5 More Quick Ways To Reduce Cancer Risk

Cancer is largely predictable, the end result of a decades-long process, but just a few simple changes in your daily life can significantly reduce your risk.  To follow up last week's post, here are five MORE ways to reduce cancer risk:

• Work broccoli into your PPT meal plan, but steam it rather than microwaving it. Broccoli is a cancer-preventing superfood, one you should eat daily. But take note of this: A Spanish study found that microwaving broccoli destroys 97 percent of the vegetable’s cancer-protective flavonoids. So, we recommend that you steam it or eat it raw.  (By the way, broccoli's protein-to-carb ratio works very well into a healthy PPT meal plan.)
• Supplement with vitamin D.  More and more, vitamin D has demonstrated to have strong anti-cancer qualities.  If you're not spending at least 20 minutes per day getting sunlight, then you'll need more vitamin D supplementation than most.  Contact Perfect Personal Training to establish the right amount of supplementation for you.
• Indulge in cantaloupe.  Cantaloupe is a great source of carotenoids, which are plant chemicals shown to significantly reduce the risk of cancer.  These are carbohydrates that should replace simple sugars in your current meal plan.
• Every time you go to the bathroom, stop by the kitchen or water cooler for a glass of water. A major study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1996 found that men who drank six 8-ounce glasses of water daily cut risk of bladder cancer y 50%. Another study linked the amount of water women drank to their risk of colon cancer, showing heavy water drinkers reducing their risk up to 45 percent!  Why aren't you drinking more water?
•  Take a multivitamin every morning. Many studies suggest getting the ideal levels of vitamins and minerals improve the immune system and help prevent a variety of cancers.

Add these ideas to your daily regimen for reduced risk, and please feel welcome to comment or call PPT at (877)698-3648 for a more personalized anti-cancer protocol for you and your family.

Top 5 Things You've Got To Know for Fat Loss

If you're going to effectively lose excess bodyfat, then you've got to have a Caloric Deficit Plan!  Otherwise, you're throwing darts, blindfolded.  It's all a crapshoot if you don't know what you're up against or how your efforts will measure up against it!

#5.  Remember this:  1 lb = 3500 calories.  Burning one pound of bodyfat means creating a caloric deficit of roughly 3500 calories.  These calories can be expended through movement, through consuming fewer calories of food and drink, and through raising your metabolism. 

#4.  While a Perfect Personal Trainer can better personalize these numbers, you can usually assume an approximate caloric loss of...
4 or 5 calories per minute of light aerobic or circuit training exercise
8 - 10 calories burned per minute of moderate aerobic or circuit exercise
13 - 17 calories per minute of intense aerobic or circuit exercise

#3.  It is usually safe for those who weight over 180 lbs to consume as few as 1500 calories per day.  Those between 120 and 180 lbs can usually consume as low as 1350 calories per day without negative repercussion.  For those under 120 pounds, it is often safe to consume as few as 1200 calories per day.  Get to know the calories you're taking in so you can insure your weight loss success.

#2.  Don't rely on bodyweight exercises when they're not in your best interest!
For example, pushups can be an excellent exercise for many. But, this exercise is usually not ideal for those who can safely perform more than 30 pushups at a time, or for those who experience back pain, or wrist or shoulder problems during or after this exercise.  When you're selecting your exercises, choose the ones that are most appropriate and the best use of your time -- not just what's convenient.

#1.  Find out what your body composition is!  You see, much of your body weight will come from bone density, muscle tissue, body water, or other healthy, normal fat-free weight.  Therefore, it doesn't make sense to assume that losing weight is always good or that gaining weight is always bad.  Let a Perfect Personal Trainer assess your body composition (fat percentage) so that you can plan for roughly 1% of body composition loss weekly until you're in a healthy, safe range.
There is a LOT to discuss here, everyone, so please feel free to post comments or call us at (877)698-3648.  We're always here to help you achieve preventive health, your fitness goals, a greater self-confidence, and your lifelong dreams!

2011 Fitness & Wellness Resolutions -- Three Reasons Why You're Not Noticing Your Health Successes

It's now been over five weeks since your New Year's resolution began.  Surely, you're checking up regularly on your progress, eager to see if your efforts are paying out as you'd hoped.

If you're amongst those that feel that you're not living up to your potential, or if you think that you "just can't" seem to get at fit as you'd like, then here are some possible explanations for why you're actually being more successful than you think:

(1) First, if you're still measuring success solely by what the scale tells you, then you're probably misleading yourself.  If your exercise, diet, and overall lifestyle changed have led you to burn 5 pounds of bodyfat, and also led to a 5 pound gain in bone density, water, and/or lean muscle, then obviously, your weight will be what it was before you began.  THIS IS NOT A BAD THING!  Gaining muscle and bone density is incredibly good, and will prevent future injuries while improving metabolism.  Losing fat, is of course, very desirable for most of us.  For this reason, you can't let the scale be your "be all / end all" when it comes to assessing your progress, because your actual weight is not an indicator of fat loss or improved fitness.

(2) Secondly, if you're judging your fat loss by how well your clothes fit, then understand that this is not always an accurate way to figure things out.  You don't burn body fat in all the right places at all the right times.  For example, you may lose 5 pounds of unwanted body fat, but it may not come from your belly or your butt right away.  In fact, these are sometimes the last places that body really loses its fat, while the calves, back, and legs show faster reductions in fat tissue.  So, if your pants are just as tight as they used to be, there is still plenty of hope: The fat in that area may not come off until later in your exercise regimen.  And, those other areas are gaining lots of muscle, too, meaning that your circumference measurements and the way your clothes will fit may not be much of a noticeable change.

(3) And, finally, there is one more big bad barrier to truly assessing your own health and fitness successes:  Your own psychology.  Some days, we just feel better or worse about ourselves than we do on other days, and those unsightly body parts tend to flow with our feelings, causing us to think that our fitness levels are changing in ways that they are not.  This also ties in with the feedback that we get from people, affecting the way that we perceive ourselves.

So, how do we truly assess our health and physical fitness variables?  The biggest recommendation is to regularly have a Perfect Personal Trainer assess your body composition -- your ratio of fat weight to non-fat weight.  Even if you're not a regular client of ours, Perfect Personal Trainers can come to your home and check this figure to compare to your past scores.  This will help you to understand what lifestyle changes are burning fat and which aren't, and how your body is changing (or not changing) as you move forward with your exercise and nutrition.  We also recommend having flexibility tests for major articulations, and strength/endurance tests.  Again, Perfect Personal Training has top exercise scientists and instructors that are eager to implement these exams with you, and explain how the results can impact your life during the aging process.  We'll compare the results with ACSM norms, using health industry guidelines to assess risk for joint degeneration, metabolic factors, and risk for cardiovascular diseases and interventions.  This way, you'll gain the "bigger picture" relating to where your health and fitness really stand.

Enjoy your weekend!