This is a common excuse everyone makes.. It takes a lot of courage to submit to a strict regime of exercise and diet control so to attain the fat loss desired. If you are not ready to make a life style change, you cannot escape the clutches of the life style diseases.

How does one start on this fat loss and exercise journey?

1. Think realistic. It is very important to set a realistic goal when trying to lose weight because losing more weight by starving yourself would only lead to more harm than good. A target of losing two to four pounds a week is reasonable.
2. Plan. Plan every activity and diet change that would lead you to your goal. The plan should be one you can follow regularly, or else it would not be effective.
3. Make the necessary diet changes. Decrease the intake of salt, sugar, processed foods & colas. All of the above mentioned items are just calories and no nutrition. Reducing the amount of unhealthy calories would inevitably result in more fat loss.
4. Eat more fruits and vegetables. The minimum requirement of fruits and veggies of a day is five servings. Check on the number of servings of fruits and veggies that you take on an average day and you would be surprised. Most people tend to ignore the healthy foods and gorge on white processed foods adding to their fat troubles. When you make a conscious effort to take at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, you would soon see you have more energy in addition to other positive effects, like the glow on your face.
5. Count your calories. Keep a food journal and count every morsel of food that goes in. you would be surprised to see how many calories you take. Aim for a calorie deficit of 500 per day to lose one pound in a week. The deficit of 250 calories should come from diet and the other 250 from exercise.
6. Move more during the day. Be as active as you can. If you are at a sedentary office job, get up every 30 minutes. Get a glass of water, make a quick round in the office and come back. A break of 5 minutes is enough to perk you up for the next hour reducing the need of coffee. And also it increases your physical activity through out the day.
7. Exercise. Exercise is the most important component of weight loss regime. Cardio exercises, strength exercises as well as flexibility exercises are all good aides in burning calories. Burning all the excess calories is the trick to getting a leaner and fit body.
8. You feel you are so overweight that you cannot exercise. This feeling is just in your mind. There are some or the other exercise form which you can always do and not feel the strain on your knees or feet. If you are overweight, start with walking slowly and gradually increase the pace and time. If you feel you cannot walk, try swimming. Swimming is a cardio exercise that burns as much or more calories as any other cardio exercise, but lacks the stain on your body. Water supports the frame of your body and reduces the strain.
9. Develop an interest for a physical game or activity. If you are interested in games like tennis, badminton, squash or other activities like dancing, take up these on a regular basis. These are fun activities burning an unbelievable amount of calories per hour. So your passion can be your fat loss device as well.
10. Add strength training to your exercise regime. Strength training would not increase the bulk, as is a misconception, but rather aid in defining the muscle mass and add to the lean muscle. It would help you get a leaner look even when you are not exactly at the target weight. Also addition of lean muscle would aid in improvement of metabolism, burning more calories in a day.

In short, fat loss is a life style change. Make small changes in your diet and fitness regimes and when you are comfortable with one change, add another. This is a sure shot way to attain the leaner and fit body you intend to have.

Weight loss seems a Herculean task for so many people. People attempt all sorts of measures to cut the calories they take in, by limiting the food intake or starving themselves, surviving on liquids etc to achieve the dream weight loss.

Starving yourself would lead your body into a famine mode, your body tends to store all possible energy as fat, and you gain weight instead of losing. So this is not a good method of losing weight. And if you limit your food intake, you always feel hungry and the only thought that is on your mind is food. This is also not good for weight loss.

There are some things I follow. If you do follow these tips, it is easy to lose the extra pounds without starving yourself.

1. Eat breakfast. A healthy breakfast gives you enough energy to last you till lunch time. Include proteins, whole grains and fruits in your breakfast. Breakfast being the first meal after a long fast time through the night replenishes the body. This is essential also because if you skip breakfast, either you tend to eat unhealthy snacks or a high calorie lunch.
2. Eat smaller meals frequently. When you have three square meals a day, you tend to be sluggish immediately after the meal and lack concentration to do the other activities of the day. If you eat smaller meals four or five times a day, you space it at regular intervals so that your body metabolism is high throughout the day. Also, you feel less sluggish.
3. 

   easy-to-follow-diet-tips-for-weight-loss_fruits

   Include a serving of fruit and vegetables in every meal of the day. There are several benefits of this trick. This would keep your fiber intake high, help you meet your daily target of five fruits/ veggies, and it will give a feeling of fullness for a longer time. You can keep your snacking off for a longer time.

4. Snack healthy. Snack on fruits (fresh, canned or dry) so that your diet remains healthy.
   
5. Cut your coffee or tea. There are several ways of doing this. Instead of running to the coffee machine, try munching an apple when you feel tired. You might forego the coffee. If you must have a coffee or tea, try it without milk. Also control your sugar intake. A common mistake of people following a controlled diet is that they tend to drink more coffee or tea, not that it is bad, with a lot of sugar in it. Now that is bad for your body. Sugar just adds calories without any benefit. Having limited amount of sugar in coffee or tea, or even having it without sugar is just a habit which you can build on.
6. Limit the number of times you eat out in a month. Every visit to your favorite restaurant would only add calories. Most of the restaurant portions are oversized and loaded with calories. Share the dish with your partner, or get a part of the dish packed, so that you don’t load yourself with calories at one meal. People often think ‘let me have this meal, I’ll control later’. This thought never works. Controlling your portions is for every meal.
7. Eat a light dinner at least two or three hours before bedtime. This would give your body time to digest the meal before you hit the bed.

Following some simple tricks, the need for you to constantly starve to control your weight is eliminated. And keep in mind, making the changes in your dietary habits is a life style choice, not a fad diet. Fad diets never help you lose weight.

Food is the source of energy required for all the activities. After utilizing the energy for all the physiological and physical activities, any excess of energy is stored as glycogen in liver as well as fat in fat cells.

Fat deposits have a crucial role to play in the normal body function. It acts as a back up of energy in case there is a famine situation occurring in the body. Body fat also plays an important role in keeping the body temperature regulated. The fat stored in a female body plays a role in the hormonal regulation of the reproductive organs

What happens if the minimum amount of fat is not available in the body?

It is very difficult to eliminate all the fat from your daily intake. And it is even more difficult to survive on a diet low in fat. After a while on no- fat diet, you would start to crave for something fatty. If you continue on low fat diet, body weight drops.

How can you lose the excess fat stored in the body?

Though fat is required for the normal functioning of the body, excess fat is bad too. A lot of medical problems occur due to the weight gain. Losing weight takes a lot of effort and patience. And many people experience difficulty in losing the excess fat. There are some small measures you can adopt as to promote the loss of fat instead of muscle.

1. Limit the intake of high sugar and fat rich foods. It does not mean you cut out fat and sugar completely from your diet. Take in fat and sugars but control your portions. Also be sure the fat you are taking are good for your body.
2. Eat fiber rich foods. Fruits have low glycemic index, they would be converted into glucose very quickly after intake and the body would start giving hunger signals very quickly. When you increase your fiber intake, by means of raw or cooked vegetables, it stays in the stomach for a longer period of time and you have a feeling of fullness for a longer period.
3. Eat frequently. Small frequent meals would keep your metabolism at a constant high level. Improved metabolism would start burning the stored fat for energy.
4. Eat slowly. It takes 20 minutes for your brain to sense fullness and satiety. Eating slowly would not only aid in digestion, but also gives time to your brain to register fullness.
5. Be more physically active. Include physical activity in your daily life. It is not necessary that you spend one hour at a stretch doing cardio exercises, if you do not wish to, but move frequently. Take walks all through the day, for a smaller period of time. For example, 10 minutes walking three times a day would give you 30 minutes of exercise.
6. Include strength training in your daily exercise regimen. It is not essential you lift weights for strength training of your muscles, rather you can use the body weight for strengthening exercises.

When you follow a balanced diet and be physically active, the fat build up on the body will be utilized. It takes time, but achieving a perfectly sculpted body is not impossible.

After pondering on this and doing some research, I realized my mistake. I had concentrated on losing weight, and neglected the toning up of the body. When I revised my exercise plan and started working in a new pattern, I attained the desired body shape I desired.

Here are some things I followed regularly.

1. Strength training with weights. Women neglect strength training thinking it would bulk them up. This is a misconception and on the contrary, strength training aids in toning of the muscles and slimming you. The more toned your muscles are, the slimmer you would look. There are other benefits of strength training with weights as well. Strength training also aids you in burning calories for a longer period of time after the work out. So after you have done the training for an hour, even though you are not working out as hard, your body would be burning calories at a faster rate. Strength training workouts also helps in building the lean muscles of the body, which burn much more calories. The increased power of the muscles happening as a result of strength training would also improve your tolerance to exercise.
2. Eat protein. Increase the amount of protein. An easy way to achieve this is to include protein in every meal including snacks, of the day. Try to take lean protein like chicken and turkey (skinless), fish, egg whites etc.
3. Eat smaller meals at frequent intervals. Instead of sticking to three square meals in a day, eat three smaller meals and include two or three snacks.
4. Drink water. Water is the best fluid you can take. Soft drinks are fully loaded with sugars and nothing else. These are empty calories and would not aid you with your efforts of weight loss in any way. Taking fruit juices is also an option of increasing your fluid intake, but ensure that the juices are freshly prepared.

With these tips I am sure you would be able to lose fat in no time.

During pregnancy:

1. Keep a check on what you are eating. It is true that your baby gets nutrition from your body. This doesn’t mean that your keep gorging on food. Eat when you are hungry and ensure the food you are taking is healthy. All the junk food taken during this period would just pile on the pounds and offer no nutrition. Eat a lot of fruits and vegetables to provide you with fiber, proteins to help you with energy.
2. Be physically active. Even during pregnancy, you can exercise. Avoid high intensity exercises during pregnancy, but walking is not restricted. And continue doing the work in your house or other activities that you were used to, pre pregnancy, unless medically advised.

Post partum period

1. During post partum, adequate rest is essential to aid the body to recover from the effects of the delivery. Also, this period would be tedious because of the demands of the small baby. Get in as much period of rest as you can.
2. Eat a balanced diet during the post partum period. Include veggies, fruits, proteins and adequate amount of carbohydrates. Avoid junk food.
3. Start exercising as much you can. Start at lower intensity and for a smaller period of time. Increase the duration and intensity as your tolerance improves. If you are not able to manage the whole exercise at one go, split it up. Instead of exercising 30 minutes at a stretch, you can do 10 minutes of exercises three times a day.
4. Start doing strength exercises. Include core exercises in your daily routine in addition to other strength exercises. Get adequate rest in between the strength training schedules.
5. Include Kegel’s exercises in your daily regimen. Kegel’s exercises help in strengthening the pelvic floor. This may seem a trivial matter when you are young, but would be really helpful as you age.
6. Include your husband and other family members in your efforts to lose weight. Taking care of the baby and exercising in the mean while may become tedious for you, any little help you can get might go a long way.
7. Breast-feed your baby. Studies have proven that breast feeding aids in weight loss after pregnancy. The longer you breast-feed, the better for your baby as well as for your efforts at weight loss.

These smaller tips and measures would go a long way in helping you to lose weight that you gained after pregnancy.

Do not be discouraged. The celebrities are constantly under the scrutiny of the public and their career is at stake, hence they lose the weight after pregnancy in no time. And to achieve this end, they can afford to have all the professional help they want. Most of the celebrity moms have at least a nutrition expert as well as a physical trainer to help them with their workout regimes and diet patterns. Hence all the positive effects in what you consider no time.

It does not mean only celebrity moms lose baby weight and a common woman is stuck with all the weight they gained during pregnancy.

Any woman would gain at least some weight during pregnancy. 25 to 35 pounds of weight gain during pregnancy is considered normal. Immediately after delivery 12-14 pounds are lost, as this would be the weight of the baby and the placenta. She is left with another 12-20 pounds to go.

Follow a regular eating and exercise pattern and you would be able to lose weight in some months. Some points to be kept in mind are

1. Be realistic in your goals of weight loss. Aim for a loss of one to two pounds a week. Losing more than this would mean a depletion of nutrients in the body and might affect your well-being as well as breast-feeding of your child.
2. Eat a nutrient rich diet. Include a lot of fruits and vegetables for fiber, adequate amount of proteins and carbohydrates. Control your eating habits. Every meal should be adequate to keep up the metabolism, but take care not to overeat.
3. Drink adequate amount of fluids. Water is the best fluid you can give to your body. If you do not like the taste of water, you might try having some fresh juice as well. If you do not have any other option but to have canned juice, try diluting the juice with water. This would reduce the number of calories as well as provide fluids to the body. Avoid soft drinks. They are just calories with no nutritive value.
4. Be physically active. You require a period of rest to recover from the pregnancy and delivery. After a month or two after the delivery, you can start exercising. Start slowly and at a lower intensity level. You can increase your intensity as you improve your stamina and tolerance. But take care to not overdo the exercise, in order to lose weight in a jiffy. You have a baby to take care of. And your body would need a lot of rest during the first six months after the delivery, to cope with the demands of taking care of a small child.
5. Take care to stretch before and after the exercise. Stretching is very important to avoid cramps and soreness of the body.

Involve your family in your efforts of weight loss after pregnancy. They would be able to contribute in small ways to your efforts and might be of great help.

What do I do to lose these excess pounds fast?

As a fitness trainer, I get this question very frequently. But I always tell them. There are no shortcuts to weight loss. Remember, you didn’t pile all those pounds in a day or two. It took years to get you all apple shaped, now it would take at least months for you to get back into shape if you set to doing it.

How do I proceed to losing the excess pounds?

Taking the first step is always the difficult one. The first step in your weight loss journey is to set a realistic plan for losing the weight. I say realistic plan, because if you intend to lose more than 20 pounds in a week, it is not possible, and it is also very unhealthy to try something like that. But if you set a goal of losing 1-2 pounds a week, it is realistic. The short- term goal achieved would give you some satisfaction as well as motivate you through your journey.

Analyze your diet habits. Keep a diet diary and note down every morsel that goes in to your mouth. You will see a pattern of emotional eating or over eating in this diary.

Change your diet habits into healthier one. Include more fibers, more protein and less carbohydrate, take good fats and reduce the intake of bad fats. Most important, learn portion control. Once you control your portions, you would be able to limit your calorie intake and create more calorie deficit.

Now comes the most important means to weight loss; Exercise. Most people shun away from the thought of exercise, making excuses of lack of time, lack of energy etc. But once you get into the habit of exercising, you would start loving the feeling of well being after exercise. And this would lead you to look forward to your exercise time as well. This is goal you have to achieve. Weight loss would come with it.

As a beginner to exercise, start with easy exercises. Then as your stamina improves, build up the intensity as well as time.

There are some simple but effective exercises any individual at any stamina and weight can do. Some are.

1. Walking. Take a stroll across the neighborhood park. Start at an easy pace. If you cannot manage 30 minutes of walking at a stretch, break it up in to three 10 minute intervals through the day. On an average, you burn 100 calories in 30 minutes even if you are taking a stroll.
2. Jogging. If you have a little more stamina, you can convert your walking into mild jogging. Break it up in your walking time. If you walk for 30 minutes, spend at least 10 minutes, together or five minutes each as intervals jogging.
3. Swimming. Come summers and everyone is looking for a membership at the pool in the club. But how many people realize swimming as a cardio exercise. Instead of lazing around at the pool, spend some time swimming. It is a good workout for all your muscles, improves your stamina and keeps you cool at the same time. Swimming is a preferred cardio also because, as you are exercising in the water, the fatigue or exhaustion due to the intense exercise is not present.
4. Water aerobics. If you do not know how to swim, no worries. You still may be able to do your workout in the comfort of the pool. Water aerobics classes are organized at most of the pools. Water aerobics include aerobic exercises done while in the water.
5. Resistance training. Resistance training with weights or using your body weight would help. It is a misconception among most people that resistance training would bulk you up and hence many females wanting to lose weight hesitate to undertake resistance training as part of their schedule. Resistance training would not bulk you up, but tone your muscles. The toned muscles would expend more calories and in turn would help you lose weight.

Do whatever you can, but do some physical activity. This would aid in losing weight.

In addition to doing exercises and keeping dietary control, the important point to keep in mind is being motivated.

]]> http://www.eatrightkentucky.org/is-there-an-easy-way-to-weight-loss-is-exercising-essential.htm/feed 0 http://www.eatrightkentucky.org/the-most-common-question-about-weight-loss-pills-does-it-work.htm http://www.eatrightkentucky.org/the-most-common-question-about-weight-loss-pills-does-it-work.htm#comments Sat, 26 Jul 2008 05:33:55 +0000 admin http://www.doctorforhelp.com/?p=16 People are very interested in losing weight, looking slim and being healthy. Obese/ over weight people who want to lose weight look for shortcuts. It would feel really nice to lose 20 pounds in a week and get into that perfect dress. It is not just a wish many have, they are willing to go to any extent, try any thing to achieve this.
Taking pills for weight loss is one of the common trends. People believe it is possible to lose weight by taking just a pill, keeping their dietary habits as unhealthy as before.
There are a lot of weight loss pills available in the market. Many of them are available as over-the- counter drugs.

Over the counter weight loss pills:
Bitter orange- it is a herbal supplement, aimed at increasing the body metabolism. This would enable you to lose weight in a short time.

1. Chitosan- this is a drug which would block the fat absorption in the body. All the fat is eliminated and you lose weight.
2. Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) – this is said to decrease your hunger, resulting in your eating lesser calories in a day, enabling weight loss.
3. Ephedra- decreases appetite and you eat less.
4. Guar gum- acts on the body to lessen the fat absorption.
There are other prescription weight loss medicines as well. ALLI is one of the FDA approved prescription medicine for weight loss. It acts to decrease the fat absorption in the body.
But do these weight loss pills work?
It is true that the weight loss pills do work to some extent. As suggested, they increase your basal metabolism, resulting in increased rate of calorie burning, or decrease the level of fat absorption in the body. Much of the excess calories stored as fat in the body comes from the fatty food people eat. Hence, if the absorption of fat is decreased, the accumulation of fat also decreases. But the long term effects of the weight loss pills are really doubtful.

Long term effects of weight loss pills

Most of the weight loss pills would work when taken regularly. But there is a catch. They work only till the time they are taken regularly. If you make no permanent life style changes related to diet and exercise, and discontinue the pills, the lost pounds come back and real fast. There is a scientific reason behind this. Weight loss pills act in your body in a specific manner. On discontinuation, the action stops as well. The metabolism gets back to normal, and the body stores everything as fat.
Side effects of weight loss pills

Many people who want to try on a weight loss pill are not even aware that there could be side effects. Most of the over- the- counter weight loss pills are not just one medicine. There might be different components in them. In many of the herbal supplements, even where the ingredients are mentioned, you might not recognize the components are and how they affect you.
If you are taking some medication for some medical condition, there are chances that one of the components might react with the drug and cause some adverse reaction. Some of the drugs may act adversely with some ingredient in your diet or even alcohol. There are even chances that you get side effects because of the drug itself.
Some of the common side effects of weight loss pills are vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, flatulence, irritability, sleeplessness etc. There are reported side effects as increased blood pressure, irregular heart rate etc due to some weight loss pill, though such severe side effects are relatively uncommon.
Is there a way to lose weight quickly?

No. There is no quick way or short cuts to losing the excess weight. It is only continued efforts and life style changes that would help you with this. And losing the weight in the proper way is better than going through short cuts, starving yourself, losing the weight only to regain it.

What do I do to lose weight?

Described below are the measures you can employ to lose weight. And the weight lost would be gone forever.
1. Make dietary changes. Increase fiber in the diet. Limit the intake of refined foods. Reduce the intake of fatty foods.
2. Eat lesser number of calories. Limit your portions.
3. Eat frequently. It helps to eat frequently than eating three whole meals in a day. This would boost your metabolism and keep it running all through the day.
4. Increase your exercise. Add more physical activity to your life. Take the stairs, walk more, do some moving around every hour if you have a sedentary job.
Make all this part of your life. And the result would be a healthy you in no time.