Say NO To Diabetes | Tips from FROME PERSONAL TRAINER

On the verge of diabetes? Eat right to keep it at bay.

When type 2 diabetes sets in, you can expect a life full of tedious and exact portion control, medications, blood tests, and injections. But what if you could catch diabetes before it ever set in, and thereby avoid all of these potential problems?

Thanks to a diagnosis of pre-diabetes, you can. If you're willing to change your diet.

Know the Numbers

With pre-diabetes, your fasting blood sugar level (level of sugar in your blood) is between 100 and 125 mg/dl. These measurements butt up right against the 126 mg/dl that indicates you're diabetic, and if you don't make some lifestyle changes, you can easily enter the land of diabetes. By watching what you eat, you can actually lower your blood sugar levels, preventing pre-diabetes from turning into type 2 diabetes.

Ready to sidestep diabetes by what you put in your mouth? Then sit down and take notes on your new diet plan.

Eat Less

If you're overweight and have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes, your first step toward a healthier diet that can reduce your risk for diabetes is to lose weight. The best way to do that is to look at how much you eat every day. Spend time eating out of boredom? You can't do that any more. If you're going to fight off diabetes, you're going to have to eat for energy. That means listening to your stomach and only eating when you're hungry and stopping when you're full. A few easy tips to help you do this include drinking a glass of water before each meal, going to bed earlier (this will prevent unhealthy late-night snacking), and chewing your food well and slowly.

Eat Better

Now that you're eating less food each day, you'll need to eat the right kinds of foods if you really want to help your blood sugar. Instead of greasy, fatty foods, go for something a little healthier. This means grilled or broiled instead of fried food, more fruits and vegetables, and leaner cuts of meat. It also means saying no on occasion, but there is good news about your sweet tooth.

Choose Wisely

While you don't want to stock up on cookies and cakes, you don't have to mark them off your list altogether either. With pre-diabetes, the secret to success is moderation and being choosy. That means only having a small slice of cake during very special occasions. And instead of going back for seconds, relish in the piece you had and enjoy it so much that you don't need a second piece.

Choose Daily

In addition to choosing which sweets to eat and when, you've got to make other dietary decisions on a daily or even hourly basis. Should you go with chicken or a hamburger? Baked beans or a salad? Find out what is in different dishes and opt for the option that has less sugar, fat, and calories. Low-fat, low-calorie options not look too appetizing? Then go for the hamburger. But only eat half of it and skip the fries. Tomorrow, give the chicken a try. Or better yet, give up meat one day a week and focus on getting more fruits and vegetables.

Eat Up the Gym

As you probably suspected, what you put in your body doesn't have the final say over whether or not your pre-diabetes will turn into type 2 diabetes. If you want to fend off diabetes and pull yourself out of the pre-diabetic realm, you'll also need to spend some time in the gym.

By working out regularly, you help your body make use of the food you eat each day. That way, your food gets burned off as energy instead of sitting around and increasing your blood sugar levels. So eat well, and make sure you couple your new eating habits with regular physical activity for maximum diabetes-fighting power.

Baby steps to a better diet in Bath

Big diet adjustments have you overwhelmed? Then start with baby steps.

Whether you need to change your diet in order to shed pounds or improve the health of your heart, it can be hard to know where to start. If you've set a weight loss or health goal for yourself, the best way to achieve and maintain that goal isn't to completely overhaul how you live your life overnight. You're more likely to maintain good habits if you start out slow and steady.

So what baby steps can you take to make a healthy diet a life habit instead of a mere goal?

Sip on This

It may sound simple, but drinking more water is a great goal to get your healthy lifestyle started - especially if you love soda. Did you know that if you drink two glasses of soda every day for a year, you will gain 24 pounds? Sound crazy?

Consider this: The sugar found in sodas, caffeine products, and juices taste great, but these drinks may actually make you thirstier instead of quenching your thirst like water does. That's why you wind up downing glass after glass of soda when you go out to eat.

Try replacing at least one soda a day with a cup of ice water. You'll cut out excess sugar and calories, and the cold water will help you burn calories by forcing your body to warm up the water. If you simply can't cut soda completely out of your diet, drink diet soda instead of regular.

At the same time you're cutting soda out, you should also switch to skimmed milk.

Even drinking one-percent milk adds hundreds or thousands of grams of fat to your body each year. Skimmed milk may taste a little different, but it still has the same amount of vitamins and minerals and less fat. If you're currently drinking whole milk, switch to two percent. Give it a few weeks, and then jump to one percent for a couple weeks, and finally work your way to skim.

Go Color

When you think of colorful foods, don't think about red velvet cake or green icing. Think about fruits and vegetables. Having a colorful plate at each meal is a healthy thing to work toward, so take small steps to add them into your meals and snacks. If you find yourself reaching for chips or cookies at snack time, try an apple or baby carrots instead. And don't worry about becoming a vegetarian. Including at least one fruit or vegetable at each meal will help you take great strides toward a healthier diet.

Stay Balanced

Breakfast is often overlooked and forgotten. After all, many people are too busy in the morning to sit down to eat or perhaps they just aren't hungry first thing in the morning. However, eating even a small breakfast can make a big difference in your health. Skip breakfast, and you can expect to be extra hungry when lunch rolls around, causing you to overeat and add extra, unneeded calories to your physique. Don't think you can become a breakfast eater? Go with a small piece of toast, a hard-boiled egg, or a spoonful of peanut butter to get started.

Also, be sure to include healthy snacks as part of your day, and don't let more than a few hours go by without food. Otherwise you will suffer the same fate as if you didn't eat breakfast. You'll become overly hungry and eat more than necessary at the next meal.

Other small changes to make in your meals include using olive oil instead of butter, switching to whole grain breads and pastas, and checking nutrition labels to reduce sodium and sugar in your diet. But don't sweat making all these changes at once. Remember - baby steps!

Eat well all year round! Diet Tips in Bath

A few reasons you should eat well from January 1 to December 31.

Life is one huge seasonal event. Spring turns into summer, summer to autumn, autumn to winter, and winter to spring. As you pass through these seasons, you go through your own seasons: from being a toddler to a child, the teenage years, and adulthood. And while the world and your age may operate seasons, your eating habits should stay sure and steady throughout the year.

Why? Good question. Here are a few answers to help you stay on track with your healthy eating ways.

Swimsuit Season Is No Surprise

Have too much to do each day and not enough time to figure out when you should start your swimsuit exercise and diet regime? Then why not stay in swimsuit shape all year long? That way, if you just happen to take a trip to the tropics in mid-February, you will get to have to wear your most flattering swimsuit instead of that unappealing sweat suit you've had since high school.

Not planning to hit a tropical locale during the cold months? You'll feel comfortable enough in your own skin to hang out at the indoor pool when a company trip has you living in a hotel for a few days.

Consistency Does the Body Good

Imagine dropping dirty oil into your car's engine for a few months every year. Even with six or eight months of feeding your car the best oil available, the dirty old oil will gradually wear your car out. The same is true for your body. In order to get the most from your body, you need to maintain a healthy weight all year long, throughout every season. It may not be easy to lay off those fattening comfort foods during the cold winter months, but your body will thank you.

Energy Up

When you wake up and the weather is dreadful, it can be difficult to get out of bed and get moving. Gain some extra pounds during the cold months, and it will be even harder. That's because it takes more energy to move your heavy frame than your lighter, more svelte frame. Help make it easier to get out and about by feeding yourself healthy calories that provide energy to get through the day. Leave the extra, unnecessary calories alone - unless you're looking for a way to have less energy.

Farewell, Seasonal SADness

Each year, folks around the globe suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) during the darker, colder months. With SAD, you experience light symptoms of depression that make you feel tired for no reason. Eat the right foods and maintain a healthy weight, however, and you will have increased energy and a better outlook on life, making it possible to fend off SAD. In the event you do experience a bout with SAD, your healthy weight can cause the episode to pass faster.

Guilt, Be Gone!

If you've ever let your weight go up and down, you know what happens when it's on the up and up: guilt! With year-round weight management, that self-loathing goes bye-bye. In its place is a confidence you've never experienced. And while others are wondering how you're saying no to a third piece of pie, you're content knowing the benefits of staying healthy 365 days a year.

Make It Happen

Want to keep your body in tiptop shape every day of the year? Then you're going to have to make some changes to how you operate. Try the following tips to maintain a healthy weight from now until this time next year:

•                get rid of fattening foods that are hard to resist

•                tell your loved ones what you're doing and encourage them to get onboard

•                make your own food as often as possible

•                adopt an exercise routine that you can maintain

Don't get upset when you eat more than you should, but use it as a learning experience to avoid doing so next time

Eating on Overtime- Diet in Bath

A few tricks to keep your diet healthy even when your job has you working late.

You've worked a long time to get where you are at your job. You've worked even longer to get yourself into healthy eating habits. Suddenly, you're at a pivotal moment when your job has you working over and you're stuck wondering how to avoid falling back into your unhealthy-eating ways.

What can you do to keep your diet and that of your family from suffering because of your late hours?

Plan Ahead

Is working overtime a given for you? Then stop making excuses and start planning ahead of time. Know you're going to stay late at the office or the work site a few days each week? Don't wait until you're working overtime to figure out how you're going to avoid dropping by the fast-food restaurant on the way home. Think about it a night or two ahead of time and do something about it.

What exactly can you do? Do what busy people across the planet do. Cook a week's worth of meals on your off days and toss the food in the freezer. That way, when you're pressed for time, all you have to do is toss dinner in the oven for a few minutes, and you're good to go. If you aren't motivated to cook a week's worth of meals at once, cook too much food every time you cook and eat on it for two or three nights. You'll get tired of eating spaghetti after two nights, but eating leftovers will save you an incredible amount of time and prevent you from making poor food choices.

Snack Healthily

Dinnertime should be a sacred time during which you sit down with the entire family to be together and discuss the day's happenings. While the meal itself is sacred, don't hold the time as such. Instead, have a little flex with your mealtime.

Have to stay at the office for another hour? Don't fret. Just grab a handful of carrot sticks or a dozen fresh blueberries to help you fight the temptation to grab a greasy pizza on the way home. And before you walk into your last meeting of the day, call your family and remind them that they can find healthy snacks in the kitchen cabinet. This way, they'll have a small and healthy snack instead of filling up on snack cakes and pudding cups.

Spread the Love

Want a great way to get out of spending an hour cooking when you get home after a grueling day at work? Show your family around the kitchen. Even youngsters can lend a hand in the cooking effort, and every minute you have someone helping in the kitchen is another minute saved, which puts you another minute closer to eating time.

Don't have a spouse or kids? Beg your roommate to help as you try to maintain a healthy diet despite a hectic work schedule. Living on your own? Then you may just need to cook all your weekly meals at one time after all. Or you may want to hunt down a business that specializes in cooking healthy meals and will deliver the meals to your home or even your workplace. That way, even if you're stuck working until the wee hours of the morning, you can enjoy a healthy and filling dinner.

When Dinner Is at Work

Sometimes, you've got to work so late that you're not worried about getting home in time for a healthy dinner. You're worried about getting dinner at all. But don't let these situations turn into a fattening take-out meal. Go potluck with your coworkers!

To do this, talk with your coworkers about the idea the day before you're stuck at work for the long haul. Have everyone bring one healthy food item, and have everyone sit down for dinner together. It may not be as nice as being at home, but sharing meal responsibilities with your work family is a surefire way to increase camaraderie, promote healthier lives, and help you get the night's work done in record time.

Eat Fresh, Seasonal Grub - Weight Loss in Bath

Wanna Be Healthier?

Eat more berries.

It seems a new fad diet hits the market every day. Sometimes, these fads take the world by storm, as people are anxious to cash in on the promises that such diets make. Eventually, these fad diets go the way of all fads and make room for the next fad to come along and take over the constant dieter's imagination.

But truly health-conscious people realize that good health doesn't come and go like fads. It's a lifestyle that requires vigilance and dedication. If you're beyond fads and are interested in adding another burst of good health to your life, it may be time to add some berries to your meals and snacks.

Why Berries?

Besides being able to fit a dozen of them in your hand for a snack, berries offer an array of health benefits. They're filled with fiber, vitamins (vitamins B, C, and K to name a few), minerals (iodine, manganese, and folate, among others), and everyone's favorite cancer-fighting chemical: antioxidants.

Doubtless God could have made a better berry (than the strawberry).-William Allen Butler

On top of this, each berry you consume during the day has special properties that make it particularly worth your while. For example, cranberries help you ward off urinary tract infections, strawberries lower your blood pressure and increase your good (high-density lipoprotein or HDL) cholesterol, blueberries are considered useful for fighting coughs, and blackberries are great at protecting you against heart disease. Want to get the biggest bang for your berry buck? Don't just eat one type of berry all by itself. Mix up a few types of different berries, and the accumulative result will be substantially greater than eating one type of berry on its own.

Believe it or not, there are more reasons to put berries higher on your priority list. Because not only are they delicious and full of great stuff for your body, but they're also low in calories and add no fat, cholesterol, or sodium to your diet. So by eating plenty of berries, you add nothing but good stuff to your body!

How Berries

No matter what time of the day or night, there is always an opportunity to add some berries. Want some easy ways to slip your favorite berries into your daily regimen? No problem.

Breakfast: Eating berries first thing in the morning is a great way to give your body a boost for the day. Add berries by tossing some cut-up strawberries or a handful of blueberries on top of pancakes; add blackberries to a cup of vanilla yogurt; or sprinkle some raspberries on top of your favorite cereal. When you're in a time crunch, spread some organic blackberry jam on a piece of toast or drink a glass of cranberry juice.

Lunch: It may seem obvious, but a small bowl of berries goes with just about any food on planet Earth. Mix a few raspberries and blackberries with some blueberries and strawberries, and you'll have a berry-tastic lunch that will make all your other lunches seem dull.

Dinner: You may not think that salads are the most exciting food, but berries can change that. With a few strawberry slivers, your green salad gets some much-needed color and flavor. Feel really creative? Find a recipe for berry-based salsa, make it up as directed, and add it on top of your favorite chicken or fish dish.

Snacks: Between meals and need something to keep your hunger at bay? Leave the candy bars and potato chips on the shelf and go with a couple handfuls of berries instead. Having a hard time finding fresh berries to snack on? Get a frozen bag of your favorite berries and have them ready for a cool treat!

Good Carbs v Bad Carbs - Lose Weight in Bath

Understanding the difference between refined carbs and those other ones.

You're bombarded with information about carbohydrates. You may have even been frightened of them at one point - or maybe you are right now. However, not all carbs do the same thing. Actually, some carbs are good for you and necessary to keep your body going strong. Where do refined carbohydrates fall on the health scale? You're about to find out.

Not the Best

To get a refined carbohydrate, a food is taken that contains carbs. Then, everything else in the food is taken away, leaving only the refined carbohydrate, which is either a starch or a sugar.

When eaten, refined carbohydrates give your body a quick boost in glucose (a.k.a. sugar), which can be helpful right before you get started in some sort of athletic endeavor, such as a sprint or a soccer game. However, eating refined carbohydrates on a regular basis, regardless of what you're doing afterward, can leave you with a rather useless store of carbs.

See Them Now

To avoid eating too many refined carbohydrates, you should know what they look like and where they're most often found. Thankfully, they're rather easy to see, so you can sidestep them with ease. Most often, refined carbs are white on their own, but they can hide inside various foods without being recognized.

The following are a few common foods that contain refined carbohydrates:

•                white bread

•                white rice

•                foods ending with the word "starch"

•                foods that use puffy or shredded grains

What to Choose Instead

Since refined carbohydrates aren't doing your body much good, you ought to do your best to go for foods with the other kind of carbohydrates. Whether you call them good carbs or all-natural carbs doesn't matter. What matters is what comes with these carbohydrates that is stripped from their refined peers.

One of the items that gets stripped from carbohydrates during the refining process is fiber. Since fiber is helpful in your goal of good bowel health; avoiding diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and kidney stones; and obtaining and maintaining a healthy weight, you don't want to spend much time eating foods that have gone through a fiber-stealing process. Instead of going with fiber-stripped carbohydrates, choose foods that contain fiber-rich carbs. Good choices include fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains.

Your Need for Carbohydrates

Still not convinced that you need carbohydrates in your diet? Has the popular no-carb diet craze messed with your head so much that you continue to fear this necessary part of your daily regimen? Then there's something you should know.

While you don't want to fill up on refined carbohydrates (as you already know), you do want to eat plenty of good carbohydrates. In fact, otherwise healthy adults ought to use as much as 65 percent of their daily intake of calories to consume carbs. That means that every other bite you eat should contain healthy carbohydrates for optimal health. So what are you waiting for? Wave goodbye to those white, worn out refined carbohydrates, and open your arms and your mouth to health-boosting whole grains, fruits, and vegetables!

Why No-Carb Diet Works

If you've ever gotten into a diet that cuts you off from all carbohydrates, you probably lost some weight. If you're supposed to need carbs, why did you have such great weight loss success when you cut them from your diet? There are three reasons.

The first is that cutting carbohydrates from your diet often results in a loss of water weight, as not eating carbs may cause you to urinate more frequently and with greater volume.

The second is that any diet that forces you to avoid one sort of food altogether will result in eating fewer calories. While this is a good thing at first, it's healthier to trim calories from all the food groups instead of picking on carbohydrates only.

The third is that diets that trim carbohydrates do not trim protein or fat, which both cause you to feel full faster and longer, reducing your desire to eat.