I am always concerned about hydration when I exercise but in the summer months when it is hard to stay hydrated even when doing nothing it is even more critical to keep your water and electrolytes up.

Proper hydration plays a critical role in athletic performance. Some consequences of dehydration are as follows: cramping, fatigue, dizziness, rapid elevation of body temperature, confusion, fainting, and the inability to sweat (cooling mechanism of the body).

Despite these symptoms obviously hampering athletic performance, they can progress rapidly into heat exhaustion or heat stroke. In order to avoid these serious side effects and increase the ability to perform at top levels, it is essential that not only athletes, but everyone that is exposed to Louisiana temperatures have a clear understanding of how to maintain proper hydration.

When focusing on hydration, it is important to look at some warning signs that the body gives to signal the lack of proper hydration. Thirst is considered by some experts to be an early signal that your body is in need of re-hydration. But according to Nancy Clark in her “Sports Nutrition Guidebook,” athletes may have already lost over a pound and a half of water weight before their thirst mechanism kicks in. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Tags: dehydration, dizziness, fainting, fatigue, Louisiana, Nancy Clark, Porche, stroke

If you are trying to gain muscle there are a few things that people do to sabotage themselves. I have done a few of these things in the past and just wanted to drop these here to let you know as I have nowhere else to put it.

Don’t drink booze. Alcohol is very bad for your metabolism and it will stop you from making any gains at all in the gym as well as punishing your body with dehydration, one thing you really do not need.

Although I did once write a bit on how great beer was for you, this is one of the worst things for your muscles as that old dehydration and lack of metabolism will really sap your gains. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: dehydration, energy

Dieting is not about following a fad diet for a few months, getting rid of a few pounds, and returning to your normal eating mode (which is nothing but gorging on more junk and fatty foods). Rather, dieting is about healthy eating, and if you want to gain the maximum mileage possible from your diet, you need to make it an essential part of your life just as you have done with those junk foods.

Of course there is a big difference between theory and practice. If you have been eating only junk foods all your life, it would be difficult if not impossible for you change your food habits for the better. However, I have a few tricks up in my sleeve which would help you with that.

Get rid of allergic foods: For the purpose of successful weight loss, you should not only get rid of junk foods but also those foods which make you allergic. Crabs are a good example; many people are allergic to crabs even though they have been touted by several experts as an ideal food for weight loss. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: dehydration, fatigue, food, food allergies, food habits, nausea, waiter, wheat-based food

Thanks to the considerable awareness about weight loss generated by experts and media alike, almost all of those so-called ‘bad foods’ now have seemingly ‘good alternatives’ so that you could enjoy your favorite foods without getting fatter. So we have diet drinks to replace fizzy drinks and diet soda to replace the original sweet soda. But how healthy are these diet alternatives? In this article we shall take a closer look at that.

Take diet soda for example. It may contain fewer calories than the original soda, but they are also loaded with lots of caffeine which makes equally harmful. In case you don’t know already, caffeine is a diuretic that makes us dehydrated by flushing out all the water from our body. The more caffeine we consume, the more our body would become dehydrated. But how would you know if your body is dehydrated or not? Here are some quick symptoms to check out.

1. Fatigue: Are you always tired? Do you feel unable to concentrate on any one thing? Do you tend to feel sleepy even after sleeping for a long while? Do you feel that you lack the energy required to perform your daily chores? Believe it or not, they are all symptoms of dehydration.

2. Headaches: We all know how annoying headaches could be. But do you know why they happen? Very often, when our brain is deprived of even a little amount of water, we suffer from headaches. Keep in mind that almost two-thirds of our brain is composed of nothing but water.

3. Difficulty in passing bowels: When water gets depleted from your body, your stool gets harder and harder, consequently making it difficult for you to pass the bowels. You would notice that almost always a patient suffering from constipation is advised to drink lots of water and fruits; while water keeps the stool soft, fiber pushes the bowels so hard that you should have no difficulty passing them at all.

4. Dark-colored urine: Do you urinate less than usual? Is the color of your urine dark? This is yet another pointer to the fact that your body is dehydrated and it needs water supply. When your body’s water level is reduced to an abnormally low level, the kidneys find it difficult to flush out the toxins and other waste products properly from our body and consequently our urine becomes abnormally dark.

5. Bad breath: If you have tried high and low and are still unable to get rid of your bad breath, consider increasing your water intake. Bad breath is caused by bacteria, and water helps flush out these bacteria from your mouth, thereby ridding you of bad breath.

As you can see, diet sodas are not a good choice because they could make your kids’ body dry as hell. If you really want to control your kids” soda intake, persuade them to drink water more often.

Tags: constipation, dehydration, energy, flushing, headaches, waste products

You already know that exercise boosts your metabolism, of course. And we can not recommend highly enough that you do some type of aerobic activity every day, even if it’s just walking up a few flights of stairs a few times a day at work, or taking a brisk walk on your lunch hour.  If you do aerobic exercise, your metabolism remains higher for up to eight hours after you finish exercising!

And if you exercise enough to put on more muscle, so much the better. Building up muscle can boost your metabolism by ten percent or more, which will generally mean you can eat a few hundred more calories a day.

But when you’re dieting you need all of the help that you can get, so here are some ways to boost that metabolism and burn those calories off faster. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: boosting your metabolism, dehydration, energy boost, heart disease, metabolic rate, metabolism boosting foods

If you have been frustrated with the calorie counting diet, take heart, for you are not alone. To be honest, I haven’t seen a more bogus dieting method in my life. If you really wish to achieve any significant weight loss results with this diet, you would have to:

a) Hire a chef who would count the calories of each and every food before and after cooking them.

OR

b) Have a calculator beside you every time you eat, be it at home or a restaurant.

OR

c) Keep eating the same “low-calorie” foods day after day, month after month, and year after year, until one day you become so bored with your diet that you quit it altogether, thinking that life with a fat belly would be much happier than this.

In fact, you cannot imagine what funny and stressful situations this diet would land you in. Imagine that you are sitting at a restaurant with your sweetheart next to you. After thinking long and hard about the calorie contents of certain foods, you order them, praying at the same time that their calorie contents don’t go over the ‘limit’.

Once the foods are served to you, you take out your pocket calculator and the calorie chart immediately, excuse yourself to your sweetheart, and start counting the calories of each of the food items served to you. What could have otherwise become a romantic dinner ends up being a stressful and unhappy dinner. I won’t be surprised if your better half takes you for a mad man and dumps you.

The stress of counting the calorie contents of each and every morsel you eat would definitely curb at least half of your appetite, if not more, not to speak that this added stress would hamper proper digestion of the food. Even if these things don’t happen, there is a chance of making wrong calculations, as revealed in a recent study done on a few city-based top dieticians.
The dieticians were asked to count the calorie contents of five restaurant meals. And what do you think the results could be. On an average, the dieticians undervalued the fat content of the meals by almost 49-50% and the calorie content by about 36-37%. Now, if dieticians are prone to making such wrong calculations, then where do we ordinary people stand?

I would offer you a simple advice. Don’t follow this calorie counting method because it is only a matter of time before you quit it unhappily. Keep in mind that there are much better diet plans out there. To be honest, you really don’t need to follow another diet if you keep these five simple rules in mind:

a) Eat small meals: If you currently eat two or there large meals, split them into five or six smaller meals. Eat each of these small meals every two or three hours.

b) Exercise religiously: It takes hard work to gain anything in life and exercising is the hard work you need to do to lose weight. There is no second opinion about it; if you don’t exercise regularly, you wouldn’t achieve permanent weight loss, no matter what diet program you follow.

Exercises not only help you burn fat during the workout session but also after it. Besides, exercises build muscles for you, and muscles help you burn fat even when you are resting. As such, you don’t need to depend on your diet program alone for weight loss. Even if you quit dieting at some point of time, you still won’t gain weight if you eat right and workout regularly.

c) Eat right fats and carbs: It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the right and wrong carbs and fats. The wrong fats and carbs are contained in junk and fast foods; these “bad” carbs and “bad” fats are what made you overweight. Instead of consuming them, try to have natural fruits and vegetables for carbs, and fishes and olive oil for fats. You would be happier that way.

d) Increase your protein intake: When you increase your protein intake and combine that with regular workout, you would build more lean muscles than you would without protein. Keep in mind that muscles not only strengthen your body but also help you burn fat; therefore, you should make sure to build lean muscles on a continuous basis.

e) Increase your water intake: To ensure that your muscular tissues don’t become weak at any point of time through dehydration, you should drink adequate water daily. An adult needs to drink at least 8-10 glasses of water every day. Water keeps you hydrated, strengthens your muscle tissues, detoxifies your body and also boosts your metabolic rate. A boost in metabolic rate would in turn accelerate the weight loss process for you.

Tags: chef, dehydration, food, food items, olive oil, rocket scientist

Just caught this long article on Eating disorders on the main MSN.ca site. There are a lot of facts in this article and it is interesting that when people want to better their health sometimes they go to far and actually harm themselves by losing to much weight. I used to hate the talk of Anorexia and Bulimia being a disease thinking that it was just a way for some people to get attention but have really learned over the last few years that this is something that is a very dangerous disease with very deep rooted causes.

Eating disorders have increased in frequency as a consequence of society’s emphasis and preoccupation with thinness. Eating disorders are multi-factorial, with genetic, traumatic and nutritional causes. In North America, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the two most important eating disorders. They predominantly affect females.

What is the difference between anorexia and bulimia?

Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric condition where people intentionally starve themselves because of a false belief that they are fat, or for fear of becoming obese. In reality, they are almost always underweight or of normal weight when the condition starts. It is estimated that more than 90% of all those diagnosed with anorexia nervosa are female, often from middle and upper socioeconomic backgrounds. This disorder usually starts in the years between adolescence and young adulthood, with the average age at onset of 14 years. Anorexia nervosa afflicts about 1 per 100,000 in the population at large, but the rate is believed to be higher among Caucasian adolescent girls – about 1 in 200. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: affective disorder, alcohol abuse, American Psychiatric Association, anorexia nervosa, anxiety disorders, binge-purge syndrome, bulimia nervosa, cognitive behavioural therapy, constipation, Counselling, dangerous disease, dehydration, depression, digestive and reproductive systems, dizziness, drug abuse, Drug therapy, dysfunctional family environments, eating disorder, eating disorders, enemas, esophagitis, food, food craving, food cravings, food restriction, inflammation, low blood pressure, malnutrition, Mumps, nervous and hormonal systems, north America, obesity, obsessive compulsive disorder, olanzapine, panic disorder, parenting, Psychotherapy, runner, schizophrenia, social phobias, starvation, vomiting

That one last drink may have seemed like a great idea last night, but now you have to face the computer screen to search for home remedies for hangovers, you may be regretting it just a little bit!

The good news is you do not have to look any further. We have all the information you need!

Stop Your Hangover In Its Tracks

The answer is to drink – but not alcohol! Alcoholic drinks actually use up your body’s water stores, causing dehydration. This in turn causes some hangover symptoms, so drinking water is a good start.

Be careful because it is possible to drink too much water too fast. Large quantities of water can strip electrolytes from the body so it is better to try to replace these as well, or keep to around a half liter of water per hour.

Sports drinks are one of the best ways to get you feeling human again. They will boost your blood sugar, rehydrate you and provide the vital electrolytes (potassium, sodium etc) that you will have lost through the kidneys while you were drinking and overnight.

If you prefer not to have the refined sugar and additives that are in sports drinks, have plain water and eat bananas for potassium and fructose. Or make a banana smoothie by putting a couple of bananas in the blender with a little water or milk.

If you do not have bananas and cannot face going to the store right now, use apples or other sweet fruit (not citrus) or even plain honey dissolved in water. Honey contains electrolytes too. The less refined your honey is, the better.

Feverfew is a well known herbal remedy for headaches and can be taken in place of aspirin or other chemical painkillers. Raw persimmon and raw cabbage are also said to help with headaches. Aspirin can damage the lining of the stomach so it is not the best solution for a sensitive morning-after digestive system.

Exercise will help your circulatory system to detoxify. Take a brisk half hour walk as soon as you are able.

Next Time Around

Here are a few things that you can do before you go drinking to prevent the same thing happening next time around.

Drink water to prevent dehydration. The best rule is to have one glass of water between each alcoholic drink, but failing that, drink a couple of large glasses of water before you go to sleep.

Buy some Bifidus powder. This is friendly bacteria that detoxifies acetaldehyde, a byproduct of alcohol that is a major cause of hangover symptoms. One teaspoon in a large glass of water drunk before going to sleep should mean that you wake up hangover-free.

Foods high in unsaturated fats can reduce the effects of alcohol. American Indian lore says that 6 raw almonds eaten before drinking will stop you getting drunk. African tradition recommends peanut butter. Evening primrose oil is another option, especially for women who can benefit from taking it anyway. Take any of these before you start drinking to avoid having to search for home remedies for hangovers after your next night out!

Tags: chemical painkillers, dehydration, home remedies, primrose oil, sports drinks

Eating before or after a workout is one of the most important determinants to whether you perform at the peak of your ability and recover from the workout as best as possible. There is a lot of science behind exercise and eating and in this article, I found this article in a magazine at a hockey rink a couple of weeks ago and could not believe how great it was, thanks to the Calgary minor Hockey Association we can tell you exactly how to eat. Following this pregame and postgame eating should make your workouts better and your performance better as well.

THE PREGAME MEAL

What you eat each day can have a big effect on how you perform. What you consume right before a game can be critical. Wrong choices can slow you down and even take you out of the game, while right choices can give you that competitive edge. The pregame meal can supply your body with significant amounts of energy, although don’t rely on it to supply you with everything you’re going to need. You’ll want to have eaten the right kinds of food for several days prior to your game to charge up your muscles with glycogen. Your body converts food into glycogen – the key energy source your muscles use during intense physical activity such as hockey. The pre-event meal can help with the following; Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alberta, competition eating, dehydration, diarrhea, eating exercise, energy, fat dairy products, fatigue, food, food choices, food remaining, hockey, Illinois, key energy, nausea, postgame meal, pregame meal, registered dietitian, Sport Medicine Council of Alberta, sports drinks, sports performance, the Calgary minor Hockey Association, University of Illinois, vomiting

Sometimes we just do not eat very well and I ran across these 100 eating tips that would improve anyones diet very quickly in a very good direction, so gobble them up!

1. Add just one fruit or veggie serving daily. Get comfortable with that, then add an extra serving until you reach 8 to 10 a day.
2. Eat at least two servings of a fruit or veggie at every meal.
3. Resolve never to supersize your food portions–unless you want to supersize your clothes.
4. Make eating purposeful, not mindless. Whenever you put food in your mouth, peel it, unwrap it, plate it, and sit. Engage all of the senses in the pleasure of nourishing your body.
5. Start eating a big breakfast. It helps you eat fewer total calories throughout the day.
6. Make sure your plate is half veggies and/or fruit at both lunch and dinner.

Are there Any Easy Tricks to Help Me Cut Calories?

7. Eating out? Halve it, and bag the rest. A typical restaurant entree has 1,000 to 2,000 calories, not even counting the bread, appetizer, beverage, and dessert.
8. When dining out, make it automatic: Order one dessert to share.
9. Use a salad plate instead of a dinner plate.
10. See what you eat. Plate your food instead of eating out of the jar or bag.
11. Eat the low-cal items on your plate first, then graduate. Start with salads, veggies, and broth soups, and eat meats and starches last. By the time you get to them, you’ll be full enough to be content with smaller portions of the high-calorie choices.
12. Instead of whole milk, switch to 1 percent. If you drink one 8-oz glass a day, you’ll lose 5 lb in a year.
13. Juice has as many calories, ounce for ounce, as soda. Set a limit of one 8-oz glass of fruit juice a day.
14. Get calories from foods you chew, not beverages. Have fresh fruit instead of fruit juice.
15. Keep a food journal. It really works wonders.
16. Follow the Chinese saying: “Eat until you are eight-tenths full.”
17. Use mustard instead of mayo.
18. Eat more soup. The noncreamy ones are filling but low-cal.
19. Cut back on or cut out caloric drinks such as soda, sweet tea, lemonade, etc. People have lost weight by making just this one change. If you have a 20-oz bottle of Coca-Cola every day, switch to Diet Coke. You should lose 25 lb in a year.
20. Take your lunch to work.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: appetizer, Baltimore, beverage, Brown University School of Medicine, Cal Dinner, cancer, Coca-Cola, counseling, dehydration, dietitian, energy bars, food, food journal, food portions, Food suppliers, fresh fruit, heart disease, leftover food, microwave, no-cal beverage, nutrient-rich food, olive oil, online diet programs, online weight loss programs, peanut oil, Pennsylvania State University, Peter Pan, registered dietitian, smallest fast-food burger, sports drinks, veggies