Tag - Kevin Angileri

What is the Raw Food Diet?

Have you started hearing about the Raw Food Diet? It’s gaining popularity and buzz, not just as a diet to lose weight, but a diet for a long and healthy life. We eat so much in the way of processed food that we don’t even stop to think about what we’re putting into our bodies, and how far we’ve come nutritionally from our ancestral, agrarian roots.

A raw food diet means consuming food in its natural, unprocessed form. There are several common-sense rationales for why this is a good idea. Processing and cooking food can take so much of the basic nutritional value away. Think of some of the conventional wisdom you’ve heard about for years, such as: If you cook pasta just to the al dente (or medium) stage, it will have more calories, yes, but it will have more the nutritional value in it than if you cooked it to a well-done stage. Or you probably remember hearing not to peel carrots or potatoes too deeply, because most of the nutrients and values are just under the surface.

The raw food diet means eating unprocessed, uncooked, organic, whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, dried fruits, seaweeds, etc. It means a diet that is at least 75% uncooked! Cooking takes out flavor and nutrition from vegetables and fruits. A raw food diet means eating more the way our ancient ancestors did. Our healthier, more fit ancestors. They cooked very little, and certainly didn’t cook or process fruits and vegetables. They ate them RAW. Their water wasn’t from a tap; it was natural, spring water. Maybe they drank some coconut milk on occasion.

Doesn’t it just make sense that this is how our bodies were meant to eat? It’s a way of eating that’s in harmony with the planet and in harmony with our own metabolisms. Our bodies were meant to work, and need to work to be efficient. That means exercise, certainly, but it also means eating natural, raw foods that require more energy to digest them.

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The Importance of Weight Loss and Exercise by Kevin Angileri

November 13, 2016

The Importance of Weight Loss and Exercise
Carrying around too much weight feels uncomfortable, and it can also damage your health. According the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), obesity rates have skyrocketed in the United States in recent years. As of 2010, more than one-third of American adults were considered obese, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher. Body mass is derived by dividing weight in pounds by height in inches squared, and then multiplying the result by 703 (weight (lb) / [height (in)] 2 x 703). You can calculate your body mass by following these three steps:

Multiply your weight in pounds by 703.
Calculate your height in inches squared.
Divide the resulting number from step 1 by the resulting number in step 3.
Obesity can lead to a number of serious health problems, including heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and some types of cancer.

One method that can help a person lose weight is to limit the number of calories taken in through their diet. The other way is to burn extra calories with exercise.

Benefits of Exercise vs. Diet
Combining exercise with a healthy diet is a more effective way to lose weight than depending on calorie restriction alone. Exercise can prevent or even reverse the effects of certain diseases. Exercise lowers blood pressure and cholesterol, which may prevent a heart attack.

In addition, if you exercise, you lower your risk of developing certain types of cancers such as colon and breast cancer. Exercise is also known to help contribute to a sense of confidence and well-being, thus possibly lowering rates of anxiety and depression.

Exercise is helpful for weight loss and maintaining weight loss. Exercise can increase metabolism, or how many calories you burn in a day. It can also help you maintain and increase lean body mass, which also helps increase number of calories you burn each day.

Part 3 of 8
How Much Exercise Is Needed for Weight Loss?
To reap the health benefits of exercise, it is recommended that you to perform some form of aerobic exercise at least three times a week for a minimum of 20 minutes per session. However, more than 20 minutes is better if you want to actually lose weight. Incorporating just 15 minutes of moderate exercise — such as walking one mile — on a daily basis will burn up to 100 extra calories (assuming you don’t consume excess calories in

your diet afterwards). Burning 700 calories a week can equals 10 lbs. of weight loss over the course of a year.

Part 4 of 8
Calculating Your Target Heart Rate
To receive all of the health benefits of exercise, you’ll need to mix in some higher intensity exercises. To get an idea of how hard you are working, you can check your heart rate. The basic formula for determining your target heart rate is to subtract your age from 220 and then calculate 60 to 80 percent of that number.

Talk to a trainer or your healthcare team to help you determine your best intensity for each workout. Those with special health concerns such as an injury, diabetes, or a heart condition should consult a physician before beginning any fitness program.

Part 5 of 8
What Are Some Examples of the Different Types of Exercise?
The type of exercise you choose for weight loss doesn’t matter as much as whether or not you’re doing it. That’s why experts recommend you pick exercises you enjoy, so that you’ll stick to a regular routine.

Aerobic
No matter what exercise program you implement, it should include some

form of aerobic or cardiovascular exercise. Aerobic exercises get your heart rate up and your blood pumping. Aerobic exercises may include walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, and dancing. You can also work out on a fitness machine such as a treadmill, elliptical, or stair stepper.

Weight Training
A big advantage of working out with weights is that, in addition to shedding fat, you’ll build muscle. Muscle, in turn, burns calories. Talk about a healthy feedback loop! Experts recommend working all the major muscle groups three times per week. This includes:

abs
back
biceps
calves
chest
forearms
hamstrings
quads
shoulders
traps
triceps
Yoga
Yoga is not as intense as other types of exercise, but it can help you lose weight in other ways, according to a recent study by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The study found that people who practice yoga are more mindful about what they eat and, therefore, less likely to be obese.

Part 6 of 8
Incorporating Exercise Into Your Lifestyle
The total amount of exercise you engage in during a day matters more than whether or not you do it in a single session. That’s why small changes in your daily routine can make a big difference in your waistline.

Healthy lifestyle habits to consider include:

walking or riding your bike to work or while running errands
taking the stairs instead of the elevator
parking farther away from destinations and walking the remaining distance
Part 7 of 8
Activities and the Amount of Calories They Burn
The average adult male who doesn’t exercise requires approximately 2,200 calories a day to maintain his average weight. A female needs about 1,800 calories to maintain her weight.

The following list contains common activities and the approximate amount of calories burned per hour:
Activities

Calories Burned

playing baseball, golf, or cleaning the house

240 to 300

brisk walking, biking, dancing, or gardening

370 to 460

playing football, jogging (at a nine-minute-mile pace), or swimming

580 to 730

skiing, racquetball, or running (at a seven-minute-mile pace)

740 to 920

Part 8 of 8
Before You Start an Exercise Program
Talk to your doctor before you start a new exercise program, especially if you are planning on doing vigorous exercise. This is especially important if you have:

heart disease
lung disease
diabetes
kidney disease
arthritis

People who have been very inactive for the recent months, who are overweight, or have recently quit smoking should also talk to their doctors before staring a new exercise program.

When you are first starting a new exercise program, it’s important to pay attention to the signals your body is giving you. You should push yourself, so that your fitness level improves. However, pushing yourself too hard can cause you to injure yourself. Stop exercising if you start to experience pain or shortness of breath.

by Kevin Angileri

Why Low Carb Diet is Healthy by Kevin Angileri

November 13, 2016

Why Low Carb Diet is Healthy

Are you one of those who’ve cleaned out your pantry and decided to commit to low-carb diet? It’s currently one of the diets that people who wanted to slim down tries. Before, it was low-fat diet but now the new craze is low-carb diet although not everyone believes it to be a healthy. But low-carb diets do have proven health benefits.

Is Low-Carb Diet Recommended by Experts?

The thing is that it’s a difficult task to provide general health and diet advice that would actually apply to everybody. This is why public health guidelines are often focused on recommendations that guarantee everyone has enough vitamins, minerals and nutrition in their body. Such health recommendations also emphasize that physical activity is balanced with calorie intake.

The dietary guidelines recommend that one eats healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables, low-fat or fat-free dairy products, whole grains and seafood. On the other hand, one should eat less of trans fats, saturated fats, sodium, refined grains and added sugars. These were what the experts in nutrition and diet recommends.

But then when it comes to a person, each case varies greatly to another that one recommendation or solution applies to all. When it comes to health, several factors have to be taken account such as height and weight, metabolic function, etc. especially for individual recommendations. When you suffer from a specific medical condition, it is especially important that the dietary recommendations are tailored to your needs.

On that account, a number of diets emerged and developed to cater to individual’s varying needs. Two of the most common are low-fat diet and low-carb diet. Some individuals prefer the low-fat while there are some who do better with low-carb diet. With low-carb diet, there are some who are skeptical that there are health benefits to living a lifestyle that way when your blood cholesterol might elevate and the risk to coronary heart disease increase.

But in the last few years, there have been studies and researches about low-carb diets which have shown that it maybe actually helpful to those suffering from obesity. What’s even better is that it may not only just help you lose weight but also improve your overall health in so many ways. On that note, here you’ll learn of the health benefits of low carbohydrate, high fat diets to your health.

How Low-Carb Diet Works

So you’ve decided to try low carb diet. You now avoid refined sugars completely and you cut down on other types of carbohydrates in your diet by avoiding pasta, rice, bread, corn and potatoes. Now, the only carbohydrates you consume are those you can find in fruits and vegetables. In low-carb diet, the way you can provide your body with energy is by increasing the natural healthy fats you consume.

You can do so by eating plant-derived fat, animal fat and dairy fat but you’ll avoid low-fat dairy since they are usually full of artificial sugar. Afterwards, you start to selectively add carbs to your diet but only in the amount abided so you won’t start gaining weight again. It’s basically how low-carb diet works but it is important that you consult your doctor and ask for advice first.

Before anything else, you should research and read more about this type of diet. The doctor is the best person to talk to if you are planning on trying low-carb diet. Have test done and checked so you can be sure this diet is safe for you. This way, any individual issues can be addressed and the risk of worsening your health be prevented.

Health Benefits of Low Carb Diet

Here are proven and tested health benefits of low carb, high fat diet:

Weight Loss

Studies and experience showed that low carb diet is able to foster weight loss. One should note, however, that the amount of weight loss varies individually. It depends on the individual’s health and how aggressive they are in ridding themselves of carbs and sugars.

Improve Blood Pressure

With stroke and heart disease, high blood pressure is one of the known risk factors. As such, it is an important step for lowering one’s risk to heart disease that blood pressure is lowered. In that note, studies on low-carb diets have shown that it effectively lowers blood pressure of those with obesity.

Improve Blood Sugar

Apart from improved blood pressure, low-carb diets have also been shown to lower glycated hemoglobin and fasting glucose levels. If you are diabetic or pre-diabetic, this is extremely helpful. This health benefit is also quite helpful for those individuals with metabolic syndrome.

Improve Upset Stomach

When you are on low-carb diet, it’s found out that it’s quite uncommon to experience stomach problems. It is specifically found that there’s often less gas, risk of diarrhea and stomach cramps. A lot of people have reported that they experience less heartburn.

Reduce Sugar Cravings

Low-carb diet is especially effective in reducing your cravings for sugar. A lot of people find it hard to stay away from sweets which results to obesity, diabetes and all other medical complications. But with low carb diet, you can finally beat down your obsession with sweets.

Reduce Acne Problems

Reduced acne problems are also one of the benefits of low-carb diet. People have improvements in their acne problems with low carb diet which isn’t surprising seeing that there’s a connection between acne and high carb diet which could be the effect of growth hormones.

Increased Physical Endurance

This type of diet has also been found to provide increased physical endurance. This is because it gives you continuous access to all the energy there is in your fat stores. The thing is that the stored carbohydrates your body supplies only last for a couple of hours, especially when you’re doing intense training. But with low-carb diet, your energy can last for weeks, sometimes even months.

So these are the benefits of low-carb diet. It shows that low carb, high fat diet is safe and health improves your general health, even when it is unfamiliar as low-fat diet. Only that you must learn more about it first and consider a lot of things before you ever try this new diet.

by Kevin Angileri

Healthy Foods to Snack On by Kevin Angileri

October 15, 2016