Small Steps to Health

Increase Your Metabolic Rate and Burn More Fat with These Simple Exercises

This is a guest post from Ben. It’s well known that the faster your metabolic rate (the rate you burn calories), the easier it is to stay in shape. What’s perhaps less well known is that boosting muscle mass helps boost your metabolism. This is because muscle burns more calories than fat – up to [...]

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Superfood Short List

This is a guest post from Carl. As many of us desperately try and cram two months of toning into less than two weeks before we go away in order to get a bikini body, more and more of us will turn to ‘superfoods’ to help our bodies try to detox, cleanse and tone up. [...]

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Muscle Loss While Dieting

When you go on a fad diet to lose weight, you are setting yourself up for failure. Approximately 70% of the weight lost through fad diets is from muscle tissue.  So for every 10 pounds you lose, 7 pounds comes muscle loss! Muscle loss = slow metabolism Maybe you think muscle loss is the price [...]

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How to Avoid Food Poisoning when Traveling

I love eating fruits and vegetables, especially when I travel. However, I’ve gotten food poisoning when I am in places like Mexico and China. When you travel, you only eat food that are piping hot or ice cold if you want to reduce your chances of getting food poisoning. I have a weakness for fresh [...]

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Ultimate Jump Rope Workouts Book Review

The last time I jumped rope was during the Jump Rope for Heart program in elementary school. I remember practicing every day because I did no­t want to be the weak one in my class. Peer pressure could be a good thing when it comes to exercise. While I occasionally “jump rope” in my exercise [...]

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Getting in Shape: How Long Does it Take?

You’ve seen the ads and the infomercials for exercise programs and machines that would help you get in shape in 6 weeks or less. Even though I’m skeptic about instant weight loss miracles, a small part of me wonders why I’m not getting in shape as fast as the models on the infomercials. This post [...]

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How to Quit Smoking: Learning Your Best Options

This article is contributed by Raj. The habit of tobacco smoking has been around for hundreds of years, and it is still an extraordinarily common habit today. In the old days, pipes were the most common way of smoking tobacco. Now, cigarettes are the method of choice. No matter how tobacco is smoked, it is [...]

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Forming Food Habits in the Toddler Years

At Hazelnut’s daycare, most of the staff is overweight and a couple of them are obese. There have been plenty of times when I showed up and 3-4 of the staff waltzed in from their breaks with huge Starbucks frappicianos (with the whipped cream), McDonalds, or Chinese take-out. While the daycare is not feeding the [...]

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Are You Fit Enough to Escape Danger?

The other day I had a very interesting conversation with a co-worker about escaping from danger. Actually she thought my ideas where interesting. “I really need to go on a diet to lose some weight. I need to get healthier so I can play with my grandchildren without needing a nap afterwards,” said my co-worker. [...]

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Nike Plus FuelBand Review

My brother sent me a Nike Plus FuelBand a month ago because he “thought I would appreciate it.” Appreciate it I did. I tore the box apart in my haste to get to the FuelBand. Oops, I guess I can’t return it now (it’s like when you lick something as child to claim it. My [...]

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Basic Principles of a Healthy Lifestyle

While I acknowledged the busy lifestyle of most parents today, I never truly understood it until I became a parent. Even reducing my hours by 20% and essentially putting my career on the mommy track, I find it sometimes easier to buy into the conveniences of the drive-through and packaged foods. My 14 month old [...]

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Reduce Caffeine Withdrawal Symptoms With This Treatment Plan

This post is a followup of yesterday’s discussion of caffeine withdrawal symptoms. Today’s discussion is about my caffeine treatment plan, which reduced my morning coffee from 3 cups to 1 cup while minimizing my coffee withdrawal symptoms. Create your caffeine withdrawal plan Creating a caffeine withdrawal treatment plan is all about slowly getting rid of [...]

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How Severe is Your Caffeine Withdrawal Symptoms?

Long time readers of my blog know that I have a love/hate relationship with coffee. Once every couple years I would cut out coffee for several months just to have it slowly creep back into my life again (this is what happens when you have another coffee drinker in the house). My dependence on caffeine [...]

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Exercise DVD Review: Gilad Express Workouts

This post is a review of Gilad Express Workouts (or aka 15 Targeted Express Workouts) exercise dvd set. I always thought Hazelnut would mold herself to my current habits and routines, but instead I am squeezing in bits and pieces of time to myself into her schedule. Like clockwork, my 1 year old would nap [...]

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Food Themes in the Hunger Game Series

  Spoiler alert: I will be talking about the Hunger Games series and the Hunger Game movie. If you have not read the entire Hunger Game series or watch the movie, you might want to skip this post. I eagerly waited in line Sunday morning for the Hunger Games movie. Rarely do I feel inspired [...]

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Brain Injuries: How Do They Happen, and What Can You Do?

This is a guest post by Raj, a personal injury lawyer who specializes in no win no fee whiplash claims. Brain injuries are no joke, considering that they can permanently handicap someone or even result in death. While there are many causes of brain injuries or trauma, the most common are due to some sort [...]

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New iPad (3rd Generation) Dictation Feature

I finally joined the ranks of iPad bloggers last weekend. The main feature of the new iPad that made me decide to pre-order was the dictation feature. As you know, I normally use Dragon Naturally Speaking (a voice to text software) for most of my typing. I love the new iPad dictation feature! This post [...]

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Medical Bill Mistakes: How Much It Could Have Cost Me

While trying to catch up on my reading in my RSS reader, a post from another blogger spark my memory of the medical bill mistake made by the hospital after the birth of my daughter last year. If you remember my discussion about delivery cost, I should only have to pay my co-pays for my [...]

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Affordable Pregnancy Health Insurance

I posted recently on my mommy blog today about how to get affordable pregnancy health insurance if you live in California. Every baby deserves a healthy start, and prenatal care is vital to the future health of your baby. Here’s an excerpt from the post: Access for Infants and Mothers (AIM) is part of California’s [...]

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Weight Lost after Pregnancy: How I lost 44 pounds!

Hazelnut turns 1 year old this month! This year has been a tremendous growth experience for me as a woman while my body slowly lost the baby weight. I gained 42 pounds during my pregnancy a year ago. Losing weight after pregnancy is hard, especially with all the new mom responsibilities and lack of sleep [...]

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