trim club
TrimDownClub, December 31, 2013
After the holidays tips
A classic recipe for success that stands the test of time: eat breakfast regularly, get a good mix of exercise, and above all, don’t starve yourself!
1. Make sure that the types and amounts of foods in the house goes back to how it normally are. In other words—put away any remaining food gift packages, or bring them to work to share with others. It’s impossible to go back to normal and have a routine that includes awareness of your body’s genuine hunger feelings when your house is packed with boxes of candy.
2. Don’t eat too little. Even when you want to lose weight, it’s important to eat. Starving yourself causes the body to go into a state of emergency and slows down your metabolism. This leads to a reduction in the amount of calories burned. To know exactly how many calories your body needs to exist, it is recommended to test metabolic rate at rest (RMR) or have it calculated for you by a professional.
3. Again: many meals, small dishes throughout the day. Heavy meals strain the digestive system and can lead to partial, inefficient digestion of the food. The excess food consumed in a large meal is not utilized and instead, is stored in the body’s fat reserves. It is advised to have five or even six meals during the day in order to increase energy burning and optimize the process of food digestion and absorption.
4. Have we mentioned breakfast? Don’t skip it—they don’t call it “the most important meal of the day” for nothing. Our body’s fasting at night causes a breakdown of the bones, while breakfast stops this process and assists the bone tissue in rebuilding itself following the entrance of food to the intestine. It also provides energy to run the body. Skipping breakfast can cause the body to enter a state of stress and reduce calorie burning. Recent studies show that the body has a very sophisticated metabolic system where the metabolic rate is set in the morning: If we have breakfast, the body feels that everything is ok and runs normally. However, if we don’t eat in the morning, the body feels that something is wrong and therefore reduces the metabolic rate. Thus, if you’re in a weight loss program and don’t eat in the morning, you are sabotaging your efforts doubly.
5. Engage in muscle-building physical activity. Training with weights helps to develop muscle mass in the body and contributes to the balance between the food we eat and the amount of calories burned. Fat tissue is relatively metabolically “slow,” so when muscle mass exceeds it, the body burns more calories even when you rest. Every kilogram of muscle consumes 13 more calories as part of the basic daily metabolism.
6. Do aerobic activity. This sort of activity is based on a non-maximal physical effort. It involves large muscle groups for a long amount of time, such as walking, jogging, swimming, or bicycle riding. Aerobic activity increases the body’s oxygen consumption and heart and respiratory rates so that more oxygen reaches the muscles. Our body’s aerobic energy system should provide a relatively large amount of energy that will last for a long-term consumption. To do this it harnesses the breakdown of fats and carbohydrates. This system is the answer to muscle exertion lasting more than three minutes, and its operation is done in the presence of oxygen.   The performance of aerobic activity can help improve fitness and  weight loss. Obviously the impact of the aerobic activity depends on the frequency of performance, the duration, and the intensity level. The minimal amount of regular aerobic activity required for getting results is 20 minutes twice a week. If you wish to achieve significant weight loss and physical toning, it is advised to work your muscles at least four or five times a week, each exercise  session lasting about 30-40 minutes—some experts recommend reaching a whole hour.
7. Make sure you get enough sleep hours. Studies found that a lack in sleep hours can increase appetite, disrupt metabolism, and slow down weight loss. People who suffer from lack of sleep tend to feel hunger even if they ate a sufficient amount of food. The reason for this lies in the disrupted secretion of the cortisol hormone, which functions as an appetite regulator, among other things.
Published in Articles,