The Right Way To Lose Weight By Scott Bianchi

Many of us Americans are impatient people. We decide we want something and that means we have to have it NOW. This explains the reason for the average credit card debt being close to $9000, people over-extending themselves to buy bigger and nicer cars than they can really afford, and so on. The same theory holds true for losing weight.

New Year’s is just days away as I write this and people are going to be making their resolutions. Of course, the most popular one, year after year, is losing weight. People decide for whatever reason that they need to lose weight, usually for the sake of their looks and not to become more healthy. They expect to lose 20 pounds by February 1st because there are hundreds of products out there that say it is possible.

People spend millions of dollars a year on FAD diets. What is the hottest diet of the year, Adkins, South Beach? People join Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers and spend money on their food, because the programs only work with their food. How convenient! So, are they telling you that you will need to stay on their diets/programs for the rest of your life or you will get fat again?

I could fill this article with numerous statistics and facts to show you why it is important to lose weight. There is the ever popular heart disease, increased risk of cancer and many more. The problem is, people know why they should lose weight and don’t need the stats to explain it. The most important thing they need to realize is, they need to do it for themselves.

We are put on this Earth with only two guarantees, 1)life, 2) death. While we are living we need to maximize what time we have. Our body is our biggest resource and our biggest tool in life. People take better care of their cars or furniture in their homes than they do their bodies. Cars and furniture can be replaced, a human life cannot be.

So now you have decided to take your health seriously. Which diet, out of the hundreds, do you chose? The answer is none of them. A healthy life is not about diets, it is about changing your lifestyle. It is about common sense. It is about putting down that bag of Doritos at 10 pm for that late night snack. It is about exercise. It is about the combination of a sensible diet and exercise. If you do change your lifestyle and eat better and smarter, along with some moderate exercise, you will lose weight and become healthier. And, you will do it cheaper than if you splurge on the latest FAD diet. If all these diets were so good, why don’t they stick around long? The answer is, someone out there is trying to make some money off people by convincing them they have the cure for losing weight. They have the best diet, or some magical fat burning pill, or some belt that you wrap around you that burns fat. Don’t waste your money on these schemes designed to make someone else rich. You will need your money for the new clothes you will have to buy when you lose weight.

Resource: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=26194&ca=Wellness

Lactose Intolerance, Part 1 By Marie N. Borges

What Lactose Intolerance Is

Lactose intolerance is the inability to digest lactose, a sugar found in milk. Lactose intolerance is caused by a deficiency in the enzyme lactase, found in the small intestine. Lactase breaks down milk sugar into simpler forms that can then digested by the human body.

When there is not enough lactase to digest lactose, the symptoms of lactose intolerance appear. Undigested lactose remains in the colon where it is fermented by bacteria, and various gases are produced. This is what gives you the symptoms.

Symptoms

Not everyone who has a lactase deficiency is lactose intolerant. People who manifest symptoms are said to be lactose intolerant.

Some of the symptoms of lactose intolerance are nausea, cramps, bloating, gas, diarrhea and vomiting, which can begin hours or even a day after eating or drinking foods containing lactose. The severity of symptoms varies from person to person.

Causes

The causes of lactose intolerance are either hereditary (usually, the body’s ability to produce lactase declines over time) or caused by external factors (e.g., digestive diseases reduce the amount of lactase produced by the cells. Sometimes, children are born without the ability to produce lactase. In my case, I realized that I was lactose intolerant after my third episode of lactose intolerance symptoms. I had always been able to eat ice cream with no problems (I’m an ice cream fanatic!).

However, at age 33, I began experiencing abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting – all night long!- after consuming ice cream. Because I had never had problems before, I assumed I had a stomach virus until my sister, who is a nurse, suggested that I developed lactose intolerance. For me, this was hard to believe until a self-test involving me taking a Lactaid tablet and then eating ice cream confirmed this – I experienced no symptoms at all.

Certain ethnic and racial populations are more widely affected than others. About 75 percent of all African Americans and American Indians and 90 percent of Asian Americans are lactose intolerant. The condition is least common among Caucasians.

Diagnosis

Lactose intolerance can be diagnosed by tests in the doctor’s office. The most common tests used to measure the absorption of lactose in the digestive system are the lactose tolerance test, the hydrogen breath test, and the stool acidity test. These tests are performed on an outpatient basis at a hospital, clinic, or doctor's office.

You can also test yourself for lactose intolerance by using the self-test as I described above. If you are like me, you’ll want to avoid the pain and opt for the doctor’s test. If you already know the foods which you suspect are giving you lactose intolerance symptoms, then you can try taking the Lactaid tablet and consuming the food immediately after.

Resource: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=26208&ca=Wellness

Are You Bulking Or Cutting By Zach Bashore

Very few people possess the knowledge needed to successfully gain muscle or lose fat. A person may know how to lose weight but most of you don`t know how to keep all of your hard earned muscle in the process. On the flip side, you may know how to gain muscle, but you need to learn how to gain this muscle without the fear of fat gain. I am going to discuss the basics of bulking and cutting and hopefully give you the knowledge needed to complete your next bulking or cutting diet.

Bulking is simply eating more calories than what you are used to eating, but it`s not as simple as it seems. Your calories need to be from healthy bodybuilding foods and not from junk foods like pizza, chips, and cookies. The other hard part of bulking is determining your BMR or basal metabolic Rate.(Your BMR is basically the number of calories you'd burn if you stayed in bed all day.) To start, you should eat 500 calories over maintanance everyday. If you your gaining to much fat after a week reduce that number to 300. If you seem to not be getting any bigger then you should increase that number to 700 calories.

While cutting, your prime concern should be keeping muscle loss to a minimum. That is why you don`t want to crash diet and try losing weight to fast or you`re most likely going to lose most of your hard earned muscle. To start, you should lower your calories from your BMR to roughly 300 fewer calories a day. You can change that number according to the results but 300 is a good number to start out at. You can either eat less food or do more cardiovascular exercise to burn these calories. How you do it will depend on the individual.

Some bodybuilders like to bulk up to the size of elephants before they decide that they`ve gained to much fat, and then they go on a cutting diet. Others seem to always be sporting a low bodyfat percentage year round and slowly gain muscle as time goes on. Again, how you go about it will depend on personal preferance. I always try to stay relatively lean even during the offseason because I cannot stand the thought of gaining fat.

So can I gain muscle while losing bodyfat as well? Some bodybuilders genetics allow for this while most of us sit in aww wondering how they did it. The use of steroids allow for fat loss and muscle gain at the same time but should only be used by experienced trainee`s who know how to properly bulk and cut without the use of them. You need to decide what you want to do with your body right now. Do you carry around to much fat, are you to skinny, to small in the upper body? All of these factors determine what you decide to do with yourself. You are the only one responsible for the results you recieve. Until next time, later.

Resource: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=26125&ca=Wellness