We have always heard, and I have written a few times about the difference between good an bad carbs. I have just run across an article on “Thats Fit” website by Liz Neporent on the difference between good and bad carbs. Here is an excerpt from the article

Good carbs are good for you because they tend to be broken down more slowly by the body. Whole grains, for instance, include the three parts of the grain: Bran, sperm and endosperm. The body needs more time to process them so they enter your blood stream in a steadier, more controlled way which keeps your blood sugar and energy level more consistent. They’re high in fiber too, so they’re more filling and help push things along the digestive tract. They also tend to be relatively low in calories and fat while high in vitamins and minerals. Studies show a diet that contains lots of good carbs can offer some protection against cancer and other “lifestyle” diseases.

Bad carbs typically deliver a megadose of calories without adding much in the way of nutrition to your diet. They tend to come in large portion sizes and, though they may taste good, typically aren’t very filling or satisfying. You usually wind up eating way more than you intended because your brain takes a moment to realize what’s happening down in the old stomach. Bottom line: Studies have linked diets that contain an excess of bad carbs to obesity, heart disease and a whole array of other major health headaches.

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.

Be it out of concern for health and fitness, or simply a desire to look like the celebrities glossing on the front covers of fashion magazines, people these days are getting more and more enthused about weight loss. While obesity has always been there, the craze for weight loss is certainly a recent phenomenon.

More recently, another big change has come in people’s mindset regarding fitness and weight loss: nowadays, more and more people prefer to buy a home-based fitness machine so that they can workout at home instead of having to hit the gym everyday.

If you haven’t yet joined the revolution, why not? There can be possibly three reasons why you may be hesitating to buy a fitness equipment for home. Let me clear all your doubts and hesitations once and for all through this article.

1. Convenience vs. Inconvenience: How many times have you cursed the gym owner because you had to cancel an important appointment or meeting in order to hit the gym? How many times did you have to skip your lunch or breakfast for the gym? How many times did it happen that you felt like watching a movie in the afternoon but that movie time coincided with the time you are supposed to hit the gym? How many times have you wished you could watch your favorite television soap and workout at the same time?

Well, these are only possible if you buy a home-based exercise equipment. Why beat the bad weather outside, skip your meals, or sacrifice entertainment for the purpose of working out in the gym? When you have a home-based exercise equipment, you literally have the gym right there at home. All you need to do is to get out of bed, brush your teeth, take a bath and start your workout routine. Come rain, fog or snow, you would be able to maintain your regular workout routine nonetheless.

1. Cost vs. Health: Let’s face it, just like anything else in life, exercise equipments cost money too. There are cheap and expensive equipments to choose from. Now, “cheap” doesn’t necessarily mean bad or inferior; in the same way, “expensive” is not always an indication of superiority.

You need to buy a decent equipment: neither one which is poorly built nor one that comes with a lot of bells and whistles. A decent equipment offering the bare minimum would be ideal for you, and you should expect to pay decent amount for such an equipment. Just think about it, if you are already a member of a gym you are probably paying hundreds of dollars there every month. Can you imagine how much money you would be saving by buying a home-based exercise equipment?

Or, if you are not doing any workout at all, let me ask you a question: is money worth more to you than your health? If not, then you shouldn’t hesitate in investing in a quality fitness equipment.

We all know that cardio is great for adults to improve fitness and to improve our health but what about kids? We always see the kids running around but never think about that as any kind of training that you and I would do.

There is a new study that shows that cardio is great for kids too:

The study, whose first-year results are reported at EuroPRevent 2009, randomised 188 school children with a mean age of 11.1 years (from seven classes at three different high schools) to either an active exercise programme in their school routine, or to a conventional curriculum of just two sports lessons a week. The exercise programme comprised daily supervised exercise which included at least 15 minutes of endurance training. “So it was well controlled,” says Dr Walther, “with the teachers making sure that the programme was followed.”

“It’s clear that children today have different lifestyles from the past,” says investigator Dr Claudia Walther from the Heart Centre of the University of Leipzig. “They’re less active, and it was our hypothesis that an increase in their exercise activity would result in fewer risks of cardiovascular disease later in life.”

These are exactly what we see in adults and it is nice to see that diet alone is not what keeps the kids in good health but some real exercise as well Read the rest of this entry »

I just found a reference to a report on Science Daily showing that obesity problems in North America can be directly attributed to overeating.

The study originated in Europe and included almost 2400 people as well as using stats on the amount of food grown as well as imported.

Here is a bit of a quote:

New research that uses an innovative approach to study, for the first time, the relative contributions of food and exercise habits to the development of the obesity epidemic has concluded that the rise in obesity in the United States since the 1970s was virtually all due to increased energy intake.

As much as we like to point fingers at a host of different causes of obesity, it seems that eating more calories is the number one culprit. Read the rest of this entry »

While it is true that exercises come with many benefits, not all of us are able to keep up with our regular workout routines, sometimes out of lack of time, and at other times out of plain lethargy. In this article I would offer you one workout idea which would virtually make fitness as easy as pie for you.

Introducing treadmill. Treadmills are one of the most popular home exercise equipments out there. It should be in the house of anyone who cares even a little bit about their health. Okay, I know that the treadmill needs no introduction, but are you aware of all its benefits? If not, then this article is for you.

Huge time saver: Many people cannot workout regularly because of lack of time. They have a job to handle as well as a family to look after. Add social pressure to the mix and you could get an idea of how much stressed and busy an individual could be these days. Read the rest of this entry »

If you thought that the only function an exercise serves is that of helping you lose weight, you are terribly wrong. Everyone should do exercises, whether they are overweight, underweight or of normal weight. Your body weight has something to do with the speed and type of your exercises, but you should be working out nonetheless.

You see, besides helping you maintain a slim and sexy body, workouts come with several other bigger benefits. Studies have pointed out time and again that people who workout regularly are less likely to suffer from heart-related diseases or die a premature death than those who don’t; the same researchers say that women who workout regularly are less likely to suffer from osteoporosis and other body-weakening diseases than others.

Now the million dollar question is: if exercises are so important then why do people shy away from it? There are many reasons behind the ‘unpopularity’ of exercises. Read the rest of this entry »

As soon as summer hits, people, especially women, start thinking about weight loss. This is that time of the year when they start working on their body in the hope that by the time Christmas arrives (or maybe even before that), the extra burden of fat would be gone forever and they would be able to flaunt their slimmer and sexier bodies to their friends and beaus. These women usually go for the common route of dieting for weight loss.

At the same time, there is also a section of women who are already dieting. They are in a dilemma over whether to continue dieting or quit it forever, because the results they are getting are either absolutely disappointing or far from what they expected from the diet program.

No matter which group you belong to, if you wish to lose weight this summer with the help of dieting, this article is the answer for you. Read the rest of this entry »

These days, people are so crazy about losing weight as quickly as possible that they are looking for the latest and greatest shortcuts. If a program promises to help them lose ten pounds in three days, they would choose that over the one which promises to help them lose ten pounds in ten weeks, even if the former might involve the use of unhealthy weight loss techniques. But does such a choice really help them in the long run?

Keep in mind that when it comes to weight loss, being ’short-sighted’ is not good. When you try to lose weight by using these weight loss ’shortcuts’, more often than not you will gain back the ‘lost’ weight pretty quickly. A simpler way to lose weight is to follow healthy and natural weight loss methods. What is the best and most natural way to lose weight? Obviously following a healthy diet and exercise program is the key to lose weight healthily and permanently.

Here are the two old but simple weight loss methods that you should follow to acquire a slim and fit body easily and naturally. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are new to the game of weight loss, you are probably already overwhelmed and confused with dozens of ads on diet plans and diet pills struggling for space on the prime time television. Almost always these diet plans and pills promise you the moon so as to make themselves attractive to the masses. The problem, however, is that almost always these dieting goodies fall short of their promises.

Take diet pills for instance. If any diet pill would really work per its promise, you would be losing weight miraculously from the comfort of your home. All your pounds would melt away magically without any effort on your part. You don’t need to diet or exercise for the purpose of weight loss.

You just pop a pill and see the pounds start going away, leaving you with a slimmer body. But all these would be possible only IF diet pills would work as advertised. But do they really work so fantastically? Read the rest of this entry »

Carbohydrate is the root cause behind your obesity, or so the supporters of low-carbohydrate diets would have you believe. Low-carb diets have always been more popular than the other dieting methods. After all, who hasn’t heard of the classic ones such as the Atkins Diet and South Beach Diet which continue to be popular even today?

Today however, you have more than one choice for low carb diets. There is the Zone diet, and then there is the Suzanne Summers Diet, each trying to beat down the other in terms of effectiveness. There are also several other minor low carb diet plans available.

If you are worried about cooking low-carb meals, drop your worries. Almost all low carb diet plans now come with in-built menus, recipes and other dietary tips designed to help the common man prepare delicious low carb meals with little effort or headache. Now the million dollar question: is the low-carb diet a right choice for you? Well, that is what you would learn about in this article. Read the rest of this entry »