Here it is guys, a bonified:

Healthy Pizza Recipe

For a while I have been watching the cooking episodes on ProAtCooking.com mostly for the humour, rather than the recipes. You will see what I mean if you watch the episode below.

Tonight I decided that I just couldn’t resist the mouthwatering pizza recipe that Dave has cooked up. There are three pizza’s to make, 2 vegetarian and 1 with meat.

Now seeing as how delicious it was (it is currently in my belly), I thought I’d share it with you lot.

Watch the video here.

Press here for the full recipe.

A few notes on my experience:

I picked up some wholemeal tortilla’s for the based. There was no mini wholemeal pita’s in the supermarket I stopped off in. These turned out to work really well, just like thin crust pizza.

I also used tomato rather than red capsicum as I didn’t happen to have any red capsicum in the fridge.You will be happy to know that they still tasted great.

Make sure you cook the vegetables properly beforehand as this really makes an impact on the taste of the end product. Also you don’t want crunchy zucchini on your pizza.

Don’t add too much cheese, otherwise you will smoother your pizza and it will not cook all the way through. It will also give the pizza a lighter feel, meaning that you will not feel sluggish and sleepy afterwards. This is a great meal to have after a hard workout.

Overall this took about 20 minutes from start to in my mouth.

Veggie pizza’s:

Meat (real) pizza:

Type II Diabetes is caused by the pancreas not producing enough insulin. This is usually caused by too much consumption of sweet foods which produce the highest insulin response and eventually can effect your pancreases ability to produce insulin.

Getting Type II Diabetes is really something that you want to avoid at all costs. It is something to be unconcerned about, especially if you are overweight. You CAN avoid getting Type II Diabetes and you should change your ways TODAY to prevent this happening.

There are a few things that people with diabetes have to deal with:

• constant monitoring of sugar levels involving pricking skin
• administering insulin injections to themselves to maintain insulin levels

If you do not alter your lifestyle with exercise and diet Type II Diabetes can lead to:

• Cardiovascular Disease
• Retinopathy (leads to blindness, effects 1 in 6 people with diabetes)
• Impair kidney function (which can eventually lead to total kidney failure)
• Neuropathy (peripheral nerve disease)
  Blood vessel damage (both this and Neuropathy can lead to limb amputation, but not before you suffer from excruciating leg ulcers and foot problems)
• Erectile dysfunction
• Complications during pregnancy

So let me reiterate: HAVING TYPE II DIABETES IS A BIG DEAL

People with Diabetes can also suffer from something caused hypoglycemia (low blood sugar levels) and hyperglycemia (high blood sugar levels). This is why they must check their blood sugar levels regularly.

Hypoglycemia can cause dizziness, clumsiness, fainting and even coma.

Hyperglycemia can also cause fatigue but can also cause heart and kidney problems over a long period of time if left unchecked.

The problem is that people could be suffering for many years with hyperglycemia and just assume that they are just tired all the time. It does happen and it is always worth getting a check up if you are feeling unusually tired or weak for a long period of time.

How can you tell if you are at risk?

Waist size has been shown to be directly related for risk of Type II Diabetes.

Women, if your waist size is above 80cm your are in the increased risk group. Over 88cm and you are in the greatly increased risk group.

Men, if your waist size is above 90cm your are in the increased risk group. Over 102cm and you are in the greatly increased risk group.

If your waist size is above this, reducing your waist size is the best way to avoid becoming a diabetic. Doing this through a healthy diet and exercise is the healthiest method and will give you more energy and more confidence.

Best types of exercise to reduce risk of Type II Diabetes:

Any exercise is better than none. I recommend going for a 40 to 60 minute walk tonight to get it started. Try out some different sports (tennis, basketball, squash, etc) or cardiovascular activities (bootcamp, running, cycling, swimming, skipping etc) and pick ones that you enjoy to continue doing.

It’s never too late to start and taking that first step is the hardest. Get started today!

Best changes to diet to reduce risk of Type II Diabetes:

Foods to Avoid

• Foods high in sugar
• Refined grains
• High GI starchy foods

Examples:

• soft drink
• sweets
• ice cream
• white bread
• white potatoes
• white rice
• cornflakes
• french fries
• white bread

All I did notice was that I had some tooth decay starting along my lower incisors. I’ve always had quite healthy teeth with no cavities or any other issues. I put this new problem down to the sugary Gatorade that I had been drinking followed by protein shakes over the past two months.

So I booked in with the dentist, but I want to do something about it before hand. I started flossing as well as brushing, which didn’t really help much. I needed something new, luckily my girlfriend had told me about this ‘oil pulling’ thing that her Mum had began doing recently.

What is Oil Pulling?

Oil pulling involves rinsing your mouth with oil in order to improve the health of your teeth and gums. However other bloggers have reported benefits with migraines, leukemia, eczema, arthiritis, heart & kidney disease and meningitis. This of course has sparked at lot of interest and currently more studies are being done to investigate these claims. Although I am a little skeptical of these claims personally.

The oil in your mouth pulls the toxins out of your body allowing cells and tissue to grow.

How to do it

First thing in the morning, before eating, pour sesame or sunflower oil (cold-pressed if possible) in a 15mL tablespoon and put it in your mouth. Without swallowing, swish the oil around your mouth.

Continue this for 15 to 20 minutes, leaning to the latter the first few times. Feel free to go about your other morning tasks like showering or preparing breakfast. After the 20 minutes spit the oil out into the sink. It should be a thinner white colour, if it is still yellow you have not rinsed long enough.

Rinse your mouth out well after you finish with warm salty water and then with plain water. Make sure the sink is cleaned of the spit as the oil contains toxic human waste.

Points to remember

• Use sunflower or sesame oil, as these have been found most effective.
• Rinse for 20 minutes
• Clean mouth thoroughly
• If you can’t do it in the morning, do before another meal, but always ensure you do oil pulling on an empty stomach

My experience

I have been doing oil pulling for the past two weeks. I have noticed a small improvement in my tooth decay and it definetely hasn’t increased. My teeth are also no longer sensitive to cold foods or when I eat a whole bunch of sweets in one go.

The biggest improvement I have found is in my gums. They feel fuller and healthier and I no longer get any bleeding when I brush my teeth. The rinsing with oil and salt water has also helped with mouth ulcers that have plagued me since high school.

I believe oil pulling would also help with getting rid of bad breath.

Give it a 30 day trial and see if you notice any difference. It’s very cheap (one bottle for $5 should last you 30 days) and may just help you with any mouth related problems you may be having.

It is basically all of the muscles that run down the posterior (or rear) of your body and is also one of the most underdeveloped areas on the average gym goers body. If you don’t know what your posterior chain is, chances are that you don’t train it as hard as the anterior (or front – chest, biceps, quads) portion of your body.

What does it do?

The posterior chain acts just like that, a ‘chain’. All of the muscles contract together to straighten your hips and is one of the greatest forces your body can produce. Let’s go into a little more detail.

Gluteus Maximus

This muscle begins along the posterior of the illium, sacrum and coccyx and inserts onto the femur along the posterior and medial aspects. It is one of the key muscles in hip extension.

In English: It attaches the pelvis to your upper leg bone and causes an increase of angle in the hip joint.

Hamstrings

The hamstrings group is made up of three muscles: Biceps Femoris, Semitendinosus and Semimembranosus. These 3 muscles run along the postierior of the femur. They work together to cause hip extension and knee flexion.

In other words, the hamstrings group sit along the back of the thigh. Like Glute Max it causes your hip to straighten and your knee to bend.

Erector Spinae

The Erector Spinae serves the main purpose of control the movement of your spine. It is made of many muscles that attach all the way from the top of the spine down to your pelvis. It causes rotation of the spine, flexion, extension and lateral flexion. It is a key muscle in maintaining a strong spine and back.

Quadratus Lumborum

The Quadratus Lumborum sits on your posterior around you lower back. It starts at your 12th rib and L1-4 and attached along the posterior part of your illiac crest. It’s function is lateral flexion through ipsilateral contraction and extension of the lumbar spine through bilateral extension.

Best exercises to strengthen your posterior chain

The posterior chain is best strengthened by hip extension exercises. Most people have weak glutes so it’s important that you concentrate on contracting your glutes on the concentric (positive) movement.

• Deadlift (and it’s variations: Stiff Leg, Sumo)
• Reverse Hyperextensions
• Pull Throughs

If you are not feeling it in your glutes then you may need to do some glute activation exercises at the beginning of your workout. My favourite are glute bridges.

If you are feeling it only in your lower back, drop the weight back and really focus on squeezing your glutes to pull the weight up.

Improving your posterior chain will increase the overall stabilisation of your body. You will be able to squat deeper and heavier, bent-over row more weight and if you run, cycle or play sport you should notice a huge improvement in these areas. So stop neglecting these important muscles and get training today!

There are a many number of reasons I have found that they choose to neglect this rather large portion of their body from their resistance training regime.

Just last week I was talking to two boys who train at my gym about leg training. They skip this workout every week, their reasoning is that it makes their legs hurt. Being ‘tradies’ (what we call tradesmen in Australia) they spend most of their day on their feet. It would therefore, by their reasoning, be unacceptable to have sore legs the day after a hard leg workout. They make a reasonable point, however the truly bad DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) decreases dramatically by the second and third leg workout and would be much more bearable. So this really isn’t a worthy excuse for skipping leg training.

Let me make it clear at this point that I am not a Squat or Deadlift Nazi who curses anyone who avoids these exercises. I just believe that a resistance training program should exercise your entire body to keep balance and control.

Another reason I’ve been told for not training legs is that the trainee wishes to maintain mobility and flexibility for playing sport. This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard of and will be the main topic of this article.

Before I go into more detail the final reason I have been told someone doesn’t train legs is due to inflexibility to complete squats, lunges and the like or an injury that prevents mobility. I will also cover these points below and some possible cures to these problems.

Training Legs Will Effect My Performance in Sport

When I refer to sport I’m talking about highly mobile and powerful sports like football, rugby, soccer, hockey, athletics, etc. These are sports that people often want to put on more mass to give them an advantage against their opponents.

Weight

Let’s talk about contact sports first (rugby, AFL, ice hockey, etc). Weight can be very important in these sports, when you come up against an opponent you don’t want to ricochet off them. You want to be able to stand your ground and keep moving.

So tell me, how are you supposed to do this with weak legs? Having a large upper body by simple physics will cause you to become top heavy, making it easier to fall.

Leg muscles are some of the largest in your body, building a solid foundation with leg training will add kg’s of weight to your lower body, making you more stable and overall heavier. This in turn will make it easier to crush your opponents.

Speed

Do you think that an Olympic sprinter does not train their legs with weights? These guys have the fastest and biggest legs around, but it’s not all caused by running.

Olympic level sprint training also involves barbell squats, jump squats, lunges and leg pressing. These guys understand the importance of having strong legs and how adding that strength will also add to their speed during a race.

Mobility

As I wrote earlier, restriction of movement is often a concern of the non leg train gym goers. I can see how this concern has arisen.

Everyday at the gym I see bodybuilders stumbling around the gym with rather large, but nonfunctional legs. They are bent over from tight hip flexors and they can’t bend there knees due to tight hamstrings.

There is a very simple solution to this: stretch! Take 15 minutes after 2-3 of your workouts to give your hips and lower body a great stretch out. Tom Platz, infamous for his freakishly large legs, was still able to do the splits.

I Simply Can Not Do The Exercise

This can be a genuine show stopper but is usually treatable.

For example, some guys can’t do barbell squats imply because of an inflexibility in the shoulders that doesn’t allow them to grab the bar. Or they can sit back in the squat enough and come up onto their toes.

The shoulder problem can be treated by regular visits to an Osteopath and good exercise prescription. The leaning forward on the squat is usually a posterior chain weakness which can be fixed by strengthening these muscles.

Keep an eye out for specific exercise cures in the future.

I Have An Injury

Make sure you seek professional help with any muscular or skeletal injuries that you receive.

If you are like me and have bad knees, strengthening your leg muscles with exercise will actually help with this problem. Resistance training causes the supporting muscles to get stronger which therefore puts less strain on your bad joints.

To begin with, slowly work through a limited range of motion and possibly just single joint exercises until you have restrengthened the area. Slowly move to more complex exercises and don’t hesitate to take some time out if the injury flares up again.

Never ever train through an injury as this will just encourage long term damage and a longer recovery period.

Training Legs Means That I won’t Be Able To Fit Into My Pants

Wear shorts… which are far more comfortable and will show off your new sexy calves.

On a more serious note, you don’t need to have huge legs to be strong and powerful. A bodybuilders leg workout will put some serious mass on your legs but not so much functional use. Instead for the sports person I would recommend heavy lifting mixed with plyometrics and circuit training to achieve the best results.

The Bottom Line

Leg training provides many benefits to your performance in sport and day to day activities and should really always be included in your training. So go on, give a set of pistol squats a go today and get some power into those legs!

The Book Of Muscle is the real deal. The first half of the book goes in depth on the mechanics of your muscles on the skeletal system. It teaches you how your muscles work so that you can have a better understanding of how to train.
The second half of the book includes some great stretches followed by three 6 month workout routines. That’s 18 months of progressively more difficult workouts shaping your body into Greek God’s.
I have just completed the intermediate workout and I can say that I feel stronger and harder then I did before, with less time each week in the gym!
Buy it here.

Posture Exercises Guide has taken the time to create this awesome blog on posture corrective exercises. In this particular post PEG goes into detail on the back extension which is excellent for strengthening your posterior chain, a big weak point on most people.

Lower Back Pain Relief walks us through 7 great steps for pain relief for backs. The article is quite informative, not only touching on icing and heating but also recommends exercises to help relieve pain.

If you are having issues with maintaining your hair you may want to check out this site on hair restoration. There is lots of good info on different ways to go about hair restoration and replacement.

If you are having issues with face blemishes and acne, the Getting Rid Of Acne Facts site provides a lot of information on different methods for repairing your skin and curing acne.

Your child will require you to be at your top physical condition over the next 15-20 years as they grow up. It is very important to your child that you are healthy and that you pass those healthy living methods onto them. So here is a step by step guide of what you should be focusing on in the months after your pregnancy in the way of exercise.

Weeks 1 – 6

Your abdominals have been stretched from carrying your baby and your pelvic floor from the child birth. The exercises I list below are also suitable if you had a cesarean.

• TVA Breathing. This exercise will repair your TVA (Transverse Abdominal) and pelvic floor and prepare them for future exercise.
  • Start lying on your back with your knees bent like you are about to do some sit ups.
  • Breathe out deeply expanding your stomach. The first 2/3 of the breath should expand your stomach and the last 1/3 should expand your rib cage.
  • Breathe out sucking your stomach in. Imagine sucking your belly button through to your spine. At the same time imagine squeeze your pelvic floor (like you are holding on for number ones AND twos).
  • The breathing may feel backwards, but this is actually how we are meant to breathe.
  • You should feel your muscles tense in your lower abs.
  • Hold your tummy in for 5 seconds before breathing in again and restarting from the start.
  • Remember to squeeze your pelvic floor as well.
  • Repeat this 10-20 times.
  • Take a short rest and then repeat the steps 5 times. So 5 sets of 10-20 reps.
    
• Toe Taps. Once you have mastered your TVA breathing move onto this exercise.
  • Start with 10 TVA breaths to get your TVA activating fully.
  • Keep in that position as you move onto Toe Taps.
  • When you breathe out and squeeze your tummy, lift one foot about 5cm off the ground keeping your TVA activated (tight).
  • Hold for 5 seconds before slowly lowering.
  • Take another deep breath in expanding your tummy.
  • On your next breath out repeat the process with your other foot.
  • Remember to squeeze your pelvic floor as well.
  • Repeat 10-20 times.
  • Like the TVA Breathing repeat 5 sets per day. You only need to start with TVA Breathing on the first set.
• Outdoor exercise like walking
• Water based exercise (provided any wounds have healed) like swimming or water aerobics
• Indoor exercise like yogo and pilates
• For the best recovery I would recommend doing your ab exercises plus swimming or walking everyday if possible.

Weeks 7-12

Now your abdominals will have began healing up nicely. If you haven’t moved on to Toe Taps, now is the time. We will introduce two new exercises and your range of other exercise available will increase.

• Supine Hold with pelvic tilt. Add these new exercises on top of your toe taps.
  • Lie in your TVA breathing position on your back,
  • Keeping your shoulder blade and your feet on the ground, lift your hips up by squeezing your glutes.
  • Hold this position for as long as possible. As a long term goal aim for 60 seconds.
  • Repeat this exercise 5 times with a short break in between.
  • Oh, and remember to squeeze that pelvic floor.
• Mini Crunch. Now your abs are healing nicely we’ll at the exercise to give them some more strength.
  • From the TVA Breathing position try to lift your head and shoulder blades off the ground.
  • Keep your head tucked.
  • Your hands should be sliding along the ground to your feet.
  • This is a very small movement, you should be aiming to produce a large contraction in your abdominals.
  • Hold for 5 seconds be lowering back down in a controlled manner.
  • Repeat 10 – 20 times with 5 sets total.
• You may now include other outdoor exercise like bicycling and power walking and indoor exercise such as light aerobics and light resistance training

Weeks 13+

From this point you may ease yourself back into any previous exercise you were doing before your pregnancy. If you weren’t exercising before hand now is a great time to start. There are plenty of young Mother’s fitness groups around as well as plenty of classes you can attend to get the ball rolling. Group fitness is a really fun way to get into a fitter lifestyle.

A few notes about heart related illness:

• Hypertension (High Blood Pressure) is usually found in people who are overweight, physically inactive or have a lot of salt in their diet.
  • It can also be exacerbated by high stress levels from work and other activities.
  • Exercise is crucial in weight loss and is proven to help you manage stress knocking out 3 of those factors.
• Cardiovascular Disease is caused by a breaking off of plaque in an artery. The plaque is usually caused by high bad cholesterol which is caused by really poor diet.
  • It kills one Australian every 10 minutes.
  • Smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, diabetes and being overweight all contribute to the likeliness of getting heart disease.

Best types of exercise to improve heart health:

• 

  HIIT (High Intensity Interval Cardio): HIIT involves short intervals of hard and medium intensity whether it be on a treadmill, cross-training, punching bag or outside. The idea is that the short bursts of super intense training will keep your heart rate elevated even through the medium intensity parts. Pushing your heart rate up high will force your heart to grow stronger. Increasing heart strength is crucial in lowering blood pressure.

• Steady state cardio such as walking and cycling is excellent to get your heart pumping, especially if you are sitting around most of the day at work which your heart unchallenged.
• Play a sport. Not only is this great fun, it is also a good way to make new friends and find other people with the same fitness goals as you.

Best changes to diet to improve heart health:

• Try not to add too much salt to your food. Avoiding pre packaged, frozen and take away foods are a really easy way to lower your salt consumption.
• Eat a balanced diet, including food from all the food groups in appropriate proportions.
• Keep alcohol to a minimum, avoid binge drinking.
• Quit smoking. Not really diet related but definitely worth mentioning.