Psychology and Your Fitness Plan
You want to structure your fitness plan so that there are no mental blocks to it. If you can't commit to a full 30 minutes of exercise, break your workout into two 15 minute sessions every day.
Set realistic goals for yourself. Track your progress in a fitness log. This way, you can measure your progress, and see how close you are to your goals. Give yourself small rewards for each goal that you reach.
The Role of Fitness in Dieting
Dieting isn't just about cutting calories. Effective dieting takes place when you restructure your eating and fitness habits. Maintaining a fitness program while you diet will keep your metabolism from slowing down and your muscles from being burnt for fuel. Research showed that combining dieting and exercise works better than either approach alone.
Maintenance program for ideal body weight
If you always have had or just reached an ideal body weight, what would be a good maintenance program for you?
Different diets have different ideas for eating and exercising plans for this stage. For example, Atkins diet maintenance plan is about sticking to your individual carbohydrate intake limits, Protein Power is about keeping your protein intake high enough, etc.
However, in any case this stage is not so much about not getting something OUT of your plate but about getting every good thing ON your plate.
Think what you should have on daily basis to get all essential nutrients - "good" fats, "good" complex (whole grains) carbohydrates, plenty (5 to 7 servings minimal) fresh dark green, orange, and red vegetables, fruits, and berries.
Concerning exercise, keep increasing your fitness: it's an endless process. Go for interval training to save time and train your heart and lungs, improve your flexibility and fine motor skills, walk faster and/or for longer time, etc. It is important to increase your endurance since this endurance training is shown to be the lost efficient fat burner.
Fat cells during and after exercise
When you start an exercise, your body runs on carbohydrates taking them from carb depots in liver and muscles. These depots are rather small - a human body can survive on the energy they contain only a day and a half.
As exercise continues, especially if it's a moderate intensity exercise, the fat release out of fat depots begins. After exercise stops, the fatty acids continue flowing from the depots for a while. It often results in decreased appetite up to 2 hours after exercise.
What happens after that depends on general energy and hormonal balance in the body. If you eat carbohydrate-rich foods, the body releases insulin and the excess fat is being directed into fat depots. If you eat nothing, the excess fat is being used for fuel. If you eat fatty food, the fate of the excess fat depends on the quantities of body fat versus food fat.
Fitness per pound
Just how many calories you have to burn to lose one pound of body weight varies from person to person, usually depending on their metabolism. On average, you have to burn about 3,500 calories to lose one pound of body weight.
At first glance, 3,500 calories seems like a lot. After all, you'd have to walk about 50 miles to burn that many calories. However, if you shave off 500 calories a day, you can burn off that pound in a week.
Kelp and flax for thyroid and heart health
Kelp is a sea weed containing large amount of soluble fiber, as well as minerals, including iodine, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and iron. As a source of iodine kelp participates in producing thyroid hormones necessary for maintaining normal metabolism, but is potentially harmful to people with the specific thyroid problems when iodine is contraindicated.
Flax, a seed of the plant used for thousand years for and linen, is also a rich source of soluble fibers, but what's more important, it contains a potent antioxidant and heart protector, Omega-3 fatty acids, in high concentration. Hens fed on flax seeds lay eggs with increased Omega-3 content, you can find them as "Omega-3 eggs" in most groceries.
Exercising before versus after a big meal
It is better to wait at least 2 hours after a big meal before you start strenuous exercise. However, it's OK and even good for you to walk leisurely instead of sitting idly or going to bed.
There are more than one reason for that. Firstly, it's mechanically challenging for your heart and lungs to work while having such a bulk of a stomach around. Secondly, your blood volume is not unlimited. A lot of blood will go to serve the digestion process leaving less of it to serve muscles, heart, and lungs.
Last but not least, if your meal has been a fatty one, your blood vessels can temporarily lose some of their elasticity thus making immediate exercise dangerous. Doctors know that the risks of stroke and heart attach are increased after rich meals.
Here's a tip to avoid this kind of trouble: exercise *before* meal. Studies showed that just 10 minutes of intensive exercise 30 minutes before fatty meal dramatically reduced the vessel-hardening effect of them.
Sticking to a Fitness Plan
A fitness plan only works if you're willing to stick with it. Begin with activities that you can easily work into your schedule. This way, you won't be inclined to give them up.
Take the stairs to work or jog or go for a walk during your lunch break. Make sure that your exercise plan leaves little room for dodging. Once you become used to exercising, develop more ambitious goals and begin setting aside time for fitness.
Internet research revealed that using individualized online exercise program, demos, and logs help sticking with a program.
Weight loss for a teen
Many teens are wrong thinking they need to lose weight. However, the frightfully increasing numbers of teens join the sad army of the overweight. What should you do if you found yourself in either group?
First, figure out are you indeed overweight or not. Search online for a free fat % calculator that requires only a tape to measure a few circumferences of our body. Alternatively, go to eDiets.com and use their Body Mass Index (BMI) calculator, it's on the very first page of their Web site.
If you do need to lose weight and have no money to spend on a paid program, use one of free tools plentiful on the Net, like http://fitday.com for analyzing what you eat http://betterbodz.com for planning your strength training workouts, or http://bantadiet.com for a free complete weight loss plan.
Pedometer Tracking
Obviously, there are many kinds of equipment that you can use to get yourself in better shape. However, if you are just beginning a diet and fitness program the only equipment you need is a pedometer.
A pedometer is a simple, cheap device that measures the number of steps that you take each day. The average person takes about 4,000 steps each day. By increasing the number of steps you take to about 10,000 per day, you can achieve similar results to 30 minutes of daily exercise.
"Oxycise!"
"Oxycise!" is a program based on an intensive breathing exercise system. You can find it now as a book and videos. Search for the title on Amazon:
Oxycise! - a book by Jill Johnson
Level One Video Set
Level Two - 15 Minute Workout and Body Positions Demonstration
Level Three - 15 Minute Workout and Body Positions Demonstration
Says Jill Johnson: "I have written this book to help those who are sick and tired of struggling with their body shape and health, and who are angry at all the money and time they have wasted on pills,powdered drinks, and gadgets."
Pacing Your Fitness Plan
It is important to pace the intensity of your fitness plan. You should always reserve one day a week as a "rest day" - a day in which you will do no serious fitness activity.
The ideal goal is to be working on your fitness plan 5 days a week, for about 30 minutes each day. On your "off days" you should try and pursue some kind of light physical activity, such as going for a walk in the park.
Diet and exercise for flatter abdomen
Although fitness specialists claim that there's no exercises for reducing specific spots, the abdomen can be an exclusion. The matter is, this is the region of high sensitivity to insulin. If you have the insulin sensitivity problem, the best thing for you is a low carbohydrate diet. In this case, the abdominal fat really goes away first.
However, there ARE exercises to tone your upper abdomen so that when your fat layer disappears, the strengthened muscles will hold the shape.
To read more, I advise you to visit these pages (it's free):
For the diet part: http://bantadiet.com
For the exercise: http://dietandbody.com/Tips_For_Flat_Stomach.html
Fat burning timing
If you rely on aerobic exercises alone, the minimal time for a non-stop exercise is 12 minutes, according to aerobics classic Dr. Cooper, while the total minimal time per day is 30 minutes for running or about an hour for walking, depending on the pace.
However, it is now a well known fact that aerobics without strength training is not so effective from the fat burning standpoint because if one doesn't watch calories, the body compensates calories burnt by increase appetite.
Because of that, and to insure a better burning around the clock, it is advised to build more muscle by resistance exercises. This routine, too, can consist of two or even more bouts every day or every other day, without hurting the efficiency.
Is taking muscle pills necessary for muscle building?
To build muscle mass and achieve good muscle definition, it is necessary to have good quality protein intake and make it sure that your diet includes all necessary nutrients - "good" fats, "good" complex carbohydrates in proper amounts, vitamins, minerals, microelements, etc.
As to using supplements designed specifically for weight (muscle) gain, consult the lifetips.com's sites:
http://vitamin.lifetips.com/
http://muscle.lifetips.com/