Month: December 2014

Healthy eating is one of the most important things you can do to improve your overall wellness. In fact, when most experts talk about how to stay healthy, they list two things before anything else. They say eat right and exercise, usually in that order. So eating a healthy diet may be the most important thing you can to do to keep your body fit and avoid illness and disease.

One example many people give about healthy eating is the idea that our bodies are like cars. What you put in the car determines how well it runs. You’re not going to get your car very far down the road if you use the wrong kind of gas, or not gas at all. So eating the wrong kinds of foods, or worse, not eating at all, isn’t going to get your body very far, either.

Most people know the kinds of foods they’re supposed to eat for a healthy body, and the kind they’re supposed to eat to lose weight, if they’re overweight. Almost anyone can look at two breakfast options, for example, and understand which is considered the healthiest. Given a choice of three doughnuts or a bowl of oatmeal with fresh fruit, most people know that the oatmeal and fruit is the healthy eating option. The doughnuts are junk-food sweets—lots of sugar, lots of calories, but no real nutritional content.

Some other distinctions are more difficult, though. Is a lettuce salad with fat-free dressing healthier than natural peanut butter on whole grain bread? When it comes to choices like these, it’s necessary to consider the rest of the day’s food to determine which one would be the better healthy eating choice. Some fat is necessary for good health, so the natural peanut butter (containing only peanuts and their natural oil) shouldn’t be discounted just based on fat content. If the rest of the day’s food intake (before and after) is going to contain a good amount of fat, then the salad might be the better choice. But if everything else holds little fat or protein, the peanut butter sandwich could be a great choice.

Much depends on the second part of the health equation—exercise. Healthy eating differs a bit from sedentary people to very active people. The more active you are, the more calories you can consume while maintaining a healthy weight. A sedentary person couldn’t eat as many calories as an active person without gaining weight.

As complicated as it sounds, though, it’s not difficult to make healthy food choices, whether you’re active or sedentary. (And if you’re sedentary, you should make an exercise plan and stick to it for the best health.) If you stick to natural, whole foods as much as possible—fruits, vegetables, whole grains instead of processed grains like flour, and beans—it’s hard to go wrong. Most unhealthy food is processed and pre-packaged. For healthy eating, avoid those pre-packaged or pre-cooked items, and choose food as close to its natural state as possible.

Healthy eating is one of the most important things you can do to improve your overall wellness. In fact, when most experts talk about how to stay healthy, they list two things before anything else. They say eat right and exercise, usually in that order. So eating a healthy diet may be the most important thing you can to do to keep your body fit and avoid illness and disease.

One example many people give about healthy eating is the idea that our bodies are like cars. What you put in the car determines how well it runs. You’re not going to get your car very far down the road if you use the wrong kind of gas, or not gas at all. So eating the wrong kinds of foods, or worse, not eating at all, isn’t going to get your body very far, either.

Most people know the kinds of foods they’re supposed to eat for a healthy body, and the kind they’re supposed to eat to lose weight, if they’re overweight. Almost anyone can look at two breakfast options, for example, and understand which is considered the healthiest. Given a choice of three doughnuts or a bowl of oatmeal with fresh fruit, most people know that the oatmeal and fruit is the healthy eating option. The doughnuts are junk-food sweets—lots of sugar, lots of calories, but no real nutritional content.

Some other distinctions are more difficult, though. Is a lettuce salad with fat-free dressing healthier than natural peanut butter on whole grain bread? When it comes to choices like these, it’s necessary to consider the rest of the day’s food to determine which one would be the better healthy eating choice. Some fat is necessary for good health, so the natural peanut butter (containing only peanuts and their natural oil) shouldn’t be discounted just based on fat content. If the rest of the day’s food intake (before and after) is going to contain a good amount of fat, then the salad might be the better choice. But if everything else holds little fat or protein, the peanut butter sandwich could be a great choice.

Much depends on the second part of the health equation—exercise. Healthy eating differs a bit from sedentary people to very active people. The more active you are, the more calories you can consume while maintaining a healthy weight. A sedentary person couldn’t eat as many calories as an active person without gaining weight.

As complicated as it sounds, though, it’s not difficult to make healthy food choices, whether you’re active or sedentary. (And if you’re sedentary, you should make an exercise plan and stick to it for the best health.) If you stick to natural, whole foods as much as possible—fruits, vegetables, whole grains instead of processed grains like flour, and beans—it’s hard to go wrong. Most unhealthy food is processed and pre-packaged. For healthy eating, avoid those pre-packaged or pre-cooked items, and choose food as close to its natural state as possible.

How do you find the best way to loose weight for you and your body? While calories are the ultimate test of whether you’ll lose weight—eat fewer, burn more—the same method of cutting calories doesn’t work for everyone. Chances are that if you ate the exact same diet as someone else and did the same amount of exercise, you’d both lose weight. Though, you wouldn’t lose weight at the exact same rate, for various reasons. But unless you’re going to have your meals served to you in exact portions each day and be prompted to do your exercises, the plan has to be a natural fit for you to stick with it.

The best way to loose weight for 5000 other people might not be the best for you. Even if it’s the healthiest plan on the planet, it might not be right for you. Because even the most wonderful diet plan ever created won’t work if you don’t stick with it. And if it’s not right for you, no matter what the reason, then you shouldn’t try to keep following the plan.

Some diet and even exercise plans are obviously not the best way to loose weight and you know it right in the beginning. If you don’t like olives, for instance, a diet that hinges on eating olives isn’t right for you, no matter how popular it is with other people or how many pounds they’ve lost. A diet that severely restricts meat and poultry might be very healthy and easy to lose weight on, but it does you little good if you don’t follow it and sneak in some meat anyway.

Finding the best way to loose weight isn’t always easy. Sometimes you have to try several different plans and methods of eating before you hit on one that feels natural. You’ll want to aim for a way of eating that you think you can reasonably stick with forever. So fad diets and crash diets are out automatically. You can’t eat soup for the rest of your life with nothing else. And you just won’t want to fast 2 days a week every week for forever! Choose a plan that you feel you can live with for the long run.

Sometimes the best way to loose weight as far as your diet goes isn’t that difficult to find. But finding the best exercise to help speed your weight loss and improve your health is a little harder to find. Running is one of the best cardiovascular exercises around, and many people who’ve lost a lot of weight and kept it off swear by its fat-burning abilities. But if you hate to run, you have bad knees, or some other reason why it’s not the perfect exercise for you, then clearly it’s not the best way to workout.

Listen to your body and watch the scale carefully as you experiment with diets and exercise plans. When you’re losing weight steadily and feeling good, you’ve found your best way to loose weight.

Something that can make the difference for you when you’re trying to shed pounds is finding good weight loss support. This isn’t always easy. Often the people closest to us are the least supportive; sometimes they can be downright discouraging. If losing weight is something you’ve tried to do many times in the past but never managed to succeed, or if you lost weight only to gain it back as so many of us have, then maybe they’ve heard you say you were going to do it before. While it’s not fair that they wouldn’t be supportive now, often that’s the reason the people closest to us don’t get excited about our new efforts.

If you feel the people closest to you might have that discouraging attitude, then consider not even mentioning your efforts to them. You won’t get any weight loss support from them if they don’t know, but if they’re not likely to be supportive anyway it’s better to keep it a secret than have to deal with someone discouraging.

Sometimes the people we love sabotage our efforts without meaning to. The husband will start bringing home candy bars when the wife announces her new diet, for instance. When people fear change or worry that a new, slimmer you might make you want them to lose weight or change something about themselves, this saboteur-like behavior can start just when you need weight loss support from them the most. Don’t take this personally—most people don’t even realize they’re doing it.

If you have friends or family who also need to lose weight but aren’t currently concerned about it (at least, they don’t mention it to you) be careful how much you talk about your own efforts. At best, they’ll be happy for you at first but then wonder why you keep bringing it up, at worst they’ll feel like your success just points out their own failure in that area. It’s one thing to need weight loss support from those we love, but we also have to take into account that everyone’s human and people will react differently to your efforts and your success.

If all this seems discouraging, take heart! There are two great ways to find weight loss support that pretty much guarantee you won’t be unintentionally alienating any family or friends, and you also won’t be giving them the opportunity to take the wind out of your sails by unintentionally (or intentionally) being hurtful and discouraging. Look in your local paper for weight loss groups that meet once a week for the purpose of supporting each other. Several that cost a certain amount per week like Weight Watchers exist, as well as meetings that only require a donation like OA or TOPS.

Another great way to meet people on the same journey is through online support groups. This also has the benefit of anonymity, and convenience. An Internet search will lead you to dozens of places where you can find great weight loss support online.

Losing weight can be an intimidating topic for many people. Many people are ready to start losing weight but simply aren’t sure where to begin, and get frustrated. If this sounds like you, read on to learn some easy tips for setting up your own weight loss system so you can start shedding pounds.

To help keep your mind on your weight loss goals, have a reference item that you keep visible at all times. For example, purchase a pair of jeans in the size you’d like to reach and hang them behind the pantry door. In this way, you have a visible reminder of why you’re dieting.

A great way that may help you lose weight is to reduce the amount of alcohol you drink. Alcohol contains more calories than protein or carbohydrates and it’s very easy to drink too much. By limiting the amount of alcohol you drink, you’ll be more able to achieve your goals.

A good way to lose weight is to focus on losing weight through exercise. Though diet and exercise are both key to losing weight, dieting alone can be unhealthy and may not produce desired results. Losing weight through diet alone can dramatically slow down your metabolism. Instead, you should try to lose more weight through exercise.

When baking, try to reduce the amount of unhealthy fats that the recipe calls for. This can make your chosen recipe healthier in the long-run. Watch the amounts of whole fat milk, butter and oils and try to either cut their amounts down or find healthier alternatives.You can always use things like yogurt, healthier butter varieties, etc.

If you watch what you eat and what you do, it is truly very simple to lose weight. You should make sure to not stay stationary at any point, like watching television or reading a book. You will be expending the least amount of energy at these points. Instead, you should go for a walk or go outside.

Eat at the same times every day. If your usual schedule will allow it, try to put your meals on a regular routine. Eating your meals at the same time every day will slowly condition your body. You will be far less likely to snack or to even want to.

Before you eat all of your meals you should drink a glass or two of water. This will help you to meet your daily requirement of eight glasses of water per day, and it will also make you feel fuller so you will eat a much smaller food portion.

Think positively when embarking on a weight loss plan. Don’t view foods as ‘bad’, rather, think about them as something that doesn’t fit into your lifestyle anymore. If you have the mindset that certain foods are forbidden, the temptation will be too hard to resist. Instead, focus on all the great new foods that you will be trying out. This will give you a sense of empowerment that will really help you when trying to lose weight.

While you continue to work towards your weight loss goals, it is important to realize that you will inevitably experience setbacks. Lifestyle changes are never easy, and you are almost certain to hit a few bumps in the road. The key is to plan in advance for events and circumstances that may cause you to lose focus, and formulate a strategy for minimizing their impact on your progress.

If you were intimidated about losing weight because you didn’t know what to do, now you know. The hardest part of losing weight is setting up a system and sticking with it. Now that you can set up a weight loss system, you’re ready to start losing weight and feeling better.

There are lots of great fitness centers and gyms operating these days, and many of them try to cater to just about everyone who might be looking for a place to get in shape and participate in an effective workout. While a general fitness center might be good for most people, some women enjoy specialization and prefer to workout at women’s gyms. Gyms that focus on serving only women usually offer some unique benefits over a general facility that caters to both sexes. So let’s take a look at those advantages:

Advantage #1: Women’s gyms allow females to exercise without the fear of being oogled or approached by men during their workout. Let’s face it, there are no doubt a lot of people who believe that today’s gyms function as modern-day singles bars, when in fact most people — especially women — go to their fitness center of choice in order to help themselves get in shape. They aren’t there looking for a date, so women’s gyms provide female patrons the opportunity to workout and to feel comfortable at the same time. When a woman is exercising, particularly if she’s not looking her best because of the effort she’s putting in, she probably doesn’t want to worry about being hit on by a stranger.

Advantage #2: Practically all women’s gyms offer programs that are tailored specifically to women. That means that a woman who enrolls in a females-only fitness center should expect to find that there are classes and programs designed for the unique specifics of a female’s body. We all know that men and women are different in lots of ways, and those differences include our bodies and how they work and develop. Women’s gyms give females the opportunity to work on their bodies under the guidance of instructors and trainers who are focused on the special needs of a woman. That’s a major benefit to the body-conscious lady.

Advantage #3: It seems that generally speaking, women’s gyms are smaller and more intimate. Co-ed fitness centers (like those well-known major mega gyms) can be huge and, at times, overwhelming. A smaller and less intimidating gym can make it easier for someone to focus on their conditioning without feeling lost. Women’s gyms quite often strive to provide a sense of intimacy and pride themselves of being compact and effective, with a minimum of hype and a premium on providing a quality workout experience without making their patrons feel overwhelmed.

If you’re a woman and you’re looking specifically for a fitness center that caters to women only, you’re probably in luck. There are a number of terrific women’s gyms operating with a focus on female fitness these days, and practically every community of any size has several top-notch facilities for women to choose from. In the end, the advantages of a center that is designed for females make them a comfortable and safe environment for women looking for an effective workout.