Now that I have that all out there I am actually a bit excited! The other night I was sharing with my group(3 of us) in a Landmark Education class, http://www.landmarkeducation.com , in a seminar called Breakthroughs, Living Outside the Box, I was sharing how have had a hard time getting motivated and excited to get to the gym and get back to the super strength I had.  What I did was describe how I used to pick up those garbage cans and lift them over my head and walk in back to the house and reliving it.   It wasn’t until then  that I was actually “excited” to get to the gym the next two mornings, Thursday and Friday.  See when I described what my energy was and how I felt unstoppable all the time, I really was present and in the moment of how I felt then. Not just explain what I did, but actually being there in the moment in my description.  Now I didn’t realize it at the time but when I awoke the next morning and I was excited to go to the gym I thought to myself.  “Why I am so excited this time?”  I realized I connect to they way I felt back then and that gave me a clear connection to that feeling that I wanted again.  One thing I noticed also is when I was describing to my group what I did and how a felt they got excited to.  Now I don’t know yet if they became excited enough to get to the gym also, since we all happened to share the same desire to be in shape and exercise, but I do remember the looks on their faces.   They where excited and expressed it then.  I know that the way I relived it and expressed to them touched them and seemed to carry them in the memory and the moment were if I were just to explain it without the passion of it I would have left them uninspired.

Both days I took an Xcellerator in the morning once before my workout and once after since I was so tired after and I forgot to take one!  I have been watching what I eat more and will give more exact details  as I continue on this process with you.  I have had a bowl of fruit and it was a big bowl, strawberries, mangoes, blackberries, grapes, for lunch one day.  Also I have had a chicken Kaboob with rice and potatoes  from Best Chicken.(801) 466-8311, 111 East 2700 South, Salt Lake City.   I have had some things such as homemade ice cream, a mini ecliar, and a steak and egg and cheese bagel from Mcdonalds ., (The Steak and egg has about 500 calories?) When I do have something that I feel may not be the most nutritious, high in calories, or high in bad sugars I do try to keep it minimal wither by size or frequency.  From my experience with my group above it has given me the idea to start a support group of sorts for people that want to lose weight and get in shape so that they can live there life to the fullest.  If you are interested please send me an email: adam@ultraperform.com .

FYI:  I will post links and calorie sugar content when ever it is available or my time allows.  Thank you all.

by Cindy Ashton

Going within and really facing ourselves—our thoughts, patterns, and behaviors—takes great courage. But if we are willing to, we can transform our lives long‐term and create miracles.

Good breathing techniques are the key to deepening our consciousness and getting to know our bodies. In addition to helping us slow down enough to hear our thoughts and monsters (our fears), breath is the life force with the power to cleanse, nourish, relax, heal, and transform our world.

The benefits of good breathing techniques include:

The Relaxation Response

When the exhalation is longer than the inhalation, we stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. In turn, the heart rate slows down and blood pressure decreases.

This relaxation response helps to slow and refocus us.

Enhancing intuition and changing consciousness

Many systems of Yoga are built on breathing techniques as breath is considered to be the entry between the mind and body. When we slow and focus our breathing, our thoughts and body become quiet. At those moments we move beyond our brain clutter—and peace and clarity can shine through. Once we stop long enough to hear the intuition (or the voice of God depending on beliefs), we become aware. Awareness propels change.

Releasing toxins

When we inhale, we take in oxygen, nourishing our cells with life. Upon exhaling, the wastes and toxins of carbon dioxide are released. If we are breathing incorrectly, the oxygen cannot reach all the cells to feed them and wastes cannot be dispelled from our bodies. Therefore, cells quickly die and create imbalance in our bodies, contributing to possible illness, disease, and overall lack of wellness. When we are off balance, our energy is lower, causing us to be more susceptible to our fears.

Muscle relaxation

When our body moves with ease and without constriction, we have more energy. With increased vitality, we feel good and are able to stay positive longer. But if we are

uncomfortable in our bodies due to muscle tension, we get fatigued faster, lowering our defenses and allowing the monsters to creep in. Breathing into sore, tight muscles and then letting them go can decrease pain and increase mobility.

Releasing stored emotions

Unexpressed emotions such as anger or sadness stay in the body, once again creating imbalance and general unhappiness. If these things are not dealt with long‐term, illness will result. When we consciously breathe—noticing where the breath easily flows and where it is obstructed—we can start to assess where we hold our pain, why, and how. With this awareness, we can notice our feelings, which lead us to taking action towards deeper healing.

Breathing Awareness

Although we are breathing constantly, the majority of us fail to do it efficiently and effectively because it is an unconscious process. Therefore learning to breathe properly is essential. Healthy breathing is controlled by the diaphragm, a concave muscle running along the base of the ribs. When we inhale, the diaphragm pushes our internal organs down and flattens out causing our stomach to rise. Exhalation happens automatically.

Place your right hand on your chest and your left hand on your stomach. When you inhale (take a breath in), which hand rises—the right hand for the chest region or the left hand for the stomach region? When you are breathing, count as you inhale and then starting at one again, count as you exhale. Is your inhale longer than your exhale?

Exhale longer than your inhale? Inhale and exhale an equal number of counts?

If you inhale longer than you exhale, you are taking in too much oxygen and not expelling it all, causing imbalance and stress on your body. If you exhale longer than you inhale, then you are stimulating a relaxation response, helping you to tune into your body. If your inhales and exhales are equal, you are maintaining healthy and balanced breathing for optimal, everyday functioning.

When you are aware of your breathing, do you have a continuous, flowing cycle of inhales and exhales? Do you hold your breaths sometimes? If you hold breaths, it is an indication you are holding stress or fear in your body.

Healthy breathing techniques

Lie on your back. If you have back problems, place a pillow under your knees. Place your hands on your stomach, close your eyes, and just notice. Don’t try to take deep breaths yet. Once you feel the breath drop into your diaphragm, you should feel your hands rise up with the inhalation and down with the exhalation. Notice how your body feels so you can remember and duplicate the response at a later time. Once your belly rises and falls easily, start to breathe in more deeply. You will feel the stomach stretch. If you find the breath goes back up into the chest, repeat the process.

Listening to your body

Start by balancing your breath by breathing in for four counts then exhaling for four counts. Try not to hold your breath between cycles, keeping it flowing continuously. In order to tune into your body, you need to create a relaxation response.

Start to exhale longer than you inhale by breathing in for four, exhaling out for six. After a minute or so, start inhaling in for four, exhaling out for eight. As you are breathing, you will be slowing down to the point where you begin to notice your thoughts and feelings. Simply observe what comes up without judgment and take note.

Scan your body from head to toe, observing the areas of pain, discomfort, or tension. Again, there is no need for judgment, just observation. Imagine deeply breathing into those areas and then releasing the pain upon exhalation.

Continue to breathe into those areas and release until you feel less discomfort. Imagine blowing out black smoke that gets eaten by a cloud of white light and floats away.

Try to create other images for yourself and see what works best. Once you feel relaxed, refreshed, and ready to go, be sure to balance the breath (four in, four out). If you stand up too quickly without balancing, you may experience dizziness.

Reflect

The more you consciously breathe into your body and stimulate the relaxation response, the quicker you become at identifying your thoughts and feelings and noticing when your body (and those monsters) are speaking to you. If you have challenge or fear, or are resisting something that’s happening in your life, your body will hold pain, tension, and/or discomfort.

Once you tune into where that lies within yourself and acknowledge it, you can begin to mentally ask “what is this pain I’m holding?” From there, you can begin to tackle the monster head on! And sometimes by just noticing, it will release the resistance.

Ask yourself, “What thoughts, feelings, and images did I see while in the relaxation response? Where do I hold pain, discomfort, and tension? What insights about myself, or a particular situation, came up when I breathed into tense areas?” Now that you know the power of your breathing, get started and let’s change your life! Cindy Ashton, author of Kiss Your Monsters Goodbye, was recently featured in Performance Magazine alongside President Obama, Donald Trump and Tony Robbins. Having conquered life threatening chronic illness, she now empowers others to overcome their obstacles despite any odds against them. In presenting keynote speeches, interactive seminars and motivational concerts across North America, Cindy combines her extensive backgrounds in performing, education and kinesiology with her own real life experience. www.cindyashton.com / www.kissyourmonstersgoodbye.com

This year, Salt Lake city earns the coveted distinction as the “Fittest City in America, ” with Corlorado Springs, Minneapolis and Denver directly following.

Why? I think its beacause of the partial beacause of the natural supplement companies here. Also we have the great Rocky Mountains, Arches, Zion, Salt Lake, so many things to go outside and be active. Do whatever it takes to be healthy! Its worth it.

First I started selling it online and then I started placing the products into local Natural Supplement stores. The demand continued to increase and I was able to solely work on the business. During my communication and interactions with people, I started to see a need for more. Men where looking for a healthy alternative to increase there libido. They wanted certain natural and healthy products that they could easily associate themselves with and give them the results they where looking for. They also did not want to have an encyclopedia with them to tell them what all the different items did for them. So I began researching and developing Wow.

By recommending natural supplements to my customers and myself I was right on top of the information and resources I needed. I read many natural supplement books, consulted with doctors and master herbalists, tried a variety of prototypes, tested varieties with my customers and finally developed our WOW product. During this time one of the stores that I worked with needed help and I bought it! I was able to work more and more with customers on a one and one basis and continue to learn more about their needs and results. Through out this process I put together our Board of doctors and consult with then regularly. I would then take the feedback I received from my customers and redevelop or simply add other ingredients to our products. Then I was able to start placing the products out on the market through my current contacts in Utah and through this web site.

The products continue to spread to other regions by word of mouth and the networking that we do to create continued awareness of our products out to the public. I am very excited by the huge positive response that we receive from our customers!

Eat 4 to 6 small meals a day, 2 to 3 hours apart. Plan ahead and take food or snacks with you. Planning your meals increases the probability that you will get good, nutricious food in your diet and decreases the need to resort to junk food.

Proper nutrition is essential in maintaining and increasing metabolism as well as for overall health. Vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids will increase energy, activity levels, and metabolism. Include energy foods such as whole grains, beans, vegetables, and fruits.

Take your Xcellerator and then really give it a chance to work for you by parking further away and walking. Taking your dog on a daily walk. Doing more activities around the house to burn energy. All this plus Xcellerator on top will really give you the chance to burn twice the calories and boost your metabolism at the same time.

Include a weekly walking routine to increase metabolism at least three to four times a week. A 30 to 40 minute routine is the best way to increase your metabolism.

Try a free sample of Xcellerator here, http://www.ultraperform.com/index.php/buy-xcellerator .

We are constantly bombarded with advertisements, depicting perfectly-proportioned men and women, who seem to be enjoying themselves tremendously. The message: if only you could control your eating habits you could live the good life too.

Good nutrition, as it applies to our daily lives means that we take in what we need, to maintain our body’s healthy state. Nutrition has become an important word thanks to the involvement of the USDA in our daily food requirements, and the FDA’s involvement in determining what is, and is not, dangerous for us to consume.

What about eating habits? What roles does our daily intake play in our health? The body’s ability to remain well, under anything other than ideal conditions is a direct result of the nutrition received on a daily basis.

How do we determine that we are providing the essential nutritional needs? That knowledge comes by educating ourselves about what our individual needs are, the needs of our family, and then taking that knowledge and applying it to the foods we buy, that we prepare, and that our families consume.

Health is taught as a science course. Little individual attention is given to how to attain optimal health via our eating habits. It’s funny that we skip the most important, fundamental building block to good health: our nutritional and caloric consumption in our food.

The body’s metabolism is a unique process for each individual person. No two people metabolize food at the same rate; therefore no two people have the same metabolism. We all use our calories at different rates, with different results. Our metabolism, like our fingerprints is unique to each of us. But the need to understand and accommodate this metabolism is an issue that we all face.

The dictionary defines metabolism as the sum of all biochemical processes involved in life, or the sustaining of life. In application, concerning our health, metabolism is related to the intake and use of food. In reference to the case in point, it is our ability to utilize our food to the fullest extent.

Right now, the greatest results in raising our metabolism come from exercise and building our muscle mass, while reducing our body fat. Adding more muscle to the body, in turn causes us to burn more calories, and this helps to elevate our metabolic rate. Muscle tissue, per cubic gram burns calories at twice the rate of fat, per cubic gram.

Our metabolism functions also depend on how well we have taken car of our nutritional needs. Some people have really high rates of metabolism. In other words, when they consume food, their bodies burn it up almost as fast as they consume it. Then there are those of us who use our food intake so slowly, as to not even notice that we’re burning calories. These people who burn quickly are often slim and trim, the people who burn more slowly are the people with the tendency toward obesity.

For years, people have sought ways to raise the metabolic rate. If you can raise someone’s metabolic rate, you are then better able to control the burn of calories especially for overweight or obese people. This would make the goal of better or improved health a much easier reality for these people. Efforts to date have produced very little results. There are food that we can consume that naturally raise our metabolic rate, but not to a great extent. What we need is a way to directly alter the rate. We need to be able to raise our metabolism to a point where we can actually see a benefit.

There is where the effort to stay physically fit and active provides tremendous payoff. Over the course of your life, if you stay active, exercise, and maintain optimal health for your muscles, you will see a tremendous difference in the rate that your body metabolizes food. As people age, their metabolism quite naturally slows down. The greatest way to prevent this from happening is through exercise and staying fit.

The best way to date to control our metabolic process is through proper nutrition, daily exercise, eating foods known to have an effect on our metabolic rate, and plenty of rest. The metabolic process can be indirectly controlled by these methods.

If we can understand that a pound of fat represents 3500 calories, then it’s simple mathematically to see, that a 500 calorie reduction per day, will result in a one pound loss per week. An increase in exercise and a decrease in daily caloric consumption will result in the desired weight reduction, over time.

About The Author

Gregory Camp is a Director of Wellness, with 30 years experience in health/ fitness/ wellness with a large non-profit healthcare system in the state of Florida. Would you like to learn about how to maintain a regular exercise program if you live with Type I or Type II diabetes? Learn how to dramatically improve your body image and prevent hypoglycemic episodes.

Visit the author’s web site at: http://www.fitnessishealth.com

The simplest things can lead to more energy and better health. These are nothing new and you have probably heard them before, but here they are in a concise and detailed form.

1. Eat breakfast within the first half hour of getting up. The timing is very important. When you get out of bed your blood sugar is down, you have been fasting all night, that’s why it is called “break fast”. Blood sugar comes from food and gives you energy. If you don’t eat you won’t have the fuel to run your body. But, if you let yourself go without eating and just have coffee or perhaps a cigarette, you will throw off your blood sugar for the rest of the day and that can cause fatigue, low energy, lack of get-up-and-go, anger, and even depression.
2. Eat Small Frequent Meals. Little snacks, small meals, this gives your body the energy to keep going since food gives you energy. This will keep your blood sugar stabilized and prevent energy drops.
3. Eat lots of vegetables, especially raw ones. Even the U.S. Government has said to eat at least five half-cup servings of vegetables a day, with one being raw. Snack on things like slices of cucumber, red or green peppers, zucchini, broccoli, carrots, lettuce, pea pods, celery, any vegetables will do. Raw veggies contain enzymes, the powerhouses of energy. All veggies contain plant sterols that can help improve immune function and lower cholesterol.
4. CHEW! Each mouthful should be chewed until it is liquid in your mouth. The digestion of sugars and starches starts in your mouth, the more you chew the easier it is to digest them. Corn, peas, potatoes, bread, rice; all starches need to be chewed. Chewing starts the actual digestion going so it is important. Chewing tells your digestion to produce the necessary amount of enzymes to digest the foods you are eating. If you do not chew that thoroughly at least take digestive enzymes.
5. Exercise every day. It doesn’t have to be much; even walking is a good exercise. Try to walk as much as possible including taking the stairs when you can. Park at the far side of the parking lot and walk to the store, or better yet, walk to the store and leave the car at home. Hiking, biking, jumping rope, dancing, are all good ways to get exercise.
6. Sleep 6 to 8 hours straight through every night. Your body restores itself when you sleep. Research is now showing that too little sleep can contribute to weight gain and fatigue.
7. Sex is a vital part of staying young and having energy. All the talk shows on the major TV and radio networks have doctors on advocating having sex to stay young and have more energy. It relieves stress, reduces fatigue, and helps you sleep better at night. Many of these doctors are even advocating having sex by yourself for better sleep and restoring youth. Of course they are talking about orgasm during sex, that’s the most important part. If you need some herbal enhancement to obtain orgasm, then take something to help.

Once you can put these simple seven steps into action in your life you will have more energy and vitality, and even restore youthfulness.

Kathleen O’Bannon is a certified nutritional consultant with 30+ years experience. She is the author of eight books on health and nutrition, including The Anger Cure: A Step-by-Step Program to Reduce Anger, Rage, Negativity, Violence, and Depression in Your Life.

Want to get help achieving your goals.  Try Xcellerator Today…

Yesterday I went snowboarding for the first time all season. It was great! It was sooo beautiful and sunny up there. I took an Xcellerator right before we got up the mountain to have that little burst of energy.

Today I ate… I made a shake in the late morning with Organic Apple Juice, Ultimate Greenzone, Berry Health, and Elite Protein. This is my usual breakfast most of the time and helps me feel complete and ready to take on my day with a smile and a skip in my step. I also had a bowl of Honey Combs. Not the best thing to but into a health diet but when I saw it the other night at grocery store it called to me. I also had two burritos meat and veggie burritos(homemade) a small plate of pasta with parmesan cheese melted on top. For dinner I have Café Med, Yummy, a plate of Basmati Rice, a skewer of chicken and ground beef, some tomato and water. Oh and I had a nice Garden Salad before this. After dinner I have Black Tea with Cardman, half-half and 4 packets of raw sugar. I would never normally use four packets of sugar the waiter gave a huge to go cup.

I went to the gym at 11:00 tonight, very late but I love the fact that with 24Hr fitness if you didn’t get a chance to get your workout in you still can. There where several people there in the same boat apparently. I do my streches, crunches, 40 push ups and then I work on my arms.

• 1 set of 15 reps 50lbs. For triceps, pull downs
• 1 set of 6 reps 80 lbs. For Triceps, pull downs
• 2 sets of 10 reps 70 lbs of the curls with the straight bar
• 1 set of 10 reps of 30 lb. Curls
• 1 set of 6 reps of 35 lb. Curls.
• 1 set of 10 reps with 10 lb and then 15 lb. Triceps over my head one arm
• 2 sets of 3 lbs. Arm throws, 3 different positions several times until I am tired.( I think this really tones up my arms and helps with stamina and cardio!)

I do my stretches and come back to work on the computer a bit. Late night.

Breakfast – Muslix and soy milk, Organic Apple Juice and Green Superfood, http://www.ultraperform.com/index.php/buy-natural-health-products, You can get Ultimate Greenzone here. It rocks!

Lunch- Country White bread, peppered Turkey slices and Colby Jack cheese, mayonnaise and water.