Legs & muscle

by | Feb 26, 2013 | Exercise, How Your Body Works, Weight Loss | 0 comments

leg-muscles-man-15265902The muscles in the legs are about the biggest in the body so using those is actually very good for weight loss.

There are three exercises that will principally help you get the most out of using your leg muscles. They are Hindu squats (there are plenty of videos on YouTube how to do those), walking or running up and down stairs and finally 100 meter sprints (sprint in one direction, walk back).

Do that as many times as you can up to 4 times and that will be enough for that session and for most people you don’t need to add any extra weight as the weight of your body give your legs a sufficient enough work out unless you want to be Arnold Schwarzenegger of course.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Below is a copy of the comment I made on a forum post about muscle building

Low Carb and Anxiety

by | Feb 8, 2013 | How Your Body Works, Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

 

 433px-Digestive_system_diagram_edit.svgMany people don’t realize how important their stomach and their digestive system is in relation to other bodily systems. How our stomach “feels” can and does have a huge impact on our emotional being far more than many people have thought although thankfully science is catching up with many of the ancient practices and wisdom that did understand this, ancient Chinese medicine being at the forefront of that understanding.

I don’t know about you but I was a comfort-eater. Secretly many men are which if that was the case for you, then you have in essence taken away your comfy blanket so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to find that you are feeling more anxious about not having the food that you used to rely on to give you comfort and as a therapist you would know exactly that the body will follow precisely our inner thoughts, hopes and aspirations far more exactly than our rational conscious decisions.

One of the best ways around this is to make sure that you have a big enough reason “why” you want a new body as it were and give yourself a profound set of goals.

Hope that helps,

Mark

This is a copy of a recent comment I did on a forum post regarding low carb diet

Need to stop weighing myself daily

by | Feb 8, 2013 | How Your Body Works, Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image3043233

Taking your body measurements around the neck, bust, chest, stomach, hips and thighs is always a good idea when we start any weight loss journey because as others have said the scales do lie.

The tape measure however doesn’t lie as much but the great thing is they seldom lie together. I do recommend also that people take a set of clothes that were snug when they first started the diet and try those on once a week to see how the fit is changing. You can also measure yourself once a week as well. 

I would normally recommend people measure, weight and see how loose the clothes are getting just once a week all on the same day but if you prefer to have more ongoing encouragement you can do all those on different days so you’re still doing each of them once a week but you’re getting an encouragement every two or three days, say.

So measure your weight on Monday, see how your clothes fit on Wednesday and jump on the scales on Friday or Saturday and don’t forget to keep a record of each one because that way you’ll see the numbers slowly descending and even though the weight may not be going down, you might find you’re losing inches and even though the inches may not be going down you might find that the fit of your clothes has got loser. I’m sure you get the picture.

Hope that helps,

Mark

This is a recent comment that I made on a forum post abut weight loss

Survey on clothing sizes

by | Feb 5, 2013 | How Your Body Works, Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

Another comment I made on a forum post regarding clothing sizes

 

Hi Ann,

You’re right it does have many variables. The clothing industry basically abandoned the standard cloth-sizing agreement in the 1980s. What used to be for instance, a size 10 became a size 4, size 14 became an 8, size 18 became a 14 and so on.

How much weight you lose to drop a dress size however depends on how big you are to start with. It’s probably easier to understand if we start from the smallest size. Imagine a stick-thin model putting on a few pounds, she would probably shoot up one or maybe even two dress sizes through only gaining, say 3 or 4 inches around the waist and bust combined. At the other end of the scale dress size could be hardly affected at all even with a loss of 20 or 30 lbs, that’s for someone over 250 to 300 lbs of course.

If you look at the official figures on the old standard, dropping from a size 12 to a 10 which is a modern 6 to a 4 would have meant a combined loss of 3 inches in total from the bust, waist and hips equating to a loss of 10 lbs. Remember back then of course it was considered that shorter people were going to be generally smaller. I think that was based on the average woman’s height at the time being 5’4″. At the other end of the scale someone who was a size 50 would have according to the clothing manufacturer’s standard of the day, being around 5’6″ and in order to drop 2 dress sizes, they would have lost 15 lbs and 6 inches around the bust, waist and hips combined.

The thing is as much as for the ladies and the men, those sizes have changed so much over the last 30 or so years that they don’t mean a lot at all anymore. I shop between four different countries, the sizes the manufacturers chose relate very much to the demographics of the population they serve. For instance a large T shirt bought in the UK would be an XL T shirt for the same size in France and an XXL for the same size bought in Italy.

So the bottom line is really, it’s not what size clothes you’re buying that matter so much, its how looser the clothes that you bought last time that’s what gives me the thrill.

Hope that helps,

Mark

 

Taking measurements

by | Feb 5, 2013 | How Your Body Works, Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

A copy of another comment on a forum post regarding body measurements

 

Hi Mark,

I would actually use three lots of measuring methods to gauge how well my body shape is changing, obviously the scales although they are known for not telling the truth all the time, and then measuring.

This is how I advice people to measure:

 

Let’s start with the men first:

– Around you neck where the shirt collar would go.

– Around your chest, just under your armpits more or less at nipple level.

– Around you stomach at the largest part.

– Around your upper arm at the largest part but without flexing your muscles and keeping your arm straight.

– Forearm at the largest part with your arms straight and again without flexing muscles.

– Your thighs at the largest part and do take time to measure each leg separately and also around the calves because some men do put fat on around the calves.

 

Now the ladies: They have a little bit more to measure. Ladies measurements are:

– Again, around the neck where the shirt collar would go.

– Around the chest or bust and it’s important to keep the measuring tape parallel with the ground. Probably the best way of doing it is measure around just under the bra and exhale; you want this measurement to be as smallest possible in order to retain the accuracy. Measure your bust as well by standing straight with your arms at your side and measure the fullest part of your bust preferably while wearing a bra and again make sure the tape is parallel to the ground.

– Then the upper arm at the largest part of the arm without flexing the muscles and the arm is straight.

– The forearm, the largest part of the forearm with straight arms and without flexing muscles.

– Then the waist ideally at the smallest part but you need to be the judge of that. The secret is to keep the same place each week.

– The stomach which is normally a little bit lower than the waist, again at the largest part.

– Hips, at the level of the hip joint or the largest circumference of your hips.

– Thighs, at the largest part of each leg again measured separately.

– Calves, at the largest part of each of your calves.

 

Those are the areas of the body both for men and women that will show the greatest change due to fat loss and a change of muscle tone.

The bottom line is the more places you measure the more indicators you’ve got of a change of body shape. Different areas of your body will change size at different times depending on the quality of the underlying fat but also the type of exercise that you’re getting as well.

One last thing that I always recommend people do is when they first start on an effective diet like low carb is to put on the snuggest outfit they’ve got and on the same day they measure, get it out and see how loose it’s starting to get.

So there are three ways that you can see how well you’re doing and encourage yourself from week to week. Oh yes, only do this once a week by the way, any more than that is just a waste of effort.

Hope that helps,

Mark

HELP! A bit TMI, lets talk poop

by | Jan 31, 2013 | How Your Body Works, Low carb diet, Metabolism | 0 comments

Below is a copy of the recent comment I made at 3fatchicks about a question on constipation

 

Hi Aarrixx,

I eat hardly any vegetables and don’t suffer with constipation at all but what I do is make sure that my stomach bacteria have been salted out and are kept well fed.

So on a fairly regular basis as when needed I take a good quality probiotics and I keep them well fed by having natural home made yogurt made with unpasteurized milk and from  time to time also take enzymes for the stomach that way everything is kept nicely in order but not a Psyllium husk in sight.

Cheers,

Mark