Fitness & Wellness

At Body Sculptors in Louisville, KY, clients get the benefit of both diet and exercise expertise. We provide personalized diets that can help you lose weight, lower blood pressure, normalize cholesterol levels and more. They’re based on your needs, preferences, and goals. Many of the diets contain foods higher in fiber since fiber can provide many benefits for the body. It’s often underrated, but necessary for a healthy body.

Fiber has two forms.

Dietary fiber has two varieties, soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber dissolves in water to form a gel. It’s a prebiotic, feeding beneficial microbes in your digestive tract. Insoluble fiber doesn’t digest but provides bulk for your stool to prevent both constipation and diarrhea. Fiber slows digestion, so it helps regulate blood sugar levels and aids in maintaing healthy blood cholesterol levels.

It’s the soluble fiber that lowers your cholesterol levels.

Soluble fiber attaches to cholesterol, binding to it and preventing it from getting into your bloodstream, then going to all parts of the body. That fiber and cholesterol complete the digestive process and exit the body via feces. It only lowers LDL—bad cholesterol—not triglycerides. It doesn’t increase the amount of good cholesterol—HDL—either. Studies show that it can reduce your LDL by 18% if you eat about 30 grams of fiber a day.

You’ll get other benefits from fiber, besides lower cholesterol.

If you want to lose weight, fiber can help. Fiber can make you feel fuller longer. That means you won’t eat as much or snack as often. If you’re trying to lose weight and want to increase your fiber, do it slowly. You can increase it too much, too fast. It takes a while for your body to adjust to the increase and too much can cause excessive gas, bloating and stomach problems. Increase it slowly, over a two week period, to avoid the effects.

Food that contains high amounts of soluble fiber include, but aren’t limited to, most types of beans, Brussels sprouts, avocado, sweet potato, and apples. Insoluble fiber is found in food like green beans, potatoes, and wheat bran.

Fiber makes you feel fuller longer, so it can help you lose weight. The foods high in fiber are often lower calorie, providing bulk and satiety, but not high amounts of sugar.

When you increase your fiber intake, you’ll improve your microbiome. Beneficial bacteria and other microbes feed on the fiber. They ferment it in the colon, which produces byproducts that kill pathogens and bad bacteria.

If you have insulin resistance, it can make losing weight more difficult. Increasing fiber can help reduce insulin resistance. Oats, beans, broccoli, and other high fiber foods can help.

One thing you can do that will affect your whole body and even your mental health is to keep your digestive system healthy. Your gut is filled with bacteria and other microbes that can make you healthier or sicker, depending on the blend. There are more microbes in your body than cells, which should tell you how important they are. These gut microbes are in the intestines and are necessary to your good health. They break down food, so the nutrients can be delivered via your bloodstream, throughout the body.

Keeping a healthy gut is more than keeping the organs functioning properly.

Microbes keep your gut healthy and are vital to your immune system and help keep detrimental bacteria, viruses, and fungi in check. Mental health, asthma, diabetes, malnutrition, obesity, eczema, colitis, and other diseases are linked to an imbalance of the microbiome. You can improve your gut health by providing prebiotics, food that help healthy bacteria thrive. Soluble fiber is a prebiotic food that feeds healthy bacteria, increasing their numbers. Food high insoluble fiber are apples, sweet potato, most types of beans and oatmeal, plus more.

Keep your gut healthier by including probiotic foods.

You’ll increase the number of healthy bacteria by feeding them right with prebiotics, but another way to do it is to eat fermented foods, such as sauerkraut, yogurt, and kefir. Increasing the probiotic foods can immediately improve the beneficial bacteria in your gut. Beneficial bacteria carry out other important functions, such as getting rid of mutated or damaged cells that can lead to cancer. Cutting out food with added sugar can also improve your gut health.

Increase the amount of sleep you get and consider adding collagen to your diet.

Lack of sleep can affect the health of your gut, so get seven to nine hours on a regular basis. It can cause stress and chronic stress can also cause damage to your gut. Getting adequate collagen in your diet is important. One third of all the protein in your body is collagen. It aids in regulating stomach acid, reducing damage to the stomach lining. Collagen attracts both water and acid, which improves digestion. Collagen is necessary for repairing damage to the gut caused by inflammation and can improve conditions like IBS and leaky gut. Bone broth contains high amounts of collagen, so supplementing with it can prove beneficial.

• Whole apples can provide a big benefit for gut health. Not only do they contain beneficial fiber, but they also contain pectin, another prebiotic that feeds good bacteria.
• A program of regular exercise is also beneficial for gut health. Studies show that regular exercise can improve the balance of microbes in your gut by increasing the beneficial bacteria.
• Your mental health is affected by the chemicals in your brain, such as serotonin. Studies show that the gut makes approximately 90% of them. A healthy gut helps improve your mood.
• A healthy gut is important for weight loss. Studies show a bacterial imbalance can cause weight gain. Healing the gut with a program of exercise, stress release and a healthy diet can help. Avoid sugar that can feed harmful microbes and cause weight gain.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

If you started one of our new meal plans at Body Sculptors in Louisville, KY, and find you’re not hungry between meals or feel full enough to make it to the next meal from the snacks, that’s normal. In fact, the diet plans are created to help you feel fuller longer, without consuming tons of extra calories.is However, hunger is normal and regulated by hormones, leptin, the hormone that makes you feel full and ghrelin, the hormone that makes you hungry. The hypothalamus also regulates hunger, as does your blood sugar levels and even your empty stomach and intestines.

If you should be hungry but aren’t, maybe it’s anxiety, depression or stress.

Stress can cause anxiety and depression. It can also make you feel sick to your stomach. It triggers the fight or flight response, which can slow your digestion and decrease how hungry you feel. Stress can cause anxiety and the reverse is also true. When you’re anxious, it can trigger the stress response—fight or flight. People who are depressed also find their hunger signaling is interrupted. According to one study, it slowed the activity in the brain that assessed the body’s hunger level.

If you’re sick, you may not be hungry.

If you don’t feel good or are sick to your stomach, you’ll probably not feel hungry. Think about the last time you had a cold or allergies that caused your nose to run like crazy. Food probably didn’t sound good and if you ate, didn’t taste good either. That upper respiratory distress interfered with the sense of smell and ultimately taste. If the stomach flu has you trapped in the bathroom, of course the thought of food is completely unappetizing. Chronic health conditions like cancer, heart disease and kidney failure can cause your appetite to wane. Even pregnant women with morning sickness or heartburn might find they aren’t as hungry as normal.

The older you are, the more likely you’ll experience lack of hunger more often.

As you age, your body makes a lot of changes. Hormone levels, even the hunger and satiety hormone levels, are lower. Your body has a slower metabolic rate and needs fewer calories. The sense of taste and smell diminishes. There’s less saliva production and sometimes fewer teeth, no teeth or chronic dental illness that interferes with eating. Even chronic illness, depression and medications can dull the appetite.

• Antibiotics, diuretics, sedatives and antihypertensives all may have a side effect of lack of appetite. Some medications make your stomach upset, while others make you feel fatigued, or both. Cancer treatments are known for decreasing appetite.
• If you’re suffering from chronic pain, there’s a big chance that your appetite will suffer as well. Chronic conditions like arthritis or even cramps from menstruation can cause your appetite to suffer.
• If you’re losing too much weight, find ways to make your food more enjoyable, whether cooking with herbs or focusing on food you love. Make sure you eat foods higher in calories and if necessary, set an alarm on your phone to remind you to eat.
• See a doctor if lack of appetite is longer than a week or couple of weeks or if you can’t swallow, keep food down or have symptoms indicating a serious condition. Also check with your doctor if you’re losing weight unintentionally.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training

There are gyms that focus simply on the best workout and places that highlight nutrition, whether it’s to help you lose weight or just be your healthiest. The truth is, you really need both to be your fittest and to shed pounds quickly. While you can’t out-exercise a poor diet, lack of exercise makes losing weight extremely difficult. Not only does exercise help burn calories, it stokes your body’s furnace to burn more calories around the clock and boosts your strength, endurance and flexibility for a fuller life.

It’s about more than calorie or carb counting, it’s about nutrients.

It’s almost impossible to say which is better, exercise or diet. If you’re trying to lose weight, diet will be a top priority, but the two actually go hand-in-hand. It’s why we offer both personal training and nutritional guidance. Eating a healthy diet with a large variety of fruits and vegetables means you’ll get not only the major nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals, but also phytonutrients that provide many additional benefits and fiber.

Healthy eating ensures a great workout.

You have to have enough calories and the right nutrients to have the energy for a good workout. A healthy diet includes all three macronutrients, fats, protein and carbohydrates. You need all three. If you want to start immediately, just cut out processed foods and foods high in sugar. Sugary foods will slow you down and interfere with your energy level. Stick with leafy greens, colorful vegetables, a lean protein source and some healthy fat, such as nuts.

Exercise improves your digestion and your microbiome.

You are never alone. You have trillions of microbes in your body that go with you everywhere. Most of them are in your gut and help to digest your food so you can reap the benefits of healthy eating. When you workout, you actually increase the healthy microbes, making your digestion better. Exercise helps protect the digestive tract and studies show it lowers the risk of colon cancer, diverticular disease and constipation. Exercise increases microdiversity, so you’ll get more nutrients from the food you eat and have better digestion.

• Do you have a problem with recovery after a tough workout? Maybe your diet isn’t as healthy as it should be. If you’re sore and tired for days after your last workout, it should be the first place to check.
• Some foods can help you feel fuller longer, such as healthy fat and protein. You still need carbs for the energy to get you through the workout.
• When you eat is also important. Having a snack of carbs and protein before a workout can make your exercise more effective. Eating protein and some carbs afterward can boost recovery.
• We feel so strongly that both diet and exercise are equally important, we provide help for both. Our nutrition program, like our workouts, are personalized so you get maximum benefits.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors

AT Body Sculptors in Louisville, KY, we help you achieve your goals. Getting great looking abs is usually one of those on everyone’s list. Not only do we provide an ab workout you can do standing up, we actually recommend part of your training be on those types of ab exercises. After all, it’s how the world will see you most of the time, so it mimics your everyday movements. Standing ab exercises also work the major muscles of the hip flexors and the obliques. They help you improve your range of motion and work all the ab muscles.

You’ll give your core muscles a workout with standing ab exercises.

Not only will you get the benefits of regular mat exercises, you’ll get other benefits, too. Standing ab exercises strengthen your core muscles. They add gravity to the mix, so they increase the difficulty, while also improving your balance and posture. They train you to stand tall doing daily activities as it builds back, ab and core muscles in the process. Best of all, standing ab exercises can be done anywhere, like hotel rooms or places where you don’t want to lay on the floor.

If you’ve done a bicycle exercise laying down, the standing form should be easy.

The two exercises are similar, but the standing one requires balance. Start with your feet together and your knees slightly bent. Put your hands behind your head and lift your right heel. Hold your abs tight as you lift the right knee up as high as possible, while you rotate your shoulders toward your knee, touching the left elbow to the knee if you can. Put that foot back on the floor and repeat. Then do the other side.

A standing pike crunch can work wonders on your abs.

This one works your hip flexors and also your core. Stand with feet together then raise your hands over your head as you raise one foot in front of you. Lower your arms as you try to touch your foot, then slowly lower the foot back down to the ground, while you raise your arms back in the air. Going slowly makes it more difficult, but also works the abs more. Make sure the motion is controlled. It may take you a while to do that. Keep repeating the motion of touching your toes and raising back to upright position as you lower your leg, then work the other leg.

• Standing ab workouts are superior to ones laying down if you have a neck injury or find it difficult to get up and down due to back or knee injuries.
• You can use those few minutes at work to get an ab workout. Do a plank. Not on the floor, do a desk plank. Lean forward putting your hands on your desk and keeping your legs and body straight. Hold.
• Another easy exercise to do anywhere and sprinkle throughout the day is a side twist. Twist to the left as far as you can go, then twist to the right. You can do it in a chair, but put your hands behind your head when you do.
• If you have a physical limitation that requires limiting mat exercises, or simply want standing ab exercises you can do on the go, our personal trainers will be happy to create an entire workout for you.

For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors