Reduce Stress by spending time in nature, taking time for yourself or following some of the tips provided by Mountain Trek.

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How to Lose Those Last Stubborn Pounds

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Weight Loss Tips

Ok, you’ve made some lifestyle changes, drink more water, eat more salad, go for a walk a few times a week…so why does that last 20 lbs of weight hang on so stubbornly? It’s great you’ve made those changes, but there could be a few factors that thwart your health and weight loss goals:

  • what you burn is perfectly balanced with what you consume
  • you may not be aware of how your food choices prevent you from breaking through your weight loss barrier
  • fatigue from lack of sleep makes it harder to for you to exercise effectively
  • you might be stressed, and this can impair metabolism

If you take a long view of your health, you can gradually make changes that stick. If you are pressed for time, with risks to your heart or impending diabetes, you might need to make changes quickly.

Ideas for Reassessing Your Approach to Weightloss

  1. Assess your habits. Condiments add extra fuel to a meal and may have ingredients your body doesn’t need. Bottled sweet drinks including juice and soda add calories with less value than whole fruits or freshly pressed juices. Notice the many ways extra calories creep quietly into your day, then make clear choices.
  2. Get enough sleep. Being well-rested means you can exercise the next day; exercising means you’ll sleep well. If your body clock is properly adjusted, meals can also fall into a pattern that can prevent binging.
  3. Snack wisely. Keep veggies, nuts, and fruits available to stave off hunger between meals. A small snack will keep fat cells calm, your metabolism burning properly, and prevent your body from swinging between feast and famine modes. Make sure to have breakfast and eat a healthy lunch.
  4. Read ingredients carefully and assess your larder. Be picky! Anything that does not come from a farm or is not simply derived from a natural ingredient is worth researching. Go easy on saturated fats and avoid trans-fats completely. The more you know, the easier it will be to make healthy decisions.
  5. Find inner peace. Perhaps that’s too much to ask, but find ways to unwind. High-stress levels lead to fat storage, so figure out how to have fun and feel good. A mindfulness practice plus exercise can alleviate stress and help the body be resilient.

What is Mountain Trek?

Mountain Trek is the health reset you’ve been looking for. Our award-winning health retreat, immersed in the lush nature of British Columbia and featuring daily sunrise yoga and night-time restorative yoga, will help you unplug, recharge, and roll back years of stress, anxiety, and unhealthy habits. To learn more about the retreat, and how we can help you reset your health, please email us at info@mountaintrek.com or reach out below:

Mountain Trek Reviewed on “Lisa Johnson Fitness”

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lisajohnsonFitness expert Lisa Johnson visited Mountain Trek and summed up her experience in one word, “Wow.”

Lisa is a popular pilates and fitness icon in the United States and she’s been featured in The New York Times, Glamour, Family Circle, The Boston Globe, Entrepreneur, and on CBS News.

In her article, Lisa comments:

“(the food is) delicious. Mouth-watering soups, savory dishes; I’m so glad they give you a cookbook of all their recipes so I can make a bunch at home.  The day we had Bliss Balls (these almond butter concoctions) I was in heaven.”

She goes on to list the benefits of her stay:

  • The scenery is spectacular
  • The level of sweat is spectacular
  • I surprised myself with my strength
  • I surprised myself by not being as healthy as I thought I was
  • I came away with a new mindset
  • I finally broke through a weight plateau
  • I lost five pounds of just fat! I gained 0.6 pounds of muscle
  • I can’t wait for the rest of my life!

Click here To read Lisa’s entire article entitled, “Mountain Trek: A Posh Bootcamp.”

What is Mountain Trek?

Mountain Trek is the health reset you’ve been looking for. Our award-winning health retreat, immersed in the lush nature of British Columbia, will help you detox, unplug, recharge, and roll back years of stress and unhealthy habits. To learn more about the retreat, and how we can help you reset your health, please email us at info@mountaintrek.com or reach out below:

8 Ways to Make the Most of your Fitness Vacation

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Attending a Health Retreat or Fitness Vacation has far-reaching benefits that can impact a person for years. The idea of investing in a structured, healthy vacation, instead of the well-worn “all-you-can-eat” getaway is steadily growing in popularity; and is meeting the needs of millions of vacationers looking to revitalize their health.

Because, really, who wants to come home from a vacation with a larger waistline than when you left?

The term “Wellness Tourism” is something you’ll see more of in the coming years as active baby boomers and younger generations seek healthy adventurous and educational retreats to learn new areas of growth and self-improvement.

Structured programs, such as the one offered at Mountain Trek Fitness Retreat and Health Spa, go beyond the basics of a morning fruit smoothie and pool volleyball. Savvy guests are looking for services, treatments, and consultations that cater to all areas of health, and they see the advantage of an on-site group of therapists and practitioners with varied skill sets.

8 recommendations to look for in your next Fitness Retreat or Weight Loss vacation

These offerings will help ensure you get the most out of your stay. We at Mountain Trek offer all of these–and more!

  1. Private Yoga Sessions –Frustrated by inflexibility? Feeling lost in the crowd? Enjoy individual support and tailored advice outside the group dynamic.
  2. Kinesiologist Assessment – Suffering from poor posture, a weak core or shoulder, neck or back pain? Get an assessment and a personalized home program to help correct imbalances with stretching, re-training, and revitalizing techniques.
  3. Nutrition Consultation –Meet with a Registered Nutritionist to assess your eating habits, address any symptoms and receive recommendations. Learn new recipes and eating habits to meet your unique nutritional needs.
  4. Life Coaching – Make the most of a credentialed Life Coach to support and mentor you on your journey. With some coaching during and after your program, you can better overcome challenges and set realistic goals that are in alignment with your transformation. (Mountain Trek’s program director, Kirkland Shave, is an accredited Life Coach.)
  5. Spa Treatments – In addition to Swedish or Deep Tissue Massage, take advantage of treatments you’ve never had, and you’ll be amazed at how skilled therapists can heal what ails you.
  6. Reflexology – applied pressure to meridian points on the feet to promote the clearing of energetic pathways and deep relaxation for the whole body.
  7. Personal Counseling – whether you’re working through a life transition, relationship issues, depression, anxiety, stress, trauma, grief, addiction, or issues relating to self-image and self-confidence, these client-centered counseling sessions are an opportunity to slow down, become clear, and find ways to resolve current concerns or issues from the past that interfere with living fully in the present.
  8. Private Yoga Session – a personalized session focusing on creating your own take-home routine, or deepening your current practice.

These are just some of the ways to augment your Fitness Vacation program and start your road back to excellent health.

What is Mountain Trek?

Mountain Trek is the health reset you’ve been looking for. Our award-winning retreat, immersed in the lush nature of British Columbia, will help you unplug, recharge, and roll back years of stress and unhealthy habits. To learn more about the retreat, and how we can help you reset your health, please email us at info@mountaintrek.com or reach out below:

Sleep Tips for Beating the Winter Blues

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Sleep better and peacefully

Nothing could impact our health, mood, and vitality more than a good night’s sleep. Without it, we simply can’t function our best.  Less sleep directly compromises our immune system, lowers our stamina, and promotes the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (“SAD”).

Our sleep-wake cycle is regulated by the “drowsiness” hormone melatonin, which is produced by the pineal gland. Melatonin levels are higher in the winter due to decreased sunlight, and without bright morning sunlight, it lingers longer in the morning. This makes it difficult to wake up.

Tips for Regulating Melatonin and the Sleep-Wake Cycle

Keeping your batteries replenished through the darker winter months is achieved by keeping your sleep-wake cycle similar to other times of the year.  Here’s how:

  • Maintain a regular sleep schedule as much as possible, even on the weekends.
  • Try to get as much natural light as possible in the morning hours before 8 am, to help lower melatonin levels.  Sit by the window or go for a morning walk.
  • Use a lightbox for phototherapy to help balance your circadian rhythm and combat SAD. This full-spectrum light can be placed next to your bed and programmed on a timer to get brighter in the mornings, to mimic sunrise. This helps shut off the production of melatonin. However, it’s important to use lightboxes according to the natural pattern of summer sunlight, because too much bright light at the wrong times can result in insomnia. So use them to stimulate dawn (6 am – 8 am) every morning for the duration of the winter.
  • If you take melatonin supplements, do so in consultation with your physician, and take it around 8 pm to avoid staying up too late, and sleeping in too late.
  • Keep active with exercise!  Not only does it release endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine hormones to lift your mood, but tiring your body with healthy exertion will naturally contribute to a restful sleep, and keep your energy levels higher during the day.

Although melatonin is the hormone that regulates hibernation in animals, we don’t have to spend the winter months drowsy and holed up in our houses. You can maintain a healthy sleep-wake cycle through the winter, and get out and enjoy the season!

What is Mountain Trek?

Mountain Trek is the health reset you’ve been looking for. Our award-winning retreat, immersed in the lush nature of British Columbia, will help you unplug, recharge, sleep deeply, and roll back years of stress and unhealthy habits. To learn more about the retreat, and how we can help you reset your health, please email us at info@mountaintrek.com or reach out below:

Stress Less on Your Business Trip

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How to stay health on business travel
Does your career require you to travel?  Whether you love or hate it, it doesn’t have be a dreaded journey of indigestion, poor sleep, stress and anxiety.

Is it possible to adopt a “spa retreat” state of mind along the way, so your cortisol isn’t sky high?  With a bit of planning and intention, there are things you can do to stay more relaxed and calm amidst the hectic pace.

Physical and Psychological Management of Stress on the Road

  • Stretch and/or Massage – release those tight muscles with a stretch. Massage increases the “feel good” hormone oxytocin by 30% and lowers the “stress” hormone cortisol. Hop on the 15 minute chair massage at the airport, or have a quick visit to the local spa.
  • Support your body – maintain your energy levels and immune system with nutritional supplements, especially with B vitamins.
  • Eat well – bring healthy snacks from home, such as protein or super greens powder for smoothies on the run. At restaurants, choose salads and slow burning complex carbohydrates, which will sustain you better than a muffin, and will keep your blood sugar levels normal.
  • Exercise – bring workout or walking clothes; it will burn off stress, raise serotonin and endorphin levels, and help you sleep.
  • Hydrate – drink plenty as dehydration hits quickly on planes and in stuffy offices, leading to fatigue and foggy thinking. Take a water bottle with you everywhere.
  • Sleep – bow out on the 10:00pm cocktail and honor your body’s need to rest.  Have a bath, bring earplugs and a good book to help you doze off.
  • Meditate – calm racing negative thoughts and visualize positive outcomes.
  • Listen – travel with your iPod or MP3 and fill it with relaxing music
  • Breathe – practice mindful, deep belly breathing
  • Go with the flow – don’t worry about circumstances you have no control over
  • Bring a “stress ball” – squeeze it to release anxiety
  • Practice gratitude – be grateful for all the gifts in your life; it will lift your mood and shift your perspective.

Enjoy your next business trip!

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Mother Nature is the Pill for Real Health

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Snowshoeing for Fitness
Guests at Mountain Trek learn about the importance of time spent in nature for good health. Now there is a growing body of evidence showing exposure to nature is the root of good health and wellness. At Mountain Trek, we witness over and over the stress reduction and improved well-being of our guests each day, which contributes to increased fitness and weight loss.

Nature is cheaper and has fewer side effects than medications.

The reason we have our guests spend 5 to 6 hours outside every day is that nature has healing qualities.

The term “Nature Deficit Disorder” was first coined by writer Richard Louv in his book “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”. This book brings together a growing body of research indicating that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development, and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults. Louv directly links the absence of nature in the lives of today’s wired generation to some of the most disturbing childhood and adult health trends: the rise in obesity, attention disorders, and depression. You really can’t dispute his theory; the reduction in stress and an elevated sense of wellness experienced by our guests who spend each day in nature, directly supports his findings.

Many of the Mountain Trek staff have worked as park rangers and wilderness survival instructors, and we’ve noticed over the years how different people are when they are outside.

Ninety percent of our guests live in urban centers and deal with sensory overload on a regular basis.

Sound, visuals, light, movement, and smells are all way too intense in the city and get filtered out and dumbed down to minimize the stimulus. It’s not until at least three days of being in nature 4 hrs per day that the senses reawaken and guests start to hear the birds, notice the wind rustle through the trees and feel it on their skin.

Our findings at Mountain Trek are echoed in an article in Newsweek by Dr. Andrew Weil, on Nature Deficit Disorder that says “the human body was never designed for the modern post-industrial environment.” Weil suggests that the sedentary lifestyle that humans spend indoors, industrial food altered from its natural sources and an unprecedented overload of information and stimulation affect health in the way of depression, reduced physical activity, and overconsumption of processed food.

Spend some time at Mountain Trek and you’ll find your senses reawakening in nature and you’re stimulated to work harder on your fitness goals. Passing wild heather in the mountain alpine, we’ve noticed eyes bulge and hikers get lost in the smell and sensation, ignoring the burning of their thighs. And you just can’t experience that in your office.

What is Mountain Trek?

Mountain Trek is the health reset you’ve been looking for. Our award-winning health retreat, immersed in the lush nature of British Columbia, will help you detox, unplug, recharge, and roll back years of stress and unhealthy habits. To learn more about the retreat, and how we can help you reset your health, please email us at info@mountaintrek.com or reach out below:

Detox Your Mind

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Fed up with the steady onslaught of bad news and anxiety in the world?  With the depressing media stories and global strife which creates worry over things you have no control over, the daily news does not often support a peaceful and relaxed state of mind.

Thanks to technology, bad news is everywhere now, and taking a break from the negativity of it is essential to your health on all levels; physically, mentally and emotionally.  Feeling clear, balanced and good in your life is not just a fanciful memory of way things used to be, but a state of being that with intention, only you can create for yourself.

Along with the fitness and weight loss benefits of vacationing at a Wellness Retreat, the rising trend of “healthy vacations” is answering the need for allowing people to unplug from their stressful lives, the TV and computer, unhealthy habits, and  cram-packed schedules that leaves little time for self reflection and adequate sleep, let alone feeling full of vitality.

Guests Hiking

Detoxification is any process that removes injurious substances from your body.

If you’re regularly being exposed to unpleasant news, or barely manage to juggle an overloaded schedule of too many obligations and deadlines, have you considered taking a detox break from that lifestyle as well?  The effects of these stressors is far reaching, such as skyrocketing Cortisol levels (the stress hormone), which wreaks havoc on your metabolism, immune system and hormones.  And we won’t mention the bad moods, irritability and depression.

If you’re of an age to remember the days before computers, email and smart phones, than part of you longs to return to that way of being, if only for a short while, and if only to remember what it feels like to be yourself again without gadgets, technology and a long list of to-dos.

If you’re feeling overburdened in your body and mind, you’re certainly not alone.  That’s why more people than ever are turning to Fitness Retreats as their answer to distressing, detoxing, losing weight, and unplugging from their busy lives.

Who Comes to Mountain Trek?

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Who Comes to Mountain Trek
Fitness Vacations aren’t just for people wanting to lose weight anymore.  At Mountain Trek, we  host people from all parts of the globe, ages and fitness levels, and occupation.  In fact, one of the most fulfilling components of the job is meeting such a variety of amazing people wanting to make healthy changes in their lives, and welcoming back Alumni year after year as an investment in their health.

There isn’t any one category to describe people who choose a boot camp style fitness retreat as a break, but there are plenty that do.  The Fitness Vacation trend is now the popular choice for anyone needing a healthy break from their un-healthy routine!  It appeals to a variety of folks who are adventure seekers, hiking enthusiasts, stressed out business people, and those needing a “boot camp” type of program to shed pounds quickly and safely.

Variety on the Trails

Mountain Trek hosts:

  • guests who have beaten cancer and are needing to regain their strength;
  • mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, and spouses celebrating their 20th anniversary;
  • young couples from the city eager to hike the pristine mountains of British Columbia and breathe clean air and drink pure water;
  • hiking enthusiasts from Europe looking for a change of terrain and less crowds;
  • parents needing a break;
  • people wanting to learn about nutrition, healthy eating, and a balanced lifestyle;
  • organ transplant recipients;
  • the occasional Hollywood executive;
  • stressed career professionals needing to recharge their batteries, get back in touch with nature, and shed 6-10 pounds;
  • people in their 60’s who are young at heart and invest in staying in shape and keeping strong;
  • everyone in between who needs to detoxify from environmental pollutants, chemical and pesticide-laden foods, and a diet filled with food sensitivities and insulin imbalances;
  • and those who are motivated to lose weight and kick-start healthy lifestyle habits.

With the adventurous hiking terrain in spectacular surroundings, people have a blast pushing themselves beyond the limits of their comfort zones.  Our guests go home feeling energized and 10 years younger, proud of their accomplishments and with a renewed commitment to their health!

Meditation: It’s Not Just About Sitting Still

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Meditation
Meditation isn’t about sitting cross-legged and staring off into space. At our health spa we use it as a tool to help drop the body into a state of deep rest or calm allowing for self-repair, alignment of hormone levels, and balance your metabolic state. Blood pressure normalizes, adrenal glands produce less cortisol, and the immune system functions better. The mind clears and creativity increases.

As a follow-up to the post Cortisol: The Stress Hormone, we want to offer some tips on the different kinds of meditation you can practice. If you recall, cortisol is created when our unconscious deems it necessary to fight, fly or freeze for survival. It’s also a hormone whose production increases aging in our bodies. By introducing periods of relaxation, we can prevent the harmful effects of cortisol and gain from its benefits.

Here are some helpful examples of ways to meditate:

Focused Meditation

Concentrate on an object or sound. Even the rhythm of your own breath. Stay conscious in the present moment, while letting the steady stream of thoughts in your mind fall away. And creating space and a state of an empty mind.

Activity Oriented Meditation

This is great for those who have a hard time sitting still. By engaging in a repetitive activity (like hiking)  we get into a “zone” of movement and feel a state of “flow” that is uninterrupted by conscious thought. It allows for one to be in the present, in our body, with the mind focused, rather than interrupted with thoughts of past or future doings.

Spiritual Meditation

Although not specific to any one religion, meditation has been used for Millennia as a space to receive guidance. By focusing on a question once the mind is quiet, we can receive inner guidance or access our own true wisdom. Some practitioners believe that prayer is speaking to God, or the Divine, while meditation is listening.

No matter which technique, know that repetition brings ease and improvements just like weight lifting. A good way to begin is to think of yourself as the observer of your thoughts and notice what the narrative voice in your head says without engaging in the content. As thoughts materialize (which they naturally do all the time), do your best to let them go and come back to concentrating, focusing, or witnessing. Meditation is like taking your mind to the gym. The benefits to health are increased vitality, reduced stress levels, and peace of mind.

What is Mountain Trek?

Mountain Trek is the health reset you’ve been looking for. Our award-winning health retreat, immersed in the lush nature of British Columbia and featuring daily sunrise yoga and night-time restorative yoga, will help you unplug, recharge, and roll back years of stress, anxiety, and unhealthy habits. To learn more about the retreat, and how we can help you reset your health, please email us at info@mountaintrek.com or reach out below: