You Can't Buy A Healthy Weight, You Have to Own It!

It is time to accept the idea that losing weight is not something that can be bought or sold. It is not a commodity.

The key is to adjust your lifestyle. It means eating a largely plant-based diet based on whole foods coupled with  daily exercises. There is no such thing as a quick fix when it comes to obesity.  Once you are diagnosed with it chronic disease it can set in to stay despite pharmacology, meditation or other attempts to cure yourself.  No amount of positive thinking can alkalinize acidic tissues. You need to change your diet!

Sickness, Obesity and The North American Lifestyle

Think of the people that you know who are fat. Do you know someone who eats fried meats, junk foods and things like French fries and candy bars? Are they sick all of the time?  What is his or her weight like?

Now think of people that you know who maintain a healthy weight.  Do they eat a lot of refined food, meat and sugar?  You have probably noticed that they are mostly abstainers from these toxic foods.

Now turn your attention to traditional cultures from around the globe.  Think of the traditional Asian body and recall how svelte of an archetype it is.  In China Japan and India people have been eating a mostly plant based diet for thousands of years.  It is only recently that these race types have been less than slender thanks to the invasion of our toxic products into their culture.

After you are done picturing the body shape of the average Asian then picture what your average American looks like.  Then picture him eating snacks at a baseball game. The beer full of calories and the hotdog full of fat and nitrates stuffed inside a white fluffy high carb bun is what immediately comes to mind. Hardly health food.

Sadly the overweight American has become the stereotype of North America.  Even if the American happens to be Latino, Asian or from some other descent they tend to be bloated with the toxins and calories that are in our addictive junk foods and meat products once they locate onto our Western soils.

Vegans Tend to Be the Healthiest Humans

So just what are the statistics hewn it comes to vegans? How much healthier are they than us?  Research studies show that vegetarians and vegans are anywhere from five to thirty pounds skinnier than their fellow citizens. 

You don’t have to trust the research. You can trust your own eyes. In fact, ask yourself – when was the last time you saw a really fat vegan?

So just how much weight can you immediately lose if you become a vega?.  During a sturdy at the Pritikin center, 4,500 patients who went through a program of eating as much as they wanted of low fat, plant based whole food lost 5.5% of their body weight.  They also lost an average of seventeen pounds!

Other intervention studies on vegetarian diets have show similar results including two to five pounds lost after twelve days, sixteen pounds lost over twelve weeks and twenty-four pounds lost after one year.

Consuming a low whole foods plant based diet will help you to lose weight and the best news is that the more you weight the quicker you will lose it once you switch to a vegan based diet.  People were able to keep the weight off over the long term better as well, which of course also improved their overall health.

Of course, do not become vegan if this is not part of your Healthy & Active plan, but for most individual eating more in the Paleo style with less startches and no junk food, sugar and fat keeps them at their optimum fitness level.

For more information about the Healthy & Active Program please visit our website at www.healthy-active.com. You may also call us in Toronto at (41) 440-2217 and ask for Adrienne Wright Bulow or Dr. Michael Rahman or email us at adrienne@healthy-active.com.

Healthy And Active Program Helps Correct Hormonal Imbalance

Hormones are chemicals that occur naturally within the body. They act as messengers that simultaneously carry information through the bloodstream to organs and cells to make sure that every aspect of physical functioning is integrated and working smoothly together.

Each hormone has a specific message, designed to affect only certain parts of the body. These messages carry important information about everything from growth and development to sexual function to mood.

The Heirachy of Hormonal Balance

When Hormonal Messages Become Scrambled

During different stages of human life, different hormones are active. Some enable functions during growing phases, others are important during puberty, and still others are responsible for reproduction. There are hundreds of hormones that facilitate the healthy operating of the human body.

Hormones are vitally important to our health. However, they are also very delicate. They require a specific balance to be present in the body before they are effective but they can be affected by the slightest change in toxicity to our body. When hormones are out of balance or being negatively affected by our lifestyle, we will immediately notice the effects through a diminishment of functioning or as a change of mood. Signals do not reach the right place at the right time resulting in the overstimulation of certain functions or the shutting down of certain functions completely.

A good example of how hormones become out of balance is demonstrated by the example of what happens during menopause.  During a woman’s life, the ovaries are stimulated by two hormones that are produced by the brain FSH called (follicle stimulating hormones) and LH (luteinizing hormone). These hormones coordinate a woman’s menstrual cycle during her reproductive years. During menopause these two hormones are no longer produced causing symptoms of imbalance that can include bloating, bone loss, loss of fertility, hot flashes, irregular periods, loss of muscle mass, loss of scalp hair, loss of memory, mood swings, anxiety, night sweats, urinary incontinence, vaginal dryness and weight gain.

Imbalanced Hormones and Weight Gain

Our lifestyle and diet can have a direct impact on how well – or not – hormones are able to do their job. Many hormones control the processing and burning of food.  If our hormones become out of balance then it can become a challenge for the body to metabolize carbohydrates.  This can cause our metabolism to turn potatoes, grains, and other carbohydrates into fat instead of energy.  The result is weight gain and feeling unwell.  One of the points of embarking on a Healthy and Active Lifestyle is to rebalance your hormones so that your body is in good working order once again.

For more information about the Healthy & Active Program please visit our website at www.healthy-active.com. You may also call us in Toronto at (41) 440-2217 and ask for Adrienne Wright Bulow or Dr. Michael Rahman or email us at adrienne@healthy-active.com.

How To Choose a Great Prenatal Vitamin Supplement Formula

If you are planning to have a baby, it is a really good idea to take prenatal vitamins.  Even though a well-balanced healthy diet, full of natural, raw nutritious foods is important it is also a good idea to optimize your baby’s healthy by making sure that all of your nutritional needs are “covered” by taking prenatal vitamins. This could be especially crucial if you are a vegan.

How Prenatal Vitamins Differ From Others

Read Prenatal Vitamin Labels!

Prenatal vitamin formulas differ from other regular vitamins because that they contain more folic acid and iron then other standard multivitamins.

·      The folic acid helps prevent abnormalities in the brain and spinal cord.

·      The iron assists with the fetus’ normal growth and development and helps prevent anemia in both mom and baby

Supplementation with both iron and folic acid helps prevent the risk of the baby developing low birth weight.

How to Choose A Quality Prenatal Vitamin Formula

At the very least, the prenatal vitamins chosen should include folic acid and iron. However there are quite a few other nutrients that should be on the formula label.

A great prenatal vitamin supplement will also include omega 3 fatty acids, which are found in fish, nuts and avocadoes.  Omega-3 fatty acids are crucial to your baby’s brain development and the active component is usually labelled as DHA on the vitamin bottle label.

It is also crucial that the calcium and vitamin D are in the formula as well especially if you do not drink milk or eat calcium rich foods such as calcium, kale or grapefruit.

Reading The Prenatal Vitamin Label

You can buy prenatal vitamins in just about any drugstore.  Look for a prenatal vitamin supplement that contains:

Folic acid       400 to 800 mcg

Iron                 30 mg

Vitamin D      400 IU

Calcium         250 mg

Vitamin C         50 mg

Zinc                  15 mg

Vitamin B-6        2 mg

Copper               2 mg

DHA                 250 mg   

Taking Vitamins Before And During Pregnancy

Ideally, pregnant women should not be taking prenatal vitamins “after the fact” of conception. It is best to start taking them before conception to ensure normal brain and spinal cord development.

It is also bees to take the prenatal vitamins throughout your entire pregnancy, drink plenty of fluids and include more fibre in your diet because the extra iron in prenatal vitamins can promote constipation. Taking a daily walk can also help with the constipation.

Although it is true that the best sources of vitamins will always be from fresh, preferably organic and natural whole food sources but a little insurance (n the form of prenatal supplements) against the development of spinal and neural defects is highly recommended.

For more information about the Healthy & Active Program please visit our website at www.healthy-active.com. You may also call us in Toronto at (41) 440-2217 and ask for Adrienne Wright Bulow or Dr. Michael Rahman or email us at adrienne@healthy-active.com.

You Body Is Naturally Meant to Be Alkaline!

A huge component of the Healthy & Active Program is all about keeping your body’s pH in balance.  The term pH stands for the word “potent” and the H is the chemical symbol for hydrogen and how hydrogen behaves in your body is absolutely essential to hyour health.

Your Body is More Alkaline Than Acid

In order for the body to remain healthy and alive, your body keeps a delicate and precise balance of blood pH at 7.365, which is slightly alkaline. The body does whatever it has to in order to maintain this balance, including making us seriously ill in order to help us dispel the acid.

The problem is that most people have what can only be described as incredibly acid lifestyles. Acid is produced in your body whenever you have stress, upset emotions and when the food you eat is acid forming. The acid is only neutralized by alkaline substances.  The exces acid is stored in your fat cells and in order to try and control this your body will leach calcium, an alkaline substance,  from your bones in an attempt to stabilize your overall pH level..

The typical North American lifestyle diet is very acidic which puts a strain on all of your systems and organs and causes a lot of disease.

The Goldfish In Dirty Water Analogy

The author, Dr. Robert O. Young who wrote The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet. Reclaim Your Health and who is at the forefront of research on the effects of the acid/alkaline balance in the human body, uses a “goldfish in the aquarium” anaology to describe how Imbalanced blood pH ruins our health. 

“Pretend you had a goldfish in a bowl, and one day you saw the goldfish was beginning to look very unhealthy. You also notice that the water is a little dirty.

Chances are it's the water that's making the fish unhealthy, not the fish itself. When you change the water, the fish will get healthier. The fact that the goldfish is unhealthy is actually a symptom of the unhealthy environment. Not the problem. “[1]

Our bodies are more than seventy percent Water! And most of the time because of our diets, emotions and lifestyles, the "water" in our body is over-acidic, and to put it simply: toxic. Yet, even knowing this, modern day establishment medicine puts much more attention on fighting the symptoms, and not recognizing the root of the problem.

Acidity Is An Epidemic

It is a real challenge in these hectic times to keep our bodies in the proper pH balance and the result is that we often blow our metabolisms out so they do not function properly any more. This does not happen over night but rather, over a period of years.

Our bodies produce acid all of the time. During the digestion process (though to a lesser degree on an alkaline diet), respiration, normal metabolism, and cellular break-down.

Before you even account for what happens while you breathe, digestion and metabolism add enough acid to your body to significantly affect its pH, potentially decreasing it by as much as 2 points. That means that unless we help our bodies cope productively with these acid by-products, and/or if we overwhelm the body's ability to do so by piling on acidic food, drink, and behaviour, we are fated to be fat, sick and tired.

This is where a change in diet and lifestyle can be enormously helpful. It is possible to reverse your pH from acidic to alkaline. For more information about the Healthy & Active Program please visit our website atwww.healthy-active.com. You may also call us in Toronto at (41) 440-2217 and ask for Adrienne Wright Bulow or Dr. Michael Rahman or email us at adrienne@healthy-active.com.

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[1]  Sourced fom Robert O. Young, Shelly Redford Young. The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health. Grand Central Life and Style. 2010