This patient support community is for discussions relating to dieting,
alcohol and dieting, balanced menus,
diabetes, success stories,
exercise,
metabolism,
healthy dieting, healthy snacks, holiday tips, and nutrition. Also covered are discussions relating to specific diet plans like the South Beach Diet, Atkins Diet, Slim-Fast, Weight Watchers, Counting Calories, Fat Flush, Body for Life and others.
why do you need to lose to fast? any special occasions?
Weightwatchers has a quick start program now. You might want to check it out.
There's a great site that has lots of healthy recipes, feel free to check it out:
http://buzz.prevention.com/show/
If you ever heard that by eating low-fat or no-fat foods you can lose weight, well in reality, that’s just half the story. Most people, when trying low-fat diets, go to the store and start reading labels and look for zero-fat products. Well, what if you love spaghetti – on the label it says, “zero fat.” So then you start looking at the spaghetti sauce and it has almost no fat... and then there’s the “no-fat” cakes and cookies – and all that other stuff. So then people think, “Great, I can eat all I want.” They eat almost no fat at all – and end up GAINING weight! That’s why you need to know the other side of the story.
If you eat only low-fat foods, most of them are low in fiber and also very high in carbs. Because they are low in fiber you have to eat more to feel full. It’s like trying to fill up a sink that has no stopper. Eventually you can get it to fill up – but it takes a lot more water to do it. So. When you eat more, you take in more calories than you need and your body stores the extra carbs and calories as fat. That’s the other side low-fat diet. Unless you eat low-fat and high fiber, at the same time, you’re not going to lose weight.
Then, there’s the subject of exercise.... So many people assume that in order to lose weight, they have to constantly do strenuous exercise....And in reality, this isn’t the case either. Now, to understand how exercise effects weight-loss, you have to understand how your body creates energy, and there are only 2 ways it does it. One is by burning fat and the other is by burning blood sugar, or glucose. Even when you’re not doing anything strenuous your body still burns fat. It’s known as “Resting Metabolic Rate.” So, when you’re sitting at a desk, driving a car, watching TV, or even sleeping, your body is still burning fat. But, as soon as you increase your level of activity, like when your heart starts beating faster and you have to breathe heavily, your body will stop burning fat and instantly begin to burn blood sugar – because blood sugar can be converted to energy much faster than fat; so anytime your level of activity suddenly increases your body stops burning fat and burns only blood sugar.
And, when it comes to exercise, most people trying to lose weight make a big mistake of doing the wrong kinds of exercise. Jogging, biking, and aerobics are great for the heart, lungs and circulation, but they do not burn fat or condition the body to burn fat.
Now, the ideal approach is to lose weight without a lot of hard exercising. We still encourage people to exercise – after all, it’s good for you... but it’s not mandatory. Some people find that once they start losing weight quickly and feel great – they actually WANT to exercise.
Now, if that’s the case, what they should do is called Anaerobic exercise, or exercise that increases your heart rate, but not too much... and two of the best kinds of exercise for losing weight are walking (at a nice steady pace) every other day... and weight lifting. These will condition your body to burn fat And when I say”weight-lifting,” I’m talking about getting a couple of small dumbells and working out slowly for 20 minutes every other day (biceps on Monday, triceps on Tuesday and no exercise on Wednesday... Biceps on Thursday, triceps on Friday and nothing on Saturday, etc. This builds lean muscle and muscle burns fat. The more muscle you have, the more fat your body will burn.