How to lose weight easy

August 23, 2009 by health1  
Filed under How to lose weight

The following article presents several concrete tips on how to lose weight easy. The guidelines are very easy to follow and they will bring immediate and easy results to your weight loss efforts.

How to lose weight easy: Lose the excess fat

One of the things you can do to lose the excess fat from your body is to reduce your intake of sugar. You can do this by gradually reducing the consumption of high sugar foods like donuts, candy bars, cakes, pies, hard candy, fudge, soft drinks and processed fruit juices. If you want to have something sweet, try frozen grapes or sugar free Jell-O. By reducing the intake of sugar, you will be able to manage the levels of insulin and this will help you improve your body’s ability to start burning the stored fat.

How to lose weight easy: With home made food

Another important aspect in the process of how to lose weight easy is home made food. You need to make healthy and proper choices when cooking at home. Steaming and broiling are among the healthy ways to prepare your meals. If you need to use oil in your cooking use only olive oil. Olive oil is full of healthy mono-unsaturated fats that will help keep you a feeling of fullness for longer periods of time. Do not use oils with high saturated fat such as coconut oils, corn oil, palm oil and vegetable oils. Even better, if you have a good steamer, you can simply add some food with a little water (no oil at all) and you can prepare your self a nice and healthy meal.

How to lose weight easy: How you eat

Another secret of weight loss is how you eat your food. You should try to eat your meals at a slow pace, really enjoying every bite. It must be noted that our body needs around 20 minutes to realize that our stomach is full. If you eat at a fast pace, you will end up eating more calories than you actually need until your brain sends the signal that you are no longer hungry.

Make sure that you make healthy choices when it comes to selecting what type of fats you eat. When selecting cooking oils, choose oils that are high in mono-unsaturated fats and low in saturated fats. Oils that are high in mono-unsaturated fats include olive oil, almond oil and canola oil. Essential fatty acids (EFA’s) like Omega-3 are also very crucial to include them in your daily diet. Salmon and tuna are among the great sources of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 can help to prevent and cure various disorders in many ways. Several established research suggests that individuals who are non-insulin-dependent (or type 2) diabetes, omega-3 can help them improve their insulin sensitivity. Omega-3 fatty acids have been proved to help keeping cholesterol levels low, stabilizing an irregular heart beat (arrhythmia), and lowering blood pressure.

How to lose weight easy: Exercise

In your efforts on how to lose weight easy you really need to concentrate on getting up and exercising in order to burn the excess calories. You can start your exercising efforts by doing the simplest form of exercise, walking. Try to gradually walk 1 kilometer alone or with a friend. Try to improve and make it up to several miles per day and you will be suprised how great you will feel. You can also try doing some sports or other activities which you enjoy and at the same time provide you with a great workout. Start playing various sports, tennis, basketball, or football. By exercising regularly, you will improve your ability to lose weight faster and manage not to get back the weight you lose.

How to lose weight easy: Be selective with foods

Some of the foods that you need to be aware when you want to lose weight fast is cheese. Cheese is full of saturated fat and is very high in calories. Each gram of fat carries more than twice the amount calories compared to the calories contained in protein and carbohydrates (fat has 9 calories per gram compared to 4 calories per gram for carbs and protein). A small piece of cheese has the same amount of calories as several cups of broccoli. You should try and reduce or completely abandon cheese on your sandwiches and salads. This will help you drastically reduce the overall calories in your daily diet. If you really need to eat cheese from time to time, you can choose a light cheese which has less calories than full fat cheese. Have in mind that most restaurants do not offer low-fat cheese so it is better not to eat cheese when dining out.

Another food that has a lot of calories is mayonnaise. Mayonnaise contains a large amount of fat and has enough calories per serving. You need to make the effort and remove mayo from your sandwiches and meals. This will certainty help you reduce the amount of calories consumed per meal. Instead of mayonnaise try eating a low calorie alternative like spicy mustard. There is also the choice of light mayonnaise which contains less calories per serving than the full fat version.

How to lose weight easy: Avoid dinning out

As with the home cooking, another thing that can destroy your efforts to lose weight fast is dining out. Dining out can help you or destroy your weight loss efforts. Some foods that contain a lot of calories are bread and butter. Usually these are served for free before your main meal in every restaurant. You should be careful the next time you are dining out not to over consume bread and butter. One way to keep the temptation away is by asking from the restaurant to remove the bread basket from the table. As far as butter is concerned you should avoid eating food that is cooked with batter. Make sure that you ask to have the meal boiled, roasted or grilled with olive oil instead of butter and you will immediately reduce the calorie intake by hundreds of calories.

How to lose weight easy: Control your grocery list

Another way on how to lose weight fast is to control your grocery list. Before going for shopping, make a specific and precise grocery list of everything you need to buy and try to stick to it. Make sure that you include in your list all the healthy foods you need such as lean proteins (chicken breast, turkey breast, fish, egg whites), healthy carbohydrates (whole wheat bread, brown rice, sweet potatoes, black beans), fruits (apples, strawberries, oranges, watermelon) and vegetables (broccoli, mushrooms, zucchini, green beans, squash, romaine lettuce). By having a detailed grocery list before going for shopping, it will be much easier for you to buy only healthy food and avoid making buys like candy, chips and other unhealthy and full fat foods.

A great tip to help you stick to the items on your grocery list and not buying more than you need is to eat a healthy meal before you go for  shopping. This will give you a full stomach that will make you satisfied and keep you away from the many food temptations found in the store. A meal before going for shopping will help you not to make the wrong choices you may have done if you were hungry. Another great way is to take a protein smoothie with you to the supermarket and walk around drinking it. This for sure can keep away the sweet temptations.

Do’s and Don’ts of Losing Weight the Healthy Way

July 26, 2009 by health1  
Filed under Healthy Weight Loss

If you’re trying to lose weight, you are one of the million people out there trying to do the exact same thing: trying to find relevant, useful information on how to lose weight the healthy way, without getting cheated by fad products, without getting bogged down by misinformation and myths.

Having this in mind, here is a list I compiled together on the most common do’s and don’ts that people need to know, to benefit mostly fro their chosen weight loss plan.

Do these:

  • Eat breakfast every day. In fact, make breakfast the most important part of your meal, and dinner the least important one.
  • Eat a lot of fruits and vegetables to have enough fibre in your diet
  • Drink at least 8 glasses of water every day. Hydration is a must!
  • Monitor your progress on a weekly basis. Every Monday morning weight yourself and measure your weight. This will keep you positive and motivated to continue with your weight loss program
  • Eat smaller portions for each meal and eat 4-5 meals a day. This ensures that you are never hungry so you don’t feel the need to gobble up your food during your next lunch

Don’t do these:

  • Even though something might not have many calories, don’t eat is just because of the calories count if it doesn’t actually help you with your weight loss
  • Don’t reduce your calories too a very low level, because this way your body thinks you’re starving and will slow down your metabolism to align with you. That’s not what you are after.
  • Don’t get influenced by others, nobody knows better what’s good for you except you and your doctor (or dietician). Friends and family are not your doctors
  • Don’t get discouraged if you don’t lose weight within 3 days. This is just a myth. Losing weight the healthy way needs time. This is why it is important to weight yourself every Monday morning and measure your waist. Never a better motivation booster than seeing with your own eyes your slow but steady results
  • Don’t get demotivated if you have a ‘blue’ day. Yes, sometimes it happens that you need a day off from your diet. Just go with the flow and get back on track as soon as you’re off your blue soap box.

More exercise tips to lose weight the healthy way

July 25, 2009 by health1  
Filed under Fitness Tips to Lose Weight

Not everyone likes stretching or riding a bike, so here are additional exercise examples that you can apply when asking yourself how to lose weight the healthy way using fitness.

Are you one of the lucky ones to have a small garden around your house? Then practice gardening. Plant some vegetables or make a small flower garden that not only will thrive, but will add you natural healthy benefits. Of course, you will get more out of a garden of herbs and vegetables, because you can use them in your daily diet. Take two for the price of one!

Use the stairs. You might be living in a block of flats, or your job requires to go up and down with the lift. Why not take the stairs instead? If you have a large multi-floor department store, don’t take the lift, go up and down the stairs. Just think of the many places you encounter stairs every day and start using them. A natural way to exercise by doing what you always do. You don’t even need to take time aside for doing this one!

Don’t use another person to clean your use, take charge of it yourself! By heaving 10 minutes dusting a day, by vacuuming the carpet, by going up and down with the mop, you exercise various muscles in your body the natural way. What better way is there to lose weight the healthy way and having a sparkly clean house at the same time?

From all this, I mostly enjoy swimming. You will burn 400 calories just by smimming up and down the pool for a good 30 minutes. Swimming also allows you to tone your body. It works really each muscle in your body!
A study done in  1993 for the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J. looked at the calorie-burning effects of swimming and it found that champion swimmers burn approximately 25 percent more calories swimming than champion runners. So swimming seems to be a better calorie burning than running! This is not to say running is not good to your health. On the contrary. If swimming is not your strength and all you do in the water is splash water around yourself and get others angry, and you’re in danger of drowning in shallow water, than go for running. The health benefits int hat case are much higher for you!

So if you’re asking yourself how to lose weight the healthy way with exercises, there is so much to do around you, just pick one and do it. If it doesn’t work for you, pick something else. But don’t just sit on the couch worrying about your excess fat. Do something. Anything is better than nothing, and of course, the more you do, the more benefits you reap in the short and long term.

3 Tips on how to lose weight the healthy way

There are two ways on how to lose weight: the fast way, or the healthy way. There is no middle road. Both take you the same place, but you will find a difference along the way, or even in the outcome.

If you want to lose weight the fast way, you can do it. There are a lot of products out there that teach you just how to go about it and in upcoming articles we will discuss that. But now, let’s focus on how to lose weight the healthy way.

No matter how you put it, there is no magic pill in losing weight in a healthy way without making the following three changes in your life:

  1. Make changes gradually. You are used with a particular lifestyle, and your body is used to that rhythm too. If you make a sudden change in your life, if you don’t give you body time to adjust, the body will react sooner or later, and that will not be in a good way. Best is to give your body time to adjust. Make the changes gradually. For example, cut the sugar, and replace it with healthy honey instead. Or instead of 2 spoons of sugar in your coffee, use only one. You like that snack in the afternoon? Replace it with a bowl of fruits, or a plate of fresh carrots and other fresh vegetables that you can munch on while watching the latest rerun of Lost.
    If you’re not one to make exercises, don’t worry, you don’t have to go to the gym right away and start making aerobics, but it does help to take a walk in the park, or around the block a couple of times a week.
    Introducing these gradual changes in your life, changes that your body will have time to adjust, are a great way on how to lose weight the healthy way.
  2. Reduce your calorie intake. Obviously this involves eating less calories than before. If you’re not used to what it takes to watch your calories, there are several aids available online. You can find many calorie calculators available for free online. These calculators take into account your weight, your body fat percentage and an estimate of your daily activity, to figure out your daily burned calories. This tool is great because it will tell you exactly how the calorie intake you need to maintain on a daily basis to successfully lose weight.
  3. Be patient grasshopper. If you want to lose weight the healthy way, it will not happen overnight. You need to have some patience, so don’t keep going up and down that scale every few hours. If you really start working on these little changes in your lifestyle, you will start noticing gradual changes after about 2 weeks. So you really need to remember that this works and keep yourself motivated and not give up. Of course, we are all humans, and we have all human needs and cravings. So you needn’t feel very guilty if you do take a bite from that Belgium dark chocolate or drink a glass of red wine, now and then. But you have to get back on track and simply keep on doing it. You will see, once you notice the first pounds lost on that scale, you will feel that much more determined to go through with it!

If you’ve wondered how to lose weight the healthy way, now is your chance to actually do it. Just remember, small, gradual, baby steps, it’s all it takes. Take it easier on your sweets and calories, and gradually introduce exercise, the light way. Lifting weights is not yet on the table for you, well, not unless you like doing it, of course.