Archive for December, 2008

If you have a problem with emotional eating, you know how it can ruin your chances at weight loss. Fortunately, emotional eating is a habit that you can break. All you have to do is follow the 5 simple steps listed below, and you’ll be able to lose weight without sabotaging your efforts. Here’s what you need to do.

  • Keep a journal. A journal can be a great tool to use against emotional eating. It can help you see what’s causing you to eat when you’re not hungry, when you’re doing this the most, and how you feel after you eat. In your journal, you’re going to want to write down everything that you eat and when you eat it. You will also want to rate your hunger on a scale of 1 to 10 to see if you’re really eating when you’re hungry. Then you should write down exactly how you felt before you ate and how you felt afterwards.
  • Indentify your triggers. Once you’ve kept track of your eating for a while in your journal, you should be able to see some kind of patter emerge. Do you eat a lot after a stressful day at work? Do you turn to the fridge when you feel lonely? It’s important to really sit down and decide what is actually making you eat when you’re not hungry. Once you know what these triggers are, it will be much easier to deal with them.
  • Find better ways to cope. After you’ve identified the emotional triggers for your eating habits, then you can find other ways to deal with them. Of course, you want to find ways that don’t involve food. For instance, if stress is a large trigger for you, you’ll need to find healthier stress relievers. You could start practicing yoga or learn some deep breathing relaxation techniques. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as it works for you. You’ll need to find healthy ways to cope with any trigger that you have.
  • Create a diversion. Sometimes the best way to avoid eating because of emotions is to create a diversion. This means that every time you feel like you want to eat but know you’re not hungry, you should find something to keep yourself busy instead. Get on the phone and call a friend. Go outside and take a short walk. By the time you get done, the craving should be over. If it’s not, find something else to do until it is.
  • Get the support you need. It can be hard to break the habit of emotional eating. You may need to get some support to help you. You can ask a friend or family member to help you through this time. Maybe they can check in with you a few times per week or just make sure they’re available to talk when you’re having a rough time. If you don’t want anyone knowing about your problem, you can always find an online support group that you can talk to. This way you get the help, but you stay anonymous.

These easy steps can really help you overcome your emotional eating habits. All you have to do is identify your triggers, find non food related ways to cope with them, and get the support you need. Of course, you usually can’t break a habit like this overnight, so you’ll need to have patience. If you follow these steps, you’ll eventually break this negative habit and be on your way to losing weight in a healthy way.

Interval training is a great cardio routine to add to your workout if you’re trying to lose weight. If you don’t know what interval training is, it’s actually the practice of rotating shorter periods of intense activity with longer periods of moderate activity. For instance, if you’re if you’re walking, you could walk for 3 minutes and jog for 1 minute. You would repeat this for your entire workout. There are so many reasons to do interval training. Here are 6 of the top reasons you may want to add it into your routine.

  1. Faster weight loss- Interval training burns a high amount of calories in a short workout. This type of exercise also increases your metabolism, so it allows you to burn several calories even after you’ve finished your workout. Obviously, the more calories you burn the more weight you’ll lose. Adding in interval training into your workout routine can help you lose weight much faster.
  2. Improved cardiovascular fitness- Once you start doing interval workouts, you’ll notice a big improvement in your cardiovascular fitness. After a while, you’ll be able to workout at higher intensity levels for longer periods of time. Interval training improves your fitness level much faster than traditional cardio workouts.
  3. Less muscle loss- With traditional cardio workouts, it’s difficult not to lose muscle while you’re working out. Interval training will help you keep much more of your lean muscle while you burn the fat instead. It’s very important to keep as much muscle as you can since muscle burns more calories than fat, so interval training is a great exercise to do.
  4. Can fit into a busy schedule- Interval training workouts are usually very short, especially if they’re high impact. Some interval workouts are as short as 20 minutes, compared to the hour you usually have to put in to a conventional workout like jogging. This means that you can get a great workout in even when you’re busy.
  5. Adds variety to your workout- When you workout at the same pace for an hour, it can get pretty boring. With interval training, you’re constantly changing the intensity of your workouts. This variety can help keep you from getting bored with your workout too soon, so you won’t dread working out.
  6. Can work with your favorite cardio- Interval training works well with several different types of cardio exercises. The only requirement is that the exercise has to have the ability to change intensities. Running, spinning, walking, cycling are all great exercises to incorporate interval training. You can even use machines like the elliptical machine or rowing machine to do your workouts. All you have to do is pick your favorite and get started.

As you can see, there are several reasons to try interval training. Your heart will get stronger, your metabolism will increase, and you’ll lose weight faster than you ever thought possible. There are a few different types of interval training that you can research. You can choose the type that works with your fitness level and schedule.

If you want to burn fat fast, it’s important that you workout and not just diet. While any exercise is good for you and will help you lose weight, some exercises are much more effective than others. Here are a few of the most effective ones that you may want to work into your routine to lose weight quickly.

Interval training- This is where you add in short bursts of intense activity into a moderately paced workout. It’s one of the most effective workouts you can do. You’ll be able to burn a large amount of calories in a short amount of time. There are several different types of interval training. The one you choose will depend on your weight loss goals and your current fitness level. These workouts should only be done a few times per week. Also, you shouldn’t do interval training two days in a row. The workouts should be spaced 48-72 hours apart.

Circuit training- This type of exercise is where you perform several different exercises one right after the other one. You don’t take a rest in between. Let’s say you’re doing lunges, bicep curls, push ups, and crunches. Instead of doing 3 sets of each one, resting in between each set, you would do one set of lunges then move on to bicep curls, etc. Once your done with the entire circuit, you can repeat it if you want. This keeps your heart rate up through the entire workout, so you burn more calories. You can do this type of workout with cardio or strength training exercises.

Combination exercises- These are exercises that combine different movements into one exercise. For example, you could do an overhead press while doing a squat. Or you could do a lunge with a bicep curl. Combination exercises are a great way to lose weight fast since they use several muscle groups at once. They’re also a great way to fit in a complete strength training workout into a short time period if you’re busy.

Compound exercises- These types of exercises are ones that work several different muscle groups at once through one specific exercise. An example of a compound exercise is push ups. This exercise works your arms, chest, and back all at the same time. Another great combination exercise is the squat. The more muscles you use during an exercise, the more calories you burn, so these are great exercises to work into your routine.

High impact cardio- If you want to lose weight fast and you don’t have any problems with your joints, high impact cardio is great. This type of cardio will allow you to burn hundreds of calories during your workout. Cardio exercises like running, spinning, or step aerobics are great examples of high impact exercises. There are many other exercises like these you can do to get a good workout in. You should find the one that works best for you.

The exercises above are some of the most effective exercises for rapid weight loss. However, the most effective exercise is always one that you’ll actually do. So find a workout that gets your heart rate up and that you enjoy to start losing weight today.

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