Healthy Foods

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Mind Over Weight Loss

A very famous author indeed, whose name I really should remember, once said that he attributed his great literary success to the fact that he only ever wrote when he was in the mood and yet he had been so prolific and acclaimed. What a lucky man; such great talent, so effortless. Asked how he achieved the right mind set for writing, he replied "every morning at 9am I make sure I'm in the mood". Hard work and discipline did it for him. It seems the harder he worked, the luckier he got.

Now the obvious lesson if you want to learn it is that if you really want to lose weight, you have to get yourself motivated to do it, whether you feel like it or not.

Success is a pinch of desire mixed with a double handful of determination and persistence. Motivation is not a tap that you can just turn on. It's a bit more like a rusty old well pump that needs a lot of attention to get it functioning. To help you get the motivation flowing, work out the answer these 2 simple questions. Write your answers down. Leave them where you can see them. Often.

1. Why do you want to lose weight? Dig deep till you find the real reason, not what you've been told to believe. The motivation for your weight loss has to be dear to your heart and vitally important for you - even if it seems a silly girly reason like not wanting your high school friends from 20 years ago to freak when your unexpectedly massive frame bears down on them at the reunion.

If you don't have a rock solid personal reason to lose weight, you are not going to do it. You have to put weight loss as one of the very top priorities in your life. You can't do that if you don't sincerely believe in its importance to you. So identify your reason and acknowledge it, grab a pen and get writing: "I want to lose weight because..."

2. How are you going to go about losing weight? Do you have the determination to go for broke with a low carb or meal replacement option or is that too much too soon? Are you going to join a "boot camp" type of fitness class or take regular brisk walks on your own?

Remember whether you opt for fast or slow weight loss, sooner or later you have to take up the weight control diet and regular exercise program that is going to keep your weight low and steady for the rest of your life.

Plan ahead with your short, medium and long term goals. The more detailed your plan, the better your chance of long term success. So, I'd be writing something like: "My plan to lose weight is to eat....my exercise routine will be..."

Once you have identified your reason to lose weight and worked out a plan, don't hesitate. Get into it. Review your plan at regular intervals and be tough but fair on yourself.

Train your brain and your body will follow.

Rosie Peters gives common sense advice, encouragement and tips for weight loss, sensible diet and lifelong fitness. Sometimes it's not what you want to hear, but what you need to know. Visit Rosie at weight-control-diet-advice.com.

Rosie's e-Book Weight Loss is Simple may be what you're after. Check it out & get a FREE copy of her popular e-Book Fat No More, while you're there.

Tips On Fast Weight Loss For Special Occasions

If you are like me, you have probably been through all this before, the family wedding is coming up next month and you can't seem to fit into that suit or dress because you have put on too much weight. So you must lose at least ten or more pounds quickly.

Losing weight quickly is not advisable as most of the loss will be muscle tissue and water; you put on the weight slowly (usually over years) so normally you should take it off slowly and then you will know that the majority of the loss will be body fat.

But you have a problem here and the clock is ticking so you will have to diet pretty hard to meet your target weight loss. Let's look at that first, you all know that diets don't work; they send the body into starvation mode, a survival mechanism from long age when humans faced periods of famine.

Going too low in calories causes the body to lower its metabolic rate, which reduces its ability to burn fat. At the same time, hunger signals increase and you quickly start to crave high-energy foods loaded with fats and sugar, the same foods you are trying to do without.

Research shows repeated dieting actually makes it harder to lose weight and easier to put it on because when you dump the diet and return to normal eating habits the drop in metabolic rate caused by the diet means that your old habits actually represent an excess in calories.

Not only do you regain the fat stores just lost, but also you may even gain an extra bit.

Knowing this, you really don't want to put yourselves through this rigorous process, but for this special occasion you will. First though, you will have to boost the metabolism that has been lowered by the dieting.

To do this you will have to perform a "Strength Training" workout to generate that initial spike in your metabolism. By increasing the lean muscle on your body by using Strength Training, your metabolism will increase, burning fat along the way.

The strength training technique I use requires just twenty to thirty mins per week. Gone are the days of the five-day a week program with 6 to 12 sets per body part that, method has never worked.

One short intense strength-training workout a week will elevate your metabolism more than you ever thought possible.

While the calories expended doing exercise are important, the increase in metabolism especially after strength training continues long after the exercise is finished, burning calories at the same time.

The two main components of this technique are the intensity of the exercise and the recovery after the exercise.

Infrequent, short, high intensity weight training sessions, followed by the required amount of time to recover and become stronger is what is needed to increase functional lean muscle and lose body fat.

Small frequent meals should be consumed during the day each containing a little protein to maintain muscle mass and energy levels. A high quality broad-spectrum vitamin and mineral supplement should also be taken on a daily basis.

As before get the calories from high quality food but if you can't, utilize a blender to make concoctions from skim milk with whatever additives you want to use, just as long as you keep count of the calories for your daily total.

Now use these blender mixtures and solid food for your daily feedings. Spread it out over many small meals a day instead of the traditional three meals a day. The way to keep track of weight loss is to buy a calorie counter and record your daily calorie intake for a week.

Now average out how many calories you consume a day with the use of a seven-day eating plan and calorie counter, once you have this figure subtract 1000 calories and this will be the target number of calories you will be aiming for.

Remembering that one-pound of fat contains 3500cals, losing 1000 calories a day will total 7000 for the week, which equals two pounds lost by dietary means alone. Another technique for low calorie eating is to watch your fat intake as this has the most calories.

Incidental activity is also very important if you want to lose this amount of weight in this short period of time, by increasing incidental activity you can burn at least another pound a week The best exercise for the purpose of fat-loss is fast walking either indoors on the treadmill or outdoors.

Walk until you are mildly puffing and hold that rate until the allotted time. If your aerobic activities leave you panting or breathless, your going too hard, your energy is coming from your carbohydrate reserves and not from your fat stores. Try fast walking for one hour a day every day of the week.

Well there you have it, as an experienced trainer I wouldn't recommend this type of program to my clients. The weight loss is just too quick and the program would be very hard to maintain owing to the very low caloric intake.

I advise my clients to decrease their calories by just 500 per day (and no more) below their maintenance levels and they will be losing 1 - 2 pounds of body fat every week, safely, without craving and without too much disruption to their lifestyle.

In conclusion remember, think long term here and that's between 30 and 50 pounds of fat lost in six months. Any faster and all you will be losing is water and precious muscle tissue.

Gary Matthews is the author of the popular fitness eBooks Maximum Weight Loss and Maximum Weight Gain. Please visit http://www.maximumfitness.com right now for your 'free' weight loss e-course.

Weight Loss Body Wraps

Weight loss body wraps have been all the craze this year. But, you're probably wondering if its really possible if they could work? How could body wraps enable you burn fat and lose weight? Sounds impossible, but read on to find out how.

The Science Behind Weight Loss Body Wraps

Weight loss body wraps enable a variety of processes which facilitate both inch loss and the ability to better metabolize fat.

The first process is called lymphatic drainage. This process is also incited during some types of special massage. During this process, the interstitial fluids (lymph) in your fat cells, is allowed to move freely and transports your fatty acids and toxins out of your body as waste. These fluids contain harmful impurities which your body has stored from the processed foods we eat and the air we breathe. Losing these fluids will allow you to lose inches immediately.

The second process is called lipolysis. This is the huge one. Most body wraps that you find on the internet and such, will not stimulate lipolysis. This is what identifies a true weight loss body wrap. Lipolysis is the breakdown of fat stored in your fat cells! By breaking down this fat, and stimulating lymphatic drainage and circulation, your fatty acids are carried out of your body as waste.

The third process is called micro-circulation. This is basically the blood flow through your tiniest of capillaries. The active state of this process is critical for weight loss body wrap to truly enable weight loss. Your fat cells are engrossed with miles of capillaries and for your fat cells to expel waste and toxins properly, your capillaries must be stimulated to circulate blood appropriately.

If you are looking for real weight loss body wraps, I'd recommend: Weight Loss Body Wraps

Brandon Walsh is considered an expert author in the fields of biblical nutrition, weight loss, and healthy living.

The Three Simple Steps To Fat Loss

Its unbelievable but being overweight has now moved from a social nuisance and domestic embarrassment to an official disease.

The American Heart Association has announced obesity a dangerous epidemic and a major risk for heart disease. More than 70% of US adults are overweight and that figure is rapidly increasing.

But by following three simple steps in your everyday life you do not have to become one of the above statistics. They are easy to follow without time constraints and don't require a complete lifestyle change. These three steps are:

1. Strength Training - Nowadays you do not have to live in a gym to put on functional muscle. Short High Intensity sessions performed once a week is all that is required to elevate the metabolism for total fat burning.

2. A Small Decrease in Daily Calories - Diets don't work (everybody knows this by now) but by decreasing your daily calories by a small amount, the weight loss is body fat alone and not lean tissue and water that is associated with crash diets.

Remember fat accumulates on the body over a long period of time so it must come off slowly.

3. More Incidental Activity - Instead of driving try walking, walk instead of taking elevators or escalators; take the stairs and so on. Just keep moving through out the day.

Lets have a look at the Three Steps in more detail below:

Strength Training

Between the ages of 20 and 70 the average person loses one quarter of their muscle mass. Running, cycling or other aerobic sports will not prevent this loss.

This is very disturbing because the muscles are the engines of the body and every pound of muscle burns 100 calories every day.

By adding just 10 pounds of functional muscle to your body, you will burn off 60 pounds of fat over the next year.

Providing you take in the same amount of calories, it will keep burning those extra pounds year after year! The amount of fat the body can burn is directly related to the lean muscle your body has.

If you don't perform weight training to maintain your muscle tissue, you will lose half a pound of the fat burning tissue per year after the age of 20 years. In simpler terms the more functional muscle you have on your body the more fat you will burn up.

Small Decrease in Daily Calories

For years now, we have been told to use dieting to rid the excess fat from our bodies.

The trouble with this concept is that the low calorie restricted diet would throw the body into starvation mode, with the body holding onto the fat and using precious muscle tissue for energy.

This would then lower the metabolism causing greater muscle loss and when the diet is broken the unwanted fat would not only return but actually increase because to the lowered metabolism.

The way around this is to cut your daily calorie intake by a small amount of calories only. This will stop any starvation mechanisms from clicking in.

You can do this by making up a seven day eating plan and writing down every thing you eat for the week, and then work out the calories you have eaten with a calorie counter. Divide this figure by seven and you have your daily calorie value.

Decrease daily calorie value by a couple of hundred calories per day and no more. This will generate slow weight loss and the majority will be fat loss only. The daily calories should be consumed during the day with small frequent meals.

The calories should come from a balanced diet (no fad diets please) with the required amount of micronutrients, vitamins and minerals. As well as containing the required amounts of fibre, fat, protein and carbohydrates.

More Incidental Activity

Fat is burned from the body when cells oxidize to release energy in the form of exercise. When the exercise is done slowly to moderately then the majority of energy is taken from the fat stores.

The key to effective aerobic training that burns off maximum fat is long-term consistency not intensity. It doesn't matter if you run a mile, jog a mile or walk a mile you will burn exactly the same amount of calories.

The best exercise by far for the purpose of fat-loss is fast walking either indoors on the treadmill or outdoors. Other aerobic activities are the treadmill, bike, climber or any other training gear found in or out of the Gym.

Start with 100 minutes of controlled incidental activity per week increasing this to 200 minutes a week or more. In all other activities try to move, move, move.

Try parking the car further away from your destination so you can walk the extra distance, hide all your remote controls so you have to get up and change the channels manually. These all help burn those extra calories and body fat from your frame.

So go ahead, by incorporating these three simple fat loss steps into your everyday life you will not have to change your lifestyle or be subject to time constraints.

Gary Matthews is the author of the popular fitness eBooks Maximum Weight Loss and Maximum Weight Gain. Please visit http://www.maximumfitness.com right now for your 'free' weight loss e-course.

Lose 5 Pounds Fast - Success Secrets That Will Change Your Life

How Can I Lose 5 Pounds Fast?

If you want to lose 5 pounds fast then you are not alone. There are many people out there just like you that would feel so much better, and enjoy how they look in their clothes so much more if they could get this excess weight off. Looking good and feeling good are both very, very important. It influences our sense of self and even how we feel about ourselves. So, your goal to lose 5 pounds is not a minor one.

If you really want to lose 5 pounds fast, then you will need to do your homework. You will need to find a way to do it that will help you to not only lose this weight quickly, but to also do so in a healthy and safe way. Keep in mind also, that if you ideal weight is 5 pounds lighter, then you don't want these pounds to keep creeping back up again and again. You want to find a way to get the pounds off and keep the pounds off.

As you do your research, be sure to look for a plan that can help you in the long term by showing you how to eat and how to burn fat. Some of the diet and weight loss systems out there do a good job of helping you lose 5 pounds fast, but they don't help you create good habits going forward. A system that teaches you good habits and smart tricks can really help you develop some of these good habits.

You don't have to be overwhelmed by the idea of simply wanting to lose 5 pounds fast. But, you do want to be informed and smart about how you do it. Just learn the tips and tricks that many of the famous people use to keep their weight in the desired range, and you too will be able to look and feel the way that you want to.

Did this information on how to lose weight help you? I suggest that you learn more about calorie based diet plans here.

Easy Weight Loss Is There Really One Plan That Works For Everybody

People these days hop from one weight loss program to another without realizing how self-destroying this attitude can be! As a matter of fact, weight loss is all about finding a suitable plan for yourself and then working according to it, but too often, people make the mistake of searching for a "perfect plan" which would make them lose weight without either diet and exercise. Unfortunately, no weight loss program is perfect. In this article I will tell you about a weight loss program that I am sure will work for you as well as for everyone else!

One thing that people often forget to make is a food plan. Write what you'd be eating throughout the week, then shop accordingly. If you don't do this you are more likely to grab the junk foods when there is nothing nutritious at home. Plan your office lunch as well. Make sure you take only healthy foods for your office lunch and stay away from the 'forbidden foods' that are rich in fat and calorie and contribute to nothing other than fat!

Before choosing any weight loss program, you need to be 100% honest with yourself and ask yourself some questions. I'd ask you to write on a sheet of paper all about how much you eat daily and how often, whether you exercise or not, whether you eat junk foods and calorie-rich snacks, etc. Once you've answered these questions honestly, you will get a clearer picture of your eating habits as well as what you need to change in order to lose weight.

Check Out The Web's #1 Diet & Weight Loss Review Site - http://www.TopFatLossDiets.com You Can Begin To Lose Weight Now with Instant Downloads from Today's Top Fat Loss Diets! Decide Which Diet or Weight Loss Program Fits You The Best & Lose Weight Now: http://www.TopFatLossDiets.com

Easy Weight Loss Is There Really One Plan That Works For Everybody

People these days hop from one weight loss program to another without realizing how self-destroying this attitude can be! As a matter of fact, weight loss is all about finding a suitable plan for yourself and then working according to it, but too often, people make the mistake of searching for a "perfect plan" which would make them lose weight without either diet and exercise. Unfortunately, no weight loss program is perfect. In this article I will tell you about a weight loss program that I am sure will work for you as well as for everyone else!

One thing that people often forget to make is a food plan. Write what you'd be eating throughout the week, then shop accordingly. If you don't do this you are more likely to grab the junk foods when there is nothing nutritious at home. Plan your office lunch as well. Make sure you take only healthy foods for your office lunch and stay away from the 'forbidden foods' that are rich in fat and calorie and contribute to nothing other than fat!

Before choosing any weight loss program, you need to be 100% honest with yourself and ask yourself some questions. I'd ask you to write on a sheet of paper all about how much you eat daily and how often, whether you exercise or not, whether you eat junk foods and calorie-rich snacks, etc. Once you've answered these questions honestly, you will get a clearer picture of your eating habits as well as what you need to change in order to lose weight.

Check Out The Web's #1 Diet & Weight Loss Review Site - http://www.TopFatLossDiets.com You Can Begin To Lose Weight Now with Instant Downloads from Today's Top Fat Loss Diets! Decide Which Diet or Weight Loss Program Fits You The Best & Lose Weight Now: http://www.TopFatLossDiets.com

Diet Plans To Lose 25 Pounds Fast!

There are so many diet plans to lose 25 pounds that fail. I am about to give you a quick overview of a diet that will help you lose 25 pounds pretty quickly. Not only that its in a healthy manner and if you keep doing it you can lose even more. This article might not be the most well written, but if you follow it you will lose weight.

-Eat oatmeal every other morning along with one fruit of your choice. On the other morning you should eat a small bowl of cereal or some lean chicken/fruits. Make sure you do not exceed 550 calories for this small meal.

-Eat a small meal of around 350 calories around noon that consist of mainly lean meats, fruits, vegetables or whole grains. Stay away from all fast food as well as any other fattening foods like pizza, fried chicken etc.

-Eat another meal thats around 300 calories around 3 pm in the afternoon. This meal will consist of perhaps some brown rice, lean meat and some yogurt. Just make sure you keep the calories right around 300-350. Many diet plans to lose 25 pounds tell you to eat less, but if you keep the calories low it actually raises the metabolism and helps you burn more fat.

-Eat your last meal of the day at around 7:30 pm and make it around 400 calories. Again this should consist of lean meats, fruits and veggies.

Keep in mind its ok if you slip up say once every two days, you will also need to increase your exercise of course. Run around a half mile to mile per day for 5 days a week. I must also advise that you consult your doctor first before trying this new diet as he/she should be aware of any diet changes. I hope you like this diet plans to lose 25 pounds and wish you good luck. If you need any more help check out my bio box below. Have a great day!

John is a self proclaimed Weight Loss Enthusiast. Hurry and you can get a step by step weight loss ebook and see a powerful weight loss method at his site at his site http://www.weightlossrocket.com and see more Diet Plans To Lose 25 Pounds now!