Having Regular Exercise In Life Matters
November 10, 2009 by Terry Lane
Filed under Weight Loss
An article written in Times Magazine makes the case that regular exercise does not contribute to weight lose or weight gain. It continues to imply that the more one exercises the more weight would be gained. Exercise makes us hungry therefore we eat more. The more calories taken eat the fatter we become. Is this statement true? Doesn’t this go against what we have all heard how exercise keeps weight off not the other way around?
Many factors play a role in weight lose. Exercise is one and diet is the other. A rule of thumb has always been to burn more calories than you take in. Other circumstances apply here as well like genetics. Yet still there is no better formula for successful weight control than watching how many calories you eat and how much you cardio exercise yo do.
Exercise plays an important role in controlling childhood obesity, diabetes and heart disease. So to suggest that exercise makes you gain weight is irresponsible. Exercise may also help stem certain cancers. Physical activity helps us maintain proper weight, increases our strength and stamina, and makes are bones stronger. This is especially important if you are a senior. With out some form of exercise as we age, one can be looking at osteoporosis and being more susceptible to broken bones as a result from falls.
Americans have to start making better food choices. That and regular exercise is the beginning of a healthier lifestyle. Since we no longer hunt for our foods or walk as much for everyday conveniences, it is important that we find our calories in the quality of food we eat. It is also just as important that we find the time to exercise since technology has given us the automobile.
Health care costs continue to rise. Most of these costs go into lifestyle related problems. Americans as a nation are getting fatter. More live a sedentary lifestyle that fosters obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Gone are the days of working the fields to produce our night’s dinner. Now we have frozen dinners to zap, fast food chains on every corner, and junk food machines accessible to our young children thanks to school boards who look to profits over health.
There is no argument that exercise helps keep us fit. Schools are starting to implement more programs of physical activity and lunch programs are being upgraded with healthier choices. Schools are beginning to realize the importance exercise and diet to young children. Children benefit from exercise with improved concentration and have better test scores.
So what can you do as a family? Get out and take family walks or bike rides. Support your child in a sports program. Take the stairs and not the escalators when at the mall. Go on family vacations where lots of physical activities are readily available.
So what is the future of exercise? Schools are waking up to the fact that investing in the youth goes a long way in how our survival may be directly correlated to health of the nation in years to come. Families are actively making exercise part of their lifestyle. Staying fit matters. The future is bright to those who recognize the value exercise has on one’s life.
Strength Fitness can help tired muscles spring back to life. A dual grip medicine ball comes in various weights. A great workout tool for performing rotational abdominal exercises.
Diets For Quick Weight Loss – The 500 Calorie Diet Is Very Popular
June 24, 2009 by Dan Beckwith
Filed under Diet
Engaging in diets for quick weight loss can be very dangerous. But, if you don’t mind taking risks with your health, the 500 calorie diet might be right for you. Keep in mind, that even when considering diets for quick weight loss, the 500 calorie diet is a very extreme form of dieting. Even so, it tends to be extremely popular.
Clearly, the reason for this popularity is that you will quickly lose weight. Almost everyone who has a need for diets for quick weight loss, goes to a low-calorie diet. But even among low-calorie diets, the 500 calories per day diet is at the low end of the spectrum.
First, for a definition…For a diet to be considered low calorie, the arbitrary cutoff point is 1200 calories per day. Anything below that is considered to be a low-calorie diet. Clearly the whole idea of a low-calorie diet is to lose weight quickly, but again – it can be quite dangerous so it should always be thoroughly planned with a nutritionist or your family doctor.
It’s well known that the best way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you eat. You can do this by burning more, or by eating less. Your body needs a certain number of calories just to exist. If you’re not eating enough, the theory is that your energy needs will be taken from the fat calories in your body.
But, keep in mind that your body is very smart. It won’t simply keep burning away calories. Your body will think you are starving, and it will cut way back on the number of calories it uses to survive. This affects your metabolic rate, which means that your body will start eating away at your muscle mass.
For the long-term, this is very dangerous. It’s your muscles that burn calories (far more than fat) and if you lose muscle mass, it can have a highly detrimental effect on your body and on your ability to keep weight off in the future. As one of the diets for quick weight loss, it works…but only for a little while.
Your gender, activity level, height, body type, genetics, and overall health will determine how quickly and how badly your body is affected by a 500 calorie per day diet. For short while, 500 calories per day may be enough for some of us.
For most of us though, particularly if we are overweight, eating only 500 calories per day is literally starving yourself. Your body is most likely used to taking in 2000-5000 calories per day – or more – and suddenly dropping to 500 calories will move your body into starvation mode. To conserve energy, your metabolism slows way down.
You don’t want to do this for very long because your body will learn to live on 500 calories per day, right up until you run out of calories to burn, then you will slip into a coma and die.
The good news is, we usually stop our dieting before that happens. The bad news is, now that you’ve lost so much muscle mass and your metabolism is so slow, as soon as you go back to your old eating habits (and we all do) you will have a sudden spike in weight gain. In fact you’ll gain more weight than you would have if you had never gone on a diet to start with. Diets for quick weight loss may seem to be very effective, but they just don’t work over the long haul.
The best way to determine a safe, workable daily calorie level is by using a BMR/AMR calculator. This will tell you how many calories you need in order to maintain good health and support your lifestyle. Now, you know how many calories you need and if you subtract up to 500 calories per day you will have one of the ideal diets for quick weight loss.
Since the body size and mass of men and women is so obviously different, this means that they need a different number of calories to survive. While the average woman may eat 1200 to 1300 calories per day their male counterpart needs from 1500 to 1600 calories per day. That’s why it’s so important for you to consult your physician before starting any diet. Safety must come first.
In conclusion, cutting back to 500 calories per day is very popular in the realm of diets for quick weight loss, but it can be very dangerous. It will work to help you lose weight, but the total loss is short-lived at best. You should never restrict your calories that dramatically without the constant supervision and monitoring of a doctor.
To get your FREE copy of my “Fast Weight Loss Tips!” mini-course, and to learn more about the best ways to lose weight, check out my website right now.
Losing Weight The Sustainable Way
May 26, 2009 by Lena Hellsten
Filed under Weight Loss
Losing weight is for a lot of people something that feels like a struggle in many ways. It may seem like something that just dont work however hard they try. All sorts of diets are being tested and for one reason or the other the body temple stays the same. Sometimes the person isnt able to follow through and at other times the diets simply dont give the results that is desired.
There can be a lot of different reasons why you arent able to lose weight if this is the case. What is important if youre after success is to discover your own personal way to a slim and fit body.
In most cased, the reason why some people just cant lost weight is because they have patterns of thought, believes and behaviors that do not support weight loss. At the core of everyone that is being in your experience are believes that forms programs that your unconscious responds to and then creates circumstances that supports those believes.
Believes are normally something we pick up by default from our surroundings and when something has been delivered together with a strong emotion it normally gets a deeper imprint in our system. This can lead to an unconscious pattern that we do repeatedly even though it does not serve us at all.
For example, someone might have experienced a time in their life when they felt lonely and abandoned. Then they found that the only way to sooth this feeling was to eat. Whenever this person felt lonely she now turned to food. A behavior pattern was created and when this person in her adulthood felt lonely, she ate more and more. When the person then put on weight, she might begin to believe that no one wants to be with her and she feels even more lonely ” a so called vicious cycle is being formed.
If you would just tell this person that he has to stop eating as much, he might become very stressed and confused and straight away move back to the old behavior. Instead, if the person goes to the root and find a way to heal the cause of this feeling and this pattern, the need to do excessive eating can be released. This can be done in many ways; nlp and hypnosis, EFT, becoming aware of the pattern and starting to focus on what he really wants to mention a few.
The important part is to find a way to release whatever it is that is at the core of the pattern and in this way release also those behaviors thats related to it.
This is one example of something that can cause overweight. Everyone has their own reasons and to experience successful weight loss its important to find what really works for you.
Lose Weight With a Flexible 1,500 Calorie Diet
May 7, 2009 by Jennie Viv
Filed under Weight Loss
You can lose weight while still eating a healthy diet that won’t leave you bored of eating the same foods over and over again or feeling hungry all of the time. You can eat a 1,500 calorie diet and lose weight easily – you just have to choose foods which are nutritious and will still make you feel full.
Portions have grown ever larger in the US and unfortunately, so have our waistlines right along with these super sized meals. These larger portions result in weight gain as we eat far more calories than we actually need. Processed foods are especially to blame for obesity. Even a small portion of many of these foods have more calories than you should have in an entire meal!
What’s wrong with a lot of diet plans is that they cut certain foods out of your diet entirely, which can mean missing out on some important nutrients in the bargain. You should steer clear of any diet that tells you to avoid entire food groups. There is also a negative connotation to the word “diet” itself. Many of us think that anything called a diet means that we are going to be constantly hungry or something which certainly does not have to be the case.
Many doctors advocate a calorie count of 1,500 for healthy weight loss, but most recommend not dropping below this figure as it could be damaging to your health and you’ll need those calories in order to keep your body functioning optimally.
There are plenty of between meal snacks which can satisfy your hunger while not adding a lot of calories to your diet. For example, a half cup of strawberries is only about 23 calories! Half a cup of grapes is only 31 calories or so, a small apple around 55 and half a cup of watermelon only about 23 calories.
These low calories snacks can keep you from feeling hungry in between mealtimes while keeping you on rack for a 1,500 calorie diet. You can have these kinds of healthy snacks and still have three full (healthy) meals per day.
Working with this 1,500 calorie figure isn?t as difficult as you may think. You can plan out your meals to incorporate your favorite foods even on a diet.
One way you can do this is to have grilled chicken for dinner (but a smaller portion than you may normally eat) accompanies by a very large salad, this way, you’ll be full after you meal while still sticking with your target caloric intake.
You can make a very filling salad which has only about 15 calories (before any kind of dressing). Think it’s impossible? Just follow this – half a cup of shredded lettuce is only 2 calories, half a tomato is about 6, a sliced mushroom another two and about four more calories for a few cucumber slices! This is a great way to fill up while staying well within your calorie limit for the day. You could also choose to have a small baked potato instead of the salad. This is almost as filling, but comes to around 115 calories.
There are plenty of charts available which can help you to count your calories and plan a diet which will allow you to get all of the necessary nutrients, enjoy a variety of foods and of course, still lose weight.
Here’s The Ideal Source of Foods That Speed Up Your Metabolism
April 22, 2009 by Dan Eitreim
Filed under Diet
Any diet that even comes close to being healthy, will tell you to eat plenty of vegetables. But what kind of vegetables should we be eating to get foods that speed up your metabolism?
To boost our metabolism, as part of a healthy, balanced dietmost any type of vegetable will do the job. But if you really want to see the weight start pouring off of you, you need to start considering calories.
Calories are easy to understand, if you think of them as energy.
Whenever you eat something, it doesn’t matter what it is, it will give your body calories. Whether it’s a stalk of celery or a candy bar, everything gives us calories. Our body has to do something with all these calories. It will burn them if it needs some energy. If no energy is needed, they get stored as fat.
We can’t cut back too much on calories since that would slow our metabolism. We’re looking for foods that speed up your metabolism, so we need to boost our calorie usage rather than cut back on intake. In other words, we need to find foods that speed up your metabolism but still don’t provide enough energy. That’s when we will see our fat beginning to disappear.
What if we could find a way to keep our metabolism chugging away – at full speed – and still not have enough energy? Then, our body would get the extra energy it needs from fat. (And we get skinny.)
Enter negative calorie foods.
Negative calorie foods are like an edible version of a jog around the park. You are still getting all the nutrients you need, your metabolism is still working at full speed and yet you still have a deficit of energy – which your body provides by burning fat calories.
Eating foods that speed up your metabolism – and make you lose weight at the same time – makes dieting a lot of fun. Wouldn’t you agree?
By now, you are probably wondering what negative calorie foods are?
All of our various bodily functions require energy. In other words you need a certain amount of calories just to digest food.
A negative calorie food is one that gives us a certain number of calories but burns more calories just in being digested. With negative calorie foods, in theory, you could eat all day and still lose weight.
Here’s an example. A typical piece of broccoli (that is about 100 grams) gives us about 25 calories when we eat it. However, it uses up about 80 calories just to digest. So you have a net loss of 55 calories every time you eat a piece of broccoli.
Good stuff, eh?
Here are a few vegetables that are negative calorie foods…
Garlic, asparagus, zucchini, green beans, Garden cress, beet root, turnip, lettuce, broccoli, spinach, onion, cabbage, radish, carrot, cucumber, cauliflower, celery, chicory, hot chili.
Plus, there’s a bunch more. Think about it, it would be scientifically and physically impossible not to lose weight if you were eating a negative calorie diet. To get a lot more information, check out my website.
How Important Are Calories To Weight Loss Programs?
April 13, 2009 by Shana Leslie
Filed under Weight Loss
Consuming a huge amount of calories on a daily basis can be one of the causes of your overweight condition. How can you possibly lose weight when you are taking in far more calories on a daily basis than what you are burning off with activity.
Don’t get all worried, I’m not suggesting that you need to count calories and get out that little food weight scale to measure everything you eat in ounces. That’s the last thing I would want to do as well.
However the difference between having to count calories and just being aware of your calorie counts, is doable and can easily be accomplished.
Educating yourself on the different food groups and getting to know the calories that are in each food group, will help you to keep within your daily calorie limit in order to lose weight.
When you learn that fruits and vegetables are much better for you it will be easy for you to plan nutritious meals. I for one would always choose the pizza over a balanced meal anytime. My choices were obviously all wrong, because I spent many years of my life being overweight.
People are clueless to the fact that even fruits and vegetables vary in the amount of calories they have. Did you know that a banana has the most calories coming in at 105 approximately for a medium size, an apple 71 calories for a medium size and an orange approximately 61 calories for a medium size? This comparison shows that even when it comes to fruits and vegetables you have to pick your foods wisely if you are wanting to lose weight.
Eating sensibly doesn’t have to be that hard, it just has to be a well thought out balanced nutritious meal. I enjoy lots of fruits and vegetables, which amazingly become delicious after eating them for awhile. I can say this because I used to hate eating fruits and vegetables. Now I love them.
I have never had to deprive myself of eating anything during my weight loss program Eating sensibly has worked wonders for me.
Think Skinny! It’s the Best Way To Get Skinny
March 12, 2009 by Henry John
Filed under Weight Loss
How would you like to be skinny and stay skinny? How many times have you been on a diet only for the weight to come back again? It’s not much fun, is it? So, what’s the secret of how to get skinny and stay skinny?
What most people do when they want to get skinny is to go on a diet. Usually they are influenced by the latest fad diet. Low carb, low calorie, GI, the list is endless. Eventually they decide which one they are going to go with and because they have taken the decision, they put their complete trust in the diet of their choice.
Diets make it look so easy, don’t they? All your weight is just going to disappear and you don’t have to do a thing, just put your hand in your pocket and shell out the dollars. Nothing could be more simple. Which one do you trust – because at the end of the day it’s all about trust?
It’s true that diets will help you lose weight, but there is a very heavy price to pay. That price is the fact that after having finished your diet, the weight you have just spent time and money losing, will come back again. It’s a depressing thought, isn’t it? The problem is that diets deliver short-term weight loss: nothing wrong with that except who wants short-term weight loss? Why would anybody in their right mind be happy for the weight to come back again? Nobody!
The thing about losing weight and getting skinny is that you have got to want to make it happen. If your resolve is weak, than it won’t be successful. The other thing is that successful long-term weight loss only comes when you make change.
If you want to make change, the best way is to learn new habits, slim habits. By learning new habits you can change your behavior and achieve permanent weight loss. It’s not difficult to do and the rewards for making change are huge. It will enable you to say goodbye to diets forever…what could be better than that?







