Look Great, Feel Fantastic!

Look Great,
Feel Fantastic!
Tips for an Easier, Healthier, Budget-Friendly Life
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INSIDE
FITNESS
e Workouts
Easy At-Hom
NUTRITION
ting
r Healthy Ea
Smart Tips fo
BEAUTY
uty Tips
Budget Bea
An exclusive guide prepared especially for sparkpeople.com.
FROM THE EDITORS OF
FITNESS
Easy At-Home Workouts
Love Your Legs
How it works
Holding a pair of weights, with your arms by
your sides, take a large step forward with
your left foot. Bend your knees until your front
leg makes a 90-degree angle and your back
knee almost touches the floor. Return to start
and repeat 8 to 10 times; switch legs.
Using a pair of 2- or 3-pound hand weights, start
with this 30-minute Basic Moves workout. Build up
to doing the routine three times a week for at least
two weeks. Your body will feel challenged, which
means you’ll continue to get motivating results.
Thigh Trimmer
Total-Arm Toner
Holding a pair of weights at your sides, stand
with feet hip-width apart. Bend knees and
push your hips back until your thighs are
almost parallel to the floor, as if you’re about
to sit in a chair. Keep your chest raised and
your shoulders back. Slowly straighten legs
and repeat 8 to 10 times.
Sitting on a step or low, sturdy table with your
legs together and knees bent, place your
hands on the front edge, knuckles facing
outward. Straighten your arms to lift your rear
off the table or step. Bend your elbows to
lower your rear toward the floor, being careful
to stay as close as possible to seat. Slowly
straighten your arms; repeat 8 to 10 times.
Beautiful Biceps
Ballet Booty Squat
Stand with your feet together, holding a pair
of weights in front of your thighs, palms facing
out. Bend elbows slowly, bringing weights up
toward your shoulders and keeping elbows
by your sides. Slowly lower the weights and
repeat 8 to 10 times.
Stand with your feet double-shoulder-width
apart, feet turned out on the diagonal. Hold a
pair of weights in front of your chest, elbows
bent and arms close to your body. Bend your
knees until your thighs are almost parallel to
the floor, then straighten your legs. Repeat 8
to 10 times.
Air Push-Up
Fab Abs
Lie on your back with your knees bent, feet
flat on floor. Hold a pair of weights over your
chest, arms extended, palms facing away
from your face. Bend elbows 90 degrees,
lowering your arms directly out to your sides
at shoulder height. When the backs of your
arms touch the floor, press weights up again
to start. Repeat 8 to 10 times.
Lie on your back with knees bent, feet flat
on floor. Place hands behind head, elbows
out. Exhale as you lift your head, neck and
shoulders, keeping chin away from chest
and elbows out. Slowly lower and repeat 10
times.
Row, Row, Row Your Back
Holding a pair of weights at your sides, sit
on the edge of a sturdy table with your legs
together. Bending from the waist, lean over
your thighs. Keep your back flat and let your
arms hang down from your shoulders. Bend
elbows, bringing weights up to your chest.
Lower dumbbells and repeat 8 to 10 times.
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BONUS TIP:
Add cardio to your routine to shed pounds faster!
Cardiovascular exercise — the kind that makes you feel slightly
winded — will boost your calorie burn even more, which in turn
increases your weight loss. As an added bonus, starting your workout
with a cardiovascular warm-up will help ward off injury. While it’s true
that most gyms have fancy treadmills and elliptical machines, all you
really need for calorie-melting cardio exercise is your own two feet
and a comfortable pair of shoes. Go for a brisk 30-minute walk before
doing the total-body workout and you’ll expend an additional 270
calories: That’s another 810 calories a week!
Get more Fitness Tips in each issue of ALL YOU
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FITNESS
Easy At-Home Workouts (cont.)
Simplified Belly-Blasting Workout
Easy Does It
New to belly-blasting? Start with
this simplified workout, which will
get you results with minimal strain.
Increase reps and holds as you
feel more comfortable.
Mix up your exercise routine
Doing the same workout all the time can be tough on your body,
not to mention your motivation level. Cross-training can prevent
burnout and injury, while ensuring a well-balanced exercise
program that includes endurance (3-5 times a week) and
strength and flexibility training (both 2-3 times a week).
If you …
Try
Walk or run
Weight lifting, yoga,
or Pilates To prevent imbalances in
thigh muscles, as well as to
stretch hamstrings and hips
Weight lifting,
walking, or jogging
To build upper-body muscle
and build bone with weightbearing cardio
Swimming and
yoga or Pilates
To burn calories with cardio;
to build core strength and keep muscles flexible
Toe Dip
Lie on your back with knees bent
to 90-degree angles. Flatten
your lower back against a mat
and straighten your arms by your
sides, lengthening your fingertips.
Press the backs of your shoulders
against the mat, and slide them
down away from your ears. Inhale
as you lower your toes toward the
ground, then exhale as you return
to starting position. Do 5 to 8 reps.
Bike or spin
Weight train
Why
Front Plank
Get on your knees and forearms
with elbows directly under your
shoulders and fingers interlaced.
Stretch your legs long, and raise
up on your toes into plank position;
hold for 15 seconds
3 secret
weapons to
walk off
35 pounds!
Windshield Wiper
Lie on your back with knees bent
to 90-degree angles. Straighten
your arms by your sides, and
lengthen your fingertips. Press the
backs of your shoulders against
a mat, and slide them down away
from your ears. Focusing on the
deep waist muscles, inhale and
slowly move your knees to the
right, then exhale and return to
starting position. Repeat on the
left; that’s 1 rep. Do 5 to 8 reps.
Plank On the Ball
Kneel in front of a stability ball,
draping your abs and hips over
the ball. Place your hands on the
ground in front of you and walk
them out until the ball rolls beneath
your thighs (as shown). Once your
body is straight (with a slight arch
in your back) and you’re stable,
hold for 30 seconds. Focus on
lifting belly button and squeezing
thighs.
These 3 secret weapons have helped women walk off
at least 35 pounds — much of it around the middle.
1. P
lyometrics Adding bounding, jumping, and
skipping moves to your walk is a fun way to spike
the intensity — and you’ll burn up to twice as
many calories.
2. H
ills Walking in a hilly region will burn tons of
calories and fat, so you’ll be able to work that
stomach off faster, plus strengthen and shape
your lower half.
3. Intervals Alternating moderately paced walking
with short, faster-paced intervals lets you amp up
your walk without tiring yourself out. Peppering a
30-minute walk with 10 1-minute speed bursts can
nearly double your calorie burn.
Get more Fitness Tips in each issue of HEALTH
3
NUTRITION
Smart Tips for Healthy Eating
Choose Healthy Fats
The “less is more” approach to fats is so over. We now know
that it’s the type of fat that matters. Research shows that
certain fat from vegetables, nuts, and fish actually promotes
good health. You probably already know the delicious
potential of starting a cooked dish with healthy fat (olive oil is
the de rigueur choice these days). Take the next step: Finish
a dish with a delicious, healthy oil made from hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, sesame, avocados, or even pine nuts to add
a lovely nuance to salads, grains, fish, or vegetables.
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7 Healthy
Office Snacks
Whole Wheat
Crackers and
Peanut Butter
(10 crackers plus 1
tsp. of peanut butter
= 193 calories)
Eat Less Processed Meats
The reasons continue to mount. Many processed meats
contain nitrates, implicated in cancer. The compounds formed
by browning or charring meat, poultry, and fish are linked
to disease. Meat-centric eating pushes healthy foods, like
vegetables or whole grains, to the side of the plate (or right
off it). You don’t need to give up meat entirely, though. Use
meat for flavor instead of filler (think stir-fries or pastas with
bits of chicken). Treat meat as a side. Eat fish. Go meatless
one night a week. And when you do opt for beef, splurge on
grass-fed.
Eat More Whole Foods
It’s no news that processed foods — even those with
wholesome-sounding ingredients — reduce the flavor and
health benefits of the foods they contain to a shadow of
their natural selves. Populations with diets based on whole
foods tend to see lower rates of diabetes, heart disease,
cancer, and other health problems. Eating more whole foods
increases your consumption of fiber and complex carbohydrates and cuts your intake of dietary pitfalls such as simple
sugars, refined carbs, and salt. Best reason of all? Whole
foods, particularly those at their peak, taste great and
celebrate the changing seasons.
Fruit
(average piece is
70 calories)
Popcorn with
Parmesan
(1 bag plus 2 tbsp.
cheese is 150
calories)
Nuts
(about 170 calories
per ounce)
Eat Breakfast
The path to weight loss begins with a good breakfast. An
impressive 78 percent of the 5,000 participants in the National
Weight Control Registry report eating a regular breakfast, and
they have lost an average of 66 pounds, maintaining that for
more than five years. Mornings tend to revolve around habits,
so breakfast makes a great opportunity to incorporate whole
grains, fresh fruit, and low-fat dairy into a day that starts with
good choices.
Instant Oatmeal
(plain oatmeal is 110
calories; add raisins
for sweetness)
Mini Pitas with
Hummus
Be Portion-Aware
Even though you may know what makes a healthy meal, it’s
still possible to eat too much of a good thing. Learn what
reasonable portions look like. (It helps to borrow or buy a
kitchen scale; once you’ve seen a 4-ounce portion of beef or
a 2-ounce portion of pasta, it’s easier to gauge them by sight.)
Find clever ways of sticking with right-size portions. Set aside
leftovers before you eat, at home or in restaurants. Use
smaller plates. Read and heed nutrition labels. One food
container, even a small one, often holds more than one serving.
Get more Nutrition Tips in each issue of COOKING LIGHT
(3 mini pitas plus 2
tbsp. hummus is 150
calories)
Veggies with
Ranch
(2 tbsp. is 80 calories)
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NUTRITION
Nutrition Myths Debunked
Myth 1:
Added sugar is always bad
for you.
Truth:
Use the sweet stuff to ensure that
sugar calories are far from “empty”
calories.
Myth 2:
Eating eggs raises your
cholesterol levels.
Truth:
Dietary cholesterol found in eggs
has little to do with the amount of
cholesterol in your body.
Myth 3:
Adding salt to the pot
adds sodium to the food.
Truth:
Salt added to boiling water may
actually make vegetables more
nutritious
Myth 4:
You should always
remove chicken skin
before eating.
Truth:
You can enjoy a skin-on chicken
breast without blowing your sat-fat
budget.
Myth 5:
The more fiber you eat,
the better.
Truth:
Not all fibers are equally beneficial.
Consider the source.
Sugar is essential in the kitchen. Consider all that it does for baking,
creating a tender cake crumb and ensuring crisp cookies. Then there’s
its role in creating airy meringue or soft-textured ice cream. Keep in
mind that other sweeteners like “natural” honey are basically refined
sugar anyway — and they are all metabolized by your body the same
way, as 4 calories per gram. Sugar also balances the flavors in healthy
foods that might not taste so great on their own. Don’t go overboard,
of course. Most health experts suggest that added sugar supply no
more than 10 percent of your total calories — about 200 in a
2,000-calorie diet.
The confusion can be boiled down to semantics: The same word,
“cholesterol,” is used to describe two different things. Dietary cholesterol
— the fat-like molecules in animal-based foods like eggs — doesn’t
greatly affect the amount of cholesterol circulating in your bloodstream.
Your body makes its own cholesterol, so it doesn’t need much of
the kind you eat. Instead, what fuels your body’s cholesterol-making
machine is certain saturated and trans fats. Eggs contain relatively
small amounts of saturated fat. One large egg contains about 1.5 grams
saturated fat, a fraction of the amount in the tablespoon of butter many
cooks use to cook that egg in. So, cutting eggs out of your diet is a bad
idea; they’re a rich source of 13 vitamins and minerals.
Public health messages encouraging us to shake our salt-in-everything
habits are, in general, good; sodium is a potential problem even for
non-hypertensive people. But it’s easy to overlook how sodium can
actually help in recipes. Salt in the cooking water reduces the leaching
of nutrients from vegetables into the water. That means your blanched
broccoli, green beans, or asparagus likely retains more nutrients.
Half the pleasure of eating roast chicken comes from the gloriously
crisp, brown skin that seems to melt in your mouth. Yet the skinless,
boneless chicken breast — one of the more boring protein sources
on Earth — became the health-conscious cook’s gold standard
somewhere along the way. Fortunately, the long-standing command to
strip poultry of its skin before eating doesn’t hold up under a nutritional
microscope. A 12-ounce bone-in, skin-on chicken breast half contains
just 2.5 grams of saturated fat and 50 calories more than its similarly
portioned skinless counterpart.
Fiber is a fad-food component right now, and manufacturers are
isolating specific types of fiber and adding them to packaged foods to
take advantage. But the science isn’t entirely clear yet: Just as we’re
learning more about different types of fat, research is showing how
complex fiber is as well. We now know that different fibers have
different functions (wheat bran helps move foods along; oat bran
lowers cholesterol; inulin supports healthy gut bacteria). Some
experts are skeptical that the so-called faux-fiber foods offer the
same beneficial effect as naturally fiber-rich ones like whole grains,
vegetables, fruits, and legumes.
Get more Nutrition Tips in each issue of COOKING LIGHT
5
r
BEAUTY
Budget Beauty Tips
Soften Your Dry Lips
Get Shinier Locks
Get Pedi Ready
Remove Makeup Easily
Give your lips a smooth
makeover by first coating them
with petroleum jelly; then cover
mouth with plastic wrap. After
5 minutes, remove wrap and
lightly scrub your lips with a soft
toothbrush.
Smooth a few drops of silicone
defrizzer, like John Frieda FrizzEase Extra Strength hair serum
($10; at mass retailers), onto
damp hair.
Don’t shake polish before
applying it. Otherwise, you may
cause tiny bubbles to form,
which can lead to chipping. Roll
the bottle between your palms
instead.
Remove stubborn eye makeup
with a dab of Vaseline.
Play Up Your Eye Color
Revive Your Glow
Beat Perspiration
Goof-proof Makeup
Matching your eye shadow to your
eye color isn’t the most flattering
choice. Instead, try contrasting
shades, using Physician’s
Formula Shimmer Strips Custom
Eye Enhancing shadow and liner
($10; at mass retailers). These
eye-enhancing trios let you create
three distinctive looks.
Brighten up your look with a pop
of color. Choose a shade of blush
that matches the color of your
cheeks when you’re naturally
flushed. (Powders make skin
look drier; creams leave a dewy
glow.) Apply to the apple of your
cheeks, then blend with your
fingers in small, circular motions.
To start dry and odor free, apply
an extra-strength deodorantantiperspirant combo, like Secret
Clinical Strength ($8–$10; at
mass retailers). Put it on at night
before bedtime―when your body
temperature is lower―so your skin
can absorb the formula better.
Say good-bye to messy application
with roll-on eye shadow. If your
eye makeup tends to look cakey
or sloppy, try Bella Il Fiore Ball eye
shadow ($11; bellabeauty.net). The
tube’s built-in application ball glides
over eyelids, depositing an even
coat of color. It’s as easy as
putting on lipstick!
Scrub Skin
Volumize Limp Locks
Fight Age Spots
Exfoliate hard-to-reach areas
on your back with a long-handle
brush that has a no-slip grip.
Try Earth Therapeutics
Dual-Function back brush ($15;
earththerapeutics.com).
When it comes to hair, bigger is
better. To perk up lank tresses,
use a bodybuilding mousse that
thickens strands like Samy Icing
Instant Re-Styler ($15; at mass
retailers). It’s lighter than gels or
creams, so it won’t weigh hair
down.
Lighten brown marks and
hyerpigmentation on your face in
just six weeks with Olay Definity
Night Anti-Spot Treatment ($25;
at mass retailers).
Condition While Soaking
Up the Sun
Get more Beauty Tips in each issue of ALL YOU
Massage a deep conditioner
into your hair while you’re at the
beach. The sun’s heat allows the
treatment to better penetrate your
locks.
6
BEAUTY
secrets
t
SKIN
Ways to Be a Natural Beauty
• For a radiant complexion, slice a few grapes in half and rub the cut sides over
clean skin. The fruit acids are natural exfoliators.
• Wake up tired, puffy eyes with a chilled eye cream (store yours in the fridge).
Apply it from the outer corners of your eyes toward your nose.
You don’t need
• Zap blemishes with two ingredients homeopaths have used for centuries: antiinflammatory arnica and antibacterial tea tree oil. Find them in Nelsons Pure &
Clear Acne Treatment Gel ($6.95; online and at Whole Foods Market).
harsh cosmetics —
or tons of time —
to get smoother skin.
gentle, back-to-
t
Just steal these
basics products and
routines to start
• Stay protected by applying a moisturizer with black tea extract before sunscreen;
studies show the ingredient decreases the effect of UV radiation on skin and may
help prevent sunburns. We like Juara Sweet Black Tea & Rice Facial Moisturizer
($47; shown at left).
• Make a facial mask more effective by applying it in the shower, where steam
opens pores so ingredients can penetrate. Smooth Sanítas Skincare Papaya
Pineapple Mask ($30) over your face halfway through your shower, then rinse
before you get out.
looking your best.
t
• Get bronzed without the sun — or self-tanners. Mix 1 teaspoon organic
sunscreen and a pinch of loose mineral bronzer in your palm, then blend it over
your face for an instant (protective!) glow. Try Coola Face SPF 30 ($30; shown
at left) and RAWminerals Mineral Glow ($25; shown at left).
• To firm your jaw, neck, and throat, slowly tilt your head back, pucker up, and try
to kiss the ceiling; repeat 4 times.
helpers
Chemicals can do
more damage than
to your hair. These
naturally based
products and
techniques will give
your locks a healthy
sheen.
• Treat your parched strands to a hydrating mask with all-natural olive oil. Try
paraben-free, silicone-free L’Oréal Professionnel Série Nature Masque aux Huiles
($33; shown at left).
• Preserve your hair color by avoiding shampoos that contain sulfates. They’re
a form of detergent that can fade color or make it brassy. Try Back to Basics Blue
Lavender Color Protecting Shampoo ($9.95).
• Make curls soft and touchable by raking a palmful of TRESemmé Naturals
Lightweight Mousse ($4.29; shown at left) with organic orange extracts throughout
damp hair. Let tendrils air-dry without touching them for a frizz-free finish.
t
good when it comes
t
HAIR
• Create tousled waves by dissolving 1 tablespoon sea salt in a spray bottle filled
with 8 ounces warm spring water, then add 10 drops of organic lavender oil; shake
well, then spritz on damp hair and let it air-dry.
• Prevent breakage in chemically treated hair by applying a rich, protective styling
cream before you use hot tools. One to try: SoftSheen-Carson Roots of Nature
Strengthening Oil Moisturizer ($6.99), which contains green tea and shea butter.
t
• Add shine by distributing a few drops of Josie Maran Argan Oil Hair Serum ($30;
shown at left) throughout damp hair. The star ingredient, organic argan oil, makes
strands glossy but won’t weigh them down.
10MAYXAA
Get more Beauty Tips in each issue of HEALTH
7