Saturday, September 27, 2008

Bad Diet Habits

A lot of weight loss problems can be linked to bad habits. Weight loss will be easier once you understand this and eradicate the bad habits. It will be difficult to lose tummy fat with these habits.

Determining what your bad habits are is what you need to do first. Look at the times when you tend to overeat and see if you can understand what triggers these reactions.
When you cut out the triggers you can do a much better job of fixing your eating problems. this is only possible when you figure out what initally flips the switch

You should also look at the types of food that you go for during these times as often they will be comfort foods. More often than not these comfort foods are of very low nutritional value.
By simply changing your comfort foods, with those that are of a higher nutritional value you will still be satisfying your needs by eliminating the negative side effects that are associated with poor food.

As most things that we do in life are habitual we rarely think about the actions we take as we go about our daily routines on autopilot. Sadly we all have good and bad habits in our daily routines and we need to attend to the bad ones to help us diet.
As we age, more and more aspects of our life become habitual and it becomes more difficult to realize we have these habits.And even more so to get rid of them particularly if we have had them for a long time. This will help you lose abdominal fat.

A little self-analysis will help you spot the things that start your bad eating and lead to weight gain.
Aim to change one bad habit at a time as this is an easier goal and it also acts positively when you try to change the next habit. This is easy once you start. if you focus on the cause and not the food it helps your weight loss immensely.


Wednesday, September 24, 2008

How to get rid of belly fat - Part 2 - The exercise

Then, along with this nutritional strategy you must do some exercise. What do you think you have to do? Lots of swimming, cycling and running? Well no actually, you don't have to perform endless cardiovascular workouts. Too much cardio will send the body into what is called catabolism where it breaks down lean muscle tissue.

To complement the fat-burning diet you have to get into High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT. This involves doing low and high intensity workouts in intervals. You do a period of high intensity cardio exercise and then a period of lower intensity.

Studies have revealed that this type of combined training uses more excess than normal cardio carried out at a continuous rate. The numbers average out at 50% more however some research indicated far greater ratios than that. Up to 5 times as much. Why does this mean you lose stomach fat? Well, the body keeps the extra fat that you provide it where it is easiest to put it - the belly. Conversely, when the body needs to use up some of the stored fat for energy it gets it from where it is easiest to get - the stomach.

In addition, research has revealed that HIIT uses two times as much stored fat from the belly area than other cardio type workouts even when they train for longer. And there is more happy news. HIIT only needs to be done for short periods of time, usually ten to twenty minutes at a go.

So, as you can see, this unique mix of diet and exercise will give you fast fat loss that is healthy and you can keep off. As opposed to other diets where you achieve an initial period of fat loss but then it all goes wrong, this approach suits the long term.

More on how to lose belly fat..

Sunday, September 21, 2008

How to get rid of belly fat - Part 1 - The Diet

To be most effective in this involves both diet and exercise. You shouldn't be suprised by this fact. If you want to find out how to lose belly fat and how to lose it fast, then you have to combine the two for maximum effect. But the methods this solution encompasses might be suprising as they are not normal.

Firstly we will examine the diet portion of things, then we will examine the exercise part.
The fastest and best method to lose excess fat on your stomach is by doing a low carbohydrate diet. This doesn't mean zero carbohydrates as that would be near impossible and stupid as it would be unhealthy. What it means is lowering your need for energy on carbohydrates. What will happen then is your body will burn fat for energy.

You get your every day from these sources in the following order.
1. Carbohydrates
2. Fat
3. Protein

They all can come from food or from stores in the body. So you should lower your carbs so the body switches over to burning fat, which it does after a little time when it accepts the idea. This doesn't mean you can eat lots of high fat food as it doesn't work like that. If you did that you would have plenty of energy from the fatty food and wouldn't burn any of the spare fat off your stomach. On the other hand you don't want to go really low-fat as the body begins to burn its store of proteins for energy. This means you will be burning off muscle tissue and that is no good either.

Muscle tissue burns calories all the time even at rest, just by being there. If someone dieting loses muscle their metabolism slows and the body burns less calories. Needless to say, this situation is a disaster for someone wanting to lose fat.

Under 100g of carbs every day will do it. Below 60g is great.

More on how to lose belly fat..