Archive for November, 2008

Poorly Focused Diets

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

Many of the weight loss programs that have come out over recent years have had a very low success rate due to the fact that they have focused on the wrong techniques of healthy weight loss.

It is not just about losing weight and that is what some people don’t seem to understand.  It is about reducing the percentage of body fat and getting that to a more normal level.

Any diet that focuses purely on reducing weight without concern with the percentage of body fat and the nutritional needs of the body as a whole is setting itself up for disaster.

When you focus solely on reducing body weight you are also reducing, in many instances, the percentage of muscle in the body and that is one of the major components that helps to reduce body fat.

Muscle burns fat and the more muscle that you can retain the more fat you are going to burn so while a diet might for a short time help you to lose body weight if it is reducing muscle at the same time then the long-term effects will be that it will be become more and more difficult to reduce the percentage of fat.

The other problem with many of these fast diets and weight-loss programs is the fact that they reduce body weight so fast initially that the body’s defensive mechanisms are thrown into action.

The body will then begin to try to conserve as much body fat as possible to stop it from starving. You cannot effectively lose large amounts of body weight in a short amount of time and hope to keep it off unless the body believes it is getting all the nutrition it needs.

These ultra fast weight loss programs cause people to lose and then gain weight rapidly making it all the more difficult to lose weight the next time they try.

With A Little Help From Your Friends

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

It is so make it easier to get by and to stick to a weight-loss program if you have the support of your friends and family.

You could be doing them a favor by getting them involved in your weight loss program particularly if living in the same household where everybody begins to eat better quality foods.

Those people who have the support of others around them when trying to lose weight have a huge advantage over anybody going it alone.

You can encourage one another to get out and exercise together and make a social occasion rather than something that you would prefer not to do.
Go walking in a park or swimming at the beach to exercise and when doing this with friends and family it can be a fun time.

If you are using resistance training as part of your weight loss program then it is good to have a training partner to help spur you on to better performances and also in the event of using heavy weights to be there for the safety as a spotting partner.

More often than not more than one person in the household will be overweight because eating habits tend to depend a lot on the foods that are purchased each week so getting everybody involved in the weight-loss program will generally see the purchase of better foods and all members of the home can have an overall change in attitude towards food for the whole household.

It can be extremely difficult for the person losing weight if there are people around them who appear to be eating all and sundry as they like with little concern for their own weight.

Many weight loss experts suggest that surrounding yourself with people who don’t have a weight problem and eat good wholesome meals all the times will actually help to encourage you to change your eating habits and fall more into line with what they regard as normal.

Enjoying Your Weight Loss

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Weight loss doesn’t have to be something that you dread every day of the week.

You should be eating good healthy food that doesn’t leave you feeling starved although initially you might feel that way as you change from the bulk poor quality food that you’ve been eating to smaller portions of better quality food.

It can take time to your body to adjust and one of the best ways to help out in this situation is to drink more water.

Most people realize that exercise is one of the best ways of losing weight although there are a lot of people who are reluctant to exercise for one reason or another.

For those people who are obese it can be quite difficult to exercise although there are forms of exercise their can cater to virtually anybody.

Swimming biking and walking are three very good low impact forms of exercise that can improve your fitness and reduce your body weight.
They can speed up your metabolism and help you to burn fat and swimming in particular is very good for people who are overweight to the extent that they find walking difficult.

Recently Nordic walking has become a lot more popular and this is a particularly good form of exercise for two reasons.

Firstly by using the poles when you are walking you are using a lot more of your upper body muscles for the exercise and in doing so this helps to burn more calories than walking without them.

The other benefit of using the poles when walking is the fact that it takes a lot of the stress off your knees and hips and this can be a godsend for oversized people who find that their joints take quite a hammering when walking due to their weight.

Is no wonder that Nordic walking is becoming one of the most popular forms of exercise throughout the country.

There Is More To Weight Loss

Saturday, November 1st, 2008

If you are willing to put in the extra effort you can lose considerably more weight a lot faster by adding resistance training to your weight loss program.

Lifting weights will help to burn body fat quicker than aerobic exercise which is something that a lot of people don’t understand.
Aerobic exercise for an hour or so will burn more calories than lifting weights for the same hour however weightlifting gives additional benefits after that hour that aerobic exercise doesn’t.

After resistance training your muscles need to repair themselves and in doing so this process burns even more calories so you are getting the benefit of the calories that are burnt during the exercise combined with the calories that are getting burnt as the muscles are getting repaired.

There is also another benefit that is obtained by weightlifting and resistance exercise and that is the fact that you will be building up muscle mass.

Now many women get concerned thinking that they are going to look like a female version of Arnold Schwarzenegger but not only is this unlikely, without the use of steroids it is impossible particularly for a woman.

Muscle burns fat and by building up your muscle mass you are creating a fat burning machine that will help to use up excess body fat throughout the day.

This is why people who supplement their weight loss programmes with suitable resistance training will reduce fat and get considerably better results in less time.

You also get the additional benefits of becoming fitter, improving your heart and your bones and it also has a positive affect on your mental attitude and to some people just feeling better about themselves can solve a lot of the reasons why they overeat in the first place.

You don’t have to lift excessive weights for this to work as even light resistance training will be an added benefit to your weight-loss program.