Health and Wellness

  Introduction Isn't it amazing - and so frustrating! - how easy it is to gain weight? Our bodies are like magnets that seem to attract and pile up excess pounds as soon as our guard is down. All it takes is a couple of rich desserts, a few weeks on vacation or the Christmas holidays…bam! Our waistline has expanded in proportion to our indulgences. Conversely, losing weight can be a grueling struggle. For some people, staying fit and maintaining a healthy weight is an unending cycle of diets, weight loss schemes and exercise programs. However, everybody who has struggled to lose weight will unanimously agree on one thing: the most frustrating issue has got to be belly fat. Nothing is more unattractive. Nothing is more frustrating than that "spare tire" around your waistline. Belly fat is that ugly layer of flab around our bellies and when we are trying to lose weight, it's usually the last to go. Why do some people struggle with belly fat? Whether you are generally ov...

   Introduction Carb cycling, Paleo, Keto, Atkins, intermittent fasting, Mediterranean diet… These are just a drop in the bucket when it comes to eating plans and diets. All of them claim to help you lose weight but more importantly, they claim to be healthy nutritional solutions that instill good, lifelong eating habits. This is not true, as anyone who has tried one of these eating plans will tell you. Diets don’t last long enough to instill lasting habits. In addition, we have negative associations with them related to deprivation, calorie cutting, and hunger. These associations will not help our brains adopt good habits. Finally, diets don't last forever. Once we've shed the pounds and stopped dieting, we go back to our old eating habits and gradually gain back the weight. What's worse, dieting can actually create very unhealthy eating habits such as binge eating, cravings, and an obsession with dieting, where a person jumps from one diet to the next. This is why the wei...

 Keeping Your Body Active and Mobile Now perhaps the most important way to protect your body and mind against Aging: working out! That’s right: body and mind. Your brain’s primary purpose is to move your body and a huge amount of your grey matter’s real estate is dedicated to exactly that job. If you want to keep learning and creating new connections in your brain, then nothing will compare to staying active and exercising. What’s more, is that exercise stimulates the release of countless necessary neurochemicals including dopamine and serotonin. It has been shown to greatly improve memory and to boost the IQ too. Meanwhile, the benefits for the body are huge. Staying active can help to improve heart health and prevent the likelihood of heart disease. It can also improve your looks, combat diabetes, prevent depression, keep your bones stronger (especially if you train outside and get lots of sun) and much more. More importantly, as we discussed in the introduction, staying active i...