Abdominal Weight Loss

Most people aren’t aware that yoga has some of the most effective abdominal weight loss exercises. In fact, there are specific poses that target the abdomen. Today, I thought I’d share a few with you.

1. The Sun Salutations: These are a combination of poses that serve as a warm up-routine for a yoga session or class. These incorporate forward and backward bending motions, which you should find will tighten and reduce your abdominal area.

2. The Bow Pose: This simple pose involves laying flat on your belly and grabbing your ankles with both arms while simultaneously lifting your head up high. When performed correctly, you should be resting on your abdomen.

3. The Peacock Pose: The objective here is to balance your abdomen on your conjoined elbows while simultaneously raising your legs and head of the floor. Naturally, merely attempting it speeds up abdominal weight loss.

4. The Abdominal Lift: This is not a pose per-se, but a specific exercise that involves exhaling and pulling the diaphragm in while letting your breath out. This is a specific abdominal exercise for weight loss, spiritual rejuvenation and detoxification.

There are many more yoga poses that you’re sure to find helpful in abdominal weight loss, but these provide a good beginning.

Your Weight Loss Diet Needs

Fallen off your diet? Maybe the diet wasn’t right for you?

Everyone has different dieting needs. Some people need a complete lifestyle change. Other people only need to lose a couple pounds. And most of us fall somewhere in between.

The truth is many diets focus on short-term changes that provide a short-term weight loss. This is because they rarely address the underlying factors that brought about your weight gain in the first place. They focus on the “outside” you and never attend to your emotions, your psychology, your perceptions of who you are and the world around you.

If you’re looking for short-term (ten to thirty pounds) solutions, then here are reviews of the current top programs: Fat & Weight Loss Programs

If you’re looking for long-term, permanent weight loss, then you need to allow yourself plenty of time, forgive yourself for past dieting efforts that went by the wayside, and allow yourself to make future mistakes (because they are going to happen). You also need to take a look at the hole within that you’ve been trying to fill with food.

What triggers your overeating?

Boredom? Stress? Unhappiness? Loneliness?

Fat Loss vs. Weight Loss

For most of us, the bathroom scale is our primary tool to measure our weight loss progress. And in truth, that’s all you need over the long haul. It’ll give you a perfectly adequate estimate of how well you’re doing.

However, your scale can’t tell you whether or not you’re losing fat. Your weight loss could be the result of fat loss, water loss, or muscle loss. In fact, most diets are designed to initially shed water pounds because they come off easily and the loss will give the dieter a psychological boost.

So what’s the answer?

Well, you can actually measure your body fat percentage and lean body mass (this includes all your fat free tissues, such as bone and muscle).

For your body fat percentage, there’s the skinfold test. You can do this is the privacy of your own home with the Accu-Measure, which comes with calipers and instructions (I’ll include a link below for you). Once you’ve calculated your pounds of fat, subtract your pounds of fat from your total weight in pounds, which will give you your lean body mass.

These two numbers will give you a much more accurate picture of how your fat loss is doing versus your weight loss.

Beating Food Cravings

The best way to avoid a dietary disaster when you get food cravings during the day is to plan ahead.

First, try to plan 5 to 6 small meals throughout the day, so you’re eating approximately every three hours. It takes an average of 2 ½ hours for the human body to digest a meal, so by the time you start to feel a craving coming on, it’s almost time for your next meal anyway.

Make it a point to drink plenty of water. Often when you feel hungry, it’s actually your body trying to tell you it’s thirsty. By keeping a bottle of water with you and making a point to take constant sips throughout the day, you’ll keep hydrated, feel better, and eliminate this common cause of food cravings.

When you’re at home, keep fresh fruit on hand. If you are hit with a craving, fruit is a better choice than cake or chips. Also, make a fat-free dip and cut up some fresh veggies like carrots and celery and keep them in the fridge. This will give you another quick and healthy snack that you can just grab and eat during a craving.

Never go to a party, a meeting, or any event where there will be food available on an empty stomach. Eat a small meal or at least eat a good, healthy snack before you go.

If there are certain snack foods that you really enjoy, don’t try to completely cut them out. You’ll only overindulge in them when you can’t control the urge to have them later. Plan these snacks into your day, and make them snacks you enjoy once in a while and in moderation.

When You’re Bad

Regardless of how disciplined you are, from time to time you’re likely to fall victim to food cravings. It happens to all of us. So, the first thing to keep in mind is that it’s going to happen. The second thing is make sure you don’t let it run away with you. This is where the real damage occurs.

If you have a bad morning and end up scarfing down a huge, unhealthy lunch leave it at that. Don’t fall prey to failed logic which tells you that since you’ve blown your diet you might as well go all the way. This will lead you into more disastrous eating, and quite possibly the end of your diet altogether.

So, be honest with yourself … you blew it for a meal. And make sure that’s all it is: just a meal. Follow it up by eating healthy the rest of the day and the damage done will be minimal.

Bad Habits – Undermining Your Diet

Most of our problems in life are the result of bad habits, and this is as true for weight loss as everything else. So what can you do to start eating healthy and drop those extra pounds?

The first step should be simple: identify the bad habits that are undermining your diet. There are a couple ways to do this. The first is by listing the recent times when you’ve overeaten. See if you can determine the trigger, and your reaction. What foods did you turn to? Why? Did you overeat?

The second method is keeping an eating diary. For a week, record everything you eat. When you ate. What was the situation? Where you alone? Where did you eat? Did you overeat?

With this information, now you’re prepared to fully understand your habits. Some will be excellent, others will need to be eliminated or at least controlled. For example, if you have certain comfort foods that you know aren’t good for you, then start looking for a healthy alternative. Often, you’ll be able to find foods that are equally satisfying, yet have less fat and fewer calories. It just takes a little effort to uncover them.

2 Steps To Permanent Weight Loss

One of the biggest mistakes when pursuing permanent weight loss is skipping meals. In fact, the best approach is to eat six, small healthy meals throughout the day. Three of these meals should be snacks, around 100-150 calories. The other three should be slightly bigger meals that include healthy proteins, carbohydrates and limited fat. By regularly eating throughout the day, you’ll keep your metabolism functioning at its peak.

The second huge challenge to losing weight is emotional eating. Often when people are gripped by intense feelings such as anger, hatred, depression, stress, boredom, and loneliness they turn to food. If you’re one of these people, you have to learn to eat only to satisfy your hunger. I know this is easier than said.

Fortunately, there are a number of techniques you can use to help relieve emotional eating. Here’s one that you can quickly start using today: Emotional Freedom Techniques