The 'Winter Body' Season: 3 Key Components

With only a couple of weeks left of our 'Winter Body' season, it seems appropriate that we discuss the three components that need to be considered in your quest for a 'Winter Body'. The first of the three components is exercise.

Exercise

Towards the end of last year there seemed to be a worrying trend in articles about exercise being pointless, because the amount of calories you burn, in say 30 minutes on a treadmill, does not greatly exceed the amount you burn in the same period when going about your everyday activities. It didn't make for good reading and just seemed irresponsible for writers to be portraying exercise in anything but a positive light. Since when was exercise only intended as a method of burning calories anyway?

Exercise can take so many different forms and must become a part of your daily routine in order for a 'Winter Body' to be achieved. The benefits of regular exercise stretch way beyond simply burning calories. Team sports can help build friendships, reinforce working relationships, and help to boost confidence and self esteem in individuals. Exercise also releases chemicals in your brain that fight stress and make you feel happier. It can even help to restore your longevity genes, that will keep you looking younger and potentially extend your lifespan.

Remember, exercise isn't something that takes place exclusively at the gym. Here are a few ideas for making exercise seem less daunting, that can easily slot into you daily routine!

Cycle and walk more

When you are only making short journeys, try leaving your car at home and walking or using a bicycle instead. One brisk walk or trip out on the bike everyday is enough to increase your heart rate, warm up your muscles, and release chemicals in your brain that will improve your mood.

New sport or activity?

There are so many fun activities to try

Why not take up a new sport? It could be an individual one, or a team sport. Think about a sport you may of always wanted to try, or perhaps one that you used to play and regret giving up. There is no time like the present!

Stretch more!

Have a stretch at every opportunity you get. You don't need to always get psyched up and change into tracksuit bottoms or shorts to do a bit of exercise. Many off us spend the majority of the day sat behind a computer, quite often in unnatural positions that create stress on our bodies, and cause negative changes in our posture that can lead to serious muscular and skeletal conditions. Whenever you get the chance; stand up, take some deep breaths, and stretch your muscles out.

Nutrition

This is probably the most important of the three 'Winter Body' components. Nutrition is not only essential for life: nutrition is life. We really are what we eat! We are also what we drink, what we supplement, and of course what we allow to diminish through are lifestyle choices. From the building blocks of protein and fat, right through to the micronutrients, nutrition determines so much of our lives. How heavy we are, how much energy we have, and how well our brains are working. Even our sex lives are influenced by nutrition!

Some Good Lingonberry Powder, cucumber and lemon water

Drink lots and lots of water

Yes, you've heard this before ... But it really is the most important thing you can do for your overall health. Drink as much as you can everyday, but try and consume the bulk of it in the morning.

If you want to add some colour, a bit off flavour, plus some serious power to you water, why not add a couple of slices of lemon, cucumber, and a spoonful of Lingonberry Powder to it. The lemon will enhance your enzyme function, stimulating your liver and helping it flush out your toxins, whilst the super high levels of antioxidants in the Lingonberry Powder oxidise the free radicals in your body which stops them damaging cells.

Supplement

Make sure you get the amount of minerals that you need, not that someone somewhere suggests you need. We are all different, and while some people may only need a certain amount of something to feel and function well, other people might need more. Try different supplements for a month at a time and see how they make you feel. You might get a big surprise. Be careful of the amount of Vitamin A you take (you can get enough for a day in one carrot, and too much isn't great for our bones), but apart from that, you can usually tell if you have had too much of a certain vitamin or mineral. 

Listen to your body

This is relevant to all of the 'Winter Body' components. Your body is amazing! It does extraordinary stuff that keeps you alive every minute of the day. Your body will tell you if you've done too much, not slept enough, ate too much or not enough. You just need to trust in it!

Raw Spiced Fig Tarts by Ellie Bedford

Eat Raw

Try and have a few raw meals a week, whether that be in the form of a juice or a full solid meal. Here are four steps to help you introduce raw food into your life, courtesy of author, Tanya Maher, writer of  'The Uncook Book'.

Go meat free once a week

This is often something that carnivores don't like hearing, and although we are not in the habit of preaching veganism or vegetarianism to anyone; we like arming people with facts so sensible dietary decisions can be made: for us that means reducing meat intake, not necessarily cutting it out altogether. Give it a go one day a week. It's good for the environment, will reduce your cancer risk, and you might even find you have a lot more energy.

Relaxation 

Relaxation is the final component of a 'Winter Body', and no less important the other two. Without the ability to relax; happiness, or at least contentment is not easy to achieve. The stresses of modern life takes its tole on our bodies and minds, and the vast majority of us never really take a break from it. We sit in front of a computer all day looking at a screen, only to return home and look at another one until we go to bed. Some us spend the day working outdoors in the cold, occasionally lifting weight not much lighter than our own bodies. When work ends, instead of trying to rest the mind and body, we buy a pack of beer and switch on the Playstation, or go to the pub and drink a bottle or two of wine. There is of course nothing wrong with any of these things; but if we never switch off, we are never properly rested, therefore we never experience true relaxation. 

Shut down your screen 30 minutes before bed

Most of us use our mobile phones and watch the television right up to the point when we decide it is time to go to sleep. Many of us also complain of waking up in the night, or not being well rested ... coincidence? Even if you consider yourself somebody who sleeps well and never complains of tiredness, just try it. You might find out you feel a whole lot better. At worst you've given your eyes a slightly longer rest.

Yoga

   
Not only is it great for relaxation; it is fantastic for maintaining flexibility. Hollywood stars, Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron and Demi Moore all appreciate the value of yoga, and there is no doubt that the secret to Ryan Giggs' 23 season, pretty much injury free career in top flight football was aided by regular yoga practice. There are many different styles of yoga, but it is likely that you will be able to find a class to suit you somewhere fairly close to your home, as there are classes for every level of ability dotted about in towns and cities all over the World.

Take a deep breath

Focusing on the way that you breath is the key to relaxation. Deep abdominal breathing encourages full oxygen exchange, which slows the heart rate and lowers blood pressure. Try focusing on your breathing a few times a week and see how it makes you feel. Meditation techniques don't have to be done on a yoga mat in a candlelit room, or under the stars on a clear night. Next time you feel tense and stressed at work, try taking 10 deep breathes, relax your shoulders and try and clear you mind; even if just for a minute. These little techniques are seriously powerful! Add them to your daily routine and you will feel better. 

For more information on relaxation and the secrets to happiness, check out this inspiring book written by The Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, titled 'The Art of Happiness'.

We hope you have enjoyed reading some of the posts in our 'Winter Body' season, and now have a greater understanding of what we mean by the term, 'Winter Body'.

If you want any more information on nutrition or any of the subjects we have discussed in this series, please feel free to get in contact with us at www.some-good.com 

Keep your ear to the ground for some fantastic new natural health solutions we are getting ready to launch later this year. Thanks for reading.

The Winter Body Season: Is Your Diet Climate Appropriate? Part II

It's been a month now since we brought the idea of food being 'climate appropriate' to your attention.

We are constantly on a mission to find out everything there is to know about attaining optimum health,  so we've been doing heaps of research into what it really means to eat climate appropriately. It seems that not only is it important that we regularly eat foods that grow in the area that we live, but we have actually evolved to do so.

Have you ever wandered how some people can eat mountains of chips, and rounds and rounds of bread, and still not put on any weight? Well, it might just be that their ancestors are from a part of the world where starchy foods, such as pasta, bread and potatoes have been eaten for hundreds of years, so their bodies have been perfectly adapted to process starch efficiently.

  Potato plants contain lots of starch that they use for energy when it is cold or dry

Starch serves as energy storage for plants, to help them survive when the climate is cold or dry. In tropical rainforests with plentiful sun and rain, plants have little need to store energy. They focus on capturing it by growing big leaves and rich fruits that attract animals to disseminate their seeds. Historically, humans living in these environments would mainly eat fruit, meat, and honey, as they wouldn't have had access to starchy foods. Humans who lived in the most northerly regions of the world, would have had no access to plants at all, so lived almost entirely on animal foods. In temperate climates such as the United Kingdom, plants grow large starch supplies, so it has been apart of their diet for thousands of years. In fact most countries with a temperate climate have been cultivating crops such as wheat, maize, and rice, for over 10,000 years. It is this innovation that changed how starch is digested in different people’s bodies. These evolutionary changes would go on to have serious implications on people's health.

In tropical climates, plants grow huge leaves and fruit

If your ancestors have been living in temperate climates for the last few thousand years, the chances are that your body will be good at processing the sugars contained in starch. However, if your ancestry goes back to sunnier climates, the tropics, or some of the coldest areas of the world, then you might want to limit your consumption of starchy foods. This is because people in temperate climates have developed a higher concentration of a type of enzyme that breaks down starch into sugars. These sugars are absorbed into the bloodstream in order to feed tissues like muscle or fat around the body. In order for these tissues to take up glucose from the blood, a hormone called insulin is required. Insulin prevents blood glucose levels from getting too high and becoming toxic: as in diabetes.

Not everyone can get away with eating starchy foods ... it really is in our genetics

As it turns out, humans who have less starch busting enzymes in their saliva, also have lower insulin levels. This means that they are more likely to feel the negative impact of eating starchy foods, such as obesity and diabetes type 2.
 
The reality is that many of us don't really know where our ancestors lived all those years ago; so the trick is to be sensible, and listen to what your body tells you. If you notice that eating a lot of bread and pasta makes you pile on the pounds, it is likely that your body isn't designed to eat much starch. If you are a person that can eat mashed potato for lunch and chips for dinner everyday, and still maintain a healthy weight, it is likely that your ancestors have been eating starchy foods for centuries, and your body has evolved perfectly to do so.

For our final post on climate appropriate foods, we'll be giving you some simple ideas to maximise nutrition, without compromising on choice.

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The 'Winter Body' Season: Is your diet climate approriate?

So, what is 'climate appropriate' food?

Well, many people believe that we are much better at digesting and absorbing the nutrients from foods that are grown in a similar climate to the place where we live. That is not to say that these foods have to be native to this area: they just need to be from an area with a similar climate, so they can grow successfully.

We will be discussing this topic over the coming months, so we'd love to know what you think about it. Have you emigrated and found that the change in your diet has had an impact on your physical wellbeing? Are there certain exotic foods that you find don't agree with you?

The idea of food being 'climate appropriate' may all seem a bit far fetched, but if you think about it properly, it makes a lot of sense. Many years ago we weren't able to get food from other countries: we were limited to hunting and foraging in the area where we lived. It wasn't so long ago Europeans considered tomatoes to be poisonous, and many people only laid eyes on a banana for the first time shortly after the second world war.

Plants grow naturally in places with certain climates because they are designed perfectly for those conditions. With that in mind, does it not make logical sense that the animals living in that same area are designed to eat them? Of course we are not suggesting that eating foods grown in other climates are going to do you serious harm, but they may not be as beneficial to your health as locally sourced foods, or foods grown in similar climates to the one where you live.

Here are a few of the reasons why eating climate appropriate food is better for attaining optimum health:

• Strengthens our immunity; making us less prone to local disease

• Better for our digestion 

• Reduces the risk of developing food allergies

• Foods that have to travel long distances are often picked before they are ripe, to stop them becoming bruised and over ripe on their journey; so they often don't reach their full nutrition value

• Imported foods often require chemicals to keep them fresh: some of these toxins may be illegal in our own country, but because this information does not need to be provided, we’ll never know

Next time we're gonna think about occasions when not eating 'climate appropriately' has had a negative impact on people's health ...

The 'Winter Body' Season: Tips for your lifestyle change

So, it's been a week since we asked you to make an improvement to your everyday life, that will help you feel better. This change didn't have to be drastic: it could be as simple as taking some time out of your week to go and get your nails done, taking a walk in the park, or adding an extra portion of vegetables to your daily food intake.

We hope by now you have thought of a lifestyle change that you want to make, and have begun to implement it. Here are a few tips to help you along the way:

Giving up smoking or cutting certain foods out of your diet? Remember:

• If you fall off the wagon it doesn't mean you can't just dust yourself off and get straight back on

• Leave notes around the house and set alarms on your phone, reminding yourself of the reasons you are making the change 

Trying to make time for yourself to relax? How about:

• Writing a list of tasks you need to complete in the day and include relaxing as one of them

• Remember, your health is the most important thing you have and no job is worth compromising it for 

The 'Winter Body' Season: Protect your hair, skin and nails

There is no doubt that winter can take its toll on your hair, skin and nails. We become more susceptible to illnesses such as cold and flu, that can often result in chapped lips, dull hair, and dry skin. Our 'Winter Body' season is about taking positive steps to look, feel and think better, all year round: so we don't want to let the colder weather get the better of us.

Here are some tips to keep your hair, skin and nails in top condition this winter:

Drink more water
  
Although you may feel less thirsty than you do in the warmer months, your body still needs as much water. Far more people get dehydrated in the winter because they simply don't drink enough. Remember to think inside out ... If your body has no moisture inside, how can you expect to have beautifully soft skin on the outside?

Treat your hair

Consider pretreating your hair with oil to retain more moisture. If you are prone to dry hair, you should also think about using a deep-conditioning mask once a week: apply it to damp strands and then wrap in plastic. Try to avoid the use of dry shampoo during the colder months, as this removes essential oils from the hair.

Eat foods containing caffeic acid

Caffeic acid is an antioxidant that is fantastic for the immune system, so it will help you keep cold and flu at bay. It is one of the key components argan oil, which is amazing for the condition of hair and skin, and can be found in beauty products all over the globe. Foods high in caffeic acid include the herbs: spearmint, thyme and sage. You can also find it in sunflower seeds and lingonberries.

The socks and gloves trick

Moisturize your hands and feet thoroughly and put on some gloves and socks on for bed. In the morning your skin will feel totally rejuvenated; plump and soft.

The 'Winter Body' Season: Change just one thing and feel better

So, our winter body campaign has begun. Over the next 4 months we will be bringing you loads of healthy winter recipes and tips to help you stay in top form, not only this winter, but all year round. During this period we would like you to make a change in just one area of your life, that will help you improve your overall health.

Remember, a winter body isn't just about an external silhouette, so the change you make doesn't have to involve cutting something out of your diet or doing 300 sit ups every few hours: if you think your health will be improved by taking 30 minutes out of your day twice a week, just to relax in the bath with a book, then this is what you should choose!

The only goal you need reach by the end of this four month period is to feel better than you do now … Not a bad thing to aim for!

Some Good tips: If your decide to choose a weight loss goal as your improvement, please try and concentrate more on losing fat instead of actual weight on the scale. Your weight constantly fluctuates, so checking yourself on the scales every day will only lead to confusion or potentially negative feelings.