3 Tips for Losing Weight Healthily

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Losing excess weight not only makes you look and feel good, but also significantly reduces your risk of getting diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart attack and high blood pressure. There are numerous crash diets and over the top workout programs sold online that promise to help you lose weight fast, but most of them don’t work in the long term.

If you’ve tried any of them and failed, don’t give up just yet. There are numerous steps you can take to develop a healthy relationship with food and attain lasting weight loss. Here are 3 tips for losing weight healthily:

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 Introduce Changes Gradually

Our bodies use the foods we eat for energy. When you eat more food than your body requires for daily activities, the excess energy is stored as fat. The more food you eat, the more fat your body stores and the more weight you’ll gain. To lose weight in a healthy way, it is very important that you gradually change your eating habits.
Making small changes here and there can make a big difference in the long run. So, if you are used to eating unhealthy foods, try cutting them out slowly and replacing them with healthier alternatives (vegetables, fruits, whole grains and lean meat). Swap snacks like biscuits, candy bars or potato chips for fruits such as an apple to ensure you remain fuller for longer.

Reduce Your Calorie Intake

Other than introducing healthier foods to your diet, you also need to limit the amount of food you eat to lose weight. A good starting point is cutting down on foods that have added sugar and refined carbohydrates like white bread, energy drinks and white rice among others. Aim to eat at least 300-500 calories less everyday, and you’ll be able to lose between 1-2 pounds per week. This may seem a bit slow, but it is more realistic and sustainable. Eat smaller portions of the foods you usually enjoy, and you’ll be able to lose weight for sure.

Increase Your Activity Level

Every time you exercise more than you usually do, but maintain your calorie intake, you’ll burn calories and fat. There are many physical activities you can do to increase your level of activity even if you don’t like going to the gym. This can be anything from using the stairs at work instead of the lift, watching your favorite TV programs while jogging on a tread mill or using a stationary bicycle, swimming, or taking longer walks than you usually do.

The key to long-term weight loss is to eat less calories than your body needs, do physical activities that you enjoy regularly and make lifestyle changes that contribute to your overall health. Always remember that every extra step you take in the right direction brings you closer to achieving your weight loss goal.

10 Reasons Why Fad Diets Suck

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A Fad diet is a conventional diet that promises people fast results through simple methods. These diets are very tempting given that losing weight is a challenge to many people with most of them having a misconception that they can lose weight overnight. The fact is fad diets are all hype and may cause you, even more, harm than good.Below Are 10 Reasons why Fad Diets Suck:

Unnecessary food restrictions — Fad diets that promise quick weight loss will usually instruct you to eat more of one food type and restrict yourself from eating another food type. This could lead to an unbalanced diet. To address that, fad diets will usually recommend many supplements, but then again, many supplements might cause nutritional deficiencies.

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Against the fat level as recommended by the government — Fad diets does not follow government recommendations for fat concentrations in the diet. Most fad diets will recommend high fat and low carb diet, which is not good for your health when taken long term. You will indeed lose weight but taking so much fat could lead to heart disease.

Failure to address the root cause of weight gain — The reason that fad diets are considered bad is that these diets do not address the root cause of the weight gain. You regain back the weight you lost at the end of the day!

Expensive — Some fad diets require people to take pills and drink potions which can be costly.

Anti-exercises — Any diet that promises you weight loss without counting your calories or doing exercise is a fad diet. These diets do not encourage weight loss patients to incorporate exercises into their programs.

Elimination of healthy foods — Usually, fad diets ask people to eliminate certain food groups from their diet because they are bad. Some of the foods are carbohydrates, dietary fiber, and essential fatty acids.

Short term results — Fad diets are just a temporary solution and will not make any permanent change to your figure and eating habits. In a few weeks time, you will regain all the weight as you will fall back to your old eating habits.

Extremely unhealthy — The short-term weight loss effects followed by weight gain is extremely unhealthy and may cause many diseases such as high blood pressure or coronary heart disease.

Not motivating — They will make you feel bad and guilty whenever you break the overly restrictive diet. After a few days of following the diet and restricting yourself of certain foods, you will start craving and start being bored and sad about your diet.

Unbalanced diet — Many fad diets do not give you a balanced intake of fruits and vegetables, which is important to keep yourself healthy.

Conclusion Diet and Exercise

Irrespective of how good the fad diet advertisement is, don’t fall for these diets, they will not help you in the long term. The only way to achieve weight loss is to eat moderately, eat a balanced diet, exercise, etc.

5 Ways to Improve Your Fitness

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Are you struggling to attain a perfect body fitness? Have you been exercising for months without any significant changes? To be physically fit, you need to eat well, exercise and sleep. It is all about leading a healthy, active, relaxed, and stress-free lifestyle that can help you achieve your goals.

Here are 5 Ways to Improve Your Fitness

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  1. Make sure that aerobic activity is a major part of your fitness routine. Some people make the mistake of spending all of their time on strength training. However, in order to make your muscles stronger, you have to get rid of the fat which is hiding them. That is where cardio activity comes into play. So make sure that you engage in at least 30 minutes of aerobic activity each and every day.

  2. If you want to tighten you muscles be certain that you engage in strength training. This will help you tighten up all of those lose areas once you get rid of the body fat.

  3. Remember to keep things fun. Fitness should not be something that you dread. It should be something fun, so go ahead and engage in an activity that you enjoy. If walking on a treadmill at a gym is not your thing, try running or rollerblading outdoors.

  4. Exercise is the key to improving your body fitness. In fact, people who have an active lifestyle are seldom seen with unattractive figures. If you can manage simple workouts on a daily basis at home, or go to a gym regularly, then you will notice visible changes in your body fitness within a month. Exercise helps in protecting your body from muscle loss. It increases the metabolism, improves blood circulation, and revitalizes the entire system. Yoga is a perfect way to achieve a perfect body fitness, and to relax your body. It helps you in overcoming the stiffness of your muscles and produces great agility in your body. If you want to trim specific areas of your body like tummy, thighs, biceps, then you can consult your trainer to guide you about the relevant postures, and exercises.

  5. Finally, keep off from stress. Stress factor does not directly affect our body fitness, but it alters our attitude towards life. It also affects our eating patterns. We neglect our exercise, proper diet, and stop thinking positively in life. We tend to starve either, or glutton on anything and everything especially on caffeine, chocolates, and colas.

5 Apps to Make Weight Loss Easy

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Our bodies are unique in a way that we react differently from different stimuli, one method or technique that works for you may not work for the other. Finding the best way to burn fat is easy as long as you have a background in the proper diet and exercise techniques

With ever increasing work load and pressures fitness and health issues often takes a back seat. There are plenty of apps on the Android Market, which acts as a constant reminder that you need to exercise and also the number of hours one needs to work out.

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Here are the best of the best Android applications which will help you stay fit and loss Weight
better.

Cardio Trainer + Racing

Nothing can be better than exercise looking like a game rather than just exercise. The cardio trainer combines the free Cardio Trainer with a racing application. The app includes a virtual race simulator with a voice telling feature which tells you how far behind you are so that you need not stop to know it. The Cardio Trainer app will have extra features once you pay $2.99.

Fast Food Calorie Counter

Fast food is said to be one of the biggest reason for obesity and other related diseases. Fast Food Calorie Counter keeps track of all the ugly fat you are taking in.The application has data from almost 9,000 items from 72 fast food restaurants. The app gives details like calories, fat grams, fiber, carbs, and protein.

AllSport GPS

All though an expensive application AllSport GPS has many features which will interest sports persons. AllSport GPS allows users to track routes, distance, time, speed and calories burned. Users get maps, virtual races, downloadable routes, elevation and speed graphs. All your effort exercising can be shared online on twitter and facebook. Download the app for $9.99 via Android Market.

Absolute Fitness

If you want to keep track of each and everything you take and some calories you spent throughout the day then this app is the best you can get. It has food analysis, charts, stats and exercise regimen pages.

Endomondo Sports Tracker

Endomondo is a great application for runners, cyclists, joggers and rollerskaters/rollerbladers. The application tracks your time, distance, speed, and altitudes. The app has Google Maps support too.

There is no magic when it comes to losing weight. It is difficult to do for the most part and usually takes a lengthy period before you see dramatic results, but for serious weight loss and keeping it off power, then you need to buckle down and put your mind to it. Remember that there are many easy ways to lose weight and for the most part, they all boil down to creating a new plan of eating, a changed outlook on the foodstuffs you eat and sticking to your plan until you see results.

Workouts Programs For Beginners

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If you say you can’t work out appropriately because you are a neophyte in the journey called fitness, better re-think. Beginners like you can get hold of fitness routines that are just simple to execute. It doesn’t take any experience for you to go the gym to start your resistance and strength training.

Usually, fitness gurus will accommodate and provide you a specific program that comprises with warm-up, cardio, resistance training and cools down routines to complete every single gym session.

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Your goal is to manage your weight for sure. But beyond that, the exercises you are going to do will also improve your blood circulation, increase your heart performance, enhance your resistance, and firm your muscles groups. The more lean muscles you develop, the higher your capacity to burn fat is.

Toning your muscles will also calm your whole system down, that’s why it’s important to finish your session with toning. Learn from the steps below so you can choose which areas to focus on. By doing one set of each, you will be able to experience a total body workout that toughens your shoulders, arms, chest, back, legs, abdomen, and hips.

1.Triceps Pushdown. You will need a pair of dumbbells to do some arms curl that targets to toughen and increase the muscles on your triceps. Do 16 repetitions in each arm.

2.Arm Curl Machine. Most fitness clubs have this machine that targets the arm muscles. You can do two sets of 16 for this one.

3.Lying Leg Raise and Press. For leg raise, you won’t need any equipment. You just have to lie down the floor on your back and raise your legs up and down. To do the leg press, you can use a specific machine wherein you just sit and extend your legs and start pushing the weight against you.

4.Shoulder Press Machine. You can stand up in front of the machine and grab the two grips. Start pressing up and down to feel the contraction on your shoulder and arms.

5.Seated Row Machine. Sit on the machine and place your feet on the metal steps. Grab the weight and pull it back with your shoulder blades together. Halt when your elbows are aligned and reverse the step.

6.Lying Leg Curl. Using a lever lying leg curl machine, you lean your upper body on the bench and insert your legs over the lever pads. Grab the handles and start flexing your knees. Lift the lever pads up and down repeatedly. You can do 16 or 32 counts of this.

For beginners, you can settle for machines that allow you to carry on your fitness programs more easily. As you get the hang of it, you can increase the intensity of your executions

3 Reasons You Aren’t Losing Weight Fast

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Are you obese? Have you attempted almost everything to lose weight with little success? Well, losing weight can prove to be a difficult task especially if you don’t know where to start from, or you lack an experienced hand to guide you through the process.

In this post, we’ll delve into 3 Reasons You Aren’t Losing Weight no matter how hard you try. To learn more, please read on.

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– You don’t exercise regularly

If you intend to lose weight exercise is a must. Health experts recommend that you work out for at least thirty minutes daily. Regular exercise will help you burn extra calories and regulate the production of a hormone named cortisol produced when you are stressed. Cortisol is closely associated with obesity since when your body is recovering from stress it increases your appetite to compensate for the carbohydrates and fat that was used to prepare your body for fight or flight.

– You are not eating healthy

What you eat will determine your body weight. If you intend to lose weight, and you still eat processed foods that are rich in trans fats, salt, and sugars, you are doing more harm than good to your body. These substances tamper with your digestion as well as metabolism. Besides, processed foods lack nutrients and won’t satisfy you, meaning that you will have to eat more to deal with your cravings. Modify your diet by including more fruits, vegetables, and proteins that contain nutrients that promote weight loss. And that is not all, also ensure that you drink enough water to improve your digestion and catalyze reactions that result in burning off extra calories.

– You are not sleeping well

Lastly, to achieve your weight loss goals, you can’t overlook getting enough sleep. Sleep is crucial in promoting your overall health as well as weight loss. Studies have shown that those who don’t get enough sleep have a tendency of consuming high-calorie foods the next day. Yes, you heard me right! Besides, lack of enough sleep also affects your appetite hormones namely leptin and ghrelin increasing your appetite. So, if you are not sleeping well, start sleeping for about seven to eight hours to lose weight without much hassle.

Wrap Up:

There you have it-3 Reasons You Aren’t Losing Weight. Getting the body that you have always desired can be so hard sometimes. However if you exercise, eat healthily and sleep well, then you will be in a better position to lose weight fast within the shortest time possible.

Muscle Fiction

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If you’v been training, here’s a short list of bodybuilding fiction.

1. 12 Rep rule

Most weight training program include this much repetitions for gaining muscle. The truth is this approach places the muscles with not enough tension for effective muscle gain. High tension e.g. heavy weights provides muscle growth in which the muscle grows much larger, leading to the maximum gains in strength. Having longer tension time boosts the muscle size by generating the structures around the muscle fibers, improving endurance.

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The standard prescription of eight to 12 repetitions provides a balance but by just using that program all of the time, you do not generate the greater tension levels that is provided by the heavier weights and lesser reps, and the longer tension achieved with lighter weights and more repetitions. Change the number of reps and adjust the weights to stimulate all types of muscle growth.

2. Three Set rule

The truth is there’s nothing wrong with three sets but then again there is nothing amazing about it either. The number of sets you perform should be base on your goals and not on a half-century old rule. The more repetitions you do on an exercise, the fewer sets you should do, and vice versa. This keeps the total number of repetitions done of an exercise equal.

3. Three to four exercises per group

The truth is this is a waste of time. Combined with twelve reps of three sets, the total number of reps amount to 144. If your doing this much reps for a muscle group your not doing enough. Instead of doing too many varieties of exercises, try doing 30 to 50 reps. That can be anywhere from 2 sets of 15 reps or 5 sets of 10 reps.

4. My knees, my toes

It is a gym folklore that you “should not let your knees go past your toes.” Truth is that leaning forward a little too much is more likely a cause of injury. In 2003, Memphis University researchers confirmed that knee stress was almost thirty percent higher when the knees are allowed to move beyond the toes during a squat.

But hip stress increased nearly 10 times or (1000 percent) when the forward movement of the knee was restricted. Because the squatters needed to lean their body forward and that forces the strain to transfer to the lower back.

Focus on your upper body position and less on the knee. Keep the torso in an upright position as much as possible when doing squats and lunges. These reduces the stress generated on the hips and back. To stay upright, before squatting, squeeze the shoulder blades together and hold them in that position; and then as you squat, keep the forearms 90 degree to the floor.

5. Lift weights, draw abs

The truth is the muscles work in groups to stabilize the spine, and the most important muscle group change depending on the type of exercise. The transverse abdominis is not always the most important muscle group. Actually, for most exercise, the body automatically activates the muscle group that are needed most for support of the spine. So if you focus only on the transverse abdominis, it can recruit wrong muscles and limit the right muscles. This increases the chance of injury, and reduces the weight that can be lifted.

Why Does Exercise Feel Bad?

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A lot of people will try and tell you that exercise will feel really good. Normally these are people with something to sell but they can also include friends and colleagues who seem to have an unhealthy love of exercise and want to recommend it to everyone that they meet.

The rest of us know different. When you first start trying to exercise on a regular basis it is far from fun. Sure, there might be some ‘runners’ high’ effect, but most of us have never lasted long enough to encounter it. Instead, we get the feeling of sickness, the ‘burn’, muscle cramp and more. exercise

Why does this happen?

The Burn

Let’s look at the ‘burn’ sensation first. Often you will hear bodybuilders talking about this sensation as though it were magical and highly desirable. Some even go as far as to say it’s highly pleasurable (cough Arnie cough). Whether or not that is true is somewhat debatable but where exactly does it come from?

Specifically, the burn is caused by the build-up of metabolites in the muscles. This is partly the result of blood and oxygen being pumped into the muscles to provide fuel and nutrients. The more you use your muscle, the more this build-up occurs. Simultaneously, the contraction of the muscle also ‘traps’ the blood in that area, causing it to pool.

Meanwhile, by-products are created as a result of the glycogen lactic acid system. All this can eventually result in a painful sensation that some people believe is a key indicator that you have done enough to trigger growth.

Sickness

The other thing you’ll notice and particularly when taking part in cardio workouts (HIIT even moreso) is that you start to feel somewhat sick. This is again due to the build-up of metabolites and lactate, this time in the bloodstream.

It is thought that the body responds to this increased lactate by feeling sick and that this might even be a signal that the body uses to force you to reduce the intensity of your workouts. Lactate is only really created during very intensive training sessions and as such, it is most likely to occur when you push yourself. Eventually this leads to the ‘lactate inflection point’ which is the most lactate you can manage in your bloodstream. When that happens, you’re ready to slow down and return to an aerobic state.

DOMS

DOMS stands for ‘Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness’ and is the pain you get the next day following intense training. Again, there is some debate over what precisely causes DOMS but it’s generally agreed that it has to do with ‘microtears in the muscle’. That is to say that making small tears in the muscle fiber not only trigger subsequent repair and thus growth but also cause discomfort as essentially these are very minor injuries!

Regular Old Pain…

And of course workouts can also just hurt. When you’re curling weights, you’ll find that you rub the skin on your hands painfully. When you’re jogging, you’ll jolt your joints and also your feet inside your shoes…
Training hurts… But the more you do it, the less it will start to hurt!

Top Exercises to Use With HIIT

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HIIT is high intensity interval training. By now, most of us will know what this term means and be familiar with how to go about using it. Simply put, it means that you are going to be alternating between periods of high intensity (normally at around 90-100% of your MHR) and periods of relatively low intensity and recovery (at around 70% of your MHR).

What this does, is to deplete your stores of glycogen and ATP, so that the only way your body can get the energy it needs to carry on with the low intensity training is to burn fat. You thus burn more fat both during the workouts and also continuously after the workout has finished! 

But HIIT doesn’t just have to mean running. Actually, there are a number of different exercises you can use in order to burn more fat and build more muscle and these work perfectly when combined with a HIIT workout.

Here are some great examples:

Kettlebell Swings

The kettlebell swing is an exercise that involves swinging a kettlebell up in the air and then letting it fall back down again. The momentum generated by this allows you to continuously exert yourself and ultimately, it’s a great way to provide a cardio challenge that burns fat while at the same time challenging and building up your muscles as well.

This is the perfect example of ‘concurrent training’ and will not only burn more fat but also tone and build muscle and generally help you to see amazing results.

Pull Ups

Pull ups are very well suited to HIIT, as long as you can perform enough of them with good technique. When you start to tire, you can always try to use a bit more momentum, at which point they become ‘kipping pull ups’ like those taught in CrossFit classes.

High Knees

If you can’t get outside to run, then another way to burn a lot of calories with a similar motion is to perform high knees. Stand on the spot, hold your hands up high and then run so that your knees hit your hands.

Tuck Jumps

Jump up in the air and then hug your knees in toward your chest each time you reach the apex of your jump.

Jack in the Box

Here, you squat down into a huddled position and then jump straight up in the air and kick your hands and arms out like a starfish. This not only challenges your legs to deliver a lot of explosive power but also involves your entire body in the movement!

Clapping Push Ups

HIIT works best when you involve your fast twitch muscle fiber. Fortunately, clapping push ups are a type of exercise that do exactly that thanks to their plyometric nature. These are much harder and more ballistic than regular press ups and can be used to burn through calories as a result.

Other CV

Of course running is just one example of a CV workout. Just as good is rowing, swimming, bike… Try them all and see what works best for you!

The Best Diet and Supplement Regime to Combine With HIIT

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So you just discovered HIIT? No doubt you’re loving just how easy it is to get a fat burning, calorie melting workout in now and you’re getting a kick out of pushing yourself so hard.

But while you’re probably feeling great, you should know that fat loss and muscle gain do not happen in the gym or on the track. Rather, they happen in the kitchen. If you really want to make the very most of HIIT, the you should combine it with the right diet… hiit

The Basics – Calories In, Calories Out

The great thing about HIIT is that it is a form of MetCon – metabolic conditioning. That is to say that it doesn’t just burn calories while you’re training, it also increases your calorie burn at rest by making your cells more efficient at burning through fat stores and sugars. Thus, even when you’re resting, you’re going to lose more weight.

But you still need to try and calculate this as much as you can and to do that, you need to figure out a rough ‘AMR’ – the total number of calories you burn in a day (this stands for ‘Active Metabolic Rate’). Likewise, you should track the calories you’re taking in with an app like MyFitnessPal and what this will then allow you to do, is to make sure you are consuming fewer calories than you are burning off. If you do this, then you should lose weight – and especially with the metabolic benefits.

Carb Backloading

Some people will tell you that it is important to reduce carbs – at least the simple kind. That’s because carbs spike the blood sugar and your body responds by producing insulin, absorbing that sugar and then storing it as fat.

If you’re concerned about this, you can try something called ‘carb backloading’. Here, you simply consume carbs only immediately following a workout. This wouldn’t work with aerobic training but HIIT will deplete the glycogen stores in your muscles. Thus, the priority of your body will become refuelling those glycogen stores, meaning that you’ll be less likely to store the excess energy as fat!

This way, you can still enjoy your carbs but without the guilt!

Supplements

One supplement that makes a lot of sense in conjunction with a HIIT workout program is creatine. That’s because creatine allows you to recycle ATP in your system, which in turn means you can rely on the ATP-CP energy system just a little longer. This in turn means that you can go all out for a second or so more when performing the high intensity portion of your workouts. That’s a big difference and it will result in better results. All that and creatine has also been shown to add muscle (by increasing water retention in the muscles) and to boost IQ!

Meanwhile, you can also try other supplements that will enhance your cellular energy. Popular choices include l-carnitine, CoQ10 and omega 3.

You don’t need any supplements, but adding a little l-carnitine and creatine can only help you see results faster!