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Calorie Counting Is Not Important in Losing Weight

  • Posted on May 16, 2012 at 1:18 pm

You may often hear people ask, how many calories should I burn to be able to lose weight two pounds? Or maybe how many calories do I burn when I do cycling in one hour?

It is usually based on the assumption that the more calories we burn in the exercise, the more body fat will be removed. But the truth is counting calories when working out is not very important. Even when you know the exact amount of calorie burning, it doesn’t help the fat burning process in your body. Why is this?

Try reading this analysis. 1 hour workout, in the average, you will burn calories around 300-400 calories alone, maybe 500 calories with hard work. But day-to-day, we ate more than 400 calories. Even one day you might even eat around 1500-2500 calories. So how is it possible to burn 400 calories per day when the intake is around five-fold?

We often find out that people who actively doing hard exercises such as aerobics, swimming, basketball. But they complain about the body weight is not lessening. Analogize this phenomenon with mobile phone. You know that Blackberry Onyx needs less battery power than Blackberry Dakota. Dakota will absorb more battery power which makes it more energy in the battery. Dakota’s screen resolution is higher than Onyx. One is for screen resolution Dakota higher than Onyx. So will your mobile’s batt exhausted if it’s only used just to make call? Even if we leave it on standby mode, the battery will be exhausted in one time.

The phenomenon is similar to our body. We burn calories not only when we work out alone, even when we are not exercising, our body will burn calories constantly. Well now how do we increase calorie burning when we are not working out? We should increase our metabolism, so that it will refer to Dakota in the earlier illustration.

So the key here is to increase the metabolism of your body. This can be done by increasing the muscle mass in the body. The good practice is that muscle consumes fats in the body to convert it into energy. So if we can increase the muscle mass and feed the muscle with good nutrition, it can work optimally. When you do weight training, and return home, the muscle improvement process will burn more fat. And after the muscle repair completed,  the new muscle will burn more fat even when you are asleep.

That is the reason why a workout routine alone is not enough to remove the fat in your belly. You should make a higher metabolism, and training loads will give effect to afterburn that will burn your fat more. So counting calories when you work out is not important, because this way you will constantly burn calories even after you doesn’t do work out again.

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“Cheat Day” Effect on Healthy Diet Program

  • Posted on May 2, 2012 at 1:34 pm

When we do our healthy diet program, we often hear or even do the “Cheat Day” or free meals day, which is one day in a week which we are free to eat anything we want, including the ones forbidden in the diet program.

Cheat Day is a double-edged sword. When we use it properly, we can be free from the boredom of consuming the diet food. But it also has the negative effects, which can make us feels tortured to do the healthy diet program. First thing to note, when we think that the Cheat Day is the liberation day, doing the other six-day is a burden for our life. This will cause a negative mindset which can ruin our long run healthy diet campaign.

Basically, human has nature to find comfort. Cheat Day gives the wrong idea of understanding the diet itself. Finally, we will be more comfortable to change the Cheat Day into Cheat Week , which causes us to stop our healthy diet program. The second condition will worsen our effort, the mindset of, after doing a few days of diet, then we can give prize to ourselves by eating pizza, burger, or other junk foods at the weekends.

Try to make an analogy like this. Imagine you are a child, studying hard, tried his best to answer the questions at full semester. When he arrives at the final test, he thought that it’s okay to cheat at the final test, after all his hard work to do the previous tests, he deserved to cheat.

I think that is the wrong mindset to give a “cheat” as our prize. When a child studied hard, and finally passed the test, the prize could be vacation with the friends, buy a video game, toys, or anything. It’s not good to gift a “cheat” in his future efforts. Similarly, when we go all-out on a healthy diet program, the gift will be smaller clothes size, feel lighter body. We will be stronger when travelling. We can take vacations, spa, swim at the beach with our new body shape. Not “cheating” by eating junk foods for a short moment.

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You Are What You Eat

  • Posted on April 20, 2012 at 3:06 pm

We often hear the saying: “ you are what you eat ”, which means your body is a reflection of what you eat. This is true, because if you eat healthy foods your body will feel refreshed, energized, and healthier. But if you are eating unhealthy foods then your body will be at risk of health problems.

Knowing the relationship between the food you eat and its impact on health is important for you to understand, so you can choose healthy foods that your body needs.

Food, it takes the body as a source of energy for the body. Any activity you do can occur because the energy in your body. Food that you consume daily to give energy for the body to move, whether walking, running, thinking, and any activity you do every day.

Carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals are variety of essential nutrients the body needs every day to keep the body functioning properly and stay healthy. The only way that your body gets the nutrients it needs to stay healthy and functioning properly is to eat a variety of healthy food variants.

Different foods have a major impact on the health of organs such as heart health.Research has shown that a high fiber content in fruits and assorted vegetables play an important role to maintain heart health and maintain a stable blood pressure. While eating foods high in saturated fats and fried foods such as junk food may increase the risk of heart disease dramatically.

Vegetables and fruits also contain calcium. Calcium is one of the essential nutrients for the body every day. Calcium plays a significant role in maintaining bone density and health, prevent osteoporosis, and helps the performance of nerve cells in the body to work optimally.

Therefore, make sure your body always get enough nutrients every day, that is by eating a variety of healthy foods that you can get around you. Remember that your body is a reflection of what you eat.

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Avoid These Wrong Exercise Habit to Achieve Your Six Packs

  • Posted on March 22, 2012 at 3:15 pm

Maybe you’ve tried dozens of ways to get a sixpack stomach. But until this moment, your efforts are not fruitless. Though you’ve been training very hard, did strict diet program, your stomach has not got a sixpack yet.

Have you ever thought that a hard workout and diet you are doing is completely within the rules. Here are 10 mistakes that often frustrate you in getting a six pack stomach.

  • Monotonous exercises, techniques of training is the first obstacle that can frustrate you get a sixpack stomach. Even when you’ve been training hard enough. For example when doing a crunch, you use your neck muscles to lift the body instead of using the abdominal muscles. Another common mistake is, you’re not using good breathing techniques. In the crunch exercise , inhale in a state of supine, then when the body is bent exhale and contract your abdominal muscles. The next error, you’re doing the reps too fast and irregular. You should do more reps with quietly and periodically so that more muscle fibers are involved so that the muscles are well trained. So that you get proper exercise technique, find a reference on how to properly train the abdominal muscles and practice in front of the mirror to see if the technique you are doing is good and right.

 

    • Doing the Same Exercises

Doing the same exercise every day without increasing the training load is also a fundamental error that must be changed. The body will adapt to the exercise, so that muscle mass will not increase significantly. It’s better to add the weight than to add dozens of reps with the same load.Try a new, more challenging exercises for abs.

  • You’re not doing cardio exercises
    The important things you need to know to get a sixpack stomach is to reduce your fat in your stomach first. You must do cardio exercise! The most effective methods to burn fat is doing a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) program. Examples of its application, warm up by jog 3-5 minutes, then run quickly for 10-15 seconds, 10 seconds quick walk, then run quickly again for 10-15 seconds, repeatedly within 4-5 minutes.
  • Wrong Diet
    We can not separate exercise and diet in forming a six pack stomach. Reduce your carbohydrates, sugars, and fatty foods intake. Replace with high-protein foods such as chicken breast, lean meat, fish, milk, soy, and nuts. Add the vegetables and fruits as a source of vitamins and minerals to boost your immune system.
  • Avoid Stress
    Stress can be a stumbling block you get a sixpack stomach. Stress can cause the body to produce the hormone cortisol, which can affect the other hormones that cause weight gain. In fact, stress can also trigger appetite that can lead to excessive accumulation of fat in your body. To cope with stress, you can do breathing exercises, pilates, or yoga.
  • Lack of sleep
    Want sixpack stomach? Do not stay up in the night. Lack of sleep can affect the body’s blood sugar, increase appetite, and disrupt your body’s metabolism.Research shows that people who sleep less than 6 hours per day had a risk of being overweight by 27% more than of those with 7-9 hours of sleep.

Avoid basic mistakes that can derail your efforts to get six pack stomach. Work on your exercise technique and run the appropriate diet to achieve your six pack stomach.

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How to Prevent and Overcome Work Boredom at Office?

  • Posted on February 22, 2012 at 3:19 pm

It’s normal when you are busy at work, at noon, your eyes getting heavy, the body starts to feel weak, you fell reduced concentration and so on. This is a sign that your energy levels have started to decline and you feel the boredom.

Each individual has a different saturation levels, depending on several factors that influence it, such as age, the food you eat and your activity level. Well, here are tips to prevent and overcome the boredom that comes in while you work.

    1. Find Fresh Air . When feeling lazy start coming you need to do first is to stand from your chair. Spend a few minutes to get out of the office and breathe fresh air, and feel the fresh sensation for your body.
    2. Push Up . The next way, if by chance your boss is not there., Take the time to do push ups, or even dips exercises using your seat. Not be too long, just 10-15 reps, and your body will come back refreshed.
  1. Sleep for a moment . Indeed, it seems unlikely if the job you are allowed to sleep for a while. But, by the insertion time for a nap (no more than 30 minutes), concentration and fitness of your body will return to normal.
  2. Listen to Music . If you love music, listening to music that excited about going back to pump up your enthusiasm and concentration.
  3. Eat fresh fruit . Instead of choosing a fatty and high calorie snack to increase your energy, you better eat fruit instead. Fruits contain vitamins and minerals as well as fresh fruit taste sensation, they will refresh your working spirit.

Those are some ways you can do to overcome the laziness that comes while working. So, how to prevent laziness to come?

  1. Balanced Lunch . Do not eat too much. If you want to eat large portions, introduce more protein than carbohydrates. Carbohydrate intake is too high can increase the risk of diabetes and obesity.
  2. Enough sleep . If you don’t have enough sleep at night, you will risk decreasing more energy than usual. Sleep 7-9 hours a day and reduce the habit to stay up.
  3. Light exercises . To avoid feeling lazy to come, you should do some light exercise before work, such as the lunge, squat, and jogging in place , to increase the circulation of oxygen in your body.
  4. Get A More Challenging work . Instead, you feel half-hearted and then sit out in your work, maybe it’s time you find a more challenging job.

Hopefully the above tips can be overcome healthy and prevent boredom you experience in the office. Good luck!

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Small Physical Activities Help to Burn Your Fat

  • Posted on February 9, 2012 at 12:34 pm

Work, family, children, traffic jams, and many more problems we face every day in the busy modern times like now make us very busy. We often do not have time to do sport, though sport is the most effective way to burn calories. Then how do we burn calories and lose weight in the middle of busy activities?

Enter Physical Activity in Your Routines
Daily routine makes many people sleep at late times, and have to get up early. Business is sometimes the reason why you can not do the pattern of healthy diet pattern and do sports. As a result, body weight also tend  to accumulate, but it’s very difficult for you to lose weight .

If you are one person trapped in a busy routine, here are 10 activities you can do to burn 100 calories in the middle of your busy life.

  • 12 minutes jogging
  • 12 minutes playing volleyball
  • 15 minutes of exercise load
  • 15 minutes of time swimming during free time
  • 20 minutes of dancing
  • 20 minutes of golf
  • 20-minute car wash
  • 20 minutes walk up the stairs
  • 25 minutes to clean house
  • 25 minutes ironing clothes

It may be true if the loss of 100 calories is not a great amount. However, if you are able to do any of 10 activities on a regular basis every day, this course will be very useful in helping to improve the metabolism of the body you, which means there will be more calories and burn excess fat in your body.

So, essentially, to lose weight effectively, make the body always active, even in the middle of  your busy activity.

In addition to help burn calories and lose weight, stay physically active will help you maintain health and fitness of the body.

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Small Actions to Achieve Ideal Body

  • Posted on January 24, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Having an ideal body is the dream of everyone, especially for you who have excess weight. Losing weight requires hard effort. Many people fail to lose weight because of their unpreparedness to accept the changes in her/his life.
Actually, you do not need to hate your life if it leads you to be better, in this case is losing weight. Believe that small changes you make will have a great impact for you later. If you do not believe it, try 10 healthy habits below as the initial small changes in your life to lose weight the healthy way.
  1. Avoid High Calorie Foods
    Maybe this time you still love to eat high-calorie snacks with high sugar . From now cut these foods and replace them with healthy foods low in calories and high in protein, such as vegetables and fruits.
  2. Shopping with Full Stomach
    This will prevent you from buying unhealthy foods that can increase your weight.
  3. Eating Regularly
    Eating regularly will help you maintain stable blood sugar, preventing excessive hunger, and maintain weight.
  4. Do not Perform Other Activities While Eating
    Performing other activities such as talking, watching television, and so when you eat, can increase your meal much bigger without you knowing it.
  5. Eat Food in Small Pieces
    It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to get the full signal from your food. By dividing the food into small pieces will help you feel full more quickly.
  6. Eat Food Slowly
    Eating slowly will make you enjoy the food. Also, by eating slowly, the brain will provide motoric signal quicker.
  7. Brushing Teeth After Having Meal
    It is useful to prevent you from the temptation to eat again. Using mouthwash is also useful to prevent the desire to eat again after meal.
  8. Consume Healthy Snacks
    If you want to snack, make sure to consume snacks that contain high protein and low in calories. Nuts and fruits are a good snack examples.
  9. Do not Forget to Have Breakfast
    After not consuming food during sleep, the body needs an adequate intake of nutrients for energy. Breakfast is also useful to prevent you from overeating during the day.
  10. Exercise Regularly
    Exercise regularly to burn excess fat in the body, so it can help you lose weight.
Losing weight is not an instant process and quick. It takes patience and a strong determination to make it happen. Good luck.

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Yoga Burns Fat

  • Posted on January 7, 2012 at 2:36 pm

In recent years yoga has become a way of life. The high-health-benefits of yoga is one of the main factors which increase the number of practitioner. Every movement in yoga, train your body to increase tolerance to discomfort. Even some useful yoga for weight loss.

The benefits of yoga are not just limited to improving health. More than that, yoga is also helpful for weight loss. Why is that? Here are some reasons that can strengthen this opinion.

  1. Yoga Can Reduce Stress
    As you may know that one of the benefits of yoga is best known for relieving stress . In some people, stress can trigger over-eating that can trigger weight gain. Therefore, to prevent stress and eating large meals, yoga is the right way to handle it.
  2. Substitute Yoga Exercises That Too Heavy
    A few people may have physical limitations to perform exercises that are too heavy. If you can not do a very intensive exercise to lose weight, yoga can be an appropriate alternative. Every movement of yoga allows the body to burn more calories , so it is good to maintain your weight.
  3. Useful Yoga Exercises To Burn Excess Calories
    What you eat plays a major role in the process of increasing your weight. Eating high-calorie foods can cause the body to store excess calories into fat that can accumulate if you rarely move. Practicing yoga allows your body to remain actively engaged thus allowing a greater calorie burn.
  4. Fun to do yoga together
    Yoga is fun when done together. Exercise together can enhance the spirit of practice, so the process of weight loss will not burden you. Invite family or friends to practice yoga together.

Benefits of yoga for the body is not in doubt. However, not only by doing yoga weight then you can drop drastically. You need to remember that keeping your diet should also be run before getting the benefits of yoga to lose weight. Happy practicing!

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