We need to exercise

Exercise comes in many types. Playing sports like soccer or swimming or walking, jogging, using hand weights are just a few way to exercise.

More people than ever are starting to exercise. People are realizing the benefits. I don't want to minimize the diet part but exercise has benefits for everyone even if you don't want to lose weight. Exercise will make you feel better and be a happier person with more energy. Of course, the diet part of losing weight will give you the energy you need to exercise. Overweight people generally are tired most of the day. They use up their energy in the morning and slow down after that. Yes, it can be because they're heavy but mostly lack of energy is because of the food you're eating. If your food isn't giving you energy for the whole day, maybe you're eating the wrong food.

Getting started with exercise

What should I wear?

You should wear comfortable, moisture wicking clothing and a good pair of athletic shoes (or barefoot for yoga!). PS: Always have a water bottle nearby to stay hydrated!

How often and how intense should I be working out?

The CDC recommends 150 minutes of cardio a week and two strength training sessions a week. You decide how, when, and where! The options are endless. Just get moving!

How do I know if I’m doing it right?

Good form equals good results. Read the instructions we provide, but more importantly, listen to your body. Muscle fatigue means “Wow! I’m working hard, I can barely do another repetition.” Muscle pain means ”Ow! Something doesn’t feel right.” Work to muscle fatigue. Never work through muscle pain.

Help! What’s a set?

Here’s some help decoding fitness jargon:

• Rep: Short for repetition. The number of times you perform an exercise.
• Set: The number of rounds of repetitions.
• Cardio: It’s heart-pumping exercise that gets you breathing through your mouth, not your nose. The difference between “window shopping and mall walking.”
• Strength Training: Working your muscles. You could be lifting weights, using a resistance band, or doing bodyweight exercises.
• Flexibility: Stretching your muscles and mind-body exercises like yoga

This post comes from MyFitnessPal and gives the beginner some great tips on exercising. 

Send me an email if you have any questions but we all need to start some sort of exercise program that you can stay with.

If you really want to lose your body fat than look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $1.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, B&N.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com, just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Do You Want to be Thin?

Some people believe "if I just lose a little weight, I can be thin too". Well, I never found it that easy. I guess I learned the hard way. I was always a little heavy. Even back in High School I was what my family called chubby. After I finished school I worked as a truck driver unloading the truck by hand at every stop I made, usually about 40 stops a day. After about 5 years I changed to a construction worker. I did heavy construction, steel and concrete for bridges and tunnels, the money was better and I had a family to think about.

Both the jobs were hard work and I lost about 10 pounds without trying. I was just burning several thousand calories a day. I was 6 foot tall and weighed about 172. After I left contruction and bought a small business, I started to gain weight. I was 32 years old and the next 5 years following I gained about 20 pounds, and before I was 40, I weighed about 220 pounds.

Everyone I knew had noticed and I started to feel self-conscious.  I knew I had to lose weight. I had settled into a lifestyle of self-indulgence. Finally I joined a Health Club. It was a complete gym with machines, running track, aerobics classes, a separate room for weight lifters, a pool, jacuzzi, steam room and expansive locker room with towels provided.

I did get a lot of exercise but I didn't lost much weight and after a few years I stopped going. Like most people I was pretty discouraged through out my 40's and then after I sold my business I finally got serious about losing weight.

So the reason I'm writing about myself is because I want you to know that my battle with my weight went on for more than 20 years. But yes I did win the battle because I never quit. I weight 165 today after more then 30 years of trying to lose weight. I reached my goal now and just work on maintaining my weight. And even maintaining is a battle, an everyday battle of watching my calories and exercising. I have no regrets, the exercise has made me a healthier person and staying thin in my senior years lets me be active. I ride a bike, swim, walk a lot, I do yoga and weight train twice a week.

Being thin can be challenging, for some people it comes easy. Their born with the right genes and they can process food without absorbing the fat. Others like me have to work at it. But if I would have taken some advice when I was younger it might have been easier.

I always thought I could do it the easy way. "I'll diet for a few weeks and I'll be thin and ready for the summer." That was a pipe dream, it never happened. Sure, it's easy to drop 5 or 10 pounds, but in a couple weeks it comes right back. I wasn't serious about my weight, oh sure I wanted to lose weight, but doing what was necessary never happened.

I didn't get serious until I started to feel sluggish, I was tired in the afternoon, my joints started to ache and walking became a chore. My whole adult life I was in denial about my weight and maybe that was because it didn't bother me to be overweight. Then you get older and you start to feel the affects of carrying around the extra pounds, but your still in denial and think the aches and pains are because your getting older but it's not, it's from carrying around the extra weight and because you aren't active enough it's getting harder to carry the extra weight and your heart is starting to strain under the extra work it has to do.

I think I wrote about this before, but being a little over-weight isn't going to keep you from living a healthy life. You can be just as healthy as a thin person if you do regular exercise. If your not exercising your heart will wear down from the extra strain. Extra weight causes extra strain on your heart and at the later years of middle age your heart can start to give you trouble. So actually, if your an overweight person, exercise is more important.

Carrying extra fat especially in the waistline is the hardest fat to lose,  and it's the most dangerous to your heart. I don't really understand why, but most of us start to put on the extra pounds in our thirties and forties. Like me though, we don't work at losing it until it starts to cause problems. By that time you can lose the ambition to lose fat and that's probably why you see so many seniors overweight.

If you truly want to be thin, you want to do something about it when your young enough to have motivation to make the hard choices and get into the exercise routine before it becomes too hard on your body. It's only recently that studies have shown us that extra inches around your waist will shorten your life. The bigger your waist, the shorter your life. Do something about your weight now, while you still have the motivation.

Happy New Year

Make this New Year Resolution count. This is the year you can do something about your body fat. I get lots of email from people of all ages who just want to keep off the pounds. They lose and gain it back and do it again and again. It not a losing battle. You can win this battle like many others have done.

Read my blogs and posts and it can be easier then you think. I have an ebook coming out on Amazon this month, with any luck, and I have a new website about the book. Once the book is released you'll see a link on the website for Amazon. I fixed the price at $3.99 so it's affordable for everyone. The website is:
                       howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight.com 

The website is live now. Check it out and bookmark it. When the books released I'll promote it on the site and my blogs.

About Stomach Fat

When you read the following you should understand more about the dangers of stomach fat. As I did my research I found that stomach fat was different than other body fat and the reason it's very dangerous is that your vital organ will feed off that fat and that overloads the Liver with fat that will pass through the Liver and into the arteries. Your Liver should be processing fat from the food your eating not the stored fat in your belly area.

Can belly fat be a problem even for people who aren't overweight? New research says yes, excess weight around the middle boosts the risk of premature death even for people considered normal weight.

What's more, normal weight people with excess stomach fat had an even higher risk of dying early than overweight or obese people did, according to new research published online Nov. 10 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

"Belly fat is bad fat," said Dr. Paul Poirier, from the Institute of Cardiology at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, and the author of an accompanying editorial in the same issue of the journal.

Stomach fat has been linked to high cholesterol, inflammation, heart disease, stroke and diabetes, he explained.

"When you have fat around the belly, it's a lot worse than having the same amount of fat around the hip," Poirier said. "If your weight is normal, but you have weight around the middle, it's bad. If you've got a belly above 40 inches for men and 34 inches for women, this is obesity [even if your weight measurements seem normal]," Poirier said.

These people may not be obese from a weight perspective, but they are obese from a waist perspective, he said. 

For the study, a team led by Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., used data from a national survey to compare the risk of premature death among more than 15,000 adults. The mean follow-up time was 14 years.

The researchers looked at body mass index (BMI), a rough estimate of body fat based on weight and height measurements. They also looked at waist-to-hip ratios. 

The investigators found that normal weight adults with extra stomach fat had the worst long-term survival, regardless of BMI. And, normal weight men with bigger bellies seemed to fare even worse than slender women with more tummy fat.

A normal weight male with more fat around the waist had an 87 percent increased risk of death during the study period compared to a man who was normal weight without extra belly fat. Compared to overweight or obese men (as measured solely by BMI, without specific waist size information), a normal weight man with extra belly fat had more than twice the risk of dying early, the study revealed.

Normal weight women with extra belly fat had nearly a 50 percent increased risk of death during the study period versus a normal weight woman whose weight was more equally distributed throughout her body. Compared to obese women (measured by BMI only), the normal weight women with belly fat had a 32 percent higher risk of early death, the researchers found.

Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, in New Haven, Conn., and president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, said the study findings raise the question: who would have more belly fat and still be at a normal weight according to their BMI?

Some people are more prone to depositing excess fat around the middle, he said. This can lead to fat accumulation in vital organs, especially the liver, he explained. 

Another group may be those who have excess body fat and illness, perhaps in early stages, causing loss of lean body mass, Katz said. Although it's not clear from this study how many people might fall into this category, he added. 

Regardless of why someone has gained weight around the middle, Katz said, "We have long known that all varieties of overweight are not created equal with regard to health risk, and that central obesity is the most concerning variety." 

If you really want to lose the extra flab you can get help, I write 4 blogs and I’ve written two E-books. Read some of my other blog posts.

Gettingtoahealthyweight.wordpress.com

idropped40pounds.wordpress.com

howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight.blogspot.com

blogonweight.blogspot.com

E-books are the easiest and cheapest way to learn about any subject without groping through hundreds of websites looking for the material you want.

My first e-book is “HowBadDoYouWantToLoseWeight” and it sells for $2.99 on most online bookstores like Amazon.com, BN.com, iBook, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, and Gardner books in the U.K.

My second e-book is available in the same stores. And on smashwords.com. If you use the Smashwords promotional code You can get my second book for $1.99 (TL96R). Just type in the search line “getting to a healthy weight”.

Why Can't You Lose Weight?

Losing weight is just as much mental as physical. You have to really want it and be willing to do what it takes. That's the secret, "be willing to do what it takes".

You have to quit buying all those foods you love to eat. You have to walk more. Most people gain weight as they get older because they are less active. When you're less active you burn fewer calories and if you eat the same but burn fewer calories you gain weight. It's not that hard to figure out. It's normal that people gain 3 pounds a year give or take as they get older. Why? you might ask. Because you're slowing down even if you don't realize it. Slowing down is normal and if you're not fighting it, trying to increase activity, then you will gradually gain weight. It will happen to everyone if you're not tracking your food and your activity levels.

It's easy to do with a journal which you can do using paper and pencil or your PC or your smart phone.  I use an APP called "MyFitnessPal", it's free and there are dozens more all free. You pick the one you like. I use to use a spread sheet but it got too hard to remember everything from the whole day. The App is great for me because I can enter things as I go along.

Tracking what you do and what you eat is a big help. When you have that "I'm not going to quit" attitude  a journal will help you find your mistakes and there will be mistakes. Time when you just stop losing and don't know why. The journal is your log book and when you look through the pages you'll find what you're doing wrong. It's not that hard. When you go off track there's only two answers: You ate the wrong things or ate too much or didn't burn enough calories, usually because you skipped exercise or you cut back on walking.

When you find a plan that's working for you, stay with it, don't make any changes until you have to. When your plan is failing and your stuck and not making any progress it's because your body got use to the routine. When that happens you won't burn as many calories and your progress will stop. All successful trainers want you to change your routine every few days so your body doesn't get a chance to get use to the routine. As long as you keep the same intensity and work out for the same amount of time you'll continue to burn the same amount of calories.

All you need is about 3 different exercise plans. I do a run, walk routine, a free weights routine and I'll swim a couple days a week. Do some research and find some exercises that are right for you. You want exercise plans that challenge your muscle. Building strength will burn body fat. Losing body fat will make you a happier, healthier person, a stronger person with better balance.

If you really want to lose your body fat than look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $1.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, B&N.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com, just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Walking for Weight Loss

This is a good post from MedicineNet for the beginners. Walking is the best way to start an exercise program. When you first start it's not that important that you walk fast, the important thing is that you walk 30 minutes.

Let's start by breaking it down.

1. How Many Calories Do You Burn Walking?

Using walking to balance how many calories your burn each day with the calories that you eat can help you lose weight. But you need to know the numbers, which will vary depending on how much you weigh and how far you walk.

2. Best Ways to Burn More Calories and Fat When Walking

What are the keys to burning more calories with your walking workout? There are good ways and bad ways to try to burn more calories when walking. It is also important to walk long enough to burn fat.

3. Watching the Calories You Eat is Important

One candy bar takes three to five miles to burn off, so the key to weight loss with walking is also to eat fewer calories.

It's a hard truth, but these are the facts. You can't outwalk your mouth.

4. How Fast to Walk for Weight Loss and Burning Fat

Speed matters when it comes to effective walking workouts. How to walk in the fat-burning zone for weight loss. It can be easier to hit this zone with a walking pace than with a running pace.

5. How Long to Walk to Burn Fat

The best walking workout distance and time for weight loss will have your body going into the stored fat you want to lose and burning it as fuel.

Here's how long you should aim to walk three or more days per week.

6. Walking Schedule for Weight Loss

Mix up your walking workouts to get the most weight loss effect. Use this plan for short days, long days, long easy days, days off and weight training.

7. Treadmill Weight Loss Walking Plan

If you prefer using the treadmill for your workouts, this plan will help you challenge your body with a variety of workouts and a weekly schedule to maximize them.

8. Keep Track of Your Walks and Weight Loss

Studies show that keeping track of your walking time and calories can keep you on the path to losing weight.Keeping a log or journal will help ensure success, or use a pedometer with memory or linked to an app to track your walks and exercise.

9. Walk of Life 10-Week Program

Our free daily program for walking, healthy eating and weight loss. Each day for 70 days you will be coached to enjoy a walking workout, exercise, improve your diet and have fun.

10. Ten Things to Stop Doing to Walk Off Weight

Use this list to check yourself and see what habits and thought processes you need to change in order to be successful in walking off weight.

Blogspot is making some changes

Blogger using "blogspot" just found out that Google is making some changes next year. Many of our readers sign in with Twitter or other logins but that will change in January. After the change you will need to sign-up for a Google Account and use that login to read the blogs on Google sites. I'm sure Google will explain all this better than me, but it's all free and there won't be any subscription charge and there is several benefits to having a Google account. It probably has something to do with the security of the blog sites. So don't be surprised when all this takes place next month.

Happy New Year from Howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight.com