Nowadays detoxifying your body is more important than ever! We eat a high quantity of processed foods with sugar and hydrogenated fats… and most of the food is grown with pesticides, herbicides, hormones and antibiotics and when it is processed its filled with color agents and preservatives to lengthen the shelf life.

When we eat these foods all these toxins end up in our body. So what detox diet should we follow?

In the long term these toxins are what cause our immune system to weaken and collapse to diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc. More common symptoms are feeling bloated, tired, constipation, frequent colds, sore throat, etc.

90% of all diseases start in the gut.

Knowing how to detox your body naturally will help clean out all these waste materials that you ingested and boost your immune system by cleaning your gut and other organs of their toxin overload.

Even when we do an effort to eat healthy food it can be hard to find if you have a busy lifestyle or travel. It certainly costs more to eat healthy than to go toMacDonalds.

To detox you have to avoid eating junk food and sugared or caffeinated drinks.

Drinking Water to Detox

The most important thing to detox your body is drinking enough water. As I already mentioned in the article on dehydration, water is important for your well being and health. Drinking clean water detoxifies your body like nothing else. It is so beneficial because you are replacing your soda and coffee with water. Removing a big source of toxins like sugared drinks, coffee, tea, alcoholic beverages will greatly increase your health and vitality.

Caffeinated and sugared drinks like soda and juices are non-foods. Non-foods require more nutrients than they contain, so that your body can process them… They steal the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that your body can use for other things like keeping your immune system strong and fight diseases.

Medical tests have shown that when people drink less water their addictions are augmented (addictions of sugar, fats, alcohol, tobacco, medication and recreational drugs). So if you drink enough water you will do yourself a favor, because it will make you healthier and it will make it easier to change your diet and lifestyle for six pack abs.

If I had to give you one piece of advice to feel better, lose weight, lose belly fat, feel more energetic, detox, solve digestive problems, get more mental clarity and concentration it would be to drink enough water.

Detox Diet and Six Pack Abs

A detox diet can accelerate your journey to getting a good looking six pack. Most people walk around with inflamed guts or constipation… or both. The obvious side effect is that your belly looks bigger because it is inflamed and because you have a bunch of undigested food lodged in your intestines.

From the moment that you stop taxing your digestive system with toxins, your body starts using its resources to continue detoxing your body and cleaning the whole mess up. This leads to less undigested food in your digestive system and it doesn’t get inflamed. This also leads to a healthy digestive system without constipation.

In reality you body doesn’t start detoxing. Your body is always detoxing to its maximum potential. The problem is that it can’t keep up with all the sugar, hydrogenated fats, preservatives, antibiotics, steroids and other trash that is in the industrialized food that you eat.

How to Lose 10 Pounds in 2 Weeks

I have seen women loosing 10 pounds in 2 weeks because they started eating right. This looks like its an ad for a weight loss product… how is this possible? First of all they don’t really lose weight, they are lose water weight.

Second… most women are constipated. When you start eating right and actually start going to the toilet regularly… those things add up to some weight. When they start evacuating their bowel the capillary beds start tightening up and the gut is less and less inflamed. When the bowel inflammation goes away the water retention in the intestine tissues has disappeared and that is a few extra pounds that are lost.

All this weight loss is due to defecation and water retention that goes away because the body starts functioning like its supposed to!

This happens mostly with women, because women are much more sensitive to constipation and bowel inflammation.

Healthy Diet and Exercise Response

If you don’t feel good and have digestive or health problems you should not start to do heavy exercise. Manny people go to the gym to get fit and spend an hour on the treadmill or stepping machine.

Cardiovascular exercise puts an enormous strain on your body and if you have digestive problems and are not eating healthy you are doing more damage than good.

Detox Diet or Untoxic Lifestyle?

Doing a special detox diet now and then is a good thing and it is a great start for a healthier life. Doing these exceptional efforts once in a while is not going to give you the quality of life and well being that you are looking for. If you want to live disease free, look better, age gracefully and save on doctor visits you need to start adapting your lifestyle.

So to sum up, these are the things you should do to detoxify and keep the toxin intake to a minimum:

• Drink a lot of water. The skin is the largest organ of excretion of the body. If the liver and kidneys can’t handle the toxic load your skin will show you. Zits come from the inside and they are nothing but toxins that couldn’t leave the body through the kidneys and urine or through the bowels and fecal material. If you look at the people that are putting these expensive acne treatments on their face you will see that almost every one of them is constipated and has a poor diet. If you start eating right and clear up your food allergies your skin can clear up like its magic. The problem is coming from the inside, not the outside.
• Don’t drink sodas and other artificial drinks, this includes sugar “juices”. They overload you bodies pathways of detoxification, dehydrate you and clog your body up. Caffeine is a dehydrating substance, when you drink a lot of sugar your body has to suck the water out of your digestive system and muscles to be able to break it down. The combination of sugar and caffeinated drinks is highly addictive so if you drop those you get a double whammy of good results!
• Get your digestive system working properly. Getting your digestion working normally is essential to keeping the body clean and healthy. If you have digestive problems your liver will be overloaded and you will not be able to detox at a normal rate.
• Know your food intolerances. You need to go to access what kind of food intolerances you have because they inflame your bowels and don’t allow your digestive system to work properly.
• Stay away form deep fried foods. Most of these fats and oils are bad for you.
• Prescription drugs are a major cause of toxification. When you apply all the principles for a healthier life you will start seeing results and can start using less prescription drugs.

Once you are over the sugar and caffeine cravings it will all be very easy. You will feel better, your body will work like its supposed to and you will wonder why you didn’t do it before. To know more on how to get a six pack and how to lose belly fat check out the other articles on that! I hope you enjoyed this articles and if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

If you want to lose weight, get a six pack and feel healthy you have to use everything to your advantage, from eating healthy to exercise and something that most people forget is to sleep enough.

I did some research and found some studies that show a connection between lack of sleep and obesity. So why does low quantity and quality of sleep affect your weight?

Sleep Hormones and Weight

What researches concluded is that not sleeping enough or having a poor quality sleep affects 2 key hormones that regulate your appetite. These two hormones are Leptin and Grehlin and they control your appetite, therefore influencing your weight gain or weight loss.

The hormone Grehlin increases your appetite and hunger. Leptin does the opposite, it calms and decreases your appetite.

Chronic lack of sleep or increases the levels of Grehlin and decreases the amount of Leptin. This makes your appetite increase and you get more cravings that are hard to handle. The lack of sleep increases appetite and is one of the factors that increases weight gain and obesity.

Keep in mind that poor quality sleep can be linked to other factors that also increase weight like medication, stress, eating unhealthy, irritability, lack of energy, etc. When more than one of these factors work against you they can be responsible for starting a downward spiral to more severe health problems and not only obesity.

Imagine someone that doesn’t sleep enough, takes medication, eats unhealthy, is dehydrated and feels insecure about their appearance. This persons appetite is augmented by the lack of sleep and the dehydration. Dehydration also increases the desire to eat empty foods and empty calories. Because that person doesn’t eat what the body needs he or she always feels hungry a short time after eating some foods with no nutrition.

Because of all the sugar and lack of water, digestive problems develop which give more stress and make it even harder to sleep… See where this is going? Its a downward spiral, from bad to worse.

Normalizing sleep patterns and making sure that you sleep long enough will make it easier to lose weight because you can control your cravings better. Those cravings for sugar and fat that seem uncontrollable can be weakened by sleeping better. When you feel well rested your immune system and hormonal levels are kept under control because it is during the night that these systems are restored and recharged.

Paul Check has a system called The Last 4 Doctors you Will Ever Need. The four doctors are: Dr. Quiet, Dr. Diet, Dr. Movement and Dr. Happiness. Dr. Quiet, which is sleep and introspection (meditation and so on) is the first part you need to get working on. This has more benefits that normalizing your Leptin and Grehlin levels and controlling your appetite. When you are well rested you can handle more stress and problems, your immunity is stronger and you feel much better. This leads to more brain power and motivation to achieve your goals, from getting healthy to pursuing your other dreams.

How to Sleep Better

Here are some tips to sleep better:

• Don’t consume caffeine, alcohol or nicotine in the evening. These substances will interfere with your healthy sleep pattern and sleep quality.
• Do relaxing things in the evening; read a book and listen to calm music. Do not do stressful things like trying to solve your problems, pay bills or any other things that make you worry.
• If you exercise or eat, do it at least 3 hours before you go to sleep. Digestion and exercise elevate your body temperature and make you go to the toilet, which will disrupt your sleep pattern.
• Dim the lights and wind down in a silent and calm environment. Setting the mood to sleep is very important to be able to fall asleep fast.

There are many diets and tips on how to lose weight and how to get a six pack, some of them don’t work but many do. The biggest problem that people face when getting fit is lack of motivation and quitting. The most important thing in weight loss is the mindset because it will make you hang on and follow a healthy eating plan, do your exercises and rest enough. Having a healthy sleeping pattern is crucial because it will diminish the “uncontrollable cravings” that some people have and can’t go up against.

Enough good sleep will give you mental clarity, less stress, more endurance, stronger immunity and a normal appetite. It will directly influence your mindset and motivation and that is why it is so important for your health and fitness! I hope you found this article helpful and if you have any comments or questions don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

Dehydration is one of the most underestimated problems of today. There are many things that cause dehydration and not drinking enough water is the obvious reason… But why?

People drink a lot of coffee, coke, juices and other liquids… There is water in that right? Yes, there is water in those drinks… and toxins… and sugar… and caffeine.

We also eat a lot of processed foods that are full of chemicals, toxins and low nutritional value. Do you think that carbonated,caffeinated and sugared drinks have no toxins and waste? Do you think that these factors interact with our body functions? Yes they do.

When your body gives you the signal of being thirsty you are already dehydrated. You need to hydrate with clean water… and not with coke (sugar, carbon dioxide, preservatives, etc) coffee, or some packaged juice. The body needs water to cleanse itself from toxins and other waste. If you add more toxins to the mix you are defeating the purpose of hydration.

We need to drink water to cleanse the toxins that we have in our body.

Water and it is vital to our body functions because:

• Regulates body temperature
• Affects how nutrients and oxygen is transported
• Removes waste and toxins

How much water should I drink?

Most people don’t drink enough water… so how much should you drink? It is said that you need to drink about 8 glasses of water a day, but that is not very accurate. How big are the glasses, how hot is it where you live, how active are you and how heavy are you?

If you are in a warm climate, are very active, exercise hard or go to the sauna you need to drink more.

To calculate how much water you have to drink divide your weight by 2, that number in ounces is what you need to drink daily.

So if you weigh 140 pounds you need to drink 70 ounces of water a day. The rule of 8 glasses a day would get you up to 64 ounces of water…

Some people may be drinking enough water but they are not spreading it out enough. If you drink some water every hour then you are spreading it out better. You can do this by having a bottle of water at work, in the living room and taking water with you when you drive around.

Water Drinking Tips

• Drink through the day. When you feel thirsty you are already dehydrated. So don’t let it get that far!
• Don’t drink when you eat. This dilutes the digestive process and will make it harder for your digestive system. You won’t be thirsty during your meals if you hydrate properly.
• Drink water. Not tea, not coffee, not sodas. No sugar or salt in it and no carbonated water either.
• Learn more about water. You need to drink good water, not everything that comes out of the tap. Water that has chlorine or other chemicals that are bad for your health are not good!

Dehydration Symptoms

The most common symptoms of dehydration are dark yellow urine and feeling thirsty often. When you are thirsty your body is already dehydrated so you should replenish yourself with water and drink consistently so that you don’t feel thirsty.

To avoid feeling thirsty and dehydrating create a habit of drinking water throughout the day.

Drink Water! Not Sugar, Caffeine or Salt…

Manny people drink fluids with sugar (coke, fruit juices and other sodas), coffee or other drinks with salt (isotonic drinks for the gym). These drinks won’t help you get hydrated and replenished. When you are thirsty always drink water… not tea, not coffee, not soda, not carbonated water… just water. Water also regulates your appetite, when you drink these other fluids with sugar and sodium you will feel more hungry and you won’t hydrate yourself with them.

If you drink soda or coffee you are being counter productive because you are pouring more toxins into your body… instead of cleansing your body with clean water.

When you are well hydrated you will feel more energetic and more relaxed. It will be easier to handle stress and disease because your body functions are more efficient and over time your hormonal levels will be at their optimal level because you are dumping out more toxins (because you are drinking properly) and ingesting less toxins (because you are avoiding sodas and other sugar drinks).

Chronic Dehydration Symptoms

Chronic dehydration causes headaches, lack of energy, dizziness, rapid heartbeat, low blood pressure and dry mouth and eyes. This cripples your body’s immune system and makes you vulnerable to many other health problems to come.

If your urine is dark yellow then you should definitely drink more water… that is the most accurate indicator. Your urine should be from a light yellow and almost colorless.

Drink more water and you will feel better, have more energy and be stronger against disease and health problems.

In my opinion dehydration is one of the most underestimated problems in this age. Drinking beverages full of calories, sugars and toxins that you don’t need is a bigger problem than you might think. Over the years this adds up, and make no mistake: this will make you ill. It may take 30 years or it may take 15 years.

I also think this is easy and simple for any person to correct. Drinking water and letting go of sodas and coffee will give you benefits in health, weight loss, muscle gain, stress resistance and it will improve your overall quality of life!

Being well hydrated is also the beginning of detoxifying your body, which is an essential step for your well being, health and athletic performance.

Drinking enough water is the first step to be healthy and achieve your fitness goals. If you want to lose weight, gain muscle or detox you need to get this part of your diet in order… don’t read this lightly or overlook this issue. Drinking junk liquids and not enough water will sabotage your efforts to lose weight, gain definition, build muscle and will stress you out! To stay hydrated you just need to develop the habit of drinking water regularly and throughout the day… everyday! Its not as hard as you think and you will get used to it after a few days.