Ok, you’ve started a path to a new lifestyle, but, you see advertisements on TV and the newspapers, for those miracle pills that say they will help you shed that weight. Well, be careful, while some do actually work, there is no such thing as a “workout” pill in a bottle. You can’t depend on pills alone to achieving your goals. You’d be waiting a very long time to get to where you want to go by doing this. And even then, you may not get there. The best thing you can start doing is to change your habits. Here is a list of some changes you can start with:
1. Portion Control
2. Exercise (running, weight lifting, walking, jump rope etc)
3. Low fat recipes
4. Start reading and understanding nutrition labels
5. Weigh yourself once a week in the morning
6. Never reward yourself with food
7. Join an online community for support and encouragement
8. Team up with a friend
9. Don’t sweat the bad day and get back at it the next day
10. Cut the candy (soda included)
These are just some things you can start doing to keep you on the road to your goals. Every day will not be an easy day, but, consistency will be the key. It’s never to late to change your habits.
Fri 6 Nov 2009
Avoid The Gimics, Change Habits
Posted by Tim under attitude, nutrition, overweight, running, weight loss
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Thu 5 Nov 2009
Your Gateway To A New Lifestyle – Fitness
Posted by Tim under Uncategorized, attitude, bmi, energy, immunity, nutrition, overweight, running, weight loss
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Whether you are just starting out to loosing weight, or you’ve been making progress, over the course of your efforts, you are learning new things about how to get you from where you were, to where you want to be. This is not always an easy road to tread. It doesn’t matter how overweight or underweight you are. Cutting back, controlling your portions and taking vitamins / supplements are only part of the solution.
Unless you are trying to gain weight, you should consider some way to increase your activity. Even if you are working on gaining weight, exercise at some level is always good. By increasing your activity, whether it be running (my favorite), walking, riding bike, or even joining a gym, you’ll be increasing the effort to burn those calories. So, by making this choice, here is what you are doing:
1. Eating right (portion control and watching the types of food you are eating)
2. Taking supplements / vitamins
3. Exercise / increased activity
You’ve now started a brand new way of living, thus, enter a new lifestyle of fitness which will bring about a whole new you. After a while, you’ll begin to look back and say good bye to the old you that you once new. Now the list above, is only the beginning or a good starting point. You can pick and choose later what works best for you as you learn your way in this new lifestyle. Remember, it is a lifestyle and not a “diet”.
No pain no gain
Now, if you are trying to gain weight, there are products/supplements available to help you in this direction. While portion control would not be an issue where, you would still want to be aware of how much you are taking in, especially when you start gaining weight so as not to over shoot your goals.
A brief on Portion Control:
Why is Portion Control so important? Well, for one thing, without it, all your other efforts would be a waist of time. You would be just spinning your wheels which will get you nowhere.
Tue 3 Nov 2009
Grease – It Doesn’t Do The Body Good!
Posted by Tim under nutrition, overweight, weight loss
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Each time you get a burger at a fast food place, you get a sandwich complemented with grease. When you make something with burger at home, you can run into grease. Burger is not alone here either. There is also chicken, fries, fried potatoes, ground turkey etc. Grease can come up just about anywhere. Yes, there are different varieties of this useful cooking item. Some are even more healthier than others. The only thing is, it is still just grease. So, how do you deal with this substance to make your meal healthier? Well, here are some suggestions:
1. Ground Beef or Ground Turkey: After you fry up your burger (getting it ready for a meal such as spaghetti), first drain the grease and then using a colander, rinse off the remaining grease thus making your ground beef or turkey virtually grease free before adding to the rest of your meal when preparing.
2. French Fries: Instead of deep frying, try baking your fries, they are just as good. You can get bags of fries making it easy for this.
3. Chicken: Bake the chicken with your favorite seasonings or use Shake N Bake.
4. Pork: Bake the pork using your favorite seasonings or use Shake N Bake.
There are many ways to get past the dreaded Grease word. Granted it is sometimes hard to get around. But with a little effort, your meals can be healthier. Imagine how much better off you’ll be by decreasing or eliminating Grease from your diet! This only paves the way to better nutrition.
Mon 2 Nov 2009
It’s Right In Front Of You
Posted by Tim under attitude, nutrition, overweight, weight loss
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When you can’t see something, there is no guarantee that it exists? Right? If the answers are right in front of you and you choose to ignore them, is not the end result the same? You continue to go on down a road that is nothing but a detriment to you. So now, you are at the proverbial fork in the road. Not everyone takes the “right” direction and end up going to the left for whatever reason. You know the saying, “you gotta start somewhere”. The problem is that people fear change and get used to or caught up in reason’s or excuses for not making changes that could benefit them. Change is hard, sometimes down right impossible when other realities get in the way. Or at least, that is how it seems. In a case of weight loss, the greater the weight, the greater the need. Fear of failing to loose weight ends up being an obstacle for a lot of people. It took a while to gain that weight, it’l take time to loose it. Patients is a key factor in this process as well as an understanding of creating a new permanent lifestyle to support your desires. For, if you loose the weight, but don’t loose the habits that got you to gain that weight, you’ll only get that weight back anyway. I was surprised to see that I’ve been overweight too. I started at 187.7 and my bmi was over 27 which is defined as overweight. Today I’m under 170 and I feel a lot better. You gotta get started and stick with it to achieve your goals. It’s not always an easy fun process. There will be those bad days. Stop ignoring the resources that are right in front of you and do something for yourself today! What do you got to loose? Weight? Poor Health?
Mon 2 Nov 2009
Nothing Wrong With Going Bananas
Posted by Tim under illnesses, nutrition, overweight, running
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There are a lot of good facts about bananas to get you going bananas! First of all, they contain three natural sugars – sucrose, fructose and glucose combined with fiber.
Bananas give a sustained boost of energy worth having especially for athletes.
Doing a 90 minute workout soon? Just 2 bananas give enough energy for this amount of time spent on your workout.
Bananas can also help us prevent or get over some illnesses and/or conditions such as depression, PMS, anemia, and blood pressure.
Depression: According to a survey taken, (By MIND) – Those suffering from depression felt much better after eating a banana. This is do to tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, which is known to help you relax. It can also help improve your mood.
PMS: Bananas have vitamin B6 which regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood.
Anemia: Bananas are high in iron and can stimulate the production of hemoglobin in the blood which can help in cases of anemia.
Blood Pressure: The Banana is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it perfect to beat blood pressure.
Bananas can also help with brainpower, constipation, hangovers, heartburn, morning sickness, mosquito bites and nerves and many more.
So, a banana really is a natural remedy for many illnesses. In comparing it to an apple, the banana has four times the protein, twice the carbohydrate, three times the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals.
So, if you need to indulge, a banana is the way to go.
Sun 1 Nov 2009
New Forum added
Posted by Tim under notice
No Comments
Today, AboveNBeyond4u.com added a new forum -
AboveNBeyond 4U Fitness Forum (4U Forum)
This is completely new and different than the one that was available in the past.
Check it out today, it’s FREE! – AboveNBeyond4u Fitness Forum — Can be accessed either
by clicking the 4U Forum link at the top or in the pages section at the right. You can also get there from the Resources section too.
For more convenience, you can bookmark the forum as well.
Fri 30 Oct 2009
Your Worst Enemy Revisited
Posted by Tim under attitude, bmi, energy, nutrition, overweight, weight loss
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Now and then regardless of how successful you are, your worst enemy can rear it’s ugly head. There can be many reasons for this such as seeing what other people are doing and you can’t or feeling like you aren’t getting anywhere. Or, you could have just lost 15 or 20 pounds and it seems like you can’t loose anymore. Another example could be that you took a break from this and have found it hard to get back into it. These feelings are normal. My wife and I have been there. Your continued perseverance will pay off. I know it can seem frustrating when you have hit a wall. But remember this, walls were built, so they can be taken down. To start tearing that wall down, you need to concentrate on the basics and stick with it:
1. Portion control
2. Eating right and avoid the bad foods
3. Pay attention to the Nutrition labels
4. Weigh yourself once a week, not every day
5. Don’t eat after 7 or 8 at night
These are just some basics to follow on your way to weight loss. Easy, no it’s not, but, you have to un-learn habits you picked up along the way. Besides, do you want your enemy to win? Of course not. Continue working on it and say good bye to your worst enemy forever! Understand that your success or failure starts and ends with you. How mad do you have to get before you say enough is enough and take control to banish your worst enemy? Keeping all this in mind, weight loss is only the beginning and you need to get proper nutrition as well.
Fri 30 Oct 2009
Useful websites that rock!
Posted by Tim under nutrition, overweight, weight loss
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With both my wife and I living this lifestyle of eating right and exercise, we have discovered some really good websites out there that we want to share. Here are a few:
1. Hungrygirl.com
2. 3fatchicks.com
3. Sparkpeople.com
4. Kimbenson.com
Check these sites out! They are very informative and useful.
Thu 29 Oct 2009
Losing weight doesn’t happen over night
Posted by Tim under attitude, bmi, energy, immunity, overweight, sick, weight loss
No Comments
When dealing with other issues like getting over a sickness or injury, paying off a mortgage etc, weight loss is no different then these issues. It doesn’t happen over night.
Patients, discipline, focus and effort all play apart in achieving goals. On the other hand, fear, emotions, doubt and lack of confidence can lead to interfering with making the effort or continuing the effort of achieving your weight loss (or other) goals. Make a commitment and stick to it. You’ll get there. Basically, it took you a while to get overweight, and it will take you a while to loose it too. Never starve yourself to loose weight, because you actually need to eat to loose weight.
One thing that people tend to forget or not think of is that you need to think of this as a change of lifestyle and not a diet. Diet signifies short term. The problem is if you don’t let go of those bad habits, you could get right back to where you started from and you don’t ant that. What do you got to loose by working at loosing weight? Weight ?? Go for it! How will you be 6 months from now?
For other related information, review posts on Portion Control
Wed 28 Oct 2009
Attitude Affects All
Posted by Tim under attitude, energy, immunity, nutrition, overweight
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Life can sometimes get your way and influence your attitude. People can do that too. I perceive that there are 3 groups of attitudes: Good, Bad and Ugly. I’m being simple here on the 3 types. Let’s start with the Ugly Attitude first.
The Ugly Attitude: This goes far beyond the Bad types. Nothing is good and this person is not open to anything at all. One view, his/her view and that is it. This person has few friends and it’s no wonder why.
The Bad Attitude: Having a bad attitude could be a result of a recent bad experience and the person hasn’t yet gotten over it. This type is nowhere near like the Ugly Attitude. Bad attitudes can come and go.
The Good Attitude: Those who have a good attitude are not immune to the Bad Attitude, but, is usually on good terms. These types usually bounce back quickly after a bad experience.
Your everyday life is affected in some way by your attitude. Your health, outlook, and daily routine can all be in some way touched by your outlook. Take for instance, you may not feel like doing something depending upon how your attitude is. Your attitude could be a result of depression, injury, sickness , or even a positive event.
If you are having a real bad day today, here is something to try, look in a mirror and smile, it may just get you going. Attitude is like good or bad weather, it can change from one day to the next. Get out from under the rain cloud and poor out the sunshine today!
You can have your Turkey and eat it too! Just be careful how much you eat and realize that the Turkey has it worse off than you this holiday season! -- Portion Control!