Archive for April, 2007

To lose weight fast, you have to calculate how many calories are needed for you to survive. Body building exercises helps you in losing weight and gives you a lean body.

Here is the formula given to find out how much you need to eat to live.

If you go below this number, you enter into starvation mode.

Calculate your BMR to lose weight fast:

BMR stands for basal metabolic rate. It means the amount of calories you spend to run your body systems if you stayed in bed all day.

Men: 66 + (13.7 x Weight in Kg) + (5 x height in cm) – (6.8 x age in years)

Women: 665 + (9.6 x wt in Kg) + (1.8 x ht in cm) – (4.7 x age in years)

Multiply your height in inches by 2.54 to get centimeters

Divide your weight in pounds by 2.2 to get Kg

Example:
Woman of 40 years
5 feet 6 inches (167.64 cm)
168 pounds (76.36 Kg)

665 + (9.6 x 76.36) + (1.8 x 167.64) – (4.7 x 40)

665 + 733.56 + 301.752 – 188 = 1512.312 calories just to stay alive.

You can maintain good life fitness once you begin exercising and eating right diet.

You have more energy, feel more optimistic and fit into smaller clothes.

By staying healthy, you will lower the chances of heart attack, cancer and other diseases.

Forty is the age where you have to reexamine your life and make changes that are required to maintain good life fitness. You have to start getting checked your cholesterol levels, blood pressure and body fat. Healthy fats are better to consume and won’t cause any effects.

If you are a woman of age forty, you have to go for mammogram. Get it checked before starting any exercise program. When you start exercising, see after three months of following diet and exercise that how much you have improved.

You may be dealing lot of stress in your life. This stress speeds up the aging process. Stress lowers your ability to fight off cancer and is a contributing factor in cardio vascular disease and hypertension.

If you engage in activities you enjoy, it helps in protecting you against these things. You can take cooking classes, dancing classes, go for a walk, garden, or join a book group. You can restart your hobby which you have left behind in your teen years.

If you think to start a workout program, you may get a picture of strenuous workout on huge machines, huffing and puffing in front of you.

Workout program includes different types of workouts.

Your workout program can be a simple walk or strength training workouts.

You can join a fitness center for starting your workout program and ask the fitness trainer which workout is right for you [Fitness training].

If you are active:

If your workout program contains at least three days a week for thirty minutes, then you qualify as an active person.

You can do only cardio work out or you can do both cardio and strength training.

You have to work on cardio, strength training and balance but you have to focus on raising the intensity of your weight training workout gradually. If you have more lean muscles, you will feel younger and look good.

To get lean muscles, start with two sets of strength training exercises the first week and add a second set in the second or third week. Next, add third set.

Every one nods their head when they hear that they should eat better.

You have to concentrate on the calorie intake to know what you are eating and what not.

You may have excuses like I don’t have time, I don’t know what to eat, I don’t know where to start, and the diet plans are confusing [Diet and exercise].

If you don’t have time to cook, it is impossible to lose weight. Healthy calorie intake is required to lose weight effectively and to gain health.

Many advertisements say that they give you the body you so desire.

They act as if they know the secret of losing weight and you have to learn from them. You believe and spend lot of money in their products.

Losing weight is not a big secret and is not a complicated thing. By concentrating on calorie intake, you can lose weight easily.

Calorie intake:

If you want to lose weight, the calorie intake should be less than you burn. Many diets claim that you can eat unlimited quantities of favorite food and still lose weight. You cannot fool your body for long in this way.

How to get lean body? Exercise is important to a long and healthy life and it is very much important at the age of forty.

You may be thinking how to fit the exercise in your daily routine.

A proper fitness plan helps to fit the exercise in your daily routine.

How to find time for exercise?

Take a piece of paper and write down hour by hour what are the things you do daily. Write down when you wake up and when you sleep. Write the amount of time you spend in watching television. Write the time spent on activities like shower, dressing etc.

After writing the daily routine from morning to night, you can just watch that you may be spending couple of hours in watching television and on other activities. You may be doing activities for other people that they can very well do for themselves.

If you are going to drop some of your filler activities, then you can easily drop your weight by preparing a fitness plan.

If you are starting the exercise workout, keep heart rate monitor to calculate if you are working hard enough.

You can buy the heart rate monitor which calculates your optimal beats per minute range.

Cardio exercise workout:

If you are sedentary, you have to take up one day for cardio exercise workout out of the three minimum days you will allot to exercise [Cardio exercise equipment].

You have to perform the activity that increases your heart rate and makes you sweat for twenty to thirty minutes.

You can walk around your yard or down your street or on a stationary bike. Pick two or three activities you can do regularly.

If you are active, you can perform your cardio exercise workout three days out of six. Do it every alternate day. You can perform on a stair stepper machine as you can get an intense workout without pains in the joints and muscles. Stretching exercises are also helpful to relax your muscles.

If you are a member of gym, you can try other cardio exercise workouts. Your body adapts to exercise quickly and you can see the improvements very soon. You can also choose swimming as the exercise workout.

The power yoga is so called because importance and focus are placed on connecting with your inner core of power, recognizing the power within, on several levels.

The physical tension can be released by physical power developing strength and health for the body.

Power yoga concentrates on developing physical flexibility and cultivates the desire for self-discipline.

It has the same prospective of following thorough full body workout and encourages mental stability and concentration.

Power yoga is preferred mostly by younger generations as it gives quick results.

They can also enjoy exercising with minimum amount of meditation practice with their yoga. It is mostly based on ashtanga yoga primary series.

Power yoga requires the basic poses like bikram yoga. It gives an energetic workout and offers basic challenges that can be done by the beginners. It concentrates on proper form of executing yoga poses and perfecting them by holding the pose longer improving the flexibility and stamina.

Power yoga is done while synchronizing the breathing patterns to each movement. Warm up exercises should be done before starting power yoga session to relax and stretch your muscles of the body.

Over fifty percent of people at the age of 40s do not follow fitness program.

If you are at the age of forty, you may be busy with your kids at home, you may be having debts to worry about, you need to take care of your old parents, your work may be stressful, and you may not be having enough time to sleep.

At the age of forty, life gets most complex and you may have lot of commitments. Added to that your energy levels become less at this age and you may not be able to follow a fitness program.

This is the age where you put on extra pounds and start to lose muscle. Your metabolism slows down and the diet that allowed you to maintain a steady weight earlier will now put an additional weight leading to weight gain.

Weight settles around your mid section and on the back of your arms. Muscle loss results in aching back. Without the fitness program, you have a droopy appearance. Do not think that this information is meant to depress you.

Food nutrition helps in losing weight at the age of 40s.

You may have confusion which type of food nutrition you have to follow to lose weight.

Here are the some of the guidelines to follow food nutrition.

Food Nutrition:

• Eat vegetables half to one cup servings thrice a day.
• Eat two fruits daily, three or more fruits are even better.
• Eat lean protein minimum two servings per day. The lean protein includes nuts, turkey, beans, and tofu.
• Eat whole grains six servings per day. Whole grains include whole wheat flour, brown rice etc.
• Eat healthy fat oils one to two table spoons per day. Healthy fat oils include soy, corn oil and olive oil.
• Eat fat free dairy products or calcium fortified dairy products two to three servings per day. This includes soy milk, fat free milk, soy yogurt etc.

This food nutrition helps you to lose weight and feel great. If you want to lose weight even easier, use 10 to 35% calories from lean protein, 45 to 65% calories from carbohydrates and 20 to 35% calories from fat.

The rest of the calories should be taken evenly from vegetables, fruits, and dairy products.

Maintaining upper body building such as arms, chest, neck, back and shoulders is important to your posture making your breathing easier and allowing performing normal pushing, lifting, reaching, twisting and pulling activities.

Upper body strength helps you to maintain a good posture and reduce the risk of injury or lower back pain.

The upper body strength holds your head more easily in an upright position, reducing fatigue and neck pain.

Weight lifting is one of the fastest ways to see changes in your upper body. Follow the weight lifting exercises at least three times per week and you will see the results in three or four weeks. You can combine weight lifting exercises with daily cardio exercises to get good results.

You can start with lighter weights in the beginning. Lifting lighter weights with more repetitions builds muscle endurance.

Before starting your body building exercise program, assess your current strength level. If you are a member of gym, you can take help from the trainer to determine the best weight for you.

If you are starting at home, you can purchase a set of dumbbells. Once you have identified the right weight for you, the next step is to know the proper form to use.