Posts Tagged ‘diet’

Busting The Rapid Weight Loss Myths

March 12th, 2010

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to be slimmer just to have a sexier body. Many people have moulded their bodies to make them look more healthy and more desirable. However, there is no way to attain this new look in a day of two. The problem is that most people do not want to wait, they want it now.

This can lead to these people making rather rash and, it has top be said, rather silly decisions. They are not willing to wait and they are not willing to work for what they want. This is why so many people turn to rapid weight loss diets. Some ‘guru’ brings out a new fad diet and a good percentage of the ‘I want it now’ crowd jump on the band wagon. Only to be disenchanted again within the year or less.

Speed diets or rapid weight loss diets tend to put out great advertising copy that is very hard to resist. However, all diets, no matter which one you choose, Weight Watchers, Atkins or fad diet, depend on overweight people making lifestyle changes in order for them to work permanently.

There is a very apposite saying: if you always do what you always did, then you will always get what you always got. That says it all. You can lose weight with all but the stupidest of diets, but if you go back to your old ways when you hit your target weight, you MUST slowly, but gradually creep back to your old weight.

If you give your body more calories than it needs, it will store them for when it does need them. The problem is that that day never comes for too many people, because they never exercise themselves. This is especially true of fad diets like the ‘cabbage water’ diet. Yes, you will lose weight on it, but you would lose weight by fasting whatever you did. For a while, and then you might get sick. For a diet to work, it has to be adaptable and enjoyable enough for you to be able to stick with it for the rest of your life. Make no mistake, dieting is long-haul.

Many rapid weight loss programs actually only squeeze the water out of you. Just like a wet sponge. But a good dieter maintains his or her grip on that sponge, not letting it soak up water again. The problem with short term dieting, is that you let go of the sponge underwater.

This is why serial dieters first lose weight and are happy; then finish dieting, go back to their old weight and become depressed. In that state of depression they are suckers for the advertisers of the next latest craze diet. In other words, they are being manipulated and literally squeezed dry, but of their cash too.

These silly rapid weight loss programs also include fat loss pills. They are not making you lose fat, well, maybe a tiny amount gets flushed out with all the surplus water you are carrying. They are only diuretics under another name. How many pills would I sell if I called them diuretics? How many more would I sell if I called them miracle fat loss pills?

Type the word diuretic into a engine and find out more about them. They are all around you in mild healthy forms. A diuretic will essentially cause your body to lose more fluid than was in the diuretic. Tea is a diuretic, for example.

This list of these dopey dieting aids to rapid weight loss goes on and on, but someone must be buying them and you can bet your bottom dollar that it is the sad, depressed dieter who let go of the sponge.

Slimming soap! Slimming soap is being advertised as being a rare Eastern remedy for corpulence. Well, let me tell you, I live in the East and I have never seen it here. Asians are slim because they do a lot of physical work and do not come under the pressure to eat junk food that Westerners do, although that situation is changing rapidly too.

Magnetic weight loss earrings, I ask you! Even being drunk without a present for your wife ten minutes before Christmas Day is not a good enough excuse to fall for this one, surely? The advertisers say that the secret of this set of earrings is that they are magnetic.

Well, if you believe this, why not get a pair of $1 children’s toy magnets or even a pair of fridge magnets and put one in each hip pocket? Two? Well, after all, you would not want to lose weight from only one side, would you? You would be lop sided.

Just remember, when you are looking for a rapid weight loss diet: there ain’t one ( that will work for life). If you are putting on weight, then your lifestyle is wrong and it is up to you alone to change it.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with how to lose weight online. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

Extreme Weight Loss Diet-Lose Belly Fat Quickly

March 1st, 2010

I don’t think anyone would disagree with me when I say having a nice looking body is one of the most sought after things. Not only do other people look at you and aspire to someday be like you, but your self confidence goes way up. A great way to do this is by going through an extreme weight loss diet, in this article we will show you three incredible tips on how to set one up. After you finish reading this article you will realize how easy it is to shed off all the pounds.

1-Don’t just eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner

If you have only been eating your average of three meals per day, this needs to stop. You should be eating at least five smaller meals per day and never go over five hours without eating. Some of you may be wondering how eating more often helps lose weight. Once you go four hours without eating your metabolism starts to slow down which means you don’t burn as many calories. If you eat every two to three hours, you will keep your metabolism going fast.

2-Breakfast is your best friend, not your enemy

As I am sure you have already heard before, breakfast is by far the most important meal of the day. If you don’t eat breakfast your metabolism will be slow throughout the day. When you eat breakfast, you want to make sure it consist mostly of protein and carbs, try to keep the fat under ten grams. The great breakfast would be oatmeal, a protein drink, and some fruit.

3-Try to stay away from sugars

Some of the most dangerous words in the English dictionary when it comes to losing weight are cake and candy. If you are a person who loves sugar and has a sweet tooth, that doesn’t mean you can’t eat any sugar at all. Sugar is perfectly fine after a workout, consider it a reward for working out. Having some fruit right after a workout is great because these are loaded with sugar but also vitamins and minerals.

You need an Extreme fat Loss Diet if you are wanting to lose fat as fast as possible. To learn more about how you can lose fat just look at http://ExtremefatLossDiet.info

Are You Hobbling Your Weight Loss Program?

February 24th, 2010

If you want to lose weight, you must have a plan, a route map to success. This is called a program or programme. There are thousands of programs, but many of them are just plain batty. If they sound foolish, they probably are. Have you heard of the ‘cabbage water diet’? It sounds daft and it is. You cannot only drink cabbage water all your life!

Although there is a lot of nonsense talked about losing weight, there are some truths that have a role to play in almost every program you choose to follow. One of these truths is that it is better to eat many small meals throughout the day (about 5-6), than to go all day without eating and then stuffing yourself at dinner in the evening. This is commonly called ‘grazing’.

Have you ever asked yourself why this might be so? Well, the fact is, that the typical human body can only process about 250 calories an hour. If you consume more than that, you are probably overloading your digestive system. This is why it is important, because if your body cannot handle all the calories that you give it, it will stockpile them.

Your body can only use up what it requires to execute the job that it is busy with, that is, what you are putting it through. If you are watching TV, most of those 250 will be stored. If you are exercising, most will be burned up. It stores the remainder as body fat. Your body has learned through evolution that hard times will come, so it prepares for them. It is like us putting excess money in a savings account or people hoarding food if a bad winter is predicted.

However, these days in the West, we rarely face those lean times any longer. Therefore, that fat is never used up and we just keep adding to it until we decide, by choice, to limit our consumption of calories or increase our amount of exercise.

Given this information, what can we do with it? Well, if you were to want to lose weight, you ought to be consuming no more than 1,500 calories a day (or whatever your program tells you), so 1,500 divided by 250 is six. if you ate 250 calories every other hour, that would give you twelve hours.

Consequently, eating light but often would be a helpful strategy or program to follow, because first of all, you are only providing your body with what it requires, when it needs it and secondly, you are able to better maintain a consistent blood sugar level, which means that you iron out the spikes and troughs you experience in a normal day’s cycle.

Two hundred and fifty calories does not seem a lot, but it is surprising what it will stretch too, if you take the time to investigate. It is true that you will have to rigorously restrict some foodstuffs, like bread, pasta, rice and potatoes, but whoever honestly thought that you could lose weight by eating that stuff anyway?

If you do not have time to cook a number of times every day, look in your supermarket. There are loads of ‘250 calorie’ microwave meals. You don’t want to eat that? I can’t blame you. so get a good cookbook, which shows calorie content. You are at work all day? OK, eat some fruit, but choose wisely. It can be done, it only requires a little will and planning.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with lose weight programs. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight? This and other unique content ” articles are available with free reprint rights.

Strategies for Treating Acne

February 19th, 2010

Most people with acne attempt to cure their itchy skin with astringent creams, fruit washes, expensive soaps, lotions and treatments. However, the best way to treat acne is by changing your diet and avoiding acne-producing items like fried food. A healthy diet, comprising natural unprocessed foods such as vegetables, fruits, grains and beans is the first bit of advice for treating acne.

Foods containing trans-fatty acids, milk, milk products, margarine, shortening and synthetically hydrogenated vegetable oils, as well as fried foods, should be avoided. It seems the prevalence of acne in the United States is caused by the typical American diet. Americans tend to eat fried food in large quantities, usually cooked in the most damaging of fats and oils.

However, not all fats are bad, but the fats that typical Americans use make them more susceptible to develop acne and other skin problems. Products that can cause are ice cream, cheese, bacon, chocolate and milk. Furthermore, acne can’t actually be cured using creams and soaps because the basic cause of the condition lies underneath the skin.

Pimples, spots and blemishes are caused by bacteria and other irritants lying beneath the skin’s oil glands and hair follicles, which are generally caused as a result of improper hygiene, squeezing and poor diet.

This poor diet could be a result of too high a proportion of such items as processed, fatty, fried and sugary foods in your diet. A diet that is good for your skin emphasizes raw and lightly cooked vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables that contain valuable trace minerals and are rich in fibre. Fresh green vegetables are essential. You should also include in your diet lean protein sources and complex carbohydrates, such as rice, whole-grain bread and potatoes.

These fibre-rich foods should help ensure a healthy gastrointestinal tract, which is so important in the management of acne. Eat three healthy meals every day in order to provide you with sufficient vital nutrients and to decrease your desire for sugary or greasy fried foods.

Moreover, you should consume lots more food that is rich in vitamin A, like apricots, watermelons, and broccoli, as well as lean beef, nuts, legumes and whole grains, because they are rich in zinc, which should also be useful in curing acne breakouts. It is also vital to drink lots of water to help clean out of the body all the poisons that contribute to the development of acne.

Are you having trouble treating acne? If you are or you’d like to know more about acne, please go to our website entitled http://treating-acne-scars.com Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

How To Keep To Your Resolution To Lose Weight.

February 19th, 2010

Without a shadow of a doubt, the most frequent New Year’s resolution in the West is to lose weight. However, it is also the first New Year’s resolution most likely to be broken! Losing weight is not hard in theory, but practice is oh, so different. This is because it involves lifestyle changes.

Our bodies change as we get older and typically our level of activity diminishes too. Maybe, we get an office job with a promotion, whereas we used to work ‘in the field’. But people in general, do not regulate their diet to match their variation in circumstances. We sit behind our desks or in retirement and think we can still eat and drink like we did twenty years ago. Big mistake!

Fortunately, there are dozens of diets on hand to help us attain our weight loss goals. There are the traditional calorie counting diets, as advocated by Weight Watchers; there are the ‘new era’ diets like Atkins, which have us counting carbohydrates and there are no end of fad diets which are frankly not worth wasting time talking about.

The choice of which diet you would like to follow is all yours, of course, but it is well worth examining the main kinds of diet to see which one will suit you. Then you must determine whether you will need the help and encouragement of a weekly visit to a club or not, or whether you can get that companionship from an online club of slimmers, where you talk to fellow slimmers in the club forum online.

It is also worth fixing in your mind, why you want to diet. Is it to look better? Or to feel more comfortable in yourself? Or is it for health reasons? Or all three? Have a think about your reasons and let them motivate you. Whenever, you feel like packing it all in, remember your motivation. Get a book and journal your progress, but first write your motivation in bold capitals on the front page or cover. Keep it in front of you and read it out loud to yourself every day.

Consult some of the slimming sites online and work out a few key metrics like the typical weight people are for your height, sex and body type and your BMI or body mass index. Write these figures on the first page of your book too and use them as the ultimate goals.

You could create a graph and plot your weekly weight to see how you are doing. Set realistic goals and targets. You can get loads of free information from the Weight Watchers and Atkins websites or / and visit your doctor for advice and leaflets.

Aim to lose something like 10-20 pounds in the first month and eight to ten per month after that. Go slowly and aim to go slowly, because then you will hit your targets and you won’t feel like giving up. When you get within five to ten pounds of your target weight, assuming that you have lost a lot of weight, rein back a little and allow yourself a little more freedom. Drop your target to one pound a week, so that you will get a feel for ‘eating normally’.

The dreaded exercise; you have to face it, you will need to do more exercise, but two times thirty minute walks a day is ordinarily enough. You could swim once a week too or get an exercise machine, if you are tied to the house by family.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with how to lose weight online. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight? Click here to get your own unique version of this article with free reprint rights.

Are Acne Scars Permanent?

February 16th, 2010

Acne scarring are a sad memento of the having suffered pimples or even acne before. They are unbearable because of their seeming longevity and their non-complimentary look. Normally speaking, acne scars are rather hard to treat, but tissue regrowth is not impossible these days with all the fantastic technological developments.

In general terms, when referring to acne scarring, we mean the healed lesions caused by an acne breakout. While most scarring is temporary and will probably disappear naturally in time, scars from the more severe forms of acne can be permanent.

Acne scars can be prevented if the patient visits a doctor when it is in the incipient stage, particularly if nodules or cysts accompany the red pustules on the skin’s surface. If the breakouts of acne have marked your skin, you will have to approach the problem from a different perspective, which most of the time means surgery.

Laser resurfacing is one possibility of removing the damaged skin areas and stimulating the natural regrowth of the tissue underneath. This operation only requires local anaesthesia and can take between a few minutes and an hour depending on the extent of the problem.

Fractional laser therapy is one of the most recent methods of removing acne scars. It means surgical intervention at deep skin layers. The therapy is better than both dermabrasion and laser resurfacing in terms of quality and has a much reduced healing period. Nevertheless, fractional laser therapy remains within the reach of only those few lucky sufferers, who can afford it, since it is the most expensive acne treatment currently available.

Sometimes, further sessions are required to improve the condition of the upper layers of skin, before they can tackle the deep level treatment of the acne scar. The doctor may inject collagen into the scarring in order to raise the normal skin level or she/he may recommend micro-dermabrasion for the very same purpose. Trying to perform chemical peels for acne treatment at home could be a bad policy given the risk of aggravating the condition by irritating the scars even further.

As for the forms of acne scars, they can be classified according to the formation pattern. Scars can result because of an increase of tissue or due to a loss of tissue They both have an adverse impact on the way the face looks. Specialists’ evaluation of the nature of the scars is a very important factor for the decision of adopting one kind of treatment or another.

Are you having trouble treating acne scarring? If you are or you would like to know more about acne, please go to our website called http://treating-acne-scars.com Don’t reprint this exact article. Instead, reprint a free unique content version of this same article.

The Best Ways To Lose Weight

February 15th, 2010

If you decide that you want to keep to a traditional style diet, as a rule of thumb, you ought to find a weight loss plan that is rich in fresh fruit and vegetables; low-fat dairy products; white meat and fish; whole grain cereals and plenty of drinking water and by that I mean at least eight to ten 250mm glasses a day.

Being heavy can cause a lot of other issues, in addition it being a problem in its own right. Obesity makes rapid movement, stretching and reaching difficult. Surplus sweating can be an embarrassment and it can result in chaffing. The range of fashionable clothing available can be constrained too. In addition to these problems, studies have shown that being overweight invariably leads to health problems such as hypertension, cardiac issues, sleep apnea and diabetes.

The only solution to this bundle of problems is to lose those spare pounds around your waist by embarking on a healthy weight loss diet plan and following it faithfully. I will give you a few general pointers below to help you slim down and decrease the risk of spending your latter years running in and out of hospital.

Nearly all of the traditional weight loss diet plans suggested by dietitians and nutritionists begin with the simple exhortation to reduce your food intake to the amount you need to carry out your daily routine. The problem is that it sounds simple, but it is one of the hardest things to do. It takes a lot of determination on your part. However, you could start by eating and drinking three-quarters of what you normally eat. Once you can handle that, reduce the percentage again.

Try to make every calorie count. By that, I mean, if you are going to eat 200 calories, make certain that they are contained in food that will do you good and keep you feeling satiated. A bar of chocolate will give you a blood-sugar rush for 20-30 minutes, but a doorstep of a cheese and salad sandwich made from whole grain bread washed down with a glass or two of water will give you plenty of fibre and vitamins and fill you up for a couple of hours.

It is always a good idea to keep a journal of what you eat and when. This way you can compare days and weeks and see what works best. It also helps if you are reducing your consumption in stages. Mark what you eat with the number of calories in that portion. If you do not know exactly, guess it. Writing something down is better than nothing.

The next part is the part I don’t like – exercise. Regular exercise. The good news is that it does not have to be too much. Two thirty minute walks a day is quite helpful. Once in the morning and once in the evening. Or walk in your lunch time and after your evening meal. If you like, frequent visits to the fitness center are even better, but they are also easier to miss or give up altogether.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with lose weight programs. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight? Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

Dieting And Fitness As Tools

February 9th, 2010

When it comes to living a long and healthy life, there are two necessary ingredients: diet and fitness. While some believe that they are indivisible, nothing could be further from the truth. It is quite possible to follow a perfectly healthy diet with appalling exercise habits. It is just as possible to be physically fit with less than ideal eating habits.

There’s a smart little line in the Jimmy Buffet song “Fruitcakes” when his ‘lady’ is complaining: “I treat my body like a temple, You treat yours like a tent”

I can’t help thinking of this line whenever I think about all the people around the world who are on these garbage in, garbage out diet plans hoping to accomplish the weight loss triumph of those who are endorsing the items.

To be totally honest, it is possible to shed pounds by dieting alone. It is difficult but possible. It is also possible to be physically fit and still have a few extra pounds. To a large degree, we are what we eat. If we follow a high fat low fibre diet our bodies are going to lack the fuel required to burn the fat. At the same time if we are not providing our bodies with the tools it requires to create muscle it does not matter how many weights we lift.

When it comes to diet and fitness, the best results are achieved when they are combined together rather. Use your fitness routine to burn surplus calories and use your diet in order to provide your body with the nutrients and fuel it requires to build muscle.

A pound of muscle takes up less space on the body than a pound of fat. Pound for pound, I would much prefer mine be built of muscle than fat. Dieting on its own does not build muscle and that is something you would do well to remember.

You should also understand that as you are building muscle you may be shedding inches while not showing a great deal of progress on the scale. It is very important that you bear this in mind throughout the weight loss process. Do not measure your progress by the scales alone or you will perceive deceptive results.

The problem is that far too many people do just this, grow discouraged and give up when they are actually making progress. Do not allow yourself to be a victim of the scales. Look in the mirror, try on your tight pants, and measure your waistline. Measure your success by how you feel after climbing a flight of stairs not by the scales.

By building fitness into your diet routine you are also enabling your body to burn off any extra calories you may have consumed during the day. This means that if you want to have a small ‘cheat’ during your day, you can make up for it by burning a few more calories than normal in the evening. This is not something that should happen often but an occasional occurrence is not going to make or break your diet.

You should also consider dieting and exercise as a hand and glove type of relationship. They fit together. Diet and fitness when combined can create incredible weight loss results for those who take them both seriously.

The thing to remember is that neither works well alone and neither will work unless you are willing to do the work. You must make this a priority in your life in order to achieve the best possible results.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with why can’t I lose weight. If you have an interest in losing weight, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

Get an Atkins Diet Free Plan.

January 30th, 2010

What is the Atkins diet and what will you have to sacrifice in order to achieve the results you’ve seen other people realize? You hate your size twelve, and you desperately want to drop down to the size six that you once were, although you’ll settle for a size eight, if you have to. It doesn’t really matter as long you’re nowhere near your present size twelve!

You’ll have to start with a working knowledge of what the Atkins diet is all about and what it might entail. However, if you don’t want to get caught up in detail, you could always just try out an Atkins diet free plan, which could assist you to get a grip on the situation.

There is not one place I can send you for you to get an Atkins diet free plan of course, but I’ve found that the Internet is the best place for you to find out just about anything and everything you need to learn. Start by turning on your computer, it’s really amazing how many snotty looks I receive when I state this blindingly obvious fact! In fact, you probably did the same just now!

So, just search the Internet for an Atkins diet free plan, you’ll be surprised at the amount of other free plans that you’ll find as well. And if you’re not dead set on testing the Atkins diet way, then you might just test any one of the other free plans. As it implies, it won’t cost you a penny more than the time spent surfing the web.

So, what can you possibly hope to gain from an Atkins diet free plan? To begin with, you can pinpoint which types of foods you can eat and which type of foods you can’t eat. If you’re thinking of going with the Atkins diet then in the induction phase alone, there are many things that you’ll need to give up in order to stay on your diet.

On that list of foodstuffs, that you may eat and still stay on your Atkins diet free plan, you’ll find that you can eat cream, cheese and butter so long as you remain within your moderate daily carbohydrate allowance, but out go the fruits, the breads, the pastas and the pizzas. Basically anything that tastes great, you may think.

But, the statement is not completely true, as you’ll see when you inspect the Atkins diet plan recipes which may or probably won’t come with your Atkins diet free plan. There are plenty of fantastic tasting recipes you can consume and, although you might not not it yet, they’ll include many of your favourite foods, just not anything high in carbohydrates.

As far as drinks are concerned, the same principles hold true as in the rest of the Atkins diet free plan. That is, you must avoid sugared drinks like Coke or Pepsi, hot chocolate and sugared tea or coffee. Moreover, you must to be careful with coffee, because it can be more addictive while on the Atkins diet for some people.

Likewise, caution is required with regard to alcohol. Some types, like lager or sherry contain too many carbs, while others, like Guinness or whisky seem to be OK in moderation. However, you should always refer to your Atkins diet free plan before deciding what you can or can not drink.

Do you need to lose that excess weight rapidly? Well, take a free look at Atkins Diet Free Plan, by going to our website called The Atkins Diet Plan You can get a unique content version of this article from the Uber Article Directory.

Pregnant Women And Acne Treatment

January 29th, 2010

Treating acne is normally the right move when you have it, but not always. There are stages in a person’s life when you can not try to cure acne just because you want to. During pregnancy is one of those times. As everyone knows, this is a delicate stage in a woman’s life and it is that phase of a woman’s life that she must show extra care of herself. If she feels the need to treat her acne, she must see to it that she arms herself with the correct information.

This must also be borne in mind by those women who might get pregnant. The following are some cures for acne that are not recommended for use during pregnancy since they could be harmful for the fetus:

Hormonal treatment which may include estrogen, flutamide, and spirolactone. They are definitely ruled out, because they are injurious and may lead to some issues for both the mother and the child. It is best regard it as a threat.

Isotretinoin treatment is another therapy that would put a pregnant woman’s life at risk. Isotretinoin has negative effects as well, especially for pregnant women and those who are breast-feeding. It could cause severe health issues in both the mother and her unborn baby. Therefore, it is advised that a woman who is on Isotretinoin should be monitored by an expert. Women who are trying to get pregnant must avoid taking Isotretinoin, because it could trigger negative complications not only for mother but most especially for her child.

Oral tetracyclines which can consist of doxycycline, tetracycline or minocycline, may not be an option on any account, because it is harmful. It has been shown that pregnant women or those who are breast-feeding must refuse the use of this drug at all costs, because it may produce side effects that are nothing short of life-threatening to you and your baby, although the most frequent side effect is the permanent discoloration of your teeth or / and bone issues.

Topical retinoids, like as tazarotene, adapalene and tretinoin, is another group that must be completely refused. Just like the afore-mentioned remedies, topical retinoids may be a danger to you and your baby. No matter whether you are pregnant or not, it is just not wise to take any of the treatments mentioned above.

For those women, who are pregnant and have acne, it really is best to stay away from the heavy treatments mentioned here. Instead, why not settle for traditional remedies, like keeping your hair off your face, washing your face three-four times a day, changing your pillow cases every day and eating more fruit and avoiding fatty, oily and spicy food.

Are you experiencing problems treating acne during pregnancy? If you are or you would like to find out more about acne, please go to our website called http://treating-acne-scars.com Visit the Uber Article Directory to get a totally unique version of this article for reprint.