How to Lose Weight with Weight Training

Most people heading to the gym to lose weight hop on a treadmill or other cardio machine and completely ignore one of the most effective means of burning calories. Weight training will build your muscles and the more muscle mass you have, the more calories your body burns. Unlike treadmills and elliptical machines, muscle will continue burning calories every minute of the day boosting your metabolism and creating an all over healthier you.

Weight Training

To make the most of weight training, you should be completing a routine and recording your efforts to ensure you’re lifting the proper amounts of weights and not overtaxing your muscles. You don’t want to lift as much weight as it takes to max out in a single lift or two. You should ideally be lifting as much weight as you can stand for three sets of eight to twelve reps. By the last set, your muscles should be tired, but not on the verge of collapse. Overloading yourself can injure your muscles.

Building Muscles

To build muscle, you must essentially tear your existing muscles and let them recover by growing new fibers. The more muscle fibers you have, the larger and stronger your muscles will be. To tear the muscles on a microscopic level, you should be exercising until you feel a burn, but not pain. Then you should rest. Large muscle groups such as legs and buttocks will need a day of rest following an intense weight lifting session as will arms and chest. Alternate these workouts so that you focus on one group one day and then let it rest while you focus on the other group the following day.

Muscles and Weight Loss

A pound of muscle burns 50 calories a day. By gaining a few pounds of muscle over the span of a month or so, you will be able to burn off a serving of ice cream by doing nothing more than sleeping on the couch. Your muscles will be taking care of it for you. Of course, if you skip the ice cream, your body will lose two pounds a week by itself. If you skip the ice cream and lose the potato chips, you might be losing almost three pounds of fat a week – without ever touching a treadmill.

Lose Weight Fast with Weight Training

Weight training is a sure way to lose weight so long as you’re not still consuming more calories than your body was burning before you built muscle, but if you want to lose weight even faster, you should go from slow and steady weight training to rapid weight training, also called circuit training. Circuit training is a system of stations that you must complete rapidly one after another. By moving quickly, your heart rate stays high effectively giving you a cardio workout at the same time as you are getting a strength workout.

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How to Lose Five Pounds Fast

It’s definitely swimsuit and shorts season, and there is nothing worse than pulling on a pair of shorts or last years suit and discovering it just a bit too tight. If your warm weather wardrobe is pinching in all the wrong places, it’s time to lose five pounds FAST.

Losing Five Pounds

It seems everyone is always trying to lose five or ten pounds, but for many reasons, it just doesn’t seem to happen for most of us. Fad diets, faulty portion control and too many opportunities to fall off the wagon are the primary reasons for yo-yo dieting, but you can’t afford to join that group – you need to lose the weight the right way.

Diet

It all boils down to your diet and your nutrition. You should be eating plenty of food every day, it just needs to be of the healthy variety. To lose five pounds fast, you can simply chunk all of your soda (even the diet ones), chips, cookies, ice cream, and other treats out with the trash.

Leave yourself fruits, veggies and complex carbohydrates such as whole wheat bread. Eat when you’re hungry, and chew some gum if you’re not hungry but have the urge to nibble. Removing all the empty calorie snacks you would normally just toss back will also help to cut back where it counts.

Exercise

If you’re just looking to lose five pounds, you’ll want to choose your exercise carefully. While muscle building exercises such as lifting weights are terrific in the long and short-term, you’re interested in short-term gains. You want to see results quickly, and who can blame you? Stick to intense cardio such as jogging on the treadmill or the elliptical. Swimming is another good way to burn calories fast, but you might not be ready for the old swimsuit just yet.

The bottom line here is that you’re consuming fewer calories than you’re burning, but you’re doing it in a completely healthy way. Fasting or eating five bites of cabbage a day doesn’t help you lose real weight, plus you’ll just over indulge when you reach your goal creating a yo-yo diet situation.

Drink Water

Finally, while you are dieting and exercising, increase your water to over a gallon a day. You’ll be using up quite a bit of water with your intense exercise, but you’ll also be helping to flush out any stored water which might be making you look or feel bloated. Diet, exercise and water is all you need to lose five pounds fast.

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How to Gain Muscle Tone

To gain sharp definition in your muscles you’ll need to take a two fold approach. First you must build the muscle as much as possible, and then you’ll need to remove the fat that is between the skin and muscle. The thinner this layer, the more the definition of muscle will show.

Building Muscle

Building muscle is as simple as tearing away the existing muscle and letting the muscle grow larger and stronger as it heals. To encourage the muscle to grow, you must tax it to the limit. Lifting weights and working against resistance, such as resistance bands or water, are the means to most effectively encourage new muscle growth.

To build muscle, you’ll need to exercise regularly. Lifting weights and establishing a routine to work all muscle groups is essential to your success. Work close to your limits every day to gain the maximum benefits, but don’t push yourself to a point where you risk injury or aren’t able to work out effectively the next day.

Many body builders seeking to build large muscles choose to use bodybuilding supplements to ensure they are getting the right balance of nutrients and additives to increase strength and power.

Eat a balanced diet heavy on proteins and vegetables, but low in fats. The increased muscle will burn fat, but you should incorporate an intense cardio routine into your exercise plan to burn off more calories as quickly as possible. As the fat melts away and the muscles before more defined beneath the skin, your muscle tone will be truly impressive.

Losing Fat

Even those who appear slender may sport an impressive layer of body fat. Extra calories will be stored as fat. You can build impressive muscles, but the muscle definition will be hidden under the fat until you’re able to lose enough to see the outline of the muscles through it.

Loosing fat is a challenge for any dieters, but those trying to gain muscle tone must work especially hard. To gain muscle you must consume extra calories that will convert to the muscle, but old calories are still stored as fat. To lose fat while gaining muscle, you must focus on eating the right kinds of calories. Protein is used to build muscles while carbs and fats convert more readily to fat.

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How To Begin a Meditation Practice

The benefits of meditation are well documented and a quick search online will pull up a long list of reasons why we should make time to meditate regularly. Making the commitment to do so is another matter. Even with the best of intentions, annual resolutions to make meditation a habit, it is easy to let the busy-ness of life get in the way of slowing down to meditate and reflect. I offer the following suggestions to help you develop the discipline of meditation.

My first suggestion is that you make an investment. Obviously, in order to meditate, you will have to make the investment of some of your time. This is often the easiest way to avoid meditating because there are so many other "more important" things to do instead of taking a few minutes to meditate. But if you are serious about meditating it may help if you make another kind of investment. Look around your home and find a corner or area you can devote to meditation. Make it as pretty and comfortable as you possibly can. Buy pillows or a meditation stool. Often, when we make a financial investment in accomplishing something we are more likely to make the time to follow through on our intention. 

You may determine that you do not have the room to set aside even a corner for meditation. If this is the case, then your financial investment can take the form of a meditation cd or even some comfortable clothes to wear while meditating. By spending some of your financial resources on your intention to meditate you will be sending yourself a clear message of the seriousness of your commitment.

My second suggestion is that you make a commitment. The more time you spend meditating the more you will reap the benefits of meditation. However, meditation is like exercising and if you try to spend an hour or more on your first time meditating you will very likely stop meditating long before you experience any of the benefits. At first, set aside five minutes to meditate. Sit comfortably in a chair or even sit up in bed. Or, if you are fortunate to have created a meditation corner or space for yourself, go there and get into a comfortable position. We have all seen people sitting, their legs crossed, feet resting on thighs, hands on knees. The truth is, we are not all comfortable sitting in this position and it is essential for you to find a position that is comfortable for you. You may find it possible to sit with your legs crossed for more than twenty minutes. If not, find a different position. Experiment until you find a meditation position that you can sit in for at least five minutes. 

You may choose to use a cd to help you time your meditation or you may want to set a timer and simply focus on your breath. It doesn’t matter how you do the meditation so long as you are comfortable. Thich Nhat Hanh also suggests that, when you sit in silent meditation that you smile softly. This helps the muscles in your face to relax. 

Sit for five minutes at first and only increase the length of time until you are ready to try sitting for longer. You may prefer to sit for five minutes on days when you are busy with work and save the longer practices for weekends (or whatever days you have the most time to commit to meditating). You may find certain positions only comfortable for a certain amount of time. Don’t beat yourself up if you can only sit in one position for fifteen minutes. Instead, remember this and, when you only have fifteen minutes to devote to meditating, sit in that position. Use your discomfort to your advantage.

My third and final suggestion is that you make it uncomplicated. If you cannot afford to buy pillows or cd’s, if you don’t have the space to create a meditation corner, don’t worry about it. You don’t even have to schedule a time, necessarily. If you arrive at work a few minutes early, do not go rush to your desk. Instead, sit in your car or outside and begin breathing slowly, smiling softly, and allowing yourself a moment of meditation before your work day begins. You can do this again, when you get home, either sitting in your car in the driveway before rushing in to start dinner, or you may opt to go inside and sit down on your couch for five minutes. 

If you did nothing else towards meditating you will be meditating ten minutes a day. If you then add in two weekend meditations of twenty minutes each you will be meditation for over two hours a week. Does it still feel impossible to set aside that much time for meditation? If so, perhaps you need to re-read some of the information on the benefits of meditation to reinforce your reason for making the time your own.

There is one more thing I would like to encourage you to do; keep a notebook and pen handy. You may find yourself distracted by random thoughts, some of which you won’t want to forget later but now is not the time to focus on these things. Instead, jot them down in the notebook and return to your breath. It is also a good idea to pause, when you are finished with your meditation, to write down how you felt during practice. Did you feel warm or cool? Was there any tingling in your hands or a tension anywhere? Make note of any sensations, emotions, or whatever else may come up during a meditation. Record what works and doesn’t and, above all else, follow your intuition as it leads you in how you should practice your meditation.

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