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Weight Loss Exercise

Breads and Vegetables evil or good?


Breads and Vegetables? What do these have in common? Not much. The reason that we want to consider these two staples of a diet is for opposite reasons.

Breads are a nightmare for many people trying to cut down on the carbs in their diet. There is good reason to cut the carbs as most people are taking in to many carbs in the first place. In saying that cutting down carbs is good I am not writing about a zero carb policy like with the Atkins diet but instead just talking about cutting a quarter or half of your carbs out and not replacing them and thus you will have cut your calorie intake quite substantially. Bread as any diabetic can tell you is a very addictive food. To most people the cutting of bread from their diet is one of the biggest sacrifices they can make and once it is out of your diet for a week or two you will feel better and will not have those cravings anymore. I know this from experience as I have a bagel every morning (equivalent to 5 slices of bread) and for a week I went without and felt badly in the morning but by the next week I was not missing it at all.

Vegetables are also carbs but are much better for you and in the typical North American diet most of us would be very short of the six or so servings that we should have. The advantages to increasing your vegetables are threefold. First vegetables are fairly high in Water and fiber which helps your body to keep everything running smooth. Secondly vegetables are a great source for most of your vitamins and minerals and thirdly vegetables are filling and will keep you from getting up after your mealto grab something sweet.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Dean Karnazes Running Across America

Dean Karnazes Running Across America

Dean Karnazes Run Across America

This is one of those inspiring crazy stories about just how hard people can work. Dean Karnazes is an ultramarathoner, you know the guys that run up to 100 miles in one day. Anyway Dan is going to run across America in 75 days from Los Angeles to New York. The run is sponsored by the Regis and Kelly morning show but the real work is being done by Dean Karnazes.

Run Across America

This endeavour is amazing and the fact is that dean is running not just for the achievement but also for a couple of charities and the bringing of these charities into the public eye, specifically childhood obesity. As a father of two you can imagine how great and important that I think that this issue is.

Dean will be running for 12-14 hours a day, sleeping 5-6 hours a day and running 40-50 miles a day. I could not do this once let alone do it for 75 days.

Lets all cheer on Dean Karnazes and help in any way we can for this great run!

You can follow his progress on the Live with Regis and Kelly site

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Weight Loss Exercise

Back on Schedule

Back on ScheduleWell today I am finally back on schedule. It has been about three weeks since I have had a regular schedule and man it feels good.

In mid-December I had a week of holidays and as we all know the whole Christmas season is running, working, family and anything else that you can jam into the days and weeks.

Well today was my first day back and there are a few things that made me realize that as much as I crave freedom I still like to have a schedule.

Eating – Every workday, including today, I make my breakfast in the morning and have all of my eating and food planned for the day. Over the last few days or weeks that has not been the case at all and I had been eating and snacking anytime that I felt like it.

Working Out – My workouts have been pretty steady even if they have been inconsistent. I have been just doing weights over the last few weeks except for one cardio workout. Well today I was back but at least I will get a chance to get a couple at least cardio workouts in this week. I usually get my workout in just around noon  and today was no exception.

I hope that as the days get longer I can get on my bike again soon as this is probably the best time and exercise that I get, this is the time that I let my mind get quieter, get some consistent rhythm going in my exercise and it is just plain nice to get outside and enjoy the sun.

Sleep – My sleep schedule has been horrible for over a month now. I did not care about my sleep at the beginning of December and hit the wall just as I was starting holidays. Now over the last couple weeks my kids have kept me running and then after they finally crash I am able to get some time in reading. I am reading that book Eat, Pray, Love and it is fun to read but it keeps me up to late.

And to make matters maybe worse I have been sleeping in late. I feel that I always perform best when I get to sleep earlier and wake up early as well.

How about you? How do you like the year and the days getting back into a schedule? Are you running into the same as me? I know that I miss my wife and kids more going back to work today but this SCHEDULE is exactly what I needed.

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edit: My wife saw the pic of us in this post and got mad. The choice that she liked better is the pic that I put in here now… so much for editorial immunity but my wife always gets final say