Are There Easy Ways To Diet Successfully?
Dieting is alays a hot topic on fitness and weight loss forums and sites online, and everyone is looking for the easiest ways to diet… But ARE there any easy ways to burn fat and achieve your weight-loss goals?
Dieting to lose weight has never been easy, but it can be made easier for you if you follow a few simple rules and take some advice.
Develop The Ability To Gauge Calorie Levels
Most people who calorie-count do it religiously. They will add up everything they eat to the nearest calorie but they may really be missing the point. It is better to develop the skill of looking at food and understanding it and knowing intrinsically how many calories it contains – i.e. how much energy it is going to give you and how long it will last. When you can do this, you will gain a greater appreciation for food and it will help you to stop over-eating beyond what your body needs. It will also help you to maintain that calorie deficit that is necessary for consistent weight loss.
What you should do is to first start by counting calories. Look up the calorie content of everything that you eat. If there is no packaging to refer to then look it up on the Internet as there are several good web sites where you can do so. When doing this, you want to relate this to how much a normal, healthy person should eat (as a general rule, start with a target of 12x your desired weight for each day’s calories. For a target of 125 pounds, for example, it would be 125 x 12 = 1,500 calories daily. Other factors can weigh in, but that formula gives you a rough idea).
After about a month, you won’t need to look anything up anymore. You will pretty much know how many calories the food that you regularly eat contains. You will also develop an ability to look at most types of food and gauge how many calories are in it. You will have a new appreciation for food and how it provides our bodies with energy instead of viewing it as something that is there to give you a good, tasty experience. You will be much less likely to eat too much and will find it much easier to eat a ‘restricted’ diet.
Knowing What Feeling ‘Full’ Really Means
Many of us feel full after we eat. Our bellies get bigger and we may even need to expand the belt a notch or two to accommodate that extra girth.
When you feel full after a meal it is really your body crying out to you and telling you that you have eaten way too much already and that you probably won’t need to eat much, if anything at all, for the rest of the day. Certainly, you should stop eating immediately.
Letting yourself get really hungry is a mistake, and it can add to your weight problems if it becomes your habit. Fitness experts, almost without exception, ‘graze’ all day instead. Instead of the standard three big meals a day, they eat 5 or 6 smaller low-calorie meals each day, designed to total up to their daily caloric total.
Not only does this stop them from getting hungry & binging, but it keeps their digestive system burning calories all day to burn off even more energy – energy that could otherwise be stored as more fat.
And THAT is the trick to eating for fuel instead of simply pouring in calories – truly successful dieting. Never feeling overly full while never feeling very hungry is a major step toward burning fat and achieving your weight-loss goals!
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Involve Your Kids In The Fitness Lifestyle Early…
Getting your kids involved in the fitness lifestyle early in life can go a long way to helping them stay fit throughout their lives. Beyond simply involving them in sports, let them see and experience the strong & vibrant community of fit people of all ages.
Source: Flirting With Fitness on Pinterest
Everywhere you look these days, our kids are exposed to poor physical role models. Yes, they see sports players and some actors in great shape, but that can’t possibly outweigh their day-to-day environment in the schools, on the street and in the media. And the constant bombardment of advertising for fast-food joints is so over the top it’s almost surprising that only 60% of Americans are overweight or obese…
Our son Devon, pictured above, is a prime example. He grew up around fitness models due in part to our fitness photography business, but also from coming along to events like the one pictured above and from seeing his mom & dad working out regularly in our home gym. From live events like the Fitness And Modeling Expos (FAME) to strolling along South Beach, Florida, Devon has been keenly aware of the fitness lifestyle as far back as he can remember.
Is it any wonder then that now, at 23 he’s strong, lean & weightlifting with us every week? He already knows this isn’t about getting fit or staying in shape – it’s a lifestyle. The fitness lifestyle. And throughout his life he’ll be happier, healthier, stronger, better looking and much more energentic because of it. And isn’t that exactly what we ALL want for our kids?
No matter how young or old your kids are today, start involving them in the fitness community today. Whether they appreciate the fitness lifestyle right now or not isn’t the issue – you will, and the time will come when they thank you for it and for the better life you’ve helped them expect & achieve!
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Low Carb Diets – Low Carb Dieting The Atkins Way
The Atkins diet (TM) is the best known form of low carb dieting. First published by Dr Robert Atkins in the 1970s, it is neither the newest nor the first low carb dieting plan, but it is very well established. Because of this, you can find a wide range of recipe books based on the plan as well as plenty of free recipes online. There have also been plenty of studies about the Atkins diet and it is better accepted by health professionals than many newer diets.
If you are thinking of following the Atkins diet you will need a copy of ‘Dr Atkins’ New Diet Revolution’. This is the revised version of his diet which includes more vegetables and is generally felt to be a healthier diet to follow than his first plan, so be sure to buy the book that includes the word ‘New’ in the title.
Atkins and other low carb dieting plans work by keeping your carbohydrate consumption low enough that you enter ‘ketosis’ or ‘lipolysis’. This is a natural condition of the body designed to deal with times when carbohydrate foods are scarce.
Many body functions require glucose for energy, and normally this is taken from the carbohydrate foods that we consume. But if the body is not getting enough of these, it can switch to using fat for energy. In this state it will use both the fat that we consume and the fat that is stored in the body, so we lose weight.
Unlike some other low carb dieting plans, the Atkins diet does not restrict fat consumption. This is because the switch to lipolysis depends on the body having plenty of fat in the diet as well as using stored fat. Also, fat is a substance that makes us feel full for a long time after eating. In fact, Dr Atkins included a rule that says you must not go more than 6 hours between meals, simply because his first patients found they were not hungry, and were not eating enough.
So what are the rules of the Atkins way of low carb dieting? Well, there are three stages. The first and best known is induction, in which you are restricted to a maximum of 20 grams of carbohydrate.
Some people assume that this means that you can have 20 grams of pasta a day, but that is not the case at all. Almost all foods contain carbohydrate, except for meat, fish and oils. So if you are counting the carbs in your food, you need to do it by using an online diet tracking program such as fitday.com.
For those who do not want to weigh and record everything that they eat, Dr Atkins gives you a list of foods that you can eat freely (e.g. meat, fish, oils) plus foods of which you can eat a certain amount each day (e.g. milk and dairy products, avocado). In addition you get to eat up to 3 cups of vegetables a day, which you take from certain lists. These do not include starchy vegetables like carrots and potatoes, which are not allowed on induction.
If this sounds restrictive, do not worry. You only follow induction for 2 weeks to kick start your weight loss. Then in phase 2 you will gradually increase your carbohydrate intake and at the same time, reintroduce some of the foods that were not allowed during induction. This means more vegetables, including some beans and starchy vegetables in small quantities; more dairy products; nuts, fruits, whole grains and even alcohol.
Phase 3 of the Atkins low carb dieting plan is maintenance for when you have achieved or almost achieved your desired weight loss.
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