Dedication Health

Strength training isn’t just for bodybuilders and marathoners. It’s for anyone who wants to feel healthier, more energetic and, yes, younger. “Strength is the fountain of youth,” says Gavin McHale, a Winnipeg-based kinesiologist and certified exercise physiologist who works primarily with older adults. “Benefits of resistance training, and subsequent strength gains, in older adults include better control of symptoms of chronic disease, pain and depression, as well as prevention of falls, maintaining existing muscle mass, improving posture and stability, increasing bone density and remaining functional.” For instance, a 2015 Experimental Gerontology study of men and women ages 65 to 97 in retirement care facilities found that performing strength exercises just two times a week for six months significantly improved participants’ mobility and functional performance. The result: a longer and, most importantly, fuller life . After all, as we age, while we naturally lose some muscle mass...

Conventional wisdom (and most research) tells us that healthy eating requires eating balanced portions of a wide variety of foods, especially fruits and vegetables. Seems simple enough…except for the fact that what’s recommended on the back of a nutrition label isn’t always enlightening. And a lot of traditional serving size definitions are pretty unhelpful, tbh. (When was the last time you looked at a deck of cards as a size reference for anything?) “Portion sizes can get a bit confusing, since a lot of nutrition labels talk in grams for portions and people don’t carry a food scale around in their back pocket,” says Brigitte Zeitlin, RD, owner of BZ Nutrition in New York City . “One serving can seem a bit abstract and not really a concrete visual to understand.” Most of us tend to overestimate portions since we’re used to restaurant portions—which are actually more like double the recommended serving size, Zeitlin says. The one exception: vegetables, which most of us don’t get enou...

Take a minute and think about what you drink in a typical day. Unless you are a true water lover, you may be getting some extra, unneeded calories through sweetened soft drinks, sodas, iced tea, coffee, juice, and energy and sports drinks. In fact, sugary drinks are the number one source of added sugars in our diet. Some research suggests that when you drink calories, you aren’t as satisfied as when you eat the same amount of calories in food. This could lead to eating more calories than you need. Here are some tips on how to switch to healthier drinks that will quench your thirst and still taste good! Read nutrition labels and ingredients – Beverages like energy drinks can be deceiving because they advertise that they are healthy but usually are loaded with calories and added sugars. Common forms of added sugars are sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, dextrose, syrups, concentrated fruit juice, agave and honey. Look at the label carefully because one container may be more than o...