Lifestyle

1. Submitted: Thursday, May 23 2013

   Avoid the Mistake of Overtraining - Benefits of Using a Heart Rate Monitor

   Have you ever found yourself in this situation, you are working out six days a week, occasionally twice a day and despite all your efforts you are not experiencing the results you want? Anyone's knee jerk reaction is to hit the gym harder and to bring down the calorie count even further, but the culprit behind a stubborn stall in fat loss and plummeting gains in muscle size and strength is overtraining. Overtraining is defined by the National Academy of Science and Medicine as “an accumulation of training and/or non-training stress resulting in long-term decrease in performance capacity...

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2. Submitted: Tuesday, May 07 2013

   Perfecting the Smoothie

   Smoothies are one of the easiest ways to provide controlled calories on a restricted calorie diet. It’s possible that a smoothie made only of fruit and juice may taste great but may not be considered nutritionally balanced. By adding quality protein and healthy fat, you can blend a nutritionally balanced meal replacement. Learning how to prepare a balanced smoothie as a meal replacement can help you achieve your weight loss goals and healthy eating habits for a lifetime. By combining the 40-30-30 ratio of carbohydrates, protein and fat, you can help stabilize blood sugar to stimulate fat...

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3. Submitted: Thursday, April 11 2013

   Keeping a Nutrition & Exercise Journal

   When you’re looking for a powerful tool you can use to plan, track and evaluate your diet, weight loss and exercise to achieve your goals, try using a Nutrition and Exercise Journal. Keeping a food journal encourages you to eat healthier through dietary accountability and awareness. Simply logging your daily consumption can help you identify triggers that cause you to overeat, see where you can make improvements and more easily identify hidden calories. By tracking your food choices, you can become more aware of the balance of what you eat and begin to discover a powerful tool to help break...

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4. Submitted: Thursday, April 11 2013

   Spring Eating

   Now that the harsh winter weather is behind us, we may feel the need to drop a few pounds or just refocus on eating healthier. But when it’s still cold outside, a plate of salad greens may not be as appealing to our palates as it was in August. How do we get our fill of fruit and vegetables when the temperature’s still cold and all we crave are carbs? One easy way to get greens is with hearty soups. Start with a stock and add seasonal greens like kale or spinach and then layer with legumes or beans to give a protein boost and filling fiber. Soup can be made quickly with frozen vegetables...

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5. Submitted: Wednesday, April 03 2013

   Healthy Foods for Skin Care

   Chilly weather in the early spring months can leave you with extra dry, chapped and even cracked skin and lips. As the temperatures in the winter-spring transition are colder, it’s even more important to focus on proper hydration and diet to maintain a healthy balance of water and nutrients for healthy skin cells. As we age, our bodies experience a natural loss of collagen, elastin and water in our cells. But environmental aging from harsh weather and dry indoor heat can be reduced or prevented with corrective care. Dry skin requires more than just lotion to stay young and healthy. Sun block...

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6. Submitted: Monday, March 25 2013

   Top 5 Energy-Boosting Tips

   At the start of this year, I was at a healthy weight, but some days my energy levels did not reflect my fitness levels. I decided to focus on eating and how it affects my energy levels. Energize through nourishment One of the big topics in nutrition is clean eating. Clean eating is a nutrient-dense diet of animal and plant-based whole foods that deliver a balance of quality protein, healthy fats and complex, fiber-rich carbohydrates. Today, so much of the food that is consumed is highly processed. Whole foods are foods in their natural state, before any processing. A great way to think about food...

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7. Submitted: Tuesday, March 05 2013

   The Healthy Benefits of Dark Chocolate

   It may seem too good to be true, but studies continue to show that dark chocolate, in moderation, is good for you. This popular treat has some pretty impressive chemistry that provides powerful health benefits for your heart, mood and skin. Dark chocolate contains healthy antioxidant compounds called flavonoids that may help fight aging and prevent disease. Antioxidants protect our cells from harmful free radicals as well as relax blood vessels, help lower blood pressure and reduce LDL cholesterol. Flavonoids also help keep platelets less sticky which helps decrease the risk of heart attack or...

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8. Submitted: Tuesday, March 05 2013

   Quickie Tips for Balancing Daylight Savings Time

   On March 10, Americans will set their clocks forward and gain an extra hour of daylight. With extra daylight comes the opportunity to do even more withalready jam-packed days. Before you stress out, take the time to read how you can make that extra hour of daylight really count with these tips for balance from lifestyle expert, Laurel House, The Quickie Chick . Do THIS First You don’t want that extra hour to cause your entire day to be in a daze. Counteract the fact that the average person loses 40 minutes of sleep the first night of daylight savings time by eating energizing foods that will...

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9. Submitted: Friday, March 01 2013

   Caffeine Without the Calories: Have a Healthier Morning Pick-Me-Up

   Many people fall into the trap of grabbing a sugary, hot beverage daily. But research is confirming that weight gain from sugar-filled liquid calories can be even greater than calories from solid food. A daily high-carbohydrate beverage can easily add 400 to 500 more calories per day. High-carbohydrate drinks can quickly spike blood sugar and stimulate the release of insulin to lower it. Insulin converts the excess glucose into glycogen, lowering blood sugar by storing it in your liver and muscle cells. But relatively small amounts of glycogen can also be stored and converted into fat. Even if...

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10. Submitted: Thursday, February 14 2013

    The Resolution Guru Weighs In: Amber Rosenberg Answers Your Health Questions

    Our grand prize has been awarded, but thanks to our Resolution Guru everyone can be a winner in the Balance Bar® “Outlast Your New Year’s Resolution” Giveaway. Amber Rosenberg took over our Twitter feed earlier this month, offering tips and tricks to help our fans stick to their goals in 2013. So while you may not have won the personal consultation with this health and wellness expert, you can still benefit from her advice. Read on for a recap of her Q and A session, and get motivated to stay healthy all year long. (And if you’d like to be notified of our next TwitterChat...

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