Today’s sedentary lifestyle leads to weight gain. No one can argue with that. Everyone differs, however, on how to shed the weight.

The conversion of energy from stored fat is one of the main functions of the liver. Therefore, it is important that your liver is always at peak performance. Another function of the liver is to help the kidneys do their job if they’re dehydrated. The solution to keeping your liver converting fat to energy is to drink more water! The consumption of water is vital in order to maintain a healthy body. To summarize, cut down on the dehydrating beverages and fill up with more water.

Just existing burns calories. Energy is required every hour of the day, regardless of what we do. Who doesn’t know that? What is not as commonly known is that the amount of muscle on your body determines your resting metabolic rate. Even a small increase in your muscle mass will increase your resting metabolic rate, with the result being more calories expended throughout the day.

To benefit from increasing your metabolism, you don’t need to lift weights two or three hours a day. You probably don’t have that kind of time to invest – nor do I.

If you’re overweight and would like to add to your muscle mass, start slowly, and do simple things like squats or push-ups. Every day do five of each exercise. Those can both be done from the home and it won’t cost you a dime. If you want more workout than just push-ups and squats, do you need to buy a set of weights? No matter how silly it sounds, you can always use a pair of rocks weighing three or four pounds each.

Increase your muscle mass as fast as possible by making your body constantly rebuild and repair muscle. Every part of your body needs exercising: chest, shouldres, back, biceps, triceps, quads, forearms, and glutes, calves and hamstrings, and abdominals. To accomplish this, do you need to kill yourself every day at the gym? Not if you’re creative. Just remember, push-ups and squats. Those two exercises will work every muscle in your body (it’s even better if time allows you to concentrate on individual muscles).

However, don’t overlook the last but very important factor of losing or gaining weight: your diet. If three times a day you consume a double cheeseburger and a large fries, and drink a soda that’s not calorie-free, it’s going to be hard for you to lose weight no matter what you do.

While there is no limit to the number of diets claiming to be the best (all fruit, no meat, low carbs, low fat, etc.), different types of food create different reactions in people. On the most fundamental level, everyone’s body metabolizes food differently. What rejuvenates one person is just as likely to make someone else lethargic.

Which diet produces the best results for your body? To start, analyze how many calories you eat every day. Make sure it is the proper amount for your current body weight. Second, pay attention to how you feel emotionally and physically thirty minutes after you’ve eaten. Do you feel sluggish and want to nap? Or are you re-energized? Feeling like you could run a marathon? Most likely you’ve already concluded the answer because your body will tell you exactly how it feels after consuming a meal.

Light exercising, adequate water consumption, and a diet that makes you alive and full of energy are the fundamentals of losing weight. Be sure you include all three of the above factors, your lifestyle will be healthier and you’ll lose weight without even trying!

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Renegade Water Secrets with Jonny Bowden, is a board certified nutritionist, personal trainer, motivational speaker, and author of: Living the Low-Carb Life: Choosing the Diet that’s Right for You, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The Surprisingly Unbiased Truth about What You Should Eat and Why and his most recent book is The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why.

Kevin: Thank you. Well, for those of you who have never heard of Jonny Bowden, why don’t you just give us a quick little summary and then we’ll get right into the meat of this call and the questions.

Jonny: Well, I’m a board certified nutritionist. I have a Masters degree in psychology. I was a personal trainer for 10 years and I have six certifications in personal training and I try to combine motivational speaking with clinical nutrition and fitness and health for just transformation of the world and the planet and people’s health and personal power.

Kevin: Wow. So let’s get right into it. I sense a theme of the questions that we got and I got a chance to take a look at them, kind of revolve around to very specific things. One is emotional eating and the other is a sugar cravings and I have a feeling that they’re a little bit connected, but I’m going to let you talk about that. So let’s talk first about emotional eating. How can someone overcome emotional type grabbing for food no matter what it is?

Jonny: Well, it’s certainly something that we can spend an entire hour on, but let me just give you a tiny piece of the way I approach it. I did a program a while ago, which has been doing really well on my website called the Diet Boot Camp Program. It’s four CDs and a manual and it’s the text that we use in our private coaching program. It’s kind of a textbook, but this is an at-home version that you can do without the coaching program and everyone talks about using a food journal to keep a record of what you eat, so that you can kind of monitor food reactions and calories and be accountable to yourself. In the Diet Boot Camp Program, I particularly added to that food journal questions about what you just asked. What am I feeling when I’m eating this? Am I really hungry or is something else going on? How do I connect the dots between the triggers for eating and my eating behavior? Because I think the answer to your question is really about how we connect the dots? How do we identify what triggers happen often subconsciously, and often without us even noticing them. They happen so quickly.

What cues do we respond to that trigger eating behaviors, because until we can make that connection we can’t to break the link. So what we’re looking for is a circuit breaker. We’re looking for a way — if you know those Christmas lights that you have that you put on a Christmas tree. When they’re all kind of chained together and there’s one little circuit that’s broken in there then all the rest of the lights beyond that don’t light up. That’s what we need to do with some of our more addictive behaviors, whether it be food behaviors or drug behaviors, whatever we’re addicted to and here were talking about sugar and cravings and emotional eating.

So what we tend to and I was a cigarette smoker, for example. Certain subjects would come up. Certain anxiety producing subjects would come up in conversation. You automatically reach for the pack. So what I talk about on Diet Book Camp is making a chink in the link. You’re looking at that link of behaviors that starts with an emotion of feeling of fear or anger. In the 12 step program they talk about don’t get too angry or too tired or too thirsty or too hungry or too lonely. There are these triggers and what we’re looking for is what is the link of behaviors that ends with us eating something that doesn’t support our health and how to we break that link. How do we put a little circuit breaker in that link of lights and I think that’s the key to getting mastery over emotional eating.

Kevin: When someone is craving something is it too late? Does this groundwork have to laid before?

Jonny: That is a great question and let me give you the short answer. Obviously, if you can nip it before it happens, it’s the same thing with cigarettes and everything else. If you can stop cravings before they overcome you and there are things you can do. There are things you can do to modulate, for example, blood sugar, because dropping blood sugar is a big cue for cravings. There are things you can do to not get too angry or too hungry and there are things you can do to start molecules going up to your brain, saying this dude’s not that hungry. We can manage. So there’s a lot of things that you can do in advance of cravings. Once you understand what the triggers are, there are things you can do.

My ex-girlfriend was a big smoker and she knew that there were certain routes in the car, driving home from rehearsal, certain times that were triggers for her, so she learned to not do this particular things and to find alternative a ways to go home, to find different times to go, different people to travel with, so there are ways that you can kind of anticipate before the craving happens. You can do it be it with modulating blood sugar or taking some of the supplements that I talk about in The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth, like glutamine and things like that, but once a craving hits there are still things you can do to interrupt the circuit. It’s a little harder than not having a craving in the first place, but sometimes cravings just hit us. So what we have to do is find some alternative behaviors or just find a way to get, as I said, a chink in the link, maybe put one behavior in between the craving and the action.

A lot of us feel a craving and immediately gratify it and sometimes if you can just train your brain to put a five minutes in between, like maybe make a deal with yourself and you say okay, I’m going to delete this food or have the cigarette or whatever it is that you’d like to not be able to do. I’m going to be able to do it and make a deal with myself, but I’m going to wait five minutes. I’m going to just walk around the block first. It’s kind of like when you’re really angry and you take 10 deep breaths. You just make that deal with yourself to put that little bit of distance and when you know some of the tricks of what you can do in that little bit of distance you’d be amazed. The cravings pass within 15 minutes. It’s been documented. There’s no question about it. If you can outlast it, you can beat it.

So there are things that you can do and it isn’t always too late once the craving starts, but obviously the best solution is to try to anticipate what might trigger those cravings in the first place and maybe head them off at the pass before you are victimized by them.

Kevin: Right, because it’s challenging when you have a piece of cake or there’s a whole variety of people in this call. People who are into raw foods to people who just want to lose weight. It’s a challenge when you have that thing in your hand and it’s in your reach. Is it a different kind of trigger for each person, like a different kind of stop technique? Why don’t you give us an example of what you use for smoking? What was your stop technique?

Jonny: I wrapped the cigarettes and paper and put a rubber band around the pack. I would have to unwrap the cigarettes. I would have to write down on the paper the time of day. I’d rank it from one to 10 and I would have to wait five minutes and actually go out of the room and do it someplace else.

Kevin: Wow.

Jonny: After a while, if you put enough of these little stop gap measures, five minutes, 10 minutes, you have to wrap it up, you have to write it down and have to go out of the room. If you make it inconvenient enough, as you begin to break the habit it becomes easier and easier. For some people I’m going to have dessert, I’ll have a warm bath first. I’ll read 10 pages of the Wall Street Journal or of my favorite novel. I’ll wait and watch 15 minutes of the news and then I’ll have it. You can make them up. They can be different for different people. I’ll walk around the block. I’ll do 10 push-ups. You’d be amazed at the number of things you can put in there to just jam up the works. What you’re trying to do is deconstruct that automaticness, that knee-jerk reaction and once you can do that, once you can get a wedge in it’s like a wedge issue. Once you get a wedge in, it’s sort of like undoing a knot on your shoe lace when it’s really tight. Once you can loosen it a little bit, the rest of it sort of unravels a lot more easily.

Kevin: What a great 10 minute explanation on food cravings and sugar and everything. I think that kind of covers it. That is some incredible advice.

To read the rest of this transcript as well as access The Renegade Roundtable experts just like Jonny Bowden please click here! Kevin Gianni is an internationally recognized health advocate, author & film consultant. He has helped thousands of people take control of their own health naturally. For more information visit raw food diets and holistic nutrition.

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Renegade Roundtable, which can be found at http://www.RenegadeRoundtable.com. In this excerpt, Jonny Bowden shares on nutritional supplements.

Renegade Water Secrets with Jonny Bowden, is a board certified nutritionist, personal trainer, motivational speaker, and author of: Living the Low-Carb Life: Choosing the Diet that’s Right for You, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The Surprisingly Unbiased Truth about What You Should Eat and Why and his most recent book is The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why.

Kevin: There are so many supplements today to choose from. The costs can be high and I don’t know if they work. If you’re on a budget, what are the bare-bones supplements that you think that people should really be concerned about or should be using?

Jonny: If I had to pick one, if you put a gun to my head and I had to pick one supplement that would have the broadest-based shotgun approach to health that does the most things for the most people and that most people are lacking in it would have to be fish oil. Even a multiple vitamin, a lot of people on this call are eating really great. They’re eating a lot of raw foods. They’re getting enzymes and they’re eating yogurt or other naturally fermented foods and they’re getting some probiotics. Let’s assume they’re getting a ton of vitamins from their vegetables and fruits, although most people are lacking in some of them, but if you could only take one the omega threes just have the widest range of health benefits and are most needed by most people. So that would be my number one with a bullet.

There are others down the list. Certainly, multivitamins, magnesium. 75% of magnesium is getting a less than optimal level of magnesium. Probiotics are a good one. Digestive enzymes. There are a lot of different things and then of course, you get into the different health conditions and the different things and different challenges that different people have. If there are some heart issues or anything to do with — if anybody’s on a staten medication to lower cholesterol and that’s a whole other discussion, but if you are on one of there’s not even a doubt, you should be on co- enzyme Q10 supplementation. Absolutely 100% and if your doctor tells you otherwise change doctors. Staten drugs seriously deplete co-enzyme Q10. It’s a vital nutrient for the heart. If you’re on a Staten medication co-enzyme Q10 is at the top of the list.

For energy depletion there’s all sorts of different things. If people have blood sugar issues and I talk about all of this in The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth. Different natural prescriptions for supporting your health with different kinds of conditions and not necessarily curing a condition, but supporting your health and maybe being able to reduce medication or maybe being able to put something into remission or reduce the number of outbreaks of asthma attacks or acne or any of these different things. That can be helped by different dietary supplement strategies, but again, go back to what is the one thing that people on a budget, one thing that they can take. That said, I would

have to say fish oil.

Kevin: Any specific supplements for women?

Jonny: Well, certainly fish oil again, because that’s something both sexes need. If someone is pregnant, I think that’s number one with a bullet, because the developing fetus again, the brain is 60% by weight fat and most of that fat is DHA. So again, this is vitally important. I think folic acid is particularly important. It’s important for men and for women. I’m not one of those people who think that there’s a vast difference in what men and women need. There are some things like iron that men just shouldn’t be taking, but folic acid, if you’re of pregnancy age or whether you’re intending to get pregnant or not of pregnancy age you should be taking folic acid absolutely every day. If you drink, you should be taking folic acid every day. So this is another supplement that just has wonderful benefits in a myriad of ways, but certainly any one of pregnancy age should be taking that.

Then beyond that I think calcium, magnesium. I think we been oversold about how much calcium we need to take. I think that’s a whole different discussion, but I don’t think we need nearly as much calcium as we’ve been told. What we need to do is stop eating things that remove calcium from our system and then we wouldn’t need to take so much of it.

I’m more concerned that people aren’t getting enough magnesium. I think vitamin D is going to be the unsung nutrient hero of this decade. We’re just now seeing how low the recommendation has been compared to the value that this vitamin has and how much of the vitamin D deficiency epidemic we have in this country and how vitally important that is for health on many different levels. It has anti-cancer activity.

I was just interviewing for my radio show yesterday, the author of the book called The Blue Zones, which is what he did for National Geographic Explorer and he found four areas in the world: Sardinia, Okinawa, a remote peninsula in Costa Rica and the Loma Linda area of California, where the Seventh-day Adventists live. He found these four areas in the world that they called the blue zones, where people live to be a hundred they live in fantastic health. They have energy. There are people that are over a hundred years old that are tilling the fields. These pockets of long-lived healthy existence and they went and he investigated to see with the people might have in common. All of them live in sunny climates. All of them were getting a lot of vitamin D. Now there are a lot of things that they have in common, as well; very high plant-based diets, for example, a lot of activity and a lot of connections to other people. All of that stuff, but one of the central things was the vitamin D connection. So I think that’s a vitamin that almost everyone can benefit from, from taking more. We don’t do nearly enough with that. We get this ridiculous low RDA of 400 IUs a day is waste. It’s laughably low. That would be another one that we could benefit by.

Kevin: Why did you say men shouldn’t be taking iron supplements?

Jonny: Because we have no way of getting rid of iron. Menstruating women have a monthly cycle in which they lose blood and therefore, can get rid of some of the iron that accumulates in their bodies. Iron is very toxic to the body when it accumulates. So if you’re menstruating you have a way of getting rid of it. If you’re not menstruating, if you’re a postmenopausal woman or a man you shouldn’t be taking iron, because it gets into the system and it absolutely can oxidize. It can be a component of — there’s just a lot of connections to heart disease and all kinds of other things. You don’t want accumulated iron in the body. So I would say that for any man, a multivitamin without iron and for any postmenopausal woman a multivitamin without iron.

To read the rest of this transcript for free as well as access a full archive of information by health experts on abundance, optimum health, and longevity just like Jonny Bowden, please visit http://www.renegadehealth.com/inner-circle.php for a free 30 day trial.

To read the rest of this transcript as well as access The Renegade Roundtable experts just like Jonny Bowden please click here! Kevin Gianni is an internationally recognized health advocate, author & film consultant. He has helped thousands of people take control of their own health naturally. For more information visit raw food diets and holistic nutrition.

Milk thistle is a plant whose fruit and seeds have been used for more than 2,000 years as a treatment for disorders of the liver, bile ducts, and gallbladder. Milk thistle is also called holy thistle, Marian thistle, and Mary thistle is indigenous to the Southern regions of Europe however today it can be found growing around the world. This herb has a long therapeutic history.

Silymarin has been identified as the active ingredient in milk thistle which gives it its therapeutic properties. Silymarin is a naturally occurring polyphenolic antioxidant flavonoid. This active ingredient is only soluble in alcohol and not water, thus making an alcohol extract the preferred medium of extraction. Silymarin contains 4 compounds: silybin (the most active), isosilybin, silychristin, and silydianin.

Silymarin has been studied extensively around the world. Today, several scientific studies suggest that active substances in milk thistle (particularly silymarin) protect the liver from damage caused by viruses, toxins, alcohol, and certain drugs such as acetaminophen (a common over the counter medication used for headaches and pain; acetaminophen, also called paracetamol), can cause liver damage if taken in large quantities or by people who drink alcohol regularly.

Hepatitis C is a disease of the liver that is caused by a virus. Chronic hepatitis C can cause liver disease, cirrhosis (scarring of the liver), liver cancer, and liver failure. Among people with chronic hepatitis C, most show no symptoms for up to 20 to 30 years; some have mild symptoms; and some have more serious symptoms. One acute viral hepatitis study reported latest out come measures at 28 days and showed significant improvement in aspartate aminotransferase and bilirubin. Also, two studies of chronic viral hepatitis both showed basic and histologic improvement with milk thistle supplementation.

More over, two animal studies on prostate cancer chemoprevention and treatment are ongoing, and a third phase trial in human prostate cancer patients with rising prostate-specific antigen also is under way with milk thistle. Several large, carefully designed studies in patients with liver disorders have found that taking Silymarin to be effective as a treatment and may in some cases have a laxative effect or cause nausea, heartburn, or stomach upset. A growing amount of information from laboratory, animal, and human studies suggests that milk thistle may help to lower blood sugar levels as well.

Research into the biological activity of silymarin and its possible medical uses has been conducted in many countries since the 1970s, but the quality of the research has been uneven. A summary of the research findings the results of scientific studies to date do not definitively find that milk thistle is beneficial in treating viral hepatitis C in humans so more research is needed to be conclusive.

Many professional herbalists recommend milk thistle extract for the prevention and/or treatment of various liver disorders including hepatitis, fatty liver associated with long term alcohol use, and liver damage from drugs and industrial toxins such as carbon tetrachloride. The German Commission E, which studies the safety and efficacy of herbs for the German government, recommends milk thistle for liver damage due to toxins, cirrhosis of the liver, and as a supportive therapy for chronic inflammation of the liver.

In conclusion, milk thistle has been reported to have protective effects on the liver and to greatly improve its function. For over 2,000 years Europeans have used milk thistle seeds as an herbal treatment for liver disorders. So given all the research to date, one can do a systematic review of the evidence to clarify what is known about this herb, so one can make a informed decision as to treatment of their liver problems.

More information on milk thistle is available at VitaNet ®, LLC Health Food Store. http://vitanetonline.com/

CPR is an excellent life saving tool that has saved many lives and has existed in many forms for hundreds of years. However, our current method of CPR was not taught to the public until the 1970s. Before that, it was determined that artificial respiration and chest compressions could save a person’s life, but the method before our current one consisted of laying a person on their stomach. Fortunately, our current method is the adopted method because of its high success rate.

However, there are plenty of misconceptions when it comes to CPR because of what we see in movies and on television series set in hospital environments. The reason why CPR is portrayed the way it is on television is for dramatic effect, but what that does is give people the wrong impression about how it is really done. Could you imagine sitting there and waiting for the person performing CPR to breathe into the victim’s mouth twice and then do 30 chest compressions? That would be rather boring, wouldn’t it? We usually see them breathe twice and do anywhere between 5 and 15 chest compressions.

How to perform CPR

CPR isn’t the quick and glamorous lifesaving technique we see in Hollywood. There are steps to be taken. Those steps are:

• You must try to wake the victim. You can rub your knuckles against their chest in a brisk manner. Any moaning or moving means CPR doesn’t need to be done.

• If they’re not breathing, tilt their head back so their chin is lifted, and put your ear to their mouth to ensure they are still not breathing. Use your cheek to make sure they’re not breathing and look at their chest. Pinch their nose and then seal their mouth with yours. Use a CPR mask if you can. Give breath for one second, let their chest fall, then give breath another second and let their chest fall.

• Do chest compressions in the middle of the chest with the heel of one hand and the other hand on top with fingers interlaced. Compressions should be about 1