Fitness/Physical Health

The Body’s Two Brains

The connection between your brain and the “second brain” in your digestive tract is something you’ve probably experienced in the form of a “gut reaction.” You know the feeling when you get some bad news or have a difficult conversation with someone. Your gut tells you exactly how you’re feeling. When stress or anxiety strikes, your brain sends a signal to your gut – and the next thing you know, you’ve got a churning stomach.

The signals travel in the other direction, too: from gut to brain. This system alerts the “first brain” if you’ve eaten something you shouldn’t have, and also keeps tabs on your hunger level and your mood. When something in your digestive system isn’t quite right, an alert is sent to your brain – often before you even notice that anything is wrong.

Your Gut and Your Mood

It’s clear that certain emotions can trigger a digestive response, but there is also speculation that the reverse may also be true – conditions in your gut may influence how you feel.

According to Scientific American, recent evidence indicates that not only is our brain “aware” of our gut microbes, but these bacteria can influence our perception of the world and alter our behavior.

There is no question that your brain and gut are well connected – so it makes sense that keeping your digestive system in tip-top shape is vital to your sense of well-being.

How to Improve Your Digestive Health

The steps you take to keep yourself healthy are the same ones that promote digestive health, too. Here are some tips to get started:

Include plenty of fiber from colorful fruits and vegetables and whole grains in your diet. Fibers help promote regularity (which could affect your mood!), and certain fibers also promote the growth of the “good” bacteria in your microbiome.
Stay adequately hydrated throughout the day.
Make sure to eat a source of probiotics Fermented foods, such as yogurt, pickled vegetables, and tempeh, provide natural probiotics that support immune health by crowding out other bacteria that can potentially make you sick.
Make regular exercise a part of your routine

By Corey White (my personal trainer)

The Wellness Playbook

Herbalife Distributor Overview

We recommend a daily shake!

It has benefits!

Count your calories accurately. Keeping track of your daily calorie intake is an important key to weight management. But its’s not easy to do; most people underestimate their calorie intake by 20% or so. Part of what makes calorie counting difficult is that it requires you to accurately weigh and measure everything you eat. Plus, you need to account for all the little details, like how the food is prepared or what condiments you eat with it. The beauty of protein shakes is that they’re usually made up of just a few ingredients that are easy to measure. That allows you to get an accurate calorie count of the finished shake.

Include more fruits and vegetables in your diet. Customizing your protein shake by adding fruits and vegetables allows
for almost endless variety—and you can easily add a serving or two to your shake. To make this quick and convenient, keep
a variety of frozen fruits on hand in your freezer. And try adding veggies such as fresh or frozen spinach, carrots, kale or
winter squash to your shake.

Establish regular mealtimes. Many people have erratic eating patterns because they just don’t make time to plan and prepare what they’re going to eat. As a result, they may end up skipping meals or snacking more. There are few things that are easier to prepare than a protein shake. When you’ve got your protein powder, your liquid “mixer” and maybe some fruits or vegetables to add, you’ve got balanced nutrition in a glass in minutes—and no excuse for skipping meals. Control portion size at meals. A protein shake is naturally portion-controlled, which can help you in a couple of ways. First, when you use your protein shake as a meal, your portion is defined for you. Having a protein shake at one meal might also help you control your portion size at your next meal, too. Also, if your shake is nutritionally balanced and provides protein and carbohydrates to keep you satisfied from one meal to the next, you won’t be famished when you do sit down to eat. And that can make it much easier for you to control how much food you put on your plate.

Meet nutritional needs. No matter how careful you are with your food choices, it isn’t always easy to make sure you get all the nutrients your body needs every day. A protein shake made with milk or soy milk and the addition of a fruit or vegetable can help you meet your needs for several nutrients, including protein, calcium, vitamin D and fiber. And many protein shake mixes have vitamins and minerals added, which boosts nutrition even more.

Eat better, even on the run. When you’re on the run and hunger strikes, you might be tempted to dart into your local fast food place for quick satisfaction. But it can be challenging to find a healthy, balanced meal when you’re on the go. If you let yourself get too hungry, you’ll probably just grab the first thing you can—which may not be the healthiest thing. The fact that protein shakes are portable is a huge plus. Once your shake is blended, it’s ready to go.

Eating well, exercising, and avoiding harmful substances are healthy habits that make sense, but have you
ever thought about why you practice them? A healthy habit is any behavior that benefits your physical,
mental, and emotional health. These habits make us feel good and improve our overall well-being.
Healthy habits take time to develop and often require changing your mindset. If you’re willing to make
sacrifices to better your health, the impact can be far-reaching, regardless of your age, sex, or physical
ability. Multiple benefits of a healthy lifestyle include…

Living a healthy lifestyle can be a challenge when you are faced with processed foods, lack of time for
exercise and going out with friends. There are many options available for fast food and when combined
with poor exercise choices they can negate other healthier lifestyle choices. Bad habits require effort to
break, but once you adopt a healthier lifestyle you won’t regret the decision. Healthy habits reduce the risk
of certain diseases, improve your physical appearance and mental health, and give your energy level a
much needed boost. You won’t change your mindset and behavior overnight, but making the decision is
step one. Ready for step two? Let’s keep going…

Imagine this…You’re a few days into your nutrition plan and you’ve completely
changed your lifestyle. You’re more active, drinking shakes and tea, taking your
vitamins. But you feel lousy. In fact, you feel worse now than before.

What’s the deal?

Get this! Think of your fat cells as tiny sponges. These sponges love to soak up everything they
can and store it for later use. Vitamins? Yup! Fats? Yes! Hormones? Definitely! Random pollutants
and toxins? Unfortunately. Throughout our lives we have a constant number of fat cells. They are
never eliminated but instead grow and shrink in size. When you lose weight, your fat cells begin
to shrink and as a result whatever was stored inside of them is released into the blood stream.
Pollutants are temporarily stored inside our fat cells to prevent them from circulating in our
blood stream and having harmful effects on our organs. These pollutants come from our
environment as well as from our food, particularly those on the dirty dozen list. Our bodies do
not store enough of these pollutants to become toxic, but after constant build up, they begin to
re-emerge upon weight loss. As we are burning fat, we are releasing toxins into our bodies. Don’t
worry, we are eventually eliminating them through natural detoxification processes, such as
through our pee. As these toxins are now circulating through our bloodstream, awaiting the
detox process of elimination, we begin to feel pretty lousy.

The problem is not the diet you go on, it’s the speed at which your lifestyle has changed
combined with the lack of understanding around what's going on. Your healthy active lifestyle is
not causing you to be sick, though a lot of the symptoms would indicate this! What's happening is
you have reduced your toxin load from the body (you're not following your old diet), while
increasing activity and blood flow. When you begin your new lifestyle, all is well in the first few
weeks, and then guess what happens? Your health slowly starts to improve, your incoming toxin
load is reduced, so the body can start clearing out the toxins stored in body fat. These stored
toxins are now released back into the body to be processed. But this triggers the same health
problems as if the toxins have just been ingested. Of course this causes confusion and frustration
for you, someone who has only just started their health crusade.

Those who are not aware of this process may eventually give up as they simply don't understand
why they feel worse on their healthy diet than they did on their old junk food diet! If they knew
this was happening maybe they would have continued on their journey. There may be times in the
beginning stages that you feel yucky, but keep pressing forward. Trust the process!!