Posts Tagged ‘Weight loss’

So you can’t lose weight even though you’ve been following your weight loss plan faithfully.

It’s so frustrating!  Let’s take a look at your weight loss plan and see where you can tweak it to get the results you want.

1. Are you dieting but not exercising?

Steady, permanent weight loss requires a combination of decreasing the number of calories you take in and increasing the number of calories you expend.  Exercise revs up your metabolism to keep your body burning calories efficiently.

2. Are you exercising but not dieting?

Exercise is great for your fitness but will not help you lose weight if you continue to overeat between workouts.  It takes a lot of exercise to burn just one pound of fat so, if you want to see results, you need to reduce the amount of fuel coming in so your exercise efforts can work on burning fat that is already in storage.

3. Is your diet too restrictive?

Your body requires a healthy balance of carbs (50% of your daily intake), protein (15%) and fats (35%) in order to keep working like it should.  If you give it the wrong fuel, it will become sluggish and unable to do it’s work of burning calories.  And if you limit yourself to too few calories, your body will go into starvation mode and cling to every single fat cell.  You will feel weak and miserable, plus your weight loss will stop.

4. Are you doing the wrong exercise?

For optimum weight loss, you have to include a combination of cardio and strength training in your exercise plan.  If you are using cardio alone, you are missing out on the calorie burning benefits that building muscle provides.

If your weight loss program hasn’t been as effective as you had hoped it would be, try one of these easy fixes!  And don’t forget to share these ideas with anyone else you know who might need them!

Today I would like to share with you a great article from Lori Shemek of  DLS HealthWorks.

Top 3 Successful Weight Loss Tips (Permanently)
By Lori L. Shemek, Ph. D.

Healthy eating for weight loss is not about becoming unrealistically thin or starving yourself from the foods you love. Rather, it is about living your life with freedom. Freedom from the emotional toll that being overweight has burdened you with, freedom from the diets, freedom to have more energy and freedom to feel optimal health at every level.

We are all different and we all have different stories. But the one connecting point we all do share is our emotions. Emotions run the gamut when it comes to food. But most who struggle with their weight, not only wrestle with proper food choices, and exercise integration, but struggle with the emotional component in their relationship with food.

So in order to create success with your weight loss, you want to integrate the following very important, life-changing weight loss tips:

Tip One: Change Your Mindset

The foundation of all success stems from a deep conviction to change our life. Most people focus on the word “CAN’T.” Instead, take out the ‘t and focus on the word “CAN.” You CAN create the kind of life you want for yourself.

Did you know that the most successful people in the world share a common characteristic? They are tenacious. They persist until they have achieved their goal, even when they feel like quitting.  You must believe that you hold the power to do anything  that you set your mind to. When you feel like giving-up – ask yourself if there isn’t something else you can do. Can I put more effort into making my weight loss goals a reality? Have I tried another strategy? Will quitting help me accomplish my goals? Remember that trials will come, difficulties will arise, and you will want to quit. Reject all thoughts of failure. Tomorrow is another day and as long as you get back on the horse, you will succeed…because you are tenacious.

Tip Two: Change Your Diet

This does not mean you need to eat less food – no far from it. Instead, you need to consume fewer calories. With smart choices, this is very doable. The key is to choose nutrient dense foods only, foods that allow you to eat larger portion sizes but that are delicious and allow you to eat fewer calories. These foods include whole fruits and vegetables, whole grains (complex carbohydrates) such as: oats, whole wheat and brown rice. Choose lean protein and healthy fats as well. Include lean protein with every meal and snack to stabilize your blood sugar. This will help prevent hunger, cravings and poor food choices.

It is vital that you eliminate sugar from your diet. Sugar makes you fat. Excess sugar affects every single organ in the body – including the liver. The liver is where sugar is stored in the form of glucose. Eventually, if sugar is consumed every day, your liver will be unable to store the excess sugar and is returned to the blood in the form of fatty acids. Guess where those fatty acids are stored? They are stored in the most inactive areas: The buttocks, the breasts and the thighs etc.

Stay away from fast foods, processed foods, sugar (desserts, sodas, candy etc), white rice (including rice cakes), white flour products and margarine. These foods wreak havoc on the body in many ways!

Hydrate! Drinking adequate water is one important tenet of weight loss. For example, two studies (Boshmann M, StienigerJ. 2003) found that by drinking 500 ml of water, increased metabolic rate by 30% in both men and women. The increase was observed 1o minutes after the consumption of water and the metabolic increase was sustained for over an hour! They attributed this to the increased metabolic action of room temperature water warming-up to body temperature.

To determine how much water you need each day, take your weight and divide by two. The result is the amount of ounces you need each day. Remember that larger people need more water, climate conditions warrant more as well as activity level.

Tip Three: Change Your Environment

You are a product of your environment. Place yourself in an environment or situation that will create weight loss success for you. That means looking at your refrigerator, cupboards, night stand, car, office desk for foods that will prevent you from achieving your weight loss goals. Dispose of all those ‘foods’ that do not serve you in your weight management or optimal health goals.

Use smaller plates, bowls and cups. This will help you serve smaller portions. They make your portions appear larger. Leave the table as soon as you are done eating. The longer you sit at the table, the more you will eat. If you are hungry later, you can have a small healthy snack. Ensure your environment contains elements that contribute to your success.

Commit to NOT eating in front of the TV. Do not have the TV around you when eating or snacking – either leave the room or move the TV.

Cravings will happen, so again, change your environment. When a craving strikes, when you want to reach for food – Create a Diversion. First acknowledge that yes, I do want that food because I am lonely, sad, angry etc. Then take a walk, call a friend, go for a ride in the car, play with your children, read a book, try deep breathing – anything to divert your attention from the food until the urge to eat passes.

Your health and quality of life depend upon your actions, your continual focus and…your tenacity.

Losing weight and living with optimal health is easy once you have the knowledge and motivation. If you would like to learn more about healthy permanent weight loss or any other area of health and nutrition, please visit us here: http://www.dlsHealthWorks.com/ and while you are visiting, please sign-up for your FREE Weight Loss Tips and your FREE eBook “7 Steps To Creating Optimum Health” Here you will find everything you need to create optimum health in your life.

Lori L. Shemek, PhD, CNC, CLC, is Founder and President of DLS HealthWorks. Dr. Lori is a Weight Loss Specialist focusing on healthy and permanent Weight loss. Lori is the creator of the highly successful “All You Can Eat” Weight Management Program. She is the show host of “Creating Optimum Health!” Lori is the Co-Author of “A Practical Guide On Aging Parents And Nutrition.

Article Source:  http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lori_L._Shemek,_Ph.D.

For a free ebook of even more weight loss tips, please leave your email address in the box to the right.

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”.