Water Aerobics For Weight Loss - Does It Work?

Aerobic exercise involves taking in extra oxygen, and this is really good news for your health. Aerobic exercise conditions your cardiovascular system and helps strengthen your heart, resulting in it not having to work as hard to pump blood around your body. Aerobics is usually set to music and incorporates good rhythm and movement, making aerobics a great cardio workout that is ideal for burning calories and losing weight. There are many types of aerobics which are normally performed in gym classes or by individuals in their homes, in addition to these forms of aerobics there is also water aerobics which is performed in a pool.

What Is Water Aerobics?

As the name suggests, water aerobics is an aerobic workout session that takes place in water. It is sometimes called aqua aerobics and as a rule does not include swimming (although this is an aerobic exercise in itself). During a water aerobics session you will perform exercises while standing up in the pool as well as activities which involve moving around in the pool. These may be classic aerobic activities such as knee raises, jumping jacks, and arm circles in addition to walking or jogging in the water. Weights are often used as well to build muscle mass and the side of the pool can also be utilized as an exercise tool for chin ups and pull ups. You can find water aerobics classes in many good gyms and leisure centres. but what are the benefits to performing aerobics in the water?

What Are The Benefits Of Water Aerobics

Water aerobics is a really fun and innovative way to enjoy exercise, but it is far more than just an enjoyable splash around. It is a great activity for losing weight, improving your cardiovascular system and building muscle mass. The reason that water aerobics is so effective is because of the natural resistance provided by the water. This forces your body to work harder as it moves through the water, which builds muscle mass and burns more calories. It also provides you with a low-impact workout because the water supports your body weight, this puts less stress on your body and joints in particular compared with more traditional workouts. This is why exercising in the pool is great for older people and as rehabilitation for people returning from injury. Even though you are in the water, you will still get dehydrated during a session and need to take on board plenty of fluids. You must also warm up properly before starting a session, don't just dive straight in and get going.

So why not try water aerobics for weight loss, and enjoy a really fun and unique exercise experience?


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4 Signs You Should Eat More to Lose Weight

Did you know that eating too little can actually prevent you from losing weight? It's true. When you eat below a certain amount of calories (this level is different for everyone), your body enters "starvation mode" and tries to hold on to all the fat that it has so that it can survive.

The good news is that by eating more food, you can fire up your metabolism and start losing weight again.

Here are four signs that you should start eating more:

You have a lot of weight to lose. The higher your weight, the more calories your body burns just to function on a daily level. A good rule of thumb is to figure that [your body weight X 10] is the number of calories that your body needs to maintain its current weight. If you want to lose weight, you should subtract 500 from this number and that is how many calories you should eat in a day.
You have a high muscle mass. Muscle burns more energy than fat, so if you have a higher muscle mass, then you may need to eat more calories to keep your body fueled.
You exercise a lot. If you exercise hard for an hour a day, five times a week, then you may need more calories. Strenuous exercise burns a lot of calories and if you are not eating enough to maintain this level of activity, you're body will think that it's starving (even if you actually are eating) and will try to keep its fat for energy.
You've hit a plateau. If you've been successfully losing weight by eating right and exercising and your weight loss suddenly comes to a screeching halt, you may need more food. Your body has gotten used to this level of food and activity. Try eating an extra 200 calories a day and see if that doesn't fire up your metabolism.



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Bioidentical Hormones and Weight Loss

Everyone knows that losing weight is difficult for most women. Perhaps it is because our bodies work against us if our hormones are not balanced. Therefore, the need for balancing our hormones could be the main issue in weight loss. Bioidentical hormones like the product Amberen may be the answer. Bioidentical hormones are plant based as opposed to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) made of synthetic hormones or animal -derived hormones which may not be assimilated in the human body and could cause even more weight gain problems.

Actually, a woman who has unbalanced hormones has many problems other than weight gain, but weight gain contributes to all her other problems. She may be experiencing all the symptoms of menopause such as lack of energy, loss of libido, loss of energy, irritability and mood swings, trouble concentrating, hot flashes, and night sweats. Weight gain is just one of her problems.

One cause of weight gain and difficulty in losing weight may be a thyroid deficiency. The thyroid gland produces hormones known as T3 and T4. These hormones help our body metabolize calories. Doctors prescribe medicine if they find that we are low in T3 and T4. Often they prescribe Synthroid for hypothyrodism.

Testosterone is another hormone that helps our body metabolize calories and burn fat more efficiently. It also prevents storage of fat around the mid section. If testosterone and progesterone levels decrease leaving us estrogen dominate, we may gain weight and experience severe fatigue.

Bioidentical testosterone regulates hormone levels and helps symptoms such as fatigue and lack of sexual desire. Testosterone is also connected to aggressiveness, development of muscle mass and social outlook.

Balancing hormones with bioidentical hormones can alleviate fatigue, increase bone loss, boost sex drive, relieve hot flashes, stop night sweats, relieve anxiety attacks, stop weight gain, and make a woman feel younger. Bioidentical hormones are derived from plants. Bio identical testosterone is made from extracts from soy and yams.

Bioidentical testosterone creams are made when these extracts are combined with cream and applied directly to the skin. Taking testosterone pills is not recommended since their potency is reduced during the digestive process.

One safe way to balance hormones is with bioidentical hormones and perhaps a progesterone cream that is formulated from plant sources that our body synthesizes like it did our own natural progesterone. When buying progesterone cream, make certain that it contains at 20 mg of USP progesterone per dose. Progesterone helps our bodies use fat for energy.

Prognenolone is a hormone that is made from cholesterol. It helps relieve stress, lifts our mood, improves brain function and helps increase testosterone levels to improve metabolism.

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4 Tips to Help You Lose Weight Naturally

What is the best way of losing weight?

 Should you lose weight the natural way, through exercise or surgery? There are many ways but they work for different people differently. Once you have made up your mind that you need to cut down, choose a method that works best for you. Other things to consider include, when and where do you start and how do you go about the whole process. The following tips will help you lose that extra weight the natural way.

1. First, Decide Your Starting Point

Before you think about the method that you will use, think about where you are and what you are out to achieve. That is; what is your current weight and where do you intend to be at the end of the day? What is your Body Mass Index? Think about what you consider to be your ideal weight. You can then set out your goals, but only remember that they should be reasonable and achievable goals. Do not forget that going overboard will not enable you to cut down weight faster, but will only delay the process. At the end, it will leave you negative about what you were out to achieve.

2. Reduce your starch and sugar intake

Cutting back your starch and sugar intake is a positive move. These two are good in stimulating the secretion of insulin. What does insulin do to your body? It is a major fat storage hormone. Reducing the insulin in your body will result in a reduction of fat in your body. Remove starches and sugars from your diet to control your appetite.

3. Go For A Proper Training Program

Most people start off a training program at a very high rate only to go down half way through the regime. In most cases, this is because they did not choose the right training/exercising program. Remember that what works well for someone else might not work for you. This is why you should go for a tailor- made training program. However, even with the right training program, remember not to overdo things. Overdoing things might leave you with negative results such as a sore body. If you are on a tight budget, you do not have to go to the gym to lose weight. You can do the training in the comfort of your home.

4. Always Motivate Yourself

You will not achieve much if you do not keep yourself motivated. You are the best person to do this to yourself. Motivate yourself, focus on your goals and have the determination to achieve up to the last goal. Keep encouraging yourself even when others might not seem to notice the change in you.

Do not forget that losing weight in a natural way might seem to take a little more time than other methods, but you will, in the end, see results. The outstanding benefit of losing weight this way is that it does not have any side effects. Be at peace with yourself even in times when you do not seem to be getting far. These are just a few of the tips that you need to lose weight naturally.

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Weight Loss Plans For Women Over 40

This is something that all weight plans for women over 40 need to keep in mind. No matter what diet plan you as a woman are following, research has shown that keeping a detailed food diary, a record of everything you eat, helps keep motivation positive and can quickly help you point out problem areas in your diet.

Maintaining a food journal while you are losing weight and for a full year after you reach your target weight helps keep the pounds off. Just knowing that you will be honestly writing down every bite you take can help curb overeating or eating unhealthy foods. There is no point in cheating in your food journal; its function is to help you maintain healthy weight loss so you will only be cheating yourself.

To make tracking food intake a fun project, start by finding an appealing blank diary or notebook for recording your food consumption. Pick something that you'll enjoy seeing several times a day. You can buy a special pen to use, something with an unusual design or ink color. Just for fun, you can use different ink colors for each day of the week. You'll be using your food diary multiple times each day so make it a pleasant experience!

Then plan how you'll record each meal and snack. The point is to not only write everything down, but to do it in a way that is easy to go back and read. This way you can quickly spot trends that are enhancing weight loss or foods that are blocking progress.

Many people like to keep a corresponding exercise journal, recording activities and length of time. It is a proven fact that weight loss occurs when calorie intake is less than calorie expenditure. That's the only way to really shed those extra pounds! Research confirms that calorie output has to be greater than calorie intake for lasting weight loss. So, keeping track of both food intake and exercise only makes sense.

If you would like, you can keep tack of calories using the many calorie charts for various foods. Although some experts insist on recording calories, others say focusing only on calories isn't the wisest activity. Portion size is another important factor. Simply cutting down the size of the portion is one of the easiest ways to lose weight. You are still eating many of the foods you enjoy, just smaller amounts of them, cutting calories by cutting portion size. Again, some advise weighing or measuring portions, others suggest using smaller plates and bowls so you will naturally cut portion sizes to match the size of your dinnerware.

You can include pictures of yourself and a weigh in every month to track your progress. Fill your food journal with inspirational quotes or anything that will help you maintain positive motivation. Make it beautiful, something to be as proud of as your new, slimmer body!

Use your food diary to look for patterns, watch for foods that are preventing successful weight loss, and congratulate yourself when you've achieved your weekly eating goals. Set aside a few minutes each week to analyze your diary. Food journals are a great tool to help speed weight loss, but to work, you have to use them! So, if you need a weight loss for women over 40, this food journaling is something simple you can do.

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Losing the Weight With a Friend

Losing weight is never easy, at first. 

Even if after all these years, you have nearly given up on yourself, go to your past and find what you are missing and bring it forward and let people know the secrets you found. In the beginning you will find that the food is not the problem, that exercising is not the problem (or important when you begin), that lifestyle is not important either. Your mind (the way you think) is the only thing you need, to go forward. Be smart and follow the right steps and you will get to your ideal BMI and from there you can build back that confidence that you once had.

Having a friend is the motivation you need to keep your brain stimulated in the right direction. 

Your friend will help you make the right choices when you don't feel up to it. Your friend will keep you on track when you want to fall off. Going to a friend's place for supper and feeling good about it might seem abnormal to you? You will feel guilty sometimes without reason, but your brain will play games with you and your friend will be there to tell you not to panic.

What you need to do has nothing to do with the diets that are on the market. You need to find a long term solution to this tremendous problem. Find a way that will give you results. Find a program that will do for you what the others don't do. If you don't trust the program in the beginning, your friend will keep you in line. Now, if you are 10 to 20 lbs. overweight you need a program for you. If you are having a hard time tying your shoelaces, you need help. Go find your body mass index BMI and start to create your objective. Give yourself a realistic goal and take out those old high school pictures. Get ready to start the journey that will forever change your life and help all the people that you hold so dear. Don't forget, you will be helping all generations.

Being obese is not normal. Your knees were not meant to support all that weight. Your vital organs were not meant to be squeezed into your insides the way they are. If you are having a hard time tying your shoes, its not right. If you have tried all the diets out there and you are always back to where you started, that's not right. Losing weight is simple. Losing weight must be fun. Losing weight is challenging. Losing weight is rewarding. Losing weight will save your life. Be your best friend and follow simple principles and believe you can.

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How to Burn More Calories in Less Time

The key to losing weight and burning fat is to burn more calories than you consume. Although it sounds simple, unfortunately it isn't always as easy as x-y=z. The truth is that there are a lot of biochemical issues that factor in to how difficult it can be for some people to lose weight. Take for instance people that starve themselves or skip meals often. These people have forced their body into a conservation mode, where it will keep everything it gets because it is never sure of the next fuel source. However, on the inverse of that, people that eat 3-5 small meals per day are able to burn fat much easier because they keep their metabolism at a high rate all day long. This leads to decreased fat stores and a better looking body.

So what does this mean to you? Well the first thing that you need to do if you want to lose weight is to examine your dietary habits. You've got to give your body a constant fuel source throughout the day or it will start to hold on to your fat with an iron grip. You've also got to make sure that you aren't doing any late-night gorging or eating too much junk food. This can be a body killer on its own, so make sure you eat what you know to be healthy.

In terms of exercise, my favorite method of burning fat and getting in shape is called high intensity interval training (HIIT) and it consists of short (60 seconds or so) intervals of intense exercise, followed by short intervals (again, 60 seconds) of moderate exercise. This routine will get your body in the habit of burning calories in short periods of time, which will not only teach it how to find energy more efficiently (fat), but will also improve your overall health and fitness level very quickly. The science behind this method is solid too, as research has proven that 20 minute of intense exercise can burn the same amount of calories as an hour of moderate exercise. Now, if you only had to work out 20 minutes a day, even if it was intense, do you think you could do it if it meant a better looking body?

The great thing about high intensity training is that you can use it for nearly any type of exercise. You can use it in a manner similar to circuit training. Regardless of how you use it, the most important thing is to go all out for 60 seconds. It might hurt, and it might make you winded, but it will work! If you just do 20 minutes of moderate exercise and stop cycling through intensity levels, then you are going to be in worse shape then the person doing 60 minutes of cardio. So don't let that happen to you. Simply follow the methods here, and you will be well on your way to a tighter body and a lean Hollywood look.

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Fit For Summer in 6 Weeks

Summer season is usually spent by going to beaches, sunbathing and getting oneself tanned. But wouldn't it feel better if you do these with a nice and fit body? Well, you shouldn't really worry if you have eaten a lot during winter. You just have to sacrifice spring time for your firming up for you to get ready for summer. These things are easily said than done and so to get you started with losing weight and getting yourself in shape, you have to start with knowing your goals.

Knowing your goals would mean asking yourself why you want to do this. And when you have finally decided, make it serve as a motivation for you to keep going. Constantly remind yourself about these to help you make it through.

Aside from this, you also have to act! Do the full body exercises and not just the part workouts. This way, you also get to have full benefits. Gone are the days when part workouts are to done. This is a more effective way. Suggested workouts are the following:

1. Squat Jump - this involves both squatting and jumping. You do this exercise by putting yourself in a standing position with hands on your hips. And then, you bend your knees a little. This is also known as squatting. After you do the squat position, you jump. With feet together, you land on the ground and do the whole exercise repetitively.

2. 8 Count Body Builders - basically, what you do in this kind of exercise is to fully bend your knees and place your hands on the ground and from there you straighten up your body with a jump and then land with both feet together.

3. Burpees - to do this, you are to jump as high as you could manage and then land with your feet together and go down in a push up position and immediately stand on your feet jointly.

4. Push ups with knee tuck - in this kind of exercise, you will make use of a ball to hang your legs on in a push up position. You then do a push up and then bring your knees to your chest and then return to that push up position.

As was said earlier, these are only suggestions. You could also do other exercises which you think would best work for you. With proper determination, perseverance, patience and motivation, you will likely succeed getting that beach body you so wanted to have for summer.

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What Your Mother doesn't tell you about... LOSING WEIGHT!