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Metabolism Workout

Metabolism Workout

treadmill

Just because your metabolism might not be so fast that you can eat everything in sight and not gain a pound, it doesn’t mean that you can’t improve your metabolism through exercise to work properly.

Through metabolic conditioning, you can increase your body’s ability to burn fat – not only through workouts – but your body will begin to burn fat over the course of the day when you aren’t doing anything.

The first step to any fitness program is to know where to start. You can either pay money to have your metabolism tested, or use the bronze method online to find a beginning point.

This assessment will let you know where your body is burning fuel at different heartrate zones that range from zone one being the easiest to five being the hardest. Typically, the body burns fat in the lower zones, while burning food, carbs and sugar at the hardest zones.

Think about how many times you’ve heard about people working as hard as they could in the gym and not losing a single pound. This is because those high zones such as four and five are burning zero fat cells as energy, and instead burning the food that they have eaten.

After their intense workout, these people go home and begin to eat all of the food that they burned off in their workout. Proper metabolic conditioning means you should spend time in all zones, while making sure that a majority of your workout is in lower fat burning zones.

An example would be to spend four minutes in zone two heartrate zones, while spending one minute in zone four or zone five with a higher intensity. Lifting weights is also important because the more muscle that you have, the more calories your body burns to maintain muscle throughout the day.

Lifting weights in repetition ranges of ten to fifteen is a great way to start, and there are tons of online videos on how to lift with proper form. Just make sure you lift with every body part over the course of the workout, and try to resistance train at least twice a week.

Nutrition will go a long way as well when it comes to working out to improve your metabolism – such as proper hydration levels, high fat and fiber foods, and eating enough calories.

If you’re improving your cardiovascular health, building muscle, and eating a little healthier than you did the day before, you metabolism will begin to improve over time and be more efficient at burning fat.

Metabolism and Weight Loss

Metabolism and Weight Loss

How fast or slow your metabolism is can either make weight loss an effortless breeze, or something that work against you. A fast metabolism means that your body is a fat burning machine when resting, and can typically be found in people who are already slimmer or younger.

Metabolism ages and slows down as you grow older, making weight loss more difficult. Luckily there are ways of improving your metabolism, and you can even train your metabolism to be more efficient through metabolic conditioning.

Before you attempt to work out harder to making progress even faster, you need to start by knowing where your heartrate is in each of the cardio zones. There are 5 zones total that range from zone one, which is the easiest level of exertion, to level five being the hardest when your heartrate is at its highest.

In zones one through three, you are burning fat as your fuel source, which mean that zones four and five are primarily burning only carbs and sugar. If you burn carbs and sugar for your workout, you won’t lose much, if any, fat – and you could end up feeling hungry by the end of it

This results in you eating back all of the calories you just burned. To find out what zones your heartrate rest in, use an online calculator for the bronze method for a fairly accurate guess.

You can always invest in an active metabolic assessment for a couple hundred dollars to get your exact heartrate zone numbers at a gym. Now that you have your heartrate zones, spend a majority of your cardio time in zones one through three to build your aerobic base, while spending short amounts of time in the higher zones.

This will help your body switch from burning carbs and sugars quicker, to spending more time in fat burning zones during your workouts and while resting. Nutrition is another great way to work on achieving a better metabolism as well.

Simple tricks such as making sure you’re not under eating, drinking plenty of water, and eating foods with plenty of iron, fiber and protein are all beneficial for metabolism. Cardio, strengthening exercises, and nutrition go hand and hand when it comes to fitness plans.

Each will complement the other when it comes to improving your metabolism. When your body’s metabolism improves, it will improve at burning fat, and even prevent metabolic diseases.

 

Metabolic Testing

Metabolic Testing

Knowing where your metabolism stands is a great place to start when trying to condition it to be faster and more efficient. Having your metabolism tested will allow you to know exactly how many calories you need to eat in order to fuel your body throughout the day, tell you where your body burns calories at specific heartrate zones, and calculate your VO2 max.

metabolic testing

Calorie intake is important because not eating enough will slow down your metabolism resulting in weight gain, and overeating will also result in weight gains as well. Where you’re burning calories in your workouts can be tested through an Active Metabolic Assessment, and will tell you out of the five heartrate zones, where your body burns fat most efficiently with specific numbers tailored to your body.

This way, you can eat a proper amount of food to fuel your workouts, and spend your workout time in your fat burning zones without any guessing when you step on the treadmill or other cardio equipment.

Some people eat way too few calories and over exercise at too high of an intensity – resulting in depleted energy levels, and more resistance to fat loss. Your VO2 max is the amount of oxygen that your body takes in when exercising, and is a good indicator of your level of cardiovascular endurance.

More cardio performed at lower zones will grow your aerobic base, which will result in a better VO2 max, and help train your metabolism to stay in fat burning zones much longer as you exercise.

Retesting your metabolism quarterly is recommended so that you can progress your training and continue to shape your metabolism into a fat burning machine inside and outside of the gym.

When you retest after training, your VO2 max should increase resulting in longer workouts. Your fat burning zones should be achievable for longer amounts of time, and your body will burn more fat throughout the day rather than just burning the carbs and sugars that you consume.

If you’re exercising on a budget, try to see if your insurance or health savings accounts will cover your assessments because it’s medical related. There are other methods to testing your metabolism through free online calculators that, although they’re not perfectly accurate, they do provide a much better educated guess on where to start your training.

Don’t rely on fad diets and extreme exercises to lose weight. Instead train your body to work more efficiently and burn fat for you. Metabolic testing takes all the guesswork out of the equation and gives you a strong foundation on which you can succeed.

Metabolic Syndrome

Metabolic Syndrome

Metabolism plays a big factor that not enough people think about when it comes to their health. Metabolic syndrome is a collection of three or more risk factors that are present because of the body’s inability to burn food properly throughout the day, or when exercising.

When the body can’t burn food as a fuel properly, it stores more fat – typically at nighttime – and when people exercise, they burn the food they eat as energy rather than fat cells.

Most people assume a fast metabolism is for skinny people and slow metabolism makes it hard to lose weight, but an unbalanced metabolism has more risk factors than just weight.

People with slow metabolisms are at a higher risk for increased blood pressure, high cholesterol, and insulin resistance – which all can lead to more diseases. Weight, age, race, diabetes and other factors all play a role in how your metabolism functions, and typically those who are older, out of shape, and have poor lifestyle choices run a higher risk for metabolic diseases.

The reason thinner people have a higher metabolism is because their body naturally burns fat on its own, which is why some people can eat thousands of calories and not gain a pound.

Just because you may have a slower metabolism, it doesn’t mean that you can’t change it. Better nutrition choices, more water, and consistent exercise is a great way to improve metabolic function to help your body burn fat more efficiently.

If you have the money to invest in your health, you can call your doctor about getting your metabolism tested. Active metabolic assessments will show you how your body burns fuel – whether it burns carbs or fats during your workouts at different heartrate zones

Resting metabolic assessments are great for knowing how your body burns fuel outside of your time spent working out. If you don’t wish to invest in an assessment, there are free calculations such as the bronze method that can be done at no cost online for an educated guess.

Knowing where to start is a crucial part of improving your metabolism and preventing metabolic syndrome because everyone has a different heartrate zone to begin with. After about two to three months of changing to healthier eating habits, staying hydrated, and conditioning, your metabolism – through easy to moderate intensity cardio – should start to show improvements in how your body burns fat.

Increasing your metabolism will not only help you slim down faster and prevent a plethora of diseases, but it will give you more energy and an overall more enjoyable and active life.

 

Curb Your Appetite by Adding New Choices to Your Meals

almonds

Curb Your Appetite by Adding New Choices to Your Meals

Losing weight might be accomplished by adding new choices to your meals to feel full and curb your appetite. You can also use these choices to help your metabolism, reduce obesity and resist high-calorie foods such as sweets.

Walnuts are thought to be a great choice as a food to add that will help curb your appetite. One research involved two groups – one that was given a smoothie that contained approximately 14 walnut halves and the other given a placebo smoothie with the same caloric content and taste as the walnut smoothie.

The study involved only adults who had a BMI that was considered obese. The research time was five days of drinking smoothies by both groups. Each group also took part in a neurocognitive test that included photos of high-fat foods such as fried foods or sweets.

Each group also saw low-fat foods such as veggies and fruits and even non-edible flowers. After the five days of the test, the group resumed their five-day diet smoothie plan with only the placebo smoothies.

MRI testing was also performed during this time. Researchers found that those who consumed the walnut-smoothie were less apt to overeat and the part of the brain that controls impulse and appetite control was better activated.

Walnuts can be a tasty addition to oatmeal, salads, yogurt and other foods. Other examples of foods that help control cravings and appetite include almonds and coffee. Almonds help induce feelings of fullness and coffee provides a temporary boost in your metabolism.

It’s been known for some time that green tea contains catechins or substances that help stabilize the blood sugar – making food cravings less likely. Apples can also reduce weight gain by adding fiber to your diet.

Or, add cayenne pepper to your food to spice it up and to boost metabolism. Tofu and oatmeal provide protein and fiber to make you feel full and reduce cravings during the day.

And don’t forget water as a valuable component in reducing weight. It’s an inexpensive way to keep you from feeling hungry by making your stomach feel full. A great addition to your food choices is broth-based soups.

Consume a bowl of soup before a meal and you won’t eat as much during the meal. Curbing your appetite by adding these healthy foods to your diet will help you reach your weight goals and introduce you to a new way to think of food – and it’s natural.

The year 2018 promises many changes and innovative methods of thinking about diets and weight loss. Dieting is an important part of keeping our bodies healthy and functioning properly. Stay tuned for all the new developments.

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Try the MIND Diet

Try the MIND Diet

Your mind has everything to do with how you lose weight and keep it off. It also has much to do with keeping our brains working at their best, especially as we age. It’s not a “brain food” diet, but what researchers have named the Mediterranean/DASH-Intervention for–Neurodegenerative-Delay.

Although it sounds like a lot to take in, it’s actually a very simple concept. DASH stands for Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension and researchers at Rush University Medical Center (funded by the National Institute on Aging) that a mix of DASH and Mediterranean style meals can effectively reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers carefully tracked the dietary habits and cognitive ability of almost a thousand adults over a nine-year period of time. They found significant differences of those in the group who followed the MIND diet.

The MIND diet encourages the consumption of such foods as nuts, berries, fish, olive oil, wine and green leafy veggies. The group who followed the MIND diet plan enjoyed a 53 percent lower chance of contracting Alzheimer’s.

Butter and/or margarine, sugary and processed foods and red meat should be avoided, but not banned. Those who cut down on these foods significantly enjoyed a 35 percent less chance of suffering from Alzheimer’s.

The MIND diet uses two of the best diet plans, Mediterranean and DASH, and focuses on the foods in those diets that explicitly affect brain health. Foods such as red meat, cheese, butter and margarine, fried foods and sweets should be avoided, but you don’t have to completely give them up to get great results.

You can expect to see more research on comparisons of those who follow this diet plan rigorously, those who follow it modestly and those who eat very little of the foods on the plan.

Although the MIND plan doesn’t necessarily target weight loss, you will probably lose weight simply based on the fact that you’ll be consuming lower calorie foods. Combining the MIND diet with a moderate amount of exercise delivers even better results for overall health.

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Schedule Meals at Certain Times Meet Your Weight Loss Goals

Schedule Meals at Certain Times Meet Your Weight Loss Goals

Fasting isn’t the same difficult way to lose weight as it was once thought. The new way of fasting has you consuming food during a certain time period each day. For example, you might choose to eat the dinner meal before 6 P.M. each day or no lunch after 12 P.M.

The health, spiritual and mind benefits you get from intermittent fasting has been the practice of many groups of people for thousands of years and the future will reveal much more information about this healthy and beneficial lifestyle plan.

Once again, this is a plan that slowly eases you in to a lifestyle that will be sustainable for the future and not a crash diet plan where you only see brief results. You begin gradually until your body accepts the new way of eating and build on that success.

Celebrities have already latched on to this healthy method of dieting to lose weight and keep it off, but you can expect much more information in 2018 as more people realize great success.

When you teach your body to adapt to a certain routine, great things begin to happen. For example, your skin will glow, glucose tolerance will improve and even your day will go smoother because your life will be simplified.

Those with pre-diabetic tendencies and those who are resistant to insulin may see that they no longer need medication for their condition and weight reduction and fasting glucose levels will help Type2 diabetics.

It may take a while to adjust your new way of eating meals with your family’s schedule, but you can always tweak the plan to meet your lifestyle needs. It won’t take long to get in the rhythm of timing and choosing healthy meals.

Most diets rely on three meals per day and snacks in between, so fasting can never be realized. But, when you realize how your body works and responds to the fasting process, you’ll be pleased at the results.

Fasting often improves or alleviates completely the problems of skin conditions. You should always avoid the inflammatory foods that offer very little nutrition and choose high quality foods that can resist food intolerance and sensitivities.

You’ll also be better able to differentiate between true hunger signals and cravings that often come from eating too many processed and high-calorie foods. You’ll have a better understanding of your body’s needs and how strict meal times can help you lose weight.

When you choose definite meal times and quality foods, you’ll be more in control of your own body and notice much more about how food affects your body’s functioning. Heart function, mental acuity, cancer prevention, immune system and even stress can all be improved by this nutritional way of planning meal times.

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Do Away With Deprivation

Do Away With Deprivation

Diets have often been perceived as depriving ourselves of the rich foods we love. That’s why diets are doomed to fail and you’re destined to add even more pounds to the load you need to lose.

Not only does the long-term effect of deprivation dieting mean sure failure, but it can also be very harmful. People think they’re going to diet for a short period of time and lose the excess weight and be done with it.

This method may be temporarily successful, but at the end of the diet people go back to their old eating habits and the body immediately turns the food into fat cells to replace the ones lost on the diet.

The reason diets are doomed to fail is that they’re based on deprivation – some of it very extreme. You may cut calories or certain foods, be required to weigh the ingredients on a food scale or only eat certain meals at certain times.

These rules are difficult to follow on a long-term basis – especially for the rest of your life. You may have brief control over the weight loss situation and lose a few pounds, but it isn’t feasibly sustainable.

Deprivation soon gets old and self-control wanes on the limitations diets demand. Back to square one you go – and the guilt and negativity that comes with it can ruin your mindset of achievement.

Leading a life free of deprivation diets should not give you the green light to eat whatever you want, whenever you want. Sweets, alcohol and fast foods should be considered along with everything else with a mindset that leads you to ultimate success.

The new recommendation about weight loss is to make small changes in your eating habits that are sustainable and keep adding changes you want to make as you become used to each change.

For example, you might give up or cut down on the amount of sweets you have each day or eat earlier than just before bedtime. You’ll be surprised at how quickly the results of just that one small change will affect your weight and mindset.

This method is slower than the immediate weight loss you may have from a deprivation diet, but it makes more sense in the long run because you’re adhering to the change and not facing multiple changes at one time that are more difficult to control.

If you’re contemplating a vegan diet, give it some time by beginning with a couple of handfuls of veggies at a certain time of day for a couple of weeks. It’s a slower change, but it’s more likely to last rather than a quick and complete change to your habits.

A sugar cleanse diet may last three weeks or longer, but if you simple cut out that morning chocolate croissant and make eggs instead, you’ll be able to control the sweet intake and eventually cut it out completely.

The future of dieting is changing rapidly and the more we know about how our bodies react to certain diets such as deprivation, the more we realize that it doesn’t work in the long run, but small changes over a period of time can help you be successful in your weight loss efforts.

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Using the Scale for Weight Loss

Using the Scale for Weight Loss

One of the best weight loss tricks for success is to use the weight scale you’ve hidden and dread to step on. But, scientists have recently revealed that it’s the best tool for shedding pounds – without diet or exercise.

The old way of thinking was to only weigh yourself once a week or even once a month. Now, studies indicate that when you weigh yourself every day, your chances of weight loss success increase tenfold.

Stepping on the scales can be a daily wake up call for you to cut down the calories and hit the gym. A recent study followed almost 300 women after measuring their body fat percentage.

Over the course of two years, the women were not on a weight loss diet. But, one group weighed every day and the other did not. The unexpected results showed that women who weighed themselves on a daily basis lost more weight and fat percentage than those who didn’t.

Weighing yourself daily is a form of motivation that can be highly effective when trying to change your eating and exercising behavior each day. Every pound you lose is concrete evidence – on the scale – that your weight loss plan is working or not.

As the scale indicates weight loss or gain, you can adjust the way you’re eating and exercising. The scale won’t lie to you and you can quickly see what’s working in your life and what isn’t.

The scale will also tell you a lot about your lifestyle. A night of drinking and binging on snacks will show on the scale as soon as the next day and you’ll have a good idea about what you must lose to maintain or shed pounds for health and wellness.

Things are changing rapidly in how we view weight loss methods. What was shunned in the past may have a popular revival in 2018 as more studies are performed and more is revealed about what works – and what doesn’t – for weight loss and healthy living.

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How Social Media Can Help You Lose Weight and Stay Healthy

How Social Media Can Help You Lose Weight and Stay Healthy

Gone are the days when we thought social media was just a fad. We now know that it can provide helpful information that can use to change our lives – or save our lives. You’ll be hearing and noticing much more in the coming year about the social media way of dieting.

The Instagram Diet is rapidly moving ahead to help people lose weight by offering information and social support. Besides getting motivation from others, you can give motivation by sharing your experience through the photo sharing process of Instagram.

The community involvement that Instagram provides is a valuable asset for those trying to lose weight and achieve life goals. People are clamoring for information that will help them in their struggles – and Instagram meets that need.

Rather than attend weight loss meetings and trying methods that don’t work in the long run, the community you’ll connect with on Instagram and other social media sites can be reached any time and is a more personal way to give and receive help.

On Instagram, you can separate your accounts into those meant for sharing with different groups of people – such as family, friends, weight loss support and more. One of the main motivational techniques that Instagram offers is the ability to post pictures and recipes for healthy food.

This can be a great tool for encouraging others to choose low calorie and healthy foods rather than high fat and high cholesterol foods. Pictures and food journals also act as learning tools for recognizing healthy foods compared to unhealthy ones.

And you don’t have to write a description of the meal if you’re in a hurry. A picture is worth a thousand words when it comes to recognizing low calorie and health-oriented foods.

So many exciting new developments are being launched on the Internet and social media is one of the areas that’s going to enjoy even more popularity as people discover the benefits of using the Instagram Diet and other Internet support for weight loss and healthy living.

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