A slightly different approach to Weight loss

In many western countries, excess weight is a problem for the majority of people. Those of us battling a few extra pounds would like to be able to lose it quickly, but the problem with quick weight loss is that the weight tends to come back rapidly. The healthiest weight loss programs are the ones where you lose weight slowly. It is so hard to be patient enough to wait for results, but it’s been shown repeatedly that if you lose weight slowly, by adopting healthy lifestyle habits, the weight is more likely to stay gone.

But there are healthy ways to jump start your weight loss, fortunately. You have to remember one principle that seems counterintuitive: you must eat in order to lose weight.

“Wait,” you’re probably saying. “Isn’t that how I got fat in the first place?” Well, yes and no. The reason you have to eat in order to lose weight is because when you stop eating, your metabolism slows. Your body thinks it’s experiencing a famine and conserves resources as a response. Not only will you have a harder time losing weight, you’ll have an easier time gaining it back when you start eating again. You want your metabolism to hum along at a steady rate and fine tune your eating habits to promote weight loss.

One thing that most diabetics know is that eating smaller, healthier, more frequent meals is a way to keep blood glucose levels stable. It is also a good way to keep a steady supply of energy rather than energy surges and crashes, and as it turns out, it’s a good way to steadily lose weight. If you know you’ll be eating again soon, you’re less likely to binge than if you’re starving and you know it will be six hours until supper.

You can follow this eating plan on an 80/20 schedule: eight out of ten days you follow the frequent, healthy mini-meal plan, and the other two you can eat as you normally do. The great thing is, you might feel so much better that you adopt the healthy frequent meal schedule for good. It feels good and is easy to maintain.

The best part is, once you have your metabolism running well, it is easier to lose weight because you’re never in “starvation” mode, binging then “being good” for a day or two. You do have to eat reasonably healthy, however.

Now, with this eating plan, there aren’t any “forbidden” foods. The more you remind yourself you can’t have that slice of cheesecake, the more you’ll want it, and the more you’re likely to binge on it along with other unhealthy foods. While there are no forbidden foods, the preferred foods are lean protein, fruit, vegetables, and complex carbohydrates. If you do this for eight days out of ten, then you can give yourself a break from it for a couple of days. Chances are that by then, you’ll have noticed you’ve lost a little weight and will be motivated to keep your healthy eating habits.

Losing weight and keeping it off is more about making lifestyle changes you can live with rather than deprivation or fasting.

Breaking the Insulin Boom and Bust Cycle that keeps you Fat!

Most people think that extremely overweight people are simply eating too much and moving too little. While that is certainly a factor, there are other metabolic properties that have an effect, too. Obesity involves a vicious cycle in metabolism that eventually results in insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Learning how your metabolism works is the key to stopping this unhealthy cycle.

The processes in your body that take the nutrients you ingest and turn them to energy (whether it’s energy you use by exercising and moving, or energy stored as fat) are collectively known as your metabolism. Your metabolism wants to give you energy when you need it, so that you can walk, work, or do housework without feeling faint or hungry.

A few years ago, everyone blamed carbohydrates for weight problems. While simple carbs like white sugar and white flour can be harmful over time, carbs themselves aren’t necessarily the “bad guys” that everyone made them out to be. If you have a healthy balance of nutrition and an active lifestyle, your metabolic furnace will run well. But sometimes it gets out of balance, you gain weight, and you raise your chances of acquiring diabetes and heart disease.

What happens first is a blood sugar spike that follows consumption of simple carbohydrates. To cope with the sugar overload, your body produces extra insulin. Whatever unused energy from the food is not used is stored as fat. After a while, your body becomes resistant to the effects of insulin and stops using insulin efficiently. Your blood sugar levels increase, which promotes further insulin resistance. Weight gain is very common in this pattern of eating. After several years of this, your body cannot use insulin well, and you end up with type 2 diabetes, which raises your risk of other health problems like heart disease and kidney disease.

Unfortuantely, there isn’t a simple fix to this metabolic cycle that causes obesity. You have to help your metabolism get back to normal again. That is a lot of what happens when people are newly diagnosed as diabetic. Once they are regularly monitoring blood sugar levels and can see exactly how high their blood sugar goes after a couple of donuts, they can clearly see how those simple carbohydrates can cause long term problems. Decreasing your intake of refined sugars and increasing your exercise are the two proven ways to break out of this metabolic spiral, lose weight, and have a healthier body.

Losing Unsightly Back Fat

There’s no doubt about it that losing weight can be tough, particularly for those who are easily discouraged. A lot of people are concerned over the fat that has accumulated on their back and want to do something about it. There are things you can do to promote steady weight loss and to help get rid of back fat at the same time.

1. Incorporate upper body exercises into your daily routine. If you’re a walker, add a couple of small – 2 lbs. or so – dumb bells to your walk. Hold one in each hand, with elbows bent. When you start out you may think it is a waste of time, but when you are done, you’ll know that you’ve done much more of a workout. And strengthening the upper body is a great way to tone up problem areas like the back.

2. If you’re not doing any cardio exercise, you should start. Cardio doesn’t necessarily mean an exhausting half-hour aerobics workout (though that will work, too). It means getting your heart rate up a little by moving. Walking, skating, biking, or swimming are good ways to get your heart rate up to where you’re getting your heart in shape. The American Heart Association recommends one hour of cardio four days a week. If you’re like me, and not getting anywhere near that much, then even 15 minutes of cardio most days can make a difference. Cardio is not only good for your heart, it’s helps you lose weight steadily.

3. Make healthy changes to your eating habits. This does not mean throwing away everything in your refrigerator and starting from scratch. It means gradually adding healthy foods and gradually reducing or eliminating unhealthy foods. At some point, if you’re hungry and you have the choice of eating that fresh apple in the fruit bowl or going out to the store to buy a box of cookies, you’ll opt for the apple, if only to save yourself the hassle. Keeping the biggest temptations out of your home is a good idea. Getting rid of every single food you like, however, is a setup for failure.

4. Change your meal plans. People with blood sugar issues know two things: 1) eating frequent, smaller, healthy meals keeps blood glucose (and hence energy) levels steady; and 2) when you cut out simple sugars, you lose weight. Combine these two things and you have a good way to lose weight healthily. Though diabetics have to watch sugar intake all the time, if you’re eating frequent small healthy meals for eight days out of ten, then you can reward yourself by enjoying a treat or two over the next two days, before starting back on the mini-meals. Some of the weight lost will come from the fat you’ve accumulated on your back, particularly if you exercise regularly.

Often, one simple change like frequent, smaller meals or cutting out refined sugar can help weight come off quickly, which is very motivating when you’re faced with the next trip to the grocery or the next restaurant meal with friends. Remember: fasting doesn’t work as a permanent weight loss plan.

Fitness Camp to Home: A guide for parents!

It wasn’t easy sending your child to fitness or weight management camp. It was probably very expensive, and you no doubt missed your child. A teen can change an awful lot over a summer, even without going to weight loss camp, and it’s tough to miss out on that. Once your child returns home, he or she needs support in maintaining healthy habits learned at camp. There are a number of reasons that children have a tough time maintaining their weight loss once they return home. Below are a few of the difficulties and how you can help avoid them.

Unrealistic expectations are common because parents forget that their teen faces the double difficulty of losing weight while still growing. Sometimes they don’t so much lose weight as they gain height and “grow into” their weight. The point is, when they return home, they may not have lost that much weight. But don’t focus so much on the number on the scale: he or she may have grown an inch over the summer, making any weight lost more significant. Be positive about what your teen has accomplished rather than comparing it to what you think he or she should have accomplished.

Parental guilt can be destructive all around. Some parents feel guilty for “letting” their child become overweight, and some feel guilty about sending their child to weight loss camp. When your child returns home from camp, it’s an opportunity for the entire family to start again with healthier habits and to lose some of the old habits, like going out for ice cream a couple of times a week.

The kitchen itself could be a problem. If your child has just spent two months learning healthy eating habits and comes home to a refrigerator full of ice cream sandwiches and a pantry full of potato chips, it’s going to be exceptionally hard to maintain those habits in the face of such temptation. Before your child returns, stock the kitchen with easy to prepare and eat foods that are healthy. One of the best examples of this is fruit. In summer you can get fresh fruit easily, and for most fruits, the only preparation required is a good washing.

You may think you’re helping your teen by being a “food Nazi,” but if you do nothing but tell your child what he or she cannot eat, it’s a classic setup for rebellion. Encouragement is great. Talking it out is great. But saying “no treats ever, period” is unrealistic and not really supportive. Encourage the good habits your child has developed rather than looking for faults and pointing them out.

Be a good role model, but don’t go overboard. If you look perfect, get up every morning at 5 a.m. to jog, and happen to have a fast metabolism, your child is going to look at that as a set of unrealistic expectations. On the other hand, if they see Mom or Dad lying hour after hour in front of the television with a bag of chips and a bowl of dip, they’re going to wonder why they bothered learning their healthier habits. It is much better for everyone if your organize activities like a walk after dinner, or a weekend hike at a local park.

In summary, your teen’s return home from fitness or weight loss camp is an opportunity for the entire family to “reboot” with better eating and exercise habits. Let them know that you are supportive and that you are “there” for them and don’t go overboard in enforcing “rules” and you’ll have a healthier environment for them and for you.

Weight Loss Tips for Teens

It is important to note up front that weight loss may not be necessary or desirable. Many young people have a certain amount of “baby fat” that they outgrow. Teens’ bodies are changing constantly, and what you look like at 14 may be very different from what you look like at 18. And there are some teens who want to lose weight because of the people they see in magazines and movies. Often it’s the “popular” kids at school that take their standards from the fashion magazines, providing more peer pressure. But there do exist teens who really do have extra weight that they need to use. For those individuals, there are many things they can do to encourage steady weight loss.

1. Cut down on simple sugars. For many years, people thought that candies and cookies weren’t all that bad because they didn’t have a lot of fat in them. But the sugar itself leads to insulin surges and a sugar “high” followed by a sugar “crash.” Simple sugars are also very easy for the body to convert into fat. If you forbid yourself all sweets, you’ll grow resentful and could binge. Just cut back, and substitute some of those sweets with fresh fruit.

2. Excercise at home. Sure, you’re slammed with homework, and you may not have the money or time to join a gym. But anyone can take 15 minutes to exercise with a DVD or by playing Wii Fit if you have the equipment. If your neighborhood is safe, walk. Are there places within walking distance of your home, such as a library? If you have a dog, take her on a walk. She’ll love the attention and the exercise is probably healthy for her too. If you have a high energy pet and a place that is safe, you could try roller skating with your dog. Be sure to wear protective gear if you do, though. The point is, regular activity is the key. You know what the best exercise is? It’s the one you’ll do.

3. Participate in school activities. School sports can be a great way to stay or get fit. If the “big” sports like football, basketball and baseball aren’t you’re thing, many schools have swim teams, bowling teams, and track teams. Even signing up as a help for a sport can get you a certain amount of activity, plus you won’t be consuming sweets while you’re keeping stats and helping the coach.

4. Cut back on fast food. It seems that teens and fast food were made for each other. Growing teens do need a certain calorie level, and fast food is quick and inexpensive. But it shouldn’t be an everyday thing because fast food is high in calories, fats, and sugars.

5. Walk at the shopping mall. You can get a pedometer for a couple of dollars to keep track of how far you’ve walked.

Getting a weight loss buddy to exercise with you, learning to cook healthy foods, and drinking plenty of water are other ways to gradually change over to a healthier lifestyle. Make changes you can live with and you can make a big difference in health and weight.

Ways to lose weight FAST!

Thanks to technology, many Americans can now chose a diet plan from a vast array of options. It is true that what many desire is to lose weight fast while still preferring to keep the pounds off. But to be very frank, this will be an uphill battle because the presence of unhealthy food stores in virtually every street corner goes against this objective.

This is actually the major obstacle facing anyone wanting to lose weight. We desire a slim figure, but only a very few number of us are willing to put up with the inconveniences that comes with it. The key to achieving fast weight loss is eating the right type of food and the frequency of your exercise routine. Nothing will be accomplished if all we do is pay lip service to our physique, some action is required to effect the desired change.

The diet preference of individuals varies. Some people are on a program such as the weight watchers plan, and add points daily on their computer. Part of it is keeping tabs on what you eat and determining the amount of calories you consume every day. This weight watchers plan provides a range of meal options that will enable people achieve fast weight loss, while not starving during the process. An alternative option is the Atkins diet, which at the moment is the rave.

Like with anything, losing weight fast can be achieved by employing either good or bad methods. The objective of course still remains the same, namely that you want a trim body, lose weight, be healthy and staying that way. So many will lose weight fast only to put it all back on after a few months or years. To achieve permanent weight loss, you will need to adopt a new lifestyle which includes a healthy diet (remove processed and fatty foods) while increasing your vitamin intake. The last point highlights one of the biggest problems of fast foods, which is the lack of vitamins.

So to achieve fast weight loss, it is necessary to take correct amount of vitamins and calories, and this must be complemented by regular exercise, which is something that discourages many people. But you cannot shy away from it because exercise is a vital component in the process that helps keep the body in shape and burning calories.

The internet can also be a source of information on fast weight loss methods, diet plans, and exercise routines. You must not consider fast weight loss as an elusive concept, because it is a very feasible task that can be done if you are willing to learn the nitty gritty of it.