Health Fitness

Middle-Aged Women and Hormones: Estrogen, Fat Cells, and Weight Loss

Many studies have been done to determine what effect aging and menopause have on women. Middle-aged women not only experience hormonal changes, but the side effect can sometimes be extra fat in the abdominal area. The aging process, genetic factors, lifestyle changes, and dietary changes are all factors in this dreaded seemingly sudden weight gain. As in life, there are certain factors that can be controlled and others that cannot. The trick is to work with what you can change, to get the desired result.

Middle-aged women may experience a drop in estrogen level. Estrogen refers to three different sex hormones. Estrone, estriol, and estradiol are steroid hormones made from cholesterol, which form estrogen. It is produced by the ovaries, and its function is to stimulate ovulation. Estrogen affects the development and health of the reproductive system, as well as breast tissue. Middle-aged women experiencing perimenopause and menopause produce less estrogen. The body tries to make up for the decrease in estrogen by producing more from the fat cells. In order for cells to produce more estrogen, cells must store more fat, which slows down the body’s metabolism, leading to weight gain. When the body’s metabolism slows down, fat cells are not converted to energy as quickly and fat is stored in the cells. When you lose weight, you lose estrogen, and your body gets an alert that it needs to make more, starting the cycle all over again. That is why it is so difficult to maintain weight while dieting.

Weight loss also creates a fluctuation in the levels of other hormones like leptin and ghrelin. Leptin sends signals to your brain, indicating that you’re full, and ghrelin stimulates hunger. Leptin will decrease with a drop in body fat percentage, while ghrelin levels will increase. So if you have less leptin, you will continue to feel hungry, and the increase in ghrelin continues to stimulate your hunger. Androgen is a hormone that also affects weight gain around the abdomen. Testosterone, a steroid from the androgen group, is the hormone that helps build lean muscle and increases metabolism. With weight loss, this hormone also decreases. Muscle mass decreases and the rate at which fat is converted to energy decreases due to lower testosterone levels. These hormone levels continue to fluctuate even a year after losing weight, so it’s important to maintain your dietary habits to prevent weight gain again.

Fat cells form a very complex tissue, to coordinate fat storage and regulate metabolic processes. These cells secrete hormones and proteins, regulate the reproductive system, and tell the body when it is time to make more, to maintain a constant number in the body. When you lose weight, you don’t reduce the number of fat cells, you just reduce their size. When fat cells shrink, triglycerides are broken down into glycerol and fatty acids. Fatty acids and glycerols are absorbed by the liver, kidneys, and muscles. They break down further to produce energy for your body. The number of fat cells in your body is set during puberty. The more calories you burn, the more your body uses fat cells for energy. Therefore, reducing fat cells is the goal of any weight loss program. Then you have to deal with fluctuating hormones, which tell your brain that you’re still hungry.

The middle-aged woman’s bulge is not just a vanity concern. It has very pronounced effects on the body. Increased belly fat can lead to heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes. Metabolism slows with age, and that’s a normal aging process. Genetic predisposition to obesity is also a factor, so hormones cannot be said to exclusively cause midlife weight gain. However, it is a factor to consider, and while hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, is available, it has been found to have potentially dangerous side effects. Many of the studies done suggest that long-term treatments are necessary to counteract the changes in hormones and reduce appetite. It seems that the best way to lose the extra pounds is with a sustainable lifestyle, physical activity and a healthy diet.

Health Fitness

Why skating is better than jogging

When I was young, I loved to run. It didn’t matter if it was raining or snowing, I would be running early in the morning. If I let a few days go by without running, I would start to feel sluggish. I enjoyed running not only for the exercise but also for the benefit of clearing my mind at the start of a new day. When I wasn’t running, I would wake up focusing on the problems I would have that day or the days to come. But running gave me a reprieve from the problems around me.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that my body can’t take the abuse of running. My bones and joints began to give me some problems. I’ve found that skating, whether inline or roller skating, can be a great replacement for running. I found that skating can give me the same benefits as running, but without further damage to my bones and joints.

When I ran, the souls of my feet would absorb the shock when my feet hit the ground. But when he was on wheels or skates, the skates absorbed much more, up to 50 percent of the impact with each landing. Because the frames and wheels take the brunt of the impact, I found that my knees and ankles weren’t affected much.

What this meant to me was that I could continue my exercise through skating without further damage to my joints, due to minimal impact. I also found that I could skate longer than I could run, which meant I could burn more calories.

So if you are considering taking up this sport or have been running and thinking about starting skating as a sport, let me share with you some of the benefits,

mental clarity: This is a great benefit that is often overlooked with vigorous exercise. Whether you’re skating hard or casually, your mind will benefit.

Strengthen the heart: This is pretty obvious. Just like running, skating gives your heart a great workout without damaging your joints! In fact, I think skating gives a better workout because you can do it for a longer period of time. If you do this for 30 minutes you can get your heart rate up to 148 pm

Weight control: Since skating is a fun sport, you’ll get exercise while having fun at the same time! If you spend 30 minutes on the skates, you will burn an average of 285 calories. If you go fast on the skates, the calories burned will be much higher.

Coordination: When a child is young, this is very important to learn. But as we get older, it’s great to play a sport that continues to improve coordination and balance. This all happens naturally while you skate.

Health Fitness

Merits of having a healthy diet

In the modern era of having everything at your fingertips, a diet plan has become a trend to reduce weight. Having a healthy diet is important to have a proper and controlled diet. Basically, you need to follow a particular diet chart when you are on a diet. The diet chart is a plan to meet the proper nutritional requirements. Healthy diet foods are the key to having a prosperous lifestyle and staying away from diseases. It is difficult to achieve a healthy lifestyle if we do not eat healthy foods.

You can follow a healthy diet to reduce weight or gain proper weight. Also in case of certain health problems like hypertension and diabetes, doctors recommend a diet plan. Dietary foods are mainly composed of:

  • Fresh fruits / Dried fruits- They have a great contribution of energy, vitamins and minerals. They also provide refreshment to the body.
  • Vegetables: Essential for providing protein and carbohydrates, vegetables are the main component of any diet meal.
  • Dairy products: to supply energy and provide certain nutrients.
  • Grain products: rich sources of protein and nutrients.

We can also define healthy foods into three categories:

  • Protein healthy diet foods: This category includes the foods rich in protein. Fish, poultry products, dairy products; dried fruits etc. are the main components of this category.
  • Healthy Carbohydrate Foods- Include abundant sources of carbohydrates. Mainly rice, sweet potatoes, beans are the main sources of it.
  • Healthy Fatty Diet Foods: Although having a lot of fatty foods can cause obesity, having limited fats can be healthy. Oil supplements, seeds, peanuts, butter and ghee are rich sources of fat. Fats, if consumed in a controlled manner, can be classified as part of a healthy food for weight loss.

A healthy and balanced diet food must contain food from the three previous sources in a harmonious way. It helps to maintain a proper and problem-free lifestyle if we stick to a healthy diet. Many people follow a particular diet for a short period of time and then stop. It is important to note that healthy diet foods must be consumed continuously to maintain a fit body.

Most people think that healthy diet foods taste pretty bad and there is no variety available to eat. The weight loss food is quite tasty and has many items as well. Junk and oily food is not part of healthy food. These foods are likely to cause many dangerous illnesses and diseases. To have a healthy diet you have to avoid them. People who indulge in unhealthy diet foods may suffer from dangerous diseases like cancer, hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes.

One must consume the correct number of calories calculated according to the diet plan. Each food carries particular calories. It is necessary to consult a nutrition expert about the number of calories provided by a particular food. Eating healthy food is one way to stay away from diseases and stay fit. It is the key element to keep fit!!!

Health Fitness

NordicTrack C900 Treadmill Features and Specifications

Nordic Track C900

NordicTrack arrived on the home fitness scene with the NordicTrack Pro Skier in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since then, they have become big players in the home exercise machine market offering a line of home exercises including treadmills, stationary bikes, and elliptical trainers. The company also continues to make its famous ski machine.

The five categories of NordicTrack treadmill models

In the treadmill category, NordicTrack offers five product line categories generally categorized by features, component strength, fitness settings, and price. The five categories are Commercial, C-series, Incline, Fit (formerly A Series), and Elite. The NordicTrack C900 treadmill is part of the company’s C-series line of treadmills.

NordicTrack C Series Treadmills

C-Series machines are built with heavy-duty components (tread, frame, and engine), but not the strongest or most durable ones reserved for commercial line models.

There are two models in the C-Series category, the C900 and the C900 Pro. While the underlying components are the same, the C900 has a few more options that make it more appealing to the home user, while the smaller offerings of the C900 Pro make it more suitable for a gym or a professional training center.

NordicTrack C900 Training Features

There are a few additional training-related features that make the C900 a good choice for a home user. The C900 has 20 built-in pre-programmed workout routines to help you get started on a workout fast. There are five focused on calorie burn, five for speed, five for incline, and five high-intensity options.

Additionally, the C900 is compatible with the iFit Live training program (sold separately). iFit Live fitness software is an Internet-based program that tracks exercise progress across multiple workouts, recommends personalized workouts, and allows users to run a virtual course using Google Maps and Google Streetview in which the machine matches the actual ground elevation.

Incline settings range from 0-15% and there is no downgrade option for the C900. The running speed of the treadmill is up to 12 MPH.

Comfort Features C900

The C900 has NordicTrack’s QuadFlex cushioning, a suspension system that softens landings on the treadmill deck to reduce impact on bones and joints. Also aiding user comfort is an in-console fan that can be set to automatically adjust its speed to match workout intensity or manually set to the desired speed.

The C900 has a space saving feature where the treadmill deck folds flat and stores vertically between the arms on top. To help users raise the bed, the C900 comes with a hydraulic boom, a feature called Easylift Assist by NordicTrack.

Nordic Track C900 Specifications

The C900’s motor is a 3.0 CHP (continuous-duty horsepower) unit, which is in the mid-range compared to other NordicTrack treadmill models. The tread length is 20″ wide by 60″ long and the rollers are 2.5″ in diameter, a spec that, like the engine, is in the mid-range of those available. User weight capacity is 350 lbs.

With mid-tier components and a wide range of built-in fitness features and available options, the NordicTrack C900 is an ideal treadmill for the regular home exerciser. The components can withstand regular use and there are enough training and comfort settings to keep frequent users from getting bored.

Health Fitness

Filipino Recipes – Sizzling Pork Sisig – Pinoy Food

The sizzling pork sisig is a very popular “pulutan” for beer. It is a bestseller among bars and restaurants because it is a perfect complement to beer and any type of beverage. This recipe is originally from the province of Pampanga. In fact, the term sisig is a Kapampangan word that literally means “snack something sour.”

The original version of sisig was made from finely chopped parts of the pig’s head (brain, snout, ears, face, etc.). Over the years, sisig has reinvented itself as a dish made from just plain minced meat and is mostly served on sizzling plates alongside liver, chili and onion. Vinegar and calamansi are used for seasoning. If you want to enhance the flavor, simply add raw egg to the dish. Apart from pork, sisig can also be made with chicken, tofu, bangus, tuna, and chorizo.

Ingredients:

  • 2 teaspoons butter
  • 3 tablespoons of soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon golden chili sauce ketchup
  • 4 pieces onions (chopped)
  • 1 kg of pig face
  • 1/4 kg of pig brain (optional)
  • fried pork skin (ground)
  • salt and pepper to taste)
  • 1 egg (optional) – only when serving

Cooking procedure:

  • Put the pork face in a large saucepan or skillet and boil until tender. Cut into small cubes.
  • Put the butter in a deep frying pan and sauté the onion. Then add sliced ​​pig face and brain.
  • Mix all the liquid ingredients in a mixing glass.
  • Pour the mixture into the pan and cook for 15 minutes.
  • Use a sizzling plate to serve. Egg and fried pork skin can serve as a garnish and tomato sauce or chili for added flavor.
Health Fitness

Salads – a great addition to any meal

Salad – a bowl of health and happiness

Today’s salads are bursting with flavor, not a bowl of wilted lettuce, over ripe tomatoes and little else. Today’s salads are full of color, appetizing, full of fresh fruits and vegetables. They are appropriate for all occasions. You can create a salad for a family dinner, light lunch, or dinner. The salad can be your main dish. Salad creation is limitless. If you can dream it, you can create it.

Today’s salads can be prepared at any time of the year. They can be as simple or as complex as you like. Salads can be the main dish by adding meat, seafood, or poultry along with greens, vegetables, nuts, fruit, and cheese. Salads will fit very easily into your eating plans. As you get into the habit of adding salads to your menu planning, you’ll find yourself searching for the ingredients for the next type of salad you want to put on your table.

In this day and age we are encouraged to eat more fruits and vegetables in our diets. There’s no better way to add them to your diet than a fresh salad at mealtime.

Salads: keep them fresh

Salads are only as good as the ingredients you use. When shopping for your ingredients, it’s important to make sure they’re fresh. Just as it’s important to be eye-catching when serving a dish, let your eyes do the shopping.

Salad recipes:

Greek Salad (serves 4)

Ingredients:

7 ounces Greek feta cheese

2 heads of romaine lettuce, shredded

4 tomatoes, cut into quarters

1 cucumber, sliced

24 Kalamata olives, pitted

2 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs (such as Greek oregano, flat-leaf parsley, or basil)

Dressing room:

6 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 clove garlic

3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar

1/2 teaspoon of sugar

salt and pepper to taste

Addresses:

1. First make the dressing and reserve.

2. Prepare all the salad ingredients and divide them equally among 4 bowls.

3. Drizzle with dressing and serve. (Do not add dressing until ready to serve)

Salad Dinner (serves 4)

3 ounces cucumber, sliced ​​or diced

8 chives, chopped

2 tomatoes, seeded

1 yellow or red bell pepper, seeded and cut into strips

2-3 radishes cut into thin slices

3 ounces spring mix

1 tablespoon fresh mint, chopped

Dressing room:

1/4 cup fresh or frozen berries

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon of water

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 garlic clove, crushed

Salt and pepper to taste

Addresses:

1. Add all dressing ingredients to a blender and puree. set aside

2. Prepare the ingredients for the salad and divide them equally among four bowls.

3. Drizzle with dressing and serve. (Do not add dressing until ready to serve)

Shrimp, Salmon and Tomato Salad (Serves 4)

6 ounces grape tomatoes

12 romaine lettuce leaves

4 ounces of smoked salmon

8 ounces cooked and peeled shrimp

Dressing room:

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

2 teaspoons of sugar

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 teaspoon fresh dill, chopped

Addresses:

1. Mix all the ingredients for the dressing in a bowl, set aside.

2. Cut the tomatoes in half. Take the lettuce leaves and arrange them around the bowl.

3. Cut the smoked salmon into strips. Add the tomatoes, salmon, and shrimp to the bowls.

4. Drizzle with dressing and serve. (Do not add dressing until ready to serve)

Health Fitness

What is the best workout ever invented?

You see, at a time not too long ago (60 years and earlier) the world was a less electronic, digital, robotic, and stress-filled world.

Manual labor was the norm. Automobile, steel, and other industry-related factories demanded more muscle power from workers than they do today. A day at work was physical and demanding. It was an exercise!

Guys who wanted to get bigger and stronger needed to train with weights. They needed to lift weights and eat healthier foods.

What did you do?

They did what all the toughest, most muscular men (then they were drug free) were doing and had been doing for 100 years. They trained with weights with a proven and timed result and training program and diet.

And it worked: These guys got bigger, stronger, and better looking without all the cardio and weight training equipment. There was no “magic bullet for energy or muscle building” to waste your money on. Just solid, basic and simple training methods that produce results.

There were no special “man cave, cave woman, Italian, Greek, NASA, low fat, high fat, eat breakfast, no breakfast” diets at the time.

The diet consisted of eating lots of clean, healthy, natural and varied foods and you will build muscle diet. Train hard and stay away from junk food and you will lose body fat. There’s no need to live like a hamster in a cardio lifestyle on wheels.

Yes, there have been improvements in some of these areas of fitness, but if you take the time and google these men, Vic Tanny, Jack Lalanne, Eugene Sandow to name a few, and look at their photos, you’ll see that they haven’t. they are just robust. muscular, lean, handsome men, but they were also healthy and didn’t live in the gym or spend all their time measuring every ounce of food they put in their mouths.

It was when I left the “Muscle and Fiction” magazines that had all the glossy pictures of Arnold, Franco, Lou and other superstars of the day and picked up the real “how to build muscle and lose fat” magazines that I switched. my physique so much that people accused me of using drugs. In a world where everyone wants “instant results” with “minimal work,” it’s easy to see why people fall for the oldest tricks in the world of muscle building and health.

Get off the “hamster wheel” of hyped commercial programs and on your way to overly successful muscle, strength and health!

Health Fitness

Muscle Gain Secrets From The Man With 23 Inch Biceps

Last night I was flipping through an old muscle magazine and I saw a picture of Bill Pettis.

If you don’t recognize the name, Bill Pettis was a bodybuilder who built possibly the biggest arms of his day.

They are rumored to have measured 23 and 1/4 inches. (I say rumor has it because no one really knows if the arm measurements are accurate, as most bodybuilders are prone to inflating the truth a bit.)

But even if you don’t believe the numbers, the pictures don’t lie. Any way you cut it, his arms were HUGE.

And strong too. He could curl 225 pounds and could use a whopping 340 pounds on the standing triceps press.

But what really caught my attention was how he ate:

While most bodybuilders still rely on the six meals a day method, Bill only ate two meals a day. He ate about 3-4 eggs per day and a sizeable helping of bacon, steak, fish, chicken, vegetables and some fruit.

As supplements, I would have some protein powder, brewer’s yeast, and also desiccated liver tablets.

His training was high volume: He would do dozens of sets of heavy barbell curls, along with a lot of triceps work. In fact, he would do about twice as much triceps work as biceps exercises.

The reason? The triceps contain more muscle than the biceps muscle group, so by working the triceps you can increase your overall arm size faster.

You may not be able to build 23-inch biceps like Bill Pettis, but by following the tips in this article, you too can increase your arm size and start stretching out your t-shirt sleeves.

Health Fitness

5 quick and easy tips to lose weight

Are you looking for weight loss tips to help you lose weight fast or weight loss tips that will keep it off forever? There is a big difference. It is tempting to opt for the first type of tip. Looking for shortcuts and quick results is just a part of human nature. The problem is that you will be back to square one when the weight comes back (and it will) when you lose weight quickly. Here are some weight loss tips to help you do what it takes to achieve permanent weight loss and look forward to a healthy life.

Weight loss tip #1:

Keep a food and exercise journal for a week. Keep track of calories consumed per day and calories burned per day. Do not cheat! Put everything down. Being honest with yourself is a critical step toward weight loss. By the end of the week, you’ll have a good idea of ​​your average calories consumed and burned per day. Then move on to the next of these weight loss tips and figure out what you should be consuming per day.

Weight loss tip #2:

Learn the basic formula for weight loss. The calories in must be less than the calories out. We all have a certain number of calories that for our height, weight, gender, age, and activity level will only maintain our current weight. These calories are spent in the daily needs of our bodily activities, such as breathing and digestion, as well as in our normal work activities, whatever they may be. Calculate this number of calories using a calorie calculator. If you want to lose weight you must do two things:

1. Reduce this calorie intake.

2. Increase the number of calories burned.

Weight loss tip #3:

Over time a healthy and lasting weight loss occurs. One to two pounds per week is the recommendation to achieve this. One pound of fat is equal to approximately 3,500 calories. Therefore, if your goal is to lose one pound per week, you should be in a caloric deficit of 500 calories per day. If your goal is two pounds per week, then this deficit should be 1,000 calories per day. If you determine that your calories per day to maintain your current weight are 2,000 calories, then reduce your intake to 1,750 per day and burn an additional 250 calories. This could be as simple as eating a half sandwich for lunch instead of a whole sandwich and going for a brisk two-mile walk. If you want to achieve a weight loss of two pounds per week, don’t cut your calories too drastically.

Weight loss tip #4:

Read food labels. No one wants to spend the rest of their lives counting the calories of everything they put in their mouths. At first, understanding portion sizes and caloric amounts is crucial, but after a while, you’ll be able to assimilate most of what you eat. You will probably be surprised at first too. It doesn’t seem fair that the size of a serving of ice cream is half a cup! As painful as it is, you need to know this so that when you think you’re eating 350 calories of fat-free ice cream, you understand that filling that bowl of cereal with what you used to think was one serving is really more like 1000 calories. A slice of bread is one serving of bread and is generally around 100 calories. I started eating open sandwiches when I realized that!

Weight loss tip #5:

Realize that what you are doing right now is one of the most important things you could be doing for yourself. Healthy and lasting weight loss is a priceless reward for all your hard work. Patience is the key. Pay no attention to that coworker who lost ten pounds last week on whatever fad diet she tried! In five to six weeks, I guarantee you’ll have gained most of that weight back and you’ll be reaping the rewards of your slow and steady weight loss. Not only that, but you will have developed the tools and knowledge to keep the weight off forever!

Health Fitness

How to Lose Weight With a Foreman Grill

If President Obama made me his food czar, he would require everyone in the country to buy a George Foreman grill. In addition to making old George Foreman a billionaire, he would trim inches off his waist and make him the envy of every Weight Watchers customer. This fat trimmer cooks virtually any piece of meat in a matter of minutes and serves up a very tasty and healthy meal.

The reason I love this machine in the first place is because I’m basically a lazy man. I bought my first Foreman grill just because all the commercials said he could cook a week’s worth of chicken in under 10 minutes. “This is great!” I thought, because I could throw chicken on the grill and have a whole week and be done with it. The reason I got fat in the first place was because I was too busy or lazy to cook, so I ended up eating out a few times a day. So I tossed that chicken on the grill and after a minute or so, I noticed this thick liquid coming onto my counter. In all my haste I forgot to put the grease catcher under the grill!

That’s why I believe every person and family needs a Foreman grill, it actually melts the fat no matter what you cook. This can not only help a person lose weight, but it makes the meats you cook for dinner so much healthier without all that saturated fat. So my diet became much easier to follow because now I could eat more than just chicken breast in my diet, I started grilling burgers, pork chops and other high fat meats. The variety of foods that I was able to make healthy was a godsend.

So, long story short, the Foreman grill can help you lose weight by cooking your meals in five minutes, eliminating saturated fat in the meats you eat, and adding more variety to your meals by making taboo things like red meat healthier. Now you have one less excuse not to start a healthier lifestyle.