Posted by Virginia H. | Posted in Articles, General tips | Posted on 27-05-2010-05-2008
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Your friends, your cold, your spending habits–science can blame just about everything for filling our jeans to overflowing. But how much extra poundage are these surprising factors really responsible for? We dug through the research to find out what’s stalling womens weight loss.
The risk: Your Flabby Friends – 2 lbs
Palling around with a tubby crowd could be worse than having Rosie O’Donnell as your diet coach. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at the social networks of 12,067 people over 32 years and found that for every 10 pounds a person gained, close friends of the same height gained an average of one to two pounds.
Improve your odds Instead of making plans to go out for drinks and dinner, catch up with your buds as you sweat on side-by-side elliptical machines, play racquetball, or cruise town on your bikes. Don’t take no for an answer!
The risk: Credit Cards – 5 lbs
Your plastic may be affecting more than just your credit score. Visa conducted a study of 100,000 fast-food restaurant transactions and found that people who pay for their food with a credit card spend 30 percent more than those who pay with cash. Opt to swipe and you could end up with a double quarter-pounder with cheese and a large Coke instead of a quarter-pounder with cheese and medium drink. For the average woman, who visits a fast-food restaurant once a week, that adds an extra 17,160 calories, or 4.9 pounds, per year.
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Posted by Virginia H. | Posted in Articles, Eating habits and diet | Posted on 16-04-2010-05-2008
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Your cube mate advises against eating after 8 p.m., a girl from your yoga class swears by the grapefruit diet, and your best friend warns that mixing carbs and protein can pack on the pounds. Sure, you’ve been hearing diet tips like these from well-meaning people for years, but is there any truth to them? To set the record straight on the most oft-repeated advice, we consulted a team of nutrition experts. They revealed which strategies you should forget and which live up to their get-slim promise.
Q. Will chewing low-cal foods like sugar-free gum and celery help me burn calories?
A. It might, but hardly enough to trigger weight loss. Gum and certain veggies are often called “negative-calorie” foods because they supposedly take more energy for your body to chew or digest than they contain.
The negative-calorie myth was put to the test when researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, asked people to chew sugarless gum at a rate of 100 bites per minute. After calculating the energy expended (about 11 calories per hour), they concluded that a person who chomped on a piece every waking hour of the day for a month would lose less than a pound. As for celery? All that crunching does burn energy, but it amounts to less than the 6-calorie stalk contains. The bottom line: If you really want to shed pounds, give your jaw a rest and start moving your body.
Q. Can coffee really rev up my metabolism?
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Posted by Virginia H. | Posted in General tips | Posted on 05-04-2010-05-2008
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Getting enough sleep is very important. Without even realizing it, we tend to eat more when we are tired; it is a way to “perk” ourselves up. While eating something high in carbs will give you a burst of energy, it will soon fade away. Feeling well-rested may help keep that “afternoon slump” at bay (and you away from the fridge).
To be an efficient fat-burning machine, your body requires at least eight hours of
sleep a night. If you think that you’re doing yourself a favor by sleeping less, you’re mistaken. Give your body time to rest itself, both mentally and physically. Sleep is very, very important (if only for mental alertness for the following day).
Sleep just right. Don’t sleep too long or too short because according to a study done by researchers at Laval University in Quebec, people who slept too long (over 8 hours) & people who slept too short (under 6 hours) were more likely to gain weight than people who slept the normal 7-to-8 hours.
Also when you don’t get enough sleep the levels of
leptin in your body are lowered. Leptin is a blood protein that suppresses your appetite. With your levels of
leptin being lowered due to sleep depravation your appetite is tend to grow.
This is one of the easiest and most pleasant recommendations of how to loose weight fast and effectively at home.
Posted by Virginia H. | Posted in Physical activity | Posted on 25-03-2010-05-2008
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Someone who increases the level of physical activity above usual, but maintains the same diet and calorie intake, will almost certainly lose weight. No matter if you hate gyms – even light exercise, such as a short 20 minute walk or visiting a dancing class, will be beneficial if done most days of the week. If you are on a light diet or taking Green Tea or other supplement increasing physical activities is even more efficient and you will lose weight even faster.
Interesting fact: Every single time you exercise more than usual, you burn calories and fat.
There are lots of different ways to increase the amount of physical activity you do. Team sports and games, aerobics or martial art classes, running, walking, swimming and cycling will all improve your fitness levels.
I will write more deep about physical activities in future posts.
Posted by Virginia H. | Posted in General tips | Posted on 21-03-2010-05-2008
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This is the basis of any diet or weight loss methods, you need to know how many calories you consume on average per day. From now on you should start counting your daily calories (you can use electronic calorie counters or just put it down on paper). Usually you can find the amount of calories of a product on its label (look for kcal). I also suggest USDA National Nutrient Database to find information about calories, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, carbohydrates, protein, and fiber in different products.
Now all this information in this and previous posts should be enough for you to determine your body index and set a goal of calories to cut per day. For fast but still safe results it is recommended to cut 15-30% of your daily amount of calories (depends on your lifestyle, sex and BMI).
Warning: Keep in mind this general rule of thumb: women should not go below 1200 calories and men should not go below 1800 calories a day. Your body burns up most of its daily calories just by keeping your body alive — even while you’re asleep! It needs fuel (calories) to do this.
Interesting Fact: A calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. The calories in food are actually kilocalories or 1000 calories. When we say that a carbohydrate like sugar has 4 calories per gram, we really mean that it has 4 kilocalories per gram. This means that one gram of sugar has enough energy to raise the temperature of 1000 grams of water by 4 degrees Celsius. The calories in food provide a measure of the energy content of the food.
