Permanent Fitness, Shredded Abs, and A Daily Dose More Powerful Than You Think

Nutrition Corner

A Daily Dose of Vitamin D Is More Powerful Than You Think. Here's What to Know.

Over 90% of U.S. adults eat one or more snacks per day, with most eating between 1.2 and 3 snacks daily. Studies also show that snacking has been increasing in both frequency and quantity over the last few decades.

Recipe for The Day

Grilled Kiwi-Chicken Kabobs with Honey-Chipotle Glaze - When guests bite into these juicy grilled kabobs, their eyes always widen with satisfaction.

Lifestyle & Fitness Focus

7 Tips for Healthier Use of News and Social Media

• Know your goal - If you want to use social media to stay up-to-date on community events, log off after you have the info you need. If you're trying to stay caught up on the day's events, do you need to keep an eye on the headlines all day? Maybe a check-in once a day is enough.

• Notice how it makes you feel - Does seeing what friends are sharing make you happy? Or does it make you feel down? Does the daily news stress you out? When you know how news and social media affect you, you can decide if you need to make some changes to how you use them.

• Don't compare your everyday life to someone else's online life - People usually post about the shiny parts of their lives instead of daily struggles or disappointments. So even if what you're seeing is a true story, remember that it won't be the whole story.

• Change notification settings - That way you can find information you want when you're ready for it, instead of letting it find you.

• Unfollow and hide feeds as needed - If accounts you follow or friends you have post things that stress you out, get rid of them. If you don't want to "unfriend" someone, just change your settings so that you don't see what they post anymore. They'll never know.

• Follow the feel-good stuff - The news can be heavy. Try to find balance by focusing on things that make you feel happy. Try following social media accounts that are focused on your interests or on things that make you laugh.

• Set a time to step away - Make time to disconnect from news and social media. Close your apps, and turn off the TV. Read a book, get outside, work on a puzzle, or call a friend. It doesn't matter what you choose to do. Just make sure it's something that feels supportive and worth your time.

5 Glucose hacks that will transform your health

• Have a savoury breakfast - Making sure you have a savoury breakfast - one that is based around protein and doesn't contain anything sweet in it except whole fruit - is key.

• Add a bit of vinegar - Research shows that drinking vinegar before a meal will curb the glucose spike of what you eat afterwards by up to 30% – without you needing to change anything about the meal you're about to have.

• Add a veggie starter - Eat your vegetables first during your meal, or munch on a pre-meal veggie starter. Why? Because vegetables contain a powerful substance called fibre which can aid your digestion.

• Get moving - You can minimize your blood glucose spikes by doing as little as ten minutes of walking after eating.

• Drink coffee after food - So many people opt for a cup of coffee to wake them up in the morning, but by the same logic, caffeine spikes glucose levels if consumed before food.

Permanent Fitness: 5 Steps to Staying in Shape for the Rest of Your Life

• Never stop walking - One of the greatest ways to drastically reduce one’s risk of all-cause and CVD mortality is also one of the easiest. Go for a walk.

• Honor the zones - It helps to think of exercise (and specifically endurance training) in the context of heart rate zones. The majority of your training should ideally involve “lazy workouts,” or long stretches spent at 60-70% of your maximum heart rate.

• Prioritize bodyweight exercises - If you make strength training a consistent component of your fitness regimen — even to the tune of just one or two sessions a week — you’ll fortify your muscles and bones for the long haul, while cashing in on all those short-term benefits you were angling for, anyway, like looking good in a fitted shirt.

• Shock yourself - Shocking yourself, in exercise terms, could mean going for a big hike, trying an animal style workout, or taking a martial arts class. Think of them as fitness field trips; you open to the occasional new way to move and sweat, basically, while trusting that your larger, day-to-day fitness framework will be there when you get back.

• Make it part of your identity - You have to start telling yourself a different story about yourself. You are a person who goes for a walk after lunch. You do spend 180 minutes on a bike each week. As these mantras turn into facts, and slowly become entangled with your sense of self, it’ll get harder and harder for you to skip out on your healthiest habits.

3 Easy Fixes to Get Shredded Abs

• Treat your abs like any other muscle - Instead of doing countless reps of crunches daily, incorporate weights into your ab exercises. You can use weights behind your head or between your feet for various movements. Challenge your abs with heavier loads for continuous improvement.

• Incorporate trunk flexion - Pay attention to the technique during ab exercises. Focus on trunk flexion rather than hip flexion or neck flexion. For crunches, ensure your shoulder blades lift off the ground with every rep, and during leg raises and knee tucks, curl your hips, knees, and feet toward your chest for proper engagement.

• Fix your diet plan - To reveal your six-pack, you must lower your overall body fat percentage. You can’t target fat burn specifically from the stomach area. To achieve fat loss, maintain a calorie deficit and lower insulin levels. Avoid refined grains and sugar in your diet. Intermittent fasting and the ketogenic diet are effective ways to lower insulin levels, but there are other options as well.

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