ThinkSlim

Exercise For Fat Loss

This article has been provided by guest author Kyle Wood known as one of the best among up and coming Melbourne personal trainers.  Kyle has a keen interest in new and more effective training for himself and his clients and he believes exercise should contribute to your life and make it more fruitful rather than detract from it. He currently runs a blog in his spare time called Kyle’s Fitness Facts so take a look there if you want to know more...

Exercise for Fat Loss

Diet is very important when losing weight. The best training system in the world cannot out do a terrible diet filled with junk food, irregular meals and no veggies. However, as you reduce your caloric intake your body adapts to that caloric intake and the weight loss will plateau. This is where a lot of people will give up, however for those who continue, more calories must be cut and so on. This reaches a point where the calories are cut so low that you begin to starve your body.

A better solution to making that second cut in calories (or even the first) is to add exercise. If you are already exercising regularly then I suggest adding more intense workouts to your training schedule.  Here are some great ideas (that can all be done without a gym membership):

Sprint Intervals

Find your local track or oval (soccer pitches work excellent). Start off by doing one or two laps to warm up and then follow this cycle:

• Jog 50m
• Sprint 50m
• Walk 50m

Repeat this 4 times. Each week add an additional cycle until you reach 10 cycles. When you can do that move onto something new.

Note: A full size soccer pitch is 50m wide and 100m long so you can complete 2 cycles in one lap.

Circuit Training:

I’m not talking about walking around in a circuit on weight machines for 30 minutes, I’m talking all out circuits that will get your heart pumping through your chest and your fat cells dropping like flies. For these circuits you will need a railing or play equipment bar about 1.2m (4 feet) off the ground and a low bench or steps.

Circuit 1:

• Feet elevated push up x12 (on knees if unable to do on toes)
• Bodyweight squat x12
• Crunches x 12
• Butt Kick Jumps x12

Repeat 2 times before moving onto circuit two

Circuit 2:

• Burpees x10
• Inverted row (on railing) x10
• Forward Walking Lunges x5
• Reverse Walking Lunges x5
• Pushups x10

Repeat 2 times. Each week add an extra circuit to one of the circuits until you reach a total of 10 circuits.

Hill Sprints

Find a small hill. Sprint to the top, walk back down, rinse, repeat. You will be amazed at how awesome this simple activity is for cardiovascular fitness and fat shedding. Do this 5 times and then add an extra sprint each week.

Remember to warm up thoroughly beforehand and then warm down and stretch afterwards. This applies when doing any exercise.

You want more?

If you work your way up to doing all of that in a week then you can add low intensity recovery cardiovascular work to your off days. This kind of exercise is excellent at promoting blood to muscles to aid in recovery from your previous workouts. Good ideas are swimming, bike riding or brisk walks with your partner/family/dog.

Give these high intensity techniques a go. Stick to them for at least 6 weeks before you truly give them your analysis. I believe by then you will be addicted to high intensity training. Not only will they help you lose weight faster but you will also have more energy and feel more alert. Before I go, some great fun facts:

• Muscle requires more energy to exist, so the more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism.
• 20-30 minutes high intensity training burns more total energy (calories) over 24 hours than 60 minutes of low-moderate total training.
• Recent studies are continuing to show that the lactic acid system (shorter bursts of energy like sprinting and circuits) is a far greater channel for fat oxidizing (fat burning) than the aerobic study (longer low intensity training) which might explain why sprinters are so ripped.

My 90% Rule For Taking Off The Belly Jelly – Guilt Free Dieting

This guest article was provided by my friend David Huckabay from HowtoBurnStomachFat.net who believes in a sensible approach to losing weight. Just see how successful he was himself with this.

Hi all – I'm going to show you how I got back into shape without beating myself up.

If you will just take a few minutes to read this, I believe that I can show you how to make a lot of progress very quickly – without much of the waste of energy, self doubt and guilt that can be part of a diet program.

Once you read this, you will be able to move forward with any plan and make better progress with less stress!

First of all, remember that none of us are perfect. Forget the celebrities (they have trainers and dieticians), forget the weight loss gurus (they do this full time) and remember that you do have a life outside of your weight loss program. You are not a “professional weight loser” so don’t judge yourself as if you were. My technique is all about being as kind to yourself as you are to others.

The technique that I used to drop 43 pounds of weight back in 2006, and keep it off since is simple. 90% compliance. That’s it. Simply do what you are supposed to do about 90% of the time, and you will see progress. Will you burn stomach fat as quickly as you would have with 100%? Probably not, but there won’t be all that much difference.

At this point you may be thinking “So what? I cheat all the time and sneak a snack or two.” Exactly. You call it cheating because you are breaking the deal you made with yourself to lose weight and get in shape. So you cheat, feel guilty, slip again, and eventually give up altogether. Why do this to yourself?

Let’s take a look at a weight loss plan implemented with the 90% rule:

For the sake of simplicity, we’ll assume that you are eating three times per day, and working out three times per week. So we have 21 meals per week, about 90 meals per month. We have 12 workouts per month.

Right off of the bat, we know that we can go off of our plan for 9 meals! Awesome!

Now, we need to define what I mean by this. I’m not saying that you should go to some buffet and attempt to eat an entire cow. More like this: You are at a cookout, and yes, you can have a normal plate of food just like everyone else. A burger, some chips, some salad. This helps more than you can imagine. Just knowing that if you find yourself at your niece’s birthday party, you can have a piece of cake like everyone else is a tremendous help. Feeling like an outcast, who has to do things differently from everybody else is no fun, especially at a party. The rest of the time (80 meals!) we stick to our plan.

Personally, I saved my special meals for times when I was out with friends or parties. If I was having dinner at home, I stuck to my plan.

Exercise is even easier to handle with this technique. A lot of it has to do with actually counting all of your activity. Ok we have 12 workouts set for this month. So we know we can only skip one or two. But there is a lot of leeway when it comes to exercise, and we can make up workouts fairly easily.

Let’s say I missed my workout on Wednesday of week two this month. Fine, but then on Friday I mowed the lawn – continuous walking and pushing for over an hour! Does anyone want to try and convince me that that is not a workout? Then on Saturday, we went to the zoo. We walked, looked and laughed for 3 hours. Again, does anyone doubt that we burned up a lot of calories doing that?

I give myself half of a workout for my activity in these situations. In the case above, I would actually have my 3 workouts for the week! Take stock of your activity, and be honest with yourself. I think you will see that you are doing a fair amount of uncounted exercise.

Friends, I’ve shown you how to apply the 90% rule to your diet, and to your workouts. It’s up to you to do it – but I know you can. This is a way to take the pressure off, enjoy family outings and parties, and still meet your weight loss goals. So stop beating yourself up for little slips, and give the 90% rule a try. You’ll be glad you did.

David Huckabay

Weight Loss Motivation

In my post last week Why Can't I Lose Weight? I talked about the missing factor in your weight loss efforts.

Motivation!

You may call it willpower but I think what is really missing is "want power".

You may want to lose weight but in the actual moment when faced with a piece of cheesecake you want the cheesecake more than any desire to look good on the beach in the summer. 

You may want to lose weight, but in the moment when faced with staying in bed or getting up extra early to go to the gym before work you seemingly want more sleep much more than you want to drop 10lbs.

So how do you get that elusive motivation to lose weight?

Lots of ways and I have a whole free weight loss motivation course on the subject so I won't go into the details.

But even with that course you have to follow it. You have to do something.

There is no magic pill, patch or potion which will help if you're not prepared to take action.

But if you're ready to lose weight you can do it - anyone can - you just have to want it enough to do what it takes.

Are you sure you want to succeed at losing weight? How sure? Are you ready to work on your weight loss motivation?

Let's Get On It On

Happy Valentine's Day for tomorrow! Eat a little chocolate. Treat yourself and then get right back to it!

Enjoy the track - download today or tomorrow while it's still free!

Janice

Why Can't I Lose Weight?

Why Can't I Lose Weight?

This is a question I get asked over and over again.

"Why can't I lose weight? I eat healthily and I'm walking to work..."
"Why can't I lose weight? I eat so much less than my friends and I drink a lot of water..."
"Why can't I lose weight? I don't overeat and I go to the gym three times a week..."

The fact is that if you're not losing weight then you are probably eating too many calories or not moving enough.

If you take in more calories than you use you will gain weight.

If you take in as many calories as you use you will maintain weight.

And if you take in fewer calories than you use you will lose weight.

It's simple to say of course but not so simple to do. But that's the size and shape of it. Although there's one more factor that counts.

You see, all that any weight loss program consists of is a strategy for eating fewer calories and/or using up more of them. You can use my weight loss program or devise your own but until you do that you won't lose weight.

But even if you have 101 strategies you have to actually use them. You have to change what you eat (or how much or both). You have to make the extra effort to exercise.

Are you?

And if you are, are you doing enough? often enough?

If you're not losing weight, you're not! It's simple as that. The missing factor? Motivation!

More on that in my next post.

My new Silva EX3 pedometer: Here at Last!

My new Silva EX3 pedometer finally arrived a few days ago.

Well worth the wait - no wonder they were sold out! What a difference it is making.

The cheap one I bought while I was waiting for delivery of this one started being annoying and so I didn't wear it all day. With this one you can wear it around you neck, in your pocket or in your bag and it's around 20g (less than an ounce) so you don't even notice you're wearing it.

It resets itself automatically every night (keeping a record of the last 7 days for you) - I leave it in my dressing gown pocket until I'm dressed and then it goes in my pocket or around my neck depending what I'm wearing.

No annoying click click click either or falling off your waistband when you bend over.

If you've only ever used those horrible cheap ones you'll really notice the difference though that may be less of a case if you've had an expensive one before.

As far as motivation goes, it's working for me so far.

I'm reasonably fit so I didn't start from the beginners part of my pedometer weight loss program with a gradual build up on steps - I'm aiming to do 10,000 steps a day.

First day I had the EX3 I had only done 6000 or so steps by 4pm so I did an extra 30 minutes stepping in front of "Ready Steady Cook" to help me arrive at my target and yesterday I decided to walk to the Post Office instead of driving so that I could get some extra steps clocked up and I got to almost 13,000.

Today I have not done any formal exercise so I am around the 3000 mark and so that will be me going for a walk this evening or stepping in front of the TV again instead of being lazy.

By the way if you would like to buy one I have seen these on Amazon in the Uk - the .com site doesn't seem to have them but you may get something similar on their pedometers page.

Update: December 2012 Amazon no longer sells the Silva X3 but there are updated models that now cost less! See the Silva range here.

How to Bead Your Way to Weight Loss

You can tell I've got something new on my brain with that title LOL but I've not gone quite mad yet.

The thing is, I started a new beading class on Tuesday morning and instead of feeling hungry around 11 am and ready for lunch, as I usually do, I was lost in a world of choosing beads from the vast array the teacher had on display and putting them together into something that resembled a half-decent pair of earrings and a bracelet.

I had a great time with a friendly bunch of people and a very helpful teacher and was totally absorbed in being creative. I could have quite happily put off lunch for another hour - it's almost unheard of for me to manage not to eat my lunch before 12 if I'm working on something on my PC at home.

So often we eat (or think we feel hungry) because we are bored.

Now what will keep me happily absorbed (and not thinking of food) may not be for you but if you can find something that interests you like that it can keep you hands busy and out of the cookie jar and your mind on the task at hand instead of on what you can eat.

The trick is to find something you love and which you can be actively involved in during your free time to stop yourself getting bored.

These days many of us spend a lot of our leisure time passively in front of the TV and that leaves us too open to thinking we are hungry (especially after watching food ads or cookery shows) ... see if you can replace some of that time with a hobby - and if you can make it one that get's you moving all the better. Unfortunately beading doesn't use many calories :)

How to Stop Eating

I had an email from a lady, let's call her Penny for the sake of anonymity, who wanted to know

"I read a book to motivate myself to quit smoking...how do I get motivated, really motivated to stop eating"

The thing is, eating is even more addictive than smoking. We are biologically programmed to eat. It's definitely NOT the same as smoking. If we don't eat we die. If you don't smoke, you live longer! We can't just not buy food or stay away from other eaters. Or chew a food substitute.

And unfortunately for the state of our waistlines, it seems we are also programmed to eat as much food as we can when food is plenty so that we are able to cope with lean times ahead.

Now the trouble is that these days there are no leaner times to use up our fat stores so some of us (well a whole lot of us actually) just eat and eat to the point of obesity

Those of us who want to be slim, simply have to learn to regulate ourselves, like it or not. We have to learn to read our body's signals. To know when we are physically hungry and when we have had enough. We have to eat slowly and pay attention to our bodies.

And once you are aware that you have eaten enough you have to stop eating before you feel stuffed. And not start again until you are physically hungry.

There are a few strategies you can use to let your body (and mind) know it's time to stop eating :-

• Like smoking, eating too much (or eating when you're not physically hungry) can be a kind of habit so if you stop yourself snacking or eating too much at each meal (using sheer willpower in the beginning) eventually you will be quite used to that and stop naturally.
• If you like chocolate (like me) you may allow yourself a square with coffee at the end of your meal to signify that you have finished eating. You won't mind stopping so much, because chocolate is coming :)
• Some people find it useful to brush their teeth when eating is over. This may be a helpful strategy for Penny who used to use a cigarette to signal the end of a meal.
• You could also use clearing the kitchen of all dishes and leftovers, rinsing out the sink and putting out the kitchen lights.

Penny is also asking how she can be motivated to WANT to stop eating.

For that you need to understand what you want to achieve by losing weight and keep reminding yourself how much you want to achieve it - every time you reach for food you don't need.

If you don't want to lose weight enough then the compulsion to eat will be too great. So reinforce your reasons by going through them (in your head or on paper) whenever you can.

Plus, if you want more help with motivation and strategies to follow you can get my FREE 7 part weight loss motivation course here

Eat a Good Meal and Lose weight

When you say you had a good meal what do you mean?

A good meal could be one which gave you enormous pleasure. It could be that it was absolutely delicious. You enjoyed every mouthful and felt quite satisfied after eating it.

Maybe it included some of your favorite foods - just like your mom used to make. True comfort food.

Maybe it was pure indulgence with food you love but which you don't normally allow yourself to eat on your diet.

Maybe you pushed the boat out a bit and ate in a top restaurant and are still remembering the whole experience of dining like royalty.

But there's another definition of a good meal I would like you to think about. It's one where you don't say "That was delicious" and then regret the calories when you get on the scales the next day.

A truly good meal is delicious but it also nourishes your body and provides a good balance of protein, carbohydrate, healthy fats, vitamins and minerals without going over the top on calories. It's one which has a healthy balance between tasting fantastic and making you feel fantastic too.

You may think that such foods don't exist - that a good meal isn't a good meal without a multitude of calories and a sticky dessert but I'd have to say you just haven't found the right recipes yet.

Make it your mission this year to find one new delicious healthy recipe every month (or every week if you can manage it). Find a healthy recipe that you would look forward to eating, try it out and make sure you love it then add it to your usual list of potential meals. As time goes on and you have collected a few recipes, you will be able to have a good meal whenever you like without wrecking you diet - you'll have your own treasure trove of personal favorites.  

To find recipes take a look at the cookbooks you have at home, search for "low-calorie recipes, "low-fat recipes" or "Weight Watchers recipes" online or check out some specialist magazines from your local book store.

Is it Your Hormones?

I had a reader ask me a question recently about losing weight caused by hormonal imbalance. She was looking for help to find websites which deal with natural remedies which would make the process of losing weight easier.

In these situations I always try and find the true cause of excess weight and I answered her with a few questions to try and get to the heart of the matter. I add my response here in case it helps anyone else. As usual I try and tell it like it is - I won't tell you there's an easy solution when there isn't.

"Mmmmh... Why do you think you have a hormonal imbalance? Has a doctor diagnosed that? If so, your doctor is the best person to give you the answers! Or visit a natural therapist locally who can can look at your case on an individual basis - they treat the whole person not just the symptoms - so there's no single solution to an imbalance but there are many answers to suit different individuals.

 

In this case I would never follow anything you read on line as there is more misinformation than information - always use a properly qualified medical practitioner.

 

If a hormonal imbalance has not been medically diagnosed then it's back to my question ("Why do you think you have a hormonal imbalance?") because so many people use hormonal imbalance as a reason for being overweight  but I have to say in my experience it is rarely the main cause (unless again there is a proper medical diagnosis).

 

Just something to think about...

 

By the way even if you do have a hormonal imbalance, there's no magic herb you can take to whisk weight away. Unfortunate but true. You can generally correct the hormonal imbalance through medical treatment (natural or otherwise) but the weight still has to be lost.

 

I'm sorry this may not be the answer you want to hear but I hope it helps you get clear about the task ahead."

Now as it happened, my reader responded and she did have a problem with polycystic ovary syndrome which had caused her to gain weight fast and was making it difficult to lose weight. So in this case there was indeed a medical problem.

I am not a doctor and have no training in this particular medical condition but if you have PCOS the following part of my response may help you too

"Instead of looking on the internet where there is a lot of misleading information I know I have seen a good book on this problem which dealt with weight gain caused by polycystic ovaries - the PCOS diet book - but there are a whole range of other books too which might help you as I just found on Amazon.

I have a cousin who has thyroid problems and it is just the same for her - very, very difficult to lose weight. But the things you are already doing will keep your weight in check even if you do not lose it and will help you remain as fit and healthy as possible until you get your medical problems sorted out. Please don't give up!"

 

If you have a medical condition, which is making it difficult to lose weight, get as much help as you can from a properly qualified medical practitioners and don't trust everything you read online. You'll find a whole lot of misinformation about Chinese herbs, berries, pink patches and GI capsules out there.