Yoga for Weight Loss

The Surprising Weight Loss Benefits Of Yoga

While walking around your city, you’ve probably seen a variety of yoga studios—everything ranging from Bikram to Anusara, Jivamukti, and Vinyasa yoga. Bikram is known for hot rooms and sweat-dripping bodies, while vinyasa is all about the flow of movements.

If your goal is to get lean and lose body fat, you might be wondering whether, or how, yoga fits into your program. There are a multitude of benefits to practicing yoga, but does yoga help with weight loss?

Yoga Only Burns 3-6 Calories Per Minute

In order to lose body fat, you have to create a deficit of calories. If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight, and one pound of fat is equivalent to about 3500 calories.

Yoga classes often endure for about 60-90 minutes. According to research done by the American Council on Exercise, the average individual burns about 3-6 calories per minute practicing yoga, which equates to a total of only 180-360 calories burned during that class. In contrast, a kettlebell workout burns about 13-17 calories per minute, which equals about 800+ calories burned in an hour. That’s a significant difference in calorie expenditure.

While it depends on the type and intensity of the class– certain styles of yoga are much more rigorous such as power yoga, hot yoga, and vinyasa, whereas yin yoga, restorative, and hatha yoga are more gentle and slower-paced. Regardless of the intensity of the yoga class, circuit training is still superior in terms of overall metabolic boost and calorie burn.

But even with the calorie difference, yoga has other benefits that can help the weight-loss individual.

…But Yoga Can Still Be Effective For Weight Loss. Here’s Why

From 2000-2002, medical researcher and yogi Alan Kristal, in association with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, conducted a study on the effects of yoga on weight-loss. The study surveyed 15,500 middle-aged men and women about their physical activity and weight over time, controlled for factors such as diet, health, and other forms of exercise that could cause changes in weight. The study found that both over-weight and normal-weight adults who regularly practiced yoga for at least 4 years were less likely to gain weight than those who did not practice yoga. In fact, those who were overweight and practiced yoga actually lost an average of 5lbs during the four-year period, whereas the overweight non-practitioners gained about 14lbs.

If calorie expenditure didn’t account for weight maintenance or loss, what did? The researchers found a strong association between a regular yoga practice and mindful eating, which they did not find in other activities such as walking or running.

How Can Yoga Help You Lose Weight?

Reasons that yoga might help the weight loss process include:

Effective stress management, reducing the likelihood of stress eating

Increased body awareness, specifically relating to hunger and satiety

Mindfulness and mindful eating

Although practicing yoga doesn’t burn the most calories, it might still have a place in your workout routine. An effective fat loss program that encourages maintenance of lean muscle and maximizes calorie burn should be founded on a combination of resistance training and cardiovascular activity. 

However, yoga could be used as active recovery and flexibility training between more intense workouts. The benefits of stress reduction and mindfulness associated with yoga could lead to improved sleep, better eating habits, and increased self-awareness, which could mean more weight loss and improved maintenance of weight loss will result over time. No matter how bad you want to lose weight you can't work out hard every day. A hard workout is hard on your muscles and those muscles need time to rebuild, so you have to spread out those hard work outs. 

Regardless of the exercise you’re doing, however, good nutrition is essential. If you’re not paying attention to your diet, you won’t see the results you want. Exercise right, eat clean, and you’ll be able to realize your goals.

I write E-books and blogs about fitness and weight loss. I’ll show you the cheapest, inexpensive way to lose weight. Right now and for a limited time, my E-book, "How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight”, is $1.99 on all the major sites. Amazon.com, iBooks, B&N.com, Scribd.com, Kobo.com and many others in several other countries.

Reasons It's Hard to Lose Weight

Exercise

If you listen to the weight loss industry, you've been told over and over how easy it is to lose weight—just take this pill, follow that diet or buy this piece of equipment and everything will melt away in a flash. In fact, we spend over billions of dollars each year on weight loss products and services and yet we're still overweight.

If you struggle with weight loss, as most of us do, you've figured out just how hard it is to lose weight.

  The question is, why is it so hard and is there anything you can do about it? There's no shortcut to weight loss, but you can make the process easier with a few simple changes.

Complex Problems, Simple Solutions

The idea behind weight loss is simple--burn more calories than you eat. This can be accomplished by replacing a couple of sodas with water and adding at least 30 minutes of exercise every day. Sounds simple...and it is. If it's that simple, why can't we seem to do it?

There are a number of factors that contribute to our weight gain that you already know. But it's not just about finding time to exercise or choosing the salad over the burger—it's about genuine commitment to make healthy decisions every day....regardless of what's happening in your life. If you're not ready to make some changes, losing weight will be hard. Below are things you'll need to look at in order to get yourself on a healthy track.

1. Your Attitude.

If you're only on a health kick to lose weight or look a certain way, it will be hard to lose weight permanently. Why? Because what happens if you don't see results quickly enough? You give up.

Weight loss is a great goal, but unless you have something else to motivate you, what's to keep you going if the scale doesn't budge?

It takes time to lose weight—how will you motivate yourself in the meantime? Find more reasons to be healthy—having more energy, dealing with health problems or just feeling stronger and more energetic.  Keep an exercise journal and write down every single success, whether you're losing weight or not.

2. Your Workouts.

If you don't workout consistently enough, it's hard to lose weight. Yes, it's possible to lose weight through diet alone, but you'll likely hit a plateau. You don't need to spend hours in the gym, you only need to set up a reasonable workout schedule that you can follow each week. It's not about killing yourself with workouts—it's about finding something you like and that you'll continue with for the rest of your life. You have to be willing to be more active on a regular basis—not just for a week here and there. My Beginner's Corner can give you some idea of where to start.

3. Your Eating.

Changing the way you eat is another thing you're going to have to do for long-lasting weight loss.

You need to be willing to replace unhealthy foods with healthier choices most of the time.  That means:

• Keeping a food journal
• Spending more time in the grocery store reading food labels
• Spending more time preparing meals
• Understanding proper portion sizes
• Making conscious choices about what you put in your mouth.

For permanent weight loss, you need to pay attention to what you eat and make good choices more often than not. Maybe a structured diet eventually ends, but healthy eating never stops...there will never be a time when you're done eating healthy.

You might feel you're sacrificing the good stuff (pizza, fast food, etc.) and your life won't be fun if you can't have those foods. Guess what? You can still have them...just not whenever you want. Are you ready to make these changes? Are you ready to stop giving your body the most convenient thing available (and often the most fatty) and, instead, spend time planning what and when you'll eat? Because that's what it takes to really lose weight and keep it off.

4. Your Lifestyle.

If you want a healthy life, you have to be willing to change how you live. It doesn't mean changing everything overnight, but simply being open to new ways of doing things. Some things you might need to change for a healthy life are:

• Daily Routines. You may need to get up earlier to prepare your lunch or squeeze in a workout, use your lunch hour for exercise or go for a walk after work instead of watching TV. Exercising on a daily basis changes your entire day, so sitting down with your schedule to see where those changes need to happen is your first step in establishing an exercise habit.
• Limits. You might need to set new rules for yourself limiting how much TV you watch or how long you sit at the computer. You'll need to pay attention to how you spend your time and where you're out of balance so you can add more movement.
• Your Pantry. I'm the kind of person who will eat an entire bag of Doritos if they're in the house. That means I don't keep them in the house and if someone (ahem...husband) brings them home, he must immediately relocate them elsewhere. If you want to be healthy, you may need to get rid of those foods you just can't resist.
• Your Schedule. If you're not willing to sit down and change the way you live each day to include exercise, time to prepare meals and time to nurture yourself with sleep, it's hard to lose weight. People use busy schedules as an excuse not to be healthy...are you one of them? If you're not ready to take responsibility for the schedule you've created, it will be hard to lose weight.

5. Your Surroundings.

Sometimes, you can't control the things around you. At work, you may be surrounded by temptations—donuts, vending machines and the like. That's just one thing you have to deal with, but what about your home?

Surround yourself with things that will support you in your efforts to get healthy. That might mean spending some money on home workout equipment, setting up a corner of the house for your gear or commandeering the TV a few nights a week to do an exercise video.

Set up an environment that encourages those healthy choices and reminds you of them—just walking into my kitchen and seeing that bowl of fresh fruit is often enough to remind me of all the healthy choices I'll need to make that day.

6. Your Support System.

While getting healthy may be something you're doing on your own, it's a big help to have a support system. At the very least, family members who understand what you're doing and are either willing to participate or help. If you have a spouse who wants to continue eating the kinds of foods that tempt you, you need a plan to deal with that so you can still reach your goals and keep your relationship together.

Try to surround yourself with people who support what you're doing and avoid those people (like that co-worker who always offers you a donut even though you refuse on a daily basis) who don't. A workout buddy is also an excellent idea for support.

7.  Your Willingness to Fail.

You will not be perfect every day. As a perfectionist, I have to say that is a frustrating concept for me but, the truth is, everyone (even perfectionists) has good days and bad days. On the good days, you'll eat all your fruits and veggies, say no to that pizza and do your workout even though you're tired.

On the bad days, you'll wake up late, forget to bring your lunch, have an extra piece of cake at your friend's birthday party and skip your workout. The bad days will happen if you're a human being. The trick is to never give up, even when you mess up. Work on overcoming your fear of failure and remember that you're not a loser just because you make some mistakes...you're simply a person trying his or her best to make good decisions.

I write E-books and blogs about fitness and weight loss. I’ll show you the cheapest, inexpensive way to lose weight. Right now and for a limited time, my E-book, "How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight”, is $1.99 on all the major sites. Amazon.com, iBooks, B&N.com, Scribd.com, Kobo.com and many others in several other countries. 

Skipping Meals Promotes Belly Fat

Skipping Meals Promotes Belly Fat Storage, Increases Risk For Insulin Resistance

I want to reblog this article because this is a common mistake that everyone makes when they first think about losing weight. 

The author Justin Caba writes for MedicalDaily.com where you can always find valuable information.

Anyone looking to lose weight knows they have to restrict the amount of calories they consume, but how much and when they restrict those calories can make all the difference. A recent study conducted at Ohio State University has revealed that skipping meals not only leads to abdominal weight gain, but it can also lead to the development of insulin resistance in the liver.

"This does support the notion that small meals throughout the day can be helpful for weight loss, though that may not be practical for many people,” said Martha Belury, professor of human nutrition at Ohio State University. "But you definitely don't want to skip meals to save calories because it sets your body up for larger fluctuations in insulin and glucose and could be setting you up for more fat gain instead of fat loss."

Belury and her colleagues divided mice into two groups: one group that was put on a restricted diet and a second group that was put on an unlimited diet. Mice from the restricted diet group received half of the calories that were given to the unlimited diet group in the first three days before having additional calories added. Although mice in the restricted diet group initially lost more weight compared to those from the unlimited diet group, they regained that weight as calories were added back into their diet.

By the end of the study, the weight of the restricted diet group was similar to the unlimited diet group. However, restricted diet mice had gained more weight around their midsection. Weight around the midsection of mice was likened to belly fat in humans, which is often associated with insulin resistance and higher risk for type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

"With the mice, this is basically bingeing and then fasting," Belury explained. "People don't necessarily do that over a 24-hour period, but some people do eat just one large meal a day. Under conditions when the liver is not stimulated by insulin, increased glucose output from the liver means the liver isn't responding to signals telling it to shut down glucose production. These mice don't have type 2 diabetes yet, but they're not responding to insulin anymore and that state of insulin resistance is referred to as prediabetes."

As the study continued, mice developed gorging eating habits that caused them to finish their daily amount of food in around four hours and fast for the remaining 20 hours of the day. Gorging and fasting among mice led to a spike and then a severe drop in insulin that causes a variety of metabolic issues. Mice from the restricted diet group often experienced elevations in inflammation and a higher activation of genes that lead to the storage of fatty molecules and plumper fat cells — predominantly in the midsection.

"Even though the gorging and fasting mice had about the same body weights as control mice, their adipose depots were heavier,” Belury added. “If you're pumping out more sugar into the blood, adipose is happy to pick up glucose and store it. That makes for a happy fat cell — but it's not the one you want to have. We want to shrink these cells to reduce fat tissue.”

A similar study conducted at the Oregon Research Institute (ORI) found that skipping meals or restricting the number of calories you consume each day can actually make unhealthy food more attractive. When adolescents who willingly curbed their eating habits were shown pictures of unhealthy but appetizing food, brain imaging showed a spike in hyperactivity.

So, no matter the reason, skipping meals is depriving the body of essential nutrients.  

Source:  The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. 2015.

I write E-books and blogs about fitness and weight loss. I’ll show you the cheapest, inexpensive way to lose weight. Right now and for a limited time, my E-book, "How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight”, is $1.99 on all the major sites. Amazon.com, iBooks, B&N.com, Scribd, Kobo and many others in several other countries. 

There's No Magic Pill

Everyone looks for the easy way to do everything. We look for the App to change the stations on the TV, you look for the App to open the garage door, the App to do your Taxes, but for losing weight there’s no easy way. Did You ever do a search: "lose weight” and see all the different websites that have the answer for quick or fast weight loss. Just buy this and eat this and the weight will melt away. It won’t happen and if you lose weight it usually comes right back.

I lost weight by changing my diet and I never went back. And if I’m on vacation or go to a family gathering and I do slip up and eat something that will add fat, if you go right back to your meal plan the next day, any extra fat you added will disappear fast. When I changed my diet and started to eat fresh, mostly vegetables and fruit for dessert or for a snack, eating more nuts and not eating that food I use to eat. Not eating that food that put the weight on in the first place. I’m not a vegetarian, I do eat meat, but I stick to white meat chicken or tuna or wild salmon.

 My trick to losing weight is to eat as little animal fat as possible. White meat chicken has some yellow fat on the outside of the meat and It’s easy to remove, so you are eating meat that’s 95% fat-free. Fat on a fish is almost the same, the fat lays outside the meat under the skin. The advantage to eating fish is you get the nutrients from the Omega-3 fatty oil in the fish and salmon and tuna are rich in Omega-3. Other seafood has fish oil and minerals but for my money, I’ll buy wild salmon and tuna. I think you get more nutrients for your money. Red meat and even pork has animal fat marbled through the meat. Some red meat is leaner than others but all animal meat contains animal fat. It’s a good source of protein but you can’t avoid the animal fat and that’s the part your system doesn’t process very well and will turn most of it into Body fat and store it. 

Yes, humans have always eaten animal meat, but throughout history man has never had a very long lifespan. On average we probably live longer today than humans have ever lived throughout history. Having said that, science has no idea how long humans could live if we could eliminate disease and illness. 

Now we all know that science can’t remove all disease and illness in the next century, but we can change our diet and become healthier and whether science knows that or not, eating healthy is the answer to longevity. That and exercise for your body and your mind will definitely keep you fit and active for many years to come. 

It would be nice to avoid all those health problems our parents have or had. And by eating healthy I know I’m going to live a better, longer life. 

Losing body fat should be your goal. Read up on weight loss and losing body fat. It doesn’t cost money to lose weight. The internet is full of free information.

Checkout my other blogs: 

blogonweight.blogspot.com

Howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight.blospot.com

But the quickest way and cheapest way is to buy an ebook online and get everything you need in one short read. I have two ebooks on Amazon:

How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight

Getting To A Healthy Weight

Check out one of them, I think you can find all the info you need and plenty of tips on how I lost my body fat. 

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. 

Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find these e-books. These books give you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my books at Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.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. 

Starvation Diets Never Work

The face of dieting is changing. For too many years we would diet, lose the weight, the weight would come back and we'd do it all over again. Today diet company's and the diet guru's are taking a different approach. They have finally seen the light and they know the public doesn't believe the claims of quick weight loss and permanent weight loss any longer.

So now, the guru's are preaching reform. Change your life and be a healthier person. Live a healthy lifestyle and you'll lose weight. "Eat clean", that's the new catch phrase. In fact, some say not to weigh yourself. Getting healthy is all about body fat. Lost a couple of pants sizes, that should be your goal. You'll look better and fell better. The scale isn't that important. I only use the scale to see if I'm going in the right direction.

Sounds simple, ya. It's not that easy to forget everything you were taught as a child. To learn to like different foods. We are a product of our parents and other members of our family and if we have weight problems today it might be because of the way we grew up. So now as an adult, why is it that we are first realizing at this stage of our lives, that we need to lose weight. Or maybe we knew about this problem earlier as a teen or even earlier in grade school.

You might know that today pre-school and even grade school kids are not as heavy as they were 10 years ago. Things are changing and young parents are making that change. Kids under 10 years are more physically fit. They are more active and I think that some are starting to eat better. So there is hope that our population will become healthier.

But for now, we have to fix our own lives. If we truly want to be healthier we have to be more active and we have to eat better. Just going on another diet is probably not going to work. Oh sure, you might lose a few pounds but can you keep off the weight after you stop dieting. You see, there lies the problem. I'm one of those people who believe "diets don't work". It's a little like smoking because food can be addictive with all the sugars, salt and other chemicals that manufacturers use. Even when you buy produce or meat, chemicals are used to enrich the land where they grow the produce and chemical hormones are used in animals and poultry to stimulate growth. It's hard to get away from addictive in food, but there are new foods coming out, like organic produce and free range poultry and hormone free dairy and beef.

Eating healthy foods is the only way to permanently lose weight and avoiding foods with chemical, high-calorie foods, and processed foods.

I know what everyone is thinking, "those foods are expensive". Yes, I know, but eating healthy is more than just eating healthy foods, eating healthy also means that you have to cut back on the amount of food you eat. For families, this won't be easy. Families have to agree that they want to eat healthier, and that means cutting out the snack food and the high-calorie drinks. After that's done the cost of the healthy foods won't change your food bill.

There's a lot of benefits to eating healthier, especially for kids. They won't be sick as much so they won't miss as many school days. They'll do better in school because they'll be more alert and have more energy.  And being more active in their lives will help them lose body fat. For the adults, you will be more alert and sharper and being more active will help you lose body fat. You'll be more productive at work and at home.  And being a good role model for your kids will get them motivated. Anyone can be thin and trim and you don't have to live in the gym. It's pretty simple, eat clean and eat fresh and do more walking about one hour a day more.

Losing body fat should be your goal. Read up on weight loss and losing body fat. It doesn’t cost money to lose weight. The internet is full of free information.

But the quickest way and cheapest way is to buy an ebook online and get everything you need in one short read. I have two ebooks on Amazon:

How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight

Getting To A Healthy Weight

Check out one of them, I think you can find all the info you need and plenty of tips on how I lost my body fat. 

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. 

Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find these e-books. These books give you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my books at Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.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. 

Live Preventatively: Eat Whole Foods

Food is Health; Exercise is Fitness

The way I see it is this; Food is Health, Exercise is Fitness. You need both. It's simple really. Eat good food every day, move your body every day and health can be yours.

Remember that little (yet extremely powerful) saying from Hippocrates, "Food is Thy Medicine?" Well, I've seen it first hand in my life. When I began to change my diet many years ago and eat healthy, it changed how I felt physically, my energy levels went through the roof and I was sleeping better and had more balanced moods.

It is possible to prevent future health problems through eating a whole food diet, and very possibly reverse some of your current health issues.

Incorporating Whole Foods Into Your Life

I do my best to stay away from any food that comes in a bag, box or can that has more than 4 ingredients. Processed food is frankenfood. It's not real. It's not good for you. And it provides nearly no nutritional value.

Sometimes it's hard to avoid processed foods, especially because convenience can be a huge factor when it comes to how we eat, but convenience does not equal health. Most convenience foods contain a lot of chemicals and ingredients that tend to be hard to pronounce and harmful to the body.I travel extensively and believe me, it can be challenging to stay healthy on the road, but the key to staying healthy is being prepared and eating as many whole, unprocessed foods as possible. This includes veggies, whole grains, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, healthy fats and lean proteins.

The more of these whole foods we put into our body, the better and healthier we will feel. Eating this way will start to bring your body into a more alkaline state which is how our tissues, blood and organs stay healthy and heal.

Preventative Living

Look, preventative living doesn't have to be hard. It's just about educating yourself. As you age, you body will break down more and more, so you have a choice about whether you want to help it stay strong and healthy or add to the aging process by not taking care of it. Enroll friends or family to help you, shop at your local farmer's market and on the perimeter of the grocery store, plant a garden. Start to seek out delicious recipes to incorporate more alkaline, whole foods into your diet. Get creative. Your body will only thank you, and you will feel so much lighter, happier and energetic. 

This article first appeared on MedicineNet, the information is partly mine but I totally agree with this author. All the health problems humans have today are caused from the foods we are eating. Modern man wants so much the conveniences that we have today, all because our lives are too stressful and subconsciously we are look for the easy way thinking that will ease the stress we have, but food can't ease your stress and most of us haven't learned that yet.

I write E-books and blogs about fitness and weight loss. I’ll show you the cheapest, inexpensive way to lose weight. Right now and for a limited time, my E-book is $1.99 on all the major sites. Amazon.com, iBooks, B&N.com, Scribd, Kobo and many others in several other countries. 

What Kind of Shape Are You In?

Surprisingly Simple Longevity Tests

No one can predict exactly how long you'll live, but researchers have devised some surprisingly simple tests that are strongly correlated with a risk of early death - or a longer life - in the years to come.  Here's a look at some basic ways scientists are attempting to assess your physical capability and the associated chances of living longer. Being in good shape doesn't have anything to do with "how strong you are". Being fit and healthy is what keeps us from have a serious illness. We can get a head cold and it never slows us down but if we get some type of bronchial infection that's serious. Take the simple test below and see how fit you are. 

1.   Sitting-Rising Test:  Developed in the late 1990s by Brazilian scientist Claudio Gil Soares de Araujo at Gama Filho University in Rio de Janeiro, this test simply involves going from a standing position in a small (2 meters by 2 meters) area, to a sitting position on the floor, and then rising again.

Subjects are scored according to how many supports they require to perform the cycle: a point lost for using a hand, forearm, or knee, for example, to either sit or stand.  Another half-point is deducted for generally unstable execution.  A total of 10 points can be achieved for each full cycle.

In a 2014 paper published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, Araujo and others discovered that older adults had a 5-6 times greater risk of mortality during the 6.3-year follow-up period, if they scored only 0-3 points on the test, relative to the top-performers scoring between 8-10 points.  A total of 2002 adults between the ages of 51 and 80 years participated in the study.

Araujo's team writes that the Sitting-Rising Test (SRT) is a simple gauge of musculoskeletal fitness, with the capacity to predict mortality among community-dwelling adults in this age range.

2.    Grip Strength:   The strength of your hand grip is typically measured using an electronic dynamometer.  In numerous studies, a stronger grip has been linked with lower all-cause mortality, especially among older adults. In the 2014 UK study of adults aged 53, women's grip strength ranged from 21kg (46lb) to almost 34kg (75lb), while the men squeezed from 36kg (79lb) to 54.5kg (120lb).  Averaged across both sexes, and taking other risk factors like body mass index, smoking status and physical activity levels into account, the 53-year olds with the poorest grip strength had anywhere from a 29% to 98% greater risk of death from any cause during the 13 years of follow-up.

3.    Standing Balance Time:  The same 2014 BMJ paper examined how long its subjects could stand on one foot with their eyes closed.

 The resulting times were short, with a maximum average of just 19 seconds for men, and 10 seconds for women.  The good news: achieving simply those brief standing balance times was linked with lower mortality.  Poor performers of the standing balance test -  clocking in at just 3 seconds for both women and men - had a 2.5 greater chance of dying from any cause, during the 13-year study.

4.    Sitting Height:  If you think your overall height is the only tallness measure researchers are interested in, you're wrong.  Sitting height, an anthropometric measurement which compares the relative proportions of the torso and legs, has been linked in Western populations to the incidence of heart disease. Greater leg length (and less relative sitting height) has been viewed as an indicator of better childhood health, which may protect against age-related illnesses like heart disease and diabetes in adulthood.  

5.    Gait Speed:  Can how fast you naturally walk say anything about your longevity?  Yes - according to epidemiologists from the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere, in their 2011 paper published in JAMA. The researchers examined 9 separate studies involving a total of 34,485 participants and found that among both sexes, gait speed was linked with survival at all ages. A natural gait speed of 0.8 metres/second (about 1.8 miles/hour) corresponded with average life expectancy for each age; walking faster than that as a natural pace was linked with better than average longevity.

Since walking requires energy, balance, and engages multiple organ systems to work together, the researchers suggest slower speed may indicate hidden illness or poor overall conditioning.

6.    Waist to Height Ratio:  Some researchers believe that waist to height ratio - calculated by dividing the waist circumference in centimetres by a person's height (also measured in centimetres) is a better predictor of disease than weight or body mass index.  The advice is simple: keep your abdominal fat down, and make sure your waist measurement is not greater than half your height.

Bottom line:  These tests are simple tools to measure the statistical probability of an early death, as indictors of overall health and conditioning.  You can improve your own odds of living a long, healthy life by staying physically active, eating an anti-aging diet, staying active within your social circle, keeping stress at bay, not smoking, and drinking only in moderation.

I like the Waist to Height Ratio as being the best way you have to know that you have too much fat. Some woman become very concerned with fat arms or fat legs but the only fat that's important is belly fat. Once you lose your belly fat the fat in other places will also drop off. 

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.