Fitness based Weight Loss Programs

Fitness based weight loss programs are those weight loss programs that make you lose weight by making you spend time on fitness in places like the gym. Everyone wants to have a fit and toned body. One of the major reasons of obesity and weight gain is the lack of physical activity. Most of the jobs include computer work and this makes a person to remain seated at one place. Because of a sedentary lifestyle, people become overweight.

The best way to burn fat and keep your body fit is working out. Fitness based weight loss programs are the programs that will focus on exercising to make you lose weight. Working out is a tried and most trusted way to lose weight. Take out some time and exercise regularly. It will make you slim down without any side effects. The excess fat in your body will burn down and help you to burn extra calories.

The fitness based weight loss programs include exercises, diet plan, and advice of specialists and fitness experts who will instruct you on how to lose weight. These instructors will help you in different exercise programs. Spending some hours daily in gym along with balanced diet gives you appropriate nutrients and then burns fat.

To opt for these weight loss programs is a good option. There are fewer chances of adverse effects and you can have that body you dream about just by working out at the gym. Along with that, a diet based on low carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables keeps a watch on your calorie intake. All these things together are part of a good and successful weight loss program. Starts looking for one if you want to get your confidence back that you have lost because of your being overweight. Once you become a member of any fitness program, you will start felling the difference on your own.

Benefits of Keeping a Food Diary

To shed those extra kilos, one also needs to reduce the number of calories taken in per day. This can be easily done by jotting down calorie consumption, on a day-to-day basis, in a food diary. By keeping a tab of calories take in, the body can be made to burn up stored fat which would eventually result in weight loss.

Food diary as an aid to weight loss

Food diaries can be used as an effective aid in weight loss. It will help you assess your eating pattern and the reasons why such a pattern was followed by you. By monitoring these two factors, it can help you devise way to regulate them and thereby lose weight off your body.

However, keeping and writing in a food diary alone won’t do you good. You will need to make sure that you have written down everything with full honesty. If you are not honest about your calorie consumption pattern and reasons for doing so, there is no point in continuing with this effort. You might as well stop it immediately.

Things to write in a food diary

Food diaries don’t need to be very complicated in nature. You don’t need to write out a full page essay as a daily entry. You can put down everything in a tabular manner with short notes attached to each point. The content of each page can include things like the following:

• The portion sizes of dishes you have eaten.
• The amount of carbs, fat, protein, and fiber content in this portion.
• The underlying reasons for eating (apart from true hunger).
• Your appetite and/or cravings.
• Your feelings after eating.

You can be a little more accurate in keeping a count of the number of calories taken in. You can refer to any food guide that gives you the calorie and other nutrient content of each type of food you had. If you have eaten anything pre-packed, then you can look for these details on the packaging. Jot all this information down in a detailed, tabular manner.

All this may seem a bit tedious at the beginning. Hence, you can begin by jotting down elementary details about your eating behavior. Jot down details like time of eating, portions (fistful, handful, bowlful, plateful and other such rough measurements) eaten, and things you did after meal. Once you have got into the habit, go for a more detailed analysis of your eating habits.

Nipping the problem in the bud

Do remember that the reason behind making this effort is to get at the heart of the matter. Writing a food diary would help you attack the problem right at its point of origin. Recording why you ate/over ate and how you felt after that would help you with finding alternatives to eating.

Writing a food diary can definitely help you in losing weight. The act of writing can arrange a confrontation between you and the unacknowledged reasons that so far had been fueling your eating habits. Once this confrontation is over, losing weight would be very easy.

Cutting Calories, Exercising More- But How Long?

Obesity, a state of being exceptionally over-weight, has become increasingly rampant amongst people today. Changes in eating habits as well as lifestyle have brought about such a state of heaviness. However, all this can be changed in a matter of a few weeks. All one needs to do is to regulate the food that one eats and exercise more.

The best way to lose weight is to cut down on calories. On an average, you should not consume more that 2200 calories a day. For those who are doing hard work, another 600 calories can be added but that would be the end of it. Any extra calorie beyond this level would get processed by your body and would get stored inside for future use.

In order to keep a track of this 2200 calorie-mark, it is necessary that you start counting the calorific value of each food item that you eat. This is easy to do these days. There are many guides available which can tell you the calorific value of the food that you are eating. All you need to do is to write these values in a place and stack them up to see the total. If it is more than 2200, you should cut it in whatever manner possible. If it is less then you are on target.

Apart from cutting down on calories, it is also essential to exercise. The purpose of doing so is to create a deficit in the amount of calories available to our body. This deficit would then be supplied by the fat stored inside our body. Once we start burning this fat, it would be easier to lose weight.

The type of exercise that you can do depends upon how much time is available to you and how much physical and mental effort you want to invest in it. However, in all circumstances begin with the simplest of exercises. Walking, jogging and climbing stairs are the simplest form of exercises that we can do. A 15 minute jog, a 30 minute walking session or climbing a flight of stairs for 15 minutes can give you some healthy exercise.

When you want to move on to the next level, you can try out lifting mild/heavy weights, aerobic exercises, sports like swimming, cycling, etc. A 30 minute session in any of them can provide you with the necessary exercise to burn your calories. If you want to burn them faster, add another 30 minutes to your workout session.

Keeping in mind our hectic lifestyle in which the option of either/or is not available for us, it is better to practice a bit of both. Controlling the calories eaten by us and doing a minimum of half-an-hour of physical activity should not be way beyond our reach.