Permanent Weight Loss

The concept of using a daily food log turns most people completely off. This involves effort and time that most people probably don’t have, or at least thats what they think.

It’s true that keeping track of your calories with a daily food log may be a chore in the beginning. However, over a very brief period of time keeping a food log will become routine as any other daily habit in your life.

The benefit to keeping a daily food log is that you will know how many calories you consume as you go through your day. This will give you the ability to much better regulate your daily calorie intake than had you not kept track of what you ate. I use a daily food log myself and it’s very easy to do. (In fact I will soon make my own log availible to anyone that visits this site. As soon as I have a distributable user friendly version I will announce it in a future email newsletter.)

Once you know how many calories per day you should eat, you should employ a food log to maintain that daily calorie limit. If you don’t like the idea of a food log it’s understandable. If you are in this camp, you should really reconsider your position, or at least delay making up your mind. Why not try, or at least consider using a food log? What do you have to lose besides excess pounds? Probably nothing. Enough of that for now. If you decide to use a daily food log as part of your weight loss strategy than good for you.

Remember to keep an eye on your in-box for news about my calorie tracking system. If you don’t get the newsletter, you can subscribe on the homepage of this website.

Hello everyone,

This will be a shorty but a goody. One of the most fundamental principals to losing weight is to watch what you eat. This cannot be avoided for most, sorry people that’s just is the way it is. The best way to do this is to monitor and regulate your daily caloric intake.

Unfortunately most people find this to be a big pain in the rear, and I agree. For me, and most people I talk to, the biggest pain in calorie counting is figuring out how many calories are in that meal you are eating. Yes nutrition information is on just about everything you can get, but what about recipes? When you combine several ingredients to make a meal you have the nutritional information for several ingredients with different portion sizes all combined into one dish. For instance, if you want a bowl of Beef Stew, you would have to add up calories for the veggies, meat, sauce, and then figure out your serving size and calories per serving. How the heck do you calculate how many calories per serving, or even what a serving size would be? This is a common dilemma that can put a motivational hamper on your progress.

The good news is that there is a free tool out there that does all the hard work for you. Just type in your favorite food, and it will come back with every possibility for that particular dish. This search tool will tell you how many calories, serving size, and give you all the macronutrient and micronutrient information for that dish or individual food item. It has everything, or at least I have yet to find a food that it doesn’t have. To use this free and powerful tool, just go to http://www.caloriecount.about.com

You may have found this already with a Google search, but if not you need to check this out!

Thats all for now, until next time.

One of your enemies in the war against body fat is a chemical known as cortisol. It’s also known as the stress hormone. Don’t get me wrong; cortisol is an essential and beneficial chemical that our body uses to react to stressful situations, (which is consequently how it became known as the stress hormone). It’s also used by our bodies to return to a relaxed state after the stressful situation has ended. The problems with cortisol occur when somebody is exposed to frequent stress. Frequent stress can cause heightened and prolonged levels of cortisol in the blood stream. There are many negative side effects with heightened and prolonged exposure to cortisol, including increased levels of belly fat. Yes cortisol leads to increased levels of abdominal fat, which also lead to another array of health problems.

The best way to blunt cortisol release is to manage your stress! Obviously. And of course one of the best ways to manage stress is exercise. However, there is another issue to tackle here. The issue is the fact that when you perform resistance training exercises (which you should) it can lead to increased levels of physiological stress. The good news is that this is easy to deal with. Since you are already exercising (you are aren’t you?) then you are already busting most of your stress.

The question is this: After a good resistance workout, how do can you blunt cortisol release from the physical stress of resistance exercise? Simple, give your body what it needs right after your workout. After a good session of resistance exercise, your bodies’ glycogen stores will have been mostly, if not completely depleted. You body sees this as a problem (stress) and will release cortisol to get you hungry so you will eat and replenish your muscle glycogen. So what does your body need to blunt that cortisol release? Make sure you eat a fast digesting carb so that your muscle glycogen will begin to replenish before your brain has the chance to release cortisol into your blood. The fast acting carb will quickly break down and promptly increase your blood sugar levels. This will tell your brain that you are already in the process or fueling your body so it will turn off the instinct to release cortisol.

One of the best ways to do this is to have a whey protein shake right after an intense resistance working out. To that protein shake add about 50-100 grams of a fast acting carbohydrate such as granulated table sugar, or honey. Fast digesting carbs like this create a sugar spike that will tell your brain the emergency is over and to save its stress hormone store for a more stressful time later on.

NOTE: If you have diabetes, definitely check with your endocrinologist before considering this tip.

Ideally the majority of your carbohydrate consumption should consist of slower digesting carbs that are low on the glycemic index. However, as said before, eating a very small portion of a fast acting carb after resistance training can actually be beneficial in helping your body blunt cortisol release.

Thanks for reading,

Kim Nielsen

Today I had a very good workout. I was a bit sore from yesterday’s workout, so I performed some cardiovascular exercise.

I want to make a point before we continue; This workout should only be attempted by those who have been working out consistently for at least 1 year.

I spent the entire time on the treadmill. I started with a 10-minute warm-up, walking at 2.5 mph for 1 min. Then 3.0 for 30 seconds, 4.0 for 30 seconds, 5.0 for 3 minutes, then finally 6.0 mph for 5 more minutes to complete the warm-up. Then I ran for 20 minutes performing intervals of 4-8 mph. After that I ran for a 5-minute recovery period starting at 3 and slowly ramping back up to 6 mph until the 35-minute mark. At that point I want back to intervals but much more extreme with a range of 3-9 mph. This was very challenging. Then after 7 minutes of that interval set I slowed to a cool down for 3 more minutes to finish out at the 45-minute mark. I was completely soaked in sweat, but I am sure I burned at least 550 calories, maybe more!

Again, this type of cardiovascular exercise is for those whom workout at an advanced level and do so consistently. Yesterday I promised that I would deliver a beginners workout plan, so here it is:

If you are a beginner, you can burn fat by performing cardio for about 15 minutes if you include about 25-30 minutes of resistance training. If your aim is to burn fat, then make sure you perform the cardio first. If you have a gym membership then try this:

Perform 15 minutes of cardio on a machine of your choice: Bike, Elliptical, Treadmill, and Stairs, whatever you want. For the first 5 minutes choose a low setting and go slow. If you seem to be going faster than the machine can handle, its not the machine its you, slow down. After 5 minutes increase the difficulty by 1 and keep the same speed. After 1 minute if you feel like you can increase your rate, try just don’t go faster than the machine. Keep this up until the time is up, then you are good. Now move on to the resistance training. Beginners should start with the basics and do a 2 day split.

A 2-day split is simply upper body 1 day, lower body the next, then just cardio on the 3rd day, and then start over. After 5 or 6 days in a row feel free to take a day off, just watch those calories. For your upper body routine stay simple, something like 2 sets of lat pulls, 2 sets of chest presses, 2 sets of rows, 3 sets of bicep curls, and 2 sets if triceps presses.

Lower body could be something like 2 sets of leg presses, 2 sets of leg extensions, 2 sets of leg curls and 3 sets of any abdominal exercise that your comfortable with.

This is the exercise regimen I used in the beginning and it worked very well. I lost a bunch of weight just in the first month. I can’t remember exactly how much, I just remember how happy I was to have a success like that.

Now if you don’t have a gym membership then you are still in luck. You still need to get some cardio exercise such as running, jogging, bike riding, and so on. Perform about 15 minutes just like before. For upper body Try 3 sets of pushups, 3 sets of arm circles, and 3 sets of chair dips, and 2 sets of sit-ups or crunches. For your lower body try 3 sets of lunges, 2 sets of squats (body weight only), and 3 sets of leg kickbacks. If you need more detail on how to perform these exercises I will be posting more information soon. Well sorry all but I have to run now, thanks for reading,

Kim Nielsen

I believe that most people whom are addicted to cigarettes want to quit. We all know there are various reasons for starting to smoke, but none of those reasons really keep people wanting to smoke, addiction takes care of that. A major stigma here is that many people are afraid they will gain weight if they quit smoking. This is especially true for people who are already overweight or obese and do not want to gain any more weight.

As we all know cigarettes contain nicotine. Nicotine is a stimulant that can act to suppress appetite, which can therefore help avoid overeating. PLEASE NOTE: Even though nicotine can suppress your appetite, this is NOT a good reason or endorsement to smoke! The health risks of smoking far out-way any potential appetite suppressing benefit you would receive from smoking. It’s a fact that when most people quit smoking they do gain weight. With the absence of nicotine, appetite increases which can lead to overeating. In addition, since smoking actually burns a small amount of calories, those calories will no longer be metabolized after quitting. Moreover, some people use food as a replacement to cigarettes to cope with the cravings of the addiction, which can also lead to overeating. Furthermore, all of the pressures of quitting the cigarette habit can and usually does lead to increased stress levels. Increased stress has been proven to lead to weight gain as well. Looks like the odds are stacked against cigarette smokers who want to quit and lose weight or just keep it off. Even so, don’t let this stop you. I know all of these facts can be discouraging, but its still well worth it to quit smoking.

Even if you smoke and gain weight, its usually only in the range of 5-10 pounds. As long as you don’t increase your daily calorie intake too much, this extra weight should be fairly easy to get rid of over time. So even though the odds appear stacked, you have a better chance at success that you may think. Here is another thing to consider: By quitting the habit, it will get much easier to perform cardiovascular activity. Since your cardiovascular system will become healthier and work better, it will help your become much more efficient at burning body fat. Since it would be easier to perform exercise after quitting, there will be a few less excuses you will have to avoid exercise.

So while it may seem better to just keep smoking so you don’t gain weight, the opposite is true. If you quit smoking now, and increase your cardiovascular activity, you should be able to avoid any new weight gain. And if you do gain a couple of pounds, they won’t stick around if you eat better or the same as you do now. After about a year you will have likely lost weight, and will certainly be much healthier for doing so.

Bottom line, you are far better off quitting the habit if your ultimate goal is to lose weight and keep it off.