Weight Loss Diets

Effective Methods of Losing Weight While Having Fun

2010-04-02T00:27:00.000-07:00

The market is saturated with low-fat, low-carb and sugar-free foods. But despite the popular diets, "magical" pills and the latest, greatest fitness machines that all promise to melt away the pounds, more than half of American adults are overweight.

For true weight-loss success, health experts stress the importance of changing your lifestyle for the long term and exercising regularly. Here are some creative ways to make fitness fun again and help you win the battle of the bulge once and for all.

Take "healthy" vacations. Make fitness part of your travels. Head to a spa where, along with a little pampering, you can enjoy hiking, rock climbing, kickboxing, aqua aerobics and yoga.

Walk or run for a good cause. Training for a 5K charity walk, for example, may be all the motivation you need to get started on a regular fitness routine. Best of all, you'll be helping your favorite charity accomplish its goals.

Dance. Join a ballroom or hip-hop dancing class. It's a great way to shed the pounds, learn how to dance and have fun.

Strip the weight away. New DVDs featuring Carmen Electra help you spice up your regular workout routine and provide a fun new way to tone your body right in the comfort of your own living room. "Carmen Electra's Aerobic Striptease" and "Carmen Electra's Aerobic Striptease - Fit to Strip" are fast becoming wildly popular. With the help of fitness experts, Electra teaches viewers how to trim down with high- and low-impact dance and fitness techniques. The strengthening moves are designed to help tone the hips, thighs, buns and abs. The DVDs' special features include a pop-up video display with workout tips and a customizable music track.

Do Pilates. Find out what makes Pilates the workout of choice for countless celebrities, and why your gym's Pilates classes are always full. The "MTV: Pilates Mix" DVD, hosted by renowned Pilates and yoga instructor Kristin McGee, is perfect for those who want to add a more cutting-edge beat to their workout. The DVD features two half-hour workout sessions that focus on toning the arms, legs and abs, with a music mix that motivates you to get up and work out.

Healthy Weight Loss Tips

2010-04-01T13:25:00.000-07:00

Today more than ever there is so much information out there on losing weight that is has become very confusing and sometimes difficult to follow. It’s actually very easy to lose weight if you follow my 7 principles.

1. Before you can start any diet program you need to be in the right frame of mind. If you do not feel good about yourself you probably will not want to choose healthy foods. You cannot expect the act of going on a diet to make you feel better about yourself. The only way you can choose to eat a healthy diet to lose weight is if you have a positive self-image.

2. Learn more about who your ancestors were. If you eat more like your ancestors you will be eating food that is better for your body. You will likely lose weight, have more energy and feel great. It has been shown when a group of people stop eating the food that was indigenous to them they start gaining weight and having health problems.

3. Eat whole foods that are as natural as possible. When you eat whole foods that are full of nutrients your body will know how much to eat and how much not to eat. You do not have to count calories because your body is a wonderful machine. If given the right nutrients you will be at the best weight for you, have plenty of energy and feel great. Eating highly processed empty calorie foods will cause your body to always be hungry because it’s trying to get the nutrients it needs.

4. Drink the best weight loss supplement known to man, water. Most people do not know the difference from being hungry for food or thirsty for water. A great deal of times people eat when they should drink. Most likely you will not feel as hungry if you are getting enough water. You will be satisfying the thirst, which is confused for hunger. Water also helps you digest food better. Drinking water before you eat will help fill you up.

5. Always chew your food well. Chewing your food well will ensure that you get the most nutrients out of your food. Getting the most nutrients will satisfy your body therefore you will eat less. Another benefit of chewing well is that it helps aid in digestion.

6. Eat small, frequent meals in a day. Large meals tax your digestion system, making it work harder. Taking too much time in between meals makes you hungrier for the next meal.

7. Increase your physical activity. Most people are over weight because of a lack of physical activity. Start walking more, bicycling, walk your dog for longer periods of time, swim, dance and leave the car at home when you can. It’s important that you choose a physical activity that you enjoy because you’ll stick with it. Choosing a physical activity purely based on the fact that it burns a lot of calories may be a mistake.

A Real Weight Loss Story

2010-03-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

Are you more or less constantly thinking about your weight, or whether you’re eating or not eating?

Do you find that at times when you start eating that you just can’t stop yourself? And then when your clothes don’t fit do you decide to resolve that by eating more?

Often as a consequence of this common behaviour is that you will feel bad about yourself and imagine that everyone is thinking how big you are, thus increasing your anxiety about your eating and image, so that you eat more to comfort yourself.

You might not believe it yet there are steps you can take to get you out this self-destructive cycle and turn around the negative feelings that you experience.

When we are in these ‘mind-traps’ we are habitually repeating thought patterns and acting on them without questioning where they come from and what they do for us.

A simple question such as: ‘What will that do for me?’ can often be the beginning of understanding ourselves better and our behaviour. Approaching the problem in this way can be the first step towards doing things differently.

It works like this: a bad experience gives you the urge to go to the biscuit tin and eat as many biscuits as you can. But this time, instead of binging on biscuits, as yourself: ‘What will that do for me?’

If the answer is something like ‘It gives me a treat,’ ask yourself: ‘And if I have this treat, what does that do for me?; Again, wait for your answer, it may be something like, ‘If I have this treat then I will feel appreciated.’ If this is your response carry on and ask yourself: ‘If I get to feel appreciated, what does that do for me?’ Listen for an answer and keep asking yourself the same question, until you can go no further with your responses. What you’re looking for is the higher motivation behind the behaviour ‘eating too many biscuits’. By doing this on a regular basis you will get in touch with what you really want and take your first step to controlling the food cravings.

I worked with a client who was unhappy with her weight and eating. Her name was Amy, a wife and working mother of two young boys. We did this exercise and she realised that she wanted to feel comforted.

When we looked at other aspects of her life it became clear that she never put herself first in terms of what she wanted and one way or another she now felt unappreciated and lacking.

Amy also realised that rarely gave her self permission to have ‘me time’ to do things like soak in a luxurious bath, or go out with friends, or watch what she wanted on TV, These all may seem like small trivial things, but added together they became the source of her feelings of being invisible, not appreciated and generally unloved.

Amy worked on creating ways that she could reward, comfort and appreciate herself that didn’t have to mean eating. Very soon she became very clear about her goals and how to achieve them. People around her noticed a change and responded by being more receptive and positive towards her. As a result, she easily shed weight, looked and was much happier, and forgot all about eating for comfort.

I Must Lose Weight Now

2010-03-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

My doctor told me to lose some weight. "You are overweight", he told me, "and you need to lose some weight if you want to control your cholesterol."

My doctor told me that I playing with fire and he knew people who never grew up to see their chilren grow up as adults because they neglected their were highly fat and neglected their health.

I am only 38 years old! It is a known fact that the worst age for having heart attacks is around 40 years.

Can I possibly survive without those jumbo burgers and chips.But what if my doctor is right?!

The doctor is probably right. I must not be selfish and I must think about my kids. How can my wife cope all by herself! She probably cannot. For a single parent to grow up three children all by her own is something out of this world!

I have meditated long about this and I hardly managed to close an eye at night.

Gail, my wife, does not know anything about this story, I thought it would be better to keep it to myself, at least for the time being.

The following morning, I decided to call my superior at work and ask him if I could take the day off. I was feeling really tired after a terrible night! As I was at home, I thought it would be better to do a Google search to see how many people are there who like me need to lose weight. As I suspected, I am not the only one out there who has an obesity problem and who want to talk about it. Among the many problems that have many modern countries is the obesity problem.

With the proliferation of junk food establishments and the sedentary kind of lifestyle, this comes at no surprise.

On the net I have found various sites that talk about obesity and the risks of being obese. Some of the risks include:

Possibility of having heart related diseases and circulation problems.

Probablilty of getting a heart stroke is much greater.

Added possibility of getting colon, kindey or esophagus cancer.

Increased chance of developing breast cancer.

Fatty liver disease which can lead to liver damage or liver failure.

Added chances of getting gallstones and gallbladder infection.

Sleep apnea and other sleep related disorders.

Risk of developing osteoarthritis, which is a joint disorder that causes the wearing of joint bones and cartridges.

Risk of having pregnancy complications, which can lead to premature birth or brain and spinal cord damages in the newborn.

Twenty years ago, I did not have the sedentary lifestyle I have today. When I was younger, I did not own a car and as a result it was normal for me to walk a couple of miles a day.

Many years ago I used to have smaller food portion sizes than today and unlike today, I was not used to having dessert after eating. No wonder why I used to weight eighty less pounds than what I weight today.

I never thought about buying fat loss supplements, even though I have seen them on sale at many supermarkets and chemists. Weight loss capsules and supplements never convinced me and I was always skeptic whether such products were really effective.

I Googled the keyword "fat burning supplements" and it came back with 1,140,000 results. I must not be the only one looking for such a term.

After an hour of so of browsing, I found a few keywords that I have never seen before. These included: wu long tea, hoodia and acai berries. "These look interesting", I said to myself, while at the same time deciding to look further on these supplements. I was really surprises to find a great deal of sites related to these products.

Many of the websites I came across talked positively about the supplements, even though I could never tell whether or not such sites were written by the same organizations that created these weight loss supplements Quite logically I was a bit skeptic about how legitimate were these articles. Obviously the thought that the company that creates these articles and the company that sells these supplements is the same one cam to my my mind, but this was pure speculation.

However I thought between me and myself that I should still try one of these supplements and then decide on my own it I had reason to be cynic in the first place.

For some apparent reason, acai berry supplements kind of interested me more than the other products (perhaps because I love Brazilian women (:)most websites selling acai berry capsules entitle you to try the solution for free for a couple of weeks or so. However you still need to pay for the shipping and handling costs. "Why not spend a few dollars to try something that can really help?", I said to myself. I spent thousands of dollars on fast food meals, so I though that it was worth eisking a few dollars for something that can help me with my problem.

That will be the end of my story for now.

Hope to receive my acai berry free trial soon, so as to try it out. But what if my doctor was not totally correct in his observations?

Weight Loss Diets

2010-03-22T14:26:00.000-07:00

Obesity is a physical state that refers to excessive body fat. Chances are you have experienced the frustrations of dieting at least once in your life, if you have problems with your weight. Close to a hundred million Americans go on a weight loss diet in any given year and up to ninety-five percent of them regain the weight they lose within five years. Worse, a third will gain back more weight than they lost, in danger of "yo-yoing" from one popular diet to another. The conventional approach to weight problems, focusing on fad weight loss diets or weight loss drugs, may leave you with just as much weight and the additional burden of ill health.

Today, an estimated sixty-five percent of all American adults are obese or overweight. Our culture obsesses about staying thin even as we grow fatter, but this isn’t about appearances. Obesity is known to be a precursor to many debilitating health conditions such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, osteoarthritis, and gallbladder disease. Obesity contributes to as many as 375,000 deaths every year. In addition, the public health costs for obesity are staggering. According to researchers at Harvard University, obesity is a factor in 19% of all cases of heart disease with annual health costs estimated at 30 billion dollars; it’s also a factor in 57% of diabetes cases, with health costs of $9 billion per year.

Set Realistic Goals:

No doubt you have fallen for one or more of the weight loss diet schemes over the years, promising quick and painless weight loss. Many of these quick weight loss diet programs undermine your health, cause physical discomfort, flatulence, and ultimately lead to disappointment when you start regaining weight, shortly after losing it. Fad or quick weight loss diet programs generally overstress one type of food. They contravene the fundamental principle of good nutrition - to remain healthy one must consume a balanced diet, which includes a variety of foods. Safe, healthy, and permanent weight reduction is what’s truly lost among the thousands of popular diet schemes.

Some of the weight loss diet schemes reign supreme briefly, only to fade out. While some wane from popularity due to being unproductive or unsafe, some simply lose the public's curiosity. Examples of such fad diets include the South Beach Diet, Atkins diet, the Grapefruit diet, Cabbage Soup diet, the Rotation diet, Beverly Hills diet, Breatharian, Ornish Plan – the list goes on and on. These fad diets advocate a specific technique (such as eliminating a certain food, or eating only certain combinations of foods) in conjunction with the basic idea that the body makes up the difference in energy by breaking down and utilizing some part of itself, essentially converting matter into energy. This self-cannibalism, or catabolism as it is referred, typically starts with breakdown of stored body fat.