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Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:31:00 +0100

www.CoreReflex.com - Personal Fitness, Health & Lifestyle

Diet Myths Busted

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:06:00 +0100

There are multiple rules to maintaining a healthy diet. Trouble is, it's hard to figure out which ones are worth following.

A study published in the International Journal of Obesity, looks at the various diet ideals that we are encouraged to live by and concludes that those who are flexible with regards to what they eat, often succeed in maintaining weight loss, over those who are strict and live by the letter of the law. It makes sense, its hard to keep up an ' all or nothing' approach that some diets require. No carbs? Protein only?? Dinners divided into macro-nutrient ratios???? I can see why some diets are made to be broken. The best diets fit into your lifestyle, and should be possible to maintain whether eating at home, or out at a restaurant or friends house. However, there are some myths that need to be broken, to enable you enjoy the flexibility that allows a diet to succeed.

Myth 1: It's best not to eat after 7 p.m.
It's not when you eat, it's what you eat, and how much. Studies show that those who eat late at night do not gain weight because of the lateness of their calorie consumption, but because eating at that stage usually pushes them well over their daily calorie requirement, given that you probably haven't eaten since lunchtime. If you do find that dinner is most likely to be consumed late at night, make sure to eat a healthy snack mid afternoon to counter the chances of overeating.

Myth 2: Avoid white bread, rice and pasta
While not as healthy or nutritious as their wholegrain counterparts, don't beat yourself up if you find yourself tucking into 'white' carbs. Simply ensure most of your carbohydrate intake comes from whole grains, which should allow you indulge in a serving of refined carbs every now and again.

Myth 3: Eat five small meals a day
Theoretically this makes sense, five small healthful meals ensure that your blood sugar is kept steady, your appetite satisfied, and your metabolism high. However, more meals mean more opportunities to overeat, with some studies showing links between frequent meal consumption and obesity. Additionally, for those with an emotional tie to food, having to constantly think about what to eat five times a day can be stressful, and lead to bad dietary choices.

Myth 4: A low fat or fat free diet is good for you
No matter what size you are, you need fat in your diet. About one third of your calories should come from fat, necessary for energy, tissue repair and to transport fat soluble vitamins A, E, D, and K around the body. Simply make sure this fat intake is from unsaturated fats, such as those found in olive oil and avocados, and not trans or saturated fats.

Myth 5: Low fat foods help you lose weight
This is a very common misconception. Low fat does not mean low calorie. Most of these products are high in sugar, which turns to fat. In addition, people tend to overuse low fat products, often ending up consuming twice as much as they would of the full fat product.

Understanding nutrition and taking a balanced approach to your food, should enable you to make the right choices, without the stress or rigidity of an impossible to follow diet.

www.CoreReflex.com - Personal Fitness, Health & Lifestyle

How Money Stress Can Make You Fat

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:03:00 +0100

As if being in serious debt, or being "over-indebted" (defined as not being able to pay off debts in a reasonable time frame) wasn't bad enough, there is now evidence to show that it also leads to weight gain.

A new study in Germany shows that those who are in the red financially are 2.5 times more likely to be obese than their more solvent counterparts. The findings showed that highly calorific and nutrient-low foods were the food of choice for the indebted, leading to significant weight gain . The study also claims that consumption of such food was for comfort reasons, or because they were less costly than healthier alternatives of fruit and vegetables. However, I feel that once again, this research leads to a focus on the lack of education regarding nutrition and diet for those who are financially troubled. As the person who looks after our household diet, and who buys the groceries, I can't see how fruit and veg (unless organic) are more expensive than junk food. From personal experience, I would think quite the opposite. Yet, this study claims that "energy-dense food such as sweets or fatty snacks are often less expensive compared to food with lower energy density such as fruit or vegetables." It also suggested that those who were obese lessened their chance of finding employment, as companies seemed to favour the more slender when choosing their workforce. This, in turn, of course, makes it harder for heavier people to earn money.

The study concludes that when further investigations are being performed into socioeconomic status and health, they should include indebtedness in their analysis, in addition to the more traditional measures like education and income. Perhaps additionally it shows that further measures by governments and health boards are necessary to educate individuals as to the necessity of includingfruit and vegetables in their diets, and to the potential long-term health and financial benefits of such changes.

www.CoreReflex.com - Personal Fitness, Health & Lifestyle

Need tough love? Let Weightnags motivate you to get fit and lose fat

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:19:00 +0100

Catch sight of yourself in the mirror today, and didn't like what you saw? Yet will you do anything about it? Or will you join millions of people who, despite knowing they are not at their physical best, still continue down a self destructive path of poor diet and laziness? Maybe you simply need motivation. Been there, done that and it didn't work, right? Well, maybe I have found the perfect solution for you.

Weightnags is a new 'motivational' website that berates you over email (and for a fee, via your mobile). Remember the way your mum used to nag you to sit up straight? Well, this is the fat loss equivalent.

In the name of research, I signed up to my daily dose of abuse. Here is the first email I received within a minute of registering.

"Hi Tubbo,

Okay, we know it's tempting to eat at the Hungry Heifer every night of the week. After all, they have everything.

Or at least they did, before you licked every pan in that buffet clean enough to see your reflection in it. Did you bother to look at that reflection, though?

Obviously not - yikes! Waddling from your booth to the soft-serve machine is not exercise. Unless there's, like, two miles in between. In which case, good for you - you can treat yourself to a little reward.

But until you get up and move around, you oughta lay off the buffet. Take care of your own beefy carcass before you eat a few pounds of something else's.

Even if it is marinated in delicious barbecue sauce.

Who Loves You?

WeightNags Do. That's who."

Not for sensitive souls!!!! The theory behind the site is to inspire individuals to get up off their already too large backsides and get in shape, all through insults and abuse. It is relentless. From the second their website loads, you are 'encouraged' through name calling to become a member. "Give us your info and we'll nag you once a week until you get off of your fat ass and lose some weight... enter your email address, Chubbles".

It seems this might be the last resort of the hopeless, once the gentle hand holding and encouragement has failed to help them lose the extra pounds. Personally I can't really see it being much more than an entertaining gimmick, but heck, dieting can be a pretty serious business, so its good to have a giggle every now and again!

For more abuse, check out www.weightnags.com

www.CoreReflex.com - Personal Fitness, Health & Lifestyle

If you are not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you are not hungry

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:31:00 +0100

Such is the level of wisdom that is imparted in food author Michael Pollan's interesting (and fun!) dietary do's and don'ts.

Pollan, whose books focus on various forms of food production, agribusiness, nutrition and diet, requested readers to submit their dietary rules, of which he received thousands. His top twenty recently appeared in The New York Times, a somewhat random selection of international advice, but informative none the less.

Here are five of my favourites!!!!!

"It's better to pay the grocer than the doctor"

"No second helpings, no matter how scrumptious"

"Avoid snacks with the "oh" sound in their names - doritos, fritos, cheetos, tostitos, hostess ho hos etc."

"Don't eat egg salad from a vending machine"

"Don't eat anything that took more energy to ship than to grow"

For more pearls of wisdom, see Michael Pollan's Food Rules: Your Dietary Do's and Don'ts.

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www.CoreReflex.com - Personal Fitness, Health & Lifestyle

How to get Michelle's Muscles

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:51:00 +0100

It is rare that I blog about celebrities or high profile individuals, but one person in particular seems to be catching the media, and indeed the worlds attention at the moment.

Michelle Obama has been in the White House for 10 months now, and its not just her political views or her charitable deeds that are garnering the worlds attention. Nope, its her arms! Never has there been such controversy over a first lady exposing her shoulders and arms on official engagements. Many deem it inappropriate - I say, if you've got it, flaunt it!

She has, what most of us only dream of, in the arm department. There is no sight of any excess fat, or bingo wings. Yet they are maintained in such a way that they avoid the masculine musculature of others such as Madonna. They are toned and shapely, yet look feminine. She is 44 years old, she has two kids, she is the First Lady. Just shows that there is no such thing as being too old, or not having enough time to create a toned sexy body!

Here's how she does it:

At the end of her total body workout, she finishes with a super set of arm shaping exercises. Though you cannot spot reduce fat, these exercises coupled with her cardio and weight training, help to build muscle at the front and back of the arm, which becomes more defined as the fat fades.

1. Tricep Pushdown with Grip Flip

Attach a straight bar to the high pulley of a cable station and grab the bar with an overhand grip, hands shoulder-width apart. Tuck your upper arms next to your sides and bend your elbows more than 90 degrees. Without moving your upper arms, push the bar down until your arms are straight. Pause, then return to the starting position. That's 1 rep. Do 15 reps, then reverse your grip so that you're grasping the bar underhand and immediately do another 15 reps.

2. The One - Minute Hammer Curl

Grab a pair of dumbbells and hold them next to your thighs, palms facing each other. Raise the dumbbell in your left hand as high as you can in front of you by bending your elbow, and curling the weight toward your shoulder. As you lower the dumbbell, curl the weight in your right hand. Alternate rhythmically back and forth for 1 minute.

Perform one set of exercise 1, then, without resting, do one set of exercise 2. Immediately repeat the entire routine until you've completed 2 to 3 sets of both exercises.

Interview with Michelle Obama, and her personal trainer Cornell McClellan in Octobers Women's Health.

To see the above arm exercises in action, and to read more about Michelles workout, see Michelle Obama's Body-Shaping Workout on MSN.

www.CoreReflex.com - Personal Fitness, Health & Lifestyle

iPhone App Store gets a Workout Category

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:07:00 +0100

From a usability perspective, the Apple app-store has always been a bit on the difficult side.

Sort-order is suspect, user scores dubious and load times on the iPhone far too slow.

Apple are aware of these issues, but (pardon the pun) the store seems bad to its very core, and therefore virtually impossible for them to improve on, without starting from scratch again.

One way of apparently circumventing the larger issues at hand, is by introducing categories, which goes some way to improving the sort order fiasco.

These categories run along the lines of "Apps for Cooks", "Apps for Music" and so on, with of course my focus being on "Apps for Working Out".

Within this "Apps for Working Out", there is a top 10 of Paid and Free Applications, which at the time of publishing this blog, are as below:

Top 10 Paid Health & Fitness Apps
1. iFitness
2. Tap & Track -Calorie, Weight & Exercise Tracker
3. Calorie Tracker by LIVESTRONG.COM
4. Men's Health Workouts
5. Hundred PushUps
6. White Noise
7. iPeriod (Period Calendar)
8. Women's Health Workouts
9. iTreadmill: Ultra Pedometer w/ PocketStep™
10. Couch to 5k

Top 10 Free Health & Fitness Apps
1. Lose It!
2. SixPack App FREE
3. WebMD Mobile
4. Weight Watchers Mobile
5. Restaurant Nutrition
6. Free Menstrual Calendar
7. Sex-Facts
8. Vibrating Massager FREE
9. DailyBurn
10. Natural Cures

Is it just me, or did you notice a few entries that seem somewhat out of place????

"iPeriod"? "Vibrating Massager FREE"? "White Noise"?

Just to focus on one app: White Noise ($1:59), the blurb from the developer's site states "White Noise provides 40 ambient sounds of the environment to help you relax or sleep. Includes high quality looping noises such as waves crashing on a beach, crickets chirping at night, and the soothing sound of rain fall. Includes a sound timer,LCD clock, alarm, favorites toolbar, and numerous playback options.".

While this all sounds lovely, is this really a top 10 paid app?

If so, then there are a lot of stressed out iPhone-junkies out there.

However, I believe that yet again, we see that Apple have created a piece-of-turd application recommendation engine, which seems to use the broadest terms to categorise its applications.

Or they pluck them from thin air.

Avoid at all costs.

Much more realistic results can be seen on independent review sites, such as Gizmodo, which bizarrely does a far more thorough job of rating iPhone Applications than the manufacturers themselves.

iPhone Apps

Gizmodo

www.CoreReflex.com - Personal Fitness, Health & Lifestyle

Reducing the Risk of Breast Cancer through Exercise

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:29:00 +0100

As October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it would be foolish not to address the most common cancer to affect women.

Whether a breast cancer sufferer, or not, studies that span the last decade have shown that exercise greatly reduces the risk of breast cancer. Two very clear findings emerge from various studies undertaken by universities and cancer research centres worldwide.

Firstly, in a study conducted by the Washington University School of Medicine in St.Louis, and Harvard University in Boston, researchers were pleasantly rewarded by their findings. Acknowledging proven research that exercise by post menopausal women greatly reduced the risk of breast cancer, they sought to see if such exercise had the same benefits for pre-menopausal women. The study concluded that women who were physically active between the ages of 12-35 saw the greatest reduction in breast cancer, lowering their chances of contracting the disease by up to 23%. The findings show that regular activity was the key factor, not intensive activity. It is believed that through exercising frequently from such a young age, females can reduce their exposure to estrogen which, in high quantities, is often associated with a greater risk of breast cancer.

Secondly, exercise has been shown to aid those who already suffer from breast cancer. The Alberta Cancer Board in Calgary, published a study which examined women with breast cancer over a period of 8.3 years. They concluded that those who participated in at least four hours per week of moderate intensity recreational activity over their lifetime, were at a far lower risk of death from breast cancer, in addition to the risk of its recurrence or progression. Granted, physical activity is no substitute for medical intervention, and it might be the last thing that many exhausted cancer patients feel like doing, but it can help address the 'what can I do?' feeling of futility that affects many people when diagnosed with cancer. Though housework was not considered sufficiently beneficial, the intensity of exercise does not have to be extreme, with brisk walking being enough. Again, it is thought that the link back to estrogen is the key in this study, and that physical activity lowers hormone levels. That aside, getting out of the house and enjoying open space and exercise, can be beneficial for your emotional as well as physical wellbeing.

It is never to late to start safeguarding you, or your family from breast cancer. Make exercise fun and inclusive for all ages of your family, and reap the many benefits.

Read more about the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine's on going study, which continues to look at the links between exercise, estrogen and breast cancer.

www.CoreReflex.com - Personal Fitness, Health & Lifestyle

Six Simple Ways to Maximise your Metabolic Rate

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:46:00 +0100

Did you know, that once you pass 25, your rate of metabolism declines by approximately 5% every decade? None of us are immune, and many of us show signs of middle age spread long before we begin to feel (or act!) middle aged!

There is hope though! Below are 6 great ways to help speed up your metabolism, and combat the aging process.

Don't be too severe with the calorie cutting
When you embark on a restricted calorie diet, it is important that you do so sensibly. Cutting calories too hard and too quick actually results in your body holding onto the pounds. It reverts to its basic survival mode, and slows your metabolism down in the assumption you are starving. On average you should aim to lose a half to two pounds maximum, per week.

Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep
Sorry, I was a bit excited about being encouraged to sleep, so I had to keep repeating it! It is recommended you sleep at least 8 hours a night - not just to banish dark circles and wrinkles, but also to encourage the release of cortisol. Cortisol is the appetite regulating hormone, which when absent can cause individuals to continue eating past the point of being satisfied, leading to weight gain.

Eat breakfast
So you have had your 8 hours plus sleep, now its time to literally break your fast.When you do sleep, your metabolism slows. It needs a good square high fibre meal to wake it back up. You may not feel like it, you may not have time for it, but skipping brekkie can be a great way to gain weight.

Cut back booze
What science gives with one hand (more sleep) it takes with the other (less booze). Alcohol has been shown to slow down the body's ability to burn fat. Even though a glass of wine with dinner seems like a good idea, your body will burn the sugar in the alcohol first, meaning the calories from the food will be stored as fat. So once again, everything in moderation!

Lift Weights
60-70% of your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is linked to your muscle mass. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn. Yet another good reason to pump some iron!

Interval Training
Bursts of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) have been shown to boost your metabolism, as well as shaking up your exercise routine. Lose fat and get fit - could it be any simpler?

www.CoreReflex.com - Personal Fitness, Health & Lifestyle

Review > Shock Absorber Womens High Support Cross Back Sports Bra

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:33:00 +0100

Buying sports bras must be one of my most hated things to have to do. I understand the importance of a good sports bra, and appreciate that a well fitting one makes all the difference, but I really struggle. And I wouldn't mind, but I am not exactly large chested, so I am not limited for choice.

However, I do find that shape is something that really bothers me when it comes to sports bras. I am not a fan of conical cups, and really do not see the point of exercising with two torpedoes ready to launch from my chest. Nor am I a fan of fashion over function. I like clean, well cut, non-under wired sports bras, and boy have I paid for my simple tastes over the years.

Now, I know a bra is a very personal choice, and some people find their perfect match after three minutes in Marks and Spencer's. For me, it has taken trial and error and sweat and tears to say the least. I have done the high street sports bras, Nike crop tops,bras inbuilt into sports gear and everything Triumph has to offer! And with limited success, until I discovered the Shock Absorber Womens High Support Cross Back Sports Bra - with a name that long you know it must be good!!!! For me this has been a revelation in the world of boulder holders. It is possibly the most comfortable bra I have ever worn. It is not restrictive across the ribs (I have a slight phobia that sports bras cause me to hold my breath!), and yet keeps everything in place, throughout high or low impact activities.

Let me reiterate, I am at best a B cup, so bouncing bosoms are not going to be a massive issue, but even the smallest boobs eventually head South, and so far I seem to be winning the battle with gravity! The Shock Absorber Womens High Support Cross Back Sport Bra looks good under clothes, and gives a very smooth silhouette, which is what I craved. The material is very breathable, and rarely feels wet with sweat, which is another plus when you are exercising in hot climates. Its not cheap, but neither is a corrective boob job, so given the option I'll fork out for the bra!
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