Weight Loss - Staying Active

A well-balanced weight loss diet is not enough for losing weight and for maintaining good health. Doing exercises is also very important. If you plan well, you can fit 30 minutes to an hour of aerobic exercises into your schedule with ease.

Aerobic exercises can mean activities like ice-skating, inline skating, dancing, bike riding, walking, and so on. Aerobic exercises are vital for your health since they make your blood vessels, lungs and heart work better while also strengthening each of them.

First choose the exercises you like to do and look into your daily routine so that you can fit in particular exercises. This way you can increase your levels of aerobic activity.

If you are starting from absolutely no physical activity, plan only for 5 to 10 minutes each day. Once you have reached that level, raise it slowly each week by 10 minute additions till the point when you are exercising for 30 minutes to an hour for most of the week.

Try to do all your aerobic activity at one go, so that you can maximize your cardiovascular health. However, if your routine does not allow for it, just split it up in smaller parts through the day.

Weight Loss - Cardio Is Important

Performing cardio exercises is vital towards this weight loss plan. The kind of cardio exercises I have in mind are very distinct from what other masters teach.

The purpose of doing cardio exercises is to burn all the fat we can while exercising on an empty stomach. If your stomach is empty then your body will have to burn fat and not the food you have eaten earlier.

Aim to perform cardio exercises every day that you don’t exercise your lower body. So do the treadmill for 30 minutes at least when you get up in the morning. I try to exercise for 45 minutes to an hour.

Don’t go for speed, keep a slow pace. In these situations it is better to run slow and steady rather than at a fast pace.

If the cardio exercise appears too easy for you, raise the incline of the treadmill rather than the speed. With this type of cardio exercise your body will burn stored fat rather than carbohydrates.

So that’s how you exercise. Make a solid exercise program for the exercises I have recommended and GET STARTED!

If for some reason you don’t want to exercise in a gym, then you can try out some of the alternatives and I'll talk about those in the nex post. 

Fat Loss Workout

The ideal way to lose weight is eating a healthy diet and exercise using light weights but for lots of repetitions. You should also do a lot of cardio exercises. Women should of course be careful to stay within reasonable limits.

The process of building muscle burns fat and betters overall strength, which in turn lets you burn more calories. Hence lifting weights is such an effective way of losing weight.

It is easy to lose fat if you exercise in moderation and be consistent.

You should exercise three times a week, maybe on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

The following schedule is very beneficial:

Week I

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Upper Body	Lower Body	Upper Body

Week II

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Lower Body	Upper Body	Lower Body

As shown above, I would perform upper body exercises twice in the 1^st week. In the 2^nd week, I would perform lower body exercises twice. This is the right way to jolt your muscles to get them into training mode.

Following this kind of training regimen lets you gain a lot of muscular growth and strength while on a diet.

It would be a good idea to have a log book that records the exercises and the number of repetitions you do. This will enable you to measure your results and improvement. 

Losing Weight by Changing the Food You Eat

Healthy diet and exercise is the key to losing weight. You can experiment with your diet and see faster results. It is possible to reduce weight by regularly changing the kinds of foods you eat. You should especially avoid or reduce foods made up of white sugar or white flour. You must also refrain from refined foods from which the fiber content has been removed.

This is necessary because these foods quickly raise the levels of sugar in your blood. They are termed ‘fast-releasing’ foods. They tend to have a damaging effect on your blood sugar and consequently your weight.

You must remove all artificial sweeteners and sugar from your diet. You’ll need to be smart while doing this because sugar tends to be added to any kind of food like tomato ketchup, baked beans or even bread.

It will be really good if you chew your food well and take your own sweet time when eating. This is because your brain takes more than 20 minutes to realize that your stomach is full. Therefore the more slowly you eat, the less you will end up eating.  

Low Fat Diets

Consuming fat results in weight gain and has limited nutritional value. Therefore people are advised to consume fat in low quantities.

When you are on a low fat diet program, you should limit the amount of calories you consume. When on a low fat diet, only 30% of the calories you consume should come from fat. On an extremely low fat diet, only 20% of the calories you consume should come from fat.

Poultry, fish and meat are not to be consumed when on a low fat weight loss diet. However you can consume dairy products like fat free milk, fat free yogurt, egg whites and cheese. Foods that you must absolutely not consume are seeds, nuts, all kinds of fats and refined carbohydrates like white flour, sugar and white rice.

The bright side is that you can eat an unlimited quantity of other foods like grains, vegetables and fruits.

However, the belief that fat is mainly responsible for weight problems and obesity is being seriously challenged by modern research findings.

Prepackaged-meal Diets

If you go in for pre-packaged meal diets you will need to purchase pre-packaged meals. You will learn about the correct sizes of portions you must eat but this type of diet will prove to be a heavy burden on your pocket.

Another disadvantage of this type of weight loss diet is that you might not learn much about correct nutrition and be unable to make wise meal choices for reducing weight.

Yet another problem is whether you will get this kind of meal everywhere. For example, what do you do when you are away from home?

It is difficult to lose weight but what is even more difficult is keeping it from coming back. It’s always the bigger challenge.

Fixed Menu Diets

A weight loss diet that provides you a table of foods that you should eat in order to lose weight is called a fixed menu diet.

When the food that you should or should not eat has already been chosen for you it becomes easy to just follow this kind of diet. This way, you do not have to make the difficult decision of ‘should I eat this food or not?’ 

However there is a down side to this kind of diet. The diet is very limited so it becomes very boring and difficult to follow. Moreover you could be away from your home and not have access to the ingredients you need.

Furthermore, everything is laid out for you so you don’t get to learn the skills of food selection when you follow fixed menu diets. You need to possess these skills especially when you are working so hard to reduce weight.

The best solution therefore is to begin with a fixed-menu diet and later at an appropriate time switch over to a food plan that encourages you to make food choices on your own.

That’s not all. A fixed menu weight loss diet restricts the required nutritional amount that your body needs. You need a minimum amount of minerals, micronutrients and vitamins so that you have good health all the time.

If your body does not get its share of nutrients it absolutely requires, your efforts to lose weight will slow down instead of accelerating. This is because when you abstain from some foods you end up reducing the quantity of certain nutrients as well.

Therefore to maintain both your diet and good health, taking food supplements might be the most simple and best solution.