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5 Diet Plan Saving Tips !

Guilty and frustrated from cheating on your diet plan? These diet plan saving tips will keep you on track!

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It’s nine thirty at night and you have followed your new diet plan perfectly to a tee all day. A pizza advertisement comes on the commercial break of your favorite show and you notice it is close to your next mealtime.
Up to the kitchen you go to eat your next meal. When in the fridge pulling out your nicelyprepared diet plan meal, you notice some left over Fettuccini Alfredo your wife or roommate brought home. Sure looks good you think as you catch a little bit of saliva about to drip on your shirt!

“Just a little taste won’t hurt my diet plan,” you justify…

“ I’ve stuck to my diet plan all day……”

A little taste and before you know it you tell yourself the extra carbs and calories will be a good boost to your workout tomorrow!

An hour later your gut is stretching and Indigestion plagues you from cheating on your diet plan!!

“I should have stuck to my diet plan!” is going through your head as you lay down to have nightmares of a fat ass! “Tomorrow I’ll stick to my diet plan “, you chant in your head!But you fall from your diet plan only a day or two later!

The occasional stray from your diet plan can really add up!And billboards,tv’s, radios and people are everywhere pushing fast foods and junk to sabotage your diet plan!

Here are five diet plan saving tips to arm yourself against the onslaught of the Cheating War!

Diet Plan Tip #1 – Eat Slowly – Take your time when you sit down to eat.

The chances you will stuff yourself or overeat diminish and you will reach the point of satiety much more quickly if you eat slowly!

The more you are satisfied with what you have eaten the less likely you will continue to think of food. That chocolate Black Forest cake won’t be as tempting either!

Diet Plan Tip #2 – Have Delicious Meals That Fit Your Meal Plan Prepared Ahead Of Time.

Having meals prepared ahead of time makes it convenient to eat according to a plan and on schedule.

You can make it more convenient to stick to your diet plan than it is to eat that bag of candy by having your diet plan meals prepared and available when it is time to eat– and when you gethungry.

Diet Plan Tip #3 – Get Used To Eating For Your Purpose Instead Of For Your Taste Buds.

Satisfying your taste buds when you get the urge to gorge down a Big Mac will never develop a healthy, lean, muscular physique! Keep in mind you are eating to develop a lean, healthy muscular physique every time you open your mouth! The temporary taste satisfaction of a jelly-filled donut will be gone real fast but the empty calories you just devoured can defeat a whole day’s worth of bodybuilding effort!

Diet Plan Tip #4 – Be creative with your cooking to make sticking to your diet enjoyable.

Ideally, with proper preparation and some reciperesearch you can create delicious mouth watering meals that meet your diet plan criteria. Learn to cook. Employ spices from other parts of the world. India and China are twocountries with interesting choices to really spice up your diet plan. When you don’t have to force feed yourself with your nose plugged the chances are much higher you can stick to your diet plan more easily!

Diet Plan Tip #5 – Drink Water.

Drinking water between meals can help to reduce your hunger pains temporarily by giving a sense of fullness. For those of you that sabotage your diet plan munching here and there,keeping a water bottle with you wherever you go can really help.Just sip away when its oral satisfaction rather than hunger driving you.

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Does your weight loss plan include these 10 Essential Steps?

Be prepared to be less effective and waste your own time, if your weight loss programme does not contain these quick lose fat tricks.

1. Must have a Change in Lifestyle

Every effective weight loss programme will help clients change their lifestyle. This is absolutely critical to the long term success of the programme. Unfortunately, it is now fashionable to pop slimming pills or go for cellulite treatments to lose weight.

The results from such programmes will never be permanent because the person’s lifestyle would effortlessly put back all the weight. The very moment that these artificial programmes are halted, weight will come rushing back.

When a person changes his/ her lifestyle, the unhealthy food and weight gaining activities will be eliminated from their daily lives. Hence, an effective weight loss system MUST have an in-built mechanism that helps clients refine their lifestyle.

2. Must include a Water Drinking plan BEFORE Meals

Drinking at least a glass of water half an hour before meals is critical to weigh loss and maintenance of a healthy body. The water replenishes the fluids that will be used to make bicarbonate solution on the mucus membrane of our stomach lining. This protects the stomach from being burnt by its own acid fluid.

Similarly, a well hydrated body reduces the urge to drink unhealthy drinks which introduce more toxins to your body. Furthermore, the body does not need to excessively retain water, thus making the body fatter than necessary.

Lastly, a majority of people are chronically dehydrated though they seem to be leading normal lives. It is a common sight to see my clients reduce the amount they eat after they begin the water routine. Many people have lost the ability to differentiate between food hunger and water hunger. A systematic water plan will help them regain this lost touch.

3. Must include a systematic plan for reduction of sweetened and diuretic beverages.

Sweetened drinks are beverages like soda, cola, diet cola, tea, coffee and beer. The three major groups of substances that would impede and slow down your weight loss are caffeine, sugar and sugar substitutes.

Caffeine – This is a diuretic substance that drains your body of water. It is roughly estimated that you lose 33% more fluid from your body then the amount you drank. If you drink one cup of coffee, you would lose all the fluid from the coffee plus an extra 1/3 a cup. This makes you body desperate to retain whatever water it can. In the long run, your body’s instinctive reaction is to retain water, hence giving out the round water-filled appearance. Diuretic drinks are coffee, tea, most colas, most sodas and beer (though it technically has no caffeine, it is a diuretic).

Sugar – Besides the numerous health damaging effects of sugar on your body, it also adds useless calories to your diet. When sugar enters the body it is broken down into glucose and the calorie that is created is termed “empty calorie”. It has absolutely no vitamins or minerals, hence it does not do any good to your body besides adding calories.

Sugar substitutes – Sugar substitutes like Aspartame (sold as nutrasweet) and Splenda cause you to overeat sugars (including carbohydrates) because receptors in the tongue have been trained, through the years, to expect “sugar” when it tastes “sugar”. Products like nutrasweet always tout that you get the taste of 8 (figurative number) spoonfuls of sugar but only half the spoonful of calories. In theory this sounds great, however, our receptors in the tongue will stop glucose production in the body and expect to be able to take it from the incoming food. So now it is expecting 8 times worth of sugar calories! But the sugar only provides 1/16th of that. The body now hungers for more food since it has shut down glucose production. All “diet” drinks that claim to be sugar free and sweets that are sugar free contain either nutrasweet or splenda, you can confirm it on the labels.

4. A Muscle growth programme

You need a proper muscle growth plan if you ever want to stop spiralling back to your heavy weight. Programmes that are based on pills and nutrition tend to neglect or gloss over the muscle building plan. This is very dangerous because your muscle acts as a buffer for excess calories and helps maintain your weight and figure. Furthermore, there is no such thing as eating to build muscles as popularly believed. Muscles can only be built in the good old fashioned way – make it do work.

5. A programme that focuses on the growth of the aerobic Type 1 muscle fibres.

On the other extreme there are programmes that are excessively focused on going to the gym. That would mean they ask you to go twice or three times a week to the gym for weights. This is a waste of your time and probably they are building up Type II (a/b) muscles instead of Type 1 muscles fibres. This difference is important because Type II muscles are big and showy, but they require a lot of maintenance and have poor fat burning abilities. Type 1 muscle fibres hardly bulge but contain the highest amount of mitochondria, an essential enzyme in fat burning.

6. You must want to lose weight.

Most people assume that being involved in an activity means that they actually want to do it. Many people busy themselves finding the greatest miracle weight loss cure or trying out every fad but never really achieving anything. Subconsciously, they do not want to lose weight, but the appearance of busy effort allows them to gain affection or acceptance by loved ones, peers and their own inner selves!

7. A Nutrition plan that reflects personal individuality.

When we buy clothes, especially expensive ones, we always insist on having it tailored to our size. Sometimes, the sleeve may be too long but the chest perfect fit. That is why stores have many different labels to suit different body size and shapes. Similarly, the food we eat should also be tailored to our body, not just in terms of size (calories) but also in terms of design. Nutrition programmes need to first assess and categorise our body type or blood type or metabolic type (not limited to these categories), before any recommendations can be made.

8. The plan should never come with food restriction.

Yes the unbelievable! Most of my clients are shocked when I advise this to them. It is an accepted fact that all diets mean that you have to give up on your favourite foods. This is totally untrue and will in fact destroy the sustainability of the programme. We are creatures of greed; we always want what we cannot have. That is hardwired into us. Hence, the command not to eat a particular food will conversely create a greater demand for it. The correct technique should be learning to manage the urge, rather than suppressing it.

9. It must have a component that includes aerobic walking or jogging.

Ultimately, our body thrives to walk, jog and run, that is our basic function as human beings. For many overweight people, this function has been dormant and numbed for too long. Aerobic walking or jogging is essential to any weight loss programme because it gradually helps your body to adjust to the change in weight load as you slim down. Swimming or carrying weights in an aerobic fashion is not a substitute because the whole body is not engaged in the activity.

10. The programme MUST be sustainable relative to your daily workload and commitments.

You cannot and should not embark on a quad weekly (4 times a week) get slim course if you already have to juggle two jobs and a family. Firstly, it is absolutely impossible for you to sustain the hectic schedule in the long run. Secondly, it would create a phobia within you, framing your mindset that weight loss is a strenuous and painful event. A healthy lifestyle is a fun activity that should preferably involve your family and loved ones, the last thing you would ever want to do is to sign up for a programme that is too daunting to complete.

Some Useful Resources

The Benefits of Water (One of the best resources around) – http://www.watercure.com

A Fantastic Muscle Building Programme – http://www.precisiontraining.com

A Bloody Type Diet System – http://www.dadamo.com

A Metabolic Type Diet System – http://www.turnuptheheat.com

A Health & Weight Loss System that contains all 10 of these core points plus more – http://phenogy.com

* All links are provided as is. We do not gain from commissions nor will we be held legally responsible. It is just us sharing with you some great gems.

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The author, Winston Ng, is an avid peak performance coach and CEO of Phenogy Health Advisors Pte Ltd, based in Singapore. His Health Consultancy programmes are renowned worldwide for their efficiency, simplicity and independent unbiased advice. The Phenogy Health Concierge™ is unparalleled internationally in providing cutting edge Natural Health Alternatives to the busy individual who needs viable options to invasive surgery, dangerous synthetic pills and overpriced ineffective therapies!

They want you to experience their service before spending a single dime! Receive FREE Health Coaching and find out more about their E-Manuals and Consultancy Services! http://phenogy.com.

Winston Ng and his Coaches are contactable at enquiries@phenogy.com.

Original Article archived at http://www.phenogy.com/articles/10essentials.htm

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Get Slim With Atkins Diet Plan

The Atkins’ diet has been a craze for a couple of decades. Here’s how you can gain from it.

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All of you who are reading this article right now have definitely been on a diet at some point or the other of your lives. The battle of the bulge is an ongoing problem and we are always on the lookout for various means to win this war.

Along with exercise, our diet and nutrition also plays an important role in reducing our weight. Hence, this obsession persists in all of us to undertake some form of dieting. But going on a diet is definitely not an easy thing. What to eat and what to stay away from is always a perennial problem.

One of my friends told me that she ate the normal menu which she cooked for the family, but her weight loss recipe is “portion control.” This is a really simple diet plan. In this plan, you cut down on the portion of food you consume. For example, if you usually have two pieces of toast for breakfast, you should eat only one piece. If you normally eat two cups of rice for lunch, cut it down to one cup. In this way, you are automatically reducing your calorie intake by half.

Another popular method of dieting is to stop all intake of fatty foods and sugar. In this diet, you cut down on your oil, butter and ghee intake which automatically reduces your fat deposits.

While I was leafing through a magazine, I read about one of our Hollywood celebrities following the Atkins’ diet. This immediately aroused my curiosity about the diet. Though I have heard about the diet many times, I had no inside knowledge about it. So, I immediately set to work on it and found out certain basic facts’ about the Atkins diet which I want to share with my readers.

The Atkins’ diet made its first appearance in 1972 and was invented by its namesake, Dr Atkins. According to him, this method enables us to lose weight by inducing a change in metabolism. Our body burns both fat and carbohydrates to provide energy. If we reduce the intake of carbohydrates significantly, our body starts burning only fat to provide energy. This method is called “lipolysis”, which in turn induces ketosis. In ketosis, our body burns fat as fuel. Atkins also felt that ketosis will affect insulin production which will result in less fat being formed. And, once your body enters ketosis, your cravings for carbohydrates will reduce significantly which, in turn, will reduce your body weight.

The major difference between Atkins’ diet and other types of diet is that, while most diets restrict calorie, intake, the Atkins’ plan encourages us to eat more. While most of the diets recommend low fat, high carbohydrate intake, Atkins’ does just the opposite. Instead of carbohydrate and sugar, this diet wants us to consume plenty of fat and protein.

The core principle of the Atkins’ diet is that, by limiting carbohydrates, our body is forced to burn its stored fat, rather than carbs for fuel.

The Atkins’ diet has a four carbohydrates stage plan induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. With the help of these four stages, you can reduce as well as maintain your weight throughout your life.

Induction – phase 1: This phase lasts for two weeks, by the end of which you can obtain significant results. Another point is that, in this diet plan you can begin at any of the phase. But it is recommended to start with induction. As you cut back on your carbohydrates significantly in this phase, you will jump start your weight loss programme. In this phase, only 20 gm of carbohydrates are allowed and hence your weight loss is significant. As you drastically cut down on carbohydrates your body shifts into high gear and starts burning fat. This takes about 48 hours to occur and you may feel hungry and irritated for the first three-four days. But don’t worry, as soon as your fat starts getting converted to fuel, you will feel fit as a fiddle. Induction will strengthen your immune system and also improve our long-term health.

Ongoing Weight Loss (OWL) phase 2: In this phase, the weight loss pace slows down as you add nutrient-rich carbohydrates to your diet. During this period, you will boost your body’s ability to burn fats as well as understand your body better. You will find the right amount of carbohydrates which you can consume and still lose weight. Your body will also prepare itself for permanent weight management. The amount of carbohydrates which you can eat is increased to 25 gm per day for the first week and increased in five gm instalment for the next few weeks. If your weight loss is significant, you can increase your carbohydrate intake. A person has to be on OWL till he or she is within three-five kg of their goal weight.

Pre-maintenance – (phase 3): Pre-maintenance is a practice run for lifetime maintenance. In this phase, you are fast approaching your target. As long as you continue to lose weight, you can increase your weekly allotment of carbohydrates by another 10 gm. You will be in this phase till you reach your goal and stay on it for one month. The ultimate goal here is to achieve a state of balance called Atkins’ Carbohydrate Equilibrium (ACE). The ACE is your individual level of carbohydrate intake wherein you neither gain nor lose weight.

Lifetime maintenance phase 4: In this phase, you have to focus on your individual ACE and strive to stay within two kg of your ideal weight for the rest of your life. By following a sensible eating plan, you gain energy, better health and confidence in yourself.

By following these four phases, you not only achieve your dream weight but are also able to maintain it throughout your life. You can learn more about this diet by reading the book, Dr Atkins’ New Diet Revolution. But, as with any other diet, this plan also has its pros and cons. The good point is that this diet recommends exercise as a vital part of the weight loss programme. Another point to be noted is that you cannot start on carbohydrates after you lose weight as this will result in your gaining back all that you have lost.

Medical experts advise that people who have gout, kidney problems, diabetes or are pregnant women should not follow this diet plan. As this diet is very stringent, do consult your doctor/dietician for proper advice.

Your dietician will provide you with a proper menu chart as to what should be eaten, in what quantities, etc, based on your eating habits and general lifestyle.

Happy dieting and hoping to see slimmer and fitter readers.

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