Archive for February, 2009
Yo-yo dieting can be very bad for your health. The perpetual weight loss and weight gain trend can negatively affect your heart, metabolism and other internal organs. If you really want to look and feel healthy, it would be wise to stick to a diet plan that is sensible, which does not asks you to starve yourself to death. Furthermore, you should also have a plan on how you will approach the maintenance of your new weight level.
Furthermore, when it comes to weight, prevention is still better than treatment. If you want to be healthy, you should try to prevent getting bigger and heavier in the first place because the human body, according to researchers, is actually designed to prevent weight loss. Every time you lose weight, your body will think that there is famine and drought so it will do everything in its power to resist weight loss – thinking that it is a way to protect you. Thus, your body will try to regain all the weight you have lost and then some.
Here are some of the reasons why you can regain the weight you lost:
Tricky Hormones
There are actually two hormones that are affected when you shed a significant amount of pounds. First, the leptin, which is responsible for controlling appetite, drops when you start to cut down your calories. As a result, you will have this sudden urge to eat more and no matter how much food you have already devoured, you still find yourself hungry.
Ghrelin is another hormone that goes awry during your weight loss process. The level of this hormone, responsible for food intake stimulation, usually declines after you have eaten. However, in people who are in a diet, the level of ghrelin hormone spikes up, which means that you can unknowingly eat more.
Stubborn Nervous System
If you think that fat in your body just stays put and does not affect your nervous system, then you need to think again. It seems that your intestines and the fat stored in your belly are sending signals to your central nervous system in order to resist weight loss or find ways to regain the pounds that have been shed. Thus, when you eat lesser calories than your body uses up, your body will prefer to use glucose instead of using stored fat as energy. This is why when you are trying to lose weight, there is a big craving for sweet foods.
So what do you need to do to maintain the weight you have lost?
First, you need to eat sensibly. There will surely be times when you feel so hungry during the process of losing weight. Since you cannot deny your body the food it needs, it would be advisable to eat low fat and low sugar food. Moreover, eat more veggies and fruits because they contain a lot of fiber, which is important to help minimize hunger pangs.
Second, you need to move more. A lot of people who have maintained their leaner weight try to exercise more. If you cannot beat your cravings, what you have to do is increase your physical activities. Scientists believe that weight training and physical activities could help normalize your metabolism and hormones.
Lastly, seek some help. There are many supplements that contain appetite suppressant and metabolic boosters. Just make sure that the one you choose is safe and all natural. One product you may want to try is Phenocal. Visit http://www.phenocal.com if you want to learn more about this weight loss supplement.
By: Janet Martin
About the Author:
Janet Martin is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and published author. Many of her insightful articles can be found at the premier online news magazine. http://www.thearticleinsiders.com.
Body weight consists of three things – bones, muscles and fat. On the average, a healthy female’s bones consist 12% of total body weight, muscle or lean tissue is at 35% and body fat at about 27%. The remaining weight is composed of the skin, tendons, blood, organs, and connective tissues.
Unknown to many, body fat is actually lighter than muscle. This is why physical exercise can actually make you gain weight instead of losing it. This goes to show that weight loss
exercise isn’t always about lessening your body weight.
Unlike muscles, fat needs lesser energy to be maintained. This is why it is important to maintain your body fat percentage if you are looking to have a healthy weight loss. Body fat percentage is basically the amount of body fat tissue in your body. For example, if your total body weight is at 160 pounds and you have 32 pounds of fat, then you have about 20% of body fat percentage.
Now you’re probably asking, what’s the need to calculate body fat? Well, the higher your body fat percentage, the greater is the risk of getting health related illnesses such as hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and many others.
While it is true that a high body fat percentage is already a cause for concern, it is also important to know where the fat is stored. Fat stored around our middle (also called visceral fat) is the worst case. According to several studies on health, excess abdominal fat is linked to high blood sugar, high cholesterol level and high blood pressure. It increases the risk for heart disease and stroke.
According to a study published at Anne Collins, gender is a strong determinant of body fat distribution. Men tend to store fat around their middle (hence, the apple body shape), while women store fat around their pelvis, thighs and **** (the pear body shape). Aside from gender, there are also several hereditary factors which affect the tendency to accumulate extra weight in the midsection. Also, age is a strong factor, but this is linked primarily to the lack of exercise – old men and women no longer exercise because they tend to get tired easily.
How do you know if you have too much fat in your midsection? Well, the answer is pretty easy – check your waist circumference. For women, an unhealthy waist circumference is at 35 inches and for men, above 40 inches means that you’re already overweight.
By: Sarah Caddle
About the Author:
Sarah Caddle is a certified surgeon and a writer in body fitness. She encourages her patients to help them in weight loss problems. She also writes articles to educate thousands of people to learn how to exercise properly all over the world, so that they can improve their life styles and well-being.
What’s known as stubborn weight loss occurs for a variety of reasons:
A. It may be that your body has adjusted to the changes you’ve made in your diet and you have reached equilibrium. This means you consume everything you gain from your food, but no more.
B. Your body does need more than you actually eat, but because the food it’s too scarce you have forced your body into a low activity mode where it consumes as little as possible trying to preserve your life.
C. You don’t exercise enough.
In case you aren’t eating enough, the best thing you can do is to stop immediately and see a nutritionists. He or she will be able to assist you in finding a proper diet. In case you have reached a plateau in healthy weight loss, then all is not lost and there are a couple of things you can do for yourself. The key here is exercise. You have to exercise smart.
If you are a couch potato and the only exercise you ever do is to walk from the kitchen to the living room, then you can start to add some cardio exercises. Cardio exercises will improve your overall health and will make a big difference in your energy level. You will be able to do more throughout the day and you will probably kick start the weight loss process all over again.
It’s an entirely different story, if you have lost weight with the help of both a healthy diet and a lot of exercises. If you run a couple of times a week and go to the gym too, then you probably need to diversify your activities. For weight loss, toning and shaping you really need to add some kind of resistance training. Resistance training (weights, machines or body-weight exercises like push-ups) has the added advantage of raising your metabolic rate so that you burn more calories at rest, a huge advantage in the weight-loss game.
So there you have it. At the end of the day all your body needs is a little variation. You don’t have to start rock climbing or anything extreme, just make some changes and offer yourself a little challenge. Athletes reach the same plateau when they are training for strength and endurance and savvy trainers know they have to alternate and always come up with new routines to help them get to the top and stay there for as long as possible.
If you have absolutely no clue on what you can change you can try asking your gym trainer. If you don’t like his or her ideas, change the gym and the trainer and you will certainly find variation in a new place surrounded by new people.
By: MN Nikk
About the Author:
To find out more about stubborn weight loss and how you can shift those stubborn lbs, visit Proactol.com for more information.
These are some of the steps that will help you in developing a healthy natural lifestyle that will help you get the perfect healthy body you long for.
1. The first step is being honest with ourselves,embrace our being overweight and start thelong journey of healthy living.Accepting the problem at hand helps us to be determined to solve it however tough it gets.
2. With many myths and availability of false programs that promise instant weight loss ,its easy for one to loose motivation or get desperate when the program fails and doesn’t work.Not everything that sells is right.Ensure you get the most credible information on weight loss from reliable sources.
3. Ensure you adapt to a healthy eating lifestyle.Eating balanced diet will help provide the body with all the required ingredients,watch out on fat intake and avoid eating excess carbohydrates.This will ensure the body gets only a portion equivalent to its daily need,any surplus is converted and stored as fat in the body.
4. Incorporating exercises and participating in physical activities is a natural catalyst that will aid in more fat burn out as the metabolism rate increases.Exercises and workouts should complement your healthy dieting plans to achieve maximum weight loss in a shorter time.Exercises should not necessarily involve going in a gym for daily workouts,simple physical activities like walking,jogging, sex, running,climbing stairs instead of using lifts,mountain climbing ,swimming are inexpensive ways to burn calories.
5. Avoid the same diets and exercises this avoids repetativeness thatmay make the program a dull activity to follow everyday,developing a larger array of solutions and jungling between them will help you go around this.
6. A Successful weight loss program requires lots of discipline and desire to get it done .Sticking to a weight loss program will help you achieve your goal no matter how long it takes.
7. Perseverance before the results start showing.Most people are not able to keep this lifestyle and end up on step one every time they attempt losing weight.
8. Understand your body and develop solutions that works best on it.All diets,exercises and weight loss programs don’t yield same results to different people in the same way,understanding your body will help you customize it to what fits you.
9. Set goals for yourself and reward yourself after every successful target is met,also keep on reviewing your program incorporating any new developments.
10. Yes Am Fat but can always be whom I ever wanted to be by perseverance, discipline and adapting to a healthy lifestyle!
By: paul Gitau
About the Author:
Paul Gitau Gacheru is a webmaster at www.xenopages.com and is currently researching on Weight loss programs and proven working techniques.Read More Free Related articles and leave comments.
One of the most widely-acknowledged types of body weight charts is the Body Mass Index, or BMI. Medical doctors and nutritionists the world over use the BMI method for helping to determine whether people are at a healthy weight. You can use the Body Mass Index whether you use the metric system or pounds and inches.
Here is a step-by-step method for calculating your BMI, along with tips for what to do if your number indicates that you are overweight.
1. Weigh yourself
Start by weighing yourself. Any household scale will do. Record your weight in either pounds or kilograms*.
2. Measure your height and square it
Next, use a simple household measuring tape and measure your height. Note: if you measured your weight in pounds, measure your height in inches.
* If you measured your weight in kilograms for #1 above, measure your height in centimeters and then convert to meters (e.g., 165 cm = 1.65 meters). Now, square your height (i.e., multiple the number times itself).
3. Divide your weight by the square of your height
Now, it is just “weight divided by square of your height” (or, #1 / #2, above). Okay, you are almost there!
4. Finally, multiply by 703 (if not using the metric system)
In fact, if you were using the metric system (kilograms and meters) above, you are done: this is your BMI! If you were using pounds and inches above: multiply your answer in #3 by 703. This is your BMI.
5. Determine what your BMI means
Okay, now you have a BMI number. But, what do you do with it? Okay, here is what your number means in terms of whether you are likely at a healthy weight:
under 18: you are underweight
18 to 18.5: you are thin
18.6 to 24.9: you are at a healthy weight
25 to 29.9: you are overweight
over 30: you are obese
6. Limitations of BMI as an indicator of health
If you are not happy with your BMI number and what it means about the health of your weight, first, don’t panic just yet: this system is not perfect! For example, it does not take into account your muscle mass or body type. So, if you are particularly muscular, for example, you may have a BMI that is well over 25 but you could still be considered to be at a healthy weight.
7. What to do if you are overweight
If your BMI indicates that you are overweight, you need to decide if you are willing to commit to getting yourself down to a healthy weight. That will likely mean a combination of exercise and eating right. Take the time to educate yourself now as to how to best get your body weight into a healthy range.
The BMI is just one indicator of healthy weight. Other valid indicators used by doctors and nutritionists today include skinfold thickness measurements (using calipers), underwater weighing, and bioelectrical impedance testing. However, BMI is by far the simplest method for measuring your health in terms of weight.
By: Marie-Claire Smith
About the Author:
Female Beauty
Female beauty is the only thing I can think of that is news worthy every single day. Beauty matters, it’s ridiculously idealistic to pretend it doesn’t, and, in my opinion, a waste of time to debate whether or not it should matter. While it is true that there are very minor variations in what we find attractive in a woman, in general we find the same women are attractive, so the trick in a quest for an objective definition of female beauty is not to look at the differences but at the similarities in what we all find attractive.
Ideal Body Weight
Women are aware that an ideal body weight and proper nutrition provide them with the energy they require in order to stay vibrant and healthy. An ideal body weight is really a range that is within the boundaries of good health. Staying 5-10% below ideal body weight is a good target for anti-aging weight. The ideal body weight is calculated based on height and varies slightly for men and women. Remember, maintaining ideal body weight is one of the best approaches to reducing the risk of many cancers. Being more than 25% above your Ideal Body Weight is linked with increased risk of health problems, disease and death.
Because it involves factors that are both objective (like your health risks) and subjective (like your personal satisfaction with your appearance), your ideal body weight is much more than a number on the scale: it’s more like a state of being. Ideal body weight is simply what your weight becomes when you exercise regularly and eat smaller (reasonable) portions of healthy food. Ideal body weight is different for each individual depending on health, age, metabolism, body fat, muscle tone as well as other factors. One common measure to determine ideal body weight is body mass index (BMI), which is a ratio of height and weight multiplied by a factor.
Diet
Dieting and exercise are the only methods to get to your goals and they need to become your new lifestyle if you’re going to sustain the body you want. Maintaining ideal weight is best achieved with diet and activity combined; increasing activity while decreasing food intake. Eating a healthy diet and obtaining regular exercise can be a big part of helping you achieve your goals, whether they are physical fitness, weight loss, or hormonal/fertility improvement. Evidence suggests that eating a plant-based diet, being physically active and maintaining an ideal body weight can reduce the incidence of the most common forms of cancer by up to 40%. The use of appetite suppressant medications to treat obesity should be combined with physical activity and improved diet to lose and maintain weight successfully over the long term.
Physical Fitness
Women who have not exercised in years can bring themselves back into a physical condition that they will not believe. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, physical activity of less than 2 times a week at less than 60% of the maximum heart rate, and for less than 10 minutes per day, does not help in developing and maintaining fitness. However, the actual amount of physical activity you need depends on your individual fitness goals, whether you are trying to lose weight, and how fit you currently are.
Fitness weight loss is an option that is more palatable than only decreasing calorie intake, especially by people who are searching for natural weight loss options. The basic approach to fitness weight loss is to burn more calories than you consume but sometimes whatever you do, it does not seem to be working. The key to fitness weight loss is a sensible and nutritious eating plan, where the type of food you eat is tailored to give you all the nutrients your body needs, and where the amount of food you consume is actually reduced and limited.
Conclusion
For maintenance of desirable body weight, a maintenance level of calories along with physical activity is recommended to preserve lean body mass and muscle tone. An evaluation by an exercise physiologist is helpful to avoid injuries that can occur if physical activity is initiated without much consideration given to the type, duration of physical activity, and the physical condition of the person. If physical activity is discontinued, the fitness benefits are completely lost.
By: Paul Rodgers
About the Author:
Women are aware that an ideal body weight and proper nutrition provide them with the energy they require in order to stay vibrant and healthy. For maintenance of desirable body weight, a maintenance level of calories along with physical activity is recommended to preserve lean body mass and muscle tone. Find out more about Ideal Body Weight
Paul Rodgers specializes in marketing natural health and beauty products
It has been quite awhile since I have made a post. I apologize for that but sometimes life gets busy. However, I have avidly been performing my body weight exercises and have been hitting the treadmill and elliptical machines. I cannot tell you how much I despise doing cardio but for me it is a necessity. I am too much of a wimp to work out in my cold garage so I joined a health club. It allows me to get a cardio workout and gives me a warm place to my pull-ups, etc without freezing my backside off.
My daughter takes a cardio class on Wednesday nights. I usually finish my workout before she is done so I sit down and read through a few of the magazines. Last week I flipped through a Muscle and Fitness magazine and two days ago I looked through a Men’s Health (I think) magazine. Each magazine has an article or more on body weight exercise routines.
The article I read two days ago broke up his routine into 5 different group of exercises containing 3 – 5 exercises each. He then randomly chose an exercise from each group and performed them without rest until he had completed the five chosen exercises. That constituted one round. He then rested two minutes and then performed 2 more rounds.
This gives good flexibility to your routines. There is a tendency to perform the same exercise routine over and over. When you do this your routine get boring and your body adapts. By choosing different exercises each time you keep your body off balance and keep yourself interested.
The article that I read in Muscle and Fitness discussed a body weight workout with plyometric training, sledgehammer training and the like. I almost fell out of my chair as I read it. What has the world come to when M & F includes an exercise routine that is more athletic in nature and doesn’t involve a 280 pound giant throwing plates of iron around the gym. It was good to see that even they are beginning to acknowledge the benefit of body weight training.
Well, I will try not to let it be too long between my next post. Actually, I have a review of an inexpensive product that I want to do. I will try to get to that in the next couple of day. Until then, stay healthy.
I ran across an interest article today. It involves the concept of Escalating Density combined with body weight exercises. I thought you might enjoy the article. You can find it reprinted in its entirety below.
This is a great training concept that I’ve been using recently that I came up with as a way to get mass-building effects out of bodyweight exercises that I could do a lot of reps with.
It’s a type of training you could easily build a more comprehensive program on simply by extending the concept.
Basically, it’s kind of a cross between my Compound Exercise Overload training (where you take a weight you can do 6 reps with and do 3 rep sets until you can’t get 3 reps anymore, then you drop the weight and keep going) and Escalating Density Training (by Charles Staley – you might recognize the name 
…it’s basically where you take a 15 minute timeframe and do as many reps as you can within that timeframe).
Time/Volume Training is relatively simple. I’ll use back training for my example (chin-ups, specifically).
For working back, I use a 15 minute block of time (this will vary according to bodypart – less time for smaller parts – e.g. 10 minutes for biceps).
First, start by doing a set of 3 reps. Then stop and rest 10 seconds. Now do another set of 3 reps. Stop and rest 10 seconds.
Keep going using 3 rep sets and 10 seconds rest until you can’t get 3 reps anymore. When you hit this point, now starting taking 20 SECONDS rest in between 3 rep sets.
Keep going using 3 rep sets and 20 seconds rest until you again can’t get 3 reps anymore. then take 30 SECONDS rest in between your 3 rep sets. If you have to increase again, go to 40 seconds, and so on.
Keep going in this fashion until your 15 minutes are up.
It’s just that simple! Basically, the idea here is not to go to failure on any of your reps but to manage your fatigue so that you can maximize your training volume (i.e. more reps and sets).
And, because I originally worked up this technique to go with bodyweight training (where you can’t change resistance), instead of decreasing the weight (like in Compound Exercise Overload), you will instead just increase the rest periods, which gives your body a bit more time to recover in between sets, allowing you to keep doing sets with the exact same resistance.
But just because it’s originally designed for bodyweight training doesn’t mean you can’t use it with free weights and machines as well – it’ll work like a charm for that, too!
You’ll find when using this technique with different exercises (especially bodyweight exercises, where some tend to be a bit easier than others), you’ll be able to go longer before having to increase rest. For example, when doing chins, you’ll probably have to increase rest sooner than you will with push-ups.
But rest assured, even if you can 50 push-ups, you’ll STILL get to a point where you’re not able to do 3 reps sets on 10 seconds rest and you’ll have to bump up the rest periods.
It’s a great way to work bodyweight exercises without resorting to high-rep endurance training. With the 3 rep sets, you’re still hitting the power-oriented muscle fibers, which is what allows you to make this type of training work for mass building.
You can take a few minutes in between bodyparts for a bit of recovery as well.
Here are the time intervals I’ve been using for this type of training:
Back 15 minutes
Chest 15 minutes
Thighs 15 minutes
Hamstrings 10 minutes
Shoulders 10 minutes
Biceps 10 minutes
Triceps 10 minutes
Calves 10 minutes
Abs 10 minutes
I’ve also changed up some of the bodypart blocks so that I’m actually doing 2 bodyparts at once. Here’s a split I’ve been using (based on bodyweight training) but you can definitely come up with your own.
Just be absolutely sure to keep your total workout time to under an hour (I’ve been shooting for 40 to 50 minutes).
This type of training concept is simple enough where you can simply insert it into whatever your favorite training split is.
My preference is for a 2 day on, 1 day off, 2 day on, 2 days off type of training split here. e.g. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.
Day 1:
Back – 15 minutes of chin-ups – I was using a regular underhand, close grip for these, coming all the way up and down to full extension.
Chest – 15 minutes of dips – I was using two chairs with the back facing each other. I would set my hands on the tops of the chair backs and do dips in between the chairs. Works like a charm!
Combination of Calves and Abs – 10 minutes – NO rest in between bodyparts or sets. I would just go straight from one-legged calf raises (5 reps on each leg using no weight) then right into Abdominal Sit-ups (5 reps on that exercise, too) then back to calves. Because they’re such unrelated bodyparts, their getting rest while you’re working the others, so you don’t need specific rest for them.
Biceps – because I was doing 15 minutes of Chins, biceps already got a lot of work. I would just finish the workout with one set of flexed arm hang. Click here for more info on that.
Total workout time: 45 minutes
Day 2:
Thighs – 15 minutes of Bench Step One Legged Squats – Click here for info on how to do this one. Basically, this exercise is a one-legged squat done standing on a chair or bench. Because you’re standing up off the ground, you can drop down a lot further, increasing the overall workload. I also recommend hanging onto something for support. This exercise for this long will really beat the crap out of you.
Hamstrings – nothing for me here – the deep bench step squats were PLENTY of work for the hamstrings, believe me. In a normal split, you would do 10 minutes of hamstring work for this type of Time/Volume training.
Shoulders – 10 minutes of Pike Handstand Push-Ups. Click here for info on how to do this exercise. This is a great exercise for shoulders – it’s a bodyweight exercise, making it very effective for functional strength AND it’s easy enough where if you’ve got decent shoulder strength, you should be able to get good training volume. In that same link above, you’ll also find Horizontal Push-Ups, which is an easier version of it.
Triceps – 10 minutes of Close Grip Push-Ups – even though I can normally do about 40 to 50 of these in a row, after about 8 straight minutes on 10 seconds rest, I had to increase to 20 seconds rest. The fatigue catches up to you and you’ll really be feeling how effective this training is.
I again finished with one set of the Flexed Arm Hang here.
Total Workout Time: 40 minutes
That’s the scoop with Time/Volume Training! Like I mentioned, you can insert this methodology into pretty much any training split and any program. It’s one of THE best ways to get a mass-building effect out of bodyweight training (when you can get high reps with an exercise) that I’ve ever found.
Give it a try in your next workout to test the concept then try a couple of complete workouts with it. Then take the concept with you next time you travel and apply to some bodyweight training. You’ll look at the hotel gym (with the stationary bike with no seat and the squeaky hydraulic resistance machines) and LAUGH!
About The Author
Nick Nilsson is the Director of Online Operations for Staley Training Systems. He has a degree in Physical Education and Psychology and has been inventing powerful new training techniques for more than 17 years.
Nick is the author of a number of bodybuilding eBooks (listed below) all available by clicking here and has written for a variety of publications including Men’s Fitness, Reps, Musclemag, Bodybuilding.com and many others. He can be contacted at nick@staleytraining.com.
* Muscle Explosion! 28 Days to Maximum Mass
* The Best Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of
* The Best Ab Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of
* Metabolic Surge – Rapid Fat Loss
* Gluteus to the Maximus – Build a Bigger Butt NOW!
* Hybrid Training
* Specialization Training
