Sunday 12 January 2014

How to reduce weight in one month top ten

How to reduce weight in one month top ten

So, you have to attend a wedding in a month and would like to lose weight to fit into that outfit you haven’t worn from your university days. Or, you have a month’s time to lose those love handles so that you can wear your bikini with panache on your Caribbean vacation. Is it possible? Yes, it is possible to reduce weight in a month, as long as you have realistic weight loss goals.

Usually, it is healthy to lose about 1 to 2 pounds each week. There is a high possibility that you may lose more than this when you first start your weight loss regimen, but be prepared for the loss to reduce to about 1 to 2 pounds. Ideally, you should be looking to lose about 8 pounds after a month. That is healthy weight loss and will not affect your health adversely.

Here are the top ten ways to lose weight in a month.

1. Calorie Reduction
If you want to lose weight in a month, you need to reduce your calorie intake. Calories refer to the energy in the food you consume. Approximately 3,500 calories add one pound. Your calorie consumption for the week should be reduced by 3,500 to 7,000 calories each week. This basically means that you will have to forgo high calorie food and stick to eating more fresh veggies and fruits along with whole grains and lean meats. Do not reduce your calorie consumption to less than 1,200 calories per day or you will end up feeling fatigue and may also suffer from nutritional deficiencies.

2. Say Goodbye to Unhealthy Food
This is the best time to change your eating habits. Cut out unhealthy foods, such as junk food, white rice, energy drinks and processed foods, from your diet. Not only will it help you lose weight, you also will feel healthier and fitter overall.

3. Choose Healthy Foods
Trying to lose weight does not mean starving yourself. On the contrary if you choose healthy foods, you will lose weight, as your body will not be storing calories in the form of fat. Make sure the foods you eat for each meal contains protein, legumes and veggies. Never skip your breakfast, as it will help kickstart your metabolism and get you going till lunch time. Look to eat 5 to 6 small meals throughout the day. This will prevent cravings and hunger pangs, which can cause you to overeat. Include lean meats, poultry, egg whites, fresh veggies, leafy greens and beans in your daily diet.

4. Exercise to Lose Weight
Losing weight and exercising are intertwined. So look to exercise everyday for 30 minutes. This can be in the form of walking, doing household chores, jogging or swimming. Exercise will increase your metabolism and help your body burn fat effectively and efficiently.

5. Cardio to Get Your Heart Pumping
You need cardiovascular exercises to get your heart pumping and upping up your metabolism. It is considered an extremely effective way of burning calories, especially as there may be occasions when you revert to enjoying a few extra calories or junk food, as you couldn’t help yourself.

6. Think of Strength Training
If you are serious about losing weight, add strength training to your weight loss routine. It will help build your lean muscle mass while effectively eliminating fat. Strength training can make your body look lean and fit even though you may not be able to fit into a smaller sized dress or pants. Furthermore, strength training helps to keep your metabolic rate high and this helps in burning fat. Also, the chances of regaining the lost weight after a month will reduce.

7. Drink Lots of Water
Make sure you consume a lot of water throughout the day. This will help to cleanse out your body of all the toxins that have been accumulating due to your unhealthy lifestyle. Also, water will keep you hydrated. Above all, consuming a glass of water 10 to 15 minutes before a meal will prevent you from overeating – one of main causes for piling on pounds.

8. Do Not Give into Calorie-Laden Beverages
No matter how tempting it is, stay away from beverages that are filled with calories. This includes sodas, sweetened fruit juices and regular milk. Instead opt for water or low-fat milk. Also, instead of adding sugar to your tea or coffee, try drinking it sugarless. This is especially true if you enjoy several cups a day. You will be amazed how much weight you can pile on with these beverages.

9. Keep Pushing Yourself
Maintaining strict eating regimen and doing regular workouts is not easy. In fact, there will be times during the month when you want to just give up everything. So keep pushing yourself and have a goal in sight. This will keep you motivated. By exercising regularly, you will sleep better, wake up feeling refreshed and be more productive throughout the day. So do not give up no matter how difficult it gets.

10. Take One Day Off Each Week
Fix one day in a week to indulge in all the goodies you have been stopping yourself from eating. Eat as much as you want. You will realize that by the time the day comes to an end, you will be sick of these goodies and will not want to see them at all for another week. Also, significantly increasing your calorie intake one a week tends to increase your fat loss by making sure that your metabolic rate does not slow down due to calorie restriction.


Winter Skin Care Secrets Revealed

Winter Skin Care Secrets Revealed

Trendy accessories and gorgeous cashmere sweaters will hardly make a difference to your appearance if you skin looks tired, dull and dry this winter. While winter can bring that rosy glow to your cheeks, it also can make your skin uncomfortably dry on the face, hands and feet.  For some people, winters can be extremely problematic, as the dry cold can cause flaking and cracking of skin. Regardless of which category you fall in, you can now keep your skin healthy and moist with these skin care tips.


Get Hold of a Specialist
If you are the type of person who picks up her moisture from a drugstore, do not expect to find a salesperson to dole out expert advice. You need to invest your money and time in seeking out a qualified esthetician, who can analyze your skin and recommend the best winter skin care possible. The esthetician also will recommend the products you should be using on your skin. Remember, it is not always necessary to buy expensive products, as inexpensive products can work just as well on your skin. It is important that your skin feel soft, supple and moist when you use a product. So stop worrying about the cost.


Moisturize More Often
Just because a moisturizer managed to keep your skin soft and supple during spring and summer, it does not mean it is ideal for winter. Your skin care regimen should change in winter. These are the things you should be looking for:

  • Invest in an oil-based moisturizer. Such a moisturizer will form a protective layer on your keep and help to keep the moisture in.
  • Make sure the moisturizer contains oils that do not clog your pores. The oils that do not plug your pores include primrose oil, almond oil, avocado oil and mineral oil.
  • Buy a lotion that contains humectants, such it will help to attract moisture to your skin. You should look for lotions containing alpha-hydroxy acids, sorbitol or glycerine.


Once you have the lotion and moisturizer, moisturize your skin twice a day – once in the morning and once again at night. Try to slather moisturizer on damp skin (after a bath) to seal in the moisture and keep your skin soft and supple.

Do Not Forget Your Sunscreen
Just because the day is dark, dull and gloomy it does not mean you should forgo your sunscreen before venturing outdoors into the cold. On the contrary, winter sun and the glare from the snow can wreak havoc with your skin. Use a broad spectrum sunscreen and apply 30 minutes before venturing outdoors. If you intend spending a long time outside, carry along your sunscreen to reapply.


TLC for Your Hands
Most people are always worried about their face in winter and tend to forget that hands also need some tender love and care. This is especially true in winter, as the skin on the hands is thinner than other parts of the body and it also does not have too many sebaceous glands. As a result, hands tend to get dry very quickly in cold season which can lead to skin irritation and itchiness. Use a moisturizer especially formulated for hands to keep the skin supple and moist. In addition, when venturing out, don a pair of gloves to protect your hands from the cold as well as the dry air.

Get that Humidifier Going
Heating is a welcome respite from the chills of winter. However, most heating systems emit hot, dry air and this can leach the moisture from your skin. To prevent your skin from drying out indoors, install humidifiers throughout the house. This will ensure the air inside your home is humid and this will your skin from drying out.

Hydrate Your Body
If you check out skin care tips, most will advise you to drink a minimum of 8 glasses every day to keep your skin young-looking and hydrated. However, this is a misconception. The amount of water you drink does not show on your skin. By drinking plenty of water daily, you will flush out the toxins and other waste materials from your body, some of which may adversely affect the wellbeing of your skin. So drink water for overall health, which includes healthy skin.

Greasy Feet is a Must
While those sweet-smelling foot lotions are great for summer, your feet need something stronger in winter. Opt for foot lotions containing glycerine or petroleum jelly. Once a week exfoliate your feet to get rid of dead skin cells. This will allow the foot lotion to penetrate deep into your skin and help moisturize your feet and keep them soft and beautiful.

Forget Peels and Astringents
If after all the moisturizing you still feel your face is dry and the skin feels stretched, it is time to put away those face masks, peels and astringents. These will strip the natural oil from your skin cause it to get drier. Instead clean your face with cleansing milk and tone it with an alcohol-free toner. If you want to continue using a mask as a part of your skin care routine, buy deep hydrating masks instead of clay-based masks. However, do not use masks very often, as they can dry up the skin.

Kiss Hot Baths and Showers Goodbye
Yes, it is cold and yes a hot bath or shower will warm you up, but it will also breakdown the lipid barrier on your skin and strip away the natural oil and moisture. Do not give in to the temptation. Instead stick to a warm water bath or shower. If your skin is terribly dry and itchy, run a lukewarm bath and pour in some baking soda to alleviate the itching. Right after the bath, apply moisturizer liberally to combat dry skin.

Your winter skin care regimen should begin the moment you decide to turn the heating on in your home. This way, you will never be plagued by dull, dry and itchy skin in winter. Instead, you will be complemented on your glowing, soft skin.


What weight lifting can do for you

What weight lifting can do for you
Nowadays everybody wants to remain physically fit for a number of reasons. And the increase in intake of junk food just makes it that much harder for a person to do so. When we become obese, what most of us try to do is go on a strict diet which ultimately has more negative effects on our body. And then we begin to explore several options to lose weight! So how is it possible to gain weight and maintain it with weight lifting?


DIET
First and foremost what we need to do is keep a check on our eating habits. There is no point in working out at the gym for hours on end and then eat fried and unhealthy food.
One of the main things that make us obese is junk food, so it is imperative we pay special attention on the food we consume. Junk food need to be replaced with a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and foods which have more nutritional value.
Food containing carbohydrates should be replaced with protein rich foods that help the body to grow and also work out. At the same time, it is necessary to plan out our diet.
Eating healthy food items is necessary, but if we eat too much, we will land up in the same situation we have tried to get out of. What we must focus on are the meal timings and the amount of food we intake, as too much or too less neither is going to help our cause.

LIFESTYLE
The most important thing after food is our lifestyle and the number of hours of rest our body gets. It is extremely important to have a healthy lifestyle if we want to gain weight in a healthy manner.
Our body has a limit of doing everything and that should not be compromised under any circumstances. We need to eat timely and have ample amount of rest because our ultimate goal is to gain weight in a healthy manner by lifting weights.
Our body will just not be in a position to work out if we do not give it enough rest. But as important is sleep is, it should be kept in mind that too much of anything is not good. Hence we need to have the right amount of sleep and follow it up with rigorous training so that our body grows in a perfectly healthy way.


TRAINING
Many of us do not know how to train our body in the gym, and we often make wrong assumptions and do more damage than good to our body. During weight lifting, there are specific areas we should focus on first.
If our goal is to gain weight, we firstly need to identify the larger muscles in our body and work on them before we focus on the smaller ones. For example, the larger muscles in our body are located in our back and our calf muscles in our legs. These two areas are ideally the best muscles to work on if we are aiming to gain weight.This is because, these muscles are the most affected during any kind of work out and they also grow very quickly and considerably.
We also need to do the right kind of exercise if we are targeting specific areas in our body. But at the same time, we should never overdo it and know when to draw the line. Hitting the gym 4 to 5 days a week is all it takes for us to build a good physique and to also gain weight.

THE RIGHT EXERCISE
The next vital thing we need to keep in mind is the kind of exercise we do. We should always choose exercises which focus on the entire body as it grooms every muscle in the body to grow rather than building up a specific point. Another important thing to be kept in mind is the variation in weight lifting. We need not continuously work at a stretch with the same weight. Rather, if we mix up different weights and repeat them less frequently, we will get the desired results much more quickly.
It is recommended we start off with lower weights with longer repetitions and move on to higher weights with lesser number of repetitions. Smaller weights build the larger muscles in our body whereas larger ones focus on the smaller muscles of our body. At the same time, it is necessary to mix up our exercise routine every two weeks, if we want to see quick results as alteration helps the body to cope with more, and we can get the desired results in a much shorter period of time.
Thus we see that it is very much possible to gain weight in a healthy manner with weight lifting. And if one follows the few easy steps mentioned above, he/she will have the desired results within a couple of months.