Five Easy Weight Loss Tips

So you’ve decided you want to lose weight. You already know the basics: “Eat less and exercise more”. Ok, but is there any faster way to do it? Is there any secret? Yes, actually there are a few things you can do that will help you get rid of the unwelcome extra pounds faster and also maintain a healthy weight permanently. But keep in mind that even the best weight loss tips won't help you if you don't take action.

The tips you will find here are mostly about adopting a new lifestyle: by making changes to your eating and exercise habits, you will lose weight and detox your body, making you feel more energy and less fatigue, besides boosting your self-esteem

1. Make a plan and stick with it

The first step is to create a doable plan that you can follow consistently. Consistency and moderation are the keys to weight loss, along with some discipline. But don't think that "discipline" here means you have to be in a "Marine's regimen”! No; all you have to do is to stick with the plan. That is it.

A sensible plan starts with defining how much weight you want to lose per week. Set yourself a realistic goal: when you set the bar too high, it is quite unlikely to happen and will be a big turn off on your motivation. It is always recommended to set a goal of 1 to 2 pounds per week for a healthy weight loss and this is a number that is most likely to be achievable.

Create a sensible diet and workout program that fit your lifestyle and that you know you can commit to. Commitment plays a major role in losing weight.

Also, keeping a journal is a great way to check on your progress and track down your calorie intake. It will make you more aware of what you are doing right or wrong and what works best for you.

2. Eat well-balanced meals

Some people try to lose weight quickly by stopping eating. That is the worst diet you could ever do, because it will weaken your immune system, cause you fatigue and slow down your metabolism. The best is to have between 5 -6 small meals spread throughout the day, so you will never be too hungry for your next meal.

You need to have a well-balanced diet in order to have energy and not go into binges that will jeopardize your weight loss program. This diet would include good carbs, proteins and vitamins. The protein can come either from dairy or meat, which should be lean meat. Dairy and meat also provide fat, which is the reason they should be consumed in moderation (about 2 servings a day). Vitamins come from fruit and vegetables and the FDA recommends taking between 2-5 servings a day.

Although there are diets that promote a very low consumption of carbohydrates, your body needs them as a source of energy. You can eat carbs wisely by using whole wheat grains, which are more slowly digested and keep you feeling fuller longer.

Here are a few examples of how to change from regular, refined food to whole wheat grains:

Replace white bread for whole wheat bread: one slice of whole wheat bread is more filling than two slices of white bread, due to the amounts of fiber.
Instead of buying regular pasta, buy whole wheat pasta; the taste is about the same.
Bake your cakes, muffins and goodies using whole wheat flour, instead of white flour.
If you are a cereal fan, don't start your day with the sugary brands: choose whole grain cereals, that are rich in fiber.
Give up on white rice and start eating brown rice

Those are very small changes in your carbohydrate consumption that will make your eating style much healthier because you will be adding more fiber to your meals.

3. Eat more fiber

Why is fiber your best friend when you are trying to lose weight?

Because fiber is a type of food your body can't digest, it doesn't add calories to your meal and also gives you a feeling of full stomach for longer periods of time, helping you to avoid overeating. It aids in keeping your bowel movements regular, taking carcinogens from your colon and carrying fat through your digestive system, thus helping to clean your body from cholesterol.

4. Drink more water

Drink water. Drink as much water as you can (not all at once, of course). Water has zero calories and will do wonders to your skin, besides curbing your hunger a bit. Thirst sometimes can be perceived as hunger and the result is that you end up eating when all you actually needed was a glass of water.

There are 3 very good reasons why you should start drinking water: first, it flushes away impurities, mainly from your kidneys and bladder. This will be reflected right away in your skin, which will glow and have more elasticity, because your cells will be hydrated.

Secondly, your kidneys need water to work properly. If they don't get enough water, your liver will have to come into play and do some of the kidneys' work, along with its own. And guess what is one of the liver's job? Metabolism of fat or, in other words, transforming stored fat into energy. So if you want to speed up your metabolism, don’t overwhelm your liver by making it do your kidneys' work.

The third good reason for you to include more water into your day is that when your water intake is too low, your body gets into a "water starvation mode", just as it does when you deprive yourself from food. That means that your body will start storing water into places such as your belly, hips, thighs and ankles, as a mechanism of self-defense.

The good news is that this can be easily fixed: once you start drinking more water, your body will get out of the "water starvation mode" and will start getting rid of the stored water, and you will see yourself "trimming" down.

The recommended amount is 8 glasses per day, or 64 ounces. It might seem like a lot, but it’s actually just 2 bottles of water!

5. Exercise constantly

Physical fitness is crucial to weight loss. There are few better ways to shed down pounds other than sweating your shirt in a cardio session or doing some weight lifting. The benefits of exercising go beyond burning calories: after a sweat session, your brain releases endorphins, the substance that makes you feel good, and it helps you deal with stress, which is another factor for weight gain.

It all comes down to two words: moderation and consistency. Exercise at least 3 times a week, for at least 30 minutes. It can be any physical activity: walking, jogging, biking, running, going to the gym, playing a sport. The important is to keep the consistency.

Now, put an action plan together and start working on changing your lifestyle and your body!

Importance Of Physical Fitness While Taking Supplements

You hear about this incredible weight loss supplement and decide it is time for you to lose some pounds. The label said you would lose weight easily, no exercises required. That was all you needed to hear: you rush to the closest vitamin store and buy this wonder of the gods. The results start to appear and you are happy with what you see. At least until you notice that your muscles are getting saggy. That's fine, as long as you are still thin. Inevitably, the bottle of supplements gets to the end and you start gaining weight again.

How Weight Loss Supplements Work

Does this sound familiar to you? If so, that is because a lot of people that buy weight loss supplements believe that the supplement is going to do all the work and no exercise will be required from them. Wrong. The supplements are just complements to your diet and your weight loss depends on your good physical fitness.

So, here's what happens: when you take supplements, a lot of the weight loss you see is just body water, not real fat. That means that, as soon as you stop taking the supplement, you will re-gain all that water again. That is why exercising is important: it will help you get rid of fat and develop lean muscle mass, which will elevate your metabolic rate because of the recovery process that burns calories even when you are at rest.

The Importance of Physical Fitness

To know why exercising is important while you are taking supplements, you need to understand how physical fitness directly affects your metabolism.

Exercising provides wellness benefits, such as stress relief, that go beyond simply burning calories; stress is scientifically proven to lead to weight gain, because it increases the levels of cortisol in your blood. This in turn will stimulate the production of glucose. Glucose is a byproduct that is meant to provide energy for the cell, but in large amounts will be transformed into fat and then stored in certain areas of your body.

That said, you can see how crucial for your metabolism exercise is. But when we talk about metabolism, do you know what exactly it is and how it works? And how does metabolism affect YOUR weight loss?

Your Metabolism in Action

Metabolism, by definition, is a set of chemical reactions that occur in your body in order to convert food into fuel (energy) and how efficiently this energy will be used in your everyday activities. These activities include not only the ones you can see, such as working, exercising, playing with your dog, thinking, watching TV, but also the ones you don't think about, such as your heart muscles working to pump blood through your body, your neurons connections sending information to your brain, your respiratory system and so on. And the leftovers you have from the energy produced will be transformed back into fat, because your body doesn't like waste.

At this point you might be asking yourself: "what if my metabolism is naturally slow? What can I do?"

Well, I'm glad to say that you can do something about it. Of course, there are things about your metabolism that you can't change, such as your age, your sex and heredity. After 40 your metabolism tends to slow down 5% per decade; also, the metabolism of men is usually faster because they have more muscle, which is something directly related to how your metabolism will operate.

But the good news is that there are other things that you CAN change, such as developing lean muscle mass instead of fat.

Exercise Options

And how can you have lean muscle mass? The best way is by doing weight lifting and consuming high protein foods. When you lift weights, you put a lot of strength on your muscles; they will "rip off" and you will feel sore. The recovery process that happens after you exercise is very calorie-burning because the body needs a lot of energy to recover the muscles you worked on. This means you will be burning calories even when you are at rest.

Cardio exercises are great fat burners; when you are sweating your shirt off at the treadmill, you are burning fat and helping your tissue to get leaner, since you are taking the "cover" of fat off of it.

The ideal is to alternate cardio and weight lifting: you can try to do cardio three times a week and lift weights twice a week. For the weight lifting, a suggestion is to do upper body on one day and lower body on some other day, giving your body a period of a whole week before you come back and re-start again. This will be good for you in the beginning, since it will give your muscles a good recovery period. After you get more used to lifting weights, you can try to change your program to do your strength training for the whole body twice a week, working on both upper and lower body on the same day.

For your cardio program, you should start taking it easy if you have been living a sedentary life. A good idea is to start with walking, for example. Try to begin with 20 minutes three times a week, on a plain surface. The following week extend the time to 30 minutes. If you feel good with that, try to walk a little bit faster each week.

Weight Loss Tips

Here are two small weight loss tips for you:

Cardio in the morning is said to burn more calories, besides giving you energy for the day.
If possible, try to do your weight lifting at night. Working on your muscle strength at night time will make it easier on you because it will give your muscles a longer time to rest and recover, whereas doing it in the morning will most likely leave you feeling your muscles tired all day long.

Just remember to go slow in the beginning: increase the duration and the intensity little by little, so it's not a shock on your body. The secret is consistency: it's better to do a little every day then a lot in one day and none in the next ten.

As you fit your workout into your weekly schedule, you will see that eventually exercising will become as natural for you as showering or brushing your teeth. Think of these 30 minutes per day as an investment in your health and in the money you spent on those supplements. After all, you want them to be effective, don’t you?

So now get your supplements, go grocery shopping for healthy, high protein foods and exercise!