Easy Diet

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Exercise To Healthy Weight Loss

To loss weight effectively, it is necessary to take in fewer calories than the body is burning. In order to burn off excess calories, it is essential to exercise regularly. Talking about exercise, it is not necessary to join a gym or participate in aerobic classes to burn up the fats. Calories can be burn by just simply climbing the stairs, cleaning the house, riding a bike, working in the garden or just by walking thirty minutes every day. Calories can also be burnt during sweat-free exercises. It has been proven that people who take a brisk walk for thirty minutes every day burn body fat, improve their physical fitness and lower their blood pressure as much as people who work out at a gym three or four days per week.

Exercise will help to boost energy as well. With the advent of the computer age, people are forced to do less and less physical labor. It is only logical that this would result in more energy being available for other activities. Exercise improves the efficiency of the lungs, the heart and the circulatory system in their ability to take in and deliver oxygen throughout the entire body. This oxygen is the catalyst that burns the fuel, food taken in to produce energy. Consequently, the more oxygen taken in, the more energy is available for other activities.

Oxygen is the vital ingredient that is necessary for survival. Since oxygen cannot be stored, body cells need a continuous supply in order to remain healthy. Exercise increases the body's ability to extract oxygen from the air so that increased amounts of oxygen are available for every organ, tissue and cell in the body. Exercise actually increases the total volume of blood, making more red blood cells available to carry oxygen and nutrition to the tissues and to remove carbon dioxide and waste products from the body's cells. This increased saturation of the tissues with oxygen is also aided by the opening of small blood vessels.

The first step for energy, fitness and real weight loss is by exercising every day. Exercising regularly will help to keep a fresh supply of oxygen surging through the blood vessels to all the body's cells. Exercise and healthy diet comes hand in hand in any successful weight loss program. In order to lose weight successfully, it is necessary to eat healthily and exercise regularly.

For more information on Weight Loss Diet, Quick Weight Loss Tips or Weight Loss Surgery, you can visit this site: All You Need to Know About Weight Loss

Skyjoe. All rights reserved. This article may be freely distributed as long as it remains unaltered inclusive of the active links and the copyright notice. No alteration is allowed without express written permission from the author.

3 Easy Slim Down Strategies

Look, it's going to take your some considerable time to lose all the excess weight you've spent so much time and effort putting on your long suffering frame. You have to acknowledge that or your weight control diet will be doomed to dietary failure for the term of your natural life. You know that you have to be into a great weight control diet and regular exercise program for the long haul.

But being only human and extremely impatient with yourself, now you've decided to lose weight, you want to see some quantifiable results now, today, before afternoon tea (perhaps tip number one should be Skip Afternoon Tea?").

So here are 3 simple tips to speed up your new slimline frame.

1. Eat breakfast. Not just any fatty, sugary and/or salty excuse for breakfast sometime in the middle of the morning purloined from a major fast food chain or greasy spoon cafe. Eat a high energy complex carb type breakfast when you get out of bed. Get up earlier if you have to. Breakfast is important. This is the food that is going to give you the energy to power through to lunchtime without a calorie laden stomach-stretching morning tea to overturn your best weight control aspirations.

2. Drink heaps of water. At least 2 litres per day. You will pee like a draughthorse and become intimate with every bathroom in your orbit, but you have to do it if you want to lose weight and keep it off. Water hydrates you and fills you up. It staunches food cravings and flushes toxins out of your system.

Don't worry, it does not make you fatter! While you're at it, wean yourself off the sugary drinks - your tastebuds will stop protesting eventually and kick the sugar habit if you hold out on this one.

Personally, to kick my aversion to plain old water, I visualised myself stranded on a deserted island. I figured I'd be grateful to find a fresh water supply to keep me alive, so the bottled and carbonated waters that were available to me as part of my weight control diet became more desirable in my fevered (deluded?) imagination. The important tip not to miss here is that my harmless little daydream worked for me.

3. Get moving. Walk for at least 45 minutes (preferably an hour) every day. Start as you mean to go on. (Hey, do not forget to take a litre of water with you and make sure you drink the lot - that's half your daily water quota done).

Set the duration of your daily exercise by earmarking the amount of time and time of day that you will walk. Over the weeks and months (gasp, yes walking is forever) you will go faster and therefore further every day, but you won't need any more time for it. Walking is the single most successful exercise done by people who have lost their fat and maintained their goalweight. Be one of these people.

Employ all of these simple slimming strategies and you won't just lose weight, you'll feel great as well. It's a bit of a commitment but well worth the rewards.

Rosie Peters gives common sense advice, encouragement and tips for weight loss, sensible diet and lifelong fitness. Sometimes it's not what you want to hear, but what you need to know. Visit Rosie at weight-control-diet-advice.com Rosie's ebook, Weight Loss is Simple may be the inspiration you need.

How to Lose Weight Fast? Eat More!

If you are too lazy to exercise and dieting, I have good news for you. If you are undergoing exercise or dieting but still find that they did not help you to lose much weight, you will love what I have to tell you.

If you managed to lose weight, after vigorous gym training or strict dieting, but gained back the weight that you once lost, what I am going to share with you will definitely reignite your confidence in your weight loss target.

From my personal experience, after a regime of strict diet, or even body building, my excess weight would be reduced. This would definitely lower my guard and revert to my old ways of eating and as a result, I always get back my weight. I will inevitably, go back to dieting or weight training again ... This yo-yo effect on our body weight is unhealthy.

Normally to reduce weight, one would restrict their diet and aim to eat less. Your body will interpret that message to store more fat instead because of the reduction of fat consumption. The result is that you get less nutrition, with little or no fat reduction.

I discovered a better way would be to eat normally, but to include or replace some of these food with other kinds of wonderful food that aims to boost your metabolism and burn more calories than the food you consumed. Such food is also known as 'negative calorie food'. The beauty of eating these fat burning foods is that the more you eat, the more you lose weight.

Sound simple? Yes, but the challenge is to love them and eat them as some of us would hate fruits or vegetables.

What I have come up is a list of fat burning food in different categories for your reference. I suggest you print them out and highlight your favorites. Your objective is simply to consume as many of these food that you like.

Fruits

apple
apricot
blackberry
blueberry
cherry
cranberry
grapefruit
grape
honeydew
lemon
lime
mango
nectarine
orange
papaya
peach
pear
pineapple
prune
raspberry
strawberry
tangerine
watermelon

Vegetables

artichoke
asparagus
beet
broccoli
Brussels sprout
cabbage
cantaloupe
carrot
cauliflower
celery
chive
corn
cucumber
eggplant

garlic
green bean
kale
leek
lettuce
mushroom
okra
onion
parsley
pea
pepper
pumpkin
radish
red cabbage
sauerkraut
scallion
soybean
spinach
squash
string bean
tomato
turnip
zucchini

Meats

cod
crab
flounder
lobster

Dairy Products (Must be Low-Fat)

milk
yogurt
cheese

Do not be surprised that I have included dairy products as fat burning food. As against normal belief, consuming low-fat milk or yogurt, or cheese will increase the intake of calcium which causes fat cells to produce less fat and assist the body to break down existing fat.

How do you incorporate consuming these foods into your daily diet? I have some pointers for you to consider. For salad, you can start with lettuce, add shredded carrots, cucumber slices, diced apples and pineapples. For snacks, you may want to replace your chocolate bar with an apple, or you can make sugarless Jell-O with prunes. Alternatively, you may want to have a solely fruit salad as snack and top up with a sugarless whipped cream and serve cold.

Be creative. Use fat burning vegetables to replace other types of food, and you may use garlic in your cooking and reduce the use of salt. Your food will taste nicer too. From today, aim to eat more of the food listed as they are healthier, and make you slimmer.

Although I suggest you eat as much fat burning foods as you like, as these foods will help you lose weight and keep it off. However, never go for a crash negative calorie food only. You should increase eating these foods, but not to replace total diet with them.

A balanced lifestyle that combines eating the right foods and exercises will help you reaching your target weight quicker. Keep your list of fat burning foods as your secret weapon and by eating these negative calorie food daily, will help you to lose weight faster than you thought. Trust me, there is no better way than to eat more and lose weight.

Terence Ng is a lazy weight loss expert and owner of How to lose weight fast. How to lose weight fast helps people who want to lose weight easily and quickly, using Terence's lazy but easy lose weight methods. You can instantly download his secrets by visiting http://www.LoseWeightLazily.com

Fast Weight Loss - Lose 10 Pounds In 10 Days

If you want to lose 10 pounds in 10 days, you will have to find the right diet, the right exercise regimen, and the will to stick to it. If you have tried to achieve this goal before and failed, don't worry, we have all been there. The key to weight loss success is finding the right elements to help you succeed, and sticking to it as you go. Here are a couple of things to avoid while trying to lose 10 pounds in 10 days.

1. Don't eat mindlessly. Need a snack between meals? Try to go for an apple or some fresh vegetables. Grabbing a bag of greasy chips from the snack machine at work and washing them down with a soda is only going to nullify any efforts you have made to eat healthful foods. Try and stay aware of your food choices at all times, as even the small snacks count.

2. Don't make excuses. I'm too busy, I'm too tired, it costs too much. I've heard them all. You have to cut through the excuses and stick to your diet plan. There are people out there losing weight everyday, despite some overwhelming odds. You can too, but you have to believe it!!

So, if you want to lose 10 pounds in 10 days, you have some changes you will have to make. Remember, it isn't easy for anyone. Find the right diet plan, make sure to move your body and stay active, and you will get the results you want, maybe even faster than you think!

Do you want to get rid of those extra pounds you packed on? Although they sure did not pile on overnight, you'd like to get rid of them overnight, wouldn't you? Have you had enough? Are you ready to do something about it? Change your thinking and you can change your body. Your Weight Loss success story can start today! Click Here to get started! More information on easy weight loss and more is available at http://www.easyweightlosscoach.com

Weight Loss Motivation - What You Haven't Been Told

To say we live in fast-paced times is a vast understatement. Modern communication and transportation technology have for better or worse made us impatient creatures. And a lack of patience may be the major stumbling block in your weight reduction efforts.

Hypnosis has become popular as a self-help tool in part because the results are often rapid when compared to other forms of assistance that may take months or even years before tangible results are noticed.

Let's pretend that Uncle Tony goes to the Certified Hypnotist in his community to help him end the smoking habit that he started 30 years ago when he was in the Navy. Highly motivated and very responsive to hypnosis, Uncle Tony finds it amazingly easy to end his cigarette habit. He has his desired outcome in a very short period of time. He walks out of the office as a non-smoker!

Now Aunt Polly has come in for weight management. Her goal is to shed the excess 70 pounds of which she is tired of carrying around. She too is highly motivated and responsive to hypnosis. During the course of 4 weeks she cuts back dramatically on unnecessary eating and has begun daily walks as well. The end result: during the first month she has dropped 7 pounds. Although many would say that was excellent progress, Aunt Polly is unimpressed. All that effort and she is still 63 pounds overweight! Unlike Uncle Tony, who got his results in a seeming blink of an eye, she doesn't even feel like she's close.

And here is the dilemma for anyone who is looking to drop a significant amount of weight instantly: you can't Yes, you can change attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and behaviors in a rapid fashion, however the body is subject to the laws and limitations of the physical world.

Best evidence states that a motivated individual complying with a well-designed weight reduction program can expect to reduce his or body mass by 9-15% in the course of a year. Getting back to Aunt Polly, who is starting out at 230 pounds and hopes to reach 160, it can be predicted that if she does her part she will reduce by anywhere between 20-35 pounds in one year, bringing her about half way to where she wants to be.

You can fully appreciate her frustration, however success in any regard usually goes to the person who deals with things as they really are, not how they want them to be.

So does this mean Aunt Polly is a lost cause? No, she does have a fighting chance if an addition to accepting suggestions about improved eating and exercise behaviors, she also takes on the mindset that she is in this for the long haul.

A mental trick she can also use is translating her progress from pounds to percentages. Those 7 pounds she shed in the first month signify that she has achieved the first 10% of her stated outcome. Sounds a little better when put that way.

James Malone is a Certified Hypnotist from Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey. He publishes the popular monthly Creative Calm Online Newsletter where you get incredible free bonuses when you subscribe. To learn more visit the New Jersey Hypnosis Web Site to learn more!

Fastest and Healthiest Weight Loss Program - What You've Never Been Told

What is a factor in how to lose weight fast that isn't directly related to a diet or exercise program? Did you know that a combination of non-diet, and non-exercise related factors can actually increase your fast weight loss goal successes up to four times? If you're looking to lose 10 pounds in a week or just lose 15 pounds fast, these factors can make all the difference!

According to studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), there are definitely slower and faster ways to lose weight.

Following are some little-known tips that can help you evaluate whether a program will promote fast weight loss while still being healthy. These factors were found in a variety of studies showing significant differences than their counterparts in promoting faster and/or better long-term results.

The fastest and healthiest weight loss program should:

  • Be a commercial directed program rather than self-study

    • A detailed food plan
    • An activity plan
    • A behaviormodification plan focused primarily on cognitive restructuring

  • Reduce calories as well as fat in the diet plan

  • Offer a prepared meal plan (31% more weight loss on average with this factor alone)

    • Pre-cooked meals designed to meet strict diet plan guidelines
    • Prepared snacks are available to meet energy requirements

  • Encourage regular physical exercise more than 200 minutes per week

  • Be web-based or a well-supported group therapy program

    • Participant logs onto the website frequently or attends regular meetings
    • Participation in support modalities is encouraged regularly and followed up on by interventionists.

  • Engage the participant in behavior therapy

    • Regular online submission of self-monitoring diaries with individualized therapist feedback
    • Online forum
    • Regularly emailed behavioral lessons

  • Have counseling done by a human via email rather than computer-automated counseling

Whether you want to lose 15 pounds fast, or just lose 10 pounds in a week, these factors are important. Finding a fast and healthy weight loss program that offers several of these factors could be a significant enhancement towards reaching your weight goals. Probably the best point would be to look for a program that offers prepared meals. Just prepared meals alone can up your weight loss an average of 31 percent-and it also greatly enhances quality of life, ease of participation, and longevity in the program.

Sofia Taylor specializes in weight-loss oriented research. Stop trying diets destined for failure. Sign up for a diet food delivery service today. Let them take the stress and hassle out of managing your diet. Check it out at http://www.squidoo.com/dietfooddelivery

Bike Riding for Weight Loss - Tips for Beginning A Bicycling Plan

If you are one of those people who leisurely pedal around the block or over a flat stretch of scenic road, youve probably been riding for sheer pleasure. Riding bikes for pleasure is a good form of aerobic exercise. But unless you map out a plan to push yourself, you probably wont lose much weight.

I really get sick of hearing people say, No pain, no gain! But the old adage is true when it comes to riding bikes to lose weight. By pushing your cycling distance or speed, you are sure to feel some pain in your leg muscles, your hands, wrists, and your derriere-- even some pain in your throat and lungs as your body tries to accommodate your increased demand for oxygen.

HEALTH TIP: Stretching exercises prior to exercising are helpful in preventing injury!

GETTING YOUR BICYCLE READY...TO ROLL OFF THE WEIGHT

Your first concern will be outfitting your bicycle. If you need an excuse to purchase a new bike, this is an excellent opportunity! I went from a 3-speed bicycle for leisure riding, to a 24-speed bicycle for more committed exercising. Once I learned how the different gears worked, I was very thankful for the extra speeds. They make my ride faster and the hills a lot easier to handle.

Weve found the guys at the bicycle shop to be very helpful, and concerned for our unique cycling needs. Rather than simply steering us toward the most expensive bicycle available (as I had expected), they asked how much riding we would be doing, whether we were trying for speed or leisure, and whether we would be riding on paved roads or dirt trails. When you honestly share your goals and level of experience, the sales clerks can match you with exactly what you need. They want you to be successful in your biking venture!

Some state laws require bicycle lights. But if you will be riding anytime from dusk to dawn, common sense demands that you have lights on your bicycle. These little accessories are battery-operated and last a long time. There are a variety of lights to choose from. My tail light has different blinking speeds, and is designed to make my bike visible to cars approaching from both the rear and the sides. Check for brightness before you buy one. Install the light where it makes the most sense.

We held off on buying a speedometer and odometer unit for our bikes, but once we got serious about losing weight and getting in shape, this feature became a must have. You simply cannot track your progress without knowing how far and how fast youre riding.

If you already have a bicycle, take it to the bike shop for a safety inspection each season. They should check the gears, tires and brakes to make sure everything is working properly. They can adjust your seat to fit your height and adjust the handlebars to fit your reach, making your ride more comfortable. If youre lucky, they might even clean and polish your bike!

If you want to save money in the long run, you can find books and videos that teach you how to care for your own bicycle. Its always a great idea to know how to change your own flat tire and adjust a loose chain.

Another must have is a bicycle pump. Ask your bike dealer how many pounds of air pressure to put in your bicycle tires. Check the tires each time you get ready to ride! We guessed at the air pressure one summer day, and lived to regret it. We rode the bikes to the swimming pool, not realizing that one tire was too full. While we were cooling off in the water, the hot sun was rapidly expanding the air in the tiresone tire blew as it sat in the parking lot. The day in the sun was not so fun, once the pool closed and we had to wait for a truck to haul us home!

HEALTH TIP: Talk with your doctor first, and get his or her blessing before you increase your rate of physical activity!

STAYING COMFORTABLE ON YOUR BIKE

Sitting for long periods of time on a bicycle seat can cause pain, discomfort, and even serious blood circulation problems in avid bicyclists. At your local bike shop, youll find a variety of bicycle seats made specifically for your comfort and health. The salespeople at our local bike shop encouraged us to try out new seats on our bikes for a few days. My husband found the split seat to be more comfortable for himself, while I opted to keep my old gel seat. Someone has even invented seats that look more like a bird perch than a bicycle seat!

HEALTH TIP: Get off your bicycle seat and walk around every 25 minutes or so to get the blood flow to important unmentionable parts of your body.

Think about your clothing...you dont have to have padded biker shorts and special clothing to start riding bikes. There are actually scientifically engineered fabrics designed to pull sweat away from your body in the summer and to keep you from getting hypothermia in the winter. But for now, just wear layers of comfortable sports clothes.

Make sure your clothes arent so tight that you are miserable trying to pedal. But they shouldnt be loose enough to become entangled in the bicycle chain, either! If you become overheated, strip off a layer. If you get cold, add a layer. Wear light or bright colors to allow drivers to see you easily.

It really helps to have a small cargo rack on the back of your bike. Mine looks like a little shelf over the back tire. It has two bungee cords to keep any cargo securely fastened to the bike. Ive used it to tote a small picnic cooler, a shopping bag or extra clothes.

I had the bike shop attach a water bottle holder to the bike under my seat. I can grab a quick swig as I ride or pour some water over my pulse points to cool off a bit. Take small sips of water when needed during your bike ride, rather than chugging huge gulps.

A helmet is almost a must. Life is filled with hazardsand biking has its share. Be smart. Wear a helmet. You can buy a cool rear-view mirror for your helmet. The mirror helps you see when its safe to turn and lets you observe traffic coming up from behind.

I recommend wearing sunglassesboth for the sun and for bugs! At certain times of the year, the air is thick with flying insects. Getting a tiny bug in your eye is a painful event. For contact wearers, carry a contact case and lens cleaner on bike rides for just that reason. Some day youll be glad you did!

HEALTH TIP: Shake your hands downward frequently to get the blood flowing and to prevent pain or numbness in your arms and hands.

MAPPING OUT A WEIGHT LOSS PLAN

You will want to keep a record of your daily diet and food intake, your weekly body measurements and weight, as well as your bicycling miles and time.

The web site www.OpenFitness.net is an excellent way to track your progress. It is very easy to usesimply type in your information you wish to track. As the only community fitness web site of its kind, youll find it to be a fantastic motivation tool that will print out charts and graphs to show how much progress youve made in a few days, a week, or a month!

It keeps track of your food, vitamin, and supplement intake. Thousands of foods have already been analyzed by experts for number of calories, fat, carbs, and protein. You simply select the foods you ate from a pull down feature, and the daily total is tallied for you. Make sure you dont exercise when youve just eaten, or when its almost meal time. Both times will slow you down.

No matter how humiliating it is, measure your arms, legs, chest, waist, neck, hips and thighs once a week. The software keeps track of your weight and body measurements. The thrill of seeing those same inches melt away in the coming weeks will be worth the effort. Its especially impressive seen as a graph!

Consider investing in an instrument that actually measures body fatthere are inexpensive pincer-type instruments that measure fat by pinching you, or buy a set of bathroom scales that cost more but calculate body fat quite painlessly.

Try to ride 4-6 days per week. When you map out your weight loss plan, your short-term goals will change as you change. Youll quickly develop stamina for longer distance. As fat turns to muscle, your speed will increase. Each week, try to increase either your mileage or your speed.

You know how far youve been able to ride, thus far. Start keeping track of the exact route you are taking, the total mileage, and the length of time it took you. Make notes in your records for special circumstances. Did it get dark outside so you were forced to cut your ride short? Did the road crews dump a layer of gravel on your normally paved road?

What was the weather like? Was it dangerously hot? Was it windy? The wind can be your friend or your enemy. When the wind is behind you, your ride is a breeze...but coming from any other direction, be prepared to huff and puff. Accept any length of time as a job well done and simply get the ride accomplished!

Finally, add an upper body workout three times per week. Bicycling works your legs, but to get the rest of your body firm and trim, youll need to exercise your upper body, as well. The www.openfitness.net web site, created by a certified personal fitness trainer, has excellent features which allow you to design and track this portion of your fitness program, as well.

Bicycle riding is a fun, inexpensive form of aerobic exerciseits good for every part of you. But be warnedyou will need to buy a whole new wardrobe for the thinner, more beautifully fit body that emerges!

Sharyl Calhoun

See our 9 Day Cleansing & Fat Burning Program page at http://www.fastandnaturalweightlossprogram.com

Diabetes: What Can Be Done?

A recent estimate proclaimed that 25-35 percent of Westernized populations could suffer from a degree of insulin resistance or from some of health consequences associated with this disease of lifestyle in the future. After further reading of websites and research papers, the following tips were found that were suggested to reduce the risk of acquiring diabetes.

The information is not meant to cure the disease, but because it is more a disease of lifestyle than anything else, scientifically validated information is available to help you reduce your risk. This is mostly information that you have heard all before, good nutrition, good health, and exercise, but judging by the incidence of disease from the numbers presented above, people still have not been told enough.

The ideal diet for modifying insulin resistance should reduce body weight, decrease fat while sparing muscle tissue, and improve insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity refers to the increased uptake of blood sugar by muscle cells, which is particularly important because high levels of blood sugar (blood glucose = same thing) are associated with disease. While it is relatively simple to find agreement within the literature on these general points, it is difficult to find an agreement among experts regarding the ideal diet that will best help to accomplish these goals.

Briefly:

High fiber diets are recommended, as is decreasing the amount of saturated fat in the diet. However, processed carbohydrates (high-glycemic carbohydrates) often take the place of fats, but excess carbohydrates can be very deleterious because they lead to very high levels of blood sugar. North American diets are high in processed food, for example, 8 spoons of sugar in a 355ml soft drink, and the excess sugar-diet is likely one of the largest contributors to the great prevalence of diabetes (aside from a sedentary lifestyle).

White bread, sugary cereals, pretzels, sports drinks, and flavored-beverages, etc. are all packed with high-glycemic carbohydrates ready to skyrocket your blood sugar levels. They are calorie-dense but severely lacking in nutrients. Sure pop tarts and frosted flakes are truly low-fat foods, but with chronic consumption are these better breakfast foods than eggs and whole-wheat toast? I honestly cant say for sure.

While high-glycemic carbohydrates may not need to be fully eradicated from the diet, they should not be the staple foods of your meal plans. In fact, reduce your consumption of high-glycemic simple carbohydrates to immediately post-workout. Plan around vegetables and lean meats and fruits, and include processed foods as a low priority.

Many people have used all types of diets successfully and unsuccessfully. NOTE: everyone is on a diet, this simply refers to the food that you eatfor example, a University student may be on a diet of Pasta, Pizza, Burgers, and Beer, and even though this student may get fat, he/she is still on a diet per se.

But anyway, some skinny people can eat a lot, and some skinny people can eat a lot of high-glycemic carbohydrate, while overweight individuals can eat relatively healthy, and average individuals can eat a wide-variety of food and all end up with no change in their body compositions. After seeing all this, who is to say what the best diet and macro-nutrient composition is for everyone, or for you?

Just like training, nutrition is sometimes best learned by trial and error, but reading literature on healthy eating helps as well, even though you are guaranteed to find two experts with completely opposing views on the best way to lose body fat, etc. Most importantly, if you cant stick to your food schedule due to a complete hatred of the foods you are eating, than that food plan is likely to be unsuccessful, regardless of how well thought out that it is.

Again, just like training, nutrition is best tweaked to individual considerations, what works for a young man to get lean for the beach may not necessarily be the healthiest diet for a middle-aged, overweight, pre-diabetic. Educate yourself. Learn what foods are healthy, and pick the ones from that list that you enjoy. Eating can be enjoyable and healthy.

Often bodybuilders and athletes get caught up over-emphasizing the macro-nutrient profile of their meals (i.e. how much protein and fat is in a meal of chicken and rice). However, they will fail to consider the amount of micro-nutrients that are lacking in this bland meal (i.e. very little vitamin C, and other healthful antioxidants, etc.). The recommendations are for self-education and consultation with a true expert if necessary. Oops, getting a little sidetracked, so lets return to looking at some other risks for diabetes:

Cigarette smoking From heart disease to cancer, from emphysema to diabetes. Cigarettes cause too much disease. Please avoid them.

Stress Very difficult to prove that stress causes illness, but many experts believe that decreasing the amount of stress and hassle in life goes a long way towards increasing overall health. So, get rid of your stress. Sometimes you need to remember that there is nothing that you can do about certain things in life, so accept that. But if you can change things, do so for the better.

Physical activity is important for disease prevention. Exercise may be the single most important lifestyle factor for both preventing and reversing insulin resistance, but dont let it be an excuse for a poor diet! Everyone should attempt to maintain low (yet healthy) levels of body fat and moderate amounts of muscle mass. The recommendations are quite simple, but regular exercise is huge step in the right direction, away from diabetes. Pick some activities and do them consistently.

The importance of resistance training in overall health is no longer just my opinion, but is gaining great scientific support. If you jog 5 times a week for nothing more than health reasons, you could reduce that to 3, even 2 sessions, and replace the other days with resistance training for a greater overall health benefit. Why? Resistance training increases muscle mass.

Muscle serves 3 important functions: One, it is a very metabolically active tissue, helping to take up and use more blood glucose, and thus it may help improve the blood sugar profiles of diabetics. In fact, after young healthy men did weight training for several weeks, they needed to release less insulin to deal with a large amount of carbohydrate, thus indicating that insulin sensitivity increased with an increase in muscle mass (Yarasheski, 1992).

Second, muscle provides strength for daily function and should help to prevent injuries (for example, more muscle should reduce the injury risk associated with pounding the pavement (jogging) 5 times a week). And three, plain and simple, everyone looks a little better with some pipes rather than pipe-cleaners in their sleeves.

As people age, they lose muscle, which in my opinion is due mostly to lack of activity, rather than aging factors. Again, in my opinion, it is a matter of what came first?, the loss of muscle and then decreased activity, or no activity leading to a decrease in muscle? According to *Hasten and colleagues, sedentary older men and women (age 78+) have lower rates of protein synthesis than younger sedentary counterparts.

However, within just 2 weeks of resistance training the older individuals were able to increase their rates of protein synthesis as much as the younger men and women. Therefore, it shows that older individuals maintain the ability to increase muscle growth in response to short-term resistance exercise. My conclusion: It is never too late to get out and train for muscle mass and health. But

IMPORTANT: A key point to remember if you are sedentary, dont jump back into things too quickly! Any activity you do today is more than you did yesterday, so slowly but surely, build exercise and strength capacity. As always, consult an expert if your knowledge is limited in this field.

Will we ever be free of disease? No, unfortunately that is not likely to happen. But there are many simple steps that can help improve health. If you improve your health, fitness and performance improvements are likely to follow. In the future, research will guide us along the path to better lifestyle choices, and fortunately will provide us with some help to correct our mistakes. However, since lifestyle factors play such a prominent role in insulin resistance, we can modify the bad habits right now, so that insulin resistance can be avoided in the future.

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Mens Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Isometric Weight Loss, What Is It? How Does It Work?

Ok, so you had a lot of food during your holidays and now you are uncomfortable because you gained a few pounds, so what? Just attend your local gym for a few weeks and you will end up looking better than before! But wait, life does not always work like that does it? You probably have a job, maybe even two of them, and you have a family to take care of, or maybe you have to go to school; in any case, chances are that your duties are overwhelming; the fact is that over 70% of the population does not even have time to attend a gym. Now what? Well, I am here to tell you about a new weight loss technique, it is called isometric exercising.

Isometric weight loss is based on a series of routines that may be followed anywhere: in your office while you work, sitting on your couch watching TV, at your bed before going to sleep, etcetera. With isometric weight loss you wont ever again have to visit a gym, and you wont be loosing any unnecessary energy in the process, because isometric weight loss focuses on the areas you actually need.

If you have to work a lot, then isometric weight loss is just for you, just try contracting your abs repeatedly; at first you might feel strange, but after a few sessions, isometric weight loss will become a habit, and you will do it even unconsciously. And the best part is that you wont ever feel tired of doing it, you will get out of work as energized as always, even a little bit more, and instead of having to drive all the way to your gym, you can enjoy the rest of your day by doing those things that you love the most.

Isometric weight loss is the answer for your prayers, and it is much more efficient than those exercise routines that they make you follow in the gym. If you are aiming to shed a few pounds out of your waistline, then isometric weight loss will work wonders for you, just keep in mind that every time you contract those stomach muscles, you are actually losing weight.

Try the isometric weight loss routine for a week or two, you will notice amazing results after that short period of time, and you will be most pleased, I can guarantee that.

This article can be freely published on a website as long as it's not modified in any way including the author bylines, plus all the hyperlinks must be made active just like below.

Jean Lam is a writer, author, publisher and owns several sites. Visit his weight loss obesity website for lots of articles about losing weight. Also check out the weight loss eBook that will give you tips for your weight loss problems.

Bodybuilder Workout Routines To Build Your Chest

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to build chest that you can be proud of.

Having a broad chest that women will admire when you walk into a room has been the dream of many guys for eons...

Or, for the women... having a toned and sleek chest that accentuates your natural assets in a feminine way has been desired by women for thousands of years...

And you know what? Having a chest that you want is absolutely attainable. I tell my clients this all the time... "Do the work -- do the chest exercise routines... and you will see positive results!"

But be sure to incorporate the expert tips and tricks into your overall exercise plan to avoid shoulder injuries that will set your best laid plans back...

Improper weightlifting techniques and over training always increase your chances of injuring your shoulders or back. So do the routines correctly or if you aren't sure how, talk to your personal trainer...

The workout routines that you are doing today will target your entire upper body. Your chest -- your shoulders -- and your muscles will be exhausted. But the level of exhaustion will be just right -- and you avoid injuries!

We will be doing the basic chest workouts but throw in a few twists to make it more interesting. And since you will be training in the super-chest-workout mode -- you get in and out of the gym in the least time possible.

I included a substitution for women for one Super-set if you are worried about adding too much mass to your chest. And everyone can definitely modify this workout plan to fit their physical goals.

Bodybuilder Workout Routines to Build Your Chest

Chest Super-set 1:

(Rest 1 minute between each exercise and 1.5 minutes before repeating the Super-set)

* A-1: Dumbbell flat chest press -- four sets of six reps

* A-2: Barbell row -- four sets of eight reps

Chest Super-set 2:

(don't rest between exercises and rest 1 minute before repeating the Super-set)

* B-1: Dumbbell incline press -- three sets of 8 reps

* B-2: Dumbbell chest fly -- three sets of ten reps

Chest Super-set 3:

(don't rest between exercises and rest 1 minute before repeating the Super-set)

* C-1: Medium Grip Bench Press -- three sets of ten reps

* C-2: Dumbbell external rotation -- three sets of ten reps

Exercise substitution for women:

Do only two sets of each of the exercises above.

A-1: do the # of maximum push-ups that you can do instead of using Dumbbell flat chest press

Exercise descriptions:

Dumbbell flat chess press:

Lie on the bench. Hold the Dumbbells above your chest with your palms facing your feet. Lower the Dumbbells to the chest level and then press the Dumbbells up above the chest. Easy and steady.

Barbell Row:

Stand up with your torso bent and parallel to the floor. But don't round your lower back. Keep that back straight. Keep knees slightly bent. Contract your abs to support your back. Grab the barbell and row it to your abdomen -- bringing your shoulders blades together. Slowly lower the barbells and then repeat.

Dumbbell Incline Press:

Lie on your back on the forty-five degree bench. Hold the Dumbbells above your chest with your palms facing your feet. Now, lower the Dumbbells to your chest level. And then press the Dumbbells straight up above the chest. Repeat.

Dumbbell Fly:

Stay on the forty-five degree bench but this time hold the Dumbbells above your chest but your palms will be facing each other. The key thing to remember is to keep your elbows slightly bent at all times to avoid overextending them. Now, lower your arms until they are to your sides BUT don't go below the shoulder level! Now use your chest muscles to help your arms push up the Dumbbells to the starting postion. Be in control the whole time -- otherwise you are probably using too much

weight.

Medium Grip Bench Press: Lie down on a flat bench. Feet flat on the floor and upper back against the bench. Grip the bar half-way between your shoulder width and your normal bench press grip. Keep your elbows close to your sides and lower the bar straight down to your chest level. Now, slowly push the bar back straight up above your chest.

Dumbbell External Rotation:

Start with a light Dumbbell (perhaps five pounds). Sit down on the flat bench and bend your left knee. Place your left foot at the end of the bench and rest your left elbow on the top of your left knee. Hold the Dumbbell in the bottom position and slowly rotate the Dumbbell using your muscles in the rotator cuff. Rotate the Dumbbell up and back until it is in the finish position when your forearm is perpendicular to your body at the top of the movement.

This chest workout trick can be done several times a day by anyone to get an instant increase in chest size.

You can do this either when you are sitting down in your chair at the workplace or standing up in line. But you will need some space. The first thing you will do is extend your arms in front of you with your palms facing outwards. Now externally rotate your shoulders and try to use your muscles to touch both should blades together. Squeeze your muscles as hard as you can and hold that position as long as you can. You should feel a lot of tension within your muscles in your back and front.

This is a good isometric exercise to perform to get the kinks out of your body while sitting in your chair for long periods of time at work.

Good job!

If you are looking for an effective workout program no matter if you are a beginner or at an advanced fitness level... that is guaranteed to get you in the best shape of your life... then be sure to head over here to find out how you can transform your body into one that will be slim, toned and muscular here:

http://www.healthy-weight-loss-fitness-program.com

Turbulence Training Program

How To Lose Tummy Fat Fast With A Bunch Of Buddies

Curious on how to lose tummy fat fast with a bunch of buddies? One of the reasons that people failed in their bid to reduce their weight is because there is no one to motivate each other. Have you had the experience of going to the gym or jogging track alone, start training and after 2 months, you stopped everything. You become more interested in joining friends for coffee, for sinfully good food and you gain back those fats again.

Imagine if you have a bunch of buddies to train and loose weight together, do you think you will stop your training easily. I do not think so. Let me share my experiences. When I was first attempting to lose weight, I was doing it alone. In just 2 months, I began to feel bored and slowly, I started to drift off my training schedule and the fats start coming back.

But when I was partnering with a buddy, we could force each other to the gym; we will track each other's progress as well as force more repetitions without getting injured. We will be motivating each other to carry heavier weights as well. The progress was that we both began to feel better about ourselves and we needed to buy smaller clothing as well.

It was like a business partnership, or you can call it a mastermind group, where you can give advises, point out problems and because any discussion will affect a bunch of people, you will not be able to give up easily and even if you do, your buddies will get you back to track. So find a gym buddy or jogging buddy and start planning the progress and the targets you want to achieve.

Some basic tips to plan together include:

- How much weight you want to lose?
- How much time is needed to achieve the targets you two have set?
- Location to train and the time to start training.
- Exercises to be done per day, week or month.
- Food to eat or avoid

So, to start knowing whether how to lose tummy fat fast method really works, go find those flabby buddies and start motivating each other now!

For you are seriously trying to slim your waistline, stop piling on the fats, get discipline, enforce determination and get your own personal health magazine washboard abs at http://www.trainthoseabs.info

Developing a Proper Eating Plan

Many people begin a diet plan without knowing the proper way to eat. They may eat the right foods, but the way they eat those foods can have a positive or negate impact on weight loss. If you think you can skip meals and enhance weight loss, you will be quite disappointed with the results.

Develop an Eating Schedule

One of the key items to consistent weight loss is having a set schedule to eat your meals. Although sometimes this is difficult with the work schedules and lifestyles we lead, it's an essential part of weight loss. In fact, the schedules that most of us keep today are likely to be contributing factors to overweight-as much if not more so than the type of foods we eat. It is unnatural to expect the body to go for hours on end without food. We began life as babies eating every 3-4 hours, and it's only natural that the body should continue to expect that.

How Your Eating Schedule Affects Weight Loss

Although it is natural to think that if we eat less food we will be able to lose more weight, that is not always the case. If we eat less food, we must also eat on a regular schedule. Attempting to lose weight by eating one or two meals a day is not going to work. In fact, you will probably gain weight because your body will revert to starvation mode thus slowing down your metabolism. That means you can eat one meal a day of under 1,000 calories and still not lose weight! On the other hand, you can consume 1,200-1,500 calories per day in 3-6 meals and lose weight easily.

Many people claim if they eat breakfast or eat three meals a day they will gain weight, but it's not in the fact that they are eating three meals per day but in the food they are eating during those meals. Nothing says you have to eat three course meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but you do need to eat at least three meals daily. Even if you eat some fruit and whole grain cereal with skim milk for breakfast and a garden salad with low calorie dressing for lunch, you are eating healthy while staying on schedule.

Avoid Eating on the Run

Our fast lifestyles today are forcing many of us to grab something quick and eat at our desks or in the car. In many cases that means we are not eating meals that are healthy nor are we allowing ourselves to take the time to sit down and enjoy a leisurely meal. Eating a piece a fruit while in the car may not hurt too much but that piece of fruit will eventually turn into a high calorie pastry for breakfast and a fast food trip for lunch to save time. We have to slow down and take the time to eat our food so that the body can digest it properly. If your schedule is so hectic that you don't have time for breakfast and lunch, it's time to slow down before it takes a toll on your health in ways other than those that affect your waistline.

Do Not Eat Too Close to Bedtime

Another mistake many of us make with our fast-paced lifestyles is eating a complete dinner late at night. There may be occasions when it can not be avoided, but for the most part, you want to have your evening meal at least four hours before you retire for the night. If you work late, you may want to reverse your eating schedule so that you have your heavy meal for lunch and eat a light dinner.

Marie Watson writes weight loss, diet plan, health, beauty and general well-being articles for the Slim Eazy website at http://www.slimeazy.com

The Number 1 Weight Loss Technique That Nobody Knows About

There is a simple way to aid your weight loss process that everyone either forgets, passes over, or just plain doesn't know about. It's free, and only takes minutes a day. What could be so simple yet nearly guarantee a level of success in conjunction with a good weight loss program?

It's simple. Just keep a food journal.

Did you know that most people have no idea how many calories they consume in a day? Even professional dietitians and doctors often underestimate their daily caloric intake by as much as 20%! How is this possible?

The culprit lies in the "sneaky" calories that reside in things like 3 extra taco chips, an extra mouthful from your spouse's plate, or a few M&M's grabbed on the way out of the kitchen. Totaled together, these overlooked activities can add up to several pounds in mere months.

Consider it this way: A typical taco chip has about 8-10 calories in it. Eat 5-6 extra chips per day, and changing nothing else, you could gain up to 6 pounds over the course of a year! And you probably never even noticed what you were doing.

The simple thing is this: most people watch what they eat at mealtimes, which is great. But people often fail to notice the "in-betweens." By keeping a strict food journal and writing down everything you eat, you will become aware of all the little extras that are piling up and ruining your weight loss efforts.

In conjunction with proven weight loss programs and dietary changes as well as an increase in exercise, keeping a food journal can almost guarantee that you will lose weight.

Finding the calorie counts in the foods you eat can be as easy as looking at the nutrition facts on the back of the box. Finding calorie counts for fast food and other "non-listed" foods is as easy as searching Google.

Of course, you should invest in a good weight loss plan to help you begin to make better food choices.

For more information on the absolute best weight loss programs that will jump start your fat loss goals, visit BestQuickWeightLossPrograms.com.

Fitness guru Cynthia Blake is a writer for http://www.BestQuickWeightLossPrograms.com

How to Become a Great Personal Trainer

It's a great question, and an important question. With the loss of traditional jobs and a move to service-industry economy in North America, personal training is a way to earn a relatively good living while helping others.

In my opinion, there is a huge shortage of good trainers in the workforce.

Now it's relatively easy to become a certified personal trainer. Simply look up one of the popular certifications (ACE, NSCA-CPT, or whatever certification the gym you want to work at requires), get their study materials, and then pass their test. Then you certified and can be a trainer. That's it. (So it's easy to see why there are so many bad trainers out there. Remember that the more people the organizations certify, the more $$$ they make...)

However, to become a good trainer, you will need to learn much, much more and invest far more time and education than you need to just get a quick certification.

You will need to start by mastering the basics such as anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, and an introduction to sports medicine.

For without this foundation, it is easy for a trainer to fall for the latest gimmicks and fads. If you don't know how the central nervous system controls the muscles, then standing on a wobbling board while doing biceps curls with a rubber band while reciting your ABC's backwards might seem like a good idea. But if you have a strong education in the foundations, then you'll take one look at that stuff and realize its bunk.

Fortunately, you can learn as much studying on your own as you could by being enrolled in a University Kinesiology program.

The plus side of going to University is that you will get a recognized degree and it also happens that a University or College degree (any subject however) is a pre-requisite for possibly the most recognized certification, that of the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS).

However, the obvious downsides of University are the required investments in time and money. You must study on the University schedule and the fees are substantial.

One additional downside to a University education is the heavy emphasis placed on aerobic exercise science. Not only has this lead to the "You must do aerobics for fat loss" mentality, but also to the ill-advised "high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets are best for fat loss and health" nutrition recommendations.

While some coaches regard the formal education process as un-necessary, and feel that all the requisite knowledge can be gained on their own and in the trenches, I am a strong supporter of a formal education - provided the quality of education is high. Perhaps these coaches attended less than stellar Kinesiology programs (which I know do exist).

However, the education that I attained from McMaster University is without a doubt the reason for the quality of my programs and the level of my knowledge. Most influential was the neuromuscular physiology course taught to me by Dr. Digby Sale at McMaster University. But since you will never have the opportunity to attend his classes, I recommend in his place you read:

Supertraining - by Mel Siff

and

The Science and Practice of Strength Training - Dr. Vladimir Zatsiorsky

Either way, as Michael Masterson of EarlytoRise says, expect to spend 1000 hours of study to become competent (as he suggests is the case with any discipline). Of course, having a good mentor can significantly decrease the amount of time you will need to study (perhaps by 50%).

So those are a couple of roads on how you become a competent personal trainer. But they aren't the only ones. I've even met former University-educated engineeers that are great trainers, as they seem to bring a unique perspective to training.

And I haven't even touched on the business side of things...

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Mens Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines and all over the Internet, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Building A Weight Loss Support Network

For many of us the weight loss journey is a hard and lonely one.

While some of us can achieve successful weight loss alone, many more need a support network to help us lose weight and keep it off.

This article describes what a weight loss support network is, how it can help, which people make valuable members of one and how to develop one of our own to help us stay motivated and achieve a healthier body weight.

What is a weight loss support network?

Basically, a weight loss support network is a group of people we can share our weight loss goals, challenges, triumphs, thoughts, feelings and journey with, and who will provide support to us when we need it and help us in some way to achieve our goal.

Support networks can be formal, informal, expert, non-expert, online, offline, large or small, or any mix of these depending upon our individual circumstances and needs.

Online networks can be a great help to those of us with weight loss or fitness goals because for many of us losing weight is a daily battle and online support networks are available to us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The most effective weight loss support systems combine formal and informal elements, expert and non-expert members, are both online and offline, and provide support across as many areas as needed from the largest number of sources available.

How does a weight loss support network help people lose weight?

Weight loss support groups can help those of us with weight loss goals in many ways including:

  • Providing motivation
  • Providing encouragement
  • Helping us to stay accountable and on course
  • Providing us with guidance, advice and information
  • Listening to us when we're feeling down and doubtful
  • Providing friendship when we most need it
  • Helping us feel that we are part of a team and that we are not alone
  • Helping us to overcome our fears
  • Sharing and enjoying our experiences and successes

Which people should we have in our weight loss network?

Generally speaking, when we are putting together our own weight loss support network, we should be looking to recruit the help of people who:

  • Are trustworthy
  • Are reliable and dependable
  • Have expertise gained from experience
  • Are non-judgmental
  • Are, or have been, in a similar situation to us
  • Are positive, fun and enjoyable to be around
  • Don't give up easily
  • Will be honest with us
  • Will get tough with us if we need it
  • Will forgive our failures and encourage us to stick to it despite them
  • We feel comfortable sharing our feelings and thoughts with
  • We are confident can help us
  • Are as committed to a healthy lifestyle as we are
  • Genuinely care about our health and happiness and are happy to help

How to develop a weight loss network of our own

If we think we need or would like a network larger than just a few people, it may be a good idea to sit down and make a list of the areas in which we would like support. Then we can simply list under each area who we would like to recruit to our support team.

The areas of help we might consider listing may include things like:

  • Diet
  • Exercise
  • Motivation
  • Goal Setting
  • Progress Tracking
  • Cooking
  • Weight loss information
  • Healthy Recipes
  • Role Models
  • Emotional Support
  • Sharing the journey

Under each of the headings chosen, we can then list people who can help us including both professionals and non-professionals.

Among the professional help available to us are doctors, dietitians, personal trainers, life coaches, weight loss specialists, gym instructors, psychologists, etc, and gaining help from these professionals is as simple as calling their office and making an appointment to see them.

Non-professional help can come from friends, family, neighbours, colleagues and acquaintances, internet support groups and forums (such as the weightloss forum on weightloss.com.au), etc, and help can be gained from them usually just by talking to them about your goal, gauging their reaction (whether they seem supportive or not) and if necessary asking them if they would like to help or get involved in some way on our journey.

Generally, the most useful non-professional network members will be other people who share our weight loss or fitness related goals or have already successfully achieved similar goals.

It is these people who are more likely to form walking or exercise groups with us, share recipe ideas and cooking tips with us and listen to and encourage us when we are finding the going a little tough. They are also the most likely people to really enjoy sharing our experiences and successes.

Scott Haywood is the editor of Australia's leading weight loss and healthy lifestyle website weightloss.com.au. Weightloss.com.au is a free weight loss resource that has healthy recipes, weight loss product reviews, a weight loss business directory and a very popular weight loss forum.

The Detox Diet: Harmful or Helpful?

What, exactly, is a detox diet? As described by several sources, a detox diet is a nutritional regimen that involves changing bad eating and drinking habits in order to cleanse the body of toxins and other contaminants. A detox has become quite the thing to do these days, and many claim that completing a detox can improve overall health and digestion as well as to heighten resistance to illness and help in weight control. All of the above can be accomplished with good, nutritious eating habits and healthy living styles, but we seem to want to do everything the hard way; hence a detox diet becomes necessary to bring us back to the point where we should have been anyway.

A detox diet can be comprised of many different methodologies. Some people prefer to fast, and only drink water or juice for a certain period of time. Others prefer to increase the amount of fish they eat. Others restrict the amount of calories they consume while others resort to bottled methods like an herbal detox diet. Some even go on a lemonade diet that is more commonly known as the Master Cleanse detox diet.

It stands to reason that any detox diet must be carefully monitored to ensure proper ingestion of nutritious foods, and many merely suggest that a person add more fruits and vegetables to their diet. Of course, staying away from fast food and soda, cigarettes and alcohol is a given. A detox diet is all about changing eating habits and adopting healthy and nutritiously balanced diets and foregoing McDonald's and Taco Bell offerings. It has become a fad to call anything that offers such a drastic change in eating or drinking habits a detox diet.

Still, some argue that the body is already more than capable of ridding itself of toxic wastes and that a detox diet is not only unnecessary but can also be dangerous. Our bodies are meant to contain a certain amount of fats and sugars, and to try to rid the body of these items with a detox diet can cause medical problems such as anemia, low blood sugar and lethargy and weakness. The balance of electrolytes, fats, enzymes, proteins, and carbohydrates in the body are finely tuned and shouldn't be tampered with. A detox diet that allows only liquid is not to be considered a safe alternative to exercise and a normal, well balanced diet. Studies have shown that the lack of protein in most of the more common types of detox diet decreases muscle mass in individuals. With less muscle mass, the metabolism automatically slows down, which will threaten most well-intentioned weight loss diets regardless of what you do.

Call it what you will. While a detox diet can help people learn new and better eating habits, as with everything, a detox diet should be done using caution and good judgment. Perhaps we could avoid all this unnecessary detox diet stuff by just eating better and exercising more in the first place.

Are you ready for a detox diet? Discover more about the detox diet at http://DetoxRevealed.com.

Weight Loss As An Added Bonus

The truth is that the astounding weight loss being achieved on the green tea diet is just one of the numerous miracle-like benefits of simply drinking it. The tea diet is also widely recognized as a substance that can protect against many different cancers such as stomach cancer, ovarian cancer, cancer of the colon, oral cancer, prostate cancer, and breast and cervical cancers. Another antioxidant in tea diet is also being studied as a potential cure for cancer. The diet is actually a dietary supplement which is composed of natural ingredients such as green tea.

Due to the popularity of recent findings, green tea has almost become synonymous with weight loss and diet. For instance, instead of drinking coffee and cream which area high in calories, the weight loss programs can not only save you from taking in too much calories but also let you take in several healthful substances like polyphenols and flavonoids. There are a large number of remedial benefits of drinking green tea and research has confirmed that consuming a small amount like just one cup a day can greatly assist in weight reduction and fat burning. The great thing about the weight loss benefit of green tea extracts is that it does not have any adverse side-effects.

With its countless health and weight loss benefits, these dieting supplements are fast replacing ephedra as the leading weight loss product in the market. Although green tea weight loss supplements also contain caffeine this doesn't seem to have the negative effects found in other products with caffeine. People who use these supplements in studies will loose approximately 2 pounds per month. Yes, believe it or not, more and more often you'll find green tea (or green tea extract) included in the compilations of many of the more popular weight loss supplements today.

As opposed to black and oolong tea which undergoes full oxidization, green tea diet is only gently steamed, preserving the natural antioxidants in its original form. A green tea diet is one of the easiest lifestyle changes to make. The tea diet is no different that it not only recommends but requires the use of simple exercises to be completed along with the consumption of the dietary supplements.

P. Rodgers specializes in marketing natural health & beauty supplements. http://dietea4u.com and http://herbs4all.com

Planning, The Fourth Secret Of Healthy Weight Loss

Planning

Why a plan
Do you plan your vacation?
Do you plan the dinner when you invite friends or family for dinner?

Would you invite people for dinner without taking care of all the details?
Of course you wouldnt, you want the evening to be memorable. You want everyone to enjoy the dinner and the company.

Plan to succeed
Why shouldnt you plan your daily nutrition and your daily exercise?
Why shouldnt you plan some private time to work on your Motivation and your mindset, to write your daily goals in your diary?

If you plan it, you will be more willing to do it.
If you plan it, you will be motivated to do it.

Plan to be prepared:

  • You will always have fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, nuts and seeds available.
  • You will always have fresh greens washed and ready to eat, waiting for you in the fridge.
  • You will have all the ingredients needed for your daily meals and your daily snacks.
  • You will have an updated shopping list.
  • You will always have bottled mineral water with you, at home, at the office
  • Maybe you can prepare part of the meal the day before.
  • If you eat out, you will know what to order, because you called the restaurant and ask them to fax you their menu so you can plan ahead an appropriate meal. Maybe you have a special request for the chef that he will be more than happy to accommodate if you let him know a few hours before.
  • Plan to always have something ready in case of emergencies: like products to prepare a salad quickly, or a soup and a whole grain slice of bread. (For those days when nothing goes as planned.)
  • You will have scheduled your exercise time.
  • You will have scheduled some private time to be motivated and with a positive loving attitude towards yourself and your weight management.

Plan everyday
Plan everyday to ensure your success; write everything down in your journal. Schedule everything so you wont forget, we all have busy schedules. Use your palm computer or your cell phone to schedule and remind you of your successful planning for healthy weight management. Plan and put your plan into action, this is another secrets to healthy weight loss.

Isabelle Epstein
Dedicated to healthy nutrition and a healthy life style. If you would enjoy motivation and tips for a healthy weight management, sent directly to your inbox, sign up for Isabelle's free newsletter at: http://www.HealthyNutriMania.com

Winning Tactics For Giving Up The Diet

You might disagree, but hear me out on this, if you're thinking of going on a diet to lose those extra pounds think again. Long-term weight control through dieting is near impossible, for the simple reason is that diets promote only short-term solutions not long term.

After dieting you'll certainly look lighter on the scales, but in most cases this is because you've dumped a few pounds of body fluid and muscle, and not because you've lost any significant amounts of body fat.

One of the main reasons diets don't work is because they send the body into starvation mode - a survival mechanism for times when humans faced periods of famine. Cutting back on our energy intake causes the body to lower its metabolic rate, which reduces its ability to burn fat.

At the same time, hunger signals increase and we quickly start to crave high energy foods loaded with fats and sugars - the exact foods we are trying to do without!

Alarmingly, research has shown that repeated dieting actually makes it harder to lose weight and easier to put it on.

This is because when you dump the diet and return to normal eating habits, the drop in metabolic rate caused by the diet means that your old eating habits actually represent excess in calories.

Not only do you regain the fat stores just lost, but you may even gain a bit extra.

Five more reasons to stop dieting

* Diets sap energy - Too little food means not enough energy for physical activity.

* Diets lower your metabolism - Dieting causes your body to conserve energy, making results harder to achieve.

* Diets are unhealthy - A cycle of rapid weight loss followed by weight gain can lead to a loss of lean tissue from your body and calcium from your bones. It also strips the body of essential vitamins and minerals.

* Diets make food the enemy - Food provides nourishment and comfort. Diets can make you afraid to eat, depriving you of one of life's pleasures.

* Diets cheat your confidence - Going from one failed diet to the next can leave you feeling depressed and create a cycle in which guilt battles against food.

Regular physical activity and a healthy, balanced diet aren't as glamorous as the quick fixes, but they do get better results.

Start with one extra exercise session and one less fatty takeaway meal per week, and gradually work towards a lifelong plan for achieving your best weight.

If you change the way you eat or exercise to lose weight, ask yourself this question. Can I see myself sticking to this routine for life?

If the answer is "no" then its time to change what you're doing. Any healthy weight loss plan should include the following:

* A wide variety of foods.

* Regular and enjoyable exercise.

* Enough filling foods to avoid constant hunger.

* At least 1200 calories a day.

* Flexibility for treat foods and social occasions.

* A realistic goal of your best weight (not necessarily your lowest weight.)

Fact

A realistic weight loss is around one to two pounds per week. Fast weight losses are not fat loss but glycogen and water. If you lose weight quickly then you will probable return back to the weight at which you started as quickly as it was lost.

Fiction

* Weight loss is quick and simple.

* Exercise is not necessary.

* Certain exercises can spot reduce.

* Carbohydrates (for example, bread, potatoes, rice, and pasta) are fattening.

Eliminate calorie-dense foods such as cookies, sugary desserts, chips, fries, pizza, candies, crackers etc.

Research on people who have successfully lost a lot of weight and kept it off long term, shows that the vast majority succeeded by consuming a low fat diet high in fibre coupled with strength training and cardiovascular activity.

These are the basics you'll need to aim for.

A sound weight loss-eating plan should:

* Be nutritionally sound, providing all the nutrients you need.

* Never promise fast weight losses.

* Offer an eating plan based on real food.

* Allow you to eat out.

* Avoid expensive meal plans, products and supplements.

* Not avoid carbohydrate foods, e.g. bread, rice, pasta, cereals and potatoes.

* Make gradual dietary changes.

* Provide knowledge.

* Allow you to eat all foods

* Recommend physical activity.

Fat calories are more fattening than carbohydrate calories. Your body can easily convert the fat you eat in food into body fat, so to lose weight you need to cut down on fats and foods that contain it.

Consider the following steps to reduce fat in your diet.

* Use skimmed or skimmed milk in drinks, cooking and on cereals.

* Buy a non - stick frying pan.

* Buy a cheese slicer

* Cut the visible fat from meat.

* Eat very little pastry.

* Learn how to read a food label.

* Substitute low fat yogurt for cream.

* Remove the skin from chicken and turkey.

* Eat fruit as snacks rather than eating chocolate and biscuits.

* Eat fewer burgers and sausages.

In conclusion the way to lose body fat and maintain muscle is to have a food program for life and more energy output. Increase the amount of fruits, vegetables, non-fat dairy products, whole grains, and beans that you eat.

Gary Matthews is the author of the popular fitness eBooks Maximum Weight Loss and Maximum Weight Gain. Please visit http://www.maximumfitness.com right now for your 'free' weight loss e-course.