Tips for Fitness and Nutrition

 Stay Hydrated

Whether you're heading off to spin class, boot camp, or any other exercise class, it's always important to hydrate so you can stay energized and have your best workout. But you don't want to grab just anything for hydration purposes.

Electrolyte-loaded athletic drinks, for example, can be a source of unnecessary calories.1 So "drinking water is usually fine until you're exercising for more than one hour," Jackie Newgent, RD, author of "The Big Green Cookbook," told Health.

Find a Workout Buddy

A friend you can work out with is very helpful for staying motivated, but it's important to find someone who will inspire—not discourage. So make a list of all your exercise-loving friends, then see who fits this criterion, Andrew Kastor, an ASICS running coach, told Health:

Stock Your Fridge with Healthy Foods

Foods like fruits, vegetables, and lean meats can go a long way for your fitness journey.

There are even some delicious, healthy snack options to take advantage of, like hummus, grapes and walnuts, and apple slices with cheese.

Additionally, some key ingredients may make it a lot easier to meet your weight-loss goals. During your next grocery store run, you could also consider placing Newgent's top three diet-friendly items in your cart:

6 Natural Health and Nutrition Tips That Are Evidence-Based

 If you want to boost your health and wellbeing, there are plenty of natural and home remedies to choose from, ranging from avoiding charred meats and added sugars to practicing meditation.

When it comes to knowing what’s healthy, even qualified experts often seem to hold opposing opinions. This can make it difficult to figure out what you should actually be doing to optimize your health.

Yet, despite all the disagreements, a number of wellness tips are well supported by research.

Here are 27 health and nutrition tips that are based on scientific evidence.

1. Limit sugary drinks

Sugary drinks like sodas, fruit juices, and sweetened teas are the primary source of added sugar in the American diet (1Trusted Source).

Unfortunately, findings from several studies point to sugar-sweetened beverages increasing risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, even in people who are not carrying excess body fat (2Trusted Source).

Sugar-sweetened beverages are also uniquely harmful for children, as they can contribute not only to obesity in children but also to conditions that usually do not develop until adulthood, like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (3Trusted Source, 4Trusted Source, 5Trusted Source).

Healthier alternatives include:

water

unsweetened teas

sparkling water

coffee 

2. Eat nuts and seeds

Some people avoid nuts because they are high in fat. However, nuts and seeds are incredibly nutritious. They are packed with protein, fiber, and a variety of vitamins and minerals (6Trusted Source, 7Trusted Source).

Nuts may help you lose weight and reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease (8Trusted Source).

Additionally, one large observational study noted that a low intake of nuts and seeds was potentially linked to an increased risk of death from heart disease, stroke, or type 2 diabetes (9Trusted Source).

3. Avoid ultra-processed foods

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are foods containing ingredients that are significantly modified from their original form. They often contain additives like added sugar, highly refined oil, salt, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, colors, and flavors as well (10Trusted Source).

4. Don’t fear coffee

Despite some controversy over it, coffee is loaded with health benefits.

It’s rich in antioxidants, and some studies have linked coffee intake to longevity and a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and numerous other illnesses (16Trusted Source, 17Trusted Source, 18Trusted Source, 19Trusted Source).

The most beneficial intake amount appears to be 3–4 cups per day, although pregnant people should limit or avoid it completely because it has been linked to low birth weight (18Trusted Source).

However, it’s best to consume coffee and any caffeine-based items in moderation. Excessive caffeine intake may lead to health issues like insomnia and heart palpitations. To enjoy coffee in a safe and healthy way, keep your intake to less than 4 cups per day and avoid high-calorie, high-sugar additives like sweetened creamer.

5. Eat fatty fish

Fish is a great source of high-quality protein and healthy fat. This is particularly true of fatty fish, such as salmon, which is loaded with anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids and various other nutrients (20Trusted Source, 21Trusted Source).

Studies show that people who eat fish regularly have a lower risk for several conditions, including heart disease, dementia, and inflammatory bowel disease (22Trusted Source, 23Trusted Source, 24Trusted Source).

6. Get enough sleep

The importance of getting enough quality sleep cannot be overstated.

Poor sleep can drive insulin resistance, can disrupt your appetite hormones, and reduce your physical and mental performance (25Trusted Source, 26Trusted Source, 27Trusted Source, 27aTrusted Source).

What’s more, poor sleep is one of the strongest individual risk factors for weight gain and obesity. People who do not get enough sleep tend to make food choices that are higher in fat, sugar, and calories, potentially leading to unwanted weight gain (28Trusted Source, 29Trusted Source).

The 21 Best Stretching Exercises for Better Flexibility

 

Stretching may not be the most exciting part of working out, but doing flexibility work is super important in a well-rounded fitness routine. Incorporating some stretching exercises into your workout schedule can help you improve flexibility, reduce tightness, and, ultimately, make your workouts—whether we’re talking about strength or cardio routines—more efficient and safe.

"Tight muscles can cause undue strain on the neighboring joints during normal daily function, or they themselves can become injured," Sasha Cyrelson, DPT, clinical director at Professional Physical Therapy in Sicklerville, New Jersey, tells SELF. As we age, our muscles get shorter and less elastic, she adds. "We need to take an active role in maintaining and improving the length of our muscles so we can continue to enjoy our abilities without pain."

It's true that stretching isn't exactly glamorous, and it probably won't give you the same rush that a run or HIIT class will. "It is uncomfortable and it takes time, so people don’t like to do it," Cyrelson says. "However, you can’t just do strength training and cardio without putting yourself at risk for injury and pain." By doing a ton of work that contracts the muscles (which shortens them) and never stretching (lengthening) them, your muscles will end up imbalanced. Imbalances in the body increase your risk for injury because they can cause some muscles and joints to overcompensate for other ones that are too tight to engage properly. This leads to strains and discomfort.

Why is stretching so important?

There are tons of benefits of stretching. For one, stretching boosts flexibility, which can improve both your short-term and your long-term range of motion. That’s important, since a better range of motion can mean better muscle recruitment during your workouts, as SELF reported previously. For example, greater range of motion in your hips and knees will allow you to sink deeper into a squat. Ultimately, having a greater ROM will make it so you're able to do more exercises—and do them properly.

Charlee Atkins, CSCS, creator of Le Stretch class, tells SELF that she likes to use the word mobility instead of flexibility to hammer home how important stretching is for everyday life. "For me, it's about daily things that become harder the older you get, like bending down to tie a shoe, walking up stairs, picking your kid up from the floor, or even just getting up off the couch." Improving your mobility makes these daily activities easier—"you can move more freely," Atkins says.

When should you stretch?

The type of stretching matters when we’re talking about the best time to stretch. Dynamic stretching, which involves movement, prepares your body for a workout. These stretches before a workout include movement-oriented moves like cat-cow, down dog to runner’s lunge, or thread the needle. On the other hand, static stretching (when you hold a position) helps your body calm down after a workout, which helps jumpstart the recovery process. Ending your workout with static stretches can help your mind relax and signal an endpoint to your workout. We'll be focusing on static stretches in the moves below.

Luckily, improving your flexibility and mobility isn't hard. It just takes a little time. Try adding the stretches for flexibility that Atkins demos below—everything from lower-back stretches and upper-back stretches to hamstring and quad stretches, to moves that loosen up your shoulders—into your routine to help relieve muscle tension and increase mobility across your entire body.

Quick note, if you’re experiencing joint pain or discomfort, or are looking for specific exercises for pain relief or stretches for lower-back pain, you may want to chat with your physical therapist before starting a stretching routine or doing foam rolling exercises. They can let you know which specific moves might be best for your individual needs.

Yoga for Everyone

 It’s time to roll out your yoga mat and discover the combination of physical and mental exercises that for thousands of years have hooked yoga practitioners around the globe. The beauty of yoga is that you don’t have to be a yogi or yogini to reap the benefits. Whether you are young or old, overweight or fit, yoga has the power to calm the mind and strengthen the body. Don’t be intimidated by yoga terminology, fancy yoga studios and complicated poses. Yoga is for everyone.

10 Yoga Poses You Need to Know

The building blocks of yoga are poses. These are good ones to learn as you build a regular yoga practice.

These 10 poses are a complete yoga workout. Move slowly through each pose, remembering to breathe as you move. Pause after any pose you find challenging, especially if you are short of breath, and start again when your breathing returns to normal. The idea is to hold each pose for a few, slow breaths before moving on to the next one.

Child's Pose

This calming pose is a good default pause position. You can use child’s pose to rest and refocus before continuing to your next pose. It gently stretches your lower back, hips, thighs, knees and ankles and relaxes your spine, shoulders and neck.

Do it: When you want to get a nice gentle stretch through your neck spine and hips.

Skip it: If you have knee injuries or ankle problems. Avoid also if you have high blood pressure or are pregnant.

Modify: You can rest your head on a cushion or block. You can place a rolled towel under your ankles if they are uncomfortable.

Be mindful: Focus on relaxing the muscles of the spine and lower back as you breathe.

Forur-Limbed Staff Pose

This push-up variation follows plank pose in a common yoga sequence known as the sun salutation. It is a good pose to learn if you want to eventually work on more advanced poses, such as arm balances or inversions.

Do it: Like plank, this pose strengthens arms and wrists and tones the abdomen.

Skip it: If you have carpal tunnel syndrome, lower back pain, a shoulder injury or are pregnant.

Modify: It’s a good idea for beginners to modify the pose by keeping your knees on the floor.

Be mindful: Press your palms evenly into the floor and lift your shoulders away from the floor as you hold this pose.

Mental health

 Key facts

Affordable, effective and feasible strategies exist to promote, protect and restore mental health.

The need for action on mental health is indisputable and urgent.

Mental health has intrinsic and instrumental value and is integral to our well-being.

Mental health is determined by a complex interplay of individual, social and structural stresses and vulnerabilities.

Concepts in mental health

Mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community. It is an integral component of health and well-being that underpins our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, build relationships and shape the world we live in. Mental health is a basic human right. And it is crucial to personal, community and socio-economic development.

Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. It exists on a complex continuum, which is experienced differently from one person to the next, with varying degrees of difficulty and distress and potentially very different social and clinical outcomes.

Mental health conditions include mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities as well as other mental states associated with significant distress, impairment in functioning, or risk of self-harm. People with mental health conditions are more likely to experience lower levels of mental well-being, but this is not always or necessarily the case.

Determinants of mental health

Throughout our lives, multiple individual, social and structural determinants may combine to protect or undermine our mental health and shift our position on the mental health continuum.

Individual psychological and biological factors such as emotional skills, substance use and genetics can make people more vulnerable to mental health problems.

Exposure to unfavourable social, economic, geopolitical and environmental circumstances – including poverty, violence, inequality and environmental deprivation – also increases people’s risk of experiencing mental health conditions.

Risks can manifest themselves at all stages of life, but those that occur during developmentally sensitive periods, especially early childhood, are particularly detrimental. For example, harsh parenting and physical punishment is known to undermine child health and bullying is a leading risk factor for mental health conditions.

Protective factors similarly occur throughout our lives and serve to strengthen resilience. They include our individual social and emotional skills and attributes as well as positive social interactions, quality education, decent work, safe neighbourhoods and community cohesion, among others.

Mental health risks and protective factors can be found in society at different scales. Local threats heighten risk for individuals, families and communities. Global threats heighten risk for whole populations and include economic downturns, disease outbreaks, humanitarian emergencies and forced displacement and the growing climate crisis.

Each single risk and protective factor has only limited predictive strength. Most people do not develop a mental health condition despite exposure to a risk factor and many people with no known risk factor still develop a mental health condition. Nonetheless, the interacting determinants of mental health serve to enhance or undermine mental health.

Mental health promotion and prevention

Promotion and prevention interventions work by identifying the individual, social and structural determinants of mental health, and then intervening to reduce risks, build resilience and establish supportive environments for mental health. Interventions can be designed for individuals, specific groups or whole populations.

Reshaping the determinants of mental health often requires action beyond the health sector and so promotion and prevention programmes should involve the education, labour, justice, transport, environment, housing, and welfare sectors. The health sector can contribute significantly by embedding promotion and prevention efforts within health services; and by advocating, initiating and, where appropriate, facilitating multisectoral collaboration and coordination.

Suicide prevention is a global priority and included in the Sustainable Development Goals. Much progress can be achieved by limiting access to means, responsible media reporting, social and emotional learning for adolescents and early intervention. Banning highly hazardous pesticides is a particularly inexpensive and cost–effective intervention for reducing suicide rates.

Promoting child and adolescent mental health is another priority and can be achieved by policies and laws that promote and protect mental health, supporting caregivers to provide nurturing care, implementing school-based programmes and improving the quality of community and online environments. School-based social and emotional learning programmes are among the most effective promotion strategies for countries at all income levels.

Promoting and protecting mental health at work is a growing area of interest and can be supported through legislation and regulation, organizational strategies, manager training and interventions for workers.

                   :- Self education ✨

I’d always seen my dad use Photoshop, and I was curious to learn. So in 7th grade, I scraped together my allowance and bought a copy of Photoshop for Dummies.

Through hours of practice, along with reading that book and online tutorials, I learned the basics of editing images in Photoshop. While I’m still no image editing wizard, my basic Photoshop skills continue to serve me to this day. And it was all because I chose to pursue that first learning project on my own.

It wouldn’t be the last such project, either. Since then, I’ve taught myself HTML, drawing, painting, and even Spanish.

Plus, I have the confidence to teach myself any new skill that interests me or is useful for advancing my career. My early approach to self-education was rather haphazard, but I’ve since learned a lot more about how to effectively teach yourself new things.

In this post, I’m going to share my favorite lessons for educating yourself on any subject. We’ll start with a look at why self-education is such a valuable skill. Then, we’ll move to a process you can use to start your own self-education adventures.

Credentials Are No Longer Enough

There was a time when having a college degree was enough to secure a good job. But with more people graduating from college than ever, you now need other ways to differentiate yourself.

While there are many ways to stand out in a job interview, one of the best is to demonstrate that you’re self-directed and motivated. And I can’t think of a better way to demonstrate these qualities than telling the interviewer about a new skill you taught yourself.

Compared to the other applications with the same degrees, GPAs, and extracurriculars, a self-directed learner is bound to stand out.

How to Educate Yourself

Learning is a highly personal process, and the array of subjects to learn is vast. Therefore, it’s difficult to give an exact set of steps for self-education.

But the following process should get you off to a very good start, particularly in areas where new independent learners tend to struggle.

Identify What You Want to Learn

The obvious first step to learning something new is to pick a skill or subject. You probably have a vague idea in mind already, but I encourage you to make it more specific. This way, you can better track your learning progress.

For instance, let’s say you want to learn piano. “Learn piano” isn’t a very helpful goal — it’s much too vague. What exactly do you want to learn? To play a few of your favorite songs? To play in a band with your friends? To become the next Carnegie Hall soloist?

These all fall under “Learn piano,” but they’re very different goals requiring different amounts of effort. You can see, therefore, why setting a specific learning goal is so important.

Besides being specific about what you want to learn, you should also determine why you want to learn it. As with building good habits, you shouldn’t decide to learn something just because your friend or mom or some guy on the internet said so.

Rather, you should choose learning goals that are personally meaningful. This could be to help you advance in your career, but it could also be pure curiosity. Regardless, you’re more likely to stick with a learning goal if you have a clear “why” in mind.