Monday, June 27, 2016

Exercise and Fat

Author Laurie J. Goodyear, PhD, is a senior investigator at Joslin Diabetes Center

I had to copy this post for my readers because this author has it right. Most dieters are not doing the right exercise to help them burn fat. Most people step on the scale and all they see is the number and they don't bother thinking about what the number means. Most of the time it means you adding more fat, which means you need to lose fat and that's more than just losing weight.

Most people know that exercise burns fat. It’s the reason most people hit the treadmill in the first place.

But fat isn’t just a place we park extra calories. “The tissue has a lot of other properties.

“Exercise really makes fat healthier and helps it burn more energy.”

Specifically, she says, exercise shrinks the size of individual fat cells, and the cells develop more energy-producing parts called mitochondria.

That means that fat tissue is burning more calories, even at rest, Goodyear says.

“What we’ve realized is that fat isn’t simply storage,” she says. “We see about 4,000 genes in fat tissue change with exercise. It’s not just that fat cells get smaller.”

Exercise also affects the lining of blood vessels, a layer of tissue called the endothelium that’s just a single cell thick. When this layer of tissue is damaged, it’s easier for dangerous blood clots to form.

Science has discovered that when the body is inactive, the cells in the endothelium get sluggish and don’t sit in the vessel wall properly. But exercise, which causes blood to flow more swiftly and under greater pressure, realigns the cells.

About 12 hours after a single bout of exercise, the cells have repositioned themselves to be in line with the flow of blood. This helps blood vessels work better, keeping them open and elastic, rather than stiff, narrow, and clogged.

In the brain, recent studies have shown that physical activity makes the brain more connected by bulking up the white matter, the wiring that transmits signals between nerve cells. And older adults who exercise have more gray matter in areas of the brain responsible for self-control, memory, and decision-making.

Exercise also beats medication for some ailments. In head-to-head tests, it works as well or better than pills for depression. In other conditions, like Alzheimer’s and arthritis, it’s been shown to delay disability.

It’s enough to convince anyone to lace up. Or at least it should be.

Yet that message seems to be falling on deaf ears. This year’s survey by the Physical Activity Council found that 28% of Americans say they are totally inactive. It’s the highest level of physical inactivity measured by the survey since 2007.

To keep himself healthy, he tracks his own steps every day.

If you're ready to get going but not sure where to start, Thyfault recommends three levels of fitness.

He says level one is just to walk and keep track of your steps. You can do this with a trendy fitness tracker, but even an inexpensive pedometer or a smartphone app will do the trick. Your goal should be at least 8,000 steps a day.

Once you’re hitting that goal on a regular basis, level two is to do three to five defined exercise sessions each week, with a goal of 30 to 45 minutes of aerobic activity -- like running or pedaling on an elliptical -- each time.

Level three is to add a couple of days of resistance training each week.

Goodyear agrees and says getting more exercise will make a difference you can feel. “I always feel that if I’m consistently exercising I have more energy. People sleep better when they exercise routinely, and then your body just becomes more efficient,” she says. When your body is working better you feel better, your happier and you have more energy.

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.

Friday, June 24, 2016

Avoiding Stress Will Help You Lose Weight

We can have stress and not even know it. A fast paced life is

stressful. Stress will cause a person to concentrate on those things

that worry them most. They lose their focus on their everyday life.

They start to forget about their normal routine and look for a way to cut time from their schedule. They stop working out or just walking with friends and they stop doing the regular chores like cooking at

home. They spend more time watching TV because it takes your

mind off the stress that's worrying them. Stress is one of the biggest

causes of obesity. It will make you less active.

People will stop eating real food and just start filling up on snack food and bottled or canned drinks. All of this is

caused by stress. Eating too much snack food, not preparing real

food, not caring about your food and not caring about exercise. All

of these are signs of a downward cycle that are heading toward

obesity. And the food manufacturers are happy to help you.

Because of our stressful lifestyles, we are constantly looking for

convenience and preparing meals is close to the top of the list of

those conveniences. Supermarkets are great but all the food is not always healthy. Supermarkets have to sell all types

of food and some of it is processed food. Processed food is

manufactured and not grown. Convenience foods and even restaurant food will only add more fat to your body. When you're trying to lose weight avoid foods that you aren't making at home. This is a good way to simplify your life by taking some of the hustle out of it. Try to take a lot of the aggravation out of life by organizing everything just a little better.

You can make quick meals and they can still be healthy. By planning your meals and plan for shopping ahead of time by knowing what's for dinner before you go to the store. Shopping out of habit and just buying the same stuff week after week might be the expensive way to shop. Planning your meals before you shop maybe the easiest and cheapest way to shop. And by organizing just that much of your life can make a big difference in your stress level. The less stress in your life the happier you will be. You're also going to be more organized and be a better decision maker.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

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.

Monday, June 20, 2016

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.

Saturday, June 18, 2016

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.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

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.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

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.