Category: Fitness Tips

Proper, health exercise is an important part of any weight loss program. Do remember to consult your physician before starting an exercise program. You don’t want to hurt yourself!
Ideally, an exercise program will not only help you lose weight, but will help you build muscle and stamina. You also want to design a exercise program that is balanced and exercises each part of your body.

Of course, if you are a member at your local gym, all you have to do is go to your gym, where you can easily do a complete body workout with just a few machines.
If you don’t have access to a gym, or you’re like me and prefer to work out other ways, you’ll want other exercise options.

Biking
Biking is an excellent exercise for losing weight, especially if you are not in good shape to start with. If you choose a relatively flat route and start out with short distances, you can start out very easily and work up to more strenuous rides. Be sure, though, that you are properly outfitted with an appropriate bike and equipment – visit your local bike shop for help and advice.

Swimming
Swimming is another excellent exercise for losing weight. It is not hard on the body, but provides an excellent workout. Especially if you are a novice at swimming, you should swim in a pool with a lifeguard. If you don’t know how to swim, check your yellow pages or ask around – you can get swimming lessons pretty cheaply most places.

Running
Running is a great way to lose weight and get in shape, but it is harder on your body than swimming or biking. If you need to lose weight, you should probably start out with one of the other exercises until you get into better shape. Keep in mind that running and biking both work the legs, but they do work different primary muscles.

Don’t wait – start and exercise program today to lose weight!

Have you lost weight in the past only to regain it a short time later? Have you followed every diet including Atkins, South Beach, the Drinking Man’s diet, the Peanut Butter diet, or even the Chocolate Diet? All of these diets work, and none of them work, meaning you can and probably do lose weight on any of them, but you won’t keep it off. Why not? Because the day will come when the diet is over and you’re right back to your regular routine; the same routine that got you fat in the first place.
In the past diets carried a warning not to stay on them longer than the prescribed period; usually two weeks, some a mere three days. Today’s popular diets are attempting to style themselves as lifestyle choices, but this isn’t working either. People want to be able to eat a sandwich now and then. They want the burger and the bun! Strive for balance choosing foods you prefer, and you’ll have a better chance at lasting weight loss success.

Start today, and work one day at a time making one or two small changes such as switching to the calorie-free soft drinks then weaning yourself down to two or less a day (if you drink more than that now of course). Changes don’t have to be drastic. In fact trying to make drastic changes in your lifestyle never works because while you may be happy in the beginning, you slowly grow miserable toward the end. In fact, that’s the problem right there: you anticipate an end.

Talk to people who’ve lost weight and kept it off. They’ll say, “This is a lifestyle.” It’s about choices you make every day. Are you choosing to take an extra helping, even though you’re comfortably full? Change that one behavior and you’re on your way. Do you choose to take the bag of chips to the couch? Change that, in fact just stop eating on the couch entirely and you’re one step closer. Eliminate the habit of grabbing a few bites on your way past the candy dish, that alone can shave several pounds. I once lost eight pounds simply by eliminating the candy dish I kept at my desk (not to mention the money I saved not buying a couple pounds of candy a week).
Choose one small habit or behavior at a time, not your entire existence, and you’ll have a much better chance to reach your weight loss goals.

Whenever anyone says or gestures that they want to lose weight, most of the time, they point to their guts saying “I wanna lose all this!” Obviously, abdominal weight loss is a goal for many people.
However, what most people might not be aware of is that-of all exercises-Yoga actually can help immensely for weight loss in the abdominal region. There are specific poses, that target excess weight in the abdomen and coupled with a customized diet, those seeking abdominal weight loss would find success in using these yoga exercises.

Let’s go over them, shall we?

Abdominal Weight Loss: Yoga Poses to Use.
1. The Sun Salutations: These are a combination of poses that serve as a warm up-routine for a Yoga session or class. They are very similar to the popular calisthenics exercise known as burpees. However, they differ in that they have a spiritual significance included as a result of executing them. Due to the forward and backward bending motions involved, after performing a few to several rounds on a daily basis, you are bound to notice a marked loss of weight in you abdominal area and the added bonus of muscular tone.

2. The Bow Pose: This simple pose involves laying flat on your belly and grabbing your ankles with both arms while simultaneously lifting your head up high. When performed correctly, you should be resting on your abdomen. Needless to say, it is a pose commonly recommended for weight loss and the prevention and correction of chronic constipation.

3. The Peacock Pose: This is slightly more challenging. The objective is to balance your abdomen on your conjoined elbows while simultaneously raising your legs and head of the floor. Naturally, merely attempting it speeds up abdominal weight loss and detoxification of the visceral organs and the preparatory stage could suffice as the actual execution of the pose till the mastery of it is achieved.

4. The Abdominal Lift: This is not a pose, per-se but is a specific exercise that involves you exhaling your breath and pulling the diaphragm in while holding the breath out. This is a specific abdominal exercise for weight loss, spiritual rejuvenation and detoxification.

Now friends, there are other poses such as the shoulder-stand, the forward-bending pose, the spinal twist and the wheel pose that also target increase in muscular tone and weight loss in the abdominal regions, however from practice the 4 above will perhaps be the most effective.

Do note though that if you are female and pregnant or in your menstrual period, some of these poses might not be the best to execute.
Moreover, since these poses-besides helping with abdominal weight loss-aid tremendously with detoxifying, it is advised that one eats a proper and healthy diet to augment the actions of these poses.

Other fantastic exercises for abdominal weight loss include your intense Aerobics, the use of the ab-wheel, basic sit-ups, windmills etc.
So empower yourself with these tips and information to achieve your goal for weight loss. Lose that gut starting today.

I went on my first diet around five years ago. Over the past four and a half years my weight went up and down as I tried every diet and exercise program under the sun. Nothing seemed to work for me. Until six months ago I enrolled in a weight workshop which taught me that I need to change the way I look at food. It was then that I realized that I had made many mistakes in my quest to lose weight.
In this article I’m going to share with you eight  mistakes I made on my quest to lose weight. I hope by sharing my experiences with others throughout the world via the internet I might be able to help people avoid the mistakes I made. So, here are the eight mistakes I made while trying to lose weight.

1. I started to skip breakfast
Most people trying to lose weight believe simply eating less and skipping meals helps shed that fat. And breakfast is a real easy meal to skip. This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make when on a weight loss diet. If you leave the house in the morning on an empty stomach you’re much more tempted to eat more at morning tea and lunch times. And, calories you eat at breakfast time are easily burnt throughout the day.

2. I would eat one day and not the next
I would literally eat about 2000+ calories one day, feel guilty, and end up eating about 700 calories the following day. If you “starve” yourself throughout the day you’re much more likely to eat more in the evenings, which is not going to help you lose weight. You should consume most of your calories in the morning.

3. I bought diet food
When I went shopping I always looked for the foods marked diet, low-fat, healthy etc. This is a good practice to get into, but I was buying these foods for the wrong reason. I bought these foods because in my mind it meant I could more. I would totally disregard portion size. If you eat diet foods in large portions you’re not doing yourself any favors.

4. I thought I’d always be fat
This is mindset that you must break if you want to lose some serious weight. Sometimes it feels like you’re doing the right things and not making any progress, this is totally natural. You need to focus on being happy and healthy and achieving your goals. Try not to get caught up in “the big picture”.

5. I started eating salads as main meals
Eating salad is a good way of keeping your calorie intake down right? Yes, meal of salad has much less calories that a pizza but does it have the satisfaction? When you eat you mind needs to get some satisfaction from what you have just eaten. I found that when I ate salads for meals a few hours later I was back I the cupboard looking for more food. I learnt that I was better off eating a balanced meal with slightly more calories than simply eating a salad and snacking afterwards.

6. I started my new diets on Mondays
When I found a new diet that I decided I was going to try I always started it on a Monday. This meant I would eat all weekend like I was never going to eat again. Doing this I was just setting myself up for failure.

7. I was to embarrassed to go to the gym
Taking the plunge and joining a gym was one of the hardest things I ever did. I was always worried that people in the gym would be staring at me and talking about me. I really thought I was too fat to join. My advice is to join a gym! You’ll be glad you did. I look forward to going to the gym now.

8. I set my goals to high
Setting long term goals is great, but these goals always seem to far off. You need to set smaller, more reachable goals that you can regularly meet to keep your motivation high. Set yourself weekly, monthly and three monthly goals. Once you meet one short term goal set a new one for next week.

So there you have it, those are the mistakes I made. I now look at weight loss from a totally different perspective and it has paid off. I now help others with weight loss and keeping healthy.