Posts Tagged ‘Weight Loss’

Reasons why the teens turned their weight situations around

December 31st, 2009 Health News

Weight loss for teens

Weight loss for teens

I did it for my health. To be honest, it floored me that the teens mentioned health reasons for losing weight just as frequently as appearance-related reasons, because over and over I’ve read that teens are not motivated by health. (It’s hard to give up burgers and fries because of that heart attack you might have when you ‘re 50 or 60.) Nineteen year old Taylor S, who once weighed 250 pounds, says, “My main concern was to become healthier, rather than losing weight. I didn’t want to die in my forties because of my eating habits. Among the things I stopped drinking and eating were soft drinks, sweets, and any other type of junk food item. I was simply focused on taking care of my body. To my surprise, I began losing weight quickly. and this gave me motivation to continue. Gradually, in a period of one and a half to two years, I got down to my current weight of 150.” (He’s 5′9″) Angel W, who weighed 240 pounds, says that one of her main motivations for losing weight was high blood pressure. Her 65 pound weight loss brought her blood pressure down to a normal, healthy tips number – without medication. Vincent J, who weighed 130 pounds when he was about 5 years old, says, “When I was trying to sleep, it became harder and harder for me to breathe. I was so tired that I’d fall asleep in class. My gym teachers told me that if I didn’t lose weight, I would have a heart attack.” Today he weighs about 145 pounds and is 5′5″.

I wanted to look better. Zack A says, “I wanted to look hot!” Now, there’s honesty for you. Along the same lines, a good number of teens talked about wanting to look good in clothes – or out of them. Lee J says, “I wanted to wear cute, trendy clothes.” The turning point for my son Wes was his first college visit. “It was near the beach, and I wanted to be able to take my shirt off when I wore a swimsuit and look good for girls,” he says.

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I wanted to feel better about myself. Jenni O wanted to lose weight because she was depressed and sad, and wanted to feel good about herself. She also wanted to slim down for health and appearance reasons. Ben G says, “I was sick of being upset and depressed whenever I looked in the mirror or just felt fat.”

I wanted to improve my relationships. Many teens told me that they were motivated because they wanted to fit in better with their peers and/or to attract the opposite sex. Mary N says, “I always had lots of friends, but I could never get a boyfriend. Before I started dating my first serious boyfriend, I remember him telling me about this girl he was obsessed with. He said she was so hot. I asked him what he thought of me, and he said that I was cute. After he broke up with me, I didn’t want to be cute anymore. I wanted to be beautiful. I also knew that if I was to date again, I would first need to build up my self-esteem. At that time, I had lost both my first love and all of my self-esteem. I knew that my poor body image had a lot to do with my self-esteem.” All of this encouraged Mary to start on the path to losing 50 pounds, which she did more than 3 years ago.

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9 myths about teen weight loss

December 26th, 2009 Health News
Teens' dance aerobics

Teens' dance aerobics

Teens often lose weight against heavy odds. Their experiences challenge conventional assumptions about teen weight loss and the role parents play in it.

Misconception: Teens who come from an overweight family have little hope of losing weight and keeping it off.
Facts: Sixty of the 70 teens who answered the question whether anyone else in their family was overweight said that at least one parent was. 23 of them said that both parents were overweight. Nicole S is typical. Her mom and dad are overweight. She decided to lose weight at 16, when she weighed 293. Although her family didn’t think she would do it, they encouraged her to try. Three years later Nicole weighs 145 (she’s 5′5″).

Misconception: Teens who have been overweight since they were young are unlikely to be able to lose weight and keep it off.
Facts: Many of the teens said that they first becase overweight when they were quite young – more than half said it was at age 10 or younger. The average age they reported becoming overweight was nine had a half. 15 year old Sandra D told, “I’d always been overweight, even when I was little, and I didn’t want to stay that way.” Part of her motivation for losing more than 50 pounds was that she was tired of being compared to her nonidentical twin sister, who never had a weight problem. “Now,” Sandra says, “we’ve both grown – and shrunk – to develop a relationship based on who we are instead of on the physical differences that separated us in the past.”

Misconception: Teen who have tried and failed at losing weight many times before don’t succeed.
Facts: Although it certainly isn’t physically or physchologically healthy for any teen to go on and off diets repeatedly, the teens provide hope for those who have tried and failed at weight management. When I asked many times they tried to lose weight before they finally succeeded (counting only the times when they lost at least 5 to 10 pounds), 7 out of 10 indicated that they’d lost and gained multiple times. Forty of them had tried to lose weight three or more times in the past. Sandra D, says, “There were so many times when I felt like trying was pointless but I finally did it. And if I could do it, then anyone can.” Wes G says, “It took me many tries until I really wanted to lose the weight for myself enough to succeed.” Kelly D, who tried to lose weight 3 or 4 time before succeeding, says that teens need to do some experimenting. “Keep trying new things until you find something that works,” she advises.

Misconception: It’s best to avoid talking about dieting and weight loss with overweight teens because it’s likely to trigger an eating disorder such as bullmia or anorexia nervosa.
Facts: The vast majority of teens losing weight are living proof that overweight young people can lose weight without developing such an eating disorder. Some studies do suggest that teens who say they diet regularly may be at higher risk for eating disorders than nondieters, particularly when they use restrictive and unhealthy dieting methods. That’s why teens need to be educated about how to lose weight in healthy ways and to be shown healthy role models. In fact, Kerri Boutelle, PhD, a weight and eating disorders expert at the University of Minnesota, states, “Several studies actually suggest that teaching teens healthful methods to control their weight may reduce weight concerns and the risk of subsequent eating disorders.”

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Weight loss strategies

December 14th, 2009 Health News

Each of these weight loss strategies takes advantage of the different ways the body used these nutrients to help you lose weight.

Strategy #1, eating a low-fat diet, ensures that you add less fat to the fat stores. The less fat you add, the less you will have to remove later. Strategies #2 and #3 are aimed at removing the fat that already pads your frame.

Strategy #1: Eat a low-fat diet

Fat is the villain. Fat makes you fat. Unlike carbohydrates and protein, fat is not burned off when you eat it. Almost all (97%) of the fat you eat slides right into the fat stores that pad your body. It is as if you took the hamburger you just ate and wadded it onto your belly except that it is happening from the inside.

The capacity for storing fat knows no bounds. The normal lean person stores about 140,000 calories of fat. Contrast this to the body’s limited capacity to store carbohydrate (about 1200-1500 calories). And with fat storage, there is no upper limit. A person who weighs 300 pounds is storing about 200 pounds of fat.

Whereas it is extremely difficult to overeat carbohydrates if you are eating nutrient dense, fiber rich food, there are no mechanisms to protect you from overeating fat. You can overeat fat one day, and the next, and the next, and the fat stores grow larger and larger.

In short, you are overweight because you have put too much fat in cold storage.

Creating a deficit
Each day fat from the foods you eat is added to your body’s fat stores. Some is removed to furnish energy not supplied by the carbohydrates you eat. Your weight is determined largely by how much fat you add to the fat depots versus how much you remove.

If you eat just the amount of fat that is removed from the fat stores to furnish the energy not supplied by the carbohydrates, your weight will remain the same. If you eat more fat, the excess will go into the fat stores and you will gain weight. If you eat less fat than is required to satisfy your energy needs, then the body will have to make up the deficit by removing fat from the fat stores and you lose weight.

Strategy #2: Eat plenty of nutrient-dense, fiber-rich carbohydrates

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Weight loss: Energy supply and demand

December 11th, 2009 Health News

Your body needs energy to operate
We will start with energy because weight loss is all about how your body uses and stores energy.

Basal Metabolism: Your body needs a certain amount of energy to function – to power your heart, lungs, brain, kidneys, and other organs and keep them in good repair. The amount of energy you use when you are completely at rest is called your basal metabolism. The rate at which you burn energy when you are completely rest is called your basal metabolism. The rate at which you burn energy when you are completely at rest is called your basal metabolism rate (BMR).

Each person has his own BMR determined partly by heredity and partly by lifestyle. Your heredity sets the upper and lower limits of your BMR. You can maximize your BMR within this range by doing daily aerobic exercise and by eating a lot of nutrient-dense, fiber-rich carbohydrates. The higher your BMR, the faster and more easily you lose weight.

Physical Activity: Unlike your basal metabolic rate, physical activity is not fixed within a range. The more exercise you do, the more energy you need to fuel it.

Total energy needs: Your total energy needs are the sum of your basal metabolism plus the amount of physical activity you do. The higher your BMR and the more active you are, the more energy you need.

Food Supplies Energy
Where does your body get energy to power your basal metabolism + physical activity? Just as energy stored in batteries powers machines to do work, energy stored in the food you eat powers your body.

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Before you start with a fitness regime

November 15th, 2009 Health News
Cardio Workouts for better health!

Cardio Workouts for better health!

Eveyone wants to be fit, for it has been rightly said, and accepted too, that Health is Wealth. Being fit, or being in good health, brings to you a lot of opportunities in your workplace and in personal life as well. You work more and enjoy more. Before you start with your fitness regime, in order to best determine how to reach your fitness goals, you first need to figure out where you are, physically. And the best way to do this is go sign up for a fitness evaluation, including a full health/fitness history and other important measures, such as the following:

  • Resting heart rate: Also known as pulse, this test measures the number of times per minute your heart beats while you’re sitting down or in some other way relaxing. As you exercise more and more, your resting heart rate will likely drop.
  • Heart rate after physical activity: Generally, you exercise for about 15 minutes on a treadmill or stationary bicycle and test your pulse. Cardio exercises can gradually lower this number.
  • Blood pressure: This test measures how hard your heart has to work to pump blood through your blood vessels. Cardio activities can help alleviate high blood pressure (hypertension), which can lead to health problems.
  • Percentage of body fat: Instead of measuring how much you weigh, which doesn’t necessarily indicate how fit you are, measuring your body fat tells you how much of you is fat and how much is muscle, bones, blood, organs, and other tissues. Up to a point, the lower the number, the better, reducing your body fat is often a matter of eating better and burning calories through cardio workouts and lifting weights.
  • Strength: This test measures the strength of your upper body, abdominal muscles, and lower body by doing sit-ups, push-up, leg extensions (on a weight machine), and so on. Weight lifting helps improve your strength.
  • Flexibility: Because flexibility is the downfall of even the super-fit, make sure your evaluation measures the range of motion of your joints and muscles. Stretching is one of the best ways to improve your flexibility.

Each of these tests can be done by a physician, a personal trainer, or a fitness professional, working at a gym. But don’t spend any time studying for them: You can’t fail these tests. Thing of them more as baseline measurements that help you decide where to put your emphasis: improving the health of your heart, losing weight and reducing body fat, building strength, improving your flexibility, and so on.

Choosing Your Weapon

With so many workout options available these days, you have plenty of fitness weapons from which to choose. Your workout options tend to fall into three categories, however: cardio, strength, and combination workouts. The three following sections give you a brief overview of each:

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Making the Cut: The 30-Day Diet and Fitness Plan for the Strongest, Sexiest You

November 1st, 2009 Health News
Making the Cut

Making the Cut

Making the Cut: The 30-Day Diet and Fitness Plan for the Strongest, Sexiest You is a Paperback book written by Jillian Michaels and published by Three Rivers Press. The “Complete Woman” magazine says this about the 288 pages book – “Making the Cut by fitness trainer Jillian Michaels is the perfect book to get you in the best shape of your life.” Jillian has been a team trainer in The Biggest Loser and talks of the following changes (in you) through his book – (1) drop the last stubborn 10 to 20 pounds once & for all, (2) stop the show at your special event – wedding, renunion, vacation, or prom and (3) Be confident enough to wear a bikini – anywhere, anytime!

The New York Times Bestseller book starts with taking some goodbye photos, doing the body fat analysis, taking & scheduling body measurements and doing self fitness tests to ensure the lead in future. ‘Making the Cut’ asks you to follow seven simple rules which are:

  1. Stick to your magic number
  2. Eat for your metabolic type
  3. Eat every four hours, and No skipping meals
  4. No processed or Junk Foods
  5. Increase Sodium & Water consumption
  6. Don’t booze
  7. Getting them written & followed

Apart from the rules, the book then stresses on three routines such as The Slow Oxidizer, The Balanced Oxidizer and The Fast Oxidizer apart from recipes for breakfast, lunch & dinner alongwith sauces, snacks & sides. While the things talked yet is the eating regime, the book asks you to follow the following more rules to sweat out the present fat:

  1. Intensifying the workouts
  2. Mixing up the exercies
  3. Sticking to the rules
  4. Sticking with Quality over Quantity
  5. Pacing yourself up
  6. Knowing when to hold & when to fold
  7. Knowing some exercising tecniques such as split routine, circuit training, interval training, supersets, combo lifting, pyramids & phyometrics

An excerpt from ‘Making the Cut’ – weight loss book by Jillian Michaels:

Measurements

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Understanding the Code and the Secrets to Fat Loss

October 30th, 2009 Health News

What does it really meant to conquer the fat-loss code? You’re about to find out. Here are the real “meat and potatoes” of how you’re going to reprogram your metabolism to melt fat and lose weight – forever. A big part of the program is to understand the body’s seventy-two-hour/forty-eight-hour response pattern to eating. Yes, there is a specific pattern to how your body responds to what you eat, and 72/48 is the code for losing fat.

How do you beat this code? The 72 refers to your body’s response to food intake. Every seventy-two hours, your body analyzes the energy you take in and calculates how it can reserve as much of that energy as possible to allow it to function as it should. The 48 refers to your body’s response to energy expenditure. Every 48 hours, your body slows certain functions, or readjusts the amount of energy it uses, so that it has enough in reserve to keep functioning based on what it thinks you’ll expend. To survive, your body has to keep the amount of energy it takes in and the amount of energy it expends in balance. The secret to conquering fat loss is to manipulate where your body get its energy, and we’re going to trick it into using fat as its energy source.

Macro-Patterning to Manipulate Energy Stores
Now that you know the secret to fat-loss code, you should also understand another concept called macro-patterning. This is the process of manipulating energy stores so your body can use all its excess fat, as well as the food you eat, much more efficiently as immediate energy and not store fat.

Macro-patterning means carefully regulating and alternating protein, fat, and carbohydrate intake to combat your body’s adaptive response to your eating patterns; this allows you to manipulate something called glycogen. Glycogen is just a fancy word for the stored energy that comes from carbohydrate consumption. Your body automatically chooses carbohydrates rather than fat as its main source of energy because carbohydrates are instantly available.

Remember, your body is a machine with many operating functions, and if food is its fuel, what happens when you’re not eating? Where does it go to get fuel, and what does it use once it get there? Your body is still functioning even when you’re not putting food in your mouth, and the next source of fuel it taps into is the glycogen stored in your body’s muscles and liver. Only when glycogen stores are low – from reducing carbohydrates or creating an energy deficit through exercise – will your body find and use excess fat for fuel. Understanding the 72/48 code lets us manipulate and reduce glycogen stores in the body and use excess fat.

Remember, the minute your body thinks you’re on a diet, it will do anything and everthing it can to hold on to as much fat as possible because it knows you’re going into starvation mode. Your brain will send the rest of your body a signal to conserve energy for the coming dry spell. That means it shuts down body temperature, reduces the absorption rate of food, and slows down your metabolism, all with the intention of storing more fat so it will have plenty of energy “just in case.”

By focusing on good nutrition and macro-patterning, you can trick your body into using fat as an energy source and feel great while doing it! With my new meal plans, you also take fat loss to a more advanced level, forcing your body to “melt” fat more efficiently and stop its automatic conservation of fat.

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The Ins & Outs of Weight Loss Surgery

October 28th, 2009 Health News

Making the decision to have weight loss surgery is a major commitment to your overall health. It’s usually the last resort after years of struggling and trying other methods to lose weight and live a healthier life. Weight loss surgery, also known as Bariatric Surgery, is currently the only treatment available that has been found to be effective as a long-term treatment for morbid obesity. The results after surgery are, for the most part, extraordinary, not only in terms of appearance but also in terms of the improvement or removal of health risks associated with obesity.

If you’re considering weight loss surgery, being well informed about the procedure and how your life will change following surgery is essential. The procedure itself is only a tool to assist you in losing weight and modifying your behavior. Success is up to you. After weight loss surgery, you have to be careful about choosing foods wisely, taking your vitamins and supplements regularly, making exercise a part of your daily life, and being certain to follow your doctor’s directions. You’ll need a support system of family and friends to get through the emotional and physical ups and downs.

With any surgery, risks are involved. Before you decide to have weight loss surgery, you need to understand – and accept – the risks and benefits. For many patients the risk of death from not having the weight loss surgery is greater than the risks of having the procedure itself.

Is Weight Loss Surgery Right For You?

For people who are morbidly obese, trying to lose weight without surgery isn’t as effective when it comes to achieving significant long-term weight loss. The majority of morbidly obese people who try to lose weight without having weight loss surgery regain all the weight they’ve lost over the next five years. Surgical treatment is the only proven method of achieving long-term weight control.

So how do you know if you’re morbidly obese? In general, individuals are considered morbidly obese if their weight is more than 100 pounds over their ideal body weight. But a more common way to define morbid obesity is to use the body mass index (BMI). If your BMI puts you in the morbidly obese category, you may be a candidate for weight loss surgery. If your weight is lower, but you have other health problems related to obesity; if you’ve tried to lose weight and failed; and if you’re aware of all the risks and rewards of weight loss surgery, it may be the solution for you.

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Difference between people interesting in losing weight and committed to losing weight

October 28th, 2009 Health News

Below is a summary of the differences between people who are interested in their goal of losing weight, compared to those who are committed.

People who are interested in losing weight:

  • Stick with it until something better comes along
  • Take action only if they “feel like” doing it
  • Need to see results in order to stay motivated
  • Blame people or circumstances for their struggles
  • Easily give up when they face challenges

People who are committed to losing weight:

  • Stick with their plans no matte what
  • Take action whether they feel like doing it or not
  • Assume that if they stay motivated, results will follow
  • Take responsibility for their own actions
  • Keep going in spite of challenges and setbacks
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Eating as a tool against weight loss

October 28th, 2009 Health News

Eating. Yes, eating has been the hardest part of every attempt to lose weight. Eating the right foods in the right amounts and at the right times based on the diet you are following can be very tedious. Eating becomes confusing and difficult when we have many external rules to follow and we aren’t following the wisdom of our own bodies. We have been sold a bill of goods about why we are overweight. Every new diet sells us a new reason why we can’t lose weight and how, for a small price, their diet is the answer. The best suggestion for you is to forget every food combination fad scam you have ever heard and just remember the truth.

The reason you are overweight is because:

YOU EAT MORE THAN YOUR BODY REQUIRES FOR FUEL.

Period.

End of the story.

Though it seems basic, but it is amazing how easily we forget the basics. We start believing the sales pitch for the diet products and stop believing the truth. There are two parts to this basic truth that we need to evaluate. The first part is that you eat more than is required.

There are two reasons why people overeat and both reasons include ignoring your body:

The first reason people overeat is due to too much deprivation. They restrict their food intake for a period of time by going on a crash diet or trying not to eat at all. Inevitably, they end up overeating because for each unrealistic restriction there is an equal and opposite “overeat.” By going on a highly restrictive diet you must disconnect from your body’s signals of hunger and feed it according to some external plan. This is painful for both you and your body. Once the disconnection has been maintained for a certain amount of time, the urge to eat becomes unbearable for your body, whose job it is to keep you from starving. You end up eating much more than you need. The disconnection from your body has now exacerbated this issue because the denial of the hunger signal now leads to denial of the full signal and the overeating is rampant. This is why you end up eating much more than you normally did before you went on the diet.

Your body is primal. It thinks you live in a cave with limited food available.

When we don’t honor our hunger and eat accordingly to our body, we create problems with our metabolism. When we deprive the body of food, it’s designed to slow down, conserve energy, and hold on to fat. It does this to protect us and to keep us alive when there is little food available. It’s a brilliant design. When we were cave dwellers, our body needed to adjust between times of feast and times of famine. When there was no food available, our cave-dwelling body adjusted its metabolic rate, the rate at which it used up food. Our metabolic rate, the rate at which it used up food. Our metabolic rate went down and we hung on to every calorie we got to use and store nutrition for later. Fortunately, we aren’t cave dwellers any more and we have plenty of food to eat (and we don’t use up the calories trying to catch it). For example, when we choose to strictly diet and eat very little food, our body turns into a cave dweller and adjusts our metabolic rate downward. We hold on to every calorie. When we keep our bodies reasonably fed, they know that there is no need to keep extra fat around because there is plenty of food coming at regular intervals. Your metabolism speeds up and the fat comes off.

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