HAPPINESS, the ultimate goal.
Our entire biological system, the brain and the earth itself, work on the same frequencies.
- Nikola Tesla -
Huh, ya never know.
Omg my life is 1000000 times easier now
Yessssss this is amazing!
Best avocado tip ever!
(Source: rabbitsinthegarden, via flyygoldbikini)
X-mas present! Time to get serious about running.
I have to confess, I’m kinda getting obsessed with belly fat. I’m following the 4HB diet for almost one year now and had excellent results. Lost about 10 kg (22 lbs), slimmed down almost 3 pants sizes,… But there is still too much belly fat (abs are covered way down).
For all of you who find this familiar, I share this article I found with some small advices.
There are four keys to controlling belly fat: exercise, diet, sleep, and stress management.
Exercise: Vigorous exercise trims fat, including visceral fat. It can also slow down the build-up of visceral fat that tends to happen over the years.
How much exercise does it take? Half an hour of vigorous aerobic exercise, done four times a week, a Duke University study shows.
What counts as “vigorous”? Jogging, if you’re already fit, or walking briskly at an incline on a treadmill, if you’re not yet ready for jogging. Vigorous workouts on stationary bikes and elliptical or rowing machines are also effective, says Duke researcher Cris Slentz, PhD.
Moderate activity – raising your heart rate for 30 minutes at least three times per week – also helps. It slows down how much visceral fat you gain. But to torch visceral fat, your workouts may need to be more vigorous.
“Rake leaves, walk, garden, go to Zumba, play soccer with your kids. It doesn’t have to be in the gym,” Hairston says.
If you are not active now, it’s a good idea to check with your health care provider before starting a new fitness program. They’ll probably be thrilled that you want to get started, and will check that you’re ready for it.
And forget spot-reducing. There aren’t any moves that specifically target visceral fat.
Diet: There is no magic diet for belly fat. But when you lose weight, on any diet, belly fat usually goes first.
A fiber-rich diet may also help. Hairston’s research shows that people who eat 10 grams of soluble fiber per day, without any other diet changes, build up less visceral fat over time than others. That’s two small apples, a cup of green peas, and a half-cup of pinto beans, for example.
“Even if you kept everything else the same but switched to a higher-fiber bread, you might be able to better maintain your weight over time,” Hairston says.
Sleep: Getting the right amount of sleep helps. In one study, people who got six to seven hours of sleep per night gained less visceral fat over 5 years, compared to those who slept five or fewer hours per night, or eight or more hours per night. Sleep may not have been the only thing that mattered — but it was part of the picture.
Stress: Stress happens. It’s what you do with it that matters.
You probably already know that people tend not to make the best food choices when they’re stressed. And when you’ve got chronic stress, that can be a problem.
Shively recommends getting social support (turn to your friends and family), meditating, and exercising as ways to handle stress. Signing up for a workshop or some counseling sessions can also help you tame your stress.
Short on time? “If you could only afford the time to do one of these things, exercise probably has the most immediate benefits, because it hits both obesity and stress response,” Shively says.
# source http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/the-truth-about-belly-fat
X-mas dinners vs me: 1 - 0
sigh… mrs. scale showed me I gained 2 kgs (4.4 lbs), still have one more dinner to go…
I just finished reading “Why we run”. The writer, Robin Harvie, is an ultra-distance runner. Never a natural athlete, he decided to run the London Marathon in 2000, when he was in his early 20s. His first training session ended with him coughing and spluttering after a mile and walking back home. But he completed the marathon, ran some others and started to wonder what would happen if he just kept running.
One particular race caught his imagination: the Spartathlon, a 153-mile overnight trail run from Athens to Sparta that traces the original path of the Athenian messenger Pheidippides in 490BC as he sought help against the Persians in the Battle of Marathon. It attracts the best ultra-distance athletes in the world, fewer than 30% of whom finish.
In this memoir, Harvie too often dwells too much upon his philosophical thoughts about running. But it’s his description of his journey towards the Spartathlon, that I personally most enjoyed. For the novel runner, his journey is undeniably a compelling one.
The answer to the question however posed by the title remains elusive. And maybe that’s for the better.
Unraveling the mystery of why the inhabitants of Ikaria, an island of 99 square miles that is home to almost 10,000 Greek nationals, live so long and so well.
The Health Benefits of Green Tea
Although the history of herbal medicine is intertwined with folklore and spiritual practices, Green tea has come full circle.Originally revered by the Chinese for it’s medicinal qualities over 4,700 years ago, research in the past two decades has shown that tea is in fact a scientifically-valid preventative medicine. There is a plethora of scientific evidence supporting the health benefits of drinking green tea and collectively, they have shown that tea can help to:
- Improve cognition
- Prevent blood clots
- Prevent cancers of the lung, breast, colon, bladder, mouth, prostate, ovaries and biliary tract
- Improve memory
- Prevent osteoporosis
- Prevent dental cavities and gum disease
- Prevent asthma
- Protect against cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease
- Prevent kidney disease
- Protect liver from damage by alcohol and other harmful chemicals
- Increase metabolism and promote fat oxidation
- Increase endurance in athletes
- Prevent atherosclerosis and heart disease
- Reduce triglycerides
- Lower blood pressure
- Prevent diabetes
- Improve insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetes
- Boost immunity
- Lower cortisol
- Help in treatment of inflammatory bowel disease, Chron’s disease and ulcerative colitis
- Prevent gallstones
Tea’s Antioxidants and the Human Body
Humans are susceptible to oxidation. Oxygen molecules create stress on our tissues and organs by introducing harmful free radicals that lead to complications such as cancer and heart disease. Free radicals are charged atoms or molecules that have one or more unpaired electrons. This causes them to be unstable and, in an attempt to stabilise themselves, they rush around the nearby molecules trying to find the appropriate number of electrons to gain stability. They have to steal an electron from the surrounding molecules which creates a chain reaction of giving and taking, and can eventually destroy an entire cell.
Antioxidants are substances that slow down the damaging effects of oxidation. Although some are made by the body, many can only be synthesised and are found naturally in all fruits and vegetables.
Once they are introduced into the body, antioxidants neutralize free radicals by giving up an electron from their outer valence shell. The antioxidant is harmless, because it is stable with or without its extra electron. Examples of powerful antioxidants are vitamin C, vitamin E and Beta-Carotene.
Tea contains a wide range of antioxidants. Several kinds of polyphenols known as catechins - including epicatechin, epicatechin gallate, epigallocatechin and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) - are common in green tea and considered to provide the best protection from oxidation. Black tea offers strong antioxidants, too, but the polyphenols have different structures and are not quite as effective. The reason for this goes back once again to the different ways in which the tea is processed - catechins that stay in green tea transform into theaflavin and thearubigin in black teas.
(Source: intellectualconsilience)
