Thursday, January 8, 2009

Why exercise is important

If you are yet to know that exercise is important for good health, you are already living a high risk lifestyle. It's true! If you don't know, it only means you have been doing all the wrong things all these years and your case must be looked into urgently. Your muscles will become flabby and weak. Your heart and lungs may fail to function properly. What you don’t now is that, you can even afford to eat all the wrong foods if your are exercising regularly. That means, lack of exercise may be killing you more than the cigarette you are smoking.

The importance of exercise will take a full book to highlight. Let’s take a look at a few especially those you must know. You probably need to know these before you get up and start working out.

Disease Prevention- As mentioned above, exercises may just be the reason why a lot of us who smoke and drink excessively are still alive today. Regular exercise is necessary for physical fitness and good health. It cut downs significantly, the risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure. It also promotes longevity.

Improves Stamina and Physical Endurance- When you exercise the body builds up strength gradually and with every additional day of doing so, you become stronger and much more able to thrive under pressure. Your anaerobic levels improve and if you are running it is common to find out that you will still be rearing to go while others who have not been exercising like you need to stop and take a breath.

Aerobic exercise involves continuous and rhythmic physical motion, such as walking and bicycling. How does it affect the heart? The heart develops and become accustomed to handling higher metabolic demands of the body and so even when you exercise for unusually longer periods, you do not get tired because the heart can still cope with the higher demand.

Muscles Strength- Exercising with weights causes muscles hypertrophy. That is, the muscles grow larger and become stronger. This improves your strength and even makes your grip a lot more firm. Your posture can be improved, and your muscles become more firm and toned.

Flexibility- As you exercise it makes a lot of sense to practice a variety of exercises as different forms of exercise serve different purposes. Stretching exercises are also important because it helps to circulate lubricants in the joints adequately. Stretching also ensures that the continuous joint movement gives no room for joint stiffness this way you stay flexible and reduce you chances of getting a fracture occurring.

Weight Loss- As you must have heard before, you can not loss weight without exercises. It is improper to try to loss weight on diet alone. Exercise is responsible for burning your body fat to help you loss the it. Exercise is also a key to weight control because it burns calories. If you burn off more calories than you take in, you lose weight. Taking in less amount of calorie alone will not help you loss weight you need to exercise to assist the weight loss process.

Best way to Suppress Your Appetite

“What's the best appetite suppressant? I‘ve tried both drug based and herbal but I didn’t loss any weight. I am not sure what to do, but I guess there is an answer”. So many young people today sound like the lady I quoted here.

Now what are the things you are looking for in an appetite suppressant considering the fact that you may have to be on them for as long as possible, in many cases up to 12 months. You know that for sustained effect especially if you desire drastic weight loss the suppressants must be used for sustained periods. I know a lot of ladies want to do this as their wedding approaches and guys want to do this as summer crawls near looking to show off some six packs.

If you want to suppress your appetite in a healthy and safe way, stick to high-fiber foods and high water consumption. These two help to keep your stomach filled most of the time and so suppresses your appetite. The feeling of hunger actually emanates form the hunger pangs in an empty stomach and get sent to the brain where it is interpreted as hunger. So to suppress this, it is as simple as keeping the stomach filled most of the time.

However, you need to find a way of doing so without consuming excessive amount of calories. Two of the best high fiber anti suppressants available in the market include Proactol and Acai berries & its products.

These are the best appetite suppressants! We are meant to eat lots of high-fiber fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and we also function best when we consume a large amount of water to aid digestion and circulation.

Acai berries for example, are fruits from Brazil and apart from the high anti-oxidant contents are very rich in fiber. So it tends to expand in the stomach when eaten causing fast satisfaction when eating.

Another herbal appetite suppressant is Lipobind. It is a certified medical device product. It works with the same principle of acai berries. It controls food cravings by causing what you have eaten to expand in your stomach making you feel full and satisfied.

You may also want to try out Hoodia. Hoodia is said to work well. They come usually in combination with L-carnitine. For further information on the products I have mentioned here please Google the product word. There are tones of information out there for your use.

Another effective herbal supplement that is in popular use today is 5-HTP. It increases serotonin secretion in the brain; this is responsible for elevating your mood and also decreases your appetite for food.

When using these appetite suppressants, you should be careful that you do not suppress your appetite too much that you become malnourished due to inadequate food intake.

Above all these, you can still loss weight naturally by staying on a strict diet and exercising regularly without having to spend so much on fat binders or appetite suppressants and if you must use any form of medication, always consult your doctor.

How to loss weight and stay Slim

If you are like most people looking to lose some pounds, then you probably have read some weight loss tips along the line. What you will read here are probably part of what you read but the difference is that you will know here that it is not just about knowing what to do without actually doing them. If you must maintain that heard earned new sexy look, you have to keep reading then.

Dietary control- The first thing you need to do is to what you eat which I’m sure you know to have even succeeded in losing weight to where you are now. The battle is not over yet just because you have lot some weight. You are about to get back to what you used to be if you don’t keep doing what you were doing. You need to understand that, there is no end to it. If you achieved weight lose through dieting, use of fat binders, or any form of slimming pills, you need to keep doing it. You need more discipline now than ever before.

Exercise- By now you should be mature as far as exercises are concerned and you should be going higher despite haven lost enough weight. If you keep you calories consumption at the same level, an extra 10 minutes of aerobics daily wouldn’t make much difference. This will help you not to drop.

Change the way you live- I am talking about the way you live. Remember that diet is just one of the ways that helped you loss weight. You need to change all the habits that caused you to add weight in the first place. If you we living a sedentary lifestyle, you will need to get a little more active. Avoid the elevators, take over the work of walking the dog, it doesn’t just help the job get some fresh air but helps you too. Leave the car sometimes and help out on the lawn if you never used to. You just must get active.

Join support group- It is truly difficult to do it alone no matter how determined you may be. If you can afford to join a group please do. You need to be able to encourage each other. Sometimes they even prevent you from snapping up that chocolate. Online groups are better because there are some free forums around where you could get the encouragement to stay focused on staying slim. Just Google “online slimming support groups”.

Picture Yourself When you still had that your buttons popping up- Always try to recall what you used to look like. I’m sure if you don’t like the mental picture, it should scare you to action. So take a photograph of you in past and post it by your bedside- what a nightmare!

Reorganize Your Food Stock- certain kinds of foods should no longer find their way into your store or refrigerator. Snack shouldn’t come near your refrigerator. That means even your kids will have to share your plight. ‘Sorry pet, we can no longer have chocolates in this home’. You need to be bold enough to tell him that.

Finally don’t just stuff things into you mouth especially if it’s a new product. Always take the extra step to read the labels to know what ingredients you’ve got there before you kill yourself again.

How to stay healthy

It takes more than a regular medical check up to live a healthy life, unlike what many people are made to believe. Studies have shown that some of the major causes of mortality in the United States, such as heart diseases, cancers, stroke, bronchitis, emphysema, penetrating and blunt injuries, and HIV/AIDS, are in most cases preventable if a healthy lifestyle is inculcated. Healthy diet, exercise, and avoiding some poor habits like excessive drinking of alcohol and smoking are few ways that you can stay healthy.

The more interesting thing about all this is that, like the old saying ‘prevention is always better than cure’. You will notice that it is cheaper not to smoke than to smoke. It is cheaper not to drink than to drink, yet people still choose the more difficult option that also comes with a myriad of health problems.

Leading a Healthy Life by Exercising

No one can claim to be living a healthy lifestyle if exercise is not part of his/her daily routine. Exercises help you physically; because it strengthen your muscles and bones, confers flexibility and enhances nutrient uptake from the blood to the cells to keep the cells healthy, socially; because in most cases when you are involved in a work out, you get to make new friends at the gym and enjoy the interaction. Soon you will be looking up to that atmosphere-at social gathering, regular exercises can help your self esteem. It helps you mentally by improving you mental alertness and agility. Exercises kind of make life complete and keeps depression away.

Healthy Dieting

Your meals count a lot and are a major factor in determining what your health status will be in a few years to come. Everyone should avoid fats even if you are not trying to loss weight because of the risk of hypertension, cancers, and diabetes.

Eat a lot of fruits and vegetables-they should occupy a greater portion of the space in your refrigerator. Eating the right foods and the right amounts of foods with low calorie levels will help you achieve longevity and healthier life. Getting the nutrients you need, such as calcium and iron, and keeping your weight under control can help.

Ensure that your meals contain all the essential nutrients you need and where it is difficult to achieve this, the use of dietary supplement is encouraged. Try to balance the calories you get from food with the calories you use through physical activity. Make sure the calories you use up daily is not less that what you take in. Eat a variety of foods, especially: Vegetables; choose dark-green leafy and deep-yellow vegetable, Fruits; citrus fruits or juices, melons, and berries; Dry beans, lentils, chickpeas, and peanuts; Whole grains, such as wheat, rice, oats, corn, and barley.

Above all, remember to practice safe sex, drink water only when the source is trusted. Your efforts will amount to nothing if you contact a disease from sex or water. Keep the environment clean and practice good personal hygiene.

The secret of losing belly fat fast and easily

Belly fat is usually the first sign of obesity. When a person begins to develop protruded abdomen, obesity has already set in-medical experts call it truncal obesity. There are several names for this; others say it is cellulite accumulation. What ever you call it, belly fat is the most obvious sign that tells us when a person becomes obsessed. Most people don’t like the site of truncal obesity or belly fat. There is an ugly thing to it and creates flaps at the sides of your abdomen especially when sitting down.

Do you want to get rid of the fat in your abdomen? Then you have to read on. There is a lot of advice out there in books and web pages on how to successfully burn the fat in your belly yet I keep coming across people who have done all that to no avail. The reason for this may be that, you got the wrong kind of counsel, or you applied the advice wrongly. If you fall in this category of people, there is something to smile about. That of course, will be true if you adhere to what you will learn here. Remember that your ability to loss belly fat will depend mostly on you and not really what anyone must have told you-if the best strategy is wrongly applied, you can be sure it won’t

What then do you need to do to loss belly fat?

The strategy involves proper healthy diet plan and exercise. Now that sounds familiar right? Make no mistake that you can loss your belly fat by the application of one. Both are mutually inclusive and can not be effective in isolation. I am sure you must have heard this before. But people fail to understand that belly fat requires specific type of type of exercise that is targeted at that area. For example, running will help you stay fit but will do little to burn the fat in your abdomen.

Interval Training

This is a High Intensity Interval Training. The idea involves some kind of cardiovascular exercises that are done in a period of lower intensity followed by a period of higher intensity. This is called exercising in ‘fits and starts’.

This kind of exercise helps to burn more fat that the typical kind of cardiovascular exercises. Also, with respect to belly fat in particular, research has shown that High Intensity Interval Training can produce more fat loss in the abdomen than in any other parts of the body. A recent study shows that, people involved in High Intensity Interval Training have been found to loss about 3-4 times more fat especially belly fat than those practicing the regular steady-state cardiovascular exercises, despite exercising for longer periods.

Secondly, in order to target the belly specifically, it is very important to include sit-ups as an important aspect of your exercise program.

Belly-Fat-Losing Diet

The simplest way to put it is to say, reduce your calorie intake to a maintenance level. That is, take in only the amount of calories that just enough to help maintain your body without storing any more energy. This is the most-effective way of shedding pounds of fat from the body. In place of carbohydrate food, eat fruits, fish and vegetables.

Why is nutrition important when exercising?

Adequate nutrition is necessary if the benefits of exercising are to be achieved and should go hand in hand. During an exercise, the rate of metabolism (catabolism in this case) increases and that burns up a lot of calories. This means that there is depletion of our energy levels and thus must be replaced by proper nutrition.
While exercising, there is increase in the breakdown of carbohydrates and fats. They all need to be replaced and in cases where the essence is to build the muscles, will require that, adequate amino acid sources are ingested to allow the new rate of muscle building triggered off by the exercise.

The body demands increase tremendously and will take adequate amount of energy from carbohydrates to power the level of metabolism going on. Proteinous foods will supply the amino acids needed for muscle building. All these including micronutrients like B vitamins and chromium, antioxidants such as vitamins C and E, and minerals such as calcium and magnesium will be needed at extra quantities. The level of metabolism releases even more free radicals and as such, increase mop up action will be needed by anti-oxidants.

You will need to drink more water than you usually do. During exercising, you loss fluid extremely from sweat and insensible loses due to increase respiration, and so you are easily dehydrated. This can lead to heat stroke, hypovolemic shock, renal stone formation etc. So you will need a lot of water to cool off the exothermic reaction that is taking place in your body.

There is virtually an increase in every single chemical reaction in the body. Just as everything else is working overtime, so are the heart muscles. You will need to supply the heart with adequate vitamins like B and C, oxygen and other nutrients to ensure that the electrical activities in the heart continue to meet up the new demands. More sodium and potassium ions influx and efflux occurs and nutritional intake should be such that can meet up with these activities. Depletion of these ions could cause heart block.
Before or after exercises, adequate carbohydrate which is the main energy source for physical activities should be taken. If you want to do so before an exercise, you need to allow time for adequate digestion to occur and commence when the food is no longer much in the stomach to avoid Angina as blood flow is more to the abdominal organs thereby depriving the heart. Ideally, we should eat after a good rest following exercise paying attention to the needs of the body.

For athletes, wrestlers, boxers and other sports people, that strong grip and balance in the legs can not be developed if exercises are not properly complemented by good nutrition. For a strong grip, the muscles of the hands need to grow bigger and stronger, the leg muscles must grow bigger too for balance, and the bones are not going to be strong enough without adequate calcium supply from a diet rich in fruits, fish and milk.

The Real Reason Why you are fat

Your quest to loss some weight if you are interested, will not see the light until you identify why you are fat in the first instance and then work to avoid all the identified reasons. Though in the beginning, a lot of fat people do not want to accept that they are fat and usually pick a quarrel if anyone makes an observation, there comes a time when they can no longer hide from it.

The thing is, when you finally agree that you are fat, do you just say ‘okay, I know am fat and there is nothing I can do about it’. Then put up with it? Or do you take up the challenge and start doing something about it?

So why are you fat?

Usually I get replies like; “I eat at wrong times of the day, at the wrong quantities. I have 3 kids; I run a business that takes away all the time I could have exercised. Between the business and my three kids’ daily activities at school that I volunteer at, as well as every other extra curricular activity, I really don't find the time to make sure I eat right.

I must be sure my children eat well though. While they're eating, I'm cleaning, or getting ready, or cleaning up spilt milk, etc. I miss meals, when it is time for me to eat; I eat it really big because I am really very hungry by then. I know what I am doing is wrong but what do I do?”

Others tell me stories like; “I don't drink enough fluids, when I do, its usually coffee, but I gag on water, I've tried checking this myself, and I am almost succeeding, I'm down to a coke every other day, and that is about 4 bottles a week, instead of everyday, though I still have my coffee. But now I'm up to two bottles of water a day....however, either way, still not enough fluids at all right?”

Yes enough fluid is alright but not when the fluid is coffee and coke. A bottle of coke is said to contain about 8 cubes of sugar and coffee doesn’t just contain caffeine that affects your nerves when you grow older but increases your cholesterol level. I have told people, it doesn’t matter whether it is decaff.
Another excuse people give themselves. “I was too busy working and wasn’t eating enough then I became anemic. I wouldn't be if I was eating properly. If I really wanted to eat well I could probably have worked out a schedule to make sure I eat the right things at the right times. Now the doctor wants me to eat more but I am now fat trying to do what the doctor said. I have tried to cut out the soda, and focus more on water, and I do some light walking as I was not supposed to get involved in very strenuous physical activities as at then. How do I loss weight without becoming anemic again?”

Whatever is your excuse or ‘reason’ you need to start knowing that excuses will only worsen your health status. So knock if off! You will not get better with excuses. Take the responsibility for your own health. Stop blaming the doctor, your kids or your job. It is all about you being a little bit more vigilant and determined to save your own life.
With all these excuses, you will begin to eat emotionally, stuffing a lot of chocolate, binging at any opportunity. Seeking solace in food is the worst thing you can do for your mode. Exercises will put you in a better frame of mind.