There has been a diet floating around for many years called the 3 day diet. It is crap and promises a 10 pound weight loss but is in truth a lie. I have thought a bit about this and decided to come up with my own 3 day diet.

Have you ever thought of going on a 3 day diet? I was just surfing around and found that there are people looking for something of a short diet. If you were to do a three day diet I fear that you would not lose a lot of weight but you would have an opportunity to get in better shape by eating better and concentrating on some of those fundamentals of good eating and good metabolism tricks.

So here are some ideas that I have for how to do a 3 day diet.

First as you get up in the morning on the first day remember that you will be trying to do a couple of things. You will be looking to space out your eating and you will be looking to improve your water intake to help fill you up. 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.

Walking to lose weight is a simple but powerful method that can help with your long term weight loss goals. Walking is a natural, safe and enjoyable exercise that can be done in almost any environment. While it doesn’t burn up calories as quickly as strenuous activities such as running, jogging or riding a bicycle, it can be surprisingly effective.

Walking is perhaps the most natural physical exercise you can do. Long before there were automobiles or bicycles -and even before humans domesticated horses to ride on- walking was the way people got around. In recent years, the sad fact is that many people only walk when they absolutely have to. They may see walking as something you do to get from your car to the store, or from your driveway to the house. If this describes you, and your goal is to lose weight and get healthier, it may be a good idea to change the way you see walking. Read the rest of this entry »

Fad diets are popular because they are like shiny new toys, they seem to offer immediate sparkling results, with celebrity followers. So they must be great, right? Er, no, so let’s look at the downside you will not see in the magazines …

If you look at definitions of the word ‘fad’ you will see that it means a trend that does not last. It has a huge rise in popularity, and sales disproportionate to the length of time in the market, and then it will fade away pretty much as quickly as it arrived. Now, if you take that description, and then apply it to diets, you have to wonder why a diet would suddenly appear, be massively popular and then disappear, and the only reason is that it did not work!

Let me back this up with a few fad diets – the maple syrup diet was one, the cabbage soup another, and the grapefruit diet … all Hollywood type diets requiring you to eat special foods. All of these had celebrity endorsements with well known personalities claiming the diet had worked for them in all of the magazines. They also always promise quick results.

The reason they provide quick results is because most of them are starvation diets. The maple syrup model basically involves surviving on water with a couple of things added in. Cabbage soup in itself is healthy food, but it hardly has any calories. That will see the weight drop off for sure, but you cannot safely keep to it for long, and it’s not healthy. That is why fad diets do not hang around long in the glare of publicity.

So why are fad diets so attractive? Three reasons. First, we all want to believe that there is a miracle food plan out there that will cause us to lose weight fast without any effort. The truth is that losing weight is never easy and most people find that the faster we lose, the faster we gain it back the moment we slip off the diet.

Second, when we have tried to lose weight before and failed, it is easy to think that the advice we were given was wrong, and what we need is some new or different advice. So we ignore everything we know about healthy eating, because that didn’t work for us before, and jump on the latest new trend instead.

Third, the celebrity culture is partly to blame for the fad diet. We love to read about celebrities, especially if they are doing something new or weird. Let’s face it, it will not make headline news if you or I follow our doctor’s healthy eating advice and lose 1 lb per week for the next 6 months. It will sell more magazines if a top movie star has found a great new diet that means she has to eat some bizarre combination of foods and has lost 10 lb in one week!

So in summary, most of these plans are not viable long term. If there is one that follows basic healthy eating requirements, it is really just a variation on an established diet. Look for those if you like, but avoid fad diets.

Food cravings are every dieters nightmare. There are very few times that you will be on a diet and not be tempted at least a little bit by the foods that you see and memories of fatting foods that just drift into your mind from nowhere. I had a craving for greasy fish and chips from the beach after smelling the food in the office one day, the craving did not make any sense after I tracked down the food and found that it was actually fried ginger beef, your mind definitely plays tricks on you sometimes. Stopping food cravings will go a long way to controlling all of your eating.

Stopping Food Cravings

Eat at the same times everyday

It is important for you to set a stable eating cycle so that your body knows when to expect food. I know that I am very regimented during the week in my eating but on the weekend I get affected by food cravings because I am not eating according to schedule and my body does not trust that I will be eating when it expects food.

Eat small meals multiple times a day

One of the best things that you can do for your body is to keep your blood sugar even and the best way to keep a nice balanced blood sugar level is to eat smaller meals often.

Your blood sugar level is a big factor in food cravings because your brain notices the fluctuations in hormones and blood sugar even if you are not really in tune to it. Yo ucan imageinhow this one tip can stop your food cravings almost completely

Don’t starve yourself, don’t eat large

Again any time that you have the option to skip a meal or an option to go to a buffet don’t! These two actions are two ends of the spectrum. If you do not eat a meal then your body will crave foods until you eat and then when you do in fact eat you will tend to overeat.

If you have a giant meal, lets say for lunch then you will end up not eating dinner, maybe snack as a food craving fix in the evening or then not eat at all until breakfast the next day. This causes wide swings in your blood sugar and this is not only unhealthy but will also cause your body to start storing food as fat while thinking that it in danger of starvation.

Know your times of food cravings and take control of them

Most people have down times where they crave chocolate, pop, or chips and these times you should be able to identify. If you are going to a movie you may know that you are going to be craving popcorn, when you are sitting down to watch TV you know that you will be looking for a snack.

You can stop these food cravings by knowing ahead of time how you will deal with them or at least have a coping mechanism so that you do not succumb to bad binging in these time of food cravings.

Is this all you need to stop food cravings?

People pride themselves with using self control to fix their problems but in this case you have a plan of action to stop food cravings. Yes, by using these tips and lifestyle ideas you should help in stopping food cravings or at the very least reducing them and know exactly when they will hit and stop those cravings in their tracks.

When it comes to fast weight loss, there is no dearth of tips and tricks you can avail of online. However, truth to be told, most of these tips is either ineffective or just rehashed stuff from old weight loss methods which hardly go well with the modern lifestyle. That said, the trick I am going to tell you about is not only simple but also effective. How do I know? Well this one trick alone helped me shed dozens of extra pounds.

You would be surprised to know that this trick doesn’t require you to join an expensive weight loss program, buy equally expensive exercise gadgets, or count calories like crazy. All you need to do is control your food intake…but NOT the way most weight loss experts would teach you. Read the rest of this entry »

The term “volumetrics diet” is catching up these days suddenly with the attention gained from the media. So one would naturally as to what exactly it is and from where this term gained acceptance in the popular culture. The phrase “volumetrics diet” was first used in the book released by Barbara Rolls in the year 2000, the title of which was “The Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan” and it was co authored by Barbara and Robert Barnett. Both these writers have impressive credentials with Barbara holding a Phd from Penn State University and Barnett having a track record of writing in several nutrition publications.

The volumetrics diet is based on a simple fact that the volume of food eaten is more important to us when it comes to experiencing a sense of fullness as compared to the number of calories consumed.  Although this fact is commonly known, most of the “diet plans” work in exactly the opposite direction by proposing a curb on food volume and forcing the body to go into starvation.

As many would agree this approach is short lived since it is not possible for anybody to go on living on less food for extended durations. This is where the volumetrics diet differs. It proposes that by consuming foods, which are low in calorie content, you will not just lose weight but additionally such an approach would ensure that you can do so for extended periods of time, possibly months if not years. Further, you’ll not feel any urge of hunger since you’re not eating less food than demanded by your appetite. Read the rest of this entry »

For years experts have taught us that fasting is bad for weight loss, because fasting takes our body into the ’starvation mode’ and when our body is in starvation mode, it slows down the fat burning process by lowering our metabolic rate.

While it is true that long periods of fasting do more harm than good to our body, a recent study has found out that people who went on intermittent fasting were not only successful in losing weight but also in improving their overall health! If that sounds too good to be true, read this article to find out exactly how intermittent fasting could help you get rid of fat!

When the results of this study came out, it fuelled a lot of controversy and head turning. At first many people thought that this is just another fad diet which would make people unhealthier. However, further research has proven that the intermittent fasting diet not only makes us stress-free but also keeps our body away from harmful maladies by improving our immune system. It was also found out that people who followed this diet to lose weight tended to live longer than others. But there is more to be said about it!

The kind of fasting you do under this diet is a far cry from the crash dieting method many of us are familiar with. With crash dieting, you would be virtually starving for days on end, living off merely on a bite of carrot or a glass of fruit juice. With the intermittent fasting diet, you get to eat to your heart’s content for one day (I mean, you can eat whatever you like), and then starve the very next day, consuming nothing except plain water!

As you can see, the fasting conditions set by this diet program are so lenient that I am sure anyone would have success with it! I don’t know about you, but if someone lets me eat all of my favorite junk foods on the condition that I have to fast on the next day, I would gladly take up on the offer!

It is a fact that our body is actually designed to follow this eating routine right from the primitive age. In primitive times, when the staple food for humans was hunted animals, the availability of food was quite unpredictable. On one day, you might be able to hunt down a large animal and have your fill; but if you were unable to hunt another animal on the next day, you would have nothing to eat on that day!
Back then, food supply used to be scarce and as such, eating full on one day and going hungry on the next was the norm! Now, when those people used to fast, their bodies would use the stored fat inside for sustaining itself.

This explains why your body helps you lose weight when you fast intermittently!

This subject is something that I have thought about writing about for a while now as it gets to our core beliefs of whether we can really do it, with it being our goals or not. I always wonder how I can stop people from failing, heck even stop myself from failing.

What do we need to succeed and what can cause us to fail?

I was watching a show that I really like last night, Survivorman. Survivorman is a show where the host Les Stroud goes out somewhere on the middle of nowhere and lives for a week with no food, shelter or equipment, just him and a few video cameras.

What does this have to do with fitness, besides maybe how starvation affects people? Well Les Stroud talks about how he feels in these places, last night for instance Les was in the desert. People are afraid in the desert about animal attacks, water, food, spiders, loneliness, and other stuff and he made a point of saying what helps and why. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are struggling with weight loss, you should be already aware of this basic truth: weight loss can only happen when a calorie deficit occurs in your body. When you eat foods, you consume calories, and when you work, play sports or exercise, you burn off calories. When the number of calories you burn exceeds the number of calories you consume, a calorie deficit occurs in your body, resulting in weight loss. Note that if you have a high Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) then you would be able to burn fat fast even at rest.

In this connection, let me acquaint you with the term Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). BMR is the rate at which your body burns calories at rest. There are a lot of BMR calculators available online, most of them free, that would tell you your BMR. All you need to do is to input your age, height, gender, and weight in these tools, and you would get back your Basal Metabolic rate.

When losing weight, you should always keep your BMR in mind, for it would give you a fair idea of how many calories you need to burn in order to create the necessary calorie deficit, and keep in mind that weight loss would not happen until this calorie deficit is created.

With that said, here are tips for successful weight loss:

1. While you should definitely cut down on your daily calorie intake, you must provide your body with the minimum amount of calorie it needs to perform its day-to-day operations. If your body doesn’t get the required amount of calories, it would go into the ’starvation mode’.

While in starvation mode, your body would start storing food in the form of fat deposits instead of burning them for energy production. This is not a good thing, as you would gain even more weight in the process. To be on the safe side, you should consume a minimum of:

a) 1,800 calories, if you are a man

b) 1,200 calories, if you are a woman

DO NOT cut your calorie intake level beyond the above limits.

2. Do not try to lose weight too fast by starving. Lots of people think that starving would result in a huge calorie deficit and the body would be forced to burn fat in order to make up for the deficit. Actually, the opposite happens.

To be on the safe side, you should not create a calorie deficit of less than 500 calories and more than 1,000 calories. If you follow this rule, you would be losing weight at the rate of 1-2 pounds per week. This is not only normal and healthy, but also permanent weight loss.

The most important tips for successful weight loss therefore are calorie and portion control and exercise without starving yourself.

For forty-eight hours prior to competition the athlete’s workouts must be canceled or markedly curtailed. This allows his muscles a couple of days to recover from the persistent training he has been doing. It allows that little extra bit of spring and kick to creep into the muscles, ready to burst forth at the moment of challenge.

Carbs and Glycogen in pre competition meals

Another reason for tapering off the training program during this period is that of allowing the liver specifically and the body generally to replete their glycogen (synonymous with carbohydrate and starch) reserves. An adequate supply of available carbohydrate is invaluable in endurance events, first to provide ready calories for work consumption and second to protect against low blood sugar, which in turn may be associated with feelings of marked fatigue.

The diet is not otherwise altered until the pre-event meal which is consumed three hours before competition. This period of time allows for absorption and digestion but does not extend long enough to allow hunger or starvation to ensue. Read the rest of this entry »