Burning Calories

Ok, so you understand the right diet together with enough exericse gives you the best way to burn fat and hopefully keep it off for good. The question now arises how much exercise is enough to burn those extra calories off? The answer depends on one thing. How much exercise are you willing to do? ALL exercise and physical movement burns calories.

What many people do not know is you can actually get to a point in exercising which has no more benefit to calorie burning. Too much exercise can produce a negetive effect with over exertion and you definately do not want to hurt youself. If you will, indulge me for a second by letting me make this analogy.

I'm a drummer. Playing drums is about learning finesse, contrary to many people's perception. Aren't you suppose to bang the tar out of the drums with each stoke? No, you're suppose to be as loose and relaxed as possible by letting the stick bounce and do all the work. Forcing the stick down into the drumhead actually will produce a loss of vigor after the stroke, causing a lack of smoothness and energy. Hard and "fast-as-you-can" produces only tenseness and rigidity in your muscles and before long will reduce needed energy for playing. The same happens with burning calories. At first you can get your heart rate going up to the maximum BPM, but then when you've spent that energy, it's gone. Evenly sustained exercise is favorable. It's not a, "less is more," kind of thing, it's a, "just about right," kind of thing.

It makes much more sense to exercise up to a point and then rest. Getting a heart rate up for a good 30 minutes is about maximum for calorie burning. Beyond that you may be burning residual calories, but not at the same rate or effect you were for the first 30 minutes.
This is not to discourage anyone from exercising or weight training beyond this immediate time because you can still build muscle and endurance, but even those have their limits.

The exercise plan I developed for the Small Step Diet is not in any way an end all to a good calorie burning exercise program. It is however an alternative to those of you who do not have the time nor the will power to take thirty minutes a day to raise your metabolism. Small Step Exercising is a good start which I conclude needs to be built upon by adding reps to each exercise each week as you progress with your diet.

Body Fat and Muscle

Me and my friend were have a conserversation yesterday about weight loss, building muscle, and generally talking about diet. He's one of these people which can usually take a thought and put it so precisely it seems as though he is spouting some great insight! Here was the gist of what we concluded, which is what you should be concluding in your diet, weight loss plans. Weight loss is a by product of body fat reduction. What you really should be trying to do in weight loss is reducing your body fat by building or at least maintaining muscle.

BMI is the acronym for Body Mass Index and there are all sorts of calculations you can choose to find out what yours should be. Your body mass index tells you basically the difference between your weight and muscle percentage. Don't get too caught up on this because in the Small Step Diet the goal is to reduce Body Fat percentage and a good diet, which means eating right every meal, plus a meaningful exercise routine will be your guide to both losing weight and building muscle.

Building muscle or at least keeping your muscle toned is the half of weight maintanance which should be concentrated on the most. Infact it is the focus which you definately should have when considering your weigh loss. The last thing you want to do in any weight loss program is lose muscle. Flab is the deathnail to not only keeping metabolism burinig at it's full furnace strength, but also will prevent a decently toned muscle.

The Best Worst Foods

It's not what you eat, it's how much of it you consume. All foods can be good for you. What is bad is eating too much of the worst foods. High content beef, butter, margerine, ice cream, pork, etc... All these foods have a very high consentrated fat content. What is important however is thinking you have to stay away from these foods and that's just not correct. You need a little of these foods so your bodies metabolism can begin to burn fat. In otherwords you need a little fat to burn more fat. Here are some foods you should be including in the Small Step Diet:

Lean proteins - Beef that is lean, nuts
Skim Milk - It's just better than whole milk
Butter - On toast, or in cooking. No more than a tea spoon ever!
Margerine - Use this the less, only when you don't have butter.
Olive Oil - Great fat!

Yes, beleive it or not you should be eating a little ice cream and cookies.
Staggering what you eat will help your metabolism boost even more especially
by combining fruits or vegetables with you meals. Remember: A Fiberous Carb,
A Starchy Carb, and a Lean Protein are what make up a basic meal.

One last food which I think is very good for you and tweaks your health.
Apple Cider Vinegar. The beneifits from this stuff are enormuous and will
will help practically dissolve fat. A little teaspoon of vinegar every day will
benefit your diet beyond measure.

Yes, eat some real fat in your diet ever day to help boost your metabolism to it's
highest fat burning level.

Diet Success

There is no doubt sticking to a diet is a hard habit to create. People who like to overeat desire to fulfill a perceived emptiness which does not exist physically, only psychologically. Whenever creating or changing a lifestyle there is a certain amount fear which can dominate a perspective.

The answer to succeed at change, real change with real lasting results is to take small steps. Steps sometimes so small you can not help but succeed. If your idea is to cut back on the portions of food you eat start to cut back with smidgins. One less grain of salt, one less grandular of sugar, one less potato chip, one less bite! Deal with what you can comfortably, realistically do. If you can do more, fine. If you have to do less, that's fine too. Time is not a factor in this concept of acheiving your goal, unless you make it a factor. The Small Step Diet is all about taking small steps. Those small steps will forever lead to bigger accomplishments.

Little Victories - Exercise For Life

In any successful diet you should be utilizing a regular exercise routine. There are just so many healthy, physical, and mental benefits which can be derived from an ongoing routine. Many people have this, "no pain, no gain" attitude when exercising and it's detrimental to the overall concept of physical accomplishment. Exercising and your diet work together to boost metabolism. This is optimal for losing and maintaining a healthy weight.

Working out does not have to be hard work. You do not have to go to a gym, buy expensive exercise equipment, run 5 miles, or chop a chord of wood each day. It's not that those things are bad exercise habits, they would be quite good actually, you just don't have to do them to stay in decent physical shape and help in acheiving your weight loss goals.

Here's a list of calisthenics, if done regularly will give a great start to an easy exercise routine which you can do every day. If you do all the exercises on this list it might take you all of 5-10 minutes. The effects are enormous physically, and mentally will give you the attitude needed to continue exercising for successful weight loss.

1: JUMPING JACKS - 10
We all learned these in elementary school I hope!
2: WIND MILLS - 10 Reps
Legs spread apart shoulder length. Opposit hand touches tip of toe.
3: LEG PUSHES - 10
Lie on your back. Legs straight out 6 inches off ground. Bring knees up to chest.
4: KNEE TO OPPOSITE ELBOW - 10 Reps
Lie on your back. Hands behind your heads. Bring opposite knee up to elbow.
5: PUSH UPS - 10
Real ones!!!

Walking a mile or so with this exercise routine really makes it complete, but if you just can't walk, these exercises done each day will help build and maintain muscle you need to successfully burn fat.

Food Groups

For the second principle of the Small Step Diet its all about what you eat and when you eat. There are essentially three food groups you need to pick from when creating meals, these are:

1: Proteins - meats, eggs, fish, nuts.

2: Fiberous Carbohydrates - Any Fruit or Vegetable

3: Starchy Carbohydrates - Potatoes, Rice, Cereal whole wheat bread.

Together these three foods form the basic ingredients to make up the optimal nutrients which by working together give your body what it needs to rev up your metabolism. If you're going to eat every three hours, as this diet suggest, it's good to plan ahead. Eating from these three food groups together also gives your body the neccessary elements it needs to sustain it's health. Portions are important because eating too much of one thing will cause an inbalance in overall structure and might slow down your weight loss.

The way you need to approach your eating is by understanding NOTHING is off limits. You may eat anything you wish. What you need to grasp however is to know what you are eating, and how it will effect your weight and health. Two foods which cause your body to gain the most weight and break down your health are Refined Sugar, Saturated Fat. Just because these food are fattening, does not mean you should completely cut them out of your diet. They too have their role in balancing a diet, albeit as little as possible.

Here is a typical schedule of eating times. Let's start with breafast: If I want to eat 2550 calaries a day to maintian my weight, and I'm going to start eating at 7 am. My times to eat will be, 7 am - 10 am - 1 pm - 4 pm- 7 pm. Every three hours, To maintain a weight of 165-170, my calorie break up will be:

2550 / 5 = 510 cals a meal. That's alot, you'll probably eat less than this because you'll have a hard time eating that much in one meal. Portions are important because by observing how much you eat will hopefully get you into a habit of controlling aggressive overeating. I'll give you an example of breakfast and show you how it breaks down calorie wise.

Protien/EGGS: 3 whites 1 w/yolk scrambled = 132 Calories
Fiberous Carb/APPLE: Sliced = 81 cal
Starchy Carb/CEREAL: 1 cup (Honey Bunches Of Oates) w/ skim milk = 170 cal

Calories: 132 + 81 + 170 = 383. I'm short by 127 cals!!

When you add up the calories in this typical breakfast you realize you come up short from your daily target, however it also gives you room to splurge if you're still a little hungry. Another egg white or a piece of whole wheat toast with a little butter is fine. Understand eating every three hours is a key to getting your body's metabolism in a rhythm to help it increase it's burning factor. It's important to get into this rhythm, but if you miss by half an hour or so sometimes, you're not straying too far off the beaten path.

Small, substainable meals are what makes you create an integral habit of learning how to portion your food correctly so you may give yourself the right amount of calories at each meal. The overall calorie intake for the day is important, but the meals and their eating times are what drives your metabolism to work on it's highest level. Getting your metabolismn to burn hot is what we are trying to accomplish.