Weight Loss Tips

The facts about walking and weight loss are interesting. It seems obvious that running would burn more calories than walking, right? And therefore fast walking would burn more calories than slow walking. Of course, if you look at that in terms of time, it is true. Running for 10 minutes burns more calories than walking for 10 minutes.

But if you think in terms of distance, there is not so much difference. Walking for one mile and running for one mile will burn approximately the same number of calories. There is just a little more involved in running because the person is usually pushing upward as well as forward. But the difference in calories burned is not huge.

This means that if you are starting out with a fitness program with walking and weight loss, there is no need to stress about how fast you are going. Concentrate instead on the distance. Use a pedometer to measure how far you can walk in a half hour at a comfortable pace right now, even if that is a very slow pace. Then as you become more fit you will see that you can walk further in the same amount of time.

Eventually you may decide to move on to running, simply because it means that you can burn more calories in a shorter time. A good way to begin is to introduce short bursts of running into your daily walk. For example you might start with 1 minute of running followed by 7 minutes of walking. Gradually you can increase the running time and reduce the walking time until you are simply running.

Many people use a heart rate monitor watch while running. This can also be useful if you are interested in walking and weight loss or if you are following a combined walking and running program. You can keep track of your heart rate and in many cases set an ideal heart rate zone. The watch will beep if you go dangerously high or lazily low. Many watches can also be set to beep to tell you when you need to switch from one form of exercise to another.

Of course, if you choose walking for weight loss it is important to do it often. At least three times a week is recommended for any fitness training, and more often is better. To keep you motivated, it helps if you enjoy your chosen exercise. Walking in pleasant surroundings out of doors is often more fun than using a treadmill, and can help you to keep to your planned program.

Walking can be excellent exercise for anybody who has the use of their legs. Even if you are extremely unfit, you can probably stand and move slowly around the house for a half hour. Of course, check with your doctor first, but using a pedometer you will almost certainly find that if you spend a half hour walking every day, your distance will increase. That means that you will burn more calories. In this way, you can start to be successful with walking and weight loss.

What is the quickest way to lose weight? To answer the question literally, the quickest way to lose weight is not to eat. This may seem crazy but many people do it.

Going on a water fast, where you eat nothing and drink only water, can have you losing 3 to 7 pounds a week and possibly more the first week. Another option is a juice fast where you only drink juice.

The biggest problem with any type of fasting is that it can be very dangerous. For some people, such as diabetics, even a 24 hour fast is unsafe. It should only be done under medical supervision and most doctors will tell you not to do it.

Even if you can find somebody to support you with health checks while you go ahead, you will find there are many problems involved in fasting for more than one day. First you will find that you are likely to become very tired. Anybody who is fasting needs a lot of rest, and most of us do not have the luxury of being able to take a long period of rest and relaxation in our lives.

Then you may have detox symptoms. These can be very strong during a fast because there is nothing for the system to do except detoxify. Headaches, cramps, skin rashes, 24-hour fevers and respiratory infections are just some of the detox symptoms that you may encounter in your quest for the quickest way to lose weight.

This is especially true if your diet has been poor in the past. We are constantly taking in toxins from the environment and from chemicals in our food. When we take in more toxins than the body can process and excrete, our system will deal with them by burying them in fat cells. So when that fat is used, the buried toxins are dumped back into the circulatory system.

Another problem can be that when we do not eat, the body will break down muscle as well as fat to use for energy. Muscles are built from protein, and when you have no protein in the diet the muscles are likely to become very weak.

Some people follow a juice fast hoping that it will be the quickest way to lose weight without having all of these issues. However, many of the difficulties are still likely to arise to a lesser extent. You will probably still have some detox symptoms, and you will not get much protein. There is very little protein in fruit. There is more in vegetables, but you may lose a lot along with the fiber when you are juicing them.

It is best to use mainly green vegetable juices because they contain more essential minerals and vitamins than fruit. They are also less likely to damage the teeth. But most people find the juice of green vegetables very unpalatable. Juicing can also be an expensive option, and you may be surprised how little juice you get from a pound of vegetables. Adding some fruit to your juicing veggies can help with the taste, but does not make much difference to the cost.

A period of juice fasting can be healthy if it is well planned and supervised. For most people, however, it is better to follow a recognized diet that will lead to steady, sustainable weight loss. It may not be the absolute quickest way to lose weight but it will probably work out better.

The secret to losing weight fast is often simply a question of motivation. Here are three easy tips that will help you to keep on track and see the numbers on the scale continue to fall.

1. Establish Habits

If you are overweight, the chances are good that you have bad habits around eating. It could be snacking, it could be food choices, it could be binges, but whatever it is, it has established itself as a habit in your life.

You need to replace those bad habits with good ones in order to stay on your diet through the rocky times that may lie ahead. This means establishing a routine for meals (especially the times of meals) and for all of the times when you tend to overeat. For example, as soon as you have finished eating your meal, get up and wash the dishes or do some other household task.

Research shows that we need to do something every day for around a month before we consider it to be a habit. If you can stick to your new healthy habits for 30 days without cheating, you will find that it becomes easier after that.

2. Control Your Mind

Losing weight fast is a lot easier if you are not constantly plagued by thoughts of all of the foods that you should not eat. You may think that it is not possible to control your thoughts but there is no need to indulge in food fantasies which will lead you off track. Occupy your mind with something else.

It helps to avoid food advertising as much as possible. Remember, food advertising is designed to make us desire all kinds of junk that God or nature never intended for us to eat. This can mean changing channels or leaving the room when the ads come on the TV.

3. Have An Emergency Plan

Snacking and binge eating are sure to stop you from losing weight fast, so you need an emergency plan to cover the times when you are tempted. This is a list of 3 things that you will do instead of (or at least before) you have that unhealthy snack.

Your plan should include some quick exercise (e.g. going up and down stairs 10 times), then drinking a large glass of water, followed by something you can do for around 10 minutes that will make you feel good such as putting on makeup, taking a shower, playing with the dog etc.

Keep a copy of the list on the refrigerator. Do this right now even though you may think you will never need it. Then promise yourself that any time you are tempted to go off plan you will do ALL of those 3 things before snacking.

In most cases, this will keep you from snacking or binge eating. The water fills your stomach while the other activities improve your mood to help you deal with any emotional upsets that triggered the wish to snack. You may find that you are genuinely hungry, and maybe it is time for a healthy meal. But most times, you will not need to eat anything at all until your next planned meal.

Following these tips will help you stick to any diet, and that is the secret to losing weight fast.

Losing abdominal fat is something that many men want to do and it is one of the most highly sought after weight loss tips for both men and women. Most people think there’s nothing attractive about a big flabby belly. Having a flat stomach and tight abs makes us look leaner, fitter, younger and more attractive.

Losing abdominal fat is also very important for our health. When we are apple shaped, with our excess weight concentrated around the belly, the danger to our vital organs is very great. Much of the weight is carried by visceral fat surrounding the heart, liver and other organs. This can kill.

So what are the secrets to losing abdominal fat? They lie in two areas: diet and exercise.

Losing Abdominal Fat With Diet

Many guys make the mistake of thinking that all they need to do to get a rock hard six pack is to go to the gym a few times a week. Unfortunately, this is not true. If you are carrying excess fat, it is not easy to change that into muscle with exercise alone. You will not impress anybody with your muscles if they are still hidden under a layer of belly fat.

The answer to this lies in your diet. You probably know what makes a healthy diet so there is no need to go over it again. If you don’t then browse other articles on this website and you will find plenty of information on that topic. Basically if boils down to replacing some of the pizza, beer and other junk with healthy foods. Protein supplements can help you to avoid eating too much fatty red meat. Keeping track of what you eat with a calorie counter can help you to see where you can easily cut down.

Losing Abdominal Fat With Exercise

There are many exercises that you can do to target the abs. These include the classic crunch along with other crunches that may be even more effective for tightening the abdominal muscles such as the bicycle crunch. In fact, the bicycle crunch has been found to get much better results than a classic crunch for tightening both the six pack and the waist.

To do the bicycle crunch, lie on your back on the floor with hands beside or behind the head. Bring the bent knees up toward the chest and raise the shoulder blades up off the floor. Then straighten each leg alternately as if pedaling a bicycle in the air, and at the same time turn the upper body away from the straight leg.

So while your right leg is straightening out your left knee is coming in toward the chest, and you are twisting the upper body to the left and bringing the right elbow toward the left knee. Be careful not to pull on the neck or head at all, just rest the hands behind the head and make the abs do the work.

Be sure to include other exercises in your workout too. Leg raises and work on the exercise ball can also be great for the abs. Plus it is important to tone up all of the other core muscles so that they are not left weak and vulnerable to injury.

Taking this two-part approach to losing abdominal fat will help you to get that tight stomach fast!

Many people start running to lose weight. It is an excellent form of exercise in many ways, but is it actually effective when your aim is to reduce your weight?

The answer lies in what else you do. If you take up running without changing anything else in your life, then yes you might lose weight. But in some cases you might not, just because muscle weighs more than fat. So if you are turning fat into muscle you might remain the same weight. However, you would be slimmer.

The problem that can arise for many people who start running to lose weight is that there is a natural tendency to consume more calories to compensate for the calories burned while running. This is easy to do because the margins are quite small.

A person weighing 150 pounds will burn around 100 calories in a one mile run. All it takes to replace those 100 calories is one 8 oz (240 ml) glass of orange juice. So you need to keep a careful eye on what you are eating and drinking if you plan to lose weight by running.

Another point to keep in mind is that we need to burn off around 3500 calories to lose one pound of weight. So that 150 pound person would need to run 35 miles a week to lose one pound a week, if they did not make any changes to their diet.

From all of this you can see that it is important to focus on diet as well as running to lose weight. Keep a food journal so that you can see how much you actually eat. Then log it all in one of the many online food tracking sites to keep track of your calories.

Yes, this means weighing your food if you want to be accurate, but you will be surprised just how effective this step can be. Even without trying, the effect of logging everything that we eat will often result in eating less. It just makes us think twice about that third or fourth chocolate chip cookie.

As a side note, you can do the same thing if you need to save money. Write down everything you spend and you will be surprised how you suddenly start spending less!

Of course, when you are running to lose weight it is also important to run regularly. Once or twice a week is not going to have much effect on your fitness or weight loss. You need to exercise at least three times a week, and preferably more.

Having said all of that, running is certainly great exercise. It can help you to lose weight if you take care of your diet at the same time. It can also improve your metabolism so that you burn more calories the rest of the day. Of course, it can be stressful on the heart, so if you are not very fit it is best to have your doctor check you out before you start running to lose weight.