Blog on weight, How to Lose Fat on the Cheap

This blog post is from  VeryWell.com . Why is this important? If you don't know why you gained weight you will probably not be able to lose the weight. It's not always from overeating, Most of the time it's more about  what you eat, not how much you ea t. But read on and see what the experts say: By Jennifer R. Scott Most people who aren't overweight think that the root cause of overweight and obesity is deceptively simple. If you take in more calories than you use, you'll gain weight. And if you eat less, you lose weight. But in reality, there are several underlying weight gain causes that can contribute to your weight beyond just calories consumed and calories burned. Normal Weight Gain in Daily Life Some weight gain is a normal part of life, particularly for women. Weight gain occurs with pregnancy, and many breastfeeding mothers maintain a certain amount of weight while nursing. In addition, most women experience a periodic weight gain each month before a...

Strategies to Lose Fat and Keep It Off Trying yet again to lose those last 10 pounds? We hear you. In fact, 50 percent of women say that within six months they gain back any weight they've managed to ditch. And more than a quarter have dieted so many times they've lost track of the number. Well, get ready to stop the endless yo-yoing: Science has finally come up with simple, groundbreaking solutions for lasting weight loss. We checked in with the top experts in the field and scoured the latest research to bring you the skinny on everything you need to reach your slim-down goals and stay there. Make your fat  burn fat . Seriously: Your flab can help you shed pounds. How? Just as there's more than one kind of fat in food, there's more than one type in your body. White fat is the bad stuff you want to zap. But a second kind, brown fat, actually torches calories. "Up to 80 percent of adults have brown fat deposits in their bodies," says Aaron M. Cypess, M...

Obesity means having far too much body fat. It's about much more than your clothing size or how you look. It can seriously affect your health. Your whole body feels it, from your joints to your heart, blood pressure, blood sugar, and other systems. The extra fat cells produce inflammation and various hormones, which boosts your odds of chronic medical conditions. If it seems like those odds are stacked against you, remember that it's possible to beat them. The first step is to know where you stand. The problem with having too much body fat is that it slows down body functions. If you have too much body fat the first sign I had was fatigue . I was tired all the time. Sometimes I even woke up tired. What causes this? Your body has to maintain all parts of your body, even your fat. When too much of the nutrition you eat has to be used to maintain fat, then your body will slow down other functions to have the energy to maintain this large body mass. Body mass is made...

You've probably heard the U.S. National Institutes of Health's recommendation for most adults to get 30 minutes of "moderate exercise" on most days to stay fit. But what exactly is moderate? And how do you know if you're working hard or hardly working? All good questions, and because "moderate exercise" is what is always suggested for losing weight, I'm reblogging something from MedicineNet.com. One of the easiest ways to measure the intensity of your workout is with the "talk test." If you're working in the moderate range, you can talk without too much difficulty. But if you can sing, pick up the exercise pace, according to the American College of Cardiology. And if you're doing vigorous activity, you'll be able to say just a few words before pausing for a breath. Another way to figure out how hard you're working is to monitor your heart rate. To do this, first figure out your maximum heart rate. Subtract your ...

Losing weight is a commitment to stop what you're doing and change. I weighed about 180 pounds in high school and that's good for a kid 6 foot tall. After about 10 years in the workforce and at the age of 32, I still weighed 173 to 178. In those days I was working construction jobs, very physical. Now, 40 years have gone by and I weigh 157 pounds.  It's not like I never had a weight problem, at one point I was 220+ pounds. I owned a restaurant for more than 5 years and my weight inched up and I didn't really pay attention. I was in my 30's and gaining weight didn't bother me. I could still run, swim and play basketball. I still had energy. After I passed 40, I noticed myself getting sluggish. I knew I had to lose weight, the extra weight was affecting my performance. I joined a health club, started to play racket ball and use a rowing machine. I was going every day but I had a hard time losing more than 10 pounds. The problem I had is that I was very active...

Natural vs. refined sugars: What’s the difference? If you can't lose weight or have trouble keeping it off, it's important to read this post. Your doing something wrong and understanding a little more about the foods your eating will help. Sugar, in all forms, is a simple carbohydrate that the body converts into glucose and uses for energy. But the effect on the body and your overall health depends on the type of sugar you’re eating, either natural or refined. We wanted to explore the difference between these sugar types as a follow-up to our post about whether sugar drives the growth of cancer, which has received several comments. We again turned to Julie Baker, Clinical Oncology Dietitian at our hospital outside Atlanta, for her expertise on the issue. Understanding sugars Natural sugars are found in fruit as fructose and in dairy products, such as milk and cheese, as lactose. Foods with natural sugar have an important role in the diet of cancer patient...

I wrote before about making a lifestyle change as a way to lose weight.  There has been much written about the Mediterranean Diet, it's not a real diet with set rules about your everyday meals. It's a lifestyle of eating the way Mediterranean people have been eating for centuries. On the front page of my website, I write about the Mediterranean lifestyle of eating in the diet section. When I gave up on diet plans you buy in packets at the grocery store. And decided I wasn't going to sweat the pounds off. I read a book on the Mediterranean Diet and it all started to make sense to me. Cutting back on the food I was eating, only made me hungry after an hour or so. I needed to change my eating habits totally. I stopped eating traditional meals, no more 3 meals a day. Now I was going to eat 6 times a day, but after a few weeks, I decided the 5 meal-a-day plan was a better option for me. So you might ask, how do I lose weight that way.? Good question. The Idea is to only eat...

Anti-sugar fever seems to be on the rise. Especially since sugar has been linked to Cancer.  Last week, a friend who does not have type 2 diabetes asked me about my diabetes diet: “How many carbs can you eat without raising your blood sugar?” Another pal is on a 21-day-cleanse – no sugars allowed. And folks in my neighborhood recently formed a support group for going cold turkey on sugar, which one member claimed is harder than giving up cigarettes: “No one wants you to smoke, but they’re happy to see you eat a slice of birthday cake.” This is a blog post from WebMD, but I want to stick my personal opinion in here. "I think that sometime in the future medicine will know for sure that refined sugar might be one of the causes for most of our health problems." I know that sounds a little vague and I'll explain. Sugar, the real sugar, isn't the same as refined sugar that you buy in the stores. The real sugar is the sugar in produce and in dairy products. The granula...

This post was first on Hungry Girl, one of my favorite blogs. Protein powder isn’t just for bodybuilders anymore. It’s gone totally mainstream! It’s definitely a good way to add protein to your diet, but can it also help with weight loss?  One review of studies found that replacing some of your daily calories with whey protein could decrease body weight and body fat. I'm going to insert a few words here because I wrote about the same subject a few weeks ago. I mix protein powder in plain Greek yogurt and add it to my milk shakes every day. Anyone that's been dieting for a while knows that you want to increase protein to increase muscle mass which in turn burns more body fat.  Increasing protein doesn't mean you have to eat more meat. It means you should eat more protein without consuming more animal protein. Meat should only be about 20% of your total food intake. Eggs are a good source of protein and you can get protein powder that is pla...

The Upside of More Than 3 Meals a Day While eating many meals may not rev up your metabolism or make you burn fat, experts say it could help you in other ways. The longer you wait between meals, the hungrier you get, and then you’re more likely to overeat. “After about 3 hours without food, blood sugar begins to fall. And after 4 hours, your body has already digested whatever you sent down earlier,” says Cleveland dietitian Amy Jamieson-Petonic, RD. “Once you’ve crossed the 5-hour mark, your blood sugar begins to plummet, and you grab whatever you can to refuel.” That’s why breakfast is so important. After 7-8 hours of sleep without food, you need energy to get moving, Jamieson-Petonic says. People who regularly eat breakfast tend to weigh less than those who skip their morning meal. They also get more nutrients like vitamins D, B12, and A. They may even be more likely to resist food cravings and make ...

Have you ever noticed that no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you exercise or no matter how many calories you cut, you still can't get rid of the extra fat? There could be another reason for your size. My friend has a twin born at the same time but one guy's bigger and still is 40 years later. The bigger brother is overweight and the smaller one is thin and fit. The overweight brother can't seem to lose the extra fat. At family gatherings, they always eat the same amount of food but the smaller one never gains weight. So what's going on is pretty normal for siblings. I've read a lot about families with some overweight members and some thin members.  Research shows that we are all different even when we're twins. So even if we look the same, we all process our food differently. It's your DNA that's different. DNA is in every gene that you were born with and siblings from the same parents won't have exactly the same DNA. So in that...