Tips To Make Yourself Stop Wanting Junk Foods

Convenient and delicious not to mention addictive but with little to no nutritional value—that’s what junk foods are. Now, if all you eat it is that, don’t be surprised if you’re sick or feel tired all the time, gaining weight, or your hair is getting thinner or looks dull. This is why you have to make your diet 70% fruits and veggies, 25% meat and dairy, and 5% of anything you like.

But it’s no secret that it’s very challenging to do that, if it’s up to you, you’d probably just eat what you like all the time, may it be fast food, chips or sweets. But the thing is, if you don’t want your body to give out before your appetite does, you’d want to feed it with nutritious foods majority of the time. So for you to do that and avoid cheating on the healthy diet you’re trying to maintain, here are some tips for you to train your brain into rejecting junk foods.

Drink Water First

A lot of times, you’re not really craving food but just thirsty. Every time you feel an urge to snack, drink water first. After a few minutes the craving will usually fade if your body is actually just thirsty.

Drinking water has a lot of health benefits for our body. It doesn’t just keep you hydrated but it also helps improve your digestion, clear the skin a bit, as well as keeps you from drinking sodas. But aside from that, if you make it a habit to drink a glass of water before every meal, it will fill you up you that you don’t overeat.

Don’t Make Them Easily Accessible For You

You’re more likely to munch on junk foods if they’re lying around your house and can easily grab them. You can solve this by not including them in your grocery shopping. This way, you’ll have to go out and buy it in the nearest convenience store whenever you crave them. However, you may not even bother buying them because most of the time it feels bothersome to go out just to buy snack.

Distance Yourself From Junk Food

You can do this either physically distancing yourself from the food item or mentally. If you crave for something all of a sudden, you can try taking a walk outside especially if that food is just in your fridge or pantry. You can also avoid routes where the store you usually grab your junk food is located. Another way to distance yourself from the craving is to think of something else. You can plan your day tomorrow or watch those cat or dog videos that you like so much. You’ll find that once you get distracted from the thought of the food, the craving fades too.

Don’t Wait Until You’re Extremely Hungry Before Eating

If you’re the type who doesn’t really follow the typical meal intervals and only eats when really hungry or when you feel like it, there’s a good chance you end up eating midnight snacks all the time. Eating meals at regular intervals is healthy for the body and its metabolism. It can maintain the blood sugar levels throughout the day and can also put a halt to those midnight hunger pangs.

Fight Stress

Deadlines, bills, relationship troubles, and other family issues have a way to mess with your appetite. You either have no appetite at all or find yourself stress eating all the time which is bad because when this happens junk foods are usually what people go for. This then can spike the level of cortisol in the body and make you gain weight in your midsection. Not only that, there are people who resort to food or vices like alcohol drinking when they’re stressed which contributes to weight gain as well.

People under a lot of stress or feel down tend to avoid eye-contact and their shoulders are rounded and stoop. People say that stress is all in the mindset, but you should know that your body condition play a big role in it too. Receiving adjustments from a chiropractor here in Singapore can make a significant difference in your stress level by relieving pain or discomfort caused by misalignment, helping you sleep better at night, have better control with your appetite and even treat other health condition like constant headache and digestive problems which are without a doubt stressful.

Practice Mindful Eating

Mindful eating is about practicing mindfulness, a type of meditation, in relation to foods and eating. It teaches you to develop awareness of your eating habits, emotions, hunger, cravings and physical sensations. Mindful eating teaches you to distinguish between cravings and actual physical hunger. It helps you choose your response, instead of acting thoughtlessly or impulsively. Eating mindfully involves being present while you eat, slowing down and chewing thoroughly. It is also important to avoid distractions, like the TV or your smartphone.

Get Enough Sleep

Notice how cranky you get when you lack sleep? Coffee can’t compensate for that. Try to sleep at least 7 hours daily and you’ll surely gain more energy, maintain sharper mind, and lower risk of getting sick as well as prevent cravings from showing up.

Eat Proper Meals

Our body thrives not from the quantity of your meal but from the quality. So even if you ate a lot of food, you’ll find yourself wanting to eat something after a while because your body didn’t get the nutrients that it needs from your previous meal. Consumption of essential fibers can provide sugar stability which can keep you full for a longer period of time.

Remember that snacking a lot, even if you’re consuming healthy snacks, can still lead to weight gain which causes a lot of other health problems, especially if you do not do it in moderation. While being healthy doesn’t mean you have to be thin, weight gain should still be monitored. So instead of constantly trying to depriving your body of foods, try focusing on providing necessary nutrients for your body. Aside from that, you also have to adapt a healthy and regular eating pattern to avoid messing up with your metabolism. This is why chiropractic care aims to treat the body on a holistic level, meaning its goal is to not only provide immediate relief from issues such as back pain, but to help the body heal and manage itself from the inside out, so it's less likely to face other health issues such as weight gain.

Ways To Set Weight Loss Goals Efficiently

There’s a lot of reason why it’s a good idea to lose weight. But if you need one that isn’t about looks, then how about pain management? Keeping your weight under control is actually helpful when it comes to back pain prevention which has been rising and becoming more common nowadays. You're more likely to suffer from low back pain if you are overweight or obese, or quickly gain a significant amount of weight. Being overweight, especially in the mid-section, shifts your entire center of gravity forward and puts additional strain on your back muscles. Try to stay within 10 pounds of your ideal weight to avoid experiencing unnecessary back pain. To help you lose weight successfully, here are some tips to plan better on how to do it because it all starts on the goal setting.

Be Specific

Don’t just say you’re gonna lose weight. Determine why you want it for, how much you want to lose and how exactly are you planning to do it. Let’s say you’re trying to lose weight to reduce your back pain, then don’t just kill yourself at the gym or start starving yourself because while you may see results doing those, it’s also very likely that you’ll develop other problems along the way.  

So first, you should look into where you’re at weight-wise. Keep a record by writing it down or making a note on your phone (whatever works for you) so that you can stay on track. And then know how much you want to shed since having that figure whether it’s 10 lbs or 50 lbs allows you to see if you’re progressing or not. Lastly, you should really get into the details on the steps you’re thinking to go about it. Like you should plan your meals, know the foods that you can and cannot eat. It also helps to schedule your workouts so you’re more likely to stick to it.

Set Short And Long Term Goals

It’s important that you have both short and long term goals when you’re trying to shed pounds. Why? Because while the long term goal, which let's say losing a total of 40 pounds, is the finished product that you want to achieve. The short term ones, like losing 5 pounds every month, allows you to stay motivated and focused on reaching your ultimate goal. If you only think of the 40 pounds that you wanna lose, it’s easy to be discouraged or get lazy along the way since it’s gonna take some time before it happens. But if you have mini goals every week or month of the journey, the whole thing won’t feel much of a struggle because you can see that you’re getting close to what you want in the long run.

Examples of short term goals that can help you reach your long term ones are:

·         Switching into healthier alternatives of your usual meals or snacks.

·         Limiting alcohol/soda/fast-food to once a week only.

·         Cooking your own food at least for one meal a day.

·         Drinking a glass of water every hour.

There are a lot more that you can make adjustments to in your daily life depending on your routine and lifestyle but setting even those tiny goals keeps you more accountable to your plans.

Stay Realistic

Biting more than you can chew is a surefire way to failure. Understand that you didn’t gain the excess weight that you have overnight. So do not assume that the transformation will happen overnight too.

Set goals that you know is within your capability and probability. Now, what does that mean? It means the goals that you should set, both short and long term, should be realistic and achievable. If you normally eat out due to your busy schedule and have never exercised before, then don’t plan on home cooking 3 meals a day 7 days a week and/or going to the gym every single day on top of that. Chances are, you wouldn’t last a week and you’ll drop the whole weight-loss goal.

Cooking your own food is the best way to limit things and be more in control on what you feed your body. But if you’re really busy, then just commit to cooking at least your own dinner and packing your own snacks at work. Once you’ve gradually worked out your schedule to that and have gotten used to it, then you can slowly try to wake up a little earlier and make your own breakfast. This way you have two main meals and snacks that are healthy and then accept that packing your own lunch may not just be feasible since you don’t have more time to cook in the morning and allow yourself to grab whatever’s convenient in your cafeteria. Planning it this way makes it easier to accomplish thing more often than forcing yourself into unrealistic goals and then beating yourself up when you can’t do them. That just defeats the purpose of the whole thing.

When it comes to exercising, especially if you have an office job where you sit a lot, admit to yourself that you may not be able to do it as consistently as you would like to. So don’t be disappointed with yourself if you can’t go to the gym every day. Just find ways to move more wherever you are. They say sitting is the new smoking. Not only can sitting for an extended period of time cause health issues, it also a reason why you might be struggling to shed pounds since insufficient physical activity leads to that. So if you have a deskbound job, even find ways to interrupt sitting or squeeze more exercise in your routine like taking the stairs to your office instead of the elevator counts as a workout. Sedentary lifestyle causes some people not only gain weight but also develop musculoskeletal conditions which can make losing weight even more difficult. If this is your case, better consult a chiropractor right away to address your condition accordingly which when treated can help you lose weight in the process.

Establish Your State Of Mind

Remember that weight-loss goals can also be behavior goals, or “state of mind” goals. These types of goals include:

·         Eat slower

·         Pay more attention to the Nutrition Facts labels and ingredient lists on food products

·         Stop negative “self-talk,” such as telling yourself you’re fat or incapable of change

·         Change the direction in which you walk or drive to avoid food temptations

A behavioral change could include meditation classes to help alleviate stress, which in turn could help you eliminate stress-related behaviors such as eating junk food for comfort. It could also be staying abreast of new research that relates to diet, pain, and the connection between the two. And, of course, when it comes to weight control and overall health, any physical activity you can safely do, including walking, is much better than no exercise at all, can help boost your spirits, and could give you a little more leeway in your diet.

Stay Open Minded

If you want to successfully change your lifestyle to achieve your goal, know that you have to be flexible. Even if you've started to adapt healthy habits, always keep in mind that things may not work according to your plans every single day. Let’s say you’ve been making your own breakfast and dinner for weeks now but due to events or hectic work schedule, you couldn’t do breakfast. That’s okay. Use that opportunity to find a place to grab breakfast that’s still healthy. Or if you couldn’t go to the gym as planned, then just find 5-minutes within the day to do simple but compound workouts at home or during breaks at work to maximize the time.  You don’t have to actually follow your weight loss plan to a T. Improvise if you must or take alternative routes that still leads to the same direction of your plan. Try new things or different ways to achieve your goal and you might just learn that you have a lot of options to choose from when time or circumstances are working against you. They may not be what you’ve set out to do but if they’re healthy habits and changes then you’re basically still on track.

How You Can Take Care Of Yourself Better

We live busy lives with a lot of things to take care of; family, friends, career, pets, house, and the list could go on. But those aren’t enough reasons to ignore your own needs, especially your health. You need a healthy body to take on the world; here are some tips to help you keep your health in better shape.

Don’t Try To Achieve It All At Once

Usually, the reason why people fail at trying to lead a healthier lifestyle is that they try to go all in. Approaching any goal with big sudden effort is bound to fail sooner or later. Why? That’s because it’s our natural reaction to feel tired or move away from something that feels restrictive and depriving. So if you’re trying to lose weight, for example, don’t go into a diet plan that is completely different from what you’re used to. If you’re a big meat eater, don’t try to be straight vegan all of a sudden because chances are you’ll start slipping off that diet. Do it slowly. Instead of eating meat (or whatever unhealthy food you eat) every day, cut it down to 4 days a week, then three, down to one. But don’t cut it out completely. Then learn to cook healthier options for your meals. This way you won’t feel like you’re depriving yourself.

Choose Activities That Help You Manage Stress And Feel Balanced

Everybody is busy with work, socializing and running errands that it almost feel like 24 hours isn’t enough. However, it is important that you prioritize your health and make a conscious effort to balance your activities every day in a way that it won’t feel like you didn’t get a chance to breathe before the day ended. After all, being healthy is necessary for you to be able to perform your daily task.

Try To Achieve A Really Good Night Sleep

Notice how cranky you get when you lack sleep? Coffee can’t compensate for that. Try to sleep at least 7 hours daily and you’ll surely gain more energy, maintain sharper mind, and lower risk of getting sick. Lack of sleep isn’t something to be overlooked. It’s important for everyone to get sleep and wake up well rested because when you do, you feel better, look better, and work better. However, the problem is that more and more people are having a hard time get proper shut-eye which not only lead to poor performance in athletes but as well as health issues like diabetes, high blood pressure, memory problems, weight gain, headaches, impotence, and an impaired immune system.

Good thing some people have started to discover chiropractic care. They’ve found how it greatly helps them with their sleep troubles.  Chiropractic adjustment relaxes your body, corrects misalignments that disturb body and brain communication causing unbalance in your body and affects sleep, helps relieve pain and teaches the proper sleeping position. All of these can help you achieve quality sleep better than any sleeping pills out there. If you’re now thinking about chiropractic care, there are a lot of chiropractor in Singapore that can help you understand how it works and how it can help you specifically.

Avoid Things That Could Make Your Health Deteriorate

If you know what’s causing your asthma attacks, stress, never-ending cold, vices, or things that are harming your health, step away from those. Stop making excuses for them. If you don’t find it in you to put an end to bad habits even if you religiously take vitamins, you’ll just seesaw between repairing and damaging your health. That’s not going anywhere near improving your well-being.

Take Those Little Health Problems Seriously

Those “just a stiff neck/back pain” or “just a headache” lead to bigger or more complicated conditions when not addressed accordingly and right away. Leaving them untreated because they are ‘not that bad’ can overtime, harm both your overall health and your quality of life, so taking a positive step towards solving these issues, like making an appointment to see a good chiropractor, will probably have a bigger positive impact on your day to day life than you’d ever imagined.

Exercise Some Relaxation Techniques

We could try really hard but we can’t avoid stress altogether. But we can do some relaxation tricks to keep our stress level at a minimum. Diaphragmatic breathing, yoga, or music therapy help calm the nervous system so we don’t get consumed with tension.

Adapt Some Positive Coping Strategies

When we say self-care for good health, we’re not just talking about physical, it also involves a mental and emotional aspect of your health. So to help you stay sane it would be good if you can develop a healthy perception about potentially stressful situations. In short, try to look at the bright side of every circumstance. Or better yet, find an outlet, like journal writing, pottery, or dancing so you can release the feelings of overwhelm and confusion and find peace and clarity.

See A Chiropractor

Sometimes, feeling stressed is your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong. People who complain with neck, back, shoulder pain, headaches usually suffers to more than just being overworked. It could be that there’s a deeper cause like spinal misalignments. When this is present, you’ll feel all sorts of pain and it’ll manifest mentally, physically, and emotionally. To make sure, why not visit a chiropractic clinic in Singapore and see how chiropractic sessions can make a huge difference in your overall health.

Things That You Can Do To Ensure A Safe Spine Care Experience

Back pain and neck pain are some of the spine issues that are so common nowadays that not everybody take them seriously. Because of this, some condition worsens which lead to a surgery. While the surgery may be a success doesn’t mean you no longer have nothing to worry about. You still have to ensure that your recovery goes smoothly to avoid complication. You can’t just rely on the hospital/doctor/nurse about this. You also have to do your part to guarantee a safe and successful spine care experience.  

Wash Your Hands

Just like in any other medical procedure or surgery, the first thing that you should keep in mind is washing your hands. Until you’ve fully recovered, you should maintain clean hands in order to avoid infection.

Ask Every Question You Can Think Of In Regards To Your Care

Inquire about the possible risks of your operation, the experience of your doctor in the specific procedure you’re about to go through, or why a certain procedure is recommended to you. When it comes to your health care, ask anything that you want to know. Having peace of mind is also essential to the success of your operation and your recovery.

Alert The Nurse Or Doctor Immediately If You Need Help

Don’t try to endure anything or brush off things that worries you after you’ve had the operation. Doctors and nurses will only be able to provide you good care if you cooperate well and raise concerns early on so that it doesn’t get worse or affect your recovery.

Make Sure You Get Every Detail On Your At-Home Treatment Plan

Being discharged from the hospital doesn’t mean you’re fully recovered. It only means you’re well enough to leave but you still need to continue an at-home treatment plan. This is especially true for patient who have undergone a spine procedure. So make sure that before you leave, you understand how to carry the at-home treatment plan. If you’re not confident you’ll remember everything, ask for it to be written down. But it’s still important that the doctor explain everything to you verbally.  

Change Some Your Lifestyle Habits

Whether it’s your diet, your daily routine, or things that you do for fun, consider changing or adjusting them according to your current health situation. This may not only speed up your recuperation period but also improve your overall health in order to avoid the same issue from recurring in the future. For back and neck pain suffers, quitting smoking and/or losing weight should be at the top of your list.

Chiropractic care may be focused on the diagnosis and treatment of mechanical disorders of the musculoskeletal system, especially the spine but chiropractors understands that patients are so much more than just spine. This is why they always say that they aim not just to relieve pain but to improve your overall health. In order to achieve that, you need to feed your body healthy foods that contain vitamins and nutrients from vegetables, fruits, lean meat, whole grains, and healthy fats. But, when it comes to nutrition, you have to consider what your body needs and focus on that. There are different ways to eat healthy in order to reach a certain goal. In this case, you have to nourish your body in a way that works with your post-surgery recovery. So, make sure you consult your chiropractor about a meal plan that suits your condition.

Ensure Your Conditions Are Coordinated

If you have other health issues apart from your spine condition, always make sure your doctor or chiropractor knows about it. This is because treatments or medications for your spine condition alone may have adverse effect to your other condition. You can do one treatment that treat one condition and then aggravate another.

Be Smart About Your Prescriptions

Being a safe consumer of medications goes beyond simply following the correct dose. Are you getting refills at the appropriate time? Are you adhering to drug? Are you making the right adjustments to your drug regimen if you’re having spine surgery? Medication safety can be complex, it can help you but it can also cause problems if you don’t know how to handle it properly.

Prepare Your Home According To Your Needs

If your room is on the second floor, maybe you can move to the first floor while recuperating. Make sure you can easily reach light switches and the floor must be clutter-free to avoid accidents especially if you have trouble moving around after the operation. Even small changes like this in your home can make your spine care experience a lot easier. So that you can focus on your spine until you’re fully well instead of constantly worrying how to go up and down the stairs without falling.

Foods To Avoid Eating If You’re Prone To Headaches

Headaches are often brushed off since we tend to just power through them. But frequent headaches may not only be a slight discomfort but can also be completely a nuisance. So the less you experience them, the better not just for you but for everyone else. The problem is, people hardly ever seek medical attention for headaches unless they become incapacitated with it. As a result it can be hard to manage at time because we basically don’t know what to do about it aside from taking painkillers. But did you know that you may be able to manage it by avoiding certain foods?

Chocolate

A lot of people, not just women, find chocolate a comforting food. But did you know that if you tend to get headaches a lot, chocolate may have a different effect? It’s said to be due to tyramine or phenylethylamine, two amino acids found in chocolate that is triggering the headache.

Alcoholic Drinks

Whether you’re a habitual drinker or not, you’re probably aware of how much of a pain hungover can be.  But you don’t even have to be that drunk or have a hungover to experience the headache from alcoholic drinks. Since alcohol in any drink causes increased blood flow to your brain and can also result in dehydration, both of which might be headache triggers.

Coffee

The high or energy boost that coffee can give you can also cause headaches, especially after the effect of the caffeine has worn off. But this depends on how often you drink it. Moderate consumption may help relieve pain since it gives that sense of alertness. But daily intake, especially if you have more than a cup in a day, makes your brain develop a tolerance for it. So the effectiveness becomes weaker and your body expect an additional dose right away which when unmet the withdrawal syndrome which includes headaches kicks in.

Cheese

Substance called tyramine that forms as the proteins in cheese break down over time. And the longer the cheese ages, the more tyramine it contains which is a known headache causing element. So if you’re a fan of cheese and you add it in anything that you eat, you may wanna start cutting back on that and see if your headache improves.

Foods Containing Soy Sauce And MSG

Monosodium glutamate (MSG), which is found in soy sauce and as a food additive in many other foods, has been found to cause cramps, diarrhea, and a horrible headache in 10 to 15 percent of people who get migraine headaches. This is possibly due to the saltiness which can lead to dehydration that we know leads to headaches too.

Ice Cream

Drinking or eating something cold very quickly can cause what we call brain freeze which basically is headache due to the cold. Therefore, it’s actually not the ice cream itself that’s causing the pain. You can still enjoy it, just eat it slowly no matter how much you love it or have been craving for it for days!

Banana

Shocker, I know. Banana is hardly found in any not-to-eat-food list because of how nutritious it is. But apparently, headache or migraine sufferers have found that banana triggers the pain for them. This is because banana also contain tyramine which if you’re sensitive to it, headache takes over!

Processed Meat

Nitrites used as preservatives in hot dogs, bacon, and lunch meats may dilate blood vessels and trigger headaches after eating in some people. There may not be a solid study that can back this up but we know that too much processed foods in your body is not good because of all the preservatives added in them. If you can’t eliminate them in your diet altogether, you should at least limit your consumption of them.

Eliminating or even just limiting these food items from your diet may help, but probably the safest, surest way to headache relief is to seek chiropractic care. Because it’s a great alternative treatment that doesn’t involve drugs or surgery to eliminate the pain but is effective in improving your overall health. Aside from that, it’s best to work with your primary care physician, neurologist, or headache specialist too. With some trial and error, you may find a treatment that finally relieves your pain.

Pointers That Will Make Your Boss Agree To Provide Height Adjustable Desks In The Office

When you spend majority of your time sitting, chances are back pain, shoulder pain, and neck pain have become your constant companion. This isn’t good. Not only that this can make your entire day uncomfortable, but it can also lead to spinal injuries and affect your performance at work in general.

But don’t worry because utilizing height adjustable desks in your workplace is a good way to alternate sitting down and standing up throughout the day and avoid back pain and stiffness. The question is, how do you get your boss onboard with this? Well, you suggest this idea in your next meeting and to convince him or her, here are the pointers you definitely want to highlight!

Return On Investment

Businesses don’t like spending money on something that they won’t profit from, that’s why it’s called business. So if you’re going to present this idea of investing on new desks, you have to explain how the management would gain from it. So you explain that while the cost of such desks may be off-putting at the beginning, it actually benefits them as time goes because of how it helps employee perform better.

Improved Employee Health

Did you know that back pain is a leading cause of missed work days as well as work limitations? That is not good for businesses as their employees’ health affects performance which affects business’s revenue in the long run. So if they invest in a desk that prevents back pain, the company enjoys increased productivity, reduced sick days and lower health insurance cost.

Improved Mood Means Increase In Productivity

Being allowed to move more by alternating sitting and standing not only lessens chances of back pain but also improves a worker’s mood. We all know that once a person starts feeling stressed out or starts getting into a bad mood, a tasks starts feeling more difficult or they get mental blocked that they can’t figure out how to do something at all. But the simple act of getting up from the desk and moving your body refreshes the brain more than staring at the computer for hours. So for a company, a happy worker is a more productive worker and if a height adjustable desk can help with that, your boss will be more willing to give it a go.

No Assembly Required

The company won’t have to hold a tutorial seminar just to teach employee to assemble these kind of desks. So it’s not like they also have to worry about wasting precious working hours because sit-stand desks nowadays require no assembly at all. You simply have to take it out of the box, place it on the existing desk and then it’s done!

No Risk

When it comes to risks, you simply have to recommend a supplier that offers return and exchange within 30 days, which most suppliers nowadays do, and it should be fine.

People say that stress is all in the mindset, but you should know that your body condition play a big role in it too. So if your symptoms persist even after improving your work setup with the help of sit-stand desks, it’s time you seek a professional. Receiving adjustments from a chiropractor here in Singapore can make a significant difference in your stress level by relieving pain or discomfort caused by misalignment, helping you sleep better at night, and even treat other health condition like constant headache and digestive problems which are without a doubt stressful. Aside from that, you’ll find that when your body is in tip-top condition, your performance at work improves as well and you’re less likely to feel sick and tired of going to work every day.