Weight Watchers recipes and Success Stories: March 14

Showing posts with label March 14. Show all posts

Lose Belly Fat Naturally: 7 Useful Tips

In some people, fat accumulates in the hips, thighs, and buttocks. Others find fat accumulating in their midsection or stomach.

While excess fat in any area is bad, visceral fat or fat that accumulates in the abdomen is more dangerous. It increases the risk of developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

If you are wary of medical treatments and weight-loss pills, you may want to know how to lose belly fat naturally.

Exercise and diet changes are the best ways to lose belly fat naturally. There are also other steps you can take to reduce belly fat safely.

How to Lose Belly Fat Naturally

1. Get a good night’s sleep. You need 6-8 hours of sound sleep to maintain a healthy body. When you are sleep deprived, your metabolism drops by 10-15%.

Sleep deprivation also causes glucose intolerance and increases the production of cortisol, causing you to feel hungry. Getting enough sleep helps reduce fat storage in the body.

2. Don’t skip breakfast. Mom was right. A good breakfast jumpstarts your metabolism and gives it a boost. Eat more proteins for breakfast.

You’ll feel full longer and prevent food cravings that will have you eating more. Eating breakfast will help you lose body and belly fat naturally.

3. Consume low-calorie, nutrient-dense food. Eat more fiber-rich foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds and legumes. Choose lean cuts of meat and low-fat or fat-free dairy products.

Avoid highly processed foods that contain high amounts of sodium, fats and sugar. Healthy foods will help you lose belly fat naturally.

4. Perform cardiovascular exercises. Cardio workout should be done for at least 30 minutes to encourage fat burning. Brisk walking, jogging, biking, swimming, and kickboxing are excellent forms of aerobic or cardio exercise.

5. Develop your abdominal muscles. Targeting your abs will help tone and flatten your belly.

Some of the best abs exercises that will help you lose belly fat naturally include crunches, sit-ups, leg raises, and pelvic tilts.

6. Get stronger. Lift weights to develop your muscles and increase muscle mass. Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat does, even while at rest.

When your muscle mass increases, your metabolic rate will also increase. Your body will burn more calories and you will lose belly fat naturally.

7. Eat less but eat more often. Have a light snack once every two to three hours between meals to increase the rate of your metabolism. Snack on fruits, vegetables, healthy nuts, and other natural foods. Include whole-grain cereals in all your meals.

Whole grain cereals are high in fiber, low in calories, and will keep you feeling full longer. Try some fat-burning foods that will help you lose belly fat naturally.

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Secret Weapon Busy Moms Use to Lose Weight Fast

Any busy mom that has successfully lost weight has discovered the ultimate secret weapon to shedding those unwanted pounds. Something that will keep you accountable. It will also show you patterns in how you eat, when you eat and the reason why you’re eating.

What is this magical thing busy moms have discovered?

A food journal. Wait before you roll your eyes and think you don’t have the time – find out why this one thing can help you. You’ll be able to shed that fat faster. Those unwanted pounds that you just can’t seem to lose no matter what.

Why Does a Food Journal Work?

Reason #1 – Exhibit More Self Control and Eat Less

A journal keeps track of what you’ve eaten. This helps in the middle of the day when you realize you haven’t eaten all day. Usually you’d eat a meal and add way more calories because you are now starving. But since you’ve been journaling you know this pattern and eat a breakfast in the morning. So, you don’t add those unwanted calories.

why food journalling works

Reason #2 – Accountability

Being accountable for what you eat, will help motivate you to eat healthier.

Knowing you have to write down the calories for a cupcake or a soda is enough deterrent to not eat or drink those two options. You will eat less because you know you’ll have to record it later.

Reason #3 – Records Vital Information

With a food journal you don’t just record calories. You’ll record other information like the time you ate, why you ate, how hungry you were feeling and what your reactions to that food were afterwards.

You’ll learn if you eat more during certain times of the day. Or maybe you eat because you are watching TV. Being aware of when you eat and if you are actually hungry while you are eating will help you change the behavior. You’ll be able to find a hobby to do instead.

Recording how you feel after each meal is a great motivator. If you record that you had a huge energy boost after you eat an apple or protein bar you’ll be more encourage eating more of those foods.

Whereas if you eat a bag of chips and don’t feel like doing anything after or are irritable you are more likely to avoid junk food. Being aware of your reactions is half of the battle.

Busy moms gain weight for a variety of reason – you overeat from stress, you don’t eat in the morning and then eat too many calories when you do grab a bite. You don’t notice how much you eat during meals or snacks.

With a food journal you’ll be able to manage or eliminate all of these challenges. In fact recording all of this information will help you lose those unwanted pounds by figuring out how many calories you are eating in a day and where they are coming from. As you can see the food journal is your secret weapon if you are having problems shedding that extra weight.

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Weight Loss Challenges and Hormones: The Hidden Connection

One of the most frustrating things you can probably experience is doing your best to lose weight, and not seeing the results that you want to see. This is not uncommon and a lot of people go through this infuriating episode in their lives on a regular basis.

Why is it more difficult for some people to shed the pounds while others are just burning these off with the same amount of effort? Is something stopping you from succeeding in your goal to lose weight?

You might not be aware of this, but your weight loss efforts may be ineffective due to your hormones. Yes, an increase or decrease in the levels of certain hormones can hinder attempts to lose weight, and in order for you to succeed in attaining your fitness goals, you need to address these imbalances first. What hormonal imbalances may be reducing your weight loss chances? Here are some of them:

Hormones For Weight Loss

Leptin – this is a hormone that is released by body fat, and this tells your brain that you need to burn more calories and to eat less. There are times however when your body has too much fat that leptin is produced too much, which then results in what is called leptin resistance.

This is when your brain becomes somewhat immune to the signals that come from such a hormone. You will need to remove the leptin resistance from your system before weight loss efforts can show any substantial results.

Cortisol – when you are stressed, cortisol is the hormone that is produced. This is what prepares you to either fight or flee. While this is all right in small doses, with how lives are being lived these days, people are constantly under a lot of stress, which means a body is bombarded by too much cortisol.

This is not good.

Too much of this hormone in your system makes you crave high-carb and high-sugar foods, which in turn results in a feeling of constant hunger, which then results in overeating. This also triggers the body to store more fat in your abdominal area, and this abdominal fat actually makes your body produce more cortisol when under stress.

Ghrelin – this is a hormone that tells your brain when you are hungry. When you try to reduce your caloric intake, there is an increase in this hormone and your body will feel that it is always hungry.

It has been seen that even after you have returned to eating normally, your body will still feel hunger pangs from an elevated ghrelin level.

The good news is you can counteract this increase in ghrelin with intense exercise. This is why dieting alone is not a good idea.

Adiponectin – this is a hormone that aids your body in losing more fat, and is produced by lean muscle. When you have very little lean muscle to begin with, and a lot of body fat, your body does not produce enough adiponectin.

This is where problems may arise and why people lose hope when it comes to losing those love-handles.

In order to make your weight loss efforts more effective, you need to create lean muscle and lose fat to increase your adiponectin levels, but since the lower levels of this hormone makes it difficult to do this, it feels like an impossible task.

In order for you to find out which hormones are wreaking havoc on your weight loss efforts, you need to visit your doctor. Tests can be done to find out what hormones are imbalanced, and what treatments need to be given to help you with these. Once you have your hormones on even keel, losing that excess weight won’t be the frustrating endeavor it used to be.

Sources:

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