How to Break a Weight Loss Plateau

by | Apr 17, 2013 | Exercise, Fat Loss, Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

Break a Weight Loss Plateau

So many weeks in to your diet and you’ve been doing really well. Pounds are coming off, the inches are going and you are probably feeling quite pleased with yourself.

Then all of a sudden your daily weight in session is the same for two days running, and then three, and then four. Even though you’re exercising and you’re eating as you know you should do, nothing is moving in the scale front. You have reached what is known in the trade as a plateau.

Here’s a short but sweet article that will give you a few tips and tricks on how to deal with it.

You’re doing everything right. Counting calories and lifting weights and doing massive amounts of cardio. One day, you realize that you’ve stopped burning fat. No longer can you fit into smaller and smaller clothes; the scale is unchanged for days, perhaps weeks. How frustrating. You’ve hit a weight-loss plateau that can easily be broken.

Steps

  1. Trick your body. Change up your routine. If you’re hitting the exercise bike or the elliptical, do something different. If you are doing the same exercises over and over again, your body “knows” what to expect. It’s called “specificity of training”. If you work out at a gym, change your cardio routine by jumping on a stair-climber, a treadmill, or a rowing machine. Try ten minutes of intense cardio work on a machine and jump on another and repeat. Mix up your routine so it’s not a routine.
  2. Join a sport. An active sport is a great to change up your routine. Sports like racquetball, tennis and basketball will work different muscle groups with lateral movement instead of the same boring forward movement on a treadmill or elliptical (that’s not to say that the treadmill or elliptical aren’t good machines, but mix it up!). If you don’t have a gym membership and instead get your cardio by jogging, try riding a bike or swimming or some other such exercise. The key is to try something new to “trick” your body into losing weight.
  3. Weight train. The more muscle mass you have the more calories your body will need to maintain it. This is very important and very effective. You may feel more hungry after a heavy lifting session; this is your body trying to supply the needed calories to increase the muscle mass (tips on how to deal with this later). Ladies, don’t be afraid to lift some heavy weight. There are plenty of girls at the gym who may look thin but are a bit soft in the flesh. This may make them want to do more cardio to burn the fat. This is a perfect reason to hit up some weights and tone up. Eat only the right type of carbohydrates. It’s important to have carbohydrates in your diet and life without them, as many of us experienced in the early 2000’s with the Atkin’s diet is a pain. What works is to eat “good carbohydrates.” Multi-grain bread is fine, but have no more than a couple of slices a day. The point is to stay away from refined sugars. These are found in pasta, white breads, cakes and other sweets and all the things we think we love. Even small amounts can kill your diet so it’s best to stay away from them in the first place. The good news is when you eliminate heavy sweets from your diet, it only takes a few days to not crave them anymore. They will appear unappealing because such a diet forces you to make healthy choices in the food you eat.
  4. Increase your protein intake. You have to supplement something for cutting your carbohydrates right? Protein is excellent. It promotes strong lean muscle tissue which is beneficial to fat burning. Protein fills you up better than a heavy carbohydrate meal. This is an added benefit to help cut your caloric intake.
  5. Eat six small meals a day. Eating small portions throughout the day will help keep your metabolism going. This is an extremely useful tactic in breaking your weight-loss plateau. Eat something when you wake up in the morning, perhaps a small omelet with cheese. And as you continue throughout the day, snack on  cheese or some other natural, unprocessed food. Pretty much keep your meal times as normal; breakfast, lunch and dinner with a meal in between each and something for the evening. It’s not that important to count your calories, but try to be a scientist and find out what works best for you. What can you eat that is small and will curb your hunger for the next 2 and a half hours before your next small meal? Keep it higher in protein, small in calories, and nutritious. 
    • If you must count calories then aim to eat a consistent amount of calories, and track your caloric intake regularly. Many diets fail from overindulging, which is brought on by an overly restrictive diet plan. Instead, aim for a consistent caloric intake that will allow you to fit in indulgences as needed. This way, you can enjoy eating while still achieving your weight loss goals.
  6. Change your long cardio session to shorter more intense interval training. Conventional myth states you have to participate in a certain “fat burning” zone in order to lose body fat. Stale, long, boring cardio is actually keeping people stuck in their plateaus. Instead, favor sprint interval training to set a new challenge to the body. Making this change will reinvigorate the adaption response. Initiate the intervals by incorporating one-minute bursts of intense activity then return to a normal pace for one to two minutes. Research has shown you will significantly raise your heart rate during and for up to 6-9 hours after the workout, thus burning more calories during and post exercise.

Tips

  • Keep hydrated. Water is good for you; it cleanses your body of toxins and will make you less hungry throughout the day. Stay away from sports drinks; they’re just empty calories.
  • Getting 8 hours of sleep and limiting stress is a sure fire way to reinitialize the weight loss process.
  • Keep your exercising consistent, meaning don’t skip out on workouts. Be committed to your weight-loss by lifting every other day and doing cardio at least 5 times a week, even more if you really want results.
  • Do your resistance training before your cardio. You’ll use up your glycogen stores doing the weight training and when you move on to cardio, your body will use your fat stores as a fuel source.

Warnings

  • Be careful to have a mixture of healthy foods. Change up your fruits and vegetables. Learn how to cook healthy meals that are higher in protein and lower in carbohydrates. It’s important to get all the nutrients you need.

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Break a Weight Loss Plateau. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Discovering Food Types You Can’t Eat on a Low Carb Diet

by | Apr 15, 2013 | Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

I needed to lose weight but what type of diet should I choose? After some research, I decided on a low carb diet, as I am not a big fan of breads and other high-carb foods. However, there were other things I learned that I would not be able to indulge in, and I knew that I would be missing some of my favorites. In this article, I will tell you about many of the food types you can’t eat on a low carb diet.

Breads, Pasta and Rice

carbs

Here is where the high carbs come in. Bread, pasta and rice are not only high in carbs, but very low in nutritional value altogether. You can try these items if they are whole grain, and sugar-free, but on a low carb diet; they should be used in very limited amounts, if at all.

Sugar, Pastries and Candy

pastries

Sugar, pastries and candy are probably the most evil carbs! They contain huge amounts of carbohydrates, and offer little to no nutritional value whatsoever. There is really no place for these items on a low-carb diet. If I was craving sweets, which I do on occasion, I had to opt for sugar-free gelatin or low-carb yogurt. I could do that, I decided. After three or four days, the craving for sweets was mostly gone.

Fruits- Insidious Carbs

I do like fruit. However, upon learning that they contain large amounts of carbs and sugar, I realized they would not play a large role in my new, low-carb way of eating. Since a low-carb diet usually means less than 60 carbs per day, I had to be choosy when picking my carbs. Fruit seemed to be one of the food types you can’t eat on a low carb diet. I did learn, however, that if you wish to include fruit in your food plan, berries are the best choices. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries are all good choices, and they contain less carbs than other fruits. I just had to limit myself to a small serving each day. I liked to sprinkle a few in my yogurt for extra flavor.

berries

Veggies are a staple on diet, and are not one of the food types you can’t eat on a low carb diet. In fact, salads are a mainstay when you are limiting your carbs. I did, however find that there are some vegetables that are a definite no-no if you are watching the carbs. These include:  carrots, corn, beets and many others. I kept a carb-counting book handy to check before I indulged.

veg salad

These are just some of the food types you can’t eat on a low carb diet. I missed some of my favorite foods, but I enjoyed my new diet full of protein and veggies. I came up with many recipes using alternatives for higher-carb foods. And within 8 months, I was free of my extra 50 pounds, and am now the healthiest I have ever been!

Popular and Delicious Low Carb Diet Foods

by | Apr 15, 2013 | Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

These days one of the most popular diets out there is the low carb diet. It has been proven that a diet rich in protein and low in carbs is a great way to significantly reduce a persons body fat levels. While most people know the weight loss benefits associated with a low carb diet, not nearly as many know what low carb diet foods to eat. Fortunately for you, the following article has some of the most popular and delicious low carb foods that you can make a part of your next diet. Read on and learn.

The first food group we’ll discuss is meats. Of course at the center of most low carb diets is meat. Most meats contain no carbs at all so you should feel free to eat as much meat as you want. One thing to watch out for is fat content. Many meats, such as red meat and pork contain lots of unhealthy saturated fats. While you can have these foods on occasion, you are better off sticking with lean meats such as chicken, turkey and fish. Try and consume only the white meat portion of your turkey and fish as the dark meat also contains more unhealthy fat. It is important to note that meats are going to be the center of your low carb diet so hopefully you aren’t a vegetarian.

chicken

Next we’ll talk about vegetables and fruits. Generally on a low carb diet, want to avoid simple carbohydrates that contain a lot of sugar. The one exception however comes in the form of fruits and vegetables. You need to make these foods a staple in your diet no matter what type of diet you are on. While fruits do contain a good amount of carbs, they also contain lots of other nutrients that your body needs in order to maintain itself. However, it may not be a bad idea to cut down on your fruit intake, and increase the amount of vegetables you eat. That having been said, all vegetables are not created equal on a low carb diet. Leafy greens are among the most popular low carb diet foods out there. They contain very few carbs and are jam packed with nutrients. You would also be wise to stay away form starchy vegetables such as potatoes and carrots as these foods tend to have a higher carb content.

leavy veggies

Last, we’ll talk about grains. You are going to want to stay away from grain based foods altogether. Foods like bread, cereal and pasta are pretty much nothing but carbs so they should be avoided at all costs. The one exception are low carb versions of these foods that have a high fiber content.

 grains

Some other popular low carb diet foods include cheese, nuts and protein shakes. These are great to get you the extra calories that you miss out on from avoiding some of your favorite high carb foods. Try a low carb diet today and watch the fat melt away.

cheese, nuts, protein shakes

Do I Need to Eat Breakfast?

by | Apr 5, 2013 | Food Choices, General Health, Low carb diet, Sensible Eating | 0 comments

 

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Do you really need to eat breakfast everyday? Well, the short answer is no, you don’t despite  the common myth that so many people are trying to tell us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It’s better really to only eat when you’re hungry.

Now whether you’re hungry when you wake up depends on well, quite a number of factors such as what you ate the night before. Now if you were out at a meal with friends, say and you had a nice big dinner, well you may not be hungry when you wake up; it’s as simple as that, or you could have spent your time on the couch in front of the tele just giving in to temptation and snacking away on all sort of things. The point is whether you eat or not first thing in the morning really depends on a whole host of different things.

Hunger just may not be instant when you wake up. Many people are like that. Some morning when I get up I don’t want to eat a thing. Other mornings I wake up and the first thing I want is bacon and eggs so I’ll have bacon and eggs, it’s as simple as that.

For some other people it might not trigger until you’ve done some exercise. Now that can be as simple as walking to work or going up the stairs when you get to your office or whatever it might happen to be. The point is that if you are hungry first thing in the morning; don’t go too long before you start eating otherwise there will be a tendency to overeat. In the west in particular we have been stucked in a conventional timetable about when we should eat whereas really spreading what we eat throughout the day is probably a much better idea if you were on a conventional diet of course.

The bottom line is for most of us, what you eat really should suit the healthy eating plan that you’ve decided to embark on. So at the end of the day, is it better to eat breakfast or not? Well that really depends on you. If you want to have breakfast, have breakfast. If you’re not hungry, leave it till a bit later in the day. You’ll enjoy your food a lot more that way.

Low Carb Mag

by | Apr 5, 2013 | Fat Loss, Low carb, Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

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This is something that is well overdue as the Low Carb community has been wanting a magazine for a very long time. A monthly health, diet and lifestyle magazine where you will be able to learn about low carb eating and living a low carb lifestyle.

Want to know more? Follow this link: Low Carb Mag

or go direct to the App Store.

 

How to Count Carbs on the Atkins Diet

by | Apr 4, 2013 | Carbs, Fat Loss, Low carb | 0 comments

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Managing carbohydrate intake is the heart of the Atkins diet plan. In addition to computing your daily carbohydrate intake, you will gradually reintroduce carbohydrates back into your diet in a specific sequence called the carbohydrate ladder.

Steps

Compute Net Carbs
The Atkins diet focuses on net carbs, which is the quantity of carbohydrate in a food less the amount of dietary fiber and sugar alcohols.

  1. Find the number of total carbohydrates in a food on the food’s nutrition label. Total carbohydrates are found in the top section of the label after the product’s sodium content.
  2. Find the quantity of dietary fiber in the food. Dietary fiber is usually located as a subheading beneath the total carbohydrate count.
  3. Subtract the amount of dietary fiber from the amount of total carbohydrates. If the product contains 20 grams of total carbohydrates and 3 grams of dietary fiber, then the product contains 17 net carbs.
  4. Look for sugar alcohols. Because sugar alcohols are not easily absorbed by the body, they do not count against your net carb total. If the food label contains a listing for sugar alcohol quantity, then you can subtract sugar alcohol content from your total carbohydrate count in addition to subtracting dietary fiber.
  5. Use a carbohydrate-counting guide. Many guides for foods that contain both their carbohydrate and dietary fiber counts are available in bookstores or online. These are especially helpful for foods that do not come with nutrition labels.

Count Carbohydrates During the Induction Phase
In the Induction phase, you should consume no more than 20 net carbs per day. In subsequent phases, you can consume more as long as they don’t interfere with your weight loss.

  1. Start by consuming 12 to 15 grams of net carbs through eating foundation vegetables. Foundation vegetables include leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus.
  2. Eat high-fat, low-carb dairy products during Induction for your remaining carbs. Examples include hard cheeses, cream and sour cream.

Count Carbohydrates During the Ongoing Weight Loss (OWL) Phase
Increase your carb intake gradually during OWL (Ongoing Weight Loss). Every week, add 5 grams of net carbs to your diet. As long as you continue to lose weight, you can continue gradually adding more carbohydrates to your diet. If weight loss stalls, you can gradually cut back on your carbohydrates until you start to lose weight again.

  1. Start eating nuts and seeds again. Avoid chestnuts, which contain too many net carbs.
  2. Add in some fruit the next week. You can eat berries, cherries and melon. Avoid watermelon, however, because it will raise your blood sugar rapidly.
  3. Vary your dairy. After you incorporate fruit, you can add in whole milk yogurt and fresh cheeses, including ricotta and cottage cheese.
  4. Add legumes next. These include chickpeas, lentils, peanuts and beans.
  5. Drink some tomato or vegetable juice cocktails after you add in legumes. Continue to avoid fruit juices with the exception of lemon and lime juice.

Count Carbohydrates During Pre-Maintenance and Maintenance
Add 10 grams of net carbs each week during Pre-Maintenance and Maintenance. Your weight loss should slow to a crawl during this period because you are working to find your Atkins Carbohydrate Equilibrium, or ACE. Your ACE is the number of net carbs you can consume each day without gaining weight.

  1. Eat a greater variety of fruit. Enjoy apples, citrus fruits and other fruits that are lower in sugar but high in fiber. Be wary of fruits high in sugar such as banana, pineapple and watermelon.
  2. Start eating high-carb vegetables again. You can add winter squash, peas and carrots back to your diet. Avoid regular potatoes.
  3. Add whole grains after you add high-carb vegetables. Focus on whole grains and continue to avoid high-carb refined grains such as white bread and white rice.

Tips

  • In addition to watching your weight, pay attention to your cravings. If you start to crave more carbohydrate after adding additional net carbs to your diet, then you are probably eating too many carbs.
  • Throughout each phase of Atkins, make sure to consume 12 to 15 grams of carbohydrates each day by eating foundation vegetables.

Warnings

  • Don’t allow yourself to gain more than 5 pounds without addressing your carbohydrate intake. Lower your daily carb intake by 10 to 20 grams until your excess weight retreats.

Things You’ll Need

  • Carbohydrate counting guide

 

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Count Carbs on the Atkins Diet. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.