Posts Tagged ‘calorie’

The hidden fact of shifting calorie diet

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Nowadays, most of us definitely have informed the craze of shifting calorie diet approach to reduce weight. But simply few of us really know the physiological processes in our body that is responsible for its immense accomplishment. To get an idea how the shifting calorie diet approach works, we must have an idea of how the conventional dieting technique works and its failure to reduce obesity of the person on dieting.

Traditional dieting works on the principle of starvation. The basic sense is ‘if you eat less, you shall lose weight’. At a glance it makes sense, but there is much more principles involved behind weight loss and gain.

When you reduce your total calorie intake by lowering the amount of food you take, your body engages in a number of metabolic and hormonal changes that is closely linked with starvation. Physiologically, our body tries to pile up as much calorie as it can involving a easy and swift process, which in turn results into deposition of more fat. Concurrently, the muscle mass is broken down to keep the normal energy level. Glucose is one of the substances that give us required energy during any kind of physical activity. Muscle and the liver store much of the calories that our body keeps for use in case of emergency situations. This is done by converting the glucose into glycogen that involves some complex enzymatic reactions. When situation demands, glycogen is broken down to glucose by the process of ‘Glycogenolysis’ and thus required energy is available to our body.

The net effect is swift loss of water to wash out the detrimental byproducts out from the system. This appears as the loss of weight. But this weight loss is not everlasting. When you start to take food in normal quantity, the water loss is regained while accumulating more amount of fat besides loss of general muscle mass.

The shifting calorie diet management works in a different way from the conventional dieting involving starvation. The basic principle is to change the amount and types of food intake besides preserving the optimal nutritional equilibrium to stay away from the evil effect of muscle loss.

Here the recommendation is to split the meal into 4 or more small parts and changing the types of food taken as well. The excess amount of fat is burnt while maintaining the intake of a healthy amount of food daily. One is allowed to take as much amount of food he wants but with a caution to stop eating just before his hunger is completely satisfied. This is the main approach to the shifting calorie dieting.

You can maintain the overall healthy lifestyle as with all other dieting techniques by adopting shifting calorie dieting. The requirement of exercise is moderate like simple walking for half an hour daily. There is no point to go beyond the recommended time frame especially when you are starting.

Conventional dieting which involves starvation is a thing of the past as it’s definitely not good for our body. It may leave more harmful aftereffect than good. By adopting shifting calorie diet approach, you can easily reduce the extra mass of fat while maintaining the total muscle bulk. You are free to take the foods you normally enjoy in the quantity you like.

Diet and exercise

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

If you are thinking to lose 5 kilos of weight within 7 days with only your exercise program, you must be living in a fool’s world. No exercise program can reduce fat unless you are on proper diet. Optimum diet and exercise is the core for a healthy lifestyle. Exercise program will lead to gradual wasting of muscles unless you replenish the calorie with suitable diet.

Combining these two is very easy. First let us discuss about how to plan your exercise program.

The first thing is consulting your doctor. Women over 50 and men over 40 are the high risk persons. They tend to develop various chronic physical ailments such as diabetes, high blood pressure or obesity. If all the things are all right, you can begin your exercise program. Start exercising slowly and build up activities step by step over a period, say a couple of months. This is important to keep away from easy fatigue and injury. You must include half an hour of moderate intensity cardio exercises (aerobics) each day. You need not to do this at a stretch, rather dividing into two halves will increase your endurance. You can opt for weight training advance step routine exercises twice a week. This is to develop your muscle strength. Add some activities in your daily routine, like park the car as far as possible from your office parking – then take a brisk walk. Do not use email or fax a copy while sending it to some of your office colleague. Rather go to him personally and deliver it with a smile. It will definitely increase your PR. Do not use car while going to the nearby departmental store, rather using a bicycle will burn some calorie. You can take the stairs rather than using elevator.

Make your leisure time full of activities you like. You can clean your yard, go for a walking to the nearest hill or take part in some outdoor games with your friends. Riding a static bicycle while watching your favorite TV show is definitely better than being a couch potato. Choose the activities you like, you need not to go to a multi gym to keep yourself fit. Your Success to achieving the goal leads to enhanced motivation to remain physically active. Make sure that whatever exercises you are doing, are compatible to your physical condition and age.

Now come to the second part. Proper diet is a must because all the exercise we do, burn our stored calorie. Unless you replenish a good part of it, you will be exhausted. What you should do is –

Increase the vegetable intake and better to take steamed vegetables. Avoid using oil and fat as far as possible. Reduce the intake of meat and supplement it with fresh vegetables. Add some grated carrot, cabbage or zucchini to meatloaf. You can take adequately washed celery and trimmed carrot sticks for snacks. Increase the intake of whole grains. Substitute the whole wheat flour for white bleached flour while preparing any baked item.

Germination increases the nutritional value. You can make delicious breakfast by mixing some germinated peas, Bengal grams and baked potato with dash of rock salt and pepper. Take bran based cereals – bran retains the original nutritional vale of the food grain. Avoid red meat. Reduce the amount of salt intake. Substitute herbs or lemon juice while making noodles or pasta. Reducing pure carbohydrate is controversial, because the most of the calorie should come from carbohydrate with a balance from fat and protein. But you must not take heavy pastries and cakes which contains huge amount of fat along with carbohydrate. Take small but frequent meals.

Balanced diet and regular exercise are the two basic factors for a healthy life.

Diet for Quick Weight Loss

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

Millions of people are obsessed with weight loss, mostly because of the inherent dangers of being overweight. In recent years, advanced studies have revealed that being obese can cause serious heart ailments, ulcers, high blood pressure and even depression associated with a low self-esteem. Although obesity can be caused by genetics, a lot of people are obese because of a higher calorie intake. Whenever we eat, food is processed and burned and energy is released. (more…)