Posts Tagged ‘Healthy’

Appetite: a Better Option for a Healthy Well Being

Friday, January 15th, 2010

“Appetite” is related with hunger. It is in fact the desire or an urge to eat. All living creatures experience appetite. It serves as a procedure to regulate energy to maintain effective metabolic needs. Appetite is regulated by a close interplay and inter-relation between digestive tract, adipose tissue and the brain. Loss of appetite is termed as anorexia.

The sensors and the effectors within the body play an important role in the regulation of appetite. The part of the brain which is considered to be the main regulatory organ for appetite is the hypothalamus. The sensors through its various numbers of hormones namely the leptin, ghrelin, orexin, etc modifies the hypothalamus responses of the brain and works as a machinery for the regulation of appetite. Furthermore, the biological clock which is also regulated by the hypothalamus modifies hunger. Further the cerebral cortex projects a lot on the hypothalamus and modifies appetite.

Everyone desires for a well toned physique. But how to maintain it is the question which is in the mind of many. The basic solution to this is to control the appetite. But controlling appetite is not at all an easy procedure as while it may sound simple to control appetite but it is very difficult to actually get control of it. But there is nothing to worry about it as for now we have an easy solution to it and they are the diet control pills and also the fat diets on the basis of which it has become much easier to put a check on one’s appetite. Diet control pills in this aspect like Phentermine, Adipex and Xenical works wonder as appetite suppressant. Moreover, Atkins Diet plan, the three phases South Beach Diet programme and the Sugar Busters nutritional lifestyle are some of the easy options of diet controls. Besides these, reducing hunger by way of drinking lots of water, adding fiber to our diet, stimulating natural sunlight to the skin and by avoiding carbohydrates to the diet are certain other options for diet control.

Appetite suppressants are short term supplements for weight reducing processes which is advisable only during the first few weeks of the programme of losing weight. These supplements are found in the form of medicines which is advisable to be undertaken through doctor’s prescription. People suffering from allergies, people following low calorie diets, pregnant women, mothers nursing babies, children below 16 years of age, older adults and persons undertaking other medicines should consult doctors before undertaking such suppressants.

As a writer, Farzina Naznin has been associated with various health sites like http://www.aboutlifeonline.com/ http://www.softcarehealth.com/ http://www.carebetterhealth.com/ for the purpose of writing articles. Comments if any are most bwelcome at farnznin@gmail.com

Diet Pills For A Healthy 28 Year Old Male Who Is Active?

Monday, December 14th, 2009

I am currently training for an event, hit the gym 4 times a week, eat right, and use whey protein, but I am looking to get some more assitance with my diet.
Are there any good diet pills out there that I can take? I was thinking Stacker 3.

Coupled With A Healthy Diet, Are There Any Diet Pills That Speed Up The Process?

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

I understand that you have to eat right and exercise as well – but are there any diet pills that work well enough that they will help you lose more weight than with ONLY diet and exercise?

Healthy and Natural Appetite Suppressing Techniques

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Appetite suppression is a very important part of weight loss. A lot of people who are overweight suffer from uncontrollable hunger; this is where natural appetite suppressants come into play. By being able to control how much and how often we eat, we can minimize our calorie intake. Some of the unnecessary calories come from our junk food intake and our oversized meals. The key to controlling these two culprits is appetite suppression. One of the ways to control our appetite naturally is through the use of the hoodia pills.

The hoodia gordonii plant contains a miracle molecule known as P. 57AS3. This particular molecule is known to suppress the appetite and it has done so for thousands of years without any side effects! Another way to reduce our calorie intake is through the consumption of whey protein shakes. Whey protein shakes offer numerous health benefits on top of the excellent hunger sustaining power. With this particular protein powder, the consumer can expect improved athletic performance, improved blood pressure, improved digestive health, improved immunity, and improved weight. It is one of the best ways to control ones hunger while at the same time getting the daily nutritional values you expect from a well balanced meal. It is no surprise than why millions of people rely upon protein shakes for weight loss and body nourishment.

Fiber and protein are also excellent natural appetite suppressants. It is a proven fact that eating foods which are rich in either fiber or protein can help us feel full for longer periods of time. By feeling full hours longer than usual, we are less likely to snack in between meals. We are also less likely to overeat during lunch and dinner; therefore, you should make sure to include fiber and protein in each one of your meals. These are just a few tips to help you lose weight and control your appetite naturally.

Lyla Feldman writes articles about striving towards a healthy lifestyle. Some of her favorite passions include writing about energy drinks and natural sleep aids.

What Are Some Healthy Foods I Can Eat Tomorrow?

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

I am going to the movies with my mom tomorrow and I want to eat really healthy tomorrow. I want to lose my tummy fat and I want to know how to do that. What are some foods I can eat tomorrow and other days that can help me lose weight and tummy fat fast? Do not say acaiberry or any of those other scams! Thank you so much!!!
P.S. I don’t like green/ white tea. I do like sweet tea, though. Thanks so much!

Healthy Foods To Lose Body Fat

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Many advertisers of weight loss products would like you to believe that you can solely rely on eating the right “Foods To Lose Body Fat” whereas in fact all they are doing through this is telling most people what they would like to hear as it isn’t entirely true.

Let?s face it,people who are enjoying exercising are in the minority and by telling people that they can lose body fat strictly by eating certain foods, may well be regarded a very attractive alternative by many. The hard reality however is that exercise is just as important to dieting in the process of losing body fat.

Purely considering the diet component of losing body fat, it is a well known fact that different food groups require different digestive conditions. Combining food groups in particular ways enables the design of targeted and effective weight loss products and programs which include many foods to lose body fat.

There are certain food groups commonly considered to be incompatible in dietary circles and these are not to be consumed together. These are starchy and acidic foods, carbohydrate and protein foods, protein and acid foods, and protein and fatty foods. These combinations are avoided in typical food combination diets.

Food combination diets typicaly encourage the intake of fresh foods, fruits and vegetables, but at the same time discourages the consumption of processed foods and desserts. This phenomenon makes food combination fat loss diets that are designed to basically produce foods to lose body fat, a very attractive weight loss alternative for many.

If you are still in doubt about which foods or food combinations go together that would help you lose body fat and need more information on this, you ought to visit: http://www.my-linker.com/hop/FoodsToLoseBodyFat. Here you will discover foods to lose body fat fast, effectively and in a healthy manner.

If you are still in doubt about which foods or food combinations go together that would help you lose body fat and need more information on this, you ought to visit: Foods To Lose Body Fat . Here you will discover foods to lose body fat fast, effectively and in a healthy manner.

How to Target Fat Loss and Create a Lean Healthy Body

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Statistics show our average dress sizes are getting bigger with over 60& of our modern world being classified as overweight.

Lose Body Weight – Eating Healthy is a Good Start to a Better Lifestyle

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Are you looking for a basic guideline and diet to follow as you determine which approach to use to lose body weight? If you want to obtain true weight loss you have to eliminate all of the processed foods, sodas, cookies, artificial sweeteners, and pastries. This is a good starting point because it cuts out all the toxins. Cutting out the toxins helps facilitate your body to remove unwanted fat that builds up in your body over time. This is one of the many secrets to losing body weight and keeping it off for good. If you put garbage in, expect the output to be garbage.

For example, you buy a very expensive car that needs only a certain type of gas to run at its optimal level. You did just as you were told and filled it up with the specific gas. Your car runs beautifully. Then one day, you decided, I am going to use this other gas it shouldn’t make a difference. You kept doing this for 2 months, and then you started to notice that it wasn’t running like it used to. You ignored the signs of the car getting progressively worse, and then you go to start the car and it will not run. As the proper gas was needed for the car to run smoothly, the same holds true for your body. If you continue to fuel your body with the wrong type of nutrients your body will eventually break down and not work at its optimal level.

The change of diet will be hard at first, but you will lose body weight and you will have more energy and less fatigue. I am not saying you can never eat any of these foods again, but it is best to decrease as much as possible to reap the most benefits you can. There is no single diet that is right for everyone but there is a diet that is perfect for you. There is an ideal balance of the macro-nutrient proteins, carbohydrates, fats that suits your body’s specific biochemistry. Adjusting your eating patterns towards the balance of foods appropriate for your metabolic type can bring about noticeable improvements in your body and mind. Eating the wrong foods may cause unpleasant temporary symptoms such as lack of energy, irritability, depression, sweet cravings or indigestion. The long-term effects of an unbalanced diet can be much more serious, and result in chronic disease.

People experience different learning curves when it comes to changing their eating habits. You may ask now what? This is such a daunting task. How am I going to do this? First, take a deep breath. It is going to be OK! I am going to give you a method to do this change easily and with as little discomfort as possible. No matter how effective a plan is over the short-term, you have wasted your time, effort, and money if you have to start from the beginning over and over again. Make sure that the plan you choose helps you lose body weight, emphasizes permanent weight loss, and has a system to support your efforts until you are comfortable doing it alone.

The truth is you don’t need such-n-such medical agencies or some’ muscle head’ at the gym telling you a bunch of fluffed up statistics and misleading numbers about calories and carbs. All you have to do is begin the process, take charge of your life, and stop thinking I can’t lose body weight. Start taking action if you want to improve your health and lifestyle and begin losing weight.

Singapore Personal Trainer Shares His Favorite Healthy Fat Loss Methods

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

After more than 10 years of experience as a Singapore Personal Trainer, I have made the observation that more than 90% of my clients require some form of fat loss to achieve the results they want.

Several really good coaches have come out with excellent fat loss manuals, methods and training programs. So how do you choose?

In this article I will be discussing my own experience with different fat loss protocols.

NOTE: ALL the methods below will not be effective without good nutrition. You need to eat enough protein, vegetables, fruits and healthy fats for this stuff to work.

Its been guessed that you need about 3-4 hours of physical activity PER DAY to overcome a poor diet and still lose fat. In our sedentary lives, we need to eat right for fat loss or else it just isn’t going to happen.

Method 1 – Long, Slow, Distance training (LSD)

Stair climbers, elliptical trainers, jogging, swimming, whatever. The main idea here is, “lets burn as many calories as we can during exercise”, and “lets make sure as many of those calories are from fat”. From an aesthetic perspective, the thought is “long distance, endurance athletes are thin, so to get thin we should do LSD training.”

In theory this makes alot of sense. LSD does burn alot of calories because it can be done (as the name suggests) for a LONG time. A larger percentage of the calories burnt are fat due to the “zone” at which these activities are done. However recovery is easy and you won’t burn calories outside of your exercise time.

In my time in the armed forces, long runs were very popular. In the process of training for a half marathon, we ran 12, 14, and 16km runs every week. What happened?…I got thin and weak. “Well at least he got thin” you might think but I got THIN not LEAN.

I had marginally visible abs but nothing like the ripped appearance you might expect from so much endurance training. I also lost 30cm from my broad jump and a few tenths of a second off my sprint times.

My bad experiences are the norm for people who use this method. In addition LSD takes a lot of training time and takes more and more as you get “better” at it and need to increase the distances and mileage.

Science also backs up these experiences. For fat loss, LSD is not even an improvement over diet alone.

An example of a LSD training program would be 45 mins of swimming 2x a week, and 45 mins of jogging 2x a week.

Does it work? – No, its ineffective and takes alot of time.

In other areas like rehabilitation and therapy, there is a place for LSD training. But there is NO PLACE for it in a fat loss program.

Method 2 – Metabolic Disturbance Training

The main idea of metabolic training is to create as much “disturbance” to the body’s systems so that we burn calories all day not just when we are doing the exercise. In addition, it maintains and even builds muscles and that’s important when losing fat.

This disturbance is so great that one study shows 9 times greater fat loss for this form of training when compared to LSD training. And the time spend exercising was far lower for the metabolic training group.

They just did such intense training during that exercise time that the body was burning above normal calories for up to 38 hours after the training session. WOW. The calories burnt DURING exercise was about 1/2 the LSD group, but the total calories burnt was far higher.

Whats happening? Lots of disturbance to the body’s state, so lots of adaptation. That adaptation is fat loss.

I have used this method extensively with clients and myself as well. It plain works. Fat melts off. The workouts are short (1 hour or less) and challenging. I have clients losing 10kg of fat in 2 months easily.

Here is a sample of a metabolic fat loss workout that was performed just a week ago by one of my fairly strong clients. Note A1, A2 etc mean that the exercises are performed one after the other, a “super-set”. All exercises are done with a 3 sec lowering and 2 sec lifting timing

A1: Stiff Leg Dead lifts x 12 reps rest 45s

A2: One handed Push ups x 6 reps/side rest 45s repeat A1 Total 5 super-sets

B1: Seated Cable Rowing x 12 reps rest 45s

B2: Barbell Lunges x 10 reps/side rest 45s Repeat B1 total 5 sets

C1: Stability ball sit ups x 12 reps no rest

C2: Shoulder external rotation x 15 rest 30 sec Repeat C1 total 3 sets

The training session ended with 10 mins of interval sprints on a stationary bike. The total training time was about 60 mins.

Does it work? YES!. This is THE preferred method of fat loss for my clients. Results are just about guaranteed, the body simply cannot keep fat around when its being worked like this.

Method 3 – Interval training

This method burns calories, and creates significant disturbance and post exercise calorie burn. It’s disadvantage is that it doesn’t do as well at maintaining/building muscles as resistance training (but its not nearly as bad as LSD). Interval training can really vary from a sprint(90-100% of your best) + a walk(20-30%) to a fast striding pace (75-85%) + a jog (40-50%) or anything in between.

I use some kind of interval training for all clients wanting fat loss. Its not as demanding on recovery as resistance training so it can be added to most training programs.

A sample interval session would be:

10 sec sprint cycle (100% effort) followed by, 20 sec slow cycle (30% effort) repeat 20-60 times depending on conditioning level. It only takes 10-20 mins but its really effective.

another example of a lower intensity (not as effective but less demanding on recovery ability and can be done more often)

30 sec fast cycle (80% effort) followed by 30 sec slow cycle (30% effort)repeat 10-20 times

Does it work: Yes. Intervals are a valuable fat loss tool in any training program. Not as good as Method 2 but intervals can be added in for added effect.

Method 4 – Strength training

This method focuses on retaining as much muscle as possible while letting fat loss occur through diet. The weights that you life should reamin heavy, and the number of reps per set should remain low. The idea is to make sure that we lose little to no muscle or strength during the fat loss phase.

My experience of this is a personal one. On a diet with few calories, I did not perform any intervals or LSD training because my calorie intake was to low to support those training methods. I went to about 5-6% body fat and had the “ripped look”. If I had used a different kind of fat loss training method, my muscle mass would have dropped and that would have been terrible news on a reduced calorie diet. Exercise volume (total weight lifted) must be kept low because we match this kind of training to a lower calorie diet.

A sample workout would look something like this

A: Barbell Squat 3 reps x 6 sets 120s rest between sets

B1: Barbell Row 5 reps x 3 sets 90 sec rest

B2: Military Press 5 reps x 3 sets 90 sec rest

C: Step up 5 reps/leg x 3 sets 90 sec rest

Does it work? Yes but the workout doesn’t burn that many calories and the disturbance is not as much as metabolic training (Method 2).

So far all I have given are the 4 main methods that are in use today. “So what should I use?” you ask. Ok It depends on who you are.

For a beginner to intermediate client (1 year hard training or less) with a fat loss priority, Use method 2 and 3 together. 30-40 mins of metabolic training + 10-20 mins of intervals will do the trick.

For an advanced client (great technique, strong for their body weight), use method 2, 3, and a sprinkling of 4 (1 in every 6 to 8 training sessions. 40 mins of strength/metabolic training + 10-20 mins of intervals

For a athletes in metabolic sports (lots of running around) who need to lose a bit of fat, use method 2 with a bit of 4. Sport training will take care of the “interval” requirements.

For athletes in a power/speed sport (sprints, throws, weightlifting) who need to make a lower weight class, use 4 with a bit of 3. Let a reduced calorie diet take care of the fat loss. Use training to maintain strength, power and speed. Also keep the intervals in the high intensity range. If your sport training has tempo runs or sprints, you can cut out the intervals entirely.

Hope this clears up any misconceptions about fat loss training. Once again you MUST eat cleanly for fat loss. Get to you goals quickly and wisely.

Coach Jonathan Wong is Singapore’s Top Personal Trainer and Fitness Expert. He is a sought after author on fitness topics and is a member of Men’s Health Advisory Panel. Clients come to him to improve their health, fitness and sports performance. He has helped hundreds of Singapore residents achieve their fitness goals. Get a free 1500 page e-book and constant newsletter and blog updates at http://www.coachjon.com

How To Drop Pounds At A Healthy Yet Fufilling Pace?

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

Im 155 pounds and 5′7 i know thats alittle too much and i wear a size 8-10 im hoping to fit perfectly into a size 7 by christmas. Is this practical? And what should i do?