Weight Loss Advice: Doing Something is Much Better than Doing Nothing

When of the most common excuses people use for not exercising is "I am too busy; I don't have time to exercise as much as I have to in order to lose weight and/or tone my body or build muscle." If you are one of those people who use that kind of excuse for not exercising at all, I would like for you to be aware of two very important facts that might just change this mindselt for you for you:

1. Exercising, weight loss and health us the most important thing in your life. I don't care how many children you have to take care of, what you do for a living, and how many professional and social obligations you have - if you are not healthy, fit and happy, NOTHING else will matter to you and all other achievements will be undermined by this missing fundamental link of a healthy, happy life. Hey, if our President, Secreatary of State, and the Governor have time to exercise with all their headaches, who are we to complain that we don't have time?

2. It's very important to realize and remember that when it comes to exercising, doing something is much better than nothing. Too many people do not take the time to exercise just because they don't have a full hour or more to do that. It is not  necessary, however, to exercise for such a long period of time in order to get the health and the weight loss benefits from physical activity that you need. In fact, a very short but intense exercise can be very effective or just as effective for the purposes of losing weight and becoming stronger. Most people, even if they carry a significant extra weight, can run a mile in under 12 minutes, which is a great workout in itself. Even a couple of sets of 3 minutes of squats and three minutes of rope jumping with a few minutes of jogging to warm up and cool down will jump start and significantly speed up your metabolism, and that should only take around 20 minutes or even less.

So, if you know you should be exercising and you just have a few minutes to do so, don't blow your work-out off copmletely because of lack of time, but instead, use those few minutes to get a great, intense workout.

Are you undereating?

As I observe and work with many people who are eagerly trying to lose weight, I am amazed to find out that when it comes to nutrition, many of them are undereating rather than overeating. Ironically, due to the nature of the metabolic process that allows a human body to burn fat, undereating will hurt your chances of losing weight just as much as overeating.

The reality is that you need fuel to burn fuel! If you are determined to lose weight and you exercise intensely and regularly, your body will not give you the results you want if you are trying to "pull through" the whole day on cereal and a couple of protein bars. It's especially when you exercise, you body craves those essential vitamins and nutrients that will allow it to speed up the metabolism and accelerate the fat burning process during the work-outs and at any other time throughout the day.

Therefore, you must eat an adequate, recommended amount of all the essential vitamins and nutrients every day in order to support your body's needs for energy and in order to maintain high metabolism which is the main catalyst of burning fat. You can easily find the commended daily calorie intake, considering your height, weight, age and body size on the internet and you should follow that recommendation by eating equal or greater amount of food as your exercise routines become longer and / or more intense.

Fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean proteins must be part of your daily diet. You must never find yourself in a position of starving and feeling that you are depriving yourself of food when you being an intense, daily exercise regimen.

The worst thing a person who wants to lose weight can do is skip breakfast and not eat anything until noon or later, like so many people unfortunately do. If I could compare it to operating a car, this kind of start of the day will put your body into "slow rpm" mode - where it will go into starvation mode, so that when you finally feed when, while being extremely hungry, the food will not be processed properly and the body, anticipating that it will be starved again, will attempt to store that energy as fat in the body instead of using it, as it would have, if you ate in the morning one or more small meals before afternoon, and kept your body's metabolism up the whole time.

Undereating will not only slow down your metabolism, but it will also significantly hamper your body's ability to recover form workouts. That in turn, will slow you down and will prevent you from exercising as hard as you want and need in order to achieve your weight loss goals.

So, give your body all the nutritional elements it needs to burn fat, build muslce and feel energized and ready for exercise and other daily tasks.

The importance of getting up early!

Scientific and medical research clearly shows that testosteron is linked to metabolism and a greater production of that hormone has a direct effect on burning calories from fat. Researchers also found that the levels of testosteron prodution in an average adult vary throughout the day, while this process usually peaks between 7 am and 9 am every day.

Being awake during those morning hours is crucial to enhancing the chemical processes in the body that cause testosteron production. During those very hours, our metabolism is at its peak! This means two very important things to anyone who wants to lose weight: (1) Since your metabolism is most intense during those hours, anything you eat between 7 and 9 in the morning will be absorbed, digested and used as energy more efficiently than during any other time of the day. Therefore, this is the time when the smallest amount of energy you consume will be stored as fat. (2) These hours are also the time when your body is at its fastest and strongest (unless you didn't sleep all night, of course). Therefore, exercising during those hours is will allow you to perform better physically while building muslce and losing fat. fat.

So, if you are serious about losing weight and are eager to make it happen sooner, get up at or before 7 am.

Seeing results helps!

It so happens that we all enjoy seeing results of our work as soon as possible. The work we do in order to lose is no different. We want to see some kind of progress shortly after we start working out and maintaining healthy diet. The good news is that there is a simple, reliable way to see the results of your work relatively quickly - get a digital weight scale. A quality digital scale will show you your weight loss progress in precise measurement of 1 or 1/2 a pound.

Thus, if you weight yourself, lets say, once per week, seeing a drop of 1/2 - 1 pound per week will be a very encouraging news for you and it will further motivate you to work harder and stick with your routine.

I do not like endorsing particular brands, but when it comes to scales, quality matters and Tanita make excellent, precision digital scales. Get one and start monitoring your progress weekly, records your measurements and watch how you drop those pounds of fat.