2008 June | Weight Loss Ways

Burning calories – Some simple ways

Jun 30, 2008 No Comments »

There are many habits that you can adopt to keep your body metabolism high. High metabolism means burning more calories and thus achieving a faster and easier weight loss. There have been instances where people have lost weight by slightly changing their daily habits, like taking few kilometers of walk or switching to diet soda.

Here are some simple habits that can help you immensely in your war against weight.

Move as much as possible

Each movement of the body results in burning calories and thus making simple body movements a habit contributes in a big way in burning calories. Tapping feet, swinging your legs, doing simple neck and stretching exercises, changing positions and postures, using restrooms in a different floor, parking in the farthest corner, while talking on the phone standing up and moving from side to side, pacing up and down, clenching and releasing your muscles etc. are some very easy to adopt routines that can fetch you great results. At the end of the day, make sure to use every possible opportunity to move, as it is a proven fact that an active person losses about 50% more calories than an inactive person.

Eat lesser but often

Metabolism burns more energy if smaller and frequent meals are taken instead of larger meals taken with longer time gaps. The digestion process requires energy usage and frequent meals would mean continuity of the process and thus more energy consumption.

Eating good fat

Eating ‘healthy’ fats help you augment your body’s calorie burning capabilities. Incorporating fats like flaxseed oil, hempseed oil, olive oil, avocados, salmon, albacore tuna, nuts and seeds etc in your meals do a great deal in enhancing your body capability to burn calories. These fats are a must for our bodies to work efficiently besides being good to eat.

Drink water as cold as possible

Your body requires certain level of temperature to be maintained. If you consume cold water instead of any hot beverage, your body would use more calories to raise the cold water to match your body temperature, thus burning those extra calories.

Exercise with weights

Exercising with weight tones up muscle tissues that are metabolically active even when the body is resting. The amount of calories burned by these active muscle tissues can make a huge difference in the long run.

Use spices

Metabolism is affected enormously by eating many of the hot spices. Cinnamon for example is very effective in keeping the blood sugar under check and increases metabolism. Cayenne, crushed red pepper or wasabi are other spices that are good for this purpose.

Eat more proteins

Consuming more protein requires more calories to digest the same, as protein digestion is a complex chemical process. As proteins prolong digestion time, it keeps the tummy full for a longer period and does not instigate you to eat further. In the process it also keeps your blood sugar under check. Hence it is a great idea to include more of protein in your meals.

Aren’t these very simple things yet contributing in a big way to lift your metabolism and burn more calories?

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Knowing Unknown Reasons for Weight Gain

Jun 26, 2008 Comments Off

Are you surprised at the weighing scale needle going upwards even after all your sincere efforts to check your flab? Weight gain can frustrate you to no end, especially despite you adhering to a lifestyle that includes healthy eating and compulsory exercises.

There are many factors that may result in your gaining weight despite being calorie conscious and a regular exerciser. Michelle May, MD, author of “Am I Hungry? What to Do When Diets Don’t Work?” writes, “Weight gain is so complicated; there are so many factors that can impact your weight. It is more likely a combination of things more than just one factor,” The five factors presented below do play a big role in adding up to your weight when it is least expected by you.

“Lack of Sleep” is one such factor, as it leads to tiredness. When tired, your body will not be able to deal with stress efficiently and it may induce you to go in for food thus resulting in unnecessary quantity of calorie intake. Symptoms like fatigue, low energy levels, drowsiness, and getting irritable etc indicate the deficiency in sleep. Usually it is recommended to have at least eight hours of sleep.

Today’s lifestyle and individual expectations lead to unwarranted “Stress”, another factor that contributes to your weight gain. To cope up with stress, "Our bodies store fuel, slow down metabolism, and dump out chemicals [cortisol, leptin, and other hormones] which are more likely to cause … obesity in the abdominal region" explains May.

Many people restore to food intake for coping with stress, which is more like self-medication, which does no good. There are many relaxation techniques and exercises that help in getting rid of stress also indirectly helping in burning calories.

Some of the “medication” which are prescribed for treating depression, mood swing disorder, epilepsy, migraines, blood pressure, diabetes etc. are known to have weight gain as a side-effect. However for the sake of overall health many a times gaining a few pounds is still worth it.

Some “medical conditions” like hypothyroidism, a thyroid hormone deficiency resulting in low metabolism and appetite loss is most commonly known to induce weight gain. The symptoms of hypothyroidism are feeling fatigued and lethargic, hoarse voice, over sleep, immediate reaction to cold, body parts swelling or headaches. Similarly another condition “Cushing’s syndrome” is a disorder that causes excess cortisol hormone leading to weight gain. Look for the symptoms and see a doctor immediately to have this factor eliminated.

In women “menopause” is another reason that naturally slows down metabolism and induce weight gain. It triggers other factors like hunger, depression and lack of sleep that will all add up to further weight gain. During menopause, women lose estrogen, a hormone that usually pulls the weight to the lower body i.e. hips an thighs. When this goes down the weight starts accumulating in the mid section. This however is avoidable with changing your exercising habits to gain a lean body mass, achieving high metabolism and calorie burning.

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Weight Loss and Motivation

Jun 26, 2008 No Comments »

We all think that weight loss is about to plan an exercise routine, chalk out a healthy diet plan and that’s it. But weight loss is more than a great diet and exercise combination. Its all in your head and outlook. Otherwise you may lose weight to gain it back in few months and this cycle continues. Actually motivation is the key ingredient to weight loss. How? Read here for details.

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