By Herbalife Staff January 24, 2017 Herbalife Nutrition independent distributor Melissa and her customer Amy talk about health, their relationship and a one-of-a-kind triathlon. Melissa: As a distributor, I’m helping people stretch to a new place in their lives and…
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Follow this balanced circuit training routine for a great full body workout that gets you the results you want, while limiting the possibility of overuse injuries.
Whatever your focus––be it improving your strength, cardiovascular fitness or endurance––you can benefit from doing weekly circuit training sessions.
Circuit training is a great way for people of all ability levels to exercise. Whether you’re new to exercising or a seasoned pro, you can use circuit training to help you improve your overall fitness level, and target and strengthen your trouble spots.
Circuit training involves performing lots of different exercises in one sequence. This makes it almost impossible to get bored during your session. Plus, because you get to set your own schedule, you can easily fit it into your day. Circuit training is also great because it allows you to squeeze in exercises that you don’t necessarily enjoy. Since you only have to do each move for a short amount of time, getting in some dreaded cardio or strength training work is a lot less daunting.
You can do a circuit that’s as long as 60 minutes, or as short as 5 minutes. Decide what amount of time will fit in with your personal schedule, while keeping in mind that the more intense training should be kept to a shorter duration.
You can do a continuous circuit, which is when you go from one exercise to the next without a rest until you have completed one full set. Or you can take a short rest after each exercise. The less rest you have in between exercises, the greater the challenge will be. However, having adequate rest between each full set of exercises is important, as it will allow you to work out at your very best. Base your rest times on your personal fitness level. As your fitness level improves, you will need less rest in between each exercise.
If you are doing a full-body circuit, try to include exercises that engage your largest muscle groups, such as legs, glutes, chest and back. Also, add in some stability-based moves that involve your core muscles, as well as some cardio. There are so many exercises to choose from, but a few of my favorites include squats, lunges, crunches, burpees, push-ups and jumping jacks.
The best way to organize your workout is to avoid using the same muscle groups back to back. Alternating between lower body, upper body and core exercises can help you to avoid overworking a particular muscle. When you’re doing a targeted circuit workout and focusing primarily on one area of the body, it’s still important to think about how your joints work and how to avoid over-stressing your body. The shoulder joint, for instance, can become easily stressed out, so avoiding doing exercises like planks, push-ups and mountain climbers all in one set is important. Try to ensure that each exercise that you choose engages your muscles in a different way. When it comes to organizing your routine, common sense will steer you in the right direction.
The great thing about circuit training is that you can choose to include as many or as few exercises as you wish. I believe that it’s best to set up a circuit that allows you to repeat it three times. Adequate repetition is important when exercising if you wish to get results. For example, if you have 15 minutes for exercise, choose five exercises that will allow you to do each for 45 seconds, and perform three full sets with adequate time to catch your breath in between sets.
Planning out your own circuit can be a lot of fun and very rewarding. Though it takes a little bit of practice to design your own workouts, when you plan it out in advance and make sure it’s balanced, you’ll be well on your way to becoming your own perfect trainer.
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Make your daily staples as healthy as you can. Small changes in the foods you buy in the grocery store and eat every day can add up to big rewards.
The holidays are over, and we’re all getting back to our routines––which means it’s time to get serious about those New Year’s resolutions you’ve made. If eating better is something you plan to do this year, now is the time to think about how you’re going to go about it––before you slip back into your old eating habits. Rather than adopting a complete dietary overhaul (a complete “out with the old, in with the new” approach rarely works), your best bet is to begin by working on several small steps you can take to improve your everyday eating habits. And your first steps should take you directly to the grocery store, since that’s where healthy eating really begins.
There are different personality types when it comes to grocery shopping. Some shoppers take the ‘business as usual’ approach, by buying and preparing the same foods week after week. Others plan all their meals in advance and shop only from a detailed shopping list, while ‘frequent fliers’ are in the store almost every day. No matter what your shopping patterns are, a few small steps can deliver big nutrition rewards.
The Nutrition Facts label on packages is one of the best tools you have for selecting nutritious foods and for making comparisons among products. You can compare things like calories, fat, protein and sugar content across brands, which helps you make smarter choices.
Most of the time when there are reduced fat options of foods you eat frequently––like salad dressings, spreads, dairy products, even desserts––switching to the lower fat version can save you a lot of calories. A cup of whole milk has 150 calories and about 7 grams of fat; nonfat milk has 90 calories and no fat. A switch from regular ground beef to ground turkey breast can cut about 10 grams of fat and 100 calories per 3-ounce serving. You’ll eat fewer calories and a lot less sugar if you buy plain yogurt and add your own fruit and sweetener instead of the pre-sweetened variety. Replace refined starches with whole grain: try brown rice, whole wheat pasta, whole wheat bread and crackers, whole wheat couscous, quinoa, and oatmeal instead of cream of wheat.
When it comes to produce, the current season’s fruit and veg options are usually fresher, often retain more nutrients, and are often less expensive than items that are out of season. If you have a farmer’s market nearby, the produce might be fresher than what you find in the supermarkets, which means vegetables won’t wilt as quickly and the foods retain their nutritional value. You’re also more likely to find new varieties of fruits and vegetables to try, which will help you with the next tip.
If you’re not ready to tackle a whole new food item, you can start slow with a different variety or relative of a familiar food. All fruits and vegetables are unique in terms of the healthy phytonutrients they provide, so variety is really important to your good health. If your salad is always made with iceberg lettuce, switch to deep green romaine or baby spinach instead. Try a new variety of cabbage or apple, or cook some purple cauliflower instead of the usual white.
Canned tuna and salmon that are wild caught are good sources of omega-3, and they’re also convenient and affordable. Add canned tuna to your pasta sauce instead of ground beef, or toss some canned salmon into a salad for a quick, healthy and light main dish. Once you’re well stocked with healthy ingredients at home, you can start to think about changes that you can make when you cook.
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By Andrew Shao, Ph.D., vice president, Global Government Affairs, Herbalife January 19, 2016 I’m looking forward to joining some of my colleagues in attending the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) North America 2017 Annual Meeting in La Jolla, California…
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By Carel le Roux, MBChB, MSc, FRCP, FRCPath, Ph.D. Member, Nutrition Advisory Board January 18, 2017 The combination of obesity and aging may have negative effects on the brain. Although more long-term studies are needed, evidence is emerging to…
Read more on Metabolic Expert Says More Research on Obesity, Aging and Brain Health Needed at I Am Herbalife.
New Year’s resolutions––don’t make promises you can’t keep. This year, make a few small changes in your eating habits that can yield big results.
Do you remember the New Year’s resolutions you made last year? Let me guess: If you’re like most people, you probably vowed to eat better, get more exercise––and maybe floss more often. So, looking back, how did it go? Did you accomplish all you set out to do? Or, did you start the year out strong then fall back on your old patterns, so that you’re making the same resolutions again this year? This may surprise you, but I think that’s okay––and here’s why. If you make the decision every January to shape up, it says that taking better care of yourself is important to you. If it weren’t important, you wouldn’t keep working at it. And just because you make the same promises to yourself every year, it doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t accomplish anything last year.
Maybe you didn’t exercise as much as you planned or ate as carefully as you intended. But if you’re still doing better now than you were the year before, maybe it’s because you managed to chip away at a few bad habits. And that’s great – because the little changes to the way you do things every single day can really add up. And you can continue to build on these small successes this New Year.
It’s great to be ambitious but if you try to tackle too many changes at once, you could be setting yourself up for defeat. Making resolutions is the easy part. Making them stick is what’s hard, because you have to do things differently. It takes time to undo a bad habit, which is why repetition is so important. But it’s a lot easier to repeat a small, relatively easy task than one that seems positively Herculean. Plus, you have to figure out what’s getting in the way of your progress, and figure out how to move these obstacles out of your way.
Let’s say you don’t floss your teeth as often as you should. What’s getting in your way? And what steps can you take to make sure you’ll do it regularly? It’s not really a time issue, it only takes a couple of minutes. But you need to make sure you have the floss in the house. You need to make sure you see the floss whenever you brush your teeth. You need a mirror so you can see what you’re doing.
Maybe you decide that rather than tossing the dental floss in the back of the medicine cabinet where it gets lost in a jumble of half-used toiletries, you’ll instead make a little ‘dental kit’ for yourself. Make one that includes your toothbrush, your toothpaste, your floss, and maybe a little dental mirror. With everything conveniently in one place it’s more likely that every time you pull out your kit, you’ll not just brush––you’ll wind up flossing, too.
Same thing goes with your eating habits. You have to figure out why you’re not doing what you plan to do, and how you can make it easier. It’s easy to say you’re going to eat more fruits and vegetables, but it’s hard to do if you don’t keep them in the house. But that’s not enough. Once you’ve got them in the house, you have to make it easier to eat them. So, maybe you make sure to keep a stash of fruit in the freezer to add to protein shakes. Or keep a bowl of fruit on your kitchen counter to remind you that fruit makes a great snack. Or you keep some cut up veggies handy in the refrigerator where you’ll see them every time you open the door looking for something to munch on.
Just make sure that whatever changes you plan to make are things you know you can really do. If you’ve never brought your lunch to work, it’s unlikely you’ll suddenly start doing it every day. So, set a reasonable goal and make it specific. Not “I’m going to bring my lunch to work more often,” but “I’m going to bring my lunch to work twice a week.” That way at the end of the week it’s easy to determine if you’ve met your goal or not.
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If you have dry skin, here are some simple tips you can follow to help.
Sometimes it feels like no matter what I do, when I look in the mirror I just look dried out and older then I really am. It’s not just about how my skin looks, it’s also about how it feels when it’s dry. I’m not sure if having dry skin is worse than having oily skin, or vice versa. On average, people with dry skin tend to have fewer blemishes and breakouts than someone with oily skin. But we do tend to look a little bit older when our skin is dry. People who have oily skin tend to look a bit younger, but unfortunately, they can have more blemishes and breakouts and have larger-sized pores.
As dry skin can be disheartening, I put together some tips that have worked for me over the years that may also help you.
I’m the first to admit that there’s nothing better than a hot shower or bath. However, while the rest of the body feels great, the heat can cause your skin to dry. Hot water can strip your body of its natural oils that act as a barrier on your skin. This barrier is super important, because it helps trap much needed moisture that keeps your skin stay hydrated, soft and smooth. If you can, avoid a hot shower and take a nice warm one instead. And while we all love to linger in the tub, it’s best to get in and out quickly to avoid the drying of our skin. Limit yourself to 5 to 10 minutes maximum. When you get out of the shower, gently pat your skin dry, don’t rub, and immediately apply your facial and body moisturizers.
When we cleanse our skin, sometimes we get a little rough. It’s as if we literally want to scrub our bodies clean. When it comes to dry skin, you need to take it easy and gently cleanse. Don’t exfoliate or scrub your skin too hard, because it can irritate and thicken your skin—not a good thing. It’s important to use gentle cleansers as well. Anything with harsh detergents can leave your skin feeling extra dry and irritated. Choose a cleanser that contains natural ingredients like Aloe vera, which will help soothe and soften the skin. Lastly, remember to rinse clean. You want to remove all traces of soap and cleanser from your body, especially your face. Lingering product can cause drying and itching.
We’ve discussed at great length the importance of sun care products for the face and body. The damage caused by the UVA and UVB rays not only burns our skin, but also contributes to skin aging. The signs of aging are not pretty and include fine lines and wrinkles, dark spots, skin roughness and dryness. It’s important to wear sunscreen products year-round, not just in the summer. You must include a protective moisturizer with broad-spectrum sunscreen into your regimen for daily protection against the sun’s rays and to help alleviate dryness.
For all of the guys out there who have dry skin, this one is for you. Shaving your face can definitely irritate dry skin. Each time you scrape a razor across your skin you’re not only removing unwanted hair, you’re also removing your natural oils. It’s important to shave during or immediately after your shower. This will allow your facial hair to become softer and more pliable, which ultimately will make shaving easier for you. Make sure your razor is sharp so you can avoid irritation. Always use a shaving cream or gel, preferably one with moisturizing properties. Avoid alcohol-based aftershaves and toners at all costs, as they will only contribute to further dryness. Choose a good facial toner as a healthier alternative to aftershave.
If your skin is dry and uncomfortable, adding moisture is very important. Again, apply your moisturizers immediately after your bath or shower while your skin is still damp. Be sure to use a daytime product that contains SPF and a richer, replenishing night cream at bedtime. A hydrating eye cream is perfect for the delicate skin around the eyes. An all-over body lotion or gel will help with dryness and itchiness everywhere else on the body. The legs, arms, back, hands, and EVERYWHERE else can get dry without proper moisturizing. If you suffer from dry hands, be sure to apply a nice hand and body lotion every time you wash your hands. When water evaporates from your skin, it can draw even more moisture out of your skin. A good moisturizing cream or lotion is really your best defense against dry skin.
Now that we’ve discussed being moisturized on the outside, remember it’s also important to moisturize on the inside. Drinking water throughout the day keeps your body and skin hydrated.
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Sometime it just takes the correct approach to achieve your fitness goals. Here are six steps to help you make your workout plan more effective.
The New Year is a great time to evaluate your goals, set new ones or recommit to old ones. If you’re reading this and know that your old habits are hard to break, then it’s time to take a new approach and spruce up your workout routine. A fitness makeover could be just the thing you need to get motivated and excited about getting fit. Some changes may be simple and subtle, but when it comes to getting fitter and healthier, even the small changes can make a big difference. Make this New Year when you establish new, healthy habits that’ll lead to positive results.
Ask yourself what three specific goals you want to achieve this coming year and write them down. Make sure that you have a way to monitor your progress, such as weighing yourself or taking measurements.
The more specific your goal is, the better. If you’re new to activity, start small. Be practical and realistic about your activity goals. Whatever your goals are, write them down. So many people have told me that they’ve been able to reach their fitness goals when they have specific goals and track their journeys. Write down what your goal means to you. Does it mean feeling energized, looking better or reaching a certain number of activity minutes? The more opportunities you create to measure and log your success throughout the year, the better the chances of you making a lasting lifestyle change.
It’s time to let go of any failed diet and fitness plans of the past and get your mind engaged with the present. Now that you’ve written down your goals, move forward with them. It’s time to focus solely on today and let the past be in the past. Once you can make a commitment to being present in today’s choices, you’ll step toward success more smoothly. When you wake up each morning, think that today is the only day that counts (even if you severely derailed your diet the night before). No more promises of tomorrow. Accomplish what matters to you most TODAY.
If you always workout in the morning, try to add in at least one afternoon workout session per week, or vice-versa. If you never do a morning workout, try to add one into your schedule. Sometimes your body needs to be pushed out of its usual routine. You may even find that a particular time works better for you than what you originally thought. We are each individuals and our bodies perform better at different times of the day. Experiment and try to find the time of day that you feel most awake and energized, and make that your go-to workout time. You may find that you push yourself more, burn more calories and get more benefit out of your exercise routine.
Who says you need to spend hours in the gym to reach your fitness goals? Keep your workouts short and sweet––or more accurately, short and sweaty! On at least two days of the week, perform an interval style workout that pushes you to get out of breath. When your intensity level is high, your sessions can be kept as short as 15-30 minutes in length. This is perfect for those with a busy schedule who always come up with the same excuse of not having enough time to exercise.
Short, effective workouts should be your new approach to fitness, especially if you lead a busy lifestyle. Building lean muscle mass should be an essential part of any weight loss or weight gain program. If you currently use weights in your fitness routines, try to increase them. If you’re just getting started, be sure you are using a comfortable weight that allows you to maintain good form. Don’t be afraid of bulking up from lifting heavy weights. In my opinion, lifting very light weights that don’t feel challenging for many reps is a waste of time.
Creating good habits and setting a solid routine is essential, especially when you are first starting out with a new exercise plan, but it doesn’t have to be predictable and boring. When you get stuck in the same old routine, you often mentally tune out and become less productive with the task at hand. This year, try to keep your body guessing by trying new activities, changing your workout style, having fun with a new exercise partner or by adding in a weekly fun fitness challenge. The more fun and exciting you make your exercise time, the more you’ll look forward to it and stick with it. Exercise doesn’t have to be boring to be effective.
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By Dr. Luigi Gratton,M.P.H., vice president, Worldwide Nutrition Education and Development, Herbalife Chairman, Nutrition Advisory Board January 13, 2017 Friday, January 13 is the fourth annual celebration of National Gluten-Free Day in the United States. Gluten has gotten a lot…
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In recent years, gluten has become the new dietary no-no. As during the fat-free and low-carb crazes of the past, consumers are now clamoring for gluten-free products like never before.
Before jumping on the gluten-free bandwagon, though, a bit of background is in order.
When you eat whole grain bread or barley soup, gluten provides the body with protein to build and repair muscle tissue or to manufacture other body proteins like hormones and enzymes. Gluten protein provides structure to baked goods, and can be isolated from grains and formed into a vegetarian meat substitute known as seitan.
Many people feel that they can’t handle gluten because they feel bloated or gassy when they eat grains, and because they feel less bloated when they stop eating gluten-rich foods. And they note that they often lose weight when they cut out the gluten, which could be reason for the sudden enthusiasm for gluten-free foods.
Because gluten lurks not only in grain foods, but is also used as a stabilizer and thickener in lots of processed foods like salad dressings, frozen yogurt, and processed cold cuts, it could be that people feel better after they go gluten-free, whether they’re intolerant or not. After all, they’re cutting out fast foods and processed foods and possibly replacing starchy foods with healthy fruits and veggies, which would promote weight loss.
Some people truly have gluten intolerance and do have to follow a strict gluten-free diet, but the numbers are relatively small. It’s been estimated that only about one percent of the population has the most severe form, known as celiac disease.
They must avoid wheat, rye, and barley, as well as wheat “cousins” kamut and spelt. And products made from these grains, such as bulgur, couscous, wheat germ, semolina, durum, and bran, are forbidden, too. Gluten might also be disguised on a label as vegetable protein, modified food starch or malt flavoring, and it’s sometimes found in soy sauce and grain-based alcohol.
True gluten intolerance is relatively rare, but one argument for going gluten-free is that it’s a way to improve the diet, especially if refined grains have been the source of most of the gluten. Replacing starch-heavy pastas, cakes, cookies, white bread, and pretzels with gluten-free whole grains like quinoa or millet is good advice for everyone.
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