Eating For Health

How can you add some activity to your every day life?   So much to do?   Commute to work.   Sit at a desk job. Commute back home and watch some TV or have some other screen time.   How can you switch up a sedentary lifestyle to a more active lifestyle?   And doing so will lower your risk of a number of diseases.   Just moving more can help one lose weight or keep off the weight you have lost.   And reducing your weight by 5% or more can lower your risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.   An article in Verywell Health described, 9 Ways to Beat a Sedentary Lifestyle .   What are some of their suggestions and others you can try? Walking – aim for a 30 minute walk a day.   I used to commute to work, have a desk job, but planned a walk with friends at lunch every day.    No time for 30 minutes?   Then take three 10-minute walks each day. If you commute by bus or train, then get off a few blocks before your stop and walk the rest of the way.     In the morning and at night, t

Are there things you can do to rev up your metabolism?   Yes.   There are things you can do to rev it up in the short run and other things that will rev up your metabolism longer term.   Some people complain they have a slow metabolism and envy those who seem to have a faster metabolism.   Well there are people that will have a faster metabolism than you for a number of reasons.   So why do some people seem to have a more revved up metabolism?   What are the things you can do to boost your metabolism both in the short term and long term? Who has a faster metabolism? Men – guys will have a faster metabolism than women, even if they are the same height and weight.   Why?   Because guys have more muscle than women. Tall people – the taller one is, the higher their metabolism.   Age – younger people have a faster metabolism than older people.   Metabolism starts to slow after age 40 and some say before that.   It slows about 5% per decade.   But some of this “slowing” is due to

Fat – we need fat in our diets.   So many people focus on cutting carbs but rarely do people focus on cutting the fat in their diets or changing their diet to include healthier fats.   And there are healthy fats we should be sure we have in our diets.   So, what are the fats we should be cutting back on and what are the healthy fats we should be choosing?   And where do we go to get advice on what fats we should be putting in our diets?    What are the fats we should cut back on, the bad fats? Saturated fats are the fats the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends we cut back on.   Why?   Because it is the saturated fats that raise your cholesterol, especially raising the bad cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol.   As the AHA notes, “high levels of LDL cholesterol in your blood increase your risk of heart disease and stroke.”    Foods with saturated fat Not easy to meet their recommendation though on how much saturated fat you should aim for as only 5-6% of your calo