« Older Entries

Get Slim With Atkins Diet Plan

The Atkins’ diet has been a craze for a couple of decades. Here’s how you can gain from it.

mediaimage
All of you who are reading this article right now have definitely been on a diet at some point or the other of your lives. The battle of the bulge is an ongoing problem and we are always on the lookout for various means to win this war.

Along with exercise, our diet and nutrition also plays an important role in reducing our weight. Hence, this obsession persists in all of us to undertake some form of dieting. But going on a diet is definitely not an easy thing. What to eat and what to stay away from is always a perennial problem.

One of my friends told me that she ate the normal menu which she cooked for the family, but her weight loss recipe is “portion control.” This is a really simple diet plan. In this plan, you cut down on the portion of food you consume. For example, if you usually have two pieces of toast for breakfast, you should eat only one piece. If you normally eat two cups of rice for lunch, cut it down to one cup. In this way, you are automatically reducing your calorie intake by half.

Another popular method of dieting is to stop all intake of fatty foods and sugar. In this diet, you cut down on your oil, butter and ghee intake which automatically reduces your fat deposits.

While I was leafing through a magazine, I read about one of our Hollywood celebrities following the Atkins’ diet. This immediately aroused my curiosity about the diet. Though I have heard about the diet many times, I had no inside knowledge about it. So, I immediately set to work on it and found out certain basic facts’ about the Atkins diet which I want to share with my readers.

The Atkins’ diet made its first appearance in 1972 and was invented by its namesake, Dr Atkins. According to him, this method enables us to lose weight by inducing a change in metabolism. Our body burns both fat and carbohydrates to provide energy. If we reduce the intake of carbohydrates significantly, our body starts burning only fat to provide energy. This method is called “lipolysis”, which in turn induces ketosis. In ketosis, our body burns fat as fuel. Atkins also felt that ketosis will affect insulin production which will result in less fat being formed. And, once your body enters ketosis, your cravings for carbohydrates will reduce significantly which, in turn, will reduce your body weight.

The major difference between Atkins’ diet and other types of diet is that, while most diets restrict calorie, intake, the Atkins’ plan encourages us to eat more. While most of the diets recommend low fat, high carbohydrate intake, Atkins’ does just the opposite. Instead of carbohydrate and sugar, this diet wants us to consume plenty of fat and protein.

The core principle of the Atkins’ diet is that, by limiting carbohydrates, our body is forced to burn its stored fat, rather than carbs for fuel.

The Atkins’ diet has a four carbohydrates stage plan induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. With the help of these four stages, you can reduce as well as maintain your weight throughout your life.

Induction – phase 1: This phase lasts for two weeks, by the end of which you can obtain significant results. Another point is that, in this diet plan you can begin at any of the phase. But it is recommended to start with induction. As you cut back on your carbohydrates significantly in this phase, you will jump start your weight loss programme. In this phase, only 20 gm of carbohydrates are allowed and hence your weight loss is significant. As you drastically cut down on carbohydrates your body shifts into high gear and starts burning fat. This takes about 48 hours to occur and you may feel hungry and irritated for the first three-four days. But don’t worry, as soon as your fat starts getting converted to fuel, you will feel fit as a fiddle. Induction will strengthen your immune system and also improve our long-term health.

Ongoing Weight Loss (OWL) phase 2: In this phase, the weight loss pace slows down as you add nutrient-rich carbohydrates to your diet. During this period, you will boost your body’s ability to burn fats as well as understand your body better. You will find the right amount of carbohydrates which you can consume and still lose weight. Your body will also prepare itself for permanent weight management. The amount of carbohydrates which you can eat is increased to 25 gm per day for the first week and increased in five gm instalment for the next few weeks. If your weight loss is significant, you can increase your carbohydrate intake. A person has to be on OWL till he or she is within three-five kg of their goal weight.

Pre-maintenance – (phase 3): Pre-maintenance is a practice run for lifetime maintenance. In this phase, you are fast approaching your target. As long as you continue to lose weight, you can increase your weekly allotment of carbohydrates by another 10 gm. You will be in this phase till you reach your goal and stay on it for one month. The ultimate goal here is to achieve a state of balance called Atkins’ Carbohydrate Equilibrium (ACE). The ACE is your individual level of carbohydrate intake wherein you neither gain nor lose weight.

Lifetime maintenance phase 4: In this phase, you have to focus on your individual ACE and strive to stay within two kg of your ideal weight for the rest of your life. By following a sensible eating plan, you gain energy, better health and confidence in yourself.

By following these four phases, you not only achieve your dream weight but are also able to maintain it throughout your life. You can learn more about this diet by reading the book, Dr Atkins’ New Diet Revolution. But, as with any other diet, this plan also has its pros and cons. The good point is that this diet recommends exercise as a vital part of the weight loss programme. Another point to be noted is that you cannot start on carbohydrates after you lose weight as this will result in your gaining back all that you have lost.

Medical experts advise that people who have gout, kidney problems, diabetes or are pregnant women should not follow this diet plan. As this diet is very stringent, do consult your doctor/dietician for proper advice.

Your dietician will provide you with a proper menu chart as to what should be eaten, in what quantities, etc, based on your eating habits and general lifestyle.

Happy dieting and hoping to see slimmer and fitter readers.

Tags:

How To Forget Dieting So You Lose The Bulges

Almost everyone trying to lose weight will start going on a diet at some point. Unfortunately most dieters are not able to permanently keep weight off. This is because it is often difficult or impossible to commit to a diet and keep up with a weight loss plan. However, there are other options for those who want to lose weight.

Unlike a diet, hypnotherapy will help motivate you to naturally have a healthier diet and get more exercise. Here, I will discuss some popular diet plans, the keys to losing weight, and how you can achieve weight loss using hypnotherapy.

The high numbers of searches for dieting advice and online diet plans indicate that many people are looking to lose weight. Some popular diet plans are:

The Atkins diet, which is a popular low carbohydrate diet, is centered on the limited intake of “refined carb” foods such as sugar and white bread. By restricting carbohydrate consumption, this weight loss program is supposed to make the body switch from burning carbohydrates for energy to burning fat (a process called ketosis).

The Ornish diet is a very low fat, vegetarian diet, is an entirely vegetarian diet, and when followed diligently, a scant 10% of total calorie intake will come from fat. The Ornish diet also strongly encourages stress-management and exercise, and has been used successfully to help reverse heart disease in many dieters.

The Suddenly Slim diet program involves taking diet pills and meal replacement shakes with the goal of stimulating the body’s metabolism to use up more calories. The products include many ingredients typically found in diet pills. The Suddenly Slim diet is supposed to work without more exercise or making other major lifestyle changes, although exercise and better eating habits will increase results.

The Zone diet balances carbohydrate, fat, and protein intake, with 30% of calories coming from fat, 40% from carbohydrates, and 30% from protein. Like the Atkins diet, this diet is frequently considered to be “low carb.” The Zone diet pays close attention to calorie intake and physical exercise to deliver results.

The Cabbage soup diet is a component in numerous diet plans and is largely considered to be a fad diet. It consists of eating only low calorie cabbage soup for seven days. Following this diet will usually lead to some weight loss, but when you resume normal eating habits, the weight will usually come back. Furthermore, staying on this unbalanced diet plan for more than a week may lead to poor nutrition and poor health.

There are countless diet programs all promising fast results, but what many of these popular diets claim is not what they actually offer. They are based on meal plans that are unbalanced, unsustainable over a long-term period, or downright unhealthy. The truth is permanent weight loss is rarely achieved through a short, one-time diet session.

Successful dieters know that the keys to success are not in fad diets or even diet programs, but in portion control, selecting nutritious and filling foods, and exercising regularly. This sounds simple to do, but it can be difficult to stay motivated to keep healthy habits and undo a lifetime of bad dietary choices.

We often lose our motivation to exercise and eat right. Hypnosis can be used to change our bad habits and lack of motivation. Hypnosis weight loss programs work by tapping into the power of your unconscious mind to motivate you to exercise and treat your body right.

Even the best free diet plans will fail if they aren’t followed through. Research shows that most diets fail because dieters just can’t stick to them. After years of eating oversized portions, many of us compulsively overeat and our appetites are out of control. This is where hypnotherapy for weight loss is especially effective. Hypnosis weight loss programs are highly successful in helping to control food cravings and control the appetite.

For many people, another component to losing weight is stress management. Many people overeat because of emotions. We eat food in response to our feelings, such as when we are bored or sad. This emotional attachment to food can make it easy to gain weight. We can use hypnotherapy to develop better strategies for coping with stress and to quit associating food with our emotions.

It is easy to learn hypnosis by yourself with a good self-hypnosis program. There are weight loss hypnotherapy programs specifically developed to help you achieve your goal of permanently losing weight. With simple techniques from self hypnosis CD programs, you can quit struggling to lose weight and become naturally enabled to shed pounds.

Tags:

Get to Know How Many Calories to Lose Weight

To decide how many calories to lose weight, you will have to look at your weight first. One thing to bear in mind is that you could lose weight without having lowering calories at an accelerating speed. In terms of losing weight, you’ll desire to begin with setting up a goal to lose the initial A couple lbs as opposed to picking 20 or maybe much more lbs. By performing it this way, you can in fact be capable of reach your weight loss objectives. Plus this can make sure that you don’t ought to dread on your own weight loss program.

When attempting to check on how many calories to lose weight, you can begin off with the BMR Calorie Calculation. Essentially, BMR typically known as Basal Metabolism might be the quantity of calories needed to sustain your body at rest. This might be the calories needed to run it including breathing, digestion, elimination etc. Significantly like recent statistics, the normal calories day-to-day for females could be separated into the following: Sedentary (limited activity) – 12 ALM; moderately active (3-4 exercise sessions per week) – 14 ALM; Active (6 – 7 exercise sessions per week) – 16 ALM. To discover how many calories to lose weight, you’ll be able to calculate with all the following formula; desired weight * ALM = average calorie needs. The harder you in turn turn out to be active, the bigger the calorie you’ll desire to enhance. However, if you’re seeking at how many calories to lose weight, it needs to decrease.

Really should you be about the outlook for how many calories to lose weight, a easy example which will outline the above theory is typically to begin consuming meals of vitamins and minerals as opposed to foods. You may recognize that you could automatically reduce weight. You could begin your day-to-day diet plan which has a calorie count spreadsheet, so every time, you pick to consume, and you will have to input the calorie total the spreadsheet. This need to enable you to to hold tabs on the calorie intake.

When attempting to decide how many calories to lose weight, diet plan plays a huge role. You don’t have to drastically switch from a favorite foods rather try to balance it. You could begin day 1 with one of your favorite food plus day 2, you might exchange signal of something lighter. By taking exercise, you happen to be positive to knock the extra pound off your weight. As an example, a person who walks for 3mph will burn over 250 calories inside 45 minutes. There’s usually aid around need to you be much less than positive how many calories to lose weight. You could attempt on the web for much more details or make contact having a dietician or even a wellness coach.

Tags: