Here are a few easy skin care tips that can help you make sure that you look beautiful at any time of the day.

Water therapy

You just can’t underestimate the importance of a soothing bath. You can use all the skin care creams that you want, but they cannot beat the therapeutic effects of water. A bath in warm water will not only help you cleanse your skin, but also help your body relax and reinvigorate itself. The effect of this therapeutic exercise can be seen on your skin. It’s a great stress buster and at the same time helps soften your skin.

Cleansing and moisturizing

If you think beauty products are an expensive option or you are looking for a wholly natural option, you can look for products closer to home. A mixture of rose water, lemon juice, and glycerin is a great moisturizer and it’s inexpensive to boot. Also the fact that it’s natural means that you are not going to experience any adverse side effects of this mixture.

Eating healthy

Beauty products are all very well and there are quite a few good ones, but they won’t work if you have an unhealthy lifestyle. An unhealthy diet is one of the primary components of an unhealthy lifestyle. To help keep your skin glowing, a healthy diet is a prerequisite. You can’t get around it.

The beauty tips are all about doing the simple things right. Don’t complicate matters, and just be regular in whatever skin care routine you adopt.

Below are our tips on how to start eating healthy.

1. Do you know that your clothing style can affect your eating habits? You can’t believe this? Scientific evidence shows that women who prefer loose clothes eat more! So forget about shapeless T-shirts!
2. Exclude one food item from your diet per day. It’s awfully difficult to start eating foods that you didn’t want before. So don’t stay away from your typical diet. This is ineffective because you will want back all the foods you get used to sooner or later. What you need is to pick up food items you are ready to avoid at the moment, such as white bread, meat, cheese, alcohol and so on. Leave the rest of your diet intact. Following this rule can help you cut down on hundreds of calories without any stress.
3. Don’t try to eat less at the beginning. Small French fries instead of a big portion… This replacement could be so sad for you that you would simply quit the idea of starting to eat healthy. So cutting down on your meal portions isn’t that brilliant. Use your big plate but fill it with foods you can safely eat in large quantities like shrimp, chicken, stir-fired or raw vegetables. You can really eat lots of these.
4. Say no to sauces! You need to exclude sauces, especially sour cream or butter based, right from the beginning. Obviously, you should forget about mayonnaise.
5. Eat slowly. Have a glass of water before meal. After that you will feel full quicker.
6. Alcohol. We can’t insist you stop drinking alcohol once and for all. All you need is to avoid useless calories contained in alcohol. How? Here is the tip for you, don’t drink tasty alcoholic beverages. For example, it will be great idea to avoid cocktails and white wine. When you drink alcoholic beverages you don’t like you can’t drink a lot of them so you are cutting down on useless calories.

Fat burning foods are foods that burn more calories than the calorie content of the food itself, therefore they fight stored fat. The secret to successful weight loss is to eat and drink the right kinds of foods until you are full and satisfied. If you skip meals, it will slow your metabolism and deteriorate your health.

There are certain foods which actually burn more fat than the calorie content of the food itself. These fat burning foods are natural plant foods. If you eat these fat burning foods and exercise, it will boost your metabolism and burn more calories (fat) at a faster rate for several hours even after exercise.  Full list of the fat burning foods is available.  So without further ado, here are Foods that burn Fat.

Fruits rich in vitamin C
Citrus Fruits: like limes, lemons, oranges, guava, grapefruit, papaya, sweet lime, tangerines and tomatoes are rich in Vitamin C and fibre and have fat burning properties so they may be called as fat burning foods or fat fighters.  Vitamin C helps the body process fat faster and also stimulates the carnitine amino acid which speeds up the body’s fat-burning capacity.  Vitamin C dilutes the fat and makes it less effective and helps in releasing the fat from the body.

Apples
Pectin in apple restricts the cells to absorb the fat; and also encourages water absorption from the food which helps in releasing the fat deposits from the body. The antioxidants in apples may help prevent metabolic syndrome, a condition marked by excess belly fat or an apple body shape.

Calcium Rich Dairy Products
Calcium in dairy products like milk, cheese and yogurt act as fat burner that can boost weight loss by increasing fat breakdown in fat cells.  According to Professor Michael Zemel at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, a dairy-rich diet with calorie restriction can nearly double the rate of weight and fat loss. His research has shown that eating 3-4 servings of dairy products a day is more effective at enhancing weight loss efforts than calcium supplementation alone.  Dairy products may therefore be termed as fat burning foods or fat burners.

The researchers found that overweight people who consumed 3 servings a day of calcium-rich dairy lost more belly fat than those who followed a similar diet minus two or more of the dairy servings. The calcium supplements didn’t work as well as milk.  Nuts help feel full while also increasing the body’s ability to burn fat, says author Jordi Salas-Salvado of the University of Rovirai Virgili in Reus, Spain.

Chilies
Foods containing chillies or cayanne pepper are considered to be as foods that burn fat. Chillies contain capsaicin that helps in increasing the metabolism. Capsaicin is a thermogenic food, so it causes the body to burn extra calories for 20 minutes after you eat the chilies.

Proteins
Protein rich foods and high fiber foods are the best as foods burning belly fat. Protein needs more energy to digest than fat as so eat low calorie dairy products, beans, whole grains, oatmeal, eggs, etc. as much as possible.  Lentils are high in protein and soluble fiber, two nutrients that stabilize blood sugar levels, therefore lentils are a great tummy flattener,” according to Tanya Zuckerbrot, R.D., author of The F-Factor Diet.

Some of the other foods that may be included in the list of fat burning foods are asparagus, beet root, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, chillies, beans, soybeans, sweet potatoes, blueberries and watermelon.  Keep in mind that in order to lose weight you have to burn more calories than you consume.  So eat fat fighting foods and make sure to do some physical activity everyday.  This will help your body burn up excessive stored fat.

1. Almond nuts

These are great! Just a handful of almond nuts can make you feel full. Almond nuts contain proteins and iron. Eat them regularly during the day and you will manage to rein in your appetite.

2. Carrot

It is a fact that carrot helps to strengthen teeth and improve eye sight. But if crunching carrot sticks sounds a little boring to you, grad some sauce and dip your carrot sticks in it. Yummy and healthy!

3. Lettuce

Even if you’ve taken just some lettuce and a couple of parsley leaves from home, this will make а feel-full snack. Don’t be so surprised. Throw in some croutons and add some oil and you will get a snack that is way healthier and tastier than a pack of chips.

4. Crispbread

Crispbread is better than chips! If you like to crunch, you’ll be better off crunching crispbread instead of chips (it doesn’t matter potato or corn chips).

5. Cherry tomatoes

It is a good replacement for regular tomatoes in case you don’t like them. Cherry tomatoes are sweater and their small size makes them an interesting snack choice. Just eat these small tomatoes like you eat grapes.

6. Apples

Apples, especially hard ones, typically disappear from our diet with age. So if it’s hard for you to munch on apples, you can slice them or have dried apples. Vitamin C in apples provides energy and rejuvenating effect.

7. Raisins

Combine raisings with almond nuts to get a healthy and energetic mix.

Try to follow this snack diet for just a week and you will see the difference as your waistline and hips start looking slimmer!

Vitamin D is essential for strong bones because it helps the body use calcium from the diet.  Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with rickets, a disease in which the bone tissue doesn’t properly mineralize, leading to soft bones and skeletal deformities. But recently research is revealing the importance of vitamin D in protecting against many health problems.

Symptoms of bone pain and muscle weakness can mean you have a vitamin D deficiency. However, for many people, the symptoms are subtle. Yet even without symptoms, too little vitamin D can pose health risks. Low blood levels of the vitamin have been associated with the following:

* Increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease
* Cognitive impairment in older adults
* Severe asthma in children
* Cancer

The sunshine vitamin may protect against a host of diseases, including osteoporosis, heart disease, type1 and type ll diabetes, hypertension, glucose intolerance, multiple sclerosis, and cancers of the breast, prostate, and colon.  Sunlight also has other hidden benefits, like protecting against depression, insomnia, and an overactive immune system.  Treatment for vitamin D deficiency involves getting more vitamin D, through diet, supplements, and through spending more time in the sun.

To get your vitamin D from the sun, try spending 15-30 minutes in the sun everyday with no sunscreen so you can build up immunity to the sun without causing skin damage.  Vitamin D is found in oily fish like tuna and salmon as well as in fortified foods like milk and breakfast cereals.  You can also take vitamin D supplements.  The AI for children and men and women up to age 50 is 200 international units (IU); 10 mcg (400 IU) between ages 51 and 70; and 15 mcg (600 IU) after age 70.

]]> http://smartgirlconsulting.com/2010/06/did-you-take-your-vitamin-d-today/feed/ 0 http://smartgirlconsulting.com/2010/06/daily-time-spent-sitting-comes-to-14-plus-hours-for-britons/ http://smartgirlconsulting.com/2010/06/daily-time-spent-sitting-comes-to-14-plus-hours-for-britons/#comments Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:37:25 +0000 admin http://smartgirlconsulting.com/?p=558 When the time Brits spend sitting has been calculated it amounted to 14 hours and 39 minutes for each day! This awesome figure came up as the result of a poll involving 3,000 adult Britishers.

If it may seem incredible, it’s only at the first glance, for when we start to ponder about the things that keep us sitting – including reading this article!- we will find them numerous.

Adults whose day consists of commuting to work, working away at the office desk and indulging in playing on the computer or watching TV in the evenings find themselves with little chance to employ their legs properly.

The research came up with the average time spent at desks (4 hours and 17 minutes), on the driver’s seat in the car (an hour and 41 minutes) and sitting down in public transport (52 minutes).

Using a home computer or a laptop eats up two hours and 23 minutes more. The television demands its daily toll of two hours and 27 minutes, winning only 4 minutes over computers (clearly not so for many of us!)

Computer games make a separate entry of 54 minutes.

Eating consumes 33 minutes of sitting, and if some of us may eat on the go, we hardly read without sitting down first, so it’s another hour and 10 minutes for those who are fond of their book in the evenings.

This research was carried out by Weight Watchers UK, whose spokesperson stressed the role of recession in having people sitting more than they had before – which leaves less time to be spent on exercising. In the comments this state of things was called «a health bomb waiting to happen.”

The time British adults spend on exercising that made 50 minutes a week remains grossly inadequate for ensuring a healthy living.

2. Eat breakfast
Surely you have heard that eating breakfast is healthier than eating before bed. And here is another good thing about hearty breakfast. It helps burn more fats because a signal goes to our brain that we are not hungry anymore and our body won’t be storing anything.

3. Have a good laugh
Laughing for 10 to 15 minutes a day burns down about 50 calories. But what happens if you laugh more than that? Sounds like a good replacement for morning exercises!

4. Get mad
It’s good to be angry when you do your fitness training at a fitness center or work out in the gym. Studies showed being angry can boost your workouts.

5. Walk
Sound very simple, but it’s true. Take a pair of comfortable flats with you to your job, and then free yourself of high heel shoes for a nice walk after work. A slow walk can be sometimes enough to burn excessive calories. And don’t be lazy to use staircases.

Denise Chen, a psychologist from the Rice University, said that couples with close relationship are more likely to instinctively understand each other’s feelings.

Chen and her colleagues studied 20 heterosexual couples who had been living together for between 1 and 7 years. The participants were shown videos designed to induce feeling of fear, joy and sexual arousal. They wore pads on their arms to collect sweat.

Then the volunteers were asked to smell four jars containing the sweat from their partner or a stranger of the opposite sex and recognize the feelings experienced by a person. Nearly two-thirds could detect emotions when they sniffed a partner’s odor. Couples who lived together for the longest period of time were better at indentifying the specific emotion. The smell accuracy rate for strangers was at 50 per cent.

Cold Stone provides 131 g fat and 153 g sugar. Jamie Oliver, a famous British chef, was shocked at the news. But people like it. They don’t care about calorie count and love Gold Stone for its taste

Acne is a disorder that causes skin eruptions and inflammation.  It usually occurs during the adolescence/teenage years and is suffered or endured by nearly 90 percent of the teen young population.  Acne is also quite commonly seen in adults.  The increased production of the Testosterone hormone and natural oils in the body during the teenage years is responsible for the formation of pimples.

A variety of factors such as stress, psychological disturbances, and irregular living habits can also bring on Acne.  Acne skincare with harsh, drying chemicals can actually make acne worse and dry out skin.  Tea Tree Oil, Aloe Vera, Zinc, and Vitamin A are natural products you can use to help clear up Acne. 

Tea Tree Oil is obtained from the Melaleuca alternifoliais tree from Australia. It is very effective against Acne as it contains bacteria-fighting substances called Terpenes. Acne is often caused by bacteria and the Terpenes either outright kill them or weaken them enough to be destroyed by protective antibodies.

Aloe Vera Gel is also a highly effective natural cure against Acne. The enzyme-rich gel has very soothing anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties. It can also be taken internally and helps clean up and detox the digestive tract. This in turn can help clear up the skin.

Zinc is taken in the form of capsules.  It helps to strengthen the human immune system and to repair the skin.

Vitamin A capsules are also a natural and effective Acne cure.  Vitamin A promotes healthy skin.

Vitamin E also helps in countering Acne. It is a natural antioxidant and beneficial for the skin.  Vitamin E comes in soft gelatin capsules that contain Vitamin E, Soybean Oil, Glycerin, and Water.

The most important thing to do if you suffer from Acne is to drink at least six to eight, eight oz. glasses of water everyday.  Include lots of fresh fruit and leafy green vegetables in your daily diet.  Try adding a fruit or vegetable to each meal or at snacktime to ensure your getting the daily allowance.

Avoid touching your face and keep your hair away from your face as much as possible.  Avoid picking at pimples unless their on the surface of the skin.  If you do pop a pimple, make sure you wash your hands before touching your face thoroughly and wash your face immeditely afterwards.

Use a natural cleanser or acne scrub that exfoliates dead skin cells to effeciantly kill bacteria like Carley’s Clear and Smooth.  This all natural acne treatment works great for all skin types, especially on acne and sensitive skin types. It’s even gentle enough for the dryest of skin. We love it because it doesn’t contain any harsh chemicals, fragrances, or animal by products.

If you’re prone to Acne is to avoid using heavy make-up ridden with toxic chemicals that can clog pores and make acne worse.  Opt for natural mineral make-up instead.  We love Everyday Minerals and e.l.f. Minerals.