Tuesday, February 26, 2008

How to Get Rid of Love Handles With These Simple Exercises

So many people today wonder how to get rid of love handles, those pesky deposits of fat on either side of your waist, just above your hips. While some may joke about them and pretend that they're cute and "more to love," in reality those who have these pesky problem areas are typically very self-conscious and would do anything to get rid of love handles, if they only knew how. In truth, there are a few simple exercises you can do to tone even these problem areas.

First of all, remember that it's important to pay attention to your diet and eating habits overall to get rid of love handles. You need to be eating healthy foods and loading up on junk, fast foods, or sugar is only going to make your body stubbornly hold on to that excess fat no matter what else you do. You can only exercise so much, which is why you need a good balance of calories consumes versus your physical activity to cut down on excess body fat, including around your midsection.

When it comes to actual exercises to get rid of love handles, crunches and sit-ups will help to tone the muscles around your stomach and midsection overall. However, you also need to work your obliques, those muscles on the sides of your stomach. You can do this by twisting your middle section to one side as you use a crunch machine; this means that you're adding resistance to your sides rather than your front as you perform the crunch. Some gyms also have oblique machines, which work by twisting you from side to side as your legs stay in one place. This too adds resistance to the oblique muscles, which will help to get rid of love handles on those pesky sides. Reverse sit-ups do the same; this is where you work the back muscles rather than the stomach. Your gym probably has several machines to do this; one works like a chair that you push backward with your back. Or, there may be a reverse crunch machine where you hook your legs between bars while leaning forward, and then pull your back up. These help to get rid of love handles because they strengthen your entire midsection. If you don't have these pieces at your gym or you don't belong to a gym, try a basic Pilates routine. This too helps to strengthen your core, or your midsection, which will firm up everything in this area of your body.

Of course you don't want to ignore your aerobic activity overall. By burning calories with regular exercise, your body is much less likely to hold on to stubborn fat, whether it be around your middle or any other area. You can only do so much when it comes to resistance training to get rid of love handles; if you aren't burning calories efficiently, your body is just going to keep holding onto fat and much of that will be deposited around your stomach, including your sides.

Britney Smith writes her blog daily on slimming tips and weight loss, visit her blog at http://www.slimmingtips101.info/

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

The Real Secret of How to Lose Belly Fat

Crunch after crunch, sit-up after sit-up; the more time you spend in the gym working on those abs, the flatter they'll get, right? Wrong. Crunches and sit-ups are not the answer when wondering how to lose belly fat. While it's true that these exercises will tone and tighten the muscles of your stomach, this does sometimes give you a slightly leaner look around the belly simply because you're more toned, crunches and sit-ups don't actually cause you to lose fat at the midsection.

Why Crunches Are Not the Answer

To really understand how to lose belly fat, you need to understand how the body actually burns fat in the first place, and it really has nothing to do with resistance training or weight lifting. The body holds fat when you eat more calories than you expend; these excess calories are converted to fat and stored in the body, whether it's around your stomach or arms or legs or anyplace else. In reality, fat is fat, and the only way to learn how to lose belly fat is to learn how your body burns that excess fat in the first placed.

To reduce these fatty deposits in your body, you need to adjust that balance of calories consumed versus calories burned. This might mean decreasing your calories every day, expending your calories burned by increasing your physical activity, or a combination of both. This is the only solution to the problem of how to lose belly fat. When you begin to expend more calories than you consume, your body burns those stores of fat to compensate. It calls upon those "reserves" of fat to provide the necessary energy, and the fat begins to melt from your body.

How to Lose Belly Fat Versus Other Body Fat

The one problem that many people face when wondering how to lose belly fat is that they are trying to target this specific area for trimming. Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing you can do to decide where your body is going to draw those fat reserves from. It might start burning the fat on your arms, legs, butt, face, or anyplace else before it takes fat from your belly. Crunches and sit-ups won't cause your body to take fat from that area any sooner or any quicker.

However, there is an upside to doing all those crunches and sit-ups when considering how to lose belly fat, and that is that this will make your stomach look more toned once that fat does start melting off. Also, doing resistance training and muscle building of any type will help your metabolism speed up, as people with more muscle mass have a higher metabolism, meaning that they are burning more calories even at rest, then those without. The body needs to work harder to constantly feed those muscles, so it's burning more calories overall. So don't discount the idea of doing crunches and sit-ups when learning how to lose belly fat, just don't expect them to perform miracles either!

Britney Smith writes her blog daily on slimming tips and weight loss, visit her blog at http://www.slimmingtips101.info/

Monday, February 18, 2008

Will The Calorie Shifting Diet Work For You?

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“Tricking” the body’s metabolism has been found to work wonders when it comes to weight loss, as the body will hold onto fat when the metabolism becomes accustomed to a certain routine. Calorie shifting works by understanding this scientific principle and is simply a way of eating that keeps the body guessing so that the metabolism never becomes accustomed to one particular routine. But what exactly is calorie shifting, and can this work for everyone?

There are three main components to eating according to the calorie shifting principles, and this includes the kind of foods you eat, the total number of calories, and the nutrients in those foods. If you eat basically the same foods day in and day out, your body quickly becomes accustomed to this routine; calorie shifting means mixing up what you eat and how much you eat from day to day. This means that your metabolism won’t slow down because it expects a certain amount of calories day in and day out. There is no particular list of foods to be eaten or schedule to follow, but of course you need to stay within a healthy number of calories and be mindful of your nutrition overall.

So, one day you rely heavily on vegetables and fruits and perhaps have only a small amount of meat at lunch, and eat 1200 calories. The next day you’ll have more meat than you did the day before, and eat 1500 calories. The day after, you again reduce your calorie intake to 1200 and eat more whole grains; the third day you eat 1800 calories; every day you simply mix up your routine in this way. That’s the heart of the calorie shifting diet.

You should of course always talk to a doctor when starting any new eating plan and make sure you’re eating healthy foods, including whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and so on, even when following the calorie shifting diet, however, this eating plan has helped thousands to lose weight and may also work for you!

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