healthy living

from www.healthambition.com

We are what we eat. This statement is very common, but it happens to be true. A new study shows that to lose weight more efficiently, cutting carbs is a better strategy. The new study, presented at the American Cancer Research Society meeting on December 8, found that a low carb diet, even just two days a week, was more effective than a low calorie diet to lose weight and lower insulin.

All carbohydrates change into sugar, the importance is the time it takes for them to be absorbed by the body. Unlike the other carbohydrates, fiber is the only one that does not turn into sugar when passing through the body. Fiber actually slows down sugar absorption. There are complex carbohydrates and simple carbohydrates.

There are several great reasons to control your carbohydrate intake. Managing diabetes (blood sugar), improving mood, improving energy, and weight loss are a few of these reasons. Cutting carbs is really difficult to do without setting goals and following a plan to help stay on track. It is hard to only eat a few potato chips. Eating half the bag happens before you know it. Stocking up on fresh fruits, vegetables and other food items are a much better idea. They are full of nutrients that are healthy for the body and are great snacks during the day. Those labels are put on foods for a reason. Reading them is a necessity when trying to cut carbs to lower calorie intake.

Why does cutting carbs work?

Cutting carbs is a great plan for losing weight. It makes sense because eating an excess of carbohydrates will fill the bodies storage tanks and the rest will be stored as fat. Another way to think about it is, many high carbohydrate foods are high in calories and unburned calories are what puts on the pounds. Who eats just one slice of toast.

Most people eat two or three. Do you over-eat bananas, apples, carrot sticks and celery? Generally, the answer is no. Overeating tends to be the high carbohydrate foods. High Carb foods are high in calories. When the body takes in more calories then it works off then it produces weight gain. It takes burning 3500 more calories than you eat to burn off 1 pound of body fat. Eating too many high calorie carbohydrates makes it difficult to burn off fat to lose weight and very easy to gain weight.

Is cutting all carbs a good idea?

Cutting all carbs would be really difficult for most people to do and unhealthy. Having no carbs in the daily diet is extremely restrictive and unsatisfying. For the longterm, learning to control the amount of carbohydrates , eating the right kinds of carbs, and  learning how to use them as a tool to burn fat is a much better way to live. It is beneficial to cut carbs, but not remove them entirely.

Lowering carbs in the daily diet is a lifestyle change that can be maintained instead of a crash diet where the pounds come right back. Controlling carbohydrate intake is a much better solution. Carbs do turn to sugar, but they also break down into energy quickly. It's eating the wrong types of carbs, and in excess, that causes weight gain. It makes more sense to eat a diet high in protein and low in carbs in order to build muscle mass and provide higher levels of energy.

Eating lots of protein and the right kinds of fat helps a person feel stronger and more energetic. Cutting carbs entirely reduces the nutrients the body needs to be strong and healthy. It is the unused carbs that create the unwanted weight gain. A limited amount of carbs allows the body to actually burn fat while working out and build energy. This is why athletic teams have pasta feasts before competition. A reduction in carbs allows the body enough to use for burning fat while reducing the amount that causes weight gain. 

Losing weight is a balance of eating right, lowering carbs, and exercise. Without exercise it is very difficult to lose weight. Cutting carbs completely out of the diet will result in weight loss, but it does not allow the body to function properly. The best way is to lower carb intake and eat fiber rich and low calorie foods.

Lower carbs in the daily diet instead of cutting them out entirely. Choosing fresh vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, high fiber, vitamins, and minerals is the healthy and most longterm solution. A healthy diet is not something you do for six months just to lose weight. It is a way of life. Following a diet that a person cannot maintain for life is not the answer.

from http://thewellnessscientist.com

Losing weight for most people, it takes time. Some forms of dieting can be unhealthy at best, and counterproductive at worst. However, there is still hope. If you're serious about losing weight and want to see an immediate difference in your body in less than 7 days, follow these helpful tip.

Part One: Diet

Part Two: Exercise

Part Three: General Tips

Having own weight machine at home is very good for you if you do not have much time. Before making a purchase, be sure to consider whether or not the machine you are looking at will help you to achieve your long term fitness goals.

One of the most important questions to keep in mind when choosing a weight machine is to determine what range of weights is available for lifting in the machine. Often, weight machines that are designed for home use have a relatively small range. For example, they may offer a range of weights from 10 to 100 pounds. While this may initially seem acceptable, there are many people who may be able to easily perform specific exercises with more than 100 pounds. If you are one of these people, a weight machine such as this could be useless to use.

Being fit, healthy, and flexible is not always easy.  It takes regular exercise and eating a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables. In addition, any exercise program that you choose such as push-ups stretches, jogging or walking takes discipline.

The same discipline applies to using fitness equipment. If you are the type of person that prefers using fitness equipment for your exercise routines, here are few tips to consider before purchasing.

Do not believe what you see and hear. You will need to assess whether all the advertised claims are true. Fitness equipment will claim for example, that you will lose will lose several pounds off their weight in as little as seven days or that you will decrease your pants size in one month.  

To lose weight in seven days or decrease a pant size in such short time is nearly impossible, even with the assistance of dietary supplements. Be skeptical about claims that say you will be able to burn a tremendous amount of fat in a specific area of your body, such as the hips, thighs, waist just by applying a specific type of ointment or lotion, etc. 

The only sure way to burn fat is by changing what you eat and exercise. Before and after pictures of people who claim that they were able to lose weight because of using such and such equipments may or may not be true. If ever they are, their experience is purely personal and that is no assurance that your unique body weight, body make-up will also undergo the same change they went through.

It is also always advisable to read the fine print, whether it be fitness equipment or anything else. Though you believe that the fitness equipment you are planning to purchase is a good one, reading the fine print really would not hurt as it may say that you also have to decrease your calorie intake and not just rely on what the machine could do for you.

There are advertising statements that say you could pay off the fitness equipment in a number of easy payments or by paying a mere thirty-nine ninety-five a month. Do not forget to inquire about shipping and handling costs and include that in your calculation. In addition, add-on the required sales tax, delivery fees, set-up fees. Know all the details before you purchase. 

It is best that you consider asking about details on their thirty-day money back guarantee. Though this sounds good to you as the consumer, it may or may not actually be a good deal, if for example you are going to return the item. You may actually end up paying large shipping cost, return to stock costs, etc.

Make sure you contact their customer service hotline. The customer service hot line should have a toll-free number as well as a customer service representative in case you have problems with your fitness equipment. As stated above, to be fit, healthy and flexible takes more than just fitness equipment. It will take discipline to exercise and a healthy diet.

Body weight exercises entail the use of more energy, resulting in burning more calories faster. There are several traditional and simple cardio exercises to do at home or in your neighborhood that provide a great challenge and gain results. Do not worry if you are going to do the workout at home and have no. This cardio workout includes a variety of challenging, low impact exercises that will get your heart rate up without any jumping. You can do this workout at home or on the road to burn calories and stay healthy.

Perform the exercises for the suggested time, one after the other with little or no rest in between Perform the circuit once for a 10-minute workout or up to six times for a longer, more intense workout modify or skip any exercises that cause pain or discomfort.

Warm up (1 minute)

Warm up for one minute with light cardio, such as step touches (as shown).  Really use your arms to get your heart rate going. 

Side Lunge with Windmill Arms  (1 minute each, 2 repetition)

Take it to the next level by standing in a wide stance with the arms straight out. Bend at the waist, abs in, and take the left arm towards the right foot. Stand up and repeat the move on the left, going as fast as you can. Bend the knees if you feel any back pain.

Knee Smash - Right and Left Leg (1 minute each, 2 repetition)

Extend the arms and bring the left knee up and across the body while bringing the arms down. Return to start and repeat, going as fast as you can to get the heart rate up for one minute.

Front Kick Lunge- Right and Left Leg (1 minute each, 2 repetition)

Bring the right knee up and extend the leg in a snapping front kick then take the same leg back into a straight-leg lunge while touching the floor. Repeat the kick and low lunge sequence for one minute and repeat the sequence on the other side for one minute.

Bear Crawl (1 minute each, 2 repetition)

Squat to the floor and walk your hands out until you're in a plank position. Do a pushup on the knees or toes and then walk the hands back to a squat and stand up. Add a jump at the end for more intensity.  Repeat for one minute.

Knee with Side Kick - Right and Left Leg (1 minute each, 2 repetition)

In a wide stance, bring the left knee up to the side while bringing the elbow down towards the knee. Take the left foot down and shift the weight into the left leg while kicking out to the side. Repeat as quickly as you can for one minute on the left and one minute on the right.  

Squat Kicks (1 minute each, 2 repetition)

With arms up in guard, squat as low as you can, taking the hips back. As you stand up, kick with the right leg. Repeat the move, kicking with the left leg. Repeat, alternating kicks for one minute.

Cooldown

Walk around for a few minutes to cool down and let the heart rate come back to normal.

from www.hcgultrareport.com

You need weight-loss programs to losing weight for good. Programs can teach the nutrition, fitness and lifestyle skills you need to maintain healthy living, long-term weight loss. Losing weight can be a frustrating business. You have to eat healthy, start exercising and then wait for great result. Running is a very simple form of exercise. It’s easy and quick to put on your shoes and go out for a run or jump on the treadmill. However, when you’re using running to lose weight you have much more to think about than just running.

To give yourself the best chance of success you need much more than mere hope or wishes, you also need to look at other factors. Here are four key areas you should take a good look at:

Set some goals

Take some time to have a good think about your reasons for wanting to lose weight and what you would like to achieve. What are your weight loss goals? What are your running goals?

Goal setting is more than important; it serves as your road map to weisuccess. If instituted properly, effective goal setting can motivate you to reach new personal horizons. Or, on the other hand, it may help you get back on track if you've made a wrong turn. Goal setting can be learned, but it's not easy, it takes practice and careful evaluation. Here are a few tips to not only help you become an effective goal setter, but a successful achiever as well.

For your goals to truly encourage you, they must not only be specific to your needs and wants, but they must be realistic as well. That's not to say that you should throw all of your dreams out of the window. We are all driven by goals that seem a little beyond our reach. That's what keeps us going. Just start off on the simple side at first. Once a pattern of achievement has been established, test yourself by setting your sights a little higher.

Develop a plan

If you don’t develop a plan then you have little idea about how you’re going to reach your goals. Or maybe you’ve created a quick, half hearted plan because you don’t want to “waste” much time producing one.

The fact is that by not spending the time to develop a plan you will waste much more time later on by struggling to reach your goals.

A sound plan helps to guide you and act as a road map leading you towards your desired weight. Not having a plan will only result in wasting months and even years of your life, and you’ll also end up suffering much frustration along the way.

Measure and track your progress

Now that you’ve got some goals and a plan, you need to be able to identify whether you’re on track. If you don’t measure your progress then there will come a time when you should have reached your goals but suddenly realise that you’re a long way off.

By keeping track of your progress you can identify what’s working and what’s not, and modify your running and weight loss plan accordingly. You can therefore be confident that you’re on track to reach your goals rather than not having a clue whether you’re on track or not.

So you may want to measure things like your weight, Body Mass Index, and body fat percentage. You may also want to take body measurements and photos of yourself as you lose weight.

Also don’t forget about measuring your running progress because if you’re not improving your running ability then sooner or later you’ll hit a plateau and stop losing weight.

Check your diet

In order to lose weight you need to create a calorie deficit by burning more calories than you consume. While running will help you on one side of the equation, your diet will help you on the other.

The problem is that most people severely underestimate their calorie intake and then wonder why they can’t lose any weight. If you don’t have a sensible diet or your calorie intake is too high then you can do all the exercise you want and you’ll still struggle to lose weight.

To summarise

I hope you can see that there’s much more to using running to lose weight than just simply going out for a run or jumping on a treadmill.

By taking note of these four key areas you’ll get a lot more out of your running and weight loss efforts. You’ll have more purpose, direction, and motivation which provides you with a much better chance of success than someone who drifts along and pins their hopes on mere luck.

To get more tips like these that help you improve your fitness and running ability and lose more weight, take a look at these running programs which guide you every step of the way.

How fast your body burns calories depends on several factors. Some people inherit a speedy metabolism. Men tend to burn more calories than women, even while resting. And for most people, metabolism slows steadily after age 40. Although you can't control your age, gender, or genetics, there are other ways to get a boost. 

Speed up your rate of burning calories using the following tips:

Build Muscle. Our bodies constantly burn calories, even when we’re doing nothing. This resting metabolic rate is much higher in people with more muscle. Every pound of muscle uses about 6 calories a day just to sustain itself, while each pound of fat burns only 2 calories daily. That small difference can add up over time. In addition, after a bout of resistance training, muscles are activated all over your body, increasing your average daily metabolic rate.

Step Up Your Workout. Aerobic exercise may not build big muscles, but it can rev up your metabolism in the hours after a workout. The key is to push yourself. High-intensity exercise delivers a bigger, longer increase in resting metabolic rate than low-intensity workouts. To get the benefits, try a more intense class at the gym or include short bursts of jogging during your regular walk.

Fuel Up with Water. The body needs water to process calories. If you are even mildly dehydrated, your metabolism may slow down. In one study, adults who drank eight or more glasses of water a day burned more calories than those who drank four. To stay hydrated, drink a glass of water or other unsweetened beverage before every meal and snack. In addition, try munching on fresh fruits and vegetables, which are full of fluid, rather than pretzels or chips.

Energy Drinks. Some ingredients in energy drinks can give your metabolism a boost. They're full of caffeine which increases the amount of energy your body uses. They sometimes have taurine, an amino acid. Taurine can speed up your metabolism and may help burn fat. But using these drinks can cause problems like high blood pressure, anxiety, and sleep issues for some people. The American Academy of Pediatrics doesn’t recommend them for kids and teens.

Sinless Snacking. Eating more really can help you lose weight -- eating more often, that is. When you eat large meals with many hours in between, your metabolism slows down between meals. Having a small meal or snack every 3 to 4 hours keeps your metabolism cranking, so you burn more calories over the course of a day. Several studies have also shown that people who snack regularly eat less at meal time.

Spice Up Your Meals. Spicy foods contain chemical compounds that can kick the metabolism into a higher gear. Eating a tablespoon of chopped red or green chili pepper can boost your metabolic rate. The effect is likely temporary, but if you eat spicy foods often, the benefits may add up. For a quick boost, spice up pasta dishes, chili, and stews with red-pepper flakes.

Power Up with Protein. The body burns many more calories digesting protein as it uses for fat or carbohydrates. Although you want to eat a balanced diet, replacing some carbs with lean, protein-rich foods can boost the metabolism at mealtime. Healthy sources of protein include lean beef, turkey, fish, white meat chicken, tofu, nuts, beans, eggs, and low-fat dairy products.

Recharge with Green Tea. Drinking green tea or oolong tea offers the combined benefits of caffeine and catechins, substances shown to rev up the metabolism for a couple hours. Research suggests that drinking two to four cups of either tea may push the body to burn 17% more calories than normal during moderately intense exercise for a short period of time.

Be active. The average person burns about 30 percent of calories through daily activity; sedentary people only use about 15 percent. Taking every opportunity to move can make quite a difference to the amount of calories you burn.

Booster Shot: Black Coffee. If you're a coffee drinker, you probably enjoy the increased energy and concentration that follows your morning ritual. Taken in moderation, one of coffee's benefits may be a short-term increase in your metabolic rate. But if you have ulcer disease, you can try Green Coffee Bean Extract 800 with GCA. This incredible weight loss has nothing to do with caffeine. Green coffee bean extract only has 20 mg of caffeine per serving. 

Quick Tips: Doing just 10 minutes a week of Plyometrics (jumping drills) can make a difference in your fitness by making you faster and more agile.

You know that to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume. Lets take a closer look at some easy ways to burn calories that you can incorporate into your daily life.

Fidget. 

It's called Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT), any movement that isn't intended as exercise. You can burn an extra 100-150 calories an hour by increasing NEAT. Here are some ideas:

Reach for the caffeine, pass on the sugar and cream.

Caffeine tends to increase the number of calories you burn, probably because they stimulate thermogenesis — one way your body generates heat and energy from digesting food and because the boost in energy means you move around more (which means more calories burned). Having 250 milligrams of caffeine with a meal can increase the calories spent metabolizing the meal by 10%. Green tea, in particular, seems to be especially conducive to burning calories. Drinking coffee or tea plain will take some getting used to, but purchasing high-quality beans or tea leaves will certainly help.

Increase your after-meal burn by eating more vegetables and phasing out meat and dairy products.

Your body expends around 200 calories to digest your food. People who eat fibrous fruit, vegetables, complex carbs, and low-fat meat burn even more calories after they eat. In fact, vegetarians generally have a bigger after-meal burn than their omnivorous counterparts. And no matter what you eat, adding 5g of Tabasco sauce to any meal can raise your metabolism by 12-20 percent for up to two hours after you're done. This is caused by capsaicin - the nutrient that makes chile peppers hot.

Drink ice water. 

The colder the water you drink, the more calories you burn, since your body expends more energy warming up the water. If you have 8 glasses (64 oz) of ice-cold water in a day, you'll burn 70 more calories than if you drank 8 glasses of a body temperature beverage. In fact, this principle will work with any calorie-free beverage, as long as it's ice cold, so you might want to ice up that coffee and tea mentioned earlier for cumulative calorie-burning effects. Keep in mind, however, that the weight loss impact of this one particular practice isn't drastic: It would take 435 glasses of ice water (about two months, assuming 8 glasses a day) to lose one pound.

Chill out.

Shivering burns calories, so if you can spend more time outside when it's cold, you'll crank up the calorie furnace. Even if you don't shiver, though, you can get a 3-7% increase in calorie burn just from your body warming itself (similar to the principle at work when you drink ice water).

Calories burnt is proportional to your lean body mass.

Consume a good amount of protein, 20-30 grams, within ten minutes of your workout and you will be on your way to increasing you lean body mass and burning better calories.

Eating a small meal every 2 hours will keep your metabolism fired and keep your calories burning.

You can also make weight loss quicker and easier by increasing your metabolic rate and speed up your Rate of burning calories.

Everyone’s looking for a weight–loss magic, but the true way to trim down is to control your calories. Staying within yours can help you get to or maintain a healthy weight. Reaching a healthier weight is a balancing act.

Like most people, you've probably heard a lot of weight–loss "wisdom” such as “cut the carbs," "avoid fat," and "pack in the protein." Then there are the many trendy diet plans: the cabbage soup diet, goji berry diet, egg diet, the juice diet, you name it! Some of these might help you lose weight in the short term. But staying on many of them can damage your metabolism — not to mention leave you bored and hungry from their limited menus!

So how can you lose weight? Use more calories than you're consuming. It really is that simple. And the two proven ways to do this? Eat the right amount of calories and exercise more. Keep things simple by making sensible choices on a day–to–day basis.

Finding your "caloric balance."

The true way to trim down is to control your food. They are the key to successful weight loss.

So where do you start? The first thing to do is to see your doctor and learn how many calories you need each day. From there, you can work backward to see how many calories you can safely cut to lose weight at a sensible rate.

Something you can do right now is learn about your Body Mass Index (BMI). This is the ratio of your weight to your height, and the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) online Body Mass Calculator is a handy tool.

If you are :

Here are helpful tips on cutting calories from the CDC:

Don’t forget to exercise! When you don't exercise, you place the entire burden of weight loss on your diet. Being more active means that you can eat more of the things you like and still lose weight. The key is finding an exercise you enjoy. Every step toward healthier living is a step in a good direction.