Glucosamine- The secret to healthy joints

Glucosamine is one of a group of substances known as amino sugars, hence the "Glucos-" and "-amine" group. Though it looks like a sugar, it is only used to structure body tissues, instead of being a form of energy.
Glucosamine has been proven in more than 300 studies to actually build joint cartilage, helping those with osteoarthritis and when combined with Chondroitin sulfate, it can have an even greater effect.
Though you might have heard Glucosamine is only good for the joints,it is also involved in the formation of the nails, tendons, skin, eyes, bones, ligaments, and heart valves! It's amazing at how beneficial this supplement can be. Your body responds to it well since Glucosamine is already produced in the body and is found in high concentrations around your joints, but it can be even more beneficial and even therapeutic if extra supplementation is taken.
Even more reasons to take Glucosamine:
Helps with~
asthma
bursitis
candidiasis
food allergies
osteoporosis
respiratory allergies
tendinitis
vaginitis
and various skin problems*
*info from Prescription for Nutritional Healing 4th Ed. by, Phyllis A. Balch, CNC

Glucosamine 7 by Nutrilite gives you 1500mg Glucosamine Sulfate, a blend of 890mg of MSM, Chondroitin Sulfate, Boron, Manganese Amino Acid Chelate, Hyaluronic Acid, 50mg of their patented ingredient 5-LOXIN Boswellia Serrata Extract, and a Vitamin C Blend

Green Tea

Green tea is one of the Earth's great gems that anyone can enjoy on a daily basis. The multitude of health benefits offered by this wonderful leaf range from weight loss perks to antioxidant protective properties.
Studies have shown that epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), a particular polyphenol in green tea, has the ability to penetrate into the human cell to protect it from the free radical, hydrogen peroxide. Green tea has also been shown to help protect the body from cancers, lower blood cholesterol levels, and reduce the instance of blood clots.
Another popular use for green tea is in weight loss since it can promote the burning of fat, help with the regulation of blood sugar and insulin levels, and give a mild energy boost!
Even though coffee can give you energy with its naturally occurring caffeine, some people have commented on the energy boost through green tea without the jittery side-effects.
An easy way to enjoy green tea~
Boil 4 cups of water on the stove
Remove pot from heat source and place 3-5 green tea bags (depending on preferred strength) in hot water and cover with lid for about 10-15 minutes.
Pour in large pitcher and fill the rest with purified water and ice cubes
You can add squeezed lemon or honey, depending on your preference.
I love to use our ZSENSO® Green Tea with our Truvia to make it sweet without adding calories!

Getting in shape isn't for a season

Getting is shape may be for a reason, but it certainly should not be for a season. It needs to be for a lifetime.
As I was exercising on the bike today doing my cardio, I was thinking about how much I incorporate exercise in my lifestyle. We have been stationed in Okinawa for almost 4 years now, and I have lived here for over 2 years. I remember when I got here, I went to check out the gym facilities so I would know where I would be spending a significant amount of my time ;-). The gym was suitable then, and it is certainly suitable now!
I make it a point to exercise almost everyday. I average about 5 times a week, sometimes 6, and it varies in intensity. My style of exercise depends on the particular goal that I'm trying to obtain, but one thing is for certain: I don't go any period of time without working out. It is certainly part of my lifestyle. In fact, if I go even a couple of days without it, I can tell by the way I feel, the way I sleep, and the amount of energy I have.
You know you've got the lifestyle when you start planning everyday with exercise in mind. You know you've got it when you don't let excuses get in the way. If you've got it, you'll find a way to work in fitness no matter what you have going on. It will become who you are, and you will know when you've missed it.
Incorporating fitness for a lifetime is like saving money for your retirement. Even though a hefty retirement account can be developed quickly if you have the funds, you usually don't wait until it is time to retire to start saving. You save money on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis and know that when the time comes, you'll have a good amount saved up. I can't say, "by the time I retire, I will have X amount of money saved, and to do this, I'm going to save my money in January!" Well, what happens in February? Are you going to spend all the money you saved the month before? You'll probably commit to saving a little every month so that a habit will be formed, to guarantee a certain dollar amount at the end of the time you determine. It is a major sacrifice at first, and there are a million excuses you can give to why you really need that money right now, but if you stick to it, you'll develop a lifestyle of saving!
What is my point? My point is, you don't start a workout program in January for your vacation in June, then blow your diet, drop your workout routine and expect your results to last! Why not just keep going and never have to return back to your starting point ever again!
You don't have to love it, you don't even have to like it. This is a common misconception that some people have about people involved in fitness. There are many days... and I emphasize the word "many", that I get up and think, "man, I really don't want to work out today, I am just not in the mood!" The thing is, I know that if I give in to that feeling, then it might cause me to lose the motivation for the rest of the week! So I go, and when I do, I'm telling you, I'm so glad that I did. I have a rule for myself that if I'm really feeling tired, and it's not my "rest" day: I get up, put on my workout clothes, and I drive myself to the gym. By the time I'm there, I am already feeling better about it and by the time I've done about 20 minutes of cardio, I'm back in the game. The funny part about it is, those are the times that I usually have a great workout!
Don't stop going, don't let excuses dictate your quest for health, make it become who you are and never let negative thoughts get in the way. I know you can do it.

How many carbs for my diet?

If you restrict your carbohydrates too much, your body breaks down muscle fiber into sugar, and if you eat too many carbohydrates, you body stores them as fat. The subject of carb consumption might seem confusing at first but I'm going to try to set some concepts straight for you so that you can make a better choice for yourself.
First realize that it is necessary to know how many calories you need in a day. Then, we can further organize the calories into protein, carbs, and fat calories. A good overall range for carbohydrates is 50% of your diet. If you calculate a daily calorie need to be 2000 calories, then 1000 of those calories should come from carbs.
Carbohydrates, like protein, are 4 calories per gram. Take your 1000 calories, divide them by 4, and you get 250. This means 250 grams of carbohydrates per day.
Remember, this is usually for your average person that is lightly to moderately active.
For some of my clients, for example, on a 2000 calorie diet, I will drop their carbohydrates to 40% of their diet giving them 200 grams. It all depends of you, your activity level, and your goal. These numbers can vary from person to person but one thing is certain, it is good to know your numbers.

Glycemic Index is another factor to take into consideration. It refers to the effect that a carbohydrate has on your blood sugar. Right click on the chart below to look at a glycemic index chart in another window.
The chart shows you the effect different foods have on your blood sugar. It is better to choose the foods with a lower glycemic index because of the slow release of insulin into your blood stream after eating them. When your body releases insulin slowly, your cells respond better to it, and you're less likely to have a "crash" in your blood sugar. It is best to keep your blood sugar from "spiking" as much as possible to avoid future problems with your health.
Feel free to write me with any further questions if you have them!

Calories IN vs Calories OUT in depth

Now that you know that the basic equation for weight gain/loss is calories in vs calories out, you now need to understand how to structure these calories coming in... In today's blog, I want to emphasize carbohydrates, and the importance of them in providing energy for your body's everyday tasks.
"Carbs" don't just come from bread, rice, pasta and sugar. Carbs come from a variety of sources such as vegetables, fruits, juices, beans, dairy foods, whole grains, and other foods. They exist in the form of sugars and starches. So why do carbs get such a bad rap? The negative connotation developed during the Adkins diet phase when many people would lose weight from a dramatic drop in dietary carbohydrates. Carbs were then looked at as the enemy and some people started avoiding them like a person with swine flu.
When you eat anything more than your body can use, you will store it as fat but if you eat the right amount, your body doesn't have to store fat from the extra calories. Let's say "Sally" eats a carbohydrate-containing meal. Her body first uses the carbs to fill up the muscles and liver with glycogen. This is great for her body. It's like, filling up a car with gas for the trip you will take that day. If Sally fills her muscles with the right amount of carbs (glycogen), she will store only what she needs. If she eats more of the carbohydrates than her body needs, then she will then convert the extra carbs into fat stores.
The amount of carbohydrates a person needs for the day mostly depends on physical training, basal metabolic rate, and regular eating habits. If your goal is to lose extra body fat, then you can tweak the diet in a way that is beneficial to your goals. Schedule your carbohydrates in your diet around the time of the day that you are the most active. This way, the body can utilize the energy quickly, plus you will feel more energized during the most active parts of your day because your body will not be lacking in its energy nutrient!
Choose your carbohydrates from the healthiest sources. Good, starchy carbs are great around your workout time (in the right amount), and watery, non-starchy carbs are great for the rest of your day.
Here is a list of your good carbs:

Spinach	Whole Barley	Grapefruit
Turnip Greens	Buckwheat	Apples
Lettuce	Buckwheat bread	Prunes
Water Cress	Oat bran bread	Apricots, Dried
Zucchini	Oatmeal	Pears
Asparagus	Oat bran cereal	Plums
Artichokes	Museli	Strawberries
Okra	Wild rice	Oranges
Cabbage	Brown rice	Yams
Celery	Multi-grain bread	Carrots
Cucumbers	Pinto beans	Potatoes
Dill Pickles	Yogurt, low fat	Soybeans
Radishes	Skim milk	Lentils
Broccoli	Navy beans	Garbanzo beans
Brussels Sprouts	Cauliflower	Kidney beans
Eggplant	Soy milk	Lentils
Onions		Split peas
Tomatoes

Here is a list of some carbs to use sparingly:

Table sugar

Corn syrup

Fruit juice

Candy

Cake

Bread made with white flour

Pasta made with white flour

Soda pop, such as Coke®, Pepsi®, Mountain Dew®, etc.

Candy

All baked goods made with white flour

Most packaged cereals

When you hear someone say, "I'm going to cut my carbs", ask if they know exactly how to do it and if they are planning on cutting down on their simple carbs. To cut out carbohydrates all together is unhealthy and can be dangerous. There is a healthy variety of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients from carbohydrates and can be extremely beneficial to the body and its defense system.
Plan your carbohydrate intakes so that you can burn your body fat stores, have energy doing it, and be able to keep it up for a long period of time without burning out! Stay tuned for tomorrow's blog where we will address how to determine how many carbohydrates you need in your meals.

The basics of it

There is one rule in the quest of weight loss, just like there is one rule in the quest to weight gain. It is simply this: Calories in VS Calories out.
All this means is, I must burn more calories throughout the day than what I eat to lose weight
I must burn less calories throughout the day than what I eat to gain weight.
Why? Because your body is like an energy bank... It takes calories to function just like a light bulb functions on units of joules. The amazing thing about the body though, is that if we take in too many calories by eating or drinking too much, then we store it as fat! Well this is wonderful news for us if we were going through famine! It is like saving up money for a vacation or retirement, or stocking the refrigerator with bottles of water and the pantry with canned goods. When we eat more than the body burns it can do nothing else more with it than to store it for later use. Now if you are on a quest to build muscle and put on some size, this method of eating more than you burn is very relevant to you because the extra calories are used to rebuild the muscle that you broke down during your workout. In this case, when done right, it works very well... but when your quest is to lose the extra storage, you don't need to keep stocking the shelves if you know what I mean. Use what you have and reduce your storage slowly.
Think about it like this, say you were in charge of setting the spending budget for your family. You notice that money is being spent frivolously and you know that if it continues to be spent in this manner, you will soon have problems. One way to get the budget back under control is to organize the spending into different categories. Then you might set "limits" on each category starting with an amount that everyone can agree on. When this "limit" is set in place, your family member, if they are in compliance, will know how much they can spend on a particular item in a specified period of time. For example, if you give you daughter a credit card and tell her to go shopping without specifying a limit, you might not know what was put on credit until you look online at the statement. If you give her a $100 bill and send her on her way, you know exactly what she has to spend.
If you know how many calories your body burns in one day, you can know how many calories you need to eat in order to lose, gain, or maintain your weight. It is that simple. Just as a budget has multiple facets, a calorie structure does, too. This we will get into later. For now, consider the concept that your in order to be in control of your weight, you must grasp the fact that it is all about Calories in VS Calories out.
Consider this and take a look at what calories you might be taking in and what you can do to offset any unwanted gains or losses with it.

The first consideration

When you first decide that it is time to revise your diet, you have got to look at some of the obvious items to kick out. Do you drink sodas? I don't mean diet sodas, but I do mean full-fledged sugar sodas... Do you eat sugary snacks like donuts, candy, snack cakes, or do you put sugar in your coffee, or your cereal? Some of these obvious things are good to toss. What about when you eat out at restaurants, do you order appetizers, the entree and a dessert? What do you drink with your meal? Are you eating the bottomless chips without giving it much thought? Are you ordering an entree with fried food, or do you notice that you go heavy on your salad dressing? When you order a dessert, do you order one just for yourself or do you split it with friends?
Take a look at your regular eating habits. These could be causing you to gain unwanted weight or it could keep you from losing weight.
What I have noticed with my clients is that sometimes when they sit down with me for an initial assessment, it is their knowledge of food that needs improvement. A lot of the time, they are confused on what to eat and what not to eat! This is completely understandable for someone who generally doesn't take an interest on the subject of nutrition and health. I personally do not enjoy talking about savings plans or investments... they bore the ever-living snot out of me. Thank God my husband has that all figured out, because he is there to make sure everything is in order when my attention span goes bye-bye on the subject. Don't get me wrong, I do try to learn about it by going to personal investment classes here on base and reading books on the subject, but it is hard for me to grasp something that I don't naturally have an inclination to study.
I want to teach you about nutrition in a way that you can easily grasp so that you can carry the information with you for a long time. When you genuinely grasp it, it is more likely to stay with you for longer instead of slipping out the window after a couple of days.
First consider the obvious hang-ups in your diet, then work on eliminating a hang-up one at a time. For example, if you drink sodas, then switch to drinking iced tea with a non-calorie sweetener. Then after you're comfortable with that, then cut out a couple of sugary snacks throughout your day. After that, consider splitting a dessert with your friends, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, or whoever so that you don't eat the whole thing.
Consider, identify and eliminate one by one until you're comfortable for more change. Stay tuned until tomorrow.