Your Beliefs Are Your Reality

March 14th, 2009

What you believe is what you will get and this is particularly so with weight loss.

How many times do you say that you have finished lunch or dinner only to pick up another piece of food and eat it?  Many people do this on a regular basis and they have programmed their mind to believe that there is always more to come simply by the actions that they are taking on a regular basis.

How many times do you cut the cake in half intending to only eat that portion and then go back and eat the other half immediately after?

When you are cutting that cake in your mind you already know that you will be getting the rest and you are falsely kidding yourself into believing that the process of cutting off half is doing you some form of good.

In fact it is better to decide on how much you will be eating and then eating that portion even if it is the whole amount because you will at least be true to yourself.

If you are constantly allowing yourself to fail by succumbing to additional food then you are training your belief system in a negative way and this begins to affect all aspects of your life.

It doesn’t matter what you say to other people or what you try to have them believe. It is not helping you one bit to tell everyone that you won’t be eating any more cake. What matters is what you do and whether you are doing what you say you will do.

Your beliefs are your reality and if you believe that there are many different reasons why you can’t lose weight then the reality of your life will be that you won’t lose weight.

If you believe that your genes or your metabolism are responsible for your over weight condition then that is what you will be even though a change in diet and exercise will make a difference.

Getting your mind to understand and accept the true reality is one of the biggest hurdles for most people who are trying to make changes in their life.

Believe you can do it and you will - there is no doubt about that.

Age Is Not An Excuse

March 7th, 2009

There’s no doubt about the fact that the body changes as we age and fat is stored in places that we didn’t have to worry about when we were younger.

The metabolism slows and the digestive system doesn’t work as well as it once did.

Hormonal changes in the body can also affect the shape that you are in but there is one thing that always remains the same at all ages - If you eat too much food and drink too much alcohol you will gain weight.

Many people use their age as an excuse for being over weight but this is not acceptable. Consider how many elderly people there are who are still slim, fit and healthy and you will see that age is not an excuse.

Lifestyles create the body we have to live with and the effects of poor lifestyle choices are multiplied as we age because the abuse that we have been giving our body through poor food choices throughout our life accumulates with fat and other health related problems due to poor nutrition.

You can and should expect to keep your fat percentage at an optimum level throughout your life. The health benefits from doing so will pay dividends with a better quality of life and reduced dependence on medication and other health related expenditure as you age.

At any stage in your life, no matter how old you are you can benefit from improved nutrition and exercise.

Anything that will reduce the excess levels in your body fat will assist in helping you to live longer and to enjoy that time more.

Starting on an exercise program and taking care to improve your nutrition is the best way to turn back the body clock and it is never too late to start winding back the years. Obviously the sooner you start the better but starting is the essential ingredient that you need right now.

Spot Fat Reduction

February 28th, 2009

Contrary to what many different weight loss programs suggest it is not possible to spot reduce fat from one particular part of the body.

Just because you might have fat thighs or flabby triceps you won’t find a diet that will specifically reduce the fat in those areas.

When you lose fat you will lose it throughout your body and not in specific areas alone.

The same applies to areas such as the belly however there is something that you can do.

By adding targeted resistance training exercises to your daily routine you can assist the muscles in those areas to support and tone your body.

By doing abdominal exercises you can firm and tighten your abdominal muscles where they will assist in better posture. This alone can help to flatten your stomach and give the appearance of weight loss through the better posture you will achieve.

You can do tricep exercises to tone and strengthen the tricep muscles and this too will help that area to look better even without fat loss.

Once you begin to lose fat throughout the body those parts where you have been applying your resistance training will begin to show the benefits of your training.

You can have the best shape abdominal muscles in the world but no one is going to see them if they are covered in a layer of body fat.

You need to understand from reading this that you won’t be able to get the look of rock hard abs by using the latest advertised abdominal machine each day if the muscles are hidden by a layer of fat. Sure you will be able to add support to the whole of your body by strengthening the muscles but you need to reduce fat to get in shape no matter what else you do.

Training will help to burn the fat as will diet and you will find that most of these solutions that are advertised in the infomercials that promise such startling results include dietary recommendations and it is by applying those changes to your eating habits that has the most influence on your body shape rather than the exercise equipment.

That Four Letter Word

February 21st, 2009

That four letter word ‘diet’ brings about all sorts of different emotions in people and more often than not those emotions tend to be negative. To most people a diet is a struggle. It is something that they would rather not have to do. People only do on diets because they know that they have to do something about their weight and their health. It is a choice made out of necessity.

As soon as you believe you are on a diet you also become aware of the fact that you are going to get off it again and what do you expect will happen when you get off the diet that is helping you to get in shape?

For most people getting off a diet means reverting back to their former lifestyle and that is the lifestyle that got them overweight in the first place.

What you really should be doing is not dieting but making lifestyle changes because lifestyle changes are something that you can continue with forever. If you make lifestyle changes that result in healthy body weight then you will maintain that body weight for as long as you maintain that lifestyle. It is not something that you will get off at the end of achieving a result. A lifestyle is a way that you intend to live for the long-term and that is how you will remain in good shape for the long-term.

How often do you hear people saying that they are on a diet? And the next minute they are no longer on the diet.

What they should be saying is; I have made lifestyle changes and the result of those changes have been a reduction in body fat, an increase on my energy levels and an overall improvement in health.
That is what lifestyle changes can do for you and it is something that short-term diets rarely achieve.

Organize Your Life

February 14th, 2009

A disorganized person is always rushing and a person who is always rushing will tend to eat too fast. A person who eats too fast will tend to eat too much and a person who eats too much will tend to get fat.

Mess causes distress and that in turn causes people to eat too much. Are you beginning to see the picture of how having a well organized life will help you to maintain a more balanced and healthy body?

Many people resort to eating in the effort to handle stress and being disorganized is a surefire way of increasing levels of stress in your life.

Being organized will also ensure that you have the right food in your house and you don’t have to resort to low quality foods that you keep as a backup for those times when you run out of the nutritious food that you should be eating.

Being organized will also help you to eat at regular times throughout the day and by being regular with your eating it will help you to maintain more consistent blood sugar levels that will reduce the chance of you getting into low blood sugar and over eating to compensate.

By planning ahead with your meals you can plan to have better meals and you won’t need to resort to fast foods because you haven’t got any other food organized by the time you’re ready to eat.

By being organized and having a shopping list where you have determined in advance the right foods for your diet you will be less likely to buy food that you shouldn’t be buying when you go to the supermarket.

Organization is one of the keys to success in following any weight loss program. It also helps to reduce the amount of time that you have to think about food and think about losing weight and when that doesn’t become such a big focus in your life you are more likely to succeed.

You Don’t Have To Eat It All

February 7th, 2009

Many of us are brought up from childhood where we have been told they we are not allowed to leave the table until we finished all the food on our plate. While this was done generally with the best intentions in mind it is not the way that we should look at eating. You don’t need to eat everything that is on your plate.

If you’ve had enough to eat you should stop whether there is more food available or not. You shouldn’t need to get rid of food as these days it is no longer necessary to be concerned with keeping the food fresh as it was in the past. Stop eating and put that excess food into the refrigerator where you can eat it tomorrow.

If you are constantly finding there is additional food left when you are satisfied then you need to reduce the quantities that you are cooking or making available for your meals each day.

It is better to have a little less than too much.

Don’t feel obliged to eat all the food that is placed before you when you’re eating out. Even then you should only eat to feel comfortable and not feel full.

For most people it is a habit to eat everything that is on their plate and this belief has been drummed into them from childhood. Now is a good time to reverse that train of thought.

Where possible put the food on your plate that you intend to eat at any particular meal and then take that plate with the food to the table. This will encourage you to put limits on the amount of food that you will eat. Having additional food available at the table only encourages you to eat more. If it is not in sight you are less likely to feel the need to eat it.

Slow Down Your Eating

January 31st, 2009

You might be surprised to learn that simply slowing down the rate that you eat your food at can have a profound affect on your body weight.

The longer it takes you to eat your food, the less food you will need to eat to feel satisfied.
There are some simple techniques that can get you out of a bad habit of eating too fast and consequently eating too much.

Try to chew your food a little longer before you swallow it as this will help with the digestion of the food and the extra time that it takes you to chew will also help you to feel more satisfied without having to have such a large quantity.

Don’t load up your fork or spoon with more food until you have finished eating the food that is already in your mouth. One simple way of doing this is to actually put down your fork or spoon until you ready to pick up the next piece of food to eat.

It breaks the habit of over eating from eating too fast. If you look at the way that French people in particular eat as a whole, you should notice that not only do they have smaller portions of food but they take a lot longer to eat their food. They are doing two things that help them to stay slim. Eating smaller amounts and taking longer to eat those smaller amounts.

You will find that once you start eating a little slower you will actually get to enjoy the food a lot more. You will have more time to savor the tastes in the food.

It takes a little while after eating food for your body to register the fact that it has had enough and many people overeat when they eat too fast simply because they believe they are still hungry. You should never eat until you are full; rather eat until you feel comfortable that you have had enough.

Reward Yourself

January 24th, 2009

You should reward yourself as you achieve goals along the way when following a weight loss program. It will give you the incentive to carry on and make you feel good about your body.

I am not suggesting that you reward yourself with a whole lot of bad food but rather something more effective such as a new piece of clothing in the smaller size that marks a stage in your weight-loss program where you have made another positive achievement.

It is important that you reward yourself and feel good about what you have done because the better you feel about yourself the more likely you will be to continue with the program you have chosen.

For many people it is a lack of self worth that caused them to start gaining weight in the first place so a reversal of this mindset can be a very powerful stimulant for getting back into shape.

It is more important that you feel good about yourself rather than being concerned what others think. By rewarding yourself in one way or another you are taking your self worth to a higher level and that is extremely important to your success not only with your weight reduction but every other aspect of your life.

Each time you get closer to your optimum body weight you are benefiting as a whole with improved health and well-being and these rewards that you give yourself along the way are significant reminders of what you have achieved and they are very powerful incentives for bigger and better things.

Never underestimate the impact that this can have on your ability to succeed with a whole new direction in life starting from the inside out.

It doesn’t even need to be something that you have to spend money on even just taking time out for a while and considering what you have achieved and congratulating yourself with what you have done.

Changing Your Routine

January 17th, 2009

Quite often one of the best ways for most people to get started on a weight-loss program is to simply change the routine that they are accustomed to.

We get into the same habits of eating the same foods and doing the same things every day and the change alone can stimulate the body into action.

There is no better way to break a habit than to do something completely different and if you do it for long enough that will become the norm and changes in your lifestyle can be made within the course of a month if you habitually do the same thing every day - just make sure that that things that you do every day are making positive steps to achieving a better quality of health and lower body fat.

Most people who are overweight have some habit or habits that have resulted in their condition because it takes the constant over abuse of food and alcohol to get in such a state unless there are some other specific health-related problems.

If you make a concerted effort to change many of your normal routines you might find that these habits present themselves and you can begin to understand why you started putting on weight in the first place. If you know the reason for your condition that makes it a lot easier to reverse that state and get to where you want to be.

No matter how many weight loss programs you attempt to go on they will always be a struggle if you can’t resolve the underlying issues and the habits that have caused you to neglect your health to such an extent that you don’t feel happy about your body.

Quite often the foods that we believe we can’t do without are only needed due to the habit of always having had them.   If you were brought up in a different household where your diet was different then those would be the foods that you would want to eat even if the diet was completely different from the one you currently enjoy.

Exercise To Reduce Appetite

January 10th, 2009

Many people believe that if they start exercising they will become hungrier and tend to eat more and fear that they will put on weight due to the fact that they will be consuming more food.

What they don’t realize is the fact that your blood sugar levels determine when you feel hungry. When your blood sugar drops you will begin to feel hungry and seek food to increase the level again.

Exercising helps to normalize fluctuations in your blood sugar levels and in doing so you won’t get that starving feeling as often.

Exercise activates your muscles which in turn burns fat rather than carbohydrates so this reduction in the burning of carbohydrates maintains your blood sugar levels in a more balanced manner.

By raising your metabolic rate from exercise the cells of your body will burn oxygen more efficiently and that in turn helps you to use the nutrients from your diet more effectively. It also helps to eliminate waste products and in doing so you are getting better nourishment from the foods that you eat.

By getting more nourishment you don’t require the same quantities of food to feel fulfilled.

Another benefit of exercise is the fact that you are increasing your body temperature and this will help to mobilize the fat in your body that is used for energy rather than the food. Your resting basal metabolic rate will also be raised after exercise for a considerable amount of time effectively helping you to burn more fat and improving the ratio of body fat percentage in your body.

There are so many positive reasons why you should be including some form of exercise into any weight-loss program and even if you are reluctant to exercise you should understand that it is probably easier to increase the exercise than to reduce the amount of food that you feel like eating every hour of the day.