Do you exercise regularly and follow a healthy diet, take all your vitamins, supplements and shakes to get the most out of your workout? Maybe you are new to exercise but want to maximize your results. Well listen up because you may be working against yourself even if you seem to be doing everything right. If you've spent a considerable amount of time making sure your eating the right things, maybe its time to start thinking about when you're eating. Nutrient timing can be a critical factor in the results you see with your exercise. For instance, resistance training actually breaks down your muscles rather than builds them. The body's response is to rebuild more muscle tissue where the breakdown occurred to prevent a future breakdown. The two important factors to this process are the nutrients in the body before the workout, and the nutrients you introduce after the workout. Pre-exercise you want to be sure your muscles have enough of the right type of energy to be able to perform at peak potential. Post-exercise you want to be sure your muscles have what they need to rebuild those muscles. Because of the physiology of exercise in the body, there is a certain window of time where nutrients delivered are most effective for those processes. So, if you are training to be an endurance athlete, or if you are training for a particular physique, find out what the best nutrient timing is for you. Its a relatively new science, but one that is showing dramatic results.

A recent study over the period of a decade and including 100,000 participants has recently concluded that people with a larger waistline are at a significantly elevated risk for dying early from respiratory illness, heart disease and cancer. "Four extra inches around the waist increased the risk of dying from between 15 percent to 25 percent. Oddly, the strongest link - 25 percent - was in women with normal BMI." This is a sobering statistic even if your BMI is considered normal. The Fat stored in the belly may effect certain hormones and chemicals in the body leading to disease. So, how can you protect yourself from this? Simple. Eat healthier meals and exercise more. Create and maintain an exercise program that suits your schedule. Mix up the exercise as well, crunches alone will not slim your waistline. Strengthen and tone your muscles overall so they utilize more energy and can help maintain a healthy body weight and muscle to fat proportion. Even if you are not overweight or if your weight has not changed much in years, there is still an elevated risk if your muscle mass has been replaced by fat through a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy nutrition. According to the study, if your weight has remained the same and your waistline has increased, you are at an elevated risk and should start taking steps now to maintain your health.

Consider for a moment, who am I? In this section of this newsletter we talk about meditation, and the reasons and benefits of practicing meditation, but what does it really do? The answer to that can be as varied and nuanced as each individual practicing it. However, one thing that will likely come about is a little clearer picture of who you are being in life. Perhaps the feelings you espouse will come to the forefront, or the thoughts you think will be a little louder in the moments you normally do not listen so closely. They will seem a little more present, and the more you practice meditation, the more visible, the more loud they will seem. This can be a difficult situation to be in as you may not like the things you see, you may even be surprised that they are there at all. However, remember this, if you can witness it then it is not you. If you can view it, see it, hear it, feel it, it is not you. The 'you' I am referring to is not the person or the personality, but that thing that is actually conscious, that thing that allows you to be aware at all. Asking 'who am i?' is not a question to be answered, its a method for distinguishing the things that are not you, from You. It is a method of elimination.

To help with the idea, consider this. Have you ever actually seen your eye? If you think about it, you have never seen your eye. The closest you've come is to see a photo of your eye, or a reflection of your eye in some other object, but never have you actually seen your own eye. If this is so, then everything you have seen with your eye, cannot be your eye. It must be some other thing. If you can witness it with your eye, it cannot be your eye. Likewise, your eye is never what you see with it. They are always different, separate. However, we often times confuse what we see with the eye as the eye itself. You may recognize this experience if you've ever worn an outfit that is completely different from your usual style. You see yourself in a costume or outfit and suddenly you notice that you actually feel different as a person. Nothing about you has changed, only what the eye sees has changed, and yet you feel different somehow. And this happens many times to us, and rarely do we pay attention to it. The eye is simply a witness, it sees. It makes no judgment, it only accepts what is coming to it. Our minds create the judgment, the meaning of what we witness, not the eye. So how can you know the eye if you cant see it? You can see with it. Pay attention to the looking rather than to what is seen. Involve yourself in the looking, the seeing, the witnessing rather than in the object being witnessed. As you do this, you will become more aware of what is being seen and less involved in your mental chatter regarding that object. ... Now, try re-reading that explanation replacing the word 'eye' with 'I', and see if its clear.