As some of you may know, February is American Heart Month! It's no secret that it's important to have a healthy heart, but what does exercising have to do with it? Maintaining an active lifestyle helps to maximize your heart health and there are many benefits from regular exercise.


These benefits include:
-     Strengthening your heart muscle
-     Improving your coronary blood flow, circulation, balance, muscle tone and heart failure symptoms
-     Reducing your blood pressure and cholesterol
-     Controlling your blood sugar levels
-     Helping to reduce body fat, stress, tension, anxiety, and depression

Even though we may not always be motivated to work out sometimes, trying to stick to my usual workout routine is essential to staying healthy.

So what kind of exerciseswill help you to have a healthy, happy heart?

Outdoor activities
-     Running (when running or walking, make sure to wear the right kind of shoes so you won’t hurt your feet)
-     Walking
-     Jogging
-     Bicycling (let’s not forget our helmets! I’ve heard of too many bicycle accidents that ended badly!)
-     Jump-roping
-     Swimming

Indoor activities
-     Treadmills
-     Stationary bicycles
-     Stair steppers
-     Ladder climbers
-   %2

You come home from work late and you’re very tired from the long day. Who feels like cooking? Instead, you pick up some fast food on the way home or you order a pizza for you and the family. For some reason, you aren’t in a good mood after dinner—maybe it was the long day, maybe it’s the fact that you’re home now yet still can’t relax, maybe it’s because it’s Monday—or maybe it was the food you ate. Your eating habits do affect your mood, believe it or not. If you’ve been in a slump recently—try eating better and getting plenty of rest. You don’t want to encounter a weight problem because of your grumpiness!


Tackle the challenge
All of this stuff goes hand-in-hand. If you eat healthy foods, you will maintain a healthy weight and a healthy attitude! However, when something is amiss, is it a downward spiral unfortunately.

If you stress easily like I do, you know how tempting it can be to reach for the ice cream and somehow forget to grab a bowl to control your portions—not a good idea! If you’re upset, it will be hard, but try to gravitate towards nutritious snack foods instead of the easy comfort foods we all know and love.

If you are overweight, or maybe you’re an average weight but you still aren’t satisfied with yourself, you will feel more pressure to lose weight and stress about it daily. Worrying won’t help you in this case—the secret is to force yourself to put the chips back and grab some popcorn or fruit to munch on instead.

Tips on eating well despite your emotional struggles
Since being in a bad mood will make it that much harder to resist the urges to slip back into your old ways, eliminate the temptations:
-      Keep the junk food out of your house, stock up on healthy snack foods like baby carrots, apple slices, cottage cheese, hummus, peanut butter, etc.
-      Cut back on sugary sodas and juices—you shouldn’t keep sodas readily available at all. The typical soda has 36-50 grams of sugar per 12oz serving ( or 1 can), and an additional 150 calories on top of that. While soda has no nutritional value at all, many people get into the habit of drinking empty calories because they don't like the taste of water. Although water is best, try using lemon juice or Cystal Light to flavor your water and steer clear of sodas. Diet sodas tend to also cause weight probelms because they contain so much sodium, they cause bloating and extra water weight. Do yourself a favor and find a healthy alternative.  
-       Be active. If you’re bored sitting on the couch, you will be way more tempted to grab a cookie than if you were out walking. Call a friend and take the dog for a walk, surf the web for a nutritious dinner recipe and run to the store to grab the ingredients. If you have something to do, you can fight the boredom and the urge to snack on junk food.-      Curb the stress. Try yoga or meditation if you are over-eating due to emotional issues. This relates to the previous bullet too, keep busy no matter what makes you splurge on unhealthy snacks. If you are eating due to stress, then give the craving time to pass because you most likely aren’t really hungry.
-      Be social—if you talk to friends or family about your eating problems, they will be there for you to help you fight the unnecessary cravings. Also, you are more likely to actually exercise if you are with a partner or friend.
-      Get in those 8 hours! If you are sluggish at work or school, you will be more likely to snack to get an energy boost—try napping or going to bed earlier instead.
                                                   
While it is difficult to shut out comfort foods completely, be aware that if you do experience a lot of stress, then that may be the cause of you over-eating on junk food. Follow the simple tips above and give yourself a reality check

You may have noticed that spiffy new banner on your Dashboard. The one with the Benjamins on it? TLS is proud to announce our Find Your Fit Challenge! Participants have the chance to compete as a Group of 5  OR as an Individual Challenger! Just in case your health wasn't enough of an incentive, Groups can with a Grand prize of $10,000 while Individuals will be competing for a $2,500 1st place prize!

The Challenge is open to everybody and anybody who wants to get healthy. The purpose of the Find Your Fit Challenge isn't just weight loss; it's about getting healthy and staying that way. Weight loss is only one component of health, and we want to see everyone lose big or maintain their health for 12 weeks (if not forever)! If you want to lose weight, gain muscle mass, increase your physical endurance, lower your cholesterol or blood sugar, maintain your health, improve the quality of your lifestyle or diet, or even support someone participating in the Challenge, come and Find Your Fit!

What you'll need to register:

• An active membership to tlsSlim.com
• The drive to get and stay healthy

• A team of 5 people who want to get and stay healthy (Sensing a trend here?)
• Entry fee of $60/per person
• Group Registration PDF: This downloadable PDF is available for download when you go to register as a Group Leader. This helps us identify your group members! Make sure you include your Group's full entry fee ($300), the first and last names of your group members, their PC ID, e-mail, and phone number and send it in to us at findyourfit@marketamerica.com!
• A Group Leader: Group Leaders will be responsible for organizing their group and submitting the Group Registration Form full entry fee for their group before March 1st!

By: April Laughlin and the TLS Team


Newly married? Been married for years? Couples who live together tend to gain and lose weight together too due to the shared environment. If you thought it was a strange coincidence, it isn’t! Makes sense, right? You eat your main meals together and people tend to eat more if they are eating with someone else rather than by themselves—like I’m going to cook just for myself, please! As a single man or woman, you want to stay fit in order to attract a suitable mate, but once you’re married, you’re already got a partner hooked and it’s much easier to let yourself go. If you and your hubby/wifey are experiencing a weight problem, then tackle the problem together!

Losing weight as a couple
Alright couples—I have some good news and bad news. Which news would you like first? I always like telling bad news first to get it out of the way so that’s what I’ll do here. Due to biological differences, it tends to be easier for men to lose and keep weight off. Totally not fair! I’ve heard it’s because women need to be healthy enough to bear children—so that even in a famine where everyone is malnourished, we will still have enough weight to reproduce…I’m not sure about that theory, but either way, it’s complete crap!

On a positive note, the good news is that people who try to lose weight together (either with a partner or friend) tend to be more successful than those who go at it alone.  It also helps to know that some of the weight you lose is water and men have a higher concentration of water in their bodies—hence the reason they shed the pounds quicker! So, ladies, if your partner is a man, don’t get discouraged because you’ll see results too!

Quick tip
One thing to make a note of though…don’t set up a bad cop-bad cop situation where one of you polices about dieting and the other about exercising—this could cause problems between the two of you and we don’t want that! It works better if both of you are on the same page and have similar routines.  No matter what your reason may be to lose weight, help each other through the challenge of weight loss. It will be tough and you may want to bite your partners head off, but it will help to realize they are in this with you and only want you to succeed. Keep on encouraging each other!

Tell us: have you and your partner attempted to or successfully lost weight together?

When you bring a child into the world, you can’t help but think of all the ways your life is going to get better. You’ll see yourself planning the birthday parties and cheering at soccer games and attending PTA meetings and, in your mind’s eye, you look pretty darn good doing it. However, that may take a little work. All moms want to be hot moms, but losing the weight you’ve gained during your pregnancy isn’t easy. It’s also something you should take seriously because, believe it or not, it isn’t just a vanity thing. Losing weight after pregnancy is extremely beneficial to your overall health, so it’s important to find the best, healthiest way to lose the weight and look as great in real life as you do in your imagination.

Though most new moms want to lose the weight for personal appearance reasons, it’s also a good idea to try to lose the weight for health reasons. Just because it was fat brought on by pregnancy, it doesn’t mean it’s healthy fat. Not trying to lose weight after pregnancy may lead to obesity later, which causes an endless list of health problems. However it is extremely important to both your health as a new mom and your baby’s health that you choose a weight loss method that is safe.

If you are a new mom planning to breastfeed, you should wait about 6 weeks before attempting to lose weight. Your body has just gone through a lot with 9 months of pregnancy and a birth. It needs a bit of a rest before being prodded to change again. However, when you do start dieting, make certain to eat a good variety of foods. This means you should refrain from using intense dieting techniques like a cleanse or purge or adopting a no-carb diet. Diets that exclude things completely creates a lack of vitamins and nutrients in your breast milk that your baby needs to grow.
 
A mistake that many new moms make when dieting is to cut their calorie intake.  This is actually the opposite of what you should do. Breastfeeding mothers need to add about 500 calories to their daily caloric intake in order to supply breast milk rich in nutrients. Remember, you may have given birth already, but you are still sharing your nutrients with your baby. A component of breast milk that is very beneficial to a baby is protein, so it is recommended that you add those 500 calories in the form of a meat or other food high in protein. It is also essential to drink lots of fluids while breastfeeding.
             
Whether you’re breastfeeding or not, it is extremely important that new moms stay healthy. If you are breastfeeding, your nutrients are going to your newborn. If you aren’t breastfeeding, you still need a lot of energy to keep your newborn happy and healthy. So new moms trying to lose weight, good on you, but please do so carefully. Remember to eat lots of protein, drink lots of fluids, and eat a balanced diet. Additionally, exercise is a great way to boost weight loss as well as keep your energy level up. So, get out there and shed those pregnancy pounds you hot mom, you!