The holidays will be upon us in a flash. Wouldn’t you like to
appear at the next holiday party looking great and having plenty
of energy left to have fun?

Then you’d better get started!

Here are 10 easy things you can do to start looking and feeling
better right away, and lose some of that weight before the
holidays - without suffering a bit.

1. Drink 8 glasses of water throughout the day.

* It fills you.

* It satisfies your thirst, which is often mistaken for
hunger.

* It flushes out toxins and wastes (including fat.)

* It keeps your organs working their best, which means
they can absorb nutrients, get rid of the garbage, your
skin will look better, you’ll think better, you’ll
have more energy, and you’ll burn more calories.

2. Make 5 a Priority.

Even if you change nothing else, make eating at least 5
servings of vegetables and fruits a priority each day.
At mealtime, eat the fruits and vegetables first, leaving
less room for the worse things on your plate.
You’ll be surprised at how big a difference this one
little change will make.

3. Eat Something From Every Food Group Every Day.

Your body needs all sorts of foods to operate its best,
including fats and some sugar. The better your body works,
the better you feel, and the more calories you burn. Be leery
of any diet that tells you to eliminate an entire food group.
It’s not healthy, and it will be hard to stick with.

4. Added Nutrition.

At a minimum, take a good vitamin and mineral supplement
everyday. It’s almost impossible to get every single nutrient
your body needs everyday just by diet alone. Besides, who
has the time to spend counting calories and nutrients?

5. Get Some Sort Of Exercise Every Day.

Take a walk, take the stairs, vacuum, dance, just get
moving. Even if it’s 10-minute spurts a few times a day.
It doesn’t have to be earth shattering.

6. Cook Fresh Dinners.

Fast food and prepared foods have a lot of saturated fat, salt,
chemicals, and they don’t taste all that great. Cook healthy
is really very fast and easy. Use lots of raw vegetables and
fruits. No cooking required!

7. Get Enough Sleep.

Your body repairs itself while you sleep. You’re even burning
calories! When you don’t get enough sleep, you tend to
compensate by eating a lot of empty calories that further
drain your energy.

8. Try Not To Over Schedule Yourself.

When you’re running around like crazy it’s too easy to just
grab junk food - which only drains your energy even more.

9. Eat All Day.

The secret is to keep your body fueled all day. Most people
make the mistake of not eating all day, and then eating too
much at night when you’re not going to do enough to burn
it off. (But stop eating when you’re full.)

10. Stop Eating a Couple of Hours Before Bed.

If you feel hungry at bedtime, have a piece of cheese and a
few baked crackers just to take the edge off. It’s actually
not good to go to bed hungry. But stay away from sugar
and caffeine before bed.

The truth is, it’s not that hard to lose weight. Just by following these 10 simple tips you will start losing weight almost effortlessly.

Want to speed it up more? Cut our saturated fats and pop, and
get more exercise. The whole key to losing weight is to burn
more than you take in. In time, once you’ve mastered better
eating habits, you can make it mathematically impossible to
gain weight.

The question isn’t “can you lose weight”. Of course you can.
The question is, will you? Get started today - be a knockout
for the holidays!

Want to know more about developing healthy eating habits
that will keep you fit - trim- and healthy for life, staying
well, fighting disease, cooking healthy dinners in a flash,
and stuff like that? It’s easy - just Get a Thin Attitude Here

Carole helps you find easy common sense solutions to life’s most perplexing everyday problems. Her weekly ezine is filled with tips to help you live better. Have more easy solutions for managing your life delivered right to you every Friday night - Get Your Free Ezine and Gifts Here

Tags: burn calories, diet, healthy eating, lose weight, weight lossburn calories, diet, healthy eating, lose weight, weight loss

Share This

Why do so many diets fail? In theory losing weight is easy. Simply eat slightly less than the body needs over a sustained period. Yet in reality only a small percentage of people lose weight and keep it off. And whilst it’s true that most diets would be successful if followed, many fail to acknowledge the psychological impact of weight loss. As Oprah Winfrey once famously said “Diet’s don’t work, you’ve got to get to the reason that lies behind overeating.” She had rightly identified what many scientific studies had already indicated. By changing our mental attitude to food we can change our behaviour. Without that change in attitude there is little chance of long term success.

The Scientific Evidence

A laboratory controlled study conducted at the Littlemore Hospital, Oxford, England concluded that the effect of just food restrictive, weight loss programmes were “surprisingly ineffective as a means of achieving sustained weight loss”. That’s because dieters seem to exhibit one of two distinct behavioural styles.

Behavioural Style One. The dieter starts full of enthusiasm only to revert to their previous eating style before reaching their desired weight. A chart that plots the fallout rates shows that 82% will lose heart in the first five weeks. Typically a specific food or event would trigger the initial break in their resolve, after which the dieter would increasingly revert to their old behaviour.

Behavioural Style Two. Between 3% and 8% of dieters would stick to their diet and achieve their desired weight. Then over time - usually between six months and two years later 70% of this group would have gained most or all of the weight they had previously lost. This leaves only 2% of dieters with sustained, permanent weight loss.

This study is backed up by a substantial study conducted by The University of London, England. Its theme was effective and permanent weight reduction. They were evaluating the effectiveness of combining traditional diet control with positive psychology. Their findings overwhelmingly determined that by combining these techniques weight loss was much more effective and sustainable than just using a calorie controlled diet in isolation.

For permanent weight loss combine diet and positive psychology

Whilst many people can and do lose weight using a controlled diet this doesn’t address the psychological issues that surround eating patterns. For example, the act of eating produces complex ‘psychological anchors’that link the process to emotions like pleasure, satisfaction, self-esteem. Break or change these anchors and losing weight becomes much easier.

Increasingly there are a number of useful courses and books that focus on this area. So if you are serious about sustained and permanent weight loss, take a tip from The University of London study and combine diet control with a change in your mental attitude. Because based on the research it seems that successful weight loss really is all in the mind.

Jim Brackin contributes tips, help and advice on popular psychology to variety of magazines like Cosomopolitan and Women’s Own. Author of the No Diet Diet, he is the body language expert for Sky News (UK), and developed http://www.personaliteye.com that provides free visually based personality profiles.

Tags: Calorie, Controlled, diet, dieting, health, loss, Psychology, weight, WeightlossCalorie, Controlled, diet, dieting, health, loss, Psychology, weight, Weightloss

Share This

You’ve finally committed to getting fit and you want to join a gym, but which one? Unless you’ve been a regular at gyms in the past you really don’t know a good one from a bad one.

A good fitness center has their members as their number one priority. They are customer service oriented. A bad fitness center is only looking at your dollar value. Once you join they will not want to know you.

Telling the difference can be as simple as following this simple checklist:

Equipment

Take a walk around the gym and have a good look at each piece of equipment. Get on and use some. If they grind, or seem loose or unstable then that’s a sure sign that the equipment is not serviced often. Any gym that doesn’t service their equipment is not going to service you.

Cleaning

This is a great way of seeing how important the owner’s business is to them. If it’s not cleaned daily then they’re probably cutting costs, which isn’t good for a prospective member. When you’re walking around have a good look at how clean the machines are. If they’re covered in dust, they are probably not cared for.

Service

If you don’t know much about exercise and nutrition, this is the most important of all. A quality gym will want to help you in any way they can. You should be given a new program every 4-6 weeks and another fitness assessment every 8-12 weeks. There should always be someone around to answer your questions. The staff should also be friendly and easy to talk to.

Type of Gym

What type of people use the gym at the times you will be training? Unless you’re into bodybuilding you probably want to stay away from ‘muscle head’ gyms after 3pm. These gyms are easy to identify. They have loads of weights, no aerobic classes, and no (or very old) bikes and treadmills.

Ethics

Are they constantly trying to push their products? This is often done with nutrition supplements. There’s nothing wrong with selling these products as some are quite good if you need them but some unethical centers try to push supplements onto all new members. If the salesperson or instructor seems pushy with their products, run for cover!

Staff

Whilst qualifications are important, it’s not everything. The most important trait in a good fitness instructor is that they must care. If they are tertiary qualified as well then you have yourself a great trainer, but even the most knowledgeable person in the industry is of no value if they’re not interested in helping you. It’s easy to identify staff that care because they are friendly, courteous, and listen! (They may even remember your name)

Membership Price

Every region is different but the membership price should reflect the service, equipment, and instructors. You shouldn’t judge a fitness center on price alone (this is why they rarely give prices over the telephone!). Have a look at a few gyms in your area and compare each one. That is the only reliable way to measure true value.

Ray Kelly is an Exercise Scientist with 15 years experience in the health and fitness industry. Sign up for his free 7 Day Weight Loss Course at Free Fitness Programs

Tags: choosing fitness center, fitness centre, health club, Joining gym, loose weight, lose weight, weight losschoosing fitness center, fitness centre, health club, Joining gym, loose weight, lose weight, weight loss

Share This