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Fat That Fights Belly Fat? / In Your Dressing?

Nutrition, The A.L.I.V.E. CAFE

I was talking to one of my personal training clients earlier this morning who just got back from her vacation in Italy.

She mentioned that Italians consume a lot of Extra Virgin Olive Oil in their dishes and yet, they are able to stay lean.

How can a pure fat food make you get lean and healthier? The truth is that all fats are not created equal.

You probably didn’t know, but I have been taking a shot of olive oil for over a year.  It is the only vegetable oil that can be consumed as is.

Olive oil contains a high level of Oleic Acid which is a monounsaturated fatty acids.

Research shown oleic acid helps prevent heart disease by stabilizing LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels while increasing the HDL (the “good” cholesterol) levels.

Not only that, olive oil helps prevent your body from producing cancer cells and can even control your blood sugar levels.

All types of olive oil contain monounsaturated fat, but I recommend “extra-virgin” because it is the least processed form.

The ALIVE Alternative, Try Dee-vine Dressing, 4 different dressings, Always a great taste. Bottles cost $14.00, with a $10.00 bottle refill.

email questions  to  dee-vine_chef@hotmail.com

to place your order here.

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5 Secret Mind Tricks to Avoid Giving Up

Weekly Motivation

5 Secret Mind Tricks to Avoid Giving Up

Stefan Pinto’s Lists

Our mind is capa­ble of inc­re­di­ble awa­re­ness, thought and expe­rien­ces. But, in an attempt to pro­tect us, a spurt of base­less rumi­na­tions can easily and quickly deceive. Our brain will try and shut down our wor­kouts by con­vin­cing us that we must “stop” or “quit” as it thinks you will get hurt and or fail–regardless of what we want. Avoid “thin­king” too much when wor­king out and make the choice to engage your­self in the moment.

  1. Stay in the pre­sent: to stay focu­sed on our goal, you must be in the now–the pre­sent. In order for your inten­tion to be rea­li­zed you must pay atten­tion and become aware of where you are. “When action is per­for­med in the pre­sent moment of awa­re­ness, it is most effec­tive” (Cho­pra). The past and the future are either memory or ima­gi­na­tion res­pec­ti­vely and only the pre­sent is real. The pre­sent simply “is” and it is filled with pos­si­bi­lity. And if you main­tain your atten­tion here, in the pre­sent, without wave­ring into ima­gi­nary “what if” sce­na­rios or worse, with­dra­wing into past reco­llec­tion of fai­lu­res, you can focus on your goal ins­tead of obstacles.
  2. Keep going: your brain is telling you that you can’t run the last lap or one slice won’t do much harm. Trick your­self and con­vince your brain that you will only do half the lap and then go for the whole lap or if die­ting, cut the slice into one bite sized por­tion and leave the rest (war­ning: this only works if you actually use uten­sils. Biting off a piece will be a punishing test of will power).
  3. Stand tall: don’t look down, hold your head up. By lite­rally kee­ping your head up, you will become more aware of your surroun­dings, your pre­sence, the­reby sen­ding strong sig­nals to the brain, rein­for­cing your inten­tion. Ima­gine you are being “pulled” up by a strong mag­net (towards your goal, if you wish). Science aside, mom is always right, “hold your head up.”
  4. Breathe. Relax: Don’t hold onto ten­sion in your jaw and mouth. Other­wise, you are focu­sing on the per­cei­ved pain and com­ple­ting the task. Breathing and rela­xing keeps you in “the zone.” When your jaw is rela­xed, your lips will be sligh­ted par­ted, and the ten­sion will be trans­fe­rred to where you need it the most.
  5. Have fun: we pre­fer to surround our­sel­ves with peo­ple that are fun. But often, we for­get about our­sel­ves. We spend most of our times with our­sel­ves, our minds. We should be fun, too. If you enjoy the cha­llenge, it will help you to per­form. There is oppor­tu­nity in adver­sity and if you learn to make lemo­nade from lemons, your challenges–and life–will become that much more enjoyable.

If you want to be suc­cess­ful, you need to change the way you think and simply let go. “Relin­quish your attach­ment to the out­come. This means giving up your rigid attach­ment to a spe­ci­fic result and living in the wis­dom of uncer­tainty. It means enjo­ying every moment in the jour­ney of your life, even if you don’t know the out­come” (more Chopra).

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The Principles of Self-Management Part One

Weekly Motivation

The Principles of Self-Management Part One
Posted by Brian Tracy on May 21, 2010

The starting point of maturity is the realization that “No one is coming to the rescue.” Everything you are or ever will be is entirely up to you.

This life is not a rehearsal for anything else. This is the real thing. The game is on. Time is passing quickly, and all of your decisions and indecisions, your actions and inactions, have added up to create the life you’re living at this very minute. If you want things to be different in the future, you’ll have to make things different in the present. You’ll have to take complete charge of yourself and your life and make things change, because they won’t change by themselves.

Self-management is really personal management, time management, life management. It’s putting your hands firmly on the steering wheel of your life and then taking yourself in your chosen direction. Remember the old Confucian saying, “If you don’t change the road you’re traveling on, you’ll probably end up where you’re going.” Every successful man or woman in America made, at one time or another, a firm decision about where he or she wanted to go and then took deliberate steps to get there. And you can do this for yourself as well.
One of the most useful ideas I ever learned was to view myself as a “bundle of resources.” You can benefit from this idea by standing back and looking at yourself in terms of what you are, instead of what you do. We tend to define ourselves in terms of our work, in terms of what we’re spending most of our time doing at the present moment. When we meet someone, even at a bus stop, we describe ourselves in terms of our jobs.

We say things such as “I’m a salesperson,” “I’m a manager,” or “I work in such-and-such a business doing such-and-such a job.” Since we tend to become what we think about, the more we describe ourselves to others as being what we do, the more we think of ourselves as what we do. Perhaps this is why people who are fired or laid off go through a period of shock and emotional turmoil. it’s as though they’ve been cut off from their identities. You may have had that experience.

The fact is that you’re not what you do. Instead, you’re a bundle of resources. You have the combination of ingredients that makes you a unique and remarkable human being, different from anyone else who ever has lived or who ever will live. You’ve undergone a wide variety of experiences, both positive and negative. You’ve had a formal education, and you’ve learned from the various jobs and activities that you’ve engaged in. You have a unique intelligence, much of which isn’t yet developed to the full. You have skills that you’ve acquired through hard work, discipline and practice.

You have abilities that you were born with, which make it easy for you to do certain jobs and to accomplish certain tasks. You have energy and ambition and goals and opportunities. You have a philosophy of life, however developed it is, and you have attitudes and perspectives that make you extraordinary. The federal government has identified more than 22,000 different job categories; when you put all your skills together, you’re probably capable of excelling at hundreds of jobs, doing different things in different organizations, businesses and industries.

As the psychologist Abraham Maslow once wrote, “The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.” The average person tends to settle for far less than he’s capable of and then wonders why he’s so dissatisfied and frustrated with his life.

The fact is that you have an inborn drive toward the realization of your full capacity. There’s a force within you that makes you restless and discontent, and that drives you onward and upward toward the achievement of your dreams and aspirations. Many people attempt to deaden that ambition by drinking too much alcohol, watching too much television, socializing too much and even resorting to drugs and dangerous activities. But it will not be denied. You have been put in this world to do something wonderful with your life. You have a unique destiny, a special purpose.

And the starting point for realizing that purpose is self-management. It is taking full control over yourself and everything that you are doing so that you are moving progressively toward the realization of a worthy ideal, so that you are firmly on the road toward becoming everything you are capable of becoming.

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5 Reasons You Don’t See a Doctor, But Should

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5 Reasons You Don’t See a Doctor, But Should

By: Jenna Bergen

Men in the Crystal family shy away from stethoscopes the way vampires recoil from crosses. Stuart Crystal avoided checkups throughout his 20s. His 30-year-old brother, Jonathan, waved him off when Stuart noticed a strange lump on Jonathan’s neck. “The lump kept growing bigger,” recalls Stuart, now a 46-year-old retired police officer living in Florida.

Months later, Jonathan saw a doctor, who instantly ordered a biopsy. It was lymphoma, and it had spread. A week later, he was dead. “His doctors said that he might have lived had he acted quickly enough,” says Stuart.

Jonathan Crystal should be an exception. Yet a recent survey by the American Academy of Family Physicians reveals that 55 percent of U.S. men haven’t seen their M.D. in the past year. “They’ll ignore blood in their urine and watch testicular tumors grow to the size of grapefruits because they’re afraid to come in,” says urologist Sheldon Marks, M.D., author of Prostate and Cancer: A Family Guide to Diagnosis, Treatment, and Survival.

Even young guys sometimes die horrible deaths because they ignore warning signs. We’re here to bust your excuses and show you how to maximize your visit once you go.

“I’m healthy. Why get a checkup?”

How do you know you’re healthy? One-third of all heart-attack victims never have any warning. “Men often wait until a crisis occurs before they see us,” says Rick Kellerman, M.D., a family physician in Wichita, Kansas, and board chairman of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Doctor’s orders: To stop dreading exams, find a nearby internist (an M.D. specializing in internal medicine) you like and respect. Take care of the “like” part by meeting with several physicians in your area before an emergency strikes. See who asks the most questions about your medical history.

Double-check your gut instinct at docboard.org/docfinder, a site that lists disciplinary actions and malpractice suits against doctors. All clear? You and your new doctor can decide the frequency of your physicals based on your family history and risk factors, says Dr. Kellerman.

Maximize your visit: The nurse will cuff you as soon as you sit down, but the reading could be misleading. Sitting still for 16 minutes before being tested produces blood-pressure numbers that are more accurate, according to a study in the American Journal of Hypertension. The goal is for your BP to register less than 120/80 millimeters of mercury (mm/hg). If you test out at 115/75 at home but hit 140/90 in an exam, ask for a do-over.

“It all just feels too awkward.”

If you think a prostate exam is the height of humiliation, get over it. “Look, as a doctor it’s not something I look forward to either,” says Dr. Marks. “But I’ll do it so you don’t die a terrible and preventable death.”

An STD is another excuse to shy away from medical scrutiny. “Men almost always know when they have a sexually transmitted disease,” says Dr. Marks. “Usually, there’s a painful, burning, itching discharge from the penis. It won’t get better without treatment.”

Doctor’s orders: Remember, a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test is noninvasive. As for digital rectal exams, don’t worry about jokes concerning your manhood. “Outside the office, doctors don’t talk about guys’ sizes,” says Dr. Marks. “The men we do talk about are those who opted for pain and death over 10 seconds of embarrassment.”

Regarding STDs, does the idea of stomaching a painful urethral swab have you feeling ill? Chill out. If your faucet has a drip, most docs will simply capture a few drops and send it to the lab. Meanwhile, they’ll prescribe a full course of oral antibiotics that covers gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis.

Maximize your visit: Let your doctor know if you take the hair-loss drug Propecia, which can lower your PSA reading by half after a year of use. That doesn’t mean your risk of prostate cancer has plunged. In fact, an artificially lower score could be masking underlying trouble, according to a study published in Lancet Oncology.

“I hope it’ll just go away.”

Even something as innocuous as a mole needs to be checked out. Melanoma is a cancer of the skin’s pigment-producing cells, and it kills almost 8,000 people each year. What’s more, one out of every 58 people will be diagnosed with it in his or her lifetime. “It’s a very aggressive tumor,” says John Romano, M.D., a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College.

Still, many men drag their feet. “I’ve had patients say they saw a mole changing but were afraid to come in because of what we might say,” says Dr. Romano. “Bad news becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Doctor’s orders: Any mole that suddenly darkens or changes shape should be checked out, especially if you have many moles or a family history of melanoma. Other warning signs: a ragged or blurred border, color shifts across the mole’s surface, or a diameter exceeding that of the head of a pencil eraser.

Maximize your visit: Think of your skin as a single organ; cancer can crop up in areas not directly exposed to sun. Point out any suspicious moles, even those normally covered by clothing.

“I don’t want a scope up there.”

“Men aren’t used to being probed and examined like women are,” says Mark Reichelderfer, M.D., the chief of clinical gastroenterology at UW Health in Wisconsin. “But it’s a small price to pay to prevent a totally devastating disease.

“More than 50,000 people die of colon and rectal cancers each year, and early screening could have prevented many of those deaths. “One in three people who wait to come in until they’re experiencing symptoms—blood in the stool, severe abdominal pain, or a narrower stool—will die,” says Dr. Reichelderfer.

Doctor’s orders: Everyone knows to see a doc if they’re flushing blood down the toilet, but anemia and rectal pain can also signal cancer. Regardless, schedule a colonoscopy every 10 years, starting at age 50. If a family member has had colon cancer, begin screening 10 years before the age at which they were diagnosed.

Maximize your visit: While not as accurate as a traditional colonoscopy, less-invasive virtual procedures are better than no exam at all. A tube is inserted into the colon, but instead of a 30-minute expedition into your bowels, a CT scan captures a 3D image of your innards in 10 to 15 minutes. “We can fly through the colon and look for polyps like a video game,” says Dr. Reichelderfer.

“I can’t afford a checkup.”

Even with insurance, co-pays and deductibles can hurt. If you’re having trouble making payments, speak up. “I’ve never known a doctor who wouldn’t try to help, whether it’s by not charging as much or by giving you extra samples of a prescription,” says Dr. Marks. If your doc orders a bunch of tests or medications, it’s okay to inquire about less-expensive alternatives.

Doctor’s orders: Read the bill. “Often, you’ll see errors, which are rarely to your benefit,” says Dr. Marks. “I’ve seen men charged for gynecological procedures.” If you can’t understand the medical jargon, ask your doctor to look over the bill for you.

Maximize your visit: Don’t hesitate to ask your doctor for free samples of any medications he’s prescribing. Yes, it’s playing into Big Pharma’s marketing strategy, but it’s also a quick way to save money.

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5 Nutrients You’re Not Getting Enough Of

Nutrition

h4>By: Jason Stevenson

Five years after telling a bunch of angry apes to keep their filthy paws off him, Charlton Heston starred in Soylent Green. In the film, a megacorporation solves a starving world’s need for nutritious food by turning the dead into dinner. This is complete science fiction, of course: Most of us are so short on key nutrients we couldn’t possibly be someone’s square meal.

In fact, studies show that 77 percent of men don’t take in enough magnesium, that many of us are deficient in vitamin D, and that the vitamin B12 in our diets may be undermined by a common heartburn medication. And we haven’t even mentioned our problems with potassium and iodine.

It’s time to play catch-up. Follow our advice, and a cannibal will never call you junk food.

Iodine

Your thyroid gland requires iodine to produce the hormones T3 and T4, both of which help control how efficiently you burn calories. That means insufficient iodine may cause you to gain weight and feel fatigued.

The shortfall: Since iodized salt is an important source of the element, you might assume you’re swimming in the stuff. But when University of Texas at Arlington researchers tested 88 samples of table salt, they found that half contained less than the FDA-recommended amount of iodine. And you’re not making up the difference with all the salt hiding in processed foods—U.S. manufacturers aren’t required to use iodized salt. The result is that we’ve been sliding toward iodine deficiency since the 1970s.

Hit the mark: Sprinkling more salt on top of an already sodium-packed diet isn’t a great idea, but iodine can also be found in a nearly sodium-free source: milk. Animal feed is fortified with the element, meaning it travels from cows to your cereal bowl. Not a milk man? Eat at least one serving of eggs or yogurt a day; both are good sources of iodine.

Potassium

Without this essential mineral, your heart couldn’t beat, your muscles wouldn’t contract, and your brain couldn’t comprehend this sentence. Why? Potassium helps your cells use glucose for energy.

The shortfall: Despite potassium’s can’t-live-without-it importance, nutrition surveys indicate that young men consume just 60 percent to 70 percent of the recommended 4,700 mg a day. To make matters worse, most guys load up on sodium: High sodium can boost blood pressure, while normal potassium levels work to lower it, says Lydia A. L. Bazzano, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of epidemiology at Tulane University.

Hit the mark: Half an avocado contains nearly 500 mg potassium, while one banana boasts roughly 400 mg. Not a fan of either fruit? Pick up some potatoes—a single large spud is packed with 1,600 mg.

Vitamin B12

Consider B12 the guardian of your gray matter: In a British study, older people with the lowest levels of B12 lost brain volume at a faster rate over a span of 5 years than those with the highest levels.

The shortfall: Even though most men do consume the daily quota of 2.4 micrograms, the stats don’t tell the whole story. “We’re seeing an increase in B12 deficiencies due to interactions with medications,” says Katherine Tucker, Ph.D., director of a USDA program at Tufts University. The culprits: acid-blocking drugs, such as Prilosec, and the diabetes medication metformin.

Hit the mark: You’ll find B12 in lamb and salmon, but the most accessible source may be fortified cereals. That’s because the B12 in meat is bound to proteins, and your stomach must produce acid to release and absorb it. Eat a bowl of 100 percent B12-boosted cereal and milk every morning and you’ll be covered, even if you take the occasional acid-blocking med. However, if you pop Prilosec on a regular basis or are on metformin, talk to your doctor about tracking your B12 levels and possibly taking an additional supplement.

Magnesium

This lightweight mineral is a tireless multitasker: It’s involved in more than 300 bodily processes. Plus, a study in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition found that low levels of magnesium may increase your blood levels of C-reactive protein, a key marker of heart disease.

The shortfall: Nutrition surveys reveal that men consume only about 80 percent of the recommended 400 milligrams (mg) of magnesium a day. “We’re just barely getting by,” says Dana King, M.D., a professor of family medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. “Without enough magnesium, every cell in your body has to struggle to generate energy.”

Hit the mark: Fortify your diet with more magnesium-rich foods, such as halibut and navy beans. Then hit the supplement aisle: Few men can reach 400 mg through diet alone, so Dr. King recommends ingesting some insurance in the form of a 250 mg supplement. One caveat: Scrutinize the ingredients list. You want a product that uses magnesium citrate, the form best absorbed by your body.

Vitamin D

This vitamin’s biggest claim to fame is its role in strengthening your skeleton. But vitamin D isn’t a one-trick nutrient: A study in Circulation found that people deficient in D were up to 80 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke. The reason? D may reduce inflammation in your arteries.

The shortfall: Vitamin D is created in your body when the sun’s ultraviolet B rays penetrate your skin. Problem is, the vitamin D you stockpile during sunnier months is often depleted by winter, especially if you live in the northern half of the United States, where UVB rays are less intense from November through February. Case in point: When Boston University researchers measured the vitamin D status of young adults at the end of winter, 36 percent of them were found to be deficient.

Hit the mark: First, ask your doctor to test your blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D. “You need to be above 30 nanograms per milliliter,” says Michael Holick, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of medicine at Boston University. Come up short? Take 1,400 IU of vitamin D daily from a supplement and a multivitamin. That’s about seven times the recommended daily intake for men, but it takes that much to boost blood levels of D, says Dr. Holick.

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