Fitness Programs for Women: Four Essential Tips

Fitness programs for women are often wrought with bad advice and pseudoscience. It's no wonder that so many fitness programs for women utterly fail! There's plenty of great information out there, but it can be impossible to find amidst the gimmicks, fad diets, and ineffective workout routines. If you're looking for fitness programs for women that really work, try using the four following tips.

1. Lift Heavy Weights

Plenty of women make their way into the weight room now and again, but most are afraid that they'll get "bulky" if they lift too heavy. That's nonsense! It takes male bodybuilders years of dedicated effort to pack on muscle mass, and they've got testosterone and tons of food on their side. Not only will you not get "too big" by lifting challenging weights - you'll actually look better.

Lifts like squats, bench presses, deadlifts, and other heavy movements are great for stimulating your metabolism and packing on a little bit of lean mass. Whether or not you realize it, that's really what you want! The right amount of muscle gives you a lean, fit look that you simply can't achieve with cardio alone. Challenging yourself in the gym will also cause you to burn more calories, which means you get to eat more and still lose weight.

2. Low Fat is NOT Healthy!

Some nutritionists are still stuck in the 1980s' low-fat craze, but avoiding dietary fat is NOT going to get you the results you want. In fact, most "low-fat" products like crackers, pretzels, and other grain-based products will make it nearly impossible to get lean! They make your blood sugar levels skyrocket, which in turn causes your body to secrete tons of insulin - a hormone which actually makes your body store even more fat. If you're trying to get lean, ditch most of your carbs and eat plenty of olive oil, avocados, nuts, and even some red meat.

3. Ease Up on the Cardio

If you're going to start lifting heavy weights (which you should!), then you're also going to need to ease up on all of that cardio you're probably doing. Slaving away on a treadmill or elliptical is simply not necessary, and it eats up way too much of your time. It's great to do a few short sessions per week for your cardiovascular health, but hours upon hours of monotonous movement aren't going to help you lose fat.

However, there is a much better type of cardio for optimal fat loss: interval training! On a track, treadmill, elliptical, or exercise bike, simply alternate short bursts of all-out sprinting with longer bouts of active rest. For example, you might do eight rounds of fifteen-second sprints and forty-five second "jogs" on an elliptical machine. The whole thing will be over in under ten minutes, but the intensity of the workout will cause your body to burn more fat all day long.

4. Don't Under-eat

One of the worst things you can do in fitness programs for women is to eat too little. Your body is an adaptive machine, and it will respond to severe calorie restriction by slowing its metabolism way down. Have you ever noticed how lethargic, tired, and cold you get when you don't eat enough? Those are sure signs that your body is burning less fuel!

That's not to say that you shouldn't cut calories at all - your body does need a reason to use its fat stores for energy instead of your food. The key is to eat just little enough that you can burn fat while avoiding hunger. Focus first on the right food choices, and then start counting calories if you truly need to. Overall, it's best to take it slow and steady with your fitness programs for women and focus on losing no more than a pound per week.

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Weight Loss And The Proper Nutrition

Approaching the matter of nutrition and weight loss, we have to emphasize the two basic issues that nutrition itself is a culture of eating proper food in a proper manner. Let’s start with the first, proper food.

All cells and tissues in our body are formed by the food we eat. And also food is the energy source for our body functions. So, this can explain why proper food is so important.

Food is one of our strongest motivators. And unfortunately, most of us consider food to be a source of pleasure only!

Our bodies are not fixed statues – they are always in process, which we call metabolism.

Perception, memory and all the intricate complexities of bodily functions are possible because of having or producing enzymes, hormones and a thousand other wonders – that are produced in the body from what we eat.

As a source of energy our body uses carbohydrates (sweets), fat and protein. To be more specific, carbohydrates are the source of immediate energy, proteins are the body building blocks, and fats are the high-energy storage. But these roles sometimes overlap.

And faulty nutrition is the usual cause of illness!

At the same time, with correct choices we can prevent many food-related diseases such as heart attack (!), stroke, essential hypertension, diabetes and – even cancer!

More than a century ago, Ellen G. White, in "Counsels on Diet and Foods", shared her observation: "At mealtime cast off care and anxious thought. Do not feel hurried, but eat slowly and with cheerfulness, with your heart filled with gratitude to God for all His blessings". Isn’t it wonderful?

Just let me share with you part of our experience with nutrition and weight loss. If you haven't had any previous experience of following the simple principles I suggested when discussing how to reduce the amount of daily food, you might find them difficult to follow, but this is just on the face of it.

In reality it is much easier than it seems! And I promise, I’ll teach you how to master it. Because this issue of how to practice eating habits is essentially an important one!

The same food or eating process itself can bring you joy and fullness of life, or, on the other hand, if taken wrongly, can cause considerable damage to your health and even shorten your life!

How does overeating or eating the wrong food cause harm? The answer is: whatever food that our organism is not able to digest normally, becomes poisonous to us. Thus any poison will shorten our life!

This is the reason, why I suggest that my clients practice this: before starting to eat, gently close your eyes for a few moments, forget all your problems for a while and give yourself a smile! And then you can start eating.

Another recommendation is this: when eating, try to keep your eyes gently closed (or just turn your eyes away from the served food), while slowly chewing a small portion of food in your mouth.

Believe me, this process will bring you much more flavor, and benefits at the same time. Because just by doing this small thing you will lessen the portion of consumed meal by three to five times!!! (As I have already mentioned)

I would emphasize the importance of taking time to eat. When eating, if possible, make it a social occasion to communicate with your family or with your friends. But! (Always, there are some "buts"). If you decide to improve your eating habits, see if the company would be appropriate at this time, especially at the beginning. For this reason, it is better at first to have all the changes stabilized, so that you can resist any temptations...

But even when in difficult situations, we should never compromise basic principles of good nutrition. Always watch what you eat or drink!!! A well mannered person will know how to do this without compromising friendly relationships.

As we do this, we will have the added benefits of alertness, clear thinking, and a perception that is fully aware of life’s joyful events. But real joy comes from facing reality and patiently dealing with whatever life has to offer. If we take time to learn what is good for us and make a serious effort to put it into practice, we can expect to be rewarded with extra energy and a longer and happier life!

Let’s take a look at sweets. Which are conglomerates of simple sugars, most important of which is glucose. This simple sugar is the supplier of the most bodily energy. Penetrating into the blood stream it meets the constant need of all the cells. Due to insulin, glucose is able to pass through the cell membrane and become available for use.

At the same time, our bodies are capable of properly handling only a limited amount of simple sugars in a given period of time. When exceeded (if we eat too many sweets), the pancreas is forced to work overtime producing insulin for converting excess sugar into fat.

Small amounts of sugar will not do this, but we must remember that there is hidden sugar in most processed food and drinks. And this is the problem – we usually eat far more sweets than our pancreas can cope with!

Let’s see how we can avoid this problem. When we plan our diet we should give preference to the natural source of sweets, like fruits, then wheat, rice, potatoes, beans, and other starch-containing foods. Because these vegetable foods require quite a long period of time for to be digested, and simple sugar is released gradually. This allows our body to process this energy in an orderly fashion.

Latest scientific researches have revealed that: consuming excessive sugar (too many sweets) can lead to such problems as:

* Constipation.
* Causing dental caries by providing an ideal culture medium in the mouth, and by slowing down the internal fluid circulation in the teeth.
* Depression of the immune system, by interfering with the germ-killing capacity of white blood cells.
* Promotion of adult-onset diabetes.

Now we come to the practical application of the above for the weight loss. With the exception of some fruits the ideal diet will include only a minimal amount of sugar, and provide an abundance of complex carbohydrates such as those found in vegetables and whole-grain pasta.

Brigi G by Fit 4 Health

Best Way to Loose Baby Weight For Good - 7 Fat Burning Tips

The best way to loose baby weight is eat more nutritious foods and workout hard.
These are the 2 key themes of successful fat loss, and it is all about being consistent and making it a habit. Do it over time and you will find this second nature to your routine of caring for your family - give yourself time to focus on yourself.
Below are 7 simple tips you should incorporate into your fat loss journey.

Best Way to Loose Baby Weight
1. Choose and prepare foods with less salt. Reducing sodium, along with eating more fruits, veggies and low fat dairy foods is a great way to lose body fat. By making your own meals with fresh produce and wholemeal products, you know that your food is healthy.

2. Eat foods in all the different colors of the rainbow. This ensures you get as many vitamins and nutrients to fuel your body. Plan to eat out less, throw out all kinds of processed foods, and drink less sodas to improve your eating habits. Get this right and you'll be healthier.

3. Eat more protein. Why? Protein requires more energy to digest than other foods and thus may help you burn more calories. Protein helps to stabilize blood glucose levels and in turn reduces hunger by lowering insulin levels. The hormone insulin is known to stimulate hunger and encourage fat storage.

4. To get your leanest, firmest physique, you should incorporate strength training and high intensity interval workouts into your fitness program. The bonus here is, while upping the intensity, you will burn more extra calories and your body will continue to burn for a few hours after you finish. Best yet, this requires less time at the gym (approximately 30-40 minutes) than the standard cardio session - that means more time with the family!

5. Find your favorite sport - some people like boxing, some cycling and others aerobics. Find an activity you enjoy or else you'll lose motivation.

6. Encourage the whole family to participate. Getting the entire family involved is a great way to staying focused towards your goals. Research has shown that a support network is key component of your fat loss journey.

7. Be consistent with your efforts - get into a pattern of eating nutritious foods and staying active. Long term, this will become part of your healthy routine and the baby weight will come off.
A combination of healthy eating and properly designed total body workout are major factors to loosing baby weight - it is simple the best way to loose baby weight.

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6 Things Health Conscious People Do Without Questioning

There are a number of valuable reasons to buy organic food.

Non-organic food has herbicides, fungicides and pesticides, which are known to be toxic. Yes, they're only in small amounts, but these toxic substances when taken long-term, through frequent consumption, add up to something significant, especially if junk food is chosen regularly in the diet.

Organic food has better nutrition value because the toxins in the above are not present to denature the food's vitamins and enzymes (lose their molecular shape). Also, organic food is GMO free...

2. Eat a high percentage of raw food
On the subject of vitamins and enzymes raw food has a higher nutrition value than cooked food. For example, some food can have very little nutrition value because it contains many denatured vitamins and enzymes caused by the extreme temperatures (heating), unable to serve the body's metabolic requirements. The same effect occurs when deep freezing food.
It's not unusual for health conscious people to have a salad a day and have an overall diet of around 80% raw food.

3. Drink plenty of clean water
If someone put me on the spot and asked what I would say is the single most important contribution to health, I'd respond by recommending drinking more than an adequate supply of good clean water, because it's probably the most underrated factor that contributes to health. No wonder health conscious people are often seen drinking water!

4. Exercise regularly
Besides improving hormonal control such as blood sugar regulation, then there's better cardiovascular function, body mobility, muscle contraction, nervous function and other bodily functions, exercise also helps with alertness and cognitive ability thus increasing intelligence...
The recommendation is around 20-30 minutes exercise a day. The level of exercise depends on the individual and what is appropriate for them in terms of age and fitness.... Where appropriate, the more strenuous the exercise, the better. For example, frequent strenuous exercise gets you puffing and panting which in effect improves cardiovascular function.

5. Maintain a positive outlook
Many health conscious people are frequently seen up-happy. They frequently laugh, have their hopes and are optimistic! Usually, they find themselves having plenty to do in life that interests them. They appreciate the beauty in things... It's also worth a mention that meditation helps maintain good health.
 
6. Avoid toxicity
With the state of the world today it is increasingly difficult to avoid so many different environmental toxins such as air radiation, other pollution and low electromagnetic frequencies from applications such as the computer, Wi-Fi, mobile and phones... etc but health conscious people avoid chemicals from personal care and beauty products like toiletries, shampoo, hair sprays, creams and lotions... by choosing the natural non-toxic forms of these products.
As already mentioned toxicity is also avoided by choosing the organic option while avoiding junk food.

Source  Paul Phillips | Amazines 

How to Stay Fit During the Holidays

The holidays are a time to celebrate, and boy, do we make the most of it. We eat, we drink, we indulge and then we end up feeling like bloated whales by the time it's all over. It's almost an unspoken rule that, with the holidays, comes unlimited eating and skipped workouts, but this year, you have a choice.

You don't have to let every party become your own personal eating contest, and you don't have to let shopping take the place of your usual exercise routine. All it takes is flexibility, creativity and a new way of defining exercise.
Keep Moving
It's tempting to ditch your workouts as your days fill up with holiday preparations, parties and errands, but now more than ever, you need to stay active. Exercise will help you deal with added stress and give you energy for everything you need to accomplish. It will also help you manage your weight through the maze of parties and gatherings you'll be attending. If you have trouble sticking with your usual routine this time of year, come up with a new one. Forget the rules, lower your standards and do whatever you need to do to keep moving:

• Shorten Your Cardio. Pare down your cardio routine to whatever time you have, even if it's only 5 or 10 minutes. Choose activities that are easy to do at a moment's notice: walking, running, jump roping or cycling. Get the most out of the time you have by working at a high intensity. This sample 10-minute workout is a great place to start: 0:00 to 1:00 - Warm up with a brisk walk (outside or around the house)
  1:00 to 2:00 - Jumping jacks
  2:00 to 3:00 - Jump rope (pretend if you don't have a rope)
  3:00 to 4:00 - Run as fast as you can for 1 minute (in place or outside)
  4:00 to 5:00 - Speed skaters
  5:00 to 6:00 - Jumping jacks
  6:00 to 7:00 - Walk as fast as you can
  7:00 to 8:00 - Jump rope
  8:00 to 9:00 - Jumping jacks
  9:00 to 10:00 - Cool down and catch your breath
  Remember to work hard. Keep your perceived exertion at 8 or 9 for the entire workout.
  
• Exercise wherever and whenever you can. You already know to take the stairs, park far away and so on to get more exercise. This holiday season, wear a pedometer as you're running around, and see how many steps you can accumulate. Use every opportunity to get in more movement, whether it's parking on the opposite side of where you need to be or chopping down your own Christmas tree.
• Make it a family affair. As you gather together with your family, plan active things to do. Walk around the neighborhood to look at holiday decorations. Play football before the big meal at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Plan contests with the kids to see who can run the farthest or who can do the most push-ups. Challenge everyone to a snow-shoveling contest, and then build a snow person out of the remains. 

• Don't forget strength training. Maintain your muscle mass by paring down your routine to the basics. Choose compound, multi-joint movements to make sure you're getting the most out of your time. And, don't worry, you don't need any equipment to get a great workout.  Try this 10-Minute Body Weight Circuit.

Control Your Eating
Eating yourself into a coma seems inevitable during the holidays, what with all the yummy delights available. Treating every party as if it's an invitation to indulge, however, is a sure way to add pounds. Below are a few reminders for keeping the calories in check:

• Eat Before You Go. Rules to live by: never go grocery shopping while hungry, and similarly, never hit a holiday party on an empty stomach. You'll be less tempted to overindulge if your belly's full of something healthy.
• Choose One Treat. Once at the party, choose one thing to indulge in and make it good. No chips -- you can have those any old time. Pick something you only get during the holidays.
• Control Your Drinking. Alcohol is an easy way to consume more calories than you need, so avoid mixed or fruity drinks, and have a glass of water for every drink you consume. Also, definitely avoid the egg nog; it has up to 350 calories a cup.
• Don't Skip Meals. It's tempting to skip meals to make up for whatever nightmare food you'll eat later, but just like the empty-stomach rule, if you're starving, your rational mind will be unavailable for healthy food choices. Eat small meals all day to avoid going nuts at the buffet table.

However you deal with the holidays, make this the year that you don't gain extra weight. Make a decision to do everything you can to stay active and eat healthy while not depriving yourself of all the fun. Like everything else in life, it's all about moderation.

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How To Get and Stay Motivated To Exercise & Eat Healthy

How is it that in the past 3 years I’ve never taken more than 5 days off (due to injury) from being active?
3 years ago I remember waking up in South Korea at 2 pm with the worst hangover, an empty box of fried chicken to the right of my head, and almost nothing left in the Nutella jar to my left. This was a typical Sunday.
I felt disgusting, weak, and was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Then I realized that I had a choice. Did I want to continue feeling and acting like this? Only I had all the power to control the way I felt and looked. Ah ha! It dawned on me. The act of exercising and eating healthy was actually self respect, self love. I was clearly choosing to not respect and love myself!

After this realization did exercising become easy? F*uck no. The hardest part about it was my mind. I had to make a commitment to myself that I’d stop listening to the voice inside my head that always had so many excuses why to not workout or choose healthier options. I made a commitment to say YES when my mind said no.

I knew that it wouldn’t be easy, but I had to commit to myself FOR myself.
I tried to make it so easy for that it was hard to fail. I no longer bought Nutella and fried chicken. I no longer turned to partying as a release of stress. I looked for a gym to join. I told myself that I only needed to do 15 minutes of activity a day. I made a commitment to transform myself inside and out.
Slowly, I committed more and more to myself. It’s become less about the physical and more about the mental and emotional. The process is easier if you look at it as self respect and recognize that your mind will try holding you back. The challenge is making the choice that will lead to bettering yourself.
I encourage and challenge you to commit to loving yourself. Side affects include: happiness, self love, self control, and bountiful health.
 

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