Slimming Down - Fast!

In the last month my father lost 13.5lbs without one stroke of exercise, without starving himself while still eating out occasionally!

I mention this to prove to you that, while there are numerous benefits to exercising in the immediate, medium and long term, with respect to losing weight, exercise is not particularly necessary. It’s what goes into your mouth (or doesn’t as the case may be) that will likely have an immediate impact.

In his case, he reduced his sugar and starch intake and focused instead on eating vegetables, protein and fats. He told me he got tired of "being here rather than there". He did it while watching his friends tuck into foods that made his mouth water. But he stuck to his plan.

He took his hot soup to lunch in a bulging Thermos flask. He was brutal in not drinking his usual fruit juice and ever drinking only cold water and green tea. He made up his mind to pay the weight loss price now and in next to no time, he had lost half of the weight he wanted.

So many of us put off paying that price but it is observable that the universe favours no one. It makes no exceptions. He reasoned that you will pay the price one way or another and, there being no time like the present, he decided to lose his extras now rather than putting if off for a future date.

Now, he’d be the first to accept that while the fat disappears from where ever it can disappear from, losing weight like this does little to give you a particularly healthy look. Neither does it offer you any particular level of fitness or extra aerobic capacity or strength.

So he considers initial weight loss to be a necessary step towards being healthier– it does, after all, gives great feedback and a whiff of success – but for a toned, slender, streamlined, strengthened body with great aerobic capacity and strength, exercise is what you need. There really is no substitute for exercise, and if you live a mostly sedentary existence, doing something recreational that involves movement.

Looking good so that you feel good, however, requires a bit of planning, commitment and motivation and the majority of those that succeed do so with a buddy or with a personal trainer. Getting someone to bounce ideas from, to give ideas and to provide you with the motivation and the knowledge you need, and in some cases the equipment to make your goals a reality, is the biggest benefit of getting yourself a personal trainer.

Exactly how a personal trainer can help you by slimming down though is the subject of another post.

To your greater weight loss

Dominic

If Your Looking To Lose Weight Check This Out 

How to lose weight the healthy way | Start Losing weight 

I’m willing to bet that most of you walk around with 2 huge misconceptions – er. Misconceptions that can make a big difference to your understanding of how weight loss works!

Why am I willing to make this bet? Because even though I studied the topic at Uni I too thought the same. Before I tell you the first one, here’s what I want you to do.

When I tell you the first big misconception I want you imagine me giving you £5 if I am right. Similarly, I want you to imagine receiving £10 from me if I am right. What is my claim? My claim is that I’m betting that you thought that “All Calories Are the Same” or put another way “calories are calories are calories”.

That is my claim but it is not true Not All Calories Are the Same!

To be fair I could have framed this better and asked you “Do you think that your body responds in the same way to all calories?” It is another way of asking you if you consider all calories to be the same. But now that you’ve thought of it for more than a second, I’m certain you can see that if you ate 100 calories of say potato mash (carbs) or 100 calories of prime Angus Steak (protein) or 100 calories of ice-cream that your body would deal each of them differently.

Naturally, things become more complex with real meals when you combine carbs, fats and protein together. What matters in real life is the ratio between the three types of calories, (the portion size of each kind), when you eat your meals, the efficiency of your digestive system, the extent to which you chew your food and how your body allocates those calories towards fat loss and muscle gain.

So what’s my point? For slimming down, losing weight or gaining weight it’s useful to understand some of the common misconceptions (in this case that all calories are the same) and how if not properly understood, they can lead you to sabotage your own goals.

To your greater weight loss

Dominic

Click Here If your Looking To Burn More calories 

 What is a calorie | Empty calories  

It is now well understood that our bodies have designed to handle and digest carbohydrates, proteins and fat.

But have you ever wondered about the part that each of those three kinds of food play in your meal?

Food has at least four distinct roles to play in keeping us alive.

1.Food should be nutritious - to sustain us
2.It should satisfy our hunger and help is to know when we’ve eaten enough.
3.It should regulate our bodies – sugar levels etc
4.It should satisfy our energy requirements

But how does this relate to carbohydrates, proteins and fats?

- White carbs (bread, pasta, sugar, potatoes, cakes, etc) provide more immediate energy than proteins.

- Protein (meat, fish, eggs, etc) , among other things (like forming amino acids that helps form muscle), takes longer to get broken down by the body to glucose (as is carbs) but in a longer time than say potato mash.

- Fats (oils, butter, fatty foods, etc) take even longer to break down. The effort required by the body to break down the different kinds of foods varies according to the particular foods.

If your meal consisted of solely carbs, the digestive process would be relatively short and you would be hungry again soon afterwards. The length of time it would take to become hungry would decrease by introducing proteins – protein helps you to know when you should stop eating. The effort in breaking down a steak, for example, would be greater than just eating mashed potato.

However, fat takes even longer to break down. And as it takes even more effort, than protein it helps to curb your cravings and despite what the supermarkets say with their low fat foods – this has morphed into a huge industry - you do need fat for the reason that it is energy that takes greatest effort to break down and takes the longest time to be converted to glucose.

The more effort to break down results in you expending more calories. Eat a small packet of pork scratchings (the kind you get in pubs) and notice that you’ll not be hungry for quite some time.

So what can be said about the three foods? I’d say that white carbs help with immediate energy but does little to satisfy you. Proteins help to satisfy your hunger but do little for your immediate energy needs but take longer to become energy. Fat helps with your longer term energy needs and help with keeping you full longer and stops your cravings.

What does this all mean? That the perfect each meal should contain carbs, proteins and fats in varying amounts based on factors like 1) the time of day, 2) your kind of lifestyle and 3) what your plans and hopes for your body are.

So maybe have less white high carbs/starch (white bread, rice, mash, sugar, potatoes) in the evening more so than in the morning. (Note that vegetables are carbs too but they deserve their own post and I’ve pretty much ignored them so far focussing mostly on white high carbs). Indeed, a good meal (in my humble opinion) should contain about 50-60% of low carb vegetables.

Note, also, that not all carbs are the same. They can be considered as simple or complex and play an important part in our diet. They affect the rate at which sugar enters the bloodstream and can therefore be categorised by their gylcemic index and their insulin index (the amount of insulin that gets released by each food) – Simple carbs (sugar) have almost immediate release capabilities while complex carbs release their energy over a longer period (pasta, brown bread) - this is what you're aiming for.

So, to ensure that each meal plays its part to the maximum you should aim to include all three kinds of foods in each meal that deal with immediate energy, satiety and cravings – i.e. the perfect meal - make sure to control the quantities.

As I alluded to in an earlier post Ian Marber the author of a great easy-to-read book named How Not To Get Fat is far more qualified than I to explain here in our Amazon convenience store 
 
To your greater weight loss
 
Dominic


Click Here If Your Looking To Reduce Belly Fat

I want to tell you a quick story.

A few months ago I was reading a book by Ian Marber about food entitled How Not to get Fat. I turned to a page that to this day has remained with me. On the left page was a list of things that the author described as being ok to eat. There were so many items in this list of foods that the font of the text had to be reduced to fit them all onto the page.

On the page on the right was a list of things you shouldn’t eat, that you should therefore avoid. In fact, it was one thing. Just one thing! Do you know what that one thing was? Yes, you guessed it right – Sugar.

Sugar is possibly one of the most addictive substances ever. It is everywhere and appear in many forms of lovely looking, sweet tasting, fantastic smelling cakes and pastries. We love it- we tell ourselves that we deserve it. The fact that sugar is all pervasive (everywhere) is a measure of the extent that we love it and crave it and shops stock it in abundance because we continue demand it.

Finding lunch around London can be difficult if you favour a protein-based lunch because all around are all kinds of carb-based sandwiches, pastas and sweet pastries.

What’s less obvious about sugar is that it’s close to the kind of energy that the body expects to use.  It is easily convert to glucose to use as energy. In the form of sugar it does not take much energy to convert for a process that is already very efficient in converting intake to glucose. Sugar in all its forms, is one of the easiest to convert as opposed to something like steak for example.

While like most people I love sweet things, the thing to note about sugar is that unless you intend to use that immediate energy by exerting yourself regularly you’re likely to store that energy as fat automatically and in all the wrong places – then you spend the rest of your life trying to get rid of it. Sugar and carbs are useful for those outdoor workers that require energy often – builders and sportspeople spring to mind, but much less useful for those of us who sit in front of computer screens all day long.

My advice to you is to be strong- resist sugar in all its forms. Think medium to long term. Living a long life requires that you be tough, mentally strong and resilient. The sooner you can liberate yourself from the tyranny of sugar, the healthier you will be over the long term. Not only that, but you will be ruling out the possibility of all kinds of sugar-related diseases like diabetes mellitus where you may end up having to have a limb or two removed. That is not the life your mother intended for you at birth now, is it? 

According to Wikipedia, diabetes is also linked Alzheimer Disease, not to mention tooth decay and potential loss of teeth. Say this now to yourself “No dentures for me, ever”. Imagine your dentures in a glass of water. Not a pretty sight is it?

So, have sugar only occasionally, if at all. Don’t try to replace the sugar taste with sweeteners (there are already links to brain disease for some sweeteners on the market)– go the whole distance and change your tastes – remember that you learned those tastes and so they can be unlearned. You will definitely be liberated.

So be tough, be strong, get started today. Take your power back. You are at the end of a long line of survivors so don’t become the wrong kind of statistic. Dump the sweet stuff today.

Time will show that this is one of the most useful pieces of information that it is possible for you to receive – all because of that book I stumbled across.

Education is key – read about it and learn for yourself How Not to Get Fat

To your greater weight loss

Dominic

Fats and Sugar| Limit Fat and Sugar 

If you eat more calories than you burn off you're likely to gain weight. So if you eat more calories than you burn off your body will store the excess calories if they are not required for immediate use. 

It's not realistic to expect weight loss to happen overnight. Losing weight is a process, not an event! It takes time, however, once achieved the right weight can be sustained. 

There are 3 ways a person can lose weight. Take up extreme exercise while killing yourself at the gym. This means not worrying about what you are eating but being sure that you’ve burnt off the amount of calories you've eaten during the day plus some extra calories from the fat stores. You continue doing this until you achieve the body weight and shape you want. 

Another option is to starve yourself to lose weight but this is not really an option and the 3rd option is to use nutrition - reducing the starch and sugar in your diet. Reduce the sugar in your diet but don't not starve yourself, as a lot of people believe is necessary. Move to eating more foods that provide you with longer lasting energy so you don’t get overly hungry. To get longer-lasting energy incorporate more wholegrain foods brown rice, brown bread etc and avoiding white rice, potatoes. Additionally, increasing your protein in-take (and fat in-take) which will help curb sugar cravings and help build lean muscle. 

However, to begin losing weight initially avoid all white carbs, fruit and fruit juice, to give your body an opportunity to start burning some of that fat! Replace the carbs in your diet with a larger portion of green vegetables.

Whatever you do it's important to establish a balance. Exercise 2 -3 times a week doing whatever you can. Gradually increase the weights that you lift over time. Also increase the time that you spend doing cardiovascular exercises. Also, mix your exercises up to avoid monotony.

So, during the week, work hard to maintain good eating habits, whenever possible, avoiding sugar (honey, fruit, fruit juice, ...) and starch (all white carbohydrates like potatoes, bread, pasta, rice). 

Increase the meat (protein) and green vegetables in your diet. As you are in it for the long term, you can afford to take a single day out on which you're less food stringent and eat some of the things you like on one of the weekend days. Your body works on averages, so taking one day out of 7 days you can continue to lose weight and feel ok about yourself.


To your greater health

Dominic 


Click Here If your Interested In Losing weight 

Have you ever wondered why there are 45,000 products in our supermarkets and  only a handful of these products don’t cause you to get fat?

I’m writing this post around the Christmas holiday time and no doubt many of you will resolve to get fitter in the coming year. It seems appropriate 
therefore, that I should give a few simple rules for really losing weight - starting right now – that will not involve making unrealistic and unnecessary sacrifices.

Stop being hostage to the food creators that are thinking more about themselves than about you. Take control yourself with these 7 guidelines to reduce your body fat naturally and relatively quickly. 

7 Easy Guidelines

1. Avoid Unnecessary Carbs. You do not need carbohydrates all the time so avoid most of them (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, sugar (glucose, fructose, honey, jam)) and eat fruits only one day at weekends - instead of everyday – you don’t need the fructose (fruit sugar) on a daily basis unless you are really active. If you can’t do without fruit eat only strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries – these you can eat any day.

Of course, you don’t avoid want to avoid carbs forever. They provide ready energy. However, you use them to control your weight like a lever when you’re close to your ideal weight.

2. Eat Regularly - Don't leave more than 3 hours before you eat again if you can! Imagine your metabolism as a fire in a fireplace. To keep a normal fire burning you would stoke it with wood to keep it burning all day. Do the same with your body making sure that you eat small amounts - handfuls regularly - so that the fire never completely dies out. By small amounts I mean a handful of say Brazil nuts, or two spoons of peanut butter – try to consume about 170-200 calories each time.

3. Don't Drink Calories. Avoid high calorie drinks and fruit juices – (NB: Water has 0 calories!) - Why drink calories then go to the gym to burn them off!

4. Snacks - Snack on pure protein foods (salmon, bacon, eggs, ham, fish, legumes, peanut  butter, lentils  and nuts) often and drink plenty of water throughout the day.  Bear in mind that there are so many millions of protein options available to you that you don’t need to eat unnecessary carbs.

5. Cause Some Confusion - Switch your meals around. Have your dinner at lunch and have your lunch meal in the evening or your lunch meal in the morning and your breakfast meal in the evenings – This keeps your body guessing.

6. Remove Temptation - If you live alone remove the carbs from around you and replace them  with tins of tuna, salmon, crab and other fish. NB: This may be difficult for many because sugar and starch (especially sugar) is addictive – but starch is just a pointless filler for weight loss – in many cases.

7. Mix it up - Treat yourself 1 day a week, maybe at the weekends, just to mix things up for your body.

If you are able to follow these rules as well as regular exercise, over the course of a few weeks, (even though exercise is not necessary per se) you should begin to see a reduction in fat. The best part is that you probably won’t need to diet as such.

From this point forward, you should also be able to discern which of the 45,000 supermarket products to safely ignore.

To your greater health

Dominic

Healthy Weight Loss & Dieting Tips| The Ultimate Weight Loss Guide 

Let’s say you haven’t worked out for a while and you are short or time but yet you want to burn a few calories to help you on your way – there are two exercises that you can always rely on to help build your core. Press-ups, sit-ups and/or leg raises will always do it for you.

If you’re a woman doing your press-ups on your knees is the best/easiest way to get started.

Also, if you are male and have been out of shape for a while, and have not been doing any exercise either, then the same suggestion applies – do the press-ups on your knees. As for the sit-ups, the key thing is to not strain yourself. Make sure to do the proper technique otherwise you end up with neck-ache and putting yourself through effort that makes little difference towards staying active.

Similarly, you want to do proper leg-raises using the proper technique. One tip is to roll-up a towel and put it under your lower back where it curves naturally. The cloth of the towel gives your back some support as you lift your legs. Another technique when doing your leg-raises is to put your hands under your lower back (without the towel, of course) touching your fingers as you raise your legs.

When done properly, sit-ups will let to lose weight and keep your metabolism up.As always, make sure to warm up for a few minutes before and after your exercise.

You can read my review of a device I own that makes doing perfect situps really easy and without issue.  With this unit you worry less about the technique and more about how many sit-ups you can do!

To your greater health

Dominic

Welcome to my first ever blog post.

You’ve probably guessed that my interest is about Health, Fitness, Nutrition and Well-being. That’s what this new blog is about.

For quite some time people in western countries have long had their basic needs met. We certainly have adequate warmth, shelter and food, plenty of food - so much food that we throw lots of it away. With our huge resources, until recently, food has become cheap and abundant.  Just think, McDonalds – you can get a Happy Meal for £2.00 or so.

At the same time, a large number of us have grown fatter as our job roles have made less physical demands on us, as we have successfully transitioned to a more service economy where we do less physical work. As a result of being more sedentary, (it’s not the only reason) obesity is fast becoming a big problem and many of us stand to not fulfil our destinies if we continue on as before – in other words, if we don't fix ourselves we’re gonna die prematurely because of our failing organs and over-fat bodies!

During the coming blog posts, I’ll share with you my experiences and encounters with Health, Fitness and Nutrition. That might be in the form of reviews of product that I consider useful or beneficial, it might be of food that I consider to worth of a mention, it might be an exercise program for those of you that might be short of time or it might be of books that I find of value or even of ideas I come across that I disagree with. Anything that I think is likely to help or be of value to you I’ll pass on from wherever I find it so that you don’t have to bother.

Additionally, I'll add information about things I discover that might affect your overall wellbeing - for example, I recently stumbled across some fantastic pillows that have changed my life - I'll mention those in another post.

So in this blog, I’ll do my best to tell you what works and what does not as best I can.

When you get a free moment why not drop me a comment letting me know what you think. Let me know if you agree or disagree with my views and have any views or recommendations of your own. Let me know if there is any information you’d like to see here.

Kindest regards

Dominic