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Are you stuck in a snacking rut?  Here are fifty things you can do instead of eating!

1. Go for a walk.
2. Paint your toenails.
3. Read poetry out loud to yourself.
4. Make your bed.
5. Look up ten words you don’t know in the dictionary.
6. Drive down a road you haven’t been on before.
7. Paint a rock.
8. Make braids in your hair (even if it doesn’t seem long enough.)
9. Make a snow castle (in winter) or a dirt castle (in summer).
10. Take a sketchpad outside and draw a flower or a leaf.
11. Color with crayons.
12. Sing along to the radio, except in a falsetto.
13. Mix dish soap with water (about 1 part soap to 4 parts water) and blow bubbles.
14. Clean your TV and computer screens.
15. String beads on a string for a necklace or belt.
16. Make a collage out of magazine pictures.
17. Update your resume.
18. Add to your Netflix queue.
19. Sweep the floors.
20. Write a story and illustrate it.
21. Go through your clothes and donate the ones you don’t want anymore to a local thrift store.
22. Go through your blankets and donate the ones you don’t want anymore to a local pet shelter.
23. Pluck your eyebrows.
24. Update your music collection.  (Do you really want people to continue thinking you still listen to “Wannabe” on your iPod?)
25. Wash all your dishes (by hand).
26. Write with your opposite hand.  (This looks silly and stimulates your brain.  I suggest copying poems.)
27. Get dressed up for no reason and make yourself a cup of tea (sip elegantly.)
28. Take a nap.
29. Rearrange your furniture.
30. Make a face mask using oats (any brand will do) and water.  Boil the water and pour onto the oats, mixing so they get gooey.  Add a spoonful of honey and mix again, then apply to your face.  Leave on for 5-10 minutes and then wash off for super smooth skin!
31. Write a letter to a company to tell them what you like or don’t like about a product.
32. Call a friend you haven’t talked to in a while.
33. Sew a patch onto a pair of jeans or a skirt.
34. Go to the library.  Pick up a nonfiction book on something you know nothing about.
35. Make a self portrait with Paint (or Adobe Photoshop if you are way awesome) and post it as your Facebook photo.
36. Make bird treats from bread slices, bird seed, and egg whites.  Cut the bread slices with a cookie cutter and dip them in egg white.  Sprinkle them with bird seed.  Bake them on a cookie sheet at 300 degrees for 5 minutes.  String a string through them and hang them from tree branches.
37. Decorate soda, wine, or beer bottles and use them as vases.
38. Do some jumping jacks.
39. Cut snowflakes (in winter) or stars or flowers (in summer) out of construction paper.  String them together and hang them from your window.
40. Change all your passwords.
41. Make puppets out of unmated socks.
42. Learn to knit or crochet (both will eat your time like nobody’s business.)
43. Play a board game.
44. Walk around your neighborhood with a garbage sack and gloves and pick up litter.
45. Make paper airplanes.
46. Clean out every drawer in your house.
47. Go to a park and feed the birds.
48. Do some yoga poses.
49. Window-shop.
50. Memorize a famous speech.

We’ve all heard it on the news. You have to do this to stay alive, You have to do that to get fitter, but the thing is, do we have the time? I have thought about everything that the government, or other organisations say that we should do each day, and written an account of the day. Let’s see how many hours we have left at the end of it!

I am going to take an example of a nineteen year old woman who is doing a course at university. Of course, the same would apply to anyone with a job, or with children to take care of. Time is a huge issue for us all.

• You must get at least 8 hours sleep per night. This recommendation has been around for years now, with the recommendations for a child being even higher. If we did this every single night, we would only have sixteen hours of the day left.
• Relax for an hour before bedtime. This is supposed to help us sleep better, and allow the sleep that we do have to be of good quality. If we do this, we only have fifteen hours left of the day.
• Two hours of university, plus three hours independent working. This can apply to those in employment as well. The average person works for five hours per day, with some people actually working much more than this. If we use this as an average, there would be ten hours left of the day.
• Ten thousand steps per day. This is the number of steps that an individual is supposed to take per day to be of the correct recommended daily level of physical activity. If a normal person were to get to this level just by walking at a normal pace, it would take two hours of none stop walking. Taking this into account, there would be just eight hours of the day remaining.
• Always brush your teeth twice per day. Dentists recommend that we brush our teeth twice per day, taking fifteen minutes each time to brush and floss carefully. If we did this, there would only be seven and a half hours of the day remaining.
• Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It is recommended that we build half an hour into our day in order to enjoy a healthy breakfast. This is so that our metabolism is kick-started for the day, and also so that we have the energy that we need to function until lunch time. With this taken into consideration, there would only be seven hours of the day remaining.
• Beauty Regimes. We hear so much about this. You have to cleanse your face twice per Day and you must moisturise your skin in order to keep it young and supple. In fact, if we did everything that beauty specialists tell us to do, men included, it would take two hours out of our day, meaning that there would only be five hours of the day remaining.
• Shower daily. This is a simple recommendation meant for personal hygiene reasons. Assuming our showers were short and we were able to dry ourselves quickly, we could break this process down to half an hour, leaving four and a half hours of the day remaining.
• Eat five portions of fruit and veg per day. With us having to do this, we could end up spending a lot of time preparing and cooking healthy meals, as often ready meals do not provide us with the nutrients that we need to maintain a healthy lifestyle. If we did this, we could easily spend two and a half hours of the day cooking and eating our food, leaving us with just two hours remaining.

In the two hours not assigned to anything else (but I assure you, there are plenty of other time consuming things that the government say that we need to do) you would have to fit in time with your family, children, washing, cleaning, ironing, shopping and anything else that you needed to do.

It is unlikely that the government have thought any of this through when publishing all of their policies which are often time consuming, and many of them contradict each other. Take this into consideration when deciding which ones to follow, as you certainly won’t be able to follow all of them in the time that you have available to you.

Exercise is good for you. It builds strong muscles, a healthy heart, flexibility, stamina, and even makes you happier by boosting mood and energy levels. On the other hand, exercising too much has its downsides too. It can increase your risk of getting sick – especially during cold and flu season.

If you’re a person who works out hard, it may be time to rethink how much and how hard you’re working out and take some steps to avoid overtraining. A study carried out on elite swimmers showed that when they exercised intensely, antibody levels in saliva that protect against infection dropped significantly. Athletes who worked out hard also had a decrease in natural killer cells and lymphocytes. Both of these cells are important for warding off viral illness. When you do an intense exercise session – particularly if it’s prolonged – you run the risk of landing on the sidelines with a bad cold or flu.

The good news is moderate exercise stimulates the immune system and helps the body fight off colds and flu. The key is to avoid overtraining and allow adequate recovery time between sessions. It’s okay to work out at a high intensity – as long as you don’t do it every day.

On high intensity training days, it’s important to eat well to supply your body with antioxidants to repair the free radical damage that occurs with intense exercise. Foods high in protein and complex carbs are they mainstay of an athletes diet, but fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are also important because they’re rich in antioxidants.

One way to avoid overtraining is to alternate high intensity exercise sessions with low intensity ones. For example if you run five miles one day, do a yoga or pilates class the next. This keeps you moving, but still gives your body a chance to recover. In fact, some studies show that yoga exercises boost immune function and help to protect against colds and flu.

Another way to avoid overtraining and the risks of too much exercise is to keep an exercise diary. Write down the training you do each day along with how you feel before and after exercising. If you’re unusually tired or sore on many days or experience frequent cold symptoms, it’s time to adjust your workout. A regular diary will make it easier for you to tell when you’re exercising too much before it becomes a problem.

Keep exercising, but take some steps to avoid overtraining. It’ll help you stay in the game.

Athletes use it to build stronger muscles, but creatine may be useful for more than just building brawn. A study published in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care shows it could prevent the muscle wasting that’s so commonly seen with conditions such as cancer, AIDS, and some types of heart and lung disease. This wasting of muscles contributes to the fatigue and difficulty getting around that patients with chronic diseases often experience. Creatine to the rescue?

What is Creatine?

Creatine helps the muscles use energy more effectively. It’s an amino acid produced by the liver and transported to muscle tissue where it provides additional energy for the hard working muscles – keeping them from becoming fatigued – while stimulating muscle growth and repair. Because of this effect, many athletes and bodybuilders use creatine supplements in hopes of building bigger muscles. Although it does help reduce fatigue in people who do high intensity exercises that are short in duration such as weight lifting, it’s of limited benefit for people who engage in endurance exercise such as long distance running.

Is Creatine a Good Treatment for Muscle Wasting?

Muscular dystrophy patients who were given creatine supplements showed a decrease in wasting of muscle – as well as gains in muscle strength. Creatine supplements could also help patients who are confined to hospital beds for long periods of time reduce their loss of muscle mass. Immobilized rats experienced less muscle wasting when they were given creatine. Creatine shows promise as a muscle wasting treatment – although more studies are needed.

What about the Safety of Creatine for Muscle Wasting Treatment?

Some experts are concerned that creatine supplements could increase the risk of kidney disease. So far, studies have failed to show an increased risk of kidney problems as a result of creatine use – although anyone who has kidney disease should avoid it until more is known. Creatine supplements can cause muscle cramps, nausea, and weight gain – although the weight gain is mostly due to fluid retention. In most people, creatine supplements are well tolerated.

Other Benefits of Creatine

One interesting study showed that creatine supplements improved memory and thinking ability in people who followed a vegetarian diet. Another one showed that creatine significantly prolonged the lifespan of mice.

Creatine for Muscle Wasting Treatment: The Bottom Line?

Creatine supplements look promising for helping people with muscle wasting as a result of a chronic illness. More studies are still needed to prove that it’s safe to take long term, but, at least in the shorter term, it appears to be well tolerated.

We all know that to improve our health, we should drink lots of water, eat more fruits and vegetables and exercise, but little is defined beyond that. How much water should we drink? How many fruits and vegetables are in a serving, and what counts as exercise? If you’re wondering where to begin to improve your health, start with the six simple tips below.

Drink more than eight glasses (64 oz.) of water. Humans need a lot of water to function. If you weigh more than 130 pounds or exercise regularly (two and a half hours per week), you need more than eight glasses of water per day. To figure out the right amount of water for you, divide your body weight in two and drink that number in ounces of water per day. For instance, if you weigh 200 pounds, drink 100 ounces, or about 13 8-ounce glasses of water. Remember that most drinking glasses actually hold 12 ounces.

Aim to eat two cups of fruit and 2.5 cups of vegetables per day. You’ve probably heard to eat five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day, but how much equals a serving? Headquartered in D.C., the USDA based serving sizes on the portion sizes people eat, ease of use and nutritional content of fruits and vegetables. For most fruits and vegetables, one half cup or one whole orange, apple, peach, tomato, banana or ear of corn equals a serving. One serving of fruit or vegetable juice is four ounces.

You don’t have to buy all organic produce. Pesticides can’t penetrate through the thick skin of some fruits and vegetables. According to the Environmental Working Group, these 12 fruits and vegetables are the most highly contaminated with pesticides: peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, kale, lettuce, grapes (imported), carrots and pears. So go organic on those, and stick with non-organic for the rest.

Find a calorie consumption amount that’s easy for you to maintain. Sure, you can consume 1,200 calories per day for a few months and lose weight, but as soon as you move up to a reasonable amount – say 1,600 calories per day – you’ll start to gain it back. Instead, imagine your ideal weight and multiply it by ten. That’s the number of calories you need to eat every day to both lose and maintain your weight. If you exercise, be sure to allow extra calories for those you burned off so you don’t overeat the next day.

It’s not the number of times you go to the gym; it’s how you exercise. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends at least two hours and 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise (such as brisk walking or swimming) or one hour and 15 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity (such as running or cycling) per week, preferably spread throughout the week, and two strength training sessions per week. Ideally, aim for 30 minutes of activity per day, but if you can’t work that in, an hour of cardio twice a week plus two strength-training sessions will suffice. Or, split those two hours into six 20-minute sessions. Also, keep in mind you’re exercising to ward off adult diseases, not just to lose weight. Your efforts might keep you from getting cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

Drink chocolate milk after a hard workout. No, don’t drink chocolate milk immediately after you workout; wait until your stomach settles. Here’s why: water replaces just sweat loss, but low-fat chocolate milk provides carbohydrates, protein, calcium and a little salt and sugar, which perfectly replenish tired muscles after a long bike ride, swim or run. Essentially, chocolate milk is water, plus a whole lot more.