Lose Weight Living like a Thai — A Western perspective on a low fat Eastern lifestyle
It’s off to Thailand. I was a recent college grad seeking to experience a new culture and improve my martial arts skills. After some careful planning I selected the land of smiles for my first international adventure. I obviously got a dose of culture shock jumping into a culture radically different from my hometown in Littleton, Colorado. The city of Bangkok was humming with traffic non-stop. The tropical climate offered a hot and humid atmosphere. And I discovered the cheapest place is the world to get a foot massage. Although I enjoyed experience a new culture I quickly felt the withdrawals from some my western amenities, namely easy access to a weight training facility. After some asking around and creative thinking (like using elastic bands or dumbbells for resistance) I eventually found a few workout facilities that got the job done.I then was a little surprised to see that most Thais don’t engage in structured exercise (especially weight lifting). However the vast majority are extremely thin especially compared to my home country’s standard waist line. To further perplex the situation I noticed that they really didn’t express a big concern about dieting. Every time I ordered an iced coffee (temperatures are usually hot in Thailand) it always came loaded with sugar. Most of their food dishes where loaded with fried items. Fried rice, friend chicken, fried noodles, fried anything Thais would eat it. Their alcohol consumption was comparable to the U.S. (maybe slightly less).So how does the country of Siam stay so skinny? It could be partly due to genetics but I really believe that this phenomenon comes down to four factors: food portion control, frequency meals, low stress and plenty of activity (not just structured exercise).In Thailand cooked meals are readily available almost everywhere you go. The locals get up early in morning to fire up their small portable grills. They would offer food of multiple varieties: fried chicken, fried sausage rolls (at least it looked like sausage), fried bananas, fresh fruit. There were also several small walk-in restaurants wherever you went. Most of them offered dishes that included combinations of rice, seafood, vegetables or poultry. Whenever I went to order a meal from one of these restaurants they would give me a small (but tasty) portion of food. I was tempted order more at first but learned to eat slowly and to stay satisfied with just one serving. Their restaurants were also consistently busy. It didn’t seem like there were set eating times in Thailand. Everybody would drop into eat whenever they felt hungry. This would usually be several times a day (5-6 small meals).As for transportation getting around most Thai cities (especially Bangkok) could be a very frustrating endeavor that was further compounded by the language barrier. They seemed to have non stop traffic jams with cars, mopeds and motorcycles everywhere. Despite the chaos I saw people smile and wave whenever a potentially road rage conflict presented itself. Someone would cut off my Taxi cab and the driver would just laugh. The same was true for off the road. Wherever I went people just smiled. They seemed happy to be living out their lives. Any feelings of discontentment were seldom noticeable. This contrasted greatly from where I was brought up.I know that excess stress can negatively influence our hormone levels (especially cortisol). How many times have you become extremely angry and frustrated because you got stuck in a traffic jam? How many times have you felt impatient while waiting in a line at convenience store, grocery store, coffee shop, etc? How many times have you lost sleep over things that you KNOW are relatively unimportant? I’m not sure what causes this problem, but it’s certainly not tipping the scales in our favor.As for activity I didn’t see very many Thai’s engaging in structured rigorous exercise. The weight gym facility I worked out at had a Ping Pong table which was much more frequented then the bench press. However I did notice some Thais did engage in one excellent fitness activity; Muay Thai Kickboxing. Just to give you a little about Muay Thai it is an ancient martial art that has grown into an ultra competition international sport today. Training in Muay Thai requires that you have both endurance and explosiveness. Inadvertently Thais are using both slow twitch and fast twitch muscles when training in their sports. This aerobic/anaerobic combination burns a great amount of calories. A vigorous sessions of hitting punching/kicking thai pads can burn anywhere from 300 to 600+ calories an hour.So what does this boil all down to? Well for the average person looking to stay in shape and have a relatively low body fat I would recommend the following:1. Food portion control: Eat small meals of 400 to 600 Kcal depending on your body size. Overeating can cause insulin level spikes, an expanded stomach and puts a lot of unnecessary stress on your digestive system. 2. Meal Frequency: 5-6 six small meals a day, preferably spaced out every 2-3 hours. If you don’t have time to eat take a protein supplement in between meals. 3. Calm down: yes America is certainly stressful country. However life is by no means easier in Thailand and they manage to stay collected. Take a lot of deep breaths, get plenty of sleep and find healthy ways to channel stress. Remember that your work, your life and your choices are YOURS. The Thais I met don’t lose hair over trying to earn a six digit income (in US dollars of course) and you shouldn’t either. 4. Activity. I realize that not everybody has the time exercise, but almost anybody does have the means to be more active. Take a walk on your lunch break. Better yet use that hour to workout at a local gym. The ideal workout routine would involve a combination of weights/cardio. If you are strapped for time try to find an activity that combines both aerobic/anaerobic exercise. A few recommendations would be structured aerobics classes that combine both weight training/cardio (most American gyms offer some variety of this) or a martial arts program, I would personally recommend a kickboxing class for almost anybody.The only negative thing I noticed in Thailand it is that weight loss supplements cost a fortune. Protein supplements are about 2-3 more expensive. Costs for weight loss products are outrageous. If you reside in the U.S. I would highly recommend www.discountanabolics.com for protein supplements. Also if you are looking to take a few shortcuts (promise me you won’t down a bottle of ephedrine) to lose weight I would suggest the fat loss supplement Phire! from www.axislabs.net. Chad Klingensmith is an American Council on Exercise Certified Personal Trainer and a Mixed Martial Arts Competitor. He has helped several clients meet their goals in personal training, including weight loss and body building. Do you have questions for Chad? Email him at fitnesschad@gmail.com. Chad also recommends visiting www.axislabs.net for the best body building and weight loss supplements. (more…)

Diet Fads
The more you understand about any subject, the more interesting it becomes. As you read this article you’ll find that the subject of Diet Fads is certainly no exception. Knowledge can give you a real advantage. To make sure you’re fully informed about Diet Fads, keep reading. It might be actresses such as Suzanne Sommers and Jane Fonda, or models such as Christie Brinkley or Kathy Ireland. It seems that a number of celebrities today offer their own weight loss programs. The programs are appealing because we see these various svelte celebrities and we want to have bodies just like them. The celebrities are also highly likable, so we have a predisposition to be accepting of their products.However, did you ever stop to think whether these celebrities have any nutritional training? Do they have medical training? Is the information that they offer nutritionally sound? Or is it just a good sales pitch?Nutrition experts Annette B. Natow and Jo-Ann Heslin, authors of the book Get Skinny the Smart Way, say that consumers should be leery of celebrity-inspired diet books. They point out that such books are often based upon nutritional fiction and that, while the diets outlined in these books may result in short-term weight loss, they can be far from healthy in the long run. Therefore, you might consider passing up the celebrity diet books and opting for those written by nutritional experts instead.But celebrities aren’t the only ones preaching fad diets. For instance, there’s the so-called grapefruit diet which recommends consuming a grapefruit prior to each meal. Another fad is the cabbage soup diet, which requires you to consume all the cabbage soup you can handle. Other fads call for eating all the eggs you can…consuming only raw foods…or fasting every other day. Such diets are not only based on nutritional misinformation—they can also be dangerous. For instance, let’s take a closer look at the cabbage soup diet. No major health organization has endorsed it. Moreover, the American Heart Association disapproves of it, noting that it can actually harm you. Promoters of this diet say that you can lose as much as 15 pounds a week by following it—what they don’t say is that most of that weight is water weight. Once you begin eating normally again, you will see your weight rise once more. Some of the side-effects of the cabbage soup diet include a feeling of weakness, stomach pains, and diarrhea. Yet another questionable diet approach is what’s known as food combining. Such a diet assumes that you are overweight because you are not eating the right combination of food. The requirements of such a diet can seem quite arbitrary. For instance, you might be told that you can eat a banana only in the morning. This is rubbish, since your stomach can deal with a variety of different foods at one time. The idea behind such a diet is to eat food with fewer calories, but there are other methods you can use to accomplish the same goals.Some companies even claim that you can shed pounds while you dream. They say that, if you use their product right before bedtime, you will lose weight. In actuality, no company can make such a claim with any degree of credibility. It is impossible to burn a large number of calories while snoozing. In other cases, you may be tempted to try to lose weight by consuming special milkshakes or candy bars. In essence, these products are just milk and candy with certain vitamins and minerals added. However, one rarely feels satisfied after consuming these products. As a result, you may find yourself actually consuming additional calories during the rest of the day. While you might be able to theoretically lose weight in the short-term, you’ll find it difficult to maintain the weight loss over the long haul.The fact of the matter is that there is a great deal of money that can be made through the sale and marketing of diet products. As long as America has a large contingent of overweight people, companies will try to make a profit off of overeating. It is up to you to be savvy enough to recognize a diet fad when you see it and opt for a different approach to losing weight. You’ll find that there are really no short-cuts to weight loss. Any successful diet program takes time, patience, and determination, along with a willingness to change your eating patterns. Knowing enough about Diet Fads to make solid, informed choices cuts down on the fear factor. If you apply what you’ve just learned about Diet Fads, you should have nothing to worry about. <p>Author J. Brian Keith is a proud contributing author for
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Lose Weight Permanently Without Dieting
How To Lose Weight And Keep Fat Off Forever Without Strict Diet How many times have you heard a friend say, “I am on a diet”? Then what happens is your friend would lose some weight for a while before putting them all back on again. I’ll bet you have also seen someone say that “Cardio is the best for losing weight”. This person would then religiously pound the treadmill but results are agonizingly slow. Soon, he gives up and gains back all the weight he had lost, and sometimes even gaining some extra kilos! Ah, so you thought you’ve finally found the answer to permanent weight loss. You went on a strict diet and ran your heart out. You dropped kilos real quickly. But somehow, something is wrong when you look into the mirror in your birthday suit. Yes you have lost some weight, but somehow your body shape isn’t as flattering as you would like it to be. And then suddenly, you hit a plateau. No matter how strict your diet and cardio workouts are, your weight just simply refuses to drop any further. Then horrors of horrors, you actually start to gain some weight! You get disillusioned because with the unrewarding program and soon you succumb to ‘guilt food’ more often, and the weight comes right back up once again. The program fails and you blame it on your bad genes. Why??? Here’s why. Firstly, take a good look at the title of this article. It’s to “Fend Off Fats” and not “lose weight”. My point is, by merely losing weight, you will also lose some muscle mass in the process. By losing muscles, you will lose body tone and thus your metabolism rate for burning calories will slow down. Therefore, you have got to build muscles while losing fats. You may even gain some weight because muscles are heavier than fats. To lose fats and keep them off permanently, you have to combine healthy eating habits, incorporate cardio exercises and lift weights to build muscles. For every kg of muscles you pack, you will burn an extra 70-100 calories per day even without doing anything. Can you imagine the benefits of building up 5kg of extra muscles? You will be burning 350 to 500 extra calories a day even if you just laze around. You’ll be burning a Big Mac everyday! To further illustrate my point, 1 kg = about 7,700 calories, thus if you burn 500 calories a day because of the extra muscles you have, you will be burning off about 1 kg every 2 weeks simply because of your higher metabolism rate! You’ll also look good, healthy and well-toned too! Is it any wonder why body builders eat so much but do not put on fat as easily? Everyone knows that intensive cardio and strict diets cause you to lose muscle mass along with fats. So while you will lose some weight at the beginning, you will look like, well, just a smaller version of you without any muscle tone. That’s not what we want is it? So, as you lose more and more muscles, your metabolism begins to slow down. On top of that, your body will start conserving fats and ‘eat’ your muscles for energy because it is reacting to your strict diet. What happens then is that you will hit a plateau and no matter what you do, you will not reduce anymore weight and your fats will start creeping up again. This, in a nutshell, is the ‘yo-yo’ dieting effect that we hear so much about. Losing fats is simple. And notice that I said ’simple’ but did not say that it is ‘easy’. My pointers will be simple to understand, but the execution will take determination and discipline on your part. It is a lifestyle change to keep the fats off permanently and you will be glad you did because you will get used to the changes in only a few weeks. By then, it will become a cultivated habit for you, especially when you are rewarded with a fitter, healthier, hunkier you, together with a glowing complexion to boot! Here is how you do it. Simply, losing fats just means you must burn more calories than you consume. Period. Lift weights with compound exercises - Forget those puny biceps curls and tricep push downs. Go for big muscle groups like legs, back and chest routines. Why? Because you are working with bigger parts with more mass, and that means more body parts are working, translating into more calories being expended. If you are fit, do giant sets (4 or more exercises or sets with no rest in between sets or exercises). Here’s an example. Do only one set of each exercise with no rest in between the exercises. Choose a weight of about 60%-70% of what you normally lift and go for at least 25 reps. Do more if you can or until your muscles are fatigued, then stop. Leave the gym. The whole routine should not take you more than 40 minutes. After thoroughly warming up, start with squats, then dip, bench press, barbell row and military press. Sounds simple? Not so. You will be huffing, puffing and sweating profusely. What is achieved? You will have combined a cardio workout with a lifting workout and your metabolism will burn for the next several hours. Do this 3 times a week with at least a day’s rest in between lifting days. After 4-8 weeks, change the sequence of the exercises. So if you usually squat first, then squat last. Then after another 4-8 weeks, change some of the exercises, like substituting squats with dead lift, or bar bell rows with lat pull down. This is to shock your muscles so that they continue to adapt and grow. For cardio, go for a run first thing in the morning before breakfast. If you are jogging at normal speed, sustain the jog for at least 45 minutes. If you are running at 65% to 80% of your maximum heart rate (you will be panting and unable to sing or complete a sentence while running), then 20-30 minutes will be enough. Anything more than that may cause muscle break down. You may intersperse the speed with slower jogs in between to catch your breath. Do these 5-6 times a week. Eating habits? Just eat less of what you normally eat. For example if you have 2 slices of bread with 2 eggs in the morning, now take just one slice and an egg. Just eat half of what you eat but eat more regularly. Have 5 to 6 meals a day if you can. This is to feed your body frequently so that it will not go into starvation mode and start to conserve fats. At the same time, it will boost metabolism because your body burns calories while digesting the food. Chuck away all soft drinks, sugared drinks and stop adding sugar into your coffee and tea. Just by abstaining from sugary drinks, you may already have gotten rid yourself of 200 calories per day. Drink plenty of water instead and double the amount if you can. Oh, by the way, all work and no play makes Jack a dull (and very tired) boy. Do choose a day to relax a week. No exercise on that day. Indulge in your favorite food if you must. Hey, pat yourself on the back and reward yourself for passing another grueling week. After all, your body needs to recover too. As you reach your fat loss goals and you are happy with your muscular development, you can then take things a little easier. Hit the gym less frequently, have shorter runs and even relax a little in your diet. Because of your greater musculature, your body is now a fat-burning machine. You have earned that luxury. Simple? Sure. But do you have the determination enough to lose those fats and keep them off permanently? Who said you must go on a strict diet to lose weight and keep the fat off forever? It’s your call folks! Chris Chew fitness personal trainer of actors, pageant winners, models and celebrities. See his websites <A HREF="http://www.sgfitness.com">Lose Fat Fast Build Muscles Quickly!</A> and <A HREF="http://www.sgfitnessonline.com">Singapore Fitness Personal Trainers</A> (more…)

How Can Looking at Photographs of Tummy Tucks Help You?
How Looking at Photographs of Tummy Tucks Can Help Your Tummy Tuck Operation. (more…)

Weight Loss Strategies for Strength Training
For years we have been told to diet the excess fat from our bodies and throw in some fast walking to hasten the process. The trouble with this is that the low calorie restricted diet would throw the body into starvation mode, with the body holding onto the fat and using precious lean muscle tissue for energy. (more…)

The South Beach Diet Danger And A Warning To All Dieters
The South Beach Diet is considered to be a healthy diet which is concerned on the right carbohydrates and the right fats for a healthy body. As such, many people were drawn to it believing that the South Beach Diet is really the best diet for them. However, out of this good reputation that the South Beach Diet maintained, still there are some attacks and bad comments about the diet. Well, we don?t need to be surprised about this, for this is how the world is set. What then is the importance of the principle of ?yin and yang? if there is only one side for everything? There could be biases, prejudices, and imbalances, right? So, even though there is really no noted ?big? South Beach Diet danger, still there are certain resources which hold that the South Beach Diet danger surface when the improper application of the diet is made. Numerous resources have noted that part of the South Beach Diet danger is the lack of information or understanding about the diet. From the word ?lack? alone, a sort of South Beach Diet danger is then viewed. According to many studies, the South Beach Diet danger surfaced for the reason that the South Beach Diet is very demanding for those that are accustomed to carbohydrate-rich diets. In line with such view for the South Beach Diet danger, it is also noted that one of the largest South Beach Diet dangers surface when there is a lapsing into the old eating habits. This was considered to be a South Beach Diet danger for the reason that this lapsing will result in speedy weight gain. Along with that, this part of the South Beach Diet danger may then be a new way of life. In relation to such fact about the South Beach Diet danger, another support states that a great South Beach Diet danger will also surface when there is a lack of willpower exerted for the diet, especially from the carbohydrates lovers. In fact, it is a common view that there is always the South Beach Diet danger of lapsing back into old eating habits and increasing the carbohydrate consumption without even realizing it. So to battle this one of the common South Beach Diet dangers, Dr. Arthur Agatston himself recommends that the dieters who do lapse and end up on placing some of the weight back on should then be immediately switch back to the first phase of the South Beach Diet for a short while. This recommendation is given not only to battle such South Beach Diet danger but also to prevent from the occurrence of several South Beach Diet dangers. It is also interesting to know that if this South Beach Diet danger is not prevented earlier, this will lead to an excess in weight gain. With such mentioned possible South Beach Diet dangers, the South Beach Diet then received mixed reviews from most dieters. Despite the South Beach Diet dangers, many people still consider the South Beach Diet as an updated version of the Atkins diet that is a far more balanced diet. Only one thing that this diet plan does do is really to educate the dieters in eating the correct food to reduce heart disease, high cholesterol levels, and other South Beach Diet dangers. Check out our <a href="http://www.lowcarbdomination.com">low carb recipes</a> site. Feel free to redistribute this article as long as there is an active hyperlink pointing to our site. Enjoy. (more…)

EnLITEned Kosher Cooking: Not Just Low-Fat Or Low-Carb, It’s Healthy
Good-carb, healthy-fat and sugar-free recipes–AND KOSHER, TOO! Shalom! I come to you today in the name of peace among the nations of low-fat and low-carb by offering to the citizens on both sides of the dietary spectrum an honest… (more…)

The 3 Hidden Keys to Rapidly Burning Stubborn Fat
Reveals the secret “power tips” that athletes, bodybuilders, and fitness models use to burn maximum fat in the shortest amount of time. (more…)

Bariatric Surgery Things You Should Be Aware Of
When all other measures fail to control morbid obesity, weight loss surgery is a source of hope to the overweight. American doctors perform weight loss surgery over 140,000 times a year.
The oldest form of weight loss surgery is the most familiar, stomach stapling. In this 30-year-old procedure, most of the stomach is sliced and then stapled shut. (more…)

Weight Loss Organizations
Losing and maintaining weight is a difficult and intimately personal struggle, but it is not one that anyone needs to go through alone. There are literally millions of people forging their own paths to their better selves, and together, they offer support, advice, and inspiration to one another. (more…)