You probably already know about the amazing health benefits of including foods rich in antioxidant to your diet. These free-radical fighting antioxidants not only help you look and feel younger by slowing down the aging process, but they also help to prevent heart disease, cancer and a huge number of other degenerative diseases. It doesn’t stop there. Antioxidants also help your recovery from exercise…and that means less body fat and more muscle tone on your body long term!

Antioxidants help in your recovery from exercise by the inhibition of free radicals produced during exercise. Whenever you workout, free radicals are produced in the body that damage muscle tissue. Roughly an hour before exercise, taking an adequate supply of antioxidants can greatly reduce muscle damage caused by free radicals, therefore, improving your muscular recovery from exercise.

Some of the most potent sources of whole food antioxidants are berries (cranberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries,), cherries, acai fruit, grapes, various teas (green tea, black tea, white tea, oolong tea, and red tea – a.k.a. rooibos tea), seeds, nuts, red and black beans, purple potatoes, cinnamon, and dark chocolate or cocoa. Remember whole foods are always better for you. Don’t be fooled by all of the intense marketing for expensive antioxidant supplement pills…

A great pre-workout antioxidant-loaded snack is organic cashew butter (or peanut butter if you can’t find cashew) spread on top of a graham cracker, and topped with fresh strawberries.. I wash it down with a glass of acai berry drink or cranberry juice. This is literally a super charge of potent anti-oxidants! The cashew butter, strawberries, and the acai berry or cranberry juice are all loaded with different varieties of youth preserving, muscle sheilding, antioxidants. I have this snack about an hour before my workout. Try it yourself, or be creative and come up with your own antioxidant-rich pre-workout snack based on your taste buds.

Every day your body is persistently bombarded by free radicals (creating oxidative stress) from exercise, processed foods, air pollution, smoke, sun exposure, exposure to chemicals, etc. To reap the full benefits of antioxidants, try to make sure that every meal and snack you eat has at least one or two sources of antioxidant rich foods. This will give you a non-stop supply of antioxidants throughout each day, which will prevent damage from the free radicals you are constantly exposed to.

Antioxidants are just one piece to the puzzle of a healthy diet that will give you the lean, muscular, youthful, and disease-free body that everyone wants. To discover the secrets behind all of the other pieces to the diet puzzle that create a lean body (glycemic response, macronutrient profile, muscle protein synthesis, hormonal response, glycogen storage, the role of leptin, the insulin process, etc.), visit http://www.CelebrityBellySecrets.com

Shantelle Golding

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