SCHC News

Thanks to all our members we managed to raise over $400 for movember. This money will go to charities to help mens depression, testicular cancer, and prostate cancer. So a big Thankyou from goes out from all of us at Southern Cross Health Club.
By: Southern Cross Health Club

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Thai Green Salad

Serving Size: 2
Salad
300g Lean Chinken Breast
2 Lebanese
1/2 Red Capsicum
1/2 Yellow Capsicum
1/2 Red Onion Sliced
1 Bunched Corriander
1 Bunch mint leaves
Roasted Cashew Nuts (optional)

Dressing
Juice from 2 limes
2 Tablespoons fish sauce
1 Tablespoon Honey
2 Garlic Cloves (optional)

Cook the chicken breast in a non stick pan. Cook one side on high heat for 2 minutes then turn and put heat to low.
Chop up the rest of the ingredients.
Slice chicken once cooked then add this to the other ingredients to form your salad.
Mix Ingredients for the dressing then poor over to serve.

ENJOY!!!!
By: Southern Cross Health Club

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Donate a Gift this Christmas

We are looking for gift donations suitable for boys or girls aged 4-15 yrs

All gifts will be donated to

The Smith Family 
&
The Salvation Army

All gifts will go to under privileged children to help put a smile on their face!!!

By: Southern Cross Health Club

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Were coming into summer and if you exercise outdoors you increase your risk of heat exhaustion, sun stroke, and dehydration. Its important to help keep your training on track and also keep your health in good balance to follow a few easy to do guidelines.

1. Watch your weight Before starting your exercise session out doors jump on the scales and weigh your self. Do exactly the same when you get home you should notice a difference this is from fluid loss. You should drink at least 250ml of water every half hour after your session to help restore this lost fluid.
2. Drink the right stuff You should drink water before you start your sessions as its important to have the body hydrated. This way during your session your just topping up your body. This is very important as water makes up a majority of our body and helps with alot of bodily functions so letting your body go into dehydration is doing you no good.
3. Rest in between If your doing an out door session make sure you pencil in rest and drink breaks. This will help the body reduce the core temperature and will there for help fight exhaustion. In some studies its been shown that exhaustion becomes apparent when the core temperature reaches 39 degrees so helping cool your body could make you get more out your session.
4. Wear the right stuff Wear breathable clothing. This allows the body to still exchange heat with the environment as the body loses heat most effectively by radiation, which is just a transfer of heat with the environment and perspiration, which is when the body loses heat through sweating.

Follows these simple guidelines and all your outdoor sessions will be enjoyable and safe. Its also important to remember recovery doesn't stop after you finish training so keep hydrated, rest, and fuel your body with healthy food choices.

By: Southern Cross Health Club

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Fitness and health are becoming one of the biggest factors in a persons life. Its becoming more apparent that being healthy is becoming more of a want then a need but sometimes we can get side tracked or motivation can drop. Here are some easy steps to keep your training on the right path and leaving you less stressed and feeling better.

1. Reverse your routine. If you feel like your getting bored of training or your motivation is lacking reverse your training schedual, or even slight changes doing a under hand frip instead of a overhand grip, doing front sqauts instead of normal sqauts, try reverse curls and reverse tricep push-downs. Another trick is count your reps backwards.
2. Set the alarm. Plan a weekkly plan of work, kids, and social activities then work in exercise around this and set some alarms or reminders. Making a plan for exercise has been proven to help people stick to a routine.
3. Cost. If you cant fins the money make a budget. Make a list of everything thing you spend money on and see what is a nescity. If you are drinking 2 cups of coffee a day that works out to be $35 per week, cutting back on this or just having one cup a day could be enough for your gym membership.

By: Southern Cross Health Club

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When shopping have you ever looked at the back of a product at the food label and felt a little lost. The fact is alot of food labels are hard to understand unless you have a nutrition degree so lets break it down in a simple way to help starve of excess calories or unatural processed products. When looking at a food label there are 2 main rules if there is a list of ingredients on the back that takes up most of the packet chances are the food inside is porcessed. The second rule is you should check the main ingredient is, This will be the first ingredient on the list as it goes from main ingredient to the least most ingredient. If the main ingredient turns out to be suger keep looking to find a healthier food choice.

Sugar is hard to find sometimes as it is not labelled as sugar. Instead you will see names like glucose, fructose, lactose, maltose and honey. There are other sugars out there called like sorbitol, xylitol, mannitol, and isomalt these are all found in alcohol. The sugar to look out for is high fructose corn syrups (sugar dextrose), which is not the sugar found in fruit but is processed out of cornstarch to get glucose. You will normally find this in fruit juices or fruit bars etc, anything that says it contains fruit look out for this ingredient. The reason we should keep away from this type of sugar is because its hard for the body to process this effeciently as energy and becomes stored as fat.

You must also look for foods high in sodium (salt). This is because foods that are laden with copious amounts of sodium are normally foods that have been processed. You should be having about 6g of sodium per day but this is easily exceeded if you dont pay attention to your food labels. Its also important to know that if you are adding high amounts of salt to food because you cant taste it you may have a zinc deficiency which can affect your taste buds, so it may be an idea to get a blood test done by your doctor.

The last thing to keep an eye out for is fats. The fats you should stay away from are the unatural fats or the saturated fats. This will be found in foods high in oil or that are highly processed, noramally take away food is the biggest form of saturated fats. Another of fats to look out for is hydrogenated fats, these can be listed as "shortening" and is mostly found in bicuits, cakes, magerine, and preprepared meals. This fat is bad as its molecular structure is similar to that of plastic, and i dont know to many bodies out there that can process plastic.

Stick to this rules to help improve your diet and make healtier food choices.

Quote of the day
"Nothing Added, nothing taken away thats waht we are aiming for"
ANON
By: Southern Cross Health Club

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Stretching is an important part of training program and also important in your lifestyle. As we get older our muscles become tighter and can reduce our range of motion in the joints. This can affect everyday living and simple day to day tasks. A regular stretching program can help increase flexibility and help make your daily tasks become easier.

Stretching sessions should be incorporated in your daily routine and do not have to done for hours of a day. This should be done by everyone whether you are training or not. Simple stretches can be done while watching television, at the computer or in the morning or before you go to bed. If you are undergoing a training program you should be stretching at the end of every session alternatively you can stretch between sets. If you do this make sure its no more then 10 seconds in length as you dont want to lengthen the muscles being trained as you will loose force. When stretching after sessions or during other times you should be aiming at holding a stretch for a while, the longer you hold it the more benfits you will recieve. Its always a good idea to start small, pick 5-6 stretches that target the major muscle groups and aim at doing 10-15 seconds of each 3-4 times per week. Like training you should try and overload each week this can be achieved by increasing the time, frequency, and the amount of stretches you are doing.

Benefits of stretching

• Reduced muscle tension
• Increased range of motion in the joints
• Increased co-ordination
• Increased circulation
• Reduced stress
• Reduce levels of fatigue

Stretching is so important for all of us as it promotes good health for our muscles and joints. Esspecially in a sporting context as it can help reduce the chance of injury, and reduce muscle soreness after a vigorous work-out. The benefits of stretching speak for it self so start small aim and the important thing to remember is consistancy.

Safety Tips

• Always warm up before stretching
• stretching should never cause pain
• Never bounce into a stretch
• Never hold your breath while stretching
• Stretch within your limits

"To improve life you must first relieve tension"

By: Southern Cross Health Club

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Looking for some quick fix summer recipes that will keep you feeling full longer and improve your health. Here are 2 great low GI meals that you can prepare at home.

Asian Chicken Noodle Salad
Serves: 2
Cooking time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 Tablespoons of olive oil
• 2 small chicken breasts
• 100g rice noodles
• 1/2 red capsicum
• 2 red onions
• 1/2 cup corriander leaves

Dressing Ingredients

• 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 1/2 tablespons lime juice
• 1/2 tablespoons sugar

Method
Heat the oil in a non stick frypan, Cook chicken until cooked through take out and break up. While the chiken is cooking take noodles out of packet and put in a bowl and add boiling water till the noodles are covered allow to stand for 5-6 minutes then drain. Combine the ingredients for the dressing and stir till sugar has disolved. Mix the chicken, noodles, capsicum, onion, dressing and corriander and then serve.

Vegetable packed spaghetti
Serves: 4-6
Cooking time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 500g spaghetti or pasta
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 small onion diced
• 1 small carrot grated
• 1 celery stick grated
• 2 zucchini greated
• 1 capsicum diced
• 500g of pasta sauce

Extra Ingredients if desired

• Mushrooms
• 200g lean mince

Method
Add oil to non stick fry pan and cook onions. Add the vegetables to the pan then stir through pasta sauce, allow this to simmer for 5-6 minutes until vegetables are cooked through. If you are adding lean mince to the dish brown the mince first and then add the rest of the ingredients.
Cook pasta according to packet leave to stand.
Add pasta to a plate and pour over sauce.

These are 2 great easy cook meals that are packed with essential nutrients for our body. They are high in antioxidents, protein, low GI carbohydrates and vitmins and minerals. These are also low in non essential fatty acids making them perfect to kick of summer!!

By: Southern Cross Health Club

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Movember is a charity event that supports prostate cancer, testicular cancer and depression. Its about raising awareness on all these issues that affect most Austrlians either directly or indirectly. Here at southern cross we are getting behing this great cause and are growing mo's. We are registered at the start of movember and have now raised over $200. We are looking to get sponsored by anyone who is a member of the club or people just looking to help us out. You can log onto movmeber website and sponsor or just ask behind the desk.


www.movember.com.au
Follow this link to the donation page and spnsor the Southern Cross Mo Club

Look out for weekly updates of Rhys, Richard, Joel, Josh around the club!!!
By: Southern Cross Health Club

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Healthy Hearts

Our heart is the pump for our body helping transport blood, oxygen, nutrition, and helping remove the waste from our bodies. Keeping our heart healthy is an important task as coronary heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in Australia. Its as simple as making a few lifestyle changes and promoting good health within your body. Heart disease can affect the heart in many different ways, but mostly comes from an unhealthy and sedentary lifestyle. This can lead to increases in cholesterol or lipids (fats) in the blood. An increase in these levels can result in increased pressure on the arteries and can result in higher blood pressure, which can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.

Exercise is an important factor when looking at decreasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, just 20 minutes a day, 3 times a week will reduce your risk by 50%. You can also make slight changes to your diet by cutting down on saturated fats, such as take-away or oily foods. Increasing foods that are high in antioxidants like fruit and vegetables and foods rich in omega 3 and omega 6, which are essential fatty acids such as fish, avocado and nuts can also help reduce your cholesterol and help reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease. Reducing sodium or salt intake is also important as it can lead to hardening of the arteries and again, can increase your changes of cardiovascular disease. Slight changes to a lifestyle can lead to a happier, longer, healthier life!

Quote of the day
"When the heart is at ease, the body is healthy" Chinese proverb
By: Southern Cross Health Club

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