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www.facebook.com On vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, Diet and Fitness Guru Laura Mak demonstrates her multi-joint fitness routine. Be more effective with your training when you train multiple muscle groups at one time. Enjoy this workout series and add this to your interval training. Visit www.facebook.com for more fitness, health, and nutrition tips for a healthy and curvaceous body!

weight loss, diet and fitness. Getting down to 200 pounds.

Yoga has been a revelation for many people. They have found that they can improve the quality of their life with the power of yoga. Yoga combines both physical and mental activities, so it engages your whole body rather than just part of it. Some of the benefits of yoga include better breathing, easier relaxation and relief from the symptoms of asthma.

The reason that yoga can help with your asthma is that by using yoga, you will get your body back to a more natural state. Both your body and your mind will be less stressed. Think of it like how contact lenses help your eyes, (we use a 1800contacts coupon by the way) — yoga and asthma treatment isn’t that much different.

Relaxation and deep breathing were made for each other. Both of them help you to calm down, clear your mind and re-energize your body. By spending a few minutes taking slow, controlled breaths and paying attention to your breathing rather than taking it for granted, you will notice that your breathing automatically becomes calmer. Rather than it’s “normal”, hyper-active state. In turn, this will bring more energy into your body and calm you down.

Try out this simple breathing relaxation exercise. Read the instructions through a couple of times and then start.

1. Sit down, making sure that your posture is good and your spine is straight as possible. Place your feet flat on the floor and check that your knees are directly over your feet. Place your hands on top of your legs.

2. Gently close your eyes.

3. Concentrate your thoughts on your ribs and your lungs. Inhale slowly and deeply. Notice your lungs filling up and your ribs expanding outwards and upwards. Then slowly exhale, again noticing your lungs slowly releasing the air you’ve just breathed in and your ribs gradually going back in and down.

4. Repeat this routine once a day for up to 3 minutes when you first start out. Over the coming days, gradually increase up to 5 and then 10 minutes throughout the day as necessary.

Yoga breathing exercises have been shown to help sufferers of mild asthma. You may still need your medication and any other health devices, although you should notice that you need them less and less as you practice these techniques.

3 Steps To Sticking To Your Diet, Singapore Fitness Instructor Explains

As a fitness bootcamp instructor and personal trainer in Singapore, I recognize the importance of a good diet plan for success in your weight loss, fat loss and muscle building plans. ere are some tips to help you reach those goals.

As promised, here are three simple steps that WILL help you to get that body to die for:

Step 1: Remove all bad foods from your proximity.

Take the bad stuff out of your house, office and locker – whatever place you have food stashes in – of all evil food. This is CRUCIAL. If you have “it” (chips, candy bars, cornflakes) within reach, sooner or later, you will succumb to it. It’s happened to me countless times and I’ve learnt to keep my house junk-free. Having such foods around is just setting yourself up for failure. Once, I found two Snickers bars (they belonged to a relative who had stayed over for a couple of weeks) in the basket on top of the fridge. I ate them, one after the other. So, get rid of it. Don’t give it away – it’s morally wrong to feed trashy food to your friends and family. Dump it. Today. And DON’T BUY MORE!

Step 2: Enlist support

Inform supportive friends and family of your new dietary resolutions. Call them when you’re struggling with food cravings to the breaking point and have them remind you of your goals. Play a quick game of bridge with your cousin till the longing for crème-filled choux puffs passes and you’re your real self again.

Good friends and family can give INCREDIBLE encouragement, especially during food-filled gatherings! Once, when I was on a strict cutting diet, I had a friend who went out of her way to prepare a special low-calorie, high protein soup just for me, during a potluck. That kind of support can be incredibly encouraging when you’re struggling with adjusting to your diet.

As for the friends and relatives who will try to sabotage your diet and think it’s a great joke to do so, just do your best to avoid them for a bit and stay strong. Remember – they aren’t the ones having to squeeze on your pair of skinny jeans. They aren’t the ones with your cellulite problem. It’s you and you are not going to let all hell stop you from looking lean and sexy.

Step 3:

Be mentally ready to start cooking for yourself at least some of the time. While it’s not impossible to eat healthy and practice portion control while eating out, it’s a lot easier to do both if you’re cooking your own meals. (Besides, cooking your own meals is far more economical! And you’ll get to impress far more people that way)

Now, while these three steps are simple, they’re not always easy. However, once you start seeing the results and feeling all that new energy that comes from just being healther, you’ll get addicted to your new, healthy lifestyle!

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Vegetables and your healthy diet – Singapore Fitness Bootcamp Instructor explains

As a Singapore personal trainer and fitness boot camp instructor, I am always encouraging my clients to eat more vegetables. For anyone serious about fat loss, muscle gain, weight loss and fitness, eating vegetables forms a crucial part of the right kind of diet and lifestyle.

Remember, vegetables are great for our health! They have vitamins, minerals, fiber, all manner of anti-oxidants and other beneficial phytochemicals. The antioxidants in vegetables can help slow cataracts and macular degeneration, slow development of heart disease, reduce DNA damage, prevent cancer, moderate inflammation in the body, reduce our own production of DNA-damaging chemicals, slow the body’s removal of calcium from bones etc. In fact, in our gym, vegetables are on the “10 commandments” for a healthful lifestyle that all our personal training and fitness boot camp clients get to read.

So how do we make sure that we benefit from the vegetables we eat?

For that, we need to understand the effect of cooking/not cooking on our vegetables. Also, we need to understand how to keep our vegetables in top shape before eating them, and how to keep them safe for consumption!

Cooking:
Cooking causes many nutrients in food to breakdown, yet it can also make many nutrients more easily absorbed by the body. So, the best healthy diet will include both raw and cooked vegetables. Also, always eat your vegetables with some fat (olive oil, butter etc) to aid absorption of the good stuff in them.

How cooking diminishes nutritional value:
Cooking usually causes a drop in the nutritional value of food, since the lovels of most vitamins, antioxidants, and other beneficial substances because of increased, uncontrolled enzyme activity, high temperature and exposure to oxygen and light. Cooking liquid can also draw out nutrients from vegetables and fruits. Brief and rapid cooking in minimal amounts of water helps keep cooked veggies as nutritious as possible.

How cooking enhances nutritional value:
Cooking destroys some harmful germs. It also softens and concentrates food, so it’s easier to eat enough of them and makes certain nutrients more available to the body. For example, without cooking, we would not be able to absorb starch (our digestive enzymes can’t deal with the tough outer layers of raw starch granules) and carotenoid pigments, such as beta-carotene, and lycopene, which is an important antioxidant. These aren’t very soluble in water, so can’t really extract these chemical well by chewing and swallowing. Cooking breaks up the plant tissues better so we can extract more of them (Adding fat helps us to absorb fat-soluble nutrients better too).

Keeping vegetables safe and in good shape:

Vegetable safety

1. Avoid pre-cutting fruits and vegetables. The tissue damage causes the plant cells to increase biochemical defensive activity, which can reduce amount of remaining nutrients and cause changes like browning, toughing and off-flavors. It also exposes the nutrient-rich interiors to disease-causing microbes. You can coat cut fruits and veggies with something acidic, lemon juice to slow down browning etc.

2. Throw away bad – rotten and moldy etc – fruits and vegetables at once, before they have a chance to “infect” other. Mushrooms, berries, figs, avocados and apricots particularly rot fast. Don’t eat potatoes with green bits – poisonous alkaloids have formed. You might not be able to turn up for your personal training or fitness boot camp sessions the next day.

3. Scrub down and disinfect the places where you regularly store vegetables and fruits (the refrigerator drawers etc) frequently to discourage germs.

4. Don’t “stress” fruits and veggies by packing them too tightly and don’t store fruit or veggies that have been dropped – use them immediately.

5. Soil harbours germs so wash tougher fruits and tubers before storing but don’t wash delicate fruits like berries before storage since even a gentle water rinse will cause their protective epidermal layers to be abraded by the dirt particles.

6. Cook your beans well to make sure that protease inhibitors that interfere with digestion and lectins that interfere with nutrient absorption are destroyed.

7. Eat your produce as fresh as possible. Buy small amounts you can consume within a couple of days, if your schedule permits frequent trips to the supermarket/farmer’s market.

8. WASH everything well (the veggies, knives, cutting boards etc) before food preparation.

Enjoy your vegetable. As our personal training and weight loss boot camp clients have all found, vegetables are delicious and make that difference to your day!

Reference: McGee, H. (2004) On Food and Cooking: the science and lore of the kitchen. Scribner: New York

Free video reveals a 6 week female figure athlete diet and exercise plan to look and compete as a female figure competitor. This is just for you if you want to get into figure fitness or figure bodybuilding.

TV Weight Loss Club Offers Balanced Diet and Fitness Approach

It used to be that being called a loser was derogatory and hurtful. NBC has changed that, making it almost a badge of honor to be called a loser. And the Biggest Loser, that’s the ticket. NBC’s weight loss challenge show, The Biggest Loser, has turned Tuesday nights into must-see TV. Having just completed its fourth season, and the launch of the Biggest Loser Club, everyone wants in on the weight loss action.

Each week, more than 15 million viewers tune to NBC to watch the three Biggest Loser teams battle it out on the scale. Each team is lead by a coach who teaches them about fitness, nutrition and diet helping them shed unbelievable amounts of weight. While they each walk away with the prize of thinner, healthier bodies and new lifestyle, the one crowned Biggest Loser wins a quarter-million dollar prize. The Biggest Loser is the one who loses the greatest percentage of body fat.

Like many great TV programs, this one had a spin off. The Biggest Loser Club was NBC’s answer to the overwhelming demand for participation on the show and access to the coaches’ expertise. For just /month, far more affordable than a trainer or gym membership, you can get your pass to the Club. Your access to this fitness program will give you:

- Opportunity to talk with the show’s nutrition gurus and contestants

- Talk to other “losers” on the message and discussion boards

- Receive personalized fitness instruction, which will allow you to exercise at home

- Track progress with a personal online journal

- Have meal plans created just for you, with accompanying shopping lists and recipes

Thousands of pounds have been lost by the Biggest Loser contestants, and now its your turn to step up and make that change for the better. New Years is just around the corner, and there’s never a better time to wipe the slate clean and decide that this is the year for serious changes.

While this season just ended and it will be a few months before the next installment starts again, you can start being a loser today. Signing up is simple, and if you still have reservation, get the free diet profile. This will help you identify what the Biggest Loser Club is going to do for you.

Biggest Loser is a low-fat and low-carb diet, but don’t think you’re going to starve off all that weight. You’ll learn how to strike a balance with portion control, three meals a day, some light healthy snacking and exercise. You’ll enjoy plenty of delicious meals like blueberry pancakes, New Orleans chicken and stuffed mushrooms. So what’s holding you back? Decide today that you want to be a loser and join the club that sees being a loser as the first step to a healthier life.

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Easy cooking tips for healthy diet – Singapore Fitness Bootcamp Coach explains

In my experience as a personal trainer and fitness boot camp Instructor in Singapore, I am often asked about herbs and spices and how they can help to boost health, weight loss and fat loss results. I always suggest that people incorporate as many different kinds of herbs and spices as often as possible into their diets.

Why? Here are three awesome reasons to include herbs and spices in your foods.

1. They improve the flavor and taste of food without adding hidden or unhealthy excess calories. No matter what kind of diet you might be on, most, if not all, herbs will fit right into your diet plan. No matter what kind of diet you are on (low carb, high protein, etc) herbs can help you boost your results and make your taste buds happy as well.

2. Herbs and spices teem overflow with stuff that are good for you – vitamins, minerals, all sorts of health-giving phytochemicals etc. These are best found in their natural form rather than in their chemically produced and often ineffective artificial forms found in many multi-vitamins or mineral supplements.

3. In general, they make everything taste so much better without adding evil stuff to what you put into your mouth – artificial colors, chemical preservatives, trans fats, whatever. Well, that is assuming your herbs were not grown close enough to the freeway to absorb tonnes of toxic metals and the like, or on a commercial farm that uses pesticides and fertilizers the way some bodybuilders use steroids. Organic herbs are best because you want to make sure that the quality of your herbs is high so that you get a good amount of the active ingredients in your herbs. Here are some very brief examples of certain benefits that recent research has been suggesting:

Cardamom – stimulate bile flow for liver health and fat metabolism, reduces flatulence, contains limonene that boosts the body’s production of an enzyme with antioxidant properties.

Cinnamon – helps reduce blood sugar and “bad” cholesterol

Cloves – 1 tablespoonful contains the RDA of manganese for women. Also contains potassium, calcium and phytosterols in significant proportions.

Cumin – has antimicrobial properties, good source of iron, helps reduce heartburn and improves digestion

Garlic – lowers cholesterol and prevents blood clots, current research suggest strongly that garlic has anti-cancer properties, helps in weight control

Ginger – anti-inflammatory, research suggests it lowers cholesterol

Mustard seeds – contains isothicyanates which are believed to play important roles in cancer suppression

Oregano – has even higher antioxidant properties than the famous blueberry! Oregano oil has been shown to kill parasites in the digestive system and inhibit growth of microbes. Also contains antimutagenic and anticarcinogenic compounds

Parsley – freshens the breath

Tumeric – anti-inflammatory, possible benefits for Alzheimer’s, cancers, digestive disorders and insulin regulation.

So incorporate herbs and spices into your diet, as much as you can, as often as you can, in every creative way possible! You’ll not just get all those health benefits, but you’ll also enjoy your diet more, so it’ll be easy to stay with your healthy lifestyle. That means you’ll surely get those fat burning, fat loss results that you want!