EstimatedEst. Read Time: 5 minutes

green tea weight lossNew here?  Like Athlean-XX for Women on Facebook to stay up to date with new posts, great fitness and nutrition articles, motivations and inspirations, fitness challenges, Q&As, giveaways and more!

For those of us who are working on weight loss, we’re familiar with the phrase, ‘Don’t drink your calories.’  Drinks like bottled juices, sodas and fancy lattes and frappes contain empty calories and lots of sugar.  Studies show that even the artificial sweeteners contained in the sugar-free, calorie free versions can spike blood sugar and spark cravings.   That pretty much leaves you with water, right?

Actually, unsweetened green tea is calorie free just like water, and has some additional health benefits too! If you’re not a green tea drinker yet, you may want to become one.  Green tea has some incredible health benefits including hydration, antioxidants and weight loss.

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EstimatedEst. Read Time: 6 minutes

caring for knee jointsNew here?  Like Athlean-XX for Women on Facebook to stay up to date with new posts, great fitness and nutrition articles, motivations and inspirations, fitness challenges, Q&As, giveaways and more!

Do any of us focus on strengthening our knee joints to get more lean, toned and sexy knees?  Probably not.  But your knees may be the most important joint in your body in terms of your overall fitness.  If your knees are sore or weak, it will hamper your overall ability to achieve the level of weight loss or fitness you are going for, because all leg and glute strengthening exercises and all cardio exercise depends upon strong knee joints.

That said, it’s important to do what we can to strengthen our knees to avoid injury and to take care of them when they’re feeling sore.  As we get older, all of our joints begin to degenerate, especially the knees which we use extensively every day of our lives.

Below are the best ways to care for sore knees, stretches to make sure knee joints stay lubricated and exercises to build strength in this important joint!

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EstimatedEst. Read Time: 5 minutes

healthy fatsNew here?  Like Athlean-XX for Women on Facebook to stay up to date with new posts, great fitness and nutrition articles, motivations and inspirations, fitness challenges, Q&As, giveaways and more!

Back in the 80s and 90s, fats got a bad rap when it came to diet and weight loss.  They were vilified, stripped from packaged foods and replaced with carbs and sugars to create ‘diet-friendly’ versions.  However, this practice actually created more harm than good, causing those looking to lose weight to overindulge on high-carbohydrate empty-calorie foods.

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EstimatedEst. Read Time: 5 minutes

juice cleanse for weight lossWe frequently hear about juice cleanses as a way to lose weight, cleanse or detox our bodies or to hit the reset button for our metabolism or our eating habits.  Some of these cleanses are quite drastic – lasting 3 – 21 days and sometimes allowing only liquids.  Many celebrities have been known to use cleanses to drop weight quickly.  Beyonce famously lost 20 lbs for her role in Dream Girls, using the controversial Master Cleanse.

But, the truth is that this type of juice cleanse isn’t really as healthy as it sounds.  While you might lose a few pounds quickly, the starvation aspect of a cleanse can really mess with your metabolism, making those same pounds more likely to pile back on later.  Typically cleanses have you eat too few calories to support your basic metabolic function, causing your metabolism to slow to conserve energy.   So, when you go back to eating normally, your metabolism remains slow and you’ll be more likely to gain all the weight back.

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EstimatedEst. Read Time: 6 minutes

mindful eatingNew here?  Like Athlean-XX for Women on Facebook to stay up to date with new posts, great fitness and nutrition articles, motivations and inspirations, fitness challenges, Q&As, giveaways and more!

What is mindful eating?   It’s not a diet.  In fact, you can eat what you desire.  The idea is to eat it with more attention paid to the food, rather than eating unconsciously as most of us do most of the time.

Mindful eating involves approaching your eating habits with a greater awareness of your feelings of hunger, potential emotional triggers for eating, and the enjoyment and experience of the food.  Getting in touch with these feelings can have a powerful effect on your eating habits and can help you lose weight by eliminating emotional eating and learning your satiety signals.  It can also help you make healthier food choices by getting you in touch with what foods your body really needs and desires.

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