Friday, July 31, 2009

Lose Weight by Eating More -- Food that is Virtually Impossible to Store as Body Fat

By: Marty Gallagher
Certain foods are extremely difficult for the human body to convert into body fat - not impossible but damned near impossible. By consuming calories derived from these foods, the anabolic margin of error is extended dramatically, which means it will be easier to lose fat and gain muscle, if you choose.

Lean protein, protein devoid of saturated fat, has been the staple, the bedrock nutrient of elite athletes for 50 years. Why? You can eat a mountain of lean protein and not get fat - assuming you train with intensity sufficient enough to trigger muscle growth. Lean protein is difficult for the body to break down and digest. As a direct result of this digestive difficulty, the body kicks the metabolic thermostat upward to break protein down into subcomponent amino acids.

The human body wants to preserve stored body fat as a last line of defense against starvation. If overworked and under-fed, the body will preferentially eat muscle tissue to save precious body fat.

Obese people that go on crash diets, precipitously slashing calories, might lose 100-pounds of body weight, yet still appear fat. Despite losing from say 350-pounds to 250-pounds, they still appear fat because they still are fat. The body has cannibalized muscle tissue and saved the fat. Though they might weigh 100-pounds less, they still possess 25-40% body fat percentile.

Lean protein is the bedrock nutrient in the physical renovation process because it supplies muscle tissue battered by a high intensity weight workout with the amino acids needed to heal, recover and construct new muscle tissue. Lean protein is a bedrock nutrient in the physical renovation process because it causes the basal metabolic rate (BMR) to elevate; the metabolic thermostat, the rate at which our body consumes calories, increases when digesting protein. Lean protein is a bedrock nutrient in the physical renovation process because it is damned near impossible for the body to convert it into body fat.

The other bedrock nutrient in the physical transformation process is fibrous carbohydrates: carrots, broccoli, green beans, bell peppers, spinach, cauliflower, onions, asparagus, cabbage, salad greens, Brussels sprouts and the like. Fibrous carbohydrates, like lean protein, are nearly impossible for the body to convert into body fat. Fibrous carbohydrates require almost as many calories to digest as they contain. A green bean or carrot might contain 10-calories yet is so dense and difficult to break down that the body has to expend nearly as many calories to break down that bean or carrot as the vegetable contains.

Fibrous carbohydrates have a wonderful "Roto-Rooter" effect on the internal plumbing: as they work their way though the digestive passageways they scrape mucus and gunk off intestinal walls and help keep sludge buildup to a minimum. For this reason fibrous carbohydrates are the perfect compliment to a lean protein diet. Too much protein can cause bile buildup: fiber is the Yin to protein's Yang. The two nutrients should be eaten together.

Both protein and fiber have a beneficial dampening effect on insulin secretions. It is no accident that professional bodybuilders, the world's best dieters, capable of reducing body fat percentiles to 5% while maintaining incredible muscle mass, construct their eating regimen around protein and fiber.

The best way to eat is to eat often. If you eat 3,000 calories a day the best way is in five 600-calorie feeding or six 500-calorie feedings instead of a breakfast containing 400-calories, a lunch of 1000-calories and a late dinner of 1,600-calories. Avoid calories easily converted into body fat.

Eat multiple small meals in the 400-600 calorie range comprised exclusively of foods near impossible for the body to convert into body fat. Plus, these foods cause the metabolism, the BMR, the body thermostat to elevate in order to digest them. Optimally you should eat every three hours: in about the time the nutrients from the previous meal have dwindled, been expended and exhausted, in about the time the elevated metabolism is 'settling back down to normal,' eat another small protein/fiber meal. This reestablishes anabolism, kicks the metabolism upward once again and gives the body more practice at assimilating and distributing quality nutrients.

They say practice makes perfect and by eating small, power-packed, tough to digest meals every three hours, the metabolism is kept elevated, anabolism is established and maintained and the individual never feels hungry. A person who is not hungry is far less inclined to binge on sweets and treats, junk and trash then the crash diet/calorie cutters who always feel hungry, deprived, listless and lacking energy.

The small meal/protein/fiber approach has been used successfully by elite athletes for decades and is not some untried dietary abstraction - rather it is the proven method of choice, one that has withstood the test of time, one that has been used for decades and been proven effective time after time.

If a person is able to establish a multiple meal schedule comprised primarily of lean protein and fiber eaten every three hours, then adds to this eating schedule some serious weight training and a cardiovascular regimen, physical transformation is a biological certainty.

Author Bio
Coming soon! "The Obesity Solution" is designed to help overweight men and women physically transform themselves into healthier, thinner, more fit individuals. Designed by Marty Gallagher, a world champion coach and former www.washingtonpost.com fitness columnist, he will take you by the hand to help you achieve permanent fat loss.

For more information, visit www.purposefullyprimitive.com/article.html and get a FREE special report on how to stick to a diet the easy way!

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Monday, July 27, 2009

Eat Healthy and Lose Weight

By: Christopher Ayu
If you accept the analogy that our bodies are like an engine, then it follows that this engine will perform better if it receives the type of fuel that it was designed to run on. In years gone by, before artificially processed and manufactured foods, our bodies normally received the correct nutritional balance every day.

As more and more families saw both the husband and wife holding down jobs outside the home, the dynamics of eating, exercise and nutrition began to change. "Convenience" and "fast foods" became the norm, and farms were gradually replaced by processing plants. Today, the average meal is so laden with artificial preservatives and saturated fat that our bodies are starving for the ingredients that they need, and overflowing with the ingredients that they don't need.

This nutritional imbalance manifests itself through weight problems, skin problems, tiredness, disease, and overall poor health. Although this problem has reached pandemic proportions, you can reverse the effects of poor diet in your own life if you truly want to.

Garbage In - Garbage Out

While this phrase may have been coined for the computer industry, it's very relevant when it comes to our own body. Every moment that we are alive, our body is busy manufacturing the chemicals, fluids, proteins, and tissues that are required to keep us healthy. Food, or rather the nutrition that is derived from food, is what the body depends upon to handle all of these tasks.

Everything that we consume is used, stored, or discarded by the body. The body's particular nutritional needs can vary widely depending upon what's going on inside and outside of us at any particular time. Our body makes decisions on whether to burn carbs or fat based upon our immediate energy needs, how long it has been since our last meal, and the general condition of our health.

The body burns fuel in a very specific order. Alcohol is burned first because our bodies have no way to store it for later use. Protein is burned next, then carbohydrates and, finally fat.

Because fat is consumed last, and the average person has a diet which is rich in fat, our bodies store the fat away to be used at a future time. How is this fat stored? You guessed it; it's stored as fatty tissue. And that's why we call being overweight "fat".

These excess fat stores not only affect our physical appearance, but they have a tremendous impact on our overall health. Study after study has shown that excess fat in our diets are directly linked to these medical conditions:


Increased risk of developing certain cancers.
Increased risk of arterial and heart disease due to elevated cholesterol levels.
Increased risk of stroke.
Increased risk of Diabetes.
Increased risk of Liver disease.
Direct impact on the body's immune system.


Doesn't it just make sense to avoid these unnecessary health risks by reducing the amount of fat that we consume every day? Of course it does.

Author Bio
Christopher Ayu is the webmaster and content provider for www.swim-wear-in-style.com This is one of the many article posted on his site on health-and-fitness.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content

Find a Weight Loss Program That Works For You


By: Philip Nicosia
Millions of people struggle with weight issues every year-and despite claims that a wonder diet can "work for everybody", the fact is that each of those individuals have a medical history, a personality, or a lifestyle issue that affects whether or not that weight control technique will help them shed those pounds.

But while nothing works for everybody, there is something that will work for you... and the challenge is to find it, identify it, and stick to it.

For some people, appetite control is extremely difficult. Some weight loss programs try to tackle that problem by delving into the psychological issues behind food (these are the total lifestyle body makeovers, whose techniques include keeping a food journal and coming to terms with one's body image). Others address the problem through metabolism, introducing or removing certain foods in one's diet that are said to either trigger appetite. Still others, like diet pills, act as appetite suppressants. Other programs rely on nutritional substitutes, like heavy shakes that make one feel full and provide adequate vitamins and minerals, while reducing calories.

For others, it's not appetite that's problematic, it's the kind of food they eat. Certain diet programs give very strict diet regimens that promote weight loss, because of the way the body digests the food. Some are short-term, meant to shed pounds over a limited period of time; others are long-term lifestyle changes. The success of these diet programs depend largely on the person's weight loss goals and level of commitment. Needless to say, if you just want to drop a dress size for your wedding, you may not be ready to go into something long-term. But if you have health problems, and need to control cholesterol levels, then a short-term solution would not be very effective.

Other weight loss programs are closely tied with exercise routines. Of course, not all exercise regimens will appeal to an individual; some would find yoga interesting, while others would prefer something like belly dancing. The idea is that one picks what is most interesting to them-the more fun and enjoyment they derive from a routine, the more likely they will stick to it.

The mistake that many people make is that they don't consider their own lifestyle or personality when they try a diet or exercise regimen; they go with what everyone else is doing, or jump on the weight loss bandwagon on the premise that it worked for so-and-so. While it's okay to experiment with different regimens (wouldn't hurt to try anything once), ultimately it is a search to find what is personally appealing.

Another secret to maintaining a diet or exercise regimen is to have very clear and realistic goals. "Be thin" is too general to be meaningful; pinpoint a number, and a date: "Lose 15 pounds by September." And to avoid discouragement, that goal must be humanly achievable and should never compromise with one's health. If a diet makes one dizzy, or radically affects one's ability to be fully alert and functional, then stop immediately.

Luckily there is a wide variety of weight loss regimens. There's bound to be one that will help one meet one's goals and match one's lifestyle.

Author Bio
Resources.eu.com is an online resource centre covering many topics including health and fitness and weight loss.

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How to Really Make Your Diet Work For You

By: Stanislav Karpunin
First of all, you need to understand, that your body needs a proper Balanced Nutrition Diet, with a proper daily amount of: vitamins, proteins, minerals and carbohydrates.

Get into a habit of eating exactly 3 Meals a day.

1. Eat breakfast within one hour of rising.Breakfast provides at least 30 percent of the total energy and nutrition needed to sustain the human body during the whole day. And therefore it is very important to have a proper breakfast and not to skip it.

2. Have a healthy low-fat lunch snack.
Have a healthy snack in your lunch time, low fat yogurt for example, to keep your energy running.

3. Have your dinner three hours before your bedtime.Have a Proper dinner three hours before your bedtime; never go to bed on a full stomach.

Drink at least 2 liters of water a day. 2 liters of water a day would help your body to burn calories more effectively and to get rid of toxins.

Exercising is a KEY.
By exercising, your body gets an advantage of many physiological benefits such as:

Weight Control by elevating your metabolism so that you burn more calories daily.
The Boost in your energy level
Strengthening of your heart and lungs
Improvement in your self-image and self-confidence.
So, don't forget to exercise at least 10 minutes a day.
Try to avoid using fats. Try to keep the fat level in your cooking as low as possible.

Make Calcium your friend. Include as much calcium as you can in your daily diet by eating:

Oranges
Broccoli
Soybeans
Tofu
Sunflower Seeds
Papaya
And other sources of calcium. Calcium is a crucial element for bone metabolism. Calcium deficiency is very common. The "Average" American diet does not even come close to meeting the normal calcium requirements:
425 mg. a day for Men
450 mg. a day for Women

So, to sum it up:
1. Have exactly 3 meals a day
2. Drink at least 2 liters of water a day
3. Exercise at least 10 minutes a day
4. Avoid fats
5. Make calcium your friend

By following these 5 simple rules, you will be losing weight in no time.

Author Bio
WellnessWorx.net markets quality, weight-management, nutrition and personal health care products created by WellnessPro leading industry experts. Weight-loss can be a pleasure! http://wellnessworx.net WellnessWorx.net