Losing Fat in Specific Areas: Is it Possible

By Ross Harrison

Most people are looking to improve certain parts of their body. Common concerns are excess flab around the stomach, under the arms, or in any number of other areas. There is a general belief that performing specific exercises will help people lose more fat in certain areas of the body. This is typically known as spot reduction and it is a popular concept, but does it really work?

The simple answer to this question is no, spot reduction is a myth. However, no matter how often this is said, people still want to believe they can lose fat in a particular area by exercising specific muscles. As a result, people often end up doing many exercises to isolate specific muscles, especially the abdominals and arms, hoping to burn fat in those specific areas.

Unfortunately, this is not the way the human body loses fat. You will lose fat throughout your entire body with any type of exercise, regardless of the muscles being used. Exercising specific muscles will however make them stronger, firmer, and improve their appearance, which can create an illusion that more fat is being lost in those areas.

Believe it or not, performing excess exercises for the abs and arms at the expense of other muscles will ultimately decrease your overall fat loss. Exercises that isolate the abdominals, biceps, or triceps have a smaller impact on the body than exercises that use larger muscles or incorporate many different muscles at one time. Exercises such as squats, lunges, chest/shoulder presses, and back rows/pulldowns have much greater physiological effects on calorie burning, hormonal adaptations, overall fitness, and of course fat loss.

While it is true that exercising any muscle causes fat loss throughout the body, it does not mean that fat will be lost evenly. There is one factor that does have a significant impact on where you lose fat and that is your genetics. Most people have specific areas where they easily accumulate fat or store a proportionally larger amount of fat compared to the rest of their body. These are commonly referred to as problem areas and they will vary from person to person.

Problem areas are typically the first to gain fat and the last to lose it, so they are often significant obstacles to long-term fat loss. Luckily there is one approach that is generally successful in dealing with problem areas, but it may not what you want to hear. The key is dedication and consistency with your nutrition, as well as variety and progression with your exercise. Initially you may not lose fat from the areas you want, but if you stick with it, you will start losing fat from those problem areas.

If on the other hand, you have good eating and workout habits some or even most of the time, you may experience some positive fat loss, but once you stop exercising or start eating poorly, the fat you lost from your problem areas will be the first to return. If you are serious about long-term fat loss, you have to make exercise and nutrition a priority throughout your life.

Ross Harrison, CSCS, NSCA-CPT is a certified personal trainer, strength and conditioning specialist, and nutritional consultant who teaches people how to lose weight, get in shape, and improve their quality of life with exercise and nutrition. For more information or to sign up for his free health and fitness newsletter, visit precisionhealth-fitness.com.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ross_Harrison

               

Don’t Be Fooled by the Claims of the Latest Weight-Loss Products

By Abbie Frank

The pain and frustration of constantly being on a diet and watching everything that you eat sometimes seems too much to bear. While I can sympathize with the disillusionment and disappointed outlook of many dieters, the fact is that we do it to ourselves.

Let’s face it, the idea of a weight-loss product, pill, plan or program that can somehow, almost magically remove those unwanted pounds is very appealing to us. We have instant information from the Web, instant entertainment and fast food that is so much a part of our life today. Why is it unreasonable for us to desire a product that will give us the results we desire without any work or commitment of our own?

Weight-loss product manufacturers and marketers however, are only too happy to design their products to meet those magical desires. While they claim thier product will result in rapid weight loss by eating anything you wish, they hide behind disclaimers such as: ” The statements regarding these products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.”

We dutifully ignore or minimize this statement and purchase the latest herbal weight-loss patch, wrap, formula, product or diet supplement based on the belief that maybe this latest product will be that magic pill that work for us without any effort on our part. The reality is that many of these products can help us lose weight but we need to be greatly involved to make it happen. When it doesn’t work as hoped we become disillusioned and disappointed with the product and also ourselves. We then tend to beat ourselves up for yet another failure.

Unfortunately, our bodies live in a real physical world. This means that as much as we would like to experience rapid weight loss and very little time without effort, it’s just not going to happen. That herbal patch or weight-loss formula recently purchased may have in fact worked, though not as well is the marketing hype led you to believe. Maybe the whole failure issue is inaccurate when it comes to both an weight loss products and one’s personal dieting efforts.

Possibly the problem is one of setting the right expectation. Although it’s unfair that the weight-loss supplement industry can make wild claims, we need to look beyond those claims and set reasonable expectations for weight loss.

While an herbal patch may work very well at curbing your appetite, by itself, diet supplements will not cause you to lose weight. It would be reasonable to expect that any weight-loss product, be it a wrap, patch, potion, power, pill, plan or program help you reach your desired goal losing weight in a constant rate.

This means that your search for diet weight loss supplements should be seen more as an effort to find a product that will help support your weight loss dieting efforts only. It’s only through our ability to lower the number of calories we eat each day and raise the number of calories we burn each day can we lose weight

Abigail Franks has done extensive research into weight loss and what works. Find out valuable information about the weight loss diet pill and successful weight loss

Article Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Abbie_Frank

               

Weight Loss Scams Revealed

By Gillian Tarawhiti

Wouldn’t it be nice to lose weight quickly, with minimal effort or fuss? Of cause you would! I for one would love to just sit back do nothing and the weight will just fall off.

Whether it’s a Low Carb, Low GI Diet, A choice of diet pills or “natural” weight loss pills, diet shakes, or exercise equipment, we’ve all seen the fantastic claims people including celebrities make about losing tons of weight AND how they can show you how to do the same thing.

I can tell you right now that 99% of these people are total frauds. You may have even fallen prey to one of these scam artists, selling you their latest “weight loss” program. Me too!

In the past I’ve brought so many of these programs that I can’t even recall how many. I don’t know why, but I tend to find the “good” in people, and I was “sold” by these marketing schemes time and time again, even after being scammed by another. Finally, after so many disappointments, I got FED UP. I decided to get to the bottom of this fascination we have with Weight Loss Programs and find out if there really were any LEGITIMATE programs for Weight Loss.

Legitimate as in not only dealing with LOSING WEIGHT but also what caused the Weight Gain in the first place.

The American Heart Association has several tips to that helps guide you to identify a Fad Diet or Program if it is recommended.

• Magic or miracle foods that burn fat. Foods don’t burn fat – they create fat when we eat more than we need.

• Bizarre quantities of only one food or type of food such as eating only cabbage or tomatoes. These foods are fine as part of an overall healthy diet, but eating large quantities of them could lead to unpleasant side effects.

• Rigid Menus. Many diets set out a very limited selection of foods to be eaten at a specific time and day, exactly as written. Often these limited diets don’t address the widely varied taste preferences of our diverse population.

• Specific food combinations. Some foods taste good together, like the classic “soup and sandwich,” but there’s no scientific evidence that eating foods in certain sequences or combinations has any medical benefit.

• Rapid weight loss of more than two pounds a week.

• No warning given to people with diabetes or high blood pressure to seek advice from the physician or healthcare provider. Some fad diets could raise blood pressure or blood glucose even if you loss weight.

• No increase physical activity. Simple physical activities, like walking or riding a bike, are one of the most important ways to lose weight and maintain weight loss. Yet many “fad” diets don’t emphasis these easy changes.

Now don’t be discouraged, which weight loss program is the right one for you, which one isn’t just a fad diet. In my research I have found a few programs that not only deal with losing weight but also the cause of why you got fat in the first place (which by the way, is ultimately the main reason why we end up putting the weight back on) and also adding in successful, simple strategies to increase exercising.

Whatever you do, I wish you a healthy year for you and your’s

Author Bio: Gillian Tarawhiti BSc, Dip BM, Dip Ed, is Founder and CEO of Community Training Centre & Gain Back Your Life Centre, A registered EFT Practitioner, Member of AAMET and Online Training and Support to the new and not so new netpreneurs. Gillian is also the author of eBay Billion Dollar Goldmine, and the creator of NO DIET WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM(TM) and the Multiple Ripple Effect System © 2004. Permission is granted to reprint this article in print or on your web site so long as the paragraph above is included and contact information is provided to http://www.gainbackyourlife-eft.com

Article Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gillian_Tarawhiti

               

Journaling Your Way To Weight-Loss

By Johnny T. Flynn

Many of my diets have been unsuccessful over the years. I’m not proud of that fact, but I do feel that many of my failed diets have taught me valuable lessons. It is extremely important to try to learn something from each diet that goes south. If you don’t learn anything, your mistakes will be repeated.

One of the best ways to learn from your mistakes is to start writing in a journal. A journal is a personal tool, and I wouldn’t normally tell you how to use one. But I feel I must share with you some of the ways I learned to use my journal.

For starters, write down everything that you eat, as you eat it. This may seem strange, but as I’ve mentioned before, many of us do actually forget some of the things we eat during the day, especially the small stuff. This is especially true if we are continually snacking. Do you remember how many handfuls of Sugar Frosted Flakes you munched on today? Was it two? Or was it more like nine? You must be precise in order to gain any benefit from this technique. Don’t write down that you ate “some” M&Ms. Write down that you ate “three handfuls” of M&Ms. At the end of the day, you can take out any calorie counting booklet and add up your total calories for the day. You can be the judge. How many calories did you consume? Was it a good day, or a bad day? If it was a bad day, which items made it so? Can we cut back on that tomorrow? Great!

Don’t cheat, and don’t fudge (no pun intended). If you try to pretend that you didn’t eat all that ice cream last week, and you tell your friend that you stuck to the diet but still gained weight, then you have more problems than just being overweight. Most of my friends can tell when I’m lying anyway.

If you can’t be honest with your friends, you have to at least be honest with yourself. If you aren’t honest with yourself, that’s called denial, and that will do nothing but continually frustrate you. When you weigh-in, you will find that the scale remembers everything you ate. A record of where you slipped up on your diet is priceless information. Don’t deny yourself that feedback.

A second type of journal entry could be your weekly problem log. You only need to fill out this log for weeks that you didn’t lose weight. You need only summarize what you feel are the reasons you did not lose weight this past week (stress, holidays, a sale on brownies, etc.). Here is a sample log:

PROBLEM LOG
WEEK 3: I ate an entire chocolate bunny, or two.
WEEK 7: I thought the chocolate sauce was nonfat.
WEEK 9: Chocolate. Never mind what, just chocolate.
WEEK 11: We had no trick-or-treaters, and I ate all the fun-size Snickers because they were bothering me as they lay there.

Trends often emerge within a problem log. In this case the trend is chocolate. The appropriate correction is to eat less chocolate, preferably no chocolate. Yes, life is unfair.

The challenge then is finding ways to lower your intake of chocolate. The best thing I could do to help myself is to stay away from 7-Eleven stores. We all have our secret little places that we go for our “fixes.” Resist the urge to go to them and pretend you need a vegetable fix, or a fruit fix instead. Take a big bite out of that carrot and say out loud, “Yes, oh I needed this so much.” Make sure no one is within earshot first.

Not everybody’s problem log will be filled with “chocolate” entries. Some people will drink too much alcohol (oops… multiple problems), while others will eat too much junk food. Others will drink a 12-pack of soda per day, while still others will eat as much meat in a week as some of us do in a year. The point is that by using a log in this way, you will be able to see which items or events most severely affect your weight-loss.

A journal can also be used for keeping track of your exercise sessions. Keep track of how many hours you exercise per week and what type of exercise you perform. It is also helpful to have a weekly exercise goal in mind as you journey through your diet. This can be expressed in calories or in hours, whichever suits you best. The goal is a constant reminder to include exercise in your weight-loss plan.

One of my favorite ways to use a journal is to regroup and reorganize after a terrible weigh-in. I tend to write down whatever I’m thinking at the moment just to get the pen rolling. Often the first few words reveal my mood, and I’m not often a happy camper. Here are some examples:

January 6 - Okay Johnny, what happened? Wait, let me guess, you shouldn’t have eaten at McDonald’s three times this week. When will you learn to stay away from those places? Are you on my side? Or are you just going through the motions?

January 27 - Let me just say one thing…WHAT’S WITH THE FOUR PIECES OF CAKE AT THE WEDDING? What could you possibly be thinking? Your plan was to stick with vegetables this week. Did you temporarily forget that cakes are not in the vegetable family? What can you do to keep away from that junk next week?

February 17 — Ok, this week is shot. Seems to me that we’re having a lot of blown weeks, aren’t we Johnny? And didn’t we have this same conversation a few weeks ago? Yes, I think we did? Wait! Maybe there are some other areas of your life that we could screw up too. Why should we limit it to dieting…

You might think I’m being a bit harsh on myself in these journal entries, but I get all of my frustrations out right then and there. I usually stop being upset with myself after a few paragraphs, and then I write some positive goals for the upcoming week.

Keeping a journal of your thoughts and reflections concerning your diet each day is also helpful. No topic that pertains to diets is off limits. Sample topics might include: Have you been drinking eight glasses of water each day? Did you blow it big time last night at dinner? Have you had a revelation or breakthrough in your diet strategy?

It is important to focus on what has been negatively and positively affecting your progress each week. It’s helpful to review the past week’s journal entries over the weekend or on whatever day you choose. This serves as input to your diet planning process. Throw out what doesn’t work, and welcome whatever does work for you. As you reread your journal, you may be surprised at what you have written. Was that really you who wrote that paragraph three weeks ago? Did you really eat all that in one day? Or “My God, I’m so paranoid.” You’ll be amazed at how many states of mind you find yourself in.

Within your own journal, you can do more than write. I like to draw pictures of the restaurants that are safe to visit, and I like to draw pictures of and make lists of the foods that I can and cannot eat, separated by a big thick impenetrable line that I drew and did not dare cross. I even tried to draw an apple fritter at one time, but it didn’t look appetizing. It looked more like a poorly groomed, ugly hairpiece, but that’s not the point. I knew it was an apple fritter and I knew I couldn’t eat it. That type of stuff works for me; you must find out what will work for you.

Remember, however, that the journal won’t do the hard work for you. The journal can help you see trends in your eating behavior, but you are going to have to reverse the bad trends on your own. So please learn these lessons well, and if you need to start your diet over, like I have done many times, start over with conviction.

Johnny T. Flynn (Author) Heavy Lettuce: Adventures of a Journeyman Dieter, ISBN: 0976352516, website: http://www.heavylettuce.com, email: Johnny@heavylettuce.com

Article Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Johnny_T._Flynn

               

12 Tips For Faster Fat Loss Now

By Gregg Gillies

Let’s face it. Burning off fat can be frustrating, especially those final 5 - 15 pounds. Sometimes, it seems like no matter what we do, the weight won’t come off.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the important aspects of fat loss that you may already be implementing, and some that you are most likely not using. These could make all the difference in burning off those final pounds and giving you the lean, defined physique and six pack abs that you’ve been working so hard to get.

Mental Tips on Getting Started

1. Determine the reality of your current situation. Be honest with yourself about where you are and how far you have to go.

2. Figure out the things you are doing now that you would not have gotten involved with, knowing what you now know. Examples are smoking, drinking sugar laden soft drinks, junk food snacking late at night, spending most of your time on the couch, etc.

3. Do a complete and honest analysis of yourself and your skills regarding health and fitness. What do you do well? Where do you need to improve?

4. Determine a measure that you can use to gauge your progress.

5. Set specific goals for each day, week, and month of what you need to do to move yourself toward your goals and discipline yourself to accomplish these small goals that will lead you to big rewards.

Analyzing Your Lack of Fat Loss Progress

Here’s a short checklist of reasons that your fat loss progress may be stalling.

1) Too Many Carbohydrates.

This doesn’t mean you have to eliminate carbs from your nutrition plan. The right carbs are a vital part of your fat loss efforts, not to mention your health. However, any additional carbs above and beyond those needed have a good probability of being stored as body fat. Weight training does require a higher carb intake. But most people don’t train intensely enough for the amount of carbs that they take in.

2) Stack Your Carbs.

Eat most of your good carbs in your morning meals and in your post-workout meal. This will help to stabilize your insulin levels and help you burn body fat for energy later in the day.

Forego the pasta, potato or rice at your evening meals for lean proteins like fowl or fish, along with a side dish of veggies. Or enjoy your favorite protein shake recipe. Okay, maybe not your favorite if your favorite contains a lot of simple carbs, but you get the idea.

3) Too Much of the Wrong Type of Cardio.

What happens to the guy or gal who performs 1-2 hours of cardio a day? (We know you’re out there!)

They send their body into a tailspin, a state where the “starvation hormones” secreted by the body skyrocket (it’s your body’s survival mechanism, a response to too much exercise!) causing fat cells to try to hoard their energy!

Too much cardio will eat away at muscle tissue, causing your metabolism to slow down and your body to start storing fat. In other words, the exact opposite of what you are trying to accomplish. Substitute shorter duration, high intensity interval training for the slow, long duration cardio you’ve been doing and watch your metabolism get a boost as you burn more fat in less time.

4) Never “Cheating” on Your Diet.

Once in a while you should let loose and give yourself a break from the rigors of dieting and scale watching. In fact, it’s helpful in losing weight.

That’s because continual dieting eventually leads to roadblocks where the body responds by slowing its metabolic rate. Strict dieting also takes its toll on you mentally, and can leave you feeling deprived.

That’s a bad combination! Taking in a couple of high calorie meals once every 7-10 days not only provides a mental break from dieting, but helps you side-step roadblocks by preventing the body from entering a starvation state where the metabolic rate slows.

Another way to approach this is on a daily basis.

Here’s an example. Don’t forget the numbers are for the example only. You’ll need to adjust the calorie number to what’s appropriate for you.

Day 1 - 2,600,
Day 2 - 2,500
Day 3 - 2,400
Day 4 - 2,300
Day 5 - 2,200
Day 6 - 2,100
Day 7 - 2,000
Day 8 - 2,500
Day 9 - 2,400
Day 10 - 2,300
Day 11 - 2,200
Day 12 - 2,100
Day 13 - 2,000
Day 14 - 1,900
Day 15 - 2,400
Day 16 - 2,300
Day 17 - 2,200
Day 18 - 2,100
Day 19 - 2,000
Day 20 - 1,900
Day 21 - 1,800

At this point, I will take a look at my progress (using body fat calipers, the scale and the weight increases on my exercises) and then devise a new plan for the next three weeks.

The cycling of calories in this manner is good both for building muscle and losing fat. How high you start and how low you go depends both on your goals (building muscle or losing fat) and your individual metabolism. If you are building muscle you don’t want to make your low days too low. You just want to have some slightly lower calorie days so that you keep fat gain to a minimum as you add muscle.

For losing fat, you don’t want your high days too high (for obvious reasons) but you also don’t want your low days too low, otherwise you will lose lean muscle and put your body into starvation mode, which will cause it to slow your metabolism down and store fat - two big no no’s. If the weight stops coming off, don’t always go lower on calories but consider increasing your cardio training (or just increasing the intensity of the time that you do your cardio - the more intense it is, the more calories you burn during the same amount of time).

You still need to be careful with the amount of food you eat when you do this. After all, it doesn’t take too much to completely wipe out that week’s progress.

5) Paying Attention to The Scale Only.

The scale is not the “end-all” measurement of progress. You also monitor a couple of other things, primarily body composition, energy and strength.

As I’ve said before, don’t go just by the scale. It can deceive you and frustrate you. Get yourself a nice pair of electronic skin fold calipers and keep track of your muscle gains and fat loss.

Skin fold calipers, along with the scale are a much truer indication of your progress.

6) Eat More Good Fat

Getting enough of the good fats will help you lose fat, build muscle, and recover faster from your workouts. In addition, it has myriad health benefits, including being good for your heart. Good fats include: polyunsaturated ( especially Omega-3’s), such as those from fish and nuts, as well as monosaturated fats, such as those from peanut butter, olive oil, egg yolks, and fish oil.

Bad fats include saturated fats from things such as animal and coconut fats. Then there is the worst kind of fat the man made kind, trans fatty acids which can be found in our typical, of no redeeming value, junk foods such cookies, chips, fries and margarine.

Limit, if not stay completely away from, the bad fats and try to get about 30 - 35% of your calories from the good fats.

“Studies show that higher-fat diets make more sense for fit people than low-fat diets,” says Liz Applegate, Ph.D., author of Encyclopedia of Sports & Fitness Nutrition. “In one study, endurance athletes ran up to 24 percent longer before they fatigued when they ate a diet that was above 30 percent fat compared to one that was below 20 percent,” she says.

More importantly to most readers of this newsletter, researchers are now beginning to realize the fact that a nutrition plan high in the good fats helps the body to burn fat. Omega-3 fatty acids increase the size of your cells’ fuel-burning furnaces so your metabolic rate rises and you burn more calories every minute of every day.

Omega-3’s also help your body’s sensitivity to insulin. This helps your body store less fat. In addition, the fat you do store is more readily and easily converted into energy and burned during activity. This keeps your blood sugar levels stable and keeps you away from those famed sugar crashes and cravings and irritable mood swings.

7) Don’t Get Frustrated by A So Called Lack of Progress.

I received an email the other day from a man who wanted to thank me for the quality information I have provided to him.

He’s lost 100 pounds in the past two years and he didn’t think this was very good progress because of what he’s seen others do.

Stuff like this drives me nuts. He made phenomenal progress and should be extremely proud of himself and what he accomplished. Please people, don’t let the progress of others (especially those in ads) cause you to get frustrated with what you’ve accomplished.

Sure, you can use those outstanding results to motivate you but don’t let them make you think what you aren’t doing isn’t special. Don’t let it derail you from your goals.

Gregg Gillies is the founder of www.buildleanmuscle.com . Want to boost your metabolism, burn more fat with less effort and lose all the weight you want…fast? Grab his free report at www.fatlosssecretsrevealed.com

Interested in gaining 21 pounds of muscle in only 9 weeks? Grab his free report at www.fastmasstips.com

Article Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gregg_Gillies

               

If Diets and Weight Loss Programs Leave You Cold - Start Your Own!

By Donovan Baldwin

Anything that I write on the subject of weight loss has GOT to include facts. Not supposition. Not opinion. Not argument. Not pie-in-the sky. None of that. I said “facts”, and I am talking about proven facts on the subject of diets and weight loss.

Fact #1: Diets are not a permanent weight loss solution.

Fact #2: Even a “good” diet is usually mis-handled. (Okay, one opinion.)

Fact #3: You won’t get there without exercise.

Fact #4: In place of a “diet” you need to substitute good nutrition.

Fact #5: Almost everything else is a helper or a hindrance.

Fact #6: You need your own weight loss program, not somebody else’s.

A DIET IS NOT A PERMANENT WEIGHT LOSS SOLUTION

It is well documented that dieting, that is removing certain things from you normal list of foods you eat or eating only certain foods, does not work as a permanent weight loss solution. The explanation of this could be the subject of a book itself, but to make it short, you get bored, it’s hard to stay on the diet, dieting produces changes in your body that encourage weight gain, you lose energy, it just isn’t fun and so on. Pick any diet you want. Are you prepared to spend the rest of your life eating that way? Probably not. The only real solution to a lifetime problem is a change in lifestyle and behavior.

DIETS ARE COMMONLY MISUNDERSTOOD AND MISHANDLED

Here’s a classic example: The Atkins diet! Ask almost anybody you know what the Atkins diet is, and they will say it’s a diet that lets you eat lots of things like steak, bacon…you know, the fun stuff, without worrying about those nasty old veggies and carbohydrates. That’s why it’s called “low carbohydrate”, right? Shows how far most people read. A few pages into the Atkins diet plan, you learn that eating like that is only supposed to be done for about the first two weeks, to shift your body into the proper mode for the next three phases. In each of those phases, Dr. Atkins actually instructed people to begin adding certain foods, including carbohydrates, back in because it is not healthy to remain on a straight diet of chicken-fried steak or whatever for the rest of your life.

Just to drive the point home, I have a friend who went on the Atkins diet over two years ago. After a couple of years, he was still eating the from the list of foods that were recommended for the first two weeks! He lost weight at first, he’s gaining it back now, and then some, and has no idea why the Atkins diet doesn’t work any more.

It’s interesting to note that the Atkins diet, and almost any other weight loss program, diet drink, diet pill, fitness coach, you name it, includes exercise as being important to their product being effective.

YOU HAVE GOT TO EXERCISE FOR WEIGHT LOSS

In fact, many people could lose most of the weight they need to lose just by getting into the right exercise program and staying with it! That’s half the problem. Our bodies are designed by Mother Nature to DO THINGS! Clicking the remote doesn’t count. Again, this topic is broader than the scope of this article, but the facts are that if you want to improve your overall health, defeat or at least delay dozens of mental and physical conditions, get more enjoyment out of life, live longer, live better, AND lose weight, you need to exercise.

The basic rule of weight loss and weight gain is that if you eat more calories than you burn you gain weight. If you burn more calories than you burn, you lose weight. That simple.

For most people it really seems simple. If they eat less, they will lose weight!

IN PLACE OF A DIET YOU NEED TO SUBSTITUTE GOOD NUTRITION

As pointed out above, simply cutting foods out of your diet is not the answer. However, the solution is simple - just eat sensibly. Nobody ever said you can’t eat chocolate cake, just that you shouldn’t eat two or three pieces a day, and the piece you DO eat should be a normal size. We all have at least a vague idea of what foods we SHOULD be eating, and we have a good idea of what we shouldn’t be eating, or at least eating a lot of. This is an active process. Most people drive up to the window and say, “Give me your 99 cent greaseburger and a cup of water with sugar.” When asked if they want to “supersize” it, they agree. Even the good restaurants serve a lot more food than it is healthy to eat, but most people go ahead and eat it anyway because they have no idea of how much they should be eating, because it tastes so good, or because they were taught to clean their plates.

DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE FRILLS

You see a lot of diet and weight loss products that claim that they have found THE SOLUTION to your weight loss problem. Hardly anybody gets overfat (Arnold Schwarzenegger is “overweight”) because of one single thing. Mostly, it will occur over a period of time because of a combination of factors. While nutrition and exercise are two of the absolute MOST important factors, simply changing one without the other doesn’t work as well as putting both into action. Little things like an electric exercise belt, a pill made out of grapefruit, or a secret drink from Tahiti might help your weight loss program, but if you aren’t already doing the two most important things, don’t expect to see much in the way of results. That’s why so many of these diet and weight loss products have a remark on the label that says something like “…when used in conjunction with a proper diet and regular exercise.”

There is good scientific evidence that things like cortisol and caffeine can influence weight gain and weight loss, for example, but if you were to try to control your weight over a lifetime by controlling these factors, you probably would not notice any real results. If, however, you were to begin eating sensibly and getting more exercise, taking cortisol blockers or cutting caffeine out of your diet MIGHT contribute a few extra pounds of weight loss, but it is weight you will probably lose eventually if you stay on your weight loss program.

YOUR WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM, THAT’S THE GOAL

You are not your brother, your sister, or your mother no matter how closely you are tied to them genetically. What works for one of them might not be what you need. While there is scientific fact to back up the exercise equations outlined above each person is going to react in their own unique way. You need to exercise, but maybe not as much as your friend. You need to eat less chocolate ice cream, but maybe you can’t eat as much as your friend does. You need to make any weight loss program work for you by designing it around you. Do the exercises you like to do, just make sure you are doing enough. What’s enough? Well, you will have to experiment and see. Eat the foods you like, just eat them in sensible quantities and eat primarily foods that have a lot of real nutrition in them. What foods? Again, you will have to find your way, probably by trial and error, although there are many excellent books to give you guidance.

Speaking of goals, your goal is to be healthy and happy. Wanting to weigh a given weight because somebody else weighs that amount is senseless. You shouldn’t even be trying to weigh what you weighed in high school, because, physically speaking, that was a different person. He or she was someone with a different metabolism, lifestyle, and tastes. Concentrate on getting your exercise and eating properly and let your body figure out how much it needs to weigh.

Trying to tailor a weight loss program on someone else’s results is just asking for trouble as far as weight loss is concerned. They may be able to run faster than you. They may have a higher metabolic rate than you. They may have a different bone structure. They may have fewer obstacles than you. Let’s face it, somebody like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can have the best equipment, the finest personal trainer, and can make the opportunity to sculpt a beautiful body. Plus they have the incentive of knowing that their multimillion dollar salaries depend on their maintaining the basic equipment their genetic makeup endowed them with. You and I have an old set of barbells, a cracked sidewalk, sneakers that are falling apart, live paycheck to paycheck, and the kids are going to be home in two hours. You and I are not going to look like Brad, Angelina, or Arnold. Just do the best you can with what you’ve got, and you will not regret the outcome, trust me.

Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer. A graduate of the University Of West Florida (1973) with a BA in accounting, he is a member of Mensa and has held several managerial positions. After retiring from the U. S. Army in 1995, he became interested in internet marketing and developed various online businesses. He has been writing poetry, articles, and essays for over 40 years, and now frequently publishes articles on his own websites and for use by other webmasters. He has a blog on the subjects of health, fitness, diet, and weight loss at http://nodiet4me.com/ and a website on the subject of weight loss at http://nodiet4me.com

Article Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Donovan_Baldwin

               

Stop Sabotaging Your Diet

By Laura Pueschel

When you’re getting ready to start a new diet do you already feel doomed to fail? Are you saying to yourself, “Okay, I’ll give this diet a shot, but it probably won’t work either”? There are many reasons that a lot of diets don’t work, or work for awhile and then you start putting the weight back on. Here are some things you can do about it.

1 Stop saying “I’m on a diet”.

Doesn’t just the thought of being on a diet make you feel deprived? And besides, unless you’re one of those people who need to drop 5 pounds quickly to fit into that outfit for the reunion, you’re looking for a long term solution. You want a way to take the weight off and keep it off. When you say “I’m on a diet”, that suggests that some day you’ll be “off” the diet and go back to eating the way you used to, which is when the weight you’ve worked so hard to lose will come back. Tell yourself you have a new eating plan, and get excited about all the new healthy foods you get to enjoy.

2 Don’t expect perfection.

There will be days when you’re really motivated and do everything right, exercise, eat the right food at the right time, everything perfect. And then there will be most days, when you don’t make the time to exercise, eat some-thing really fattening, or both. The important thing to remember is not to beat yourself up over it. You’re going to have good days and bad days, and many days in between. Just don’t give up. What’s important is that you keep working toward your goal.

3 Don’t set your goals too high.

So, you want to lose 100 pounds to get to your ideal weight . If you focus on that one number you’ll get intimidated before you even start. Instead, break it up into manageable 10 pound goals and find a way to celebrate each milestone, it will help keep you motivated.

4 Don’t expect instant results.

You’ll see ads everywhere promising “lose 14 lbs. in 7 days”, or “drop 10 lbs. by next week”. Don’t believe it. Try them if you must, but remember these “fads” only work for the short term, the weight will come right back on as soon as you stop. Think about how long it took you to put on the weight you want to lose, and then give yourself a break.

What you need to remember is that weight loss is a process that is ongoing. You learn along the way what works for you and what you need to do to stay at your goal weight once you reach it. Just don’t give up.

Laura Pueschel writes about healthy weight loss and sensible fitness for http://www.advantageweightloss.com

Article Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laura_Pueschel