Except for perhaps Weight Watchers, the Adkins Diet may be the most popular diet of our time. Even if you haven’t personally tried it yet, you undoubtedly know someone who has used it. Of course, popular doesn’t always mean good.

Is the Adkins Diet the revolutionary way of life that will slash your risk of high cholesterol and have you fitting back into those jeans from high school or is it the dangerous, unbalanced way of eating that some claim it is?

One of the undisputed benefits of the Adkins Diets is simply that it works. It works quite quickly and effectively for pretty much anyone who employs the diet in its entirety. Even while eating enjoyable foods that might have previously been considered “off limits” by dieters, this diet produces results.

The secret is in the science of low carb dieting. The body has two types of fuel. The primary type of fuel the body uses is glucose, which is obtained from carbohydrates. The other type, considered the “back up plan” of the body, is ketones, which are obtained from the body’s own fat store.

When carbs are strictly limited, the body must resort to pulling fuel for energy from the body’s fat store. This built-in self-preservation system works beautifully, but is it healthy to put the body into such an altered state of functioning?

One negative to consider is the possibility of inducing what is known as “toxic overload”. This occurs when the body burns through fat too quickly. Toxins in the body are frequently stored in the fat cells, and as the fat cells are used up to fuel the body, these toxins may be released into the bloodstream.

Despite this concern, the Adkins Diet is often touted as a sound and healthy dietary regimen. While it is true that the body requires nutrients from various sources, particularly the plant sources that may be restricted by the diet, the Adkins Diet is proven to reduce both blood pressure and cholesterol. Diabetes may even be positively impacted by adherence to the Adkins Diet.

Many diets set dieters up for failure with their overly restrictive nature. Diets based on calorie reduction, in particular, cause dieters to suffer through periods of intense and uncomfortable hunger. A benefit of the Adkins Diet is its generous allowance of larger amounts of food as well as foods high in satiation, like meats.

While satisfaction with the foods a dieter is allowed to eat certainly contributes the dieter’s ability to stick with a dietary program, it is certainly not the only aspect of a diet that may impact the dieter’s quality of life. Many adherents to the Adkins Diet complain of extreme fatigue and lethargy due to the dramatic change in metabolic function.

Like most diets, the Adkins Diet provides excellent weight loss results. The real question is whether the dieter finds the results to be worth the lifestyle changes.

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Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Tags: diabetes, energy, fatigue, food, Lethargy

I am always concerned about hydration when I exercise but in the summer months when it is hard to stay hydrated even when doing nothing it is even more critical to keep your water and electrolytes up.

Proper hydration plays a critical role in athletic performance. Some consequences of dehydration are as follows: cramping, fatigue, dizziness, rapid elevation of body temperature, confusion, fainting, and the inability to sweat (cooling mechanism of the body).

Despite these symptoms obviously hampering athletic performance, they can progress rapidly into heat exhaustion or heat stroke. In order to avoid these serious side effects and increase the ability to perform at top levels, it is essential that not only athletes, but everyone that is exposed to Louisiana temperatures have a clear understanding of how to maintain proper hydration.

When focusing on hydration, it is important to look at some warning signs that the body gives to signal the lack of proper hydration. Thirst is considered by some experts to be an early signal that your body is in need of re-hydration. But according to Nancy Clark in her “Sports Nutrition Guidebook,” athletes may have already lost over a pound and a half of water weight before their thirst mechanism kicks in. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: dehydration, dizziness, fainting, fatigue, Louisiana, Nancy Clark, Porche, stroke

Everyone seems to be shouting these days that in order to lose weight and get fit you need to workout, workout and workout. At least, that seems to be the general refrain amongst today’s fitness experts. However, rarely, if ever, does one care to offer a step by step workout plan that even newbies can understand well. You see, just like everything else in life, there is a certain formula you need to follow when doing workouts. In this article I will tell you about the five parts of a workout plan.

a) Warm up: A warm up exercise would do exactly what its name implies – it would warm up your body for the hard core workouts that are about to come. Make sure that you don’t use a hardcore workout for a warm up as that would only make you tired even before you have started your actual workouts.

In my experience, elliptical trainers are best suitable for warm up exercises. Why? It not only involves your entire body in the workout but also lets you exercise at a low intensity level. Ideally a warm up session must not last for more than 5-10 minutes.

b) Stretch: Now, before doing stretches, you must drink at least one glass of water. Now start the stretching workout. Stretching fills up your body with adequate oxygen so that you don’t suffer from fatigue during the actual workout session. Ideally you should not spend more than five minutes on this, or at most, ten minutes. Once you have done stretching, drink another glass of water. In the next step the actual weight workout session would start.

c) Weight workout: A weight workout session must not be either too long or too short. If it is too long then you would not only get badly tired at the end of it but also have a difficult time in recovering from the strain of the workout; on the other hand, if it is too short then you won’t be able to work on your muscles hard enough to produce the desired results.

In my opinion, you should spend no less than 45 minutes and no more than one hour on this workout. You should also take breaks of about 2 minuets between each set of workout, and during these break periods be sure to drink adequate water.

d) Stretch: Once you are done with the weight workout, start stretching again. Stretching makes your body relaxed. When your body is in a relaxed state, it would be able to recover from the strain of the weight workout quickly. Stretching also helps regulate your blood flow and prevents cramping that may occur as a side effect of heavy exercise.

e) Replenish your body with carbohydrates and protein: By the time you have finished your workout session, your body would have little energy left for doing anything else. To replenish your body for the lost energy, you should consume an adequate amount of carbohydrates. I have found that sugar drink is the best choice for this purpose as your body is able to get loads of carbs quickly that way. After an hour, you should take a large sized, protein-rich meal.

Tags: energy, fatigue, Fitness Equipment, lost energy, strain, strain of the workout; on the other hand

Hydroxycut is a product that many of us in the weight loss and muscle gain community have watched and used before and after health scares. Hydroxycut in the early part of the is decade, even in the 90s was a great product for stripping fat in the Spring and was already pulled once off the market and now Hydroxycut is gone again.

Hydroxycut has a history as a fat loss supplement and was one of the first popular products to have and ECA stack. Back in the 90s the ECA stack was Ephedra and caffeine to raise the metabolism and aspirin as a buffer to help your stomach and get rid of any shakes from the ephedra and caffeine. Well once ephedra was pulled from the market for giving seemingly healthy people heart attacks Hydroycut was gone to, at least I thought so.

Hydroxycut was eventually successfully relaunched as a completely natural product and I wrote a review of it just a little while back (now I will pull that review) and now the FDA had pulled Hydroxycut off the market again. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: abdominal pain, cardiovascular disorders, fatigue, Hydroxycut, Iovate Health Sciences Inc., Iovate Health Sciences USA Inc., itching, kidney failure, liver failure, liver injuries, liver transplant, nausea, Oakville, Ontario, rhabdomyolysis, seizures, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, vomiting

Getting happy is very very important for no other reason than the happy person will do what is necessary and the unhappy person will instead dwell on failures and not bother raking those steps to get into better health.

(hint: Serotonin makes you happy)

More than 25 million people received treatment for depression last year and the American Psychological Association reports: more than half of Americans say they are stressed. It’s becoming a primary focus for doctors world-wide.

Here’s what you need to know, to protect you mind and your body.

These days, world-renowned speaker Deepak Chopra teaches that happiness is no longer just a mental quest, but a physical one. Chopra recently released his newest DVD “The Prescription for Happiness.” Doctors are on the same page. They now have solid evidence your happiness directly affects your health. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: American Psychological Association, Author, Deepak Chopra, depression, fatigue, insomnia, Liz Vaccariello, National Institute of Health, Parkinsons disease, re-sets chemical patterns, speaker, treatment for depression, United States

Calorie here, calorie there. Every time we try to lose weight, we are asked to monitor our calorie intake. Now what the heck is this calorie? Well, as a matter of fact, each of the foods and drinks we consume contain a certain quantity of calories. Once food enters our body, those calories are transformed into energy. In turn our body uses this energy to perform its day-to-day operations.

Now our body requires a certain minimum level of energy to be able to function properly. If the current energy level is below this minimum requirement, we would suffer from fatigue, weakness, and a host of other maladies. On the other hand, if our body receives more energy than required, it would deposit the extra energy as fat for future use.

As you can see, if you want to get rid of fat, you need to control your body’s energy production, which can be done only by reducing your daily calorie intake level. One way to do that is by controlling your food intake by dieting. Dieting of course means eating balanced, healthy meals rather than fasting. Another way to keep the energy levels at normal level is by burning the excess calories with the help of workouts. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: canola oil, energy, energy level, energy levels, energy production, energy production level, excess food, fatigue, food, food habit, food intake, little oil

It is said that America tops the obese adult population in the world, which is of course true. However, one seems to overlook the fact that America is also home to the highest population of obese children. If WHO (World Health Organization) is to be believed, our world contains more than twenty million obese kids, most of whom are in the age group of five-eight.

WHO also says that childhood obesity has reached the level of an epidemic in America, so much so that in the past three decades the number of obese American kids has more than tripled. Isn’t your child one of them too? It is time to take control of your kid’s life and help him lead the kind of comfortable and healthy life we would want him to lead. And this is only possible by helping him get rid of the extra pounds.

In fact, if America tops the number of obese kids, even third world countries are not far behind. You would think that an economically backward continent like Africa would have skinny kids because most of their parents are too poor to feed them properly, let alone overfeed them. However, very often our beliefs don’t coincide with reality. Just recently a special task force sent to Africa to gauge the health stats of the people living there encountered more obese kids than malnourished children.

You maybe thinking: why all this hullabaloo about childhood obesity? What is wrong if the belly of your kid if a tad fatter than his peers? The answer is: just like overweight adults, fat kids are also likely to suffer from harmful diseases such as high blood pressure, type 1 diabetes, hypertension, fatigue, heart diseases, and in some cases, even early death.

Believe it or not, the root cause of childhood obesity has little to do with genetics and more with poor lifestyle habits. Often people add two and two and jump to the conclusion that the kid is fat because of his parents. But that is not true at all. Kids emulate the unhealthy habits of their parents and naturally become fat like them. If you and your kids follow healthy lifestyle habits, both of you would be able to get rid of fat very quickly.

Truth to be told, the onus of the rising levels of childhood obesity lies on parents to a great extent. We parents prefer our kids to have junk foods since they can be easily procured from outside and help save the time we would have spent on cooking. A diet rich in fat and sugar could only make your child fatter and fatter. There is really nothing new to be said about it. Unless you are willing to spend a little time and energy in cooking healthy foods at home, don’t expect your kids to become any slimmer.

Apart from making them eat healthy foods such as whole grains, fruits and vegetables, it is also important that you try to reduce their intake of soda and fizzy drinks.

Controlling the food habits of your kids is only half the battle won, the other half being that of encouraging them to become more active. If you are concerned about your child’s future and wish to offer him a healthy life, you would need to take him away from Xbox and PSPs to outdoor sports such as cricket, basketball, tennis, etc. Encouraging them to indulge in cardiovascular activities such as swimming, dancing, rope jumping, etc., would also help them burn fat and lose weight.

Tags: Africa, America, basketball, cricket, diabetes, energy, fatigue, food habits, heart diseases, high blood pressure, hypertension, obesity, outdoor sports, Swimming, Tennis, World Health Organization

Even a few years ago the position of ‘epidemic’ was hold either by cancer or drugs. Not any more. Thanks to the fast and unheeded lifestyle lived by most American teenagers, teenage obesity has almost become one of America’s leading epidemics, and this is not an exaggeration.

Believe it or not, it didn’t become an epidemic in one day or year. During the last five decades Americans have become somewhat lazier and started preferring easy and comfortable lifestyle to hard work. American adults were probably the first to fall prey to obesity, followed by children and teenagers. Today American teenagers ape the unhealthy lifestyle habits of their parents, and teenage obesity is the natural outcome of it.

If you are a red-blooded American citizen you would probably voice a loud “NO” against obesity. After all, if a large percentage of a country’s population suffers from the pangs of killer obesity, what would be the future of such a country. It is no secret that people can keep their native country healthy only when they are fit and healthy themselves, and the secret to living a long and healthy life lies in losing the extra pounds.

Apart from the fact that obesity is itself a disease, it also brings forth several other killer diseases into the human body such as diabetes, hypertension, fatigue, irritability, high blood pressure, heart-related problems, stroke, etc., and even though instances of obesity-related deaths are rare, they DO occur nonetheless.

As for remedy, there is really nothing unique and new to be said here. Since it all started with following an easy and fast lifestyle, people need to revert the process by copying the healthy habits followed by their forefathers. In good old times, teenagers used to play outdoor sports such as volleyball, tennis, basketball, etc. Some of them even used to indulge in hula hooping, rope jumping, skiing, scuba diving, etc. Today’s teens prefer to sit at home and watch television or play video games. Is it then any wonder if they become overweight in due course of time?

Coming over to foods – chips, popcorn balls, candies and chocolates are as much favored by a teen as a pre-teen. In fact even adults take a fancy to these delicious foods. When teens see their parents enjoying a packet of popcorn while watching a Hollywood movie, they get even more encouraged to follow the same routine. Add to that the fact that today’s teens attend dozens of parties just like their parents and you cannot expect a party without beer or soda.

Junk foods have entrapped us so much that we have almost made them an integral part of our staple diet by eating them all the time, be it at breakfast, lunch or dinner. Once again the outcome of following such unhealthy eating habits couldn’t be anything else except obesity.

It is difficult to modify a teenager’s eating habits unless you take recourse to coercion in some form or other, which in turn would do more harm than good. The best way to tackle the situation is by monitoring your kid’s lifestyle habits right from the start.

From a very young age, they should be taught the benefits of playing tennis over watching videos games or PSPs. They should also be taught that chips and cookies are not their friends and that they should eat organic fruits and vegetables as often as possible. These simple measures would go a long way in keeping them fit and healthy throughout their whole life.

Don’t forget that you should also follow the same healthy lifestyle you expect your children to follow.

Tags: America, basketball, cancer, diabetes, fatigue, high blood pressure, hypertension, obesity, outdoor sports, scuba diving, skiing, stroke, Tennis, volleyball

Dieting is not about following a fad diet for a few months, getting rid of a few pounds, and returning to your normal eating mode (which is nothing but gorging on more junk and fatty foods). Rather, dieting is about healthy eating, and if you want to gain the maximum mileage possible from your diet, you need to make it an essential part of your life just as you have done with those junk foods.

Of course there is a big difference between theory and practice. If you have been eating only junk foods all your life, it would be difficult if not impossible for you change your food habits for the better. However, I have a few tricks up in my sleeve which would help you with that.

Get rid of allergic foods: For the purpose of successful weight loss, you should not only get rid of junk foods but also those foods which make you allergic. Crabs are a good example; many people are allergic to crabs even though they have been touted by several experts as an ideal food for weight loss. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: dehydration, fatigue, food, food allergies, food habits, nausea, waiter, wheat-based food

Beyonce Knowles-in recent times, days she became more famous for her sudden unexpected weight loss than either her vocal cords or histrionic abilities! Once she claimed on a TV show to have lost almost twenty pounds of fat using a special diet program, everyone went crazy over it. So what is this diet program and exactly how does it work, and more importantly, could Beyonce’s results be duplicated by others? I will answer all these questions in this article.

Beyonce claimed to have lost the weight while shooting for the film Dream Girls, where she plays her real life role, that of a singer. Now anyone who is familiar with the environment of movie sets would know that it is virtually impossible to maintain a strict diet out there. Now you maybe are wondering how she lost weight despite all the odds!

Well, her nutritionist prescribed a special detox drink for her and during the following two weeks, she survived on nothing except that drink! That is a bit tough I agree; I for one cannot even imagine being on a liquid diet, that too, for two weeks straight!

But that is what Beyonce did, and whenever she would suffer from unbearable pangs of hunger, she would douse it with this detox drink. So that is how she lost weight! If you want to follow this diet plan, I would suggest that you don’t use it beyond a week or ten days at most!

What is in the master cleanse Diet?

Fortunately it doesn’t take a lot of skill or expertise to prepare this drink. All you need is to do is to get eight ounces of clean and pure sprint water, and then add the following ingredients to it:

a) two tablespoonfuls each of lemon juice and maple syrup. Both the lemons and maples should be fresh and completely organic, and the juice must be made at home. Don’t buy high-calorie flavored juices from your local store!

b) If you want you can also add a little bit of cayenne pepper to the mix for taste.

So that’s it! I would say that it would taste best if you cool it off in the refrigerator but of course you can also drink it hot! Both lemon and maple cleanse all the toxins from your body and thus help you lose unnecessary weight!

However just like other liquid diets, this one also has several disadvantages, and Beyonce herself admitted to have followed it out of lack of choice; she further admitted that given a choice, she would prefer a healthier diet plan to this one. If you really want to follow this diet plan, make sure to fix an appointment with your local nutritionist just like Beyonce did, so as to make sure that your body is fit for this diet plan!

The one major drawback of this diet is that it virtually makes you starve, and that is not a good weight loss method. When you starve, you will lose weight for sure but that would be just water weight! As soon as you get back to your normal food habits, you would gain back all the ‘lost’ weight instantly! If you want to get rid of your fat belly or flabby arms, you need to lose FAT, something which this detox diet is unable to help you with!

Fatigue and weakness are some of the side effects you may suffer from the use of this diet, so be careful if you decide to go for it!

master cleanse secrets" />

The toughest part about a cleanse is doing it right and fighting to get though not eating for a while. Of course the most popular cleanse is the master cleanse. The master cleanse secrets will help you to get the most out of the master cleanse.

Tags: Beyonce Knowles, Dream Girls, fatigue, local nutritionist, normal food habits, nutritionist, singer