Tag: Fitness

It is no big secret that exercise, proper nutrition, getting plenty of rest and drinking lots of water throughout the day is a proven recipe for health.

Regarding exercise, is there a particular time of day when working out or staying physically active will deliver greater rewards? The answer to that question seems to be “yes”, and the time you should be exercising is in the morning.

When you are productive in any area of your life, you enjoy less stress and anxiety, more happiness and a sense of fulfillment, and more success.

To boost your productivity, get active more often. Jogging, taking a walk, lifting weights, cycling, and performing yoga or Pilates will give you more energy than if you are sedentary, which will naturally lead to better productivity. When you schedule that exercise in the morning, you supercharge that productivity.

Here Is How Morning Exercise Improves Productivity

Exercise in the morning means fewer scheduling conflicts. You never miss a workout when you wake up early, and you don’t have to push other responsibilities aside to make sure you get a workout in.

This means after your morning workout, your entire day can be focused on productively knocking out your to do list, and daily responsibilities.

Waking up is hard to do for a lot of people. This means sluggishly getting through the morning and heading to work without much energy.

Exercise fires up your endorphins and cranks up your energy levels. Enjoying even just 20 minutes of physical activity in the morning can lead to energy reserves to fuel a productive day.

Early-morning fitness means a spike in your metabolism. So when you have a mid-morning snack and lunch while you are working throughout the day, you effectively burn more calories. This means you’re less likely to suffer a mid-afternoon energy crash.

Moderately intense to intense physical activity also wakes up your brain. So you start the day with a clear head, improving your chances of keeping ahead of your workload and responsibilities all day long.

As far as motivation goes, getting your workout in early gives you a boost of self-esteem. You have barely begun your day, and you have already accomplished something important. Success can build upon itself.

The feel-good hormones that exercise releases make you feel good about yourself for exercising in the morning, a time when it may be tough to think about physical activity.

This successful early-morning achievement develops the proper mindset to attack subsequent goals and commitments with a lot of productive energy and positive feelings.

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Serious – low energy is probably responsible for a huge proportion of our problems!

It’s low energy that makes it hard to wake up in the morning, it’s low energy that makes us not really want to exercise and it’s low energy that prevents us from performing our best or really enjoying life.

The problem is that it takes energy to start changing your lifestyle and to do things like exercise more or sleep better to improve your energy… so where do you begin? The answer is simple: you begin with your diet.

There are tons of ways that you can improve your energy levels through your diet, here are just a few.

Glucose Hit

One way you can add more energy using your diet is just to consume more glucose. This won’t give you long-term energy but will instead help you to improve your energy in the short term and give you a small kick when you’re struggling.

And interestingly, one of the best ways to get that hit of glucose is to ‘cheat’ and have glucose from man-made, processed sources. A glucose tablet is one option, another is to eat Wine Gums!

MCT Oil

Using glucose on a regular basis is not a recommended way to keep your energy levels up though.

Instead, it’s better to use MCT oil, which comes from coconuts and other natural sources.

This type of oil doesn’t get absorbed by the body in the same way as other fats and it encourages the body to produce ketons – a type of energy that has a lot of particular uses for the brain.

Chia Seeds

If you want an example of someone with high energy levels, then look no further than the Tarahumara tribe.

This group of indigenous people are able to run hundreds of miles in a single go and they accomplish this at least in part thanks to chia seeds – seeds that are capable of absorbing several times their weight in water.

Iron

Iron is used to create the red blood cells that carry oxygen around the body.

More iron = more oxygen where you need it – meaning in turn that you’ll have more energy.

Vinpocentine

Another way to get more oxygen around your body when you need it is to cause vasodilation and widen the blood cells.

This can be done with any food containing nitrates – including garlic.

But vinpocetine is a natural ingredient that goes one step further by ensuing the vasodilation occurs mainly in the most important regions of the brain.

It enhances cognitive functions, including those involving long- and short-term memory, and it has also been shown to be valuable in protecting heart, visual, and hearing functions, among other benefits.

CoQ10
Meanwhile, anything that can increase mitochondrial energy metabolism will greatly enhance energy levels – CoQ10, PQQ and creatine all being very good examples (and all being found in organ meats).

CoQ10 is a substance that helps convert food into energy. CoQ10 is found in almost every cell in the body, and it is a powerful antioxidant.

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One of the hardest parts of eating clean is turning down the tasty snacks that you know are bad for you. You don’t have to starve yourself of course or eat all that strictly.

There’s nothing wrong with a nice pasta dish packed with vegetables and meats…

But what you should avoid is that massive chocolate cake after dinner that will add 450 calories to your diet and leave you feeling sick.

It provides zero nutrition and it sets your diet back in a way that can sometimes be hard to recover from psychologically.

But don’t worry – there’s a trick!

What is CBT?

CBT stands for ‘cognitive behavioural therapy’. This is a psychotherapeutic approach that involves training the brain to overcome negative thoughts. The belief is that your thoughts can reinforce negative beliefs and can have unwanted effects on your behaviour.

For instance, if you’re trying to get over a phobia of heights, the thing you need to change is the thought process that involves imagining falling or telling yourself it’s not safe!

What Does This Have to do With Eating Clean?

So what does all this have to do with eating clean?

Simple: it gives you the ability to reprogram your thoughts and thereby to remove the desire to indulge in cakes etc.

To do this, you simply need to think ahead and focus on how you’re going to feel after the meal. Focus on the cake and the taste and you’ll produce the reward hormone dopamine.

Instead, you need to focus on the last time you made yourself feel sick from eating too much cake. You probably felt bloating, stuffed and guilty and most likely you couldn’t finish it. Concentrate on that sensation and suddenly the cake doesn’t seem so appealing.

Now instead, imagine how good it would feel to have a refreshing dessert that would perk you up and leave you feeling good about yourself. How about a hot drink?

Or maybe you could get an ice cold lemon sorbet that will cleanse your palette without adding too many calories!

This makes all the difference to your desire for pudding and you’ll find that you actually would prefer the fresher dessert. If you do this regularly enough, then you will actually create new associations to the point where you actually don’t want to eat that huge cake.

The same goes for reprogramming your diet in every other area too!