The best long term way to gain control over your weight is through a combination of healthy eating and exercise, which for the best benefit, should be embed as a life-long habit. Once regular exercising is part of your life style, it will not only assist with weight loss, but will also have a substantial general health benefit.

Lack of exercise is a major contributing factor to chronic heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, elevated cholesterol, back pain and other postural disorders. So having a program of exercises to lose weight is not only good for your weight management, but also for your general health. Do not only see exercising only as a weight loss technique, but also as a health promotion initiative.

So what exercises to lose weight should you consider as part of your weight management regime? The following, singularly or in combination, are ideal and can be mixed-and-matched according to your fitness level and desire:

Walking - Is a useful aerobic exercise and is a good starting point as a natural extension of your daily routine. Initially, try to do more of what you are already doing by increasing your general level of activity. To get the best out of this exercise you need to walk quickly and not dawdle. Set a target of 10 000 steps per day to get yourself going and add a little “power walking” to it (quick walking at an elevated heart rate which will make you very fit), once or twice a week to pep up your walking.

Jogging - Is running at a slower pace. It is a natural advance to walking which you can integrate with your walking activities (i.e. 8 minutes walking, 2 minutes jogging; repeated three times will give you a total of 30 minutes of mixed exercises to lose weight). Keep on adding more running to your walking-running combination, depending upon how you are feeling that day and within 8 weeks you will see a visible weight and health benefit.

Cycling - Uses the major legs muscle groups. Add a little resistance to your cycling by using bigger gears or hills to your cycling will raise your heart rate. This will have beneficial muscle growth and positive impact on your metabolic rate, which will have a health impact and simultaneously you will shed weight.

Skipping, mini trampoline - Is good for the soul and will have a weight loss impact. More importantly, incorporating some impact and weight bearing exercises into your program will have a positive spin off on bone strengthening. So be a child again every so often and skip and jump a bit more often.

These four simple activities are very good exercises to lose weight and are easy to do. Overtime, besides contributing to a weight loss program they will also have a substantial positive health impact as well.

For those of you who don’t know, about 7 years ago I embarked on a journey to transform my body. As every teenager does, I had insecurities about myself and more specifically my body. Weighing only 130lbs at 175cm tall, I was pretty much the smallest guy in the year and it dented my self confidence greatly. So in my stupidity of youth, I went to the gym Rocky style for the next three years, pretty much training myself into the ground and getting no results. When you are young, you’re impressionable and you believe what you read in the magazines and the media hype around supplements and training. I had some ridiculous machine ridden, high rep, feel the burn type workout that got me no results at all. On top of this, my diet was awful; nowhere near enough calories and when I did eat enough, it was all the wrong stuff. How times have changed. I’m now sitting here writing this at 13 stone (not a big guy, but just perfect for me) with lifts that most be people other than the freaks of nature would be impressed with. Having spent so long trying to get into this position, I now believe I am qualified and have the knowledge to pass on to others who are trying to achieve the same goal. In this article, I’m going to talk about the basics of putting on weight; and when I say weight, I mean lean weight rather than scoffing a bunch of cakes every five minutes and turning into something that wobbles too much.

So, in a nutshell, here are some key pointers to putting on lean weight. In this article I’m concentrating soleley on the nutritional aspect of bulking up with the assumption that you have already got the training side of things nailed. I have many other articles that cover the training side of putting on muscle mass, so feel free to check those out.

1. Eat more than you consume

Guys, this is really fundamental and completely logical. Muscles can’t just appear from nowhere they need to be built up from a range of processes. Fuelling these processes is food. Your body won’t prioritise building muscles over more fundamental biological processes such as feeding the vital organs so you need to take your internal environment into a state of anabolism where resources are excess such that your body can afford to expend the additional energy on building up the musculature. In short, calculate your BMR and your daily calorific requirements, and eat 500 calories more a day. If you don’t know how to do that, then Google is your best friend!

2. Eat the right stuff

Another fairly fundamental bit of information for bulking up is that you need to eat the right stuff. You can sit in the corner eating chocolate gateau all day in the hope that you’ll gain weight (and you will), but it won’t be the type of weight that you want! A bulking diet should be high in low G.I carbohyrdrates such as bread, pasta, rice, wheat, potatoes as well as being high in proteins such as chicken, beef, fish, any lean meat, nuts, cottage cheese, whey protein shakes etc. A little known fact is that you should also consume a decent amount of high quality fats; these are known as Essential Fatty Acids that can’t be produced by the body. Omega 3, 6 and 9 all have their purposes in the body - make sure you are getting an adequate amount of all of them. EFA’s can be sourced from Flaxseed oil, Fish oil, Cod Liver Oil and Rapeseed oil. If you just want a full blend of oils in the right ratio then I suggest you Google “Udo’s blend”. This brand of oil is pretty much known for being the best blend of Essential Fatty Acids that is on the market today.

3. Eat small meals spread throughout the day

Did you know that your internal environment has windows of approximately 3 hours? This means that your body can change from a calorie surplus state to a calorie deficit state in that time frame. Therefore it follows that you should consume adequate meals through the day rather than sticking to the traditional three square meals approach. Some people eat up to 7 times a day; obviously the meals are smaller and can even be in the form of a shake or a supplement to help you get all the calories down you.

4. Have the breakfast of champions

Breakfast “breaks” your evening “fast” - hence the name! It is the meal that gets the day off to a good start and you should be your biggest meal of the day. You have 16 hours of activity ahead of you, so get those calories down you. A typical breakfast could be: 2 slices of wholemeal bread with olive oil spread, 4 egg whites, glass of orange juice, bowl of oats with milk and 1/2 a protein shake. This will kick start your day with a full does of anabolism!

5. Post workout meal is hugely important

Having just beat yourself up in the gym, your body is crying out for nutrients to recover from those gruelling drop sets. The quickest way to inject the nutrients into your body is through a low G.I carb and fast absorbing protein mixture. Something like 50g or whey mixed with 50g of dextrose in water is the perfect post workout meal. Make sure you follow this up with a post post workout meal about an hour later!

Summary

I have only really covered the basics in this article, so don’t think you know it all yet. I have put together a free guide that covers all of this in greater detail, you can download this for free through my link in the footer of this article.

I wish you all the best with your bulking and hope you can go through the transformation that I have!

Employing healthy eating strategies into your lifestyle can seem like the hardest thing in the world to do at times. We have all of the information out there telling us how to eat better and live healthier lives, and who doesn’t want that. The problem, though seems to come when its time to put the “pedal to the metal”. If you’re like me, you’ve probably done what I’ve done a time or two (or possibly more), which is make a resolution to improve your nutrition and really work on losing that weight that’s been “hanging out” (pardon the pun) on your body ever since you started having children. Again, if you’re like me, the desire always seems to be there but strangely enough, the ability for me to follow through on my conviction to really do what it takes to lose weight always seemed to elude me. Well, after an untold number of failures and immense frustration, I was finally able to experience that breakthrough that I’d been seeking, but unfortunately, too many people are still looking for an answer to their weight loss problems.

How Poor Nutritional Habits Can Sabotage All of Your Weight Loss Efforts

I think we can sometimes erroneously think that we shouldn’t have to change a thing and the weight should still fall off of us because, somehow, we really want it to just go away. I have to confess, that was definitely me for so many years. I was of the mindset that if I just wished hard enough, then something good had to happen. I would wake up the day after so many nights of late snacking only to find that…Drats!…my body weight was actually moving in the wrong direction. This never used to be the case, but being in my 30’s…yes my 30’s…my body needs more help than I would have ever wanted to believe. Seems the old metabolism just wasn’t what it used to be. As much as I wanted to lose those extra pounds (30 to be exact), I had a very serious hurdle that needed to be overcome if I was going to really get serious about shedding those unwanted pounds.

One thing I learned about myself which was very important for me to know was that I really didn’t want change as much as I thought I did. I most definitely wanted to see physical change, but I also know that I certainly wasn’t willing to work for it. I didn’t want to put in the time or effort it took to begin curtailing some of my poor eating habits so that I could start seeing some real weight loss results. The issue that had to be addressed was what I would be willing to do to start experiencing the change that I so desperately wanted to see. I finally came to the conclusion that If I wanted to see change, I needed to make it happen! For me, there would be no more hoping and wishing!

The major issue, which it took me so long to figure out was that there was most definitely a reason why all of the experts were saying to minimize the amount of junk food that we consume. Foods like potato chips, ice cream, cookies, and soda would have to move from the category of dietary “staple” to occasional “treat”. Making this change had to be one of the most difficult things that I’d ever had to do. I started wondering if people who smoke experience this kind of struggle when they are attempting to quit. I was briefly comforted by the fact that, like them, I was doing something positive for myself, and that not only was it worth the struggle, but that it would be absolutely necessary that I struggle. It couldn’t be easy…not after so many years of indulging my every desire every day. If change was going to happen, it would have to happen at a personal cost to me. But, boy would it feel good when I finally came out on the other side…healthy and much lighter too! That’s a reward worth fighting for! So what would be my plan? Well, strangely enough, I took an approach not seen too often today in our “Here and Now” society. I took it slow…and steady!

Why You Need to Improve Your Nutrition over Time to See the Best Results

I had already experienced the results that came with the quick weight loss diet programs out there, and I didn’t want that for me anymore. It was just too frustrating and painful. I was fresh out of any belief that they would produce results any different from what I had experienced in the past. In fact, I knew they wouldn’t. The only question was how was I to make the necessary changes to my lifestyle and not end up where I had always ended up? I decided that I was going to finally try it the way I’ve always heard but was too impatient to try. I was going to take it slow. I realized that by making some small changes in my life over time, I was able to gradually take off those unwanted pounds and didn’t have to worry about them coming back. The reason I didn’t have to worry about them coming back was because I had done so much more than implement a new strategy, but I had actually changed my nutritional strategies to the point where I had gradually diminished the impact of all of my poor eating habits and had also gradually improved my nutrition. The result was a total-body transformation that had me literally jumping for joy! So, how can this happen for you?

How Adopting Healthy Eating Strategies Will Accelerate Your Weight Loss Efforts and Lead to Lasting Success!

It’s quite simple, actually. When we adopt healthy eating strategies, we begin to better understand the impact that a piece of fruit will have upon our body as opposed to a bag of potato chips. We begin to see that when we incorporate more healthy grains, fruits and vegetables into our diets, it leaves less room for poor eating habits to creep in and steal our weight loss rewards. One thing that I found quite helpful was the importance of breakfast on my body. I realized how important the right type of calories was on my metabolism. That breakfast biscuit, though it provided necessary energy, was not helping facilitate weight loss, but actually was promoting weight gain. I learned that it was important that we not skip meals in an attempt to save on calories, because that actually promoted weight gain! Obviously, the late night snacking had to go! No more 11 o’clock rendezvous with the fridge. It was far more beneficial to my body for me to finish all of my meals and my snacks by 8 o’clock at night. This would prevent me from putting my body in a compromised state of having to digest food late at night or worse yet, while I slept. This was never a good recipe for success, but I had ignored all logic for the sake of satisfying my guilty pleasures.

By focusing on making one dietary change per week, it became easier to adjust to my new lifestyle. It still was very challenging, but far easier than the “All-or-None” approach I had been using all these years. This is the same approach that many women and men will be using over and over again with great frustration and no lasting results until they slow down long enough to see that the quick weight loss approach is really the “impatient” approach. Thankfully, I was able to finally see the light, and learn that successful weight loss…the kind that lasts…only happens when a commitment to small, gradual change is implemented consistently, and even in the face of adversity and set-backs. It is important to realize that when you take this approach, you will improve your nutrition in such a way that, after a while, it will become almost effortless. This is the way that I commend to you, and please remember, slow and steady always wins the race!

By applying what you’ve read in this article, you will start adopting healthy eating strategies that don’t significantly affect your current lifestyle, allowing you to experience a more enjoyable weight loss experience. You’ll also truly understand why it’s important that you make small, manageable dietary changes if you are to reach your weight loss goal. Lastly, you’ll understand why adopting consistently poor eating habits will sabotage all of your weight loss efforts and ultimately produce frustration and failure.