What's Up Doc Watson?

Every year I try to make an effort when the new year starts to effect a change in my life that will make my life and the lives of those around me better.  Most people, when the new year rolls around, want to either lose weight or get out of debt.  In this economy more people have lost their jobs, lost their homes and are living on credit or worse, homeless.  They are under tremendous stress.

When a body is under stress among the many chemicals the body secretes is a hormone called cortisol.  If the stress becomes chronic an excess of this hormone is circulating in the system which may lead to the development of abdominal fat.  There are a number of things a person can do to reduce the amount of stress they feel.

Take a warm bath with essential oil of lavender or sandalwood.  This can help relax you.  Do deep breathing (belly breathing) and concentrate on your breath.  This helps lower blood pressure and calm your mind.  Some nutritional supplements that can help are the amino acid from green tea, Theanine, and the wonderful phospholipid, Phosphatidylserine.  Both of these supplements help to reduce cortisol in the body.  Another supplement that can help calm you is GABA, Gamma-aminobutyric acid. This works similar to Xanax without the side effects.

These are just a few ways you can lower the cortisol levels in the body.  If you are one of the many tens of thousands that are wanting to lose weight make sure you are reducing your stressors so your weight loss efforts succeed.

Check out this website, North American Power, if you are interested in finding a way to supplement your income.  Finding a way to make extra money could go a long way to alleviating the stress you might be experiencing.

If you’re like me, work is sedentary without much chance for exercise.  After a long day on the job you still have dinner and chores to do at home.  If you’re really like me, you love to eat but you don’t love going to the gym.  Keep in mind that you do need to eat some calories to keep your body working.  But…chances are you are eating more than your body needs to maintain your ideal weight.  That’s why you are gaining weight every year.

Imagine if you ate just 50 extra calories more than you needed to maintain your ideal weight every day for ten years .  We can figure it out and the answer is you will have gained about 50 pounds.  That’s right!  It doesn’t seem possible but numbers don’t lie.  3500 calories = one pound.  You do the math.

I told you so.  Anyway, image if you could find an exercise that you liked to do and you did it everyday, about 20 minutes worth.  It would get your heart rate up so you would start burning fat.  If you did it in the morning before work you would burn more calories even after you stopped the exercising, at least for a while.

A side benefit of exercise is it helps de-stress you so you lower a hormone in your body called cortisol which increases when you are under stress. And who isn’t under stress these days.  It also causes our bodies to deposit fat in our mid-section.  That’s why, when we get older we develop a tummy.

We’re not in the New Year yet but how about starting an exercise program today that you can live with and maybe you’ll get to your ideal weight before you know it.  Or at least not gain anymore weight from now on.  They say if you can keep up an activity for 21 days it will become a habit.  Let’s get in the habit of doing some exercise everyday.  Your life may depend on it.