Hey guys, I have been getting quite a few emails of late about overweight children. Many are parents and even more sad many are young kids emailing me about how to lose weight. I would tell most of you parents, the most important thing you can do is make sure your child knows they are OK no matter what there weight! As hard as it may be it is also important to talk to your kid about weight, and ask them how they feel. Believe me, if you know your child has a weight problem, they do to.
The biggest thing you can do is increase your family's physical activity as a group. You may not have weight problems, but by increasing the whole family's activity it will make your child not feel singled out, and it will give them more motivation to continue. Try to plan out family activities that involve an active lifestyle. Activities such as swimming, hiking, walking, biking. You can also try to set rules on your sedentary lifestyle. Your children can watch a certain amount of television a day, or the video games can only be on for an hour. You can also do certain things throughout your day such as walking up stairs instead of taking the elevator. As I said in my earlier posts, forming habits is the biggest part of working out and staying motivated. Once an active lifestyle becomes a habit, you may consider getting a gym membership for your whole family. Many gyms and health clubs offer deals for cheaper monthly costs if you bring in family members to sign up as well. Therefore, it may be much cheaper than you thought to get to the gym.
As with any type of physical activity, it is important you teach your child about healthy eating habits. A great site for information on diet and losing weight is meal plans 101. This site can set your child or you whole family up with personalized meal plans to help with weight loss. Good Luck and Have a Good Night.
the fitnessexpert
Showing posts with label body fat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label body fat. Show all posts
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
Fat Loss Made A Little More Simple
Hey guys, I'm getting quite a few emails in the last few days with questions about losing fat. Many of you have read my articles about burning fat, but still have questions clarifying things. One question I'm getting is if I can design a sort of fat burning workout without just the normal treadmill for 30 minutes type thing. Let me see if I can break this down a little better and then I'll post a good fat burning workout.
Alright, in order to break down and burn the fat in your body, you have to do two things. Cardio and diet. Cardio is what actually burns the fat you have now. Cleaning up your diet is to help prevent from gaining anymore fat. Changing up your diet can also be beneficial in losing fat as well. In my previous posts, I said you need to be eating about six small meals a day. The reason you do this is to speed up your metabolism. When your metabolism is fast, you will burn off the food you eat faster. Metabolism begins to slow down with age, so spreading your meals out during the day can help counteract this and speed it back up. That's really all there is to it.
Now, in my other posts I say you don't want to eat carbohydrates past about 7 o'clock. When you sleep, any carbs that were not used up and burned off during the day turn into sugar while you sleep. That sugar is then turned into fat and stored in your body. The same thing can happen with excess calories. If you eat a lot before you go to bed, many of those excess calories may not be burned off while you sleep and are turned into fat. I like to use the college beer belly to explain this. You know many kids go off to college and gain the "freshman 15" and develop a beer belly. This is because of all the excess carbs and calories they get at night from drinking. If all this drinking started say at 10 in the morning and was done by mid afternoon, and then they went on with there day, they would not develop the beer belly. I'm not saying skip class and start drinking, but the excess calories would be burned off during the day with normal activity. Hopefully this helped simplify the process a little bit. If not, email me and I'll try to help you out even more. The following is a great fat burning program that you can start doing. It will be a little bit more interesting than just jumping on the treadmill. Good luck and enjoy.
Jumping Jacks –1 minute
Bodyweight squat (one-leg squat for advanced) – 15-20 reps
Push-ups (slower reps for advanced) – as many reps as possible
Kick butts (jog in place and kick your rear with both heels) – 1 minute
Hamstring floor bridge (use swiss ball or one leg for advanced) - 15-20 reps
Superman (lying on stomach w/ arms out to side, lift legs and chest off floor) – 15-20 reps
High knees (jog in place lifting knees as high as possible) – 1 minute
Stationary lunge – 15-20 reps
Torso rotations/twists – 20 reps each direction
Side bends/reaches – 20 reps each direction
Mountain climbers – 1 minute (if you can J)
Wall sit – as long as you can hold it
Dips (use chair/bench/stairs) – as many reps as possible
Go right down the line and do all these and you will be feeling it after...I promise.
the fitnessexpert
Alright, in order to break down and burn the fat in your body, you have to do two things. Cardio and diet. Cardio is what actually burns the fat you have now. Cleaning up your diet is to help prevent from gaining anymore fat. Changing up your diet can also be beneficial in losing fat as well. In my previous posts, I said you need to be eating about six small meals a day. The reason you do this is to speed up your metabolism. When your metabolism is fast, you will burn off the food you eat faster. Metabolism begins to slow down with age, so spreading your meals out during the day can help counteract this and speed it back up. That's really all there is to it.
Now, in my other posts I say you don't want to eat carbohydrates past about 7 o'clock. When you sleep, any carbs that were not used up and burned off during the day turn into sugar while you sleep. That sugar is then turned into fat and stored in your body. The same thing can happen with excess calories. If you eat a lot before you go to bed, many of those excess calories may not be burned off while you sleep and are turned into fat. I like to use the college beer belly to explain this. You know many kids go off to college and gain the "freshman 15" and develop a beer belly. This is because of all the excess carbs and calories they get at night from drinking. If all this drinking started say at 10 in the morning and was done by mid afternoon, and then they went on with there day, they would not develop the beer belly. I'm not saying skip class and start drinking, but the excess calories would be burned off during the day with normal activity. Hopefully this helped simplify the process a little bit. If not, email me and I'll try to help you out even more. The following is a great fat burning program that you can start doing. It will be a little bit more interesting than just jumping on the treadmill. Good luck and enjoy.
Jumping Jacks –1 minute
Bodyweight squat (one-leg squat for advanced) – 15-20 reps
Push-ups (slower reps for advanced) – as many reps as possible
Kick butts (jog in place and kick your rear with both heels) – 1 minute
Hamstring floor bridge (use swiss ball or one leg for advanced) - 15-20 reps
Superman (lying on stomach w/ arms out to side, lift legs and chest off floor) – 15-20 reps
High knees (jog in place lifting knees as high as possible) – 1 minute
Stationary lunge – 15-20 reps
Torso rotations/twists – 20 reps each direction
Side bends/reaches – 20 reps each direction
Mountain climbers – 1 minute (if you can J)
Wall sit – as long as you can hold it
Dips (use chair/bench/stairs) – as many reps as possible
Go right down the line and do all these and you will be feeling it after...I promise.
the fitnessexpert
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The Secret Behind Body Shape and Fat Distribution
Hey everyone, sorry I have been away a couple days. I will have 1 or 2 new posts for you everyday from now on. Here's a good one.
Do you ever wonder why your body fat never distributes in the same place. You may have a flat stomach, but you have tons of fat in your butt or love handles. Sound familiar? Genetics and gender play a huge part in body shape and fat distribution. There are three body shapes that people tend to form. Android is the apple shaped fat distribution. Gynoid is pear shaped and Ovoid is a rectangle or oval type shape. The android body shape is usually more common among men, while the gynoid is more common among women. Android body types store most of there fat around the abdomen and the upper body, while gynoid's store there body fat in the hips, thighs, and butt. The ovoid is more of a general distribution of fat. Losing this shape and excess body fat starts just like any other. You need to be on a strict diet and get plenty of physical activity. People with android body types are actually at quite a high health risk. They can begin to develop something called visceral fat. Visceral fat is fat that develops around the organs inside the body. It is way more common in someone suffering from obesity than someone who is just a little bit overweight. Large amounts of fat around the abdomen are a sign that you could be developing visceral fat.
So what can you do to influence your metabolism and body fat? Well, there are a number of things.
-Adding muscle to your body actually raises your metabolism causing you to burn more fat
-Metabolism slows down with age
-Crash Dieting, which is basically not eating at all slows metabolism
-Physical activity of course speeds your metabolism and burns fat
-Women typically have a slower metabolism than men
This doesn't mean you can sit back and blame your high body fat percentage on the world around you. There is plenty you can do to get the best out of your body. For information on fat loss read some of my earlier posts. My next post will be happier....but everyone needs to know information like this. Enjoy
fitnessexpert
-
Do you ever wonder why your body fat never distributes in the same place. You may have a flat stomach, but you have tons of fat in your butt or love handles. Sound familiar? Genetics and gender play a huge part in body shape and fat distribution. There are three body shapes that people tend to form. Android is the apple shaped fat distribution. Gynoid is pear shaped and Ovoid is a rectangle or oval type shape. The android body shape is usually more common among men, while the gynoid is more common among women. Android body types store most of there fat around the abdomen and the upper body, while gynoid's store there body fat in the hips, thighs, and butt. The ovoid is more of a general distribution of fat. Losing this shape and excess body fat starts just like any other. You need to be on a strict diet and get plenty of physical activity. People with android body types are actually at quite a high health risk. They can begin to develop something called visceral fat. Visceral fat is fat that develops around the organs inside the body. It is way more common in someone suffering from obesity than someone who is just a little bit overweight. Large amounts of fat around the abdomen are a sign that you could be developing visceral fat.
So what can you do to influence your metabolism and body fat? Well, there are a number of things.
-Adding muscle to your body actually raises your metabolism causing you to burn more fat
-Metabolism slows down with age
-Crash Dieting, which is basically not eating at all slows metabolism
-Physical activity of course speeds your metabolism and burns fat
-Women typically have a slower metabolism than men
This doesn't mean you can sit back and blame your high body fat percentage on the world around you. There is plenty you can do to get the best out of your body. For information on fat loss read some of my earlier posts. My next post will be happier....but everyone needs to know information like this. Enjoy
fitnessexpert
-
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Alcohol: The Liquid Fat
For many of you readers, this article will change the way you think about your body. It did for me anyway. Most people out for a good physique understand how to watch what they eat, train correctly, and get enough sleep. However, did you know alcohol can have a very negative effect on the body in terms of body fat? Alcohol is what we refer to as empty calories. Protein, carbohydrates, and fat provide calories and nutrients that can be used by the body. Alcohol, just kind of sits there causing damage.
Alcohol supplies the body with 7 calories per gram. This is only two less than a gram of fat (9 calories). Alcohol is the first thing to be burned in the body. This means while you have alcohol in your system, your body must spend all it's time burning up this alcohol before it can work on things such as burning fat or building muscle. In a sense, alcohol does not cause fat gain as much as it just severely slows down the process of fat loss. This alone can be detrimental to any diet.
Another adverse effect of alcohol is that it lowers your testosterone. Testosterone is a big part of burning fat and also building muscle. Lowered testosterone can lead to a lowered metabolic rate. A lowered metabolic rate will cause even more problems with fat loss. The reason you spread your meals out during the day while dieting is to speed up your metabolism. The lowered metabolic rate will cause more retention of fat. Along with this, alcohol also increases your appetite. With the lowered inhibition that alcohol causes, you will be more likely to eat foods you should not be eating while dieting.
As you can see, alcohol has very adverse effects on dieting. I know it is unrealistic for many of you to just give up drinking. If you feel you absolutely have to drink, try to drink either straight alcohol or wine. Mixers add excess sugar, carbs, and calories. Wine also adds quite a bit of sugar and carbs, but the alcohol content is not as high.
In conclusion, alcohol is very bad for dieting. Larger amounts (over seven drinks at any one time), often described as binge drinking, can cause major problems and probably should not be advocated. Maintaining reasonable levels of health, while enjoying a few drinks - using moderation as the key - should be no problem. However, athletes - who definitely are not your average population - wanting to improve performance, and those wanting to lose weight are a different issue entirely.
Alcohol, as shown, will negate any efforts to lose body fat and will alter performance for the worst. The best advice would be to totally abstain until performance and weight loss goals are obtained.
Alcohol supplies the body with 7 calories per gram. This is only two less than a gram of fat (9 calories). Alcohol is the first thing to be burned in the body. This means while you have alcohol in your system, your body must spend all it's time burning up this alcohol before it can work on things such as burning fat or building muscle. In a sense, alcohol does not cause fat gain as much as it just severely slows down the process of fat loss. This alone can be detrimental to any diet.
Another adverse effect of alcohol is that it lowers your testosterone. Testosterone is a big part of burning fat and also building muscle. Lowered testosterone can lead to a lowered metabolic rate. A lowered metabolic rate will cause even more problems with fat loss. The reason you spread your meals out during the day while dieting is to speed up your metabolism. The lowered metabolic rate will cause more retention of fat. Along with this, alcohol also increases your appetite. With the lowered inhibition that alcohol causes, you will be more likely to eat foods you should not be eating while dieting.
As you can see, alcohol has very adverse effects on dieting. I know it is unrealistic for many of you to just give up drinking. If you feel you absolutely have to drink, try to drink either straight alcohol or wine. Mixers add excess sugar, carbs, and calories. Wine also adds quite a bit of sugar and carbs, but the alcohol content is not as high.
In conclusion, alcohol is very bad for dieting. Larger amounts (over seven drinks at any one time), often described as binge drinking, can cause major problems and probably should not be advocated. Maintaining reasonable levels of health, while enjoying a few drinks - using moderation as the key - should be no problem. However, athletes - who definitely are not your average population - wanting to improve performance, and those wanting to lose weight are a different issue entirely.
Alcohol, as shown, will negate any efforts to lose body fat and will alter performance for the worst. The best advice would be to totally abstain until performance and weight loss goals are obtained.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
5 Diet Tricks to Major Fat Loss
For most people, losing body fat is a big problem. It can be very frustrating, and eating the right things is something people just don't like to do. In the end it's all worth it, and here are 5 tips to losing that unwanted body fat.
1. Eat more than 3 meals a day
Most of you will look at this and not understand. Why would I eat more meals a day if I want to LOSE weight! Well, this is probably the key reason most people fail at losing bodyfat. Everytime you eat, your metabolism starts working and burning whatever you are putting into your body. The more often you eat during the day, the faster and harder your metabolism is working to burn that food. Space your eating out to 5 or 6 smalls meals a day, or every 3 hours or so. This is not to say eat like a cow 5 times a day, just keep your meals small and frequent.
2. Night Eating
Eating before bed is a big no no. For most people, your appetite is stronger at night, which cause people to put unwanted calories into your body. When you sleep your metabolism slows down. Any food you eat before bed could possibly be stored as fat, and your body will not be able to burn it off. Avoid eating 3 hours before you go to bed, and you will make big strides on your diet.
3. Drink H2O
The importance of drinking water is very often overlooked. Your body is composed mostly of water, and water allows you to utilize all the nutrients you put into your body. It also flushes toxins out of your system, makes your skin healthier, improves stretch marks, and your complexion.
4. Watch Your Carb Intake
This one is simple. Your body burns carbohydrates before anything else in your body. Next, it burns up your fat. So, if you lower your carbs, your body can start burning fat sooner. The trick with carbs is you want to consume most of them in the morning. They will give you energy to get through the day, while your body slowly burns them off. Begin tapering off your carbs in the early afternoon, and watch that fat melt away.
5. Take a Multi-Vitamin and Supplement
While dieting, taking a multi-vitamin can help replace key nutrients you may lose when watching what you eat. There are many good multi-vitamins out there, but I recommend two specifcally:
For Men: Megamen from GNC
For Women: Centrum
Supplementation can be a huge deal if done right...Wu Yi Tea is one of these great supplements. It is an all natural green tea that can help you lose weight.
There ya go...5 keys to fat loss..follow these and you will be well on your way to a healthier 2008.
1. Eat more than 3 meals a day
Most of you will look at this and not understand. Why would I eat more meals a day if I want to LOSE weight! Well, this is probably the key reason most people fail at losing bodyfat. Everytime you eat, your metabolism starts working and burning whatever you are putting into your body. The more often you eat during the day, the faster and harder your metabolism is working to burn that food. Space your eating out to 5 or 6 smalls meals a day, or every 3 hours or so. This is not to say eat like a cow 5 times a day, just keep your meals small and frequent.
2. Night Eating
Eating before bed is a big no no. For most people, your appetite is stronger at night, which cause people to put unwanted calories into your body. When you sleep your metabolism slows down. Any food you eat before bed could possibly be stored as fat, and your body will not be able to burn it off. Avoid eating 3 hours before you go to bed, and you will make big strides on your diet.
3. Drink H2O
The importance of drinking water is very often overlooked. Your body is composed mostly of water, and water allows you to utilize all the nutrients you put into your body. It also flushes toxins out of your system, makes your skin healthier, improves stretch marks, and your complexion.
4. Watch Your Carb Intake
This one is simple. Your body burns carbohydrates before anything else in your body. Next, it burns up your fat. So, if you lower your carbs, your body can start burning fat sooner. The trick with carbs is you want to consume most of them in the morning. They will give you energy to get through the day, while your body slowly burns them off. Begin tapering off your carbs in the early afternoon, and watch that fat melt away.
5. Take a Multi-Vitamin and Supplement
While dieting, taking a multi-vitamin can help replace key nutrients you may lose when watching what you eat. There are many good multi-vitamins out there, but I recommend two specifcally:
For Men: Megamen from GNC
For Women: Centrum
Supplementation can be a huge deal if done right...Wu Yi Tea is one of these great supplements. It is an all natural green tea that can help you lose weight.
There ya go...5 keys to fat loss..follow these and you will be well on your way to a healthier 2008.
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