general fitness and weight loss

If you want to improve your health, start by cleaning out what doesn’t serve it. One of the biggest factors that contributes to poor health is not what you think.

Our poor health is the result of all the chemicals we are being exposed to. I wrote a book on how to identify these hidden chemicals.  You can get a copy of it for free below.

Click Here to Get The Book

So Much Information, So Little Change

If you want to improve your health, drop body fat, control your weight, or attain your ideal body shape and size, you must look at your relationship with food. It’s not about a series of tips or tactics; it is about changing your approach to food itself.

In this video, I will help you completely revamp your approach to losing weight.  If you look on Amazon right now, you will find approximately 10,361 books on dieting. That’s mean there are over 10,000 different authors promoting thousands of different ways to drop weight.

And yet, over the past couple of decades, we have only been increasingly gaining weight according to the national average.  With more than enough information and new gyms opening all the time, we have all the resources we need to lose the weight.  So, what is the problem?

What Are Your Core Values?

I believe that no one is really considering the importance of their relationship with food. In life, we have core values that we operate by: honesty, open communication, hard work, etc.  We use them to manage our lives.

As decisions arise, we go back to our core values.  What are your core values regarding food? Without establishing these core values, we cannot manage our health.  All the weight loss tips out there will lead us nowhere if they are not based on or connected to our core values.

Here, we talk about three core values which, if you adopt them, will completely revamp your health without the struggle.

1. Slow Rainbows.  Slow rainbows means eating a variety of colorful foods throughout the week, mainly fruits and vegetables. We want to eat this rainbow of foods slowly. When we eat food quickly, we tend to overeat, and we miss the connection with our food. Food just becomes a tool for quenching hunger, a fuel, something we have to do each day, rather than a relationship to savor and enjoy.Food is so essential for living that we need to consider it as part of our life. You can go through life single, but you cannot go through life without food. That’s why it’s so important to develop a relationship with food, tuning into the experience of both preparing and consuming it. When we enjoy the process of handling and savoring a colorful variety of foods, it will enhance our life and improve our health.
2.  The 80/20 rule. If you spend 80% of your time eating healthy food, the other 20% does not matter. What do we consider healthy food? To determine this, just follow a simple rule. Any food that has been through a machine at some point is unhealthy. Ideally, the food we eat will come from the earth in its whole, natural state. Played out over a week, out of 3 meals a day for 7 days (21 meals), 17 should be healthy, or from the earth, and 4 can be unhealthy.
3. There are no BAD foods. Apart from choking, food has never directly killed anyone. Food, in and of itself, is not inherently bad.  It is how we choose to consume it that creates problems.

These three core values help us avoid feelings of guilt and shame in relation to our food.  So many of the programs for eating are based on a do this, don’t do that mindset. When we violate that rule, we feel bad about ourselves or try to justify our behavior.  Regardless, our relationship with food is harmed, and we start to see it as a villain, rather than a friend that we need and enjoy. We separate ourselves from that program and begin to eat poorly because we have broken up with food.  The weight comes back, and we look for another program, and the cycle continues.

By identifying our core values with food, and adopting the values I present in this video, we can avoid that vicious cycle of weight gain and weight loss. Yes, we still need will power and dedication to eat healthy. By establishing healthy eating habits, eating well will eventually come naturally to you.

Healthy Food, Healthy You

You can sustain a lifelong relationship food that leads to good health, good body weight, and a body shape you want.  As you adapt these core values to your lifestyle, you will begin to see changes, but it will take time. You won’t get there in 12 weeks, or even 6 months.  It might take years, but the process develops permanence. Just like with any sport, you can’t go from beginner to professional overnight.  It takes years of muscle memory and habits to become great, but those skills will stay with you forever.

Quick weight loss programs, with instant transformations do not last. I have a separate video which talks more about that, but for now, focus on the fundamentals.  Develop those core values that will lead to a lifetime of good health.

Invisible efforts for weight loss

In this video you will learn something call invisible effort and why you need to understand this if you are trying to lose weight. Hi my name is Doctor Steve Young, owner and founder of bodysolutions. And also firm believer of Holistic Health and fitness. You see there are many things that you expect in life. You expect to pay taxes, you expect to age, you expect to get quick results and you expect immediate gratification.

New habits to lose body fat

Unfortunately we are programmed to think this way because all the marketing message say billions of dollars spent and you do not even realize that hitting you when you watch TV, open a magazine, driving and seeing billboards its programming you to expect immediate gratification and quick results.

And here is the problem, if you are trying to lose body fat or trying to lose weight fast, if you are trying to get in shape, if you are trying to improve your health. You actually may be doing the most perfect thing that you should be doing right now but because it’s not immediate gratification. Because the perfect routine you are doing right now you will not see results for another 6 weeks or may be even 6 months.

You are going to question yourself, I need to do more. I need to do something different, I need change something, I need to add something, I need to take away something. And that would be called the invincible effort meaning if you are doing the right things, applying right efforts. But because the gratifications the results are not immediate you start to question what’s happening.

And I want to encourage you that if you have already implemented healthy behavior changes like eating healthier, drinking less sugar, eating more fruits and vegetables, snacking on the right things. Keep it up, don’t change. Stick with it, let that habit sink in and then develop new habit. Do not make a bunch of quick changes to lose weight on different things that is what the media wants you to think and believe so that you buy their product.

So the invisible effort for better life is essentially is stop that you are doing works right now that you don’t see right away. What I recommend that you do is keep it up. You have to have faith in the process and know that permanent weight loss, permanent body fat loss, permanent improvements in health just takes time. So stick with the routine, gradually improve your health, set short term behavioral goals and when you reach them set other short term behavioral goal.

It’s a process, enjoy the process. Ask yourself the right questions how can I enjoy eating healthier and make me happy? Not what can I cut out, what’s the boring food to eat. Ask yourself the right questions and you will get the right answers.

Now if there is any additional questions I want share with you a book that I just wrote including some of this information, look below and there is information about that. I hope to help you with your weight loss fat loss efforts and to help you feel better and look awesome.

Hacks for weight loss and healthy body

Everyone these days hacking everything. They are hacking their health for improvement, memory, their business, their life. in this video I want to talk about why I am not a big fan of hacking. Hacking in terms of whatever you are manipulating already involves you are taking places and may be you are finding an optimum way of doing something.

On the surface that sounds amazing right? You just sort of hack this and make tweak and get a major result from that hack. However let’s look closely what happening to your health when you decide to hack it. You are basically implementing these tools and tricks try to improve your health.

For example may be you are putting something in your coffee in the morning trying to hack your energy levels in your health. May be you are hacking it bay drinking specific smoothies or recipes during the day. May be you are hacking it by using a sleep app by making your sleeping quality improve.

May be you are hacking your health and fitness,  by doing something special workout program that’s out there. However what’s really happening? What is lifelong sustainable health or healthy body and what does it involves? It involves improving your skill and relationship with yourself and health. Because it’s not just about tweaking a few things.

Imagine if I say I hack your marriage or relationship with your spouse or girlfriend. All you have to do is buy these set of roses, buy these gifts at this time and you have to do this at this day and your relationship will improve. That’s sound kinda silly right, because you are at the fundamental of or root problem if you do not have any issues with your relationship with your spouse or girlfriend it has to do with your communication and how open you are.

And that actually takes practice to work on it and that’s the same with your health improvement.

If you are trying to improve your health, if you are trying to lose weight, if you are trying to build muscle, if you are trying to just live up above of abandoned energy level and then decreasing risks of cancer different disease. If you have a condition that you are trying to resolve without medication, the root cause of that a lot of time is your relationship with your own health.

That doesn’t involves hacking, you cannot hack relationships. It’s about understanding, I would like to use the word re-engineering. Because if you study any kind of engineering what has to happen? You study all the pieces and how everything works. And when you understand how everything works you engineer and create. Engineering is about creating new possibilities.

New structures and new things, it’s not about hacking. So I like the process of re-engineering your health and that’s about understanding what are the fundamentals of good health. And that is what you are about to learn in this site. There is all kind of information about what is the fundamentals of good health, you know what tare three core values of having a good relationship with food.

I will talk that about in a separate post, what are the fundamental movement skill level that your body has so you can work out properly. It’s not about using a program, its about what is the ideal movement program that matches your skill level. Or if you are trying to eat better, people ask me what are the best eating tips, have you hacked nutrition.

You cannot hack nutrition, you can look how are you eating now and make what’s called the progressive adaptive changes. Progressive adaptive changes, right meaning the next level of changes that best serves you. There is no random hacks that is just bunch of things you are doing that no one ever sticks with forever.

Try drinking your coffee with your fat forever, good luck with that. You do not hack, you look at where you at and you make the small incremental improvements and changes so they become new habits. And that how you permanently change and re-engineer your health. With this understanding I hope you are not trying to hack your health, you are taking time and effort building this improve relationship with health so you can gradually formulate the health that you want.

When you can gradually engineer the health, the healthy body that you want.

Healthy Weight loss and fitness for women

Weight loss tips+diet tips for women

So, research in the recent literature has proven that willpower is like a muscle. You probably know this instinctively if you’ve ever dieted before. Its something that you apply: willpower to not eat this food and stay away from that food. But eventually that muscle gives. It weakens and you give in to the willpower.

Here’s the problem, no muscle can contract and last forever. At some point it fatigues, just like no willpower will last forever, at some point it will fatigue. What happens when it fatigues is that you will go back and binge on those foods that you spent so much time depriving yourself of.

In fact the longer you hold out and refrain from eating those foods you love the more the your will power fatigues. Yes, you do lose weight by holding back. Yes, you can “cheat” here and there. But what has been the outcome in the long run. Your weight climbs back up and you feel horrible. Every time  you go through this cycle, your strength and motivation weakens and you are left with a sense of failure.

First thing to do for weight loss for women:

Now I suggest a much better approach to dieting. You want to look at the food that you are told you typically can’t eat, and change your relationship with the food. It’s not bad food. Sure it’s less healthy. You might be eating that food for other reasons, not just for nourishment. Maybe it’s for stress reduction or to reduce anxiety. These comfort foods actually release happy hormones in your brain when you eat them because of the high sugar content. So these foods work very well to make you feel happy!

Now how do you change your relationship with that food?

Well, it’s all in your mind. The next time you look at your piece of cake that you love, your favorite comfort food – maybe it’s a hot dog, a hamburger, nachos, pizza, all the unhealthy foods we should not eat too frequently, I want you to do this.

I want you to look at that food, and I want you to close your eyes and picture a time where you are having great difficulty, great sadness, great stress, and great anxiety, and know that this food  literally contributing to that.

When you are trying to lose weight, your body image,  how you feel, and your health directly contribute to how happy you feel and your success rate. While that food may give you happiness for the moment, you know long term, that food is not giving you long-term happiness.

Read More: Dangers of Dieting

Your happiness is within you the whole time because you are an amazing soul!

So I want you to embody that, and think about that. Don’t go for the immediate gratification and how you feel at that moment. Before you eat it, think about what that food means for you life-long. Look at that in your mind, picture it: the feeling that you have, the colors that you see.

The pictures of you seeing yourself not losing weight and being stressed, and the feelings associated with not being able to lose weight. All of that is embodied in that food at that moment. When you do this, it will change your relationship with the food. You will no longer try to crave it for immediate gratification. You will now make better choices about that food for long term.

I want you to repeat this. I want you to put your favorite food in front of you and try to elicit those feelings about how it feels in the future. The stress and the negative feelings down to the very colors, the sounds, the picture of your body, I want you to repeat that process. Every time that you do, you are changing your relationship with your food, and that is much better than willpower.

It is like using willpower to stay in a bad marriage.   Don’t do that. Change the relationship. Work with the spouse, in this case you work with the food. I hope this tip helps you, and any questions, comment below, enter your information and I will be able to help you directly, and have you achieve your weight loss and the body that you deserve.

To learn another way to lose weight by using effortless habits instead of will power click here to get a special offer just for moms only.

As the director of Body Solutions where we use a Holistic approach to… well everything from healing to, transformations, to weight loss, and to empowering you. It our passion to help a Billion people by 2020 be successful and happy in life.

While that goal may seem BIG, it’s not when you work hard and work together with some amazing leaders from around the world like Richard Branson. That him holding the mic as we brainstorm and plan how we will help empower a BILLION people by 2020.

You can start that journey and create the life, the body, and the joy you want by working with me and my team by clicking here.

Are you sitting all day?

Stretches for lower back pain due to sitting at a desk all day

Do these stretches at your desk throughout the day,  Stretches all the muscles that get tight from sitting all day

Here are few exercises that will help you to cure your lower back pain that you got from sitting all day long. These pains are common to those who work on computer and sit 3-4 hours or more at a stretch.

Touch Down Stretch

This exercise for lower back pain, you can simply do in your office and it does not take a lot of space or time

In this video of reversing the damage from sitting all day at a desk we are going demonstrate a technique or stretch to help length our front of the body to eliminate lower back pain. This stretch is going to focus on the abdominal wall, the hips and the thighs. First thing that we are going to do is we are going use a chair and we want the chair slide up against the wall to prevent any sliding.

We are going to put one foot on this chair and as we lean in the first thing you want to do is you want to start arching the mid back and as you lean in your arms raise up creating this touch down look. And if you find yourself having not so much of flexibility and your foot on the floor the heel starts to come up that’s fine as long as you start feeling the stretch on the front of the body.

And due to balance ideally you want to hold this stretch for about 30 seconds. If you find yourself balance is little challenging may be bump it down to 10 seconds. And you can do 10 seconds 10 times or you can raise it up to 30 seconds and 30 seconds 5 times. So once again we are going to put our foot on to the chair and we are going to position our upper body to arch our upper back, leaning back, arms raise up.

As I lean into the stretch I should feel that stretch on the abdominal wall, hips and thigh and a little tip, if your heel on the floor starts to raise up that is fine as long as you still feel the stretch on the front of the body. If your balance is challenge hold for about 10 seconds doing 10 times. If you do have the balance do 30 seconds 5 time.

Self Neck Stretch And Massage

As you tend to sit at a desk all day and do your work, you constantly put pressure on your neck. This neck stretching will help you out a lot.

In this video of reversing the damage from sitting all day we are going to demonstrate actually how to thumb strip or we could use our finger past to the length of the muscle to help with the Sternocleidomastoid. We are going to take the same approach of another stretch. We are going to take our finger pads and pin down the muscle and we are going to take the opposite hand and as if we are almost outlining the muscle.

At the same time we are going to extend your head and then you allowed it to bring your ear to the opposite shoulder. Once you reach to the point which is the bony part behind the ear then you can reset yourself. Left hand or one of the hand will pin down the muscle and the opposite hand will then outline the muscle dragging nice and lightly towards the bony part of the ear or behind the ear and once you reach that part.

You feel good pull you can reset yourself. You can do this 5-10 times and again also looking to the recommendations of your therapist.

For Morning And Night Do These:

Side Lying Trunk Rotation Stretch

In this video of reversing the damage from sitting all day at a desk, we are demonstrating the Side Lying Trunk Rotation so for this exercise yo are going to be lying on your side with your knees bent towards your chest. So both foot should be bent one foot on top of the another. For this exercise one arm is going to reach up for the ceiling. Like this. Now you are going to allow your arm to drop behind and lowering it towards the floor so you are going to let your body, upper body follow your arm and your knees are still bent maintaining contact with the table.

For this exercise if you have shoulder problems or this particular position strain on your lower back so it can be modified with your elbow bent so roll back to your side. So we can bent the elbow keep to close to your side, to your body and now rotate. So that if you have shoulder problems or if the arm extended put so much strain on the lower back and that is the Side Lying Trunk Rotation.

Super Stretch (for hamstring, quads, and hip flexors)

The exercise that cam help you stretch all the core muscles of your body, lower back to ease back pain and help yuo recover from sitting all day long, everyday!

We are going to demonstrate the Super Stretch. For the Super Stretch you are going to be lying on your stomach with one leg hanging off the table. So the first thing you are going to do is walk the foot forward on to the floor until you feel a stretch on the back of your thigh, hamstring area.

Once you get the stretch on to the back of your thigh on this leg you are going to be using green strap or dog leash, hooked over to the opposite foot, we will give it over to the shoulder and you are going to pull this with both hands and you will bring this leg upfront until a stretch is felt on the front of your thigh. So typically we hold the stretch most commonly for 30 seconds. And this is the Super Stretch.

Hip Rotator Stretch

We are going to demonstrate the final exercise in this series of exercises that you should do help your back recover from the pain from sitting all day. This exercise is called supine Hip Rotator Stretch so you are going to start by bending one knee like this, up through your chest, your foot will be flat on the table. Your opposite foot will be crossed over. So you are bringing your foot over to the opposite leg on top over the knee.

So once you are in this position with your foot crossed over you will be grabbing on behind your knees with both hands and pull the knee up to your chest. And you are going to feel a stretch on the left hip, like in the buttock area. And typically we hold the stretch for 30 seconds. This is the supine external Hip Rotator Stretch.