Fitness & Wellness

If you thought healthy eating was simply too hard to do, there are ways to make it far easier. It may start by simply cutting out food with added sugar. While that sounds easy and makes sense, people often struggle because they’re addicted to sugar. It triggers the same receptors as opioids and creates a bit of a withdrawal. It’s also in most the processed products on the grocery shelves. To complicate the matter, manufacturers use several names for sugar. If you see high fructose corn syrup on the list, put down the product and quickly walk away.

If reading labels is more than you can tolerate after a long day at work, choose a different option.

Switch to more whole foods. These are foods that are less processed and have no additives. Spend your time at the produce section and shop for lean cuts of meat and poultry. Include fresh fish in your diet once a week, but don’t fry it. If you choose peanut butter, find one that has only peanuts in it and nothing else. When choosing fresh fruits and vegetables, include a rainbow of colors. Each phytochemical that creates the color provides a different benefit for the body.

Focus on what you drink, too.

You may be drinking tons of calories and artificial additives that make your body less healthy, plus pack on the pounds. Don’t be fooled by zero calorie or diet drinks, either. Studies show that people who drink diet drinks often have a larger mid-section circumference. Stick with drinks naturally low in calories, such as herbal or green tea and especially water.

Make it super easy.

Choose one of our nutrition plans and use the menus and shopping list provided. You can even save money, since the recipes are designed to use ingredients several ways throughout the week. Cook all the food on the weekend and then just heat and serve throughout the week. It takes the guesswork out of menus and what to eat, while teaching you new recipes and techniques to eat healthier.

• Always have healthy snacks available. Cube a melon and have it ready in the refrigerator or slice up the celery and have dip ready. When you have healthy snacks ready, you’ll be more likely to eat them.
• Don’t be fooled by products labeled low fat. It doesn’t mean it’s necessarily healthy. Manufacturers often add sugar to make low fat products more palatable. You also need to eat healthy fat to burn fat.
• Learning to eat healthier is all about making smarter decisions. For instance, you can substitute brown rice for white rice and save calories. Using Greek yogurt instead of sour cream for potatoes is another calorie savings.
• Focus on how you cook, too. Steaming, broiling and grilling food is far healthier than frying it. Wipe out all deep-fried foods from your diet. Not only do they pack on the pounds, they’re unhealthy.

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

You don’t have to be in any particular occupation, location or circumstance, stress occurs no matter what you do, or where you live, whether it’s Louisville, KY, or any other place on the globe. Doing exercises that relieve stress can help you live a happier, healthier life. Stress creates hormones that prepares the body for the fight or flight response. If those hormones aren’t burned off, they can create lasting changes that lead to serious conditions. There is scientific proof that exercise helps anxiety, which can come from prolonged stress.

Improve your body and health, while getting rid of stress with an HIIT workout.

HIIT—high intensity interval training—can be used for any type of exercise. It’s a way of modifying the intensity of the workout that helps build muscles faster and reduce stress. You go at peak intensity for a short time, followed by an equal amount of time or longer at a recovery pace. Then, you repeat the process throughout the workout. You can do it with walking, running, any type of workout at the gym or whatever you choose. It burns off the hormones of stress.

Turn up the music and do some fast dancing.

Dancing works very much like HIIT. You move fast and burn off stress hormones, while also varying the intensity. When most people dance, they aren’t constantly in vigorous movement, but have pauses where they sway or make other motions that allow them to catch their breath. Try finding a happy song to dance to and put a smile on your face while you dance.

Learn techniques you can use every day.

Stress never waits around until you’re ready to go to the gym. It hits at all times of the day. You need a tool to help you burn off the hormones of stress. One of the simplest and easiest to use any time, any place, is walking. Maybe it’s why some people revert to pacing during trying times. Studies show that you can reduce the potential for stress-related conditions, like high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes by adopting a walking regimen. It helps quiet your nervous system, release major muscle group tension and makes you breathe more deeply. If you get a chance to walk in a more natural setting, like a park, it’s even better.

• Tai chi, qigong and yoga all help you relax. The movements are slow and gentle and there’s a lot of focus on the correct way to breathe, which also helps reduce stress.
• Your time at the gym counts as a stress reliever. No matter what you do at the gym, it helps reduce stress. Any exercise can help you feel better and more relaxed for hours.
• Exercise also helps improve posture and that can boost your confidence to help prevent some stress. Go for a swim, bicycle, take the kids for a hike or come to the gym regularly to burn off the hormones of stress and help prevent them.
• Learn ways to control minor stressors. You can start by turning off the TV and getting off social media if you find yourself stressed. Take that time to turn on music and dance, walk or garden.

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

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