Healthy Lifestyle

People often wonder whether there is any validity in ready to go weight loss diet plans such as Nutrisystem and similar packages. There are countless Nutrisystem Reviews online that mostly give it a good press, but then again, most of them are thinly veiled sales pitches, so of course they’re going to give them a glowing report! So do they really work? Let’s look at what we can see with our own eyes.

Diet plans are fine and in theory at lest should work well to help a person lose weight, as after all that’s what they’re designed to do. Most work by restricting your calorie intake in a 24 hour period. This is the major aspect of weight loss that would work every time if only the people that were doing the diet plan would also do some exercise to compliment it.

After all, you must burn more calories than you consume in order to lose weight. Its no good just restricting your calorie intake without exercising, or your nody will just go into survival mode and use even fewer of the calories you consume, while storing the excess as fat.

As good as any diet can be, it needs that combination of exercise and diet to truly work. Most diet plans are well balanced, with nutritious foods that are designed to supply the body with all the nutrients it needs while keeping the number of calories down to a reasonable level. That is along with reducing the amount of fats, trans fats, sugars and low GI carbohydrates, all of which tend to slow the body’s metabolism down. So by reducing these aspects, these diet plans actually help your body to lose weight by giving its metabolism a boost. All you have to do is stick to the diet and not cheat!

So the bottom line when it comes to weight loss diet plans such as Nutrisystem is that no matter how good their diet is, they will work if the person using them combines that diet with sufficient exercise to burn off the calories, no matter how few they are consuming each day.

The idea of losing water weight refers to getting rid of excess water that is retained in body tissue and not used for generally hydrating the body. So if you want to know how to lose water weight, read on.

Water retention, or edema to call it by its correct medical name, is a condition where the body stored excess fluid in body tissue which can cause swollen legs or ankles and causes a person to be heavier than they need to be. So how do you go about losing this excess fluid?

The very first thing you should do is to consult your doctor. That way the doctor can test for and rule out any medical conditions that might be causing your edema. If you are given a clean bill of health, you doctor may prescribe diuretic pills (water pills) which will help your body to flush the excess fluids. These must only be taken for a few days then stop, or following your doctor’s guidelines.

There is also a natural way to deal with water retention and that is through diet. Yes, that old weight watcher’s word raises its ugly head yet again. But really, if your diet is not up to par, then you are letting yourself if for a whole host of unhealthy conditions that will build up over time without you realizing and then will come out and hit you when you least expect it.

So for dealing with water retention, you should make sore you cut down on your salt intake for a start. If you are consuming too much sodium, you will retain more fluids as well as raise your blood pressure and risk several other medical problems down the line.

Cut down your refined sugar intake if this is high. Too much sugar causes a equal and opposite response by your body by releasing high levels of  insulin into your bloodstream, which not only cause more fat storage but also water retention.

Increase your intake of proteins if this is an area you are neglecting. That means more meat (of you are not vegetarian, that is) fish, nuts, seeds, fresh fruit and leafy green vegetables. Also increase you intake of omega 3 and 6 fatty acids (walnuts, flax seeds or cod liver oil caps are good for this)  and also the B vitamins.

Doing all these things while combining them with daily exercise and drinking more plain water (yes, really) and herbal teas and green tea will all help to rid you of the excess fluids in your body.

Welcome back and here has to be the most unpopular post on the planet right now! With a title like that, it’s bound to set off a chain reaction with millions of irate housewives shaking their fists at me and calling me out. But whatever they say, its true that doing housework is not only good for you, it helps keep your weight in check too. That’s right, you can actually lose weight doing housework!

How do I know this? Because I’m the one that does the housework in my home and the exercise is actually pretty beneficial, especially for someone who spends his working day in front of this computer writing stuff.

So how does it work?

Well, the whole strategy is based upon not seeing housework as a chore, but shifting your perception on it being a form of daily exercise designed to help tone up those flabby bits while burning off some excess calories that slobbing out on the sofa definitely does not. The disclaimer here is that this may not be for everyone as we’re all different, but its better than nothing and when you put your mind and determination into it, it can work for you too. Here’s how it works for me.

Ok, first job is to grab a CD with all my might and put it in the player. Loud, rhythmic music is essential, just like it is with aerobics. The style is your choice, but it has to be pretty fast, foot stomping stuff, so keep your Brahms lullaby stuff for after… I hate modern electronic music, being a musician myself I prefer real music played by real people and as I grew up in the late 60s, early 70s, I like foot stomping rocking music, so AC/DC are a favourite…

Ok, once the music is pounding the wall, I sweep what has to be swept in time to the music making a big deal out of each broom stroke. If my neighbours could see me they’d think I’d gone totally nuts… What has to be mopped gets mopped with the same treatment. Rough and tough! I run up and down stairs as fast as I can and as often as I can because that’s a great cardiovascular exercise. I don’t vacuum because I live in a house with marble floors so there are no carpets to vacuum, hence all the sweeping and mopping, but if I had to vacuum too, then I’d make sure I put a lot of energy into it just the same. Cleaning windows is hard work, especially the big ones, so I really put a lot of effort into it and by the time I’m done I’m sweating and out of breath.

That’s good and it means I’ve been working hard enough to shift those calories. Some jobs don’t get done every day and so you get to vary some of the jobs day to day, which is good. But every cleaning job gets pretty much the same treatment until I’m done.

Here’s the thing. If you don’t sweat and get out of breath, you’re not burning calories and you’re not working hard enough to lose weight. Work harder!

When you do all that for maybe an hour every day, you soon start to feel the benefit!

Welcome back to this healthy blog for another instalment of Rapid Weight Loss Tips that will astound you at their very simplicity and common sense. This time I’m really going to look at another immensely enjoyable thing that you can do and it will, believe it or not, lead to weight loss.

Stretching!

You bet! And I’m not talking about the pre-work out warm up kind of stretching exercises that you need to do before taking on a rigorous workout either. I’m talking about something that is much more pleasurable to do. And the best part about it is that you can do it in bed!

Now that I’ve grabbed your attention, the kind of stretching I’m proposing is the kind that you can do upon waking in the morning. It’s really simple and it also really kick starts your day.

Start by simply having a good lazy stretch. Spend some time doing this, but only a couple of minutes is plenty. Stretch your legs first and really feel every muscle all the way along the length of each leg really stretch and feel great. Then stretch your torso and at the same time put your arms out to the side and stretch them too. Stretch your hands and fingers feet and toes and finish with a great big yawn.

Ok, now get out of bed and stand up. Raise your arms over yoru head and stretch them up to the ceiling, while simultaneously stretching your legs again as well as your torso. Rise up onto the balls of your feet and do it again. One last yawn if you need it and your done!

Oh I’m sorry, you thought I might be talking about something else?

Ha! Is that a lazy person’s work out or what? You have to admit that easy weight loss tips don’t come much easier than that. So does it work?

You bet it does! It works because it sets all your muscles up for the day ahead, meaning that they’ll all work that much more efficiently and burn more calories. And you really will feel more awake and alive as you go into your day, so keep that happy feeling and have a great day!

Now everyone is searching for the perfect and easy to do Rapid Weight Loss Tips, so I think it is only fair to continue on this train of thought and post another one of these! After all, while the media is falling over itself to ram the whole weight loss thing down our throats, ordinary people are fretting because they think they may be a few pounds overweight just because they don’t look like the latest stick thin fashion model featured in the latest glossy magazine.

Well, that fires up the old indignity genes enough to draw forth a weight loss tip that hopefully adequately responds to this imbalance of nature!

This third in my mini series of rapid weight loss tips focuses not on what you can do to your body to lose a few pounds, but more on what you can do to your mind to come to a truthful self assessment as to whether you really do need to lose any weight at all!

Yes, you heard right! There are an unbelievable number of people who are not the slightest bit overweight. Yet because they don’t conform to what the media likes to make everyone believe about their weight, they put themselves on gruelling weight loss programs and deprive themselves of vital nutrients just so they can look like this years top model.

The truth, of course, is that they do not have to.

If you’re a young woman (and let’s face it, the media hype on weight loss is aimed unfairly and squarely at women), the pressure is enormous to be thinner, but the truth is that most men do not prefer their women to be so thin. You have to remember that fashion models are dressed by predominantly gay male fashion designers who prefer the flat chested slim hipped figure of their female models because they’d rather be dressing flat chested slim hipped MALE models.

So if you ever wondered why fashion models are so thin, now you know. If that upsets anyone, it shouldn’t. Be honest with yourself and you’ll see the common sense in that.

So take the pressure off yourself and rejoice in your body as it is. That’s assuming of course that you are actually NOT clinically overweight. But even if you are a few pounds more than what you should be, if you feel healthy and can run around without getting out of breath too quickly, then don’t sweat it. Keep doing that and you’ll find a healthy balance between what your body says feel right for it and what the doctor says is right.

Bottom line, the rapid weight loss tip for this post is to STOP worrying about what the magazines say you should look like and just be what your body says it should be like. You’ll feel pounds lighter in an instant!

There is no shortage of people wanting to lose weight and I believe that this is one of those things that is not likely to be changing anytime soon. My last post here gave some more Rapid Weight Loss Tips, set the trend for a mini-series of posts along the lines of losing weight so I’ll add to the first with a second and see where it takes us after that!

What is this magical nugget of thought provoking wonder that will help someone in their quest to shed a few pounds?

Well, it sort of follows the first tip where you really should spend a lot less time in front of the television because it involves one of the easiest of all exercises to do and when you knuckle down to doing it on a regular basis, it really does help you to lose weight. Don’t be too shocked when you see what it is!

Walking.

Well, if you thought I was going to say something else, sorry to disappoint! Plain good old fashioned walking has a lot more going for it than many people realise. For a start, it gets you out of the house and into the fresh air, which is always beneficial and if you can do that on a bright sunny day, then the sun will lift your mood and bring a more positive feeling within you. Exposure to the sun also helps your body to produce vitamin D, which is essential for enabling your body to efficiently absorb calcium for strong bones. Just not too much all in one go because of teh dangers of skin cancer.

But what is usually recommended are bursts of between 30 minutes to an hour of brisk walking twice a day, once in the morning and once again in the evening. As long as you put some effort into your walking and don’t simply amble along, then you’ll raise your heart rate and force your muscles to do some work, which, as long as you do it for more than twenty minutes, will cause your body to begin to burn some of the excess stored fat as energy to fuel those muscles!

That’s about that for this timely and rapid weight loss tip! Walking on its own is better than no exercise at all, but of course you will get more benefit if you watch what you eat and mix your exercise up a bit, but that’s the topic for another of my rapid weight loss tips, for another day and another post!

I’m slacking a little here as the weight of work has eaten up all my time, so my last post Healthy Foods: Ginger, is over a week ago and I apologise for the break. But I’m back today and I thought it might be nice to break away from the healthy food mini-series I’m putting together to begin a weight loss tips type of mini-series that I’ll intersperse with the healthy food posts. That way you’ll get good diet tips along with some related ways to lose weight.

Today’s tip is a simple one and one that will probably sound pretty unpopular to most people, but it is a legitimate way to lose weight and you can do it quickly. So what is this magic pill that you don’t have to swallow?

Its called Ditch the TV!

Oh great. What has the TV, or lack of it got to do with losing weight?

Plenty. You see, the TV is constantly ramming advertisements into your brain to buy this and buy that. Guess what it wants you to buy loads of? Yep, fast foods, fizzy drinks, processed meals etc that are all full of just about everything that’ll make you gain weight, get sick and curtail your lifespan in some nasty way!

Oh wonderful… what will I do without the TV?

That’s the beauty of this king of all weight loss tips . What you do without a TV is LIVE!!! Get out of the house and do some exercise, like walking, running, cycling, swimming. Go dancing, go skateboarding, go have some fun!

You won’t miss that brain washing, mind numbing piece of junk after much time and you’ll be amazed at all the things you’ve been missing out on by spending hours in front of the thing every day.

Now isn’t that a great tip?

I’ll be back with more posts covering health, weight loss, diet and anything else related very soon!