If you’re new to losing weight and dieting, or you’re determined to succeed in your fat burning goals this time around, you should read this article. It’s our ‘weight loss 101’ – the basics of weight loss and fat burning. We’re going to cover information about calories, keeping the weight off permanently, weight loss myths, weight loss secrets, weight loss programs and low fat diets.
All right here, in this one great big post – you might want to bookmark this so you can come back to it! So if you’re sitting comfortably, let’s begin. First up, we’re going to take a look at calories…
All about Calories
When we work out and enter into a fitness program, often times the gym instructor will ask you to take some high calorie foods. And we are like, “okay?” Taking high calorie foods is not always bad! The main point here is that we also need to be aware of the content of the foods we eat and its role into our body. Here’s exactly what you need to know about calories.
Calories are units of energy. And energy is essential for the body that is why we need calories. We get calories from the food we eat. The higher fat content the food has, the higher is the calorie content as well; however, our body needs healthy fats. And, not all the fats we take from our foods are healthy. Still, the best way to get healthy fats and calories is through the natural way, eating and drinking fruits and vegetables.
Calories are converted into energy once taken into the body. This energy is what we use for everyday living and this energy is also needed by the body systems to function well. Once calories are converted into energy they can be used to break down cells (catabolism) or they can be used into cells/tissues (anabolism).
Every time you work out or exercise, the energy is in its catabolism stage. On the other hand, if you don’t want to do exercises, the excess fat in your body will be stored and like a cooking oil placed in the freezer, it will be stagnant, hence; anabolism. And because of this, the stored energy will become a stored fat as well and an extra cell which is equivalent to gained weight.
Now that you have an idea as to how calories work and their role in our bodies, you need to be aware and conscious of the drinks and foods you consume. As highlighted above; what you put into your body has a huge impact on gaining and losing weight. When you eat more calories, burn them as energy by exercising and eating natural fat burning foods. You can also read about calorie limited diets.
The Keys To Permanent Weight Loss
Losing those extra pounds is only the first step in the process. After you lose them you need to keep them off. If you gain them back you will have wasted all of the time and effort that you put into improving your health and your life. So what are the keys to losing the weight permanently? It is a three part process: decide, believe, and achieve. You need to set goals to improve yourself, you need to believe in yourself, and you need to create good habits.
The first thing you need to do is decide to make the change in your life. That’s a lot easier said than done for most people. Change is not something that most of us look forward to. We like to keep things the way they are because it makes us feel safe and secure. But if you are overweight, change is going to come whether you want it to or not. If you don’t decide to make changes for the better, then changes for the worse will take place. You could be facing a wide variety of health problems ranging from heart disease and high blood pressure to diabetes and stroke. Make the decision to change for the better and set realistic goals for improvement.
Next, you need to believe in yourself. You can achieve anything in life if you believe in yourself. You will make mistakes and you will have setbacks, but you cannot let yourself get discouraged. A positive mental attitude is an important part of achieving those goals that you have set for yourself. The only difference between someone who succeeds and someone who fails is the willingness to try one more time. Everyone gets knocked down. You need to believe in yourself and pick yourself up and keep going. Most people who fail never realize how close they were to success when they gave up. Be willing to believe in yourself and take that one more step.
Once you have started yourself on the right path to lose those pounds you need to take those positive changes and turn them into new habits. Studies have shown that in order for a new action to become a habit, or for an old habit to be changed, a person needs to do it for three weeks. If you can get yourself to do something for 21 days it will become like second nature to you and will be something that seems very natural and normal instead of something you are forcing yourself to do. Your health and life are worth 21 days of effort aren’t they?
Losing that weight and keeping it off is a goal that anyone can accomplish if it is handled properly. You need to decide, believe, and achieve. Make that important decision to start, the first step really is the hardest and its all down hill from there. Believe in yourself, you can accomplish anything when you believe. Turn those goal into actions and those actions into habits and you will train yourself to do the right things without even thinking about it. That is a successful formula for permanent weight loss.
Weight Loss Myths That Can Hurt You
You started out with the best of intentions. You wanted to lose those extra pounds so that you would look and feel better. Something went wrong along the way though because you have actually gained a few pounds and don’t feel any better. You did everything you were supposed to do, all those things that the so called experts said you should do. You even tried a few things that some of your friends said would work or that you found while surfing around on the internet. The problem is that a lot of those things are just myths. They don’t work and can sometimes hurt you.
You believed them when they said natural is always better, and that you can eat whatever you like because it’s only the calories that matter, and that when something is labeled as low fat that means it is also low calorie. That’s where you went wrong.
They told you that things labeled as natural are always better for you. They meant well, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. There is very little government regulation for using the word natural and manufacturers can pretty much put it on anything that they want to unless it is expressly forbidden.
Just because something says natural doesn’t mean that it isn’t loaded with chemicals that have no business in your body. And on those rare occasions when the government does get involved the situation can actually get worse. For example, highly processed and man made things like sugar and high fructose corn syrup can be labeled as natural sweeteners but something that is natural, like honey, is artificial according to the regulations. Read the label for the ingredients and find out what is really in your food.
They told you to go ahead and eat whatever you want because it’s only the calories that count. Please don’t fall for that one. Things like trans and saturated fats, refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour, and anything that contains ingredients that you can’t pronounce are always bad for you no matter how few calories you are consuming. A well balanced diet from all of the food groups is what your body needs.
They told you that you should eat all of those things labeled as low fat and that you can eat as much of them as you want because low fat means they are also low calorie. This myth probably causes more people to stumble than other. Low fat in no way means the same thing as low calorie. When a manufacturer removes the fat from a product they have to replace it with something, both to make up for the lost volume and to make it taste good.
Always read the box to see what they have put into the product. Many times the fat has been replaced by chemicals or sweeteners that actually make it less healthy for you than the full fat version. People also tend to consume more of the low fat product, consuming more calories than they would have, because without the fat they just don’t feel full as soon. You must limit your caloric intake even if it is low fat.
Avoid these myths and you will save yourself a lot of frustration in your dieting. A label that says natural doesn’t mean anything, you need to check the ingredients. There are more important things than calories like eating a well balanced diet that provides the vitamins and minerals that your body needs. Low fat foods aren’t always the best choice, you need to read the list of ingredients, and you still need to control how much you eat. Check out our list of fat burning fruits for more ideas and information.
The Weight Loss Secrets No One Ever Told You
Everyone has their own little secrets when it comes to losing weight. But it always seems that those people who swear by their secrets the most never seem to be losing any weight. If it doesn’t work, is it really a secret? Is there a way to successfully lose weight? Are there any real secrets to losing weight? A secret is something no one says out loud, if they did it wouldn’t be a secret.
There are a few secrets to weight loss but you have probably never heard them because they aren’t exactly the kinds of things people want to hear. The real secrets of weight loss include keeping a food diary, making a lifetime commitment to your weight loss, and the biggest secret of all, stop weighing yourself.
Go out and get yourself a little notebook. The size is up to you but remember you will be taking it with you everywhere you go and if people see it they will inevitably ask questions about it. So pick something inconspicuous. And really carry it with you everywhere you go. Every time that you sit down to eat something, write it down in your notebook before you start eating. If you didn’t write it down, you don’t get to eat it.
Everyone eats more than they think they do. Looking back through your food diary you will be surprised at what you really ate. A food diary provides the one thing that may be the most important part of losing weight. It creates accountability. You can’t trick yourself anymore into thinking that there must be some other reason you aren’t losing weight. The evidence is right in front of you in black and white.
Weight loss is a lifetime commitment. It is a marathon not a sprint. You want to lose the weight now and you try every new diet that comes along. You lose some weight, but then you put it back on and some more along with it. Changing your eating patterns for the short term doesn’t work. If you really want to lose weight and keep it off then you need to make changes that you can live with for the rest of your life.
If you don’t think that a particular change is something that you can do day after day, year after year, then don’t make the change. Short term success will always result in long term failure when it comes to weight loss. Devise a meal plan that you will be able to eat tomorrow and 10 years from now. The weight loss will be slower, but it will be permanent.
People who are trying to lose weight always develop the habit of weighing themselves way too often. Just stop it. Weigh yourself when you start and then forget about it. There is no good reason to weigh yourself everyday. Your weight fluctuates from day to day for many different reasons and weighing yourself everyday will only frustrate you.
Weigh yourself once a month, that is more than enough. Your guide to how your weight loss is going shouldn’t be your scale, it should be how you feel and how your clothes fit. If you are working out it is possible that your weight could actually go up because muscle weighs more than fat. If you are constantly weighing yourself then gaining muscle will make the scale go up and drive you crazy. But gaining muscle is a good thing and you will know that because you feel better and your clothes look a lot better on you, maybe you even need a smaller size.
There you have the real secrets of losing weight. Always keep track of everything you eat, look back through your diary often, and hold yourself accountable. Make a lifetime commitment to changing eating patterns, quick fixes never work. Stop weighing yourself, trust how you feel and how you look in the mirror. And when your friends ask how you did it make sure you whisper it into their ears. They are secrets after all.
The 3 Things That Your Weight Loss Program Must Do
You have decided that today is the day you will start losing those extra pounds that have accumulated around your waist over the years. It can’t be that hard right? There must be some magic weight loss program out there that will let you lose that weight overnight. Unfortunately there isn’t. There are, however, some good programs out there that will help you if you follow them correctly.
How do you go about cutting through all of the hype and picking a weight loss program? When you are doing your research there are three things that you must look for in a weight loss program. The program must work, it must be affordable, and it must fit into your life.
You need to find a program that works. Choosing a program that doesn’t work is only going to set you back in your weight loss goals and your wallet. The program should have no problem telling you what the success rate of people who have participated in the program. If it doesn’t make the success rate public then you should probably move on to your next choice, they obviously have something to hide and it is most likely that the program doesn’t work.
You found a program with a good success rate but how can you be sure it’s real, that they didn’t just make it up? That’s where testimonials come in handy. If they don’t have any testimonials or, even worse, people are saying bad things about the program then it is, again, time to move on. If you doubt that the testimonials are true do some searching on the internet. People have no problem complaining if they feel something doesn’t work.
You have to be able to afford the program. A lot of programs require special fat burning foods that can get very expensive. The programs that require you to buy the food from them are usually even more expensive. And the cost of the food is on top of whatever the fee is for the program. In the end, losing the weight is ultimately worth just about any amount that you have to pay to get the pounds off, but if it is so expensive that you have to quit before you reach your goals it really won’t help you. Find a program that fits within your budget.
The weight loss program must fit comfortably into your life or you will not follow through and meet your goals. Especially if you have a job with a strict schedule, you will need to make sure that you will be able to eat the necessary meals at the necessary times. You need to make sure that the program allows you to eat a large variety of foods that you like.
It doesn’t matter how good or how inexpensive a program is if it only allows foods that you don’t like, a severely limited number of foods, or requires that you buy pre-made meals that you think taste like your front lawn. You won’t follow it. Check out our post about foods that burn fat for lots of ideas on the best foods to eat to lose weight.
These three simple things are where you need to start when looking for a weight loss program. You need to make sure that the program has worked for other people. The program must be affordable and fit within your financial means. Your life cannot be totally disrupted by the requirements of the program. If the weight loss program doesn’t meet all of those requirements it will fail you.
All about Low Fat Diets
What brought about the emergence of low fat diets? The answer would be the high number of heart diseases, overweight, and even the increase of cancer cases which are as well brought about by products you love to eat –French fries, hamburgers, salad cream, and many other processed foods and drinks.
The body actually needs an average amount of fat which is necessary for the proper functioning of the hormone system and the immune system. It is the excess and shortage of fat in the body which impairs the health. Once the body system experiences unusual functioning, waste products and excess fats are blocked within the body system and that needs to be cleansed out. And to avoid this, you have the low fat diets.
This is an eating program where the amount of dietary fat is limited up to 30 percent of calories. A calorie measures the energy in food and drinks you take in. Low fat diet simply aims to let the person eat as little fat as possible and that also includes oil in the form of cholesterol and saturated fats. Cholesterol is found in meat products, cheese, and egg yolks while saturated fats are mostly seen in dairy products and processed foods.
The program is not encouraging everyone to believe that fats are not essential to the body. All you need to do is be conscious and cautious on what you eat everyday. You may eat any meat but couple it with fruits and vegetables. Also, include an exercise to burn out unwanted fats and regulate the good ones to produce energy. Do not forget to drink as much fluid as you can, if possible, try drinking fruit juices and other plant extracts. You may try coconut juice which is a good cleansing aid for unwanted acids in the body.
The focus on this program is not actually the amount of fats, the type of fats, and the fat content of any foods or drinks that you take, it is primarily on your overall health and it can help you avoid severe diseases. What you are after is how to get mentally and physically fit by eating the right food on a right diet.
