Metabolism Manipulation: Firing Up a Slow Metabolism

You need a spark for a fire...

A slow metabolism sounds like a poor excuse that obese people use for eating too much and exercising too little. Overweight people despise thin people for naturally having a high metabolism who can eat anything that they crave without putting on weight.

Although some of us are able to cheat while others pick up weight looking at the cake display in a restaurant, the kilojoule burner in our body can be manipulated. By either making small changes in our diet or activity levels, we can kick start or speed up metabolism slightly, resulting in a more efficient machine that looks leaner.

By skipping meals and eating irregularly, we confuse our body and this could lead to fat storage when your body hoards the energy that is consumed. Experts recommend eating up to six small meals per day, but the quantities depend on energy expenditure. If your idea of exercise is moving from the car to the couch, fewer calories need to be consumed on the couch.

The excuse of not having time to exercise is just as unacceptable as wearing luminous unitards to the gym. Exercise choices include dancing, skating, group activities and outdoor sports. Exercise involves any physical activity that raises the heart rate and this means that the possibilities for energy expenditure are endless!

Regular intervals of raising the heart rate throughout the day can boost energy levels and wake up tired muscles. Dead times of the day include times when you are waiting in a queue, watching television or preparing a meal.

Use these times more effectively by:

1. Clench your buttocks together and hold a few seconds when sitting down.
2. Pull your navel towards your spine and reduce the area between your hips and belly to improve posture while driving.
3. Do a few calf raises when standing or talking on the phone.
4. Activate your lower abdominals by lifting your heels off the floor when sitting.
5. Buy a punch bag or speedball for the office or home and take out your frustrations each time you walk past.
6. Walk to the tv instead of using a remote to change channels.
7. Walk to the shops instead of driving.
8. Get home exercise equipment such as a cycle or stepper and sweat while watching television.
9. Play with the kids by running around the garden or wrestling with your partner.
10. Drink water instead of snacking on unhealthy food. One suggestion is adding the juice of half a lemon or 4 tablespoons of unsweetened cranberry juice to 32 ounces of water with a sprinkle of natural sweetner (honey, agave, raw sugar) . Aside from being less than 2 carbs, you will get the health benefits that it provides along with the vitamin C and electrolytes that lemons have. You can substitute limes for lemons if you get bored.
11. Keep a bag or apples or nuts at your desk to avoid chocolate temptation.
12. Pick up some dumbbells! You can speed up your metabolism and look leaner plus it gives you more energy!

Have an excellent day.

5 Workout Rules For Women

1. Stick to a time, but be flexible. Like clockwork leave your home at the same time to exercise. Even the morning after a late night event, make your workout. 

2. Ditch the crummy sweats.  Always looks great and wear the coolest athletic clothes! Look good, feel good, perform well! It will motivate you. I promise. 

3. Change it up.  Stay excited. One day go to the gym, the next jogging outside.  Never do the same thing twice in a row.

4. Find friends who love to work out. They’ll encourage you, they’ll join you.

5. Never over do it. Never workout for more than 45 minutes if you have a busy schedule. So take heart: An incredible body is never a full-time job- just regular commitment.

Turn Frustrated into Firm

Exercise is key to dropping pounds, but it’s only part of the equation. In one study, overweight adults who exercised and cut calories shaved up to 66% more inches from their waistlines than those who exercised or dieted alone. To pinpoint what’s making your scale stick, ask yourself these questions.

1.       Am I working hard enough? Exercise should be enjoyable, but to blast fat, you need to challenge yourself. At the right level, you’ll be breathing through your mouth (not just your nose).

2.       Am I snacking more? Working out can increase your appetite. To keep your energy up without overeating, have a 100 calorie snack before or after your session or exercise right before a meal.

3.       Are my portions oversized? Studies show most of us consistently underestimate our food intake. To keep tabs, write down everything that goes in your mouth, and for at least 1 day actually measure your portions. I tried it and was shocked at how many servings I poured into my cereal bowl!

4.       Am I in a workout rut? Doing the same routine day after day guarantees stalled results-and boredom! Muscles get used to the same movements, so it takes less effort and burns fewer calories. Instead, add some hills to your walk, switch up your speed or distance, or try a new toning DVD.

Getting You To Your Ideal Weight and Body Composition

There is no mystery to releasing weight.  People who do it successfully just figure out what works for them, and they stick to it.  Nobody knows that better than the researchers at the National Weight Control Registry, a group that tracks the successes and failures associated with long-term weight loss.  (Find them online at www.nwdr.ws ). The group has monitored more than 6,000 men and women since 1994 and has learned that if you want to lose weight-and keep it off- you need to adopt these six habits.

Do breakfast always: Never skip to save calories. It is a mistake.  A healthy breakfast gets your fat-burning engine started.  If you skip meals you are more likely to over-indulge later in the day

Cooking is a mainstay habit: Never slave over the stove.  Just start preparing your meals in advance and separate your portions for later meals.  

Inspiration will propel you: Most people (80%) can recall a point in their life that triggered their desire to release weight (bigger pair of pants, purchasing two seats on an airplane, being warned by a doctor). Whatever your rock-bottom moment becomes, keep it fresh in your memory and use it to stoke your motivation when you want to skip training.

Record your favorite shows:  Mindless flipping leads to mindless watching.  The average American watches 28 hours of television every week.  Use this time to get active. Record your favorite programs, cut out the crap, and get to the gym!

Balance nutrition and workout:  90% of fitness successful do both in balance. Snack on more veggies, avoid sweets, and stop missing your workouts.

Know your numbers:  You have to change the way you live.  That means monitoring everything from calories to your weight. Use these measurements as markers for your success.

Embrace this mantra: Work hard and you will be the talk of the town. Then pay it forward.

Never Let Weekends Make You Fat: Tips for the Weekend Warrior

If You Plan To Party:

• Take a break from your typical routine. Put demand on different muscles and muscle sequences.
• Pencil in at least a longer workout. 
• Take a swim instead of your typical stint on the elliptical machine; or play basketball or soccer. 
• Run hills or stairs. 
• Start Saturday or Sunday with a healthy breakfast even if you sleep in.

Chill at home:

• Check your weight on Saturday and again on Monday. 
• Variety may be the spice of life, but limiting your choices to healthy ones will favor you. Restrict afternoon snacks to one healthy choice such as almonds or popcorn. Limit or avoid the refills. 
• Avoid mindless eating when watching TV. Leave food and drinks in the kitchen.

Barhop:

• Head out with a full belly. Before hitting the bar, eat a meal with protein (6 oz.) and vegetables (1 cup). You will be less likely to cave in to junk food after a night out. 
• Stick with a 100-150 calorie beer or glass of wine. Steer clear of mixed drinks which can contain up to 500 calories each. You can use tonic or diet soda (diet soda not recommended). 
• Set a limit on how much you’ll spend on drinks before the night starts then alternate alcoholic beverages with water or club soda. 
• Get your REST. Sleep deprivation can wreak havoc on your metabolism and makes it difficult to avoid overeating, especially after a long night of drinking.

Eat Out:

• Order first. Set the tone for the meal by choosing a healthier entrée. 
• Never waste calories on mundane foods, like white rolls or baked potatoes. Save those calories for foods you never eat very often or never eat at all. 
• Drink with dinner, never before. A pre-dinner drink lowers your resistance, making you much more likely to indulge on empty calories.

Never Let Weekends Make You Weak:

• Most people eat more on Saturdays and Sundays than during the week. 
• Some people take in an extra 400 calories a day (enough to gain 12 pounds a year). 
• People consider the weekend to relax and unwind. 
• To avoid this eat small portions of your favorite weekends foods, stay within your calorie range and stay active.

5 Secrets to Surviving the Office Lunch

This was never meant to take anything away from the popularity of corporate lunches and the power of networking and using luncheons to close deals. Eating out with co-workers can also help one survive the office politics. The true problem is when one fails draw the line when trying to find congruence in his/her fitness program.

Here are some tips:

Always eat breakfast. Never skip breakfast and become impulsive or compulsive at lunch because you are starving. You will set yourself up for major failure here. 80% of fit people eat breakfast and 80% of people that need to release weight skip breakfast. Make a habit of it. Eat items (choose organic when you can) like eggs, peanut butter, oatmeal, berries, and pineapple (or any other fruit for that matter).

Strategize your meals. People are overly impulsive when they are distracted or rushed. If you are doing business it can also be a distraction. A good rule is to know what is on the menu before you go. Call ahead of time or have them fax the menu over.

Start with bulk. Salads should always be eaten first (especially at buffets). They contain minimal calories and will give you good nutrition and help to prevent you from overeating. Watch the dressing (get it on the side).

Minimize liquid calories. Brains triggers make it hard to know how many calories you might take in through liquids (especially carbohydrate based).Use unsweetened teas and water. Steer clear of diet beverages or artificial sweeteners. They contain neurotoxins and contribute to metabolic problems in the body which leads to disease.

Never Stuff Yourself: If you are feeling stuffed, skip dessert. The processed sugar in most desserts can send your blood sugar crashing. Excessive amounts of sugar also deplete crucial B vitamins needed by the liver to detoxify the body.

Sitting Negates Workout Benefits...

Think working out every day is helping if you have a desk job? Think again! A study of 4,757 adults that was just published in the European Health Journal found that sedentary employees who barely moved from their desks during working hours imperiled their health. In general, the subjects who moved the least during working hours had the most risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, while those who both moved frequently during the day and engaged in regular exercise had the least.

How does this affect you and how many breaks does it take to protect your health? The data showed that the most active subjects took up to 1,300 breaks per week, compared to only around 100 for the most sedentary. Consider that three breaks an hour in a 40-hour week only comes to 120 breaks -- and that's the lowest end of the scale. Also remember that the data shows that you can't make up for prolonged periods of inactivity by cramming it in on the weekend. Again, it's sitting for long periods of time without breaks that creates the problems, and exercise later on in the day doesn't compensate adequately.

On the other hand, the data does NOT suggest that you should run out to Starbucks for a grande concoction every 15 minutes, nor that you should give up your afternoon jog because you stood up and stretched 40 times on Tuesday. The bottom line here is that activity leads to good health, and that means activity spread throughout the day and throughout all endeavors. If you have a sedentary desk job, you need to figure out how to keep yourself moving without going so kinetic that the boss calls in the EAP folks to administer valium. And surprise, it's not as hard as you think. There are countless opportunities throughout the day.

The experts suggest standing while talking on the phone, walking over to colleagues rather than emailing them, taking the stairs and strolling the corridors. All obvious stuff, but as the chair of the American Council for Fitness & Nutrition, Susan Finn, points out, "Setting up huge goals for people to get them to devote huge blocks of time during the day to exercise just doesn't work. People won't do it. Instead, getting people to engage in purposeful activity, trying to motivate small changes, is the way to go. It's all about making this stuff, these small changes, doable for people, and the workplace is a very good example, a very good place to start.

FEELING GOOD...

Tune in to your body...

Your body is trying to tell you something, but you're just not listening! To win at the weight-loss game, you've got to make some changes. One of the most important ones is to stop listening to anything but your body to establish a realistic weight for your specific build. Forget about what you see and hear from pop-culture sources.

Falling Off The Wagon...

There are times when we gain those "few extra pounds" through bouts of overeating. Holidays, times of stress, changes in normal routines are all contributing factors. It's easy to get into the habit of overeating. What's not easy is rectifying the situation. When you break it down, the reason for this becomes quite clear.

It takes an extra 3,500 calories to gain a single pound of body fat. If you picked up an extra five or ten pounds, we're talking about an extra 17,500-35,000 calories. Chances are, you didn't do that in one sitting. In fact, if you're like most people, you gained that weight by allowing a number of bad eating habits to creep in…and become firmly established. Therefore, saying you need to "eat better" isn't going to give you the structure you need to change these lifestyle habits you've accrued.

So how do you make these changes?

Start small. Take a look at what you've been eating daily and see what small changes you can make to lower your calorie count. Say no to mayo or fatty dressings and sauces, skip the bacon and change to whole-wheat options instead of white. Don't forget the calories in drinks as well. Always order the smallest size and preferably, just order water.

Control portions. If you're eating out, order appetizers or split your meal with someone else. If that's not option, tell the server to wrap up half of your meal to go before serving it to you to avoid accidental overeating.

Eat less, more often. We often find ourselves overeating or eating less healthy options when we're starved. Keep this "need food now panic" at bay by eating more small meals throughout the day. Include healthy snacks such as vegetables, fruits and low-fat options to round out your diet.