Fastest Way to Lose Weight

On July 22, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

This article will give you some tips that will help you teach yourself the fastest way to lose weight.

Dieting is easy…

BUT…

Staying on a diet until you see positive results is hard. Hard enough that most people tend to shy away from dieting after a few days of staying on it. The fastest way to lose weight is not difficult in an ideal world. Even better, once you’re on a diet; it could actually be fun. After all, losing excess weight is a mental exercise. That means setting your body and mind to achieving your goal. Ideals do not have to be different from reality, but the sad reality is, they often are.

Most dieters believe in a lot of misconceptions about diets like cutting back on proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Actually, you can still lose weight even if you eat lots of proteins, carbohydrates and fat. You may lose more weight because you are being more metabolically efficient – especially when coupled with increased activity.

So What is The Fastest Way to Lose Weight?

Activity and food intake are closely related. Even if you eat healthily while your lifestyle is sedentary, you will still gain weight. And even if you exercise to your heart’s content while your diet is really bad, then all your effort will simply be put to waste.

So how should diet and exercise work to your benefit then?

Simple! You just need to diet and exercise strategically.

Strategic dieting and exercising is probably the fastest way to lose weight in a week, in a month, and for the rest of your life. However, if it takes a lot of discipline, focus and even passion may not be able to match what your brain thinks your body wants. In order to do get your evolutionary tendencies to coincide with your diet and exercise habits, here are 3 amazing tips you can do and master without ever growing tired. Think of them as a way to form lifelong habits that will make you feel younger and look better.

Stress and worry-free dieting
Most people are stressed about losing weight. And stressing about it alone can make you gain more weight. Stress affects the brain negatively by increasing your appetite and makes you feel sluggish and really tired. It can make you feel like the pressure is always on you! And because of this, you tend to worry too much about everything, especially your diet! In addition, worrying can slow your metabolism down. When your metabolism slows down, your body’s ability to convert nutrient stores into energy for your metabolic activity decreases. Your body will store more fat and even misuse the energy you already have. How will you know that your body is misusing energy? Too much thinking, stressing and worrying about something such as your diet requires a lot of energy. Instead of you using the same amount to eat healthy and exercise, your body loses precious power simply by doing nothing. And the result it has on your body is far from worth it. Furthermore, have you ever noticed that when you are anxious about achieving your goal you are less likely to get it? Well, that’s because you are focused more on how to do it rather than actually doing what you need to do. A Stress and worry-free diet should start in the morning. Don’t skip breakfast or eat less than what you normally consume. Instead, remove those parts of your breakfast that you know are unhealthy and replace them with something healthier. Most juices from concentrate are actually not much different from canned soda. So instead of juice, wash a clean piece of fruit and enjoy the extra fiber and fresh flavor. Regular bread should be replaced with whole grain bread and sugar coated cereals can be replaced with regular oats. You can continue this type of substitution throughout lunch and dinner and you’ll see a great difference in as little as 7 days. Substitution is about as simple and good as it gets when it comes to diets.

Light and simple exercise regimen
I hate to say this because I’m an elite athlete, but heavy exercising is for the elite and requires a lot of things to go right to make gains. They need an exorbant amount of calories, a solid nine hours of sleep each night, and spend several hours in the gym each week lifting hard and heavy. Most people like you usually eat too little and sleep far too little, so for you, the easiest and fastest way to lose weight is to keep exercise simple and light. A 5-minute cardio session may not cut it, but a 5-minute whole body activity like running can make you lose more calories in a single day. I challenge you to work your way up to five full-out sprints per day; full-out sprints can only be sustained for 15-30 seconds; that’s less than 2.5 minutes of running and it will do you far more good than half an hour on the treadmill. However, don’t forget to warm-up. 5 minutes of brisk walking before your sprints will keep you injury free – just limber up during the walk. Playing with your kids is also great full body exercise. Since kids are high in energy, playing with them can get you pumped in as little as 5 minutes. Biking and swimming are also simple exercises that work well for your body inside and out. Anything that keeps you moving is considered an exercise. And anything that makes you sweat increases your metabolic activity – leading to pounds after pounds of fat loss.

Importance of getting quality sleep
Most people fail to realize that sleeping is related to weight loss, but it actually has a lot to do with it. Sleeping produces hormones like melatonin, serotonin, and endorphins that can make you feel good. These neurotransmitters help with normal body functioning and can hinder stress. And as mentioned a while ago, stress can put your body in hibernation mode. Your body’s metabolic activity decreases with stress and your appetite increases dramatically. In order to avoid this from happening, an uninterrupted and deep sleep of 8 to 10 hours is required. You’re not trying to stay in bed longer for weight loss, but because you have likely been undersleeping for many years, and your body will appreciate it. Think of a the time when you were functioning at a level far below your peak because of sleeplessness. Remember how that awful sluggish feeling made you want to crawl back to bed and just sleep the rest of that day? Of course, you wouldn’t want that. Fatigability and exhaustion can make you perform less well, and in children, it makes a huge difference in test scores. Usually, it’s better for them to get a full nights sleep than to stay up late studying. So if you really are serious about losing weight, don’t neglect simple things that matter most to your health. Maintaining a good and properly functioning physique is, after all, the fastest way to lose weight.

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What To Eat To Lose Weight

On May 28, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Are you wondering what to eat to lose weight?

Or perhaps you are thinking about not eating to lose weight.

In either case, this article will address how to lose a lot of weight, primarily through dietary techniques, although exercise can greatly speed up your weight loss efforts. In this article, I will talk about the benefits and pitfalls of losing weight through calorie restriction as well as some sustainable dietary tips.

Let us first address a very common and loaded question:

Does not eating make you lose weight?

I have done just about every diet under the sun, and many of them have been calorie restriction diets. While effective, the biggest pitfall of these is how difficult they are to sustain. Competition bodybuilders have mastered this art, but it is not an easy road to travel.

Alternatively, if you consider the Bragg diet coupled with fasting, this leads to severe calorie restriction that causes you to lose both fat and muscle. This may be sufficient for your needs, and I honestly felt wonderful on the diet, but if you want to eat meat, you should look elsewhere. A raw foods diet is not for everyone, and if you couple fasting with a typical western diet (instead of a raw foods diet), you are far more likely to gain weight than to lose it.

You usually gain weight on this regime because your metabolism gets downregulated when you are fasting, and if you follow a fast with a high calorie meal anytime soon, your body absorbs all of the calories and quickly converts them to fat so that you can survive the next fast when it comes around.

So, can you lose weight by not eating?

Yes but…

Only if you can sustain a very low calorie diet with an excellent vitamin profile (think fruits, vegetables, nuts and berries). For many people, this is ideal, but others cannot stand it. If it sounds like a good fit, give it a try. If not, read on.

I will now discuss what to eat to lose weight if the above approach is not for you.

Foods to Avoid When Losing Weight

First, let us consider foods to avoid when you are losing weight. As I have said in other articles, if it comes in a box, bag or can – avoid it. Substitute for something that is natural and fresh instead. Cereal bars, despite their attractive packaging, are not full of living vitamins and nutrients – they are what are called “dead calories”. Dead calories do not help you much, and are all too easy to over-consume.

What To Eat To Lose Weight

Having lived in a second world country, I think the main reason for the American obesity epidemic has to do with the convenience of calorie dense foods. In developing countries, food has to be cooked and cleaned from scratch for the most part which means that there are few snacks easily available, and everything comes from fresh, raw ingredients which are generally much more filling and more expensive. The result is that people eat less food because it is harder to make and healthier food in general. Combined, that makes for a thinner population.

We often “don’t have time to cook” which usually means a highly processed, quick meal with little to no nutritional value and a very high calorie count. Take a lesson from the developing nations (that are getting fatter the more developed they get), and make meals from raw ingredients that take time to make.

This could end up being the best piece of advice you get for making foods that help you lose weight.

Weird Ways to Lose Weight

There are all sorts of weird ways to try and lose weight to avoid the heavy lifting of actually adopting a good diet and exercise regime. Do not waste your time on these because they are usually just as much work, if not more, and will often deliver less than acceptable results.

Heed the advice in this article; put more time into the food you make, use better ingredients, and stop going for the fast fix, and you will lose weight. Avoid the calorie restriction trap that often leads to yo-yo diets that make you worse off than you started. Finally, if it sounds appealing to you, give fasting and a raw foods diet a try. Although I no longer use this method because I require large amounts of calories for my power lifting workouts, it is very suitable for people that are less active, and I loved how I felt.

Best of luck to you and I look forward to hearing about your success in the comments below.

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Best Way To Lose Weight

On May 21, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Are you wondering about the best way to lose weight? There are many ways to lose weight. However, you need clear goals so you can check your progress and see if you’re achieving them. For example, you need to have a clear definition of weight loss, whether you want to lose fat or just lose weight. There is a big difference between fat loss and weight loss. Since muscle can help you become more metabolically efficient, it is best to retain muscle while losing fat. This article will discuss some of the theory behind losing fat easily, efficiently, and as quickly as is reasonably possible.

The most important question you have to ask yourself when considering ways to lose weight is whether or not your chosen method is sustainable. We all know that there are two ways to lose weight: you can either exercise more, or you can eat less. Let me rephrase this so that there is no confusion. You either need to burn more calories than you consume, or consume fewer calories than you burn. This is not as simple as it may seem. Many factors may increase or decrease your metabolism. As a result, two different people may do the same activities and consume the same foods and have completely different body composition. If you have a higher metabolism, you’ll naturally burn more calories. Therefore, one approach to losing weight is to try and boost metabolism. If you have more muscle than someone else, you may also burn more calories. Therefore another approach is to try and build and retain as much muscle is possible. However, since many people are afraid of developing muscle, they are shortchanging themselves.

Nobody will look like a magazine model simply by trying to gain muscle or get stronger. One has to do a lot of steroids in order to achieve those kinds of results as well as elitie, competition level dieting for the muscle to be clearly visible. If you are reading this article, this is not for you. You do not need to worry about gaining too much muscle because it simply will not happen.

“Eat less” is a terrible substitution for burning more calories. People should not really be worrying as much as they do about consuming calories and should instead be focusing on doing more exercise. Most people do little or nothing in terms of exercise. Our ancestors used to have to walk around and hunt for food all day. Almost all of their time was consumed simply trying to find food. To do this, they had to be physically fit and cover large distances which most of us could not even fathom. These days, most of us sit at a desk all day and have the food come to us.

We’re like trash cans in that we stay stationary and food just gets shoved into our mouths.

When I used to be fat, I used to feel like a trashcan. It was not easy to move, and I felt gross on the inside – not to mention that my self-esteem was not very good. I sympathize with people who are currently overweight because I used to be overweight as well. I know that things like walking can even be difficult. I used to have problems with my knees and ankles because I was overweight. I did not want to be too active because I knew I would get sweaty very quickly. This was undesirable to me and those around me. Therefore, I did little to nothing in terms of exercise and gained more weight in the process. This is an ugly downward spiral.

When it comes to easy weight loss, there are really only two solutions. First, there’s surgery. Second, there are supplements. Both of these are very hard on your body, and they are not sustainable. You will either need to keep getting surgery, or keep using the supplements for the rest of your life. The same is true of exercise, but the health benefits to your internal body, external body, and psychology are far greater. If you go for the easy route in this domain, then you are only shortchanging yourself.

How much can one lose in a short amount of time?

It is possible to lose a large amount of weight very quickly. This can easily be achieved through fasting. Simply consume no calories at all, and still be fairly active.

In my ignorance, this is how I first went about losing weight. However, it was very effective. In the course of six months, I lost 75 pounds. This is actually a reasonable start if you have a lot of weight to lose. You want to learn how to fast safely so that you do not hurt yourself or gain the weight back in the process.

For me, it was not just a matter of fasting, but also switching to a raw foods diet. Together these greatly reduced my overall caloric consumption. I would fast one day a week, and three days at the beginning of every month. When I was not fasting, I was eating only raw foods, which are things like uncooked vegetables, nuts and beans. It is very hard to gain weight when you’re consuming far less than the average person in terms of calories, and all of the calories are clean and natural.

However, I have learned much since that time, and would not recommend this approach to everyone. There are far better ways to lose weight, have more energy, be more fit, and still eat the foods you love.

In my next article, Weight Loss Solutions, I will talk about specific strategies that will help you lose weight. These will address topics such as:

Is running the best way to lose weight?
What is the best ways to lose weight at the gym?
What are some easy ways to burn calories?
What is the most efficient way to exercise?

I will also detail more about the calorie – weight-loss equation.

I hope this discussion has been enlightening and gotten the gears turning in your brain as to what is the best way to lose weight.

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Weight Loss Solutions

On May 19, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

In my previous article, best way to lose weight, I talked about some of the theory behind different weight-loss solutions. I said that the most important thing you have to consider is whether or not your method of losing weight is sustainable. I discard of the ideas of fasting, surgery, supplements, and a sedentary lifestyle. This article will outline specific strategies for how to exercise, eat, and live so that you have a leaner, healthier body. I will also address the questions that I left at the end of the last article.

Let us start with sustainability. If you lose 10 pounds after a lot of work and then gain it back, are you happy? How about if you lose 20 pounds over two weeks, keep it off for three months, and then slowly gain it back over the next six months? Do you want to live a lifestyle where you’re continually dieting, losing weight, gaining it back, and then having to diet again?

The answer for most people is a resounding NO.

It is important to choose things that we can habituate. Aristotle talked about the power of habit and said that it was far stronger than the powers of nature. This is because once we adopt a habit, it becomes our nature. Nature can only instill a few habits in us, whereas we have the power to choose whatever habits we want to become part of us. If you learn how to eat healthy in a way that is not too difficult and you make this a habit, you will become a healthy eater. It will be natural for you to eat healthy. If you decide to become active and incorporates more activity into your life, habitually, you will become a more active person. You will naturally be more active. This is not rocket science, but it is something very important that we do not explicitly teach in our schools.

Weight Loss Solutions:

Let us first consider the fundamentals of exercise. Force equals mass times acceleration. Your goal in any physical activity can be summed up as either increasing your total volume or increasing your total force. If you do something faster than you did last time, you’re increasing your acceleration. If you are lifting something heavier than last time, you’re increasing your mass. These are the two variables of the force equation. I am of the opinion that the best way to exercise is by lifting weights. It is easy to track your progress, set clear goals, and manipulate your mass, acceleration, and total volume. These are the primary variables that increase your strength.

Everything else is secondary.

You want to increase your strength because the more volume you can do, the more calories you can burn, and likely, the more muscle you can retain. For weight loss, your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is very important. This is determined by the amount of muscle that you have on your body, how much you suffer from stress, and the amount and quality of your sleep. If you increase your basal metabolic rate, you can burn far more calories in a day than with just about any kind of exercise. However, exercise is also a part of determining your basal metabolic rate. Difficult exercises which few people perform can elevate your basal metabolic rate by a factor of eight to 10 for a short period of time. This is why you can eat so many more calories after a workout and not gain fat than you can consume before bed. The stronger you are, the more muscle you have, the more frequently you eat, and the more active you are in general, the higher your basal metabolic rate. I will now talk about how to eat so that you are not shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to the synergy between exercise and eating.

Calories and weight loss are closely related. However, as I mentioned in my last article, the difference between the amount of calories you consume and the amount of calories you burn are not easy to determine. In addition to needing more exercise, people could also use better diets. If you’re overweight, it is likely because of both of these reasons. You should be more active, and you should eat better food. You should also eat less junk.

Substitution is the key to a better diet. You can habitually replace bad foods with good ones. This helps you eat more healthy stuff as well as eat less junk. You are also not left with a void that you do not know how to fill. For example, many people fail to quit smoking because they stop smoking and, in the process, they lose a way to deal with stress. Simply deciding to do something in place of smoking, like drink and a glass of water, can help them ensure that they do not replace their smoking with another bad habit. This also decreases cognitive dissonance, so they are not as bothered by not smoking. Clearly, calorie restriction is not enough. It is smart calorie restriction that is sustainable which is most effective. This is why substitution is so effective.

You can easily choose your own rules to set and follow. Here are some of mine:

Weight Loss Rules

Eat every two to three hours
No carbs afternoon
No junk food unless it’s within one hour of a workout
Walk 30 minutes every morning before doing anything else
No caloric beverages after 3PM
Go to the gym at least twice a week and always aim for some kind of personal record
No work or computer after 10PM
Go to bed at 11PM and wake up at 7PM

Note that all of these rules are now natural. I do not have to think about them because they come to me automatically. I feel odd if I do not eat every three hours. I feel lethargic if I did not get my morning walk. I feel sludgy if I drink some caloric beverages after 3PM. I feel that if I do not get to the gym, then I am getting fat. I do not feel relaxed before bed if I do work or use the computer after 10 PM. I go to bed at 11PM so I can get a full eight hours of sleep.

The best way to lose weight is really a combination of habits. Set clear goals so that you know exactly what you need to achieve, then adopt habits, one by one, that will bring you to your goal. Once you have achieved your goal, you may either reevaluate your goal and strive to do more, or you can just continue on as you are. There is no need to do more or less. Just keep the habits that you have worked so hard to attain.

We are sum of our habits.

If we are inactive, we are not fit. If we eat more calories than we burn, we gain weight. If someone uses contraband habitually, then they look like a junkie. If someone trains to be strong, and they look strong because they are strong. If someone sleeps very little every night, then they look tired on a regular basis. They may develop deep bags under their eyes.

Poker players have to read people for a living. I used to play a lot of poker, and several of my friends are professionals. From this, I know that it is easy to get into the mind of somebody by observing their body because we are sum of our habits.

Lastly, let us look at efficiency.

Losing Weight Efficiently:

If you think that running is the best way to lose weight, then you are sadly mistaken. First, we must define running. When most people say running, they’re referring to this odd activity where a person maintains a steady, walking-like state, usually on a treadmill, for a long duration of time that is not too physically demanding. This is easy by comparison to sprints. One cannot accelerate for more than a few seconds before their acceleration decreases. Since forced equals mass times acceleration, they are not generating their maximum force once their acceleration decreases. It is important to keep such activity short, unless your goal is to try to develop very large muscles because low force does not generate strength. Furthermore, it has been shown that high intensity interval training burns far more calories than does steady-state cardio in the same amount of time.

The general rule of thumb is that the most efficient exercise is the one that recruits the most muscle fibers and generates the greatest amount of force. Therefore, if you have a choice between steady-state cardio and sprinting, you should choose sprinting with short rest periods. If you have the choice between doing squats and leg extensions, then you should choose squats.

For greater fat loss, keep your rest periods short. By short, I mean 60 to 90 seconds. Powerlifters will often rest for four to five minutes to ensure that they have had enough time to recover between sets. This allows for optimal strength development and recovery because they are always able to generate the largest amount of force in any given set. Unless you decide to become a powerlifter, stick to circuit training so that you can work different muscle groups as hard as possible with short rest intervals while still allowing them ample recovery time.

There are few more easy ways to burn calories worth mentioning in case you want to habituate them. Sleeping can increase your metabolic rate, so be sure to get a solid eight hours every night if possible. As you saw in my daily habits, I do not drink any calorie containing beverages after 3 PM. The exception to this is green tea because it can help with weight loss and because it can be used to substitute for calorie-containing beverages. Finally you may have also noted that I eat every three hours. By keeping the stomach constantly digesting by having protein containing meals every two to three hours, your metabolism stays elevated throughout the day.

Find habits which are suitable and sustainable for you. Work on implementing them, and let your habits bring you to your goals. I hope you have enjoyed these weight loss tips, learned a great deal, and enjoy success beyond your imagination.

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image of the yin-yang representing weight loss balance

Quick Ways to Lose Weight

On April 24, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Unlike my last blog post, Quickest Way to Lose Weight, I will cover several quick ways to lose weight in this post. Rather than just cover what I think is the best way to lose weight, I will go over several very good ways to achieve this goal.

Weight loss tips abound, but most are missing the forest for the trees. A few really good tips will go much further than a huge bag of very minor tips. In addition, it will be far easier to implement a few solid tips than to try and remember a hundred different things that you need to do differently.

You can lose weight, and you will if you follow these tips without adopting new bad habits. Often, when trying to make a positive change, people will sabotage their efforts by simultaneously adopting a new bad habit. For example, when I first decided to stop drinking pop, I thought juice would be better. Little did I know that juice is also just a bunch of dead calories, just as calorie dense as pop, and I often drank more of it than I did pop because it both came in larger containers and because I mistakingly though it was healthier.

The result – weight gain. I thought I was doing something healthy, but I made a simple mistake. I adopted a new good habit (not drinking pop) but also adopted a new bad habit in its place (drinking calorie dense juice instead).

So the first quick way to lose weight is to evaluate all decisions related to weight loss carefully. Here is a short, but important checklist to make sure that you are making good weight loss decisions:

Is this new habit/rule sustainable?
If eliminating a habit, what will fill its place?
Is the new behavior/rule better than the old one?
Is there an even better alternative?
Would trim, vibrant people who I want to be like benefit by following this rule/habit?

Is this new habit/rule sustainable?

If it is not sustainable, it is not worth doing. Why bother to lose ten pounds if you will just gain it back in a week after you change your habits? Short-sighted thinking causes most people no end of pain. Looking to hook a man with your great looks that usually aren’t there? Go off the diet, and if he was interested in a slimmer you that you can’t sustain, expect him to go bye bye when the weight comes back on. Unless it’s a one-time event (like a vocabulary test), short-term fixes hurt more than help. They just waste your time at least twice (once when doing it the first time, and again when you decide to take the quick fix in the future).

If eliminating a habit, what will fill its place?

New years resolutions usually fail not because of poor intentions or lack of willpower. They simply fail because they are not engineered to succeed. You may decide to workout eight hours a day, and can keep this up while on vacation, but as soon as you go back to work – you simply can’t do it… not as long as you are human anyway. The sad fact is, most people have no idea how to plan for change effectively, although there is one simple rule that always works.

Whenever removing a habit, you need to find a new one to put in its place. If you do not have a new habit in mind beforehand, you will simply end up filling the space / scenario with something random. Since it is random, it may be a better or worse habit. The only way to guarantee success is to decide on a good habit to replace the eliminated one. For example, instead of just saying you will stop drinking Coke, decide to drink water every time you feel like drinking Coke.

I got off of the Coke habit while my father tried doing the same thing with beer. However, since my father did not have a replacement, he ended up substituting scotch for beer which just made him more inebriated and cost a lot more to boot! Moral of the story is, you cannot quit cold turkey. Have something to put in place of what you plan on eliminating before you start and stick to it.

Is the new behavior/rule better than the old one?

Let’s pretend you are working out to lose weight, but decide that you will do something more fun instead of something that is really working for you. Let’s say that you decide to go on a morning walk in the nice fresh air for half an hour instead of doing interval sprints on the stationary bike because it is more enjoyable. Now, there is something to be said for doing what you love, but the new behavior will probably lead to bad weight gain rather than added weight loss. You may like your walks more, but the new rule is not better than a harder workout to lose weight.

Is there an even better alternative?

Let us continue with the previous example. If you want to get more fresh air, you can substitute a morning walk for high intensity sprints on the stationary bike. However, instead of just walking, turn the walk into a sprinting exercise. Do the same amount of work that you would normally do at the gym, but do it outside at your favorite time of the day when the air is fresh and the birds are singing. At worst, you see the same results, but at best, you get even better results and feel better about it. Extend the length a bit more so you can wind down and enjoy the outdoors more and you have found a much better alternative from all angles.

Would trim, vibrant people who I want to be like benefit by following this rule/habit?

Another excellent question to ask about your method for losing weight is whether other healthy and vibrant people would adapt your idea. If, for example, you wanted to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger used to, you should expect to do similar training to what he went through – steroids and everything else included. Are your weight loss solutions actually helpful, or just helpless distractions? If you have a very fit friend or acquaintance, ask them about your idea and see what they think. If they shoot it down and recommend something else – strongly consider their advice. They may be a meathead or whatever derogatory term you have made-up to save your own ego, but they have something you desire. The quickest way to success is often simple emulation.

One of my favorite quotes comes from a world-famous powerlifter by the name of Jim Wendler. To get whatever physical goal you want, his advice is pretty much the same:

Eat a ton, exercise hard and sleep well. Repeat this daily for 10 years.

It’s hard to argue with that! However, few people are able to find habits which they can sustain for ten years since most diets and routines are all about fast results. Shift to a long-term perspective and your goals and behaviors for attaining them become clear.

My last quick weight loss tip will also save you a ton of time and frustration:

Focus on behaviors and not results.

If you do the right things on a consistent basis, do not worry about the results. They will eventually come as long as you keep doing the right things. However, if you are lying to yourself and not doing the right things, the results will never come. Therefore, if you fail to get your desired results time and again, you really need to change your approach because it is not working for you.

I hope you have enjoyed these quick ways to lose weight and wish you success in implementing them.

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Quickest Way to Lose Weight

On April 23, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Welcome to my article on the quickest way to lose weight. The problem always starts in the definition. Sometimes I address the extremes, and other times I address something more moderate. In this article, I am going to talk about a moderate, but extremely effective way to quickly lose weight and to keep it off.

If you have read my other articles, you probably know that I think habit is extremely important. This goes back to Aristotle who said that habits are ten times more powerful than nature. If you form good habits, the results of good habits will follow.

Instead of asking, “What’s the quickest way to lose weight,” I am going to change the question a bit to, “What is the most effective way to lose weight?”

Now, my apologize if you are only thinking about losing weight for a week. However, I think most people are really looking to lose weight for a long time, but want to get off to a good, fast start. There is nothing wrong with this because results are motivating. However, all results have diminishing returns when it comes to weight loss.

For example, after a vacation where I lose twenty pounds, I can lose twenty pounds in two weeks because I am quite strong and can therefore burn calories much faster than people who are much weaker. This is because I can do a lot more work, where work equals the amount of energy transferred by a force through a distance. Since I generate more force (mass times acceleration), I do a greater amount of work, and burn more calories. However, this does not go on forever. If I could keep losing ten pounds per week indefinitely, I would cease to exist after about twenty weeks!

Therefore, it is best not to get into the short-term mindset. Just be happy with your gradual weight loss. This is actually not that difficult to accomplish with the approach I am about to outline.

I will now outline what to do to lose weight.

Forget about workouts to lose weight for today. I discuss these in other articles at great length.

Today we will focus on diet, particularly, the art of substitution.

Substitution is an excellent art when done right, because I find that it makes discipline a lot easier. This is the same approach the National Institutes of Health (NIH) takes to help people lose weight and quit smoking.

The main premise behind substitution for weight loss is to replace “bad” foods with “better” ones. Notice that I did not say “good” foods, although that would be an excellent final goal. So the process is quite simple after defining bad and good foods as well as looking at a few examples.

What is a “bad” food?

The list of bad foods can get quite long depending on who you talk to, but let us make it a bit simpler because easy rules are easier to follow.

Bad foods are:

calorie-dense: ice cream, soda, alcohol, cereal, bread, etc.
processed: come packaged in a box, bag, can or plastic

Good foods are basically the opposite:

calorie-sparse: vegetables, fresh meats, legumes
natural: fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, legumes, unsalted nuts, organic cheeses and breads

So to effectively substitute foods, you need to:

Identify “bad” foods quickly and honestly
Think of a better food that can be eaten in place of it
Have the constitution to choose the better of the two options

Substitution is like all habits, the more you do it, the easier it is to do.

You now know what is the quickest way to lose weight in terms of a sustainable dietary change that it is now up to you to implement.

Are you up for the challenge?

Are you going to take this very simple and extremely powerful tip and use it to lose weight that you are obviously unhappy about carrying around with you?

OR

Will you ignore this advice and keep asking yourself, “Why can’t I lose weight?”

It is now up to you. The ball is in your court. If you don’t learn to dribble, you will never get the ball to the other side of the court and score. There are many ways to lose weight. I apologize for not having the best organization, but there are many gems on this website that, if you actually give them the attention they deserve, you too will be able to achieve your weight loss goals; not just once, but for the rest of your life.

Even if you start today and it takes you nine months to hit your weight loss goal which you were hoping to achieve in two weeks, just two years from now, you will look back and realize that the quickest way to lose weight was actually the most sustainable way to lose weight because you don’t have to yo-yo back and forth, and you can always improve your habits.

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Ways to Lose Weight Fast

On April 5, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

If you are looking for ways to lose weight fast, then you have come to the right place. This website has many weight loss tips from how to exercise to how to eat and everything, including psychology, in between.

The first question people often think about with weight loss is what they are eating. A reasonable first question may then be about what to eat to lose weight fast.

While this is a good question, the negative is even more important. So instead of just thinking about what to eat to lose weight, you may first want to consider what not to eat to avoid gaining weight.

The reason I focus on what not to eat first is because one bad meal or snack can ruin an entire day, or even several days worth, or perfect dieting.

So what are some good rules for what not to eat?

Think “outside of the bakery”
Processed means dead calories (lots of dead junk that makes you fat)
Fats and carbohydrates are like cats and dogs – they usually do not get along
Do not eat until you feel like an inflated balloon

Actually, rule 3 is just a repetition of the first rule. carbohydrates and fats are like carbohydrates and sugars – they help you gain fat very quickly. Unless your bakery is very different from the one by my house, almost everything found inside of one will destroy any efforts you make to eat well.

Rules two and four help you constrict calories where they should be constricted. Do not drink or eat anything that is contained in metal, plastic or cardboard. Many of you may not know how to eat at first given this rule, so you may have to go and ask active and healthy looking people how to eat better.

This means no cereal, no fruit juice and no canned vegetables.

You actually need to go to the produce section and buy foods that will rot if you do not eat them in the next week. You also should drink beverages like green tea (no sugar or milk), miso soup, and apple cider vinegar water or fresh fruit smoothies and yogurt.

Of course, water is at the top of the list – no calories and it helps hydrate you when your body is thirsty – asking to be hydrated with, well, water!

Follow these dietary guidelines and you will quickly lose a lot of weight quickly!

However, this is not all for this article since there are many ways to lose weight fast. I will now talk about the other key component; exercise.

You may be wondering, “What is the fastest way to lose weight?” The above recommendations are good, however, a better question to ask is:

“What is the best way to lose weight?”

Focus on the long term and you are guaranteed long-term success. Focus on the short term and your results will only be temporary.

Therefore, the best way to lose weight fast is to follow my “do not eat” rules and to become an active person.

Active person means that you are a person who regularly seeks activity. You do not avoid it, and being active becomes a very important part of who you are.

If you want to lose weight, you likely have a lot of excess weight on you. This comes from two things; poor diet and inactivity.

I discuss in other articles what I think are the best exercises to lose weight, but for now, just look at your current activity.

How many hours of exercise do you perform each week?

Walking up stairs does not count as activity, nor does walking into stores from your car. If you are not going to use your legs, you may as well get one of those electric wheel chairs. Many people who are forced to use them would kill to be in your position with a working pair of legs.

Whatever your current level of exercise, a simple recommendation is to increase it by 4 hours per week. If you currently get no exercise, go to the gym and workout 4 hours a week, or play a few games of soccer / football. Sorry, bowling and baseball do not count – you need to actually exert yourself for it to count as exercise.

If you have a lot of extra body fat, consider riding bike outside where you are forced to pedal up hill sometimes. Try to beat your old times, and push yourself.

Your body will not change unless you force it to.

I have not talked about what food to eat to lose weight, but what food not to eat since this is more important in the beginning. Couple this with four more hours of exercise per week and you will see fast weight reduction.

Enjoy the rest of this site – most articles will help you find several ways to lose weight fast, but remember, the three keys are diet, exercise, and becoming an active person.

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On March 29, 2011, in Uncategorized, by BTB Friend

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Exercises To Lose Belly Fat

On March 18, 2011, in How to Lose Belly Fat, by admin

There are several exercises to lose belly fat, and the best way to lose belly fat is through exercises. These days people have become very conscious about their health and want to look smart as well. But if you have belly fat, then it can be very annoying and embarrassing too. You cannot wear fashionable clothes, moving about becomes difficult and you are prone to various health conditions. In order to have a healthy body and shed the fat around your waist you have to make certain lifestyle changes.

If you are wondering how to lose belly fat fast by making the changes in your lifestyle then, read on. When you have excess of fat, they are first stored in your abdomen region. So you have to plan your exercises in such a way that they get your abdomen muscles to work. Once they start working, the rate of metabolism is increased and speeds up your weight loss by reducing the fat storage. Once you start following such exercises you can easily get good results. When you do exercises you body uses up all the stored energy.

Aerobic exercises like jogging, walking, cycling and swimming for at least 30 minutes daily are the best ways for losing belly fat. The effects of these exercises will be seen on the belly and the whole body too. Other kinds of exercises include weight training and cardiovascular workouts. They help to build muscles and also burn a lot of calories than aerobics. Squats work on your muscles and help to increase the metabolism. While doing these workouts remember to keep your stomach tight. If you have a gym or a health club in your locality, become a member and get the help of fitness trainers. They will guide you better and help you with various kinds of workouts.

Apart from exercises to lose belly fat you have to eat healthy meals too. A well balanced meal will provide your body with all the necessary nutrients required for proper growth and function. Workout sessions alone will not be useful. Complement them with proper food so that you can get the benefits of both. Drink a lot of water as well to keep your body hydrated. Make an effective plan consisting of nutritious meals and daily workouts. Follow the plan carefully and you will be able to see a lot of changes. Do the workouts regularly if you want to remain healthy and also have flat stomach.

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Weight Loss for Idiots

On March 7, 2011, in Fat Loss 4 Idiots, by admin

Fat loss for idiots and weight loss for idiots may sound a lot like the same thing; they are, and they are not. There is one key difference between the two; weight loss involves losing any weight so that your total weight is less while fat loss only involves, well, fat loss! Therefore, weight loss is a relatively simple and straightforward process, and there are many ways of going about it. In this article, I will discuss five ways to effectively lose weight.

Weight Loss for Idiots Tip 1

The first weight loss for idiots tip is to skip dinner. OK, this may sound a little harsh, and it is, but go to bed hungry. When you go to bed, your stomach will feel hungry, but you will get used to it. When it comes time for breakfast, your body will have gone through a nice mini-fast and it will soak-up whatever you eat for breakfast. By skipping dinner, you both cut your calories significantly, and you absorb as many calories as possible by waking up hungry after a fast. Your body is primed to use the calories that it takes in for breakfast, and you are also getting rid of the most dangerous eating time: before bed! Eating before bed can be hazardous both due to the quality of calories consumed, as well as not having much time or activity to metabolize them unlike breakfast and lunch. So all in all, you are decreasing your calories, cutting out the worst quality calories, and giving your body plenty of time to metabolize your last meal through several hours of remaining daily activity.

Weight Loss for Idiots Tip 2

Eat your meal in order from low to high calorie foods. This means eating your veggies first, and eating lots of them! This also means drinking your bland liquids like water and tea. Eating your vegetables first helps with digestion, ensures that you are not skipping your vegetables because you filled up on other stuff first, and makes you full faster. This also helps keep your fiber levels high, so you will not have any problems with having a good bowel movement. If you eat your vegetables last, you always run the risk of being too full to eat them. If you eat the least calorie dense foods first, your stomach physically gets full in terms of volume. A whole cabbage will not have nearly as many calories in it as a pint of ice cream, but it will make you more full. The net result is that if you eat low to high calories, you will become full faster and consume fewer calories. Likely, you will be consuming more fiber than you are used to, so if you suffer from constipation, this will make you feel like a new person. Specifically, you want to have your bland liquids first with your vegetables. If you have some fruits, save these for desert as they are nature’s sweets. After your veggies, you can eat your protein, followed by carbohydrates, and finally any other fats (like nuts).

Weight Loss for Idiots Tip 3

Eat protein and fats, or protein and carbohydrates, but not carbohydrates and fat. This means that anything you get from a bakery is off limits. Carbohydrates produce a great deal of insulin, and when combined with fats, the fats end up getting stored as fat. Combine fats with protein instead and they will be absorbed nicely to help repair your muscles after working out. This is just a general rule of thumb, but the difference between proteins and fats versus carbohydrates and fats is great.

Weight Loss for Idiots Tip 4

Move more than usual! This can mean going to the gym, riding bike, walking, taking extra flights of stairs, doing crunches before bed, push ups during your work day, stretching before lunch, taking up a sport, gardening, etc. Just do something new that you enjoy that requires more movement than you usually get. If you are used to jogging regularly, throw in some sprints. If you hardly go outside at all but love flowers, start a garden. In a recent 90 year follow-up study on longevity, it was not necessarily the strongest people that lived the longest, but the ones that were regularly active and liked their activity. Take this to heart – you not only will burn more calories, you will do something you enjoy and live longer because of it!

Weight Loss for Idiots Tip 5

What weight loss tips for idiots article would be complete without this last recommendation – well, none that I can think of! Your fifth and final tip is to… SLEEP! Get an extra hour of sleep per night. This will help increase your metabolism not just for the evening, but for the next day as well. It will also probably help you feel more rested, and as a result, improve your productivity the following day as well.

I hope these weight loss tips for idiots have been both helpful and enjoyable to read. I hope you can follow at least one of them and live a healthier, slimmer life.

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Fast Ways to Lose Weight in a Week

On January 2, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

As you probably know by now, there are no shortage of weight loss tips or fast ways to lose weight in a week on this blog. Today I will talk about the importance of when you consume your calories, and how eating at the right times can help your weight loss efforts. In this article I will talk about something that is somewhat of a hot topic these days called “calorie shifting” as well as meal timing and carbohydrate cycling.

The basic premise for all of these methods is keeping the body off its guard. When weight training, you go through something called adaptation if you just do the same exercises every week. Your body adapts and you quickly hit a ceiling. That is why all of the people over at Westside Barbell use something called the conjugate method. In essence, all this means is do the same thing every time, but different. So instead of narrow-stance squats to depth with a two rep max weight every session, you vary the width, throw in a box, use different bars, add bands, chains, or weight releasers, do different sets, different rep amounts, and may even do bottom-ups or reverse band work. The options are almost limitless, but these are all the same exercise; the squat.

Well, the body does pretty much the same thing. If it knows that it will get two thousand calories every day, it will adapt to this. If it does not know how many calories it will be getting, it will store fat differently and process its nutrients differently as well. This can mean weight loss, once again, without actually changing the foods you are eating, but rather timing their consumption better.

Before describing any of the methods, let me be frank; this can be programmed very scientifically based on several factors which may include your current fitness level, body composition (fat to muscle), age, resting heart rate, usual calories consumed in a day, and even type of work. However, most of these factors do not mean much. People package them so that their book is different from the next guy’s; at the core of these programs is what I will outline below (without specific calorie counts):

1) Calorie Shifting

The premise behind this is quite simple. Eat like you normally will for say two days in a row, then eat the same number of meals on the third day, but cut the calories in half, then return to your normal diet. Rinse and repeat. Your body will get fewer calories than it is used to, but it will not down regulate its metabolism because you are not going long enough on a calorie restricted diet. In other words, it is better to diet two days a week (fewer calories) than seven. Pretty simple concept, but the difficulty comes in returning back to the normal days. Many people are likely to eat too much on the day after their low calorie day, so beware and find foods that will work for you.

2) Carbohydrate Timing

This is not exactly a diet tip, but more of a cheating tip. If you really want to have a bunch of carbohydrates (something I do not usually recommend), then the best time to have them is after an intense workout at the gym. Your body will suck up the insulin after your workout and those calorie dense carbs will not do as much harm as they normally would. The morning is the second best time to have them, and before bed is the worst. A big bowl of cereal may be OK for breakfast, but it is the fat man’s bane before bed!

3) Carbohydrate Cycling

Carbohydrate cycling is the bodybuilder’s best friend, and could become yours too. I say bodybuilders because almost every bodybuilder will do it, and because not everyone else is doing it, it may be a bit harder for the average Joe to master. Basically, the only carbs you eat come from vegetables on low carb days. Your normal day is a low carb day, and then every three days you get a high carb day (this should also be a workout day). Since you are not getting many carbs on your normal days, your body will become more insulin sensitive, and soak them up on your high carb days. Meanwhile, on your normal days, your calorie intake will be lower since you have eliminated a high calorie group of foods. If you keep your protein intake high on normal days, you can stay muscular and lose fat at the same time; this is the Holy Grail of fat loss.

I have talked about a few ways to time your eating / foods to help you make the most of them, whether it be when to eat junk food, or when to cut back. Just cutting the calories is a lesson in failure, and a no-carb diet is not as sustainable as a carb cycling diet. Everything in moderation, but not all at once; it is usually better to cycle foods / calories / weights / sets / reps in some planned way to avoid accommodation. Eat smart, train smart, and good luck.

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Fastest Way to Lose Weight in a Week

On January 2, 2011, in Uncategorized, by admin

You have come to this blog looking for the fastest way to lose weight in a week, and I will tell you exactly how to do that. Losing weight comes in many forms, and for fastest weight loss, you need to attack all of them. At the top of the list is water weight. Usually, when people lose weight quickly, it is all water weight. When competitive fighters and powerlifters have to weigh in before a fight, they often cut twenty pounds in a day of water weight. The next most effective kind of weight loss is muscle loss. If you do not eat, you lose fat and muscle, but usually more muscle than fat. The body keeps fat as its final reserves, and that is why it is so hard to lose it.

Before I go into a plan, let me first warn you that I do not recommend this plan for anyone. Doing any one of the three things mentioned to excess can cause death, so do not do it. This is purely a hypothetical example to look at what might be achievable for the best theoretical fat loss. Do not worry, I will give some real tips after our thought experiment.

Putting these together, here is what your fastest natural weight loss plan would look like:

1) Go on a fast; eat nothing and drink water for the next week.

2) Exercise as much as possible. On the first day I would train heavy, complex movements and run sprints. On the second day, I would walk for a few hours. On the third day, I would do circuit training until I get dizzy then do a bunch of walking. On the remaining days, I would lift very light weights and do do as much walking as possible. After a few days without food, exercise is very difficult.

3) Dehydrate yourself on the last two days of the week. Once you have depleted as much muscle and fat as possible, you drop all the water weight.

Now, with this method, assuming that you lived and depending on your bodyweight, I think it would be possible to lose between forty and up to one hundred pounds in a week for someone with more than fifteen percent body fat. Once you start eating again, if you do not get sick and vomit everything back up because you weened off the fast improperly, you would gain all forty to one hundred pounds back in a matter of days.

Clearly, the goal then should not be the fastest way to lose weight in a week, but rather the fastest good ways to lose weight in a week. Forget in a week altogether if you can. Instead, you should think about:

“The fastest ways to lose weight and keep it off with as little effort as possible.”

Few people come to search engines with such a good definition, but it would serve them well if they did. In my blog I give many weight loss tips, but fast is often counterproductive. So I will now share a few new sustainable habits that can really help you out that are not that hard to do.

First off, do not check the scale often. All you are doing is checking your daily fluctuations in water weight. Check once a day at a fixed time (preferably when you first wake up and before breakfast), and only check it once every two weeks. If your weight goes down over the next two checks, congratulations! Whatever you are doing to lose weight is working. However, we have not yet decided which type of weight loss you are having. You may be losing muscle, fat, or both. Likely, it is both, and if you do not care which it is, ignore the next paragraph.

If you are interested in fat loss, you need to lose fat while gaining or retaining muscle. The only way to do this is through a high protein diet and heavy weight training (or lots of steroids and a small amount of weight training). You simply cannot retain muscle while losing fat unless there is a reason for your body to keep the muscle.

Now, if you are only interested in losing weight (fat and muscle), this can be done through calorie restriction alone (though it is more effective when combined with exercise). For today, I am going to recommend two new habits before every meal:

1) Drink a tall glass of water

2) Eat a handful of unsalted nuts

What this will do is get you past the twenty minute time-delay for fullness so that when you start to eat, you are not extremely hungry. Fats are slow digesting, so you will feel more full when you have some good fats (nuts) with your meal than if you just ate carbs or protein alone. This new habit will make you more full while eating less, which means fewer calories in. It will also probably help get some extra fiber and healthy fats in your diet which have many benefits in themselves (fat loss and improved mood among them for healthy fats).

Eating fat is not the bad guy, having food turn into fat is the bad guy. The worst thing you can do is eat a bunch of simple carbohydrates (sugars) together with bad fats (trans-fats). This prompts a big insulin response from your body that all turns to fat if unused, and it will not be used unless you are weight training or doing crazy sprinting / biking before you consume them. Instead, a handful of nuts before a meal will actually help you eat less and lose weight. Never be afraid of natural foods; nuts, fruits, vegetables and berries in their raw form. Nobody ever gets fat if they eat these good foods alone, it is only in conjunction with bad foods that fat gain happens (unless they have a very rare medical condition).

I hope this article has been enlightening on several levels, from weight loss philosophy, to a few useful tips and nuggets of wisdom along the way. It is not about the fastest way to lose weight in a week, but rather the fastest and easiest way to lose weight and keep it off. Good luck and stay tuned!

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Quick Weight Loss Tips

On January 2, 2011, in Weight Loss, by admin

Today I am going to cover a topic that I quickly mentioned in the past in more detail. This article will focus on the art of substitution. I say art because it is a skill that is learned slowly over time, and the more you do it, the better it becomes. I call this article quick weight loss tips because really, there is nothing much faster for weight loss than simply choosing the right foods. Truly, this skill has the capacity to completely change not only your body composition, but your entire lifestyle as well. However, in this article I will focus primarily on how you can use substitution to effectively help you lose weight.

The first, and perhaps most obvious use of substitution is to eat good foods instead of bad ones. If you feel like a coke, choose a healthier option like non-sugared tea. If you must have something with a bit more flavor, go for milk or fresh fruit juice. However, most fruit juices that you buy in the store are no better for you than the coke, do do not believe the claims on the labels. I recently bought a package of swiss miss; it talked about all natural ingredients on the label, but the first ingredients were sugar and high fructose corn syrup. This is far away from what the labels lead you to believe if you do not look at the ingredient list; the power of advertising and good marketing in full force.

Now, if you get used to substituting the worst foods with something a bit better, this is a great start. What are the worst foods? Well, it will differ from person to person. Make a list of the ten worst foods you eat and brainstorm some substitutions for each. Choose the best substitution and stick with it for the next few months.

One example of this in action was my usual trips to the Outback restaurant a few years ago. It was the favorite place for many of my friends, and I absolutely love the Aussie cheese fries. Now, since I was eating there quite often, I had to do something about that heart attack on a plate, so instead of ordering them as an appetizer, I ordered the chicken salad instead with extra chicken fingers. Still not great, but much better. Do this for your ten worst foods, and the amount of calories consumed will be far less opening the way for fat loss.

So, you now know the basics, so I will move on discussing the next stage of your substitution habit; replace calorie dense foods with calorie sparse ones. Now, I can never part ways with the lactose free whole milk that I found, but for those of you that can, skim milk instead of whole milk is a great substitution. Likewise, anytime you are considering starchy carbohydrates like breads, cereal, pasta, substitute with legumes, beans, and vegetables instead. This will cut a huge amount of calories from your diet.

The above technique is used by professional bodybuilders almost exclusively. They will eat lots of calorie dense foods, but usually only on a high carbohydrate day or around their workout window. Otherwise, it is strictly beans, legumes and vegetables. This helps them stay lean and are a good source of fiber. Another thing they often do is substitute all calorie containing beverages with water or green tea. Imagine drinking nothing but water or green tea and how many calories this would eliminate from your diet. This is relatively simple once you get used to it, but may be very scary at first to take the plunge.

Finally, the supplement industry wants you to think that you need to gulp down handfuls of pills everyday to stay healthy. This has always been the case, but on the whole, unless your doctor has told you that you need to take something for health, you probably do not need it. Following this, my final suggestion for substitution is to substitute whole foods for all of your supplements. If you take fish oil, just eat fish every few days. I will go through periods where I eat fish several times daily for months when I live in a region with fresh seafood. At other times, I will find a great deal on canned tuna and will buy boxes full of cans. If you are taking a multivitamin, these are largely a waste of money. Just be sure that you are getting a healthy variety of meats and all of your vitamins will be covered unless you have some sort of special deficiency; always listen to your doctor (if they are a true Ph.D and not some “alternative medicine” fruit loop). I say meats instead of vegetables because meats are far higher in the essential vitamins than vegetables. Animals eat vegetables, you eat animals. Carnivores do not get vitamin deficiencies, vegetarians do.

I hope this article has made substitution a bit more clear. Start with the big things first, identify and substitute for the ten worst common foods in your diet. From there, move from calorie dense to calorie sparse foods, and finally, get your vitamins and minerals from whole foods instead of supplements. This will save you lots of money in the end and make you healthier overall. These substitution tips can be applied to your life and bad habits as well, but this is beyond the scope of this article. I hope you have found these weight loss tips helpful and informative. Good luck!

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How to Lose Weight in a Week

On December 29, 2010, in Weight Loss, by admin

Today I will talk about how to lose weight in a week through some novel methods. To begin, weight loss should not just center around one week’s worth of dieting in general because you will always gain the weight back once the diet is finished. Instead, think about losing weight in a week as something you do fifty two times a year. The weight loss tips that I will cover in this article include how to eat (not what to eat), and how this can help you shed the pounds. If you are like me, smarter is preferable to harder. Let’s begin.

If you have not heard about the twenty minute rule, let me introduce you to the concept with a few short stories. Currently, I am a powerlifter. I have been doing this for two years and go to the gym regularly between six and eight hours per week (three to four two hour sessions). When I finish my workout, I know that my metabolism is very high, so I want to eat as many calories as possible because my body will use them very efficiently to repair the muscle damage caused by my workout. In other words, eating a lot after intense workouts is one of the keys to getting very strong as a powerlifter.

As soon as I am done with my workout, I drink a high carb shake immediately and order a pizza. By the time I finish showering, my pizza is ready for pickup and is just down the road from me, so I will pick it up on my way home. After I arrive, I will devour the whole thing as quickly as possible, often drinking a glass of milk with it, and then have some ramen to fill me up a bit more. This all weighs in at about two thousand calories, what most people will eat over an entire day.

How is it possible to eat so much? It is all due to the twenty minute rule which my friend introduced me to when we were teenagers. Basically, after you start eating, you have twenty minutes before your body says, “I am getting full.” Ever seen a hot dog eating contest? There is a reason they eat and chew as fast as they can because once they pass the twenty minute mark, they literally cannot eat anymore.

We used to buy a family meal from Kentucky Fried Chicken and see if we could finish it off, and gradually increased the size until it was just silly to continue further. I did lots of stupid stuff as a teenager, and it is part of the reason I was very fat when I graduated from college. However, this binge eating did far less damage than my usual dietary habits, so I will teach you how to make the best of the twenty minute rule; not for self destruction, but for self preservation!

If it is not already apparent, practice eating slowly. If you take your time, your food will have time to digest properly and you will feel full when you should. This is why Europeans can take several hours for a meal and not be close in body size to the fast eating, obese Americans. They are much better at enjoying their food and taking time to chew well. I lived in Europe for a year, so this is not just word of mouth, it is first hand knowledge. Also, chewing well increases nutrient uptake and it is easier for your stomach acids to dissolve the food.

It may take a while to get into the habit of eating slowly; especially if your are famished! In this case, the next tip will come in handy: wait ten minutes for seconds. Even if you think you are eating slowly, take ten minutes before helping yourself to seconds. Usually, the fullness will set in and you will either forgo seconds entirely, or help yourself to a smaller amount.

I went to the buffet with co-workers the other day and saw the twenty minute rule in effect. After twenty minutes, the initial rush for food slowed down. A few more people continued to stuff food into their mouths (to get their money’s worth no doubt), and they felt full to the point of excess afterwards. Those that took more time to eat, slowly enjoyed a bit more; they enjoyed their food and conversation more fully, and actually ate longer than those that gorged themselves. However, they ended up eating less total food altogether.

There are two more tips related to eating that I would like to leave you with before concluding this article. If you absolutely must eat fast due to a short lunch break or some other such time constraints, make a new rule; do not have seconds and only eat eighty percent of your normal portion size. If you do not have time to enjoy your food and chew properly, you are better off without some of it. Eat a bit less or make time to eat well (slowly with lots of chewing, preferably with a few friends you enjoy spending time with).

The final tip is to always eat before you are hungry. As I mentioned in my first post on weight loss tips this may mean every two to three hours. Now, if you are eating this often, the quantity of food should be less. If you do not get hungry for five or six hours, just follow the previous guidelines about slow eating, waiting for seconds, and chewing well.

Congratulations, you have reached the end of this article. You should now know how to lose weight in a week, perhaps every week for the next several weeks, and then maintain your new bodyweight by keeping to the weight loss tips described above. You should understand the twenty minute rule, take breaks between second servings, chew your food well, eat less if you do not have time to eat well, and always try to eat before you get hungry so that it is easier to avoid gorging.

I hope this article has been helpful, informative, and that you successfully implement these new habits. Good luck!

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Quickest Way to Lose Weight in a Week

On December 15, 2010, in Weight Loss, by admin

Many people are looking for a quick weight loss fix. If you are like me, throughout your life you have tried tens or maybe even scores of diets to always have the same result. You lose weight from diet alone or coupled with exercise and all seems to be going well. It is hard but you stick with it and are content with the results. After some time, eventually, the weight loss stops, and you did not lose as much total weight as you hoped. You are glad to be thinner, but the diet is now not as satisfying because you are no longer losing weight, and it is somewhat of a nuisance. You look to the next magazine rack after your will has weakened and you have gained back every pound you lost, and then some. The next diet promises to do more, and be better, so you work up the resolve to try the next one. Fail, rinse, repeat. If you are looking to lose weight in a week, you are just entering a faster black hole of failure; do not go there.

Let us pretend that you think losing fifteen pounds in a week will make some huge imagined change in your body composition. You think with fifteen pounds of fat, fifteen pounds of mayonnaise jars less that you are carrying under your skin, that your six pack will be visible, or those love handles will disappear. This is wishful thinking and nothing more. Competitive bodybuilders prepare for months for a competition with strict and ever increasing diet restriction, special exercises in the gym, and loads of hormone manipulation that can kill the person that does not know what they are doing. At best, you will succeed in you weight loss, only to look like a slightly smaller version of yourself. You body does not burn all of the fat from its abdominals because you want it to; fifteen pounds of fat loss will come from removing both fat and muscle throughout your whole body; it may knock a notch off your belt size, but it will not do much more.

I lost eighty pounds, and went from two hundred and thirty five pounds down to one sixty five. Did I look better, you bet, but it was from six months of basically starvation and daily exercise. Even then, I was what is known as skinny fat. I was skinny, but not muscular. My muscles got smaller with my weight, so I still did not have a six pack at one hundred and sixty five pounds. If you think fifteen pounds of weight loss due to diet alone will make you look buffed, unless you are already a world-class strength athlete, it simply will not happen.

Now, all of the weight you lose in a week may not be fat and muscle, much of it may be from water. Eat a few salty foods after your diet and you may gain as much as ten pounds back in a day. This is not real fat loss, and can easily be duplicated. Elite level bodybuilders, fighters, and powerlifters regularly cut twenty or more pounds in one single day through dehydration. It is a dangerous practice if you do not know what you are doing, but it is something that allows them to make their weigh-in requirements and compete at their normal weight. The person who can dehydrate and rehydrate better (gaining all of their water back within a day), has a huge advantage because they are essentially keeping all of their muscle but competing against people that do not know how to dehydrate themselves as effectively. Again, this is of no concern to you because you are looking for some kind of visible change in appearance in the long run, not the look of a fat and dehydrated person for a day.

Whether you lose weight and make a smaller version of yourself for a small time and gain it all back, or dehydrate temporarily and gain it all back, the common theme is that you will not look any better in the long run. Luckily, I will not leave you hanging. I will conclude with two solid tips that will improve your body composition for the better in the long run.

Tip #1: Learn how to substitute foods. This comes from the science of habit setting, and a very successful model used to help people quit smoking. In order to change a habit, most people cannot simply stop doing something. There will be a time and activity gap if they stop. They will fill this gap with something else, so instead of possibly letting some other vice creep in, set yourself up to succeed. If you want to eliminate ice cream, for example, decide to make a smoothie every time instead. Instead of buying ice cream at the store, but ingredients for a healthy blueberry smoothie instead; fresh or frozen blueberries, nonfat yogurt, and some bananas are much better than a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. Instead of having cereal for breakfast, substitute fruit and yogurt. Instead of a McDonald’s cheeseburger, opt for their chicken salad with vinegar and oil instead of the thousand island dressing. Make substitutions one at a time and realize how easy they are to adopt. Stick with them for thirty days each and they will be much easier to maintain. This can result in rapid and permanent weight loss because you develop healthier habits and become a healthier person.

Tip #2: Push yourself five minutes, five seconds, or five pounds at a time. If you already do exercise, this translates to increasing duration by five minutes per session, doing the same amount of work in five fewer seconds, or increasing the weight by five pounds on every new set. Of course, you cannot keep this up forever, but until you are moving more than your bodyweight with complex movements like the squat, bench press, overhead press, and deadlift, you should be able to keep up the momentum. Do not worry about reps when you increase weight. If you do not currently exercise, it is time to start. This means five minutes of walking per day and increase until it is more efficient for you to go to the gym than to walk for two hours, then follow the above protocol.

These two surefire weight loss tips will help you lose weight that will stay off in the long run. There is no temporary fix unless you manipulate your hormones or get liposuction, and you will need to repeat these over and over again anyway, so I recommend following the tips rather than wasting your time, money and health on the latter.

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Weight Loss Tips

On November 23, 2010, in Weight Loss, by admin

This article is going to share what I have found to be the most effective weight loss tips after a long streak of trying to lose weight, but gaining it all back over and over again throughout my childhood, teens, and early twenties. In this first article, I will discuss three great tips you can really take to the bank. Weight loss does not involve just one factor, but several. It is a multi-factor approach that yields the best results, in other words, lots of good tips go a long way!

Tip #1: Eat protein every two to three hours

This is the secret that bodybuilders, athletes, gymnasts and other lean, mean fighting machines have known for a long time. Protein is harder to metabolize than fat and carbohydrates, so essentially, you get all the good muscle preserving nutrients that you need and fewer calories than you would expect.

Tip #2: Replace breads, cereals & pasta with fresh, whole fruits and vegetables.

Another nutritional tip. Cereals, bread and pasta are very calorie dense foods that really do not carry much nutritional value. Fiber is important, but you can easily get enough of that from your greens (i.e. vegetables). Fruits and vegetables will give you far more essential vitamins, in their natural forms, and clean your tubes. Replace these starchy carbohydrates with fruits and vegetables and you will lose weight simply by consuming fewer calories. Never worry about eating too many vegetables and only avoid excess fruits if they are very sugary like bananas or prunes. Do not eat too many dried fruits because those are very calorie dense – think fresh fruits and vegetables!

Tip #3: Exercise before you eat

You knew exercise was coming, right? Now, I’m not going to ask you to do more, although that will always help. Longer, faster, and harder exercise will always lead to better results than your current exercise, but my point here is about timing. After exercise, you metabolism is revved up, so your body absorbs more of the calories that it consumes than it normally does. That is why breakfast and post-workout nutrition are considered both the most important meals of the day as well as the most metabolically efficient.

What is your biggest meal of the day? If you answered dinner, then to burn the most calories, exercise before your meal if possible, and try to get eating within thirty minutes of finishing your exercise – as you wait, your metabolism returns to normal.

More easy weight loss tips to come in the future. I hope you enjoyed this article and take up these three big tips.

To Summarize:

Eat protein every 2-3 hours
Replace starchy carbohydrates with fresh fruits and veggies
Exercise before you eat (dinner is preferable)

The author is a competitive powerlifter who counts losing 60lbs of fat and gaining 30lbs of muscle among some of his greatest accomplishments. A former fat boy turned powerlifter, he loves to help others achieve their strength and weight loss goals.

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Tagged with: easy weight loss tips • exercise • nutrition • weight loss tips

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Lose Weight in a Week

On November 22, 2010, in Weight Loss, by admin

My fitness experiment started about six years ago, and I have learned far more than I ever thought I would along the way. You are reading this post because you want to lose weight quickly. This is an easy goal to achieve, and can be done with absolutely no supplements at all. However, you are missing one key ingredient; long term perspective. In this article I will outline three key topics; the quickest way to lose weight in a week, the best way to lose weight, and having a long-term perspective on health.

The quickest way to lose weight in a week:

OK, so you do not care about where you will be after a month or year with your weight; you just want to lose as much as possible in a short period of time for a special event. Let me try to dissuade you right now from this course of action. If you lose five or even ten pounds, you won’t look any better. You will likely look more sickly, and just like a slightly smaller version of yourself. This was my experience when I first got serious about losing weight.

I went from two hundred and thirty-five pounds down to one hundred and seventy-five pounds in six months. That is ten pounds per month on average, with most of the weight loss being right up front.

How did I do it? I started something called a raw foods diet and fasted (no eating) four times per month. On Wednesday every week I did not eat anything, and at the beginning of every month I did not eat for the first three to four days. This put me in an extreme state of calorie deprivation, and I walked outside for two hours every day. You cannot do much more than walk when you have no calories powering your system.

So, if you still want to lose weight as quickly as possible, I suggest you switch to a raw foods diet and fast every other day for the week. Throw in some mild exercise on the days the days that you eat food (a couple hours of walking will suffice), and you will lose more. Lift some weights before you start your fast and your body will eat up your muscle, which weighs more than fat, and you can lose a little more weight. However, this approach is extremely unattractive for the long-term, so I will just make a few quick recommendations below. Also, please consult a doctor before trying any kind of fasting; this is especially important for diabetics.

The best way to lose weight :

Since starting my weight loss experiment, I have become a competitive powerlifter and lift several times my bodyweight in the squat, deadlift and bench press; I even have a third place medal to show for it in the United Kingdom. By far, the most metabolically efficient way to lose weight is through heavy complex movements; variations of the power lifts and Olympic lifts. Do this every other day and on your off days, for an extra boost, do high intensity interval training. Your diet should include meat and vegetables at every meal, and drop all the starchy carbohydrates including calorie-dense beverages and any kind of grain and fatty sauce (like salad dressing). I may go into further detail in a later post.

Having a long-term perspective on health:

Are you not sick of always having to look to the Internet and magazines for how to lose weight in a week, when if you had a longer time perspective, you would never have to do this again? As I said before already, you will not look much better if you starve yourself, nor is it easy, nor will the benefits stick. After you have finished your starvation, you will go back to normal, and weigh more than when you started.

Consider adopting a healthy mindset instead. In order to weigh less than you naturally weigh (what you weigh now) requires permanent change; you have to establish a new natural weight. The less you want to weigh, the more you need to do. At the very least, you need to either change your diet, or commit to exercising more than you do for the rest of your life – you need a new lifestyle.

Read through the best way to lose weight section again if you need to, and I wish you strength on your journey to a better body, more energy, and greater health.

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About

On November 21, 2010, in , by admin

Welcome to BendTheBar.com, a blog focused not only on weight loss tips, but a winning psychology as well. We all want to be happier, healthier people, but with the amount of junk floating around on the Internet, our heads can get quickly filled with rubbish.

Put enough rubbish in there and we start to think it’s true. This is how brainwashing works. Well, I’m here to make that brain of yours dirty again with empowering ideas and helpful tips that will help you become what you want to be.

How can you trust me? Well, I think a picture is often worth a thousand words:

Me in 2005, not my fattest

Me in 2007 after losing the fat

Now, this is not a picture of a bodybuilder who fattened himself up for a photo op – bodybuilders do not look like I used to! I was a genuine fattie, and had a great personality, yadda yadda yadda. I would love to show you some pictures of my leg and arm definition (this was before I became strong), but since I am a teacher – it is not appropriate to post anything more revealing than the above. And if my students saw my fat picks… how embarrassing! Note, I’m not a model – I did not shave off body hair for the photo, use tanning oil, pump iron or use Photoshop. If I did, I could look like the model on a magazine cover, and so could you! I know this because I do use Photoshop and have learned many tricks of the trade – but that is not what this blog is about.

It’s the candid truth about losing weight, and that’s why it’s valuable – from someone who has actually done it, and kept it off for over 6 years now.

Had I not lost the weight and kept it off, I guarantee that I would not have met my lovely wife or done half the things I have done in the last 6 years. I have since been to 18 countries, been married for 4 years to a smart, sexy and wonderful Korean woman. I also only work 25 hours per week. Before I lost the weight, I had been to one country and worked 3 jobs. I look like a new man, and trust me, it makes all the difference.

At least for now, I will not focus on the benefits of how being physically powerful has its advantages, but these benefits have had unexpected rewards as well.

Don’t believe the lies they tell you about it being OK to be overweight – they’re meant to keep you from becoming what you want to be. If you suddenly get fit, your fat friends will feel threatened and likely ostracize you and try to sabotage your efforts. Don’t let them. You will feel healthier for the rest of your life, be able to do things you could never do before, and you will make better, more capable friends who can enjoy these activities with you.

As you can guess, there are many topics that I wish to cover on this blog. These include, but are not limited to losing fat and eating better. I admit that many of my article titles may not be very revealing, but they are at least pertinent to the title and are to the point. I don’t write a title for one thing then talk about something completely different, at least most of the time. Nor do I use newspaper titles to lure your interest and then waste your time. I also hit the same topic from several different angles, and I direct you to different posts often.

For example, I may tell you how to get rid of belly fat in one article, and how to reduce tummy fat in another. There are many ways to lose weight fast, but I will talk about how to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks several times. Protein shake recipes sound an awful lot like meal replacement shakes for weight loss? They are! However, I have different things to say about each, so pleas just bear with me.

I blog because I enjoy writing and making resources available for friends, family and my Internet followers. However, I hate organizing everything. If I had to do this, I would have less time and motivation for writing. I hope you can lose weight quickly and keep the weight off thanks to these posts. It is just the beginning, but I plan on writing hundreds of posts on weight loss topics that are relevant to you.

I recently decided to expand the blog to include food because I decided to start cooking a bit. Therefore, I will talk about what to eat to lose weight including chicken breast recipes of course (every bodybuilder’s favorite), as well as at least one healthy vegetable soup recipe, and probably a lot more to follow.

If the fancy hits me, I may also cover weigh loss fallacies and methods which are unsafe, and unsustainable. There is no point in losing weight temporarily unless you are a bodybuilder preparing for a competition, or a sick person preparing for an operation. Therefore, I will focus on sustainable weight loss; teaching you how to naturally lose weight and keep it off.

Finally, my pen name (and not my real name) is Nicholas Giles because some of what I write and picture I post may not be appropriate for my young students, like the one below (a bit drunk in France with both a Champagne bottle in one hand and a watter bottle in the other!) . If I am no longer a teacher, I will likely share my identity and other projects with you. Thank you for understanding.

Come back often to see what new health posts I’ve made and always feel free to leave comments and share tips of your own! I look forward to continuing my improvement with you.

It feels great to lose weight, but sometimes you gotta to bend the rules!

Sincerely,

Nicholas Giles

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