How would you like to buff up your arms and slim down your waist line? Or, perhaps you’re only interested in improving your overall health? If you fit into one of these categories, you’ll understand that you’ll need to take drastic actions right away. Getting into shape and getting the fat off can be far more difficult than you could ever imagine. You’ll need to eat right and exercise frequently. You may also find it beneficial to add supplements to your daily intake. Below, you’ll find a breakdown of some of the best supplements for achieving optimum health.

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Ever look at that last slice of cake and think you could be doing so much better for yourself? Now is the time to start changing your lifestyle and become a healthier person. It’s hard and you won’t enjoy the changes at first, but in the long run you will feel better about yourself and enjoy life so much more. Follow these steps to begin your path to better health.

Watch What You Eat

You might hear it all the time, but eating well really is the most important part of becoming a healthier person. Get rid of the junk food at home; as long as it’s there, it’s a temptation. That means anything sugary, fatty or salty. Replace it with fresh and dried fruits and nuts. Start cooking meals in bulk because it’s easier to stick to your diet if your meals are already prepared. Nutrition is incredibly important to becoming healthy. It isn’t necessarily about eating less though; it’s eating better that makes all the difference.

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Bodybuilding is a science. Our growth in knowledge about how our bodies work and how to maximise their performance continues to expand with every new piece of research. The tips in this article offer proven, evidence-based strategies for bodybuilding success.

1. Get good sleep regularly

Consistently good sleep is probably the single greatest determinant of your success a bodybuilder. Good sleep does more than just make you feel better, it releases Human Growth Hormone (HGH), which is one of the most essential hormones your body releases to aid in the recovery and growth of muscle. In men, 60% to 70% of daily HGH is secreted during deep sleep, which happens early in your sleep cycle, that is, about two hours after you fall asleep.

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Conventional wisdom says you can pretty much eat whatever you want if you’re an avid runner, as your body is burning off all of the excess calories. But is that really true? New research now suggests that avid runners need to pay attention to their diets as well when it comes to the potential for heart disease.

As a 10-mile-a-day runner, Dave McGillivray thought he could eat whatever he wanted without worrying about his heart. “I figured if the furnace was hot enough, it would burn everything,” said McGillivray, who is 59.

But a diagnosis six months ago of coronary artery disease shocked McGillivray, a finisher of 130 marathons and several Ironman-distance triathlons. Suddenly he regretted including a chocolate-chip-cookie recipe in his memoir about endurance athletics.

“My first reaction was, I was embarrassed,” he said.

As race director of the Boston Marathon, McGillivray is a high-profile exhibit in a growing medical case against the devil-may-care diets of many marathoners. Their high-mileage habit tends to lower their weight, blood pressure, heart rate and cholesterol levels, leading them (and sometimes their doctors) to assume their cardiac health is robust regardless of diet.

“‘I will run it off’—that attitude clearly prevails among the marathoners themselves, almost sometimes to an arrogance,” said Paul Thompson, a veteran marathoner who is chief of cardiology at Hartford Hospital.

A growing body of research shows the error of that thinking. A study published in the current edition of Missouri Medicine found that 50 men who had run at least one marathon a year for 25 years had higher levels of coronary-artery plaque than a control group of sedentary men. A British Medical Journal study published this year compared the carotid arteries of 42 Boston Marathon qualifiers with their much-less active spouses. “We hypothesized that the runners would have a more favourable atherosclerotic risk profile,” says the article. As it turned out, that hypothesis was wrong.

Many assumed that extreme-endurance sports could help prevent heart disease, but now the research suggests this extreme activity may actually cause problems.

We should be careful of course to jump to conclusions after several studies, but certainly this raises questions and challenges old assumptions.

It also brings us back to some common sense notions that moderation in diet and excercise can be the best combination. Pushing anything to the limit – whether its your diet or your activities, can lead to risks.

For many people, salt is a huge part of their diet, and cutting back can be very difficult. Unfortunatley, when battling heart issues or high blood pressure, cutting back on sodium intake is critical.

The firts step is identifying all the foods in your diet loaded with sodium. You might be shocked as to how many foods, particularly procressed foods and breads, are loaded with sodium. Things like soups are obvious culprits.

Then you need to consider how much salt you use with cooking. And this is one of the toughest adjustments for people, as salt makes food taste great.

But there are alternatives. This article has the excellent suggestion of using spices and hot sauces to augment the flavor of foods.

I’ve been using hot sauce for years. It works great with many dishes, and soup happens to be one of them. A bland lentil soup for example can taste incredibly good with some chili pepper sauce. Even with canned soup, you can buy the low sodium options and then splash in some hot sauce to make it taste better.

So educate yourself, but also be open to new flavors. You cna eat healthier but also make things more delicious.