BY JASON JOHNSON

This tip works wonders – a book was written about it- and so many people have lost weight with just this simple tip.
Drink a glass of water and eat an apple BEFORE every meal. (And by meals, we are only talking about Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.)

In the study, everything else in their diets remained the same, but the test subjects added 1 apple and a glass of water before breakfast, 1 apple and a glass of water before lunch, and 1 apple and a glass of water before dinner. The results?

The test subjects all lost weight! The nutritional qualities of fruits such as apples combine to make them an ideal “elixir” for weight loss. Being low in calories, the fiber helps by providing bulk-and making you feel full, decreasing your appetite and the desire to eat other (higher calorie) foods.

Another benefit of eating apples is their high water content. The water- along with the fiber- further aids in making you feel full. Yet, because apples are low in sodium, they will not create excess water weight for you to carry around.

Try it out for a week or two, it’s the easiest diet you will ever try.

BY JASON JOHNSON

QUICK FIX:

This can easily be corrected if we just take the time to do it. Starting today, set your watch or Microsoft Outlook alarm calendar to go off every 30-40 minutes. This is your cue to get up from your chair and spend a few minutes in an upright position throughout the day.

Do you ever notice how great you feel after getting up and taking a short walk or performing a quick stretch? Think about literally sitting through a 2 hour meeting.  And think about how great you felt when the meeting finally ended and you were able to stand up and walk around.

What about those long family road trips when you just couldn’t wait to get out of the car and stretch your legs? That’s what we are after here, but let’s do it much more often during the day. Here are a few suggestions:

• Walk around, go to the kitchen, walk down to your co-worker’s office instead of calling/e-mailing.
• conduct your next meeting standing up
  
  
• stand up during your next phone call (as a bonus, this will also make your voice sound clearer, stronger and more confident)

• eat your lunch at the counter while standing

• read one of your TPS reports while standing

This is simple, and it can and will go a long way to help keep your body get out of those unwanted seated positions all day, and chances are, you’ll start to feel better in no time.

An added benefit: standing also burns calories. Your muscles, joints and tendons have to work and expend energy to support your body weight as you stand.

The gold-standard for performing most exercises is to perform them standing rather than sitting. Why sit down on a bench and perform a seated dumbbell military shoulder press, when you can burn more calories by engaging more muscles and challenging your core at the same time, by performing the exercise standing?

So starting right now…..STAND UP!!!!

By Jason Johnson

In the words of Ludacris….STAND UP!

We sit way too much during the day. I am sitting as I type this, and I bet you are sitting while reading this as well.

Sitting is a huge part of life and we really cannot get around that.  However, a lot of physical problems come from individuals sitting too much throughout the day.

Think about it: we get up in the morning and are upright for a very short amount of time. You wake up, hop in the shower (upright), make your coffee and breakfast (you are eating breakfast every day right?-upright), then we sit down to eat.

We walk to the car (upright), then hop in our car and sit on the commute to work or school. We get to our destination and we sit again for the majority of the day. At the end of the day we come home, we are tired and we sit again until bed.  “So what’s wrong with this? This sounds like my typical day” you are saying.

That is too much sitting.  Sitting puts the human body in an unwanted position called flexion. The muscles at the front of the hip will eventually shorten, and your glute muscles shut down from all of this sitting.

Short, tight hips and glute muscles are a recipe for back problems, neck issues and other ailments. Furthermore, all of this sitting shortens our chest and shoulder muscles which will eventually lead to the “rounded back” IT computer-guy look.

The rounded back position slowly degenerates your discs and pushes the discs outward to the back. This starts the process of a herniated disc. Movement is very important for all of the joints in our body.

The joints in the human body don’t have very much blood flow on their own. Our joints get nutrition by our body’s physical movement. Is your foot asleep? There is no blood flow, which means you need to stand up, get moving, walk around.

TOMORROW:  QUICK FIX

BY JASON JOHNSON

2009 is right around the corner. One of the most common New Years Resolutions for many people is—> “This year, I’m going to lose weight!”

What does the average person do next? You are so motivated and pumped up to lose weight, you dive head first into the pool! You start a strict exercise program, and completely change your diet.

Starting January 5th (the busiest day of the year at gyms nationwide, statistically, by the way) you tell yourself, “starting today-I’m going to the gym 6 times a week.” You pack your own lunch every day with healthier food options. You immediately cut out all sodas, alcohol, fried foods and sugar from your diet.

The vending machine (aka junk machine) at work that you so frequently visited no longer exists to you. You walk right past it. The intern brought donuts for everyone in the office on Monday, there is cake for Jane’s birthday on Tuesday, Happy Hour after work for

Bill’s last day on Wednesday, on Thursday a co-worker brings in homemade fudge and insists “you have to try this”, and on Friday there is another Happy Hour after work for your boss’ birthday. But you pass on all of these indulges. The old you would have been first in line, but this is the new you. No thanks.

And what usually happens?

Burnout starts to kick in. By January 19th (2 weeks later) you skip the gym. Sleep in, instead of going to the gym, or run to the mall instead of going to the gym after work. The 6 times a week exercise routine, turns into once a week. You stop packing your lunch, and start going out to lunch again with co-workers.

So what can you do to keep your New Years Resolution of losing weight?

Find out Jason’s S.M.A.R.T. way to keep your resolutions in Part 2 on Tuesday. I’ll share my 2009 Resolutions with you on Wednesday so you all can help keep me accountable.