Posts Tagged ‘Weight Loss’

So, you have hypothyroidism and you might be thinking “What’s the use of being on a diet for hypothyroidism? I won’t be able to lose any weight”. You may be right. Maybe you are one of the few that doesn’t respond to treatment or doesn’t diet well. But, there is a good chance that you may be wrong and I’m willing to bet that you are. I am also willing to bet that given enough time and effort you will be able to achieve any realistic weight loss goals that you set for yourself.  Read more... (483 words, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

What’s keeping you from losing weight? For most people, the answer is lack of motivation.

It comes in many forms, sometimes before starting the diet or during the diet.

Maybe you just can’t get started because the whole process is too overwhelming. First you have to choose the diet, gather the recipes, buy the proper food, measure it, and prepare it. Maybe the rest of the family won’t eat what’s on your diet, so you need to prepare something else in addition to your diet meals.  Read more... (603 words, estimated 2:25 mins reading time)

Susan hates this time of year.

“I always lose a few pounds over the summer,” the 42-year-old mother and homemaker says. “But as soon as Halloween arrives, I gain the weight back, along with a few more pounds. I start eating the kids’ treats and then the holidays arrive. Every January, I am fatter, more stressed out, and more tired than the year before. Even my skin suffers!”  Read more... (1229 words, estimated 4:55 mins reading time)

Losing weight, and keeping those extra pounds off, is one of the most elusive goals you might ever encounter. If you are serious about losing weight, watching what you eat is only part of the formula. Is it possible to lose weight by eating well? Well, yes. Eating well is a key part of losing weight. Being careful about what you put on your plate, and controlling your portion size can definitely help slim your waist size. But the hard truth is that diet without exercise will only get you so far in the weight loss game.
In order to lose weight, and keep it off, you will have to integrate some kind of exercise routine into your weight loss regime.
What happens when you attempt to lose weight without exercising? Reducing your caloric intake while not exercising can actually harm your chances of achieving weight loss! If you try a low-calorie diet, you can actually be sending signals to your body that triggers a slow-down effect on your metabolism. When you make a significant reduction in your food intake, your body may react by preparing for starvation. That is, your body may prepare itself for not getting it’s accustomed ration of calories. When your body goes into ‘starvation mode’, your metabolic rate slows down. Thus, you end up burning up fewer calories.
Another negative side effect of going on a low-calorie, no exercise diet is that it can threaten your muscle tissue stores. If you find yourself losing weight through diet alone, you can be sure that you are probably losing valuable muscle tissue. Exercise helps you lose fat, while retaining and building muscle tissue. Having more muscle means having a higher basal metabolic rate, while losing muscle can cause serious long-term health problems.
Exercise and Metabolism
Simply stated, diet without exercise will only get you so far because if you are not exercising, your metabolism remains stagnant. We hear a lot about metabolism, but do you know exactly what it is? Metabolism refers to the amount of calories burned by your body. This number can vary, depending on several factors. The most basic metabolic calculation is known as your basal metabolic rate (or BMR).
Your BMR is the number of calories your body uses simply to keep your vital functions going. Vital functions include your breathing, brain function, and your heartbeat. In some ways, you can think of your BMR as your ‘standing’ metabolic rate. Everyone’s BMR is different. Factors that influence your BMR include age, body composition, activity level, and diet, height, gender, and stress level.
Individuals with a higher BMR will burn calories faster than those with lower BMR. If you are serious about losing weight and keeping it off, one of your goals should be to increase your BMR. This is where exercise comes into the picture. One of the best ways to increase your BMR is to add some forms of regular exercise into your weight loss plan.
Adding Exercise into Your Weight Loss Plan
If you the type of person who would rather live on celery sticks and water than do sit-ups, you are not alone. Adding exercise to your weight loss regime can seem difficult, especially if you are not active. The truth is that exercise doesn’t have to be painful, time consuming, or simply mind-numbingly dull. Here are a few valuable tips for adding exercise to your life in a way that will spare you the pain and boredom of traditional weight loss routines.
1. Start slow. Many people make the mistake of setting high exercise goals after long periods of inactivity. Just because your becoming more active doesn’t mean you have to sign up for a marathon. Start slow by doing active things that are easy to work into your schedule. Go for a short walk with a friend, or take the dog out for a walk. Just focus on working in 15 to 20 minutes of walking into your day.
2. Make it fun for you. Make a list of activities you like to do. Are you a gardener? If so, there’s good news for you. Gardening is an excellent way to get exercise while having fun. You’d be surprised how many calories you can burn simply by mowing the lawn, or pulling weeds. Do you like to play softball? Tennis? Golf? All are good ways to get your body moving, while having fun at the same time. Pick out a sport or activity you’ve always wanted to try, or return to an activity that you once loved.
3. Get an exercise buddy. Any type of activity or exercise is more fun if you do it with a friend. Working out with an exercise buddy can help keep you committed and motivated. Even if you’re not a big fan of jogging, you’ll find that it can be fun with a good friend trotting along side you. Again, focus on finding something fun that you both enjoy.

Nutritional health is very important. The nutrients that we take in are practically the reasons why we are healthy or why we are not. It could also be a grid to determine if we can eventually become sports superstars or not. Nutritional health may be the main reason why you are tall, strong and have the skills to be good in sports. This is also vital for having a strong mind and a healthy body because of the fact that these nutrients fuel almost all bodily functions.
In reality, many people fail to achieve a high level of nutritional health. Some reasons why they are not adequately nourished is because of their lack of information. Some people do not even know that what they are eating is bad for them. Some food also lack nutritional facts that they should have on their labels. And some just do not care at all.
People also have this misconception that what is tasty is good for your health. It is really hard to resist unhealthy food because of their availability on the market. Media also advertise more on unhealthy junk foods rather than healthy ones. Unhealthy food may be a reason for us to be fat. If you want to keep healthy, you must first get rid of unwanted fats and be fit as possible.
Some athletes also have low nutritional levels because of certain factors. One is poor understanding of sports nutrition principles. They think that eating many will make the healthy.
Nutritional requirements also differ among people depending on their training program and personal characteristics like age, sex and body type. Their failure to recognize these may also cause malnourishment as they may take too much or less of their nutrients required.
Some athletes also diet too much compromising their nutritional needs. Their lack of knowledge on nutritional facts also contributes to it. Their lack of time and opportunity to eat and the tendency to skip meals is also one reason. Overeating is also a factor of malnourishment because you might eat and take in a lot of fats and unwanted chemicals that may be unhealthy.
The sports nutritional health can be broken down into the foundation of what food is basically made of namely proteins, carbohydrates and fats. We should get optimum amounts of these types for more energy and more muscle gains. You can only lose more than one pound of fat per week if you exercise properly and eat the right food instead of starving yourself. Starving will only bring you malnourishment.
If you are losing fat quickly by starving yourself, over dieting and doing too much exercise, you may be at a risk of slowing down your metabolism and your body might start using the glucose found in your muscles as a source for energy. That is why losing weight bit by bit for a long period of time instead of losing weight quickly is much more preferable.
There are toxins found in our fatty tissues and when we loose fat, these toxins are released back into our body. Losing too much fat in a short period of time means that you are releasing more amounts of toxins into the body causing us to be sick.
On your diet, try to avoid eating food with too much saturated fat because they are bad fats and will make you gain more weight. What you should do is to ingest unsaturated fats of the good fat because it will help you lose weight.
By eating good oils like deep-water fish oil, flax seed oil and linseed oils, you are actually aiding yourself as it rids your body of fatty deposits helping you lose more fat. This weight loss program actually takes a lot of time so only take measurements every two months to give you a better look on how your are progressing on keeping fit and sexy and how much fat you are actually losing.
I discourage you on taking those commercial diets because they will only set you up for failure and disappointment. These diets make you lose fat so quickly that when you try to start eating again more than you did while on diet, you will gain weight very fast. You should look for a way to lose weight in a slow and realistic rate.
Here are some tips: First is to stay away from white sugar and all other natural sweetener. You should also stay away from simple sugars and take in slowly digested complex carbohydrates. Eat food high in fiber in order to detoxify. And lastly, exercise. The right combination of exercise and nutrients will give you a high level of sports nutritional health.

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As a society, we look up to celebrities and make them our personal idols. There is always something they have that we want, be it their stylish haircut, flawless skin, sparkling smile, or shapely body. We are always eager to learn about the latest celebrity diets, trainers, and weight loss tips. Marketing teams not only know this, but they also study it extensively in order to take full advantage of our wanting nature. Companies use celebrities to get their products noticed, and to lend credibility to their advertising campaigns.  Read more... (224 words, estimated 54 secs reading time)

Why do you want to lose weight? What is your main reason for going on a diet? When most people go on a diet they want to lose weight for a variety of personal reasons. Some want to fit into old clothes they’d like to wear again. Others want their current wardrobe to fit better. Yet others want to look good in a bathing suit at the beach or look more attractive to the opposite sex. If these reasons alone were enough to motivate most people to lose weight, we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic. Studies have shown that if you have a big enough reason to do something, something that is a major motivator; you are more likely to succeed. What could that be in terms of weight loss? It is important to understand that losing weight and keeping it off is not just about you. Your success can affect loved ones around you and descendents not yet born. Say, what? Many studies have been done that show if parents are overweight; their children are more likely to be overweight. The likelihood is great if just one parent is overweight and if both are overweight, the children are more likely to be overweight than they are to be of normal weight. Now think about this, your children are likely to have children. If your children are overweight than its likely your grandchildren will be overweight. These grandchildren of yours are likely to have children and so on and so on. In other words, the success you have at weight loss can affect thousands of your descendents not yet born. Are you getting motivated?  Try this exercise: Sit in a comfortable chair and close your eyes (obviously don’t attempt this while driving). Take a couple of deep breadths to relax yourself. Imagine you are sitting in the middle of the field of a large sports stadium. All of the seats are filled, the place is packed, and there is a feeling of electricity in the air. They are all there for you! These thousands and thousands of people are your descendents. They are so grateful for your weight loss success and the example you set for your loved ones. They know that if it wasn’t for you, instead of being normal weight, they may all be obese. There is a big scoreboard at the end of the stadium that says in big letters “Thank you” (Insert your name here). You see next to this scoreboard a large video screen. On this screen a countdown has started from 10. When the number reaches zero the place goes crazy! Tears are streaming down their faces as they look at you and yell in unison,  ”thank you, thank you, thank you!” Are you starting to feel a little more motivated?  Read more... (583 words, estimated 2:20 mins reading time)

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Number 5 – Not Monitoring Your Progress:

So many people just go through the motions with their workouts. They get into the habit of showing up at the gym day after day and mindlessly go through their routine. How many people do you see at the gym with no written plan and no way to keep score to tell if they are making progress?

For a lot of these people going to the gym just becomes a part of their social life. Now I agree that this habit is a lot healthier then hanging out at the local pub. But the time you spend in the gym could be a lot more productive and result in building a lot more muscle.  Read more... (1081 words, estimated 4:19 mins reading time)