Nutrition

Treats You Can Have In Moderation

Treats You Can Have In Moderation

Published by on November 10, 2023 | Leave a response

Holidays and delicious treats go together. It’s part of Americana. Learning the treats you can have in moderation that won’t break the calorie budget can be a real benefit during holiday time. It lets you make the smartest decisions when you choose your food, especially if you’re going to splurge a little. Choose treats with portion sizes that keep the calorie count to 100-200 calories. Even if you ate one daily, it may slow weight loss efforts, but won’t stop progress completely.

Who says treats can’t be healthy?

When you think of treats, you usually think of sugary snacks made from processed white flour. That isn’t always the case. Some treats can be healthy options, but ones that add a few additional calories. Cooked-then chilled—baby asparagus with lemon butter dipping sauce is one of those examples. If you go heavy on the lemon and light on the butter, lemon-butter asparagus easily fits into your healthy eating plan. Another healthy option is fresh veggies and dip. Make a lower-calorie dip and you can make this treat a daily option.

Nuts may be higher in calories, but they’re filling and healthy options.

It’s easy to misjudge the amount of nuts you eat and why packing them in individual serving sizes is best. A bag of nuts may contain 16 ounces. If you only eat a one ounce serving, you’ll consume approximately 200 calories. What if you ate the whole bag or even half the bag? It’s easy to do. You’d consume between 1600 and 3200 calories, enough for two days’ worth of meals. Divide the bag into serving sizes and put those in individual plastic bags.

Fruit, nuts, and veggies are okay, but what if you miss cake?

Knowledge is king when it comes to eating healthy. Angel cake is truly an angel to dieters. Slice a 12-ounce angel cake into twelve servings. Each one is just 72 calories. You can make it even more special by slicing strawberries on top and putting two tablespoons of aerosol whipped topping on it. Eight large, sliced strawberries are 66 calories, and 2-T of aerosol topping is 20 calories.

  • Make trail mix and bag it in 100-200 calorie serving sizes. You can include dried fruit, nuts, pretzels, popcorn, and even bits of semi-sweet chocolate. Make sure the chocolate is high in cacao and low in sugar.
  • Microwave popcorn is another safe treat you can eat in moderation. Make it yourself by putting 1 ½ T of popcorn in a microwavable bowl with a loose lid. Three cups are just 72 calories. Spice it up with popcorn toppings.
  • Make a healthy parfait. Put a layer of plain Greek yogurt, fresh or frozen fruit, and a half banana. Top with another layer of yogurt and a handful of nuts. Put the lid on it and store it in the refrigerator for snacks. It’s approximately 120 calories.
  • Melt dark chocolate bits or a chocolate square high in cacao in the microwave and dip fresh strawberries. You can even freeze a half banana on a stick for dipping.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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How To Stay Healthy As A Busy Mom

How To Stay Healthy As A Busy Mom

Published by on October 25, 2023 | Leave a response

Busy moms fail to take care of themselves. They focus all their energy on keeping their family healthy and happy and fail to take care of themselves. If you aren’t healthy, who is going to take care of your family? It’s one reason many women get help at Innovative Strength and Conditioning in Sacramento, CA. They provide a program that includes both diet and exercise, plus coaching that helps keep you on track. People of all fitness levels benefit, whether they’re a beginner focusing on the basics or seasoned athlete who wants a better performance.

It’s not selfish to take care of yourself.

Moms often feel that doing something for themselves is selfish. The opposite is true. If you don’t take care of your health, someone has to take care of you. Eating nutritious meals and exercising regularly can boost your energy level, so you’ll get work done quicker and have time to enjoy yourself with your family. Besides taking time to exercise and focusing on healthy meals, moms also need to get adequate sleep. It’s not noble to burn the candle at both ends. It makes you less effective and crankier. When you do the things to keep you healthy, you’ll get more done in less time and be less prone to making errors.

Learn how to be healthier and teach your children.

Staying healthy sets a good example for your children. Kids learn what they live. If you stay active and eat healthy meals, it becomes part of your child’s life. You can even involve kids in active play and get them away from the computer. Nothing makes memories quicker than fun playing ball, hiking, or doing other active things with the family. Serving healthy meals increases their chances of eating healthy.

Find a time to work out regularly.

You might think there’s no time to exercise, but when you look for a time in your schedule, you’ll probably find it. Maybe you have to get up early before your family gets up. If your kids are school age, wake them up and have them join you or exercise together in the evening, before supper. Put exercise on your calendar and treat it like you would any appointment. Call it your health appointment to make it more important in your mind. Staying healthy is mandatory, not an option.

  • Get more from your workout in less time. Circuit training, kettlebell training, and HIIT—high intensity interval training—get maximum results in less time. The higher the intensity, the less time needed.
  • You’ll have more energy to deal with problems and be less likely to respond with “less than adult” behavior in tense situations and more likely to show grace under pressure.
  • Always keep healthy snacks available. Have fruit, vegetables, and nuts ready to eat to avoid the temptation of junk food. Have water in the refrigerator instead of soft drinks, juices, or sugary drinks.
  • If you can’t carve out time for a full workout, carve out several 10-15 minute sessions throughout the day. Walk your kids to school to get in extra steps or exercise while watching TV with the family.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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How Alcohol Causes Weight Gain

How Alcohol Causes Weight Gain

Published by on October 10, 2023 | Leave a response

If you’ve noticed you’ve put on a few extra pounds, but you’re eating healthy and working out regularly, maybe there’s another reason besides diet and activity level causing it. Are you having a few drinks containing alcohol to wind down when your day is done? That regular consumption of alcohol may be the cause of your weight gain. It’s more than just about the calories it contains. It’s about how the body digests the alcohol.

Yes, some alcoholic drinks offer benefits, but don’t let that fool you.

A glass of red wine may provide some health benefits from the resveratrol it contains, but you can get those same benefits from drinking grape juice, or better yet, eating grapes. One study focused on moderate drinking compared to those who abstained. One drink or less a day for women and two drinks a day or less for men is moderate alcohol consumption. They found drinking in moderation reduced the risk of Alzheimer’s or dementia. While it may provide health benefits, so do other foods and drinks that don’t cause weight gain.

Consuming alcohol slows the fat-burning process.

When you drink, your body burns off the alcohol first, before it starts on the energy from other food. That causes a problem with how the body uses glucagon. Glucagon works the opposite way insulin does. It helps prevent blood sugar from being too low and increases blood sugar levels. It also burns off fat. Your body processes glucagon first to eliminate it from the body, just like any toxin. When it’s doing that, it ceases other functions, such as burning fat. Digesting alcohol spikes blood sugar levels, which also means they drop dramatically. That leaves you ravenous, even though the drink may have contained several hundred calories.

Like sugary products, most alcoholic drinks contain empty calories.

If you consume empty calories, you only get energy without other nutrients. The body focuses on burning the alcohol first, so the calories from other food are stored as fat. If you’re a female with low estrogen levels, those calories are stored as fat around the midsection—belly fat—due to an enzyme called Aldhlal—Aldehyde Dehydrogenase lAl.

  • Drinking alcohol can stimulate the appetite. One study compared people who had an alcoholic drink before dinner to those who had a soft drink. Those who drank alcohol ate more than those that didn’t.
  • Even if you drink moderately, if you do it regularly, the alcohol still spikes your blood sugar levels, which can lead to insulin resistance and diabetes. Insulin resistance makes weight loss more difficult.
  • Consuming alcohol can reduce metabolism by making it more difficult to build muscles. It reduces the body’s testosterone levels. The lower the testosterone levels, the more difficult it is to build muscle tissue.
  • Each gram of alcohol has two times the calories of protein and more than most carbohydrates. It’s slightly less than fat, but still very close to it with fat containing 9 calories per gram and alcohol containing 7 calories per gram.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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Hormones, Health And Behavior

Hormones, Health And Behavior

Published by on September 25, 2023 | Leave a response

When people hear the word hormones, they think of sex hormones, such as estrogen and testosterone, but hormones do more than just control sexual development and function. Some play a vital role in good health and some hormones affect behavior, mood, and cognitive functioning. Hormones may make you overeat. Ghrelin is a hormone that makes you hungry, while leptin makes you feel full. Lack of sleep can increase the hormone ghrelin and reduce the production of leptin, making weight gain more probable.

Insulin is one of the best-known hormones, next to sex hormones.

When the body doesn’t produce any insulin, you have type 1 diabetes. Too much insulin is also bad. The body can develop insulin resistance that can turn into type 2 diabetes. In type 2 diabetes, the body can’t produce enough to open the cells to uptake glucose from the bloodstream and use it for energy in both situations, lack of glucose causes cell damage and death. It can cause damage to all parts of the body.

An overproduction of stress hormones can create physical and emotional issues.

Cortisol is one of the better-known stress hormones. The adrenal glands create it. It gets the body prepared to run or fight. When you do either one, it burns off the effects of cortisol. You need stress hormones to survive, especially if you face a life-threatening experience, but not all stressful situations are life-threatening. Traffic jams, angry bosses, and crying babies certainly aren’t, yet they cause stress. If you don’t burn cortisol or other stress hormones, it can create anxiety and even depression.

Hormones play a role in almost all functions that affect your physical and mental well-being.

Adequate sleep is necessary to avoid irritability, mood swings, weight gain, and poor memory. Serotonin helps you get that sleep. Some hormones affect where you store fat. Sex hormones and cortisol are two of those. HGH—human growth hormone—is called the “fountain of youth” hormone. It helps build muscles and affects fat metabolism, and body composition. There’s no evidence it turns back time for your body, but people still buy HGH tablets, even though stomach acid destroys it. The best way to boost the body’s HGH is through exercise, particularly HIIT—high intensity interval training.

  • What other hormones can affect your mood and behavior? Dopamine, glutamate, norepinephrine, and of course serotonin all do. Low levels of serotonin are linked to depression and dopamine is known as the happy hormone because it makes you feel good.
  • High levels of testosterone can make you aggressive and angry. High levels of estrogen can make you irritable. When your sex hormones are out of balance it affects your mental and physical health.
  • Exercise and a healthy diet can help keep hormones regulated. Exercise helps you sleep better, to keep ghrelin and leptin in check. It also burns off the hormones of stress. A healthy diet can help prevent problems with insulin.
  • Your thyroid gland creates hormones that help you stabilize weight gain or weight loss. If it’s not producing enough, it can cause weight gain, dry skin, fatigue, and hair loss. Too much can cause hyperthyroidism with heart palpitations, weight loss, and other symptoms.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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Are You Wasting Your Time With Cardio?

Are You Wasting Your Time With Cardio?

Published by on September 10, 2023 | Leave a response

Don’t stop doing cardio if you’re already doing it. It’s vital for good health. However, if running through the streets of Sacramento, CA, is the only exercise you’re doing, increasing it without adding other forms of exercise is wasting your time. There is also such a thing as too much cardio, just as there is too much strength-building. If you aren’t doing other types of exercise, you’re not doing your body a favor. Even if you’re doing all four types of fitness workouts, balance, flexibility, strength, and cardio, doing it too much each day and not giving your body a chance to rest is counterproductive.

Cardio burns tons of calories.

That sounds fantastic, but there’s one fact missing. Cardio gets calories from both lean muscle tissue and fat tissue. When you burn lean muscle tissue, it can make weight loss harder. Muscle tissue requires more calories than fat tissue does. The more you have, the more calories you burn 24/7, even when you’re sleeping. Since cardio burns both fat and lean muscle mass for calories, you’ll have less muscle mass. That makes weight loss harder.

Strength training is a calorie torch, too.

Just like cardio, strength training torches calories. The biggest difference is it also builds muscle tissue instead of tearing it down for energy. That can help boost your metabolism. One way to get the benefits of both is to change your strength-building workout into a HIIT workout. HIIT—high intensity interval training—uses any type of exercise but alternates it between high intensity and a recovery pace. Doing bodyweight, dumbbell, or kettlebell exercises in this manner provides the best of all worlds.

Don’t quit cardio, it does provide benefits.

Yes, cardio does burn calories, but you also need it for other reasons. It builds endurance, improves heart function, and helps lower blood pressure. Cardio also improves brain functioning, reduces stress, and diminishes the risk of dementia. It helps control blood glucose levels to reduce the risk of diabetes. It also improves lung capacity and reduces the risk of heart attack.

  • Both strength training and cardio burn calories while you’re doing it. Intense cardio and strength training also burns calories for up to 72 hours after exercising ends. It’s called EPOC pr afterburn.
  • Cardio trains the body to be more efficient so it burns the fewest calories possible. It’s vital for heart health, so continue it, but not necessarily the best for weight loss.
  • Cardio is best for accomplishing two goals, burning off stress hormones and improving sleep. Both can help you lose weight. Cortisol, a hormone of stress, causes belly fat. Adequate sleep lowers the production of ghrelin, the hunger hormone.
  • If you live a sedentary lifestyle, walking, a form of cardio, can help you get on track to good health. Doing something is better than doing nothing, but you’ll maximize benefits with a well-rounded program is vital.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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What Vitamins Are Vegans Missing From Their Diets?

What Vitamins Are Vegans Missing From Their Diets?

Published by on August 25, 2023 | Leave a response

If you’ve decided to follow a vegan diet, you’re like many people in Sacramento, CA. It takes both dedication and planning. If you don’t plan carefully, vitamins and other nutrients could be missing from your diet. Vegans use no animal products, so they have to find plant sources for protein. It’s one of the reasons planning is so important. Getting all the necessary vitamins is another problem requiring some navigation.

While the sun can provide vitamin D, many vegans still have a deficit.

You don’t have to be vegan to have a vitamin D deficiency. It’s harder to get adequate sun in Sacramento in the winter than in the southern part of the state. Safe sunning can provide vitamin D in the summer, but it’s different in winter. People must turn to food. Most sources of vitamin D have animal origins, so consuming fortified foods or shitake mushrooms is mandatory. Vitamin D activates calcium for strong bones and teeth. It improves the immune response and can help keep you healthy.

One of the biggest problems faced by vegans is consuming adequate vitamin B12=cobalamin.

Animal products provide vitamin B12. It’s necessary for nerve, muscle, and heart health. It’s vital for metabolism as well. Many vegans have a B12 insufficiency. It’s not found in traditional vegan food sources. Algae, like humans, also need B12 and they get it from their environment. Not all types of algae offer that benefit. Chlorella is one type of algae that is the best source of this nutrient. While other types of algae, such as spirulina, contain a form of B12, it’s a pseudo-cobalamin that humans can’t use.

Other nutrients often missing from vegan diets include collagen.

Collagen is necessary for nails, ligaments, hair, and skin. It comes from animal products. A vegan source is now being created in the lab. It starts with genetically modified bacteria and yeast. Scientists then insert four human genes into the microbe’s genetic structure. That causes them to produce the basic building blocks of human collagen. A digestive enzyme, pepsin, is added to create collagen molecules that mimic human collagen. Taking vegan amino acid supplements or consuming food high in the building blocks of collagen, glycine, lysine, and proline, such as beans, seeds, and nuts, also help boost collagen.

  • Eat chia seeds, walnuts, and flaxseed to increase omega-3 fatty acids. Most of the population, not just vegans, have a diet too high in omega-6 and too low in omega-3.
  • When planning a vegan diet, ensure it includes adequate levels of zinc, selenium, iodine, and iron. Iodized salt can bring iodine levels to normal. Eating nuts, peas, spinach, and beans helps provide iron.
  • Calcium is easy to access when dairy is part of the diet. It’s more difficult for vegans. The calcium in many vegan calcium sources is less bioavailable. Only ¼ the calcium in spinach is available for absorption because of the oxalate that binds to the calcium.
  • Vitamin B2 is necessary for changing food to energy. If you’re a vegan, you can get it from spinach, nuts, and mushrooms, but it’s easier to get from animal sources.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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Benefits Of Eating Organic

Benefits Of Eating Organic

Published by on July 25, 2023 | Leave a response

People in Sacramento, CA, come to Team-ISC for both nutrition coaching and physical training. When helping them with their diet and nutritional needs, many ask if there’s any benefit from eating organic food. There’s no clear-cut answer. While some data shows eating organic food is beneficial, other information shows it doesn’t matter. In most cases, it’s about the type of organic food you eat.

Not all non-organic food is unhealthy.

Organically raised food tends to be more expensive. You can save money by identifying produce not affected by the chemicals in herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers. No genetically modified—GMO—is organic, either. The EWG—Environmental Working Group—tests produce throughout the country and creates two lists annually. The Dirty Dozen list has the most residue of chemicals you can’t wash off, and the Clean 15 list has no chemicals or minute amounts. To save money, choose organic produce on the Dirty Dozen list and opt for non-organic on the Clean 15 list.

There are more benefits to eating organic food besides avoiding chemicals.

The pesticides and herbicides that remain on the fruit or vegetable and can’t be removed by simple washing should be enough to make most people turn to organic food. Other reasons to choose organic produce include better nutrition. Commercial farmers don’t use compost or other organic methods to replenish the soil. They use a fertilizer containing just nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. That means the soil becomes depleted of many trace minerals that aren’t replenished. Studies reveal that fruits and vegetables grown today are lower in nutrients than they were 50 years ago.

It’s not just fruits and vegetables that are better.

When you consume animal products, you’re also eating what the animal ate. If they were pastured, you would get many of the same benefits that the animal gets from that diet. Commercially fed animals often have feed that wasn’t intended for an animal’s diet. Studies show that pastured cows produce dairy with heart-healthy benefits, the meat is also heart-healthy and rich in nutrients. Eggs from pastured hens have more nutrients.

  • Non-organically raised animals may be given antibiotics or hormones. That can lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and hormonal problems. In order to be called organic, farmers can’t use growth hormones or antibiotics.
  • To avoid pesticide residue, choose these foods from the Dirty Dozen list. They include strawberries, spinach, greens, peaches, pears, nectarines, apples, grapes, peppers, cherries, blueberries, and green beans.
  • Save money and choose non-organic from the Clean 15 list. They include avocado, sweet corn, pineapple, onion, sweet peas, asparagus, honeydew melon, kiwi, cabbage, mushrooms, mango, sweet potato, watermelon, and carrots.
  • All animal products from pastured cattle and other pastured livestock are higher in CLA—conjugated linoleic acid. It’s an omega-3 fatty acid that can lower the risk of heart disease and cancer. Eggs from pastured chickens also contain more omega-3 fatty acids and more vitamins A and E.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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Basic Rules For Building Muscle

Basic Rules For Building Muscle

Published by on July 10, 2023 | Leave a response

Identifying your ultimate goal is one of the basic rules when you build muscles. It determines the type of exercise to use. You can train for strength, size, and endurance. While strength training exercises do build muscles, the focus is more on building strength, like weightlifters. People who want more bulk and build for size are often bodybuilders. They use a different amount of weight and number of repetitions from the ones used for building strength.

A great body starts in the kitchen, not in the gym.

You can’t get big muscles by consuming a poor diet. You’ll lack all the building blocks to create them. It’s one reason it’s so tricky to build muscle while you’re losing weight. Your diet should have between 20% and 33% of the calories from protein and the calories you consume should match your ultimate goal. If you want to build muscle and lose weight, you can’t reduce your calories too much. Approximately 20% of your calories should come from fat and the balance from carbs. The protein should be lean and high quality. Choosing fatty fish like salmon will provide some of the healthy fat required.

Maximize your workout but don’t overtrain.

Our personal trainers will create the program to help you reach your goal quickly. That doesn’t mean you should do strength training daily or work for long hours. Over-training can even diminish your progress. When you do strength training, the workout strains and damages the muscle fibers and causes micro tears. They adapt to the stress by increasing in size. If you workout every day it doesn’t allow the tears to heal. Working out too long or trying to lift weights that are too heavy may cause muscle strain that can put you out of commission for weeks and diminish your progress. Rest your muscles between 24 and 72 hours between strength workouts.

Pre and post workout snacks can improve your performance during exercise.

Consuming a snack that’s high in carbs and protein, like a peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat an hour before working out and soon after your workout should be part of your program. The carbohydrate provides the energy for the workout and the protein provides the muscle building blocks. Pre-and post-workout snacks can boost your energy so you get the most from your workout and improve recovery and muscle repair.

  • Compound movements—ones that use several muscles, tendons, and joints, and work several muscle groups at once—burn more calories and provide more muscle gain than doing several exercises for individual muscles.
  • Healthy fat not only provides energy and keeps you feeling fuller, but it also is necessary to produce certain hormones involved in muscle building. Sources of healthy fat include avocados, nuts, and fatty fish.
  • Sleep is important when you’re building muscles. It’s when your body heals. Make sure you get at least 8 hours a night and schedule it for the same time every night. Consistency counts when building muscles.
  • Consistency is the key to any training, but so is doing each exercise correctly. If you’re working out with us, our trainers will ensure you have the right movements. Doing an exercise wrong can minimize benefits and cause injury.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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Is Sugar Ruining Your Health?

Is Sugar Ruining Your Health?

Published by on June 25, 2023 | Leave a response

Every grocery in Sacramento carries food loaded with sugar. These foods may be ruining your health and the cause of many issues you might not think are related. Even if you don’t eat obvious sources of food with added sugar, like cake and cookies, it’s often hidden in food you might not suspect. Putting salad dressing on that healthy salad increases the added sugar to your diet. Many types of plant-based milk have added sugar. Bullion, broth, and stock may have sugar in them. Three out of four items on the grocery shelves have added sugar. It’s no wonder most Americans have health issues.

One of the most obvious problems of food with added sugar is obesity.

Obesity has reached epidemic levels. 41.9% of adults in the US are obese and 19.7% of all US children are obese. That’s 14.7 million people. Obesity increases the incidence of conditions like insulin resistance that leads to diabetes. It increases the risk of hypertension, which increases the risk of congestive heart disease, non-alcoholic liver disease, and kidney disease. The risk of other diseases increases in obese individuals. Stroke, gall bladder disease, osteoarthritis, breathing difficulties, some forms of cancer, joint issues, and body pain with limiting physical functioning increase in obese individuals. Food with added sugar accounts for much of the problem.

Sugar causes inflammation that leads to many conditions.

Inflammation is necessary for the body to survive. It’s part of the immune system. Acute inflammation prevents infection from occurring and fights off viral and bacterial diseases. When inflammation occurs over long periods, it becomes chronic. Chronic inflammation lasts weeks, months, and years. It can affect every part of the body. It can clog blood vessels, cause weight gain, fatigue, digestive issues, mood disorders, diabetes, heart disease, death, and dementia. Eating food that reduces inflammation, such as olive oil, green leafy vegetables, tomatoes, nuts, fruits, and fatty fish can reduce chronic inflammation, while foods containing added sugar increase it.

It’s all about the added sugar, not the naturally occurring sugar.

When you eat fruit, you’re consuming food with sugar, but it doesn’t have the same effect as eating a candy bar. There are differences in the way the sugar is presented. When you eat an apple, it contains water, nutrients, fiber, and phytonutrients. The sugar is in lower concentrations than food with added sugar and it enters the bloodstream slower because of the fiber in the apple. The rush of sugar into the bloodstream spikes blood glucose levels, which then causes large amounts of insulin to open the cells to receive the glucose. That mechanism breaks down when it occurs too often, causing insulin resistance and leading to a plethora of diseases, including diabetes.

  • Food with added sugar can lead to premature aging. The sugar in food links with protein, creating advanced glycation end products—-AGEs—which cause aging.
  • Studies show that a high salt diet can increase blood pressure, but a diet high in sugar can have the same effect. High blood pressure can lead to nerve damage to the eyes, vessel damage, kidney disease, and more.
  • Sugar is addictive. Not only does it provide the same emotional boost as drugs when it binds to the opioid receptors, but it also dulls your taste. The more sugar you eat, the more you need to get the same flavor and emotional boost.
  • Sugar changes the gut microbiome. It encourages the growth of microbes that are bad for good health and decreases ones that are good for health. It also causes an imbalance in microbes that affect mental health.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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