This post is dedicated to my beautiful daughter, Christina. She has been on a weight loss regimen for a short time and is seeing some amazing results. She has been using Weight Watchers guidelines and it really seems to be working for her!

She has lost appoximately 21 pounds and gone down 3 pant sizes!!

 I am soooo Proud Of Her!!

Here are the guidelines she has been sticking to:

1. Eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day.

A serving is ½ cup, except for leafy greens which are 1 cup per serving. For those over 350 pounds, 9 servings is recommended.

2. Choose whole grains whenever possible.

Choose whole-wheat (or oat or multigrain) bread, instead of bread made with refined white flour; whole-wheat pasta instead of white; and brown rice instead of white.

3. Get at least two servings of milk a day.

Eat at least 2 servings of non- or low-fat milk products each day. A serving is 1 cup. Increase to 3 servings if you’re over 50 or weigh more than 250 pounds.

4. Drink at least six 8-ounce glasses of water each day.

If this is hard for you, try flavoring your water with fruit or cucumber. Cups with measurements and/or built-in straws help too. Up to half of your daily fluid intake can come from decaffeinated drinks other than water, such as milk, juice or herbal tea.

5. Have 2 teaspoons of healthy oil each day.

Two teaspoons of olive, canola, safflower, sunflower or flaxseed oil are recommended — so your body gets the vitamin E and essential fatty acids it needs.

6. Make sure you get enough protein.

A serving or two a day will keep you healthy. Choose low-fat sources such as skinless poultry, lean meat, fish and eggs.

7. Limit added sugar and alcohol.

Both contain empty calories. Avoid processed foods with added sugar. And experts recommend no more than one serving of alcohol per day for women, and no more than two per day for men.

8. Take a multiple vitamin-mineral supplement every day.

Everybody’s different, so talk to your doctor to figure out the right multivitamin for you.

 She has also been exercising at least twice a week.

Way to Go, Tina!!!

Till next time

Darlene Schirmer

www.aNewerHealthyYou.com

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Fruit is such wonderful food…I was just sitting here thinking about grabbing an orange and decided to write a few hints and tips to help get some more fruits in your diet.

• At breakfast, how about topping your oatmeal or cereal  with bananas or blueberries; put blueberries on pancakes; drink 100% grapefruit or orange juice.
•  Pack a banana, tangerine or grapes in your lunch or choose fruit of the salad bar. The small containers of peaches or applesauce are very convenient, also.
• For a wonderful change, add crushed pineapple to coleslaw, or mandarin oranges or grapes to a tossed salad.
• Don’t forget to put pineapple or peaches on a shish-ka-bob to put on the grill.
• Have baked apples or pears for dessert, or maybe a fruit salad.

Hope these give you some ideas to incorporate in your daily menu.

Good Health to You and Yours!

Darlene

www.aNewerHealthyYou.com

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 1. There is an increase in my overall fitness and muscle tone.

 2. I feel good and feel like I look better:)
 

3. My energy level has increased.
 

4. I feel a lot less stressed and am slower to GET stressed out.
 

5. I am sleeping better.
 

6. I’ve found that walking helps reduce my risk of heart disease.
 

7. Through reading, I learned that walking will help reduce my risk of developing certain types of cancer.

8. I am reducing my risk of developing diabetes.
 9. My outlook on life in general and the way I deal with things has changed for the better.

 10. I feel like my muscles, joints and bones are stronger

These are just a few of the advantages of having a walking program. Try to stick to your program…that is my challenge. Life is busy, and it’s not always easy to make the time, but you will certainly be rewarded if you do.

Till next time.

Darlene

www.aNewerHealthyYou.com

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The description of metabolism is: the rate by which the body produces and consumes energy and calories to support life.

We all know someone who has a high metabolism..you know…the person who can eat whatever he/she wants, all day, and still not gain a pound. These folks have a high energy level and seem to be doing something all the time.

Well, not all of us have high metabolisms, so here are a few tips to help boost yours without the aid of drugs or supplements.

1. Hot, spicy foods with peppers (jalepeno, habanero, etc…) have been
found to increase metabolism.

EAT SPICY FOODS!

2. Eat 4-6 small meals (2-3 hours apart), instead of 3 main meals.

EAT MINI MEALS 4-6 TIMES IN A DAY!

3. Toxins that are produced when the body burns fat are flushed out when
you drink water. Lack of hydration will slow up your body system’s processes
and also causes it stress.

DRINK MORE WATER!

4. It is a well-known fact that if you don’t eat breakfast, your body has nothing to feed it. Metabolism may slow down at a large rate if breakfast is eaten after a few hours of waking or even later in the early afternoon.

EAT BREAKFAST!

5. Physical or emotional stress causes the body to release cortisol, a steroid which slows down your metabolism. Some of us tend to reach for food when we are stressed, too. 

REDUCE PHYSICAL OR EMOTIONAL STRESS!

I realize this last tip may be difficult to do, but with some foresight and tools, possibly yoga, you may be able to lower your stress level.

 Until next time, here’s to a newer healthy you:)

Darlene

www.aNewerHealthyYou.com

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I wanted to let you all know about a fellow who specializes in weight training/muscle building/weight gaining.

Not all of us have problems taking weight OFF, some people have problems putting weight ON. This article has good info for everyone, but especially the folks who want to gain weight through muscle building. This article speaks of training for guys, but he has a program for gals too.

Six “Little-Known” Muscle Building Tips Part 1

By Vince DelMonte

So you think you know everything about building muscle? If you have read everything, tried everything and heard everything about muscle building but still resemble the silouette of a Calvin Klien model instead of a buff fitness model than I promise these three ‘little-known’ muscle building tips will accelerate your muscle gains immediately!

1. Body Weight Training

This was once a popular muscle building technique but is very commonly ignored. Why? Perhaps because most body weight training is simply hard and can put a dent in your precious ego! As far as I am concerned, if you can not work with your own body weight than you have no freaken business using external loading such as barbells and dumbbells.

It’s incredible how many attempt to use heavy weights with a microscopic range of motion but can’t do a set of push ups, a squat to the floor or even one chin up. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a place for external loading with heavy weights but not until you have the ability to master the following bench marks:

Males should aim for 1 set of 80 push ups, 1 set of 20 chin ups, 1 set of 20 1-leg squats, 1 set of 40 dips and 1 set of 20 pull ups.

Females should aim for 1 set of 40 push ups, 1 set of 5-10 chin ups, 1 set of 10 1-leg squats, 1 set of 10-15 dips and 1 set of 3-5 pull ups.

These standards will ensure a solid foundation of general fitness and muscular endurance and lead to building muscle mass more easily in the following stages of your weight training program.

2. Flip Your Program Upside Down Every 3 Weeks

This is an extremely powerful tip to building muscle mass, not to mention one of the easiest tricks to ensure your body side-steps plateaus forever. Consider that you have been training your chest shoulders and triceps every Monday. In you next phase, three weeks later, you should do the complete opposite. You will train your triceps, shoulders than chest on Friday. This will prevent plateaus because each muscle group will have an opportunity to train completely fresh.

Let’s say you are training your back, biceps, forearms and abs on Friday. Than you will train your abs, forearms, biceps, and back on Monday (in the opposite sequence). You will literally switch everything upside down. Again, this will ensure that these muscles receive an opportunity to train first in the week when your body is the most fresh.

You will curse my name when you blow the heck out of the smaller muscles first and than train the larger muscle groups last. Yes, I know this months issue of Bodybuilders Digest said to never train the smaller muscle groups before your larger muscle groups. I have heard it before so stop analyzing, trust me and give it a try. You be the judge and don’t be surprised if you see new levels of muscle mass and strength after this one technique.

3. Spend More Time At The Grocery Store

If you are serious about building muscle, accept the fact that you will need to spend more time than you do right now in the grocery store. Have you ever opened the fridge for something to eat and all you found was Aunt Wilma’s Thanksgiving turkey leftovers with mold on it? Ever gone into the cub boards and discover only a few leftover bags of potato chips from last weeks Super Bowl party?

To ensure a optimal environment for building muscle and fat loss you must ensure your cub boards and fridge are constantly stocked. This will mean more frequent trips to the grocery store. Chuck the crap that is in your kitchen right now and replace it with good stuff and keep on replacing it. Don’t ever let that supply of good food run low.

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About the Author:

Vince DelMonte is the author of No Nonsense Muscle Building: Skinny Guy Secrets To Insane Muscle Gain found at http://dschirmer.nononsense.hop.clickbank.net/

He specializes in teaching skinny guys how to build muscle and gain weight quickly without drugs, supplements and training less than before.

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By Holly Rigsby, CPT
http://www.fityummymummy.com/cbae/?a=1yr8v49p4

Would you like to “jump start” your metabolism and lose your ‘mommy belly’ once and for all? If so, the following seven tips are exactly what you need to improve your workouts and ignite your metabolism. Try some or all of these tips, but beware, the result may be a number of admiring second glances and the need to pull your ‘skinny jeans’ out of the closet.

1. The majority of your workouts should be composed of free-weight, bodyweight or cable exercises.

Compared to machines, free-weight, bodyweight and cable movements often require more skill, create muscular balance, and have a greater metabolic cost. For example, it is more difficult to balance the weights, and to coordinate muscles when performing free-weight exercises. Although this may sound like a disadvantage, it is actually a benefit. By balancing and stabilizing free-weights or cables you are working more muscles through a greater range of motion resulting in more muscles developed and more calories burned.

2. Use exercises that work more than one muscle at a time.

When focusing on fat loss, you can’t worry about “shaping” exercises, instead you should use exercises that’ll get you the biggest bang for your buck and work as many muscles as possible. Isolation exercises can be used at the end of a workout to work on a specific target area, but they just serve to supplement your core movements.

Virtually every savvy fitness professional is privy to the fact that compound exercises recruit the most muscle groups for any given body part.

If you seek lean, toned muscles and the increase in metabolism that comes with them, you must choose exercises that work as many different muscles as possible. One of the main reasons why squats are superior to leg extensions for improving your body is that they also work your butt, hamstrings and inner thighs in addition to toning your quadriceps while leg extensions focus on just the front of your thigh and don’t really offer any other benefit. That same rationale hold true for arm exercises too. That’s why dumbell presses and dips will are more valuable for your arms than triceps kickbacks and pushdowns.

A good rule of thumb is to use movements that will allow you to use the most weight. These will have a systemic effect on your body that’ll help maintain or increase your lean muscle, and in turn ignite your metabolism.

3. Pair exercises.

Pair your exercises together so that you alternate between upper-body exercises and lower-body exercises or between exercises that target opposing muscle groups (e.g. chest and back).

This type of approach will keep your workouts short and efficient by eliminating much of the downtime that comes between sets of a single exercise since you are working on one movement while resting from another. This approach can also yield huge benefits in your mission to burn fat. Since you’ll constantly be moving and keeping your heart rate elevated, you’ll be burning far more calories than you would during a typical workout.

4. Keep your reps between 8 and 12.

Through research, it has been determined that the best range for building lean muscle is roughly between 8-12 reps. Since the main focus of your resistance training efforts is to gain lean body mass and stimulate your metabolism, this rep range fills the bill perfectly. “High reps for tone and fat loss” is one of the biggest (and most unproductive) training myths! Somehow the aerobics, yoga and Pilates’ community have convinced us that when we perform bodyweight exercises or light resistance training for high reps, our muscles magically take on a beautiful shape without growing or bulging. On the other hand, if you challenge yourself with moderately heavy weights, your body will take on a bulky, unflattering appearance. If you believe this, you probably still believe in the Tooth Fairy!

5. Rest only 30 to 60 seconds between sets.

When you keep the rest periods under one minute, it’s easier to stay focused on the task at hand and keeps your heart rate elevated. In addition, it forces your muscles to recover more quickly between sets, along with keeping your nervous system revved up.

If your first movement in an upper/lower body pair is squats, you might want to rest 60 seconds before attempting your second movement. However, if your first exercise is a fairly “easy” exercise, like lat pull downs, you might only wish to wait 30 seconds before doing the second part of the pair.

6. Perform total body workouts.

You must drop the notion that muscle groups work independently of one another. Muscles work together and should be trained that way. Besides, not only does this approach mean less time in the gym, but by working the whole body three times per week, you’ll be maximizing the fat burning effect of your program.

7. Cardio is not the cure-all for fat loss.

Cardiovascular exercise aids in the creation of a caloric deficit, but the caloric expenditure during cardio is temporary. Strength training addresses the core of the problem by permanently increasing the rate at which the body burns calories by adding muscle. The best programs will include both strength training and cardiovascular training, but the core or the programs effectiveness is resistance training.

Take these strategies and incorporate them into your workout routine. Not only will you save a lot of time, but you’ll also soon see a leaner and more toned body. Not to mention a few more turned heads and the re-emergence of your skinny jeans.

About the Author

Holly Rigsby is a nationally recognized women’s fitness coach, certified personal trainer (CPT) and the author of the internationally popular e-book – Fit Yummy Mummy - Burn Your Baby Fat & Get Your Body Back. Go to http://www.fityummymummy.com/cbae/?a=1yr8v49p4 to get your FREE copy of her special report: “The Five Ways To Boost Your Metabolism.”

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1. Always look for whole meal varieties, in bread, cereal, rice(brown), pasta(vegetable is good) and other grains. Try to get the best nutritional bang for your buck.

2. As usual, look for low fat versions of your favorite foods.

3. Be moderate in your consumption of dairy products.

4. Exchange those red meats for fish, no-skin chicken, beans, peas or lentils.

5. If you need to munch, stick with fruit, such as raisens or bananas(check out the great article on bananas at www.anewerhealthyyou.com/nutrition.htm).

Enough for today! Good luck and much success on your road to anewerhealthyyou and me! 

Darlene

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You know the mantra…5 portions of fruits and veggies everyday:)

Go light on the dairy products…although this one is hard for me as I love a cold glass of milk with every meal:) Must be those years I grew up on the farm.

Lower your salt intake…I love salty foods, so this one has been a challenge. But there are other spices which add a nice flavor when your trying to reduce your salt intake. I add more pepper…this helps, too.

More coming soon.

To a newer healthy and nutritious you and me:)

Darlene

(nutri snippit) Drink tea: research suggests that those who drink tea (black, green, or white, as long as it’s from real tea vs. herbal tea) have lower BMI’s and have less body fat.

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Regardless, summer is right around the corner and now is the time to start thinking about getting into that bathing suit again!

Not a thought I relish, believe me!

So with that in mind, here are 10 diet and weight-loss tips to help “get this party started”.

1. Everytime you sit down for a meal, leave about 1/3 of it on the plate. There was a study done that revealed this process to reduce approximately 800 calories less that day.
Participants never missed them.
2. When you feel the need for some fruit juice, eat the whole fruit instead. Chewing is much more satisfying and it has (usually) a lower caloric count.
3. Write down everything you eat in a food journal. You will be less likely to overeat if its all there in black and white.
4. Eat something every 3-4 hours to ward off hunger, snacking on lowfat granola bars, apples, raisins, etc… This will help keep your metabolism pumped up.
5. Chew each bite 30 times…I know that seems like a lot, but digestion is designed to work best when the food we eat is totally chewed up. Not only will you get more vitamins out of
the food, but your tummy will feel better for it.
6. New rules…NO EATING IN FRONT OF THE TV! Your likely to consume many more calories than you anticipated sitting in front of the television.
7. When you get the urge to eat something you know you shouldn’t, brush your teeth. It fools your brain into thinking you are done eating.
8. Try to stay away from high-sodium foods. They will cause you to retain water, making you feel bloated.
9.Mustard and salsa are very light alternatives to high-calorie, high-fat mayo, butter and sour cream.
10. Replace your soda consumption with water, hydrating your body and making you feel full.

I hope these 10 tips will help you get a “jump start” on your weight-loss goals. If you just did these tips, imagine how muchlighter you will be in a couple of months…just in time for a new bathing suit!
 

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Although I am just getting started, I intend to fill these pages with everything we need to pursue healthy living, whether it be nutritional, dietary, exercise or self-help.

Bookmark this site, as new content will be added daily.

Join me on my daily journey towards a newer healthy me (and you).

Thanks.

Darlene

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