The spice of life

Today I have a treat for you...

Some words from my wife, sent to me when I fell into an emotional black hole...

All we have to remember is that we are always being looked after and that we are never being abandoned... what happens to us is for our own growth and benefit whether we think so or not. We are here for soul and unless you have spot on communication with yours I don't think you know just what soul is meant to experience this time around. All I know is that one has to face their challenges head on with the utmost faith that everything is in order. Don't forget that attitude has everything to do with it. It's what gets us through one way or another.

Believe that everything will work out for the best.... which it does when you look back on difficult times.

We are where we are meant to be. It's up to you how you see it - challenges are the spice of life... without them life would be boring.

Yeah... Who wants a boring life eh?

Get focused movie

Since I'm always on about being focused I thought you might like to get the message in a motivational movie format.

This one's courtesy of my friends at nomoresabotage.com and it's all about you so I hope you enjoy it.

Please have a look now.

Weights build muscle and metabolism

Weight training is really important in repairing a suppressed metabolism. Lifting weights is the stimulus to keep the muscle you have. Progressively overloading your muscles is the stimulus to begin rebuilding new muscle tissue, and muscle tissue is the heart of your metabolic furnace.

Men generally have no problem with weight training, but many women say they don't want to lift weights as part of their fat loss programs. The fact is, if you don’t lift weights you can expect a very, very long metabolism building journey.

Once you start exercising, especially if you do both high intensity cardio and weights, you’ll get an almost immediate boost in metabolic rate but the results are not going to be overnight.

So in addition to exercising your muscle you must also exercise your patience.

Crash diets crash the metabolism

Most diet programs claiming to help you quickly drop excess weight, only end up making it harder for you in the long run because they use harsh metabolism-decreasing diets. Furthermore they rarely advise enough exercise and almost never any weight training.

The result of following starvation diets or dropping weight too rapidly in is metabolic damage; in other words your metabolism slows right down. This makes it very difficult, after the initial impact of the crash diet, to achieve any further fat loss at all.

The bottom line is: you can’t starve the fat off with crash diets.

The good news is, any damage to the metabolism can be repaired. You just need the right combination of metabolism stimulating exercise and metabolism stimulating nutrition.

Applied consistently over time anyone can increase their metabolism.

It may take a bit longer if you've lost a lot of lean body mass from severe starvation dieting in the past, but it is not hopeless.

Truth about food documentary

In a documentary shown on BBC2 in the UK they did a study on metabolism to see if some overweight people really do have a slow metabolism. The results were startling!

The documentary called “The truth about food” found 2 women who were best friends but had very different body types. One of the chosen women Becky, was very slim and even a little underweight. The other lady named Jo was shorter in height and 22 pounds overweight.

They had known each other for years and they both believed that Becky, who seemed to eat much more than Jo, was slim because she had a faster metabolism. Jo, who had tried to lose weight on numerous occasions in the past, believed she was overweight because she had a slow metabolism.

Both fasted for 24 hours before having their metabolic rate accurately measured in the lab using a ventilation hood. They also drank a bottle of special water which has a non-radioactive isotope marker added to it. This water is well known in science and can accurately measure the total amount of calories someone consumes as well as the total number of calories burned off over the following week. The scientists didn’t reveal the truth about the water because they didn’t want the women to be influenced and adjust their normal food intake in any way. This made it much more accurate in relation to their normal everyday food consumption.

While both had very similar activity levels, the study showed Jo actually had a higher metabolic rate than the slimmer Becky!

Jo’s higher metabolism was basically due to the extra weight which she was carrying. This is logical because moving more weight requires more effort. However, it shows that Jo’s weight problem wasn’t caused by a slow metabolism.
The study also revealed that Jo was in fact consuming about 50 percent more calories than Becky!

Becky was underweight simply because she was consuming fewer calories than she needed.

The documentary concluded that a slow metabolism is NOT to blame for excess weight gain. It was also suggested that overweight people tend to have a higher metabolism than those who are slim and underweight.

I maintain that while metabolism is NOT to blame for excess weight gain the faster your metabolism, fat or thin, the better off you are.

They also implied that people will for the most part gain weight because in some way they have eaten more energy than their body requires.

It seems the fact remains; if we consume more calories than our body requires then we will put weight on. The trick is to find new ways to eat so you consume fewer total calories than your body requires.

To learn more about this documentary then visit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/humanbody/truthaboutfood/slim/

How can some eat lots and never gain weight?

If a slim person eats little and often, maybe it gives an impression to others that they always seem to be eating, thus gives the illusion that they must be consuming lots of calories?

If the snacks a slim person eats are generally low in calories, the total intake might not amount to excess energy intake.

Another possibility that could be at work here is to do with activity levels. Slimmer people could be more energetic because they are lighter and require less effort to move around. This could be helping them to move about enough during an average day to maintain or cause a negative energy balance.

In comparison to a slim person, a heavier individual has the potential to burn more calories during exercise, due to the extra effort to more the weight, but the high effort may be slightly uncomfortable for some and generally they may not move around as much as a thinner person. This would result in a heavier person expending less total energy so they could end up struggling to lose weight.

The portion size of food can mask the real intake of food. Some overweight people could be thinking they don’t eat much because they only have 2 or 3 meals each day, but if portion size is large enough then total energy consumed can rise dramatically. Just one Chinese take-away meal for example, can be as high as 1500 calories; nearly the total energy intake for an average woman!

Remember the most basic simple fact...

If energy in exceeds energy out, it will end up as stored fat.

Top 7 exercises for the non athletic

How are you going with your exercises?

What??

You haven't started??

Well maybe there's hope for you yet if you engage in these activities...

Exercise	Calories/hr
Throwing your weight around	50-300
(depending on your weight)
Climbing the ladder of success	750
Making mountains out of moelhills	500
Falling in love	500
Running around in circles	350
Picking up the pieces	350
Wading through paperwork	300

Have fun!