Health Series
How Good Do You Want to Feel? A Health Series, post 1
To a certain extent we know that feeling good is up to us.
We ponder that choice every day with what we eat and whether we exercise.
We usually are satisfied with eating what we like and taking a few supplements and then exercising within what ever program we have accepted. As long as coffee can wake us up and alcohol can slow us down, it can’t be too bad.
There are more levels of feeling good. If you make the decision, you can approach them gradually. You can select foods for their vitality enhancing qualities and add exercise for the same purpose. You should always take it gradually; even if it takes three or four years.
Any giant program you jump into for a week may not last unless its to quit smoking or something else as major.
There are lots of guides to diet and exercise. Exercise is easiest. Start exercising longer. Add some intensity as often as possible. Try and get the whole body involved. If nothing else, walk twice a day. The effort to improve will improve your self esteem immediately.
With diet, you know what you shouldn’t eat. The highest goal is probably Vegan. There are also some incredible Super Foods that can achieve almost everything we want. A good core plan would be to start adding Super Foods and not let the rest of the diet destroy their affect. You can Google them.
There are several choices with food. Do you want to avoid cancer and disease, improve your brain function, increase energy, lose fat, live longer? Strangely enough, your body wants all these goals and rewards you for every positive choice you make.
It’s your choice. You can feel bad, good, and unbelievable.
How Good Do You Want to Feel? A Health Series post 2
I mentioned in the last post that Super Foods is a great way to start feeling better.
There are foods to help you live longer because they have anti-oxidants but you don’t feel an immediate buzz, which most converts are going to want.
One of the great ways to feel lighter in body and mind is not eat cooked food for a few days. It doesn’t have to be permanent, but it gives your body a break as it cleanses and delivers more energy from not digesting.
One of the best ways to start feeling an impact is to substitute a smoothie for a meal. The retail smoothie shops throw in yogurt or ice cream which is a lot of sugar. Try to avoid unnatural sugars because they create a crash.
If you want to continue after the smoothie meal with more snacks your body will have a craving for protein. Try peanuts, peanut butter, cheese, tuna, or other desirable foods you may find by Googling protein. If you work in an office, I realize some things are inconvenient.
One of the highest impacts of eating healthy is improving brain activity. I will be discussing that in the next post.
If you would like some great reading on enhancing the brain, read Patt Lind-Kyle “Heal Your Mind Rewire Your Brain”. It not only has brain enhancing food and supplements, it clarifies how your three brains lizard, limpic, and cortex work to influence your behavior and performance.
If you want to read the best book I have ever seen on Super Foods read Jonny Bowden’s PHD. “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth”. There is plenty of selection here and I started by picking about 8 items and adding them to my diet. Of course, when you put some things in, you take some things out.
It also builds a momentum. It is human nature that after you start you want to improve.
I will soon talk about Cacao, Chlorella, Maca, Chia Seeds, Hemp, eggs, broccoli, and avocado to name a few. These power foods not only have tremendous anti-oxidant powers (which reduce inflammation in our body and cure a host of ills and improve performance, energy and vitality) but are high percentage protein and omegas 3 & 6. Protein and omegas are super brain foods.
If you want to jump ahead and get a source for fun and healthy foods look at http://Nutsonline.com
If you want to see their chart on which foods have which vitamins look at http://www.nutsonline.com/health_nuts.html
If you think you can’t have fun eating healthy, you should view Nuts on Line’s new 348 healthy foods and snacks. You’ll be drooling. http://www.nutsonline.com/tag/new+products. (I have no commercial connection to NutsOnLine, but I will suggest a number of sites where you can find fun and healthy foods,)
If you want to get an advanced look at Super Foods and Supplements at Raw Food World you will find that it can be more fun than you would think. If you substituted two table spoons of hemp powder for a hamburger it would be like trading in a VW for a Ferrari.
at Raw Food World
I do have a commercial connection to Raw Food World, but it is only one of the several sites I use and will suggest.
Exercise and the Brain Health Series post 3
Nothing is more noticeable than brain activity.
The brain influences the mind which of course creates our perspective. If the body or brain are not working at optimum, neither will our thinking which we can attribute to the mind or brain.
Out of 5 brain waves, the two you might control easiest are the Alpha and the Beta. The beta waves stimulate left brain activity which is logic, language, calculating. It is the “dominant brain-mind rhythm”- Patt Lind-Kyle, Heal Your Mind Rewire Your Brain. The chemical for optimizing Beta waves is Dopamine. “In balance, everything works perfectly with the right balance of dopamine.
The best foods for dopamine are broccoli, carrots, egg whites, salmon, pomegranate juice, spinach, and unsalted almonds. Teas that boost dopamine are green tea, oolong tea, white tea, and rooibos tea. Spices herbs, and flavorful foods that will boost your metabolism, which dopamine monitors are flaxseed, garlic, green tea mustard seed, onion, stevia, and yarrow. Some supplements that boost beta brain energies are Ginko Biloba, B Complex, tyrosine, and phenylalanine.” Patt Lind-Kyle
Exercise helps bring Beta Waves in balance as well as hobbies that are calming, including writing.
The Alpha stimulates the right brain activity which is Creativity and emotion. “They process and regulate the amount of sensory information coming at us”-Patt Lind-Kyle
The wonderful senses created by the alpha waves are stimulated by marijuana which may create the “oh wow” state of sensory perception.
“Acetylcholine is the apha brain wave partner. It helps keep the speed of your thoughts in motion as information is sent across the neurons. It juices the mind to be flexible, quick in movement, creative and innovative.
Foods that replenish acetylcholine and help alpha brain waves stay in balance are: avocado, cucumber, zucchini, lettuce, nuts, mil products, eggs, luncheon meats, and olive oil salad dressings. Foods with fats deliver choline to boost our brain activity.” Patt Lind-Kyle.
We often stimulate right brain activity with coffee in the morning to speed up Beta waves and alcohol in the evening to slow them down. We try to manipulate our emotions lots of ways including nervous eating or binging.
Meditation is the greatest way to optimize brain waves, but few people are ready to plunge into this practice.
You can see that if you want an immediate impact on your life style from improving your food intake and exercise, your brain, your performance, and your enjoyment will be major benefactors.
The Super Foods I will introduce to you multiply the impact of these basic foods.
