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The best way toward permanent weight loss is through a planned fitness program and watching what you eat.
Today we will take a quick look at this 2 pronged approach to permanent and healthy weight loss. This is the type of weight loss that you will be able live with year after year without yo-yoing your weight up and down.

After reading these simple steps you may want to look at each one in more detail by browsing through this site or another site of your choice. This post will just give you ideas to start with and then you can customize it to your lifestyle and needs.

ok, lets begin

1. One of the most important tips is to take time for walking.
I know that there has been controversy over the last few years about how many calories walking actually burns and whether or not it can burn enough fat to be considered a fat burning exercise. However, no matter how you look at it, the experts agree that walking is good for your health and as a weight baring exercise it is good for your bones.
And remember walking only requires 30 minutes each day.
Running or walking briskly for 30 minutes daily helps you in burning calories. It is also helpful in toning your leg muscles. When you walk, it boosts the metabolism to the level required for burning fat, therefore, leaving a long lasting effect.

2. Eat smaller portions at your meal. No matter what you are eating, take only half of a normal serving, or leave half on your plate. If you are in a restaurant, ask for a carryout container and put that half out of sight to use for your next meal. Eating only half portion sized meals will decrease the amount of fat number of calories you consume and your body will adjust to the smaller portion size quickly.

3. Getting a eight hours sleep every night helps in reducing unwanted fats.
Yes, new studies show that getting a full nights sleep can actually help with your fat burning furnace. You must have noticed that getting a full night of sleep that is undisturbed will give you more energy for the next day and has the added benefit of boosting your metabolism. When you are asleep and resting, your body is much more efficient at processing those calories than when you are simply being a couch potato in front of the television.

4. Take care of those nagging little items you keep putting off. Try to stay relaxed and contented. Staying under stress affects very negatively on the body and facilitates storage of fat in the cells. Therefore, by stopping the worry about tiny things in your daily life, you can simply and quickly reduce deposits of fat in your body. This is especially true of fat stored around the belly. Stress = belly fat. It is very hard to reduce stress in your life but if you can let go of some of the smaller things that bug you, you’ll be better off. Like they say “don’t sweat the small stuff.”

5. Try your best to drink enough fluids. Liquids are vital because they hydrate the cells in your body and help them in flushing the toxins (and fat) out of your system more efficiently. If you don’t drink enough fluids your metabolism can actually slow down and cause you to hold fat on to your body. Try to get your 8 glasses or water.

Following these guidelines will help you to get rid of unwanted body fat. Do not forget that a buddy who is also making these changes in his/her life will help to keep you accountable and make the experience more enjoyable.

Diet Plans - Will you be looking for a diet plan to start off 2010 with a bang?

Right now there are thousands of diet plans available for people who want to lose a few pounds and it can be often difficult to know just where you should to start.

Before you start to think about any diet plan however it is essential that you have a good understanding of just what dieting is all about.

Weight loss is a simple matter of controlling the food you eat and what your body does with that food. Stop for a second and re-read that sentence because it is absolutely fundamental to any weight loss plan and if you pay attention to this then you simply will shed those excess pounds.

The food that you consume is basically your body’s fuel supply and it gives you the energy you need to function. As long as you put just the right amount of fuel into your body for the work that it is doing then your weight will remain static but, if you put in more fuel than your body needs, then your body stores the excess food as fat and your weight will start to increase. Similarly, if you put in too little food your body will start to eat into its fat reserve to get the energy that it requires and your weight will start to drop.

Against this background you will see that it is possible to alter your weight by controlling the amount of fuel that you put into your body and the amount of work which your body does to burn up that fuel. Put another way, eat more and exercise less and your weight will increase or eat less and exercise more and you are on a diet program!

Many people feel that diets are similar to starvation. However, losing weight is not simply a question of eating less but is far more a question of eating the right type of food. Actually, it is feasible to lose weight by consuming more and not less food, replacing foods that are high in calories like fried breakfasts, shepherd’s pie, battered fish, peanut butter sandwiches and fried potatoes with low calorie foods like poached or grilled fish, rice, vegetables, pasta and a wide range of fruits.

Provided you pick your meals carefully, and there is a very wide range to pick from, you will not only be able to lower your intake of fuel, but you will also be able to fill yourself up sufficiently so that you do not feel hungry in between meals.

The second extremely important but frequently overlooked part of dieting is exercise. For the majority of us exercise paints a far from pretty image of a gym filled with already fit young men and women. However exercise comes in all sorts of different shapes and can frequently be very enjoyable.

The key to including exercise in a weight loss program is to start slowly and gradually build up as your fitness increases and your weight decreases. Additionally, you should choose several different forms of exercise or activity which you enjoy as there is little worse than finding yourself in a rut and doing the same exercises day after day. This will invariably result in boredom and in next to no time you will in all probability give up exercising altogether. Remember also that the purpose here is simply to increase your activity level so that you burn off excessive calories in support of your diet plan.

Dieting is not some mystical process the key to which is hidden in a vault with a key and a six digit combination lock. Nor is it an activity on the scale of skiing to the South Pole. In fact it is a fairly simple process of controlling your food intake and your activity level and can be great fun.

Probably the most important tip is to think about which diet plan fits into your work or school schedule, your budget and your food tastes.

Don’t jump right in to the first diet plan that you see. Look at several and then picture yourself and your family living with this plan for several months or possible for life.
Is it doable?
Is is a type of diet plan that you can occasionally go off of without feeling guilty.
Can you see yourself ending 2010 healthy, vibrant and slender?
If the answer is yes, then that diet plan is right for you.

Have you ever used a sauna? If you are like most of us the answer is yes.

Saunas are all the rage these days – the hottest ticket lose-weight-without-the-work luxury item. And if you’ve ever spent a moment in one, you know they feel great! But do they work? In a word: yes. But read on for the fine print.

Saunas have been used by advanced cultures throughout the world for thousands of years for its health benefits. From Scandinavia to ancient Rome to Native North American’s, sweating has been used as a way to improve mental and physical health alike.

Sitting in a sauna relieve stress by helping you to relax. The heat is soothing, and makes it easy for us to momentarily shed our mental baggage relish in the moment. Shedding emotional baggage is one of the oft-overlooked ways to shed baggage of the more physical sort.

Relieving stress makes it easier to avoid those emotional triggers that cause us to succumb to temptations and consume our usual comfort foods.
The improvement to your state of mind will also help raise your mood, giving you more optimism and energy to face your life and all its incumbent challenges, not least of which is the challenge of sticking with your chosen weight management program.

A calmer mind and a better mood can only help you live an active and productive life, one so satisfying that you’re inspired to be as good and loving to yourself as you can possibly be.

In concord with relieving stress, a sauna helps lower blood pressure and aids in digestion, both of which make it easier for the body to maximize the nutritional benefits of the food you eat, processing and absorbing more of the nutrients and eliminating less of them as waste.
It should be noted that while you are in the sauna your blood pressure will rise so do not use one if you have high blood pressure.

The benefits of saunas in losing weight don’t stop at stress relief. In a hot, steamy sauna, the body produces sweat, an activity that requires the burning of calories. That’s right: sweating burns calories.

Another way sweating helps burn calories is by raising the heart rate. The steam and hot temperatures of a sauna prompt the heart to pump a bit faster in order to distribute more blood to all the body’s capillaries, giving the effect of a small cardiovascular workout. And as we all know, an increased heart rate burns more calories.

So yes, you can literally lose weight ( water weight) instantly just by sitting in a nice, hot sauna.

Saunas additionally benefit your health by helping boost your immune system. In a sauna, the body temperature raises to the point where the body is fooled into believing it has a fever. Upon making that realization, the body begins fighting off whatever caused the perceived illness, thereby giving your immune system a safe and healthy little boost.

Along the same lines, saunas also effectively help rid the body of harmful toxins, like sodium, lead, mercury, and sulphuric acid.

The one caution we offer about using saunas to lose weight, however, is that weight loss from dehydration (water weight-loss) must be regained. A considerable weight loss from sweating is not a healthy or sustainable weight loss. Drinking water should always be a part of a healthy session in a sauna – before, during, and after,

Instead of rushing to the scale after each session in the sauna to see how much you’ve lost, just allow the gradual and incremental weight loss from regular healthy and properly hydrated use of a sauna over time.

Two more things to remember

1. The weight loss that results from a sauna is water weight loss and you will regain it as soon as you drink water. So don’t look at a sauna as a way of losing weight but as a way of relaxing (so that you will be less stressed and will eat less “comfort foods”), and when you use a sauna you are taking care of yourself. Once you get in the habit of being good to yourself you will find that you will want to eat less junk food.

2. Since a sauna will raise your temperature, increase your hear rate and eliminate water from your body be sure to get the ok from your health care practitioner before using a sauna. If you take certain medications, or have any medical conditions (even being pregnant) you should not use a sauna. So again- be sure to check with your doctor first.

Crash and Burn: Why Crash Diets Don’t Work

This article addresses a simple, unavoidable, and in cases of extreme painful fact, that being: why crash diets don’t work.

Now before we get to that - there is one thing that may interest you more than just knowing that your weight will return after a crash diet - and that is…..crash diets can show up on your face. Not just with dull skin but science is now showing that going on crash diets even for a short time can lead to additional lines & wrinkles on your face. So before you even think about a crash diet and how unhealthy they are ask yourself if your short term weight loss is worth having added wrinkles later on in life.

Despite what bright, loud, attention-grabbing ads from the TV to the magazine racks tout about so many pounds lost in so many days, the weight lost usually comes back in no time at all.

Weight lost quickly is most often water and carbohydrate (glycogen) loss, not fat. The body’s interpretation of this water and carbohydrate loss is that you are starving, and therefore it slows down its metabolic rate, in effect to help you live longer on less energy.

When you do ultimately start eating again (as, by definition, all crash diets end) the body believes the food emergency is over and determines its next best way to serve your longevity is to store this food you’re putting into it in case such a food emergency should arise again.

To put it another way, the effect of a crash diet is to keep the body always in a crisis management mode, rather than help sustain a healthy body weight. This in itself is bad enough, but it gets worse.

Glycogen loss is muscle loss, and since muscles are a critical part of maintaining an active metabolism, with less muscle, our bodies burn less calories. And when we burn less calories, we gain more weight.

To lose weight for good, lose weight slowly. Try to keep it down to only a pound or two each week. It may not feed your need for immediate gratification, but you can keep yourself excited and committed to the process by knowing that the results you achieve will be lasting.

To lose 1 pound of weight, equal to about 3,500 calories, find a way to cut out 250 calories from each day’s diet and find a way to burn 250 calories each day in exercise. That’s 500 calories per day: half in diet, half via exercise. The result: 1 pound shed each week. Double the formula for 2 pounds per week. But stop there.

If you do this, you’ll notice the program you set for yourself is actually quite reasonable and easy to stick to. Discipline isn’t hard when the steps you’re disciplining yourself to take are practical and realistic.

Take the concept of the crash diet out of your vocabulary and replace it with a far easier, more enjoyable, and more endearingly effective form of weight loss: behavior modification.

Simple shifts in one or two behaviors can have dramatic and lasting effects on your weight. Actually just making 1 change every week can make a big difference to lasting weight loss.

Crash diets achieve false and short term results. They lead to frustration, disappointment, and despair. And in creating a feedback loop of a chronic stress-response in the body, can even be deemed dangerous.
Stay away from them, for your own good. And when you look in the mirror look for lines and wrinkles and ask yourself if you really want more.

Almost monthly you read the results of another fitness study. Each one contradicts each other, so it’s no wonder that we are not sure if it’s worth working out for a few minutes here or there, if cardio is indeed way over hyped or if the newest fad is just a waste of time.

Right now television and car are blamed more and more for our sedentary habits. It puts a negative light our technological way of life and subtly hints that our ancestors, who never had it this good, really never had it so good. Television and automobiles have seduced us into a pathetic state of physical laziness.

If naïveté were tax-deductible, such philosophers would be totally tax-exempt. Automation has been made the hapless scapegoat of our poor condition when, in fact, it is the fault of the people who use them, not of the appliances themselves.

What television set ever turned itself on, or what car ever drove down to the corner drugstore for a tube of toothpaste? Why blame a car? It takes a human to get it going!

This gets at the root of another misconception—namely, that the emphasis on fitness should be for children. Here the axiom is that fit children grow up to be fit adults (and who has proven this?). So for every child in shape there potentially will in time be a fit adult—a one-for-one proposition. Mathematically it is more profitable to concentrate on the grownups.

Children inherently are hero worshipers. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and children mimic the people they respect the most. If a boy sees his revered father come home from the office, slump into a chair, and turn on television, it is scarcely surprising that the son follows suit—to the exclusion of physical activity.

But let there be a father in the neighborhood who is a good sport, who keeps trim, and who is fit—watch a whole gang of kids crowd around and admire and exercise. The good influence of sports idolatry on boys in particular is seen in Little Leagues where little tykes make incredible plays in imitation of their big-league heroes. If one child is in shape, one child is fit.

If one adult is physically fit, a dozen or more children soon may be.

Another old wives’ tale involves the housewife herself. She is told she cannot become fit what with her washer, drier, automatic dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, electric floor polisher, and so forth. After all, in the good old days these chores were done by hand. True, but they were done by the maid, not necessarily by the housewife. The husband and children also helped.

She is also criticized because she uses the car too much. But home deliveries from the local market are almost a thing of the past. And with the movement to outer suburbia, it is a long walk to the shopping center. Leave the housewife alone—she gets plenty of exercise cleaning the house, chasing the children, and tending the garden.

Finally, there is a popular myth which says, “Americans must be told why they should be in shape if national fitness is to be achieved.” In fact, millions have been spent telling us why.

The problem is not that simple. Many people are not in shape, not because they are against fitness or because they do not know why fitness is desirable, but because they have not been given practical suggestions on the hows of fitness.

No one denies that Americans are in poor shape. If you’re not sure which way to turn when it comes to fitness remember this —- just get up and move your body.
Move as often as possible and for as long as possible.
Like sports –then play don’t watch.
Like using a treadmill — great –use it every day.
Just move — just move.

Are smoothies good for weight loss?

Many folks have started drinking smoothies as a method to lose weight and improve their health. And if you do it right, smoothies can help you lose weight, but you have to drink the right kind of smoothies. If you drink the wrong kind, you can actually gain weight and be left wondering why.

A smoothie weight loss program is usually made up of a plan that has you replacing your regular meals with low calorie / high nutrition smoothies. You can either replace all your meals with smoothies or you can substitute one or two of your meals each day with smoothies. If you do the second method, you will usually replace breakfast and lunch with a smoothie and then eat a healthy low calorie sensible dinner.

There are many different types of smoothies you can make that will help you lose weight. You can make smoothies that only contain fruit. You can drink smoothies that are a combination of fruits and vegetables. Another way you can make a smoothie is to add protein powder to your mix.

You may have seen a Vita Mix commercial or attended a live presentation at your local store where they blend up a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and give you a sample to taste. You may have been surprised at hose delicious freshly blended fruit and vegetable combinations can be.

People who drink a lot of smoothies that contain fresh fruits and vegetables are supplementing their diet in a marvelous way with loads of nutritious enzymes, vitamins and minerals that their bodies need to stay healthy and fight off disease and illness. Smoothie drinkers often comment that they love that they are enjoying something that tastes so good while also getting the recommended daily allotments of fruits and veggies in their diet. Smoothies just make it so easy to improve your intake of nutritious low calorie healthy foods.

Smoothies are also a great on-the-go meal for our very busy lives. You can easily whip up a smoothie and take it in your car to drink on the way to work. You can also pre-make smoothies to drink for lunch. Just keep them in a cooler or in a thermos and shake them up well just before you drink them.

There is a reason why Jamba Juice has become so popular. Folks are learning just nutritious and delicious smoothies can be. And how easy they facilitate weight loss. Be forewarned though, you can probably make a healthier smoothie at home than what you can get at a Jamba Juice. Quite often smoothie stores will add sugar-sweetened fruit to your smoothies which is not necessary and will just add a lot of extra calories that you do not need or want. If you make your smoothies at home you control the ingredients and ensure that you are not getting added empty calories.