Posted on August 25, 2011
Recently, I have embarked on my own weight loss program and it, of course, involves exercise - the E word, as I like to call it. But exercise alone is not sufficient to lose weight.
However, the purpose of this post is to examine the various forms of exercise that are available to most people and determine which of them is best for the purpose of losing weight. Before we start, you know the usual advice don't you, about consulting your doctor? Of course, you should use your common sense and make your own decisions. That said, here are the raw facts about exercise and calories:
Walking - around 360 calories/hour
Firstly, let's take a look at walking. We are talking about walking fast enough to raise the heart rate just a little. It is excellent exercise for most people as it is very low impact and it burns about 360 calories per hour. That's quite a decent return of your investment of time as it's more than the 255 calories in a 49g bar of Cadbury's Dairy Mill chocolate.
Jogging - around 600 calories/hour
Now if you can do a bit of jogging, you can nearly double the calorie burn rate (over walking). So that means you can actually eat a bar of Cadbury's chocolate and still burn 375 calories if you go for a 1 hour jog. Now jogging for an hour, even at a fairly slow pace probably means that you will be doing about a 10Km distance, so that's no mean feat if you are not used to it.
Riding a Bike: around 1000 calories/hour
Beginning to step things up a bit here. Naturally, it does depend on how fast you go, but you can be burning up to about 1000 calories per hour via this method. That means, you could have a bar of chocolate and still produce a net loss of 745 calories after an hour of cycling. Are you beginning to think I'm obsessed with chocolate? Read more...
Posted on May 28, 2011
Tired of suffering from an incredibly slow rate of fat loss? Looking for a way to enhance your results so you can finally get that body you’ve dreamed of? If this describes you, it’s vital that you take a look at a few of the top techniques that you can use with your diet to enhance the overall rate of fat loss you experience.
Many people are quick to focus on what they can do with their diets to decrease their overall calorie intake and while bringing your calorie level lower is important to get fat loss moving, you should also be focusing on what you can do to boost the metabolic rate as well.
When the metabolism is running faster you’re going to be able to consume more calories but yet still lose weight just as quickly.
Let’s look at what you need to know to dramatically enhance your fat loss just with a few simple tweaks to your plan.
Up Your Protein Intake
The single most effective way to boost your metabolism by up to 30% instantly is to increase the intake of protein in your diet.
Every time you eat foods that are rich in protein your body is going to have to spend a number of calories just breaking these foods down. As it does this that means that it will actually net fewer calories total from that food, thus you will lose weight faster.
The best protein sources to include? Aim for the leanest sources that are almost 100% pure protein so you don’t get any tag-along fats or carbs with it.
This includes sources such as chicken breasts, turkey breast, white fish, egg whites, whey protein powder, and fat free cottage cheese. You should aim to eat one of these with each and every meal or snack you consume. Read more...
Posted on May 16, 2011
You might have recently lost lots of bodyweight if you were checking up on my fitness blog and that weight loss is certainly an incredible success, but now possibly you have a lot of loose skin particularly if you lost that weight at a fast rate. Let's quickly discuss why your skin gets loose when you lose a whole lot of excess weight. As we grow and get bigger our skin needs to grow and adapt to our new size. When you lose fat, especially lots of bodyweight very quickly the elastic components in your skin doesn't have the proper time to adapt to your new size. Other factors that could increase the quantity of saggy skin you have are age, poor diet, dehydration, excessive sun exposure, and cigarette smoking.
How to Tighten Loose Skin After Weight Loss
As you do lose that unwanted weight and your skin begins to become loose you needn't stress because below are great tips regarding how to increase the tightening of your skin.
#1 - Don't Lose Weight Too Quickly
Crash diets really are a big reason for this because you will have an extreme drop in calories (usually from removing one food group, which is very bad) and then you may lose a great deal of excess fat causing you to have lose skin. Also with these crash diets you'll lose muscle mass from a lack of proper nutrition (another reason to not follow these fad diets) and with the extra weight loss your skin becomes even more lose. Tip in order to avoid rapid weight loss. Aim for a loss of 1-2 pounds a week and ensure your weight loss program includes strength training. Read more...