Your Great Mind

People are more concerned about their health nowadays and it is hard to not hear of the acai berry when watching TV, listening to the news or reading magazines, especially if they are health related. If you watch Oprah or the Rachel Ray Show, you will hear of the acai berry and how great it is for your health.

Although you may have heard about the acai berry for the first time, this berry is not a new berry or organically created in a lab to contain amazing properties. The acai berry has been around for a very long time but it was tucked away deep in the rain forests, unknown to most people elsewhere in the world.

The acai berry grows on a branch of an acai palm tree called Euterpe oleracea, which is more commonly known as the acai palm tree. The acai palm is large and tall. Each tree can have as many as 25 trunks although it is not very common. An acai palm tree can be as tall as 25 meters.

On each acai palm trunk, you will see many strands of ribbon-link branches hanging from it. Acai berries are found on the branches. Each acai berry is attached to a thin, small but long branch. Each branch has many acai berries on.

An acai berry looks very similar to a blueberry when ripe. The acai berry is round and small, similar to most berries. It is dark in color. Some are darker than others but most of them are dark purple in color. Each acai palm tree can produce as much as 20 kgs of acai berries a year.

Like most berries, the acai berry is edible. Many people eat the acai berry as fruit but some make use of other parts of the berry too. The acai pulp is where most of the nutrients are and it is very commonly used in wines, liqueurs, or as food flavoring or colorant. The acai berry has many uses so it is not surprising that there are many acai berry products around.

However, the most amazing thing about the acai berry that has caught most people’s attention is its health benefits. The acai berry is very healthy to eat since it contains more nutrients and minerals than almost everything else. There have been many researches into the health properties of the acai berry and all of them are positive.

Since people now know that the acai berry is so healthy, the acai berry is more in demand now than ever. In the past, the acai berry used to be hand picked but nowadays many companies have them mass harvested to meet the world demand of the acai berry. Unfortunately, automation will always decrease the effectiveness of the end product.

Dining out is a big part of many people’s lives. Maybe you’re eating out more frequently because you entertain clients. Perhaps you don’t like eating out. Either way, if you want to keep a nice trim body, restaurant meals will give you a huge obstacle to overcome. In fact, eating out is one of the biggest reasons why so many people fatten up while the road.

If you’re interested in staying lean while dining out by using a few healthy tricks you’re in luck because I’m going to share some below.

The 3 most important things to avoid that are everywhere at restaurants are:

*** any sodas, juices and other sugary foods (except fresh fruits, which are great) *** deep fried foods (anything dropped in a scorching bath of trans fats) *** refined starchy foods

Skip these major culprits and you can eliminate the major food sources that do the worst damage to your body - trans fats, refined vegetable oils, refined starchy carbohydrates, and refined sugars.

Ok, so what do you need to do? Well, this means you should try to skip the cheap white bread, cut out the french fries that come with every single sandwich on every menu known to man, and wipe out all of the huge portions of pasta and rice that are often loaded on the plates as well.

Instead, just try to order meat and a side salad, and then, asking for the vegetables as a substitute for the typical french fries, pasta, or rice, that most restaurant meals come with.

Almost every restaurant I have ever been to will always allow me to change to vegetables or side salad for the regular french fries or chips that almost always come with burgers or sandwiches.

Just a quick side note, it amazes me how many people scrutinize my substitutions of veggies for fries by telling me that I am ‘not living’ because I refuse to eat deep fried french fries… are you kidding me! If french fries are your idea of ‘living it up’, you need to get a better hobby!

Ironically, these same people are the first to complain that they are fat, overweight and have tried ‘everything’, yet can not lose their big guts. I am not sure why so many people think eating deep fried foods equals ‘living it up’… I am for moderation with many things, but there are 2 things that should be totally removed from every diet because these foods are simply dangerous… it is sodas and fries!

Take a look at the typical difference this simple substitution makes between choosing smart and doing what most other people do…

Most people will eat a meal out such as this:

* Burger or sandwich or burger * chips or fries * soda or other sweetened drink (and no, diet sodas are NOT healthy!)

A MUCH more smart alternative (if you care about your body and health) is this simple change you can make:

* Salad or veggies * Burger or Sandwich * unsweetened iced tea or water (no diet drinks — unless you like to drink poison!)

These 2 simple substitutions every time you eat out can save you around 400 - 900 calories… AND you are cutting out the poison’s to your body as well, by avoiding the trans fats and fructose corn syrup from the fries and soft drinks.

Here’s a side note: a little-known way to eat full portions of pasta, rice, and breads and actually get away with it without packing on the body fat is to make sure to schedule a high intensity full body resistance training exercise (can be free weights or body weight training) BEFORE your scheduled meal time.

Sometimes it can be really hard to fit the workouts into your schedule right before the meal, but if you can, the meal can be your ‘post-exercise meal’. After a high intensity resistance training exercise, your body can handle a higher amount of carbs than normal to help replenish the muscle glycogen depletion you had during the intense exercise.

Your moderate intensity cardio workout will NOT work for this… it must be high intensity resistance training to deplete enough glycogen in the muscle to handle restaurant portions of these carbohydrates.

I hope these dining tips help you choose smarter and healthier for a leaner body next time you eat out.

All too often I hear statements like, “Once I have gotten rid of my stress, I am going to quit smoking” or “It’s going to be my New Year’s resolution” or “I could quit right away, if it weren’t for (fill in the blank)”. You know what I’m getting at.

First things first. Get out a notepad and spend some time writing down the exact reasons that are driving you to rid yourself of this habit. Then once you are done with that, turn the page over and jot down all the reasons (excuses) you might make to justify why you haven’t.

Just putting excuses down on paper so that they are something solid you can see is enough to make some people look at how silly they really are. For others, they may have to analyze their list of excuses and figure out why they believe these reasons to be true. Usually it is due to repetition. You’ve been telling yourselves for years that these are the reasons why you smoke, and if you tell yourself something enough times, eventually it will become an ingrained belief, whether it is the truth or not.

I’ve listed some of the more common excuses here, but ultimately it is your responsibility to list EVERY reason you think keeps you smoking.

“If I quit smoking, I’ll gain weight.”

Really? Would you believe that it has been shown that we are better off healthwise to be 70+ pounds overweight than to continue smoking. Of course that doesn’t give us the excuse to binge. Yes it is true that some people do put on a few pounds when giving up smoking, however there is healthy alternatives to your diet which will help alleviate this. Just keep in mind to snack on healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, not chocolate bars and pretzels.

“Smoking is too enjoyable to quit.”

If that were truly so, then chances are you wouldn’t be sitting there now gathering information on quitting, would you? Don’t worry. I’m not picking on you. I used to say the very same thing. Making statements such as this creates one major issue. And that is the fact that the more times you say it, the more you become to believe it. I’ve said it before. So time to come clean and be honest with yourself, is smoking really that enjoyable or is it just a fallacy you’ve convinced yourself to be true? What is it that you think smoking gives you? More money, better health and cleaner, fresher breath? Looking at it from that angle and writing down the answers will show you that you really don’t enjoy smoking that much at all.

The thing is that I am not trying to come across as mean or condescending, so please don’t take what I am saying the wrong way. No, what I am trying to do is be truly helpful by telling you that none of the excuses that you are currently using or have used in the past do anything for you other than keep you smoking and once you come to terms with this fact, the easier quitting will be.

Don’t doubt your abilities to beat those lies. You can do this.

You have just made the initial step on your path to weight loss, admitting that you have a desire to lose weight. Weight plays a big part in how you feel about yourself. If you aren’t happy you will feel bad physically as well as emotionally.

But people can have a difficult time realizing that in order to lose weight they actually should eat moe often throughout the day. A common strategy at the beginning of a diet is a drastic reduction in the amount and kinds of food eaten. However, that may in fact ultimately do more damage than produce any benefit.

Eating too little during the course of the day actually sets up your body for weight loss failure. By not eating enough you set your body up to have low energy throughout the day. Try to store as much fat as possible, which will thwart your weight loss attempts,your body will also go into starvation mode. You should also know that once you begin to keep yourself from eating you will have a greater food craving than if you were to just eat sensibly.

Your body’s main goal is to keep yourself alive and operating properly and healthfully. Our systems have all sorts of survival mechanisms in place to keep your systems working. These systems will automatically start up when your body gets the signal that it is needed. One of our most highly developed defensive mechanism is our response to famine.

You could sit down and eat whatever you want that your internal mechanisms do not really realize. Your body does not recognize your choice to consume fewer calories, but operates in a starvation mode, making adjustments to be able to provide energy for its functions.

Your body will begin to think that it is starving if you choose not to eat enough or if you wait for long periods of time between meals. You shouldn’t do this because your body will react in a negative way. You will slow down your metabolism making it harder to burn the fat you are trying to lose. An effecient metabolism is the keystone of a successful weight loss plan.

Instead of the fat as a result of your eating habitsyou may start to lose the toned muscle. If your body does not get enough protein to support your regular activities, then you will lose muscle mass. You will be slowing down your metabolic rate even further,additionally, by loosing this lean muscle. Again reducing the amount of fat that your body is able to burn.

If you intend to loose weight then make sure that there is no problem with your metabolic processes. The best way to keep your metabolism up and running is to eat a small meal every three hours. You are sure to quickly become the new you that you have always dreamed of being if you do that in coordination with a fitness program.

Tom Venuto created the Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle program to help bodybuilders get the kind of lean muscle that they are after. You will learn with this program how to cut the fat out of your diet and your muscles and create a lean and strong physique. This book delivers a great program that has been hot on the market for years. The author of the program is a competitive bodybuilder that gives you all of the information that you need to get the results that you want.

Venuto’s aim is not only to teach every minute details of bodybuilding but also makes it easier for beginners to start off and achieve their goals, be it shedding 100 lbs or adding some extra pounds to get a six-pack. Venuto’s writing style is quite calm and confident, it’s highly communicable. It will also help you in having a clear perception about the fat loss program.

The e-book is refreshingly devoid of ego. Piles of e-books are available on the web these days, which have “n” number of nutrition plans, supplements and fitness routines; but with least focus on attaining the real goal. Though the authors try very hard to convince the readers and they succeed too, but it doesn’t last long. Tom makes no such false claims of knowing everything about bodybuilding and is the founder of the fat loss secrets. He genuinely is trying to help you with his book and I agree with the fact that he is the most competent person to guide a beginner through the course.

Tom’s BFFM program comprises of 4 key components:

* The importance of goal setting

* Nutrition

* Cardio, and

* Weight training and its importance

The very first chapter of this e-book is the most informative and will provide you with a great deal of motivation for reaching your goals. There are some great goal setting formulas that you can use to reach your goals no matter what they are. The program will teach you how to train your brain so that you have a great chance of reaching those goals.

The problem that many people have when they are bodybuilding is that they do not set proper goals in the beginning. Tom believes that this is the most important part of reaching your goals. There will be those who will skip past this part of the book and jump right into the bodybuilding techniques, but this would be a big mistake. If you want to make a lasting impact on your body, you should not skip this part of the book.

The focus of the program is on your nutrition and not dieting. You will find a great approach to reducing your body fat while you are gaining lean muscle. The program will focus on a permanent solution to losing body fat and not simply a starvation approach. When you use starvation to lose weight you will be in danger of gaining back the weight once you are off the program. If you focus instead on a healthy approach to eating and nutrition to get the results that you want. The diet advice is real and based on real life experiences.

The habits that you develop about food are not the only approach that is taken. You will learn all of the advanced ways that a person can lose extra weight while they are building their muscles. The first step is to learn the basics, however, and these will be tended to first. The book will cover everything that you need to learn about bodybuilding and how to lose the extra weight that you might be carrying.

Once you have learned the basic information you will be given advice on your nutrition that will help you to separate the myth from the fact in your diet. This information is essential to gaining the kind of muscle mass that you are after.

After you have gotten down the basics of bodybuilding you will learn some of the more advanced techniques that are used to give you the body that you want. The methods that are used will apply a carbohydrate manipulation to get the results. You must be very careful when you are using these techniques because when they are used incorrectly, you could have poor results. The bodybuilders who use these techniques are on an advanced level and have complete knowledge of the process before they begin and so should you.

A new mom stranded on an island with no food would naturally lose the pregnancy weight fast because of the lack of food. Although there are many factors that affect and contribute to being overweight, the one factor that stands apart from the rest is FOOD. Food by itself is not the problem. The real problem is our unhealthy relationship with food and lack of knowledge about the food we buy and fuel our bodies with.

1. Making Poor Food Choices

If the majority of the food you buy from the grocery store is packaged in a box or can, then you need to make some serious changes. Most processed foods are high in fat, sugar and salt and low in vitamins and minerals because these foods are changed from their organic state for reasons of safety, longer shelf life and convenience. Processed foods are bad for your health and can be a roadblock to lose your pregnancy weight fast.

Be a smart consumer and opt for more natural foods (fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and fish) or food products with more natural ingredients. Go for healthy processed foods such as fortified milk and fruit juices or frozen produce which, although frozen, still have their nutrients.

2. Fast Food Nation

Fast food is addictive. The convenience of fast food is an easy meal solution for moms on the go. But due to the high in saturated fat, sugar, salt content, these foods are just empty calories. Eating too much fast food will increase your size and is a definite self-sabotage to losing the pregnancy weight fast.

Pre-planning your weekly meals and grocery lists is one way to get organized to start cooking and eating healthier meals. There are thousands of delicious healthy recipes available that are quick and easy to prepare. So plan ahead and recruit the rest of the family to get on board with eating healthy and make the next meal at McDonald’s a special family treat and not the family meal norm.

3. Skipping Meals

Do you eat during the wrong times of the day? Some moms are so preoccupied with looking after the baby, running errands, and so on that they forget to eat until the end of their day. Not fueling your body properly and frequently will affect your metabolism’s normal rate of activity and prevent you from losing your pregnancy weight fast. Skipping meals such as breakfast or eating just one big meal for the day only serves to make your body conserve energy instead of burning it.

Just think of how often you feed your baby and how often you feed yourself. A baby feeds often because a baby’s body needs frequent nourishment to provide energy to fuel proper development and growth. Likewise, in order for your metabolism to be able to sustain your daily activities and to lose pregnancy weight fast you should eat six small healthy meals per day.

4. Eating Food to feel Better

How often do you find yourself watching favorite Soap Opera with some junk food? Or if you are depressed about your current body image, you soothe your depression with your favorite pint of Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Bad eating habits prevent you from losing pregnancy weight fast.

One surefire way to help lose pregnancy weight fast is to stop buying or replacing these foods with healthier choices. Also finding other non-food outlets to deal with your emotional eating such as joining a yoga or meditation class can help wean you off of eating for comfort.

5. Lack of Exercise

How often do you walk your dog? Our bodies are built for action but thanks to technology our lifestyles are becoming more and more sedentary and we’re getting fatter and fatter. We spend more time in our cars, on our computers and on our couches than walking, running, cycling or hiking.

If you want to lose pregnancy weight fast, you have to do some form of daily exercise that elevates your heart rate for at least 30 minutes. Going for a brisk walk, every day rain or shine, will keep the pounds off and you healthy. Make fitness a family affair and plan a Saturday afternoon to go roller balding or playing Frisbee at the park. The choices are endless when it comes to fitness activities. So have fun and in time exercise will be a normal part of your daily lifestyle.

Take responsibility for your health by being an informed consumer. Eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lean meats. Exercise daily with and without your family. Life is what you make it, so take charge to live healthy and make it fun.

To understand what an antioxidant is, we must understand the meaning of the two following terms first:-

FREE RADICAL:

The outer shell of this atom or molecule contains a singular electron in constant search for its pair.

OXIDATION REACTION:

In the event of the free radical losing its unpaired electron, the reaction is known as oxidation.

Although oxidation reactions are very important for our body, some of them are harmful and can cause damage to the cells and DNA of the human biology.

ANTIOXIDANTS basically prevent the free radical from shedding its singular unpaired electron in its outer shell so that it cannot begin a “chain reaction” that can be a health deterrent.

DARK CHOCOLATE:

Dark chocolate has been regarded as one of the most effective antioxidants of all time. It slows down the oxidation process greatly. Although milk is an antioxidant itself, doctors usually recommend people to consume dark chocolate on their own, without milk.

Dark chocolate antioxidants, within an hour of their consumption, resulted in increased level of epicatechin (polyphenolic component green tea also found in chocolate). The Cocoapro cocoa containing chocolate Dove Dark, made by Mars Inc. contains a heavy dose of flavanol, which is rich in antioxidants. These flavanoids neutralize the free radicals. Consumption of cocoa is a great way of antioxidant intake, which in turn lowers the risk of heart disease, cancer (lung, prostrate) and type 2 diabetes. Professor of Penn State University, Penny Kris-Etherton has found in his studies that those who consume high levels of cocoa and dark chocolate have lower levels of bad LDL cholesterol and higher levels of good HDL cholesterol. Cocoapro cocoa even helps in the clotting of blood and production of nitric oxide. Milk chocolate also contains flavanoids, but to a much lesser level.

RED WINE:

Two glasses of red wine if consumed daily, is a rich source of antioxidant. Red wine antioxidants help fight potential cases of cancer. This rich-in-color drink contains phytochemicals, polyphenols such as catechins and resveratrol all contain anti-cancer properties. Polyphenols (main source: skin of grapes) remain contained in the red wine after fermentation, providing a rich course of antioxidants. Since white wine does not include the skin of grapes, these polyphenols are not present, making it a less potent source of antioxidants. Resveratrol is the result of a plant fighting against fungus or injury. It is a strong antioxidant as well, present in red wine. It helps reduce incidence of tumor by sensitizing the cells to radiation treatments.

Red wine also helps fight pancreatic cancer by attacking the cancerous cells’ main energy source, the mitochondria. This ultimately results in the death of such cells.

Red wine consumption also reduces the chances of prostate cancer. However, to derive its beneficial effects, red wine must be consumed under controlled dosage. Excess consumption of it could have severe reverse effects and harm the health seriously.

Carrots, tomato, broccoli, peaches, and apricot (vitamin A), orange, lime and strawberries (Vitamin C), nuts and whole grains (Vitamin E) and fish, eggs and meat (selenium) are other sources of antioxidants.

Since so many people enjoyed yesterday’s video from Napoleon Hill let me share another one!  A definition of the REAL Riches that most people don’t know. Summarized in 12 principles in order stated in Napoleon Hill’s voice from a seminar in Circa 1937. This is only 1 minute long but profound beyond words!

Please share your comments!

Ray Stendall AKA “The Catalyst”

www.yourgreatmind.com/blog

Good morning everyone,

I would like to share with you a video from Napoleon Hill.   Dr. Hill has had the greatest influence on my life. I had the good fortune to study his famous book “Think and Grow Rich” in 1987 when I was 12 and my father gave it to me.  Listen carefully to his message and may it move you to a higher state of consciousness as it did for me.

Over the years my studies have helped me greatly and soon I will be a certified instructor with the Napoleon Hill Foundation which gives me tremendous joy. I look forward to sharing with you ideas and thoughts which can make a huge difference in your life. You have unlimited potential once you take control of your own mind and intelligently direct it to what you want!

Ray Stendall AKA “The Catalyst”
www.yourgreatmind.com/blog

Good morning everyone,

Today is election day here in the USA! Do you think this election will impact you financially?

I do not think so - listen to this podcast to hear why I have come to this conclusion.

Ray Stendall AKA “The Catalyst”

www.yourgreatmind.com/blog

 

 Election Day: Play Now | Play in Popup