The most important advice for beginners upfront when doing yoga poses is to practice yoga safely. Like any form of exercise if you push yourself too much and overdo things you can get yourself into trouble, but with yoga you can stretch and pull muscles that you didn’t even know you had.

Tips on Yoga Poses for Beginners

Be sure to take your time and learn the yoga poses accurately from a knowledgeable person or video training that can demonstrate the proper form to you. Yoga videos with verbal instructions and follow along demonstrations can work well by helping you to learn the many yoga poses at your own pace.

In other words don’t try to figure yoga out on your own without some good solid instructions.

If you’ve been leading a sedentary lifestyle you need to work into doing yoga poses gradually. A goal many yoga beginners start off with is to do just 15 minutes (less if you are severely out of shape) each day and gradually increase your time as you feel your poses getting easier to do.

Getting Good at Doing Yoga Poses

Trust that you will get better and better at yoga with a little bit of practice and consistency. Be very careful not to push too hard and injure yourself while working your way up slowly from around 15 minutes a day to around 30 minutes a day.

It’s a good idea to wear something comfortable and use an exercise mat, or at least a nice cushy blanket on the floor. Other than that, all you need is some good instructions to follow along with as you learn the various poses.

One of the great things about yoga is that it can fit into your life no matter what shape you are in starting out. You’ll want to be sure to pay close attention to your form and be sure to take time to learn how to do basic postures correctly.

We’ll show you how to do this with a follow along yoga video in a moment.

Yoga Poses can Help Back Pain

Some people will start practicing yoga to help with their back pain and some doctors even recommend it. There are lots of yoga postures that can help eliminate back, hip, shoulder and neck pain. A few common yoga postures that can help out your back area are the forward bend, pelvic tilt and the side angle poses.

Yoga Poses to Help Get Pregnant?

People who are more familiar with yoga will tell you that there are many health benefits associated with its practice. There are even yoga postures that women use for infertility or just to help along the process of getting pregnant for the impatient couple.

Women have reported great results using relaxation yoga poses after sex to help get them pregnant. So yes, yoga poses can help you get pregnant and have a healthy and happy baby.

Yoga Poses Used to Relax You

Taking up yoga can teach you how to De-stress yourself and let your body relax. You’ll learn poses that help you relax all of your body’s muscles and relax your mind at the same exact time. Take your time learning your yoga poses the right way in the beginning so that you’ll forever receive the most value from every yoga pose you do from here on out.

What are the Best Yoga Poses for Beginners?

As a beginner in yoga you run the risk of becoming overwhelmed when first starting out. It seems like there is much to learn when just starting out but a good yoga instructor will tell you that you don’t need to learn it all to start getting results. Take it one step at a time and learn a little something new with each one of your yoga practice sessions.

The best thing that you can do is to learn a few yoga poses first and add more time and new ones as you grow and develop.

Below you’ll find various categories of poses along with a short description on the benefits of each type of pose. From there we’ll finish up by showing you a couple of examples of yoga poses and provide you with some help on putting it all together.

The many benefits that yoga provides are well within your reach so let’s cover what some of common yoga pose categories are and what they’re good for.

What are Standing Yoga Poses?

Standing yoga poses are done in the upright position and help you relieve tension and aches and pains in your body. They are also great for kidney function, circulation and breathing. With consistent practice standing poses can help improve the strength of your neck, shoulder, hips and knees.

What are Seated Yoga Poses?

Seated yoga poses are, as the name implies, done while in a seated position. These are the calming poses that people use to help relieve their stress. These seated poses can help you feel soothed, relaxed and revived. Even though they help you feel less tired many people find that they sleep much better after doing seated yoga poses.

What are Inverted and Balancing Yoga Poses?

The inverted poses are basically “legs up and head down” where this reverse in gravity brings a supply of fresh oxygen rich blood to your heart muscle and head. This pose is beneficial for improving circulation and refreshing tired, achy or swollen legs after a long day of being on your feet.

The balancing yoga poses are very beneficial in developing core muscle strength and greatly improves muscle control, coordination, flexibility and agility. In other words, these are some good poses to work into your sessions as soon as you can.

What are Yoga Side Bend and Twist Poses?

The side bends yoga poses are just that – side bends. These are especially useful for stimulating some of your organs like the kidneys, liver and stomach.

The twist pose is a pose that you can do in a sitting or standing position. Twists are great for strengthening and helping with stiff necks, achy backs, shoulders and even great to help relieve headaches. These can be a bit intense for some people but when done the right way can increase the overall flexibility of your spine.

What are Reclining Yoga Poses?

Reclining yoga poses that are in this group fall primarily into two categories namely, the prone pose and the supine pose.

1.) Prone is done lying on your stomach on the floor facing down, doing poses where you mostly hold yourself on your knees and hands.

2.) The supine poses are just the opposite where you are lying on your back in more relaxed positions. These poses are restful poses that are great to do toward the end your yoga workout session.

What are Forward and Backward Bend Poses?

Forward bend poses uses movements that can help you to strengthen your lower back and your hamstrings and are good for helping you improve digestion and circulation.

Backward bend yoga poses use movements that help improve deeper breathing and have been know to help people with depression. Because of the deeper breathing accomplished in these poses your body and mind will feel more energized and revitalized at the end of the session.

Learn to Breathe Right and Relax Yourself

Learning to breathe correctly needs to be your top priority if it’s not already. So, get a grip on to the fact that besides feeling a little overwhelmed at the many types of yoga poses there are to learn, you’re now being told that you need to occupy your time learning proper breathing techniques.

Learning to breathe right takes some time but only at first and in a short period of time of focusing on your breathing, you’ll be automatically breathing right without even thinking about it. Breathing correctly is so important so do not ignore learning it.

Doing Your First Yoga Pose

Be graceful in your movements and promote flow while doing your yoga poses. The easiest way to say this is to not move from pose to pose but to “flow” from pose to pose in graceful movements such as a dancer or ice skater might do.

There’s no need to follow along with this pose as its only purpose is to give you an idea of how a yoga pose goes. If you’re new, it’s best to use an instructor or instructional yoga video to learn from.

So for the sake of making a choice of one of many yoga poses we could do, let’s demonstrate the Cobra Upward Pose which is a great beginner’s pose because it can be done in a few simple and easily learned steps.

Firstly, lie down on mat or blanket with your forehead to the floor. With your legs stretched backwards pull them closely together. Next, put your hands flat on the floor underneath your shoulders, take a deep breath and begin raising your head pushing your neck and shoulders back while using your hands to push your body up and back until you are holding an arched pose.

Remember to breathe correctly and flow in and out of your pose as you repeat it.

You can see a visual demonstration doing the “Cobra Upward Facing Dog” in this video and even follow along if you like as you learn how to do this simple yet effective pose.

[video_youtube video_url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwzHiRxA2eg” width=”480″ height=”300″]

When looking at a pose like that it doesn’t seem so difficult, but if you are new or out of shape, do yourself a favor and only go as far as you can each time and listen closely to what your body is saying to you. Only you can be the judge of what you can or can’t do and even if you want to push yourself, don’t run the risk of injury and setting yourself backwards.

Be Smart and Yoga Poses can Take You a Long Way

The great thing about yoga is that it can be very gentle from all fitness levels as you slowly work your way into it and it can be done virtually anywhere you go. All in all, yoga is a full body workout that can stretch and tone each one of your muscle groups giving you more flexibility and mobility in your everyday life.

Take yoga seriously as it can truly benefit your body, mind and life as a whole. No matter what your physical condition is, there are likely several yoga poses for beginners that you can start doing today and see positive results in a matter of a few short weeks.

 

Create a Muscle Building Schedule that Works for You

Your goal is building muscle but your time is limited. You need to create a do-able workout schedule but not sure how to pull it all together. With the truth be told…

Building muscle is not a “One Size Fits All” Plan of Action

When creating your muscle building workout schedule the one thing that you need to remember is that no two people are going to build muscle mass at the same rate when working out the same amount of time. Just as men and women, the young and old all lose and gain weight differently, building muscles is no different.

When couples decide to lose weight together, who is it that ends up losing weight the fastest?

Do an online search for workout schedules and you’ll come up with pages and pages of free and paid membership schedules and complete programs to help you create and follow a set workout schedule but let me try to help simplify this for you here.

Building Muscle with One Scheduled Workout at a Time

When you are working your muscles out you need to let them recover from the workouts that you put them through. One good way to do this and allow you to get exercise daily is to target different muscle groups and rotate your workout routines giving one group recovery time while you’re working another group.

Putting Together Your Muscle Building Schedule:

You need to put together the times that you will dedicate to your muscle building routine. Keep in mind 15 minutes every other day is better than no minutes spent exercising at all, so do what you need to do to get started right away. It would be great if you could eventually get it up to 30 minutes 5 days a week.

When deciding what muscle groups to work with and when to work them, a routine working the following groups on each one of your scheduled muscle building days is:

Workout Day 1 – Back and Arm Muscles

Workout Day 2 – Chest and Triceps

Workout Day 3 – Shoulders and Abs

Workout Day 4 – Legs and Buttocks

Rotate back to “Workout Day 1 – Back and Arm Muscles” and start all over again.

Using an approach like this for your workout schedule for building muscle is effective for beginners because each separate routine does not take that long to do, it allows your muscles enough time to rebuild and recover and the best thing is that you can see and feel the results pretty quickly.

When Building Muscle it’s Important to Rest and Recover

It is very important to rest your muscles so they can rebuild because during your workout you will have stretched your muscles hard and when you relax to recover, they start to build and develop strength. Both men and women build strength but men have a tendency to build muscle mass larger and faster than women.

Planning Your Workout Schedule for Building Muscle Quickly

The discussion continues over the best time of day to plan your workout schedule for building muscle fast. Many fitness experts recommend doing your training first thing in the morning if possible. This is especially good if you have job that requires little movement because your morning workout will give your metabolism a boost throughout the whole day and allow your muscles to grow as your body rests and recovers.

Building Muscle Consistently Works Best

Going back to what we discussed earlier, if building muscle is your goal then you must create a schedule that is do-able for you so you can stick with it. Consistency is of the utmost importance because if you do not use and workout your muscles on a regular basis you’ll regress and the work that you put in already will have been mostly lost.

If you don’t use your muscles, you’re going to lose your muscles.

With that said, if you don’t have enough time to work out in the morning hours then pick a time that best suits your schedule. The main thing is that you train on a regular and consistent basis, rest to recover then keep after it.

So whether you choose 15 or 30 minutes a day, 15 to 30 minutes every other day or making the decision to workout only three days a week set your schedule and stick to it as close as you possibly can. Being consistent is the key.

If weight training is brand new to you then start with a beginner’s workout schedule for building muscle by lifting smaller light weights at first until they become so easy to do that you need to increase the weight in order to progress.

You’ll feel when the time is right to add additional weight to your routine. Gradual increases in your weight lifting are a great way to benefit from each workout session while reducing the possibility of injury – this is very, very important for beginners.

Setting up your muscle building schedule is half of the battle. The other half is learning the different exercises, how to do them correctly and sticking with your plan. Day by day you’ll notice small results that will develop into bigger results. As your routine gets easier, it’s time to step it up to adding in heavier weights and longer workout times as you can fit them in.

When you’re ready to get started building muscles, visit us at http://MyFitnessNut.com where we can help you learn exercises that cover all of your major muscle groups. If you will dedicate the time to begin building muscles by setting a schedule and agreeing to stick to it then we’ll provide you with three great muscle building training programs to help get you started.

 

Are you thinking about getting into doing yoga? If so, you are making a step in the right direction. There are many benefits that yoga can bring you and it is a perfect way to exercise for beginners because it can be adjusted to get more challenging as you progress and become more fit.

Yoga for the Beginner

As a beginner it is always best to take your time and learn the proper posture for the many different yoga poses available to you. You might even think about taking a “yoga for beginners” class to get personal instructions to learn the various yoga poses.

There are many qualified yoga instructors you can learn from, possibly right in your back yard, but here we are going to focus our attention on giving you a well rounded introduction and some Hatha Yoga training videos, compliments of MyFitnessNut.com that you can use to get started in your own home and at your own pace.

First, Let’s Cover Some Benefits of Yoga for Beginners

Among the many top benefits of yoga you’ll find happening is that you’ll start to become much more flexible. Not mentally flexible, physically flexible, but in time and with practice you’ll find mental flexibility occurs and a more confident point of view materialize as you discipline and develop yourself.

Simply put, yoga is good for your body and your mind.

Yoga can help you be calmer, more in control and reduce stress in your life. It can help you improve your self confidence, let you concentrate and think clearer and promote your overall well being.

Some people decide to practice yoga as a means to simplify and de-stress their busy life because it can help train you to calm your mind and find peace. Yoga can renew and invigorate your mind and body to thrive in a healthy state.

Let’s face it, in today’s hustle and bustle life that many of us lead, finding a good stress reliever is important and yoga is also about deep breathing and relaxation which even on their own promote stress relief, calmness and harmony in your body.

Best of all, yoga is an excellent fitness workout for most anyone regardless of their current physical condition, size, weight, sex or age. It is purposely designed to give all of your muscle groups a good healthy workout.

Yoga is great for beginners and people who are out of shape, overweight and maybe have a difficult time moving because most of the beginner’s poses are very gentle on your body.

In a short period of time you will find that yoga will help you gain fuller control over your joints and muscles and you’ll find that you’ll be gaining much more control over your body. Some of the areas you’ll see more flexibility in are your legs, arms, shoulders, hips, abdomen and back.

Yoga Involves Balance which Develops Core Body Strength

Yoga involves doing a lot of balancing in the poses and this develops solid core body strength without bulking huge muscle mass. Some of the yoga poses you’ll be doing will involve balancing on your arms and hands, on one leg and some have you moving slowly thus helping you develop better control and core strength.

It takes time to develop and get used to doing yoga poses but the results you get from have a toner and stronger body is well worth the effort. With regular practice your legs, stomach, back, arms, shoulders and chest will become more toned and defined.

And what do you think the outcome of that is going to be?

Other people will see you more toned and defined, healthier, happier and you’ll feel more confident and attractive to a potential mate. There’s nothing like it for a great self confidence booster too.

Yoga for Beginners Provides for Better Breathing

One important part of yoga that’s often overlooked by beginners is that yoga helps teach you how to breathe more properly than you’ve been used to in the past. Both adults and children alike can benefit from this and it is specially well-suited for people with asthma and other breathing disorders.

Learning advanced breathing techniques can help condition your lungs for increased lung capacity to deliver more life giving oxygen throughout your entire body. If needed for allergy sufferers there are advanced breathing techniques that can be used to help clear the nasal passages and free up life giving oxygen flow for your entire body.

Yoga for Beginners – What’s not to Like?

There are lots of good reasons why people would want to learn and practice yoga. Whole body fitness is probably the top of most people’s list but many people see yoga as a way to develop themselves as a better person.

Feeling stronger, more confident, flexible and resilient is just the beginning. Breathing better, increasing stamina and warding off allergies are all great side benefits but as you stick with it and progress, your mental state will begin to evolve with your newly fit body. You’ll feel calmer and more secure in your life and that benefits you and everyone around you.

How Can a Beginner Get Into Yoga?

When you’re getting into yoga for the first time, where you’ll want to start depends a lot upon you. Do you want the social aspect and support of learning in a group? Or do you feel more comfortable starting out alone in the privacy of your own home?

And then there’s always the in between, where you hire a personal one-on-one yoga instructor that will work with you on a personal and private level.

There are many choices and different levels of advancement in yoga too. You can find classes, videos and private instructors for the beginners to advance, from children to seniors, to pregnant women and even people with certain disabilities including the morbidly obese.

Our goal at MyFitnessNut.com is to get you started moving in the right direction when you’re considering yoga, or anything regarding the improvement of your health and fitness levels. To that point, we’ve prepared 70 different follow along Hatha Yoga for Beginners poses that are great for both beginners and hard core fitness nuts alike.

 

The combining of foods is generally pretty easy to understand and this is the basis for this healthy nutrition guide. It all started from the studying of the effects of gastric physiology. It evolved from the understanding of how digestive juices and enzymes truly function and how certain combinations of foods are digested more easily and efficiently than other foods.

It’s not always what you eat, but how you eat and what you eat what with.

This Healthy Nutrition Guide was Designed to Meet Those Fundamentals

What it really comes down to is that it’s not what you eat but how your body digests the foods that you put into it. The combination of and quality of your food will greatly determine the nourishment your body receives.

When you eat the right foods together, your overall health can improve dramatically. Side benefits include feeling better – even younger, losing weight, sleeping better and more energy throughout your day. Not to mention a healthy and more fit body and immune system.

Who in the world does not want more energy and to look and feel younger?

Use this Healthy Nutrition Guide to Start then Keep Learning

This healthy nutrition guide was designed to get you thinking in the right direction. By no means does it even scratch the surface of the different elements related to a complete and healthy nutrition plan. But for most people a healthy nutrition plan is not all that far away.

When you embark upon your journey you will notice small changes to your health and how your body feels as you begin to eat better, digest better and free up your system to feed your body’s cells with the nutrients they need for top performance.

Develop Your Healthy Nutritional Plan in Steps

Change your nutritional plan gradually by adding little changes and new habits each day and before long you will look back and be amazed at how far you’ve come.

Following this Healthy Nutrition Guide can Save You Money!

If you want to eat better it can actually cost you less money. Saving money by eating better and getting better nutrition sounds like a pretty good deal. It is and with some simple adjustments in the budget to transfer the costs of processed and restaurant prepared foods into “your fresh food department” you can save money and enhance your health all at the same time.

You might be surprised to find that your ten dollar restaurant meal will buy you more fresh fruits and vegetable than you could possibly eat in a single meal while providing more healthy nutrition than you may have ever thought possible.

If you’ve found this healthy nutrition guide useful please let us know by hitting the “Like” button on this page and then grab a hold of some more health and fitness resources at http://MyFitnessNut.com.

The first thing you’ll want to do there is to sign up for the My Fitness Nut Newsletter where you’ll get three fitness training workouts on videos that can work wonders to enhance this healthy nutrition guide by adding in a fitness routine.

 

Eating Raw Foods is a Great Choice

Eating raw food is a great choice because they are very easy to digest as they have naturally occurring enzymes that aids your body’s digestion and its ability to increase nutrient uptake.

Raw foods in their natural state make them very digestible. What’s more, it takes your body very little energy to do so.

Raw foods are loaded full of nutrients in comparison to cooked foods. Junk foods are the worst and should be at the bottom of your food chain; meaning eat them sparingly if at all. Most junk foods are just that – junk food, and are primarily empty calories with little to no nutritional value.

When You Want a Snack – Reach For Raw Food!

When you start eating more raw foods you have a choice of eating them whole or juicing them. Juicing allows you to ingest more concentrated nutrient levels but in turn you lose the fiber that’s so important. Even if you juice though, you can still snack on some raw food to give yourself some bulk.

Raw Foods Promote Natural Energy

When you increase your intake of say something like carrots and celery you will immediately notice a huge increase in your energy level. You can eat practically any vegetable or fruit and increase your energy level.

Ideas on Getting More Raw Food in Your Diet:

Vegetables – We touched on that above a bit but basically everything from Artichokes to Zucchinis works. There are lots of recipes to combine both vegetables and fruits to keep your life full of variety if you choose the raw food diet.

Fruits – if you’re juicing them be wary of the concentrated sugars found in most fruits and think moderation. Just realize that if you’re juicing eight apples to make a small glass of apple juice you’re getting most of the calorie content of eight apples and a practically empty stomach.

Raw, organic fresh fruits are an excellent source of nutrition and a wonderful source of energy but be sensible and follow the guideline in the “A Healthy Nutrition Plan Starts with the Food Pyramid”.

Salads – mix it up, red leaf, green leaf, butternut, iceberg and romaine, mix it up and eat lots of fresh leafy organic vegetables. An ideal dressing is cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil with a few herbs and spices, maybe some lemon juice, balsamic or red wine vinegar. Olive oil and balsamic vinegar all by itself makes a great salad dressing.

Juices – If you looking to put raw food into your diet you can forget about cans, cartons and bottled fruit juices. As a matter of fact, you don’t even want to make fresh raw juice at home in advance. The best value comes from the freshest fruits and vegetables being juiced and consumed as soon as possible. This is the very best way to get all of the minerals, vitamins and enzymes that your body needs. When it is not possible to make your own, turn only to fresh, cold processed organic juices from trustworthy companies that preserve the nutritional integrity of the whole raw food.

Raw Nuts and Seeds – raw organic nuts and seeds when we eat them in moderation provide lots of benefits. They contain proteins, necessary fats and calories for energy. Be sure to eat raw, not roasted nuts but be careful not to overeat and use them sparingly. Seeds like flax and sesame can be mixed into your salads for some added crunchy flavor and great nutritional value if you chew them well.

Lastly, talking about important raw foods would not be complete without mentioning Aloe Vera. Aloe Vera has been dubbed the name “miracle plant” and for good reason… Aloe Vera provides so many benefits there have been entire books written on the subject.

Because of the power of this plant, companies have gone to great lengths to preserve the nutritional integrity of the plant in a juice form and have bottled it for our convenience and use. The best bottled Aloe Vera juices will have 100% organic cold processed “inner leaf fillets” at the top of their ingredient list.

Including Aloe Vera into your diet is a smart decision indeed but most people are not going to grow, harvest and juice Aloe Vera plants for their consumption even knowing it’s as beneficial as it is.

The problem is that they’re not typically available at your local market.

From healing burns and cuts on the outside to aiding digestion, providing high nutrient absorption and the healing of your body from the inside out there’s probably not another vegetable you’d want more in your diet if you only knew all of the many benefits it holds.

Staying in harmony with the purpose of this section, local raw foods are best and the soonest you are able to consume them once they’ve been harvested the more nutritional value they hold for you.

Eat fresh and enjoy the many benefits available to you when you choose to add in or exclusively eat raw foods in your diet.

The last and final section is the “Conclusion to the Healthy Nutrition Guide” where we’ll summarize a bit and hopefully get your vote to allow us to continue to help and serve you in the world of health and fitness.

 

There are a few ways to flush out toxins from your body and detoxifying your organs right down to all of the cells in your body.

One way is by drinking plenty of clean water, another by combining the right foods and yet another by doing a colon and body cleanse.

Some people will even fast for a full day or more and drink nothing other than pure clean water giving their organs a chance flush, relax and heal.

Who doesn’t want to have a clean body inside and out?

Detoxifying is an Important Part of a Healthy Nutrition Plan

With our environment that we’re living in today we are exposed to gobs of pollution, dirt and toxins in all of our surroundings. Because they are in our environment, they end up in the foods that we eat and our body gets bombarded from many angles.

Detoxifying your body can help remove built up toxins and free radicals that can be responsible for all kinds of health and fitness problems. When we talk about detoxifying our body, we’re talking about using a method or remedy to rid ourselves of all the harmful substances that have accumulated over the course of time.

Detoxifying Cleans up Your Organs

When you detoxify, you are removing poisons and impurities from the blood primarily through your liver where these toxins are processed for elimination. Other organs that also help your body to remove toxins are your lungs, kidneys, lymph system, skin and your intestines.

In our modern world, the build up of toxins over time can tax and compromise the ability of your “cleansing organs” to work properly. This can create a downward spiral as every cell in your body is negatively affected when toxic impurities aren’t properly filtered out.

Help Your Body to Cleanse and Detoxify

We covered combining the right foods…

We covered drinking the proper amount of water…

Now, let’s give your body some help in cleansing by using herbal supplements.

The reason for detoxifying your body is to be and feel healthy and to keep your body functioning at its very best. There are many varieties of colon cleansing and detoxifying herbal supplements that do a good job with no known side effects.

Herbs like senna, sagrada and rhubarb come to mind and they are all very gentle cleansers when taken in the right amounts.

A good quality colon cleanser and detoxification program can help your body’s natural cleaning process by:

• Stimulating the liver to drive toxins from the body
• Promoting elimination through the intestines, kidneys and skin
• Improve circulation and cleansing of the blood
• Refuel your entire body with healthy nutrients due to better absorption

A cleansing and detoxifying program should be done twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall but at a minimum do the entire program at least once a year.

When your colon is clean and free of toxins the amount of nutrients that gets into your bloodstream increases dramatically and every cell in your body benefits by that.

So, if you were wondering how to colon cleanse, you can always use these herbal programs. If you were wondering how not to need colon cleansers then the next section of this guide is “Super Digestible Nutrient Rich Raw Foods” and will give you an introduction to eating raw foods.

 

There’s no doubt that you’ve enjoyed the benefits of combing the right foods together if not for the nutritional aspect, then for a pleasurable one.

The secrets of combining foods is not something new, the concept has been around for thousands of years but the reasons why and which ones work best is still being studied today.

Food is a popular topic and with good reason. It’s a necessity of life. Many studies have been performed on food and this has led to many discoveries being made with many more underway.

For instance, combining foods to lose weight quickly is extremely popular. By combing the right foods you will improve your digestion, cholesterol levels, your metabolism and this helps lead to weight loss.

Nutrition is a science that relates to everything that goes on in the body. Your body requires food and water to survive and all the basic functions cannot be performed properly without this adequate nutrition and hydration.

Food is classified as any substance that is composed of carbohydrates, water, fats and proteins. These food sources may be from plants, animals or other sources such as fungus. At one time food was found through gathering and hunting methods. In modern times farming, ranching, fishing, hunting and other methods have become common ways of finding food.

Nine Basic Rules to Follow When Combining Foods:

1. Eat starch foods and acidic foods at separate times otherwise the acids can neutralize the alkaline medium which is required for starch digestion and the result is fermentation and indigestion.
2. Eat food containing carbohydrates and proteins at different meals with most people being best suited for protein earlier in the day and the carbohydrates toward the end of the day. Protein foods need an acidic medium for good digestion.
3. Eat only one type of protein food at a meal setting.
4. Proteins and acidic type foods need to be eaten at different meals because acidic foods can inhibit the secretion of the digestive acids required for optimal protein digestion. Undigested protein putrefies, or rots if you can relate, in bacterial decomposition that produces some potent poisons that you should want to avoid.
5. Fatty foods and proteins should also be eaten at different mealtimes. Some foods, particularly nuts, are loaded with good fats but require hours for digestion.
6. Fruits contain natural sugars and your heavier proteins should be eaten at separate meals.
7. Eat melons only with other melons or alone. They do not combine well with any other type of foods.
8. Eat sugary food and fruits at different meals than your starchy foods. Fruits require no digestion in your stomach and can be held up when you eat them with other foods that does require digestion in the stomach.
9. Desserts should be eaten alone and separate from any other types of food. When eaten on top of meals they weigh heavy on the stomach but require no digestion there so fermentation occurs. The bacteria there, other foods and sugars turn into alcohols, vinegars and other acids.

Combining and eating the right types of foods together can help improve your digestion and overall health. Additionally, combining the right foods together can also help a person decrease stomach and digestive problems as well as discomfort after eating their meals.

Some experts believe that eating the same types of foods together allows your stomach to work better, more efficiently and with less stress.

One of the fastest and easiest improvements you can make right now is simply to chew your food up more completely before swallowing because that’s where the whole process starts.

One last thing about combining the right foods and how they affect your weight…

As you get older a common concern is weight gain. It is known that as we get older we have a tendency to gain weight. This is because our body needs fewer calories than it used to and if you don’t cut down your weight is going to increase and rule you.

If you’re like most of us, there’s no doubt that you have tried all kinds of diet plans and exercised more or at least thought about it. What might come to a surprise is that just by combining foods differently you could set yourself up to lose weight rather easily.

Following what we’ve been telling you here using the food combining principles above you might want to start changing up your food combinations right away.

As an example, fruits don’t digest as well when they are mixed with starchy foods so choose something like yogurt instead because they both digest easily together.

If you’re going to do it, bananas are about one of the only foods that digest well with other foods such as cereal and oatmeal. Generally speaking, you are best served by eating fruits as a snack and on an empty stomach.

Here are a few tips on combining foods for losing weight:

Eat starches and proteins separate from each other.

Eat fruit separate times.

Leave yourself 15 to 30 minutes between eating your main course and eating your dessert.

Chew your food thoroughly.

And of course one of the best ways to help you lose weight is to increase your daily water intake to one ounce for every two pounds of body weight at a minimum. Water helps you to flush out the toxins in your body and nutrients from your food can not be absorbed without it.

For the next topic in this guide we’ll discuss “The Importance of Detoxifying Your Body” but don’t lose sight of how important combining the right foods are and why it’s so important to drink enough water each day. By doing so, it will also help you feel less bloated and assist you dropping the body fat.

 

When you initially eat food the food is not in a usable form for your body. Your body needs to process this food so that it can extract all the life giving nutrients from all that you have just eaten.

Your food must be converted into small enough molecules so that it can be carried throughout your body in your blood stream bringing nutrients to all of your body’s cells. For this to happen your body needs to digest the food that you eat.

Makes sense right?

Digestion is the process of mixing food with digestive juices as the food moves down your digestive tract. It starts in your mouth with your saliva as you chew your food and begin the process of breaking down larger pieces of food with smaller ones.

So, digestion starts the moment you begin to chew your food and ends in your lower small intestines mostly exhausted and ready for elimination.

The Process of Digestion

Your digestive tract contains a wall inside of it that actually moves. It’s a large hollow like muscle that allows this movement to happen. This moving process helps pass your food along where the nutrients can be absorbed into your body through the walls of your digestive tract. Different foods are also digested in different areas of your digestive system.

This movement is called Peristalsis, as if you really wanted to know, but you can relate to this movement by envisioning a wave moving towards the beach with their back and forth movements.

Okay, after you’ve swallowed your food it’s pushed into the esophagus first. The stomach meets the esophagus at its base with a ring like muscle known as the lower esophageal sphincter.

The sphincters job is to keep the esophagus and the stomach closed off from each other. When this sphincter muscle is approached with food it relaxes to let the food pass into the stomach and closes back up again.

That’s how it works in a healthy digestive tract.

Now your stomach has three important tasks to perform with this new arrival of food. The upper part of your stomach relaxes and stores the food and liquid you just ate.  Task number two is to mix all the food and liquid together which is performed by the stomach using muscle action where it then moves on to task number three where this mixture is emptied into your lower intestine.

All foods do not move into your lower intestine at the same time. Some foods like proteins take longer to be mixed up and broken down by the stomach. Carbohydrates will be processed quickly and fats normally take the longest amount of time to digest.

Next, foods in your intestines are mixed with juices from your pancreas and liver then this mixture gets absorbed by your intestines and nutrients are carried through your bloodstream and your entire body.

Why is this Digestive Process so Important to Know?

This digestion process is very important because your body needs food to be turned into small enough particles before it can be used to feed your body. This is the only way to get these tiny particles small enough so that they can then be used effectively by your cells.

Your cells do an amazing job for you. Cells help to make your skin, bones, muscles and organs. Everything from the hair on your head to your toenails you can view cells as tiny building blocks for your body.

Nutrients from your food help to feed and repair cells and to build new ones. Once your body is nourished by your newly born and fed cells you’ll appreciate more energy and feel stronger, healthier and revitalized.

Problems of Improper Digestion

Problems begin to spring up when your body doesn’t handle the digestive process in the right way and nutrients are not properly or completely absorbed. It’s called mal-absorption. If poor digestion occurs you might experience one or more of the following signs:

This can be weight loss or weight gain, constipation or diarrhea, gas pain or heartburn, bloating or nausea.

That covers a lot of are doesn’t it?

When these symptoms occur on a regular basis it will be a sign that something else maybe wrong. So if you suddenly start experiencing any of these symptoms it may be and issue with your digestive system and you should immediately make plans to rectify the problem.

If this is you, do you think that it could have something to do with you not having a healthy nutrition plan? Yes, that’s a good possibility isn’t it.

In the next segment of this guide we’ll discuss “The Benefits of Combining the Right Foods”. Here you’ll get the basics of combining foods to help create your healthy nutrition plan.

 

Understanding What Malnutrition Really Is

Understanding malnutrition starts with understanding its meaning which is “an imbalance between the body’s demand for nutrition and the availability of nutrients”.

When your body is not getting the right amount of nutrients over a period of time you body begins to suffer.

Without adequate nutrition your body will become weak, your immune system breaks down and your overall health degrades. Bottom line is that advanced nutritional deficiency can lead to death.

Malnutrition can be Found Everywhere

Most people associate malnutrition with people living in third world countries. While it is true that you’ll find a larger percentage of malnourished people there, you’ll also find them right in your own backyard.

Going back to our definition above and you either fill your body’s nutritional requirements or you too will be considered malnourished.

A common condition found in many countries around the world is Anorexia. Even if you’ve never heard of it, you’ve probably seen it up close and maybe even personal.

Signs of Anorexia are extreme weight loss and many times it begins with a person wanting to lose weight. When the person’s perception becomes distorted about how much weight they are losing, it becomes very serious and professional help should be sought.

The type of malnutrition commonly found in third world countries is known as a protein-calorie type of malnutrition and children are often affected most frequently. Because their bodies are unable to grow and develop properly from the daily lack of food, their digestive system and organs become damaged, they suffer from starvation, and sadly they die.

Obese People Suffer from Malnutrition Too

Obese people can have severe malnutrition and you’d never think that by looking at them. But what if a person ate primarily all sugar all of the time? Empty calories, no nutrition and guess what – Malnutrition. Overweight and malnourished, how pitiful is that? Organ and digestive damage can still occur compounded by the excess strain on the cardiovascular system from being too overweight.

Remember, malnutrition is defined as is “an imbalance between the body’s demand for nutrition and the availability of nutrients”.

Many deficiencies can take hold when you fail to get the right amount of certain nutrients. You can see this in people that lack calcium for instance and their teeth, bones and fingernails turn frail and brittle. People that lack iron can become anemic and the lack of iodine can lead to thyroid problems.

The list goes on and on and the facts are that wealthy or poor, fat or thin, everyone can be at risk of malnutrition. The takeaway here is be sure that if you can’t, won’t or just don’t eat balanced nutrition, do yourself a favor and get some good quality nutritional supplements to feed your body what it’s missing.

What we’ll do next is talk a little about “Your Digestive Systems Role in Healthy Nutrition” so click that link and we’ll go through how your body uses the nutrients you consume.

 

Four Food Groups inside the Food Pyramid

There are four of the basic food groups that have now been placed into the Food Pyramid for a guide on eating healthy nutrition. This guide will show you just how many servings of each group you should eat each day. You’ll notice that the foods at the wider base offer you more servings a day while the top portion of the guide includes those foods that you should be eating more sparingly.

The concept behind the Food Pyramid is to eat servings from each of the different levels every day. This gives you with balance and variety that you need in your diet on a daily basis. By following these suggestions you can be certain that you are getting the right amount of nutrients in your body.

This is the type of healthy nutrition plan that you want to adapt to.

When you eat in this manner you can quickly begin improving your eating habits and in short order, you’ll feel the health of your body improve.

Separating the Four Groups inside the Food Pyramid

As you will notice in the diagram above the grain group is at the base of the pyramid. The foods you’ll find in this section are primarily cereals, pasta, breads and rice. You should normally be eating between 6-11 servings from this group each day unless you are attempting to do a no or low carbohydrate diet.

This particular food group consists mostly of carbohydrates and can provide your body with energy and fuel. Depending on your level of physical activity you may need to adjust this a bit because excess carbs can pack on the weight if your body is idle and you’re not burning the fuel from all those calories fast enough.

This is why professional athletes will often load up on carbs before a big race or sporting event. People who participate in marathons, triathlons, iron man competitions and long distance cycling events will do a “carb load” prior to the big event.

Next we have the fruit and vegetable group and you should be eating larger amounts of these foods as well. Fruits and vegetables are rich in vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients, fiber and more. Fiber is extremely important to your digestive system and you should eat at 6-9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day and if not, it’s a good idea to supplement in the areas that you are lacking.

Moving on to the next level of the Food Pyramid we have the meat and dairy products. This group is rich in protein which is essential for everyone and health and fitness nuts may want to increase their protein intake based on the intensity of their workouts. Protein and dairy originate from animal and plant sources. These include food items such as milk, fish, poultry, eggs, nuts, cheese and beans.

All of the foods in this group contain important nutrients and protein that can’t be found as abundantly in other food groups. Calcium, iron, phosphorus, zinc and B vitamins are essential for bone and muscle development.

The foods in this group are necessary for your body and are extremely important for children as they require more of these in their diet as they develop and grow.

Last but not least the top of our Food Pyramid contains sugars, oils and fats. You’ll find these in a variety of foods, they are very important but should be used sparingly especially in the case of sugar which offers your body mostly empty calories that provide you with little to no worthy nutritional value. Some fats and oils however are a must have for a healthy nutrition plan.

Here are a few food sources to spark ideas when planning meals:

Some of the best sources of carbohydrates include: Wheat of all varieties, corn, rice, barley, rye and oats. Varieties of potatoes like white, golden, red and sweet potatoes. The Legumes like pinto beans, peas, limas, navy beans, black beans, lentils and peanuts. Nuts of all kinds including coconuts.

Some of the best sources of fruits and vegetables include: All fruits fall into this category but some are very high in natural sugar such as grapes so be mindful of this when choosing your food.

Apples, lemons, oranges, apricots, peaches, grapes, pears, strawberries, avocadoes, tomatoes, watermelon, muskmelon, cantaloupe, casaba, honey dew, bananas, prunes, grapes, raisins, dried currants, figs, dates, persimmons, blackberries, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, currants, mulberries, gooseberries, huckleberries, olives, nectarines, pineapples, plums and raspberries.

With vegetables you also have lots of choices: Asparagus, beets, cabbage, carrots, turnips, parsnips, cauliflower, cucumber, egg plant, lettuce, celery, endive, romaine, chicory, cucumbers, cabbage, celery cabbage, parsley, field lettuce, okra, onions, radish, summer squash, spinach, kohlrabi, kale, Brussels sprouts, cone artichoke, chard, string beans, celery, turnip tops, lotus, endive, dandelion, oyster plant, rutabaga and garlic.

Some of the best sources of proteins include: Animal meat of most any kind like chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, veal, pork, geese and ducks. Legumes provide protein and are important to vegetarians. Fish is known to be beneficial for its “good oils” but is also high in protein. There are many choices when it comes to fish like shrimp, shell fish, herring, pickerel, salmon, trout, bass, pike, red snapper, tuna and a whole host of fresh and saltwater varieties not listed here.

Deep cold-water fish are prized for their valuable oils as opposed to freshwater fish so this is good to keep in mind when preparing your menu.

Nuts like almonds, Brazil nuts, walnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts, filberts and hazel nuts are all good protein sources and some of the best sources of dairy include: cheese, milk, yogurt, Greek yogurt, sour cream, and cottage cheese.

At the top of the Food Pyramid we have the fats and oils.

Some of the best sources of fats and oils include: Dairy products such as cream, butter and some of the richer cheeses. Fatty fish like herring, shad, salmon and trout being high up on the list. Legumes, nuts, coconuts, cotton seed oil, flax seed oil, sesame seed oil, olive oil and more.

Understanding the Food Pyramid helps you fit together a more balanced and healthy nutrition plan and is the basics of most preplanned packaged diets. Next, we’ll briefly touch on malnutrition with “Ending the Confusion about Malnutrition” and why it’s not just a third world problem…

And why it could be your problem too.