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Veggies – One Of The Foods That Speed Up Metabolism!

May 30, 2009 by Dan Eitreim  
Filed under Weight Loss

Picture this…

You know that vegetables are good for you and that they are one of the foods that speed up metabolism (We notice this as extra energy.)

You’ve been trying to eat better and have more foods that speed up metabolism, so you have been eating lots of vegetables with your meals. Even so, you still barely have the energy to drag yourself through the day.

After a hard day at work, all you want to do is plant yourself in front of the television and relax until bedtime rolls around.

Then, when the alarm goes off in the morning, you still don’t feel rested and you have to literally drag yourself out of bed. The coffee pot is ALWAYS your first destination.

You could be dragging because you aren’t getting the proper nutrition. You can stop blaming your bed! It could be your veggies. Foods that speed up metabolism and provide the right balance of vitamins and minerals will give you tons of energy- if eaten correctly. Here’s a possible culprit – vitamins are water soluble.

We fix our meals, happily cooking our vegetables – usually in boiling water! This means we’re dissolving the nutrients and literally pouring them out! By the time we’re finished, our meal has virtually no nutritional value left!

Guess what? Most vegetables can be eaten raw. Plus, they usually taste better that way! When given the opportunity, always opt for raw.

There are a lot of benefits to eating them raw…

First off, you’ll stop wasting all those nutrients. Possibly for the first time EVER, your body will start getting the vitamins and minerals it needs. You will feel better in general and will notice a bump in your energy levels almost immediately.

Second, raw vegetables just plain taste better.

Third, you don’t have to wash your cooking pots and pans if you don’t use them.

Fourth, you can exact revenge on all those skinny members of your family! There is nothing more funny than LOUDLY biting into and chewing a fresh carrot or a crisp stalk of celery. Done properly you can disrupt conversations – ruin trains of thought – and generally drive your family nuts! (Hey, I may be an old dude but I never really grew up!)

Fifth, they provide a lot of good roughage and fiber.

Don’t forget, they taste better too!

What’s our goal? Eat a minimum of one raw veggie at each meal.

Always be sure to wash your vegetables thoroughly. When you get them from the store, they DO have chemical and pesticide residues on them. If you want a healthier alternative, go organic.

The average diet doesn’t provide all the nutrients we need, so if you don’t take a daily vitamin supplement, it would probably be a good idea to start.

Don’t skip your vitamins, but as you start to eat healthier foods that speed up metabolism and start getting the nutrients you need in your food, you won’t so desperately need daily vitamins.

Just make it a point to eat your veggies raw and soon you could be one of those irritating people who are full of energy and leap out of bed in the morning.

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Excercise To Lose Weight – Warm Up To Warming Up!

May 9, 2009 by Dan Eitreim  
Filed under Weight Loss

We all know we have to excercise to lose weight. But, knowing it, doesn’t make it any more fun! In fact, most of us dislike working out. Add in the challenges posed by our jobs and family obligations and our workout sessions quickly become a chore that we try to get through as quickly as possible.

So far, so good. We all feel that way at times. (Btw- working out becomes more enjoyable with time.) So in our rush to “get it over with” we are tempted to skip or at least gloss over our warm up routine.

Warning – don’t do it! Skipping your warm-up is a disaster just waiting to happen! It puts your body at serious risk for injury. But, you knew that. “It can’t happen to me” or “I’ll skip it just this once” are rationalizations that we all have no trouble with using.

Evidence of this sort of rationalization is all around us. There’s been a health risk warning printed on every pack of cigarettes for over 30 years, yet look how many smokers there are! Everyone knows that drug abuse is illegal, addictive, dangerous, will destroy your life, and eventually kill you…yet illegal drug sales is one of – if not THE biggest industry in the world!

So the thought – that you can “get away with it” and can save a little time by skipping your warm up – WILL occur to you. Fight it. When you excercise to lose weight, allow a couple extra minutes to warm up and cool down afterwards. It’s worth it.

Here’s a little good news – by properly warming up, the rest of your workout will actually be a little easier and will be more effective! So skipping the warm up routine doesn’t really save you anything. To get the most benefit and avoid injury, make it a practice to warm up every time you excercise to lose weight.

A warm up routine doesn’t have to be a long and laborious process. A quick 5 minutes will do the job! Plus, there’s no need for it to be boring either. There are a number of great moves that will work, if you mix and match them, you won’t fall into a dull routine.

Be sure to do a complete warm up and get all of your muscles stretched and moving, even if you don’t plan on working on a particular set of muscles during any given session. For example, if you’re scheduled to do some weightlifting to increase your upper body strength, be sure to stretch and warm up your legs as well. Warming up is vital in any excercise to lose weight routine, whether you are working with weights or aerobic exercises.

Jumping Jacks, lunges, skipping rope and jogging are all very good options. The idea is to get the blood flowing, get moving and stretched. It doesn’t need to be hard.

Many people think of stretching as more of a cooling down move, but there are a lot of good reasons to include stretches as part of your warm up routine. Why not, it can’t hurt to do a little extra stretching. Who knows maybe it CAN hurt – literally – not to.

If you really resent spending the few minutes it takes to warm up, try warming up before you get to the gym. For example, when you can take the elevator or you have the option of using stairs, take the stairs. Or, why fight for a decent parking space? Park a few blocks away and easy jog or take a fast walk the rest of the way. You can be stretched and ready to go by the time you get inside.

Here’s a sad tale…I once saw around fifteen people waiting for an elevator to take them up to the gym! ONE floor – about twenty steps – AND they had to walk right past the stairs to get to the elevator. (I thought they were there to get a workout! BTW – half of them went straight from the elevator to the Stairmaster.)

Whether you want to lose hundreds or just a couple of pounds, any excercise to lose weight routine will start slow and rapidly build in intensity. Without a warm up, this can be risky. To remain safe and injury free, give it the couple minutes that’s required.

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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.

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Top 6 Rapid Weight Loss Techniques

March 2, 2009 by Aiza Mccaya  
Filed under Weight Loss

A person’s weight affects him in many ways pretty much like what his physical appearance can do. It shows in the quality of life he lives, the way he handles depression, in his self-esteem, the health risks he has, and physical inabilities. Weight loss can result to a lot of positive transformations for a person. This is the very reason why many people search for weight loss techniques that will work effectively to trim down fats and produce a great, attractive body.

If a person is overweight and would want to lose the extra pounds, the first thing he or she has to do is consult a doctor or health specialist for the most suitable weight loss treatment program. After a full physical examination, the doctor or specialist will recommend this program, as well as specify a proper weight loss technique suitable to your lifestyle, preferences, and personal choice. Four aspects will begin to change once you apply your weight loss program: the food you eat, how you eat, your overall behavior, and normal activity level.

Here are the top 6 weight loss tips that you can use in your program:

First: Rapid weight loss is done through a multi-faceted technique that consists of three things: proper mindset, regular exercise, and in some cases, diet supplements. You can start by learning about a particular diet food plan that you can easily adapt to. You can also incorporate an exercise routine that allows you at least 15 minutes a day of running, swimming, or dancing.

Second: It is important that you set weight loss goals that are feasible and possible to achieve. This will not only help you focus on your exercise program but will enable you to have the proper mindset to lose weight fast and quick. With this, the normal dieter will never be discouraged when going through his or her weight loss program.

Third: Listen as the body speaks. Each and everyone’s body metabolism reacts differently to different fast weight loss programs and plans. Try substituting one program for another to compensate the body’s reaction. Exercise program must be suitable to one’s body, as others are not able to exercise as rigorously as others can. If walking is all that can be done, then walk for this is proven the best exercise. Muscles burn more calories than fats so it’s also best to put on a little muscle and looking good too.

Fourth: For food, it is always recommended to eat food rich in fiber. This is so because these types of food makes you feel full and they stay in the stomach longer. This slows down the digestion rate significantly. For example, one serving of whole grain bread can move fat through the digestion process a whole lot faster and since grains normally turn into sugar, there is a boost in the body’s amount of insulin, thus increasing energy levels as well.

Fifth: Avoid deep-fried food because such kinds contain a large amount of fat. Fish and chicken, although they appear leaner than beef, may contain more fat than beef when fried. Opt for grilled food because they contain less fat when cooked.

Sixth: Take in a lot of fluid. It is recommended for a person to drink lots of water, at least eight glasses of a day, to keep the body refreshed. The body should be well hydrated since weight loss depends on the elimination of body wastes from the body.

In the end, the most important values that weight loss depends greatly on are discipline and consistency. Even if you have a light weight loss program that consists of light dieting and workouts, you’ll be able to lose weight fast as compared to undergoing a very rigorous weight loss and exercise program that might just bring you back to square one.

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