Five Weight Loss Habits You Can Start Today
Are you trying to lose weight? If you are, you may want to know adopting some new habits can speed up the process. These are things that you can do to make losing weight faster and easier. Just a few changes in habits and lifestyle can make a huge difference.
Here are five great weight loss habits that you can start today.
1. Eat often.
It may seem strange to you, but if you eat more often you can help your body to burn more fat and lose weight. The trick is to make the correct food choices, and also to eat smaller portions.
If you have a tendency for three meals a day, then try eating 5-6 smaller meals. Ensure each meal has some protein, some fruit or vegetables. For an example, nuts make an excellent snack, as do apples or a piece of cheese. If you choose whole grains along with your fruit and vegetables, this will help to keep your hunger pangs at bay for a while.
2. Eat protein.
Protein keeps your blood sugar level steady, instead of the highs and lows you get when you eat starchy or sugary snacks. Your energy level will be even for longer and you won’t experience hunger cravings.
3. Drink water and green tea.
Many people mistake thirst for hunger, so drinking more fluids can help you to feel full. Water and green tea are also good for flushing toxins from your body. Green tea is well known for weight loss as it stimulates your metabolism, and it also contains caffeine which helps to suppress your appetite. Drinking green tea is an excellent weight loss habit to get into.
4. Walk .
If your body is moving then your metabolism speeds up. The more you move the more fat you will burn. Experts have recommended walking ten thousand steps a day, which works out to about five miles. If you walk a lot at work, and you can squeeze in a few ten minute walks here and there in the course of your day, then you will make that target easily. Your also likely to find that you feel a lot better, too.
5. Lift some weights.
Muscle burns fat faster than other tissues, plus a strength training workout will burn a lot of calories, during your workout, and after. Add a strength training workout to your week or lift some weights for twenty minutes before you do your cardio workout and your weight loss will be faster.
Diet and fitness experts will tell you the best way to lose weight and keep it off for good is to change your lifestyle. You need to adopt healthy habits and get rid of the unhealthy ones. These five weight loss habits are a great place for you to start losing the weight you want to lose. And keeping it off for good.
It’s Official! Drinking Water Helps With Weight Loss
Hurrah! No more potions, gruelling exercise, or all turnip diets.
In what could fairly be called a watershed moment, scientists have confirmed that drinking copious amounts of water before a meal helps shed the pounds.
Yup, it’s that simple. In clinical trials scientists found that drinking two half pint glasses of water before a meal leads to weight loss.
Lead author Brenda Davy said: “We found in earlier studies that middle aged and older people who drank two cups of water right before eating a meal ate between 75 and 90 fewer calories during that meal. In this recent study, we found that over the course of 12 weeks, dieters who drank water before meals, three times per day, lost about 5 pounds more than dieters who did not increase their water intake.”
“People should drink more water and less sugary, high-calorie drinks. It’s a simple way to facilitate weight management,” she added.
While drinking water to lose weight is very much common sense, Dr Davy said that there has been little scientific information on this topic. Previous studies did suggest that drinking water before meals reduces calorie intake, but according to Dr Davy this was the first randomized controlled intervention trial demonstrating that increased water consumption is an effective weight loss strategy.
The study followed 48 adults aged 55 to 75, divided into two groups. One group drank 2 cups of water prior to meals and the other did not. All of the subjects ate a low-calorie diet during the study. Over the course of 12 weeks, water drinkers lost about 15.5 pounds, while the non-water drinkers lost about 11 pounds.
Dr Davy said water may be so effective simply because it fills up the stomach and has no calories. People feel full, and eat less during the meal.
Diet colas and other artificially sweetened drinks can also help reduce calorie intake and help weight loss, Dr Davy added.
What to Expect When you Cleanse – the Side Effects
If you are about to do a cleanse or detox, there are some side effects and other things you should know about and be ready for. There are both positive and negative side effects.
Negative Side Effects
Because I like to end on a positive note, let’s start with the negative side effects first!
Headaches:
When you begin to leave substances like caffeine and sugar out of your diet, things that your body is used to getting, you may suffer from headaches during the first few days of the cleanse. This is because your body is technically going through withdrawals from these addictive substances.
Lightheaded or Dizziness:
When cleansing, what you are doing is reducing the amount of food to your body. This might make you feel lightheaded or dizzy. As your body adjusts, you should start to feel a lot better.
Crankiness:
When your body stops getting what it’s used to, you may feel cranky or grumpy. Again, once your body adjusts to being cleansed, after 3 or 4 days or so, you should start to feel brighter and be much happier and more positive.
Insomnia:
Usually, when doing a cleanse over an extended period of time, you tend to alter your schedule, therefore you may experience some disruption to your sleeping pattern. Nothing to be alarmed about and this will also pass as soon as your body adjusts.
Very Loose Bowels:
Of all the negative side effects, this is probably the most unpleasant. But this is your body’s way of getting rid of all those nasty toxins. It’s a good idea to stay close to home when cleansing; read that book you’ve always been meaning to , or learn a new skill on your home computer!
Positive Side Effects
Now that the negative side effects are done with, let’s finish with a couple of positive side effects that will make your detox worthwhile.
Weight Loss:
This is probably the number one reason people choose to do a detoxification cleanse. Whether you do a full 10 day cleanse, like the Lemonade Cleanse, or a 24 hour cleanse once a week, you could well experience a weight loss from anywhere in the region of a couple of pounds up to 20 pounds or more. This is most likely due to the reduction of food you’re taking in and water weight.
Sense of Well Being:
Cleansing your body will leave you with an overall sensation of purification throughout your body; and because you have rid your body of nasty toxins that have built up over the years, you are more than likely to feel more alert and focused, as well as more energized.
Four Ideas For Weight Loss With The Wii Fit Plus
The Nintendo Wii gaming console first appeared on the market in 2005, with the Wii Fit being introduced in May of 2008. The Wii Fit Plus was made available to buy in 2009, and although this “new and improved” version may not be selling as quickly as it once did, it is still a hot item and sales are comfortably still in the millions.
So what’s all the fuss about? After all it’s just another gaming device right? Well yes, and no! It is a gaming console, sure, but it can also help you to get fit AND have fun doing it. And people love that fact. The whole family can get involved, especially the kids, in getting up, getting moving and getting fit. With obesity rates on the rise, getting some exercise has become more important than ever before.
You’re probably thinking well OK, that’s great but will the Wii Fit Plus really help me lose weight? That’s kind of a loaded question. Because if you are following a healthy diet at the same time, then any type of activity you do has the potential to help you lose weight. As long as you are burning more calories than than you consume. So, for the purpose of this post we’ll assume you’re eating a well-balanced healthy diet. And in that case the answer is yes the Wii Fit Plus can help you to lose weight.
Here are four ways the Wii Fit Plus can help you to your weight loss targets:
1 Body Test.
OK, technically this won’t help you lose weight, but this is where you’ll get weighed, learn of your BMI, etc. The machine will keep track of this information for you and you’ll be able to track your progress along the way. A very handy tool.
2 Aerobics.
This is the section where you’re going to find the exercising games that will make you break sweat and get your heart rate up. You’ll also find things like super hoopla and step aerobics in here.
3 Variety.
One thing a lot of people on a weight loss plan have a grumble about is the fact that they get bored doing the same exercises again and again. With the Wii Fit Plus, the large variety of exercise games that are available make it a lot easier not to get bored while keeping fit.
4 Frequency.
As with any exercise program consistency is key. You can’t expect to lose weight if you only use it once in a while. So set up a program and stick to it. You’ll be glad you did when you start to see some results.
So, now you know you can lose weight with the Wii Fit Plus, and have fun at the same time, why not give it a go. Just remember to use it along with a healthy eating plan and you’ll be happy with the results you can achieve.
For more information on the Wii Fit Plus and some of the many exercise games available please click HERE or HERE
An Overview of Detox and Cleansing for Weight Loss
If you are looking to lose some weight, detox and cleansing are two words you’ve probably heard a lot about. There are ads everywhere for this detox diet or that colon cleanse weight loss program. But what exactly do the two terms mean? This is a simple explanation of how a detox or a cleanse can help you to lose weight.
The words detox and cleanse can generally be interchanged and are used to describe a method of getting your body free of damaging toxins. Our bodies are made to get rid of these toxins naturally, through the liver, kidneys, lungs, intestines and skin. Doing a detox or cleansing diet for a short while helps to boost the body’s process, increases your metabolism and can help you to lose weight faster.
You will find numerous detox diets, some free and some you will have to pay for. But you will probably be able to find enough information online to create a healthy and safe detox diet that, firstly, you will enjoy and secondly, you will get the desired results. Most of these diets are designed to be used for a limited time, somewhere between 1 week to 3 months, but not usually for any longer than that. To add to that, some experts suggest a 24 hour detox once a week or once a month to maintain proper health.
A lot of people, when thinking of a detox diet, imagine it as a nasty tasting liquid diet, but a great tasting and healthy cleansing diet includes fruits like strawberries, cherries, prunes and apricots as well as raw vegetables. Unsweetened fruit juices, lean chicken and turkey, brown rice and fish are also natural foods which won’t put any additional strain on your organs.
The number one drink while on a cleansing diet is of course water. And to give your metabolism a boost, try ice cold water with lemon. The cold water will help you burn 100 calories as your body has to heat the water in order to digest it. The lemon, along with other citrus fruits, is another natural detoxifying food to include in your diet.
You may also have seen advertised some magical powder or detoxifying pills, but mostly these are just gimmicks and won’t do anything special to rid your system of damaging toxins. If you do some research, and go with natural, whole foods you probably already have in your fridge, this will probably be the easiest and least expensive way to detox and cleanse your body for weight loss.
N.B. Please remember to always seek your doctor’s advice before starting on any diet.
