BENEFITS OF DARK CHOCOLATE

Hi again fitfam! Hope you had an amazing morning full of energy and positivism! Are you ready to discover something new today?

A few days ago my dearest friends and blog colleague Ema, dedicated a post on the benefits of drinking green tea. (If you haven´t read it yet I strongly recommend you to do so! I guarantee that within 5 minutes you will be going to the nearest store to buy some.) Today, I am coming back to you to talk about the benefits of the best product that Mother Nature gifts us with, used in cakes, sweets and desserts…what is this mysterious food? DARK CHOCOLATE!

Chocolate is our top 1 comfort food, a sure–fire stand-by in times of stress, a reliable source of consolation when life has let us down, and a mood-enhancer and romance-inducer in more positive circumstances. But it is really healthy? It really depends on the kind of chocolate you choose and the quantity you eat; forget about white chocolate and the ones filled with cookies, nuts or any other caloric substances, and eat only one or two ounces per serving. The pure, dark chocolate, with a cocoa percentage of around seventy per cent or more is the one which is really good for us, being beneficial for the heart, circulation and brain and an extra help to fight against autism, obesity and diabetes.

Dark chocolate is packed with beneficial minerals such as potassium, zinc and selenium, and a 100g bar of dark chocolate provides 67% of the RDA of iron. It has also been shown that consuming cocoa reduces levels of “bad” cholesterol and raises the levels of the “good” one lowering the risk of a cardiovascular disease. Moreover, and even though hard to believe, it has been proofed that chocolate can help you loose weight. A recent studio showed that a small square of good chocolate melted on the tongue 20 minutes before a meal triggers the hormones in the brain that say “I´m full”, decreasing the amount of food you will subsequently consume. The same happens when you eat a small piece after your meal, it will make you feel satiated and even reduce subsequent snacking.

Here comes the final and best benefit of all! Chocolate contains phenylethylamine, (PEA), which is the same chemical substance that your body releases when you´re falling in love, so PEA encourages your brain to release feel-good endorphins. In other words, you will feel happier and more cheerful!

So now you know my dear readers, never feel guilty when eating dark chocolate, as long as you do it with moderation, as it will benefit your body and soul in many ways. I hope you enjoyed reading the post as much as I did writing it, have an amazing day and never forget to visit our site and see what news your 2 beloved fit brunettes have to tell you.

Photo by: Clean Indulgence

Juliet

WEARING MAKE-UP IN THE GYM?

Hi again my dearest readers and welcome again to a new week of posts in 2fitbrunettes! Are you those kind of girls who cover themselves in make-up to train? Or you prefer a natural, “I woke up like this” image? Today in the blog we will discuss if it´s good to wear make-up whilst exercising.

It is true that we girls always, and with this I mean ALWAYS, want to look pretty and attractive whichever place we go to. However, I personally don´t believe the gym or wherever you go to train should be one of them. I personally never apply make-up when I am going to train; I prefer a fresh face, as I know it will soon be covered in sweat.

It has been said many times that wearing make-up meanwhile practicing sport is not good for our skin, but why do I still se dozens of women wearing full faces of carefully – applied cosmetics?

Mascaras and eyeliners? – Beware with those! You will probably find your eyeliner smudged all over the side and lower part of your eye and the mascara running down your cheeks by the end of the session.

What about foundation and Powder? – These are for sure the worst allies you can choose. Not because they will make you look like a panda bear past half an hour, but because they will not allow your pores to transpire properly while exercising.

When we are working out and therefore our body is starting to feel hot, several things happen to our skin. We first start sweating, and because of this our pores relax and enlarge there is an act of relaxing and enlarging the pores. So, what happens if your pores are opening and you have a thick layer of foundation over it? Easy answer, maybe not that same day, but over the time your skin will thank you with a face full of spots, blackheads and uneven skin texture.

Now comes the typical question….What if I HAVE to wear on make-up because I know I will see someone special? (We all know the stories about the gym crushes…) If this is the case, I recommend you to use a light, oil-free, tinted moisturizer so that it´s not as heavy. The most important thing is to remove the products from your skin, preferably with make-up remover, before your body cools down and your pores tighten up again, trapping the make-up and impurities in the opening of the pore and leading to breakouts.

Hope you enjoyed the post and most importantly that you learn something new with it! Never forget to keep tuned and leave your comments if you wish so!

Photos by : WAPA & Paper Blog

Juliet.

3 ELECTRONIC DEVICES YOU CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT DURING YOUR WORKOUT

Good morning my dear readers! Hope you are all enjoying your Saturday morning with a warm cup of coffee and an amazingly tasty and nutritious breakfast!

Today I will continue with the topic we discussed on my last post; technology and fitness. On Thursday´s post I talked to you about the apps you could use to optimize your diet and workouts, today on the contrary, I will advise you and talk about the technology items I use whilst training or practising sports.

If you are curious to know what devices cannot miss in my gym bag keep on reading!

Number 1 and most important electronic device without which I simply cannot workout is my phone. Now you will ask yourself, is Juliet one of those girls that goes to the gym to sit on the bicycle and text for 1 hour? The answer is clearly NO! The only reason why I need my phone during my sport sessions is for music, under no circumstance I can train without music. The truth is that until 1 year ago I was still using my Ipod as a music device when I was practising sport, it was small and easy to carry. Unfortunately it got broken so I had to move on and use my smartphone instead. I use an app called Souncloud where I have different playlists of gym music that help me to keep motivated and never loose the rhythm while exercising. The down part about using this app is that as long as it is reproducing music it will require internet connection, so it will consume a lot of the phone´s power and capacity. Another way of getting music in your phone is downloading it, there are apps which allow you to do it, some examples are Mp3 Download, BitTorrent, Download Music 4Shared…

The second device I always take with me to my workouts is the heart rate monitor. For those of you who have never heard of this item, it is an electronic device that allows us to measure our heart rate in real time, in other words, how many beats per minute our heart is producing. The device consists of two parts: a watch that you will wear on your wrist where you will be able to read all the information about your body when this one is in movement: your heart rate, consume of calories per hour and minute, the amount of grams of fat you have burnt, the duration of your activity…and a kind of elastic belt that you place under your chest. This elastic belt is what, in contact with your heartbeat, sends all the information about the body activity to the screen of the watch. The only thing you need to do before starting to use it is place each thing on its corresponding place and introduce your age, weight, height and gender on the watch, it is the only way of guaranteeing an accurate result as everybody is different and so there performance while practising sport. The heart rate monitor I use is a very simple and cheap model bought in Decathlon from the brand Domyos. It only costs 20eur and works perfectly fine, I strongly recommend you to try it!

The last item that always comes with me is my wireless headphones. This year for Christmas my parents gave me a pair of Monster iSport Freedom, and now I can´t live without them! Trust me, practising sport with wireless headphones is the best thing ever! You don´t have to worry about always having the phone near you to keep the headphones connected and most importantly you will not have to waist time untying the annoying knots. You will also be able to move freely and the headphones won´t move from their place. The price of my headphones is around 120 to 200eur, but their comfort and sound in value for what they cost could not be better.

Hope you enjoyed today´s post and above all found it useful! Have a lovely Saturday and weekend.

Photo by: The Technews

Juliet.

 

HEALTH & FITNESS APPS

Hi again my dear readers!

Today I am bringing you a new article on a theme we have never discussed before on the blog, today´s theme is: Technology and Fitness! Keep reading if you are curious on what I have to tell you!

Nowadays our smartphone has become a basic and fundamental object in our lives; we don´t use it only as a communication tool, but for entertainment, to organize our daily tasks, to know what´s going on around the world…Also mobile apps play an important role in our day – to day life, we use them to catch the bus in time, to check-in at the airport, to look at the weather…there are even women who use an app to control their menstrual cycle! So, the question here is, why don´t we also take advantage of apps to control and beneficiate our health and wellness?

It is no longer than 2 years that I have been seeing people using apps to control their daily nutrition and/or workouts, so the truth is that this is a fairly new concept. However, I believe that we can be grateful to whoever had the amazing idea of creating an app that could control your health; they are really helpful for you to keep track of your daily progress and results.

The first app I ever used to control my diet and exercise is called My Fitness Pal. This is an app initially released in 2005 which you can also find and use in your computer. MyFitnessPal is a great ally for those who follow a diet and want to control their caloric and nutrients intake of every meal. Not only it allows you to control nutrition, but also workouts, as you can type the kind of sport and duration of the activity you practised and it will tell you how many calories your burnt depending on your height, weight and age.

If I had to remark something good about the app, it is that it gives you the possibility of choosing how many Kg per week you want to loose. Day after day the app is calculating all the calories you ate and substracting the ones you burnt exercising, and depending on your values it will tell you if you have achieved your goals and lost or gained weight that day.

However, we cannot rely 100% on the app as this one has no acknowledgement of what is going on in our body, for example when we have the period, that for no reason we gain from 1 to 3 kilos of weight.

Another amazing app I sometimes use when I cannot go to the gym is 7 Minute Workout. So…yes! Just as you are guessing this is an app that provides you with a million different workouts of only 7 minutes of duration! No excuses count here…who doesn´t have 7 minutes to train? All of the workouts are guided by professionals in fitness and health who will get your heart pumping in no more than two minutes using only your body weight and a chair. The workouts are divided depending on the body part you want to work on; arms, chest, booty, legs… and you can choose between cardio, toning, or cardio + toning workouts.

I truly recommend this app to all of you; it is extremely useful for those days in which you cannot go to the gym or simply feel lazy to move from home. My advice is to do 2-3 workouts of 7 minutes. However, if you feel lazy or tired don´t torture yourself during the 1^st workout thinking that you have two more workouts to get over with, start with one and then keep on going! 7 minutes pass really fast!

This is all for today my dear friends. Hope you enjoyed the post and download these apps to try them out!

Keep tuned, on Saturday a new post coming on Technology and Fitness!

Photo by : OurTuts

Juliet.

Benefits of Green Tea

Green tea is considered one of the healthiest beverages on the planet,Composed by antioxidant and elements that give powerful energies to your body.Green tea improves brain function and fat loss, lowers risk of cancer and many other benefits.Many bioactive elements in the tealeaves contains large amounts of important nutrients as Polyphenols and Catechise with its function as a powerful antioxidants.Another element is the increase of fat burning and the improvement of physical performance.

If you have a look of any list for fat burning, supplement green tea will be always present, because green tea has shown the increases of fat burning boosting the metabolic rate in human controlled rates.The tea contains a small quantity of caffeine itself, which has also been shown to improve physical performance by mobilizing fatty acids from the fat issue and making them available for us as energy.Several studies shoed that this beverage leads to decreases body fat especially in the abdominal area.

A study showed in a randomized controlled trial of 240 men and women that went on for 12 weeks that they had a decrease in body fat percentage, body weight, waist circumference and abdominal fat.We also have to consider the natural antibacterial property of green tea, capable to fights bacterium of the mouth, Streptococcus mutant, helping to avoid tooth problems.Finally Green Tea takes part of one of the most frequent problem of modern life :It controls the cholesterol blood levels, preventing heart diseases.I suggest you all to insert these beverages in your daily routine, not only for all this positive aspects, but also for having a nice pit stop in your journey.

Emma.

Photo by 30 Wonderful Health and Beauty Benefits of Green Tea

 

How to accelarate your metabolism

Metabolism is the first thing which influences our body weight, the term indicates a multiple chemical processes that happen into our body, finalized to our digestion.We can talk about slow and fast metabolism.Slow metabolism involves a long digestion which come with some physical stress and the consequence of gain weight.Most of the time this situation is connected to a no balanced and a lazy style of life.How can you help your metabolism?There are few simple tricks, which can help your metabolism to go faster such as eating slowly. Eating slowly makes your stomach feel more full, so you will eat less quantity of food.In the process of eating slow you will taste food better and give a change to your body to feel satiazed faster.

The second advice I can give you is about having small quantity of food divided in snacks during the day like having breakfast, lunch then a snack in the middle of the afternoon which can be a yogurt with fruits, then having a light dinner.Extremely important is not miss meals because stimulates the metabolism of insulin and bring you to have a big dinner with the consequence of a abnormal assimilation.There are even some types of food which can helps your metabolism such as:Pepper and spices , cereals, broccoli, green tea, apples and pears.Peppers is very positive for out metabolism it can makes run our metabolism the 25 % more than the usual, it even helps to decrease sensation of hungry.Cereals like oat makes work better our organism. Broccoli are one of the elements most detoxing in the food chain because contains vitamin C , Vitamin A and even Vitamin K .Green tea is a drink which contains many fundamental elements for metabolism such as detoxing and anti-oxidant and makes our metabolism more efficient .There is a study about apples and pears made from the Rio’s university .

They tested a percentage of woman who consumed more than three pears or apples a day. Results say they loose more weight and faster than other woman’s which do not follow this healthy routine. Pears and apples are both considered two fruits, which wakes up metabolism and helps to loose weight.Therefore my suggestion is to introduce all these elements.

Emma.

Photo by Kerry Madgwick – Health and Lifestyle

WHAT SHALL I WEAR TO TRAIN?

Hi and welcome again dear readers!

Today I´m coming back to you with another post on sports and fashion! Today´s question to answer is what kind of sport clothes to wear depending on your body and the sport you are going to practice.

Let´s get on with it!

Nowadays the market offers many different kinds of sport garments in a variety of colours, fabrics, cuts and shapes. The two things I take into account when choosing what I´m going to wear during my sports session is the kind of activity I will practise and, as I do with all the clothes I wear, what will fit better my body-type and figure.

Starting from the top part of the body, you have three options from where to choose: wearing just a sports bra, tank top or short-sleeved t-shirt. You will normally see very fit and in-shape girls wearing only the sports bra, as it is a good option to fight the heat whilst you are training and extremely comfortable if you feel confident enough to show off your belly. I personally do not feel that good with my belly (it still needs work!) so I never use only the bra to train. Despite this, all of you girls have to be brave and ignore social standards of beauty, never mind what other people think, if you feel comfortable and happy with your body, bellies out and show off your body!

If on the contrary you prefer to cover up a bit more you can choose a tank top or short-sleeved t-shirt. I normally prefer tank tops as a t-shirt becomes too warm during the trainings, but that is really up to you! If you are a person who is not comfortable with her arms short-sleeves can be a good ally as they cover a part of them.

Regarding the comfort, I believe the best option is wearing only the bra as it maintains the breasts in place whilst giving you a lot of freedom of movement. Notwithstanding, as we have said, if you are not comfortable showing your belly, you can go for a fitting t-shirt which also allows you to move quite well as the garment is fixed to the body so follows its movements. If you are a person who really doesn´t want to show the body but instead camouflage it, choose a loose shirt with a dark colour, it will keep all eyes off your figure.

Moving to the lower body, the two options you have are shorts or yoga pants. Shorts are the garments par excellence of runners; they are loose, fresh and give your legs an amazing sense of freedom and power. Yoga pants on the contrary are designed for more calmed and relaxed activities like pilates, yoga, stretching…those activities where your body is going to be in contact with the floor. However, nowadays people don´t choose in between yoga pants or shorts having in mind the activity they are going to perform, some women simply prefer working out in shorts and others in yoga pants. I personally prefer yoga pants as I feel more comfortable covering a bit my legs, but of course in summer when it is warm I also wear shorts, they are fresher and easier to move in.

As for sure you have realized, it is more common to see fit girls wearing shorts than those who are a bit over-weighted, these instead prefer yoga pants as they cover the upper part of the legs, which is normally the most problematic one. But girls, remember to wear whatever makes you feel more comfortable with yourself and your body! My recommendation though is always wearing yoga pants if you are going to do any tough activity like boot camp, functional training…in these kinds of training you risk scratching or hurting your legs if these aren´t covered.

Regarding the colours, I love using bright and neon coloured clothes as they give me cheerfulness and power when working out. However, I never leave aside black as it is the colour that best enhances your figure; I normally choose a vivid colour for my tops and black or grey coloured pants. I also love wearing full clothing sets, in other words, wearing the top and pants in the same colour or pattern, who doesn´t want to be stylish when practising sport? The sets I most like are those where you have the sports bra, tank top and pants, all with the same print and in vivid and dazzling colours.

I hope you enjoyed the post and remember to keep tuned, there are more posts coming up soon!

Photo by Self

Juliet

How to be fashionable with sport clothes

 

Everyone thinks that sport session clothes need to be used only inside the gym because they are not fashionable and that you can look messy. This is absolutely not true.Sometimes wearing sport clothes or the same clothes that you use in the gym could be very fashionable like just wearing some Nike leggings with a t-shirt and a leather jacket or even a blazer and running shoes as for example roshrun .That will be a sporty and fashionable outfit.Instead if you want to be a bit more elegant you could wear a long coat or even a trench coat on top of it.If you don’t feel comfy with legging you can even wear loose trousers with a white shirt on top and a long coat or even an elegant sweater.What about shorts? Shorts are amazing if you use them in the correct way, in my experience to wear sort session sports outside the gym is a bit more difficult but if you use the correct combination of clothes you will obtain a comfy and fashionable sporty outfit.

Let me suggest you I would advice you to wear a tank top and a jumpsuit on top of it or even a tank top and a sporty coat. Many celebrities are caught by on the road dressed in a sporty way and they always make their fashionable figure.Instead of these two options why not wearing your yoga pants at your work or for a lunch with frieìnds with a cozy sweatshirt, yoga simple pants are the most simple to wear because you can mix and match with many kind of shirts on top, the most simple are the yoga trousers.

I think that wearing sport clothing out from the gym is being fashionable in a simple and easy way. One of the most famous celebrities of nowadays Kim Kardashian had been caught many times in her gym clothes and let me tell you that even if she where wearing just some leggings and a crop top or a tank shirt she looked amazing and sexy.

Emma.

Photo by By Avery Matera

 

 

Diets NOT to do

 

Most of us think more or less in what a diet consist: not eatingMost of the diets consist in control of fats, carbohydrates, and all kind of sugar.The biggest mistake that we tend to do usually is putting ourselves in diets, which make us loose weight faster in a short period of time.Usually these diets are the unhealthiest for our body and our health.They will probably give the fastest results but they are affecting our body in a negative way, for then gain more than the kilos that we have lost doing that diet.As soon as you finish your diet, most of the people tend to return to bad habits,Gaining soon weight.

For a real result, it is necessary to keep a healthy life at table with a dynamic sport journey for a medium period.The worst two diets you can do are: Dukan diet, and eating only smoothies.Dukan diet consists in eating only proteins like meat, fish and yoghurt.With this diet you can see fast results but you can also have this negative side effects:Costipartion,bad breath, induction flu, fatigue, vitamins deficiency.This is the worst thing that you can do for your kidneys!!

For having a complete and healthy diet, is fundamental to mix proteins with vegetables and fruits, which have vitamins. Smoothie, another famous diet, made by many models, is a diet, which consists in only fruits, which contain mainly sugar!Fruits are important for a diet but need to be eaten with other elements.Best way to keep in good shape your body is definitely the choice to eat a Mediterranean diet with control of carbohydrates.

So try not to put yourself in strange diets as Dukan or based only on a few chain element, but eats various food in a small quantity.

Emma.

Photo by Flat belly diet

Most fashionable Brands

 

Nowadays most of the people is into fashionable clothes. One of the fashions, which had most evolved, is sportswear. At the beginning you could buy sportswear only in shops witch were specific in selling clothing for sport session but now you can find also sportswear in fast fashion shops as H&M, Bershka, Oisho.There are many sportswear brands.The most fashionable which we see everyday and that I recommend the most is Nike, not only for its quality but even because they have many choices for each sport you want to practice, and the fabrics are amazing (the fabrics of the sport clothing are extremely important because they go in contact with your skin while you are going to sweat.

If the quality is good it will last for a long period of time and it is safe for your skin..The big step in sport fashion has been done with different cuts, colours and in great progresses with the materials in terms of transportability, adherence to the body.Another fashionable brand of sport wearing is Victoria secret and, of course, Adidas. Everyone knows Victoria Secret because of its Lingerie, but Victoria Secret has even a collection of sports wearing which is very vast and has different typology of clothing for every kind of sports. Furthermore the quality of the clothes is very high.

Addidas is another famous sport brand, which is definitely one of my favourite brands.I would suggests also Nike because its collections are always amazing and fresh and you can always find something new which fits on every size.Instead if you don’t want to spend a lot and you love simple sport clothes Even & Odd Active is the brand made for you.Hope you are going to search for these brands and follow my advices.

 

Emma

Photo by Running Wolrd