Want to Lose Weight? Seven Habits to Avoid

There are commonalities of those of us that struggle with weight. Due to many years of unhealthy habits and food choices, we have found ourselves overweight or obese. Habits are hard to break but they can be broken. Replace the unhealthy habits that have made you heavy with healthy habits to not only help you to lose weight but to keep it off and maintain. I’ve probably lost 2,000 pounds in my lifetime only to lose and regain plus a few bonus pounds from the diet. To help you to lose weight and reach your weight loss goals, notice if any of these habits are applicable to you. If so, change the habit, change your weight, change your life.

1. Eating sweet, sugary treats regularly. If you can eat a bite of something you’d like to eat, great! However, if it is a trigger food to set you off on a day-long binge (or longer), it is best to avoid eating it in the first place. Be aware of your behavior and know yourself. There are some food choices that I just can’t handle. Thanks to losing my weight and maintaining it for years, I’m now able to be more in control. My trigger foods have lost their power over my ability to make healthy choices.

2. Eating the majority of meals in restaurants or fast food. Restaurant portions are huge. Usually, a portion in a restaurant is the equivalent to three or more healthy portions. If you must eat out, ask for a to go box at the time that you order. When your meal comes, take your single portion and put the rest in the box. You’ll save calories and money to eat it the following day. Fast food is void of nutrition but packed with calories, fat, and carbohydrates. Fast food may be fast but it is far from healthy. The additional time you spent in preparing something healthy for you is minimal compared to the additional time spent trying to lose the weight from fast food.

3. Faster causes fatter. Slow it down. It takes 20 minutes for the message to travel from your stomach to your brain that you’re satisfied. Yes, it take 20 minutes for your brain to essentially catch up to your stomach’s “I’m full” cues. Eat slower to allow sufficient time for your stomach to communicate with your brain. In 20 minutes, you can consume a lot of excess food. Put down your fork or spoon between bites.

4. Have a sedentary mindset. Become aware for small ways to be active. Exercise is important yet being active is also a mindset. Look for ways throughout your day to be more active. Little things can lead to a more active lifestyle and extra calories burned along with a boost to your metabolism. Take breaks and go outside for a different perspective and for some fresh air. Muscles were meant for movement rather than sitting at a desk all day. Take the stairs instead of the escalator; park further away rather than drive around for a closer space. People that lose weight and maintain it have a mindset to move their body.

5. Don’t exercise regularly. There’s no way around it, exercise is a component to weight loss. Exercise (such as walking) a few days a week along with resistance training is the key to weight loss. Resistance training is important because it builds muscle. Muscle helps boosts your metabolism and burns more fat. Even walking around the room, walking in place or lifting hand weights during commercials while you watch television can make a difference.

6. Eating as a recreational activity. Eating in response to true hunger is a physiologically and psychologically satisfying, nurturing experience. Many people eat out of food triggers, soothe emotions, or even provide an outlet for boredom. Eat because you are physically hungry and not according to the clock or in response to your head.

7. Skip meals. One of the ways to encourage a late day binge is to skip meals. By skipping meals results in larger meals and unhealthy food choices. Being overly hungry triggers eating fast and overeating, along with poor food choices. Feed your body throughout the day to avoid issues with insulin and blood sugar rise and crash episodes.

Habits are created and habits can be broken. Identify the habits that promote overeating and unhealthy food choices. Become aware of how many habits don’t serve you well and assist you in losing weight. After you’re aware, it’s time to take action. Take the heavy habits and exchange them for healthy habits. Before you know it, your new healthy habits will be such a natural part of who you are and what you do with your diet and activity per day. If you’re tired of being heavy, ditch the habits that make you heavy. Healthy habits are the way to reaching your weight loss goal.

Want Extreme Fat-Loss – Shock Your Body

Are you looking to get:

lean, toned, and in great shape

better health and abundant energy

increased self confidence

A Shock to your body for fast results

The Shock For Fat Loss Strategy Here’s the down and dirty facts about extreme fat loss in WA. You’re gonna need to incorporate 3 important components of overall fitness.

Supportive Nutrition

Moderate Cardiovascular Exercise

A Concern For Muscle (Strength Training)

Any Shock weight loss program must have 3 key components present in order to be successful. They are: a moderate amount of aerobic activity, overloading the muscle, and lastly supportive nutrition, I’ll explain a little more about each of these in more detail in just a bit.. They carry about the same importance, nutrition probably being the highest. I want to go into a little more detail about each of these starting with:

Shock Tip #1: Moderate amount of aerobic activity

First let me say that aerobic activity definitely is important when it comes to weight and fat loss, however you can go too far. Aerobic exercise is a necessary Shock strategy and is very popular with women of all ages, and some would have you to believe that endless hours of cardio is the key to a shapely body, but I have to tell you that not only is excess cardiovascular exercise not the best things, but it can in fact be detrimental to successful weight loss.

In short excessive cardio will break down muscle tissue, and muscle tissue is metabolically active in the body, which basically means that it burns calories 24 hours a day even while you sit down or sleep. To preserve as much muscle as possible, limit your cardiovascular exericse to about 30 minutes. 3-4 times per week. To supplement the weekly aerobic activity some form of strength training should also be included!

Shock Tip #2: Overloading the muscle

This portion of the weight loss formula is often forgotten or just left out intentionally. Overloading the muscle is just another way of saying that you put higher than normal amounts of stress on the muscle group you are working on to ensure that all of your muscle is maintained while you are on a weight loss cycle! This can literally be an endless amount of activities, from push-ups and pull-ups to rock climbing or whatever strikes your fancy. Most importantly if it is something that you enjoy you will much more likely to continue doing it.

I want to share a little strategy that can very much help you or anyone to make sure that you get your physical activity in every day, simply put you have to schedule it into your day just like it was a business meeting or a proposal or anything else that is a mandatory duty. If you just go through the day you will never find the time to exercise, you have to make the time, just like you would with any other important activity.

A good way to summarize this up is with a quote by Stephen Covey, “The Key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” Just like with anything in life if it is important enough to you, you will find a way to fit it in your daily life, no matter what you think your current schedule is like! Lastly I want to cover possibly the most crucial part of the weight loss puzzle!

Shock Tip #3: Supportive Nutrition

The nutritional Shock aspect of a weight loss program is probably the most confusing for many individuals in this country. After all with literally hundreds of different diet’s and their books touting the various forms of food exclusivity or focusing on just one food or food group or macro-nutrient. Often times people are so confused that they just don’t do anything which is the worst thing you can do.

Whatever you do, do something, you don’t have to have a perfect plan to have a Shock, just get started. You can always improve upon what you are doing the further you get into it and the more you learn. So, what are the right foods to eat.

Really you just want to eat like you think your mom would have you eat, healthy food, and balanced amounts of various foods. It is really, so simple, just think of what common sense would tell you. Would 3 cinnamon rolls for breakfast be better or a couple of eggs and some fruit, or perhaps a bowl of oatmeal with some cottage cheese? Basically you want to eat as many unprocessed foods in their natural state for carbohydrates, various forms of meat are great, limiting the amount of high-fat meats to a few times per week. Then a moderate amount of fat through, nuts, oils and other fat containing foods.

There you have it the Shock Principles to finally achieve that body, health and life you’ve always wanted.

A Quick Look at Some of Today’s Most Effective Diets

The idiot-proof diet is all about calorie shifting. That is, in this diet, you shift your food intake throughout the day instead of eating just 3 meals a day. The diet is popular because it’s actually very easy to follow and there are hardly any restrictions when it comes to the types of food you can eat.

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The Idiot-Proof Diet

The idiot-proof diet is all about calorie shifting. That is, in this diet, you shift your food intake throughout the day instead of eating just 3 meals a day. The diet is popular because it’s actually very easy to follow and there are hardly any restrictions when it comes to the types of food you can eat.

The ‘calorie shifting’ model takes place because you eat every two and half hours. The theory is that because your body is consuming calories (energy) constantly throughout the day, it’s always in ‘burning calories’ mode instead of the ‘saving calories’ mode.

When you sign up for the diet, you get access to a diet handbook, an 11-day diet-plan and a diet calculator. You get to pick what foods you like to eat so don’t think that you’ll be tarving in this diet!

NutriSystem

The NutriSystem way of dieting is all about proper meal planning. People love this diet because it takes away the burden of trying to figure out what to eat during their dieting phase. You see, a lot of people actually get confused as to what they can eat when they want to lose weight. That’s not really surprising because there’s so much information out there and for every yay sayer, there is a nay sayer so it’s really tough to know what to eat.

However, with NurtiSystem, they do all the meal planning and portion controlling for you. You just need to sign up to any of their diet programs (e.g., Women’s Program, Men’s Program, Vegetarian Program, etc.) and order a multi-day (usually for 28 days) diet program.

After you choose your diet program, a menu is presented to you and you simply choose what you want to eat. The meals are then delivered to your doorstep at various intervals during your diet program.

The South Beach Diet

The South Beach Diet is popular because the name alone conjures bikini-clad bodies! Add to that the fact that it was founded by a cardiologist, Dr. Arthur Agatston, then you have a sort of ‘doctor recommended, doctor approved’ seal on the diet as well.

At first glance, the South Beach Diet looks a lot like the Atkins Diet in the sense that it restricts carbohydrates during the initial phase of the program (there are 3 phases). The first phase (14 days) encourages ‘normal eating’ in the sense that you can pretty much eat whatever you want but you must NOT eat bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, or baked goods. Fruit is also not allowed. No sugar. No alcohol.

The second phase allows you to SLOWLY introduce these items back into your diet but at lesser levels that you consumed them before of course. The third phase is more about general maintenance.

Weight Watchers

Probably one of the longest running diet programs out there is Weight Watchers. It believes in the overall approach where food, exercise, behavior and support are addressed.

Weight Watchers is known for advocating a point system for foods. Using this system, one calculates the calorie intake of the foods he or she eats. The number of points you can have in a day varies depending on your weight. The beauty of the program is that there are no gut-wrenching food restrictions so you never feel deprived of anything. However, the point system teaches you how to balance your meals so that even if you indulge on one food item, you don’t go overboard and consume too much in a day.