The Real Antiaging Medicine

When it comes to slowing the process of aging, a healthy lifestyle is always the best medicine. Nothing has been shown to have a greater ability to hinder – and even reverse aging – then the integration of a nutritious diet and consistent exercise into your every day routine. These significant lifestyle choices can be easily referred to as antiaging medicine – the most powerful remedy in the aging process.
To begin with, diet can be considered a formidable antiaging medicine. Whatever we put in our bodies – the choices we make each and every day – determine our course of aging. Researchers have confirmed again and again that the nutrients found in whole, natural foods do as much to stop the spread of disease as any pharmaceuticals we could take.
Consider food your antiaging medicine and shop accordingly. Choose fresh fruits – especially citrus fruits and berries that deliver high levels of antioxidants that fight disease; fresh vegetables – especially spinach, kale, cauliflower, and broccoli; complex carbohydrates such as natural whole grain products; and proteins such as lean meats and raw nuts. These foods deliver essential vitamins and minerals that actually help your body shield itself from the ravages of aging. In addition, a proper diet will inevitably show on your skin giving you a healthier, more youthful look.
In conjunction with proper diet, exercise is just as important as an antiaging medicine. Keeping the body active through cardiovascular exercise, strength training, and a flexibility program will lower blood pressure, reduce stress, strengthen muscles, bolster the cardiovascular system, and improve the body’s overall function. If you want a strong body as you age you need to start with a strong body and maintain it. Antiaging medicine of this magnitude is a commitment.
But dedicating yourself to this antiaging medicine regime will pay off in so many ways – allowing you to age with strength, beauty, and vitality.
For easy to understand, in depth information about antiaging visit our ezGuide 2 Antiaging.

_______________________

By Michelle Bery

More about → The Real Antiaging Medicine

Black Tea

Black tea is one of three varieties of commonly known teas that are black, green and oolong tea. Black tea is a "true" tea and the most common form of the tea. Black tea is also referred to as a cup of a tea without milk. Black tea made from leaves more heavily oxidized than other varieties of tea. Black tea is stronger in taste and contains more caffeine as compared to other oxidized teas.
Black teas are distinctive in flavors and can be sweet, spicy or with a hint of chocolate. Black tea is known for retaining its flavor for several years. As a result, it has also been used as compressed bricks. Black teas are available in bricks and tea bags.
Black tea contains the compounds theaflavins and thearubigens. Both contribute to its distinctive flavor and dark color. Researches have shown that black tea is very beneficial for health. Regular consumption of black tea reduces the risk of strokes. Black tea is rich in antioxidants that prevent cancer, decrease the risk of heart attacks and reduces the cholesterol. Black tea is full of various nutrients such as amino acid theanine, the minerals calcium, magnesium, manganese and potassium, and the vitamins C and K. Black tea is also used in promoting the body's ability to natural heal itself.
Black tea is famous in all parts of the world and has names in different regions. In America it is known as "Black tea," but in China it often referred as "Red Tea." Unblended Black teas are usually named by the country where they are produced. Different regions are known for producing teas with characteristic flavors.
Black teas are taste delicious and have lived up to the potential of being a healthy beverage. Millions of people enjoy black tea as a dietary supplement. Consumers can find several choices of Black tea at most teashops or restaurants. The varieties of black teas are also imported to markets with the help of many dedicated tea websites. Tea lovers can also get their favorite Black tea from all part of the worlds using these websites.

________________________

By Richard Romando
Tea provides detailed information on Tea, Green Tea, Herbal Tea, White Tea and more. Tea is affiliated with Benefits of Green Tea.

More about → Black Tea

A Lifestyle vs Dieting

Based on stories we read and our own and others' experiences, it is eveident that so many peoples dieting histories begins in their early teens. What begins as ignorant, yet innocent attempts to lose a few pounds can and does spiral into years of yo-yo dieting and self-sabotaging behavior. Dieting habits are developed and these isolate one in many areas of life. This begins the war with food and self-image.
Over time, we can see that willpower alone to stick to a diet does not offer a permanent weight loss solution. The more we worry, the worse the situation seems to get and this often results to an escalation in weight when it is least needed, taking one to breaking point. Diets do little for enthusiasm and developing trust in oneself. But if one does not go on diet how do you lose the kilos?". These days, there is much talk folowing a lifestyle rather than going on a diet. A lifestyle encompasses body, mind and spirit and does not separate one from the other. It suggests living life as a whole human being and not focusing on what is missing, but rather on what we have. It really is true, we have just one body, and just one life. Right NOW we can decide to live it in a healthy and full the way or not.
Being doomed to a life of dieting is hardly appealing. Even if a "lifestyle" sounds too new age or airy fairy, it just might be worth a try. It could just change ones life. Why should food and health be different to any other area of ones life? Whether it be career, finances, relationships or spirituality, it is the consistent and constant willingness and effort to improve and be ones own personal best that helps an individual be successful. Mind, body and spirit respond in the same way. What we put in, we get out. Too much focus on one area of our life can only result in imbalance - hence weight issues, but if we focus on what we need to, when we need to and within empowering value systems ... we are bound to end up with empowering lfestyles. Lifestyles vs. dieting -- it might be worth a try.

__________________________________

By Kim Knight
I am Kim Knight, a dedicated and passionate weight loss and personal life coach. You can read more about my weight loss journey and my life at: http://www.bestweightlosscoach.ws http://www.kimknightcoaching.com

More about → A Lifestyle vs Dieting

Tips For Eating Out on a Diet

When you're dieting, you may feel like you have to isolate yourself from anything that will sabotage your efforts. A bad day at work, a surprise visit from your in laws, and even a night out with friends can make you feel out of control. Anything “unplanned” can derail even the most careful dieter.
If you have friends that love to go out to eat, you most likely feel the challenge every time they ask you to come along. If your friends don't watch their diets, the restaurants they choose can be detrimental. An evening out with your pals shouldn't make you worried that you'll end up gaining back those last five pounds! Here's a few tips to make sure your fun time doesn't ruin your new healthy lifestyle.
Make a rough outline of what you intend to order. If more than one restaurant is being debated, then have a plan for all of them. Getting caught without a plan is the number one reason why most people fail to stick with their diets.
If your planning a larger evening meal, don't skip earlier meals in the day to offset your calories. Normally, you'll end up feeling a lot hungrier by dinner time, and you'll actually eat more calories than you intended to for the day. Eating a regular lunch will help keep your appetite under control when the temptations arrive at your table.
What you drink is just as important as what you're eating. If it's an evening with cocktails, alternate water with your alcohol. Besides for keeping your blood alcohol level down, you'll consume less calories from drink by the end of the evening. Alcohol can also cause you to make bad decisions when it's time to order. When at all possible, water or diet soda is your best choice.
Stay away from appetizers you didn't plan on and the bread basket! If you're having fun with your friends, it's too easy to munch while your chatting without realizing what you're doing. If you're having problems with the temptation, try chewing gum until your meal arrives.
If you're ordering a salad, ask for the dressing on the side. The easiest way to shave calories off your salad is to dip your fork in the dressing instead of drowning your lettuce in it.
Eating out with friends who aren't dieting can be an easy task if you follow a few simple guidelines. Although, if your best eating behavior takes a backseat for the night, don't let it get to yourself. You can always sweat it out in the gym the next day. One bad meal will not undo your efforts.

______________________________

By AJ Stamp
For more information on staying healthy and fit, visit RealFitness Tips

More about → Tips For Eating Out on a Diet

Nutritional Aspects of Healthy Weight Loss (Part 3)

Micronutrients
Because of the nutritional deficiencies in the soil due to modern farming techniques and the presence of toxins, chemicals, additives, and preservatives, the need for micro nutritional supplementation is very important in our diet.
Micronutrients are found within the macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and fiber) of whole foods and include such substances as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential fatty acids, and antioxidants.
The depletion of vitamins and minerals in our soils today makes it necessary to supplement your diet with the core vitamins and minerals you need for a healthy lifestyle. For example, you would need to eat 75 bowls of spinach to get the amount of iron found in one bowl of spinach in 1935. Obviously eating 75 bowls of spinach is impractical, not to mention nearly impossible. The alternative is to take a supplement that would provide you with the necessary amount of iron.
The vitamins and minerals you take need to be high quality. That is, they need to be pharmaceutical grade and have no colors, bonders, fillers, dyes, sugars, or flavors. A review of the benefits, dietary sources, and symptoms of deficiency for each of the specific healthy weight loss micronutrient essentials is provided for your review. A comprehensive list of other essential vitamins and minerals will be provided in the food and recipe booklet.

Vitamin A (Retinol)

• Functions
• Rebuilding of body tissues.
• Formation of teeth and bone.
• Retards the onset of senility and prolongs lifespan.
• Important in maintaining good vision, healthy skin, and healthy mucous membranes.
• Necessary for proper immune system function.

Dietary sources

• Found only in foods from animal sources, especially beef, calf, and chicken liver and eggs.
• Dairy products such as milk, butter, cheese, and ice cream.
• Beta-carotene, a nutrient found in fruits and vegetables, can be converted to vitamin A in the body as needed. Symptoms of deficiency
• Frequently tired.
• Susceptible to infection.
• Rough, dry skin.
• Decrease in appetite or sense of smell.
• Night blindness.
  

Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid)

Functions

• Important antioxidant essential for stopping the damage caused by free radicals, which are the major causes of aging and disease.
• Vitamin C is needed for the growth and repair of tissues in all parts of your body.
• Essential in the maintenance of immune function,
• Necessary in the formation of collagen, an important protein used to make skin, scar tissue, tendons, ligaments, and blood vessels.
• Assists in wound repair.
• Needed to form and repair cartilage, bones, and teeth.
• Boosts your body's resistance to the common cold and viruses. Dietary sources
• Your body does not store vitamin C so you must consume enough each day to maintain good health.
• Excellent sources include oranges, green peppers, watermelon, papaya, grapefruit, cantaloupe, strawberries, mango, broccoli, tomato juice, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and cabbage.
• Vitamin C is also found in raw and cooked leafy greens (turnip greens, spinach), canned and fresh tomatoes, potatoes, winter squash, raspberries, and pineapple. Symptoms of deficiency
• Slow healing wounds and fractures.
• Swollen, painful joints.
• Bleeding gums.
• Nosebleeds.
• Severe deficiency results in clinical scurvy.
  

Vitamin E (Tocopherol)

Functions

• A powerful antioxidant that protects LDL cell membranes from oxidation damage.
• Helps maintain healthy DNA in the interior of cells.
• Important in supporting good cardiovascular health and a strong immune system.
• Required for respiration on the cellular level.
• Helps the lungs function normally and inhibits the clotting of blood. Dietary sources
• Vegetables and seed oils including soybean, safflower, and corn; sunflower seeds; nuts; whole grains; and wheat germ.
• Leafy vegetables also supply an appreciable amount of this nutrient. Symptoms of deficiency
• Larger than normal deposit of fat within the muscles
• Rupturing of red blood cells are symptomatic of a deficiency of vitamin E.
  

Beta Carotene

Functions

• Anti oxidant that is converted by the body only as needed.
• It acts to protect cells from attack by free radicals. Dietary sources
• The richest sources of beta-carotene are yellow, orange and green leafy fruits and vegetables such as carrots, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cantaloupe, and winter squash.
• In general, the greater the intensity of color of the fruit or vegetable, the more beta-carotene it contains. Symptoms of deficiency
• Loss of appetite.
• Susceptibility to colds.
• Dryness of the hair.
• Insomnia
  

Calcium

Functions

• Maintains bone mineral density.
• Critical to nerve conduction, muscle contraction, blood clotting, neural function, cell division, and electrical conduction in the heart.
• Helps regulate blood pressure
• Essential for producing and activating enzymes and hormones that regulate digestion, energy, and fat metabolism. Dietary sources
• Dairy products
• Vegetables Symptoms of deficiency
• Osteoporosis.
• Back and leg pain.
• Uncontrolled, painful muscular contractions.
  

Living Longer, Looking Better Healthy Lifestyle & Weight Loss Program Micronutrient Consumption Recommendations

• Take 1 multivitamin 3 times per day.
• Take an additional 1000 mg vitamin C 2 times per day
• Take an additional 400 IU of vitamin E with breakfast.
• Take an additional calcium supplement 2 times per day.
  

The goal of Micronutrient Supplementation plan is to help you achieve nutritional balance. The benefits of having proper nutritional balance include looking better, feeling better, having more energy, having greater mental clarity, and being less stressed.
This investment in your health will provide you with a higher quality of life and will pay dividends for many years to come.

_________________________________

By Malton Schexneider
For more information on healthy weight loss programs go to www.livinglongerlookingbetter.com.

More about → Nutritional Aspects of Healthy Weight Loss (Part 3)

Weight Loss - Why Reducing Calories Is Not The Whole Story

Add the calories up that you take in in your food and drink, subtract the calories you expend in your physical activities, if the answer is a positive number you'll put on weight and if it's a negative number you'll lose weight.
The trouble is, your body doesn't see it like that. If it were that simple, early Man would never have survived from one unpredictable meal to the next. He survived because his body had a mechanism which would store energy when food was plentiful and release it again when it was scarce. His body also had a way of recognizing when energy intake was low, and economizing on its use of fuel. These two mechanisms were his blood sugar/insulin control system and his metabolic rate.
You differ little from early Man in your genetic makeup. Your body still retains the blood sugar/insulin and metabolic rate control system that enabled your ancestor to survive. The problem is, you probably don't eat like your ancestor. Your ancestor never had the carbohydrate-dense, highly refined foods that most of us eat so much of today, such as sugar, flour and all the manufactured products that are made with them. Unfortunately for you, your energy storage system works a little too well. You put on weight easily when you eat these carbohydrate-dense foods, because they send your blood sugar/insulin control system into overdrive. They may still do this, even when the calories you are taking in are not excessive.
Even worse, if you reduce your calorie intake to a level where you have a calorie deficit, you are in danger of triggering the other mechanism -- the slowing of your metabolic rate. This is often called 'starvation mode', but you don't have to be literally starving for your metabolic rate to slow down. And if your metabolic rate slows, your body needs less food to supply your daily energy needs. In other words, the more you diet, the less food you need.
This means that losing weight is very often a precarious balance between reducing food intake and exercising enough to produce a calorie deficit, while eating enough to keep your body from going into 'starvation mode'. And if you are one of the up to sixty per cent of the population which is believed to have a very sensitive blood sugar/insulin control system, then basing your diet on carbohydrates, especially the refined sort, may also hinder your weight loss.
The importance of these survival mechanisms is only now starting to be recognized in the medical world. It is becoming understood that losing weight is not just a simple matter of eating less. There is also mounting concern about very low calorie diets -- the sort that supply less than 500 calories per day -- because of the risk that they will depress your metabolic rate if followed long term. If you are not losing weight on a restricted calorie diet, then these mechanisms may well be at play. These and many other factors which may be preventing your weight loss are explained further in the book "Why Can't I Lose Weight -- The Real Reason Diets Fail And What To Do About It".

__________________________________

By Jackie Bushell
Jackie Bushell is passionate about raising awareness of the role of diet and nutrition in good health and helping those who are affected by obesity. Via her website at GoodDietGoodHealth.com, she provides information, support, cookbooks, how-to guides and a newsletter for those wishing to understand more about how to improve their health and achieve a healthy weight in a natural way. Amongst the resources she has developed are a low carb/low GI diet cookbook and a book called 'Why Can't I Lose Weight' for those who experience common problems such as not losing weight on their diet or becoming stuck on a 'diet plateau'.

Copyright GoodDietGoodHealth.com 2006

More about → Weight Loss - Why Reducing Calories Is Not The Whole Story

Two Foods to Avoid If You're Trying to Lose Weight

Everybody is different especially when they go on a weight loss plan. The “diet” that works for one person may not necessarily work for another person. Your genetics or chemical makeup can affect how you lose weight. Some people do very well on calorie-counting diets while others almost seem to gain weight when they go on restrictive eating plans.
But there are two foods that, if you minimize or eliminate them from your diet, you will lose weight, no matter what your physical type.
Processed Carbs
If you think about how bread and pasta (the most popular processed carbs) are made, you will realize how deadly this food is to your body’s healthy weight. It doesn’t matter if they end up on your table as whole grain bread, brown rice or White Wonder Bread, they are processed in the same way and contain the same basic density of calories.
To make bread or pasta, you start with grains that are processed into flour. Each one of those grains has calories so when you have a few ounces of pasta or a slice of bread, you are actually eating concentrated calories in the form of grains. Then your body has to work hard to process it and your metabolism becomes sluggish as a result. Not only that but all those concentrated grains cause your insulin to spike which will also slow your metabolism.
One more reason for grains to be eliminated from our diets is the fact that our bodies were not designed to eat grains. But our ancestors managed to find a way to process them so that we ended up with them in our food supply. Through a complicated process, eating grains allows incompletely digested proteins into our bodies and that can cause problems for your immune system. If grains can cause serious autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s Disease, it’s probably not a good idea to eat it regularly in your diet. (Read The Protein Power Lifeplan written by Michael R. Eades, M.D. and Mary Dan Eades, MD. for more information.)
Dairy
Dairy foods like milk, cheese and yogurt are not a good food to eat if you are trying to lose weight. It doesn’t matter if it’s low fat, it’s still fat. You already have fat on your body that you are trying to lose, why would you eat more?
Plus, milk naturally has sugar in it which means your insulin level goes up whenever you drink it. If you are eating animal protein, your body is getting plenty of fat from those food sources. If you cut back on the fat you are eating, your body will use up the fat your body already has to fill its needs to function and you will end up losing weight.
Don't worry about depriving yourself. Remember that as you cut back on these foods, the goal is to lose weight. Once you lose the weight you want to lose, you can add these foods back in with moderation.

_________________________

By Eunice Coughlin
Eunice Coughlin is the founder of http://www.healthy-living-for-moms.com, a resource for moms of all ages and stages who seek spiritual and physical health and wellness. Find out how to lose 5 pounds fast at http://www.healthy-living-for-moms.com/lose_5_pounds_fast.html .

More about → Two Foods to Avoid If You're Trying to Lose Weight