Weight Loss Diary – Exercise Day 5

It has been a learning process and it has been difficult at times but I am proud to say it is day 5 of the accelerated 10 min trainer program. I have kept up with the 3 stack a day plan, except the yoga day.

Yesterday and today I  did 1 of the workouts in the morning. I think I feel better clarity when I exercise first thing in the morning. It’s too early to show any major changes but I certainly feel the effects.

The true challenge is in the jeans test. Are they still tight.. or do they slip on easy? I am waiting until friday to try on a pair I wore last fall again. They fit just right then but have since gotten tight over the holiday season.

The winter months are harsh on the body. Summer time allows me to get out and walk and take my kids to the park. But since late November I have not gotten out very much and that plus the holiday season took it’s toll. But it was super cute this morning to see my 2 year old daughter trying to work out like mommy does. I was jogging circles with her and she was giggling up a storm.

Anyways I think 10 min trainer is helping a lot so I am happy. I also am trying to watch my portions, although I am not drastically cutting calories, just trying to eat less junk. I got a tip from the John Tesh radio show about using smaller dinner plates to trick your mind into thinking you ate more. I was skeptical but it works!

Also I am not a huge fan of drinking water all the time so my soloution is 2 things.. home-made green tea with splenda sweetener, and the south beach diet protein waters to replace sodas. Well mostly… I crave a Diet Dr Pepper now and then so I indulge. But it is down to once every other day or less.

More comming soon! Actually less.. weight.. more.. me. 🙂

Weight Loss Diary Day 4 – Exercise Day 2

I started my planning on the 25th of February, today is February 28th. I recieved Tony Horton’s 10 min trainer on the 26th. I read through all of the information and safety and made sure all of my accessories were included. I did not start the program until yesterday, the 27th.

I chose the accelerated program which is three 10 min workouts per day with the day of rest being a Yoga set. I also decided to do the first couple set’s without the resistance bands so that I can get used to the exercises.

Im happy to say I got through all of the sets and I worked up a good sweat. I did not allow myself excuses, but I have not felt well the last couple days. Allergies and that time of the month are not ideal, but I don’t see how making excuses was ever going to slim me in time for Vegas in August.

Im so tired of being the chunky pale mom at the pool or beach. I feel more energy than that. Plus my current appearance does not match my attitude and charisma, it hurts my natural confidence.

Today I do another set of three exercises. I am looking forward to it!

Weight Loss Diary – Day 1

I am 27 years old, a mom of three and I want to lose weight. Many of us do, but we do not know how to start. I have a weakness for delishious food but I do not pig out, often. I have to admit I have days I ate more than I should. I must be honest with myself.

 My biggest problem though is not my eating habits, its my level of activity. I work from home making virtual clothing, buildings, making web sites, doing affiliate work, and other assorted busy work. Plus I go to college online. In all it’s way to much sitting down!

I am up and about off and on all day chasing my three kids and playing with them, but I still sit, a lot. Right now it’s worse because it is winter and its cold. Plus in this economy money is so tight!

But I have a plan and I have good tools. So if you are like me, or you have been here, I hope to encourage you. Or if you’d like you can encourage me. I am NOT the most diciplined person on the planet.

Hot french fries, chocolate.. who can resist now and then?

My first tool you are looking at, a live journal where anyone can see what I am doing. If I slack off, please send a comment telling me to stop being lazy, lol. I think it will help to have at least a weekly update of my progress. I am a busy mom, so posting EVERY day might be too much, but weekly is good.

The second tool is a cool visual model I found. It shows how I look now and how I want to look. Its located at: http://www.prevention.com/mvm/main.html

So I customised myself, its rather accurate, here I am..

My third tool is my handy calorie tracker. There are a BUNCH on the internet but I really like the free one at caloriebalancediet.com . You can even add custom foods and snacks you eat often. One thing I do not like is that things like eggs which have good cholestorol make the tracker think you just went nuts with cholestorol. Plus you might want to tweak the setting to your specific needs if you use it, we are not photo copies, we have needs that differ per person!

My fourth tool is Tony Hortons 10 Min Trainer Deluxe. I got it off E-Bay much cheaper than you could get directly from the store so I am good with that. It should arrive by the end of the week depending on the seller.

Let’s hope the sappy crying infomercial people are not in fact actors of academy award calibur. I got this to slim down without bulking up. I don’t want to win awards for muscules, I just want soft slender but firm curves. And it’s not a skinny blonde telling me to suck in my tummy.

Fifth is my DDR, dance dance revoloution game. Mainly because its so much fun to do. Im not sure it really contributes a lot, but it gets me up and I love to dance and sing.

I also plan to get a YMCA membership so I can swim within a month or two. I love thier steam room it feels soo nice. Plus they have great ab and thigh machines, my two biggest problem areas. 

So thats the plan. Stay tuned!

Lose Weight Fast

Want to lose weight fast for a HS reunion, a trip to the beach, or just for your own peace of mind? While there are many ways to shed weight quickly, losing it too fast can be a shock to your body and thus a danger. Fad diets, diet pills, extreme fasting and other fast weight loss methods may work but they can also cause you to lose muscle, counter productive to a long term weight loss program, and can cause damage to your heart and other internal organs. Here are some tips to safely lose weight fast.

Since losing weight is simply expending more calories than you take in, figure out exactly what you take in. Carry a small notebook for a week to record everything you eat. That means everything, every morsel, every sample, every sip of water. Then write down the calories in each of these foods and drinks. There are many websites such as http://www.mypyramidtracker.gov that can help with this.

Once you have a list of all the calories you consume, look for ways to cut them. This can be as simple as cutting down on portion sizes. Remember, most restaurants and even people at home serve portions that are far larger than they need to be. There are a lot of other easy cuts that don’t significantly change what you eat. These include salad dressing, butter, candies, and juice or soda. The average American consumes 240 calories a day from juice and soda. That’s 90,000 calories a year 25 pounds! Simply switching to water as a main drink is a big step in weight loss. Also note that empty calories such as sugars and white breads (carbohydrates) are the first things to cut. These can easily be replaced with sugar substitutes and whole grain breads.

An easy place to target for calorie reduction is the side dish. This part of the meal is often a minefield of bad food choices including French Fries, macaroni and cheese and potato salad. Replace these foods with healthy alternatives such as steamed vegetables, cottage cheese, or salad (minus dressing.)

Pumping iron increases lean muscle mass, which increases your metabolism. It’s a decent calorie burner, but will help you burn calories even when not exercising. Aerobic exercise is the best for calorie and fat burning. Many experts say to perform aerobic activity for 30 minutes a day 3-5 days a week. Hog wash! Make it seven days a week, which means an activity you can sustain day after day for the rest of your life.

There’s the plan to lose weight fast. Now get moving!

Fast Weight Loss

There’s no doubt that many people need to lose a few pounds. Walk around where people gather, you’ll see it. Look in the mirror, unfortunately you’ll likely see it there too. When your goal is fast weight loss, keep a few simple things in mind to take off the pounds quickly and safely.

When people want to lose weight one of the most common things they do is to skip meals. Hey, if eating fewer calories is the goal then why not skip breakfast or lunch. Fewer calories means losing weight, right? Yes, but skipping meals is a mistake, not the right way to reduce calories. When you skip meals your body goes into starvation mode. It starts to retain fat to counteract what it perceives as being starved. Another problem with skipping meals is that when you finally eat you’ll be a lot more hungry. This could lead to binge eating. Skipping a meal plus binge eating, then, will likely result in eating more calories and the body gaining even more weight from those calories than normally. It’s the worst of both worlds. Don’t skip meals.

Know how much to eat. It’s called portion control and it’s as important as eating the right foods. Too much of even a healthy food will still result in weight gain. It’s hard to do when large portions are so common. Restaurants and even most people in home cooking serve portions far larger than needed. Sources such as the FDA list recommended daily allowances. If you must eat out, keep portion size in mind. You’ll likely have to cut down on what a restaurant serves.

Eat more whole grain foods, skip the white grains such as white bread, sugar and white rice. Whole grains are rich in nutrients and low in fat. The fiber in whole grains will make you feel fuller faster and longer. Also whole grains contain many nutrients that are often lacking in people’s diets.

Drink more water. Drink it instead of juices and sodas which add about 90,000 calories to the average person’s diet each year. Drink it between meals too. In fact, the goal is 8 glasses of water each day. It seems like a lot, but it’s not. Drinking water will also promote health in general by keeping you well hydrated and helping to avoid overheating.

Eat healthy snacks between meals. The body needs food every three to four hours to maintain proper blood sugar. Eating healthy snacks, such as fruits, helps control eating at meal times.

Fast weight loss isn’t impossible with a little knowledge and planning. Keep these things in mind and pretty soon you’ll see a slimmer you when you look into a mirror.

Fastest Way To Lose Weight

Looking for the fastest way to lose weight? Aside from a long sickness or drug use, both of which are completely negative ways to lose weight, calorie cycling may be the way to go.

Calorie cycling or calorie shifting is quickly becoming a popular weight loss method. Long used by bodybuilders and other athletes who have to make weight without losing strength or muscle, calorie shifting is a simple method that involves tricking the body into remaining in a high metabolism, high burn mode even when fewer calories are consumed. The great thing about calorie shifting is that it can work to lose weight even if you don’t cut down on calories.

Here’s how it works. Every day eat at the same times, but vary the nutrients or calories consumed. It’s a very simple diet to execute because it’s a very well planned diet. There are numerous on line sources that include detailed explanations and menus for calorie shifting.

Now for a few cautions. Of course there are cautions. Calorie shifting diets are generally low in vegetables, calcium and fat. All of those are necessary to a healthy body. Next, calorie shifting is a diet originally designed for cases of extreme obesity where medical intervention is needed. In such cases the diet would be administered under careful medical scrutiny. That’s not true when used at home. Finally, calorie shifting diets are short term, quick loss diets. Like other such diets you’ll put the weight back on quickly if you go back to the regular eating habits, and most people do.

As with any diet, or really anything in life, moderation is required. Calorie shifting is fine for a short time, but shouldn’t extend beyond a few days. Also make sure it’s followed in conjunction with an overall healthy eating plan and an exercise plan. That way then the few days of calorie shifting is complete, the weight won’t return and return you to square one.

Take a long term approach to diet rather than a short term approach to diets. Sure bodybuilders use calorie shifting. But the smart ones eat well all the time, using calorie shifting only in the last few days of training before a contest. The smart ones also happen to be the healthy ones, as many bodybuilders who do the wrong things suffer from serious health problems related to constantly gaining and losing massive amounts of weight. Diet is what you eat every day, diets are short periods of eating less to make a quick weight loss gain as part of an overall food plan. Don’t do that, and the fastest way to lose weight quickly becomes the fastest way to again gain weight.

Quick Weight Loss

The American Heart Association recommends adopting healthy eating habits permanently, rather than impatiently pursuing crash diets in hopes of losing unwanted pounds in a few days through fad quick weight loss plans.

Many of these fad diets, such as the notorious and outright silly Cabbage Soup Diet, will undermine your health, cause physical discomfort (abdominal discomfort and flatulence (gas) ) and lead to the yo-yo effect of gaining weight soon after losing it. In other words the risks aren’t worth the rewards.

Quick-weight-loss diets generally put far too much emphasis on one particular food or type of food. They violate the first principle of good nutrition which is to eat a balanced diet that includes a variety of foods. If you are able to stay on such a diet for more than a few weeks, you may develop nutritional deficiencies, because no one type of food has all the nutrients a human being needs for good health. The Cabbage Soup Diet is an example. This so-called fat-burning soup is eaten mostly with fruits and vegetables. The diet supposedly helps heart patients lose 10 – 17 pounds in seven days before surgery. Even if the weight loss claim were true, all the damage due to a lack of many essential nutrients would far outweigh (pun intended) the benefits of losing the weight. There are no magic beans, or magic cabbages, or miracle foods when it comes to weight loss and good nutrition. That’s why you should eat moderate amounts from all the food groups rather than cutting out everything but a cabbage and water.

These crazy diets also violate a second important principle of good nutrition which is that eating should be enjoyable. These diets are so monotonous and boring that it’s almost impossible to stay on them for long periods. Imagine eating cabbage soup, nothing but cabbage soup, for even a few days much less for a whole week. By Wednesday you’d dread meal time, and by Friday you’d never again want to hear about a cabbage much less eat the soup. If you make it to Sunday you might die of a heart attack before you ever again tasted real food.

There are many other ways fad diets aren’t good diets. Many don’t encourage physical activity, for example, walking 30 minutes most or all days of the week. Physical activity helps maintain weight loss, while physical inactivity is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. When you hear a diet that mentions no need for exercise run for the hills, or at least run on a treadmill.

Quick weight loss sounds great. It is possible. Just don’t fall for tricks or gimmicks that might end up ruining your health.

Easy Ways To Lose Weight

Are there any easy ways to lose weight? Everyone knows that diet, cutting down on food intake, and exercise, increasing calories burned, combine into a formula for losing weight. But the hard part is sticking to a low calorie, and often bland, diet. It won’t be easy, but with a little work it sure is possible. Here are some tips to make it easier.

Keep a daily log of everything that passes your lips. Writing down everything you eat and drink, even water, will help you eat less. Studies show that people who keep track of what they eat end up eating 15% less. That’s significant.

The average American consumes an additional 245 calories per day just from drinks. Switch from juice, soda, and other calorie drinks to water. 245 calories a day is nearly 90,000 calories a year. That’s 25 pounds. Are soda and juice really that good? Another fact is that despite their calories, drinks like soda and juice don’t trigger a feeling of fullness the way foods do.

Eat five or six smaller meals a day instead of three large meals a day. Studies show that eating in smaller portions more often results in eating 30% fewer calories. Furthermore, even the same number of calories eaten in smaller portions during more frequent meals can result in weight loss. You’re less likely to binge because the body releases less insulin.

Get rid of the “fat” clothes. If you don’t have clothing that’s comfortable when you’re heavier, you’re more likely to be reminded to keep the weight off every time you dress. And you’re less likely to gain weight if doing so means having to buy a whole new wardrobe.

Use smaller plates. It’s been proven that people eat more when more food is in front of them, and they eat less when less food is in front of them. Smaller plates mean smaller portions, so put the salad plates into use as the main plate.

Similar to the idea of using smaller plates, serve your food on the plate rather than in bowls on the table. When the plate is empty the meal is over, instead of spooning another portion onto your plate.

Avoid white foods such as white bread, sugar, and white rice. Those are the foods with loads of carbohydrates which lead to higher blood sugar and weight gain. Stick to whole grain breads and dark rice. Don’t worry about the sugar, pretty soon you won’t miss it.

There are a lot of other tips for easy ways to lose weight. Don’t be intimidated if it’s only easier instead of really easy. If weight loss were easy, everyone would be a supermodel.

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Fast Weight Loss Diet

People like quick fixes. Long term solutions often work better, but they often take a long time to show results and require a long term commitment. Both elements often give people trouble. It’s no different with weight loss. People who want to lose weight are always on the look out for the fast weight loss diet.

The problem is that fast weight loss usually means yo-yo weight loss, the pounds return after the diet ends. Many fast loss diets are fad diets that don’t work, but if integrated into an overall eating plan they can have benefits.

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Here’s a three day diet guaranteed to take off pounds. But remember, it must be part of an overall eating plan and should not be maintained for more than three days.

On day one breakfast is black coffee or tea (with Sweet & Low or Equal) or water, 1/2 Grapefruit or 8 oz Juice, and 1 slice toast with 1 Tbsp. Peanut Butter. Lunch is 1/2 Cup of Tuna on 1 slice of toast and to drink black coffee or tea (sweetened with Sweet & Low or Equal) or water. Dinner is 3 oz. of any lean meat, 1 cup of green beans, 1 cup of carrots, 1 cup of vanilla ice cream, 1 medium apple, and to drink as usual black coffee or tea (with Sweet & Low or Equal) or water.

Day two breakfast is black coffee or tea (with Sweet & Low or Equal) or water, 1 egg (any style,) 1 slice of toast, and 1 banana. Lunch is 1 cup of cottage cheese or tuna, 5 saltine crackers, and black coffee or tea (with Sweet & Low or Equal) or water. Dinner is 2 beef franks or hot dogs, 1/2 cup of carrots,1 banana, 1 cup of broccoli or cabbage, 1/2 cup of vanilla ice cream, and black coffee or tea (with Sweet & Low or Equal) or water.

And finally day three breakfast is black coffee or tea (with Sweet & Low or Equal) or water, 5 regular saltine crackers, 1 oz.(slice) cheddar cheese, and 1 apple. Lunch is a hard boiled egg, 1 slice of toast, and black coffee or tea (with Sweet & Low or Equal) or water. Dinner is 1 cup of tuna, 1 cup of carrots
1 cup of cauliflower, 1 cup of melon, 1/2 cup of regular vanilla ice cream, and black coffee or tea (with Sweet & Low or Equal) or water.

Cottage cheese can be substituted for tuna, an orange can be substituted for grapefruit, frozen yogurt can replace the ice cream, and as much lemon, salt and pepper, and mustard can be used as wanted. Please remember that this fast weight loss diet is a three day diet, only to be eaten in conjunction with an overall healthy diet. Another great idea is to ask the local hospital what they serve for patients on low calorie diets.

Ways To Lose Weight Fast

Here are ways to lose weight fast submitted by regular people as comments on various blogs or articles on line.

Avoid fried meat, eat only grilled or boiled meat like steak and chicken Use a lot of spices to make it even better.

Give up the soda. If you drink a soda or two every day you are adding empty calories. If you find it hard to stop completely, cut back at first and drink water instead. (Note that the average person adds 90,000 calories a year from drinking juice or soda. WOW! That’s a great tip.)

Don’t buy junk food. Shop according to a list. If you don’t have junk food at home you won’t eat it.

Give yourself a treat. When you can’t eat something you end up craving it more, and eventually binging. Enjoy a treat once a week, or even once a day in smaller quantities. Don’t go crazy, keep it in moderation.

Use a smaller plate to trick yourself into thinking you’re eating more than you really are. (Not only are you tricking yourself, even if the trick doesn’t work it’s easier to stop eating when the plate is empty and there’s no more food available.)

Get poor. Gamble away your money so you can’t afford food. (Um, no. That’s a bad idea.)

Stay away from fad diets. They starve you and then you eat more when the diet is over.

Do exercise many times a day. If you’re watching television, do some push ups or crunches. (That’s a great idea to increase caloric burn.)

Measure your food. If you have junk food make sure to measure and control the portion. (Portion control is a big part of a healthy diet. Most restaurants and even people at home serve portions that are too large.)

Get really sick. After a month in the hospital I had lost 25 pounds. (Another bad idea. It’s best to stick to ways to lose weight while remaining healthy. After all, the ultimate goal is better health.)

Create good eating habits through repetition. (It’s said that if we repeat something 21 times it becomes a habit. Sometimes the number is different, but the idea is the same. Will power is only needed to repeat something enough times for it to become a habit.)

Eat slower. The body doesn’t feel full as fast as you can eat, so people tend to eat beyond full.

These are all great tips from regular people just like us. Most of them also happen to be common advice given by experts in safe weight loss. So ways to lose weight fast do exist, and they’re not something only doctors can know.

To enhance healthy diet and exercise I recommend Proactol, Proactol is a clinically proven fat binder with the backing of 4 clinical studies and endorsements from top health professionals from around the world.

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