Weight Loss Article - Fad diets

January 12th, 2007 webmaster

Every now and them we all tend to look into the mirror and cast a critical eye on our bodies. The internal monologue goes something like this: “I’d say that my ass looks… biggish. Could be the clothes are badly designed. Oh, who am I kidding? I’ve been eating a lot of sweets and junk food lately, so no wonder I’m putting on weight.” The usual result of these pangs of culinary guilt is a hasty decision to swear off junk food and an evening or two spent searching the Internet for diets and eating plans. This is the way people run into the latest dieting craze that can make anybody slim and vastly improve the quality of life, too.

Unfortunately, the first thing people do when they accept that a couple of extra pounds have found their way around the waist is to panic and look for the fastest way to get rid of them. This is a big mistake. The quick fix is just that and it will always and forever be nothing else. And any problem that gets a quick fix is not really going away at all. So, instead of going for the latest diet that will make you lose and incredible number of pounds in just a few days or weeks, try to chose a diet that takes a little longer and is not nearly as hard on you.

The “lose weight instantly” diets are based mostly on losing body water. This is a silly idea because you will put the weight right back on with a couple of glasses of water. You’re not trying to lose water, but body fat so stay away from these diets. Good diets need time to work for you and losing one pound per week is actually a good rate. Losing three pounds per week sounds way better, but it’s a big mistake. Anything more than two pounds per week is bound to be loss of lean tissues that make up the muscles. The basic idea is that the faster you go, the more muscle mass you lose; slow diets make sure that what goes out is fat.

The biggest problem is that quick weight loss schemes can turn into a vicious circle. The more muscles mass one has, the faster the metabolism and very little of the food intake gets to be stored as fat. But if the diet makes you lose muscle mass, then your metabolism slows down and the accumulated fat is burned slower and slower. As you can see, a bad diet makes it harder for you to lose weight. Starving yourself is a bad idea because your metabolism has to function at the proper speed in order to help you lose weight.

Not to mention that eating the right kind of food is important because you need calories to give your body the staying power it needs through the diet. There is a difference between feeling hungry while your body adjusts to less food and feeling starved because you’re not getting the required daily amount of calories. The food you eat also gives you the energy needed to burn fat through physical effort. You can’t go to the gym or run in the park if you’re about to faint every time you get up from the chair. So the next time you feel like diet time, chose wisely. There’s a big difference between dieting and starvation.

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Weight Loss Article - Do Men Burn More Fat than Women?

January 11th, 2007 webmaster

Men and women are not built the same way. There is something different in our bodies due to the way hormones change the balance between muscle and fat and shape the size of our bones to respond to different needs later on. In men, the testosterone hormone determines the size of bones, causes hair growth and deepens the voice. It also regulates the size of the muscle mass, which it turn regulates the metabolism. The more muscle mass, the faster a person burns the calories obtained from food, which is one of the big differences between men and women and between overweight people and those who are fit.

It’s an easily recognizable fact that men and women training side by side do not have the same results. Recent studies have found that women gain weight faster than men and that they have a harder time getting rid of it through exercise. It seems that women have the misfortune of being stuck with the worst part of the weight loss process and also with having to work twice as hard as men to stay in shape. And since this is no easy task for men, you can imagine how bad the ladies have it.

Another thing that makes it even worse for the ladies is the modern obsession with a thin body. Repeated attempts to drop the extra pounds teach the body to hang on to the existing fat and so weight loss becomes harder and harder as the years pass, while the women become more and more desperate and willing to try even half-baked ideas that should simply be avoided. This leads to dieting that makes the person thinner, but not healthier. Quite on the contrary actually, since there are enough emaciated, rail-thin ladies around to serve as example.

A recent study published by the BBC showed that 62 obese women who exercised 4 hours per week and learnt how to cook healthier meals felt a tremendous improvement in their self-image. They lost only 9 pounds over three months, but their blood pressure, cholesterol and heart rates were far better. And they felt much better. So, maybe women should start to move away from achieving a certain weight to just staying healthy and feeling good regardless of weight. Maybe this is indeed the future of the weight loss industry: to help people feel better about themselves instead of harming their bodies while chasing a dream.

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Weight Loss Article - Diet secrets of Hollywood stars

January 10th, 2007 webmaster

Diets come a dime a dozen in Hollywood. They practically fall out of the sky. Any doctor or layman who manages to have an original idea or, at least, a new twist on an old idea, and is marginally successful in selling it to the public is thinking of setting up a shop in Hollywood. There’s probably no other place on Earth where diets and any other idea that could keep a body slim are so venerated as in Hollywood. Hundreds of young women and men (and some of them not so young) employ personal trainers and are up to date on the latest dieting trends because it’s good for their jobs to do so.

The general public is also interested in finding out the dieting secrets of movie stars and singers. They think that actors might have some tricks up their sleeves if they manage to stay so slim and good-looking through the years. Actually it’s not quite like that. Actors and singers are normal human beings. They have their unique genetic make-ups which means that no single diet works for everybody. So each one of them tries a couple of diets in order to find out which one suits him or her. Moreover, not all Hollywood stars stick to their diets. The crave for a treat does not discriminate.

Celebrities don’t have some sort of secret knowledge that opens the path to a beautiful body. Most of them get their tips just as the rest of the people do. They hear them from hairdressers and make-up girls. They get them from agents and publicists. Or they follow the latest fashionable trainer or dietician, just as they pick up on the latest philosophies or mystical experiences. Moving from Atkins to cabbage soup is not more complicated than dropping Buddhism in favor of Kabbalah. Some stars hire people who know a lot about diets to make these decisions for them.

All these famous people have to deal with the same kind of issues we all do. Sticking to a diet is hard on them, too, so they eat things they shouldn’t and resent the fact that they can’t do it all the time. They worry about the effects of such and such diets on their skin and they don’t look all that great all the time. But for every star there’s a small army of lighting experts, make-up artists, beauticians, image editing and visual effects people who work hard to make sure that the faces we see on screens and in magazines look perfect. No blemishes, no unsightly skin, no sagging anywhere. Just perfection.

One thing that could be said for Hollywood stars is that they work harder at their diets than most people. It’s very important for their jobs and popularity and so they try really hard to stay in shape and look good everyday. They’re not dieting experts and it’s unrealistic to expect them to be so. They’re good at other things and we’re content with them being that way. So, the bottom line is that there really is not secret to Hollywood dieting. Just the will to carry on and the struggle to stay fit.

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