Newspaper Site with Health Information
If you’re looking for health information, you might find useful TheGoodLifeOfGeorgia.com. This is the website of a print publication that often carries health tips.
Add comment May 29th, 2008
Posts filed under 'Healthy Topics'
The 7 Best Tips For Women On How To Lose Belly Fat
How to lose belly fat is the most frequently asked question
by women, and of course they want the fastest and quickest
way to lose it. There are many articles and diets out
there that claim they can help you lose unwanted belly fat
but it can be very overwhelming. I have been in the
fitness industry for 10 years and have worked with real
women that have struggled with these issues. Let me say it
can get a bit complicated then just going on a diet. Women
do struggle more than men to lose this. You must be
patient in the process as it is not a linear process.
Here are the 7 best tips to beat belly fat:
1. Preparation is key. First off, I don’t like the word
“diet” it sounds very negative, and is short-lived. Most
women that go on fad diets gain the weight back and then
some, which contributes more to losing belly fat. What you
first must understand is that if you want to really lose
the belly fat you must adapt a healthy life-style. You
also must mentally prepare yourself for this and feel you
are ready to change. It is a decision to be committed
rather than just interested. Committed means you do what
it takes, and interested is that you will only do just a
little and end up frustrated because you didn’t get the
results you wanted.
2. Look at your nutrition. The main thing to be concerned
about is calories. Too little calories and the belly fat
will not come off and the same thing for too many. You
need to be in the right calorie deficit to lose belly fat.
You might be thinking of what type of plan you should be
on, but the real secret is how many calories you are taking
in for the day, but also make sure that protein is set up
to your daily requirement. This can vary anywhere from
1-1.5 grams per body weight or some like to go by their
lean muscle mass.
3. Fish oils (6 grams daily) this will help you lose fat.
You actually need the right amount and types of fat to lose
the belly fat. Most programs can show you how to take
weight off, but if your serious about losing the belly fat
you need to focus on fat loss not weight loss for permanent
results. As you progress your body will plateau and you
actually have to keep adjusting your metabolism. This is
done mainly through nutrition.
4. Eat to lose belly fat. Believe it or not sometimes you
have to go up in calories in order to lose more belly fat.
I know this may sound counterintuitive but it’s true. Do
this very carefully, otherwise you can end up worse off
than before. I recommend hiring a highly skilled fitness
professional that knows how to do this. They must
understand nutrition beyond the scope of what most people
think.
5. Have the right training program. This will consist of
both weight training and cardio. I find many women doing
cardio the wrong way. Forget about long sessions on steady
state cardio, these can actually produce too much cortisol,
which leads to belly fat. Many women are exercising this
way to lose belly fat, when in fact they are being
counterproductive in their exercise. The right way to do
cardio to lose belly fat is interval and HIIT (high
intensity interval training). These are short bursts that
can be done outside or on a cardio machine. For example of
HIIT would be 20 seconds of a workload followed by 30
seconds recovery then repeat the cycle for 8-12 times then
perform a moderate cool down. Intervals will be longer in
both work and rest segments. When it comes to losing belly
fat, weight training is very important and you want to keep
a variety of reps schemes.
Doing heavy sets one week (6-8 reps), and the following
higher rep sets (10-15) is a good way to mix things up.
There are many ways you could put together a weight
training program, but I want to stress that you need to
have variety and don’t think doing light weight and lots of
reps is going to get rid of the belly fat either. Just to
keep things simple, know that you need to vary your
program. Another key to getting rid of belly fat is
intensity, if you are working out and you are not sweating
an breathing hard then you need to push yourself harder.
Don’t waste time when you are working out, rather
keep your sessions intense and keep rest brief in between
sets (45 seconds- 2 minute rest). This will vary depending
on your program.
6. Track your progress. Take your body fat every 2
weeks, along with measurements, pictures, and try on a pair
of pants that are too small. Things can fluctuate so you
might have the measurements read the same but your pants
feel looser. I find that by doing all of these things
gives you a more accurate picture. Even the mirror can be
deceiving as you look at yourself everyday, water weight
can give you the wrong impression of progression. If you
are not changing after every 3 weeks, you need to change
your program. Women tend to stay on the same program for a
long time and wonder why things aren’t working. Like I
said in the beginning, losing belly fat is not a linear
process. You’re body will plateau, so you need to take the
necessary steps in tweaking your program if you want to
lose that belly fat.
7. Lastly, but most importantly is conditioning your mind
to stay motivated. For some reason this doesn’t get
addressed the way it should. Everything you do is a mental
process and that goes with losing the unwanted belly fat
too.
—————————————————-
Heather Picken, Female Fat Loss Expert, and Co-Founder Of
Fat Loss For Women online community. Learn the secrets to
losing unwanted belly fat and inches. Sign up for the
latest fat burning secrets and receive your FREE copy of
“Blast Cellulite Now”
http://www.fatlossforwomen.com
Add comment November 17th, 2007
Old Habits Die Hard (hard enough to feel the pain)
Why is it so tough to quit something that is bad, usually it is something that is soooo good too?
You know what I mean; chocolate, alcohol, laziness, even what you eat for breakfast. We all have habitual actions that we often feel a little embarrassed by, such as buying a chocolate bar and a can of coke every time you go to the petrol station to fill the car up; that one used to be one of my worse habits, I just knew it was not good for me, but I just couldn’t quit it. It was like I was on auto pilot.
Do you get home from work, immediately turn on the TV instead of doing your workout?
Do you go out on a Friday and Saturday night, just because it is the weekend, and then spend the rest of the weekend in bed regretting your excesses?
One of the biggest challenges as a fitness professional is to get my clients to change their eating habits so that it compliments their training efforts. One common hang up relates to breakfast, getting them to stop eating cereal based breakfasts is like putting a heroine addict through cold turkey!
The problem is our bad habits can cause us a myriad of health problems, such as weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes, a weak immune system, and poor structural health. All of which cause a great deal of misery.
Brain researchers at MIT in the US have discovered that once a poor habit is established, certain neural patterns are created in the brain which ingrain the habit to becoming almost completely automatic. We just don’t even think about the action, we just do it. These patterns can be erased just as readily as they are created in the first place, BUT the patterns can be rekindled much quicker the next time round.
Obvious stuff really, when you think about how many people relapse back into a smoking habit, or poor nutritional habits.
Breaking habits can be tough though. The fear of social alienation if you stop smoking (where will you get the office gossip from, if you are not smoking with your co-workers!). Not going out on a Friday night can cause a similar fear. Not having that glass of wine with your evening meal each night, it has become so ingrained that you would feel uncomfortable if only water was available.
Thankfully there are solutions to these problems, and it is not just down to will power. Pattern breaking is simply a matter of becoming more conscious of each action that you take. A simple example:
Do you drive the same route to work each and every day? I bet on many days the journey to work does not even register, it is just like you are on auto pilot. You have no idea of how many cars cut you up, or even if you indicated at the right moments, or even indicated at all!
Breaking this habit is a simple act of deciding to take a different route to work. I have about 5 different routes to the gym and have actually gone further out of my way, just to get in a new route, it keeps me focused.
For the more serious issue of eating and drinking habits, simply get into the habit of stopping just before you consume something and make a judgment on the quality of the item you are about to eat or drink. I use a 3 point grade A, B or C type foods.
A’s are your good clean foods like fresh fruit and veg, meat, fish and water plus some diary items like eggs too. B’s are not so good, slightly processed products including breads, pasta, cereal based products C’s are the junk food, including sodas, highly processed items like cakes, chips, burgers, pizzas etc.
This simple process makes me more conscious of my food choices, allowing me to make better choices and ones that compliment my exercise habits.
One other common poor habit is laziness or procrastination from exercise, this is because you may associate exercise with hard work, pain, or you have low self efficacy. To break this habit you may find it useful to find a purpose for actually doing your workouts;
Getting involved in a sport may just give the reason you need to start doing your workouts. Rather than simply working out to lose weight, why not make your workouts more focused towards a sport, so that you improve your speed, agility, flexibility, balance and strength. You may just find that the side benefit is that you’ll lose that weight after all.
One of my current clients came to me a few months ago with really poor motivation, the habit to workout just wasn’t working. It was becoming a real struggle to get to the gym to do the workouts. I simply asked her one question — has there ever been a sport that you thought would be just so cool to do? Immediately I saw a spark of excitement in her face, she told me she always wanted to do rock climbing, but never had the belief that she could do it. Fantastic we had just found her motivation.
Two weeks later after the change of focus and some adjustment to her routines, she joined a local club and got right back into the workout habit. 30 days later she had dropped a dress size and was really enjoying her time in the gym, plus doing great with the climbing too!
So you see habits can be broken down, simply by recognizing the patterns, then making a conscious decision to do or try something else. Yes it is NOT easy, but don’t you think your life would be fuller, richer, more interesting if you didn’t spend so much time on autopilot?
So start right now, decide what different route you are going to take to work tomorrow, stop yourself before consuming anything and really SEE what you are eating, and start making better exercise habits by changing the focus to an outcome that really excites you!
The best of luck!
Tim
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Tim Goodwin is a fitness professional specializing in help the busiest people achieve more with their amateur sporting interests, and at the same time ridding them of excess body fat. Visit http://www.getfit.lu/success.html to get a free 18 page report “How to lose weight even when you are really busy” containing a full 4 week program which you can start today!
Add comment November 5th, 2007