Tips of the Day

Our bodies are designed to create fat to protect us. Before our modern days of convenience foods and unhealthy diets, where overeating is the norm and not the exception, that wasn't a problem. People couldn't always get hold of enough to eat as easily and they didn't have as many processed or convenience foods. So, their bodies stored fat as something that they actually might have needed. Today we get too much food, more than our body needs, so we store the excess and end up with too much fat, everywhere including around our hearts. What can we do about it?

So, today we can eat all this not-so-good-for-us stuff and our bodies are able to create a lot more fat as a result. This may simply give you an image problem so you may, for example, want to lose weight around your stomach, butt and thighs. But, it can also lead to medical problems in some cases as well, including problems in the heart area.

Is healthy eating the answer to some of these issues? Yes it is!

So, let's look at three important healthy living tips to see what they can do for you.

• Healthy living tip #1 -- look after your heart...if you are carrying a lot of extra weight then you will simply be putting a lot more pressure on your heart. It is designed to support your body and asking it to support a lot of fat into the bargain can simply add to the strain. People who are significantly obese often end up with heart failure or breathing problems simply because of the excess weight they are asking their body to cope with. They may also be at a higher risk of suffering from high blood pressure and illnesses such as diabetes. Healthy living is a simple solution.

• Healthy living tip #2 -- keep new fat at bay...if you have good eating habits then you can stop your body from producing excess fat. Fat is produced, in basic terms, when you take in more calories than you burn off. Your body needs to deal with the excess and guess what it does? Yep, turns it into fat. If you work out how many calories you should be eating a day and stick to that (or less than that) then you can keep the fat at bay and end up with positive effects all over.

• Healthy living tip #3 -- get rid of the old fat...if you start eating better food then, as we've already seen, your body will find it harder to store new fat. But, what about the old fat you already have? What happens to that? Over time, if you stick with a healthy eating program, where you consume less than you burn each day, then you will make your body use up this excess stored fat. If you add extra exercise to the mix then it may get rid of it even more quickly. The point here is to burn more than you consume so that your body believes that it needs to release the stored fat.

Let's face facts...it makes sense to do this! You'll lose fat, stop new fat from being stored AND you'll look after your health for a long way into the future.