BodyForTheAges.org Blog

While most of us mean well when it comes to eating a good breakfast, it’s often easier said than done. Tight schedules, kids, and even exercise can end up taking priority over the most important meal of the day. Add a vegetarian diet to the mix, and finding the perfect combination of protein and carbohydrates your body needs, is even more of a challenging task.

Morning is the time when your body needs a major kickstart, and if you deny your body the nutrients it needs to begin the day, you’ll experience significantly lower energy, decreased mental function, and most likely your mood will suffer as well.

We’ve all heard the above advice time and again, but let’s take a look at what we can do about making it as simple as possible to follow.

CNN.com’s diet and fitness expert, Dr. Melina Jampolis has a tasty tip:

“I sometimes find that my patients get hungry if they eat oatmeal alone so I recommend making it with a little extra water and adding a scoop of protein powder to protein fortify the oatmeal. I prefer whey protein but other types of protein work well, too. If you want to boost the healthy value even more, add a tablespoon or two of chopped nuts for extra nutrients, fiber and heart healthy monounsaturated fat.” Read more at: www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/expert.q.a/12/18/nutritious.breakfast.jampolis/index.html

Protein powders, like Body For The Ages’ CardioSoy (check it out here: http://www.bodyfortheages.com/cardio-soy.php) can be perfectly partnered with your morning carbs, to bring you the complete set of nutrients your body needs. (Many people assume that a banana alone is a healthy breakfast, but a banana is only half of what you need. A banana is a burst of carbs, good for short-term energy, but your body needs protein combined with the carbs, especially early on in the day. This brings you the all the nutrition you need, and also insures that you’ll be satisfied until your next meal, and won’t be tempted to snack.

For added protection in your wellness and fitness pursuits, check out the Pyruvate that allowed Body For The Ages founder Pax Beale to beat his heart disease and live to become a Bay Area wellness guru: http://www.bodyfortheages.com/cardio-makeover.php

CardioSoy’s ease and convenience is especially helpful to vegetarians, who often have to spend extra time finding ways to satisfy their body’s protein requirements. However, it’s also essential for those who are putting in more training hours than usual during the week. If you’re too lax about your protein intake, or find that you’ve let yourself become distracted from delivering your body the protein it needs, you’ll see the direct effects of this deficiency: Low energy, muscle weakness, and even shortness of breath.

Body For The Ages’ CardioSoy can be used as a spread over pancakes and toast, blended into a shake, or stirred into a pudding-like consistency. It’s not the only way for you to fulfill your body’s daily protein requirements, but without a doubt, it’s a quick, healthy, easy, and delicious way!

After a stressful day, most of us just want to relax, and getting exercise may be the last thing on our list of priorities. However, research is increasingly proving that exercise is just what we need to significantly decrease daily stress and anxiety.

From a Mayo Clinic staff study, “Exercise helps prevent and improve a number of health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis. Research on anxiety, depression and exercise shows that the psychological and physical benefits of exercise can also help reduce anxiety and improve mood.”

How does it work? In a variety of ways:

Chemical: Exercise releases “feel good” chemicals in your brain. You may have heard of the “runner’s high”. Well, it’s not just a ploy to get you to exercise! Physical activity releases endorphins, which deliver a mood lift to your body and mind.

Healthy Choices: Beyond chemical stimulation, exercise most often makes you feel good about your choices. When you’re confident that you’re improving your health, you’ll increase your overall confidence.

Distraction: Exercise can be an opportunity to step away from the worries of the day, and spend time by yourself, focusing on your body, and letting stress take a back seat for a while. That’s a daily prescription we could all use!

Read more of what the Mayo Clinic has to say regarding exercise and anxiety here:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/depression-and-exercise/MH00043

And go here to read about how the Body For The Ages Online Wellness Program can deliver an exercise, health, and wellness program tailored to your specific needs:

www.BodyForTheAgesNonprofit.org

-Melissa Chandler, Body For The Ages Blogger

Eating Your Way to a Lower Blood Pressure

Dr. Maoshing Ni (Dr. Mao), a Yahoo.com health expert for alternative medicine has tips for what to eat (and what not to eat), when it comes to maintaining a healthy blood pressure level.

It just may turn out that your favorite foods are working wonders for your health and wellness, in more ways than you realize. 

Dr. Mao’s cuisine recommendations include fish, cucumbers, and olive oil, for their valuable effects on your circulatory and heart health.

Foods that may raise your blood pressure include salt, refined sugar, and alcohol.  Though it’s okay to enjoy these items in moderation, it’s smart to get in the habit of substituting with spices, honey, and plenty of hydrating beverages, such as sparkling water.

Read more of Dr. Mao’s insights here: http://health.yahoo.com/experts/drmao/19535/10-best-and-worst-foods-for-blood-pressure/

Enjoy your favorites, and try some new recipes, but keep in mind that eating healthy is one of the surest paths to increased health and wellness.

As a Member of the Body For The Ages Online Wellness Program, you’ll receive a personalized nutrition plan, based on your unique lifestyle preferences and dietary needs.

Learn more about your personalized Online Wellness Program here:

www.BodyForTheAgesNonprofit.org

Turning Back the Clock

If you’ve reached middle age and your health habits are less than desirable, don’t give up hope.  Making a change at this stage of life will yield significant results, and set you on your way to an improved quality of life now, and in your senior years.

Dr. Dana King, a University of South Carolina professor of medicine, is part of a research team whose findings indicate that changing lifelong unhealthy habits in middle age may yield you a longer life.

“It’s not too late,” says Dr. King.  “If you make [healthy] changes now, it has a tremendous impact.”

Dr. King and his team colleagues looked at four healthy habits in over 16,000 people between 45 and 64 years of age.  Here are the categories they evaluated: eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day, 2.5 hours or more of exercise per week, a healthy weight level, and not smoking.

Dr. King’s research team found that the people who adhered to the four healthy habits were “40 percent less likely to die and 35 percent less likely to suffer heart problems than those who did not adopt the beneficial habits.”

Read more about the findings here: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=5314059&page=1

Body For The Ages is committed to helping you make the health changes necessary for you to enjoy a vastly improved quality of life for years to come. 

By becoming a Body For The Ages Member, and participating in the Body For The Ages Online Wellness Program, you’ll be assigned your own personal coach via the web.  Your personal coach will create a wellness program tailored to your specific needs, and walk you through workouts, nutrition, supplements, and most of all, be a knowledgeable and dependable motivating force, as you reclaim your health.

Visit http://www.bodyfortheages.org/, for details on our Wellness Program, and how to become a Team Body For The Ages Member.  Join now.  Body For The Ages is here to help you turn back the clock.

Have you been meaning to drop those extra pounds?

Whatever your reason, be it aesthetics, athleticism, or heart health, health problem prevention, there’s never been a better time to do it than now.

According to a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, two thirds of adults in the United States are overweight, and about one third are obese. http://win.niddk.nih.gov/statistics/

Extra weight plays a contributing factor in numerous health problems.  A report recently released from our nation’s capital states that more than 100,000 cases of cancer each year are caused by excess body fat.  Read more here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/11/05/obesity.cancer.link/index.html

Weight Loss is not easy, and it takes commitment.  But we all know that commitment will pay off, when we see that we’re increasing our extra energy and self-esteem, along with decreasing our health concerns.

Your time is valuable, and the Body For The Ages Online Wellness Program will show you how to make it count, with fun workouts, wellness tips and anti-aging tips, valuable advice from our very own Panel of Experts, and an online personal trainer available for guidance 365 days a year.

Are you ready to commit to your health and happiness?  It’s the best investment you’ll ever make.

Go to www.BodyForTheAgesNonprofit.org, get your four free gifts, and become part of the Body For The Ages Team.

Are you self-conscious about going to the gym? 

Check out this quote from the Apria Healthcare website:

“In today’s weight room, you’re as likely to see a grandmother working her glutes as a quarterback working his quads, now that resistance exercise is recognized as vital to building strong muscles and bones.” 

Read more here: http://www.apria.com/channels/1,2748,94-193,00.html

Pax’s Prescription Method of Training will show you how weight-resistance training will not only strengthen your muscles, but your heart as well. 

Pax didn’t just treat his heart disease – he reversed it.  Now his passion is to show others how to do the same.  Why?  Because it’s completely unnecessary that 50% of people die from Heart Disease or heart related illnesses.  Body For The Ages seeks to eliminate this insidious statistic. 

Read Pax’s story at www.BodyForTheAges.com.  He’s living proof that you can take control of your health, beat heart risks, and have fun in the process.

Until Next Time,

Weight training is more art than science.  Aerobics is no more than putting one foot in front of the other to make certain you don’t fall on your face.  To ensure maximum exposure to the art of building a body of your dreams, change trainers periodically.  No one trainer has all the knowledge of the sport’s infinite number of techniques.

Having been active in the field of medicine for a third of a century, I can tell you the art of weight training is not commonly known to medical professionals.  To exacerbate the problem, most know not, that they know not.

If you are rehabilitating from a medical condition or physical injury, consider the following.  You are not interested so much in how a muscle works, but how to work the muscle.  At BackPax (”peaceful backs” in Latin) Medical Center, the medically-oriented back rehabilitation clinic I founded, we gave up on physical therapists and instead hired registered nurses and nurse practitioners.  Not only were these nurse professionals more open to creative ideas about rehabilitation, they were generally more involved in their own back health and general fitness programs.

The nursing profession couldn’t be better represented by anyone other than my colleague, best friend, tower of power, and wife, Sophie “Super Soph” Taggart…Ms. America, Ms. World and Ms. Universe.  I think if you looked up “commitment” in the dictionary you would see her picture.  Yeah, I’m biased, but the credentials and the body warrants it.  Actually, “Super Soph” is a step above the level of a registered nurse, as she is a registered nurse practitioner.  The latter in many cases can prescribe drugs and diagnose medical problems, just like a licensed medical doctor, while the more common registered nurse does not have those options.

The typical physical therapists’ inherent deficiency, besides not knowing the art of the game, was that they wanted to control you, rather than train you.  This is a sensitive area with me.  When I scanned client results at BackPax I found, without exception, that individuals who were allowed to take responsibility for their own rehabilitation garnered infinitely superior results.

For some inexplicable reason, in my vast travels from one gym to another throughout the world, rarely do I see registered physical therapists as members, but the gyms always seem to be loaded with registered nurses and nurse practitioners

Some credentialed exercise physiologists and kinesiologists in licensed medical environments are quite knowledgeable about rehabilitation through weight-resistance training, but currently their work in this field is not routinely reimbursed by insurance companies.  They are frequently regulated to monitoring treadmill stress tests, while weight-resistance training authority reverts back to the ill trained physical therapist.  Nevertheless, given the option, I would choose an exercise physiologist or a kinesiologist with weight-resistance training experience over a physical therapist or medical doctor any day.

The best personal trainers are those that are independent business professionals (not employed) in the gyms, and the best personal coaches are likewise independent contractors in fitness-oriented health centers, not the hospitals.  Period.  End of report. Many personal trainers are not even college graduates, but a lot of them are so dedicated they have taken any one of a host of available educational weight-resistance training programs and become certified trainers.  A registered physical therapist degree or a medical shingle hung on an office wall does not represent a person qualified to teach the art of weight-resistance training.  I can’t say it with enough emphasis: If you are a stabilized heart rehab patient, and are allowed to exercise, get out of the hospital rehab center as fast as you are medically able. (Note: I emphasize only if you are a stabilized heart patient).

Find yourself, a personal trainer, or personal coach, and turn your rehabilitation into a fun wellness lifestyle…and yes, even an anti-aging lifestyle.  Stop feeling sorry for yourself.  Don’t think you are going to find a medical professional who will solve your rehab problem, once you have stabilized from surgery.  Don’t think the solution is only a prescription for a drug.  Don’t think of every breath as your last.  Ultimately, we all have a last breath.  Move on.  Get yourself a personal trainer, or preferably the more broad-based, multi-faceted personal coach, who knows the art even better than the science of weight-resistance training, and who will coach and encourage you. Understand results are your responsibility and involve your practicing the Total Commitment Motivational, Wellness Philosophy, then you will experience a real anti-aging, rejuvenating lifestyle.

For members of the nation’s workforce, it can be difficult to conjure motivation to hit the gym after putting in a long day’s work.  The convenient temptations of vending machines, takeout lunches and sugary, caffeinated drinks loom within arms reach.

I know personally that the thought of physical activity can be unappealing.  However, when I think of the relief that comes from working out (the mental wind-down, the increased energy, the sense of accomplishment) it motivates me to head to the gym even on my most sluggish days.

For some lucky professionals, it appears as if employer-funded access to fitness and wellness may become a nationwide blooming trend, gaining attention most recently in the town of Jackson, Michigan according to the New York Times article below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/business/smallbusiness/01HEALTH.html?_r=1&ref=health&oref=slogin

Now isn’t that a refreshing thought?  A mutually beneficial scenario in which productivity increases, company insurance costs potentially decrease and employees gain a better quality of life at no charge.

These proposed incentives provide the framework and resources for health betterment.

Unfortunately, employers can’t offer you motivation.  We have a gym here at Body for the Ages headquarters. I used it sporadically, until I started myself on the Body for the Ages Online Wellness Program.  Now I use it every work day.

If you find that you still need an extra push to get yourself on the health/wellness/self-improvement path, Body For The Ages offers a course of action for improving your fitness level, overall health and waistline through a comprehensive nutrition system, work out and lifestyle plan coupled with inspiring motivation and achievable results.

For more information, please visit us at BodyForTheAges.org.

Most books with a tough-love message want a true confession out of an overweight person - an admission that the individual is in a denial state and has an inner responsibility for being overweight.  I think that approach is wrong.  I think you have to put planks in a platform for success, and show the practitioner of the denial system how to move forward successfully, once that individual is out from under the spell of the denial system.  However, overweight people must acknowledge the solution starts at home from within themselves, not from an outside cause.  So instead of just beating you “denial system devotees” up, I will show you a practical system to defeat obesity, but damn it, don’t you dare quit on me!  I won’t accept it.  Stick with me and you’ll get the results, I guarantee.

In general, there are two types of lifestyles.  My system is a positive Total Commitment Motivational, Wellness lifestyle for success.  Those who are overweight, and don’t want to be, are living the other type - a negative lifestyle destined for failure.  When someone tells a person to pursue a positive lifestyle as an option, there is an assumption that they don’t have a lifestyle.  They do.  It is a lifestyle for failure.  No wonder so many find themselves in a position of a psychological dilemma.  Follow along with me as we lay several more key planks in the platform for the successful solution to the weight problem, and more importantly, the coping with the torment of failure.  Begin a positive lifestyle of quality eating habits, prescription exercise - that’s fun - and add proper scientific nutritional supplements.  There is your foundation.

Remember that if you start wrong, you finish wrong.  If you start right, you have at least a half-assed chance of finishing right.  And I assure you, with effort based on Total Commitment Motivational, Wellness Philosophy and serious focus on a positive lifestyle, I will describe in detail in future blogs, weight-loss success for you is a sure thing.

Want to learn more? Click checkout our Online Wellness Program.