Archive for the ‘Weight loss’ Category

There are lots of weight loss motivation tools you can try, but the thing that motivates me might not work for you.   This video talks about different weight loss motivation methods and how each person has to find what’s right for her.

Once you decide on a weight loss goal, you want reach that goal as quickly and painlessly as possible.  It’s just like ordering something online; you want it to arrive within 5 minutes of placing the order!

You’ve heard over and over that permanent weight loss takes time, slow and steady is best, blah, blah, blah.

But then you see start seeing infomercials or magazine ads and you begin to wonder:  do those things really work?  It would be so much easier!  Maybe I really could look like a 19-year-old supermodel by Friday!!

Let’s stop right there and take a look at some of these weight loss methods.

• Fad Diets You know what a balanced diet is and why you should follow it.  Any eating plan that requires you to completely omit an entire food group that you know is part of a healthy diet is obviously not good for you.  You may see weight loss at first but your health will suffer.  And any diet that extremely restricts your calorie intake will backfire on you in the long run.  If you don’t provide enough fuel to run your body, it thinks it is starving and will cling to fat like a drowning person clings to a life preserver!
• Liquid Diets Read the label carefully.  If you are using shakes to replace all of your meals, will they replace 100% of all the nutrients and fiber that your body requires in a day?  Will you feel as if you’re starving because you’re trying to survive on only a few glasses of liquid to get you through your busy day?  A better use of these shakes would be as an occasional meal replacement or supplement to your weight loss plan.
• Surgery Gastric bypass, lap band, liposuction – these are all surgical methods people try in order to lose weight.  Besides being expensive and often dangerous, they don’t provide the results that you want.  I’ve known 3 people who had gastric bypass surgery and 1 who had the lap band procedure and they all had negative results.  At first they lost lots and lots of weight, maybe for the first two years or so.  But then they gradually started to put it back on.  Because of these procedures, they could only eat small amounts at a time, but after a while they felt deprived so they tended to eat small amounts all day long.  Maybe with better nutritional counseling they could have been successful.  But then again, if they had followed sensible weight loss methods in the first place, they wouldn’t have been tempted by the quick fix of surgery!
• Spot Reducing You may be able to tone the muscles in isolated areas, but the only way to lose fat in one spot is to lose fat overall!  No product can single out and burn only belly fat or back fat or big toe fat!  That’s just silly!

To lose weight and maintain your health you need to follow a weight loss program which includes a healthy diet and exercise.  A good, comprehensive program I recommend is Fat Loss Quickie but there are plenty of others to choose from.  You can receive a free copy of the ebook, “7 Secrets of Permanent Fat Loss & Fitness” by providing your name and email address in the box near the top of this page.

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OK, let’s say you just can’t make yourself count calories or go on a traditional diet.

Diets make you feel deprived so, after a couple of days, you rebound and stuff yourself with everything in sight. Not ready to “call Jenny?”  Can’t stand Weight Watchers?  Then start small!

Make some teeny, tiny, hardly noticeable changes to your eating habits and you will be surprised to see your weight slowly going down.  Here are some things to try:

• Use skim milk in your coffee.  If you miss your flavored creamer, try a sprinkle of cinnamon.
• Have high-fiber cereal for breakfast to keep you feeling fuller longer.
• Rather than using 2 tablespoons of mayo to make your tuna or chicken salad, use 1 tablespoon of mayo and 1 tablespoon of low-fat cottage cheese.
• Leave the cheese off your subs and burgers.
• No Big Gulps or Supersized sodas! Order the smallest size available, even kid-size if possible.
• When having salad, put only 1 tablespoon of dressing in the bottom of the bowl, then toss and toss until your vegetables are coated.
• No crackers or cheese with your salad.
• Use light margarine rather than butter.
• Dip your chicken in barbecue sauce instead of honey mustard.
• Craving popcorn? Microwave a 100 calorie snack bag.

The following choices cannot be called “healthy” but will save some calories when you feel that you just have to have them:

• Eat bacon rather than sausage.
• Order thin crust pizza, not pan pizza.
• Grab a yeast donut instead of a cake donut.
• Eat angel food cake in place of cookies.
• Going out for ice cream?  Get the sugar cone, not waffle.

These small tweaks can lead to small amounts of weight loss, perhaps a pound per month.  You obviously have to make bigger changes for more dramatic results.  But it’s a start! Once you see how effortlessly you can make these small changes, it will be easier for you to begin making larger ones.

What small tweaks have you made to cut calories? Please tell us about them in the comments!

And please be sure to share this post with your friends and followers.

Many women believe that building muscle will work against their weight loss efforts.

We’ve all heard that muscle weighs more than fat so we tend to be afraid that strength training will make us gain weight.  However, when done correctly, building muscle actually helps increase fat loss.

When you are following a weight loss diet, you want to lose fat, not muscle.  The best way to ensure that you build and keep the muscle you already have is to do sets of 5 – 8 repetitions of your weight lifting or resistance training.

Performing more repetitions may increase your endurance but can actually cause you to lose as much muscle as fat.  Remember that muscle burns calories even while you’re at rest so the more muscle you can build, the more quickly you can melt off the fat, and the easier it will be to keep it off!

Don’t be concerned about becoming too muscular; testosterone or steroids are required to build massive, bulky muscles.  The average, non-supplementing woman will develop strong, lean, feminine muscle mass.  If you don’t like the look you are getting, you can always cut back on your strength training routine.

Studies have shown that dieting combined with aerobic exercise and strength training produces more weight loss than either just dieting or dieting plus aerobics.  The Fit Chic is a good, easy to follow, balanced weight loss plan which includes daily meals and workouts.

Don’t neglect protein in your weight loss diet.  Protein is not only necessary for building muscle tissue, which burns calories at a higher rate than other tissue, it also requires more calories to digest than fats or carbs.  (See my post on  Fat Burning Foods.)

If you enjoyed this article, please sign up for my weekly newsletter and you’ll receive a free copy of “7 Secrets of Permanent Fat Loss and Fitness”.

Want to feel confident and look great when you head to the beach this summer?  Make sure to follow these healthy eating tips:

• Drink plenty of water. You need to consume a minimum of 8 glasses of water to keep weight-loss-busting toxins flowing efficiently out of your body.
• Eat plenty of fiber. Fiber makes you feel fuller so you won’t be tempted to overeat.  It also grabs fat and moves it more quickly through your digestive system before it can be stored.
• Limit sweets. Come on, you already know this!  Most sweets are just empty calories that add nothing positive to your healthy eating plan.  If you crave something sweet, try fresh fruit or low fat yogurt.
• Eat 5 small meals/snacks per day. This does not mean that you add more food to your daily intake!  It just means that you spread your food out  rather than eating only 3 large meals per day.  For example, I used to have a bowl of cereal with sliced banana and milk, a slice of whole grain toast, and a boiled egg for breakfast.  Now for breakfast I have the cereal, milk, and banana.  Then, about 3 hours later, I have the toast and egg.  Same number of calories but spread out so that my metabolism is receiving a continuous fuel supply.

Remember, there is no magic bullet for weight loss.  But healthy eating habits combined with a good exercise program will get you to your goal!  Check out  healthy eating habits for more suggestions.

Today I’d like to share with you a great article by fitness expert, Carolyn Hansen.

Want to Hear the Truth About Why You Are Really Overweight?

By Carolyn Hansen

Anyone who wants to lose weight surely would like to lose it permanently and be able to maintain that loss for the long haul. Yet restrictive food diets and the wrong type of exercise program do not achieve this for the majority of overweight people. It seems strange that most of the weight loss programs available today only offer temporary results as they do not address the real cause of becoming overweight in the first place.

The cause at the bottom of the problem is that the fat burning machinery of the body has become unhealthy and is not burning fuel (calories) at the rate it should or could be if it were if good condition. Muscle tissue is where fat is burned for energy but if it not kept strong and fit with proper strength maintaining exercise it cannot burn fuel at its optimal rate. Thus calories that should be burnt up are now being stored as body fat accumulating all over the body spoiling your looks and placing your health at risk.

We have been lead to believe that ‘cardio’ type activity like walking, jogging or cycling or other aerobic type recreational type activity is necessary to lose weight. But we now know that this is not sufficient for long term weight loss. Why? Because it does not address the root of the problem – lack of toned muscle tissue to boost the metabolism.

Part of the problem is for years we have been told to just find something you enjoy and that is your exercise program. Walking, gardening, sports and bird watching – you name it they have said it is fine to just do something that is ‘fun’ and this is where the problem lies. Proper exercise that involves keep your metabolism cranking is not always ‘fun’.

Recreational activities do not work the muscular system of the human body through the ranges of movement necessary under a load to achieve a permanent boost to the metabolic rate. You have to be doing higher intensity activity than that.

This is something you may not want to hear as many people get addicted to long, slow time consuming activity and cannot see that any other way could be better. But take a look in the mirror – “Is it actually working for you?” How many hours each week do you spend doing it and what results are you getting?”

With a proper program you could be getting great results in just a couple of months. You would be saving so much time as you only need 2-3 sessions each week of 30-40 minutes to do the job properly. The more intensity (effort) you can put into it the less you need to do as this will kick your metabolism into high gear very quickly chewing into those fat stores even when you are sleeping. Something that ‘cardio’ activity can never ever do.

So, the hardest part will be the changing of your beliefs and attitude. Only when this is achieved will you experience a truly strong, lean, healthy body and until then you will likely have to live in a flabby overweight one. We have been misled for so long it will take just as long to accept the truth about what proper exercise actually is. The quicker you make the change the quicker you will get the results you really desire.

Do you want to discover the secret to rejuvenating your body, regaining lost vitality and improving the quality of your life? Download my free ebook “I’ve Found the Fountain of Youth – Let Me Show You Too!” Fountain of Youth.

If you are looking to lose weight permanently go to Fitness Weight Loss for a free ebook and check out the new Hot Metabolism Fitness System.

Carolyn Hansen is a certified fitness expert and fitness center owner who coaches clients to look and feel younger. In her nearly 30 years of fitness and bodybuilding competition experience she has helped thousands of people start their journey towards being strong, fit and youthful at any age.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carolyn_Hansen
http://EzineArticles.com/?Want-to-Hear-the-Truth-About-Why-You-Are-Really-Overweight?&id=4120813

In addition to Carolyn’s resources, I recommend that you check out The Fat Burning Furnace.