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Thursday November 20, 2008

As women age, fat is more likely to build around the midsection, rather than the hips and thighs. Too much belly fat can increase your risk for heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Fortunately, there are simple ways to fight belly fat. Besides, there's a growing body of research showing that the fastest way to burn off the fat from your belly is with a combination of weight-training and aerobic exercise. To learn more check out this week's on Belly Fat linked to early death- How to fight it.

Keep your weight training short and sweet. Training Workouts do not need to be long to be effective, in fact, if they are too long, they are counter-productive. The goal of weight training is to go into the gym and stimulate muscle growth, not to annihilate the muscles. By stimulating them with progressive overload, you are forcing them to respond and adapt to this progressive overload. Anything more is futile over training. Try to complete your workout in less than 45 minutes. This short time period will ensure you do not over do it, it will ensure intensity. It's much easier to focus for 30-45 minutes than it is an hour. The growth-assisting hormones secreted in your body actually peak after about 30 minutes of weight training and then begin to decline rapidly. So try to keep it quick and intense. No total body workout. Choose one or two muscle groups, train them well, and leave under 45 minutes.

What's Important to You? 

If someone asked you to name the most important things in your life, what would you list --your family, your faith, your health, your special friend, your integrity, your career? It is a question that very rarely gets asked of us by other people.

Yet, every day life asks that question. And every day we answer. The answer is not in words, but in action. The actions you take on a daily basis speak louder than any claims you might make as to the most important things in your life. The way you spend your time, the things to which you give your attention, and the areas to which you commit your resources, present a clear and undeniable picture of your true priorities.

Are your priorities what you think they are? Look at your actions. Look at your results. Look at the life you've built for yourself. Does your reality agree with your vision? Success and fulfillment come not from what we think would be nice, but from what we actually do, hour after hour, day after day.

Your life at this moment is an accurate representation of the things that have truly been important to you in the past, of whatever you have been committed to achieving. With that in mind, ask yourself --what's important to you now?

 

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"All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live." --Joseph Epstein

Stuffed Tomatoes with Feta and Pine Nuts

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup instant brown rice

• 1 Tbsp. pine nuts

• 4 large, ripe tomatoes

• 1 green bell pepper, seeded and minced

• 1/2 cup yellow squash, finely chopped

• 4 Tbsp. feta cheese, crumbled

• 1 tsp. minced dried onion (or onion flakes)

• 1 tsp. dried oregano

• 1 tsp. dried basil

• Salt to taste

• 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Direction:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat shallow baking pan with cooking spray. In small saucepan, bring 1 cup of water to boil. Add rice, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer 10 minutes, until liquid is absorbed.

• Meanwhile, in small skillet, toast pine nuts over medium heat for 2 minutes until golden brown, shaking pan frequently. Set aside. Slice off stem end (top) of tomatoes. Using a spoon, gently scoop out pulp. Finely chop pulp and place 1/3 cup of pulp in large bowl (discard any remaining pulp).

• Add rice to pulp along with toasted pine nuts, bell pepper, yellow squash, 2 tablespoons of feta, minced onion, oregano, basil, salt and black pepper. Mix well. Stuff rice mixture into tomato shells. Transfer tomatoes to pan and top with remaining feta cheese. Bake 20 minutes, until top is golden. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Nutritional Information: (per serving) 

• 149 calories 

• 4 g total fat (2 g saturated fat) 

• 24 g carbohydrates 

• 5 g protein 

• 4 g fiber 

• 126 mg sodium

Courtesy: AICR (American Institute for Cancer Research)

Belly Fat linked to early death - How to fight it

As women age, fat is more likely to build around the midsection, rather than the hips and thighs. Too much belly fat can increase your risk for heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Now an important new study links belly fat to early death. Researchers followed about 360,000 Europeans enrolled in one of the largest, longest health studies in the world. They found that people with the most belly fat had about double the risk of dying prematurely as people with the least amount of belly fat. Death risk increased with waist circumference, whether the participants were overweight or not.

Specifically:

• Men and women with the largest waists (more than 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women) had roughly double the risk of premature death as men and women with the smallest waists (less than 34 inches for men and 28 for women).

• Each 2-inch increase in waist circumference was associated with close to a 17% increase in mortality in men and a 13% increase in women.

• Waist-to-hip ratio also strongly predicted mortality.

The most important result of the study is the finding that not just being overweight, but also the distribution of body fat, affects the risk of premature death.

Since visceral fat is buried deep in your abdomen, it may seem like a difficult target for spot reduction. As it turns out, visceral fat responds well to a regular exercise routine and a healthy diet. Fortunately, there are simple ways to fight belly fat. Besides, there's a growing body of research showing that the fastest way to burn off the fat from your belly is with a combination of weight-training and aerobic exercise.

 

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