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Tag-Archive for ◊ weight loss ◊

Sunday, December 14th, 2008

Losing weight is becoming a common goal with many individuals. And this task is becoming difficult and complex with all the conflicting information out there. Thus, in this article, you will find logically sound and effective tips you can follow to find the diet that will give you the maximum benefits and effectiveness. 1. Find a program that provides realistic goals. Avoid diets that promise weight loss overnight. Diets that promise such unrealistic promise are not designed to lose weight. Diets take time to work. Select a diet based on your food preferences. Like sweet food? Opt for a diet that is high on carbohydrate intake. Allow your body to transit to the new diet easily by selecting the food that you like. By doing so, you can be on a diet and still enjoy it. 2. Research the credentials of your chosen diet. The best diet for weight loss is the one that is created by an experienced doctor, health practitioner, or physician. These people spent years studying how the body works and what’s good for it. Before you choose a diet, make sure that you try to find out where the diet rooted from, who created it, and how many people have already benefited from it. The more background you get from the diet, the better. 3. Plan it out. Don’t go ahead with a diet without planning at least a week ahead. Dieting is all about taking the right types of food in the right amount. If you can’t prepare your meals the proper way, you’ll end up not following your diet at all. Here’s a suggestion – before you start out on your new diet, rid your refrigerator of anything that your diet plan asks you to avoid. If you can’t do this, even the world’s best diet for weight loss won’t work for you. 4. Strictly adhere to the diet plan. There’s no sense in looking for the best diet for weight loss only to forget about it after two to three days. Again, diet takes time to work. Following it is definitely hard. So prepare yourself mentally and physically. And make sure you are up to the challenge. Don’t worry. The results may be too grand than could you have expected. There you have it! You now know the best diet for weight loss, so use it to your advantage!

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Sunday, December 14th, 2008

Death in middle life is usually due to the giving out of various vital parts of the body when subjected to strain. Nervous collapse, high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, apoplexy, heart failure and kidney disease are some of the types of functional diseases that are likely to set in at this time. To meet this period successfully, certain precautions need to be observed. 1) Cut down on the amount of food eaten sufficiently to combat the tendency to put on weight. 2) Be very moderate in the use of meats, salts and condiments; take plenty of water. 3) Get plenty of fresh air and exercise, but avoid strenuous exertions which overfatigue and place undue strain on the heart. 4) Take more recreation and rest. 5) Cultivate mental hygiene; avoid nervous strain. Although the same nutritive essentials—fuel, protein, mineral salts and vitamins—are required to nourish the body from the cradle to the grave, it should be emphasized that the amounts needed are less in the latter part of life, especially after seventy, than in the more active adult years. There is no further need of tissue-building materials for growth, and the amount of these substances for tissue maintenance or repair is at a minimum. For this reason, the protein requirement in old age is reduced, while at the same time an excess of protein is more difficult for the body to handle than ever before. The calorie requirement is also materially reduced for two reasons: 1) Less energy is used in muscular activity 2) Basal metabolism is lowered It is far easier and wiser to cut down moderately on one’s fuel intake and take more exercise when the tendency to put on weight first manifests itself, than to try to take off excess weight by radical dieting or excessive exercising later on. This advice should not be taken to support excessive reduction in the amount of fuel foods with the desire of attaining underweight, which is fully as undesirable as overweight. Beyond a slight reduction in the amount of fuel foods and some care to keep down the consumption of meats and other protein-rich foods, no special modification of the diet is needed during this period. What has been recommended as the best diet for maintaining the body in health and vigor during younger years continues to be “optimum diet” in later years—namely, a diet the basis of which is milk, cereal products, fruits and vegetables, with moderate amounts of protein foods, fats and sugar. The importance of milk, whole grains, eggs and green vegetables as protective foods still holds good.

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Saturday, December 13th, 2008

You may think you know when you look in the mirror, or you may be too busy trying to cover up unshapely areas to really see yourself as you are. Do you know how much fat you’re carrying, compared to how much muscle? Do you know where you tend to gain weight–upper body, lower body or around the middle? Until you know the answers to these questions, you are not ready to make your personal plan for losing weight and keeping it off. Understanding your body is the first step to reaching your best personal shape. As someone who teaches both doctors and the public about obesity, I believe weight loss has been overemphasized and body shape underemphasized. You have probably read about the Body-Mass Index (BMI), which is a weight-to-height ratio. If your BMI is greater than 25, you are considered overweight in the U.S., and if it is greater than 30 you are obese. This ratio has been a powerful way for scientists to document the obesity epidemic in this country and its effects on health and disease. However, when it comes to you as an individual, it can be misleading. A football player can be considered overweight on the BMI scale, but if the extra weight being carried is muscle, he is not really fat. A thin woman can have a normal BMI, yet still be over-fat. So shape counts. Shapes are personal and go beyond the usual apple and pear. Women can have three typical body shapes–upper body fat, lower body fat and both upper and lower body fat. Men usually only get upper body fat. The upper body stores fat in times of stress and some people can lose and gain weight rapidly in the upper body. The lower body fat in women responds to female hormones such as estrogen and progesterone and stores fat for breastfeeding a newborn baby. Women who have both upper and lower body fat will lose their upper body fat first. Women with more upper body fat tend to have more muscle than women with lower body fat and will need more protein in their diet to help control their hunger. Losing weight is harder if you have lower body fat rather than upper body fat, but the medical benefits of losing your upper body fat are greater. Losing weight around your neck, face, chest and waist usually goes along with losing fat on the inside as well. So as you look better, you are also improving your health tremendously. Finally, there are two more body shapes to consider: The shape you can change and the shape you can’t change. It is important to know the difference and work on the shape you can change, while adjusting your wardrobe and attitudes to the shape you cannot change. Due to low metabolism, many women with lower body fat can’t lose weight just by cutting calories. These lower body-fat cells are resistant to both exercise and diet. Only a personalized program can help make sure you get enough protein to control cravings and build or maintain lean muscle.

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