How to reduce your Body Fat

How to reduce your Body Fat Part 1

Your body functions best when you are fit and healthy. This is the optimum state in which you can maximise your enjoyment of life.
Body Fat
I will start with the issue of body fat as it effects many people both aesthetically and for reasons of health.
This is a three part problem for most people.
The first part is your mind
The second part is knowing what and when to eat
The third and final part is the activity you undertake.
1. Mind
Your SubconsciousYou, in your mind determine what your body shape will be. Close your eyes and imagine yourself walking along the beach on a lovely sunny day in your briefest swimwear, what do you look like? Your subconscious mind stores information on who and what you believe yourself to be. It is tasked with making your outside world comply with the information it has stored on how your world should be, your reality. If you see yourself as an overweight person then you will either remain as one or become one.The key here is to consciously change your picture. Imagine yourself as you would ideally like to be. You can do this whilst awake or you can do this whilst you meditate. Do it often, force the image into your mind and eventually you will follow. Why does this happen? If you think you are slim you will make the choices that you believe a slim person would. You will eat like a slim person, you will undertake activity as you believe a slim person does.
Self Esteem Some people have a weight problem because they fear rejection and they fear not being loved. Subconsciously they are finding a reason not to be loved. Society tells us that overweight is not desirable. They choose to be overweight so that if they are rejected they can blame their condition rather than themselves. It is important to realise that you are lovable and the only way you can be, is yourself.
2. Food
What you need to know1. Your body requires energy. Food in the form of carbohydrate and fat are your main sources of energy. Take in more energy than you need and your body will store it as fat.
2. Your metabolism is the rate at which you burn energy. A slow metabolism means you require less energy to perform the same functions.
3. There are two main ways in which you can speed up your metabolism. Eat the same amount in terms of energy but have more frequent meals and / or increase the amount of lean muscle your body carries.
4. Skip meals and your metabolism will slow down. 5. Fat, by weight gives you twice as much energy as the same amount of carbohydrate. Both are essential for your well being.
6. Rice and Pasta give you alot of energy but not much in terms of nutrients compared to vegetables which have less energy and more nutrients. All three are sources of carbohydrate.
7. Your best source of fat is from vegetables and deep sea fish. Eat avocado, nuts, salmon and olive oil.
8. Your body needs protein. Fish, poultry, eggs and meat are the best sources.
9. Insulin regulates the amount of blood sugar you have. The presence of excess insulin in your blood promotes the storage of body fat.
10. The energy you consume is converted to sugar in your bodies. It is transported via the blood stream to your cells. Too much sugar at one time releases an excess of insulin.
11. Rich sources of carbohydrate eaten without the presence of protein and fat are converted to sugar quickly and result in your body releasing an excess amount of insulin.
12. Excess insulin causes a dramatic drop in blood sugar. Your body will require a dramatic increase in blood sugar to maintain balance. You will manifest this in two ways. You will feel down and lethargic. You will crave sweets or carbohydrate rich foods. This is an endless rollercaoster.
Traps for the young punter
Diets are generally not sustainable for the long term, the word diet implies you are going through some sort of deprevation. You need to make a lifestyle change not go on a diet. A lifestyle change is a long term project.
If you cut your calories below a certain level your metabolism slows down and you miss many nutrients.If you skip breakfast as is common, your metabolism slows down.Increasing the number of meals you have per day, may result in an accidental increase in the total volume of food that you eat.Most people don't require a lot of energy in terms of carbohydrate. A large plate of rice or pasta has too much energy in one meal. Eating a large carbohydrate meal in the evening when you are looking forward to bed, television or other sedentary activity is a great way to help you body store fat. Eat your carbohydrate heavy meals for breakfast or lunch.
What to doEat smaller frequent meals, between four and six per day.Stop the roller coaster by eating less carbohydrate with each meal. Add a serve of protein and a small amount of fat to all of your meals this slows the release of sugar to your blood. Your energy levels will be more stable and you will not be as hungry.
3. Activity
You will have to wait till next month...

PART 2

Body Fat
As promised last month part 3 Activity...
3. Activity
There are many reasons as to why activity is important. Most people think that activity such as exercise is responsible for keeping people trim. This is only partly true.
Exercise as such does not really burn many calories, when you relate it to the amount of body fat you store.
One kilogram of body fat is 7500 calories worth of energy. This means that you can run 3 marathons, a total of 129 kilometers.
Put a different way. To burn 600 calories which is about what you find in one Big Mac and Fries, you need to do one of the following;
1 hour of jogging1 hour of advanced aerobics 1 hour of vigorous cycling1 hour of fast swimming
Walking burns about 240 calories per hour.
Lets now think back to last month where I mentioned metabolism. Your metabolism is the rate at which you burn energy. If you have a slow metabolism your body uses less energy to perform the same functions.
I mentioned that one way to speed up your metabolism is to have more lean muscle on your body. This requires you to be active.
Your body is supported by a skeleton. Around each of the bones in your body there are muscles. (Everyone has muscle) These muscles are responsible for your movement. Around the muscle is a layer of fat. These three things largely make up the shape that you are today. Some of this is genetic. Some of this is a result of the choices you have made.
When you were young you were probably very active, you may have walked to school, rode a bike, played sports etc...We use our muscles and they have a reason for being.
As you age, you drive a car instead of walk or ride, you work in an office instead of run in a playground.
As you use your muscles less they start to deteriorate. You lose muscle mass.
Here is the trap if you do not exercise -
As each year passes you have the same skeleton, less muscle and more body fat.
Yes but...I hear alot of people say " I am still the same size as I was 20 years ago"
This is because the amount of muscle you have is decreasing every year and the amount of fat on your body is increasing every year and you are staying around about the same size.
Your actual lean body mass is decreasing and therefore your metabolism is slowing every year.
Now that you are all convinced that exercise is a must, what should we do and how often.
Assuming we are beginners and we are in good health (see your doctor if you are not sure) I will use the example of walking for our exercise.
There are three stages
1. The habit of activity
2. The base work
3. Specific exercise
1. Habit is the hardest to master. Once you have this then you are right. You build the habit by consciously making an effort to do something. Do something really easy. Try walking for 3 minutes away from your house and then back. 6 minutes of activity. You need to do this everyday for at least 3 weeks and you will have built the first stage of the habit.
This must be separate from any similar activity ie: walking to the train station when you go to work in the morning etc.
You can then increase the distance, however you need to do this for a year before it becomes a life time habit.
As you walk, monitor the thoughts in your head, what are you thinking? If the thoughts are not positive you must also work on changing your attitude to exercise.
2. The base work is what gets you into the right condition to exercise. After you have formed the habit (the first three weeks) you can start to work on increasing the distance of your walks. If you started with 6 minutes of walking. Try walking an extra minute or two everyday. Build up the length of time for your walks until you are walking between 45 - 60 minutes everyday. This may take a month or two. (There are no short cuts - we are here for the long term) Once you can walk comfortably for this period of time you are ready for the specific exercise.
3. It is important now to note that your body is an amazing organism which adapts easily to many situations. This means we must constantly change what we do so that our body doesn't adapt. If our body adapts it will not be exercise anymore just an activity that we are used to.
We can increase the intensity of our walk in a simple way. Walk the same distance but try to decrease the time it takes. Don't try too hard on every session, listen to your body and how it feels. Look at the long term picture and aim to improve your time from week to week, month to month etc. Every now and again change your walk, pick a new route, walk in the opposite direction or just break into a jog.
Traps for the young punterFocusing on the amount of exercise instead of forming the habit.
Giving up because you aren't making any progress. Progress is usually not progressive and smooth, it comes in lumps. The next lump may be just around the corner.
Becoming disheartened because you can't manage to exercise everyday. Aim at everyday and be happy if you can achieve a habit of regular exercise no matter how often that may be.
Walking the same walk 'forever' because it gets easier and becomes comfortable. This is not exercise, you must exert your body slightly so that it is under load.
What to do
Start something! Try walking as an easy start. Develop a habit.