Letter from the Founder
Aahh...
Spring is in the air - It's a beautiful time of year...the days become
longer, the air smells cleaner, the sky is bluer and our earth is
getting ready to harvest!
The draw back is...it's tax season,
allergies are out of control and since we're not in school anymore,
Spring Break means nothing as it once did. It's now March where did
time go...wasn't it just Christmas?? The good news is that you can
still rescue your New Year's resolution by getting back to boot camp
and get pumped for summer! There's nothing better this time of year
than to smell the fresh air and to see the sun rise or set. Don't
miss out. And that's an order!
- Linda Taix
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Spring tips for the lovebirds
Stumped on healthy activities for you and your loved one? Here's some advice from Jill:
Hello!
Ever since Valentine's Day, my clients have been telling me their
creative ideas for non-fattening ways to enjoy an evening out!
The customary "stuff and sit" outings--where you overeat and then
let it all turn to fat as you watch a show--may be fun, but they
lead to regret on Monday morning. Here are 10 healthy date night
ideas that people shared with me:
- Go dancing or take dance lessons
- Take a hike in the woods
- Have a healthy picnic and play frisbee
- Get spa treatments together
- Have a Shabu Shabu or broth fondue dinner at home or at your favorite restaurant
- Go ice skating, rollerblading or roller skating
- Play miniature golf.
- Take a yoga or pilates class.
- Enjoy a messy meal pulling fresh crab or lobster out of its
shell (no butter sauce!) - For the truly adventurous...take trapeze lessons! There is a
circus school in Hollywood where anybody can learn
Consider making these part of your weekend routine and please
share your favorite healthy activities that I failed to mention!
All my best!
Jill Brook, M.A.
Diet for Health
1047 Foothill Blvd.
La Canada, CA 91011
(818) 952-0668
www.DietforHealth.com
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Gain a spouse and you'll likely gain some pounds too.
By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY Young adults might want to change their wedding vows to say they are taking each other "for better or girth."
Many married and single people in their late
teens and early 20s gain a significant amount of weight - an average of
15 to 30 pounds - over five years. But newly married men and women in
that age group gain 6 to 9 pounds more than their peers who are single
and dating.
These are among the findings of a study released
Monday at the annual meeting of the Obesity Society, a group of
weight-loss scientists and professionals.
The study confirms other research that shows
young adults are especially vulnerable to putting on pounds, and
gaining weight is socially contagious.
"The weight gain in this age group is
frightening," says Penny Gordon-Larsen, an assistant professor of
nutrition in the school of public health at the University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill.
She has done other research on that age group
and found that the number of people who become obese - 30 or more
pounds over a healthy weight - increases significantly from the teens
to young adulthood.
Gordon-Larsen and her colleagues followed almost
8,000 people, ages 12 to 28, over five years and a subsample of 1,200
couples. Among their findings:
·Women in their teens and early 20s who
continued to date but didn't cohabitate gained an average of 15 pounds
over five years; their male counterparts added about 24 pounds.
·Newly married women in that age group packed on 24 pounds in five years; newly married men gained 30 pounds.
That degree of gain wasn't seen in couples who
were living together but not married. Women gained 3 pounds more than
their single peers - 18 pounds - and men gained 24 pounds.
"When people are dating, there may be more incentive to be thin," Gordon-Larsen says.
Single young adults tend to be the most active,
watch the least amount of TV and are the least likely to be obese, says
Natalie The, a researcher at the University of North Carolina.
She says many factors probably contribute to
couples' weight, including having children, post-pregnancy pounds,
having less time to exercise and eating out more or cooking bigger
meals.
A study released this summer showed that one
person's obesity can significantly increase the chance that his or her
friends, siblings and spouse also will become heavy, and if a person
slims down, the people around him or her also may lose weight.
"Ideally, we'd like to shift the influence
couples can have on each other to positive behaviors, so they can
support each other to get to a healthy weight and maintain it,"
Gordon-Larsen says. |
With Faux Sugars, Real Suspicion
From the Los Angeles Times Health Section By Emily Sohn, Special to the Times
WHAT is it about artificial sweeteners?
As never before, they pervade the American diet -- in pink, yellow and
blue packets on diner counters, in sugar-free cookies and diet juices,
in sodas and smoothies and low-calorie yogurt and boxes of powder for
baking. And, as ever, many Americans view them with suspicion.
Every few years, a study links one to cancer. People get scared.
Follow-up research finds nothing to worry about. Decades may pass, but
sooner or later another scary study comes along. And still, we keep
eating these faux sugars.
Today, nearly 200 million Americans consume sugar-free or low-calorie
products, according to the Calorie Control Council, a group that
represents the diet food industry. About half of those people consume
an average of four of these products every day.
That we're consuming artificial sweeteners is clear. Whether we'll
ever do so with total ease is not. Suspicions about the safety of
man-made sweeteners started soon after saccharin was invented more than
a century ago. Studies, later disputed, led to warning labels on one
sweetening product, the banning of another, intermittent mistrust of
others.
The most recent volley in the sweetener wars came from researchers in
Italy who say aspartame causes cancer in rats. Similar fears have been
levied about newer sweeteners, including sucralose, commonly known as
Splenda.
Supporters and critics of the substances each criticize the
methods and motives of the other side. Many food chemists say it is
impossible for people to eat or drink enough of any man-made sweetener
to cause health problems. Sweetener skeptics, on the other hand, say that safety studies are
often funded with industry dollars and there aren't enough data to be
sure about the safety of most artificial sweeteners.
Behind the seemingly endless cycles of debate, there may be something
cultural at work in the way we think about what we eat, says USC
sociologist Barry Glassner, author of "The Gospel of Food," which urges
people to abandon food fads in favor of calmer attitudes toward eating.
A few generations ago, Glassner says, people looked to science and
technology as salvation -- it was the time of Kool-Aid, Tupperware and
pasteurized processed cheese. Today, he says, there's an increasing emphasis on "natural," a view
that demonizes anything in our food that comes out of labs. Instead of
electric colors and chemical flavors, increasingly our culture worships
whole grains, organic greens and local produce.
In line with this cultural shift, some people are turning to a new crop
of sweeteners based on "natural" ingredients, such as stevia, a
calorie-free herb from South and Central America. Already popular in
Asia, stevia is now available in the U.S. in natural food stores (U.S.
food companies can't yet include it in their products), and sales of it
rose 19% in the last year, according to SPINS, a natural-products
market research firm.
Each sweetening product uses a different type of molecule (or blend of
them) to trick the tongue into thinking it's tasting something sweet.
Thanks to the substances' chemistry, it takes only a tiny amount of
each to trigger the same taste receptors that recognize sugar
molecules. That makes them hundreds and in some cases tens of thousands
of times sweeter than the real stuff. (A can of Coke, for example,
contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar, while a can of diet Coke contains
less than a tenth of a teaspoon of aspartame.)
Because artificial sweeteners work in such small quantities, they add
virtually no calories to a drink or food. Some, in fact, aren't even
digested by the body. And, unlike sugar, none raise insulin or glucose
levels, making them popular with diabetics.
For more about each of the artificial sweetener types and their history: See the full article at the LA Times website
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Tips for Drinking More Water 
So,
you've started Boot Camp, and your Drill Instructors keep telling you
that you need to drink more water and you can't possibly see a way to
do it. Well, here's a few quick tips to help you stay hydrated!
(Remember,
to find out the amount of water you should be drinking, take your
body weight and multiply it by .55, that's at least how many ounces you
need to be drinking!)
- Carry water with you everywhere you go in a bottle or other
container. Before long, you'll find yourself reaching for it
without a second thought.
- Keep a glass or cup of water next to you whenever you'll be
sitting down for a long time, such as when you're at your desk at
work. Drink from it regularly as you're working.
- Try wearing a digital watch that beeps at the beginning of each
hour. Use that as a reminder to pour yourself a glass of water. Vow
to drink that water before the next beep. If you drink only one
small (6 ounce or 180 ml) cup per hour, you'll have consumed
48 ounces (1.4 l) by the end of an 8-hour workday.
- Get a water purification system. Purified water tastes very good and may help
make drinking water more appealing to you. Be aware, though, that
as you grow accustomed to purified water, you may find that tap
water leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
- Add lemons or limes to your water, it makes it taste better and
makes you want to drink more of it. Be careful not to make it too
sour, just a splash of sourness should do the trick. Some mint
leaves can be added to a pitcher of water which should be allowed
to play sit overnight. These are cheap alternatives to the bottled
flavoured water.
- Drinking a full glass of water first thing in the morning helps
wake the body up. So kick-start your day with water!
- How
many times have you mindlessly sipped a drink through a straw, not
realizing you were finished until you heard that obnoxious slurping
sound? Keep a package of drinking straws at the ready, or get hold of a
fun mug with a straw built into the lid. You will be amazed at how easy
it is to get those water ounces in once you're sipping away.
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Announcements
Extreme Boot Camp is proud to announce
several more locations that are coming soon to serve you! Keep checking
the website for more information on the following locations:
West Los Angeles
Rancho Cucamonga
Chino Hills
Laguna Niguel
Downtown L.A.
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We've won Best of the Best ...again!
Check out this Month's Boulevard magazine for more info!
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Experts page coming soon!
We're
very pleased to announce that we will be adding a new section to our
websites featuring the Experts that have partnered up with Extreme Boot
Camp to serve YOU better!
You should already be familiar with Jill Brook, our nutritionist (she wrote the nutrition section of the new Mess Logs!)
However,
we also will be featuring Andre van Commenee, P.T, a physical therapist
who, along with his team, will be offering tips and advice. Andre's
team works with such notable groups as...The Los Angeles Lakers, The
Los Angeles Kings, and various Olympians!
Keep checking the website, the page will be up soon!
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Your Brain on Exercise
By Gabrielle deGroot Redford from AARP Magazine
How breaking a sweat can make you smarter
We
all know that exercise is good for the body. Now, scientists are
discovering it's good for the brain as well. In recent years
researchers have found that exercise improves memory, concentration,
and abstract reasoning among older adults, and may even delay the onset
of Alzheimer's. It works like this: aerobic exercise increases blood
flow to the brain, which nourishes brain cells and allows them to
function more effectively - "kind of like making sure your engine is
all turned up," says Waneen Spirduso, Ed.D., a professor at the
University of Texas at Austin and the author of Exercise and Its
Mediating Effects on Cognition (Human Kinetics, 2007). A recent
study showed that exercise actually promotes the growth of new neurons
(brain cells) in the hippocampus - the part of the brain that controls
memory and learning. Scientists previously believed that once brain
cells died, they were not replaced. "You can get cognitive benefits with activity that is fairly simple, like walking for 20 minutes a day," says Spirduso. ________________________ |
Featured Recipe from
Chef Gail Connell of Gourmet a go go
Here is an easy yummy dish that is low in fat and calories.
Creole Shrimp
Serves 4
1 onion - chopped
1/2 red bell pepper - chopped
1/2 green bell pepper - chopped
1 celery rib - chopped
1 garlic clove - chopped
2 cups non fat marinara sauce
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 tsp Worchester sauce
1 jalapeño - diced small (or 1 tsp hot sauce)
2 strips cooked turkey bacon - diced
1 pound peeled and deveined shrimp
Pam Spray
Spray
Pam in large skillet over medium/ low heat. Add onion, peppers,
celery, and cook for five minutes until soft - cover the pan and lower
the heat if needed to avoid sticking or burning. Add garlic and
cook another minute. Add marinara, tomato paste, Worchester,
jalapeño and turkey bacon. Cook over medium/low heat for 20
minutes. Add shrimp and cook for 8 minutes until shrimp is
cooked. Serve hot as is or over 1/2 cup brown rice.
Nutrition Info per serving:
185 calories, 3 grams fat, 26 grams protein, 12 grams carbohydrate, 3 grams fiber
With brown rice:
Add 108 calories, 1 gram fat, 22 gram carbohydrates, 1.75 gram fiber
Gail Connell
Gourmet a go go
2263 Honolulu Ave
Montrose, CA 91020
(818) 248-2100
gail@gourmetagogoonline.com
www.gourmetagogoonline.com
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Stressed spelled backwards is Desserts!
Foods to Calm
you Down Fast
Everyone
gets stressed out once in a while, here's some tips from Dr. Mehmet Oz
(From his RealAge website) that'll help calm you down, as well as keep
you from having to do extra pushups!
· Berries, any berries. Eat them one by one instead of
M&Ms when the pressure's on. For those tough times when tension
tightens your jaw, try rolling a frozen berry around in your mouth. And
then another, and another. Since the carbs in berries turn to sugar
very slowly, you won't have a blood-sugar crash. The bonus: They're a
good source of vitamin C, which helps fight a jump in cortisol, a
stress hormone.
· Guacamole. If you're craving
something creamy, look no further. Avocados are loaded with B vitamins,
which stress quickly depletes and which your body needs in order to
maintain nerves and brain cells. Plus, their creaminess comes from
healthy fat. Scoop up the stuff with whole-grain baked chips --
crunching keeps you from gritting your teeth.
· Mixed nuts.
Just an ounce will do. Walnuts help replace those stress-depleted B
vitamins, Brazil nuts give you a whopping amount of zinc (which is also
drained by high anxiety), and almonds boost your E, which helps fight
cellular damage linked to chronic stress. Buy nuts in the shell and
think of it as multitasking: With every squeeze of the nutcracker,
you're releasing a little tension.
· Oranges.
People who take 1,000 milligrams of C before giving a speech have lower
levels of cortisol and lower blood pressures than those who don't. So
lean back, take a deep breath, and concentrate on peeling a large
orange. The 5-minute mindfulness break will ease your mind, and you'll
get a bunch of C as well.
· Asparagus. Each
tender stalk is a source of folic acid, a natural mood lightener. Dip
the spears in fat-free yogurt or sour cream for a hit of calcium with
each bite.
· Chai tea. A warm drink is a
supersoother, and curling up with a cup of aromatic decaf chai tea
(Tazo makes ready-to-brew bags) can make the whole evil day go away.
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GET SPOTTED!
REMEMBER EVERYONE..
If
you are seen by a Drill Instructor wearing your Extreme Boot Camp
t-shirt (outside of boot camp, and not right after it either, of
course), you will receive $50 off your next session!
(You must be at least 1 mile away from camp)
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