Straight Health offers easy to understand and accurate information on health, nutrition, diets and exercise. With this RSS feed you can stay up to date with all the new articles, FAQ and top 5 lists that are updated. http://straighthealth.com/ It's February, the middle of a cold, dark winter. The last thing most people are thinking about is the beach, but now is that best time to start thinking about your beach body. The week before a spring break or summer cruise, everyone starts flocking to the gym for a last minute body transformation. If you wait till the last minute to prepare, you won't have a nice beach body, you'll have a fat winter body. Start preparing now and the changes you make will show a huge difference when it's time to get into your bathing suit. http://tips.straighthealth.com/tip/2012/beach-ready-body-all-year-round.html Carbohydrates are the body's main source of energy. Carbs provide the fuel your body needs to perform everyday tasks such as digesting food, physical activity and keeping the all of the organs powered up. Without carbs, your body will underperform in a wide variety of tasks. Though low carb diets have attempted to link a decreased carbohydrate intake with increased weight loss, calorie reduction, not carb elimination is responsible. http://straighthealth.com/pages/articles/darticles/allabcarbs.html Your body needs protein to build and repair tissue. Though protein is thought of as a supplement that will only help male bodybuilders who are looking to gain some serious weight, eating the right kind can help people with very different fitness goals. http://straighthealth.com/pages/articles/darticles/allabprotein.html Creating a calorie surplus allows you to gain weight. A calorie surplus gives your body the extra energy it needs to build muscle which results in weight gain. While a calorie surplus is required to gain weight, simply eating more will only lead to unsightly fat gain. To gain muscle, you need to combine a calorie surplus with a strength training routine. http://straighthealth.com/pages/qna/calorie-surplus.html Being toned is a function of how much body fat you have. Getting toned requires that you take steps to burn excessive body fat. One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to get toned is attempting to spot reduce certain areas of the body. Spot reducing, trying to burn fat from a specific area of the body, is impossible. The only way to burn fat is by combining a diet that moderately cuts calories with a strength training and cardiovascular exercise routine. http://straighthealth.com/pages/five/toned.html I weigh 143 lbs, and I am 5'11". I want to know if I should take a weight gainer or protein to gain some weight and muscle. I don't want to gain too much fat, just lean muscle. http://straighthealth.com/pages/dietitian/basic-steps-gain-weight.html Losing weight quickly is unhealthy for a number of reasons; the quickly weight loss is unlikely to stick for a long period of time, you're much less likely to take in 100% of the nutrients your body needs each day and your energy levels will plummet, impacting many areas of your life. When you think of losing weight as a temporary diet, you will lose it in an unhealthy manner. Weight loss should be thought of as a long term lifestyle change rather than a quick way of losing a few pounds for a party, beach trip or wedding. http://straighthealth.com/pages/five/reasons-losing-weight-quickly-unhealthy.html Losing weight is as simple as following one rule: burn more calories than you eat. When you burn more calories than you eat, your body is forced to use fat stores for energy which over time, causes weight loss. The weight loss rule has two sides: how many calories you burn (exercise) and how many calories you eat (diet). http://straighthealth.com/pages/articles/sarticles/diet-exercise-weight-loss.html Almost a month has passed since the New Year which means a lot of resolutions are in danger of being forgotten. Going into the New Year, most resolutioners are excited and motivated about changing their lives. They pick an ambitious goal but when they get to work, they realize that change isn't easy. By the end of January a lot of resolutioners realize that it's much easier to continue without change than it is to improve. Even if your resolution hasn't gone according to plan, there are still steps you can take to still make a positive change in your life. http://tips.straighthealth.com/tip/2012/resolution-fatigue.html Every year, early January brings with it a huge influx of new members at almost every single gym in town. If you fit into this influx, congratulations on taking your first step towards a new and healthier lifestyle. However, simply signing up for a gym membership does not guarantee success. Carrying your resolution past the first few weeks of January takes dedication, hard work, motivation and a solid plan. If you're not serious about your new resolution, do everyone a favor and stay out of the gym to make room for those who are. http://tips.straighthealth.com/tip/2012/not-serious-stay-out-of-the-gym.html The New Year can bring hope to those seeking a positive change in their lives. January acts as a starting point for improvement, however all too often, resolutions end up in failure and the positive benefits that could have been realized are never seen. This doesn't happen due to a lack of desire, rather poor planning is to blame. Even the best of intentions need to be pushed along by good organization. http://straighthealth.com/pages/articles/sarticles/steps-to-successful-new-years-resolution.html Preparing your Thanksgiving turkey can be a tough and confusing task. Knowing all the details of how to safely thaw it, prepare it and cook it can seem out of reach. Here you'll find a list of the most common questions and answers. The most important points to remember are those that deal with safety. http://straighthealth.com/pages/articles/darticles/complete-thanksgiving-turkey-faq.html This calculator will tell you how much time is needed to properly cook a turkey. Simply enter the weight of your turkey in pounds and click calculate. A stuffed turkey requires about 15 minutes per pound while an unstuffed turkey requires 12-15 minutes per pound. These times are based on a 325 degree F cooking temperature and should be used only as a guideline. http://straighthealth.com/pages/tools/turkey-cook-time-calculator.html The turkey is the centerpiece of a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner which is why properly cooking it is so important. Mess it up and not even the best side dishes will save you. Perfect your technique and you'll be everyone's favorite person, at least for this one day every year. This step by step guide will show you how to make a perfect Thanksgiving Turkey. http://straighthealth.com/pages/articles/darticles/how-to-cook-turkey.html This calculator will tell you how much time is needed to properly thaw a turkey in the refrigerator or in cold water. Simply enter the weight of your turkey in pounds and click calculate. http://straighthealth.com/pages/tools/turkey-thaw-time-calculator.html Making a healthy Thanksgiving Turkey is a bit more complicated than using the right ingredients. During the holiday season, an increase in food poisoning is usually seen because most people don't know how to properly thaw a turkey. If done improperly, bacteria can multiply very quickly and cause your closest friends and family to get sick. http://straighthealth.com/pages/articles/darticles/thawing-turkey.html The turkey is the centerpiece of most Thanksgiving meals. Here is a step by step recipe to help you make a healthy yet tasty turkey. http://straighthealth.com/pages/recipes/thanksgiving-turkey-recipe.html Gaining weight, muscle and strength doesn't have to be a complicated process. You can be successful by combining an appropriate amount of calories with a solid strength training program. Since complaining about genetics will only lead to failure, a much more efficient use of your time is to simply eat more and lift weights. http://straighthealth.com/pages/how-to/gain-weight.html This article focuses on my friend and co-worker Luke, a 22 year old member of the United States Air Force. We were recently deployed to Iraq together (a beautiful country in the Middle East) for 6 months and made it our mission to improve our bodies. Luke's motivation (combined with my expertise and guidance) helped him lose 31 pounds over the coarse of that 6 months. He didn't subscribe to any extreme weight loss methods or complicated plans. His secret: move more and eat less. http://straighthealth.com/pages/articles/sarticles/luke.html Losing weight by dieting alone is technically possible though it's probably not feasible for most people and won't lead to long term results. Instead it will lead to crash diets resulting in gaining more weight back than you initially started with. http://straighthealth.com/pages/qna/loseweightnoexercise.html Your eating habits have a lot to do with your overall health. The types of food you eat can either prevent or speed up certain diseases. Eating healthy doesn't always mean counting your calories but it does mean being able to differentiate between good and bad choices. http://straighthealth.com/pages/how-to/eat-healthy.html A study was released showing that running works better than lifting weights for getting rid of unwanted fat. Should you drop your strength training routine and focus 100% of your energy on cardio rather than strength training? The answer is no because this study pitted a good cardio routine against a bad strength training program. http://tips.straighthealth.com/tip/2011/belly-fat-cardio-or-weights.html Exercising will improve your overall health. Moving from a sedentary lifestyle in which you do very little activity to a lifestyle in which you engage in even just moderate activity will go a very long way in giving you some real health benefits such as lower blood pressure, increased muscle mass and a lower body fat percentage. Tweaking your exercise routine can help you even further. There are plenty of strength training routines you can choose, the two main ones being: 1) full body or 2) split routine. http://straighthealth.com/pages/articles/earticles/full-body-vs-split-routine.html Body mass index (BMI) is simply a relationship between weight and height. For the vast majority of people, BMI will give a good measure of whether the weight is normal or needs to change. Some populations such as bodybuilders will have a higher BMI because of muscle mass. This tool cannot distinguish between muscle and fat so it is up to you to decide whether you have excess fat or are muscular. http://straighthealth.com/pages/tools/bmilb.html Calories are units of energy used to track food intake and exercise. Calories taken in from food is the body's source of fuel and provides it with the building blocks it needs to make new tissues and repair damaged ones. Calories can come from a wide variety of foods some healthy and others not. http://straighthealth.com/pages/articles/sarticles/calories.html Personal trainers are there to help you reach your exercise goals. They write you up a routine, make sure you're moving in the right direction and motivate you to actually stick with your plan. But are they worth all the money you throw at them? Most people that hire personal trainer wrongly associate the results they see with a trainer's help. The truth is that getting into shape and losing weight is so simple that it's very hard for a trainer (who's been working out and eating healthy for years) to fail. These results excite the client and cause them to buy more and more sessions attributing their success to the trainer rather than the fundamentals: eating less and exercising more.` http://tips.straighthealth.com/tip/2011/personal-train-yourself.html Packing on muscle can be done in two steps: lifting weights and eating more. When you workout, you cause tiny tears in your muscles that are later repaired which is what makes you bigger, faster and stronger. When your body is repairing, it's in an anabolic state. To gain the most weight, you need to keep your body from going in the opposite direction, what's known as a catabolic state - when your body is breaking tissue down. The longer you can keep your body in an anabolic state, the more muscle you'll build and the quicker you'll gain weight. http://straighthealth.com/pages/articles/sarticles/avoiding-catabolic-states.html Sweating is a way for the body to control its temperature. This water weight loss is unfortunately not the kind of long term weight control you're looking for. Real weight loss, the kind that's involved when the body burns excess fat, is caused by eating less and exercising, not by sitting in a sauna for an hour. http://straighthealth.com/pages/qna/losewtsweat.html