RE: The Walk, The Hike, The Journey

Beautiful pictures. This is the ideal place to do some exercice.

I could give you quite a lot of tips how to work on your weight and especially how to improve your general health. I've studied sport and nutrition at University and also coached my mom for about 20 years to deal with her diabetes.

The key is to change habits and the changes don't have to be too harsh. I'll write down some tips here ;-)

Break the pattern

We are often not aware of our eating habits. We tend to eat stuff between the meals without realizing it and then we concentrate our effort on the meals. The things between the meals are the worst because they generate continous blood sugar jumps that are followed by insuline increases. If these cycles are too frequent, your body will develop a resistence to insuline and this will generate diabetes.

Basically when you have insuline in your blood that is not used by the cells, your body gets the message: Burn the sugar in the blod but don't burn the fat reserves. This means that you will quickly get hungry and that your fat stocks will acumulate.

• Eat three meals a day but don't eat anything in between
• Start your meals with a salad or with vegetables. This will slow down the insuline response of the body and then it's not a problem to take a desert after the meal.
• when drinking between meals, only drink stuff without sugar (water, tea, coffee without sugar)
• avoid processed food. Whenever something is in a package it is often transformed. As a general rule, the more transformed food is, the bigger the insuline response will be in your body.
• protect yourself when you shop. The best way to avoid eating junk food is to avoid buying it in the first place. Just by the good stuff :-)

How to exercice

• When you exercice, you train your metabolisme. What you should aim at is to train your body to burn the fat in your body. The higher the effort the less your body will use the energy from fat and the more from sugar (glucose). It's therefore important to exercice not at a too intensive rate. Walking is perfect for that. When you walk make sure that you can always talk while you walk. Especially at the beginning, take some sugary snacks with you but just in case. Try to avoid to eat them. They are only there in case you can't do without anymore. You get best effects if you avoid to eat any sugar or carbonhydrates before and during the exercice. Also drink water. Like that you take the sugar sources away from your body and it's only choice is to start to burn fat as a energy ressource. You won't loose much weight like that but you will achieve something much more important. You will train your body to relearn how to work with energy from fat reserves.

A very good exercice to do:

• When you get up in the morning only drink a glass of water. Take some energy bars with you in case. Go for a slow walk for about 30 minutes and just drink water on the way. During the night your body will have goten into fat burning cycle and it will stay there if it doesn't get any carbonhydrates. While walking slowly, your body will burn more fat and improve the metabolisme. It's possible that you might get some problems after 20 minutes. Just make sure to slow down and go through it. If it doesn't work. Eat an energy bar that you took with you:-)

Feel free to ask if you have questions. I believe I could write a book about this lol