• Bullet Points for Wellness Success.
• IF THERE IS A SECRET TO BEING and STAYING HEALTHY it’s cutting back on processed food and fast foods – staying away from all of the things we classify as “junk foods” (candy, chocolate, sweets, cakes, cookies, too much bread, chips, sweetened sodas, packaged snacks, drive-through food, french fries, most fast food chains, etc.)! This is not really a secret, but it is THE MAIN REASON AMERICANS ARE OVERWEIGHT.
• Strive to be health-conscious and to stick to a balanced diet, heavy in vegetables, modest in meats & fish, low in carbohydrates plus drink lots of water.
• Watching your food intake is more important for weight control than exercise. It takes both diet and exercise for wellness, but if you want to see your abs, you must lose the fat.
• For productivity: Get-up-and-out-of-bed by 6:30 a.m. This time is both “very reasonable” and “not too early.”
• For productivity hydrate. Each morning drink 8 – 12 oz. cold water or 8 – 12 oz. tepid water – a must for everybody.
• Prepare your favorite other morning drink options, personalized for pleasure: a beautiful cappuccino with half-and-half (fat content is a positive thing here), a mug of dark coffee black or with a splash of whole milk; a mug of hot or cold tea; 4 oz. of fresh squeezed orange juice with the pulp (full of carbs, but also full of vitamins); tomato juice regular or spicy; or a fresh green juicer drink is a good start. (Some nutritionists will argue most of these drinks, but life is also about enjoying the day – everything in moderation.)
• For productivity: Work-Out First Thing in the morning.
• The best work-out is four to five days per week, for 60-minutes of “must-sweat sessions”, then shower, get ready, and off to work.
• For productivity: Be ready for work by 9 a.m. (If you need to work before nine, then your wake-up time must be pushed to an earlier hour.)
• It’s best not to eat a solid breakfast until after 10 a.m. The first hour of work should be your most productive. In many ways, the mind is more focused, when the stomach is not digesting.
• BREAKFAST: Eat super clean, berries, healthy nuts (pistachios, almonds, walnuts – not peanuts), eggs, greens and drink water or unsweet tea or coffee.
• Always have fresh produce in the fridge at home and at work, as a snack, when hungry (zucchini and yellow squash cut into rounds, carrot strips, broccoli or cauliflower florets).
• LUNCH: As a model meal – sliced chicken breast, on a bed of simple sautéed spinach or kale with a squeeze of lemon juice and olive oil, modestly seasoned with salt and pepper.
• Avoid drenching food with various sauces. You want the taste of the real food, that should be the main flavor. Cook with herbs and spices for more flavor.
• Reminder: Clean eating means not eating processed foods (ie: “crap”). Please don’t eat too much crap, that’s the secrets to a better body! Keep at the ready: Produce, Whole Fruit and Healthy Nuts, High-Protein Foods – “Clean Snacks”.
• AVOID THE WHITES = sugars / breads / flour / rice / potatoes / pastas / & dairy. (BUT) Realized if you are eating extremely clean, the addition of some cheese will add much-needed fat, which will help to fight the craving for sugars. Eating some white turkey meat along with some cheese will help you to live without the sugar and other “no-no white carbs”.
• Diet drinks with artificial sweeteners are OUT! Studies have shown that your endocrine system treats zero calorie diet sweeteners just like they are sugar and overproduces insulin to counteract them, ultimately leading to diabetes.
• Find your best-balanced diet of proteins you enjoy, healthier fats, and natural carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables.
• DINNER: Eat a ton of vegetables, along with a salad, soup, and an 8 oz protein (fish, white chicken, white turkey, white pork, or lean red meat.) Avoid alcohol. Learn to love ice water, a glass or mug of unsweet tea and warm unsweet green tea.
• Every two weeks do a one-day “alkaline cleanse”. Eliminate acidic foods (coffee, most fresh meats, hard cheeses, etc.) and consume more alkaline-rich foods (kale, sprouts, cabbage, etc.). In doing so, the hope is to increase the pH value of your body and, in turn, improve your health.
• All formal diet and nutrition options over the past 50 years have worked to some degree, and all for different reasons: calories in, calories out; low fat high carb; low carb high fat; etc. Many times the results have been unsustainable or even conceptually based on bad data. It’s best to stick to the most current trends in health, not to be trendy, but they are based on knowledge of what has not worked in the recent past.
• Eat consciously, be aware of what you are putting into your body.
• Being healthy is mostly common sense – move as much as possible, do some resistance training for bone density and muscle tone and eat a balanced rainbow of vegetables, some protein, some healthy fats, and some carbohydrates – the goal is a reasonably low-calorie count.
• The societies where people do physical and strenuous work daily, always moving, as in agriculture, and who eat lower calorie diets are the healthiest, most disease-free humans on this planet. We need to think about what do they do differently from our lifestyle, then emulate and replace our actions to model theirs, only reconstructed within our contemporary lives.
GUIDELINES FOR 2019:
• INTERMITTENT FASTING IS IN: Don’t eat anything (except water and black coffee or tea) after 6 pm each day and until the next morning.
• DRINK WATER: 1 ounce of water for each pound you weigh – per day. There are 128 fluid ounces in one gallon of water. This alone will be an incentive to lose weight. So a 200 lb person should drink about a gallon and 1/2 of good filtered water per day. Be smart, don’t literally drown yourself in water, drink until well hydrated, lose the weight, and then you can reach your goal of 1 oz per pound.
• VEGETABLES: 1/2 cup of raw veggies (or measure before they have been cooked) times three meals a day. Most raw vegetables are GUILT FREE snacks, anytime during the day.
• GREENS: an additional 1 cup of raw salad greens over and above the vegetables mentioned, times three meals a day.
• PROTEIN: A serving size is similar to the palm of your hand, times three meals a day.
• SNACK: THINK HEALTHY: flaxseed snacks, fruits, vegetables, healthy protein bars, healthy nuts with water.
• KEEP UP REGULAR EXERCISE and HEALTHY EATING!
Great and reasonable final advice: We are all tempted by the same greasy goodness everyone is eating and available at every street corner and advertised non-stop on radio and tv, it does entice! Instead of totally eliminating unhealthy foods completely from your diet, value moderation. Try to limit your “off-the-rails-treat” to one meal per week, think of eating copious amounts healthy foods for 99% of your week, but nothing is off the table. This will help keep your psyche from fighting you. Just remember “treat yourself in moderation”! This is for you, you win when done correctly and when you sneak around, you lose and it shows. The goal is to ultimately love this approach to eating and to love your new mindset and to love your health and fitness. Be kind to yourself when you slip up – each day is a new beginning and always will be.
(Source: Information came from a Medical Center / Nutritionists, name withheld by request.)
