Often I will write a blog post, or have a workout, or write and email to all the people that get my newsletters, or grab an apple or chocolate bar and I ask one question.

Why bother getting healthy?

This is a question that everyone needs to ask themselves before they step into the gym, walk into a fast food restaurant, get into the kitchen, grab a beer, and basically anytime that you are doing any helathy or unhealthy thing to your body.

You need to formulate an answer and if you have not done this yet then it is probably a big reason why you have trouble succeeding – anyone that has this answer will alrady be doing good things for themselves.

I have to admit that I am far from perfect as far as my diet and excercise go but I have hard and fast rules that I will talk about in another post. But the fact is that I care about my health and will always stick it as a high priority in my life. Is that what you do or not, or sometimes, or when the mood strikes? Read the rest of this entry »

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.

While it is important to understand the concept of calorie clearly for the purpose of successful weight loss, the different types of calorie controlling methods adopted by different dieting programs often leave us confused and bewildered. Take for example the concepts of calorie counting and calorie shifting.

Both methods would work in their own rights and lead you to weight loss success, provided that you follow the rules religiously. But of course the obvious question is: which method is easier and better? Well that is what this post would tell you.

It is indeed difficult to answer this question since both calorie shifting and calorie counting have their respective strong and weak points. Read the rest of this entry »

Just like obesity, diabetes is also fast becoming a threatening disease with every passing year. And as strange as it might sound, you could actually get rid of both of them by using the same method. Obesity is caused by an excessive amount of calorie consumption, and the same holds true for diabetes as well.

In fact several recent studies have pointed out that diabetes is closely linked with obesity. Now if you want to get rid of both your fat belly as well as those dreaded insulin injections, monitoring your daily calorie intake is the only way to kill the two birds with one stone.

Since most junk foods are high on calorie and sugar content, they tend to increase your blood sugar level apart from making you overweight. The recommended way to control your calorie intake is by counting your daily calorie consumption level using a calorie counter. So let’s see how a calorie counter could offer you fast weight loss. Read the rest of this entry »

There is really nothing surprising about the fact that America is host to the highest number of obese kids. If you ever visit a decent American fast food restaurant, you would find out almost an equal number of kids and adults eating out there. In fact people there not only eat fast foods outside but bring them at home to eat during lunch or dinner time. In short, fast food seems to have become almost an integral part of American diet.

Eating once in a while at a fast good restaurant is one thing, but making it a habit and considering junk foods to be part of your staple diet is going to make you and your kid fat and nothing more. These foods have an attractive outer appearance and also taste great in mouth, but once they go inside the body, they get deposited as fat and make the person overweight. Thankfully there are certain simple and easy ways to get rid of this menace. Read on to find out about these ways.

It would of course be wrong on your part to put the entire blame of adopting unhealthy eating habits on kids. After all, don’t children pick up habits only from their parents? They have enough knowledge to understand what their parents are doing, but are not intelligent enough to differentiate between good and bad eating habits.

As a parent, it is your duty to guide your kid during his childhood. Many parents, some purely out of laziness and others because of lack of time, ask their children to have their fill at a local fast food restaurant. Why? It is easy and effortless, since parents don’t need to spend time on cooking. The concept may look attractive on the surface but the ending is obviously not so good.

Now the question-why should you worry about your kids’ health. Kids should remain fit and healthy not just for cosmetic reasons and social acceptance but to keep themselves away from harmful diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, etc., which go side by side with obesity. If you don’t want your kid to suffer from these terrible maladies and die an early death, your best bet is to start taking the following three measures right now.

1. Breakfast is important: Starting the day with a healthy breakfast is as much important for you as your kids. Very often, adults skip breakfast citing ‘lack of time’ or ‘important business appointments’ as excuses. Children too follow them, their excuses being either ‘lots of homework’ or ‘getting delayed for school’. However if you or your kid skip breakfast, it won’t be unnatural for either of you to gorge on a couple of burgers later in the day when you would no longer be able to put up with hunger.

Eating breakfast regularly is as much important as having a healthy breakfast. White breads, sodas, burgers, French fries, etc. are NOT what you should include in your kids’ breakfast. Kids should have a breakfast rich in protein which can be found in plenty in chicken, eggs, etc. Salads are also a good breakfast food. Apart from that, any homemade meal cooked using low-calorie oil would make for an ideal breakfast food.

2. Make the food attractive: Unlike adults, kids won’t eat anything which doesn’t taste or look good. They may not be willing to eat something as dull as vegetables, but top it with cheese, and they would lick the plate dry. Same goes for pasta. Instead of serving them plain pasta, try serving it in “shapely” form.

To give you an idea, how about a triangular or octopus-shaped pasta. The more visually appealing the food is, the more attracted they would be to it. Slowly they would get so accustomed to healthy meals that their addiction to junk foods would wear off.

3. Let them eat small: The principle of eating in small portions applies as much to kids as adults. It is no use forcing your child to eat a bucketful of rice when he doesn’t need it. Instead, you should serve him the same rice in three or four smaller installments.

Kids are habitual grazers, which means that they would take longer to eat than an adult. This is a good habit, so don’t discourage it. Let them enjoy every bite of the food they eat, as they are likely to become satiated quicker this way than otherwise. As a result, there is much less of a chance of them ever overeating.

Guess how you gained so many unwanted pounds? I am not sure whether you were eating fatty or healthy foods before your weight gain, and I won’t even ask you about that either, because the type of food you eat doesn’t always determine whether or not you would gain weight!

Case in point: almost everyone would tell you that if you want to lose weight or avoid weight gain, you should steer clear of junk foods! But if that were true, I would have been overweight by several pounds by now, because I am a self-confessed junk food addict! If someone tells me to avoid junk foods, I won’t be able to follow his advice!

Hardly a week goes when I don’t have chocolates, cakes, white breads, etc. -all high-calorie junk foods supposed to make you overweight, but they haven’t affected my body weight over the years (yes, I have always been like this). I find also find it hard to resist the temptation of going into a fast food restaurant and taking a bite!

Now, here is a second scenario: I know a friend who ate nothing except fruits and vegetables. He would eat the fruits raw and the vegetables roasted or fried in olive oil. You would think that he is slim and fit, right? Wrong!

Recently he was fired from a lucrative job, thanks to the economic downturn which is affecting the world like never before. Needless to say, he soon got depressed and began to eat more than before. Again, he was eating only ‘healthy’ foods, just more of them than before. A few months into this lifestyle and now he flaunts a very big, fat belly in place of his original flat belly!

Were you surprised? Don’t be. It is all about controlling your food portions. In my case, what I didn’t tell you is that I ‘limit’ my junk food intake. I don’t visit fast food restaurants more than once or twice per week; as far as chocolates are concerned, I have a small bar every week but no more than that. I usually have white breads and cakes every two or three days, but both the bread and cake are half the size of what my brother has!

In essence, I have learnt to control my junk food intake in a way which lets me enjoy my favorite foods without the additional headache of weight gain.

My regular food habit is something I should tell you about too. Unlike most other people, I don’t have two or three large meals per day. Instead, I split those large meals into several smaller meals, usually no more than five or six. I have each of those small meals every two or three hours.

Of course maintaining a healthy diet comes easy for me since I work from home. I also make sure that I snack between two consecutive meals, and contrary to what you might believe, my snacks are anything but junk foods! I usually have a carrot or an apple as snacks; sometimes I even cook popcorn at home using low-fat oil and then store them in my refrigerator to serve as snacks!

In case of my friend, he followed healthy eating habits all along, but he erred on one count: he increased his food intake drastically owing to depression. In essence, his body received more calories than required, and consequently deposited those extra calories as fat, thereby making him bulky!

There are people who believe that the source of calories DOES matter when it comes to maintaining a slim body; however, as you saw from the above article, weight maintenance is all about exercising portion control. Give your body exactly what it needs at a particular time; that way, it would never have any extra calorie left to deposit as fat and you would always be able to maintain your lean, slim figure!

There are so many different weight loss pills and products out there that they often try to distract us from the basics, or shall I say that WE get distracted by the lure and high promises of these supplements? It is not surprising that people are falling in love with those pills. After all, if you can lose twenty pounds just by popping a couple of pills, why would you diet and exercise? However, the fact remains that if your weight loss program is based only on these magic pills you can never really lose any substantial amount of weight permanently. These supplements shouldn’t be treated as substitutes for natural weight loss. Your focus should only be on diet and exercise, not on these diet pills!

1. Check your diet: The old saying goes that you become what you eat. As much as you disbelieve it, it holds true even to this day. Have you ever watched the health of those who eat burgers regularly? Or that of your friends who often coax you to visit a fast food restaurant? Do their bodies indicate anything healthy about them? When you eat fatty foods, does your body react in a certain negative way? I know it sounds all clichéd, but unless you are going to cut down on sugar, fat and processed foods, you can never hope to shed pounds.

2. Cardio Exercises: Along with keeping an eye on your diet, you should also do cardio exercises. Cardio exercises come in various forms, such as stair climber, running on a treadmill, biking, rollerblading, etc. Cardio exercises should be an important part of your weight loss program for they help you to burn fat faster than you’d otherwise! Cardio exercises also get your heart pumping at the proper speed, as well as conditions your body to any amount of workload. If you have ever got tired while lifting weight, walking or running for miles or climbing the stairs, cardio exercise will help to adjust your body to these types of activities!

3. Resistance training: Cardio exercises are not enough. Along with cardio, you should also do resistance training. In fact, resistance training is even better than cardio exercise, for it not only helps you burn fat but also builds your muscles. The more muscles you have, the faster you will be able to burn fat. Resistance training can be of different types such as yoga, weight training, etc.

In the end, I would only like to say this much: if you want to lose weight properly then you need to follow the three-fold plan as I outlined above. If any of the above components is missing from your weight loss program, you may not be able to lose as mush weight as you really want to! Also remember that weight loss pills are called “supplements” for a reason – they are supplements to natural weight loss efforts. Therefore, while they can be very helpful in helping you shed even more pounds, they shouldn’t be treated as substitutes for diet and exercise!