Traveling Fitness

Whether you travel for business or pleasure, being on the road usually leads to one thing: weight gain. From missed workouts to large restaurant meals, travel days often become high calorie days. Next time that you go on the road keep the following tips in mind, and come home leaner than when you left!
TIP #1: STICK WITH CIRCUITS
When you find yourself in a poorly equipped hotel exercise room, make the best of it. You are not going to be able to get in a normal workout like you would at your local health club, so you will have to make do with the available equipment. A great way of doing this is to workout in a circuit. Most hotel exercise rooms will have at least one piece of equipment for each body part, and they are usually as empty as a ghost town, so a circuit will work well. Do one set on each body part, and then hop on a bike or treadmill for 10 minutes. Repeat this two more times, and you will find yourself sweating up a storm.
TIP #2: BURN CALORIES EVERYDAY
If your travels keep you too busy for a workout, or if your hotel does not have an exercise room, make a conscious effort to burn calories everyday. There are many different ways to fit some calorie burning into your day. Go on a brisk walk after your day's activities. This is a great way to see a new city, and also a great way to burn off the rich dinner you just ate! Take the stairs instead of elevator in your hotel and any other buildings you visit. Go on a short jog in the mornings or evenings of your stay. If your hotel has a pool, swim a few laps each morning or evening.
TIP#3: WATCH PORTION SIZE
Eating out is a must when traveling. Whether you are visiting 5 star restaurants or fast food diners, you are faced with the same problem: large portions. While the easiest thing to do with a large portioned meal is to simply eat it all, that isn't the easiest on your waist! When you order your meal ask the waiter or waitress to bring you a to-go box with your meal. This way you can take half of the meal and place it safely into the box before you even begin to eat. You will have no choice but to eat a healthy portion, and you have your next meal taken care of. If you would rather not carry around a to-go box then ask that your entrée be made into a smaller portion. If it is dinnertime ask for the lunch-sized entrée.
TIP #4: AVOID FRIED FOODS
While fast food restaurants are definitely convenient, with their low prices and quick service, this convenience is not worth the inevitable weight gain brought on by the burgers and fries. When you travel, keep this in mind: avoid fried foods. While this is always good advice to follow, it is even more important to abide by while traveling.
While traveling you are most likely to be burning less calories each day than you would normally burn at home, and you are consuming more calories due to your schedule of eating out. You are walking a fine line, and eating fried foods would throw you right over the edge of weight gain. A gram of fat contains 9 calories as compared to the 4 calories that proteins and carbohydrates carry, so you can see that consuming fried foods will drastically increase your calorie intake. If I still haven't convinced you to pass on the French fries, keep in mind that heartburn and indigestion are never fun, but how about experiencing them on an airplane, bus, or train ride!
TIP #5: BODY WEIGHT ROUTINE
When your hotel doesn't have an exercise room, and you still want to get in some type of workout, try this body weight routine right in your hotel room:
· 20 Jumping Jacks: you remember these from grade school! Start jumping!
· 20 Push Ups: Get on the floor, keep your back flat, and push!
· 20 Jumping Jacks
· 20 Crunches: Keep your hands behind your head and breathe out as you crunch up.
· 20 Jumping Jacks
· 20 Triceps Dip: Place your palms on the edge of a chair, bend at your elbows and push yourself back up!
· 20 Squats: Stand in place, with your knees shoulder width apart, squat down!
· 20 Jumping Jacks
· 20 Lunges: Keep your hands on your waist, step forward keeping a 90degree bend in your knee, and press yourself back up!
Next time your work or pleasure takes you away from home, keep these tips in mind and be pleasantly surprised with your results! Have a great trip!

Think You Don't Have Bad Breath

Bad breath can rule your life and what others think about
you. We've all spoken to someone with bad breath. Chances
are you looked away, smiled politely and tried to get away
as quickly as possible from the offensive odor. More than
likely you were embarrassed for that person, who seemed to
be clueless about their bad breath. Even the most stunning,
funny, charming person in the world can develop bad breath
(halitosis) and make people within range cringe and look
away. You could be delivering a speech on how to cure some
of the most wide-spread and growing diseases, but if your
breath smells, people will focus on that offense and not
the achievement you're speaking of. This is a sad, but
true, reality of bad breath.
Don't Have Bad Breath? How Sure Are You?
Do you have bad breath? If you answered no, how do you know
this? Did you cup your hands, blow into them and take a big
whiff? Blowing in your hands will keep them warm, but it is
a myth that it predicts bad or clean breath. So many
factors can lead to bad breath that just because you didn't
have bad breath last week doesn't mean you haven't
developed it this week. For example, perhaps you have a
cold this week. Did you know that post nasal drip and
excess mucous, as well as allergy/sinus medications, can
all lead to bad breath?
Breath Mints Aren't That Mighty
Most people are accustomed to adding "fresheners" to
anything foul smelling. If a room smells bad, we spray air
freshener. To keep bathrooms smelling good all day, we use
plug in fresheners. To keep old clothes smelling nice, we
use fabric softeners with strong fragrances. Sometimes the
freshener can be more offensive than the foul smell, or the
combination of the two makes the matter even worse. This is
true with breath fresheners. People think that a "mint"
will dissolve their bad breath, which is completely false.
Just because you have a strong "medicated" taste in your
mouth doesn't mean your bad breath is gone. You can't
"taste" good or bad breath. Makes sense, right?
Bad Breath Can Strike Anyone at Anytime
If you don't suffer from this today, it can plague you
tomorrow. A great way to tell if you have bad breath is to
wipe a piece of gauze on your tongue and smell it. You may
even find a yellowish color on the gauze. Did you know you
can't smell your own bad breath? The fact is, you can't
smell your own bad breath, but others can.

Addictive Are Cigarettes

People commonly use the word addiction with regard to their smoking habits, as if to throw up their hands and say "See I'm addicted, I'm helpless to resist, there is nothing that I can do."

However, depite the common belief that nicotine is a highly addictive substance no official laboratory study has been able to definitively state that Nicotine is highly physically addictive.

Not highly addictive? Really?

When people are truly addicted to substances like Heroin or Cocaine you see a common factor. When these addicts are deprived of these substances the body malfunctions. Now, no one's body malfunctions when they stop smoking. Thousands of people quit every day and their body doesn't experience any of the physical withdrawal symptoms that you might see from a real addiction. It simply does not happen.

For example, no one wakes up in the night needing a cigarette. Yet Heroin and Cocaine addicts will wake in the night for a hit just to be able to get back to sleep.

What about a movie? Everyone can easily watch a good movie in a movie theater and sit through the entire show without a cigarette yet maybe a smoker would claim that they find it difficult to go 2 hours without smoking!

Ah, you may say...."So - why then does everyone think that cigarettes are addictive?"

Now...I'm not into conspiracy theories here but lets think for a short moment about whose interest it's in for you to think that cigarettes are addictive...There's only one. The Tobacco Companies!

Just think what a great marketing tool this is for ANY product!

Convince the purchaser that they cannot live without it

But the main point is this...

If you were addicted to cigarettes your body would malfunction without them.
You know that your body does not malfunction without cigarettes
...therefore there is no physical addiction.

Inviting Antioxidants to Dinner

This article was originally published in the November 2004 issue of Zone Net
Supplementing your diet with extra antioxidants is crucial to our bodies and our immune systems during times when we are more likely to come into contact with cold or flu viruses in packed shopping malls or other public places . Just what exactly are antioxidants? Well, antioxidants are essentially natural compounds that protect our bodies from free radical damage to our cells. This destructive process is called oxidation. Just like many metals oxidize and then rust, our own bodies tend to do the same over time. The oxidation then results in specific chemical changes that impair the healthy process that should be happening.
It should be considered that free radicals are produced within the body every single day from the different chemical reactions which happen in each individual part of our bodies.
You should understand that free radicals are produced outside of the body as well, reaching us through sun-rays, toxic chemicals in our drinking water, second-hand as well as first-hand smoke, and pollution in general. It is believed by certain researchers that free radicals are a major reason for the aging process and a cause of some illnesses. Antioxidants are there to basically absorb the free radicals but due to the sheer numbers of free radicals it is critical to incorporate antioxidants through certain foods plus dietary supplements so you can support your natural defenses.
Antioxidants are usually abundant in foods that are rich in colors.
Therefore foods that feature reds, lush greens, and strong blues are generally antioxidant rich. Top foods in terms of antioxidant power include such foods as cranberries, blueberries, spinach, black beans, strawberries, grapes and sweet potatoes(the deeper the orange the better), among numerous others.
Both red wine and grape juice are known to have have a relatively high antioxidant value. It is also worth noting that many spices are antioxidant rich as well.