Eating out needn’t derail your efforts to eat well and healthily

•    Order water for the table. Drink between courses to help fill you up
•    Order plain bread and butter or olive oil separately. Pizza and herb breads have the fat added
•    Creamy sauces add large quantities of fat
•    Order extra vegetables for bulk and more nutrients
•    Fresh fruit, sorbet or a hot drink with biscotti make good choices for dessert
•    Trim hot chocolate  will fix the chocolate craving with fewer calories that black forest gataux

Bon Appetite,

Nancy

Pasta Salad
Pasta salads are delicious. Great for light easy, summer cooking. To maximize their flavour make sure you dress the pasta as soon as it is cooked while it is still hot. Try substituting fresh basil if it isn’t available, with dill, mint, oregano, or parsley.
For 8-10 servings:
Pasta:
2 pkts of brown rice pasta and vegetable pasta
Dressing:
2 large cloves garlic
1 tsp coarse mustard
2 Tbsp parmesan cheese
8-10 leaves fresh basil (or other fresh herbs)
1 tsp salt and pepper to taste
½ cup light Best Food mayonnaise
2 Tbsp pineapple juice with touch of cinnamon
Salad:
2 stalks celery, finely diced
1 red pepper finely diced
2 spring onions finely diced
½ cup toasted sesame seeds
Tinned pineapple pieces 125 g (unsweetened)
Boil the pasta as per the packet directions, until tender. ***
While the pasta is cooking make the dressing by pureeing the ingredients until smooth.
Drain the cooked pasta and put in a salad bowl and immediately toss the dressing through the pasta while it is still hot.
Allow to cool then toss the rest of the salad ingredients with the pasta.
*** Tip: Cook the pasta until just al dente; brown rice pasta will disintegrate if over-cooked.

To eat more healthily start by substituting healthier ingredients in your cooking, but keeping to tried and true recipes your family love. If they are particularly fussy eaters they may complain at first. Persevere though and before you know it they will eating it up, just as they did before.

In the recipe above I’ve exchanged plain old white wheat pasta with brown rice pasta, for two reasons. First, whole grains provide better nutritional value than processed grains. Second wheat based foods so predominate in the western diet that we miss out on the nutrients present in other grains, and many people have allergies to wheat and other gluten containing foods, so it’s a good idea to find creative ways of getting other grains into our diet. As we age too our bodies lose their ability to metabolise processed gluten containing grains well and this can cause a host of health challenges from easy weight gain to a tendency towards diabetes. Take home message, use whole grains, and vary them.

To reduce the number of calories in a recipe you can substitute ‘lite’ varieties of dressings as I’ve done here and help your cause of weight loss if that’s an issue for you or your family. If using canned fruit in a recipe go for an unsweetened variety for the same reason.

Using fresh herbs in your cooking as I’ve done here will increase flavour and nutritional value, because of the enzymes present in fresh produce verses cooked, canned or dried, all helping us toward our goal of optimum nutrition for better living.

The recipe above is contained in our nutrition book for more information on our products, go to www.flexibilityplus.com

Bon Appetite,
Yours in Health,
Nancy

Get a big enough why: There’s enough in these two blog posts to supply that though isn’t
There, if painful premature death isn’t a big enough why than I don’t know what is. Since none of us think that’ll ever happen to us though sometimes even if we’ve had a close brush, maybe we might need to appeal to our vanity to find  the motivation, fear of abandonment, or pride, whatever it is “carrot and stick” yourself in whatever way you need to get yourself moving

Explore the reasons you are stuck in an unhealthy lifestyle: Without this step no amount of knowledge about nutrition and exercise and their importance will make a bit of difference. We often avoid this kind of self exploration because it deals with emotions, painful ones at times, but without resolving these we cannot clear a path that will lead us to a better lifestyle. For example I had to understand that my weight issues all those years ago had to do with my using food to sooth painful emotions like homesickness, desperate loneliness etc. Once I made the connection and found some strategies to deal with it. then I could move forward with my fitness and healthy eating

Commit to Change: Make a written contract with yourself if necessary, if that works for you. Hang it on your bedroom door or the fridge! Get buy in from loved ones to goad you into keeping you on track. Maybe you could return the favour.

Schedule it: Just like any other appointment make exercise and healthy eating appointments with yourself, and record what you’ve done in your diary so you can track your progress

Visualize the Benefits: Spend 10 minutes each day visualizing all the benefits that will come to you from leading an active nutritionally sound lifestyle. Why is this such an important tool used by top athletes and business people everywhere? Because, seeing is believing! Believing creates in us the desire and motivation to bring the visualisation into reality

Finally, in this economically challenging time we may feel there are more important things to do than committing to fitness, but this is a miscalculation. Exercise is a tremendous buffer against stress, once you learn to enjoy it you’ll find it will take you out of most negative mind states, because of the endorphins the happy brain chemicals that are released with exercise. Having a strong healthy body helps you become mentally stronger because it literally helps rewire your brain. See one of our earlier posts on exercise and the brain for more on this. Optimal nutrition will keep your medical bills down, because you will be healthier. It will keep your household expenses down because preparing your own wholesome food from scratch is far cheaper than going through the drive through. So there is no time like the present to invest in an exercise and nutrition plan. For information on how to do this go to our website www.flexibilityplus.com to check out our products and benefit for yourself and your family.

Yours in health,

Nancy

I was talking to a friend the other day and she was telling me about a woman she knew who was taking part in a triathlon after getting on a bike for the first time in her life just a few months before. She had never been fit, and had never taken part in anything like this in her life. Not being particularly competitive by nature nor having any belief that her body could do what she was now putting it through to prepare for this event she surprised herself, her family and friends. Even her harshest critics were murmuring their admiration.

She was so inspired after hearing about another woman who had overcome all sorts of obstacles to complete this challenge. She put down the remote control and got cracking on figuring out a way to what to her was seemingly impossible. She focussed whole heartedly on the desired our come a slim, svelte body that she could do all sorts of things with most especially have the energy to enjoy her young boys in.

She got her self a trainer who helped her work out a training schedule, she discovered about healthy eating, threw out everything from her kitchen that sabotaged her efforts. Her trainer helped her put together and training eating plan and she had her partner and kids cheering her on. When she first started it seemed like her muscles wouldn’t stop screaming at her but with the help of her trainer urging her on, in time they gave up their protest and she began to feel and energy and aliveness and a sense of satisfaction in her accomplishing about what she was asking of her body to do each day. She began to fee comfortableness in her own skin that she had scarcely experienced since childhood and she actually began looking forward to her daily workout.

On the day of the race she was so excited she could barely wait for the start gun to sound. Her elation when she crossed the finish line was a high water mark in her year, the spin offs have been immense she never misses a workout if she can help it even after reaching her target weight, the sheer pleasure of keeping her body, fit, strong and flexible keeps her motivated and she is so grateful.

Feeling like this is a choice. Its’ taking one step and then another step and then another step until you accomplish your goal and have the satisfaction that goes with it. We invite you to take a look at the products we’ve created from our experience, passion, knowledge about the benefits you can derive from fitness. To learn more go to www.flexibilityplus.com.

Yours in health,

Nancy

•    Our age in years and our age according to the way our body behaves can be one and the same or two different things
•    This matters because if our body behaves much older than our age in years this doesn’t bode well for our future health

Certain biological markers such as blood pressure, heart rate and pulse, blood sugar levels, hormonal levels, cholesterol levels, bone density, kidney and liver function can help identify our true biological age. For example if you 48 years old with a blood pressure of 117/ 76 you could be said to have the blood pressure of someone in their early 20s. Similarly if you are in your 30’s and have a blood pressure level of 140 / 90 you would be considered much older than your age in regards to blood pressure. In fact a 35 year old friend of a fellow personal trainer came in to her gym to train. He was some what over weight and was keen to shed some the extra pounds. So began an assessment with him, but by the end of the warm up he was perspiring quite profusely and feeling unwell, her gut told her something was a miss, she took his blood pressure and it was off the charts even though he had been cleared to exercise previously.

She called an ambulance immediately, he was rushed to hospital and was put on blood pressure medication to stabilise his condition. According to his doctor would need them for the rest of his life. The blood pressure rise he experiences came on with out warning, most likely as a result of unusual stress he was experiencing at the time. The situation came as great shock to my colleague who would not have suspected blood pressure as high as this man had in someone his age. He was lucky to have been in the gym that day undergoing an assessment where it was picked up otherwise he could have easily collapsed somewhere and had a heart attack, possibly fatal.

Keeping a healthy weight by following a regular exercise routine and a healthy diet has been proven by the research to add years to your life and life to your years. In our system at flexibilityplus.com we teach you the key principles of optimal nutrition and provide a broad range of exercises to keep every part of your body flexible and strong. Go to www.flexibilityplus.com to learn more so your age in years can match the age  your body is behaving or better!

Cheers,

Nancy

Below are the major points we need to follow for eating to achieve high energy and a healthy body:

•    Drink 4-6 pints (2-3 litres) of good quality water every day

•    Drink vegetable juices –fresh if you have an extractor and diluted fruit juices

•    Eat a variety of whole foods as close to their natural state as possible

•    Eat five to seven servings of fruit and vegetables a day. If possible organically grown, preferably fresh , though frozen is acceptable

•    Eat raw vegetables or lightly cooked (steamed) as certain vitamins are destroyed by heat

•    Eat nuts and seeds (e.g. almonds, pumpkin, flax, sunflower, sesame, walnuts), for their important omega 3 and omega 6 oils

•    Eat some garlic and onions each day. These may prevent respiratory, cardiovascular disease and even cancer. Eating parsley with garlic reduces the offensive odour on your breath. Deodorized garlic in tablet or capsule form is also available from most health food outlets.

•    Eat free range eggs, poached, as this is the best way to preserve their goodness

•    Eat yogurt containing live cultures, acidophilus and bifidus to support healthy bowel flora (not the sweetened fruit varieties).

•    Eat fish at least twice a week especially the fatty varieties such as salmon, mackerel, herring, and cod which contain the important omega 3 fatty acids. Broil, bake, grill or steam. Deep frying undoes the benefit.

•    Eat lean meat in moderation. Reducing consumption may prevent cancer. Think of meat not as a main, but as one of several ingredients in a main dish that incorporates vegetables, grains, and legumes

•    Avoid excessive salt, coffee, and processed anything

These are points are taken from our downloadable book, NutritionPowerPlus, available on www.flexibilityplus.com

Healthy eating!

Jonathan

Some years ago I had to take my mother who was in her eighties to the hospital because she had a blood nose that she found difficult to stop bleeding.
After taking her inside and making sure she was being properly looked after I had to go back to my car and make sure where I had parked was OK.
For about 5 minutes I was sitting in the car near the hospital main entrance and I was absolutely shocked at the numbers of people continually going through those hospital doors.
So many of them looked unwell, unfit and unhealthy (I guess that is what you’d expect). But it was the big numbers that got to me, that were going through those doors, in such a short period of time.
It got me thinking about what choices had these people made in their lifetime to end up at this place. Most were nowhere near as old as my mother, who had played golf well into her seventies and was still active in her early eighties.
I thought about how important it is to make good decisions throughout your life.

I see some young energetic people in their twenties regularly smoking, eating fast foods, and they so often get a cold, or some other illness.
Its as if their bodies are giving them early warning signs that they need to alter their life style, they need to drink way less (if any) alcohol, they need to stop smoking, and they need to eat wholesome food. But they don’t seem to take any notice and I wonder if in another twenty or thirty years they will be walking through a hospital door because they have a kidney complaint, or their heart isn’t quite working how it should, or they get dizzy often…
We all need to take stock of what we do now, because what we do now does matter!
Our system of exercise and nutritional advice is sound and solid with heaps of variety. There are over one hundred different exercises so there are different ones suitable for every level of fitness. The nutritional information is easy to follow and full of excellent advice plus recipes.
Check us out on www.flexibilityplus.com
Enjoy life!
Jonathan

We’re not talking recycling, composting, and gardening are we?

Yup!

Organic food protects us and the planet- no pesticides, herbicides, GMO, hormones and antibiotics. It provides the basis for optimal nutrition.

Start with the foods you use most of and if you have infants and elderly in the household start with the foods they eat the most of, since they are the most vulnerable to the effects of toxins

The foods to begin with would be dairy, meat, chicken, vegetables, fruit and grains. Of the plant foods rice, corn, wheat, oats, peanuts, grapes, potatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, peppers are among the most heavily sprayed.

If organics are unavailable or are too pricey here is a recipe for a spray you can use on your produce to neutralize the toxic residue of herbicides. Mix together in a spray bottle: 1 cup water; 1cup white vinegar, 1 Tablespoon baking soda and 20 drops of citricidal or grapefruit seed extract.

Spray on your fruit and vegetables, leave on for 10 minutes and then rinse off.

Avoid plastic water bottles, they take one thousand years to degrade, clog land fills, and leech hormone disrupting poisons into the water they contain. Buy a reusable eco friendly bottle instead. The stainless steel ones are great because you can fill them with warm liquids in winter to take off the chill and they come in a variety of sizes including infant ones with sipper tops.

Avoid waste and produce your own beautiful health giving vegetables by composting. To make compost, use a large rubber drum or wooden bin and place in alternating layers of brown matter from your garden, such as lawn and garden clippings and sawdust, with green matter such as food scraps from your kitchen. These can include stale bread, coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells, fruit, vegetable peelings, and shredded paper. Avoid putting in anything that might attract flies and rodents such as meat, chicken, dairy and other animal produce. Each week aerate your compost, by turning it well. Add earth worms and in six months you will have sweet smelling nutrient rich compost to fertilise your vegetable and fruit trees with.

Take care in your choice of skin care and beauty products as many contains known carcinogens and hormone disrupting chemicals. What you are after are products that are parabens, artificial fragrance, colour and sodium lauryl sulphate free . Here again organic is best. Become a diligent label reader.

Protecting ourselves through healthy food choices will pay dividends to our selves, our planet our pocket and ultimately future generations!

Yours in health,

Nancy