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If you live in Irvine, CA, you may already have sampled “the Impossible Burger” or “Beyond Meat.” These new fast foods are indications that a plant based lifestyle is becoming more popular. Exactly what is a plant-based diet? It focuses on whole-foods, those closest to their natural state. It limits or completely avoids animal products. It includes a wide variety of legumes, whole grains, fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds. There are few refined foods, such as those that contain white flour, processed oil and extra sugar. While not all plant based diets are vegetarian or vegan, all vegetarian and vegan diets are plant based.

Just because it’s made from a plant doesn’t make it healthy.

I recently saw something that made me question what the American diet has become. It was deep-fried breaded sweet corn and a side dish of melted butter to drizzle over it. That’s definitely not a healthy route or in the spirit of plant-based. Corn is a starchy food, and while it can be a small part of the diet. Just like any type of diet, you need a variety of fruits and vegetables in a plant based diet. It should contain green leafy vegetables, plus vegetables of many different colors. Each color provides different micronutrients and phytonutrients that your body requires. You also need a good source of protein, such as lentils, beans or nuts. The key to a healthy plant based diet includes variety and whole foods—-food that is closest to its natural state.

A plant based diet can help you lose weight.

America is fighting a losing battle and that battle is with obesity and losing. A plant based diet can be ammunition in the battle to help take weight off and prevent it from returning. Plant-based diets are higher in fiber and exclude processed food, which goes a long way in helping you shed weight. There are now many studies that show that people on plant-based diets lose more weight than those who are simply cutting calories with non-vegetarian diets.

There are other health benefits to a plant-based diet.

Besides benefiting weight loss, the rich mix of vegetables, fruits, nuts and whole-grains prove beneficial for heart health. It significantly lowers the risk for heart disease, but including sugary drinks like colas, fruit juice or refined grain reduced the benefits it offered. It also lowered the risk for several types of cancer, including gastrointestinal cancer. It also helps prevent cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s.

• If you have diabetes, a plant-based lifestyle can help manage your diabetes. If you don’t it helps lower the risk of developing it by as much as 34%.
• While processing can be bad, frozen and canned vegetables without additives are healthy alternatives.
• A plant based diet includes fruits, vegetables, healthy fat from avocados, coconut or olive oil, legumes, seeds, nuts and nut butters, plant based milk, spices and herbs, plant-based protein and coffee, tea or water.
• Not all plant-based diets are vegan or vegetarian. Some animal products can supplement it. It can include eggs, poultry, seafood, beef, pork and organic dairy products—preferably from grass fed cows.

For more information, contact us today at Next Level Fitness

If you’ve managed to fill up the day every time you’ve considered starting a workout program, you have to wonder why you keep procrastinating. Whether you’ve never worked out or it’s been a while, finding ways to avoid starting is a common problem. The first of the tips for fitness newbies is just do it! Don’t overthink it. Put a time in your schedule specifically for working out. Whether you’re going to start by coming to the gym and starting a program or start more slowly with a walking program, do something!

Judging how much you can do and how hard to workout is tough.

Some people will be surprised at how much they can do, while others new to exercise or who haven’t worked out for a while, will be surprised at how quickly they tire or their lack of strength. If you haven’t worked out for a while or ever worked out, get help from someone who can judge your fitness level. I highly recommend using a personal trainer for a while. The trainer will make sure you work your hardest without overdoing.

Be consistent.

Working out sporadically won’t give you the results you want. A consistent effort is what you need, with a workout schedule. If you don’t have a workout scheduled at the same time each day, you’ll be surprised at how hard it is to maintain your workout schedule. Whether you do it the first thing in the morning, over your lunch hour or after work, making exercise a habit is important. It makes you feel like something is missing when you don’t do it.

Don’t forget to eat healthy.

You can’t out-exercise a bad diet. If you workout for an hour and then gorge yourself on junk food, not only will you gain weight, but you won’t have the nutrients to build muscles and remain healthy. You’ll find that not only does the workout make you feel great, but the healthy eating adds to it. If weight loss is a goal, you have to change bad eating habits that put on weight in the first place.

• Don’t try to push yourself beyond your limit if it means your form suffers. Having the proper form or each exercise provides more benefits and helps prevent injury.
• Make sure you warm up and cool down every time you workout. Warming up can help prevent injury and cooling down helps prevent blood pooling that can cause dizziness.
• Make sure part of your workout program includes things you enjoy. Rock climbing, dancing, hiking and swimming are a few examples of ways to exercise that can be fun. It makes it easier to stick with your workout program.
• Set goals and track your progress. Your goals should include clearly defined objectives, ways to measure success and a time frame. Winners keep score.

For more information, contact us today at Next Level Fitness

From the end of November to the end of the year, there’s a bounty of sweets to tempt you and too many activities that take away from your workout schedule. It’s a new year now and time to get back on track and if you haven’t started a fitness program, time to start one. People in Irvine, CA who get back into the habit in January are glad they did. Not only does it help them stay fit and lose weight, it also helps lift those after holiday blues.

You control the type of year it will be.

Whether you’re going to have a year of regret or one of victory is your decision. It takes focus and determination, which eventually turns into habit. Even if you ate an entire tin of cookies or cleaned your plate several times at one meal during the holidays, it’s a new day and time for you to take charge. Start by focusing on cleaning up your eating habits. It’s going to be tough, especially since a lot of holiday food is loaded with sugar. Start by planning menus and making food ahead for the week, including snacks, so you won’t be tempted to sneak those sugary treats into the grocery cart or be tempted to get carryout on the way home.

While you’re focusing on planning meals, don’t forget to add exercise to your schedule.

It’s easy to skip a workout when you haven’t put it in your schedule. There never seems to be enough time in the day to do it. That’s why adding it to your daily schedule and making it an appointment with the gym is so important. Just like scheduling your workout, scheduling your meals and eating at a specific time can help, too. Try to maintain continuity throughout the week, even on the weekend. It will help get you into a routine.

If you’re getting back in the groove, don’t try to pick up where you left off.

The older you are, the quicker your body loses muscle tissue. If it’s been a month or so since your last workout, you’ll be surprised at how much strength and endurance you’ve lost. Ease into the first few workouts, doing less than you did before you quit for the holidays. You’ll save yourself the potential of injury and the super sore muscles that can cause you to skip your next workout. You’ll be able to get back to your workout within a few weeks without injury.

• Don’t forget to get adequate sleep. You may have skipped critical hours of sleep during the holidays. Not only does that affect your energy, studies show that lack of sleep can cause you to gain weight.
• Don’t forget to drink plenty of water. It’s tougher to drink water during the winter months, but you can still get dehydrated during the winter months. Make sure you drink 8-eight ounces of water a day.
• Don’t just rely on the gym for exercise. Have fun with the family or exercise when you’re watching TV. Going out dancing and taking walks add to your workout schedule.
• When you get back to the gym or start a fitness program, you’ll realize just how great it feels to burn off the stress of the day with a program of exercise.

For more information, contact us today at Next Level Fitness

Whether you feel like hiding in the closet when holidays roll around or simply love the holidays, but find you can’t seem to keep up with all the demands, it’s time to make changes. You can keep your holidays happy and healthy in Irvine, CA, by planning ahead, taking time for yourself and focusing on what’s really important in your life. That’s easier to say than to do. After all, where do you find time for yourself when there are so many tugs on your time, making it impossible to keep up the pace.

Prioritizing is the key.

For most people, family comes first. After all, that’s what the holidays are all about, family. Jobs and paying bills are the next priority. Beyond that, you need to identify not only which ones tasks are more important, but also which ones need to be done immediately. If you can delay it, do that. If you can delete it, of course that’s the thing to do. Don’t forget, you can also delegate some of the responsibility or combine it with another priority and do it. An example of that would be to spend some great family time baking cookies together for the holidays.

Taking care of your family means taking care of yourself.

If you’re not at peak health or stressed out, getting everything done is even more difficult. Stress comes in many forms, but it’s always there waiting for you. Learn some meditation or deep breathing techniques to help lower the stress levels in minutes. Sometimes, even that won’t help, so burning off those hormones of stress is the next action. Make sure that your priority list includes a program of regular exercise. You’ll feel energized, less stressed and get more done when you stick with your program of exercise.

Eating healthy is easier when you plan ahead.

Sure it’s a time for sugar cookies and Christmas treats, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make meals healthier. Take an hour midweek and check out what’s on sale at the grocery. Create a week’s menus, including snacks. Make a shopping list and a family night of shopping on Friday. On the weekend, make all the meals for the week. Make extra and freeze some for the weeks ahead. Keep snacks and meals healthy. If you happen to eat a few treats during the week, it’s okay. Most of your meals will be super healthy and you’re allowed a few treats occasionally.

• If you don’t have a program of exercise, wing it. Walking more briskly, parking further from the door at the mall and spending less time circling or playing a game with the kids to zoom through chores can be a great start.
• Even if your day is full, don’t burn the midnight oil. Get adequate sleep. Not only will it keep you alert throughout the day and be heart healthy, you’ll also be less tempted to overeat. Lack of sleep increases the hunger hormone and reduces the hormone that makes you feel full.
• When you’re planning your day, keep an hour or two open, just in case things take longer. Have a few must do—but not necessarily today—items at the side that can be done if you find you have extra time.
• Plan something active for the whole family. Everyone, especially kids, will be glad to have an activity where they can run, make noise and get rid of the stress.

For more information, contact us today at Next Level Fitness!

You’ve been told for ages that eating fat will definitely make you sick, but unfortunately, the mega study that supported that was paid for by the sugar industry. The truth is that sugar consumption, rather than fat consumption is more lethal to your health. It can cause metabolic disease and the most common form of metabolic disease is diabetes. Eating excess sugar can cause metabolic syndrome. That syndrome includes insulin resistance, the precursor to type II diabetes. It also leads to obesity including visceral fat—abdominal fat, high cholesterol, inflammation and high blood pressure.

Eating sugary products promotes sugar hunger.

Sugar is addictive. It gives you a high, like an opioid and raises your energy level as your blood sugar spikes. Unfortunately, with each spike, there comes a dangerous and sudden drop. That’s when you’re starved for more sugar. It can even be worse if the sugar you’re eating is in the form of HFCS—high fructose corn syrup—which causes leptin resistance. Leptin is the hormone that tells your brain that you’re full. In other words, it takes higher and higher amounts of the hormone to feel full, so you continue to eat, even past that feeling of bloating.

A diet that’s high in added sugar leads to insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance is the diabetes precursor and it comes from eating too much sugar, too frequently. Not only does it add weight, where the weight is distributed is important. It packs on around the mid-section and on the abdomen, where it crowds internal organs. When your body gets continuous rushes of sugar, it sends out more and more insulin. The cells fail to pick up the message of sugar in the bloodstream eventually and fail to grab the glucose for energy. Eventually, it becomes full blown diabetes.

High consumption of sugar can cause non-alcoholic fatty tissue liver disease.

Not only does the pancreas have to work hard when there’s too much sugar, the liver does, too. That’s doubly true if the type of sugar is fructose. It causes the liver to suffer from stress and inflammation, while allowing fat to accumulate. It’s the leading cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Studies of fatty liver disease show that people who consume more soft drinks tend to have this condition more than people who don’t.

• Eating too much sugar is about more than just metabolic disease. It can increase blood pressure and may be just as much of a culprit as salt.
• How much sugar should you consume. The AHA— American Heart Association—suggests that women should have less than 6-tsp and men have 9-tsp of added sugar a day.
• It’s harder to identify added sugar in processed foods, rather than those you make yourself. You have to read the labels and look for words like cane juice, dextrose, beet sugar and fructose. There’s a lot of names for sugar and if they’re high on the list of ingredients or there are several sugar synonyms, don’t eat it.
• Sugar consumption can cause other problems, such as gall stones, varicose veins and even affect your eyesight or cause premature aging by stimulating the production of advanced glycation end products—AGEs—that attack collagen and elastin, necessary to keep skin looking younger.

For more information, contact us today at Next Level Fitness