Archive for February, 2007
Are your friends and family supportive of your weight loss efforts? No one ever said that you had to travel this path alone. It is of the utmost importance that those around you serve as cheerleaders to motivate you and remind you that your hard work has not gone unnoticed.
We all like a little encouragement, especially when the weight loss plateaus or stalls temporarily. However, many of us are not so lucky and in fact might have to deal with hostilities coming from what should be your support structure. Maybe they think you are “better than them” by making such drastic changes, which is absurd. Whatever you do, don’t allow their negative energy to dampen your excitement. Plus, this negativity demonstrates that they are simply a poor excuse for a friend.
Are you losing at least one pound per week? If diet and exercise are made priorities then it should be completely feasible to lose at least a pound per week. It needs to be understood that a pound of bodyfat contains roughly 3500 calories and if one removes 500 excess calories a day then at least one pound will be lost until a goal weight is achieved. This doesn’t take regular exercise into consideration which means more weight can be lost.
As far as the diet is concerned, make sure you remove those 500 calories from superfluous food sources such as sodas which can be replaced with water or unsweetened tea. That’s easily 120-150 calories depending on the soda. Instead of fries or chips, go with steamed vegetables instead. Vegetables and fruit are recommended for two reasons,not only do they have fewer calories due to the water content but they contain considerably more vitamins and minerals than the unnecessary junk. The diet facet is certainly more challenging than exercise in terms of fighting off the calories.
Do you own a heart rate monitor? If not, then you are not alone. However, heart rate monitors are becoming increasingly popular, especially among athletes and those with certain health conditions. In the days before heart rate monitors, people would have to stop and manually count a pulse by placing fingers over the carotid artery. Not only would this pressure on the artery distort the reading, but would cause some to get light headed by their pressing too hard in an attempt to find a pulse. Now, with a heart rate monitor, one doesn’t even need to stop to get an accurate reading.
The most important reason, though, to buy a heart rate monitor is for safety reasons. Most fitness professionals will tell average clients to keep their target heart rate between 55% and 85% of their maximum heart rate. In order to calculate one’s maximum heart rate, simply subtract your age from the number 220. Next, you can then use this number and multiply it by 0.55 to get the lower end of the target zone and by 0.85 to find the cut off point. Those with threatening conditions would be advised to worl in the 55-60% range.
Still, let it be known that heart rate monitors are also a vital tool for the endurance athlete. Not only do heart rate monitors make readings simpler, they also make monitoring progress a lot simpler as well. With a heart rate monitor, an athlete can better determine how to set the pace in an effort to optimize race performance. Without one, endurance athletes would run the risk of either over-training and exhausting the body or under-training and not pushing the body hard enough.
One thing is for certain though, while heart rate monitors may not be needed by everyone, they are are still extremely useful tools that can simultaneously help the fittest of the fit and help those at extreme risk.
Today, more and more people find themselves getting in shape, or at least trying to. The reason I say “trying to” is that many diets fail once losing weight becomes a “real” challenge. If simply eating right and exercising isn’t enough to shed those pesky pounds, then what else CAN you do?
Well, as long as you are eating right and exercising to the best of your ability and the pounds still won’t come off then I suggest using what is called the Zig Zag approach to dieting. And before I continue, one must understand the role of our resting metabolic rate or Basal metabolic rate(BMR). This is a fancy term meaning the number of calories burned in a day while laying at rest. These calories simply account for normal vital organ function and nothing else. When one’s BMR slows down then less calories can be burned as a result and thus fat is stored more readily.
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