Weight Loss Guide

There are thousands upon thousands of advice claiming to be the best weight loss tips floating around on the internet. I’ve tried to pull together the most useful that you may not have come across before and put them all in this article.

Keep a journal of your food intake

We often kid ourselves about exactly what we’re putting in our mouths. Keeping a detailed, specific journal can often really open your eyes about your calorie intake and your ratios of fat, carbs and protein. In order to accurately journal your intake, you’ll need to have a kitchen scale…

Weigh your food

We’ve grown used to having enormous portions and we aren’t used to estimating by eye exactly what we’re consuming. Often we only get the scales out when following a recipe. Never estimate cups by eye: always use a proper measuring cup. One cup is only 250ml, the size of a small coffee cup. Which brings me to…

Don’t drink your calories

Prepared drinks can be incredibly fattening. A Starbucks large cappuccino can be up to 180 calories. One small glass of orange juice is 100 calories. A can of Mountain Dew is 110 calories. A cola is 100 calories per can – and we all know people who can drink a 6-pack per day. Your best bet is water – your body needs water to hydrate it, not sugary liquids.

See your goal

Quite often we say to ourselves “I want to lose weight” or “I want to get skinny” but without any precise definition of where we want to end up. Pick a specific weight – perhaps with the help of your doctor or a BMI chart – or a specific dress size. Be realistic – if you’re 5ft10, you’re never going to weigh 120lbs.

Once you’ve got your specific goal in mind, visualise that goal. If you’ve been that weight before, try to find a photo of yourself at that weight and put it somewhere prominent. If you don’t have a photo, try using a virtual model generator – try mvm.com for a free online service.

Make your choices rationally

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Have a specific plan in mind for how you will reach your goal. I would advise against setting a time-frame – it can be de-motivating if the weight doesn’t come off quickly enough. Specific actions could be: eat no more than 1800 calories per day, join a gym and go at least 3 times per week, eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables every day, do not eat takeout.

Now when you’re faced with one of those decisions – such as “It’s Friday night and I don’t have any food in the house, maybe I’ll just get a pizza delivered” – think about the choice you’re making. Is your choice going to help, or hinder you, in getting to your goal? Each time you make a hard decision to stay on your path to health, those decisions will get easier.

Believe you deserve it

It’s been my experience that many of us who struggle with our weight have issues with confidence and self-esteem. Quite often this can be a vicious circle – we eat badly, so we weigh more, so we despise ourselves, so we eat more, so we weigh more… it just goes around and around. You need to drop a brick wall in front of that train of negative thought.

You may feel right now that your body is an inconvenience and an embarrassment. But treating it badly is never going to change that. As long as you keep feeding it rubbish and denying it exercise, it’s going to stay the same state – or get worse. You must make a commitment to yourself to treat your body with respect – because it’s part of you, and you deserve respect.

If right now you can’t grasp that – if you can hear it but not believe it – behave as if you believe it anyway. Once you start respecting your body, and it begins to respond to that respect by losing fat, becoming more responsive, giving you less pain, you will start to respect it anyway, and thereby yourself.

Celebrate success, but don’t punish failure

If you’ve had a slip-up, given in to temptation, it’s easy to say “Well, this day is ruined, so I may as well eat like a pig for the rest of it.” Then the day becomes a week… the week becomes a month… then it’s “til after my birthday”… and before you know it, it’s next year and you’re another 20lbs heavier.

When you do slip up – and we’re only human, it will happen – don’t give in to despair or self-loathing. Just say to yourself, “OK, I made a mistake. I’ll just get back on track now and the rest of the day will be fine.” If you’re able, add some more exercise to offset the extra intake.

Don’t try to punish yourself for being human. You’ve already punished yourself by eating something unhealthy.

On the more cheerful side, when you’ve reached a milestone, celebrate. It’s good to have a list of mini-goals on your journey, and what you’ll do to celebrate each one. A new outfit, a pair of shoes, a hair cut, a spa treatment – whatever you like, as long as it’s not a food treat!

With this list of weight loss tips, you’ll be ready for your journey to health.

Karen Barr is a mother, designer, and lifelong dieter. She owns and operates TopFastWeightLoss.com, a dieter’s resource for weight loss news, reviews, tips and opinion.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6156248

The key to unlocking metabolic weight loss is something most women desperately need to lose weight and look great without suffering due to our complex hormones and bodies.

Using your body’s own metabolism to burn calories day and night, even when we’re sleeping, is a dream situation for most people looking to drop inches quickly, and it can be frustrating when we feel our own body is working against our weight loss plans by keeping our metabolic weight loss levels ultra-low.

Luckily Asian women have mastered how to get skinny and stay lean even just after having a baby, and you can learn their metabolic weight loss tricks for losing fat and keeping it off even as you eat your favorite foods!

Metabolic Weight Loss – The Skinny Asian Way

You can learn different ways to boost your metabolism from so many sources online, in books, and on the television, that it can be confusing and overwhelming to cut through the nonsense and find the best path. Between the false “before-and-after” pictures and the endless fake “guarantees” it’s easy to get lost when trying to find actual information.

And while you’re not going to learn ALL of the best metabolic weight loss techniques that Asian women use to get trim tummies and lean legs from just a single short article online, you CAN pick up some great tips that will get you started on the right road:

1. BOOST your metabolism to the next level with these foods – Asian women have known for generations that to lose weight quickly requires that certain food be eaten more often than usual.

Skinless chicken, fish, tofu, eggs, soy, meat, and other lean protein foods are ideal because they elevate your metabolism greatly versus bread, pasta, sweets, or other carbohydrates.

Lean protein forces the body to use more energy to process the food through our system, and that energy requires calories…calories that otherwise would be going to your thighs! Just by switching to lean protein food items at each of your 3 major meals will elevate your metabolic weight loss by up to 25%…which is nearly 300 “free” calories per day!

2. This one SIMPLE move will trigger metabolic weight loss for hours – No one wants to spend hours in the gym or watching fitness DVDs trying to lose weight while going hungry and feeling awful.

Instead you can tap into one of the best metabolic weight loss methods simply by doing a set of stretches as soon as you wake up each morning. This is why you often see Asian women in the park doing slow-motion Kung Fu moves (we call it Tai Chi, don’t laugh at us, haha) right after the sun rises, because we know how powerful the fat-burning effect is the rest of the day.

You don’t have to join us in that park, don’t worry. Instead simply get out of bed and begin doing large body stretches like touching your toes with your legs straight, reaching for the sky and trying to touch the ceiling, etc. Add a few basic yoga poses (the easy ones are fine) and you’ll elevate your metabolic rate by up to 20% versus the normal routine of just hopping into the shower or eating breakfast!

3. Believe it or not, how you SLEEP determines your metabolism level – It can’t be any easier than this…sleeping actually stimulates the production of a hormone called “HGH” or “Human Growth Hormone” that regulates our metabolic weight loss levels in a huge way.

If you’re not getting enough sleep, or stress is causing you to miss out on your usual full night’s rest, it’s a good bet your HGH levels have fallen dramatically without you knowing it.

To create an environment that lets you get the most out of your sleep time be sure to shut off the computer, TV, DVD player, or any other distraction at least 30 minutes before bedtime. Spend that time doing a soft meditation where you tell yourself that everything is OK and you’re going to be fine. You WILL achieve your goals.

Meditation is one of the key ways Asian women knock off excess weight, and regulate our metabolic weight loss efforts. It’s extremely powerful and it works, try it tonight!

4. If you just can’t lose weight EVER, try this secret tip – I know it can be depressing, but if you’re upset because nothing has worked you need to learn one of the most powerful secret free methods that Asian women do to force fat off of their belly and thighs in less than a month…WITHOUT starving or doing crazy workouts.

This method works fast and is very simple, the full details on how to do it are in the free report here: Metabolic Weight Loss. I actually do it myself while relaxing on the couch watching TV, and it works amazingly well.

Click on the link and learn the trick yourself before it’s gone: http://www.skinnyasiandiet.com/free-book.htm

Love and good health always,

Catherine Cheng – Founder, The Skinny Asian Diet

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5970631