Switch To Eating Clean!

How To Switch To Eating Clean

My first book ‘How To Switch To Eating Clean: A Simple Step-by-Step Guide to Starting a New Healthy Lifestyle‘ is available for FREE download on amazon for the next 2 days! Click here to get it NOW!

Eating Clean

Get it for FREE only this weekend!

If you like it, please leave a review! I’d love to hear about you!

What Is This Book About?

Well, not to be sarcastic but what do you think? LoL! It is about EATING CLEAN, of course!
But here’s a hint: it is geared towards those who eat crap (traditional or fast) foods but want to make a change.
But why am I still flapping my lips (clacking away on my keyboard) when the book can speak for itself and you have better things to do: like go on amazon and download my FREE book! 😀

Stay Healthy My Friends!

Oat Bread Toast with Hummus And Avocado 

It is exactly what the title says it is. Nothing fancy. Just oat bread toast with hummus and avocado. Well, maybe the homemade bread made entirely from oat flour may sound a bit fancy for some. Other than that, it is perfectly normal food. But a lot healthier. And incredibly delicious. The perfect 10 AM healthy snack.

Oat bread toast with hummus and avocado

 

Tips for Starting a Healthy Lifestyle!

 

Healthy Lifestyle Tips?

I haven’t realized that starting living heathy can be a very daunting experience for some until a friend of mine on Facebook asked me for some healthy lifestyle tips. I hope this post will give you value and if you think this can give value to others, please share it!

1. Eat clean!

Possibly the most important of all the healthy lifestyle tips I can give.
Cut processed food! In case, you’re new to this: processed food is a murderous! It is chock-full of artificial chemicals which may not seem harmful directly but I can assure you: your body has no idea what to do with them. so in most cases they all go into you but not all of them comes out of you. In the long run the build up of the remains of these chemicals in your body may contribute to, or even trigger one or more of the 21st-century diseases. These are obesity, type II diabetes, Alzheimer, Parkinson disease, coronary and heart diseases, auto immune diseases or different types of cancer, just to mention a few of these nightmares.

But there’s also other problems with processed food! Highly processed food contains very little, if any, nutritional value! Is that a problem? It sure is! Highly processed foods tend to contain a lot of empty calories which will make you fat and barely any nutrients which will result in you being underfed. This is exactly why there are so many undernourished fat people these days. If you want to know more about eating clean get my book ‘How To Switch To Eating Clean’ on Amazon!

Healthy Lifestyle Tips Galore: Get My Book 'How To Switch To Eating Clean'

2. Replace soda and boxed juices with green tea or water!

Why? Because they are loaded with added refined sugar! Sugars, in their natural form are necessary for our survival. So, yes, we need sugars. But I recommend consuming them in their original form like fruits and vegetables. Now you might ask: what if I make my own juice at home? Well, it’s a little bit better than boxed juices. The reason for this is natural fruit juices are too full of sugar. So you may want to drink them cautiously, preferably in the morning. The only exception I can see when you could bring fruit juice anytime of the day, Including late night, is when you’re juicing. (Juicing by the way, is an amazing way to clean out your body from the inside out. I promise I will write a post about doing it properly soon.)

3. Drink a lot of water!

How much is a lot? At least 1/2 of your body weight in ounces or about 1 liter for every 25 kilos you weigh, for my metric friends. Water is possibly the best medicine for most ailments! How so? If you drink enough of it you will not have much to do with health issues. As lame as it sounds water is the best preventive measure if applied properly as part of a healthy lifestyle.

There are a few caveats with this one too. The most important is that the water you drink must be pure. As long as it’s crystal clear both chemically and biologically speaking it doesn’t matter whether you buy it in a bottle, filter it at home or you drink it directly from the creek (because you live in Fiji you lucky bastard…lol). Most of us will probably use water filters because they seems to be the most affordable solution for achieving quality water. For that you will need to get the appropriate water filter which is specific to your water. So as a bonus healthy lifestyle tip I recommend you to check out my other post discussing my favorite water filters.

Healthy Lifestyle Tip Bonus: Get The Right Water Filter!

If you feel fed up with water (whether it’s the taste or you are just fed up with it) do what I do!

MY TRICK: I PUT THIN SLICES OF FRUITS IN MY WATER –>> FROZEN FRUITS IN THE SUMMER OR DRINK HOT/WARM GREEN TEA DURING WINTER WHEN YOU ARE MORE INCLINED NOT TO DRINK ENOUGH.

4. Spend time with yourself

Meditate, write your journal, take a bubble bath or go for an hour of massage just because…

One of the most powerful healthy lifestyle tips I know. (Now, that I think about it, I feel like I should have started with this one.) Feel grateful for who you are and the things you have! But most importantly: Have love for yourself! The world begins with you! physical health is important so his mental and emotional health. Whether you’re a male or a female you need a little ‘me’ time many times a week!

Whether it’s reading your favorite book, meditating or writing your journal – it doesn’t matter. As long as you spend it with yourself and enjoy both the activity and your own company. Studies have shown, people who don’t take time for themselves on a regular basis tend to develop different levels of depression or even personality problems long term. It is important for you to have a good relationship with you. After all, you cannot leave you. Besides if you don’t love yourself how can you expect others to love you?

5. Sleep well!

This means going to bed at the proper time and sleeping enough. When the sun goes down, so should you! Sleep at least 8 hours. This practice helps your body to regulate leptin which is the un-hungry hormone and cortisol which is responsible for your metabolism, among many other things. This is the reason why going to bed early and getting enough shut eye will keep you slim and lean.

Now, this one too has a caveat: sleeping more than eight hours can be just as bad. It’s not necessarily sleeping too much that causes you any issues. It is usually the other way around: it could be an indicator, you already have some possibly undiagnosed health issue. You may not know about it (yet) but your body already does. When it needs to recover it will make you want to sleep more. The bottom line is: If you are an adult sleep eight hours every night! End of discussion. LOL!

Bonus Healthy Lifestyle Tip: Calculate your most optimum sleep hours (or when to go to bed in order to wake up at a specified time) with this neat on-line sleep calculator!

6. Work out!

This is possibly the most obvious healthy lifestyle tip.
Since most of us spend our days sitting it is crucial that we take our butts to sweat at least three times a week! Workouts are super important because they are the catalysts to your clean eating. And this is where I need to very strong point: if you want to look good and feel good in your body eating right is about twice as important as working out.

Now, at first it may sound that I just contradicted myself. But in all reality you can look nice and lean even without working out. (Not necessarily firm but not overweight.) On the other hand, it is almost impossible to look nice and lean if you only work out but don’t eat right!

But my main point is: miraculous things start happening to your body when you eat right and work out consistently! The synergistic effects of the two will get very pronounced in most cases! Once you start feeding yourself properly and exercising on a regular basis people will start noticing it in as little as 6 to 8 weeks!

There’s one more caveat to this tip: when you get moving choose an activity that you enjoy. Remember, you will want to work out consistently so might as will choose something you love! This way you will WANT to do it and feel more motivated even on your not-so-good days.

I also made a quick little video in my coffee break today regarding this subject.
If you watch it on YouTube please support me and like, share and subscribe!

If you feel that my healthy lifestyle tips gave you value and they can give value to others, too, please share post or the video!

How To Be Productive: Get Your Productivity Up – The Healthy Way

Productive Lifestyle

I know that being productive is not something that tightly ties in to the subject of healthy weight loss at first glance. On the other hand, being productive can play a major role in being able to afford a healthy lifestyle – mindset-wise, time-wise and money-wise. When you’re  productive it takes less time for you to get things done. Also, it is shown to be less of a stress both on your body and psyche. So how to be productive? Now that sure is a complicated subject! But I will try my best to give you my insight on it…

Productive Lifestyle

I consider myself a fairly productive person. However, I am aware that there are a bunch of more productive people out there than I am. I recently did a small research on this matter. All I could find was “artificial” techniques and methods.

“These tips could never work for me!” – I said to myself in disappointment.

But the more I thought about it the more I realized: in one way or another, I have already been doing these techniques instinctively, on my own. Maybe, not even exactly like they were described but somehow similarly. Either way, here they are:

Get Started!

Getting started is vital if you want to get stuff done! It is also the hardest part for most. Why, you might ask?

In most cases, studies have shown, our brain might feel overwhelmed when looking at the total of the task at hand. For example, writing 200 pages may seem very daunting at first. Let’s say there are 250 words on one page and we need to write 200 of it! that is 50,000 words! It takes a lot of willpower to get a project like that going even if you’re a writer. But if you trick your brain into breaking down this seemingly huge job into smaller parts then it doesn’t look so bad after all!

How much willpower does it take to write a word? Not much, right? How much will power does it take to write a sentence? Or maybe even a page? I’m sure you agree you can do that, too! All you got to do is get started!

But the real curious thing will only happen once you’re already started. Your mind will keep on nudging you, poking you from the inside and you will want to finish! The phenomena of people remembering uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones is called the Zeigarnik effect.

Time Management

To me, personally, this is the most important! In my lifetime management means that I try to plan ahead. Every evening, I fill up my calendar with tasks I want to complete the next day. It is interesting how much more you can get done in a day once you do this! So when the morning comes I really feel prepared! The day starts and I hit the ground running! It is an amazing feeling because I know that my future self will thank me for it!

In my research I found, time management is more focused on working in bursts and taking short breaks between them. If something demands your full attention like practicing a very difficult music piece on an instrument it is vital to stay focused. On the other hand, staying focused for too long can really wear you out. So it is a lot more efficient to stay focused for 90 minutes then take a 15 to 30 minute break. If you do this you can rinse and repeat it throughout your entire day.

The opposite of this is when you do something unfocused, half assed. This is when you dilute your efforts and waste a lot of energy. Actually, on a daily level you waste a lot more energy than as if you were focused for short periods of time.

But if you are anything like me, you try to arrange your day so you don’t need many breaks rather switch the type of your tasks. There are certain things I do every day which require me to use the creative part of my brain. Other tasks use the motor part of my brain. I noticed, if I switch between these two types of tasks a very short break, or in most cases, no break is needed! I can get a lot more done in a lot shorter time! Yay for Brain, yay for Productivity! 🙂

Deadline

Setting a deadline ties back into our first point: Get started! When you set a deadline the Zeigarnik effect will hit you harder. Your brain will keep nudging you stronger as your deadline approaches.

Curiously, it also ties back into our second point of time management. Setting a deadline requires a calendar! (Well, OK, it doesn’t. You can set a deadline even in your head… But doesn’t it look a lot cooler when it is on a calendar?)

Stop Multitasking!

This last one too ties back into time management. Because what does doing two things at once accomplish? Defocus! It is impossible to do multiple things simultaneously. Even if the tasks use different parts of the brain ultimately the quality of the outcome will suffer. (I am not a multitasker, so let me know if I’m wrong with this one!)

I also shot a cool little video about this subject. Feel free to watch it, listen to it if you have nothing to do. Oh, and let me know what you think! Maybe there are other, better ways to be productive!

Stay healthy my friends!

 

Water Filter Recommendations by Kor Marton – The Best Water Filters

Do you like drinking crystal clear filtered water but don’t live right next a to a mountain creek? Well, my friend, sounds like you need a water filter!

You want the one that suits your needs best but don’t know which one to get? Should you get the best water filter or the cheapest one? You came to the right place! I will tell you everything you need to know about water filters!

When Do You Need A Water Filter?

Eating clean is important. So is drinking clean! And I wasn’t kidding with living next to a mountain creek either. Because even if you live next to one chances are, you still need a water filter. Yes, our world is that polluted. Or better yet: would you take any chances knowing you don’t actually have to?

There are two ways you can figure out whether you need a water filter:

  1. Get your tap water tested. You can actually buy a water tester kit from Home Depot.
  2. If you live in a city in any first world country and your tap water is drinkable (or so you think) you probably still need a water filter. 😀

I know the second method is not at all accurate and will not reveal the actual impurity levels in your water but it is funny, right?

Seriously, it is not just where you live but there are a multitude of variables that factor into your water quality. Like how old the pipes are that bring you the water. In the US, houses built before 1986 may contain lead pipes which, as we already know now, are bad news for your health. The  quality of your tap water also depends on how effectively the water reclaiming system works in your area. You can actually find all the “dirty” details regarding this in your municipality’s mandatory Consumer Confidence Reports which is a water quality summary that’s released each year by July 1st.

Water filters are also categorized by their filtering capability. The standard they use is the one of the trusted NSF.

How To Find The Right Water Filter

Before buying a water filter make sure you know what it is you wish to remove from your water and how the filter you intend to buy stacks up based on the NSF Standard.
For example: “NSF Standard 42” means that it only does an aesthetic filtering by removing chlorine. This will make your water smell and taste a lot better but it still will not remove heavy metals or other, chemical or biological impurities, like bacterias or parasites. For that, you would need something a bit stronger like a filter that has passed the “NSF Standard 53” certification. Now, a filter like this is still not perfect because it still leaves trace amounts of prescription drugs and pesticides in your water. If you want those gone too, you will need an NSF Standard 401-certified filter.
Do you already have a water filter and you are just curious whether it does what it supposed to do? Search for it on NSF!

In my humble opinion, let’s split the water filters in three main tiers based on the impurity level in your water:

Impurity Level: LOW

If the impurity level of your water is relatively low, I recommend something simple, like the Brita pitcher.

Brita pitcher water filter

In most cases, an 8-10 cup pitcher will suffice. Pitchers are great because they contain enough fresh, filtered water for 1-4 people. They are also smartly designed to fit snugly in your fridge door.
This pitcher will only set you back by a measly $27 and you get your first filter too!
You will need to change the filter about once every 2 months or 6 times a year which will not set you back by too much: $38 per year for 6 filters!
Cheaper than bottled water right?

Another  classic pitcher is ZeroWater’s 8 Cup Pitcher. It comes with an indicator stick that will help you establish a baseline of TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) in your tap water before and after filtering. With it you can keep track of the efficiency of your filter.ZeroWater water filterIt is one of my personal favorites. And not just because of its low price.
It only costs $24.73 but the filters can get a bit pricey. Nevertheless, they are worth every penny.

Impurity Level: MEDIUM

When your water is far from clean but also not too dirty I recommend getting something a little more than just a pitcher. Like the PUR Advanced Faucet Water Filter.PUR Advanced Faucet water filter

This bad boy here is certified to remove over 70 contaminants, including 99% of Lead, 92% of pesticides, 96% of Mercury!
Also, it has 
MineralClear inside which filters water over natural minerals for a crisp, refreshing taste. Yumm!
One more thing: this filter does not remove fluoride, which is great if you are on the pro-fluoride side on the fluoride debate!
The filter is capable of filtering about 100 gallons of water and only need to be changed every 3 months.
All in all, a faucet-mounted filter is not just a lot cooler looking but also a lot more practical than a pitcher.
Its cost is also very cool: only $26.40.
And you can get 3 replacement filters for only $25.49!

Impurity Level: HIGH

If your tap water is really high in contaminants and you need something more heavy duty why not try the APEC 5-Stage Reverse Osmosis Filter?

APEC 5-Stage water filter

It fits neatly under your sink so it is technically out of sight, out of mind! So is your tap water problem!
As long as this baby serves you, your tap water will be stripped of all chlorine, arsenic, lead, fluoride, and 1000+ more contaminants, even bacteria and virus!
I think it is more than a bargain considering you will only pay under $199 for it!

Of course, there are a lot more expensive water filters out there. Are they that much better? Honestly, I have no idea. But why you would buy them if these can do a great job for a low price?

Whole Wheat Pasta with Shredded Carrots and Eggs

I am extremely busy today. I woke up very early, too. But this is normal right now. You really don’t have time for anything when you work on launching your new business.

But you still get hungry, don’t you? Oh, and you still want to eat healthy, right?

So I put together this 10 minute lunch that I find delicious!


So how is this healthy?
Well, first off I know it is “only” vegetarian and not fully blown vegan but it is a very well balanced lunch for someone with a busy life yet an active lifestyle.

Sure, it may not be for those who are actually looking to lose weight (body fat). But it is perfect if you have been living a healthy lifestyle.  This wholesome food can serve as “maintenance” for your wellbeing.

There are a couple of things I recommend you to pay attention regarding your lunch:

  1. Eat way less carbs than at your breakfast
  2. No simple carbs!
  3. Have at least a “handful” (yes, that’s what the official measurement unit is called! LOL!) of veggies in it!
  4. Don’t eat the same thing every noon!

Ideally, your plate should have 1/3 carbs, 1/3 protein and 1/3 veggies. Just like projecting the Mercedes-Benz logo on your plate! 🙂
Although it is not very visible, my little pasta has these three thirds evenly mixed up in it! Just look at the recipe!

Let me share it with you! Maybe you’ll love it as much as I do! 😉

Whole Wheat Pasta with Shredded Carrots and Eggs

  • 200 grams of whole wheat pasta (any shape, my choice was penne)
  • 1 whole carrot, shredded
  • 2 whole eggs
  • 1 tiny teaspoon of extra-virgin olive oil
  • Himalayan salt and ground black pepper to taste

It is really simple to make!

  1. Cook the pasta in boiling water for 9 minutes
  2. Gently roast the shredded carrot on the olive oil.
  3. Add pasta and eggs – mix it all together with a spatula
  4. Serve it with salt and pepper to taste

Bam! That’s it! How you doin’? Bonappetit!

Stay healthy my friends!

Brain Tickling Green Smoothie Morning Snack

I woke up very early today. At 5 AM. Now, this might not seem so early for some but it is definitely technically still nighttime for me.

Needless to say, that waking up at 5 AM is not one of my habits. Nor it is any of my pleasures. I simply woke up this early because I had to get some work done. And meet someone online who lives and works in a completely different time zone. Far away from mine.

Eating my breakfast is never a problem. I can get my metabolism going on demand. I had two thin slices of my homemade bread (made of whole wheat bio spelt flour) with a tiny spoonful of honey and a banana. (Oh, I should not forget my mandatory cup of coffee – black, no sugar, no milk, of course.)

About 15 minutes ago my online engagement ended (at about 9 AM) and although my normal morning snack-time is closer to 10 AM I was already starving for something to eat.

But the best part is, that my actual,”normal” day is just about to start and I will still need the full capacity of my brain! This sounds like a no biggie but if you ever woke up at an unusually early time you know that it wears you out and if you don’t make the proper precautions your whole morning will be shot.

So what are, or might be the proper precautions you ask?

Well, if you know me you know my answer would be “eating right” to that question. Funny as it sounds, I can solve a lot of my problems in my life just by eating right! The more demanding your life is the cleaner you should be eating, in general! This way you will have a clearer mind, be able to get more done, with a lot better efficiency, on a lot higher level thus making you more successful at whatever you do!


So that’s exactly what I decided to do and made a wonderful brain supporting morning snack! If you never tried this green miracle drink you should! Drinking this on a regular basis will help you lose your evening carb cravings (let’s face it, we all have it if we eat crap, or even worse, don’t eat enough nutritious stuff during the day!), and on the long-term it will assist you to get rid of your excess body fat without even trying!


I made this in a total of five minutes and the recipe is so simple I even feel embarrassed to call it a recipe. Nevertheless, here it is:

Green Brain Tickling Smoothie

  • One handful of spinach
  • Three leaves of iceberg lettuce
  • Two red apples
  • One banana
  • Lemon juice of half of a lemon
  • As much ice cold filtered water as you like (you know some like their smoothies thin, some like it thick)

Preparation is easy. Put the greens in the blender first, then blend it with a little water. Then add the lemon juice, the apples and the banana. Blend them as you add water to taste.

Normally I core the apples but if they’re perfectly healthy on the inside (just like mine were today) no need for that really. Oh and remember to peel the banana before tossing it into the blender! LOL!


I hope you can appreciate this wonderful “green magic potion” and it will help you out as much as it helps me every day!

Stay healthy my friends!