Food labels decoded

While we are shopping for groceries it is always good to read the food labels. But often for many of us, it is like anintricate puzzle just to see the numbers and percentages on the boxes and bottles.  Here is a video that helps you to decode food labels. A fun video to watch to understand your food labels better that I found on youtube. Enjoy but learn to read the labels for your next grocery shopping!

                                                       Reinforce your resolution

It is already a half month since the beginning of the year 2016 and every one of us is busy working on resolutions amidst of our career, parenting, responsibilities, home loan and a lot more. There are folks who already realized how important is health and healthy living while the others still enjoying eating generous meals and inactive life style. According to Statistic brain, a research institute losing weight is among the top new year’s resolution every year. Losing weight is the biggest challenge and goal people expect to accomplish within a short duration. But a lot of them stumble to keep up with the challenge with poor planning or lack of motivation. One of the most powerful techniques to stick on to the healthy living resolution is breaking such a large goal into smaller targets than just focusing on the weight scale. Here are some of the tips to keep up the healthy routine.
Eating right and healthy
A sudden transition from heavy, unhealthy meal to a healthy and limited meal could be overwhelming and many of us have the impression of healthy eating as counting the calories. Of course, counting the calories matter, but we need to make sure how healthy are those calories.

 • Make it a habit to look at the food labels for the ingredients, calories, sugar, proteins, fibers and other nutrients before adding them into the shopping cart
 • Avoid going to the snack aisle while shopping which largely helps you to keep away from junk food
• Hide the junks and keep fruits where you can see them
• Know your daily requirement of calories according to your weight
• Keeping a smaller plate for each meal helps to serve yourself smaller portion
• Homemade meals are always a better choice over eating outside
• Plan to include at least one serving of a healthy recipe during each meal for example Salad or soup
• Always pay attention to your appetite as most of the times we tend to eat even without being hungry

  Exercise
Maintaining a healthy body and mind is a combination of diet, exercise and life style without any compromise with any one of them. Winter can be lethargic to get off the couch especially after a long holiday to engage in any kind exercise. Motivation is the key to accelerate towards an active life style. Here are some tips

• Determine your favorite type of exercise (Running, walking, aerobics, dance, yoga, etc)
• Signing a contract with pledge to exercise daily (such as 30 mins daily for 3 months) is a proven method to keep up with the resolution
• Set yourself a realistic goal to workout such as to run a 5k and start feeling like an athlete
• Look for running events locally and sign up for a 5k or a cycling event or yoga events
• Schedule a time to work out every day and make it a part of your routine
• Get fitness apps in your smart phone to track your daily work out
• Find likeminded people to get motivated and form a group for support
• Change your perspective of exercise as to be healthy, than to lose weight
• Try different type of exercises if you lose interest in just one type of exercise such as strength training at least twice in a week in between your regular workouts
• Getting the help from a personal trainer can bolster the performance in a right way as exercise is a prescription!

  Good luck to the endeavors of healthy living and make sure you don’t have to start with the same resolution again in 2017. Happy 2016!