How Small Changes can Help You Lose a Lot of Weight in 2012

Every year, losing weight tops lists of New Year’s resolutions, and dieters everywhere decide to completely overhaul the way they eat to lose weight fast. After a few weeks, or even a few months, many of these plans fail as dieters are unable to live up to the unrealistic expectations they create for themselves. For more long-term weight-loss success, making small changes in diet to create a lifestyle change is key. Here are some small changes that you can make to your diet to lose a lot of weight over the long term:

Drink More Water

Soda is a bad habit for many — one that can add hundreds or even thousands of calories to your diet every day. Fruit juices and sports drinks are equally high in calories and sugar that can pack on the pounds. A simple change is to simply trade out sodas and other sugary drinks  and substitute with water instead. Over time, this one change can help you to lose a lot of weight. If you don’t enjoy the taste of water, you can add some flavor by dropping in a strawberry or a splash of lemon or lime juice. Avoid mix-ins that contain artificial sweeteners or caffeine.

Control Portions

Do you like to eat a bag full of chips while you sit in front of the TV each night? It can be hard to eat just one. However, this kind of mindless snacking can add up to hundreds and thousands of calories. Working on controlling your portions can help you to lose a significant amount of weight. Instead of sitting down with an open bag of chips, grab a handful and put them in a bowl. Put the bag away and don’t go back for seconds. Often, we tend to eat what we see, or what we put on our plates. Simply putting food out of sight or filling up a smaller plate can help us to eat less.

Cut One Bad Habit at a Time

Do you have a sweet tooth? Or maybe you have a weakness for chili cheese dogs? Instead of calling off all your vices at once, just work on them one at a time. If sweets are your problem, start phasing them out slowly. Once you have become accustomed to eating less sweets or none at all, start working on your chili cheese dog problem. Over time, you will clean up your diet and will slowly change your eating habits for long-term success.

Eat More Protein

Protein digests much more slowly, helping to stabilize your blood sugar and making you feel full longer. Eating protein at every meal and snack will also help you to feel satisfied and full more quickly. In contrast, eating meals and snacks that consist mostly of simple carbohydrates will trigger cravings for more high-sugar, high-fat foods.

Make Healthy Swaps

Instead of trying to cut out all the foods you love, try to find ways to enjoy them in healthier versions. For example, instead of cutting out pasta, try whole-wheat pasta with a low-fat marinara sauce. Instead of cutting out cheese, try low-fat versions. Instead of cutting out fried chicken, try a heart-healthy baked version. In general, choosing whole wheat over white flour and low-fat or low-sugar versions over their whole counterparts can help you cut calories while still enjoying the foods you like.

Add Fruits and Vegetables

An easy way to make your diet healthier is to add more nutritious foods to it instead of focusing on what you have to take out of it. Eating more fruits and vegetables helps you get many of the nutrients you need, while also adding fiber to your diet. Eating more fiber helps to make you feel full faster, leaving less room (and less desire) to eat other high-fat, unhealthy foods. It also promotes digestive health, which can encourage your weight loss.

Add Exercise

Diet is only one part of weight loss; exercising more is critical to overall health and to long-term weight-loss success. Like your diet, you shouldn’t try to make drastic changes to your exercise routine. If you’ve been a couch potato for years, don’t expect to run a marathon this year. Start by making small changes. If you’re not used to exercising, start by walking a few times a week. When you get used to this routine, walk for longer distances or more days of the week. Slowly add in more intense exercise — like running or cycling — as well as strength training. Over time, you will make lasting changes to your physical fitness routine.

Though the excitement of New Year’s resolutions can make us eager to make big changes in our lives quickly, attempting to do so can actually set us up for failure. To successfully change habits in the long term, small steps must be taken. Making some of these small steps to your diet and fitness routine can help you lose a lot of weight in the long term. When you’re able to keep off the weight, you won’t have to make the same resolutions again next year!

 

About the author:

Amanda Tradwick is a grant researcher and writer for CollegeGrants.org. She has a Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Delaware, and has recently finished research on <a href=”www.collegegrant.net/cosmetology/”>grants for cosmetology school</a> and <a href=”www.collegegrant.net/college-grants-for-adults/”>grants for adults returning to college</a>.

 

 

This entry was written by scrawford, posted on January 16, 2012 at 9:39 am, filed under Fitness, Food, Life is Fitness, Lifestyle and Spa, Nutrition, Santa Barbara and tagged , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Stay Active While On The Job


By Jenni Sunde

The benefits of living an active lifestyle are obvious; you look better, feel better, and have more energy.  If you work fulltime, have a family, or run your own business you are likely well aware of how difficult it can be to keep up a fitness routine.  Many people complain about not having enough time or feeling too tired at the end of the day.  Inactivity can actually cause feelings of fatigue.  Sitting all day slows down how quickly oxygen enters the blood stream and can leave you feeling sluggish and drained of energy.

Fortunately, with a little creativity and some even the tiniest amount of dedication you can lead a healthy lifestyle even with a fulltime schedule.  Depending on your fitness goals there are varying levels of changes that you can make.  The truth is that finding a way to become active again is a simple as deciding to do it.

Changing how you commute can be one of the easiest ways to optimize your time for activity.  If you live close enough to work to walk, do it!  Even if it means leaving a little earlier, those extra ten or twenty minutes will not only get your blood pumping, but they will provide you with time to decompress and appreciate your surroundings.  This can be a great way to prepare for the day ahead and to unwind on the way home.  If you don’t live close enough to walk, consider biking to work.  This will help improve your cardio fitness, reduce traffic congestion and lower your green house gas emissions.

If the commute is too difficult to change, there are other simple adjustments that you can make in your daily work life that will help to get you motivated and help combat sedentary-induced laziness.

  • Bring a pair of walking shoes to work and leave them there.  This way you can go for a brisk ten minute walk on your coffee breaks instead of just sitting more.  You may even be able to do this more than once throughout the day depending on your work schedule.  You’d be amazed at how much more alert you’ll be from a simple ten minute walk.
  • If your building has an elevator, opt to take the stairs instead.
  • Pack your lunches instead of going out to eat.  This way you can control your nutrition, save money, and get in the habit of eating healthier foods.  Bring carrots and fruit to snack on so that you can better avoid the chips and cookies left in the break room.
  • Walk around the office more.  If there is more than one printer in the building, opt to have your documents printed at the farthest one.

There are also changes you can make in your home life.  Technology is undoubtedly convenient, but it has taken a lot of the doing out of household chores.  This means we burn fewer calories in our daily lives and are less active than even just ten years ago.  You need to find ways to supplement the lost activity that was once involved in house work.  Some options include:

  • Walking a few sets of stairs during commercial breaks on tv.
  • Saving a few extra dishes for hand washing.
  • Hand watering the garden instead of just turning on the sprinkler.
  • Using a push mower instead of a sit down mower.
  • Take a few breaks from your desk to do resistance training with weights or bands.

Finding ways to engage your family in active interactions is a great way to combine family time with exercise.  Play with your kids more.  Maybe you can make obstacle course in the backyard and have them try to beat you; who doesn’t want to beat their parents at a game?  You could also try:

  • Take a special walk with each of your children one day a week and allow this to double as special time for the two of you to talk and spend time together while you get a little exercise.
  • Set up some fun family fitness goals and have a prize for whenever someone achieves a goal.  For example, go out to dinner at a place of their choosing.

The most important thing to understand is that you need to make your health a priority.  There is enough time in the day to do everything you need to do, including exercise.  You just need to make sure that you find ways to use time effectively to your advantage.  Plan ahead by marking off time each week to dedicate to your fitness goals; it is really as easy as deciding to do it and the results and finesse of it will follow.

About the author: Jenni Sunde is a freelance fashion writer and pop culture junkie. Jenni specializes in all things lifestyle-related. From home and design to health and beauty. With her love of art and all things beautiful, she delights in sharing her sense of style from her life to your computer monitor. Her title pegs her as an editor at a website that specializes in fashion careers, and another that provides people with car insurance quotes, but her passion leads her into writing with a little more substance and a lot more heart.

 

 

 

This entry was written by scrawford, posted on June 13, 2011 at 11:48 am, filed under Fitness, Green Lifestyle, Life is Fitness, Lifestyle and Spa, Nutrition, Santa Barbara and tagged , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Attaining Perfect Rejuvenation: How to Understand and Master Shavasana

If you’re a yoga devotee, you’re probably intimately familiar with Shavasana (also Savasana, or the corpse pose). You do it at the end of every yoga session, and the rule of thumb is typically five minutes of Shavasana for every 30 you’ve spent practicing other yoga poses. So if you do a 30-minute session of yoga five times a week, that’s at least 25 minutes of Shavasana. When you’re spending so much time in one pose, wouldn’t you like to make sure that it’s as close to perfection as possible?

You might think that the corpse pose is pretty self-explanatory, and it is – but to truly perfect this pose, it takes a little bit more than playing dead. Practice, more heightened concentration, and awareness of the pose’s goal can help you experience the incredible benefits of a perfect Shavasana pose. To get started, check out the following suggestions for improving your corpse pose.

Finding the Perfect Position

Going by the name, a corpse pose would have you simply lie on your back as if you were dead. Easy enough, but it’s tougher than it sounds. To begin Shavasana, sit on the floor with your knees bent, feet flat against the floor, and lean back as you use your forearms to guide your torso down to the floor so that you’re flat on your back. Slide one leg straight out, leading with the heel, as you inhale slowly andexhale. Extend the other leg and arch your back slightly. Now, soften your thigh muscles and allow your legs to turn slightly outward into a natural pose that doesn’t require you to hold any muscles taut. Soften your lower back, but don’t allow it to touch the floor. You want to retain a soft, natural curve in your spine. If you’re having trouble with this, use a bolster to find the curve and remove it when you’re confident that you can retain the curve on your own. Once you’re comfortable in this initial position, you’re ready to move on.

Focusing onAlignment

Try to keep your body symmetrical with your left and right sides reflecting each other along the mid-line of your torso. To get your head in the game, take hold of it with both hands and gently lift it away from the back of your neck. Keep your ears at equal distances from your shoulders – this will help you stay symmetrical along your mid-line. As you support your head with your hands or a folded blanket, try to release your spine and relax it from the base of your skull down to your tailbone.

Using Your Arms and Surface Area

Reach your arms up to the ceiling, perpendicular to the floor, as you rock gently from side to side. The purpose of this is to broaden your back by moving the ribs and shoulder blades away from the spine, giving you the sensation of having more surface area between you and the floor. This will help you feel rock solid as you fully relax your body. Allow your arms to find a natural position at your sides, equally angled away from your mid-line, with the palms facing up. Keep your shoulder blades firmly but gently pressed against the floor, allowing your collarbones to spread open and your chest to expand.

Silencing Your Sense Organs

Your sense organs are always at work, but in Shavasana, it’s important to try to silence them and participate in total relaxation. You can start at the top of your head and work downward, relaxing your eye and facial muscles, your inner ear canals, and nostrils. To become more aware of the stress you’re holding in your nose, try flaring your nostrils and then actively relaxing them. Now, soften the root of your tongue and release the tension in your jaw. If your teeth are gritted at this point, work to soften your jaw muscles and your tongue will naturally relax during this process. Any muscle groups that are still taut should be tensed and deliberately released. Trouble spots can include the shoulders, neck, face, back, and jaw, so make sure that these parts of your body are entirely relaxed.

Breathing and Mental Relaxation

There aren’t any specific breathing tricks to learn for Shavasana. Just observe your breath as if you were outside of your body and become aware of its natural rhythm. Focusing on this simple act of respiration will allow you to relax your mind, releasing any stresses or concerns you might have and eliminating thoughts of what you’ll have to do when you’ve finished your yoga session. Let your breath guide you within the moment of Shavasana and exclude the world as you know it. Detach yourself from your body and watch your thoughts slowly dissipate, enabling you to enter a state of total relaxation. No matter what you do, treat Shavasana as a pose that deserves your full concentration just as much as the toughest handstand. You’ll be rewarded with the perfect ending to your yoga session.

 

 

Bio: Alexis Bonari is currently a resident blogger at College Scholarships, where recently she’s been researching scholarships for ice hockey students as well as student loan forbearance. Whenever this WAHM gets some free time she enjoys doing yoga, cooking with the freshest organic in-season fare, and practicing the art of coupon clipping.

 

Photo: Public Domain
URL: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3469/3908380242_97fb2ffa61.jpg

 

This entry was written by scrawford, posted on April 5, 2011 at 3:36 pm, filed under Fitness, Life is Fitness, Los Angeles, Meditation, Santa Barbara, Yoga and tagged , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

KRISTIN FROST COMMENTS FROM SOLACE RETREAT

Kristen Frost was our 20th guest since soma has launched as an LLC in 2009 and here is what she had to say about her experience:

“Scott-

Transformed? Highly Satisfied?  ABSOLUTELY!!!

I know that you know I had a wonderful time in your care.  I just had a video call with my 2 best friends today to catch up (1 lives in Boise, the other in CT) and they want to do a retreat, they loved what I shared.  Needless to say you may never get rid of me.

OK-so my favorite moment?  Though quite painful, I still giggle out loud when I recall laughing uncontrollably while you grinded my PSOAS muscle…..Laughing is so central to my being but I don’t let it out quite like that anymore–THANK YOU!!  I needed to remember how good that feels.

You are phenomenal and I thank you for making my retreat beyond perfect.

LOVE and HUGS,

Kristin”

This entry was written by scrawford, posted on November 20, 2010 at 9:38 pm, filed under Bodywork, Experiences, Life is Fitness, Outdoors, Retreats and tagged , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

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