Report- Building A Weight Loss Framework
Building a Framework: A simple guide to using structured diets to build a solid weight loss plan.
Trying to lose weight is tough, but it’s even tougher when you’re just taking your first steps towards becoming healthier and losing that weight.
Deciding to lose weight can be as simple as one day waking up and realizing you want to do better for yourself, not everyone starts out by doing a ton of research on how to develop the best personal weight loss plan for themselves right out of the gate.
In fact a lot of developing a weight loss plan comes from trial and error to find out what works best, which is why a structured diet can go such a long way in helping you start to make the changes you want to see in your diet.
What is a Structured Diet?
A “Structured Diet” is a sort of catch‐all phrase for any kind of diet that someone else has already put together that outlines nutrition, meals, and occasionally fitness and exercise as well. It’s usually in a weekly or monthly format and is either subscription based, costs a flat fee, or in some cases is distributed freely.
In short, it’s a diet that someone already found works and is sharing with other people. You can find a lot of structured diets online or on TV, popular structured diets include South Beach, Atkins, and even “monthly services” like Jenny Craig.
Many diets are also easy to find online and can be found on forums or personal blogs, you can find plenty of information with just a simple search.
How does a Structured Diet help me start a personal weight loss plan?
When we talk about using a structured diet to build up your own personal weight loss plan we’re generally talking about building up a solid framework for you to branch off from. Like any house needs a frame to build walls, doors, windows, and a roof your personal weight loss plan will need a strong foundation of information to build up from.
Structured diets, depending on which you look at, will give you all kinds of information about why certain aspects of nutrition are “good” or “bad” and how eating a certain way can help your body and help you to lose weight.
Day one dieters usually don’t have that strong foundation of nutritional and fitness info to build from and can make mistakes that at best aren’t helping them lose weight and, at worst, can even hinder or set back progress they may be making or have already made!
How do I choose a Structured Diet that’s right for me?
Well, just like any other dietary decision you will need to do some research before you get started. First of all, you should work to identify exactly what your weight loss goals are as well as the kind of nutrition and eating habits you’re comfortable with. From there the choice is as simple as picking a structured diet that aligns with those values and that you’re interested in starting.
A good rule of thumb is to start with a diet that’s willing to go the extra mile to help you prepare and understand the nutrition that’s going to be affecting your weight and your life. Any diet that’s unwilling or unable to do that generally isn’t going to be worth the time you spend on it, so try to stay away from diets that are simply meal plans.
Another thing to watch out for is dangerous and unhealthy fad diets that promise results without much explanation of why or how it works. This usually comes in the form of a “miracle pill” or one size fits all kind of tool that guarantees unrealistic results. Diets like these try to disguise themselves as legitimate, but are usually just scams. If a diet can’t answer your questions about how it works or why you’re doing what you’re doing, then simply move along until you can find something that will.
Here are some examples of “name brand” diets and their basic ideals:
Atkins – The Atkins diet is a high protein, low carb diet that focuses on quick weight loss. The low carb aspect works well with an already diabetic diet, making it popular with people that have diabetes.
Weight Watchers – The Weight Watchers diet is a simple diet that works on a sort of point system that assigns values to foods and meals based on their nutritional value, encouraging users to eat within a certain value daily so long as their foods add up.
South Beach – South Beach is another low carb high protein diet that also emphasizes high fiber foods and helps by classifying “good” and “bad” carbs and fats.
What kinds of things should my Structured Diet be teaching me?
Since the big reason you’re going with a structured diet instead of just going in feet first is developing the base of information and understanding you need to make healthy decisions, it’s important to get some basics down right away.
Here’s an idea of the kinds of things that you should be learning from your structured diet:
1. Nutrition info. This is probably one of the most important parts of learning how to lose weight.
A proper diet teaches and helps you to understand the reasoning behind why some foods are good and others are bad for your health and for weight loss in general. I’m sure you’ve heard things like “a glass of wine with dinner can improve your health!” but it’s understanding this nutritional info that will tell you why. One of the single most important things a structured diet can teach you is how to understand the nutrition of foods and ingredients.
2. Nutritional balance. It’s not important to understand how foods affect your body and your health, it’s important to understand how to balance those aspects against each other. You should be trying to learn how to balance a meal with its carbs, calories, fats, and other nutrition “stats” so you can work on your own meal plan instead of relying on one that has been put together for you.
3. Foods and fitness. Last but not least you should understand how diet and exercise go hand in hand with each other when it comes to weight loss. Understanding calories and fats is important, but knowing how to balance your food intake with exercise to burn off calories and pounds is just as important, too.
What do I do with all of this information?
This is where you get to start branching out from your structured diet and into something that fits your personal needs better. Trying out structured diets is kind of like trying on clothes at a store, you’ll be able to find a bunch of different sizes and styles but they won’t fit perfectly like a tailored piece would.
Start with the outline of your structured diet and use the things you’ve learned about nutrition and balancing your meals to work out a rough plan for what kinds of food meet your requirements and goals. It’s all about taking “baby steps” and making minor modifications until you have something that’s working for you. For some plans you might find that the majority of the structured diet is helping you to reach your goals and that’s fine, stay with it so long as it’s showing definite progress but make sure you’re prepared to make those changes as you reach plateaus that your structured diet just isn’t able to break through. You change as much or as little as you like about your structured diet to make it your own, just make sure that what you’re doing is keeping in mind the eventual goal of a permanent, healthy lifestyle change. As you make changes eventually you’ll look back at where you started and where you are now and see how far you’ve come and all the differences between then and now. The diet that you started with will likely be a far cry from your new healthy lifestyle, but it’s the things you learned from it that will have shaped your ability to lose and keep that weight off to reach your healthy goals.
Let your Structured Diet become your successful personal weight loss plan! Nobody ever said it was going to be easy or that you would see quick results right away, in fact just about anyone will tell that it will be a long and difficult road. However, instead of letting that dissuade you from making the right choices and taking the tough first steps, let that be all the more reason for you to go out there and lose that weight. Using a structured diet could be just what you need to build up a strong foundation and a sturdy framework that will eventually become the personal weight loss plan that will help you to reach the weight loss goals that you’ve been dreaming about.
Spot Reducing Fat
Can You “Spot Reduce” Fat from a Particular Area of the Body?
Do you have areas of your body that seem to hold onto fat more than others? Maybe you have excess fat on your thighs or upper arms. Maybe you have a problem with belly fat. Most of us have areas of our body that we’d love to just wave a magic wand over, and magically the fat would disappear. The process of reducing fat in certain areas is called “spot reducing”, and there’s a whole industry that is built around the concept that some products can help reduce fat in the areas we choose. Most of these products target belly fat because it’s what most people want to reduce, but there are some that target other areas of the body. Is there any truth to the claim that fat can be “spot reduced” and do any of these products work?
Fat accumulates in different places in our bodies, and the amount and the order in which the fat accumulates is largely determined by genetics. It can also be influenced by some external factors like stress and lack of sleep, both of which cause cortisol levels to rise. Elevated cortisol levels can cause more belly fat to accumulate, but genetics play a larger role in where fat is deposited. There’s not much you can do about how your body stores fat, but can you influence how it gets rid of it?
Just as you can’t control where fat deposits form in your body, you can’t control what areas lose fat first. There are no exercises that you can do to “spot reduce” fat, even though there are multiple gadgets and programs that claim you can. Exercising a certain body part will help the muscles in that area get stronger, but it won’t cause fat to be reduced in that area. Fat loss and muscle strengthening are two different things. Also, fat does not turn into muscle. You can decrease fat and increase muscle, but you can’t turn one into the other.
There are a couple things you can do to lose fat, but you won’t be able to control where that fat is lost from. The only thing you can do is consistently lose body fat at a healthy rate by lowering your calories enough so that you burn more than you take in. This is called being in a calorie deficit. You will have to continue the process until you lose fat in the areas that you want. It may take a while, but it will happen if you stay in a calorie deficit long enough. The belly is normally the last place most people lose fat. You can help your body let go of belly fat by getting enough rest and keeping your stress levels low, lowering your cortisol levels, but there are no guarantees.
Now that you know the truth about “spot reducing” fat, you are a more informed consumer and will be able to make better decisions regarding your health and fitness. Spend your money, time, and energy on proven methods of fat loss, and stop looking for short cuts. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
How Much Daily Exercise Does It Take To Lose Weight
How Much Exercise Do You Need Every Day To Lose Weight
Weight loss is a goal that requires both a disciplined dietary approach and exercise, among other factors, to achieve and excel.
How much exercise is needed every day to achieve your weight loss goal is a common question and not one that generally has a clear answer.
Unfortunately, there is not a magic number of minutes, reps or hours needed to lose weight, rather there are a number of variables that need to be considered in order to figure out the right number.
We’ll examine the different variables that come into play when trying to determine how much exercise is needed to give you a roadmap to determining the exercise timeframe that works best for you.
Variable 1: Calories Consumed and Calorie Quality
The first principle of weight loss is that to lose weight we must achieve a caloric deficit or expend more calories than we are consuming. Thus, in order to know the amount of exercise needed to lose weight, we need to know what our daily caloric intake is, and just as importantly, what the sources are for those calories (for example, vegetables versus potato chips).
To this point, if you operate on a low-calorie diet generally speaking, it would take less exercise to lose weight and you may be fine with a moderate 3-4 day a week training plan. Conversely, if you eat excessive amounts or use tons of supplements, you’ll need to up your exercise plan and really push to get back into the caloric deficit mode.
Variable 2: Exercise Type and Intensity
The second key variable is the type of exercise, and more specifically the intensity. 20 minutes on the elliptical has a far different energy output than 20 minutes of all out sprinting. This variable can also dovetail with our first variable, in that the greater the number of calories consumed, the more energy we may have for high intensity exercise, whereas if we aren’t consuming too many calories, we may not need to exercise for an especially long time or at a high intensity per se.’
In general, exercise modalities that are more aerobic will require a longer time to see any sort of effective impact on weight loss. Jogging, biking, the elliptical or other options would all require a significant amount of time, potentially hours over the course of a week, to see a meaningful impact.
Conversely, anaerobic activities such as sprinting, resistance training or interval training methods will be more effective in a short amount of time, yet their intensity level is much higher and thus they have a certain level of pre-requisite fitness to achieve their full potential and results.
Variable 3: What is the Weight Loss Goal? How much time do we have to achieve it?
The third variable is arguably the most important, what is the weight loss goal? Much like our car ride or travel plans are determined by our destination, our exercise plan and weight loss journey will be dictated by the goal we have set.
If the goal is to lose 5 pounds in two months, that is a fairly modest and achievable goal for most and would not require much additional exercise. If you were a sedentary person prior to your goal you would only need to exercise 20-30 minutes a day for 3-4 days a week to achieve this goal.
Conversely, if you goal is to lose 30 pounds in two months, the equation is radically different, and it would take an extreme amount of exercise, multiple hours every day at high intensity to achieve that same goal.
Putting it All Together: Finding the Right Number
Now that we have examined the variables, we can think about how to more effectively answer the question of how much exercise we need per day to lose weight. If you have a low caloric intake generally speaking, are planning on utilizing low intensity aerobic exercise and have a modest goal than you might be ok with 30-45 minutes of aerobic exercise a day.
However, if you love to eat, love to lift weights and also have an ambitious goal for weight loss, you’re going to have to spend hours per day working out to reach those goals.
The ultimate recommendation would be to accurately assess your starting point as compared to your goal, look at how much time you have to reach that goal, and then make a plan accordingly to reach it rather than rely on a standard number or cookie-cutter approach that doesn’t apply to every person.
Choose the Ketogenic Diet to Burn Stored Fat
Choose the Ketogenic Diet to Burn Stored Fat
When you follow a ketogenic diet, you end up using fat as your fuel.
This not only lets you get rid of stored fat, but it causes you to lose weight as well.
You’ll feel better physically and mentally when you follow a ketogenic eating plan.
You’ll notice that you have plenty of energy to exercise and you’ll notice that you don’t feel the hunger to eat a lot like you may have before you started the diet.
You’ll also have sharper mental abilities as well as notice that your skin looks better.
You will need to make sure that you’re paying attention to the precise food that you eat so that you enter into ketosis, which is what happens when your body is using fat for energy rather than getting it from the foods that you eat.
In order to reach ketosis, you have to cut out all the carb load you may have been eating.
You’ll also need to stop consuming sugar.
When you follow the diet, you’ll notice that it helps to bring glucose numbers down as well as lowers your cholesterol and blood pressure, both of which are factors that contribute to heart disease.
You’ll be able to choose which ketogenic diet that you follow from among four choices:
The High-Protein Ketogenic diet is as simple as it sounds which means that you are going to have more protein in your diet than in other versions of the eating plan.
The Standard or Regular one is the diet that is most often followed and offers a choice between a low or higher range of carbs. In this one, you will also have some protein.
The Cyclical Ketogenic is for a mixture of low carb with high carb and you simply cycle on and off days.
If you choose the Targeted diet that is built around ketogenic eating, then you will eat according to the time that you have your workouts.
Foods on any of the ketogenic eating plans should be unprocessed.
You will be eating primarily all natural foods that contain little protein and carbs but plenty of fats. You will still need to watch your carb intake.
That includes keeping an eye on the amount of fruit that you eat. Though most fruit is low in calories, most of it is high in natural sugar. In order to stay in fat burning mode, you have to keep your carbs limited to within a certain range.
If you go out of that range, then you can leave the fat burning mode. You will have to be sure that you get your liquids in and that includes consuming water.
A ketogenic diet can make you more susceptible to not drinking adequate water.
Stress And Weight Gain
Stress and Weight Gain
You may think of stress as something that is normal and therefore there is no need to worry about it. After all, stress has become a part of our daily lives and everybody experiences it. So, why worry? Although there is some truth in this statement it is important to recognize that chronic stress can wreak havoc with our health, both mentally and physically.
How Stress Affects Your Appetite
One area of our health that is impacted by stress is our weight. Many people who have become overweight claim that their work is making them fat. This is due to a combination of factors which usually culminates in non-mindful eating, both quality and quantity. Being exposed continually to stressful tasks and situations means that they find themselves turning to foods for comfort and distraction. Unfortunately, this habit is only doing them much more harm than good.
Short term, isolated events causing stress can actually suppress appetite. This is why someone who in a hurry to finish a certain task can forget about eating. The stress of having to beat a deadline makes them forget to eat their lunch and only when they are able to finish the task do they realize they are hungry.
Effects of Cortisol
Due to the stress invoked, their hypothalamus produces corticotropin-releasing hormones that have the ability to suppress the appetite, as part of the natural ‘fight or flight’ response. When the threat passes and adrenalin levels subside, cortisol becomes the most prominent hormone. Part of its job is triggering hunger to replenish the fuel that the brain assumes has been used in dealing with the threat. Normally, once a stressful event is over, the levels of cortisol in the body will also decrease.
When stress is persistent and regular it becomes chronic stress. With chronic stress the mind and body are in constant survival mode. Cortisol levels will therefore remain elevated for a prolonged period resulting in continued bouts of food cravings.
If a person is exposed to chronic stress the adrenal glands may become overworked and even depleted. The brain reacts to the ensuing fatigue symptoms as if it were dealing with a low blood sugar episode and triggers a hunger response, automatically preparing for the worst by storing more calories and fats.
Stress Causes Poor Food Choices
Under this regime of unnatural stress, not only is the judgement of food quantity affected, poor decisions are usually made regarding food type and quality. This happens because under the influence of a ‘fight or flight’ response, the mind seeks easily assimilated simple sugar foods.
These would be ideal if the threat was an actual physical threat requiring intense physical activity. For most of us today, however, the stressor is usually emotional rather than physical. This means the ingested food is stored as fat rather than being expended for energy requirements.
Stress and Comfort Foods
Additionally, these same foods trigger the release of chemicals that provide a pleasure response, temporarily dulling the pain caused by the stress. These are the so-called ‘comfort foods’. Unfortunately, because of the feel-good response to these foods, they are continually sought after and can become addictive.
This explains why people who constantly deal with stress can find themselves eating more foods than they need to and find it so hard to ignore their cravings for comfort foods.