Let’s face it – You don’t have to be pregnant to know what it’s like to crave salty potato chips or sweet ice cream. The fact of the matter is that everyone has a craving now and then. But did you know your cravings might actually mean something?

Usually, when we crave a certain food, it’s because our body is telling us it needs a specific nutrient. You can go ahead and give into that craving to satisfy your body, but it’s important to know why you are craving a certain food and then choose the healthier alternative. Your system, and your waistline, will thank you for choosing the healthy way out.

Craving Salty Snacks

If you are craving potato chips or French fries, you need something salty. This is likely your body’s way of telling you that you are low on essential minerals. A low-calcium diet often leads to salt cravings. Salt tricks your body into believing that calcium levels are high enough.

Instead of the salt, reach for dairy. Drink a glass of milk or eat a slice of cheese. You’ll give your body the calcium you need instead of tricking it into thinking it’s satisfied.

Craving Sweet Treats

For some people, all you have to do is say the word “chocolate” and their mouth waters until a pound of chocolate has been consumed. When we crave sweets, it’s usually because of our mood. In many cases, we are sad when we crave sweets. Ever have a really tough day and the only thing that will console you is a big cupcake? That’s because when we are sad we want a quick mood lift. Our body wants to release serotonin, which you can get when you eat sweets.

If you really must have that chocolate, opt for dark chocolate. This variety contains antioxidants, which are needed to stay healthy. Or better yet, instead of eating the chocolate, go out for a walk or a bike ride. The exercise is much more likely to give you long-term mood benefits, whereas the treats will only make you feel better for a moment.

Craving a Spicy Kick

When your body is overheated, you crave the spicy foods that make you perspire. Your body wants to cool down and spicy food can help do that. Some studies suggest that people who crave spicy foods are addicted to the accelerated heart rate and rapid breathing that comes from really spicy Thai food or Mexican favorites. It’s the adrenaline rush you’re actually craving, not the food itself.

Again, go exercise to help you get the rush you need. Your body will perspire, which will help cool you down. Plus, you’re getting your heart rate up, which helps with the adrenaline craving.

When you apply these tips you can cut out a bunch of empty calories and increase your intake of healthy vitamins and minerals. You will feel healthier and look better, which everyone can agree is a good thing!

About the author: Allen is an avid basketball player and NBA fan. In his spare time he writes for YourLocalSecurity.com.

Every single year most people get stuck in the same cycle regarding fitness. As the days grow shorter and colder we exercise less. When you add in holiday laziness and indulgence, along with an over abundance of delicious food, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why so many of us start adding extra pounds.  So should you wait until spring to start losing weight or just look for ways to not add it during the winter?

An ounce of prevention

As Ben Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” While I doubt he was talking about keeping a trim waistline, the saying is very accurate. It is extremely easy to gain excess weight and fat. Simply add a few extra helpings of dessert each week and watch those pounds add up. But conversely you have to burn 3500 calories of energy to lose a pound of fat. That equals 3 1/2 hours of hard cycling, over 4 hours of step aerobics, or 5 hours of jogging.

Where to start?

Psych yourself up for staying in shape! One of the more overlooked aspects of weight gain and weight loss is the proper mindset. If you aren’t focused on a particular goal then you won’t reach that goal. For staying in shape the easiest way to forge that focus is by placing attention firmly on your abdominals. Far too many people think the all-mighty scale is the best tool. They will agonize over every little pound. But honestly, a scale gives a raw number which does not consider how you actually look. Overwhelmingly when people consider being ‘in-shape’ they think of a trim midsection.

• Work out your abdominals every other day. Do it in the morning before breakfast.
• Before you get in the shower, take a good look at your stomach. Consider how it is now compared to how you want it to look.
• Use your morning visualizations and ab soreness as motivation during the day to eat right and avoid the bad foods.
• Always bring a water bottle with you and drink frequently.
• Find some sort of easy exercise to do a few times a week and stick to it. The goal is to offset any extra calories you might consume.
• Keep a picture with you of the type of shape you want to be in. Use it for motivation when a food craving hits.

Mind over body

People can accomplish any number of goals in life if they have the proper mind set. A focused attention can easily overcome obstacles. By looking at your midsection as a point of focal point and using that as your motivation, you can avoid the roller coaster weight gain most people go through over the winter months. Then when spring arrives you will be ready to hit the ground running for fun instead of spending all of those hours working off excess weight.

Nick Walden is a fellow fitness enthusiast who enjoys a healthy and active lifestyle while developing mind and intelligence.

Every New Year, it never fails: people get a new spark of enthusiasm for embarking on a healthy course for the year. Gym memberships soar, health oriented websites surge in traffic, diet programs and pills are gobbled up like no tomorrow, and personal trainers don’t have enough hours in the day to see the new clients who’ve signed up for sessions.

Unfortunately, the enthusiasm rampant in the beginning of January wanes after a few weeks and before you know it, gyms have membership cancellations, websites see drops in traffic, McDonald’s gets back their customers, and personal trainers have a more manageable number of clients. This trend is as predictable as the ball dropping in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

Just because the majority of resolution makers give up, however, doesn’t mean that you need to become a resolution dropout as well. Here are a few ways to ensure that your attempts to make positive change in 2012 are successful:

1. Don’t Bite Off More than You can Chew: Try making smaller changes each week instead of making all your change at once. It is human nature to want to do everything at the same time, but success is often found in a more patient, methodical approach. Don’t try to over commit yourself too early. Ease into your resolution so that you don’t get overwhelmed or discouraged.
2. Stay Motivated with Activities You Love: Pretending to love running when you don’t, is not going to encourage you to exercise. Instead, partake in activities and sports that you actually enjoy. If you love skiing, make an effort to do it more. If you enjoy aerobics classes, sign up for a month’s worth.
3. Play with Your Food: Similar to exercise, force-feeding yourself rice-cakes when you think they taste like cardboard isn’t going to make you love healthier cuisine. Instead, make a game of it. Experiment with different types of health foods to find the ones you like. There are tons of healthful and nutritious foods, so please your personal palate with what you are most likely to eat and enjoy.
4. The Buddy System: Take on your resolution with a friend or family member. Teaming up with another person can help to keep you motivated so that you are more likely to stay committed to the change you want to make. Further, by teaming up with another individual, you’ll feel responsible for their success as well.
5. Be True to Yourself: If you choose to buy a membership at a gym or embark on new foods or hire a personal trainer or wellness coach, be sure they are a match to you and your personality.   Working out in an environment that you don’t like or getting help from a coach that you don’t respect is not going to keep you coming back for more.

New Year’s resolutions are a great way to make positive, healthy change in your life. You owe it to yourself to stick with it! And you can!

About the Author: Brett Blumenthal is best-selling author of 52 Small Changes: One Year to a Happier, Healthier You (January 2012) and Get Real and STOP Dieting! (December 2010). Blumenthal is CEO of Be Healthy, Inc., which is holding Be Healthy Boston (www.behealthyboston.com) – an urban wellness retreat at the Westin Boston Waterfront – this January 28^th and 29.^th

One of the more compelling reasons for adopting a frugal lifestyle is, lets admit it, scarcity of resource. Whether it be an altruistic effort to preserve the resources of the planet or to get by on a smaller budget resulting from reduced income, frugality is rapidly becoming the norm rather than an option. Not only does frugal and simple living ease the burden on resources and income, but it is also a healthier and more ethical choice to exercise. One of the effects of adopting a frugal lifestyle a few years back dawned upon us recently as we realized that our eating had undergone a total revolution. We were eating healthier, eating a larger range of food, cooking different dishes, experimenting and trying out newer cuisines and preparations, using uncommon and exotic ingredients, and, hold your hats, spending less than we used to on groceries and provisions!

Here are some of the things that we were able to identify that made this change possible:

Home Cooking Only

Being pressed for time, a natural response was to either book a table or order home delivery. As we started watching our budget, one of the first things to go was the expense on eating out and ordering in, since it did come up to quite a bit once we looked at the whole month. The same thing had to be done for office and school lunches; packing them instead of buying at the cafeteria. While we did all we could to reinforce the value of the healthier home cooked food, it was not an easy habit to break, especially in the face of the seemingly tastier and more attractive commercial preparations, in addition to the bother of cooking when tired or late. However, as we practiced this habit for several weeks, we slowly found that we were beginning to dislike the commercial preparations, especially the fast food type of stuff. Our tastebuds had got used to the low sodium, low fat, and natural food flavors of home cooking, and revolted when we did eat out after a while. What surprised us was the fact that we never realized how salty and greasy the food was all these years!

Planning, Research and Strategy

We embarked on meal planning two years back, and it has paid off rich dividends. We make a weekly meal plan, which we mostly adhere to, making allowance for sudden changes, visitors, and food cravings! We use this to draw up our shopping list for provisions and groceries. Meal and menu planning helps to ensure that we are getting a good balance of all the essential nutrients and not missing out on anything. We keep time aside for auditing the pantry and stores and menu planning in our schedule in that order. This helps in using up ingredients that are creeping towards the use by dates and ingredients that are almost over before we get fresh supplies.

We try and shop strictly by our list and we visit the stores after a meal. Having a full stomach helps control impulsive purchases of food items. We look out for coupons, discounts and compare prices and ingredients. We have learned to go by price per unit weight rather than the number on the price tag. Buying larger packages of items often translates to lower cost. Challenge areas were herbs and spices, and we learned to come up with a basic set of spices that we would use and buy. Replacing dried herbs and dried spices with fresh variants either from the market or grown in the garden was one of the strategies we adopted. We also set up a collective buying plan for expensive spices that we really wanted in the kitchen like saffron and nutmeg, buying larger amounts at a lower price and sharing the cost and the spice with friends and family. We also studied pricing patterns at supermarkets and discovered that there are predictable discount patterns connected with time of day and day of week. These change from store to store, but the ground rule is that Wednesdays and Thursdays are lower priced as stores stock up midweek and are eager to let go of older inventories. Late evenings see discounts on perishables. Your will need to study your local store to figure out their discount pricing pattern.

Restaurant Style Cooking at Home

We built up a small repertoire of fancy restaurant style dishes using common and frugal ingredients that we would use when entertaining people. We took a few basic preparations, looked up different gourmet recipes and searched for images to get presentation ideas. Then we practiced them by cooking them often. This led to some wonderful meals as well as expertise and familiarity with preparing them. We also came up with a list of quick and easy to prepare emergency dishes and began practising them till we could do it in our sleep. These recipes are our saviors when we come home and are too tired or too lazy to do something elaborate.

The Social Aspect of Food

One of our greatest influences in our current eating and cooking has been the work of Michael Pollan. Apart from the health aspect of increasing plant foods and reducing animal products, his books have helped us understand that food is much more than mere fuel for the body. It is also fuel for the spirit and helps bind people together. We have started exploring the social ritual that cooking and eating really are. We cook as a family, allowing everyone to participate, from planning to shopping to cooking, and we frequently share our meals with friends and family. We take time to cook and take time to eat, rather than making mealtimes a rushed affair or a television dinner. Along with the financial impact of all the changes we have made, this helps us appreciate the gift of life, the gift of transmission of life through what we are eating, and the gift of people in our lives.

Google for Frugal Eating

There are many recipe tools on the internet that let you search for recipes based on ingredients. We use the recipes filter on the sidebar tools on Google Search since we find it the most useful. We have found unusual recipes from different cuisines using this tool. Apart from an ingredients option, it also allows you to filter results by the amount of time taken to prepare the dish.

There are a few other principles that we have adopted as part of our frugal but healthy eating plan that this article would be incomplete without. One of them is to buy vegetables by the colors. We try and include all the different colors of veggies since this ensures that all nutrients are covered for. We have also started exercising portion control and have eliminated wasting what we serve ourselves. And finally, we have started keeping leftovers in clear view in the refrigerator, to shelves, in front, and in the center. This makes sure that they get used up first rather than slowly drift to the back of the fridge only to be rediscovered and trashed.

This steps have helped us eat healthier, save money, enjoy our meals, come closer as a family, and appreciate food in a whole new way. Try them out yourself, and you will be amazed at how it impact the quality of your family’s life. Do remember to let me know how it turns out in the comments.

*******************************

Subhorup Dasgupta is a Hyderabad based writer and artist who blogs at Subho’s Jejune Diet about minimalism, frugality and ethical living. He believes that the present crisis of civilization can only be addressed by adopting value-based and sustainable lifestyle and devotes his time to help people achieve this.

Don’t Forget To sign up for the PTB NEWSLETTER!

Related Reading:

4 Steps to Sticking to Your Workout Plan

How to Take Charge of Your Unhealthy Eating Plan

Are you exercising enough?

For most people, the answer to that question is “no” – especially at this time of year, during the holidays. Exercise might not feel like your top priority right now. But keeping active is crucial for good physical and mental health.

Even if you don’t need to lose weight, exercise is important. It will give you a greater sense of vitality: you’ll feel better in your body. You’ll see this in physical effects like greater flexibility, and mental ones like greater wellbeing. There is even evidence to suggest that depression is reduced dramatically by exercise.

There are two key types of exercise that you can do:

• Strength-training
• Cardiovascular

When you do strength-training, your weight will be redistributed – giving you a more desirable shape. This happens through building muscles (and losing fat in other areas). For instance, if you’re a man, you will be able to broaden your shoulders by chest and shoulder exercises.

Cardiovascular exercise (like jogging or cycling) lowers cholesterol, reduces blood pressure, and improves your mood. It also helps you to lose fat, which reduces the size of your fat cells – helping your newly-defined muscles to show.

How You Can Find Time to Exercise

Exercise represents something that’s important but not necessarily urgent. If you don’t exercise, it won’t normally cause problems right away – but over time, it can lead to serious illness.

It’s essential to force important-but-not-urgent items into your schedule. That might mean you exercise:

• First thing in the morning
• Immediately when you get home
• During your lunch hour or another scheduled break

Build exercise into the rhythm of your life until it becomes a habit.

About three weeks ago, I took a cruise from Boston to Halifax to Maine. Along with a friend, I went to the gym every single day. Despite eating very rich meals (and even partaking in a chocolate buffet!) I came back without having gained a single pound, because I’d kept up my exercise routine.

Use Your Body

Instead of thinking about “exercise”, think of how you can “use your body”. You could:

• Take the stairs instead of the elevator
• Park at the far end of the car park
• Do some yoga before work
• Take a five-minute walk to clear your mind

… anything that keeps you active.

If you can, work on your goal as part of a community, perhaps alongside colleagues. Many offices will have a weight-loss challenges and regular weigh-ins together. They may even have a personal trainer come in a couple of days a week and run exercise classes at work.

Don’t wait until the New Year to start being more active. Begin today.

Bio: Barry Demp is a business and personal coach in Michigan. He writes about professional and personal development on his website – click here to read his Four Simple Tips for Healthy Eating During the Holidays.

Don’t Forget To sign up for the PTB NEWSLETTER!

Related Reading:

4 Steps to Sticking to Your Workout Plan

How to Take Charge of Your Unhealthy Eating Plan

Diets do not work. Period.

They often eliminate whole food groups (which is unhealthy and dangerous) or they eliminate your favorite foods (which makes them hard to stick to!)

You can’t live on a restrictive diet for the rest of your life. You need to create a diet that’s going to fit your lifestyle, not force yourself to adopt a whole new lifestyle for your diet.

You can eat chocolate, ice cream, pizza, etc … and still lose weight.

It’s all about moderation and watching portion sizes. If you eat half a gallon of ice cream at a sitting, you will gain weight; if you eat half a cup, you’ll still be satisfied – but you won’t gain weight.

Taking Small Steps Toward Healthier Eating

Do not try to go cold turkey and cut out everything that you consider “bad”. Instead, make gradual changes.

1. Start out by eating smaller portions, period. Take three or four fewer bites; gradually work down to a half-cup instead of a two-cup serving of ice-cream.
2. Measure your portion into a (small) dish instead of eating out of a bag of chips or box of cookies –a cup or half cup dish is a good size. If you need to, take a measuring cup or use scales to work out exactly what you’re eating. The worst thing you can do is to eat directly from the bag or the box of cookies or tub of ice-cream.
3. Out of sight, out of mind! Put food containers away once you’ve got your serving.
4. Experiment to find out what works for you. Many people find that individual servings help them to control their portion sizes – but some may find that they prefer to buy one large container and weigh out the portions themselves.
5. Use a food diary to record what you’re eating: this helps you to learn what works for you and what doesn’t.

Eating Out – And Eating Healthy

When you’re eating out, you can make your meal much healthier by:

• Asking for sauces or dressings on the side.
• Asking for a smaller portion – or get a “to-go” box straight away and put half the meal into it.
• Sharing an entree with a partner.
• Avoiding eating lots of free bread.

Decide what the most important part of the meal is, to you. If you love the cheesecake but aren’t fussed about fries, leave the fries. If you want dessert, have it, but have a small portion or share.

Enjoying Treats

Practice moderation rather than deprivation. If there’s a birthday cake in the office, have a small portion: allow yourself a taste of it. That’s not going to kill you or add a dress size.

If you struggle to eat healthy at work, bring your own snacks so that you’ve got a treat that you’re controlling. Simply trying to resist can cause more problems: you’re more likely to give up on your diet.

Don’t tell yourself that something is forbidden: you only make it more desirable.

Make conscious choices about what you will and won’t eat. If you only have homemade fudge at Christmas-time, then eat it and enjoy it – but don’t indulge in all the other foods that you can have year-round, like chocolates and chips.

Ditch the diet, stop depriving yourself, and start eating in a sustainable, healthy and enjoyable way instead.

Patricia Setzer is the author of How to Eat Healthy for Life (Without Giving Up the Foods You Love), available in ebook form for just $9.99. You can click here to find out all about it here.

Don’t Forget To sign up for the PTB NEWSLETTER!

Related Reading:

4 Steps to Sticking to Your Workout Plan

How to Take Charge of Your Unhealthy Eating Plan

Do you struggle to eat healthy?

If you’re like most people, you probably give in to the temptation of ice cream, chips, cookies and fast food more often than you’d like.

After you give in to those temptations, you feel guilty. So you eat healthy for a few days—maybe a week, even. Then your self-control lets you down again and you finish a whole pint of Ben & Jerry’s in one sitting.

The cycle repeats itself. I’m guessing that you can relate at least partially to this?

For me, my weakness is dessert. I could eat dessert at every meal, every day. Chocolates, cakes, puddings, brownies—you name the dessert and I’ll eat it.

I’ve since won my epic battle with desserts, so I’d like to share with you what I’ve learned.

The Root Cause

The root cause of our lack of discipline when it comes to food is this: We associate food with our emotional state.

Feeling happy? It’s time for delicious food. Feeling sad? It’s time for even more delicious food.

Whether it’s time to celebrate or time to grieve, we find a reason to eat. If you want to take complete control over your eating habits, you need to create some distance between your diet and your emotions.

Once you do this, eating right will no longer pose such a daunting challenge to you.

I’ve discovered the three key decisions you have to make if you want to establish this emotional separation:

1. Decide to be normal, not average.

It’s average to eat a lot of junk food, to be overweight, and to be at risk for diabetes and heart disease.

But is that normal? No!

It’s normal to eat right, to be lean, and not to have any chronic health problems.

All of us want to be normal. We just need to raise our standards of what we consider normal. Don’t let the people around you tell you what “normal” is.

“Average” is relative. “Normal” isn’t. Don’t confuse what is average with what is normal. That’s the first step to overcoming your unhealthy eating habits.

2. Decide that your diet is a mini-representation of your life.

Whenever you put food into your mouth, you’re either getting stronger and healthier, or weaker and flabbier. There’s very little middle ground.

Eat broccoli and chicken breast, and you’re becoming stronger. Eat pizza and Doritos, and you’re becoming weaker.

In a similar way, whenever you choose to spend your time in a certain way, you’re either growing as an individual or you’re regressing.

When you attend an educational seminar, you’re learning and growing. But when you spend an entire afternoon reading a trashy magazine, you’re regressing.

Once you start seeing the food you eat as a mini-representation of your life, your dietary habits take on new meaning and significance. Food isn’t just food anymore. It’s a tool you can use to grow as a person.

When you eat healthy, you’re choosing to become more disciplined and focused. You’re choosing to become a person of greater character.

Start thinking about food this way and I guarantee that you’ll find it easier to eat right.

3. Decide that you want health more than you want pleasure.

If you want to change your behavior, it boils down to desire. Which do you desire more: the long-term health benefits of eating right, or the temporary pleasure of eating junk food?

It’s more effective to focus on increasing your desire for health, rather than on decreasing your desire for pleasure.

To make eating healthy more appealing, I invite you to answer the following questions:

• Do you want to have a good quality of life, especially in old age?
• Do you want to feel more energetic?
• Do you want to lose body fat?
• Do you want to fall sick less often?
• Do you want to avoid suffering from chronic health problems?

I’m sure you answered “yes” to all of those questions.

We’re driven by our desires. Cultivate a burning desire to be healthy, and you won’t have a problem saying “no” to unhealthy food.

–

I didn’t write this post for your information. I wrote it for your action.

Will you make these three simple decisions today and take charge of your unhealthy eating habits?

Daniel Wong is passionate about helping young adults to maximize their education, career and life. He is the author of The Happy Student, which will be published by Morgan James Publishing by early 2012. You can read his blog at Living Large and find him on Twitter.

Don’t forget to sign up for the PickTheBrain NEWSLETTER!

Related Articles:

4 Musts to Staying Committed To Your Diet

The Massive Benefits of a Healthy Diet and How To Make Yours Stick

In ancient Greece they used to say ‘’ Νους υγιής εν σώματι υγιεί’’ while in Rome they used to say ‘’ mens sana in corpore sano’’ both meaning ‘’a healthy mind in a healthy body’’. This was their way of living and we all know that diet means a way of living. These and other nations in the Mediterranean region believed deeply in the motto above and at the same time followed the Mediterranean diet as their way of living.

A diet for a healthy brain:

This ancient saying/axiom reminds us, once more, that it is not enough for the human brain to function properly neither is for the human body. To the contrary, we have all noticed and witnessed, one way or another that both of these ‘elements’ should work in harmony and complement each other. This is particularly important nowadays and in particular for young people that their body and brain are undergoing growth and final formation.

It should be clear that in order to keep the body and the brain healthy we should feed them with the right foods, foods that will enable them to grow properly be healthy during our entire life. It is also obvious and off course practical that we cannot have a Brain diet and a body diet. We should have a balanced diet that will nourish both the body and the brain. We should have a diet that will prevent diseases and sickness rather than curing them. This diet is not something to be invented or a diet to be devised. It is the diet that exists for many thousands of years, it is the Mediterranean diet, med diet in short.

The Mediterranean diet

The Mediterranean diet is a diet followed by many nations in the Mediterranean Sea region. Med diet consists of fresh foods; the basis is the daily consumption of fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, whole grains and legumes. It also includes frequent to medium consumption of nuts, low-fat products, like white-cheese and yogurt, olive oil and fish while for less frequent consumption recommends white meat. Red meat should be taken rarely and red wine should be consumed in moderation, usually it is recommended to have one glass daily.

Mediterranean diet for the Brain

Like any other parts of the body, the brain needs the necessary fuel to function properly and this fuel comes from our nutrition. Several studies done independently and with different scope have shown that the brain needs a balanced diet. The brain is an energy-demanding organ and a balanced diet will keep it functioning optimally.  It needs a diet that will consist of lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, olive oil, nuts, low-fat dairy products like yogurt and fish that provides the omega-3 fatty acids. All of these are the basic components of the Mediterranean diet we have described earlier. Med diet also consists of antioxidants that protect the brain from damages caused from fatty acids.  It is well accepted that prevention is better than curing and thus the important reason to provide the brain with all the necessary nutrition to prevent any brain damage that may result to memory problems and strokes.

It is well documented in several studies that with age comes a cognitive decline to certain extend and degree, which gradually may turn to Alzheimer’s for a certain group of people.  Following the Mediterranean diet slows down the cognitive decline. Another find shows that people who have taken daily, vegetables, olive oil, fish, cereal and a glass of red wine had a slower rate of cognitive decline. In addition, people who adopted the Med diet way of living had fewer incidents of Parkinson’s and had a lower risk of depression.

Why the Mediterranean Diet is so good for the Brain?

Scientists and researchers have proven that the high consumption of fruits and vegetables in combination to the high use of olive oil in the Mediterranean foods, along with the consumption of fish, positions the Mediterranean diet uniquely as the perfect Brain diet. Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants like the vitamins, A, C and E. These vitamins prevent the damage of the brain. Omeag-3 fatty acid that come from olive oil and fish can reduce inflammation in the brain.

Physical Exercise and the Brain

Physical exercise is a basic component and an integral part of the Mediterranean diet and a vital source of the Brain health. The brain needs oxygenation to function and this comes from the blood flow. It is well known that the brain uses 25 percent of the bodyís blood flow to get its nutritional needs. Physical exercise along with the med diet keep our blood vessels healthy, which in its turn means improved blood flow to the brain, resulting to better oxygenation.

Physical exercise, through the revitalization of neurons, helps to the increase of cognitive and brain functions, boosts memory and reduces the chances for neuro-degenerative diseases.

A well-functioning brain in a healthy body enables us to have the best quality of life. It is up to us to keep our body and mind healthy but the path and route for this exists and it is nothing else than the adoption of the Mediterranean diet.

Guest post by Chris. Chris is fanatic follower of healthy eating and living and the Mediterranean diet is the best you can get for a fit body and mind.

Don’t Forget To Follow PickTheBrain on Twitter!

Related Articles:

4 Musts to Staying Committed To Your Diet

The Massive Benefits of a Healthy Diet and How To Make Yours Stick

Recently I wrote about how you can start closing the gap between the life you are living and your best life . . . but I received some reader complaints. Desire to live their Miracle Question life? Check. Ideas and solutions to start closing the gap? Check. Energy to get their plan (and butt) into action? Not so much. And this is a valuable lesson. Inspiration and desire are only part of what is needed to close the gap, which is why desire + diet is the formula for success. Without physical and mental energy, it’s impossible to put the plan into action. This is why feeling good, having energy, and being healthy are so critical to living your best life.

So, how healthy are you? Jumping on the scale can give you some indication. Analyzing your body fat percentage is another option. Maybe calculating your body mass index (BMI). Getting your blood work done and looking at cholesterol levels. You could also check your blood pressure. These are all decent methods to try to answer the question, “How healthy am I?” And this is a question I’ve been asking myself for some time — often while chugging down a thick green nutrition shake. Is this stuff really working? If there was an inverse relationship between taste and nutritional value, I should be pretty damn healthy, but who knows? I sure didn’t.

But all of that changed a few days ago . . .

Let me take you back a few years first. In 2008 I read the very funny and informative book, Skinny Bitch, and it changed my life. After finishing the last page of the book, I became a vegetarian. No hamburgers. No turkey. No chicken. No pork. And most traumatically, no more Double-Doubles from In N’ Out Burger. Then after reading the China Study and earlier this year reading Kathy Freston’s Veganist, I made the leap to a vegan diet. No pizza. No ice cream. No yogurt. No whey.

So what do I eat? I drink several green protein shakes a day, wheat grass, Resveratrol, Acai berry juice, and eat baby carrots like they are a bag of Lay’s potato chips, raw protein bars, salads, quinoa, and did I mention thick green shakes?

Here’s what I’ve discovered . . . I’ve NEVER felt better in my life. I have tons of physical and mental energy. I’ve lost a significant percentage of body fat, and now I never have digestion problems (goodbye Tums). In short, I feel fantastic, and while that doesn’t exactly answer the question “How healthy am I?” — now I know that I am!

While visiting a local Rancho Santa Margarita vegan shop, I had my carotenoid antioxidant levels measured with a nifty skin scanner that claims to “prove the effectiveness of your supplements in improving your overall antioxidant health.” I have no idea what this means, but Dr. Oz featured the scanner on his show so it must be good. It basically measures the amount of cancer-fighting antioxidants in your body.

The painless scan takes 90 seconds, so during this time the women told me that there are five levels: red (worst), orange, yellow, green, and blue (best). She said most people score in the orange range and that less than 1% of the American population is in the blue category. I spent about 80 of those 90 seconds professing — no, demanding — that I would score in the blue category. If I didn’t my whole nutritional world would have come crashing down. Well, 90 seconds later, I got my blue score. Needless to say, she was surprised. In fact, she had tested so many people and so few had scored blue, she gave me a blue shirt and took my picture for their wall of fame.

So, I left with a shirt, but more importantly, I left with more self-respect and redemption. This stuff really does work.

If you want more physical and mental energy so you can get the most out of life, first focus on what you put in your body. Trust me . . . being blue never felt so good.

Are you ready to create more money, time, energy, and passion in your life? Learn how to live your best life now with these free resources:

Get the “Achieving Peak Performance” ebook and video now! (free for a limited time)

You can also join a community of passionate people at Richer Life who want to achieve more in life and at work. With your free membership, you can participate in conversations I have with experts, celebrities, authors, and thought leaders that are laser-focused on practical ways to drive more money, motivation, and meaning into your life. Take the first step toward creating a better life by joining Richer Life for free now!

Don’t Forget To Follow PickTheBrain on Twitter!

Related Articles:

4 Musts to Staying Committed To Your Diet

The Massive Benefits of a Healthy Diet and How To Make Yours Stick

Everyone is constantly telling you what to do, from your parents to your friends to the media. Unfortunately hardly anyone tells you that you should be living a healthy life. Don’t be surprised when too much stress, junk food and little exercise take their toll on your body.

Keep the following quote in mind the next time you catch yourself indulging in unhealthy habits.

“Those who think they have no time for healthy eating will sooner or later have to find time for illness.” – Edward Stanley

That being said…here are 10 simple, effective ways that you can apply right now to live a much healthier life:

1- Stop Drinking Alcohol

Alcohol in general is one of the worst things for your body. It damages your organs, drains your energy and contributes to your increase in weight.

Modern society almost expects us to drink, especially when we’re with friends or go out for the night. Drinking becomes a habit from as early as college, when your free nights are spent partying and getting wasted. This bad habit can stick with you for many years after college, and can have a serious effect on your overall health.

Ideally it would be best to cut out alcohol from your life completely, but I know how hard it can be to quit cold turkey.

Start gradually and cut down to 2 beers or glasses of wine per week.

2- Stop smoking

Peer pressure and stress are two of the biggest reasons why people start smoking in the first place, usually not out of free will.

Smoking has absolutely zero health benefits. By smoking you’re not only damaging your own health, but also the health of others around you. And on top of that it’s a pretty expensive habit (I’m talking about just the cost of cigarettes, not even factoring in the future health costs you will probably incur from excessive smoking).

Try to cut down your smoking gradually by reducing the number of cigarettes you smoke each day. Your goal is to stop smoking entirely in order to live a healthier life. If you smoke because you’re stressed, find another way to relieve that stress (E.g. Exercise or EFT)

3- Eat Fruit And Vegetables Daily

This may sound like the most obvious advice you can think of, but how many people do you know that actually follow it? Do you even follow it?

There is just too much processed and junk food easily available, and with the lack of time and high stress levels it’s just too easy to forget adding fresh fruits and vegetables in your daily diet.

Try to eat at least 3 servings of fruits or vegetables every day. The easiest is to east a piece of fruit as a snack between meals and add some veggies to every meal.

4-Replace Fast Food With Home-Cooked Meals

As I mentioned above, it’s far to easy to get caught in the trap of eating takeaways on a daily basis. I personally caught myself stuck in this habit for a couple of months, ordering pizza, Chinese or McDonald’s every day of the week.

Not only is eating fast food in this manner bad for your long-term health, you can immediately feel how it makes you sluggish and leaves you with little energy throughout the day. Your body needs REAL FOOD.

Cooking takes a little effort, but it’s much more enjoyable and usually costs less than take-outs. You can learn to cook easy healthy dinner recipes in just 10 minutes.

5- Exercise Daily

Do at least 30 minutes of exercise every day (whether it be walking, climbing the stairs or mowing the lawn).

It’s too easy to get caught up in work and the stress of life to remember to exercise every day, especially because you often don’t have the energy to do it after a long day’s work. It may sound contradictory, but exercising actually gives you more energy throughout the day.

If you don’t feel like joining a gym, just take a walk outside, go swimming or do something fun like aerobics, dance classes or tennis.

6- Drink More Water

It’s recommended that you drink at least 8 full glasses of water per day.

I actually know quite a few people who don’t even drink one full glass of water per day. Their liquid intake consists of coffee, tea, soda and alcohol. Of course these drinks contain water, but they contain harmful toxins to the body like sugars, caffeine, acids, artificial flavorants and much more.

Try to cut down on other drinks (except freshly squeezed juices) and replace them with water.

Another useful tip: Drink a full glass of water immediately when you wake up in the morning. It’ll make you feel much better throughout the whole day.

7- Breathe Deeply

Take at least 5 minutes every day to inhale and exhale deeply. Outside in the fresh air would be best.

When you take these 5 minutes, allow yourself to forget about everything around you. Forget your worries, troubles and responsibilities. Concentrate on the process of breathing. Count every breath you take and inhale as much air as can fit into your lungs.

8- Smile More

Stress is one of the worst things for your health, and when you’re stressed…you don’t smile.

Make it a habit to smile as much as you can, on a daily basis. Positivity is contagious, and you never know who’s day you might brighten with your smile. Yup, that’s right, smiling is beneficial for you AND those around you.

9- Leave Your Work At The Office

Don’t take your work home with you.

I know it’s difficult to do, but try to make a clear distinction between work and free time. That way you don’t have too much stress in your life and you can use the time you have free to relax and get the most out of life, instead of being stressed out 24/7.

10-End Negative Relationships

One of the biggest influences on your physical health is your emotional well-being. There will be times for everyone where you find yourself in a relationship (friendship, romantic relationship or work relationship) that is emotionally draining.

You’re being taken advantage of or being used. Maybe you’re giving and not getting back. Maybe the relationship is mutually destructive. Either way…you need to put an end to the negative relationships in your life.

The sooner you cut out the emotional drain, the quicker you’ll feel a relief both mentally and physically. Don’t allow other people to make you miserable and unhealthy.

I’m convinces that if you apply the 10 ways to live healthier that I’ve listed above and there is no doubt that you will become healthier, have more energy and feel happier.

Diggy is the author of one of the top personal development blogs on the web, where he helps people find happiness and success. If you’re looking for more financial freedom, you may also be interested in Diggy’s free tutorial – how to start an online business.