Jelly Belly Be Gone

We all have wellness goals we want to reach, and we all know what we need to do to reach them. But sometimes success isn’t a matter of knowledge and desire, it’s a matter of motivation.

Here are some simple, effective ways to overcome any discouragement and stay motivated.

1. Track Progress

In order to effectively reach any goal, you need to track your progress. There are many numbers, figures, and indicators that you can choose to track. The most obvious one, of course, is to lose weight. But reaching your wellness goals isn’t just about shedding pounds. Other factors, like the inches on your waist and arms, your BMI, your cholesterol, your heart rate when exercising, and your blood pressure can be important to track as well.

2. Reward Yourself

Looking good, feeling great, and staying healthy are all great rewards for reaching your wellness goals. But sometimes you need to give yourself a little more incentive to help you along the way. Having small rewards set up for reaching milestones is a great way to keep yourself focused and motivated.

It is best to have your goals and rewards set out ahead of time and written down. Keep them posted in a conspicuous place that you see every day. This will keep them in the front of your mind and will help you see your progress towards your reward.

3. Get Fit With A Little Help From Your Friends

Family, friends, and coworkers can help you reach your wellness goals, but only if they know about them. Knowing that your friends and coworkers are aware of your goals will help you want to stick to your meal and exercise plans in social situations.

We all have food cravings, be it the chocolate almonds, the potato chips, or the carton of Triple Chocolate Chunk in the freezer. Luckily, you don’t always have to fall to these temptations, which can result in unwanted stomach fat and an unhealthy body. Here are a few common causes of food cravings and some strategies to conquer them.

Need A Cookie.

When you’re not engaged in what you’re doing, your mind can stray to thoughts of food. So do something that doesn’t involve eating. Go for a walk, call a friend, or work on a different project. If you generally eat lunch at noon, wait until noon to eat. Continue to drink water or a low-calorie beverage if that’s what you do every day.

That Donut Looks Really Good.

When you bypass meals (like breakfast) or you don’t have enough during the day, you might experience cravings. You need to be careful, because inadequate food intake can make a small craving turn into a full-blown binge..

A tip is to never go more than a few hours without eating something nutritious to help keep cravings at bay.

That ‘Ultimate Butter’ Popcorn smells pretty good.

Sometimes a craving occurs because of your environment. And one of the most powerful environmental factors is aroma. If possible, avoid a situations that will trigger your cravings. Take another route if you have to walk past a bakery or restaurant. If you want coffee or tea at work, get them at times when people aren’t warming up their lunches in the break room.

The next time you have a craving, remember these simple strategies to help you deal with them correctly. Your body will thank you, and will feel better in the end.

There is a common delusion that to lose stomach fat you have to barely eat, and the calories you do eat should be no more than that required by a mouse. But researchers are finding that food quality is more important than quantity when it comes to weight loss. Combined with adequate exercise, your meals can be regular serving sizes. TRY THESE!

1.Yams and sweet potatoes:- These quickly break down and are easily absorbed into the bloodstream.

2. Oranges, apples and grapefruit:- These contain high levels of soluble fiber pectin which slows digestion, helps eliminate toxins stored in body fat, and gives you a feeling of fullness.

3. Killer sandwiches:- Try hearty sandwiches stacked with vegetables, such as tomato, cucumber, sprouts, lettuce and onion, as well as deli meats – like oven-roasted turkey. For bread choice, use brown with lots of seeds and heavy grains.

4. Cereal:- Try Low-sugar cereals packed with protein and fiber, with skim milk and blackberries or raspberries, which contain about 8g of fiber per cup.

5. Salad:- Get field or Asian greens and add a yogurt dressing. Plus you need a ton of vegetables and some good lean protein, like grilled salmon.

6. Quiche:- Quiche made with egg whites and just a couple of yolks is a great protein sources. Add a little low-fat cheese, broccoli and spinach.

7. Yogurt:- And other dairy goods that come in great-tasting, low-fat products.

8. Almonds:- Nuts are loaded with monounsaturated fats—the good fats that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, known to lower cholesterol. Fats are as necessary to a healthy diet as protein and carbohydrates.

9. Peanut butter:- This is a great source for healthy, monounsaturated fats.

You’ve seen the posters at the gym and the graphs taped to your fitness club’s treadmills. They all say the same thing: keep your heart rate low and you’ll burn more fat. It sounds simple enough, but is it really that easy?

Fitness gurus and personal trainers know that by aerobically exercising with a heart rate between 60% and 70% of your maximal heart rate, you’ll burn fat. However, you rarely, if ever, see a time frame of exercise tacked on to that fat-burning tip. They tell you how intensely you need to run, but not for how long.

Without that detail of time, you’re left jogging on a treadmill for 20 minutes a day with the assumption that at that rate, you’ll lose your jelly-belly in a couple weeks. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.

30 Minute Rule:-

Your body spends its first 25 to 30 minutes of aerobic exercise burning recently consumed carbohydrates. As you continue your prolonged workout past that 30-minute mark, your body’s fat-burning metabolism kicks in.

If you jog at 65% of your maximal heart rate for an 80-minute period, your body will spend the latter 50 minutes in “fat-burning mode.” During those 50 minutes, your long-term energy stores become your body’s predominant source of energy for your jog. Or, in other words, you spend 50 minutes burning fat.

Think of it this way: you have to put money in the bank before you can take it out. The beautiful thing about the 30-minute rule is that once you put 30 minutes in the bank, you can withdraw as much fat as you want. The more fat you lose, the better you feel, look, and perform.

There are fats that will do great harm to your weight loss regimen if not avoided.

Trans Fats:

Hot vegetable oil combined with hydrogen creates very stable trans fats. When fats are more stable, they act as a preservative and increase the shelf life of the products they are in. While that helps preserve processed foods and fried foods, it is not healthy for your body. These trans fats are common in commercially packaged foods, including crackers, doughnuts, cookies, potato chips, corn chips, tortilla chips, microwave popcorn, and even some bread.

No amount of trans fats is healthy. Trans fats raise LDL cholesterol levels and lower HDL. This can contribute to major health problems. If your diet doesn’t get adequate good fats, your body will use trans fats to replace it.

Food labels are required to list trans fats and saturated fats on the product label, so look for them under the “Fats” category in the “Nutrients Facts”

Saturated Fats:

Saturated fats raise total blood cholesterol as well as LDL cholesterol. Saturated fats are found in animal products such as meat, dairy and eggs, and also in coconut oil, palm oil, vegetable shortening, and palm kernel oil.

Like trans fats, saturated fats are never healthy. And also like trans fats, saturated fats can lead to diseases and hearth issues that could eventually prove fatal.

If you are trying to lose belly fat, or are concerned about your heart, don’t stop eating fats. Instead, try replacing the bad fats with good fats.

Monounsaturated Fats:

Monounsaturated fats lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, known as the bad cholesterol. At the same time, monounsaturated fats increase HDL cholesterol,the good cholesterol. Peanuts, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, avocados, olives, canola oil, and olive oil are all high in monounsaturated fats. These fats also help in weight loss and help reduce body fat.

Polyunsaturated Fats:

Polyunsaturated fats also lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol. Seafoods like salmon and fish, as well as corn, soy, safflower, and sunflower oils are high in polyunsaturated fats. Ideally, look for polyunsaturated fats that contain omega-3 fatty acids, like flaxseed oil, hemp oil, pumpkin seeds, walnuts or oily fish.

By adding these fats to your daily diet, you will achieve that healthy lifestyle you so badly crave.

Some fats help us absorb nutrients, aid in nerve transmission, reduce stomach fat, improve cholesterol, and help build brain cell membranes.

However, all our lives, we’ve been taught that eating fat is dangerous to our health and that it contributes to weight gain. We’ve developed the belief that cutting fat from our diets makes us healthier and causes us to lose weight.

The truth is that we all need fats in our diets.

Although fats are necessary for the body, certain fats can have an adverse effect. Consuming too many of the wrong fats can increase the risk of heart disease, contribute to weight gain, and can even paly a role in the development of some cancers.

The key to eating fats is to substitute bad fats with good fats in your diet.

There are lots of different fats found in various foods. But basically, the good fats include monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats, and the bad fats include saturated fats and trans fats.

Over the next two days we will take a look at Good Fats and Bad Fats.

Losing weight is hard; keeping it off can be even harder if you don’t know how to do it. Here are some tips how you can keep that nasty unwanted fat off after you shed them.

1. Having regular low-calorie snacks throughout the day along with regular smaller meals is a good way to manage your hunger.

2. Do not sample the food while cooking.

3. When tempted to snack between meals, substitute a glass of water with lemon and snack on carrot or celery sticks. Avoid soft drinks–they add a lot of calories.

4. Try a noneating activity, such as taking a bath or reading a book, when you feel the urge to snack.

5. Do not eat after 7:00 in the evening.

6. Limit alcohol. Alcohol provides a lot of calories and no nutritional benefit. Calories from alcohol also tend to form fat around the waist or stomach. The number of calories in an alcoholic drink depends on the amount of alcohol it contains.

7. Make mealtimes pleasant. A meal is more than just eating food. It can also be a social event, a time to communicate with family and friends, and a time to relax.

8. Eat slowly and enjoy the food.

9. Do not watch television or read while eating.

10. Use a meal plan to help control what you eat

11. Plan meals ahead of time.

12. Eat when you are hungry and stop when you are comfortably full.

13. Limit how much you eat out, especially early in your weight-loss program.

It’s the difference between wanting to exercise and actually doing it. This advice on how to lose stomach fat is priceless. Here you’ll find some favorite motivational strategies of the top personal trainers available.

1. Make a ‘friendly’ bet:- Challenge your coworker or a neighbor to a contest. The first person to drop 15 pounds wins.

2. Switch your training partners:- Close friends and family members don’t always make the best training partners because they may allow you to slack off or cancel workouts. To keep this from happening, find a new, less forgiving workout partner every few months.

3. Compete:- Find a sport or event that you enjoy, and train to compete in it. It adds a greater meaning to each workout.

4. Get a workout CD:- People who pedal stationary cycles while listening to their favorite music will do so longer and more intensely than people who exercise without music.

5. Plan your workouts in advance:- Schedule all of your workouts at once, and cross them off as they’re completed. Allow for bad weather and unscheduled meetings.

6. Don’t do what you hate:- If you loathe going to a gym, try working out at home. (If you despise the treadmill, then jump rope, lift weights, or find a basketball court. Bottom line: If you’re sick of your routine, find a new one.

A healthy weight loss diet helps you lose stomach fat and maintain a healthy lifestyle at the same time. But, most people don’t exactly know what a healthy weight loss diet is. A registered Dietitian recently explained what a healthy weight loss diet is and revealed three healthy weight loss diet tips to help you lose weight in a healthy fashion.

A healthy weight loss diet is one which ensures that you lose weight in a balanced and healthy way. It is not a diet which restricts certain foods and gives you a feeling of being deprived. In fact it’s just the opposite, a healthy weight loss diet promotes healthy eating of different foods in the right quantities, so that you eat good healthy food and lose weight at the same time.

These tips can help you drop the unwanted pounds.

1) Olive Oil – Cook all your meals with olive oil, since foods made with olive oil contain good fats which help you burn fat and lose weight.

2) Time your meals – Eat early and on time. This will ensure that your body digests the foods properly before you sleep thereby preventing any excess fat storage in your system.

3) Skips the colas and drink water instead – Drinking water will ensure that your body is well hydrated and does not confuse thirst with hunger, directly helping you to lose weight.