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The Best Day To Start A Diet

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I was recently talking to a lady who I met in the gym she was telling me about how it was a new week and she was going to get herself back on track and lose the weight she wanted to.

Firstly it is great that the lady was in the gym on a Monday and a bit fired up to start her week on the front foot with some healthy eating and quality exercise.

She was making the NORMAL decision to start things off on a Monday (again). It's the beginning of the week. The best place to start don't you think?

Well maybe not.

Let me explain why Monday is probably not the best day to start a new diet.

My experience tells me that by Friday night the lady in question may be tired and starving and could go back to her old habits whatever that means for her.

Starting on a Monday is easy, especially if you have had your fill over the weekend you are ready to have a little break. Your body and mind needs it. The trouble is, everyone lives for the weekend.

We have our routines. They are hard wired.

How many times have you started a diet on a Monday only for it to gone wrong by the weekend?

We are all the same on that front, myself included.

But of course being human, we don't tend to try a different approach when the one we are using doesn't work, we just try it again and again. We are supposed to be intelligent but I often doubt it.

That's often called the definition of insanity "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".

So with that said, a change of approach would be sensible.

My advice would be to:

1. Start the diet on a Friday.

2. Plan nice healthy recipes for the Friday and Saturday.

3. Plan your meals. Try new recipes on a weekend when you would normally eat badly.

This strategy just changes the way you come at the issue of having no willpower when it comes to weekends. This would help set you up for the following week and ensure you had some good results after sticking to a diet for 7 days in a row.

Then rinse and repeat.

When the results start to come, people often perk up a bit and find some motivation to get through the weekends a bit easier.

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Source by Rich Clarke

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Fit and Fat?

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When you see an overweight person, do you automatically assume they couldn’t possibly be fit? While carrying too many pounds can be a signal of current or future health problems, it isn’t necessarily that way for everyone who is overweight.

Health professionals define overweight as a body-mass index (BMI) between 25 and 29.9, and obesity as a BMI of 30 or higher. But BMI alone is not sufficient to predict one’s health and risk of death. BMI measurements rely solely on height and weight. It doesn’t take into account how much fat or muscle a person has. You have seen 300 plus pound football players that would be classed as obese using just BMI, but who have very low body fat. You have also probably known someone who is thin but not very muscular.

So can you be fat and fit? This is a complicated question with no black and white answer. As a group, overweight, but not obese, people tend to live the longest. This was the conclusion of a four decade long study of 100,000 people, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2016. The study found that the healthiest BMI was 27, even though this is considered overweight. Being overweight is believed to lend some protection to patients with medical problems including pneumonia, burns, stroke, cancer, hypertension, and heart disease, partly due to the fat reserves they have to fall back on when a major illness takes over their body. Overweight hospital patients typically have shorter recovery times, a stronger immune system, and less risk of arthritis or dementia.

Where your fat is located is important, however. Abdominal fat, or an apple shaped body, is considered to be worse than a pear shaped body where fat is deposited around the hip, thighs, or butt area. Abdominal fat tends to go deep into your abdominal cavity and can surround and even compromise your internal organs.

Some people call this the obesity paradox. Others call it metabolically healthy obesity. What is known is that weight is not a reliable indicator of overall health. One thing everyone can agree on is this: to be healthy, you need to meet the following requirements, regardless of BMI:

· Waist measurement of no more than 40 inches for a man; 35 for a woman

· Normal blood pressure (<120/80)

· Normal lipid levels: cholesterol less than 200, triglycerides less than 150

· Normal sensitivity to insulin

· Normal fasting blood sugar (<100)

· Good physical fitness level

In a perfect world, we would all be lean, fit, and metabolically healthy. But that is far from the case in the U.S, where nearly 3 out of 4 people are classed as overweight or obese. While being overweight is still considered a health condition that should be treated, focusing on restricted dieting and weight cycling is not good for your health either. Eating disorders, muscle mass loss, and a slowed metabolism are all potential side effects of trying to lose weight. Perhaps a better approach is to focus on healthy behaviors, regardless of what the scale says. The benefits of exercise go far beyond burning calories. Being physically active helps prevent heart disease, type 2 diabetes, depression, some cancers, and osteoporosis. Exercise can improve your mood, reduce anxiety, and help manage stress.

Good nutrition is beneficial in so many ways. A diet high in fiber, fruits, vegetables, and lean meat and low in sodium, sugar, and unhealthy fats has been shown time and time again to be preventative against heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and numerous other diseases. It is impossible to obtain all the various vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytochemicals that are required for our body to function at its best by relying on heavily processed foods, vitamin supplements, or additives.

So if those last few pounds just won’t budge, don’t worry so much about it. Keep active, eat right and be healthy.

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Source by Anita Marlay