How To Stay In Shape Forever

The core of true fitness lies in your hearts strength. Your heart is one of the most valuable pieces of equipment in your body. This little pump the size of your own fist literally creates life for your body. You can survive a shock to your brain, but if your heart stops, the chances of survival diminish drastically. If your heart is weak, your whole body is weak. It represents the ultimate power both internally and externally. A strong heart helps you lift weights easier, helps you run faster, jump higher and creates a better athlete or a better exercise devotee.

If all the above is true, how come a lot of us worry about the size of our biceps instead? I believe this is true because one way or another, a lot of us believe it is harder to exercise the heart then it is to work other muscles. When you weight train for instance, you dont sweat as much as when you participate in aerobics. This is true because the system that operates during weight training is anaerobic or without oxygen allowing the body to use less energy. cardio training like cycling, running or aerobics uses much more energy because the consumption of oxygen is higher resulting in excessive sweat.

One way to keep an excellent healthy heart is to exercise aerobically to maintain proper cardiovascular health. In other words, you must stress or cause your heart to work harder than usual to keep arteries clear and to improve pumping power as well. weight training is not the best method to exercise the heart. It affects the heart somewhat, but not enough. Make sure that you choose the right exercises that focus on the right system in your body. What ensures results is selecting exercises that directly affect the areas, muscles or system needing improvement. This is one way to maximize results. To be in shape forever then, its imperative for the health of the heart to be impeccable.

Rosendo Lopez began his Tae kwon Do training in 1990. He has a vast background in meditation, yoga and wellness. He is also the founder of http://www.theyinyangselfcenter.com He incorporates boxing, weight training and yoga to Tae Kwan Do practice. He is finalizing a book title, The Trinity of Fitness.

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Healthy Salad Dressings Made Easy

With warmer weather looming on the horizon in Northern america, many women and men start to simplify and streamline their diets. Gone are the heavy chili dinners and beef stews that fill our bellies in the dead of winter. Enter the salad: cool, fresh, crisp bursts of flavor - but not necessarily a significant caloric savings over a meat and potatoes dinner. The culprit: creamy, oil based dressings. The solution: for most, it's to take their dressing on the side.

Traditional commerically prepared salad dressings are an easy way to turn a healthy salad into a calorie-dense, fat-laden disaster. Bottled dressings can have anywhere from 8 to 20 grams of fat per serving.

Take your dressing on the side? Never! At least, theres never a need when you make your own healthy salad dressings.

Of course, you can buy decent commercial low-fat dressings, or even organic dressings but, more often than not, they are loaded with unhealthy elements like sugar and heavy amounts of heart-unhealthy sodium.

Its hard, however, to beat a homemade dressing!

The key to making delicious healthy dressings at home is to reduce the oils and other fats, and bump up the ingredients that add texture and flavor.

The oil in any salad dressing serves several functions, including providing a cling" or "binding" factor, so your acidic and other flavorings (such as vinegar and herbs) dont end up in a puddle at the bottom of the bowl.

Oil also serves to soften and balance the acids so that they're more pleasing to the pallate.

When thinking of healthier dressings, most people eschew creamy dressings in favor of lighter vinaigrettes. But classic vinaigrettes often use a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 ratio of fat to acid (for example: olive oil and red wine vinegar). Such a ratio can yield at least 10 grams of fat per tablespoon! And who uses just one tablespoon?

So what constitutes a healthy salad dressing?

Let's look at oil.

When choosing oils for your dressing, think carefully about flavors. Extra-virgin olive oil is almost always an excellent healthful and flavorful choice. But so are nut oils such as almond, macadamia and hazelnut. Each contributes complex yet subtle flavors that can complement a salad. Olive and nut oils also are rich in healthy monounsaturated fats.

You can reduce the amount of oil, however, in any dressing by approximately 40 percent if the other ingredients that balance the dressing are not too acidic.

A common complaint when reducing the oil content of a dressing recipe is that one often misses the thick texture that oil adds to your recipes. Try adding Dijon mustard as an emulsifier to make up for the reduced oil. Like oil, mustard is thick enough to bind the other ingredients and adds a tangy flavor.

In creamy dressings, the emulsifier often is sour cream or mayonnaise (and sometimes oil, too). Providing a healthy option for these ingredients is an easy fix.

Nonfat yogurt, reduced-fat sour cream, and reduced-fat mayonnaise all make good substitutes. They each have good flavor and produce dressings that hold together and coat vegetables quite well.

Or try buttermilk. Buttermilk is always either nonfat or reduced-fat. Its thick texture and mild, tangy flavor makes it a useful ingredient.

With a little bit of ingenuity and creativity, it is possible to make healthy salad dressings without sacrificing good nutrition by cutting calories, fat and chemicals.

Deborah Carraro is an avid nutrition, health & fitness enthusiast with a passion for sharing knowledge and experiences. As VP Operations for a successful online Natural Health business she has worked with the best nutritionists, fitness professionals and health experts.

You can find her online at http://www.yogaforoptimalhealth.com/HealthySaladDressings.html

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