Fitness & Wellness

You don’t have to be working toward the body of Adonis to get benefit from weight training. In fact, you don’t even have to be a man. Weight training has something to offer everyone who works out, which is why it’s becoming so popular. For years, women were discouraged from doing weight training, even though as mothers, they often lifted children weighing more than the weights themselves. The fear was that they’d build large muscles, but that just doesn’t happen. Hormone levels in the body dictate the how large muscles become. Instead, it tones the muscles and gives the woman a look that says fit and attractive.

Consider strength training for your bones.

Building strength and muscles also helps you build stronger bones. As you get older, muscle loss increases if you don’t workout. The muscle strength and working out actually helps maintain bone health and keeps them strong. In fact, several studies have found that weight bearing exercise has not only helped slow bone loss and osteoporosis, it may even reverse it. Studies comparing the effects of exercise with the effects of certain medicine designed to treat osteoporosis, found that weight bearing exercise actually worked better. Of course, there were side effects from both. The list of side effects comes with the prescription. The side effects of exercise are more energy and a healthier body.

Strength training can protect you from injury.

When you work out with weights, you’ll improve many other areas of fitness. Not only does your balance improve, just as strength does, you’ll also improve your posture. Improved posture means fewer back problems and improved balance mean fewer injuries. Weight lifting also helps strengthen the muscles, which help prevent injuries as well. When you workout with weights, you’ll be less prone to injury doing everyday types of activities.

Other illnesses and conditions can be helped by working with weights.

You might not think it possible, but the pain from arthritis is actually reduced when strength training with weights is added to the workout. In fact, many studies show it’s better than most medication. Working out with weights also helps you lose weight, which can aid in controlling diabetes and reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke and other serious problems.

• Lifting weights builds muscle tissue and the more muscle tissue you have, the higher your metabolism. That’s because it takes more calories to maintain muscle tissue than fat tissue.
• You’ll feel more confident when you lift weights, because you’ll look more confident. It improves your posture making you walk taller.
• If you’re plagued with blood pressure problems, consider lifting weights. It not only helps lower blood pressure, it also helps prevent some forms of cancer, can combat PMS and even boosts your immune system.
• Some circuit training include lifting weights. In that case, weight lifting not only builds strength, but boosts your endurance, too.

If you’ve read or heard about the apple cider vinegar drink that’s miraculously supposed to help you lose weight without effort, you’re probably excited to try it. You probably won’t have the brilliant success that the websites, friend or video promises. Apple cider vinegar can help you shed pounds, but not by just drinking it in water. In fact, one study showed it had no weight loss effect when consumed alone, without consuming a meal.

How apple cider vinegar helps.

Carol Johnston, a dietitian, studied the effects of acetic acid, the primary component of apple cider vinegar, on the blood sugar of prediabetics. In her study, she found that it aided in lowering blood glucose levels in not only prediabetics, but also type 2 diabetics with insulin-resistance and the healthy control group. It was the most impressive with the insulin-resistant group and stayed lower. It did that by blocking starch absorption. By adding vinegar when the subject ate starch, it lowered glucose, but not by just drinking apple cider vinegar and water.

Another study showed that it might help you shed those extra pounds.

In this study, 175 healthy Japanese subjects that were overweight were studied for twelve weeks. The study showed the apple cider actually helped to reduce weight, lower visceral fat, reduce waist measurements and body mass, while also lowering triglyceride levels. However, the amount of weight lost was only about 1/3 pound per week. That doesn’t really make you want to stand up and holler!

Use apple cider vinegar with a healthy diet.

Even though the study showed some slight weight loss, consider what it could do to boost your healthy eating weight loss plan. You don’t have to drink a glass of water with apple cider vinegar or suck down a couple of teaspoons with each meal. You can incorporate it into your meals in more natural ways, like using it on salad or as a marinade or sauce for fish, poultry or meat.

• You might find that a spoonful of AC makes you feel fuller. One study found the same thing. It came from the nausea it caused. There are better ways to lose weight and control appetite than that.
• Consuming AC straight can damage the enamel on your teeth. Be true to your teeth and they won’t be false to you. Don’t drink AC straight.
• If you’re going to eat starchy foods, remember, AC blocks starch absorption. Eat a salad with apple cider vinegar as part of the dressing.
• If you’re on medication of any type, especially insulin, check with your health care practitioner before adding straight AC to your diet or adding it in large amounts.

If you though only women were prone to eating disorders, think again. Today, the rise in male eating disorders is disturbing. In fact, one in every three people with an eating disorder is a male. It occurs for the some of the same reasons female eating disorders occur, but many have the added burden of trying to hide their disorder and avoiding seeking help, since it’s often thought of as primarily a “problem faced by women, not men.”The type of disorders are the same and include binge-eating disorder, anorexia and bulimia. These, especially anorexia, can affect males as young as 8.

Just like their female counterparts, it starts with societies vision of the perfect body image.

You don’t find overweight and flabby men who flaunt sex-appeal and attractiveness in commercials. Check out GI Joe action figures. They’re buff with the perfect V and if they were human, would have no body fat. Little boys look at the images presented by society as the ideal physique and hope to achieve those unattainable results. It’s similar to young girls idealizing the bodies of Barbie dolls, who would have a bust line that’s 39 inches, a waist that’s 18 inches, hips that were 33 inches, a shoe size of three and she’d be 5’9″ in height if you used the same proportions of her body.

Men have another disorder that’s more a male thing.

Men who have eating disorders may also have an unsatisfied need to develop huge muscles. I use the term unsatisfied, because no matter how buff they are, it’s never enough. They may even see themselves as skinny or underweight. This dysfunction is called muscle dysmorphia and is seem often in body builders. It reflects a compulsion to build muscle tissue, spurring the individual to spend hours at the gym bulking up, eating an odd selection of foods specifically to build muscles, spending far too much on supplements and even taking dangerous substances to enhance muscle building, such as steroids.

It’s not just how those with eating disorders view the media hype that causes these problems.

While media hype may put the “perfect” body in front of men, there’s more going on than just blindly following society’s perception of perfection. Many of those suffering from it have other issues, like lower self-esteem and feeling out of control and helpless. Controlling their weight and the way they look may be their way of regaining control of their life. Perfectionism tends to be a trait that these men have in common.

• Eating disorders are linked to depression and other mental issues. While it’s unclear, which came first, the disorder or the depression, one thing is certain, those with eating disorders have a disproportionately higher incidence of anxiety disorder, depression and substance abuse.
• Watch for signs of danger, such as extreme dieting, weight loss and over exercising for those with anorexia and bulimia. Anyone who binges frequently, may be the start of binging. If you notice the obsession with food has affected other areas of life, that man may need the help of a professional.
• People with bulimia don’t necessarily share an issue of perfectionism with anorexics, but rather have a more spontaneous and impulsive nature.
• If you recognize yourself or others in any of the descriptions, seek help. These disorders can damage organs, like the brain, heart and bones. Karen Carpenter, famous for her singing in the 70s and 80s both solo and part of the group, the Carpenter’s, died of heart damage attributed to anorexia at the age of 32.

Having a smaller abdomen and waistline is important aesthetically, making you feel good about looking your best. However, there’s another reason why your waistline size is important. It’s a measure of your overall health. Abdominal fat is called visceral fat and it’s worse than other types of fat. The more you have, the more potential there is of heart disease and diabetes. It’s even more important than BMI—body mass index.

Different types of fat.

The fat around your abdomen is called visceral fat and it’s the hardest to lose. It’s also the most dangerous. While excess fat is seldom welcomed, you do need some type of fat. It’s fuel. It cushions you—sitting with no fat on your backside would hurt after a while when there’s no cushion. It also helps protect the body if you fall. But visceral fat is totally different. It accumulates around the organs, inside the body. Men tend to have it as a pot belly, women gain it in the hips and bottom, cushioning the female organs to protect potential babies.

It’s tough to lose belly fat.

When you burn fat, it’s a process that has two parts. First there’s the lipolysis process that’s triggered by catecholamines, a chemical in the body. The catecholamine attaches to the receptors on fat cells and that causes them to release the fatty acids—stored energy—into the blood. Second is the oxidation process where the cells take the cells from the blood and use the energy. In stage one, there are two different types of receptors for the catecholamine to attach—alpha and beta. The more beta-receptors, the easier it is for the catecholamine to attach and lipolysis to take place. The more alpha-receptors, the harder it is. Visceral fat tends to have more alpha-receptors, so they don’t release energy—fat—as easily. That’s why some areas for weight loss are more stubborn than others are.

The more weight you gain, the bigger the fat cells become.

As they become bigger, these cells tend to leak, both fatty acids and other molecules, into the liver. That’s one of the areas that help control blood sugar levels. The leaking fat cells also mess with your metabolism, too. You’ll end up with insulin spikes and valleys that can cause even more weight gain, ultimately ending in heart disease and diabetes.

• In order to lose visceral fat around the belly, hips and buttocks, you have to lose weight all over your body.
• Training on an empty stomach—called fasted training—helps shed bellly fat.
• Make your cardio HIIT training. You can run, bicycle or whatever you choose, just alternate between high intensity and low to moderate intensity.
• One study showed that coconut oil helped to shrink the waistline of obese women. There were two groups each walking 50 minutes daily, eating lower calorie diets and taking one supplement, either two tablespoons of soy or two tablespoons of coconut oil. The group that took the coconut oil supplement showed a reduction in the waistline circumference.

More and more physicians and health care providers are reluctant to prescribe antibiotics. There’s good reason for that. It’s the fear of creating super bugs that are antibiotic resistant. However, there are other issues that need to be addressed when it comes to antibiotics. The comparison of data based on health and antibiotic use throughout the United States shows that areas with high antibiotic use coincide with areas that have high obesity levels. Is it just a coincidence or do antibiotics make it harder to lose weight?

The good and the bad of antibiotics.

The good part of having antibiotics available is that it kills off bacterial infections and helps you get well. That’s pretty obvious. However, antibiotic use has a dark side. One of the biggest problems is that it kills bacteria indiscriminately and not all bacteria is bad. You need the right balance of beneficial bacteria in you digestive system to keep your body functioning properly. If there’s a disruption in the balance, it can lead to chronic disease over time, such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity. In areas with high antibiotic use there were also higher incidence of these conditions.

Farmers use antibiotics to promote weight gain of livestock.

I want to say, “Hmmmm.” Most the antibiotics produced in our country, about 70 percent, are actually used by farmers to help livestock gain weight. It’s given to healthy livestock in smaller doses, changing the gut flora, which then makes the livestock grow larger and heavier. One researcher, Dr. Martin Blaser from New York University Langone Medical Center, said that the antibiotics may cause a permanent change in the bacteria in the gut, while also disrupting the hormones related to hunger. That leads to an increased appetite and weight gain.

Studies show that friendly bacteria may help weight loss.

One animal study followed rats that were given lactic acid bacteria all the way from fetus to adulthood. They put on far less weight that the control group. Babies with higher amounts of bifidobacteria (good bacteria) had more protection against weight gain, according to another study. Another study showed that people who were obese could reduce belly fat by almost five percent and subcutaneous fat by three percent by just adding a type of fermented milk that’s rich in probiotics, to their diet for 12 weeks.

One study showed that boosting good bacteria by taking probiotics can help people with metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is linked to obesity.

You can boost your healthy gut bacteria with live bacteria yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables. Kimchi is also super good and good for gut bacteria.

If you have to take an antibiotic, avoid consuming sugar products and wait at least two hours after taking the antibiotic before eating or taking the probiotic.

Adding more fiber to your diet can also help good bacteria by providing them with nourishment. Vegetables, fruit, nuts and beans are good sources of fiber.