November 15th, 2008 — carbohydrates, fats, healthy eating, proteins
One of the best ways to ensure healthy weight loss is to find the right balance for your meals. Proteins, fats and carbs are all essential, but you need to have the right amount of each to make sure that your diet will work. It can be a little difficult at first, but once you get started it will become easier.
First, you'll need to discuss your options with your doctor or with a nutritionist. They can help you come up with a percentage of each type that will work for your own unique needs. Remember, we are not all the same when it comes to the type of fuel that we need for our bodies. Some people can get away with a diet consisting largely of protein, while others will not be able to do without carbs.
In order to avoid feeling deprived, you need to find this balance and the right percentage. Commonly, most dieters stick to the 40/30/30 percentage, but you may find that you need to tweak this a bit for your own needs. With the right balance you should not experience feelings of dissatisfaction or cravings.
One of the main reasons that we suffer from cravings and have a hard time handling a new diet is due to blood sugar. After years of indulging in sweets, our bodies become used to that influx of sugar. If you suddenly stop eating these foods, your blood sugar can get out of whack very quickly. The sudden lows can lead to dizziness or feeling light headed.
To avoid this, make sure that you are getting the right amount of good carbs in your diet to replace the bad ones. For example, instead of eating white bread, switch to whole wheat. Instead of a can of soda, have a piece of fruit. You'll be giving your body the sugar it needs with much less calories.
Protein is a very important part of building lean muscle mass which in turn serves to ramp up your metabolism. Once again, the key to finding the right balance is substituting high risk protein with foods that are good for you. Instead of having a fatty piece of red meat, eat a chicken breast or a serving of tuna. Your body won't feel deprived, because it is getting the right amount of protein, just in a lower calorie form.
Although you wouldn't think it made sense, our bodies actually do need fat to function properly. If you try to aggressively cut all fat out of your diet, your body is definitely going to suffer. However, you need to make sure that you are eating the right kind of fat. Stay away from saturated fats, like butter, and use the "healthy" fats such as olive oil.
It may not be as tasty at first, but you'll be providing your body with the fuel that it needs to survive and retraining your cravings with much healthier foods.
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June 18th, 2008 — blood sugar, caffeine, carbohydrates, fats, metabolism, proteins
If you want to jump start your weight loss efforts, you're going to need to focus on your metabolism. For most of us, our metabolisms have either been slowed by yo-yo dieting or even genetics and it can be hard to get them back again. However, it is not impossible to kick start your metabolism once again. You just need to make sure you are using the right techniques.
Many people fall on the theory that caffeine is the easiest method you can use to increase your metabolism. While this is true in the short term, the drawbacks are numerous and it's not good for your body or your heart to take too much caffeine. You can actually end up with caffeine intoxication if you have more than 500mg of caffeine in a day. That's the equivalent of two large cups of coffee from Starbucks to put that into perspective.
Instead of relying on external ways to increase your metabolism, it's time to look inward. First, let's talk about blood sugar. If your blood sugar is out of whack, your metabolism is too. Your body is spending too much time processing the wrong kind of foods and your metabolism suffers for it. If you're constantly throwing your body through feast and famine when it comes to sugar, chances are your levels are far out of whack.
To fix this, you need to make sure that you are getting the right balance of proteins, carbs and fats. This gives your body the chance to actually start burning fat instead of working on handling all the sugar that you've thrown at it. Keep in mind however, that you do need some sugar in your diet to keep functioning properly.
Next, you're going to want to build lean muscle mass. It simply is more effective at raising your metabolism than anything else. You can start doing this by adding in some mild weight lifting into your exercise routine. Even women can benefit from lifting small amounts. As you build muscle mass, don't panic if the numbers on the scale go up a bit. This is perfectly normal since muscle weighs more than fat. It is only temporary and if you keep burning fat, those numbers will come back down.
You can look at it as though you are restructuring your body. You are removing fat, which slows down your metabolism, which lean muscle mass that will raise it. Over the long term, you're retraining your metabolism and getting it to speed up.
By learning how to manage your blood sugar properly and by building more lean muscle mass, you have the perfect recipe for increasing your metabolism. It won't happen overnight, but if you stick with it, you'll be able to burn fat quickly and more efficiently. Don't rely on supplements that make crazy promises and endanger your health. They may work in the short term, but unless you address the issues that caused the slowdown of your metabolism in the first place, you're not fixing the problem.
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