Tag Archives: metabolism

Lose weight without getting hungry

“I really need to lose weight but I hate feeling hungry nearly all the time,” I suppose this has to be one of the most common statements, made by people who follow many of the so called fad diets. If your diet leaves your stomach rumbling every hour on the hour, your body is telling you it’s time to make a change. I used to believe losing weight meant starving yourself. It took me a a very long time to accept the fact that I could actually eat heartily and still drop a few pounds in weight.

The times I spent starving myself in the name of losing weight were miserable. When I did manage to shed a few pounds, I would sadly put it all back on, in a matter of weeks. Sometimes I’d even gain a few extra pounds. Now that’s what I call depressing!

What I learned through many years of research (trial and error) is that when you follow a healthy eating plan, you can eat until you’re full, and still see amazing weight loss results.

What Are Healthy Foods?

Healthy foods are not created in factory’s where food is processed to death. If the food is dried, dehydrated, canned, frozen or filled with ingredients you can’t pronounce. I suggest that you stay away from it. Some good examples of healthy foods include fresh fish, naturally raised meats, legumes, seeds, organic poultry, organic eggs, raw nuts, along with fresh fruit and vegetables.

There’s nothing more miserable than having to deal with hunger pangs all day. If your meals aren’t satisfying your nutritional needs, this is exactly what’s going to happen. Here are some tricks to make your meals more filling:

Add a source of good quality protein and a source healthy fat (yes, fat) to each of your meals. Doing this should make your meals more appetizing and curbs the hunger. Sources of healthy protein include natural meats, organic whole eggs, organic poultry and fish. Sources of healthy fat include avocados, fish, beans, raw nuts, coconut oil and olive oil.

Fill your plate with veggies. They help to divide your plate into three sections, and fill the larger section with veggies. Leave the other two sections for meat and other foods. Veggies are full of fiber, so they expand in the stomach, digest more slowly so keeping you full longer. Try eating green leafs such as cabbage, spinach, broccoli which are rich in magnesium. (at least 57% of the US population does not meet the US RDA for dietary intake of magnesium)

Drink a glass of bottled water before each meal and throughout the day. This will help you feel full faster and reduce hunger.

Examples of Healthy, Filling Meals and Snacks

At Breakfast: 2 scrambled eggs, 1/3 cup of oatmeal with cinnamon and a small pear.

Snack: 1 medium apple, 1 cup of cucumber slices and 1 oz of raw nuts.

For Lunch: 4 oz ground turkey, 1/2 cup of cooked brown rice, 8 oz carrot sticks, and a small green salad with vinegar and olive oil dressing.

Snack: 2 tablespoons of almond butter, 2 slices of rye crisp bread and 8 oz of celery sticks.

For Dinner: 5 oz boiled halibut steak, 1/2 cup of green beans sauteed in garlic, small baked sweet potato and a small green salad with apple cider vinegar and olive oil dressing.

Diet plans that leave you hungry all the time (or even some of the time) are useless, why are you making life so miserable. Why not ditch the diet altogether and eat healthy instead? If you do it this way, you can eat delicious, filling foods and still lose weight.

Why not check out Mike Geary’s Fat Burning Kitchen Program for more great advice and recipes.

Exercise after eating

Exercising after eating a meal can help promote weight loss by boosting hormones that suppress appetite, say UK scientists.

These hormones can help active people feel less hungry immediately after exercise. This carries through to their next meal, experiments have suggested.

Even when they had bigger meals, sporty people gained fewer calories, overall because they burned off more.

The University of Surrey and Imperial College London research paper is published in the Journal of Endocrinology.

Exercise may affect people’s appetite, helping them to lose weight.

According to researcher Dr Denise Robertson:

Twelve volunteers were fed the exact same breakfast.

An hour later, six of them worked out for an hour, on an exercise bike while the other six volunteers sat quietly.

Both groups were left for another hour, and then allowed to eat as much as they liked.

Not surprisingly, the people who exercised burned more calories than those who sat quietly, 492 kcal compared to 197 kcal.

When they were given the chance to eat afterwards, the people who had exercised had a tendency to eat more, 913 kcal versus to 762 kcal.

However, when the amount of energy the volunteers burned during exercise was taken into account, the sporty people took in fewer calories overall – 421 kcal compared to 565 kcal for the inactive group.

Levels of hormones called PYY, GLP-1 and PP, which tell the brain when the stomach is full, increased during and immediately after exercise. So is this saying that exercise after eating is the way to go.

Volunteers also commented on how they felt less hungry during this time.

Researcher Dr Denise Robertson said: “In the past we have been concerned that, although exercise burns energy, people subsequently ate more after working out. This would cancel out any possible weight reduction effects of exercise”.

“But our research shows that exercise may alter people’s appetite to help them lose weight and prevent further weight gain as part of a healthy, balanced lifestyle.”

Experts recommend people do at least 30 minutes of physical activity, at least five or more days a week.

‘Significant contribution’

Dr Ian Campbell, medical director of the charity Weight Concern, said: “This is an interesting study. Patients often report that they feel increased hunger and eat more after exercise.

“What this study shows is that, although total calorific intake is greater, the net result, because of the exercise taken, is a reduction in the net energy balance.

“Dieting is never easy. Increased physical activity is an essential part of any weight management programme, not just to expend more calories but also, as we see here, to help control our appetite too.”

Dr John McAvoy, a GP with a special interest in obesity, said the study was a “significant contribution to understanding the complex mechanisms of energy balance”.

“It will be of greater interest to the pharmaceutical industry, than to the general public at this stage, for the simple reason that most people view exercising so soon after eating as akin to putting your fingers down your throat,” he added.

“For exercise to contribute to weight control it should be sustainable over the long term and enjoyment remains a critical factor to this end.”

Ref:

Effects of exercise on gut peptides, energy intake and appetite
Catia Martins, Linda M Morgan, Stephen R Bloom1 and M Denise Robertson

Journal of Endocrinology (2007) 193, 251-258 DOI: 10.1677/JOE-06-0030

Jason Ferruggia build bigger traps

When you ask the question of how to build big traps, the discussion usually starts and finishes with dead lifts. This is the number 1 mass builder, and it will pack huge slabs of beef on your traps faster than any other exercise there is. Take a look at power lifters, and you will see that you cannot avoid building huge traps when you do a lot of dead lifts.

While the dead lift is definitely the king of all trap building exercises, an argument could also be made that Olympic lifts are equally as effective. I would tend to agree with this, if it were not for the fact that Olympic lifts are much harder to teach and learn than dead lifts are, which moves them down to second place on the list. Just about everyone can do at least a partial range dead-lift properly. Not everyone is able to clean or snatch properly.

Finally, you have shrugs. While it’s supposed to be a very simple and straight forward movement there is actually a great deal of confusion over how to build big traps with shrugs. Can you believe that few people seem to be able to agree on how they should be done. On the one hand you have the camp that says you need to go as heavy as possible, and do partial reps, just by heaving the weight up. Of course there’s the camp that says you need to go light, by getting a full range of motion, try to get your shoulders as close to touching your ears as possible, and hold it for at least a second.

So who is right and who is wrong? – they both are!.

To try and understand where the answer lies lets take a look at the athletes with the biggest traps: power lifters and Olympic lifters

Power lifters have huge traps because of all the dead-lifts they do. Dead-lifts are heavy duty. There is no shrugging movement at all. Olympic lifters usually lift relatively lighter weights explosively, and with a range of motion that does indeed have them bringing their traps to their ears.

Looking at these two groups, what does this tell us about shrugs and the proper way to do them?

What it tells us is, the best way to get huge traps is to dead lift and also Olympic lift.

BUT… what if you can not do either of those exercises due to back or shoulder problems, or you just want more to have more variety in your trap training routine? Then you have little or no choice but to shrug. Traps are the most important, the most intimidating, and the impressive body part there is and you can’t walk around with none.

So then, exactly how do you do shrugs and which camp is right? To a certain extent they both are. Occasionally you should try going heavy for low reps, cheat the weight up. Then on another day of the week go lighter for higher reps with a complete range of motion and exaggerated contraction and hold at the top.

I suppose another option is to do both variations in one workout. You could always start with a lighter weight, doing about 10-12 reps, bringing your shoulders as high as they can comfortably go. With each set add extra weight, and work your way down to the point where you can only get five partial reps, with a little cheat at the end. You could start with the heavier sets first, and lighten them as you go.

Dead lifts and Olympic lifts should always be your first answer to the question of how to build big traps. But sometimes shrugs can be very effective as well. Be sure to go straight up and down, and don’t roll your shoulders back and forth. That’s for idiots who don’t have a full understanding of how gravity works.

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is world renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For much more info on How to Build Muscle Fast, check out muscle gaining secrets.

Why is it harder for women to lose weight.

I was reading a magazine article for some reason, called It’s Harder For Women To Lose Weight. I’m not a woman so I’m going to look into this from a man’s point of view. I guess I could be wrong but here goes. I think it’s generally harder for women to lose weight. I’m speaking in general terms, and I realise that there will be exceptions to every rule, but that’s what I think anyway.

Why would I think this? Well they’ve got a couple reasons in that article I read: Women have to do about 20% more exercise to get the same benefits. While exercise alone might be enough for men to lose weight, women also have to look carefully at their carbohydrate intake to get the same results. Experts say body composition such as muscle mass, and hormones are to blame for women not being able to lose weight.

The story goes on to says that research at the University of Missouri by Prof Jill Kanaley put 75 obese men and women, all with type 2 diabetes on the same fitness program, and found men always did better as far as weight loss went. What they are saying is that exercise alone might be good enough for a man, but unfortunately it’s not good enough for a woman who must also worry about her diet to lose weight.
It’s a pretty interesting article. It goes back to basics suggesting that because the male body is more utilitarian then the female body it responds better to exercise and diet. One main reason for this is body composition – men have a higher proportion of of muscle of women – and muscle has a higher metabolic rate than fat. This means men can burn more calories then women even when at rest. There was one part where the researcher said a man working 65 per cent effort would require a woman to work at 85 per cent to have the equivalent output or results. I haven’t done any research and am not sure that I want to believe that, to be honest. The article then goes onto say that men naturally have this advantage because they have larger hearts and lungs along with a higher proportion of hemoglobin. (Haemoglobin is the part of the blood that carries oxygen around the body which is very useful when exercising).

So what is going to be the best way for women to achieve weight loss?

I think the best way is to lift weights, do cardio and eat properly. Lifting weights temporarily raises the level of testosterone and growth hormones which in turn, burn more fat. Hormones are a big part of your metabolism. Women naturally have slower metabolisms because they tend to store fat instead of burning it, due to lower testosterone levels. Women should be doing what’s known as compound weight training, that is, using muscles such as the glutes and quads. The bigger muscle groups you use, the more calories you will burn. Lifting weights is not going to make you big and bulky. But that’s another post for another day!