The Cause
The western lifestyle of a diet of fatty foods and lack of exercise is a growing concern all over the world. Years ago people worked hard all day in physically demanding jobs, particularly heavy labour, which meant calories would be burned throughout the course of the day as we exhausted ourselves from morning to night.
Nowadays, in our automated world, the population performs less physical work and spends more time relaxing in front of TVs and computers rather than getting outdoors and exercising. The convenience and low cost of fast-food has led to people spending less time in the kitchen cooking healthy meals. This has caused people to become fatter and unhealthy.
As a result, the weight-loss industry has boomed with mass-marketing of countless weight loss products that promise an easy fix to the problem. But in reality there is no quick fix to the problem and people are wasting their time and money on these products.
When you have accumulated body fat over the years it takes commitment, motivation, time and determination to lose the fat and live a healthier lifestyle. Simply by changing your diet and getting some exercise can reverse the trend and get incredible results.
The First Step
The first, and most important, step in preparing to embark on any weight loss or fitness program is to have a routine health check up from your doctor.
The reason for this is that you may have a medical condition or risk factors that you didn't know existed. And there are some medical conditions that can be made worse from exercise and changes to diet.
Another reason to visit a doctor is to check if you have any physical exercise limitations. Certainly if you have old sporting injuries, a prior injury or have ever broken a bone you may need to modify certain kinds of exercises or avoid some exercises.
So a routine health check will give you the peace of mind and confidence that you are ready to safely begin your diet and fitness program. If you are getting older, particularly over 40 years old, it is recommended to make a routine health check an annual event.
The final reason is give yourself a starting point or baseline so that you can measure your improvement during and after your diet or fitness program. Before you start the plan you should know your weight, body fat index, cholesterol level, blood count, resting heart rate and blood pressure.
Most diets and exercise programs only focus on cutting back on the consumption of calories and increasing exercise to burn fat.
The danger with this approach is that by cutting calories it has been shown to cause your body to lose valuable muscle tissue instead of reducing unwanted fat. Usually when you increase your daily exercise level your body demands more calories to fuel the extra work. You now run the risk of starving your body of vital minerals and nutrients that are essential for healthy bodily function.
When you are looking to reduce your body fat and your weight, improving your overall health is very important. When your overall health improves your strength, vigor and mental attitude will also improve to make your life more enjoyable.
A healthy diet is crucial to making any weight loss program work for you. You don't need to consult a professional dietician but you do need to adopt a common sense approach to purchasing and eating healthy, nutritious foods. There are many foods that taste good but are not nutritious to the human body.
Low Carbohydrate Diets
A low carbohydrate diet can help to reduce the body storing but usually does little for losing fat already accumulated in the body. Most people on low carb diets find that the diet is not sustainable and any achieved weight loss is not permanent. After the diet they tend to put the weight back on again.
The reality with carbohydrates is that the body does need carbohydrate but the right level of carbohydrate for your body. Carbohydrates elevate your metabolic rate which helps to burn fat but excessive carbohydrates will be converted into fat.
The best thing to do is consume carbohydrates early in the morning, at breakfast, when the metabolism is high or before exercise so that you burn off the excess blood sugars during exercise.
Low Fat Diets
A low fat diet can help to reduce the body storing fat but isn't the complete answer to weight loss as the body needs essential fats and oils to function well.
What About Your Metabolism?
There are too many diets telling you what's bad for you and what you cannot eat. I don't agree with this approach especially when there's no scientific data to back it up. Most of these diets are simply based on myth.
There is no point to randomly dieting and exercising if you are not increasing your metabolic rate. We need to target what controls your metabolism - your hormones. Boosting your metabolism back to the levels it used to be when you were younger will increase your fat burning capability and make your body lose weight.
Exercising for fat loss is all about the quality of the exercises not the quantity. Spending hours in a gym doing the wrong exercises will not burn fat and will only add to your frustration. Many gym junkies end up doing some damage to their muscle tissue, tendons or joints.
You need to stop doing tortuous workouts and instead focus on the proven techniques that actually get the greatest fat loss results.
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=R_Grant
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