Admit it. You love Jersey Shore. It’s replaced chocolate covered bon bons as your guilty pleasure. The Situation, Pauly D, and Snooki wow you with their outrageous, yet hysterical, behavior. And as I’m sure you’ve noticed, those guys are pretty jacked. So how do they do it? “The Situation” explains.
Bodyrocking. No gym needed.
I am a prolific consumer of salt. I put salt on everything; salad, pasta, pizza, bread, steaks, everything except pancakes. I’m usually aware of how much salt I’m putting in my diet. But the WSJ had a new article out saying that you might be consuming more salt then you realize.
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Nearly 90% of adults consume more salt than U.S. dietary guidelines recommend. Now, federal officials are considering making those guidelines even tougher to follow
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Eating too much sodium, a key component of salt, can contribute to high blood pressure, a major risk for most people as they age because it can lead to heart disease and other health problems. But cutting sodium from the diet is difficult, mainly because people often don’t know it’s there. More than three-quarters of the sodium people consume comes from processed and restaurant foods. And much of the sodium we eat is in foods that don’t necessarily taste salty, like packaged bread and chicken dishes.Salt is the latest front in the battle to get Americans to eat a healthier diet. Previous efforts have focused on cutting down on sugar, to fight obesity, and reducing fat, for a healthier heart. After four decades of unsuccessfully nudging Americans to cut salt in their diets only to see them eat more of it, government officials are intensifying their efforts.
An advisory committee working on new U.S. Dietary Guidelines, due to be released later this year by the federal government, recently recommended that all adults restrict their intake of sodium to no more than 1,500 milligrams a day, equivalent to about two-thirds of a teaspoon of table salt, down from a current limit of 2,300 mgs for some people. For many, that wouldn’t represent a change. The dietary guidelines, which are updated every five years, currently suggest a limit of 1,500 mgs for people with hypertension, anyone over 40 years old and African-Americans, who are at greater risk for high blood pressure—a group that represents about 70% of all adults.
Spotting the Salt
Today, adults consume more than 3,400 mgs of sodium on average, not including salt they use in cooking or sprinkle on food from a shaker, more than twice the amount recommended for most people, according to a recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Middle-aged men are eating on average about 54% more salt today than in the early 1970s; for women, consumption has jumped 67% in that time.
The best way to reduce salt is to cut back on processed and restaurant foods, eat fresh produce, and reduce portion sizes. Nutritionists recommend eating whole grains instead of bread—a single slice of packaged bread can contain 150 mgs to 200 mgs or more of sodium. Cut back gradually, so your palate adjusts to a less salty taste.
When you do buy processed foods, look for items with less than 300 mg of sodium per serving, or no more than one milligram of sodium per calorie of food, advises the Harvard School of Public Health, which has on its website 25 sodium-reduction strategies developed with the Culinary Institute of America.
Many consumers have focused in recent years on cutting back on fat and may not have noticed that foods they think are healthier may have lots of sodium. Two tablespoons of Kraft Free Zesty Italian dressing, for example, have just 15 calories, but 480 mg of sodium. The regular Zesty Italian dressing has 60 calories and 310 mg of sodium. A Kraft spokeswoman said the differences are due to varying recipes and consumer taste preferences, and noted that the company plans to reduce sodium in more than 20 of its salad dressings by the end of 2010.
Sodium levels can also vary widely among brands, so check labels carefully. Many chefs prefer to cook with kosher or sea salt, but the sodium in these products differs little from table salt, scientists say.
Cutting sodium from the food supply is a thorny problem for food manufacturers. Sodium is an inexpensive ingredient that not only enhances flavors, but keeps packaged foods fresh longer, makes dough less sticky and keeps cheeses firmer.But amid government pressure and consumer concern, several food companies are lowering sodium in their products. Some are gradually taking salt out—slowly enough so consumers don’t notice—or are launching new product lines that tout a reduced sodium content. Some companies are trying new technologies such as grinding salt into small particles that contact the tongue in more places. PepsiCo Inc. is developing a new salt with crystals shaped and sized in a way that reduces the amount of sodium consumers will ingest when they munch its chips.
Bodies need some sodium to function properly, including maintaining the right balance of fluids, and excess sodium is usually kept in check by the kidneys. But if the kidneys can’t eliminate enough sodium, the buildup of sodium can lead to an increase in blood volume, which in turn increases pressure in the arteries. High blood pressure, or hypertension, can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and other problems.
The Salt Institute, which represents the salt industry, opposes more restrictive guidelines on sodium in diets. It says larger studies are needed and that too little sodium can harm health. “The recommendations made really hold a lot of risk for consumers,” said Morton Satin, vice president of science and research.
Too Much of a Good Thing
But most medical experts say nationwide dietary guidelines are warranted given the body of research demonstrating the risks of high-sodium diets. U.S. adults who reach age 50 have a 90% chance of developing hypertension, said Lawrence Appel, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University and a member of an Institute of Medicine committee that has recommended that the government set mandatory standards for the amount of sodium in foods. “We’re dealing with huge public-health problems here,” he said.
The American Heart Association says it endorses a 1,500-mg sodium limit for all adults.
But just telling people to eat less salt may not be enough. The Food and Drug Administration is reviewing whether to regulate the amount of sodium allowed in foods, following a recommendation in April from the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences that influences health policy. The FDA hasn’t made any final decisions on this, an agency spokeswoman said in an email.
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has signed 16 companies, including Kraft Foods Inc., H.J. Heinz Co., Starbucks Corp. and sandwich chain Subway onto a voluntary salt-reduction initiative it is leading with other cities, states, and health organizations. The goal is to lower people’s salt intake by 20% by 2014.
“This is not about individual decisions. It’s about the foods we buy,” said Sonia Angell, director of the New York City health department’s cardiovascular disease prevention and control program. “It became clear we would have to address the food supply
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This is fitness.
Most of us know Shaun White. He’s the incredible snowboarder who wins every Olympic and X games. So what does this guy to keep in shape? Does he work out? How exactly do you “train” to Snowboard? FoxNews post’s an interview where he reveals a little about his philosophy on fitness and nutrition.
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Shaun White goes big. Olympic champion big. Oprah big. No snowboarder is as decorated. No redhead is as nimble.He’s been a sponsored rider since he was 7 and turned pro at 13. At 23 he’s already won two Olympic gold medals, plus a ton of X-Games hardware, and he is the undisputed ambassador for his sport. He carries so much clout that Red Bull built a private half-pipe into the side of a mountain — complete with a practice foam pit — that was only accessible by helicopter just because he asked for it.
As if that weren’t enough, Shaun White is also a top-shelf professional skateboarder.AskMen.com had a chance to catch up with the golden boy, just days after his big Olympic half-pipe victory in Vancouver.
Shaun White on Post-Podium Partying
You must be doing nonstop press right now. Have you been able to squeeze in any partying since you won your latest gold medal?
Doing the press stuff has been a real gauntlet, an NBC madhouse. I didn’t sleep for a day or two after winning the medal, so the celebrating is more like having dinner with friends and family. The real party stuff comes after I get through all of this. Red Bull threw me a little celebration party in Vancouver before I flew to Chicago to meet Oprah though.You clearly know your way around a half pipe, but how good are you at handling your liquor? I’m not a big drinker. I have a couple drinks and I’m pretty much good to go. An average college kid could probably drink me under the table pretty quickly. I’m pretty sure that the average college kid probably hits it a lot harder than we do. We just get to do it in really cool places, like going out in Japan or Vancouver.
Shaun White on Food
That’s a pretty good segue into talking about what you put into your body. Are you careful with what you eat? Are there foods that you can’t resist?
I can’t stay away from Chinese food. I really love that stuff. Not even the really nice places though. Like the sketchy “Wok Garden” or the random ones in the airport. I love ‘em! So I go to town on that as my guilty pleasure, but I’m pretty good when I eat normally.I also love going to steakhouses. That’s my thing. I usually eat a pretty big steak the night before I compete. Other than that, I just pick up little things from friends here and there. I’m pretty good with what I eat now because I’ve been traveling around since I was 11 or 12, and it was one of those things that if you don’t open your mind and start eating everything, you’re going to be in trouble. Traveling all over in a place like Japan, you can’t always find your average cheeseburger or whatever.
Are you a big gym guy?
The stuff that I do when I get to go to the gym is more like a maintenance thing. I’m not trying to build up muscle or bulk, or anything like that. In a lot of traditional sports you need to be big — you need to knock over someone who’s bigger than you. But it’s a different strength you’re looking for in snowboarding. It’s more like tennis. You gotta be quick and you’ve gotta be really mentally prepared. You gotta predict where you’re gonna go, where you’re going to land, what you’re going to see.
When I do go to the gym, everything’s combined with balance. I’ll do a lot with those big, weighted medicine balls and those half moons. I’ll balance with one leg or squat on a half moon while getting the medicine ball thrown at me.
How does this improve your riding?
When you’re losing balance on your snowboard — doing that arm waving thin —, what you’re doing is straining yourself, and your body is grabbing every single muscle around it in order to bring you back into balance. So, that’s what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to strengthen all those little muscles that help the big muscles, and build overall strength — not size.
You’re also a pretty accomplished skateboarder. How does skateboarding help your snowboarding?
Skateboarding helps a ton with balance, precision, with air awareness… it gets your senses to be spot-on and it’s also a great way to take my mind off things. If you eat the same cereal every day it’s gonna get old. And if I had thought about snowboarding every day, I would have quit a long time ago.
So it keeps it fresh for me. If I skateboard all summer, I can’t wait to get back on a snowboard. And after the winter, all I want to do is get out of my snow gear, throw on a T-shirt and go skating.
Shaun White on Injury Prevention
We don’t see you bail often, but you did manage to smack your head pretty nicely at the X-Games this year. How do you keep yourself out of the hospital?
Ha! I could have been a boxer, huh? I can take a hit! Wearing a helmet is always nice. It flew off that time, but it did its job.A lot of it is just riding within your own limits. You try to push yourself, but if you step to something you’re not ready for… Something I learned when I was really young was to fully commit. When I was 8 or 9, I’d see so many kids who’d want to learn a backflip at the Mt. Hood Summer Camp in Oregon. And every single one would panic as soon as they got up in the air, stop rotating and land on their heads.And that motivated you to smack your head too?I just realized at that point that if they’d fully committed, they would have been way better off landing on their butts or their backs than upside down. Ever since then, I’ve never gone into a trick without fully committing to it.
Shaun White on Killing It at the Olympics
Tell us about that Double McTwist 1260 that you threw in Vancouver.
A lot of people have asked me about that last trick because I didn’t have enough speed going into it. I landed really low on my hit before it and I lost a ton of speed and momentum, but I threw the trick anyway. And as I came around, I basically willed it to land. You can see this little jerky motion at the end where I twist my board and force it to land, because that was my only option
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Everyone knows how big of a fan Fittron.com is of Crossfit. We’ve blogged about it, participated in it, and advocated it for a while now. Crossfit isn’t just a workout, it’s a way of life. It leaves the monotony of the gym behind and takes your fitness to places you never thought possible.
Check out these two stories for proof.
It’s been a while since we posted a Nikki Fitness blog. Too long. So here’s one that gives you some tips on how to get some ripped biceps.
Client: Do you know the nearest vet office?
Trainer: Why?
Client: I have some sick pythons. (Client flexes his puny arms and kisses each bicep.)
Trainer: (Rolling her eyes) Drop and give me 50.…
Taking your “sick pythons to the vet” doesn’t have to be a joke. You can really have great guns (amazing arms) in just a few easy steps.
1) Melt the fat over the muscle. That means doing more cardio, eating lean protein after your muscle workouts, and making sure you eat 6 healthy meals a day including lots of fruits, veggie and fiber.
2) Build the muscle my increasing your weight. You won’t get too bulky by lifting 15 lbs free weights, and if you never move beyond the 5 lbs weights you won’t see definition. Work on your arm muscles 3 times a week with a rest day in between. Increase the weight by 2 lbs each week. Aim for 8 reps your first day, 10 the next and 12 the last day, then up the weight.
3) Work the different fibers in your muscles by hitting them from different angles. For example, do outside biceps curls (elbows in by your sides hands lift away from you out to the sides, then up to your shoulders), forward curls, hammer curls, preacher curls and cross curls (bring weights across body from left hip to right shoulder).
4) Make your triceps a triple threat with French presses (hands together overhead holding weight, then lower weight behind your head keeping elbows pointing to the ceiling and press back up), kickbacks (lean forward, lift elbows up near your ribcage and move weights from shoulders to hips and back to shoulders), and dips (sit on a bench, hands at your sides and lift your butt off the bench, lower down toward the floor until elbows are bent at 90 degrees and lift yourself back up by pressing through the palms).
5) Push that weight off your shoulder. Do overhead presses with weights facing forward and another set with them facing your ears. Do front and side extensions by keeping arms straight and lifting the weight away from your body forward and to the side. Throw in some planks and yoga-style down dogs in your other workout days to continue to define those delts.
If you can’t get to the gym or are traveling, push-ups work all three areas conveniently. And save the corny jokes. Arms like yours are seriously sculpted.
Fitness — Fit it in!
Few fighters stir emotions of ambivalence, admiration, and pity, like Mike Tyson. At 19 years old, Kid Dynamite was the champion of the world and before he went to prison, considered by many as the greatest fighter who ever lived.
His story is tragic and bittersweet. Plucked from the streets of Brooklyn by Cus D’Amato(who makes an appearance in this video) Tyson began a meteoric rise to the top of the fight world, only to have it all come crashing down before the age of 28. He spent his prime years in a prison cell instead of the boxing ring.
We’re not prepared to pass judgment on the man, his actions, or his character. Rather we found a video that shows the highs and lows of a kid from the streets of Brooklyn who once sat atop the world. Sit back and enjoy the greatest fighter who almost was. The talent and promise will leave your breathless.
The great Obama Stimulus, you know the one that created all those millions of jobs(ha), has a little read line item mandating that all Americans register their Body Mass Index for electronic recording purposes. BMI is a metric used to find the ratio between your weight and height which then tells you whether you are overweight or obese for your size. So here we go America. It’s law. Now everyone is going to be watching. Let’s hope this goes over better then the stimulus and actually accomplished what it sets out to do.CNS News reports:
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New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records–that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year–must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity.The obesity-rating regulation states that every American’s electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.”
The law also requires that these electronic health records be available–with appropriate security measures–on a national exchange.
The new regulations are one of the first steps towards the government’s goal of universal adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) by 2014, as outlined in the 2009 economic stimulus law. Specifically, the regulations issued on Tuesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, define the “meaningful use” of electronic records. Under the stimulus law, health care providers–including doctors and hospitals–must establish “meaningful use” of EHRs by 2014 in order to qualify for federal subsidies. After that, they will be subjected to penalties in the form of diminished Medicare and Medicaid payments for not establishing “meaningful use” of EHRs.
Section 3001 of the stimulus law says: “The National Coordinator shall, in consultation with other appropriate Federal agencies (including the National Institute of Standards and Technology), update the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan (developed as of June 3, 2008) to include specific objectives, milestones, and metrics with respect to the following: (i) The electronic exchange and use of health information and the enterprise integration of such information.‘‘(ii) The utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014.”
Under this mandate in the stimulus law, Secretary Sebelius issued a regulation–developed by Dr. Blumenthal–that requires that all EHRs keep track of a person’s Body Mass Index (BMI) score. Body Mass Index is a ratio between a person’s weight and height, and is used to determine whether or not someone is overweight or obese. It is the preferred method of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for measuring obesity.
Michelle Obama has made dealing with the problem of childhood obesity the main theme of her term as First Lady.
U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin. (Photo by Penny Starr/CNSNews.com)
According to the CDC, “BMI provides a reliable indicator of body fatness for most people and is used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems.”A person’s BMI score is used as a tool to screen for obesity or excessive body fat that could lead to other health problems. While it does not actually measure body fat directly, according to CDC, the BMI scores generally correlate with a person’s body fat percentage.
The new regulations also stipulate that the new electronic records be capable of sending public health data to state and federal health agencies such as HHS and CDC. The CDC, which calls American society “obesogenic” – meaning that American society itself promotes obesity – collects BMI scores from state health agencies every year to monitor obesity nationwide.
“Electronically record, retrieve, and transmit syndrome based public health surveillance information to public health agencies,” the regulations read.
With the spread of electronic health records, the CDC apparently will be able to collect such data more efficiently and with greater accuracy because the electronic record keeping systems can send the data automatically, eliminating the need for government – both state and federal – to keep, send, and process physical records.
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We seem to post a number of beach workouts on this blog. And why not? The beach rocks. And it’s summer!!
Here’s another one for some fitness and fun in the sun.