We all know that being overweight can produce many negative side effects on your physical and mental health. Heart attack, stroke and diabetes are three of the most common. Some of the other less talked about but equally damaging are stress on your muscles and joints. It’s a fact: weight loss reduces physical stress.

Getting rid of some stress can actually make it easier to loss weight too. Stress and weight loss are intricately wound together. If you are under a lot of stress your body tends to hold on to the weight. Nothing works as well as it should. Your metabolism slows down and it is much harder to lose the weight.

As you can see it is a real catch 22. Being overweight puts stress on your body and being under too much stress encourages weight gain (or at least discourages weight loss).

OK, I know I’ve made it all sound overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to be. Even though weight loss reduces physical stress and stress makes it more difficult to lose weight, it’s not impossible.

The best way to start is with simple day to day changes. Don’t try to change your whole world all at once, instead pick one area to work on and then go for it. Once you’ve conquered that first obstacle, pick another.

Keep doing that and before you know it you will be at your proper weight, which will diminish the abuse your joints and muscles will take and you will have less stress in your life.

For many people a good first obstacle to try and work on is their eating habits. Again, don’t think you have to do it all at once. how about starting small? Maybe take a week and concentrate just on drinking more water every day. Or eating more fruits and vegetables daily. how about cutting down on the soda you drink?

Simple, one step at a time. Don’t expect huge changes quickly. It takes time to see changes and it takes time to let the momentum build. Once you start with one thing, successfully add another and so on, the whole process will begin to pick up steam. From that point on it will seem extremely easy to do.

If you can combine some diet changes along with a little more physical activity you can greatly speed up the process. Again, start small. While it’s commendable to join a gym and resolve to spend 30 minutes every single day on the treadmill, it is also a big change and it may be harder to stick with.

If you find that you can stick to it, great, more power to you. But for many people over reaching on their goals is a great way to fail and get discouraged.

Something as simple as parking a little further from the door so you have to walk more every day is a great place to start. How about taking the stairs in stead of the elevator at least once a day? Maybe take the dog for a walk at least twice a week, etc.

You get the idea. Just start making changes, simple changes that you know you can stick with, and the rest will follow.

True weight loss reduces physical stress but it can also help alleviate a lot of emotional stress as well.

Tags: Being Overweight, Catch 22, Eating Habits, Fruits And Vegetables, Health Heart, Healthy Diet, heart attack;, Joints, Losing Weight, Loss Weight, Mental Health, Metabolism, Momentum, Muscles, Obstacle, One Step At A Time, Physical Stress, Soda, Step At A Time, Time Don, Weight Gain, Weight Loss —

Weight Loss Advice – Get Your Butt Off The Couch

It’s that time of year again, the time of year when many people make resolutions to lose weight. This year you can really succeed. Don’t worry if you haven’t met your goals in the past, every day is a new beginning. There is a lot of weight loss advice floating around and some of the tips are good, some not so much.

One way to make sure that you don’t get overwhelmed is to set small, easily achievable goals. When you approach your weight loss as an ongoing process, a lifestyle change, than you will greatly increase your chances of success.

Many women make the mistake of thinking that if they lift weight they will ‘bulk up’. Nothing could be further from the truth and if you really want fast results you would be very foolish to ignore the benefits of weight training.

Women simply do not have the biological make up to bulk up unless they work out on a full time basis, are extremely clean in their eating habits (and I mean clean, no cheating at all) and they take supplements. You just don’t have to worry about bulking up if you lift weights a few times a week.

What you should know though is that weight training will allow you to build muscle. Why is that important, simple the more muscle you have the slimmer you look. Think of a good muscle tone like a girdle that holds you in all over your body.

Let’s say two women each weigh 135 lbs. but one of them has good muscle tone and the other has more fat and less muscles, the woman who has muscle tone will look considerably slimmer even though they weigh the same amount.

Another benefit of building some muscle tone is that muscles burn more calories than fat does. That means that your metabolism will be burning hotter all day everyday, even while you sleep or sit on your butt on the couch.

The hotter your metabolism burns the more weight you will lose. Basically by adding a little muscle tone to your body you will not only look a lot slimmer you will also burn more calories 24/7, cool, huh?

There is so much bad information floating around that if you follow it you may actually gain weight. Don’t fall for out dated and incorrect diet advice.

Starving yourself is another big mistake that many people make. It’s now well known that your body must get all the nutrients it needs or it will think it is dying and will slow down the metabolism. The less you eat, the less your body will burn. That is the last thing you want when you are trying to lose weight.

Instead eat a balanced diet heavy on lean protein with little to no carbohydrates. Stay away from the white foods like rice, bread, and potatoes. Instead think brown rice, whole wheat bread (if you eat bread at all) and substitute mashed cauliflower for mashed potatoes, it really tastes better anyway.

So there you have it, all the weight loss advice you really need. Do yourself a favor and don’t look for a quick fix, instead take a sensible approach, eat right, drink plenty of water and get plenty of exercise. If you do, you will be in that new bathing suit by May.

Tags: Achievable Goals, Atkins, Butt, Calories, Couch, Eating Habits, Full Time, Girdle, Healthy Diet, Lifestyle Change, Little Muscle, Losing Weight, Metabolism, Muscle Tone, Muscles, Resolutions, Time Basis, Time Of Year, Training Women, Two Women, Weight Loss Advice, Weight Training, Weights —

If you are asking yourself, “How do I go about losing weight the right way?”, you are asking a very good question. Losing weight is a process that takes time and dedication. too may people think there is, or should be, a magic pill for losing weight and that they won’t have to work at it.

Some things you may already know about stress and gaining weight, stress makes the body produce a hormone called Cortisol. Cortisol increases fat stores around your mid-section putting you at risk for heart disease and diabetes.

Learn some techniques to decrease the stress in your life. Meditation is a good technique to use to decrease stress. Yoga is another good way. Actually, just getting some regular daily exercise will go a long way to decreasing your stress level.

Try to think more positively about your life and your weight loss. If you do then the extra pounds will disappear in no time.

Getting enough sleep at night is also a big part of losing weight the right way. If you are always tired and dragged out then try getting an extra hour or two of sleep at night. The human body needs 7-9 hours of sleep per night and when you do not get it your metabolism slows down to a not so steady crawl and your body does not work the way it should. Those of us who work the night shift really have screwed up metabolisms. Working nights is very stressful on the human body. We were all meant to sleep at night not during the day.

OK, so, you have done all the things listed above and find you still cannot lose the weight. Are you drinking enough water? If you think that you drink enough fluids every day then let me ask you, do you drink regular pop, diet pop or other sweetened drinks? If you do you need to stop. Regular pop, diet pop and other sweetened drinks are called empty calories because they have absolutely no nutritional value. The only thing they do is increase the amount of fat you have. Did you know that if you do nothing else but stop drinking pop you can lose 38 pounds in just a year? No, I am not kidding!

Hold on, back up, did you say diet pop? Yup, diet pop is ‘sweetened’ with artificial sweeteners and is basically considered poison by the medical community. Diet pop actually tricks your body into staying fat. When you drink diet pop the brain expects nutrition and when it realizes you were only joking, the brain signals the stomach that it is still hungry and you end up eating more to compensate the empty calories you just put in your body.

Stick with the water and maybe some green tea. The green tea gives you an added benefit of antioxidants that are so important for your health and it tastes great, too.

So try to decrease the stress in your life, divorce it if you have to, get more sleep at night, exercise and give up the pop. This should help you in losing weight the right way.

Tags: Calories, Cortisol, Dedication, diabetes;, Diet Pop, Drinks, Eating Habits, Empty Calories, Extra Hour, Gaining Weight, Good Question, Healthy Diet, Heart Disease And Diabetes, heart disease;, Human Body, Losing Weight, Magic Pill, Meditation, Metabolism, Mid Section, Night Shift, Nutritional Value, Sleep At Night, Stress Level —

Is it safe to lose weight fasting? A high number of people would like to know the answer to this question. According to some professionals, surprisingly enough, it is safe to lose weight fasting, however, as long as you dont overdo it.

In other words if you have never fasted before, then more than a day would be or could be harmful to you. For other people that have decided to go this route they should never go a week at a time without eating.

Your body needs vitamins’ and nutrients to stay healthy, and while you are not eating anything, then you are not giving your body what it needs. And your body can react in a very negative way and then the next thing you know, youre in the hospital.

This is when a lot of health problems come into play while you were going days without anything to eat or drink. For the novices first time fasting could be really hazardous to their health. That is why it is very important to get a doctors opinion about fasting.

The one thing people have to watch out about fasting is, when you fast your bodys metabolism slows way down to conserve energy. However when you go back to a normal diet, because your metabolism was lowered it will cause you to store more energy, this will cause you to gain those pounds back you lost, plus add a few as well.

There are different versions of fasting all over the world, mostly because of religious beliefs. Some versions consist of no food, some consist of only one type of food, then there are versions out there where you can only have water and thats it. Then there is the fasting where you cannot have any food or water.

There are some religions and other physical guru’s who believe fasting can cleanse your body. Even though you would think because you are not putting anything that is harmful into your body; it would be easy to believe this is true. However, there is no scientific evidence to support this theory.

There is a belief by some people who think by fasting it can make a person live longer. Well, this theory is kind of tough to follow in my opinion. Yes, there have been studies on certain groups that didnt eat for a whole months time. During this time there would be no way a person can have any type of clogging of the arteries or damage to any other type of organs.

However the study also showed that there was not enough evidence, because no one has studied a certain group long enough to be able to prove it as fact.

So there are some facts about fasting which support it. However if you do choose to do this, just make sure you follow what your doctor says. And if you have any type of health problems seek professional medical help quickly.

Tags: Belief, Conserve Energy, Diet, Doctors, Eating Habits, energy;, Fasting, food;, Guru, Health Problems, Healthy Diet, Lose Weight, Losing Weight, Lot, Metabolism, Nutrients, People, Religions, Religious Beliefs, Scientific Theory, Type Of Food, Vitamins, Vitamins And Minerals, Weight Lose —