Friday, May 2, 2008

Ten rules of eating healthily

Eating low-cal is definitely a healthy habit. But there’s more to good living than just counting calories. The nutrients in the foods you eat can make or break your efforts to live healthfully, so choose your calories by the company they keep.

Eating Vegetables and Fruit daily

At a minimum, you want to eat three servings of vegetables and three servings of fruit every day. Most people don’t eat enough vegetables - especially the leafy-green and deep-oranges ones. On average, Americans eat the equivalent of only about one quater of a serving a day. About half eat no fruit at all on some days. Vitamin pills can’t replace the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients in produce. But not to worry, because servings are actually quite small: half a cup of most cooks vegetables, one cup of salad, or a, piece of fruit qualifies as one serving.

Don’t dink all your fruits in form of juice. You’ll miss out on fiber if you do, and you’ll easily consume too many calories. A mere four ounces of juice equals one serving of fruit, and most people drink much ore than that at a time.

Getting Enough Whole Grains Daily

Most people eat less than one serving of whole grains a day. That’s too bad, because you get more vitamin E, vitamin B6, magnesium, zinc, copper, manganese, and potassium in whole grains. These nutrients help protest against heart disease, diverticulosis, cancer, and diabetes. Whole grains are the best source of fiber, too. For example, the fiber difference between a singe slice of whole-wheat bread and one of white is 2 grams.
Twenty to 35 grams of fiber are recommended for daily consumption. So you want to make sure that you eat at least three servings of whole grains each day.

Serving Up Beans, Lentils, or Peas

Eat at least four servings of beans, lentils, or peas each week. Like most vegetables, beans, lentils and peas are good source of fiber and phytochemicals (plant nutrients) that help cut the risk of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. But unlike other vegetables, they have enough protein to substitute for a serving of meat, poultry, or fish.

Eating Regularly

Eating three meals daily, along with two or three snacks, is best. You generally need to eat every three to four hours. Research has shown that people who snack are often less likely to overeat than those who restrict their eating. The body is also better to absorb and use the nutrients in a meal than it can when presented with the feast-or-famine scenario of the typical three meals-a-day, no snacks pattern. So go ahead and snack, just make sure your snacks are as balanced as your meals, meaning they have some carbohydrate, such as three or four whole wheat crackers; some protein, like a spoonful of peanut butter, and some fat. (There’s plenty of that in the peanut butter too) Almonds and a fruit, lowfat yogurt with whole grain cereal, or even a hard-cooked egg with salsa and half a cup of corn chips all make good balanced snacks as well.

Eating Breakfast

Missing the meal is a big mistake. After an overnight fast, your body needs fuel to move. Otherwise, metabolism slows, which reduces hoe many calories you burn. Many studies have shown that children who skip breakfast have difficulty concentrating during the day. It’s true for adults, too. And here’s another good reason not to miss breakfast: The National Weight Control Registry of more than 3,000 successful weight losers eat breakfast on most days of the week. These are people who lost an average of 60 pounds and kept it off for an average of 6 years, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a pretty convincing endorsement for a bowl of flakes and lowfat milk!

Limiting Soft Drink

Sure, you may prefer swigging soft drinks to water, juice, or milk. But cola- type soft drinks (as well as many citrus-flavored sodas) pack a dose of caffeine with lots of sugar and calories without contributing nutrients, except perhaps water. Sugar-free versions don’t ass empty calories, at least, but when soft drinks replace fat-free milk in your diet, you’re missing out on one of the best sources of calcium you can get. That’s a shame, because most adults don’t get enough of that bone-building mineral

Drinking Water

Studies show that when you think you’re hungry, often you’re actually thirsty because dehydration is a major contributing factor to fatigue, which leads some people to seek food for energy. The rule is 1 liter (about 4 cups) per 1,000 calories. That translates to about eight 8-ounce glasses a day for people who eat about 2,000 calories

It’s hard to drink too much water. But if it’s difficult for you to drink water, know that fruits (which are mostly water) can count toward your day’s total. So does your coffee and tea. And, yes, even soda. The color of your urine can be an indication of how much water you’re drinking. If it’s very dark and you’re not taking a medication that colors your urine, you’re not drinking enough liquids. Your urine is a very pale yellow when you’re properly hydrated.

The average adult loses about 2 ½ quarts of water a day: 4 to 6 cups in the urine, 2 to 4 cups as perspiration, 1 ½ cups through breathing, and about 2/3 cup in the feces. Roughly 3 to 4 ½ cups of your daily water comes from solid food.

Limiting Caffeine

Limit caffeine to two servings a day. That’s two cups of coffee or tea or other caffeine-containing beverage. Coffee is the main source of caffeine in the American diet, although chocolate, tea, cola and some citrus-flavored soft drinks (such as Mountain Dew), and some over the counter pain relievers contribute to a day’s total. Caffeine speeds up your heart rate and can make you feel jittery and anxious. It also can contribute to dehydration due to its diuretic effect, which causes your body to lose water.

Limiting Your Salt

Processed and prepared foods – not the saltshaker – are the greatest source of salt and sodium in people’s diets. High-sodium diets in women are associated with increased risk of osteoporosis, a potentially harmful situation for dieters whose calcium levels tend to be below recommended levels. Eating an abundance of salt doesn’t make you gain your body fat or keep you from losing it, but it does cause water retention, which shows up on the sale, albeit temporarily.

To keep your body running smoothly, you need only about 500 milligrams of sodium a day. That’s about the amount in ¼ of salt. Eating a diet with so little sodium probably wouldn’t taste so good, but try keeping your sodium intake to the advised level of 2,400 milligrams or less per day.

Your tongue’s preference for salt can be overcome. It takes only about two weeks to prefer the taste of unsalted foods.

Limiting the Amount of Saturated Fat

Saturated fat isn’t simply a calorie counter’s concern. It contains the same number of calories as other kind of fat, but it raises your blood cholesterol level and increases your risk of heart disease. Animal products and tropical oils (palm kernel, palm, and coconut, for example) contain mainly saturated fat. As a general guideline, saturated fat is solid at room temperature. Examples include butter, stick margarine, and the fat in meat and cheese.

Click here and learn the most Advanced Dieting Methods and Fat Burning Techniques in the world

Labels: , ,

10 Inexcusable Excuses for Not Exercising (And How to Cope with Them)

We’ve all heard them, excuses like "I am tired", "exercising hurts" and blah blah blah and i bet most of you have used them. These are just so-called justifiable excuses for not being more active. Remember, exercise is an important ingredient in weight loss. Well, here are some strategies to get around those "I can't exercise" reasons....

1) Excuse: “I don’t have time.”

This is a number-one reason most people give for not exercising. But you must make exercise a priority. That’s one reason to make your daily activity a habit – because then it becomes a priority. Remember, you don’t have to commit to a full hour all at once. Three 20-minute walks count.

Coping strategies: Turn off the TV. Trade one hour of TV watching each day for one hour of exercise.

Get somebody else to watch the children, get up half-hour early, or walk during your lunch hour. Or take the children with you. You can be a good role model for them and have some quality one-on-one time, too. Make it part of the day’s routine as some moms do: When the kids get off the bus in the afternoon, they have a quick snack, grab the dog, get on their bikes, and bike away for an hour of action.

2) Excuse: “I don’t feel like it.”

Coping strategies: Grab a buddy or several friends and make a commitment to them. Chances are that one of you will want to keep moving even the others don’t. and don’t forget to give yourself to give yourself credit for every bit of exercise you do, even if you don’t make your 60-minute goal on some days. Remember, some physical activity is better than none.

3) Excuse: “I can’t do exercise well.”

Coping strategies: we’re talking about walking, not jogging, or running, or race walking, you can saunter, meander, or stroll. Just move. After a few weeks, you’ll feel more comfortable. When you do, you can increase your speed and improve your technique.

4) Excuse: “I can’t get to my workout place easily.”

Coping strategies: You don’t have to go to a special place, although you may find it motivating to go to a school track, a mall, the woods, or some other walker-friendly environment. You can take the stairs, get off the bus a little earlier and walk the rest f the way, park at the far end of the lot, or pace instead of sitting while waiting for the train.

5) Excuse: “Exercise didn’t work for me in the past.”

Coping strategies: Maybe you tried to do too much. Maybe you were forced to be on a sports team as a child. Or you were always the last person to be chosen for a team in a schoolyard. Try to figure out why past attempts to stick with exercise failed, or why you believed that your past gets in the way. Work out your own way around the problem. It’s worth repeating: We’re talking about going for a walk, not training for a marathon.

6) Excuse: “I’m too fat to move.”

Coping strategies: Have you tried “chair dancing”? You can get tapes to guide you through a seated exercise routine. (www.chairdancing.com)

Eventually, as your weight comes down and your fitness level improves, your ability and enjoyment will improve, too. Watch for little signs of encouragement, such as walking up the stairs without huffing and puffing. O notice that your thighs don’t rub together as much as they did a few weeks earlier. The more active you become, the more progress you’ll see.

7) Excuse: “I have poor balance.”

Coping strategies: Balance is a problem for very large people who have been sedentary. You may want to start strength training because one of the key benefits of building muscle is improved balance. When you’re ready to add walking, make sure that you have comfortable footwear that has a wide sole and good support. Choose flat, paved surfaces for walking.

8) Excuse: “I’m afraid.”

Coping strategies: Fear stops people from doing all kinds of things, but the best antidote for fear is action. Grab a buddy to encourage you. Keep your sense of humor primed. Make exercise fun!

9) Excuse: “Exercising hurts.”

Coping strategies: If an activity doesn’t feel good, don’t do it. Never exercise to the point of exhaustion. You don’t want to wake up stiff. If you feel any pain at all, slow down or cut back on the exercise you do and slowly work your way back up. Listen to your body. If you’re new to exercise and been sedentary, it’s possible to translate any discomfort you feel while exercising as pain. Chances are you’re experiencing the sensation of physical effort. Effort I important to work to the next level; pain is not. If the distress you feel continues after you stop moving, that’s pain. If you feel better when you stop, you’re putting in effort and that’s good. Keep going.

10) Excuse: “I’m to embarrassed”

Coping strategies: Don’t worry about looking foolish. When you walk for exercise, you don’t have to join a gym filled with perky, spandex-clad instructors. You can be as private or as public as you like, depending on where you walk. You can wear whatever you want too.

This is a brand new type of diet never seen before.

You can begin this new diet right here.

Labels: , ,

2 Cardio Mistakes You're Still Making

By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com

The controversies over cardio for fat loss are endless: steady state versus intervals, fed versus fasted, long and easy versus short and intense, and so on. Obviously there is a lot of interest in cardio training and how to do it right. Sadly, most people are still doing 2 things terribly wrong and it’s killing their results…… As best as I can figure, there are two major reasons why people are still mucking up their cardio programs for fat loss.

REASON #1: NOT ENOUGH FOCUS ON TOTAL CALORIES BURNED
Most people aren’t burning enough darn calories.

Why? Well, I guess they are too busy worrying about the “proper” type of exercise (which machine or activity), the mode (steady state or intervals), the “optimal” ratio of intervals, or the “best” duration.

Some people coast along on the treadmill at 2.3 miles per hour or some similar sloth-like pace and they think that just by hitting a TIME goal, such as 45 or 60 minutes, that with “X” duration completed, they are assured to get the results they want.

On the other extreme, we have folks who have found or created some mega-intense, super-duper short training protocol like the “4-minute wonder workout from Japan.” Just because the workout is high in intensity and it is performed in intervals, they too think they are assured to get the results they want.

What’s missing in both cases is the realization that total fat loss over time is a function of total calories burned over time (assuming you don’t blow your diet, of course).

AND…

Total calories burned is a product of INTENSITY times DURATION, not intensity OR duration.

Too much focus on one variable at the exclusion of the other can lead to a less than optimal total calorie burn and disappointing results. And remember, intensity and duration are *variables* not absolutes! (“Variable” means you can change them… even if your “guru” says you can’t!)

When you understand the relationship and interplay between INTENSITY X DURATION you will find a “SWEET SPOT” where the product of those variables produces the maximal calorie burn and maximum fat loss, based on your current health condition and your need for time efficiency.

REASON #2: TOO MUCH FOCUS ON WHAT TYPE OF CALORIES BURNED
As best as I can figure, there is one whopper of a mistake that is still KILLING most people’s cardio programs and that is…

Way too much focus on WHAT you are burning during the workout - fats or carbohydrates - also known as “substrate utilization.”

This idea comes from the notorious “fat burning zone” myth which actually tells people to exercise SLOWER and LESS intensely to burn more fat.

Hold on a minute. Pop quiz. Which workout burns more calories?

(A) A 30 minute leisurely stroll through the park
(B) A 30 minute, sweat-pouring, heart-pounding, lung-burning run?

Like, DUH!

And yet we have trainers, authors and infomercial gurus STILL telling us we have to slow down if we want to burn more fat??? Bizarre.

The reason people still buy it is because the “fat burning zone” myth sounds so plausible because of two little science facts:

* The higher your intensity, the more carbs you burn during the workout
* The lower your intensity, the more fat you burn during the workout

And that's the problem. You should be focusing on total calories and total fat burned during the workout and all day long, not just what type or percentage of fuel you are burning during the workout.

It’s not that fat oxidation doesn’t matter, but what if you have a high percentage of fat oxidation but an extremely low number of calories burned?

If you really want to be in the “fat burn zone,” you could sit on your couch all day long and that will keep you there quite nicely because “couch sitting” is a really low intensity (“fat-burning”) activity.
(Of course, “couch sitting” only burns 37 calories per half hour…)

HERE’S THE FAT-BURNING SOLUTION!
In both cases, the solution to burning more fat is drop dead simple: Focus your attention on how you can burn more TOTAL calories during your workout and all day long.

If you want to burn more fat, burn more calories and you can do that by manipulating ANY of the variables : intensity, duration and also frequency.

If you build your training program around this concept, you will be on the right track almost every time.

BUT WAIT - THERE IS MORE TO IT…
Naturally, we could argue that it’s not quite this simple and that there are hundreds of other reasons why your cardio program might not be working… and I would agree, of course. But on the exercise side, the ideas above should be foremost in your mind.

On the nutrition side, you have to get your act together there too.

For example, many people increase their food intake at the same time as they start a cardio training program thereby putting back in every calorie they burned during the workout! Then some of them have the nerve to say, “SEE, cardio doesn't work!”

Incidentally, this is the exact reason that a few studies show that adding cardio or aerobic training to a diet “did not improve fat loss”: It’s not because the cardio didn’t work, it was because the researchers didn't control for diet and the subjects ate more!!

It should go without saying that nutrition is the foundation on which every fat loss program is built.

Choose the combination of type, intensity, duration and frequency that suits your lifestyle and preferences the best, and WORK THE VARIABLES to get the fat loss results you want, but whichever cardio program you choose, remember that a solid fat burning nutrition program, such as Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle is necessary to help you make the most of it.

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.BurnTheFat.com

Labels: , ,