mdolla: 09/03/17

Sunday, September 3, 2017

This is How You Can Eat and Drink Your Way To A Good Night Sleep

Your alarm goes off and you instantly want to throw it through your wall.

This doesn’t set a good tone for the rest of the day and a night of lackluster sleep doesn’t just have you feeling like you have anvils on your eyelids, but can leave you unproductive at work and very unhealthy. There are things you can do through the day to have a positive effect on your health and today you will learn about some food and drink for better sleep.

How Sleep Affects Your Health

When you don’t get enough sleep, your body assumes some trauma must be going on. Or else why would you be up late through the night? Your body doesn’t know the difference between threat or the fact you’ve been up all night watching re-runs of The A-Team. All it knows is you’re alert for some reasons and to now bring your stress hormones into play.

Your stress hormones, specifically cortisol, are very important in small doses. They’re involved with your fight or flight response and you need them if it comes to having to fight off a saber tooth tiger or in this day in age jumping out of the way of a renegade Uber driver.

Over the long term things begin to get a bit different and constant stress hormone exposure can lead to things like:

Heart disease
Obesity
Ulcers
Anxiety
Irritability and anger
Hypertension
Insomnia
Depression

Setting Yourself Up For Better Sleep Throughout The Day

Making smart choices throughout the day can have positive effects on your ability to get deeper and more restorative sleep at night.

The first one would be exercise. Simple strength training has been linked to better sleep and even just the simple act of exertion is going to naturally tire you out. You might not want to work out too late at night trying to get this effect as your body may still be stimulated making the sleep process more difficult.

Instead, opt for the early morning workout. Going to sleep naturally lowers your blood pressure by 10-20 percent and this is part of the process of sleep. Working out early in the morning can have a better effect at blood pressure reduction and you ability to get deeper sleep at night. This affect seems to be more pronounced from the morning workouts compared to midday or later.

Watch The Java

There’s no surprise that caffeine is a stimulant that can affect sleep but you might be surprised to learn how long it can actually last in your body. The noticeable effects of caffeine that have you wired more than me at a Knight Rider convention tend to wear off in a few hours.

Caffeine though has a half life that can extend its effects in your body. So even if you feel the effects taper off after those few hours it can actually last for up to 5-6 hours in your blood stream potentially causing sleep problems later that night.

So you may have to play around with when you have that last coffee in the day. If you have one at 4 or 5 pm and try to sleep at 10 or 11pm, you may be feeling that caffeine half life effect.

Keep an Eye on What and How Much You Eat

There are foods that can have a negative or positive impact on your ability to sleep. Even just eating too much late at night can make digestion tougher and your body uncomfortable making sleep not very easy.

Here’s some other foods you should avoid at least 3 hours before bed:

Dark Chocolate– It’s actually really good for you but contains a lot of natural caffeine
Spicy foods– can raise your heart rate and body temperature keeping you awake longer
Steak– The high protein and fat content make it a slow digesting food and this can actually throw off your circadian rhythm.
Broccoli or Cauliflower– The high fiber and roughage content can again require more digestion and over a longer period which keeps your body working and less likely to fall asleep

Eat Your Way To A Better Sleep

Here are some food choices you can pick to aid a better sleep:

Walnuts– They contain tryptophan which helps to make seratonin and melatonin which help your naturally body clock

Almonds– Very high in magnesium which is important in helping the body relax

Lettuce– Contains lactucarium which has sedative effects on the brain and helps lettuce sleep better. Sorry..

Tuna– Tuna is high in vitamin B6 and which is also needed to help make seratonin and melatonin

Cherry Juice– Melatonin to the rescue here again as cherry juice can help naturally boost it in the body and help prevent insomnia

Chamomile Tea- I think a lot of people are aware of this but chamomile tea helps to relax the body and can increase glycine which acts like a mild sedative and relaxes the nerves and muscles

Hopefully today you’ve learned some ways you can eat and drink your way to a good nights sleep. Just being aware of little things throughout the day can have a big impact on your ability to sleep better each night.

It’s the small things that can be the difference between dozing away nicely or stuck watching a House Hunters marathon at two in the morning.

The post This is How You Can Eat and Drink Your Way To A Good Night Sleep appeared first on Lifehack.

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Why I Can Be the Only 8% of People Who Reach the Goal Every Single Time

Losing weight, saving money, getting fit, quitting smoking… Haven’t you ever gotten excited about your New Year’s goals?

You’re not alone. Unfortunately, as studies show, most resolutions don’t go beyond the wishful thinking stage. A staggering 92 people out of 100 fail to achieve their New Year’s goals.^[1]

When the “fresh start effect” fades away, motivation falters and the first bump on the road often signals the end of the journey. We end up the following year with the exact same goals, again and again –as if we were stuck in life.

There may be many reasons why people end up giving up on our goals. Here are some of the most common ones:

Picking up the wrong objectives;
Not setting the goal properly;
Setting the bar too high and feel overwhelmed;
Lacking guidance and support;
Not planning strategies for overcoming obstacles; etc.

But there is another one, a more obvious one, so obvious that most seem to forget about it: if we want to achieve a goal, we need to follow through. Setting the objective is a good start –but it’s only the beginning of the journey.

A lot of people have the misconception that when they have set a goal, they will be able to achieve it. It’s definitely not enough. We can’t expect success when we don’t follow through.

I have been setting and tracking goals for about 20 years now. It started after a deep teenager crisis which left my life as a mess. Setting goals was a way to rebuild myself, set eyes on a new horizon and move forward. Find out more about my story in another article I’ve written: How I Bounced Back From a Fiasco

Goals stayed with me since that day. When I started to work in investment banking a few years later, having goals helped me maintain a work-life balance and stay healthy in a high-pressure environment.

My approach to goals evolved over time. It started with a pen and a blank piece of paper; then an Excel spreadsheet; and finally, I built a goal-setting app called GOALMAP.

In total, I have set hundreds of goals and tracked hundreds of thousands of steps towards reaching them. If there is one secret I have learned and would like to share with you, it’s this one: tracking is the key. So let me try and explain how you can unlock the power of goal-tracking to build your dream life:

1. Be a S.T.A.R.

There is a lot of stress put on setting goals, but setting goals is just one of the phases of the overall success loop. If you want to achieve your goals and engage in a meaningful personal growth process, you need to take a broader approach.

I have a name for that. I call it the S.T.A.R. method: Set goals, Track progress, Analyze results, and Reset your goals. It’s a loop, a dynamic process.

2. Make your goals trackable

First things first, most objectives are bound to failure simply because they are not clearly defined. If your resolution is too vague, you can’t measure success and you can’t define a proper plan of action. It’s like saying “I want to go somewhere nice” to your GPS: it probably won’t help you.

Set your goal properly using the S.M.A.R.T. goal technique:

Specific: Your goals should be precise. You can’t hit the bull’s-eye if there is none. Don’t say “I want to lose weight” but rather “I want to lose 4 kilos by year-end”.
Measurable: Your goal should be quantified so that you know at any point in time whether you are on track or not. This will enable you to follow your progress on a regular basis.
Achievable: Don’t over-plan, be realistic, your objective must be within reach. If it’s too big, then try and break it into smaller manageable goals that you can achieve step by step.
Relevant: Your goals must be relevant to you, connected to your deepest aspirations and aligned with your personal values.
Time-bound: Your goal should have a deadline, or a recurrence (x times per day, y hours per week).

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.” Napoleon Hill

Read for more tips about setting a SMART goal: How To Make Ambitious And Achievable Goals For Great Success

3. Focus on habits

One day, I checked my goals and tried to determine what the difference was between those I achieved rather easily and those for which I seemed to struggle or procrastinate. I found a clear pattern.

I had a few long term goals, like maintaining a certain weight, or getting a new degree before I reach 40. I was doing well with the first one, less so with the second one.

Why did I seem to have a two-speed motivation? I was not less motivated by the new degree. But I had nowhere to start from, while my weight goal instead was linked to habits, such as eating five servings of fruits or vegetables per day, eating fish twice a week, exercising at least four times a week, etc.

These daily and weekly habits helped me reach the long term objective. They made it easy to track progress. I had not set any corresponding habit for my degree goal. And I was not going to achieve it just by looking at it.

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” Robert Louis Stevenson

Have a vision for who you want to be in the long run, and focus on the little habits that will get you there. We tend to underestimate how far we can go by taking small steps in the same direction day after day. Be great in the small things. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

4. Keep track

“A goal properly set is halfway reached” Abraham Lincoln.

The second half is all about tracking. Okay, you have entered a proper address in your GPS instead of “somewhere nice”, but what is the point if you then switch it off?

Track your progress in a consistent and structured manner; i.e., not just in your head. Use an app, write in your journal, etc. Make it so that you can easily follow your evolution and compare with previous periods.

A study of nearly 1,700 participants in a weight-loss program showed that those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records.^[2] Tracking fosters self-awareness. When you understand yourself better, it becomes much easier to change.

Tracking is also motivating in itself. It gives you immediate feedback on how you are performing. It provides you with a sense of achievement. Instead of a never-ending to-do-list which sometimes demoralizes you, you visualize the things you have already completed in your done list and get motivated. Find out more about the benefits of done list here: Why To-Do Lists Don’t Work and Done Lists Do

5. Reward yourself

Another benefit of tracking is that it allows you to define milestones, break down progress, and reinforce the habit loop by rewarding yourself for reaching certain milestones.

We all know that we are more motivated to do something when there is a reward at stake. The pleasure induced by a reward reinforces the activity which helped get the reward. This is called extrinsic motivation. It can be helpful to kick-start the process when intrinsic motivation is a bit low.

A simple way to introduce rewards is to plan/get/offer the rewards yourself. You need to set the bar properly. You need to do a decent effort to get it. It can’t be too difficult, or else you may end up feeling discouraged. It can’t be too easy, or else you’ll get the reward without the need for motivation.

You also need to define a reward that makes sense. Eating junk food for a week if you manage to lose three kilos is probably not the best choice! Ideally, the reward and the effort should be somehow aligned in nature. This will help create a virtuous circle.

Buying a smaller-size dress when you lose a few kilos or getting a massage after a few weeks of physical training are good examples. These rewards help you build milestones on your path to a better you. They become the symbols of your positive behavior change.

6. Analyze your results and adjust your goals

Goals are not meant to be cast in stone. They must be alive and reassessed regularly. Monotony is a big motivation killer, so tracking gives you everything you need to stay motivated smartly.

When you track your progress, you can easily compare your actual results with the targets you had set. It is then time to take a step back and reset your goals. Here are a few examples:

Adjust down: “Hitting the gym three times a week was too ambitious. I manage to go once a week, two sometimes. I’ll change my target to twice a week instead and build up from there.”
Adjust up: “I have consistently hit my target of reading two hours per week. I enjoyed reading that much and learned a lot. Let’s increase the target to two and a half hours.”
Stop tracking: “I used to drink too much coffee some days when I hadn’t slept enough the previous night but over time, I managed to ingrain a new habit. I don’t drink more than two cups a day anymore. I can probably stop tracking this goal now.”
Give up: “I liked the idea of practicing martial arts but I fail on this goal week after week. I realize that I don’t enjoy the process as much as I liked the idea. It’s time to switch to another sport.”

Once a month, or every other month, try and take an “appointment with yourself” and review your goals. Assess what works well, what works less well, update the targets, add, remove, refine, etc. This will help you keep it interesting and inspiring.

Track it till you make it

A goal you don’t keep track of is doomed to fail. Setting it is not enough. Actually, setting goals is only about making them trackable and actionable.

By keeping track of your goals, you will engage in a virtuous personal growth circle. It will allow you to analyze your results, get motivated, improve, set better goals, and so on.

Ready, set, track!

Featured photo credit: Stocksnap via stocksnap.io

Reference

[1]	^	Forbes: Just 8% of People Achieve Their New Year’s Resolutions. Here’s How They Do It
[2]	^	Science Daily: Keeping A Food Diary Doubles Diet Weight Loss, Study Suggests

The post Why I Can Be the Only 8% of People Who Reach the Goal Every Single Time appeared first on Lifehack.

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10 Best Multi-Vitamins for Women to Maintain a Healthier Lifestyle

Today’s fast-moving society means that many people are trying to make career and financial investment their top priorities. However, as women, we also need to take care of our family, and this can mean added stress and even exhaustion.

It’s no surprise then, that we often fail to take care of our own health.

Due to the pressures on our time, we want everything to be fast. For example. we may just choose to grab fast food for lunch and eat a ready-made pasta for dinner.

In order to maintain a healthier lifestyle in your busy routine, it’s sensible to take multivitamins to help cover any missing nutrition gaps.

There are some essential key nutrients that women need (especially during pregnancy), and these include: vitamin B9, vitamin B12 and vitamin D.^[1] Fortunately, these nutrients are readily available in multivitamin capsules or tablets.

To save you time and effort, we’ve put together a list of 10 of the best women’s multivitamin products.

1. One-A-Day Women’s Multivitamin

Contains key nutrients to support heart health, and has more vitamin D than Centrum Ultra to help support healthy blood pressure. Also helps support immunity with vitamins A, C, E and selenium, and helps maintain physical energy with vitamins B6, B12, pantothenic acid, chromium and folic acid.

One-A-Day is designed specifically to address women’s concerns, such as bone health. It also contains B-vitamins – which help convert food to energy.

One-A-Day Women’s Multivitamin, Tablets, $7.97

2. Garden of Life Multivitamin for Women

A specially-formulated multivitamin for women with breast support made from nutritious and raw whole foods.

Vitamin Code Women’s multivitamin includes live probiotics and enzymes, plus antioxidants for superior health and vitality. This product includes folate, calcium, magnesium, zinc and Vitamin A, C, D3, E and B-complex to help meet women’s nutritional needs.

Vegetarian, gluten free, and dairy free whole food multivitamin with no binders or fillers.

Garden of Life Multivitamin for Women – Vitamin Code Women’s Raw Whole Food Vitamin Supplement with Probiotics, Vegetarian, $29.92

3. Centrum Silver Women Multivitamin/Multimineral Supplement, Age 50+

As the name suggests, Centrum Silver is aimed specifically at women aged over 50 years old.The product includes an array of vitamins to protect heart and eye health. Centrum is a proven brand with long-term safety, and is also recommended by doctors and pharmacists.

Centrum Silver Women Multivitamin / Multimineral Supplement Tablet, Vitamin D3, Age 50+, $14.04

4. Vimerson health – Women’s Daily Multivitamin Supplement

This product is tailor-made to meet the everyday nutritional needs of women. It’s fortified with vitamins and minerals to support breast health, strengthen the bones, boost energy and manage weight. The formula’s natural ingredients include wild yam root and cranberry extract – which aid in balancing hormones.

This dietary supplement supports a healthy heart, by reducing cholesterol and supporting healthy levels of blood pressure.

Loaded with antioxidants and nutrients such as magnesium, vitamin C, selenium, alpha lipoic acid, vitamin E, zinc, manganese, biotin, goldenseal, and spirulina, these capsules can help boost the immune system.

Vimerson health – Women’s Daily Multivitamin Supplement, $16.98

5. Optimum Nutrition Opti-Women

Opti-Women delivers 23 vitamins and essential minerals in just 2 capsules. Each 2-capsule serving provides foundational micronutrient support that can be built on through consumption of a healthy, balanced diet.

The product combines vitamins and essential minerals with ostivone, soy isoflavones and much more to create an all-inclusive women’s formula.

Optimum Nutrition Opti-Women, $15.47

6. Rainbow Light – Women’s One Multivitamin

Formulated specifically for women in an easily-digestible formula with probiotics and plant-sourced enzymes.

This food-based multivitamin contains a nourishing blend of dong quai, organic spirulina, and red clover to help support the body’s stress response.

It also features a vegetable juice complex with kale, spinach, dandelion, and beet to provide enduring stamina.

Rainbow Light – Women’s One Multivitamin, $38.49

7. Vitafusion Women’s Gummy Vitamins

If tablets or capsules are not your thing, then try this tasty and easy-to-take alternative.The ‘gummy’ natural berry flavors taste like candy, and just two per day provides the essential multivitamins and minerals women need. This colorful dietary supplement contains no gluten (wheat), milk, eggs, peanuts or soy.

Vitafusion Women’s Gummy Vitamins, $9.79

8. Centrum Women Multivitamin

As stated earlier (product #3), Centrum is a highly-rated brand, with many doctors and pharmacists recommending their products. The Centrum Women Multivitamin is age adjusted for women under 50, and supports energy, immunity and metabolism. Centrum claims that it is their most complete multivitamin, with the highest levels of vitamin D3. The product is verified non-GMO and gluten free.

Centrum Women Multivitamin, $16.14

9. Garden of Life Multivitamin for Women

This vegan-friendly, specially-formulated women’s multivitamin is made from nutritious and organic whole foods.The product includes vegan D3, iron for blood support, and B vitamins for radiant skin and nails. Energy and metabolism can also be kept up with the 500 percent daily value of vitamin B12 these whole food multivitamins offer.

Garden of Life Multivitamin for Women, $46.38

10. Natrogix Women’s Multivitamin

Contains all the essential vitamins and minerals needed for optimal daily function. Natrogix claims that only pure ingredients are used (i.e., free from any synthetic additives). The product is packed with powerful antioxidants to help strengthen the immune system. Additionally, support is provided for bones, joints, muscles and organs.

Natrogix Women’s Mulitvitamin is made in the USA in a GMP-certified facility and approved by the FDA.

Natrogix Women’s Multivitamin, $15.99

Please note that multi-vitamins are not necessary if you already maintain a balanced diet with different food sources. If you do decide to purchase any of the multi-vitamins listed above, we’d recommend that you consult your doctor first.