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Warming up befor Exercise! 17/5/11

When you have to fit an exercise routine into your already busy schedule, you might be tempted to simply skip the warm up routine, even though you’ve heard horror stories about people getting injured while working out. Three words: don’t do that. When you skip your warm up, you are not only putting your body as risk for personal injury, but you are also making the workout more difficult and less effective. For the best results, it is important to warm up every time you work out.

Warming up doesn’t have to eat up the time you allotted for exercise into your day. In fact, a decent workout only has to be 5 minutes long to do its job. It doesn’t have to be boring either—you can mix up a number of great moves to make your warm up as fun as the rest of your exercising. Remember that a good warm up gets all of your muscles moving, even if you don’t think that you’ll be intensely working out a set of muscles on any particular day. Warming up is also important regardless of if you’re doing cardiovascular exercises or lifting weights.

The moves you do for a warm up shouldn’t necessarily be difficult or make you break a sweat. The main goal of the warm up isn’t to become a part of your workout, but simply to slowly move muscles that you haven’t really thought about all day to wake them up. Good moves, therefore, include things like jogging in place, doing jumping jacks, lunging, and jumping rope.

A good warm-up can also including slowly stretching your muscles in a variety of ways, although this is usually more effective for a cool-down. Also consider exercises that work on balance and form in order to prepare you for the exercises you will be doing in the workout.

If you’re really short on time, why not try warming up before you even get to the gym. Slowly jog or power walk to the gym, park as far away as possible and lunge to the door, and take the stairs instead of the elevator. That way, when you get to the gym to workout your warm up routine is already half way done.

A good workout always builds in intensity. This is the best way to shed pounds and maintain a healthy weight. Weight loss workouts are only risky if you don’t warm up, because otherwise your body will respond to prevent injuries. Although you may be tempted to skip this step, that is never a good idea.

Diet Smorgasborg 10/11/10

The Diet Smorgasbord, Come Take a Pick

Obesity is one of the leading "killers" of modern society. As a counter-attack, one must need to know its root cause to be able to choose the right slimming method. Being obese could be hereditary or something that you "did to yourself". This article will be able to help with the you-did-it-to-yourself part. So let's begin. In no particular order.

Raw Foods Diet- as its name suggests, the food to be consumed should be raw. This method assures that the dieter gets the freshest nutrients. The adverse effect? Nutrient intake is restricted plus bacteria may be present on raw food.

DietWatch- an online diet program that helps you track carbohydrates, calories, fat, weight, and all other factors relevant to weight loss. This can be customized to fit the dieter’s needs. DietWatch claims that it is not a fad diet.

Sonoma diet- is a Mediterranean diet that centers its weight loss technique in cooking and planning meals. It is highly advisable to those who look forward to losing weight with only some restrictions on food. This would be scowled at by those who are not ‘into’ cooking.

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle- this is supported mainly by men because it is focused on cardio, nutrition and training on weight. While burning fat, muscles do develop on this type of diet. It boasts of a track record that has gone a long way. Motivation is a key factor to stay in this program.

Weight Watchers- this is an online support group where members continuously get help on achieving weight loss.

Diet.com- believe it or not, a weight loss program that is based on personality traits! Diet.com believes that behavior and nutrition are inseparable.

eDiets- a more personal approach to dieting is central to this program’s continuous existence. Diet plans are customized to suit the person’s needs.

Apple Patch diet- this program believes that metabolism should be increased to be able to achieve weight loss. As its name suggests, a ‘patch’ is placed on the body to reduce food cravings. Its principle is comparable to nicotine patches that controls cravings for nicotine. The patch should stay on the skin for 3 days to ensure its effectivity.

Mayo Clinic diet plan- this centers on eating food in unlimited quantity, well, except that these foods should be fruits and veggies. The goal of this program is to reduce sugar cravings as the diet progresses.

South Beach diet- this was developed, originally, for obese patients with heart ailments by Dr. Arthur Agatston. This isn’t a low fat or low carbohydrates diet (although on the first two weeks, carbs should be shunned). It gives meal plans that are good for the heart and the weight. A vegetarian diet is also available.

SparkPeople- a holistic way of dieting. Comparable to eDiets but SparkPeople is less expensive.
Medifast- a program that can be bought online. This has long been given by physicians to their obese patients and is a surefire way to lose weight in a short span of time.

Biggest Loser Club- yup, it all began on a television show. This program focuses on exercise and meal plans.

Change One diet- this originated from the Readers’ Digest. It advises to change one aspect in your lifestyle or diet every week then weight loss can be achieved.

Zone diet- ever heard of the 40-30-30 program? This is it and Dr. Sears developed it.
Slim Fast- drinks and power bars that are used to substitute a meal. They became famous with their ‘shakes’ that promote weight loss.

Beach Body- exercise routines and cardio workout that will trim the body in 6 weeks.

Jenny Craig- this is actually a brand on weight loss programs. Meals are delivered or shipped to the dieter (low-calorie meals), these being planned and based on the USDA.

Subway diet- this may sound absurd but this diet advises a dieter to eat ‘only’ subway meals. Wow.

Grapefruit diet- the name tells it all. A dieter thrives only on grapefruit that is believed to contain something that makes a person lose weight.

Hollywood 48 Hour Miracle diet- do you want to lose 10 pounds in as little as 48 hours? Then this is meant for you, or so as they claim. It’s a juice diet that cleanses the system and promotes weight loss.

Well, there are a lot more of diets out there. This is but a short list. Review each one thoroughly before engaging in any of their programs. Stick only with the one that promotes health and well-being.

Please note I do not endorse any or all of these diets. Just remember, you are what you eat,
Cheers, Patrick

Drink Water and Lose Weight!

Close the diet books and skip the pills. The latest weight-loss trick may be as simple as gulping a couple of glasses of water before you eat.
A new study found that middle-aged and older adults who drank two cups of water before each meal consumed fewer calories and lost more weight than those who skipped drinking water.

Researchers divided two groups of overweight and obese men and women aged 55 to 75 into two groups: one group was told to follow a low-fat, low-calorie diet; the other group was told to follow the same diet and to drink two cups of water before breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After 12 weeks, those who drank water before meals had lost 15.5 pounds, compared to 11 pounds for the non-water drinkers, a nearly 30 percent difference.
The researchers got the idea for the weight-loss program from their prior research, which found that when middle-aged and older adults drank water before meals, they ate between 75 and 90 fewer calories at the meal.

What they weren't sure about, however, was if water drinkers would compensate by eating more throughout the rest of the day, said senior study author Brenda Davy, an associate professor in the department of human nutrition, foods and exercise at Virginia Tech. But after 12 weeks of dieting, that didn't happen.

"Drinking more water is a pretty simple strategy that may be helpful to people trying to lose weight," Davy said. "We're not saying, 'Drink more water and the body fat will melt away'. But for people who are trying to lose weight and trying to follow a low-cal diet, it's something they can do as part of that."

The research was to be presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.
One of the most vexing issues with dieting is how difficult it is to keep the weight off long-term, Davy said. After the 12 weeks were up, Davy and her colleagues have continued to follow the participants.

one year, preliminary data shows that those who continued to drink water before meals not only kept those pounds off, but have even continued to lose a bit more -- about 1.5 pounds on average.
Yet pre-meal water chugging comes with one caveat: it may only work if you're middle-aged or older, Davy said.

Prior research has shown that in those aged 18 to 35, drinking water before the meal did not cause them to eat fewer calories at the meal, Davy said.
In older people, it takes longer for the stomach to empty, which may be why the water helps them feel fuller and less hungry, while in younger people, water begins leaving the stomach almost immediately, Davy said.

Barry Popkin, director of the University of North Carolina Nutrition Obesity Research Center, called the findings "promising." His research has shown people who drinks lots of water drink fewer sugary beverages, eat more fruits and vegetables and overall consume fewer calories throughout the day.

One culprit in the obesity epidemic is that Americans consume some 300 calories more a day in sugary beverages than they did 30 years ago, Popkin added. That includes soda, punch and fruit juices with added sugar, sports drinks and sweetened tea.

"If you drink some more water right before a meal and fill up a little bit right before, there is the potential you may reduce your food intake," Popkin said. "But what we're concerned with is encouraging people to drink water to replace all the caloric beverages we're drinking."
Another challenge to the water-before-meals weight-loss strategy is getting people to do it, said Carla Wolper, an assistant professor in the Eating Disorders Center at Columbia University and a research faculty member at the New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City.

"The question is, do people continue to drink the water in a non-study situation?" Wolper said. "We know there are a lot of simple things people could do to lose weight. Clinical trials have shown if people write down what they eat, they lost twice as much weight. Yet it's very hard to get people to write down what they eat. Or, if people would reduce portions just a little bit, they would lose weight. But people don't do it."

The same goes for drinking more water. Even seemingly small changes require commitment. "Changing a pattern of behavior is complicated, and requires time and energy," Wolper said.
Still, it could be worth a try, she added. "Unless people overload on water, it's harmless, inexpensive. And if over the course of the entire day, it reduces the amount of food people take in, then of course it's a good idea," Wolper said.

Dieticians often will suggest a non-caloric drink such as club soda with lemon, diet soda or tea to help resist the urge to snack after dinner, Wolper said.

*Source, Business Week

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Wieght loss helps avoid heart attacks!

Eating the wrong food and gaining too much weight can clog arteries with fatty deposits, potentially leading to life-threatening heart attacks and strokes.
A new study suggests this process works both ways: Eating healthy and losing weight may actually reverse -- rather than simply slow down -- the accumulation of these fatty deposits, a condition known as atherosclerosis.
In the study, middle-aged people with heart disease or diabetes who lost more than 12 pounds over a two-year period successfully reduced the size of the deposits (or plaques) clogging their arteries, rather than merely halting their growth.
What's more, the type of diet the study participants followed didn't seem to make a difference, as long as they lost weight.

A low-carb, low-fat, or Mediterranean-style diet all had positive effects on artery health, according to the study, which was published in the journal "Circulation."
Most studies that have examined the effect of weight loss on atherosclerosis have also involved putting people on powerful drugs like cholesterol-lowering statins, says James O'Keefe, M.D., the director of preventive cardiology at the Mid-America Heart Institute, in Kansas City, Missouri.
"This [study] is just relying on diet alone and got very impressive results, as good as you see with drugs," says O'Keefe, who was not involved in the current research.
The study looked at 140 people in Israel between the ages of 40 and 65 who were at least moderately overweight and had heart disease or type 2 diabetes. In addition to following one of the three diets, 20 percent of the participants took a statin, and roughly 30 percent took blood-pressure medication.

After two years on a diet, roughly two-thirds of the study participants had less clogging in their neck arteries than when the study began. (Although the carotid artery in the neck is not responsible for heart attacks, its condition would likely be similar to that of the coronary arteries, which are more difficult to image, the researchers say.)
Health.com: 10 best foods for your heart
The volume of the plaques in their neck arteries declined by about 5 percent, on average, or slightly more than the average annual increase in people with atherosclerosis, as other studies have shown.

People who had greater weight loss and reduction in blood pressure tended to have healthier arteries, the researchers found. The people whose arteries became less clogged lost about 12 pounds, on average, while their systolic blood pressure (the top number) fell by around 7 points.
By contrast, the people whose atherosclerosis worsened lost just 7 pounds, on average, and reduced their systolic blood pressure by just 1 point. (The use of statins did not seem to be a significant factor, the researchers reported.)
"Long-term adherence to weight-loss diets are effective for reversing carotid atherosclerosis as long as we stick to one of the current options of healthy diet strategy, [and] even if we experience some partial weight re-gain over time," says the study's lead author, Iris Shai, Ph.D., a registered dietitian and researcher in cardiovascular epidemiology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beer-Sheva, Israel.

Health.com: A sample menu for a low-fat diet
In a previous paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2008, the same team of researchers reported that the three diets used in the study were equally likely to lead to weight loss.
Both the low-fat and Mediterranean diets limited daily calorie intake to 1,500 for women and 1,800 for men. In addition, both emphasized grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes, and cutting down on high-fat snacks and sweets. The people on the Mediterranean diet were also instructed to consume 30 to 45 grams of olive oil and a handful of nuts every day.
Men and women on the low-carb, Atkins-style diet didn't have to restrict their calorie intake, but they were limited to 20 grams of carbs per day for the first two months of the study, gradually increasing their intake to 120 grams daily. Alice Lichtenstein, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University, in Boston, Massachusetts, says that the new findings confirm what experts have been saying for years.

"Weight loss improves cardiovascular health," says Lichtenstein. "The way you lose the weight isn't the critical factor; the critical factor is actually that you lose the weight."
The three diets featured in the study aren't the only way to lose weight, Lichtenstein adds.
"Different people will adhere to different types of approaches to restrict calories," she says. "Some will do well if they cut fat out of the diet; some will do well if they have a higher fat content and eat lots of fruits and vegetables."

The one type of diet Lichtenstein doesn't recommend is fad diets.
"You don't want people to go off on these really wild or extreme diets because history suggests people don't stick to them," she says.
Losing weight is easier said than done, of course. The study participants had access to resources that most dieters do not. They met regularly with dietitians, and they chose their lunches from a selection of foods labeled with their calorie, carb, and fat content.
Following a similar regimen on your own would be difficult, says Shai. In fact, she says, most people would need a dietitian's help to stick to any of the three weight-loss approaches.
O'Keefe agrees. While some people can achieve lasting weight loss on their own, he says, they will be more likely to succeed if they get some professional help.
"People tend to sort of fall off the diet with time," he says. "If it's continually reinforced, if they have a lot of feedback, they tend to do better."

health.com

Wieght Loss 30/11/09

Standing in line at the grocery store is always amusing. Magazine cover after magazine cover plastered with promises to end your weight gain woes: “Lose 5 pounds in Five Days, The Last Diet You’ll Ever Need, The Stomach Flattening Weight Loss Plan, etc., etc., infiniteness.”
It’s an absolute wonder that 64 percent of Americans remain overweight with such cures sitting right in front of our noses — absolute wonder. The long, short, and sarcastic-free reality, however, is that these aren’t offers of weight loss cures, but rather they’re enticements to sell magazines.

This time of year so many people are thinking about weight-loss goals to kick off on Jan. 1, but which one offers solutions and which one offers crap. Am I allowed to say that in a newspaper article? Hopefully, because that’s exactly what they’re offering — crap!
Let’s back up for a moment and consider why diets don’t work. They are flawed at their very core because they encourage you to temporarily adjust eating habits to achieve a particular weight goal.

Unfortunately, once that goal is achieved, old dietary habits resume, allowing all the lost weight to eventually creep back up. Conversely, permanent lifestyle changes that incorporate healthy eating and regular exercise have proven to result in permanent, sustainable weight loss.
It’s an approach that may not be as easy and exciting and the hottest new diet craze, but it’s tried, true and most importantly healthy.

Most of the popular diets that make best seller lists can result in weight loss, but they fail when it comes to practicality and sustainability. So how do you know if your New Year weight-loss choice is the best choice? The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) offers the following criteria when evaluating a weight-loss program:

The calorie intake is not lower than 1,200 calories per day for normal adults and includes a blend of foods to meet your daily nutritional requirements. (Blending is an important concept. It means combining a variety of all kinds of foods to keep you palate interested and your nutritional needs satisfied.)

Includes foods acceptable to the dieter in terms of social/cultural background, usual habits, taste, costs, and ease in acquisition and preparation.

Provides a negative caloric balance (meaning a reduction in calorie consumption of 200-300 calories), resulting in gradual weight loss without metabolic derangements, such as ketosis.

Results in a maximal weight loss of 2.5 pounds a week. (That means those “30 pounds in 30 days” diets are out. That rate of weight loss is unsafe and generally impossible to maintain.)

Includes the use of behavior modification techniques to identify and eliminate diet habits that contribute to overeating. (Identify the habits that got you here and adopt lifestyle and behavioral changes that will enable you to keep your weight within a healthy range.)

Includes an exercise program that promotes a daily caloric expenditure of 300 or more. For many participants, this may be best accomplished with low intensity, long duration, exercise, such as walking.

Provides eating and physical activity habits that can be continued for life in order to maintain the achieved lower body weight.

Over the next few weeks you’re sure to be bombarded with weight-loss options. These guidelines will help you make the best choice for reaching your healthy body weight and making 2010 a Happy and Healthy New Year. Now go be great!

Eugenie Jones, M.B.A., ACE, is a workplace performance and lifestyle training expert. Find her fitness column, in its 17th year of running, here each Saturday. Visit her Web site at www.eugeniejones.com or e-mail her at eugeniek@comcast.net.Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/nov/28/eugenie-jones-how-you-can-weigh-weight-loss/#ixzz0YJkdjWVP

Vitamin D may Help!

New research suggests those who have higher levels of vitamin D while embarking on a low-calorie diet may be more successful in losing weight.
The study was conducted at the University of Minnesota and measured blood levels of vitamin D in 38 overweight people before and after they followed a diet for 11 weeks that had 750 calories a day fewer than their estimated needs.


The researchers found that for every increase of 1 nanogram per milliliter in level of a vitamin D precursor, the participants lost about a half pound more. For each 1 ng/mL increase in the active form of the vitamin, they lost almost one-quarter pound more.
In addition, those with higher baseline vitamin D levels tended to experience a greater loss of abdominal fat.


"Vitamin D deficiency is associated with obesity, but it is not clear if inadequate vitamin D causes obesity or the other way around," says Dr Shalamar Sibley, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota.
However, she adds the results of the study support the theory that vitamin D supplementation while on a low-calorie diet can contribute to greater weight loss.