Trouble with exercise is that your converting muscle into fat aswell as loosing fat and because muscle weights more than fat people dont appear (on paper) to be loosing as much weight.
It depends on the type of excercise you do, some forms of excerise will make you put on muscle rather than generally shed the pounds than others etc. If you don't want to turn into Arnie, swimming, cycling and aerobics and stuff are good forms of excercise to shed loads of calories without converting all your fat into muscle
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I think the main problem with diets and excercise is that people just don't stick to them. Once you start them, you are supposed to continue with them, rather than just work out hard and eat really healthily for just a month or something- if you don't stick at a healthier diet and lifestyle, you are bound to put back on the weight afterwards.
My advice to people wanting to lose weight or simply get a better toned body;
Ideally you should do at least 30mins walking everyday and 30mins of excercise like cycling at least every other day. You need to stretch/warm up properly before you do excercise, and when you start doing excercise, you need to keep a constant steady pace at whatever form of excercise you do and drink plenty of water and stuff etc.
You need to cut down on eating meat, eggs, and high fat dairy products like cheeses and cream etc- these foods are full of calories and fat and should not be eaten all the time unless you have a very physically active lifestyle where you need such energy.
You need to cut down on sugary foods and alchohol- many types of alchohol like lagers and beers and sugary beverages contain suprisingly large amounts of calories, for example;
Baileys, Irish Cream, Original
"Calories in 100ml of Baileys Irish Cream:
Calories
350.0kcal
Carbohydrate
20.0g
Protein
3.2g
Fat
15.7g
Fibre
0.0g
Alcohol
14.1g"
Taken from;
http
/www.weightlossresources.co.uk/calor...ter/alcohol.htm
Seriously cut down on deep fried foods like chips, scotch eggs, doughnuts etc. Unless you are doing a huge amount of excercise everyday, these foods will make you fat and give you greesy skin and clog up your digestion.
Get 5 portions of fruit and veg into your diet a day.
Don't eat if you're not really that hungry- its suprising the amount of people that eat out of habit half the time.
Eat smaller portions- if you are still hungry after eating your food, wait for 15mins before having more; it takes time for all your food to pass down into your stomach and make you feel full, more than often you will find that if you wait for 15mins after eating, you will not feel hungry anymore.
Eat a varied diet that concentrates mostly on fruit & veg: One of the main reasons why there is such a bad obesity crisis now days is that animal products have become very cheap and available, and a lot of people eat such products everyday. Not only is it quite un-natural (people were evolved to eat animal products of course, but not everyday), but such foods are full of fat and calories, most people now days with their easy going lifestyles full of time and effort saving bits of technology do not burn off enough energy in their day to day lifestyle to justify eating these sorts of foods everyday.
Fry-up breakfasts should be left to the atheletes.
Don't aim to lose weight super fast: losing lots of weight very quickly is very stressful for your body, if you do this you will simply end up feeling like you have no energy and feel depressed, your skin will sag around your new skinny frame since you lost the weight too quickly, and if you are a woman your boobs will sag too. I know this to be true, one of my best friends lost a great deal of weight very quickly on a strict excercise and diet regime, however even though she went from a size 16 to a size 10, she now regrets it because her boobs have become flat and smaller (since breast are made out of a great deal of body fat, and if you loose too much body fat, your boobs will sag and become smaller etc) and her skin looks saggy on her now skinny frame.
If she had lost the weight more gradually, she would have had a much more toned and healthy looking body as her body would have been able to get used to the vast changes in weight easier etc.
Find healthy and nutritious recipes that work for you: a diet is not supposed to be torture or a chore, and more importantly, once you start improving your diet you need to stick at it. If you find healthy and nutritious meals that work for you, you will be far more likely to stick at the diet in the long time and really reap the benefets of your diet. Make sure you eat a varied and healthy diet too.
Do more home cooking: cooking is not supposed to be a chore, and as long as you have 30mins spare everyday, thats plenty of time to cook up some really good and easy meals. By doing more home cooking, you will be able to moniter what goes into your body much easier (pre-made meals tend to be very high in salt, fat, preservatives and artificial colourings and all that cr*p etc) and will eat better quality and more nutritious food by doing so. Some of the ingedients that go into ready meals is of appalling quality.
You will also save money by doing more home-cooking, and you will feel like you are acheiving more in your life etc- basically, there are loads of benefets to doing your own home cooking rather than living off ready meals, from diet and health benefets to a better feeling of well being, personal acheivement, less stress etc
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Grilling, barbequeing, steaming, stir-frying and baking are some of the best cooking methods depending on what you want to cook- boiling tends to make food like veg lose all of its nutrious value (unless its carefully stewed), while normal frying or deep frying often uses too much oil and fat for it to be healthy.
Recipes that work well for me are vegetarian stir-frys, pasta dishes (not ones with cheesy/creamy sauces though), vegetarian mince buritos with lettuce and tomatoes etc, salads, lots of fruit instead of sweets and chocolate, LOADS of smoothies- i love my smoothie machine, i'm always doing fruit smoothies with it- I also love barbequed/grilled beef, baked potatoe wedges with baked beans, fried or steamed salmon steak with asparagus etc etc
. All of these foods are quick and easy to cook and are healthy and low-fat too
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I have heard from friends personal opinions though that they *do* make you feel significantly better and make your skin look nicer.
