January 30, 2009

Free Proven Weight Loss Tips

You know how it goes; lose five pounds almost instantaneously while eating everything you want. You don’t need to exercise and you’ll never gain the weight back! Just take a little miracle pill and all your weight loss problems will be solved! That’s the commercial or newspaper ad that sounds too good to be true. You’d like to believe it, but you don’t. Neither do I. This article is going to give you some free proven weight loss tips.

Think about this for a minute. It may not be 100% your fault you are overweight. It’s possible you may be carrying the extra weight because of genetics. But, and there is always a but; you may be contributing to your problem by not eating right and living a sedate lifestyle.

Now, even though you may have inherited some of the problem, you have to take responsibility for having added to the problem. Once you accept the responsibility, it will be much easier for you to make the decision that things have to change. Not only do you have to lose weight but you have to change your lifestyle. Failure is not an option because it can result in you cutting years off your life.

Your second weight loss tip is to talk with your personal doctor, to make sure you don't have a medical condition that is contributing to your weight problem. At the same time, your physician will tell you if you’re physically fit to begin a weight loss plan. In addition he will be able to advise you on setting realistic goals for shedding those pounds.

It is important for you to set your goals so they are obtainable. They must be set high enough to be a challenge, yet low enough so you don't get discouraged quickly. If your doctor tells you to lose 50 pounds, you need to break those 50 lbs. down into bite size chunks.

An example would be to set a long term goal of losing the 50 pounds over a six month time frame. You can break this down into a smaller goal of only 8 lbs. a month. Then you can take it down even further to two pounds a week. It appears now you have a workable goal.
For your third step you need to set out a plan for exercise. If you have been living a sedate lifestyle, you would be much better off if you start with walking. This will help you to get your muscles in your legs and arms working again.

Within two weeks you should be up to walking a half mile to a mile. As your wind and strength improve you may find yourself able to move into a brisk walk. Your walking will be the most effective when you can sustain a heart rate of 120 beats per minute for a minimum of 30 minutes.

At the same time, you should be revisiting your eating habits and start a sensible weight loss plan. Get some professional help if you need to and start changing bad eating habits for good.
This article has given you free proven weight loss tips. However, those tips are going to cost you. The price is taking responsibility and action to lose the weight.

January 19, 2009

BMI Index Calculator - How To Do It

Plain and simple, BMI, also known as the body mass index, is a tool that's used to determine whether or not a person is at a normal weight for his or her height. Even though the BMI index calculator was invented by mathematician and scientist, Adolphe Quetelet, sometime between 1830 and 1850, it is still used today nearly exactly as it was back then.

While BMI isn't the final word in whether or not someone is at a normal weight, it's one of the first tools often used to determine if someone is overweight. Because the BMI doesn't distinguish between weight from fat and weight from muscle (other tools must be used to determine the actual amount of fat) it doesn't work well for very muscular people like athletes. But for most of us, BMI is a pretty accurate measure of whether we're underweight, a normal weight, a bit overweight, or obese.

Calculating BMI isn't difficult once you understand the formula. The basic formula is weight divided by height squared, or kg/m2. You simply take your height in meters and square it which means you take the number of meters multiplied by itself. Then divide that number into your weight in kilograms. So a person who's five-and-a-half-feet tall stands about 1.7 meters. To get 1.7 meters squared, you simply multiply 1.7 times 1.7, which equals 2.89. Now, convert weight to kilograms.

So if someone weigh 200 pounds, that's about 91 kilograms. To determine the BMI of someone about five-and-a-half-feet tall who weights 200 pounds, or who stands 1.7 meters tall who weights 91 kilograms, we divide the weight by the height squared, or 91 divided by 2.89. That gives us the result of about 31. This individual is classified as obese. How do I know that?

A BMI of 18.5 or below indicates an underweight person. The normal weight range is from 18.5 to 24.9. Overweight people will have a BMI of 25 to 29.9. A BMI of 30 or greater indicates obesity. So a person with a BMI of 31 is in the obese range, but not by much. By calculating BMI again with different weights, you can see that the person would only need to lose 5 kilograms, or about 11 pounds to no longer be obese, but merely overweight. And a loss of 19 kilograms, or about 42 pounds, will put this person within a normal weight range. Calculating BMI to determine how much weight one should lose can be a big help for someone who's not sure.

Calculating BMI can be made even simpler if you're not sure how to convert to kilograms or meters. Simply take your weight in pounds times 4.88. Then divide that number by your height in feet, squared. So a 200 pound person who is 6 feet tall: 976 divided by 36 = 27.1. After calculating BMI, it's clear this person is within a normal and healthy weight range.

There you have it, the BMI index calculator. How did you come out?

January 12, 2009

Lose Weight Fast Tips


Here are my favorite lose weight fast tips:

1. Take everything one step at a time. Begin by paying more attention to what you are eating, slowly cutting back on the bad foods and implementing more healthy foods into your diet. Once you have this under control, the next step is to add exercise to your plan. If you do not like exercising, take this one step at a time as well by implementing only 15 at a time, at first.

2. Choose foods and activities that you enjoy. If you do activities that you get enjoyment out of, you will find them to be much more successful than trying to exercise in ways that you do not enjoy. The same goes for foods that you implement in your diet; choose foods that you like will help you enjoy your diet rather than craving bad foods.

3. Build muscle. You lose calories based on your weight. Muscles, surprisingly enough, burn calories more quickly than fat does, pound for pound. Work out with weights to build muscle and lose weight, and then allow your extra lean muscle mass to burn more calories for you on a long term basis.

4. Reduce your carbohydrates. Do not cut your carbohydrates out completely because your body needs carbohydrates for energy. Cut out some of the white breads and pastas and replace with whole wheat and brown carbs for better health.

5. Set realistic, measurable and attainable goals. Put deadlines on your goals, making them measurable. Make them realistic by choosing goals that you know you can attain. Set long term and short term goals and you will more readily achieve your expectations regarding quick and healthy weight loss.

6. Give up the bad stuff. It may surprise you just how unhealthy it is to eat candy, cookies, cakes and other sweets, and to drink soda and sugar laden drinks. Cut these bad goodies out either completely, or at least 80% of the time and the pounds will shrink away without you having to do much else to make the weight loss happen.

7. Have a suitable breakfast. Most of your calories should be consumed early on in the day, and breakfast is no exception. Eat a nice breakfast to give your metabolism a good foundation for the remainder of the day.

8. Control portions by leaving something behind. Make sure your portions are correct based on the actual serving size of your food, and then make sure not to clear your plate completely. Use a smaller plate to fool your eye. Exercising portion control will give you better control over what you put into your body for easy and achievable weight loss.

Implement these tips one by one and in no time at all you will begin to see a significant difference in your weight.



January 9, 2009

Gentle Detox Diet Recipes That Help You Lose Weight

You’ve probably heard the stars gushing about how they’ve lost weight with detox diet recipess, but they’re not the only ones who have found them to be beneficial for cleaning out the toxins and losing weight. Regular folks are also talking about the benefits of cleaning out their bodies and ridding it of all those toxins that have been accumulating for a lifetime. Chemicals, preservatives, fats, hormones, insecticides, and the like tend to inhabit our bodies for years, and lots of folks claim that the key to feeling better, functioning the way nature intended, losing weight, and being healthier is to enjoy recipes for detox diets.

There are some hardcore cleansing formulas that keep you hanging around the commode all day, but you don’t have to go that route. If you’d prefer a gentler approach read on.

Detox diets are meant to clean your body’s elimination system of impurities from the food we eat and even the air we breathe. Generally, detoxification diets are designed to clean the colon and liver, where impurities tend to accumulate.

The key to most blueprints for body cleansing diets is to include lots of fiber, lots of water, and eating veggies, nuts, fruits, and beans. What is missing from the above lists of foods? Meat! Meat intake needs to be reduced. What else is missing? Processed starches! Bread and pasta are notoriously absent when you are cleansing your bodies’ digestive system.

Cleansing drinks are a great way to give another boost to the healthy detoxification your body needs. Simply get some of your favorite fruits – berries are especially nutritious and delicious – and throw them in the blender with some purified water and ice. Whip them up until they are a thick-but-drinkable consistency, and you have an awesome breakfast or snack that will help your colon get rid of the yucky stuff that resides there.

Soups of various kinds are also some of the recipes for detox diets that you can find. Gazpacho soup and alkaline diet soups are very frequently used for body and colon cleaning diets. Alkaline diets are those that rely heavily on vegetables, nuts, and legumes, all of which help move things along in the digestive system and thus, are beneficial ingredients for any soup recipe.

One particularly popular and tasty alkaline soup recipe is for a vegetable broth. You simply chop up celery, broccoli, spinach, and a zucchini into tiny pieces. Add them to a big pot of distilled water, and simmer for about a half an hour.

Then, run the ingredients through a strainer or colander, reserving the broth. All those natural vitamins remain in the water when you boil those veggies, which is why you should minimally steam your vegetables when eating them. In this case, you are after the broth, so it is okay to boil the heck out of the vegetables. Discard the chopped vegetables and drink the broth.

Each of the above detox diet recipes contain viable ingredients for helping you to lose weight and keeping your body’s elimination system working as it should, without having you hang around the commode all day.



December 31, 2008

What's Up With The 500 Calorie Diet?

Do you go a bit overboard when you want to lose weight fast? If you do, then chances are you may have tried a 500 calorie diet. Cutting your calories to 500 is considered an extreme form of dieting; but it is highly popular.

A diet is considered low calorie if it involves ingesting no more than 1200 calories a day. The idea of a low calorie diet is to lose weight quickly. If not administered correctly it can be dangerous and as such it is important to plan your 500 calorie diet with a professional dietician or nutritionist before starting. But is it right for you?

It is well known that the way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you take in. However, a very low calorie diet can actually do more harm than good. When your body is craving more calories (energy) it can affect your metabolic rate. This means your body can actually start to eat away at your muscle mass.

It will do this for the purpose of converting the muscle mass to energy since there are no food reserves to take from. Because gaining muscle is the path to losing fat, this can have a highly detrimental effect on your body.

500 calories per day can possibly be sufficient for some people depending on:
- gender
- activity level
- height- body type
- overall health

For other people though, particularly overweight people, consuming only 500 calories a day is almost like starving themselves. Their body is more than likely used to taking in over 2000 calories per day and up to 5000 or more. If they all of a sudden drop to 500 calories or less their body moves into starvation mode. Metabolism then slows down to conserve energy.

If you are on a 500 calorie diet your body eventually learns to live with fewer calories. That means if you go back to your old high calorie habits (and it happens) you will have a sudden gain in weight - more than what would have occurred, had you not gone on your low calorie diet.

The only real way to determine your ideal daily calorie intake is by using a bmr/amr calculator. You will then know how many calories you need to be healthy and to support your lifestyle. If you take 500 calories away from this number then you have the ideal number of calories, to take in per day to help you get your weight down.

As men and women are different, their ideal calorie intake is also different. This means while the average woman may need only 1200 to 1300 calories a day to survive, her male counterpart may need from 1500 to 1600. It is so important for you to consult with your physician before starting any diet.

In conclusion, a 500 calorie diet can be dangerous. However, if proper precautions are taken, such as the okay from your doctor and spending only a short time at 500 calories, you can lose weight quickly.

December 9, 2008

How to Keep a Weight Training Log

For anyone who has ever kept a journal of any kind, what I'm going to tell you might seem like a no-brainer. Keeping a weight-training log is a good idea! The benefits of keeping a weight-training log are numerous.

First, a log can act as inspiration and motivation. When you can look at your log and see where you started and where you are now, it will inspire you to continue with this healthy habit.

Next, a weight training log will help you to track times when you were procrastinating or skipping workouts, or when you had an injury that kept you from working out. The details of these instances can really help you avoid problems in the future.

Keeping a weight training log is also useful for creating a good understanding of which workouts and exercises seem to work for you – what gets the best results. And of course, when you have a weight training log, you have a plan of action in written form. You know exactly what you need to do to move forward. Once you know why you should keep a weight-training log, you want to know how.

It's best to keep your log in a notebook or binder because you want to have all of your information for the past weeks, months and years available so you can easily look at your progress and see where you need to go. You can format it in any way that works for you, but making columns works well for most people.

Write your fitness goals on the top of the pages, or on the front page, or however you like, just as long as your goals are always where you can see them. Then write the exercises and machines you do, how many sets, how many repetitions and weight for each in your columns. You can also have a column for the date and to give yourself a gold star if the workout is successful. This is a basic way to track your weight training.

Your workout log should have some space for you to add comments, too. Such comments might include information about injuries, pain, how you felt, how intense the workout was, etc. You may even want to note what you ate that day and if it helped or hindered your workout, how much sleep you got, your mood, the time of the day, and so on. This information can help you find out what your optimal workout conditions are, and how workouts affect your mood, sleep, and more.

Keeping a weight-training log is a great way to gauge your progress and keep yourself motivated. It will also help you avoid pitfalls like injury and just plain slacking off. You'll learn about the ways you can make your weight training sessions more productive and how you can optimize them. If you've never kept a log before, now is the time to start. You'll find that the knowledge it gives you about yourself is a great motivator and a fantastic way to see where you've been and how far you've come!

November 12, 2008

Effective Diets - How To Choose One

Are you fighting the diet battle again this year, worried that once more, your willpower will leave you unarmed and you’ll give it up before you achieve your weight loss goals? There are many effective diets, but which one will work for you?

Whether you’re a first time dieter or one who has been going around and around the track for years, you’ll be happy to know that it is possible to pick a plan and stick to it until you get to the weight you want to be.

The first tip is to try to choose a diet plan that’s not too strict for you. You know the kind – some have special limits on carbs, protein, or anything that’s the color white. People who lose weight long-term have to learn to live in a world where nothing is off-limits, but moderation is key.

Other diets plans have you start and stop, start and stop, until the weight comes off. This can get tedious and send you on extreme highs and lows emotionally and physically as your body is forced to adjust to the new circumstances.

Instead, try to find a plan that shows you how to eat healthy for a lifetime. If you know it’s okay to sometimes have a special treat, or indulge in a glass of wine, then you won’t have to go from one end of the spectrum to the other – you’ll be on a balanced course that’s safe for your body and easy on your emotions.

Fasting and binging (even on healthy foods) is a sure way to develop poor eating habits and it can confuse your body with the mixed messages. One minute you’re devouring pound after pound of fresh fruit and vegetables, lean protein, and carbs – and the next you’re surviving on nothing but hot water with honey and red pepper mixed in.

Before you choose any diet, evaluate it's effectiveness as a lifetime plan. Could you exist without ever eating another morsel of sugar again in this lifetime? Could you turn away bread at every meal for the next thirty years?

Some diets make it seem like their rigid plan is one you could adhere to forever, but caving in could cause you to regain more weight if you get discouraged and give up for good.

No diet plan is 100% comfortable when you’re used to being able to eat with freedom. Still, there are many plans that offer sensible ways to eat where you never have to leave an entire food group off your plate. Don’t follow a fad – instead, follow your heart and make up your mind to choose one of the effective diets you feel comfortable implementing and that can become a way of life.