Monthly Archives: August 2009

Weight loss or Weight gain?

Frankly speaking, the choice is yours. Statistics have shown there is more number of people who failed to reduce their weights than them who could succeed. Whether you blame it upon the busy lifestyles dominating the planet today or just irregular eating habits, the net results are the same. This make a lot of people with obesity think it’s the sheer luck factor, which in reality, is not so. If the signs and symptoms state a weight loss failure, then there are ways to make a weight loss regime move ahead full steam.

Ways to reverse a weight loss failure

Need comes first. How much weight do you need to lose? You need to stay hell bent upon that set target, which may vary from carrying the food along and watching when you are not. Weight loss diet is a part of setting a realistic goal, which often stays so unrealistic that people find hard sticking to, so it’s paramount that your mind believes in the initiative first, thus allowing your body to follow and achieve. And that applies to all the aspects of a weight loss regime.

Determination is the keyword when it comes to shedding weight. A misconception about the same is reflected through jumping straightaway into a weight loss program, with a do-or-die attitude. This is a no-flaw approach to a failed weight loss regime. You need to provide yourself the space for the necessary psychosomatic adjustments; when did restrictions provide a miraculous result? Changes must be brought in small proportions to avoid being overwhelmed. Determination, thus, should be looked upon as continuing measured doses of workouts over extended periods and not for obtaining immediate results.

An expectation for immediate results leads to weight loss failure faster than you can ask – “how?” A headshot to a positive mindset; just remembering the fact that fat can’t be gained overnight shall make you patient enough not to lose it overnight. Everything requires time and so does weight loss.

The problem gets doubled with the frustration that leads to haphazard eating habits, which, in turn, ruins your best weight-loss intentions, leading to significant weight loss failure. A scheduled eating program is key to make your body respond best, so calculate even intervals between your daily meals. Set at three-hours gaps, it works out to be the best weight loss diet to keep metabolism up and ward off hunger pangs. You even need to cut down on nibbling and munching between meals. If you do that to fight hunger pangs, then you are NOT eating at regular intervals or, there is a problem with your calorie intake. If not, then you are simply giving in to temptations and lying to yourself, piling up excuses to keep personal responsibility at bay.Â

Â

So banish those excuses and take action; there’s no reason why your weight loss regime won’t show satisfactory results.

Most common weight loss myths

The recent trend of everything going under the name of fat loss, if not anything else is stupid, but isn’t it the same with all trends? From fashion to pop music, stupidity rules supreme since people have now started thinking less and aping more. If you are not a part of the fad, you are plain backdated. But think otherwise, who in the world got the most attention for holding up the grounds for own preferences? There are myriad names that we may drop and these people were later given the honor of being the pioneers in their respective fields of expertise. So it’s high time that you start to lose weight in a way that’s not going to take its toll on your present bodily systems and keep you safe and sound for the days ahead.

6 common weight loss myths

The first step taken towards effective fat loss and adopted by many is cutting down completely on carbohydrate intake. It’s a common weight loss myth that lower the carb intake faster is the rate of fat loss. Yes, that’s true, but until you find one morning that you have a buzzing head and willing to spend the rest of the day in bed. The brain functions on glucose and only the extra carbohydrates accumulates as fat; therefore, when you are depriving your system completely from carbohydrates, you start losing energy and your blood sugar level drops drastically, making you feel hungrier than ever and you tend to overeat. The net result is therefore, ZERO.

So eat fewer calories and taper down your refined carbohydrate intakes over several weeks, allowing your system to adapt to the change. Do not avoid any particular food group. Bread, rice, pasta and cereals (fruits as well), though carbs, make up the parts of a healthy, balanced diet and complex carbs like whole grains and beans are far better than overly processed foods (e.g. white bread). Taper the intake of these over an 8-week span, but it shall be foolish to stop them completely. At the most, reduce the intake to 1/3rd of what it is now.

Another popular weight loss myth is blaming it on the genetics. No, not necessarily you may have to share the same fate as your parents or relatives; a healthy diet and exercise can take you miles ahead, but only if you are consistent. Just remember the steps mentioned in the above paragraph.

Now, to the third myth – it’s about whether you should be avoiding fat at all. It’s going to be shocking for you to know that unsaturated fats promote fat loss, since they help in the absorption of important nutrients and suppress hunger, causing you to eat less. Avoid trans-fat and saturated fats; instead, indulge lightly into fishes, nuts and olive oil. That way, you can wade pass the fourth myth of skipping meals to lose weight. Skipping meals shall slow your BMR and help you gain weight and may also induce gastric ulcers.

The last two myths on fat loss are:

i. Eating to the heart’s content fat-free foods. When did overeating help?

ii. Sticking to a strict diet. This doesn’t speed up metabolism; exercise does. A too-strict diet often makes exercising difficult, since it drains out energy and makes metabolism stall.

Â

So now, it’s up to you whether you want to follow healthy procedures for a healthy living or something opposed to the whole idea.

Be aware of false weight loss products

Well, let’s make a couple of things clear right at the first place:

i.  This post is from someone who doesn’t carry a lot of weight.Â

ii. The post is not meant for throwing around a lot of weight.

iii. The post is not about hyping any particular weight loss product(s); it’s about conveying the right information so that the reader may find what suits his or her body constitution the best.

Â

Almost everyday, upon opening the newspaper (or magazines or the TV), we come across advertisements that speak of miraculous weight loss product(s) or some magic procedures to lose weight without putting in much effort. This is a world where all want readymade solutions to their problems and this is what even the weight loss industry has opted for of recent. But think logically; if you are transferred to Hell’s Kitchen within the next 24 hours from uptown New York or Manhattan, would you be able to adapt to the lifestyle there readily? A sharp paradigm shift may leave you a mental wreck within no time and your body, just an extension of your existence, shall object the same way if forced to accept some radical change without any prior preparation. No doubt, such miraculous measures may provide you with short-term benefits and depending on the body constitution, may actually benefit a certain number of people, but what we want is a hassle-free, long-term solution.

 Spot the difference between original & fake

So the first lesson is: Believe what they say about how to lose weight but trust not unless your gut feelings say so. Often we see that products that sound too good to be true is not when it comes down to practicality; if we follow what the FTCÂ has to say, we shall find that pills, patches and creams are not as effective as they claim to be.

Most of these weight loss products comprise synthetic testosterone as active ingredient that burns down fat initially but also makes your system face a shock; if your body adjusts to it, you are in for more trouble in the future. Unless you continue usage, you are bound to accumulate more weight in the future. Exercises increase your natural testosterone levels and lipolysis sets in without the body becoming aware all in a sudden; the increased levels also set the quantity of testosterone that your system requires to keep weight under check. The effect is a long-term one.

What are false claims made by fake weight loss products?

The first one is definitely the (in)famous Lose 30 pounds in 30 days, which is practically impossible in a healthy way or unless you’ve experienced a gastric bypass surgery. losing a pound a day is impossible. Even it was, it would be extremely unhealthy. Losing weight more than a pound a week is a serious threat to overall health that may alter your BMR and your biorhythm, giving rise to further complications later on. Instead, how about a little exercising, eating fewer calories and yes, a little bit of light and music therapy? High frequency waves have been proven to burn fat and they have no side effects, besides, they also cost less than some of the most miraculous weight loss products. Give it a try; if it doesn’t work out, there is no dearth of able physicians in the country.

Cosmetic Dentistry – Esthetics aside, it’s more towards restoring a better oral health

Like the old saying goes: Beauty fades before strength; being a long time firearm enthusiast, I finally applied that idea to my dentures a month back: It’s the bite that matters more than the shine.

When bleeding gums and an aching tooth finally started stealing away a good night’s sleep (not to mention halitosis) and started affecting my groupings in the shooting range, I made up my mind of meeting the dental practitioner to fix my white horses on the red hill. I preferred a 9X19mm in the head than some evil-looking tooth extraction device deep into my oral cavity but this time, I thought it’s better the other way ‘round than roaming around with puffy, red eyes the whole day. So, I was on a quest over entire Long Island, searching online for an inexpensive solution and I dare say that what I got didn’t affect my monthly budget for buying ammo.

This site made some tall claims (or that’s what I believed) but it looked kinda sly; later, I noticed some of the brands they work with and that induced some confidence in me. I was under the impression that with the peanuts they are charging for tooth restoration services, they are not going to probe much deep and that’s what helped me gather courage and book an appointment.

Well, to cut the long story short, the veneers, the implant, the root canal and the whitening was over in a week flat and contrary to what I thought of being away from the range for at least a week proved to be wrong. I could even fire my old-gold Henry repeater making use of the cheek piece entirely and not even getting back the pang! I feel healthy and confident. I’m glad that I didn’t have to go for the zero down payment option; I would hate to keep the good people waiting for the wonderful job they did. Senora De La Vega, it’s your bad luck that you met Alejandro and his charming smile earlier.

Does beef bridge the gap between animal fat and cancer?

So it’s like this: a couple of weeks back a few posts came up at the Archives of Internal Medicine and spoke about how red and processed meat increases risks of mortality, especially if they are consumed at a higher proportion. A somewhat similar topic by Dr Yoni Freedhoff also showed up at the Weighty Matters blog and at the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition website (it’s a research paper by Dominik Alexander from Exponent Health Sciences), though opposed by someone who felt it was against what the other research works are trying to prove. Now, something like that surely stirs up curiosity, and what came up as a conclusion is mentioned beneath.

The paper speaks about a meta-analysis, pooling together a total of six potential studies on how animal fat protein stays associated with carcinoma of the colon and the rectum. Interestingly, the finding seemed to go against the other papers in the archive that took off the stigma animal fat and protein bore on the context of carcinoma; in this paper, the subgroup analyses clearly showed that animal fat or protein intake is no way linked to the risks of colorectal cancer though the paper was intended to blame these two factors royally.

The paper of Dr. Alexander archives examined how consumption of all types of meat associates with increased chances of mortality by bundling together all types of fats (un-/poly-/saturated), though there are enough evidences that suggest the different subgroups’ opposing influences on general health. Therefore, overall, the bad effects are just an assumption, though the paper does make an interesting read.

Personal glimpses on Music Therapy

Better late than never. Whether it’s an ideology that shapes us humans or an excuse taken up by us to support our often laid back attitudes towards positive transformations is debatable, but music as a remedial factor to certain ailments is something the whole world seems to have understood finally. A personal experience says that music is euphoric at times and it helped many times to ward off the lonely-weekend blues. Now, that’s tough to digest in the age of antibiotics and till now, we discussed just the psychological aspect of it. The physical side to it is yet to be.

Music has several facets – the physical, the emotional, the mental, the social, the aesthetic and lastly, the spiritual side to it. All these, or a few aspects of it, helps in improving and maintain health – both physical and mental and has been noticed to bring positive changes to a variety of conditions. Certain psychiatric and physiological medical problems apart, music therapy is effective against a large number of physical handicaps caused by sensory impairments; the process has been found greatly effective in curing developmental disabilities and communication disorders as well as to stop substance abuse and related interpersonal problems. Music has also been found an efficient agent that slows down the aging process and promotes learning abilities, build-up self-esteem, aids in stress reduction and induces more energy to the system. The question is: How?

Let’s put it in layman’s words: Music is sound and sound is energy with a certain frequency, which in turn, has the ability to stimulate certain parts of the brain (no wonder most of the newly-wed couples have a preference for the sound of baritone saxes or that you prefer a piece from Oscar Peterson after a hard day’s work). Or, if nothing else – Vedic astrology speaks of zodiac – specific names and what’s that for? Listening to a particular frequency just shapes a person, both psychologically and physiologically. Think about it from a broader perspective and that shall put all your doubts to rest.Â

Â