Want to know your fitness level? You don’t need to join a gym and have a personal trainer tell you all about it. Get a rough gauge by using this fitness calculator. All you need to do is to fill in your weight and height in the cells and it will automatically do a calculation of your body mass index (BMI). Then it will tell you if you are over or under weight or just fit and whether you need more exercise!

I did a quick check on mine and I definitely need to keep up with some level of exercise. Check yours now. Just download this Excel spreadsheet by clicking here.

Note: This great calculator is not developed by me. I happen to receive this from a forwarded email and am sharing it here. I would love to give credit to the creator of this body mass index calculator but I don’t know who it is…

Related Tips

• Do you know how much water you need according to your body weight?
• The difference between snoring and sleep apnea
• The difference between butter and margarine
• The many benefits of drinking green tea
• Do you know the true nutritional value of eggs?

This post is brought to you by: Useful Tips For Life

Find out how fit you are without paying a personal trainer

Recently, I spotted some machines in shopping malls where you step on to it, slot in a couple of coins, and it will measure your weight and subsequently tell you how much water you should drink in a day based on your body weight.

Guess what? If you are interested to know, you don’t need to find that machine and pay the machine to tell you so. Find out for free here how much water your body needs according to your weight!

All you need to do is to download this wonderful water calculator, put in your body weight in the Excel spreadsheet and hit the Enter button on your keyboard. Your ideal daily water consumption will show up.

How accurate is this water consumption calculator as compared to the machines in the shopping malls? Well, I’ve tried the machine at the malls and also used this calculator based on the same weight, and the results are quite similar. So I would say it’s quite a good point of reference.

Now on to find out how much water your body needs to function properly….download it here!

P/S. Since this is another post I’m touching on water consumption, here’s a post you should read regarding the risk of drinking too much water in a short period of time. I thought it might be good to know.

Related Tips

• Drinking too much water can kill you
• Find out how fit you are without paying a personal trainer
• The difference between snoring and sleep apnea
• The difference between butter and margarine
• The many benefits of drinking green tea

This post is brought to you by: Useful Tips For Life

Do you know how much water you need according to your body weight?

Many people snore in their sleep. Whilst some people only snore when they are physically exhausted, others snore on a regular basis each time he or she goes to sleep. There are also those who snore mildly or quietly while others may be loud snorers and thus are disruptive sleep partners.

For those who snore regularly, do you know if you are just experiencing a non-medical threatening condition of snoring, or do you have a more serious sleep disorder that requires medical attention such as sleep apnea?

There is a difference between snoring and having a sleep disorder of sleep apnea. Whilst snoring is not a life threatening condition, sleep apnea could be potentially fatal if it is a serious case with no medical attention seeked.

Sleep apnea is a condition where the sufferer stops breathing at intervals due to a blockage of the airway, and resumes after some seconds. It poses a threat to health as the sufferer could die from a prolonged period of not breathing during his or her sleep. As such, people with sleep apnea need to seek medical care.

How do you tell the difference whether you are just snoring or you have sleep apnea? If you have sleep apnea, you will often be woken up in your sleep as you resume regular breathing every now and then. Whilst if you are just snoring, you may not be woken up like the case of someone suffering sleep apnea.

There are different types of sleep apnea conditions. For more expert opinions and information on sleep apnea, refer to this helpful article on sleep apnea.

Related Tips

• What your body does when you sleep
• Find out how fit you are without paying a personal trainer
• Do you know how much water you need according to your body weight?
• The difference between butter and margarine
• The many benefits of drinking green tea

This post is brought to you by: Useful Tips For Life

The difference between snoring and sleep apnea

Do you know the important differences between butter and margarine? Many people interchange between consuming butter and margarine because they are similar in functions, as a bread spread or to use in baking or cooking. People who may prefer to consume margarine normally do so because it is cheaper in price compared to butter.

But you should learn the health benefits of butter and margarine before you think about saving money and choose something that will threaten your health. Here are some of the differences.

• Both butter nad margarine have the same amount of calories.
• Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams compared to 5 grams in margarine.
• Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study.
• Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods.
• Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has less.
• Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of other foods.
• Butter has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years.

Margarine is known to be less healthy than butter. Read on to find out the cons of consuming margarine.

• Very high in trans-fatty acids.
• Triple risk of coronary heart disease.
• Increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol).
• Increases the risk of cancer up to five fold.
• Lowers the quality of breast milk.
• Decreases immune response.
• Decreases insulin response.

Also, this is an interesting finding: Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC!

Now if you are not convinced of the unhealthiness of margarine, try this little experoment.

Purchase a tub of margarine and leave it in your garage or shaded area. Within a couple of days you will note a couple of things:

• No flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something)
• It does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional value; nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny micro organisms will not find a home to grow. Why? Because it is nearly plastic!

Related Tips

• The many benefits of drinking green tea
• Do you know the true nutritional value of eggs?
• Is soursop a better alternative to chemo treatment?
• 7 tips to de-stress during the economic downturn
• The natural wonders of fruits and vegetables

This post is brought to you by: Useful Tips For Life

The difference between butter and margarine

Most of us are daily consumers of tea or coffee, or some kind of similar beverages. Since we consume such beverages on a daily basis, we might as well consume something that will bring us the greatest health benefits, to kill two birds with one stone. Green tea is my obvious and favourite choice amongst all hot beverages for the day. And I’m glad to learn of the many benefits to drinking green tea, much healthier benefits than drinking your usual cups of coffee and black tea.

Here are 3 great benefits of drinking green tea on a daily basis, as found in many resources online to be shared here for your benefit.

Green tea helps with weight loss

If you do a quick search on the internet regarding the topic of how green tea can help in reducing weight, you are sure to come up with many search results to confirm this fact. One of the more credible sites that I refer to for this fact is WebMD. According to the article, it says that green tea may help to ward of weight gain, as tested on mice. However, a human may be required to drink a large quantity of green tea for it to work. If you are drinking lots of green tea on a daily basis anyway, coupled with regular exercises, you may just find yourself having a trimmer waistline! Green tea has long been known to be a good natural fat burner.

Green tea helps with arthritis

Once again referring to an article in WebMD, there’s a certain compound found in green tea that helps reduce inflammation and joint damage in rheumatoid arthritis. Those with arthritis may want to read more on this before going on to consume green tea. The article does warn that it is unsure how much green tea needs to be consumed in order for this to be 100% effective. But again, if you are already drinking green tea regularly, it may be working to your advantage already.

Green tea lowers the risk of heart disease

Scientists found that people who drink green tea benefit from better blood vessel function just 30 minutes after consuming the tea. It improves the function of endothelial cells, which is vital since an endothelial cell dysfunction causes clogged arteries. Green tea is also found to contain powerful antioxidants called flavonoids which may protect the heart. You can read more about the claim to this from here.

Are you convinced of the benefits of drinking green tea yet? As with all things, it is best not to consume too much of one type of food stuff. It’s best to always consume things in moderation. Too much of anything can sometimes lead to problems too. So be considerate in your consumption and don’t over-do things.

Related Tips

• Do you know the true nutritional value of eggs?
• Don’t drink milk when you have gastric
• The difference between butter and margarine
• Is soursop a better alternative to chemo treatment?
• 7 tips to de-stress during the economic downturn

This post is brought to you by: Useful Tips For Life

The many benefits of drinking green tea