Kamis, 28 Februari 2008

Losing Fat Fast: Is it possible

The first thing you need to know if you want to lose fat is that you need to BURN fat. Burning fat is all about using up more calories than you take in. If you eat more calories than your body uses throughout the day, these additional calories will be stored as body fat. To prevent a build up of body fat you need to either reduce your calorie intake or increase your daily activity levels - doing both will have the best effect on reducing body fat.

This simply means that the more fat you want to lose then the greater the amount of calories you have to burn off. To help you achieve and speed up your fat loss, here are few things that helps.

Speed up your metabolism—Exercise speeds up metabolism. The more active your lifestyle the more likely you are to have a quick metabolism and lose weight.

Metabolism does control weight, this is true. What most people don’t know is that they do in fact have the ability to control and adjust their metabolisms and thereby control their weight. Exercise does speed the metabolism up. The more active your lifestyle the more likely you are to have a quick metabolism and lose weight. It may not be healthy for all of us to get into a highly active lifestyle all at once but it is possible to get there as quickly as you safely can as an individual.

Eat healthy balanced diet— Be sure to eat a variety of foods, including plenty of vegetables, fruits, and whole grain products. Also include low-fat dairy products, lean meats, poultry, fish, and legumes. Drink lots of water and go easy on the salt, sugar, alcohol, and saturated fat. A large part of the battle in fighting fat and a slow metabolic rate is the western world’s view of food as entertainment. In addition to taking on an active lifestyle you will need to stop looking at food consumption as a means of gratification. This is what causes us to be gluttons. Instead of stopping when our hunger is sated we continue on until we are stuffed to get more enjoyment out of it.

Get plenty of rest and sleep— Sleep and other lifestyle patterns can help or hinder the rate at which we metabolize foods. An active lifestyle should lead eventually to being able to exercise to exhaustion; this in turn should keep your metabolism quick and your fat content low. By extending oneself to ones limits you fully utilize the lungs, heart, and muscles and burn fat most efficiently.
Be strong mentally—Try not to be obsessed by your weight. Everyone has a bad day. Do not punish yourself. Try to lose any guilt feelings towards the mistakes you have done. Instead, just move on, start again and enjoy life as it comes.

Minggu, 17 Februari 2008

The Zone Diet

The celebrity diet par excellence. It’s trendy to be in the Zone and it’s nice to be in the company of stars, to go through what they have gone. The Zone is also a nice sounding name, good for all kinds of marketing purposes. One of the things that have made this diet a success among celebrities is the fact that a lot of diet food delivery companies have included Zone foods in their menus. Those who can afford this kind of expenses are probably glad that they don’t have to go through the whole shopping and cooking experience.

The Zone Diet is built around the classic mix of low-far foods, such as chicken and fish, low-fat cheese, small amounts of fruits and vegetables and some olive oil. The Zone itself is a fancy term for achieving a state of hormonal balance (especially in insulin and glucagon) that allows the body to expend the energy intake in an efficient manner and to avoid storing calories as fat. Therefore, dieters are encouraged to eat a lot of non-starchy raw vegetables, a small amount of protein, a smaller amount of carbohydrates and enough monosaturated oils to keep the feeling of hunger away.

The good side of the diet is the restriction of refined carbohydrates, which are low in nutrition, and the focus on low-starch vegetables and fruits. Nevertheless, the American Heart Association does not recommend the Zone Diet because of the lack of essential nutrients, high-protein content and the general lack of information about its long-term effects. Since the diet is quite low on the daily intake of calories, it does not seem to be designed for the long term, but rather as a quick fix. Exercising is pretty much out of the question with such a low amount of calories.

Another problem that dieters are bound to face, except for those who pay for food deliveries, is that meals have to be calculated to include the exact amount of fat, protein and carbohydrates required by the diet. This is not always easy for the average dieter and it has every chance of becoming a bigger problem over extended periods of time. Also, dieters have traditionally found it hard to stay on a diet that is very low in carbohydrates because the feeling of hunger is almost always present.

Rabu, 06 Februari 2008

Healthy Life Style

Even though we all dread the thought, we all must think about our bodies at some point in our lifetime. I know for many years I either pushed it aside or felt uncomfortable thinking about it. It isn't always an easy thing. I have never been uncomfortable with my appearance per se. I guess you could say the problem was that to identify my body, meant I had some responsibilities. Not only that, but sometimes things go wrong. When we live in a fast paced world the last thing we can afford is to have something go wrong with our bodies. The car is one thing, but our bodies are another. I don't know at what age that I began to realize that my body was important.

I would say that it was probably latter on in life than what most people do. I have never really been the active type of person. Sure, I loved to go hiking and stuff like that, but I would never hit the gym. Well, some things never change.

Maybe it is because of age or maybe it is because of all the people around me are fat. Maybe it was a combination of those two things that made me start to think of my diet and my health. When you are young, you can eat fast food three meals a day and not feel it. When you start to get older, you begin to feel it more. I would like to think that my progression towards a healthy lifestyle was to make myself more healthy. On the other hand, I think it was because I was tired of feeling like shit. I am sure that you know exactly what I am talking about.

When your diet goes down hill, the rest of you goes along with it. Your sleeping patterns go to hell, your hair doesn't look as good, and your skin looks like leather. I had always wondered why some people's skin looked like a pair of old combat boots. Now I know why. So, what do you do? You are starting to feel over the hill but yet you don't know how to change things. Change is the hardest thing to do in life. You should know, its not impossible. If you are a married man or have been in a long term relationship this will be easy for you. Chances are the old lady would like to shed a few pounds and firm up that once tight heart shaped ass that she once had.

You will be more successful if both of you do it. I'm not saying that you should expect perfection in this venture. Though if both of you are doing it, there won't be those tubs of ice cream laying around to tempt you.

Where do you start? First I would suggest that you go to your doctor for a physical. Have some blood work taken and see how you are. If you haven't done anything like this before, it is a good thing to do. He will check your cholesterol and all that stuff. Also if you have a health condition, you will want to talk about your diet and exercise plans with him before you do anything. You want to do this so that you don't screw yourself up. If you have diabetes and you start a new diet, if not done right you can cause a lot of problems.

So, after you have things squared away with the doctor. I would suggest that you figure out what kind of diet you want to go on. I would suggest that you focus on a diet that is high in veggies and fruit. Cut back on the meat and the carbs and stick with as many fresh items as you can. This will help you loose weight. I would also suggest that you look into some type of exercise program. I would start out with walking or jogging and work your way from there. You and your old lady can do this together. Get a dog, they love to go on walks. This will give you motivation when it comes to taking your walks.

After you get used to walking, I would hit the gym. If you can afford a personal trainer, I would go that route. If you can't, then I would start off by doing some swimming and doing the exercise bikes. You can also start out with the treadmill as well. I would continue to do your walks. Not only is this good exercise, but this is quality time with your old lady. You will come to enjoy the talks that you have during your walks. If you are over 40, I'm not sure how much I would push doing weight lifting. It might be something that you might want to look into. On the other hand, it will take your body some time to get used to lifting weights. For the first few weeks, you will feel like someone beat you to a pulp.

Personally, I hate lifting weights. I think it is a bit, well, boring. I think it is boring to stand or sit and just lift things for hours on end. If there is some hot chicks doing squats or something in front of me, that is another story all together. The main thing to understand is, change your diet, get more exercise, and listen to your doctor. If he gives you the green light to go ahead, then go ahead. If he gives any warnings, make sure that you listen to them.