Nirvana Diet

A Diet For the Mind

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You are what you eat!

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So you know how important I think it is to make sure your eating habits are in alignment with your health. There is no doubt that many illnesses today are life-style induced and by changing how you eat, and exercising in the right way, you can have the best health care there is.

Many people don’t realize what you eat also affects the health of your brain.

Research shows that the best foods for your brain are the same ones that protect your heart and blood vessels.

So here is the list in a nutshell:  

Green, leafy vegetables. Leafy greens such as kale, spinach, collards, and broccoli are rich in brain-healthy nutrients like vitamin K, lutein, folate, and beta carotene. Research suggests these plant-based foods may help slow cognitive decline.

Fatty fish. Fatty fish are abundant sources of omega-3 fatty acids, healthy unsaturated fats that have been linked to lower blood levels of beta-amyloid—the protein that forms damaging clumps in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Try to eat fish at least twice a week, but choose varieties that are low in mercury, such as salmon, cod, canned light tuna, and pollack. If you’re not a fan of fish, ask your doctor about taking an omega-3 supplement, or choose terrestrial omega-3 sources such as flaxseeds, avocados, and walnuts.

Berries. Flavonoids, the natural plant pigments that give berries their brilliant hues, also help improve memory, research shows. In a 2012 study published in Annals of Neurology, researchers at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that women who consumed two or more servings of strawberries and blueberries each week delayed memory decline by up to two-and-a-half years.

Tea and coffee. The caffeine in your morning cup of coffee or tea might offer more than just a short-term concentration boost. In a 2014 study published in The Journal of Nutrition, participants with higher caffeine consumption scored better on tests of mental function. Caffeine might also help solidify new memories, according to other research. Investigators at Johns Hopkins University asked participants to study a series of images and then take either a placebo or a 200-milligram caffeine tablet. More members of the caffeine group were able to correctly identify the images on the following day.

Walnuts. Nuts are excellent sources of protein and healthy fats, and one type of nut in particular might also improve memory. A 2015 study from UCLA linked higher walnut consumption to improved cognitive test scores. Walnuts are high in a type of omega-3 fatty acid called alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which helps lower blood pressure and protects arteries. That’s good for both the heart and brain.

Changing your lifestyle is one of the most important things you can do. That’s what I have been helping people do for years. To schedule a consultation, click here.

 

What is high intensity interval training?

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exercise-croppedThey call it HIIT – high intensity interval training. Here is why this is the best exercise to get and stay in shape.

We all know we should exercise, but what amount and what type of exercise maximizes your return best? That is the question.

A new study published in the journal Cell Metabolism and other research studies have been saying that it’s the high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is the best way to go in and has the best result in reversing the effects of aging.

HIIT, as it is commonly known, requires short bursts of intense aerobic activity, intermixed with longer stretches of moderate exercise. Participating in this kind of training encourages cells to make more proteins to fuel the energy producing cellular mechanism, which means you don’t get  hungrier and end of up eating more and it continues to burn fat even after you exercise..

The study found that younger people participating in HIIT showed a 49-per-cent increase in mitochondrial capacity and the older group saw 69-per-cent. (Mitochondria are the cells’ powerhouses, responsible for producing the molecule that transports chemical energy within cells.)

So how should you plan for your exercise week? The recommended amount of exercise is 225 minutes a week. If you could break it down daily it would be about 30 minutes a day. I would do 20 minutes at a moderate pace and 10 minutes of intense exercise. I would also do strength training at least two days a week. To find out what is moderate or intense, check out this post.

 

Best exercise to lose weight

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Best exercise to lose weight:

What type and how much exercise you need to do is important to understand.

There is a lot of misinformation around what type and how much exercise you need to do to achieve your lifestyle goals of losing weight (fat) and keeping if off.

A new study says we need to walk way more than 10,000 steps a day to get enough exercise. A new goal is to walk 15,000 steps, but this may still be off the mark in terms of what type of exercise you should do to lose weight and keep it off .

Here’s why:

There is a lot of research that shows how cardio or aerobic exercise helps us not only to lose weight, but to relieve stress, be more creative and healthier. Since one of the biggest reasons people overeat has something to do with unprocessed emotions and lack of satisfaction from life that spills over as stress, it is important to have an outlet in the form of physical exercise.

Before you embark on an exercise program you must of course consult your doctor.  It is important to start where you are and begin to increase it gradually.

Despite the proven benefits, most adults do not meet the basis minimum exercise guidelines which are 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise. If you want to lose weight, you double that to 300 minutes of moderate exercise and 150 minutes of vigorous exercise.  The problem with these numbers is that it does not explain what is moderate or vigorous. The term ‘aerobics’ was coined by Dr. Cooper in a book entitled Aerobics in 1968. He put forth the notion that there was a target heart rate to achieve in order to maximize the benefits of exercise that he called aerobic. It is recommended you start with moderate intensity.

For moderate-intensity physical activity, a person’s target heart rate should be 50 to 70% of his or her maximum heart rate. This maximum rate is based on the person’s age. An estimate of a person’s maximum age-related heart rate can be obtained by subtracting the person’s age from 220. For example, for a 50-year-old person, the estimated maximum age-related heart rate would be calculated as 220 – 50 years = 170 beats per minute (bpm). The 50% and 70% levels would be:

  • 50% level: 170 x 0.50 = 85 bpm, and
  • 70% level: 170 x 0.70 = 119 bpm

Thus, moderate-intensity physical activity for a 50-year-old person will require that the heart rate remains between 85 and 119 bpm during physical activity.

For vigorous-intensity physical activity, a person’s target heart rate should be 70 to 85% of his or her maximum heart rate. To calculate this range, follow the same formula as used above, except change “50 and 70%” to “70 and 85%”. For example, for a 35-year-old person, the estimated maximum age-related heart rate would be calculated as 220 – 35 years = 185 beats per minute (bpm). The 70% and 85% levels would be:

  • 70% level: 185 x 0.70 = 130 bpm, (71-84) and
  • 85% level: 185 x 0.85 = 157 bpm, (85-91)

Thus, vigorous-intensity physical activity for a 35-year-old person will require that the heart rate remains between 130 and 157 bpm during physical activity. You start with moderate and eventually you will do intervals where you do them side by side. If you have not exercised, it is recommended you start with moderate and then build your way up.

To track that you could obviously program this into a treadmill or elliptical at the gym or wear a heart rate monitor when you walk.  I would recommend starting with 10 to 20 minutes and working your way up. The initial goal for weight loss is to achieve the 300 minutes of moderate exercise or 150 minutes of intense exercise. If this seems daunting, just develop a plan that works for you and has you moving to a higher level than you had been doing.

Gradually increase the amount of exercise you do until you reach the target amount for weight loss and start tracking your heart rate to make sure you are exercising efficiently.  You can go to www.wareable.com and choose the heart rate monitor that is best for you.

 Next: Develop your plan to exercise:

Begin with the amount of days a week you can allocate to exercise. Ideally you want to do it daily, but that is not always possible.

Number of days divided by 300 = the amount of time you should exercise. Begin with moderate intensity.

For example, if you plan to exercise daily, you would do 40 minute sessions at the moderate intensity. If this is not possible, just identify a way to fit more exercise into your schedule so that are doing more than you were and perhaps can over time increase to the ideal amount or increase the intensity which would cut down the time. You can also factor your strength training into this which would ideally be three times a week for 25 minutes.

Write down my plan to exercise is:

Days of the week you will do aerobic exercise:

Amount of time:

Target Heart rate:

Days of week you will do strength training:

Amount of time: 25 minutes

It is possible as you begin your exercise that you will be hungrier in the beginning. This will subside as your body gets used to it and you feed your body the right fuel which will be covered in the next chapter. The important thing is to be aware of the real reason to eat and only eat when you are truly hungry. Try to space your meals out three to four hours apart. Eat when you feel hungry and stop eating when you are full. Do not eat if you do not feel it is the right reason to eat. Instead of eating, express yourself by doing the journaling.

Bottom line: You need to make exercise become your habit otherwise you will be having to use willpower and we have a limited amount of willpower to go around.

The Food and Mood Connection

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The connection between the food and our mood

For many years, the medical field has not acknowledged the connection between food and your mood. This includes the role stress plays in weight gain. Want to reduce stress naturally try my guided meditation. Click here to download Stress Free .

 

What you eat directly affects your brain which also needs to be supplied with the right fuel. If you eat processed foods which contain refined sugar, which is the main staple of the American diet, you are actually doing harm to your brain.

 

Multiple studies have found a correlation between a diet that includes a lot of refined sugar and reduced brain function and mood/depressive disorders.  Although one in six Americans say they have taken psychiatric drugs and eighty five percent of them have been given multiple drugs to deal with anxiety, insomnia and depression, without being aware of how their lifestyle and what they eat can help to mitigate against this. There is a food mood connection.

 

Studies have shown that when people take probiotics, anxiety levels drop and mental outlook improves. In fact, mental health is much improved on a ‘Mediterranean diet’ that includes foods that contain high amounts of omega 3 fatty acids and fermented food that research confirms can affects the bacteria in the gut which in term can boost one’s mood. Artificial sugars like Splenda lower good bacteria.

 

Cultivating ‘good bacteria’ in the gut is also critical to our emotional well-being as it aids in the production of serotonin naturally. Many of my clients, once they were able to make this switch away from processed foods reported feeling so much better both physically and emotionally. There is a food mood connection. If you do not understand how to deal with and change your ‘emotional’ relationship with food, you may be more likely to turn to junk food as a form of self-medication that starts to feel like an addiction.

 

The recidivism we see with weight loss is the same for any addiction. In fact new research with rats has shown that sugar can have the same effect as cocaine does on the brain.

 

No wonder we have a big problem. Eating patterns once they become a habit may not be controlled entirely by the conscious mind or will.

 

In fact, it’s the emotional brain that has more control over what, why and when you eat than you think. Neuroscience supports this theory in terms of how the brain can rewire by force of habit to misinterpret feelings such as anger and sadness as hunger. Only by re-interrupting and changing these habits of mind can we build new ones and change.

 

According to neuroscience our brains are inherently malleable. This is called neuroplasticity. You need to train the brain can to become your ally as you program in new ways of thinking, acting and of course eating. So that is why most people when they first came in to see me would say “I know what to do to lose weight; I just can’t seem to do it.

Sooner or later, I lose focus… not weight… and stop doing what I need to do.” Well the sad part is they did not really know what to in order to make a lasting change. That is one of the things that the Nirvana Diet helped to address, the misconceptions of what it takes to succeed in a true lifestyle transformation.

Meditation and Controlled Breathing Reduce Stress

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Controlled breathing can help you meditate and do wonders for reducing stress.

Meditation begins with controlled breathing.

Meditation and breathing are one of the eight limbs to achieving yoga. Yoga is an enlightened perspective or outlook. Although the Western version of yoga focuses on the postures, any real yogi would say that is only done to train the body so you can sit in meditation. There are eight limbs according Patanjali, considered to be the sage of how to understand and do yoga. One of the most powerful limbs was considered to be controlled breathing or what is called in Sanskrit as pranayama. For centuries yogis have used controlled breathing to access a meditative state both of which promotes concentration and improves vitality.

Controlled breathing allows you to access meditation.

I would like to share with you a powerful technique I learned that you can use to start or even as you meditation practice. You can sign up for my Creative Mindfulness Stress Reduction Course which will put all of this together for you.

You sit upright, wrap your thumb around the index finger and the rest are spread out. Close your eyes and focus your attention at a spot in the center of your forehead. Begin inhaling to the count of five, hold for three and then exhale for the count of five, once again holding for three before you inhale. I guarantee if you try this simple breathing technique, and there are more advanced ones that I teach in my Meditation Training, you will be amazed how powerful it is.

Controlled breathing has been shown to reduce stress, increase alertness and boost your immune system.

Science is just beginning to provide evidence that the benefits of this ancient practice are real. Studies have found, for example, that breathing practices can help reduce symptoms associated with anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and attention deficit disorder and improving the immune system. It does wonders for enhancing concentration and focus.

We now understand the role stress plays both in weight gain and illness. That’s why it is so important to learn how to do this. In fact, you can also use it anytime you feel stressed during the day. Just taking a few deep breaths can bring on the relaxation response on at will.

One theory, according to Dr. Richard Brown who wrote The Healing Power of the Breath, is that controlled breathing changes or directly affects the body’s autonomic nervous system, which controls unconscious processes such as heart rate and digestion as well as the body’s stress response. I have tried this when I am on the treadmill that monitors my heart rate and it always amazes me how it goes right down.

Consciously changing the way you breathe appears to send a signal to the brain to adjust the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system. This slows down the heart rate, digestion and promotes feelings of calm reducing the release of harmful stress hormones like cortisol.

When you take slow, steady breaths, your brain gets the message that all is well and activates the parasympathetic response or relaxation response.

This is a no brainer and it can really do wonders to improve your well-being.

I have created a powerful course, Creative Mindfulness that teaches all of these techniques and helps you to make meditation easy.  I cannot think of a better gift to give to you!