Quickest Way To Lose Weight

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You really do need to know how to lose weight safely.

It is no good losing weight and getting sick or lethargic with a fad diet, damaging your health short, medium or even long term.

You might as well stay fat and unfit if you cannot lose weight safely.

How to lose weight safely involves 3 interconnected aspects.

1. A plan to lose weight that you follow every day and review regularly.

How long to lose weight?

Well, you aren’t going to like this, but the more slowly and deliberately you take weight off, the more chance you have of permanent weight loss than if you go for fast weight loss.

It is also better for your short medium and long-term health to take it 1/3 to 1/2 kilo per week on average.

This is how to really lose weight forever.

2. A balanced easy, simple diet. You have to ensure that you are putting enough energy into your body in the right nutritional balance to keep yourself at a healthy peak.

Take a good quality multivitamin every day to supplement your diet. If you are not spectacularly fond of fish, swallow some Omega 3 as well as your multivitamin.

You can find plenty of well priced vitamins if you want to shop on line at bodybuilding.com.

These 2 products should ensure that, with a simple easy diet, you will maintain good health.

3. A regular brisk exercise program 6 days a week. (Most people who lose weight safely and keep it off choose to walk as a central part of their exercise program).

Walking is low impact and therefore a good exercise for how to lose weight safely.

Once you have gained some fitness over a few months of walking, you can add in other styles of exercise with minimum strain to your body and energy levels.

Try to read your body so that you can tell the difference between your mind being lazy about exercise and your body saying, “I need a break, just a short breather”.

If you overtrain and/or under eat, you will be dragging yourself out of bed, tired before you begin the day.

You will tend to pick up coughs, colds and flu-like symptoms if you are overdoing it.

If after you’ve developed a healthy eating plan and a regular exercise routine , you are not looking forward to your energy giving food and mood lifting exercise every day, then you are probably wearing yourself out or perhaps forgetting to eat enough protein or to take your daily vitamins.

Document all that you do . Diet and exercise for each day must be accurately recorded and referred to if you are going to be logical about how to really lose weight safely.

If you are not, then you are simply doing a lot of unplanned guesswork.

Having the figures in front of you means that you can make informed decisions about tweaking your diet and exercise programs in order to continue to lose weight safely.

From the outset, you have to be fully aware that fat loss supplements are not magic weight loss pills that means you can lose weight without changing the eating and exercise patterns that have made you overweight.

You cannot throw down a few tablets every day, change nothing else and expect a miracle.

Think of competitive cycling or even athletics. All athletes take supplements to enhance their performance.

Some natural, some chemical. Some legal, some not.

If you or I get on a running track or road bike after taking a course of performance enhancing products, we are not going to have a snowflake’s chance in hell of being competitive (unless you’ve been training behind my back).

It’s the same with weight loss. You can buy products that act as an aid to hasten results when you are doing the right thing by your body.

When you combine these products with eating a healthy balanced diet and getting regular exercise you are on a winner for more rapid fat loss. Effective fat loss supplements may work by increasing your energy levels and metabolism. They may inhibit or “block” the conversion of carbs to fat. Don’t be tempted in your search for the best diet supplements to buy a smorgasbord of items and tip them all down your throat.

Apart from the obvious expense, you will have no idea which product is doing best for you.

Instead, experiment with a couple of complementary products and gauge their impact over a period of several weeks. They need time to work, like every other part of your lose fat, get fit program.

When you take a product in shake form, always mix it in either skim milk or water (an acquired taste, but you get used to it). Mixing in full strength milk will negate any fat loss benefits.

These shakes satisfy your hunger pangs , help to break down body fat and keep carb and fat intake to a minimum.

Popular natural supplements include caffeine and green tea. Caffeine is a natural stimulant found in tea, coffee and cocoa.

It will increase your awareness and alertness. It decreases fatigue and promotes fat burning at a high level. Green Tea aids weight loss and can be taken as a drink or in capsule format.

If you are interested in fat loss supplements as part of a bodybuilding program, you may like to download a FREE copy of this comprehensive supplement E-Book from bodybuilder.com

A 20 minute workout is a bit of a race against time.

You are trying to get everything done in the minimum period possible and while this is ok perhaps once or twice a week, it really is not ideal for your body or mindset.

However, if you are moderately fit and are looking for tips on hiit, go to high intensity interval training for some information and workout advice.

Your mind and body really deserve and need more time than 20 minutes a day to be spent on their maintenance.

An hour a day (with one rest day a week) enables you to exercise at a comfortable pace while gaining good results.

This amount of time gives both your muscles and mind the time they need to switch to exercise mode.

You may even find yourself forgetting your water or sweat bands or towel in your rush to get your workout over and done with.

Honestly, if you see your workout as something to do in as quick a time as possible, then perhaps you are not giving exercise the importance it needs to have in your daily life in order for you to embrace it.

However, if 20 minutes is all the time you can afford, then you have to ensure that you exercise intensely to get the results you crave.

If you are undertaking aerobic or cardio exercise , crank up the pressure throughout your brief workout. For a walk, jog or bike ride in the open air, find some hills or sets of stairs and set a cracking pace.

If you take the stairs 2 at a time, you will really work your glutes (you’ll soon feel what I mean). Interval workouts are useful, where you alternate a fast pace with a more moderate one. In the gym , your treadmill or elliptical trainer or exercise bike should be set to a high resistance. Put the treadmill on a steep slope for maximum benefit.

For weight training, a 20 minute workout is very intense. It can come totally unstuck if the gym is busy, because you should be doing your 20 minute workout with no rest between muscle group exercises.

If you want muscle mass, try lifting your heaviest set of weights first, then cut down the weight for your second set and lower again for your third set.

For lean muscle, just keep the weight low and concentrate on moving without pause between the machines.

A high intensity workout will raise metabolism . Cardio workouts done at this level will move into the anaerobic sphere, meaning that you will create an oxygen debt and increase your metabolism.

Your body will keep burning calories at an increased rate well after your 20 minute workout is over – assuming of course, that you put intense effort into your precious 20 minutes.

Weight lifting will also raise metabolism because by lifting weights, you are building muscle and muscle chews up more calories at rest than fat.

A 20 minute workout is not a high time commitment, but a big commitment in expending energy if you do it properly (and what’s the point of doing it, if you don’t do it properly?).

This type of exercise routine may suit you, but you may well end up somehow finding the time for longer workouts once you have experienced the intensity of this workout.

Losing fat is simple, but permanent weight loss is far from easy.

Most people who lose weight with or without dieting do not achieve permanent weight loss.

People lose weight in an amazing variety of ways according to the diet advice they choose to take, from liquid diets, to high protein diets , to Atkins, Weight Watchers, “idiot proof” diets, fat burning diets and beyond.

It is a matter of what works for your individual circumstances.

How you go about losing fat is quite an individual journey without many rules except the indisputable one.

You have to eat less than your body needs in order to lose weight.

That’s a given.

Once the fat is off, then what? Scientists at Brown and Colorado Universities have cllaborated to discover that while you can take whatever path gets you to goal weight, the methods you have to use to achieve permanent weight loss must include at least the following 3 tactics.

1. You have to stop dieting for weight loss and start eating for a weight control diet for life.

So although you can take in more calories once you reach goal weight, what you eat must be nutritionally sound. Never return to the eating habits that got you fat in the first place.

2. You have to keep moving . Don’t give up the exercise. Once you are fit and trim, you have to keep moving it or you’ll lose it.

3. Continue to monitor your weight and fat percentage. Keep a record in your weight control journal (remember it used to be your weight loss journal , but times have changed). Don’t get paranoid but be alert for any significant trends and fix them before they get out of control.

To maintain your goal weight and keep a hold of that wonderful positive feeling of having done what you once thought was an impossible dream, you have to use these 3 keys.

Keep EATING well. You know exactly how to do it. Keep u the regular EXERCISE. Exercise should have become an unshakable and thoroughly enjoyable habit by now.

When you slip up as we all do, FORGIVE yourself for the fall and get straight back into the diet and exercise that has done so much for you.

You will not fail to maintain your goal weight if you can follow this diet advice.

When can you start to believe that your weight loss is permanent? After 1 year at goal weight, you have a 60% chance of staying there.

After 2 years this increases to 75%. After than, you have only a marginal probability of slipping back into the poor eating habits and lack of exercise routine of the past.

Meal replacement products are a good option for you.

If you want to lose weight fast or kick start a long term diet and fitness program, consider meal replacements.

If you are training to build muscle bulk or lean muscle, protein rich shakes and bars give you a burst of energy prior to a workout.

After your workout, you can drink another shake to feed your muscles.

These products inhibit the conversion of carbs into fat and help to promote fat loss and the building of lean or bulk muscle, depending on the individual product and your exercise program.

Liquid meals and protein bars are very handy to keep at work or home for a quick alternative to fast or fatty food choices.

A protein bar or shake made on skim milk or water is going to beat a Mars bar for an energy boost every time.

The taste is just as good, but different. Give your tastebuds a bit of time, but no choice and they will learn to love this food option and not miss the fatty treat at all.

These products give you a feeling of fullness. They boost energy levels and increase metabolism and therefore work on burning your fat at an increased rate. You shouldn’t worry unduly about the “unnatural” or “chemical” nature of some meal replacements. Just be informed. Read labels and make sure that the product is suited to you.

You’d have to go a long way to find anything that is worse for you than the fatty fast foods and fizzy drinks being guzzled all over the world every second of the day.

Beware of drinks and bars that while low in fat are high in sugar. If you don’t work the sugar off in exercise, it will convert to fat deposits, as will excess carbs – much more readily than protein.

As with anything you eat, give these foods time to enter the stomach before you declare yourself still hungry and go on the hunt for more calories. Give the product 20 minutes and you should feel a pleasant, not uncomfortable full feeling.

For a variety of reasons, a home fitness program may suit you better than an exercise class or a gym membership.

Workout routines that you can follow in your own home are just as valuable for you as formal exercise classes or those involving working out with shared equipment.

A home fitness workout means you can assign time for your exercise when it suits you.

Whether you are an early riser or a night owl, so long as you have some basic equipment handy, you can complete your daily exercise routine.

The important thing to remember is that if you work out at home, you have to be extra vigilant that you actually do complete your program, rather than thinking, “I’ll start again tomorrow”.

Exercise amnesia being what it is, you will end up exercising rarely but fooling yourself that you are working out almost every day.

For that reason, you need to write down the important data related to your exercise each day: time taken, intensity, calories burned and any relevant comments.

This data should be displayed prominently.

The fridge is a great place; you’ll never miss it there. Or it could be written each night in your weight loss journal. See my pages on Calorie Counting and Weight Loss Journals for more useful information on this topic.

What sort of exercise you do depends on what you enjoy and what sort of movements and intensity suit your situation.

This may well change over time as you gain flexibility, cardio endurance, strength and confidence.

Have a look at my review of Turbulence Training, a quick,simple and fun exercise program that you can do anywhere with little or no equipment.

Many people work out to Yoga DVDs or Fitness DVDs . For many of these videos, all you need are loose fitting or stretchy clothes and a yoga mat to soften the impact on your body of floor exercises and to stop you from slipping when holding a pose. A treadmill or stationary bike is another great alternative. You can read a book or magazine or watch TV or hold a conversation while you complete your exercise.

Try to keep going for at least 10-15 minutes when you start out, but go at a low level of resistance.

Increase the length of time first till you are doing around 45 minutes and then increase the difficulty of the exercise by cranking up the resistance of the machine.

You should get used to the time the exercise will take before putting any pressure on your workout.

Consider consulting an online personal trainer for a home fitness option. You can access a reputable trainer very rapidly on the net and their conversations with you will be tailored to your exact needs.

Having an expert to talk to in private can make all the difference.

If your main reason for wanting to work out at home is a feeling of anxiety about getting fit in public, you may need to address the root cause of your negative feelings so you can get to the gym and go out for mood lifting walks.

A home fitness program is however a flexible option if you have the self discipline to see it through.

Looking for good health magazines?

Want a fitness magazine that suits your individual interest? You are spoiled for choice in the modern marketplace.

What should you look for in diet and fitness magazines?

Well, as fascinating as they are, celebrity endorsements do not mean much.

Celebrities often make a nice little earner out of putting their names and photos to a lot of stuff they don’t use and sometimes have never even really heard of.

Sometimes, celebrities find out about diet and fitness programs they are supposed to be on only by chance when they open a magazine themselves.

Celebrity style magazines can be fun, but they are not to be taken seriously for diet and fitness.

Magazines that tout offers that are too good to be true are not going to help your dieting program or your fitness levels either.

Be wary of publications with lots of before and after photos that are supposedly taken 12 weeks apart. Sure, the subjects hold up a newspaper with the date on it for “proof” but how long had that paper been lying around the studio before it get photographed? Have an even closer look at the after photos. Notice the stylish haircut and colour, the professional makeup, the fake tan, the flattering clothing and angle of the photo.

Get the picture? These magazines are not the best way of spending your money.

Aim to buy a health or fitness magazine that has a regular feature on a specific interest of yours, be it training tips or an expert advice page.

Consider a magazine that has some longevity and therefore credibility like anything that comes out of the Joe Weider stable. Joe Weider has been the great force of fitness publications for over 40 years.

His brother Ben has a special interest in women’s fitness and is editor of publications specifically aimed at improving the health and fitness of women. I read the Australian version of his “Oxygen” magazine which comes out every 2 months.

The best health and fitness magazines will rely not on sensational claims, but on informative articles about eating and exercising well.

Weight training has been the preferred exercise of body builders since Roman times.

But now, it seems whatever fitness article or fast weight loss programs you peruse, you are confronted with the gym option, like it or not.

While walking is the best regular cardio or aerobic exercise for permanent weight loss, weight lifting is how you are going to tone up your lean muscle or even gain muscle mass, depending on what you want to achieve.

If you want to get lean from weight trainin, you need to lift light weights plenty of times. That means you may have the weight on the lowest setting but lift it as much as 20-25 times in each set.

This will ensure that your muscles are worked, but that they lean out, rather than bulk up. A whole body session once or twice per week in the gym is enough for you to gain lean muscle if you combine this with 45 minutes of aerobic style exercise 4 times per week.

If it is muscle mass you are after, you need to split your body part workouts up so that you can target each muscle group very specifically once per week.

Try to combine body parts that “go together” for each session so that no part of you gets over strained. One part can rest while you exercise the other alternately. Pecs and triceps go together well, as do biceps and back. Legs can be your 3rd session of the week. Of course, you can target abs on every visit – they are going to take a lot of work plus attention to diet to make them stand out.

If you are an ectomorph body shape or “hard gainer” and want to build muscle mass, there are specific things you need to do differently from people who are endomorph or mesomorph in shape.

To gain muscle,while losing fat you need to do less reps at much higher weight than people who want to get lean. You have to make the muscle group burn with plenty of blood pumped to the area to achieve the progress you are after.

Once you work up to very high weights, you should be doing as few as 3-4 reps per set. It will take time to work up to this level and you have to ensure that you start off slowly so as not to cause damage to any muscle groups.

Whether you train for lean muscle or to gain muscle, weight training must be done with good form. That means that you have to get the movement right or you will not be maximising your results.

You also have to take each rep slowly. Most people don’t. Gyms are full of men and women who race through every rep and set.

These people are getting 2 things wrong.

They are lifting weights without regard to form. For example, many are swinging their arms or backs in order to lift more, but this is not going into the muscles that should be getting worked. It’s a waste of time.

These people are not maximising the nature of the exercise. If you go slow, your muscles are required to work harder to hold the weight.

If you go as slowly as is comfortable on both positive (weight being lifted) and negative (weight being returned) parts of each rep you are going to build mass or lean out much more quickly than if you cheat the exercise with poor form and speed.

You may have been told that calorie counting is not necessary to lose fat and get fit.

Well, that’s sort of right and sort of wrong.

No, you do not have to go in for counting calories if you want to lose weight.

But if you don’t count calories, then you have to count something else, like points in a Weight Watcher’s Diet or grams of protein, carbohydrates and fats if you want to be very technical and precise about your low fat eating habits.

You must accurately measure what you are eating as well as how much energy your exercise takes up.

Take it as read that you have to measure what you are eating in some way.

By far the easiest way to accurately measure your energy intake and output is by using a calorie counter.

You could go for counting kilojoules, but most people find the huge numbers used in this measurement to be rather off putting and difficult to handle. Record your findings daily in your weight loss journal .

Counting calories is easy with most food products because all processed and packaged foodstuffs that are sold to you come with nutritional information on the side of the packet. For all other items of food you eat, such as fruit and vegetables, get yourself a cheap little calorie counter book that will give you not only the calories in the food you have chosen, but valuable information on whether it is low fat and what proportion of protein and carbohydrates it contains.

You will need to use a set of kitchen scales to help in your measuring. Do not rely on estimation and approximation. People always tend to underestimate portion size in a wishful thinking type way.

It is a proven fact the world over that people who undertake daily counting of their calories by recording, analysing and reflecting on accurate dietary figures are most likely to attain and maintain their goal weight.

That should be incentive enough for you to take up this worthwhile practice.

Choose a quiet moment at the close of your day to write down your stats.

Reflect on what you have achieved throughout the day and what you should modify for the next.

If you count calories as part of your daily routine and analyse what you have eaten and when, you can even start to make connections between what you eat, when you eat it and why you eat it.

If, for example, you eat because you are bored or lacking energy in the long afternoon, you can change this habit because you have recognised and acknowledged the connection.

You can do something very positive to fix the problem once you have the tools to pinpoint it.

Counting calories is very important for your health and fitness. Knowing the proportion of proteins, simple and complex carbohydrates, high and low fat foods and vitamins and minerals you consume is an integral part of good practice.

The tactic of counting calories will set you up for a big win in your efforts to lose fat and get fit.

Why should you boost metabolism?

What is metabolism anyway and what advantage will you gain in order to burn fat?

Metabolism is the rate at which your body burns fuel while at rest. Some people have a naturally slow or fast metabolism, but what you eat and drink and how you exercise can affect the rate at which you are able to burn fats.

Here are 5 simple and effective ways to get motivated and boost your metabolism.

1. Drink water. At least 2 litres per day, more if it is hot and more if you are exercising heavily. When you are dehydrated, your metabolism drops markedly.

If you drink half a litre at least 4 times a day, you can raise your metabolism by 30%. Another advantage of increasing your water intake is that water makes you feel full without adding calories, staving off hunger cravings.

2. Eat breakfast. This meal is least likely to become body fat as your body burns up what you eat for breakfast throughout the day.

Breakfast kick starts your metabolism and sets you up for the day, so you should never skip it. Eat the right foods and you will create a calorie deficit.

3. Avoid alcohol and saturated fats. Saturated fat should make up no more than 10% of your daily calorie intake (but you can have another 20% worth of unsaturated fats, which are great energy boosters).

Both alcohol and bad fats will slow down rather than boost metabolism. They make you feel sluggish and disinclined to workout.

4. To increase your metabolism through exercise, either break up your routine into several shorter sessions or simply do more incidental exercise throughout your day.

Climbing the stairs instead of taking the lift, walking to a colleague’s desk rather than sending an email, parking further from the office and walking the distance and playing actively with the kids or dog will all help to increase your metabolic rate.

Look for ways to increase your incidental activity and your metabolic rate will improve.

5. The more muscle you have as opposed to fat, the better your metabolic rate will be. This applies to both lean and mass muscles.

As well as weighing heavier than fats, muscles require more energy than fat at rest, so the more toned and fit you are, the faster your metabolism will be.