Eating whole foods can have a significant impact on one’s life for several reasons:
Nutrient Density: Whole foods are rich in essential nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, in their natural form. Consuming a diet rich in whole foods ensures that your body receives the nutrients it needs to support overall health and well-being, including proper immune function, energy production, and disease prevention.
Improved Digestion: Whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins, contain dietary fiber that supports healthy digestion and regulates bowel movements. Fiber also 
helps maintain a healthy gut microbiome, which is essential for nutrient absorption, immune function, and mental health.
Stable Blood Sugar Levels: Whole foods are typically lower in added sugars and refined carbohydrates compared to processed foods. Eating whole foods can help stabilize blood sugar levels, reducing the risk of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and sugar cravings. Consuming a balanced diet of whole foods can also provide sustained energy throughout the day, preventing energy crashes and mood swings.
Weight Management: Whole foods are often lower in calories and higher in fiber compared to processed foods, making them more filling and satisfying. Incorporating whole foods into your diet can help you feel fuller for longer periods, reducing the likelihood of overeating and supporting weight management efforts. Additionally, whole foods provide essential nutrients that support metabolism and muscle maintenance during weight loss.
Reduced Risk of Chronic Disease: Numerous studies have linked a diet rich in whole foods to a reduced risk of chronic diseases, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders. Whole foods are packed with phytochemicals and bioactive compounds that have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, which help protect cells from damage and reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases over time.
In summary, eating whole foods can positively impact one’s life by providing essential nutrients, supporting digestion and blood sugar regulation, aiding in weight management, and reducing the risk of chronic diseases. Incorporating a variety of whole foods into your diet can lead to improved overall health and well-being.
Chances are, as you’re reading this, you’re hunched over your phone or slouched at your desk. And it hurts. You’re in desperate need of some exercises for low back pain.
Your lower back is one of the most important parts of your body’s kinetic chain. “It’s where everything in the body connects,” says Jeff Brannigan, program director at Stretch*d, which offers in-studio and online classes. When this area of the body becomes tight, injured, or weak, it can wreak havoc in every other area of the body.
The vertebrae in your lower back—a.k.a. the lumbar spine—are the largest and bear the most weight, which means there are many possible ways to wind up with lower back pain. Simply sitting for long periods of time is one of the biggest culprits. “Most often, back pain results with no known cause,” says Jordan Seda, DPT, OCS, a certified strength and conditioning specialist at Stroma. “For example, imagine sitting at a desk and feeling a spasm in your back an hour into your workday. Prolonged periods of inactivity do not treat the body well.”
Of course, there are plenty of ways to wind up with a lower back injury that don’t involve sitting. “Lower back pain or weakness can stem from a multitude of reasons depending on your field of work,” says Miguel Aguilar, founder of Self Made Training. “Working a hard-labor job consisting of picking up or pulling heavy objects, crouching and bending over, or repeating the same movement repeatedly can cause lower back pain.”
Caring for your lumbar spine and finding lower back pain relief is all about having the right balance of exercise and stretching. “Each segment of your body needs to have a certain amount of flexibility and a certain amount of stability,” says Jenna Crivelli, DPT, a physical therapist at Stroma.
It needs to be able to support you as you bend over to pickup your toddler and keep you steady when you have to stand for an hour when you can’t find a seat on the train. “Health is about balance, and so the spine is also about balance,” Crivelli says. Figuring out how to relieve lower back pain, therefore, requires a mix of movement, stretching, and strength training.
First, you want to stay mobile. “Our bodies were made to move,” says Seda. “Movement allows for circulation of fluids that keep our tissues healthy and prepared for having to perform more strenuous physical tasks.” When we sit at a desk all day without taking walk breaks, it’s “terrible” for the body, adds Brannigan.
This is why regular lower back stretches are so important. “Active, movement-based stretching helps promote circulation and reduces the stiffness that builds over time when you stay in one position for too long,” Brannigan says. “When static for too long, muscles become tight and contracted; gentle, movement-based stretches will help loosen these muscles up and relieve tension.”
Finally, it’s important to make sure you’re also doing strength-building exercises one to two times a week to keep your back muscles strong, says Aguilar. “Surrounding our spines are core muscles that keep our spine stable,” he says. “It’s important to balance stretching with strength-building exercises to help lengthen muscle tissues and increase flexibility to be able to perform muscle-building exercises pain-free, and with greater range of motion to make the exercise more effective.” Free workout apps and YouTube workouts are a great place to start.
The most important thing you can do to fix lower back pain is to have a consistent routine filled with the best back exercises. (Some good workout songs won’t hurt either.) Here are 17 lower back exercises designed to keep you flexible, strong, and pain-free.
The Pelvic Clock
“I love this exercise, as it can be used as a way to warm up to other exercises,” says Mody of this move to help strengthen the lower back. “It is subtle but effective at awakening your abdominals and improving stability of the lumbo-pelvic junction.”
- Lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet shoulder-width apart. Imagine that there is a clock face resting on your abdomen with a marble in the center of the clock.
- Slowly draw in your stomach muscles toward your spine and tilt your pelvis back, flattening your back onto the mat. Imagine the marble rolling toward 12 o’clock.
- Next, tilt your pelvis forward, rolling onto your tailbone. Imagine the marble rolling toward 6 o’clock. The stomach muscles will relax and your back should arch off the mat slightly.
- Next, drop your left hip bone down toward the mat. Your right hip bone will lift toward the ceiling as you imagine the marble rolling toward 3 o’clock.
- Finally, drop your right hip bone down toward the mat as you imagine the marble rolling toward 9 o’clock.
- Repeat five times clockwise and five times counterclockwise.
Bird Dog
“This is one of the most researched low back exercises, as it works on the stabilization of the low back (lumbar multifidi) while keeping the abdominals (transversus abdominis) contracted,” says Mody. The key: making sure your abdominals stay engaged and activated throughout the movement.
(MENAFN– GetNews)
What does the phrase ‘Self Made mean to you?
For some, they’re just pretty words… but for Miguel Aguilar, It’s a lifestyle.
Miguel grew up in the rough neighborhoods of Riverside California surrounded by gangs, drugs and violence around every corner you turned and life at home was anything but perfect. From the earliest age he could remember life was hard, and he didn’t have a parental structure in place. Dad wasn’t around much and mom was a pathological liar who eventually abandoned Miguel with his father by age 12. Fast forward to 16 years old in High School his father went to prison and he was kicked out of the house by his step mom.
Miguel was living in his car and bouncing from couch to couch just to survive and avoid being thrown back in the system. He hustled every single day to earn his keep and was just barley able to graduate High School. Moving forward he took on all kinds of jobs and thanks to his hustle mentality he was able to begin living a normal life while working real estate and things were starting to look up for him.
But after the crash in ’08 Miguel like many others, had to file for bankruptcy and find a new way to support himself. By 2012 he came to the wild idea of solving a problem that many trainers in the fitness industry are faced with – lack of facilities to use with their clients. He began training people out of his garage and once he started to really envision what it could become, he decided to use every penny he’s ever saved in order to open a training facility…Self Made. He ended up selling his cars and anything he could get his hands on just to scrape up the additional money he needed to purchase the workout machines and décor. After grinding in the facility for months, he was able to make back all the money he spent, but rather than wasting it he reinvested into opening other locations. The moment he realized he had something great on his hands he began franchising Self Made to others, and the rest was history.
By the end of 2019 there will be 3 more Self Made Facilities opening across the U.S bringing him to 20 locations and it doesn’t stop there. Miguel plans to open hundreds of facilities in every state and is constantly on the hunt for new opportunities. From being abandoned, homeless and left to rely on himself, Miguel is now the CEO of a wildly successful training facility racking in well over 7 figures and is the true definition of a Self Made Man.
IG: @selfmadefamilyinc
Media Contact
Company Name: Self Made Training Facility
Contact Person: Miguel Aguilar, CEO
Email: Send Email
Address: 42265 Winchester Rd
City: Temecula
State: CA 92590
Country: United States
Website: selfmadetrainingfacility.com
FIND GYMS NEAR ME
Miguel Aguilar is the CEO and founder of “Self Made” training facility and although massively successful to this day, it wasn’t always so. Growing up in a negative environment filled with violence and gangs, life was anything but easy.
Adding in the fact Miguel’s mother was a pathological liar with mental issues, his childhood was a montage of moving from place to place and struggling to find stability. At the age of 12 years old he was abandoned by his mother and by 16 abandoned by his step mother and became homeless with his younger brother.
Struggling to provide for himself and enduring soul sucking jobs, he eventually landed a position in the real estate industry where his worth ethic started to shine. After years of grinding, surviving and even succeeding in the 2008 crash, things seemed to be going well.
But after tough competition in the market, Miguel was forced to file bankruptcy. Despite the challenges he faced, he persevered and eventually made a name for himself within the fitness industry and has been changing the game ever since!
Don’t miss out on this heart wrenching story of a young boy going from nothing and no one, to a top entrepreneur and 1%ER!
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