1 Things That Must Always Be In Your Car In Case Of Emergency

Tire Puncture Sealant

While it may be one of the largest health risks of your car, these carcinogenic cans of chemical sealant work pretty damn well on tires that have simple, small-scale punctures. This is one of those “use only if it’s absolutely necessary” kinds of fixes, but if it means the difference between being stuck in a dangerous situation and making it to safety, you’ll know what to do.

Four-way Lug Wrench (Wheel Spanner) And Jack

The average lug wrench that comes stowed in the trunk of most modern cars is typically small and tedious to use. By opting to carry a cross-shaped, four-way lug wrench, you boost the amount of torque you can apply to lug nuts, and you get a choice of pattern sizes that enables you to help out fellow stranded travelers.

Fire Extinguisher

You will need a multipurpose car fire extinguisher to put in your car in case of any fire emergency. The bigger your car, the bigger the extinguisher type. Take note not to buy the aerosol type that will finish in just a spray. Ensure you learn how to use it and teach other people

First Aid Kit

This is one of the most crucial, and often overlooked automotive additions, and while certain automakers have wisely begun affixing first aid kits to the trunks of various vehicles, not every new model comes with a kit. Buying a basic, pre-assembled first aid kit and tossing it in your trunk is an easy way to make sure you at least have some of the basics for when an emergency occurs.

Siphon Pump

Siphon pumps are great to have if you run out of fuel and a fellow traveler offers a splash from their tank, thus eliminating the need to hike down the highway in search of a gas station. Affordable, compact, and readily available, we suggest picking one of these contraptions up at an auto or home improvement store because you never know when it’s your turn to be the person who comes to the rescue of a poor stranded soul.

Jerry Can

Keeping an unused Jerry can on hand may sound like a great fall back plan if there’s no tank to siphon out of, but it also comes with a stern safety warning: Never keep a spare can of fuel on hand because driving with a jug of fuel, or even an empty canister increases the chance of fires and explosions. Remember, a hike up the road to a gas station is a far better situation than a roaring, four-wheeled inferno.

Water Flask

Bottled water can be a real lifesaver and can mean the difference between heat exhaustion and staying level-headed. It can also help make basic roadside assistance issues less daunting. If a quick repair requires a fat splash of water in the radiator, you’ll be ready. Since plastic bottles can degrade over time, we suggest investing in a sturdy, decent-sized insulated metal bottle.

Reflective Triangles

Road flares may get people’s attention, but they burn out eventually and are prone to expiration. Cough up a few bucks for some LED-clad safety reflective triangles instead, for they never go bad and are bright enough. A set of three or more triangles is recommended, putting them 100 feet behind the vehicle as well as one 100 feet in front of the vehicle. If your car is on a curve, place the reflective triangles ahead of the bend to warn approaching cars.

Cash

Wu Tang Clan was right all along. Cash truly does rule everything around us. Simply put, don’t put too much stock in credit cards because certain toll booths, vending machines, and other situations require a little green to keep you pointed in the right direction. We suggest tucking about some bucks in small bills into an envelope and placing it either in the glovebox or hidden in the trunk.

Jumper Cables

While it may seem like the most obvious option, you would be surprised by how many people don’t own a set of jumper cables, or who leave them at home where they won’t do any good. Buy a set that’s around 6 to 8 feet in length, make sure it has a good warranty, and don’t buy the cheapest thing on the shelf — cheap cables tend to fray.

Flashlights

Even though most people have LED flashlights on their phones nowadays, they can’t cling to the underside of a hood or area of a fender well, which means you won’t be able to free up your hands to take care of the car. These lights are cheap, useful, and incredibly bright, and prevent you from draining your cell phone’s battery, which is helpful when for calling for assistance.

Power Bank/Cellphone Charger

If your car’s out of power, your phone charger won’t to do anything for your cell, which is why it’s a good idea to always have an external portable battery charger in the car, juiced up and ready to roll. We suggest plugging in one of these power packs at home and placing your car keys on top to guarantee you’ll remember to bring it the next time you head out.

Grab Bag With Tools

Items that you might want to toss in a napsack include things like a work gloves, rags, a tool kit, and duct tape. You’ll be glad you have it if your car takes some damage and a side mirror, bumper, or grille needs taping down in order to make it to your destination or repair shop.

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SEO basics: 22 essentials you need for optimizing your site

Here we’ll take a look at the basic things you need to know in regards to search engine optimisation, a discipline that everyone in your organisation should at least be aware of, if not have a decent technical understanding.
One of our most popular articles of all time is a post entitled SEO Basics: 8 Essentials When Optimizing Your Site. It still does the business for us in terms of traffic, however it was first published in April 2013, so you can treat this as its long overdue and expanded update.

What is SEO?

Quite simply, SEO is the umbrella term for all the methods you can use to ensure the visibility of your website and its content on search engine results pages (SERPs).
The methods vary from technical practices you can achieve behind the scenes on your website (we tend to refer to this as ‘on-page SEO’) to all the promotional ’off-page’ approaches you can use to raise your site’s visibility (link-building, social media marketing).
For the purpose of this article, when we talk about visibility, we mean how high up the SERP your website appears for certain search terms in the ‘organic’ results. Organic results refer to those that appear naturally on the page, rather than in the paid-for sections…

 

Paid search is also a large part of search engine marketing. You can read more about this in our recent beginner’s guide to paid search and PPC.

Why do you need SEO?

Building a strong site architecture and providing clear navigation will help search engines index your site quickly and easily. This will also, more importantly, provide visitors with a good experience of using your site and encourage repeat visits. It’s worth considering that Google is increasingly paying attention to user experience.
When it comes to how much traffic is driven by search engines to your website, the percentage is substantial, and perhaps the clearest indicator of the importance of SEO.
In 2014, Conductor suggested 64% of all web traffic comes from organic search, compared to 2% from social, 6% from paid search, 12% direct and 15% from other referral sources.
This tallies with our own data, with approximately 70-75% of SEW traffic coming from organic.
Of all organic traffic, in 2015 it was found that Google accounts for more than 90% of global organic search traffic. So obviously you need a strong presence on Google SERPs, but how strong?
Well, according to this study from Advanced Web Ranking (which I’ve trotted out before when discussing how to dominate Google) shows that on the first SERP, the top five results account for 67.60% of all clicks and the results from six to 10 account for only 3.73%.

It’s therefore vital that your site appears in the top five results.
How are you going to achieve this? With the following tips, which I’ve split into two categories: what search engines are looking for and… drum roll… what they’re not looking for.

What are search engines looking for?

1) Relevancy

Search engines try to provide the most relevant results to a searcher’s query, whether it’s a simple answer to the question “how old is Ryan Gosling?” (the answer of which Google will likely provide without you having to leave the SERP) to more complicated queries such as “what is the best steak restaurant nearest to me?”

How search engines provide these results is down to their own internal algorithms, which we’ll probably never truly determine, but there are factors that you can be certain will influence these results and they’re all based around relevancy… For instance: a searcher’s location, their search history, time of day/year, etc.

2) The quality of your content

Do you regularly publish helpful, useful articles, videos or other types of media that are popular and well produced? Do you write for actual human beings rather than the search engine itself? Well, you should. Latest research from Searchmetrics on ranking factors indicates that Google is moving further towards longer-form content that understands a visitor’s intention as a whole, instead of using keywords based on popular search queries to create content.
Basically, stop worrying about keywords and focus on the user experience.

3) User experience

There are many SEO benefits for providing the best possible user experience. You need an easily navigable, clearly searchable site with relevant internal linking and related content. All the stuff that keeps visitors on your webpage and hungry to explore further.

4) Site speed

How quickly your webpages load is increasingly becoming a differentiator for search engines. Google may soon start labelling results that are hosted on Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) so this may possibly be the ‘mobilegeddon’ of 2016. Speaking of which…

5) Cross-device compatibility

Is your website and its content equally optimised for any given screen size or device? Bear in mind that Google has stated that responsive design is its preferred method of mobile optimisation.

6) Internal linking

We’ve talked about the benefits of ensuring your site has clear and easy-to-use navigation, but there’s also a practice that editors and writers can carry out when publishing articles to help push traffic around the site and that may lead to higher trust signals for Google: internal linking. (See what we did there.)
Internal linking has many advantages:

• It provides your audience with further reading options. As long as they’re relevant and you use clear anchor text (the clickable highlighted words in any give link). This can help reduce your bounce rates.

• It helps to improve your ranking for certain keywords. If we want this article to rank for the term ’SEO basics’ then we can begin linking to it from other posts using variations of similar anchor text. This tells Google that this post is relevant to people searching for ‘SEO basics’. Some experts recommend varying your anchor text pointing to the same page as Google may see multiple identical uses as ‘suspicious’.

• It helps Google crawl and index your site. Those little Googlebots that are sent out to fetch new information on your site will have a better idea of how useful and trustworthy your content is, the more they crawl your internal links.

7) Authority

An authority website is a site that is trusted by its users, the industry it operates in, other websites and search engines. Traditionally a link from an authority website is very valuable, as it’s seen as a vote of confidence. The more of these you have, and the higher quality content you produce, the more likely your own site will become an authority too.
However as the aforementioned Searchmetrics research suggests, year-on-year correlations between backlinks and rankings are decreasing, so perhaps over time ‘links’ may not be as important to SEO as we once thought.
There’s a good argument raging in the comments to this recent piece on links as a marketing KPI, which offers some diverse views on the subject.

8) Meta descriptions and title tags

Having a meta description won’t necessarily improve your ranking on the SERP, but it is something you should definitely use before publishing an article as it can help increase your chances of a searcher clicking on your result.
The meta description is the short paragraph of text that appears under your page’s URL in the search results, it’s also something you should have complete control of in your CMS.
Here it is in WordPress:

Write succinctly (under 156 characters is good), clearly and make sure it’s relevant to your headline and the content of the article itself.
There is more guidance found here: how to write meta descriptions for SEO.
Title tags are used to tell search engines and visitors what your site is about in the most concise and accurate way possible. The keywords in your title tag show up highlighted in search engine results (if the query uses those keywords), as well as in your browser tab and when sharing your site externally.
You can write your own title tag inside the <head> area of your site’s HTML:
<head>
<title>Example Title</title>
</head>
You should use a few accurate keywords describing the page as well as your own brand name. Only use relevant keywords though, and the most important thing to consider is that although you are formatting for search engines, you should write for humans.
There is a lot more practical guidance to be found in our complete guide to title tags.

9) Schema markup

You can make your search results appear more attractive by adding Schema markup to the HTML of your pages. This can help turn your search results into a rich media playground, adding star-ratings, customer ratings, images, and various other bits of helpful info
Schema is also the preferred method of markup by most search engines including Google, and it’s fairly straightforward to use. For more information, check out our handy guide to Schema.

10) Properly tagged images

Many people forget to include the alt attribute when they upload images to their content, but this is definitely something you shouldn’t overlook because Google cannot ‘see’ your images, but can ‘read’ the alt text.
By describing your image in the alt text as accurately as possible it will increase the chances of your images appearing in Google Image search.

 It will also improve the accessibility of your site for people using ‘screen reader’ software.

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How to Bring Large Amount of Traffic to your Blog or Website

If you own a blog or a website it’s possible that on several occasions you have wondered what you can do to increase traffic to get bunches of targeted visitors.  This is a question that everyone must be prepared to have a plan for before they even get started.  Without a plan to drive new targeted traffic to your website you will have a slow start and quite possibly a blog or website that never actually gets off the ground.
   Plan your work and work your plan.  This phrase was drilled into me over a decade ago when I entered the world of high tech sales.  To be successful at most anything you need to plan it, and then follow through on your plan without getting sidetracked.  The same goes for internet marketing and increasing traffic to your websites.  There are dozens of ways to increase traffic to your site but if you try to use them all you will end up being a “jack of all trades and a master of none”.

Popular Methods to Increase Traffic

• Search Engine Optimization
• Article Marketing
• Blogging
• Blog Commenting
• Social Networking Traffic
• Youtube and Video Marketing
• RSS Marketing
• PPC or Paid Traffic

   All of these methods are very effective to drive targeted traffic to a website when done properly, but until you setup some type of automation and invest in some tools to help you do these it can be a wasted effort trying to do them all at once.  Each one of these methods is a separate skill in itself and can take months to learn the details and intricacies to succeed with them.  If you do a lot of different things ineffectively your overall result will show it and you won’t make any money which is a terrible return on time invested.

   That doesn’t mean you need to learn everything about something before even attempting it.  On the contrary, you must begin a plan to gain experience.  When you analyze the things you did wrong you learn from it very quickly and you will progress in your internet marketing skills.  There is a lot to be said for experience in just about anything.  Experience will teach you things that they don’t teach in textbooks and will allow you to innovate your own methods and ideas while coming to an understanding of how the base foundation of all this works.

Which strategies are best to increase website traffic free?

Search Engine Optimization

   It is very important right from the start to learn best practices with search engine optimization.  Once you understand how the web crawlers work you will be able to apply these skills to be more effective at article marketing, social networking, and video marketing.  YouTube is the second most used search engine in the world next to Google.  If you plan on using video marketing you will need to understand how text is read through your video submissions so that you can rank high for the targeted audience you seek.  The same goes with social networking.

   There are now hundreds of social networks and news aggregators and bloggers are crawling them for new content.  You’ll even see Twitter results showing up in Google now in a special news feed.  Search engine optimization is a critical foundation point to begin with.  There is so much to learn though so just get started learning the basics and apply it to what you are doing so that you can get that experience you need. When you master search engine optimization you will increase website traffic from all different sources because you will have solid fundamentals to work with that will carry on into all of your web marketing efforts.

Article Marketing to Increase Traffic

If you aren’t sure what article marketing is just take a closer look at this article.  If you are reading this right now you are seeing how effective article marketing can be to gain an audience.  Getting good information out on the web about your niche is a good way to establish yourself as a leader and someone that people can trust whether you are selling a fitness product or any type of service.

   The great thing about article marketing to increase traffic is that it can help to get traffic in several ways.  First off your articles will be out there and the visitors that read your article may click on your website link in the resource box if they like what they read.  The second thing about article marketing is that you can gain backlinks to your website to increase your search engine rankings.  Make sure to use the keyword you are targeting in the anchor text of the URL.  Unless you want to rank high for the term ‘click here’, avoid using that as the anchor.  Adobe already has #1 and #2 wrapped up for that term and it is unlikely that anyone will ever pass them (and there really isn’t any reason you would want to rank high for that is there?)  If you are putting the work into article marketing then you must maximize your efforts and use it to gain meaningful backlinks that will allow you to rank higher in search engines and to increase targeted traffic to your websites.

   Here is another benefit of article marketing that many people overlook.  Make sure to get your RSS feed from your writers profile and submit it to the RSS directories.  Your articles may get picked up and syndicated on blogs or even TwitterFeeds.  Get yourself out there enough and your information will spread across the blogosphere helping to increase traffic to your sites.

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How to boost your Blog to Google's First Page of Search Result

As a Blogger who surfs the net a lot, i know you have heard about keyword optimization and also received different opinions about it.But now,lets see some truths about keyword optimization.

First and foremost, what are the best keywords?
You can get your keywords from a simple tool such as Google Suggest. It is now inbuilt within the Google search engine itself. Type something relating to your niche and along the way it will give you some suggestions. These are the suggestions that you have to pay attention to,the suggestions that will bring you your desired traffic and pageviews.

How frequently do you have to use these keywords in your article body?
The right answer for that is between 2% and 4% of the total matter of content on the website. Less than that is too less and more than that is keyword-stuffing. Now,here are some keyword related factors that you should definitely make sure you have on your web page if you are looking for good traffic, pageviews and hence good conversions:-

- Your domain name should have the keyword in it. This is really mandatory.

- The URL of the website must have the keyword in it.

- Your titles must have the keyword in it. If possible, try to wedge in your keyword in every subheading you use as well, provided they are not too many. Specifically, use your keyword in all the H1, H2 and H3 tags that you use.

- Your keyword must figure somewhere in the first and last sentence of the article.

- Use at least one outbound link to a page within your website where your keyword works as the anchor text.

- Use at least one outbound link to an external page which is trusted.

- Use your keyword to a density of 2% to 4% through the webpage.

   Employ these easy-to-understand factors and you will see that your website really rank well on Google !!! Easy to understand and easy to use, but almost 80% of the websites on the Internet overlook these simple yet critical factors. Hope This Helps !!!

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How to Add SEO Friendly Custom Permalinks for Blogger Posts

  It’s been a while now that Blogger introduced another new and very useful feature – which is the custom permalinks for blogger posts. With this new feature you can now use Search Engine Optimized friendly custom URL for blogger posts. The interesting part is that this new feature doesn’t have any character limit.
    To create your own URL for a specific post, simply click "permalink" and select "Custom URL", and enter your Custom URL in the field given. If you are writing the post today for example, today is October 9, 2012 therefore your new URL will look like this:

http://YOURBLOG.com/2012/10/customURL.html

   Note that the red colored bold area is the portion of the URL that is customizable and you can insert your preffered text there but if the custom permalink you entered already exists, Blogger will attempt to find another one for you.At present, the characters allowed in a custom URL are limited, they are : a-z, A-Z, 0-1. The only special characters available are underscore (_), dash (-), and period.

   Hope this post help, you can share this interesting post with others using the share button and stay tuned to receive our free future update.

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How to Know if a Link is Do-follow or No-follow

Recently, There are some terms being used when it comes to Blogging/Web Designing which many Newbie Bloggers might find a bit difficult to understand, what exactly it means and how it works. Although there are so many of such terms but we'll be looking towards the link aspect tonight where we have No-follow and Do-follow. These terms are always used when talking about backlinks hence No-follow links and Do-follow links.

• Briefly, the two type of links mentioned above are different from each other because the No-follow link from a website A to B is simply telling bots that rank websites / blogs on Search engines that - I know website B but I don't know if it is safe & secure so I can't really vouch for website B. On the other hand, Do-follow link from website A to B is simply telling bots that I know website B and I am sure it is safe & secure so I can vouch for it thereby Do-follow link helps the website/blog its pointing to, to gain trust provided that the referring website/blog is already trusted and well ranked in Search Engines, this is where Pagerank comes in (Pagerank will be explained fully in one of our future posts). Since we are not discussing fully about No-follow and Do-follow links in this post rather we're discussing on how to differentiate both, I hope the short illustration above is enough to show you the overview of what No-follow and Do-follow link means. Now, How would you know if a link is No-follow or Do-follow ?
  
  1. Highlight the link you'd like to check and right click on the highlighted link
  
  2. Click on view selection source and a new tab will be opened
  
  3. Now, view the highlighted text and URL in the new tab
  
  4. If there is something like rel=nofollow in the text then it means that the link is No-follow
  
  5. But if there is nothing like rel=nofollow in the text then the link is Do-follow
  
  Note - There is no attribute for Do-follow links, a link is automatically Do-follow once it doesn't have the rel=nofollow attribute in the link tag.

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5 Foods That Are Almost Pure Protein

Protein is an essential macronutrient that serves many functions in the body.
The recommended amount of protein is 0.37 grams per pound of body weight, or 0.8 g/kg .
However, physically active individuals need 0.6–0.9 grams per pound, or 1.4–2 g/kg .
Research shows that high-protein diets also help with weight loss .
The simplest way to increase your protein intake is to eat more high-protein foods.
That being said, not all high-protein foods are equal. Some of them are extremely high, almost nothing but protein and water.
Here are 10 foods that are almost pure protein, as in 80% of calories or more.

1. Chicken Breast 

Chicken is one of the most commonly consumed high-protein foods.
The breast is the leanest part. Three ounces (85 grams) of roasted, skinless chicken breast will provide you with about 27 grams of protein and 140 calories .
Some studies show that eating chicken on a high-protein diet can help you lose weight. However, the same benefits are also seen with beef as the main protein source .
A chicken’s nutrient profile is often affected by its diet. Pasture-raised chickens have higher antioxidant and omega-3 levels .
Besides protein, chicken is also a great source of niacin, vitamin B6, selenium and phosphorus.
Protein content in 100 grams: 31 grams (80% of calories).

Bottom Line: Chicken breast is a very popular source of protein, with a 3-ounce breast providing 27 grams. It is also a great source of B-vitamins and minerals.

2. Turkey Breast

Turkey is a low-fat source of protein. The breast is the leanest part of the bird.
Three ounces (85 grams) of roasted, skinless turkey breast contain about 24 grams of protein and 115 calories .
Turkey is also high in niacin, vitamin B6, selenium, phosphorus and zinc .
It also contains high amounts of tryptophan. This amino acid helps synthesize serotonin, an important neurotransmitter.
Protein content in 100 grams: 30 grams (95% of calories).
Bottom Line: Turkey is a low-calorie source of protein, at about 95% of calories. It also contains B-vitamins and minerals such as selenium and zinc

3. Egg Whites

Like most other animal foods, eggs have high-quality protein because they contain all the amino acids.
Most of the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants in eggs are found in the yolk. However, the egg whites contain at least 60% of the protein.
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Bottom Line: Egg whites mostly consist of water and protein. About 91% of calories in egg whites are from protein

 

4. Dried Fish

Dried fish is a tasty snack that comes in many varieties.
For a high-protein, low-fat option, choose cod, halibut, haddock or flounder.
Just one ounce (28 grams) of dried fish can provide 18 grams of protein .
Dried fish has many benefits. For example, it is also loaded with vitamin B12, potassium, magnesium, selenium and other nutrients .
Protein content in 100 grams: 63 grams (93% of calories)
A one-cup (243-gram) serving of egg whites gives you 26 grams of protein and only about 115 calories .
Protein content in 100 grams: 11 grams (91% of calories)
Bottom Line: Dried fish is extremely high in protein, up to 93% of calories. It also contains omega-3 fatty acids and large amounts of some vitamins and minerals.

5. Shrimp

Shrimp are a great food to include in your diet.
They’re not only high in protein but also low in calories, carbs and fat. Three ounces (85 grams) of shrimp contain 17 grams of protein and only 90 calories .
Shrimp are rich in vitamin D, niacin and vitamin B12. They also contain iron, phosphorus, copper and selenium .
What’s more, shrimp contain antioxidants such as astaxanthin, which reduces inflammation and oxidative damage .
Protein content in 100 grams: 20 grams (82% of calories).

Bottom Line: Shrimp are a great source of protein, at 82% of calories. They also contain vitamins, minerals and beneficial antioxidants.

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13 Health and Nutrition Tips That Are Actually Evidence-Based

There is a lot of confusion as it pertains to health and nutrition.
People, even qualified experts, often seem to really have the exact opposite opinions.
However, despite all of the|most of the disagreements, there are always a few |issues that are well supported by research.
Listed below are 27 health and nutrition tips which are actually predicated on good science.

1. Don’t Drink Sugar Calories

Sugary drinks are the most fattening things you can put into your body.
This is because liquid sugar calories don’t get registered by the brain in the same way as calories from solid foods .
For this reason, when you drink soda, you end up eating more total calories .
Sugary drinks are strongly associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and all sorts of health problems.
Keep in mind that fruit juices are almost as bad as soda in this regard. They contain just as much sugar, and the small amounts of antioxidants do NOT negate the harmful effects of the sugar .

2. Eat Nuts

Despite being high in fat, nuts are incredibly nutritious and healthy.
They are loaded with magnesium, vitamin E, fiber and various other nutrients .
Studies show that nuts can help you lose weight, and may help fight type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Additionally, about 10-15% of the calories in nuts aren’t even absorbed into the body, and some evidence suggests that they can boost metabolism.
In one study, almonds were shown to increase weight loss by 62% compared to complex carbohydrates (.

3. Avoid Processed Junk Food (Eat Real Food Instead)

All the processed junk foods in the diet are the biggest reason the world is fatter and sicker than ever before.
These foods have been engineered to be “hyper-rewarding,” so they trick our brains into eating more than we need, even leading to addiction in some people.
They are also low in fiber, protein and micronutrients (empty calories), but high in unhealthy ingredients like added sugar and refined grains.

4. Don’t Fear Coffee

Coffee has been unfairly demonized. The truth is that it’s actually very healthy.
Coffee is high in antioxidants, and studies show that coffee drinkers live longer, and have a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and numerous other diseases .

5. Eat Fatty Fish

Pretty much everyone agrees that fish is healthy.
This is particularly true of fatty fish, like salmon, which is loaded with omega-3 fatty acids and various other nutrients .
Studies show that people who eat the most fish have a lower risk of all sorts of diseases, including heart disease, dementia and depression

6. Get Enough Sleep

The importance of getting enough quality sleep can not be overstated.
It may be just as important as diet and exercise, if not more.
Poor sleep can drive insulin resistance, throw your appetite hormones out of whack and reduce your physical and mental performance .
What’s more, it is one of the strongest individual risk factors for future weight gain and obesity. One study showed that short sleep was linked to 89% increased risk of obesity in children, and 55% in adults

7. Take Care of Your Gut Health With Probiotics and Fiber

The bacteria in your gut, collectively called the gut microbiota, are sometimes referred to as the “forgotten organ.”
These gut bugs are incredibly important for all sorts of health-related aspects. A disruption in the gut bacteria is linked to some of the world’s most serious chronic diseases, including obesity .
A good way to improve gut health, is to eat probiotic foods (like live yogurt and sauerkraut), take probiotic supplements, and eat plenty of fiber. Fiber functions as fuel for the gut bacteria

8. Drink Some Water, Especially Before Meals

Drinking enough water can have numerous benefits.
One important factor, is that it can help boost the amount of calories you burn.
According to 2 studies, it can boost metabolism by 24-30% over a period of 1-1.5 hours. This can amount to 96 additional calories burned if you drink 2 liters (67 oz) of water per DAY
The best time to drink water is half an hour before meals. One study showed that half a liter of water, 30 minutes before each meal, increased weight loss by 44%

9. Don’t Overcook or Burn Your Meat

Meat can be a nutritious and healthy part of the diet. It is very high in protein, and contains various important nutrients.
The problems occur when meat is overcooked and burnt. This can lead to the formation of harmful compounds that raise the risk of cancer
So, eat your meat, just don’t overcook or burn it.

10. Avoid Bright Lights Before Sleep

When we’re exposed to bright lights in the evening, this disrupts production of the sleep hormone melatonin
An interesting “hack” is to use a pair of amber-tinted glasses that block blue light from entering your eyes in the evening.
This allows melatonin to be produced as if it were completely dark, helping you sleep better .

11. Take Vitamin D3 if You Don’t Get Much Sun

Back in the day, most people got their vitamin D from the sun.
The problem is that most people don’t get much sun these days. They either live where there is no sun, or they stay inside most of the day or use sunscreen when they go out.
According to data from 2005-2006, about 41.6% of the US population is deficient in this critical vitamin
If adequate sun exposure is not an option for you, then supplementing with vitamin D has been shown to have numerous benefits for health.
This includes improved bone health, increased strength, reduced symptoms of depression and a lower risk of cancer, to name a few. Vitamin D may also help you live longer

12. Eat Vegetables and Fruits

 

Vegetables and fruits are the “default” health foods, and for good reason.
They are loaded with prebiotic fiber, vitamins, minerals and all sorts of antioxidants, some of which have potent biological effects.
Studies show that people who eat the most vegetables and fruits live longer, and have a lower risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity and all sorts of diseases

13. Make Sure to Eat Enough Protein

Eating enough protein is incredibly important, and many experts believe that the recommended daily intake is too low.
Protein is particularly important for weight loss, and works via several different mechanisms .
A high protein intake can boost metabolism significantly, while making you feel so full that you automatically eat fewer calories. It can also cut cravings and reduce the desire for late-night snacking
Eating plenty of protein has also been shown to lower blood sugar and blood pressure levels.

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