 I know that my posts so far have mainly been about persuading you that losing weight right now or slimming down now rather than postponing it, or of even neglecting it, is one of the most useful things you can do. I can only imagine what you’re like. I can never really know you (unless you tell me about you) but today I want to say one important thing. There are some amazing and fantastic people in this world and you are one of them. I am particularly happy. In this post I want to share with you some information that I just came across. I consider it to be the highest value information that I can ever pass on to you. It pertains to what we all hope for and want most of all. It underpins the reason for going through the process of slimming down or achieving anything. I wonder if you can guess what it might be? It is not to do with your wealth but it is to do with your wellbeing. We feel that if we work hard, we become successful then we are _____? Get it? Try again. It is a state we all want to be. I don’t mean be lighter in weight, er, slimmer. I mean happy! We all want to be happy! When I look around me, watch TV or listen to the radio, drive to work or travel on the underground I wonder if anyone is happy. It seems that mostly people prefer whinging, moaning, complaining, criticising other people and hurling abuse. In some case we have good reason. For example, it is no longer clear what government is for. One could be forgiven for thinking that happiness is now just an old-fashioned irrelevant term. Despite the seemingly all pervasive negativity, some people are happy just not the majority it seems. As I said, I’m especially pleased to share with you some information I came across today. It’s a pity I can’t claim this material to be mine. Nonetheless, I’m keen and happy to share it with you. This is especially relevant because our health is directly influenced by our happiness. According to a scientist named Shawn Achor (details below), we can change our outlook to be more positive (and happier) in a mere 21 days. If that’s true is that not fantastic? There are just 5 things you need to do daily, that takes just a few minutes each day. I list them immediately below for you. Do them every day for 21 days, starting tomorrow (or today if you can) 1.Get yourself a notepad and jot down 3 new things that you are grateful or thankful for 2.Write or simply recall one positive experience that has occurred to you over the past 24 hours 3.Do some exercise – the happiness reasons for this should be obvious 4.Meditate – allow us all to change the attention disorder we now practise in our busy lives and refocus our mental selves. 5.Perform at least one random or conscious act of kindness for someone else – for example, write an email praising someone or saying what you like about them or their work. Find ways to be creative to make this happen. Opening the door for someone in need or showing the way or point out a better way all qualify as example to help. After 21 days you may feel compelled to continue. If I were asked to add one personal item to this list I’d add the following:- 6. Stop watching pointless TV shows like EastEnders for example – until they cease to focus on the most banal aspects of life. Give your valuable time and attention to things that are of consequence is a much better way forward. I guess that because we don’t collectively agree on what life is for people squander their time. For the deeper reasons that underpin the studies from which these tips were derived, go to the link below and hear for yourself. The video is fast-paced, funny, informative and most of all, is worthy of your time. Go here to TED -http://video.ted.com/talk/podcast/2011X/none/shawnachor_2011x-480p.mp4 Thanks for reading - I am very grateful for Shawn Achor who has shown me how to be happier. To your slimming-down new positive self Dominic Add Comment Eat More And Lose Fat Faster 19/02/2012
 Do you think you know all about diets and slimming down? I too used to think that I did, until I read something new. There really are some interesting theories about dieting and this one qualifies, in my view, as interesting. It holds the possibility of making dieting more sustainable. I say this because, the idea presented here, of minimizing calorie-intake, to between 500-800 calories, on alternate days, for a period of 4 weeks, is quite unusual. Mainstream diets don’t typically mention anything but staying on the path with reduced calories for a requisite period of time. Indeed, traditional diets make no mention of deviating at all from the prescribed regimen. The thinking is that “If you want to get slimmer you need to follow the diet without fail”. The thinking, of course, is that, to do so, would seriously reduce your likelihood of success. The diet I refer to reminds me of something my father told me. He said that my mother used to make a big saucepan of pasta one per week every Thursday. We never liked it so he ate it. It comprised of small pieces of bacon (fried), some Pasta (Tagliatelle) and Pesto sauce. He loved it and would guiltily eat the entire saucepan returning a second and third time until it was complete. Then he’d head off to play table tennis for a few hours. The following morning, on the scales, without fail, his weight would be below the weight he had been for the entire week! It was difficult to account for the loss in weight the following day because it was counter-intuitive. We always wondered if it was because of the sheer amount of calories he ate that week or was it just that one time. Was it because of the volume of carbs PLUS the recreational exercise he played that did the trick? Was it that the bulk and volume of the pasta had the effect of emptying the contents of his colon the following morning? Was it that the body requires a mix-up in food and the pasta had that impact compared with previous days? Maybe it is because there is some kind of threshold in calories that has to be consumed before the body would do its reckoning. We never did get to understand but essentially one day he consumed more calories on that day, than the previous days. This thinking follows another article I read recently in which it was suggested that a diet in which you have a single day off from the diet once per week, eating out if possible for that day, is effective for some people. This means tremendously increasing the calories on one day over previous days then returning to the reduced regimen. Again, this is counter-intuitive, but, over the long term, it seems sensible to allow some psychological leeway because dieting to get slimmer can be an internal battle of will, and the longer it goes on, the more you may want to jump off, prematurely. Allowing yourself to “live a little” becomes necessary. By taking some time off you can look forward to eating what you like, on the one day off, but you really do need to be strong and return to the slimming-down diet plan. Either way, we don’t know scientifically why he slimmed down on Fridays. To your greater slimmed-down healthy body Dominic The Power Of Your Metabolism 24/01/2012
 The Metabolic difference between a pound of muscle and a pound of fat is quite different. Muscle burn can burn up to four times more calories. If you weighs 11 stone and have a healthy 20 percent body fat you will burn about 200 more calories per day than a someone who weighs 11 stone with about 35 percent body fat. So you should look to tone up and increase your metabolism. Your Metabolism decreases as you age so it is important to stay active in anyway you can. Avoid 2-3 week diets. Make long-term lifestyle adjustments! 2 week diets send your body into starvation mode which may temporarily Lose weight but it will eventually slow down and stop. Lifestyle adjustments to your diet means that you may lose weight at a slower rate but the weight you lose will be more long lasting. To Your Greater Health Click Here For More information On How To Lose Weight Dominic  Maybe you’ve never thought of it this way but, even if you don’t agree, right now you starring in your own movie. That particular movie is called “Life”. You play the part that YOU choose. You can never control all the elements of it. It’s impossible, but you’re in it none the less. You’re an actor whether or not you like it. You choose the exact way to play the role but and you can change it if you don’t like it. As I said playing is the only option. Your objective, barring accidents, is to make it through to the natural end of your movie. We’re all playing our respective parts. At this point your performance requires that you make the most of the character you’re playing. You’re allowed to capitalize on your natural inherent characteristics – your gender, your intelligence, thin, short, dark-haired, creative, tall, pretty, blond – or whatever combination you might have. To give your best performance you should be in shape. Remember you want to get to the natural end of your role. Lose weight now so you can change the emphasis in the part you play. Lose weight now and minimize the chance that you should expire prematurely. Earlier I mentioned that the goal is to make it to the natural end but that requires making strategic decision. Losing excess fat, directly or indirectly, is one of them and you need to work this into your act. Begin your next significant act today. I’m hoping to convince you that your best performance is yet to come and can begin now, if you want to. No one knows exactly when their part will end and, by definition, when each of us will expire. Let it not be unnecessarily health-related. The biggest question now is - Are you happy to keep bumping along as an extra in your own life story? And, even more importantly, if losing excess fat today that threatens your longevity is not your highest priority, then when would be good for you? Make your next act your finest one. Love yourself more. Commit to losing weight now. Change stuff. Rid yourself of the physical, mental and emotional clutter that holds you back. Ignore the noise that distracts you. Ignore the tat in all the shops that threatens to part your from your money. Stop bringing people into your living room that you would not let in the front door. Commit to becoming more than you are right now. Commit to getting healthier. Start by being more active. Choose to lose weight as a result! Only *you* can do it. Your forefathers and ancestors were tough, resilient and determined and survived directly because of that. I doubt that your early ancestors battled with losing fat or even thought much about their weight. They were not battling sugar addictions or over-supplies of carbs, or battling tricks being played by manufacturers to part them from their assets at the expense of their health all the while telling them that low-fat is good (wrong!). Be a strong ancestor. Get more active, get slimmer, get healthier. Your good Health and Well Being trumps every other physical concern you may have. Your hopes, dreams, plans and aspirations hinge upon it. To Your Greater Health Click Here For Additional Weight Loss Info Dominic  While you’re busy wishing that your body was more like Brad Pitt’s or Beyonce’s and less like it really is, don’t lose sight of how fantastic you already are. If the majority of the consumer fashion magazines are to be believed, we all want to be like somebody else, wishing to lose fat, get slimmer or even gain weight, and we simply overlook how great we truly are. Consider the following examples. Here’s something about the body I find fascinating. To follow me, try to determine what’s common in the scenarios I describe below.
Did you see the common theme? I knew you would! The above list describes activities, of different durations, each with its own energy demands. The first energy system handles your energy needs while sedentary, i.e. while doing nothing (your brain consumes about 30% of your bodily energy needs at rest) while the last example details an extremely gruelling activity, as any cycling fan can attest to, all the way from seconds through minutes, on to hours then days. These activities require varying degrees of pain to be successful at them. Now where am I going with this? Your body, fantastic as it is, has been designed to deal with and handle all these kinds of activities. None of the items above are unfamiliar. How does it do it? Have you ever wondered? I’ll tell you how in another post, but from the above you can see that your design is way more complicated and sophisticated than you realise. Understand that you’re special already whatever choices you make about your weight. You have in-built ways to lose weight and body fat. Losing weight is straightforward, easy, actually, if you know how. To your Healthy Existence Click Here For Additional Weight Loss Info Dominic  Did you know that, according to scientists, we’ve been occupying this planet for some estimated 2.5 million years? Since then, we’ve accumulated a mass of information about our human condition. Unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of material and advice about losing weight, losing fat, slimming down – a condition that has a hugely negative impact on the lives of many of us living in the West. (It’s a bit off topic, before you tell that they can’t prove that, let me say that it is the same scientists and technology that gave us the internet, computers or even the smartphone you’re probably reading this on. You can’t embrace one and disregard the other – it’s all the same technology). Moving swiftly on ... The combined intellect of our scientists has given us new technologies and farming methods. These farming methods coupled with distribution practices make food available cheaply and in abundance. With food available cheaply and conveniently, and at low prices, we take advantage. Doing so make us feel we are living the life we were meant to live. We accept the messages from experts who appear to have our best interests at heart. Yet more and more of us are getting fatter than ever before and dying earlier that we should. This is due in part to us being ignorant about what we eat and the part it plays in our overall health. It is also due in part to the creativeness of the manufacturers and local shops that present us with visually appealing products and smells. This makes it increasingly difficult to not want to partake of the great-looking lovely-smelling food. Everyone else is clearly enjoying that food so why not you – you ask yourself? After all, you’re not a monk! “You’re so worth it” – aren’t you. However, many of you have realised that the messages are not always in our best interests. They are commercially driven with you being the currency. They come at your expense. It is a battle for your wallet from all quarters, often to your detriment. Now more of us want to lose weight or get slim – we all want rid of the excess fat we are carrying – because we no longer like the way we look, we can’t do the things we used to, yet we’re not yet old. We are willing to pay the price while we can. With health and well-being in mind, therefore, here is my list of 11 weight-loss thoughts for 2012 that I want to share with you. Assimilate them and make this year better than the last.
To your greater health and well-being Dominic  This is the time of year where traditionally you look forward to the coming year and imagine a better version for yourself. There is nothing wrong with this per se, but as I see it there really is only one thing you should commit to this year and that is “Staying Healthy” and the easiest way to do that is by Slimming Down – losing weight Your health underpins everything you do. Without it, all is lost. There are plenty of sick wealthy people wishing that their money could buy them health. For the majority of you it should be your number one priority. You may not have thought much about it but your hopes, your dreams and your aspirations really are tied solidly to your health. Slimming Down - Getting Started: Assuming you are sedentary, (for most people the only exercise they do is breathing) what do you need to do to get started? Just do a bit more than you are doing now. For example, if you live in town, walk everywhere (whenever you can). Do more than you do now. Set aside the time and walk any distance that is less than 1 mile or so. That’s about 30 minutes there and back –It is, in the scheme of things, no time at all, but can make a big difference to your health. Slimming Down – Teenager: If you are a teenager, leave the computer games, FaceBook et al, indoors and play some sport instead somewhere other than inside your home. Why not try dancing – salsa or zumba or some other sport like tennis, table-tennis or football? However, you need to commit to it – by that I mean join a club and play in one of the local leagues so that you have to commit. 50’s Slimming Down –If you are in your fifties, looking ahead, there is one big piece of advice I’d make. “Make sure to work your joints to their extreme limit, daily”. It is from this point onwards, (in your fifties) that in the next 20 years or so, your joints will begin to function less if you let them. They do this primarily because we accept that “we’re getting on in age” and we work to avoid any pain in moving our joints. Don’t succumb to reducing your joint movement! That acceptance is the fast-track path to old age and to immobility. Do not readily accept any walking aid when prescribed unless it will actually prevent you from physically falling over. Don’t accept one of those devices used to pick things up from the floor – they save you from bending – and you do not want to stop bending - ever. Beware your doctor, who however well-meaning will probably try to persuade you, but try your hardest to resist. Remember that mobility equals independence. Commit to remaining mobile - Probably the most important thing you should commit to doing this year is to reducing your body weight if indeed you are overweight. This is a big battle for everyone. For some, not today, but surely for most tomorrow. Without weight control, your weight just grows and grows and with it come all sorts of ailments that affect your joints, ability to breathe and move. Commit now to reducing it. Sure, it requires a paradigm shift but it just requires that you get started. Consider getting yourself a personal trainer – someone that can understand your goals and continue to motivate you as you move forward. Second to money management, weight management, especially as food is cheap, abundant and convenient, you need to grab this particular obesity bull by the horns and wrestle it to the ground this year. One thing to note is that as you get older, being over-weight, your inclinations towards slimming down do reduce, and you tell yourself that you can’t do it or that it is too late. Beware of this. So commit to getting fitter by slimming down now while you can. Happy New Year To your greater weight loss Dominic Click Here For Fat Loss Help Related Articles 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 Related Articles Common Misconceptions - Calories 28/12/2011
 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 Related ArticlesLose Weight- The Perfect Meal 25/12/2011
 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 Related Articles | I am ...Dominic Small - a qualified Fitness Consultant & Personal Trainer that operates in and around North West London. ArchivesMarch 2012 CategoriesAll |
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