How to Lose Weight

>All of the television commercials and emails we receive make it seem simple to lose weight. Take a pill, buy this book, try this special meal plan and in recent years, have this surgery. Losing weight isn’t necessarily challenging, but it does require effort and a commitment. To change your body, you’ll have to change your routines and possibly your whole lifestyle. Here’s how to lose weight.

Understand Calories

Calories are individual sources of energy. Your body needs energy to perform its daily functions and the number of calories a person actually needs in a day varies by what he does and his size and age. For example, a teenage boy requires thousands of calories a day to keep up with his activities and his body as it grows literally inches a month. A thirty-five year old man is less likely to be playing football or basketball after school and is only growing out at this point, so he needs far less calories. The amount of muscle you have will also increase the number of calories you require.

Excess Calories

If you eat more calories than your body needs to complete its daily tasks, the extra calories are stored in the body as fat. The more calories you consume over your body’s required amount the more fat is stored in the body.

Reducing Calories

The first step to losing weight is to reduce the number of calories you consume on a daily basis. As it is better to burn calories rather than starve them away, you’ll want to reduce calories by no more than 1000 per day over the span of a week or two and increase your activity level.

Activity Level

Calories are designed to be burned. This means that if you continue to sit on the couch but simply stop eating, you will lose weight, but most of that weight won’t be a long-term loss. Your metabolism, or burn rate, will dramatically slow effectively burning fewer calories over time. Then, once you stop the particular diet, your metabolism burns fewer of the calories you’re now consuming again and the weight piles back on.

Instead of a simple diet, increase your activity level to burn 500 or 1000 calories a day. A brisk one hour walk will burn 350 calories. Combine a one hour walk with a slight reduction in calories and you’ll find your weight loss goals much more easily met.

A Weight Loss Plan

If you are serious about losing weight, you should make two changes. The first is to increase the amount of healthy foods you eat and reduce the unhealthy ones. Don’t diet per se, but do replace fattening chips with rice cakes or whole wheat crackers. Skip the ice cream and have sorbet. Track how many calories you’re actually consuming to keep it close to how many your body actually uses on a day without the extra exercise. This will help to keep your metabolism up. By simply switching from high calorie foods to lower ones, you’ll be eliminating hundreds of calories from your diet.

Increase your activity level dramatically. Take the stairs at work and walk when possible. If you can’t get to a gym or take a long walk, try to do short bursts of activities during the day. Get your heart pounding as often as possible. Even standing or stretching while watching television burns far more calories. Walking in place or on a treadmill while you watch your favorite shows burns even more. The more calories you burn and the more muscle you build, the faster the fat will come off.

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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 Serve Gelato

The sweet frozen dessert hailing from Italy is similar to Ice Cream, but with a bolder flavor and fewer calories. Gelato is a wonderful dessert to serve at garden parties, showers, or birthday parties as it is festive, unusual and delicious. Here’s how to serve gelato.

Buy Gelato and Accessories

Wholesale gelato and accessories can be purchased over the internet. Many gelato retailers sell sorbets as well if you’re interested in a lighter frozen treat for your party. Purchase the amount of gelato you need along with the proper serving utensils. If you’d rather, you can also rent or buy a home gelato machine to make your own dessert the day of the party.

Keep the Gelato Frozen

Gelato is lighter than traditional ice cream, so it might melt more rapidly if not kept completely frozen. Store the gelato in a freezer around 30 degrees, just below freezing level to be sure it stays soft and fluffy rather than hard.

Arrange Festive Bowls

You can serve gelato in thin cones commonly found throughout Italy, or if you’d appreciate a more formal presentation, you can arrange any sort of bowl you’d like. Use champagne glasses, ice cream bowls, or even salad plates to serve the gelato to your guests.

Serve the Gelato

Gelato is beautifully textured in its container, especially if you freeze your own in an attractive serving pan. You might consider displaying and serving the ice cream in front of your guests rather than in the kitchen as the very confection itself can add to the festivities and decorations.

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How to Make a Kiwifruit Sorbet

On warm summer days, cool treats beckon. And what better treat to enjoy on a hot day than the tropical flavor of kiwifruit in a homemade sorbet? Want to make your own kiwifruit sorbet? Here’s how:

Assemble the Ingredients

To make a kiwifruit sorbet, you’ll need the following ingredients:

• ½ cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• ½ cup light corn syrup
• 4 kiwifruits peeled and cut into quarters
• 1/3 cup lime juice
• ½ teaspoon lime zest

Create the Sorbet

In a heavy saucepan, combine the water, sugar and corn syrup. Bring to a gentle boil or simmer and stir until the mixture is clear and the sugar is melted (about two minutes.) Remove the pan from heat and allow the mixture to cool.

In a food processor, combine the kiwifruit and lime juice. Puree the fruit and juice together.

Pour the pureed fruit into a bowl and add the sugar mixture and lime zest. Stir until all ingredients are smoothly blended.

Pour the completed mixture into a shallow metal pan and place the pan into the freezer. Leave the pan uncovered in the freezer until the sorbet is firm, but not hard.

Remove the pan from the freezer and scoop the sorbet into a chilled bowl. Whip the mixture with an electric mixer until it is light and fluffy.

Then place the bowl back into the freezer for two hours until the sorbet is cold enough to serve.

Serve the sorbet in fun ice cream cups with a bit of lime or kiwifruit for a garnish.

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How to Make Gelato Ice Cream

If you’ve traveled to Italy, you’ve likely stared in wonder at the many flavors of ice cream in Gelato display cases. If you can’t get back to Italy any time soon, but are craving the sweet taste of gelato ice cream, why not make your own? Here’s how to do it.

Assemble Your Ingredients and Gear

To make gelato, you’ll first need an ice cream machine if you don’t have a specialized gelato maker. The rest of the instructions assume you are working with a traditional ice cream maker.

• 2 Cups Whole Milk
• 1 Cup Sugar
• ¼ Cup Fat-free Powdered Milk
• 8 Egg Yolks
• 1 Cup Light Cream (Half and Half will do)
• 1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
• Chocolate Syrup (The richer the better)
• One Ice Cream Maker
• 2 Cups of Table Salt
• 1 Large Pot
• 1 Spatula
• 8 or more cups of ice

Heat Dairy Products

In a heavy bottomed pot, begin by heating the milk, sugar and powdered milk. Bring the mixture to a low simmer to dissolve the sugar then reduce the heat to keep the mixture warm.

Prepare the Egg Yolks

Whip the egg yolks by hand or with a mixer until thickened. Then, add one cup of the heated milk mixture while continuing to whisk. When the eggs and milk are blended, pour the contents of your mixing bowl back into the pot.

Simmer

Increase the heat under the pot and continue to simmer the mixture until it is thickened like gravy. You’ll need to stir constantly. When the mixture is thick and has reached a temperature of 170-180 degrees Fahrenheit, stir in the light cream and vanilla.

Refrigerate

Remove the mixture from the heat and refrigerate overnight or even 48 hours. At the minimum, refrigerate the mixture for 6 hours.

Freeze!

When it’s almost time to enjoy the dessert, add a generous amount of chocolate syrup and mix the chocolate in smoothly. Then pour the mixture into the freezing canister of the ice cream maker.

Layer ice and salt around the canister until the canister is completely surrounded by one inch layers of ice separated by ¼ cup of salt. Turn on the machine and let it freeze the ice cream. You’ll know it’s done when the machine strains to turn the mixture. Then, serve it and enjoy!

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