How to improve your health and fitness: 333

Ready to get strong and slim? discover health and fitness tips that will help you live a life of wellness and good health. This book features dozens of great ideas and tips to help you learn quick and easy ways to maintain your health and be in good shape. The book covers the following areas: * Healthy Eating * Healthy Lunchtime Ideas * Ideas for Weight Watchers * Exercise and Fitness * Coping with Tension and Stress * Health Care and First Aid Here's just a small sample of the tips included: Foods are most valuable to the body the closer they are to their natural state. Vegetables grown in your own backyard are superior to commercial frozen, canned, or dehydrated products. You can also home can, freeze, and dry your garden's surplus without any of the preservatives or additives found in many commercial products. High-fiber vegetables, fruits, and whole grains are natural intestinal cleansers and also help to keep down the levels of cholesterol in the blood by binding up cholesterol and fats. Studies also show that a daily dose of bran in your breakfast cereal reduces the risk of bowel cancer. Drink plenty of water daily. Water cleanses your system and promotes healthy-looking skin. Sugar plays a role in the development of tooth decay, obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. If you do nothing else to improve your diet, at least cut down on your intake of sugar. Cookies, cakes, and candies made with sugar provide only "empty calories" -that is, they have little nutritional value. Add natural sugar to your diet by replacing baked goods and fattening desserts with fresh fruits. When you need a pick-me-up, try drinking a glass of fruit juice or fresh, cold water instead of a sweetened soft drink Sugar is sugar, no matter what form it takes. Don't be misled by "sugarless" products that contain corn syrup, honey, molasses, maltose, glucose, dextrose, and invert sugar. These are just other names for sugar. If you must avoid sugar for medical reasons, read labels carefully and be aware of the many names that sugar goes under. Under normal circumstances your body needs no more than a teaspoon of salt a day. Too much salt in the diet can lead to high blood pressure, overweight, and heart and circulatory problems. You can cut down on salt painlessly by leaving it out of your cooking, by removing the salt shaker from the table, and by using salt substitutes if you really miss the taste. Substitute herbs, spices, and pepper in place of salt when seasoning foods. Use lemon and lime juices to flavor vegetables in place of salt. Reduce the salt content of instant broth by using twice as much water as the package directions indicate. Many commercial canned foods contain high levels of salt. Canned soups are often especially high in salt. Read labels carefully. A high-fat diet can be dangerous to your health. When cooking, consider using polyunsaturated fats such as corn, soybean, and sunflower oil instead of saturated fats such as lard, butter, chicken fat, coconut oil, or hydrogenated vegetable oils. Low-fat skim milk contains considerably less fat than whole milk The same is true of skim milk cheeses, low-fat cottage cheese, and yogurt. When buying meats, look for the leanest cuts. Trim off any visible fat before cooking, and whenever possible choose broiling over any other preparation method; broiling can reduce the fat content of meat by up to one-half. Although broiling is the best cooking method for meat if you're trying to avoid fat) you can also substantially reduce the fat and calorie content of meat by boiling or pot-roasting it and skimming off the fat.