planned out snacks readily available will keep your mind from wanderimg to the unhealthy snacks you sometimes crave.

Here are some ideas of snacks you can portion up and bring to work:

Fruit or Dried Fruit 

Nuts Protein Bar

Fruit & Nut Bar or Energy BaR

Jerky 

Granola 

Nut Butters

Veggies Chips 

Trail Mix 

Dark Chocolate Crackers

Here are some high protein snack ideas:

celery and nut butters

Air popped popcorn

Deli roll up-2 slices of low sodium turkey rolled up with 1 slice of cheese

Pumpkin seeds- fall time is coming and we all love having pumpkins around. Make sure you remember to scoop the seeds out and save them to bake in the oven for a snack

Protein shake- these are great to keep on hand as all you usually need is the powder and water. I keep my Shakeology packet in my shaker cup and a bottle of water in the refrigerator at work for those days that I want a shake.

Hummus dippers- place 1/3 of a cup of hummus in the bottoms of a mason jar and stick  handful of cut up veggie sticks (celery, carrots, peppers, snow peas) vertically into the hummus and place the cap on the jar. Your delicious hummus dip is at the bottom awaiting you to dip your veggies in it.

Greek yogurt and granola- use a low fat or non fat version of yogurt and low fat granola

Low fat String Chesse

Tuna and crackers- there are so many single serving cans or packets that you can get from the store that sometimes include the crackers or just pack some wheat thins to go with the tuna.

Homemade protein balls- there is no baking required with this recipe which on,y requires 4 ingredients: 1 1/2 tbsp nut butter, 3 tbsp oats, 1/2 tbsp honey and 1/2 dark chocolate chips. Roll the ingredients after mixing into balls and eat or store them in an airtight container.

Roasted Chickpeas- season the chickpeas with olive oil, salt and cayenne pepper and roast for 20-30 min. Store in a ziplock bag or small container.

I hope some of these ideas you’ll take to work with you and it makes it a little easier to follow your current meal plan. For more tips follow me at http://www.facebook.com/sandivw

Can Exercising Bring on My Period?

The body needs exercise to stay fit and healthy. If your not used to exercising then it can be a shock to your body especially when your workouts become more intense. The female body consist of a balance of hormones and things such as exercise can have an effect on how hormones regulate the body.

Cortisol, which is produced by the adrenal glands, is a hormone that is directly effected by exercise. One if its functions is to accumulate the body’s supply of carbohydrates, whose primary function is to provide energy for your body. When the intensity of your workout is higher, your body’s need for carbohydrates is triggered. This in turn produces more cortisol and the amount of cortisol produced in your body can have an effect on your menstrual cycle.

There are several factors that can cause a woman not to get her period. Being underweight, your body won’t produce the hormone it needs to complete your cycle and being overweight, your hormones are thrown all out of whack which can make it hard to conceive. Stress is a big factor along with high anxiety as the cortisol released by our adrenal glands is affected. Overtraining or over exercising may put too much stress on our body to produce the regular hormones it needs to complete a cycle. Strict dieting, emotional stress or too much alcohol or caffeine are also factors of why your body may be producing too much cortisol. So if you increase the intensity of your workout at the same time as one of these other factors then your more likely to see a change in your period.

Exercising is draining to our bodies. Menstruation is not vital for our bodies to survive but only to reproduce. When we exercise , our bodies go into a survival mode and may shut down unnecessary functions in the body (such as your period) to save on energy to keep our bodies going in its current condition.

If you are new to exercise you can avoid causing shock to your body by beginning your exercise regime slowly and steady, increasing the intensity of your workouts as your body becomes used to this new regimen.

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Anger, How Can You Work Through It

Everyone has that kind of day right? Have you ever had that day that nothing goes right and you can just feel the anger build up inside of you? Some people can handle it better than others and some just lose their cool and let the anger take the best of them. I’m not saying that keeping your anger in is any better than letting it out but there are many outlets you can use to help you deal with it. Anger is a normal and even healthy emotion but it’s important to deal with it in a positive way. Uncontrolled anger can take a toll on both your health and your relationships.

You change when you get angry. Your body gets hot, your muscles tense and your breathing becomes short. This is because your blood pressure has risen along with your pulse. Your heart races and elevates your pulse when our freeze, flight or fright response is activated. Tensing your muscles or grinning your teeth is also another indicator that your anger is escalating to rage.

Here are a few ways to help deal with anger:

-Exercise – exercises is an effective beneficial way to displace anger. Physical activity can help reduce stress that can cause you to become angry. If you feel your anger escalating then go for a brisk walk, run or spend some time doing another enjoyable form of physical exercise. It has been found in studies that people who exercised at least two to three times per week experienced less depression,anger and stress than those exercising less frequently or not at all.

-Relaxation- simple relaxation tools, such as breathing and relaxing imagery can help soothe angry feelings. Deep breathing with taking deep breathes from your diaphragm.

-Use imagery- visualize a relaxing experience from your memory or your imagination.

-Non-strenuous exercise- sometimes this form of exercise can calm down your muscles and calm you down by doing something  like yoga.

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The 21 Day Fix Program

Have you heard what all of the buzz was about when it comes to the 21 Day Fix Program? There are not too many people who watch television that probably have not seen the infomercial with the creator and trainer of this great program, Autumn Calabrese. This program has changed so many lives with how it puts together nutrition and exercise on a daily basis.

This Beachbody program teaches anyone how to eat clean and healthy while eating just the right proportion of food in each one of the food groups. There are 6 color coded containers that are included in this program. The red container is used for proteins such as lean ground beef, turkey, chicken, eggs, yogurt, fish, Shakeology, tofu, pork tenderloin, cottage cheese, shellfish and tuna. The yellow container are used for carbohydrates such as sweet potato, rice, corn on the cob, potatoes, barley, pasta, oatmeal, bread, peas, and tortillas. The  green container is used for vegetables such as cucumbers, peppers, celery, tomatoes, lettuce, snow peas, mushrooms, onions, carrots, broccoli and spinach. The purple container is used for fruit such as strawberries, blueberries, bananas, pineapple, apples, oranges, kiwi, figs, pears, watermelon, cherries and grapes.The blue container is used for healthy fats such as avocado, cheeses or nuts and the orange container is used for seeds or salad dressings. There are also teaspoons of oils and nut butters allowed each day. How many containers do you get to eat a day you might ask. There is a quick formula on how to figure out the calories you are to eat in correlation to how many containers you get per day. As the weight melts off, you decrease your containers.

The 21 Day Fix Program also comes with 9 DVD’s in which Autumn will push you with several different programs to workout different groups of muscles each day so your muscles never get too used to the same movement. Each of these workouts are only 30 minutes! Don’t worry if your just starting out because there is always a modifier for you to follow until you feel strong enough to do it full force.

If your interested in more information on the 21 Day Fix Program  send me a message or follow me at http://www.facebook.com/sandivw

Motivation

What motivates you to do things? Are you the type of person who needs a reward at the end of your task to be motivated? Or are you that person who can set your mind to something and with determination and preserverince you get to your goal because something has motivated you so much that you do not need a reward and that the goal obtained itself is the reward.

Motivation is the desire to do things. Motivation can come from many places.We are motivated when we are excited, when we are scared, when we are determined. Motivation is not something that just can be conjured on a whim, you have to foster it. Motivation is more of a result of doing something than it is a source to pull from. It’s a result of habit, routine and doing.

If we were to look for motivation as a source for the desire to do something, we will be disappointed. We can’t will ourselves into motivational, we have to choose ourselves into it.To discover something you’re passionate about, you have to do it. You have to do something that requires you to show up,and showing up requires a choice.

We can’t fabricate motivation, we can only foster it by choosing to show up consistently and have it find us. You see, if you make a goal to go to the gym everyday, you’ll never naturally find motivation to go. It’s only after choosing to show up for the next 5 days that motivation finds us. Motivation is the combination of  knowing where you want to go, a well laid out plan to get there , and doing things on a daily basis, inspite of fear and laziness, to get there.

Some simple ways to set your goals so that you can start to be motivated are:

*make a list of what your goals

*put the list of goals in the order in which they need to be obtained and work on them daily

*make a motivational board that reminds you of what goal your trying to obtain. For instance, if your goal is to lose some weight and get back down into a smaller size try using old photos of how you want to look. You can also cut pictures out of magazines of healthy foods you might eat during your journey.

*join an accountability group for support with your goal or let your friends know what your goal is so they can help motivate you

If your looking for an accountability group in regards to having a healthy and fit lifestyle to help keep you motivated, message me at http://www.facebook.com/sandivw

School Lunches

As a parent do you ever wonder what is in your child’s school lunch? As a parent you may not have any clue about what your kids are really eating. Lunches at some schools sometimes can be something similar to an overly packaged TV dinner gone wrong. Most school lunches have steadily improved over the past 15 yrs with everyone from nutrionist and public-health experts to the First Lady to a growing number of extremely frustrated parents believing that our children’s school lunches are still overprocessed with unhealthy preservatives, sodium, sugar and trains fat.

A typical school lunch far exceeds the recommended 500 mg of sodium and in some districts there is more than 1,000 mg of sodium! The USDA also reports that less than a third of schools stay below the recommend standard for fat content in their meals. Foods such as chicken nuggets are highly processed, with additives and preservatives and list more than 30 ingredients instead of chicken. These nuggets are just one example of how schools rely on too many foods that are heavily processed and high in sugar, sodium and chemicals. The problem isn’t simply that kids are eating unhealthy foods for lunch but are eating food they think is ok for them. Kids associate school with education, therefore they get the wrong impression that these kinds of food are healthy.

Ways to help your child eat healthier when going to school would be to limit when how many times they are buying school lunches and to pack their own lunch when ever possible. If you allow them to buy lunch occasionally, perhaps look over the menu and review what foods they are offering and decide which are a healthier choice and choose those days if need be. Instilling healthy eating habits in your children will help them choose healthier food options. When packing a lunch for your child I suggest you do it the night before so your not in a hurry and just throwing things into their lunch bag. Some healthy choices you should make while packing their lunch should include a fruit, vegetable, and healthy treat. Having them be part of choosing what will be packed will also help make sure they will eat all or most of their lunch and make them feel like they are helping make healthy choices.

For more tips visit me at http://www.facebook.com/sandivw

Does Stress Slow Down Your Weight Loss?

Have you ever been losing weight at a pretty good rate and then all of a sudden Bam! The weight loss stops,slows down or you even gain weight? You have done nothing different with your nutrition or exercise and you can’t understand what is going on! Well, if you have been under stress lately this could very well be the culprit.

Stress? What does stress have to do with halting my weight loss? Your body responds to stress all exactly the same way. So every time you have a stressful day, your brain instructs your cells to release potent hormones. You get a burst of adrenaline, which taps stored energy so you can fight or flee.At the same time, you get a surge of cortisol, which tells your body to replenish that energy even though you haven’t used very many calories. This can make you hungry… very, very hungry. Your body keeps pumping out that cortisol as long as the stress continues.

What do you usually reach for to eat in stressful situations? Carrots? Celery? No, of course not, your body instead craves sweet,salty and high fat foods because they stimulate the brain to release a pleasure chemical that reduces tension. This soothing effect becomes addicting, so every time you’re anxious, you want fattening food. With your adrenal glands pumping out cortisol, production of the muscle-building hormone testosterone slows down. Over time this drop causes a decrease in your muscle mass, so you burn fewer calories.This occurs naturally as you age, but high cortisol levels acclerate the process.Cortisol also encourages your body to store fat, especially visceral fat, which is particularly dangerous because it surrounds vital organs and releases fatty acids into your blood, raising cholesterol and insulin levels and paving the way for heart disease and diabetes.

Ways of decreasing stress in your life could be light yoga or meditating, deep breathing exercises, aromatherapy, listening to music, drinking black tea, chewing gum, get a massage, writing in your journal and exercise.

For more tips visit me at http://www.facebook.com/svw

What Sugar Does to You?

The instant something sweet touches your tongue, your taste buds send a direct message to your brain saying DELICIOUS! Your brain’s reward system ignites and unleashes dopamine. Meanwhile, the Sugar you swallowed lands into your stomach, where it’s diluted by digestive juices and shuttled into your small  intestine. The enzymes begin to breakdown every bit of it into molecules which are glucose and fructose. Most added Sugar comes from Sugar cane or Sugar beets and equal parts glucose and fructose. However Lab made high-fructose corn syrup has more processed fructose than glucose.

Sugar can act like poison in high doses and the the amount in our diets has gone toxic, addicting and deadly in some cases.  The typical American now swallows the equivalent of 22 Sugar cubes every 24 hrs. That means the average woman eats 70 pounds of straight Sugar every year!

Over time eating large amounts of Sugar will start to lead to diseases such as Diabetes, Obesity, Alzheimer’s and Cancers such as Breast, Colon and Endometrial. Research shows that hyper-sweet foods may be as addictive as the hardest to quit drugs out on the streets. Indeed, a recent study suggests that Sugary cookies could be as addictive as cocaine or morphine.

Your body can safely metabolize at least six teaspoons of added Sugar per day. But since most Americans are consuming over three times that amount, majority of the excess Sugar  becomes metabolized into body fat. Fructose fools your metabolism by turning off your body’s appetite-control system. It fails to stimulate insulin, which in turn fails to suppress ghrelinl also known as “the hunger hormone” which then fails to stimulate leptin also known as “the satiety hormone”. This causes you to eat more and develop insulin resistance. Eating excess Sugar  also causes a metabolic dysfunction. It will cause weight gain, elevated blood Sugar, high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and elevated triglycerides.

So how do you break the Sugar addiction cycle? You will most likely suffer withdrawal symptoms for a few weeks and crave sweets every two to three hours but substitute savory snacks for the sugary ones. Go through your cupboards and get rid of the foods that are hiding the Sugar and replace them with ones that are not. Cooking your meals from scratch will help keep the Sugar content down rather then eating already prepared meal that is usually loaded with Sugar and salt. Eating a balanced Diet including all the food groups will help keep the Sugar balanced in your body and lead to a healthier you!

For more tips visit me at http://www.facebook.com/sandivw

 

Losing Weight By Burning Calories

Losing weight  is all about creating a calorie deficit. In order to lose a pound a week, you need to cut out or burn a total of 500 calories a day. If you ditch 250 calories from your diet, you’ll need to burn 250 with exercise. Here’s how many you’ll burn briskly walking compared to jogging:

Walking:

60 minute walk at 4 mph (15 minutes per mile): 243 calories burned

60 minute walk at 4.6 mph (13 minutes per mile): 270 calories burned

Running:

30 minute run at 6mph (10 minutes per mile): 270 calories burned

30 minute run at 6.7 mph (9 minutes per mile): 300 calories burned

Both the 60 minute walk at 4.6 mph and the 30 minute run at 6.0 mph burn the same number of calories. But if you tend to walk slower, then you definitely won’t burn as many, and if your jogging pace is closer to 7 mph, then you’ll make more use of your 30 minutes by jogging.

Whether you walk or run, instead of keeping a consistent pace, an even better option is to incorporate speed intervals. Every minute of sprinting at 8 mph not only burns 13 calories  (as compared to 4 calories at 4 mph and 9 calories at 6 mph), but will also help diminish belly fat faster. Or, if sprinting isn’t your thing, add incline. A 60 minute walk at 4 mph with a 10 percent incline burns 567 calories If you’d rather pick up the pace and jog at 6 mph for 30 minutes with a 5 percent incline, then you’ll burn 363 calories.

The bottom line is that the harder you work, the more calories  you’ll burn, which is key to losing weight. Jogging burns more calories per minute than walking, so you can lose weight faster by learning to love running. So even if you have an hour to workout, spend 30 minutes running, 20 minutes doing strength training ,(muscle mass increases your metabolism, which helps you burn calories faster), and 10 minutes stretching (to help prevent injury and soreness). That intense, jam packed hour will defiantly help you reach your weight loss goals quicker than just going for a walk.

These calculations were based on a 130 lb woman.

For more weight loss tips visit me at http://www.facebook.com/sandivw

Who Is In Your Inner Circle?

Like most things in life, we as humans do much better at things when we have support. Support is usually found in your inner circle. The type of friends you have in your inner circle significantly define your success or failure.

Who do keep in you keep in your inner circle? Do you keep your parents, siblings,cousins, other family members or friends in your inner circle? Do you keep people who are negative or who don’t support you or your inner circle? I only keep like minded people in my inner circle because I have found that people who have negativity bring what I am trying to accomplish down. If people don’t support me in what I am doing  or have negative thoughts then that starts to reflect on how I feel and that is not how I will choose to live my life.

There is a saying that “show me your friend and I will show you your character “. I think it is not just any friend but a friend in your inner circle. It’s certainly a friend with whom you spend much of your time with. As a person born to win, you need other people with the belief that they are also born to win. So that you can strive together towards becoming the true winners you have been created to be.

I only surround myself with like minded people as I said earlier because theses people are who want similar things in life as I do. Positive thinking people are who you will find in my inner circle. Sometimes you may find yourself stuck in a situation with negative conversation. Sometimes just backing yourself away from the conversation or if your not able to step away do a little daydreaming to take yourself away from the negativity.

“Faithful are the wounds of friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy” Proverbs 27:6 ESV

For more tips visit me at http://www.facebook.com/sandivw