These days, everybody wants to lose a few pounds and may ask themselves Why Losing Weight is So Difficult. We must realize we are facing the greatest foe, our brain.

The brain does not want anyone to lose weight. Since the beginning of life, it has been charged with inducing us to eat and then monitoring all systems to be sure we had enough energy to keep operating. It takes energy to reproduce and that is one of Nature’s prime goals.

The Main Mechanism That Fights Weight Loss

The mechanism we face when we start to lose weight is our metabolism. As we lose weight, it starts robbing various systems of energy to keep digestion, the heart and brain functioning. It gets our body ready for a long winter of scarce resources (food energy).

So, in losing weight we face the metabolism’s effort to make it more difficult and the brain’s effort telling us we are starving and trying to induce us to eat high calorie dense foods. It takes a strong will to fight these build in mechanisms to resist weight reduction.

A few more difficulties are the heavier a person is the less the satiety hormones ghrelin and liptin affect the brain. A leaner person has an easier time because the satiety hormones registers with their senses.

The Role of Insulin Resistance

More difficult is insulin resistance. This is a factor for people with type 2 and type 1 diabetes. The cells will no longer absorb glucose because they reject insulin and so glucose from carbohydrates goes to fat. Type 1 diabetes requires injection of insulin because the function of the pancreas has ceased.

As we lose more weight the metabolism slows and gives us less credit for exercise. It becomes super efficient. The difficulty of keeping weight off after we have lost it is the metabolism stays slow and any additional calories increase our weight. This is when exercise becomes even more crucial .

While you are studying diet plans and trying to increase exercise to lose weight, keep in mind the underlying factors that will fight you .The beauty of beginning a negative calorie regimen is that after a month or two our cravings disappear and it becomes easier. A bland diet is the most efficient way to lose weight because it turns off the brains push to eat.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside

See the website Get Fit to Surf

Visit me on Instagram

For fun, see my new website Markap Health and Lifestyle

The Best time to Start Losing Weight and Getting Fit is Now. This book will start you on the right programs for losing weight, getting strong, and getting fit. The objective is to make new habits routine and then your lifestyle. After that, there is no struggle.

Buy the E-book on Amazon for $2.99 and the Paperback for $6.95

Get the Perfect Start on a Weight Reduction and Fitness Program in my book The 3 Week Plan

To get 3 books in 1, see the Surfing Trilogy which includes The 3 Week Plan, Get Fit to Surf, and the Learn to Surf Guide in E-Book for $6.99 on Amazon

See my New Book Self-Leadership, The Most Important Choices You Can Make. Follow the guide of how to make your life more productive, purposeful, meaningful, and happy with the right thoughts, intentions, and behaviors.

Read the new Markap Series Books, Self-Leadership, Happiness, Start Now

Now available in E-Book on Amazon for $2.99 or Paperback for $6.95

The post Why Losing Weight is So Difficult appeared first on The 3 Week Plan.

Many people learning to surf have been sedentary and find that surfing is an uphill battle. They have questions about How to Get Fit. Fitness is a whole body effort.

What is fitness? First, a person should be a normal weight. This is both for recreation capabilities, ease on organs and joints, and less strain on the heart for aerobics. Weight in the medical industry is gauged by the Body Mass Index calculator.

Getting fit usually requires weight loss. Secondly, most endeavors benefit from increased flexibility. In surfing it is crucial. One cannot do a beginner pop up if they cannot get their foot planted flat under their butt to stand up. One cannot do an advanced pop up without flexibility.

Flexibility, Strength, and Aerobics

Flexibility is best increased with squats and dead lifts. They can be executed each morning without weights. This will bring the quickest progress to loosen the hamstrings, buttocks, and lower back. Add weights as desired and if you have perfect form. Watch Youtube to learn how to execute.

Strength is important for most recreations and is built gradually. The best beginning exercise for surfing is pushups. Start with a few and increase by one every few days. Surprising how fast you can make progress. Floor exercises and weight machines or free weights are good for increasing full body capability.

Stamina is important for surfing and is the secret for running, bike riding, swimming and treadmills. Engaging builds stamina. The muscles have to develop receptors to absorb glucose. As the muscles learn to store glucose from you training them to exercise, they will store more and allow you to exercise longer.

Combining weight loss and strength building plus flexibility and aerobics will result in your feelings of fitness and greater capability for life and sports.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside

See the website Get Fit to Surf

Visit me on Instagram

For fun, see my new website Markap Health and Lifestyle

Get the Perfect Start on a Weight Reduction and Fitness Program in my book The 3 Week Plan

To get 3 books in 1, see the Surfing Trilogy which includes The 3 Week Plan, Get Fit to Surf, and the Learn to Surf Guide in E-Book for $6.99 on Amazon

See my New Book Self-Leadership, The Most Important Choices You Can Make. Follow the guide of how to make your life more productive, purposeful, meaningful, and happy with the right thoughts, intentions, and behaviors.

Read the new Markap Series Books, Self-Leadership, Happiness, Start Now

Now available in E-Book on Amazon for $2.99 or Paperback for $6.95

The post How to Get Fit appeared first on The 3 Week Plan.

We aspire to many goals and I wonder whether Gratitude Should be a Goal? We aspire to money, fame, success, happiness, and relationships. At the end of the day when we achieve them, what feeling do we want?

What if we set gratitude as the goal first instead of gratitude as the result of our achievement? If gratitude follows the achievement, when do we get to experience it, soon, in a long time from now, never?

Where Do We Find Gratitude?

What if we look now at what exists that helps us feel gratitude? Gratitude is happiness and it is a spiritual achievement. Gratitude can mean you are happy to be alive. You are happy to have opportunity. You are happy to be in process to achieve your goals.

Gratitude can be a connection with your body and Nature. You realize your life is a gift and that by keeping healthy you are following the guidelines set by Nature for all living things. Your body and being only ask for a few things. They need good nutrition, exercise, sleep, minimum stress, relaxation, and worthwhile challenges.

Is Gratitude Abundant?

Are all these available? They are plentiful and abundant. You can have all these ingredients in abundance. There is no shortage. Yet, we can spend our life chasing things that might be elusive, beyond our capabilities, and not as rewarding as we expected. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aspire toward them, but we can have satisfaction now.

The best behaviors create happiness brain chemicals now. Our brain rewards us for our thoughts, intentions, and actions. The themes are self-improvement and contribution. When your day includes time for both, your brain will be rewarding you with happiness. You will be able at the end of the day to feel gratitude for your opportunity and progress. Reaching the end is not necessary. It is only a summit to be followed by more summits.

The Happiness Process

The happiness process does not stop at one summit. This is the mistake that many people make and they self-destruct when the promise they sought is soon accepted and stops delivering the original perk. Happiness is in the process of improving. This need never stop. If you are passionate about your progress, you have created a love for living. For this you should feel gratitude; the ultimate reward.

Get more guidance in my book The 3 Week Plan to create a perfect start that can be continued until you reach your goals.

Read The 3 Week Plan for more details on getting a surf fit program initiated or the book Get Surf Fit.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside

See the website Get Fit to Surf

Visit me on Instagram

For fun, see my new website Markap Health and Lifestyle

Get the Perfect Start on a Weight Reduction and Fitness Program in my book The 3 Week Plan

To get 3 books in 1, see the Surfing Trilogy which includes The 3 Week Plan, Get Fit to Surf, and the Learn to Surf Guide in E-Book for $6.99 on Amazon

See my New Book Self-Leadership, The Most Important Choices You Can Make. Follow the guide of how to make your life more productive, purposeful, meaningful, and happy with the right thoughts, intentions, and behaviors.

Read the new Markap Series Books, Self-Leadership, Happiness, Start Now

Now available in E-Book on Amazon for $2.99 or Paperback for $6.95

The post Should Gratitude Be a Goal? appeared first on The 3 Week Plan.

With 70% of the U.S. population now overweight and 40% obese, more people want to learn How to Lose Dramatic Weight. I have just lost 40 pounds to reach the lowest weight of my adulthood and it was a challenge but now so rewarding.

Start off with learning how the health profession would consider your weight status. The Body Mass Index calculator will tell you if you are overweight or obese. You can then select a target weight and plug it into the calculator to see where on the scale you would be.

I started at 200 pounds and am 5’11” so I was 28 on the Index with 30 being obese. I targeted a weight of 168 which was an Index of 23, normal. As I progressed I retargeted to 160 pounds which I reached after 5 months.

The Brain Does Not Help You at First

Know that the brain is against you losing weight. The more weight you carry, the more the brain tries to hold on to fat and the more actively it feeds you thoughts that you are hungry and should eat more. Overweight people have a great struggle with their brain whereas lean people have few cravings and have normal appetites and can be content eating normal portions.

In The Hungry Brain, Stephen J Guyenet Ph.D explains how the brain works against you to preserve your fat. For 99.9% of man’s history on earth he has struggled to get enough food. In Nature, high reproduction rates are tied to having enough calories to survive and raise the libido for mating.

Primitive tribes on earth today are voracious eaters, but stay lean because finding calories consumes a lot of energy and their food is simple and not calorie dense. Therein lies our major problem. The food industry provides high calorie, calorie dense foods that are convenient. You can drive through a fast food restaurant and get a 1,000 calorie sandwich that you can eat while you drive.

High calorie foods are available at the market which are then transported to our home and office. The availability of convenient high calorie foods is too great for the brain to resist. Restaurants provide calorie rich foods with fat, salt, and sugar to entice us and then offer dessert after we are no longer hungry.

Weight loss requires negative calorie consumption. Exercise helps but is not necessary. You have to rid your environment of high calorie foods and break high calorie addictions. You have to eat natural foods that mostly require preparation. You have to resist all the temptations at mouth watering high calorie convenient foods.

Foods to Avoid

Avoiding sugar, white flour, and alcohol is a good start. Avoiding these ingredients in pasta, pizza, pastries, sodas, energy drinks, desserts, and snacks becomes the starting point. Meal planning becomes an important part of the process. Tracking your consumption helps you regulate food and portion size.

As you lose weight, the metabolism will fight back. You will plateau. You will need more tools. I found that meal replacement shakes and intermittent fasting helped break through plateaus. A keto style diet with protein and fats at every meal and low carbohydrate (bad foods) is helpful. Fruits, vegetables, nuts and healthy oils are good substitutes for the average diet.

As time progresses, food cravings disappear. The more bland you can eat, the more your brain will have less interest in eating. One of the most successful researched programs had people in controlled environments drinking only a bland liquid diet. They could have as much as they wanted, but because the brain was not excited by its low calorie density, they consumed just a small fraction of their normal calories.

Bland is Your Friend

Bland is good. The brain is excited and produces dopamine when high calorie foods are consumed. It says eat more. With low calorie foods, the brain allows you to eat less and yet you have satiety. The faster you can get to bland, the faster you will lose food cravings and addictions. The faster you will lose weight.

I became fascinated with the process and found it was pretty easy after a few months. I then set a lower weight target. I enjoyed the challenge, how I felt, my reduced desire for bad foods, and my slimming waist line. As an exerciser, I had more oxygen uptake as I lost weight and as a surfer, my pop ups and surfing improved as I got lighter.

There are no bad side affects from being lighter. It is a great place to be. I graduated high school as an athlete at 175 pounds and now being at a weight of 164 pounds feels great. Once you lose the weight the second battle begins. It is just as hard to keep it off at first as it was to lose it. Your negative calorie diet has to remain your routine although you can relax a little and find the diet that maintains your weight at the same place.

Get more guidance in my book The 3 Week Plan to create a perfect start that can be continued until you reach your goals.

Read The 3 Week Plan for more details on getting a surf fit program initiated or the book Get Surf Fit.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside

See the website Get Fit to Surf

Visit me on Instagram

For fun, see my new website Markap Health and Lifestyle

Get the Perfect Start on a Weight Reduction and Fitness Program in my book The 3 Week Plan

To get 3 books in 1, see the Surfing Trilogy which includes The 3 Week Plan, Get Fit to Surf, and the Learn to Surf Guide in E-Book for $6.99 on Amazon

See my New Book Self-Leadership, The Most Important Choices You Can Make. Follow the guide of how to make your life more productive, purposeful, meaningful, and happy with the right thoughts, intentions, and behaviors.

Read the new Markap Series books. Self-Leadership, Happiness, and Start Now.

Now available in E-Book on Amazon for $2.99.

The post How to Lose Dramatic Weight appeared first on The 3 Week Plan.

Losing weight is one of the more difficult enterprises we encounter and have to learn how to Overcome the Barriers to Losing Weight. First we have to realize the brain is against us. It does not want to let go of fat.

Our brain has been evolving for 3 billion years. Yes, scientists have found that the brain in simple life forms has not changed its duties since the beginning. It has been charged with consuming and preserving vitality for reproduction.

How the Brain Fights Weight Loss

When we want to lose weight, the various centers of the amygdala fight the realization of a negative calorie balance. More than the desire to hang onto fat stores, it sends messages to you that you are hungry and maybe that you are starving.

Secondly, as you lose weight, the metabolism slows down and starves services to the body to preserve fat stores. It thinks you are early man and calories are difficult to find. In dramatic weight loss, we often hit plateaus because the metabolism won’t allow more weight loss.

Thirdly, we have to fight our own addictions and habits. If we are in the habit of reaching for the convenient and the most calorie dense foods, we are playing to the brain’s messages. “Oh good calories, eat a lot.” We have to reverse this. We have to eat low density calorie foods that often we have to prepare. We have to rid our house, office, and car of easy to reach dense calorie foods.

Begin Selecting the Right Foods

What are the dense calories foods? Pastries, pasta, sodas, sugar snacks, pizza, alcohol, ice cream and so on. What are low calorie dense foods? Greens, fruits, vegetables ( carrots, zucchini, peppers, cucumbers,) fish and chicken. We can eat these in salads, soups, raw, or cooked.

As we are successful in eating lower calorie foods the brain centers begin to support us. We reset our brain’s marker stating we need high calorie foods. We lose appetite. Our brain loses interest in the foods we are selecting and we are satiated quicker. We lose our cravings. We can get through the plateaus.

The most difficult part is getting started and sticking to our plan in the early rough times. We will know hunger at the beginning, but that is our brain trying to induce us to eat, not our body. We can live fine on negative calories for a long time. Eventually we start feeling the pleasure of being lighter, having more energy, fitting in our clothes, and receiving complements.

Get more guidance in my book The 3 Week Plan to create a perfect start that can be continued until you reach your goals.

Read The 3 Week Plan for more details on getting a surf fit program initiated or the book Get Surf Fit.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside

See the website Get Fit to Surf

Visit me on Instagram

For fun, see my new website Markap Health and Lifestyle

Get the Perfect Start on a Weight Reduction and Fitness Program in my book The 3 Week Plan

To get 3 books in 1, see the Surfing Trilogy which includes The 3 Week Plan, Get Fit to Surf, and the Learn to Surf Guide in E-Book for $6.99 on Amazon

See my New Book Self-Leadership, The Most Important Choices You Can Make. Follow the guide of how to make your life more productive, purposeful, meaningful, and happy with the right thoughts, intentions, and behaviors.

Now available in E-Book on Amazon for $2.99.

The post Overcoming Barriers to Losing Weight appeared first on The 3 Week Plan.

We often are aware that we are putting on weight and delaying the day we put on our running shoes. Start Now with Getting Fit. The intention of improving who you are can start the dopamine flowing.

Happiness brain chemicals are Nature’s little inducement to become better. Nature’s grand plan is each generation becomes stronger. Improvement does register in our genes and they can change over time for the better or worse. Longevity is a body working well. Cancer is a body neglected.

Our Body is Always Keeping Score

The constant thoughts of delaying healthy eating and exercise are not gone unnoticed. The body has a high tolerance for abuse. Then it breaks. It can break down physically in our joints, muscles, organs, skin, brain, heart, circulation, hormones, glands, and cells.

We have little appreciation for the complexity of the human genome and the billions of years that various systems including our brain have slowly been evolving to its current perfection. But it isn’t perfect. It can’t always correct mistreatment.

How much time and money do crews spend getting a Formula 1 car ready for the track? They are a high performing precise piece of equipment that can come undone with the slightest malfunction. Your brain is far more complex that a Formula 1 car and performs tasks that make it perhaps the most exciting piece of equipment in the Universe.

The Brain is Your Life

Little things can affect how the brain performs. Sugar is terrible for the brain. We ingest sugar in our pastries, sodas, snacks, packaged goods, alcohol, desserts and even excess healthy carbohydrates. Too much sugar, usually as carbohydrates, kill the beta cells in the pancreas and when the cells start rejecting over production of insulin used to balance the sugar in our blood we get diabetes. Diabetes can blind us and cause us to lose limbs and create dementia.

The wheels can fall off the cart so many other ways. When the cardiovascular system becomes overloaded with plaque in the cell linings our heart can stop or we cut off the blood to the brain and stroke out, paralyzing us. Life can go on merrily and then the fun stops.

This is the day to start monitoring what you eat and how much you move. Both are crucial and critical to keep your motor running. Don’t delay. Your life depends on it.

Get more guidance in my book The 3 Week Plan to create a perfect start that can be continued until you reach your goals.

Read The 3 Week Plan for more details on getting a surf fit program initiated or the book Get Surf Fit.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside

See the website Get Fit to Surf

Visit me on Instagram

For fun, see my new website Markap Health and Lifestyle

Get the Perfect Start on a Weight Reduction and Fitness Program in my book The 3 Week Plan

To get 3 books in 1, see the Surfing Trilogy which includes The 3 Week Plan, Get Fit to Surf, and the Learn to Surf Guide in E-Book for $6.99 on Amazon

See my New Book Self-Leadership, The Most Important Choices You Can Make. Follow the guide of how to make your life more productive, purposeful, meaningful, and happy with the right thoughts, intentions, and behaviors.

Now available in E-Book on Amazon for $2.99.

The post Start Now with Getting Fit appeared first on The 3 Week Plan.

Surfing is physically overwhelming for many beginners and Beginner Surfers Overcome Physical Difficulties. Post pandemic, most people have put on weight and lost strength. Too much confinement and lack of movement creates both conditions.

The beginner surfer has to build his whole body. He needs upper body strength best gained with pushups. He needs flexibility best gained with squats and dead lifts. He needs aerobic fitness developed with movement.

Weight Loss is Often Necessary

Weight loss takes a goal and commitment. I put on 15 pounds during the pandemic and then took off 40 pounds. The goal stayed strong in my mind. Reducing calories is necessary and best achieved by selecting foods that have no sugar or white flour and eating lots of protein. Drinking at least 100 oz of water a day accelerates the process.

The aspiring surfer should work on everything at once. He needs a schedule to plan each aspect of body work and a new eating plan. Losing weight and getting strong work together. The surfer should also be practicing the pop up in his living room to build the strength and flexibility that are specific.

Nothing builds surfing strength like getting into the water, so frequent trips are helpful if possible. The surfer who cannot make it to the water often has to cross train just like the professionals.

Get more guidance in my book The 3 Week Plan to create a perfect start that can be continued until you reach your goals.

Read The 3 Week Plan for more details on getting a surf fit program initiated or the book Get Surf Fit.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside

See the website Get Fit to Surf

Visit me on Instagram

For fun, see my new website Markap Health and Lifestyle

Get the Perfect Start on a Weight Reduction and Fitness Program in my book The 3 Week Plan

To get 3 books in 1, see the Surfing Trilogy which includes The 3 Week Plan, Get Fit to Surf, and the Learn to Surf Guide in E-Book for $6.99 on Amazon

The post Beginner Surfers Overcome Physical Difficulties appeared first on The 3 Week Plan.

Overweight is a Problem for Surfing because of the other issues that accompany being overweight. When a person has put on weight without exercising, they have also lost flexibility, strength and stamina.

Being normal weight as per the Body Mass Index used by the fitness and medical industries is a good gauge. It is a function of height and weight. Then having good upper body strength to push off the surfboard is important.

Flexibility is required for beginners to get one foot under their butt so they can stand on it while raising their hands and moving the other foot to the nose of the board. When surfers cannot put their foot flat on the board under their butt, they can’t get their hands off the surfboard when they place their other foot. This causes them to fly off the front.

Stamina is built by the muscles having receptors for glucose. Glucose is converted by the liver from carbohydrates. Without exercise, the muscles don’t develop receptors and the glucose goes to fat. With aerobics, weights, or floor exercises, the body builds a glucose store which is stamina needed for exertion and recovery.

The aspiring surfer can develop all the capabilities at once with a program. They lose weight, they build strength and flexibility, and initiate an aerobic program. Basic surf exercises are pushups, squats and dead lifts. These three will have the most notable affect on surfing ability.

Read The 3 Week Plan for more details on getting a surf fit program initiated or the book Get Surf Fit.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside

See the website Get Fit to Surf

For fun, see my new website Markap Health and Lifestyle

Get the Perfect Start on a Weight Reduction and Fitness Program in my book The 3 Week Plan

To get 3 books in 1, see the Surfing Trilogy which includes The 3 Week Plan, Get Fit to Surf, and the Learn to Surf Guide in E-Book for $6.99 on Amazon

The post Over Weight is a Problem for Surfing appeared first on The 3 Week Plan.

Getting Fit for Recreation is a frequent theme now as we try to leave the lock down of the pandemic behind. What many people find is they have gained weight and lost strength and flexibility.

I especially notice it as a surf instructor. It is like people are coming out of a winter slumber and their bodies are not fit for recreation. Weight is a vexing problem for surfing. It is vexing because it might mean the person has not been exercising and it makes it difficult to get up on the surfboard.

Starting Everything at Once

Getting fit for recreation can be a combination of losing weight, building strength, adding flexibility, and getting aerobically fit. All are needed for surfing. Unlike other exercises like walking, biking, treadmills, and swimming, you cannot build into surfing without having a basic fitness level.

Surfing demands a high level of fitness from the start. The biggest issue is flexibility. The pop up to stand on the board requires the surfer to put a foot flat on the board under their butt and stand on it. Without flexibility, the surfer cannot get the foot flat. If not, then the pop up becomes difficult.

Gaining weight and losing flexibility often ride together. To lose weight, one has to get into a negative calorie diet. There are many diets that fit the bill. Most athletes like to use carbohydrate reduction to gain their goals. Carbohydrates are sugar from pasta, pizza, pastries, sodas, energy drinks, and alcohol.

Eliminating sugar and white flour is the quickest swath through this issue. Fruits and vegetables with low glycemic levels can be consumed in moderate amounts. Fibrous fruit and vegetables have a balance that slows sugar absorption. There are tables that show the glycemic level and load of fruits and vegetables.

Building strength can be started with three great exercises that address the largest muscle masses and are surf specific. They are pushups, squats, and dead lifts. They can all be executed without weights. A broader program can be started with floor exercises, aerobic floor exercises, weight machines, and free weights.

Building cardio can begin with walking and progress to running. Walking 10 minutes can lead to a half hour and then an hour a days. Running should lead to intervals to increase intensity. Intervals increase speed, then duration of the interval, and then less rest between intervals.

Biking, swimming, and treadmills are all good exercises to build cardiovascular capability. Intensity can be increased slowly each week or two. It takes time for the muscles to develop receptors that absorb more glucose/sugar/carbs, and provide stamina for exercise.

Engaging in all these practices at once accelerate the return to fitness and makes a person recreation fit for their next adventure.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside

See the website Get Fit to Surf

For fun, see my new website Markap Health and Lifestyle

Get the Perfect Start on a Weight Reduction and Fitness Program in my book The 3 Week Plan

To get 3 books in 1, see the Surfing Trilogy which includes The 3 Week Plan, Get Fit to Surf, and the Learn to Surf Guide in E-Book for $6.99 on Amazon

The post Getting Fit for Recreation appeared first on The 3 Week Plan.

Losing Weight to Get Surfing Fit is an important element for beginner progress. Many new surfers are aspiring to surf because it is on their bucket list or it is a safe outdoor exercise.

Surfing is one of the most impactful exercises in which you can engage. Even very fit athletes that are runners and triathletes mutter they have to get in better shape after their first surf lesson.

Losing weight has a number of benefits for the overweight beginner. It makes the pop up easier. Losing weight automatically increases the surfer’s power to weight ratio. This is the strength needed to pop the body off the surfboard.

Losing weight automatically increases the surfer’s oxygen uptake. Less weight reduces the necessary amount of blood circulation delivering oxygen. World class runners are about 135 pounds which is an efficient oxygen uptake weight.

Losing weight will improve flexibility by reducing the load on muscles. The beginner pop up requires the surfer to move one foot under their butt and stand on it. The lighter a surfer is, the easier it is to get that foot forward on the board and under their butt without contortions.

While the surfer is losing weight they should include three exercises in their daily routine. They should do push ups. I like to do 50 everyday when I wake up. I also do 20 squats and 20 dead lifts without weights. These stretch the hamstrings, buttocks and lower back. Those three muscle areas support pop ups.

For Surf Lessons in Oceanside

See the website Get Fit to Surf

For fun, see my new website Markap Health and Lifestyle

Get the Perfect Start on a Weight Reduction and Fitness Program in my book The 3 Week Plan

To get 3 books in 1, see the Surfing Trilogy which includes The 3 Week Plan, Get Fit to Surf, and the Learn to Surf Guide in E-Book for $6.99 on Amazon

The post Losing Weight to Get Surfing Fit appeared first on The 3 Week Plan.

How fast can you Lose 10 Pounds on the Mediterranean Diet? Weight can fall off pretty fast if you stop eating the wrong foods and drink 100 oz of water a day. This can be achieved without exercising.

Exercise is important for health, but not as crucial for losing weight. It becomes more important once you have hit your weight goal and start eating your regular foods again. However, if you have an acceptable diet, like the Mediterranean, the diet becomes your lifestyle.

I think the best introduction is two authors of a Mediterranean Meal Plan with which I have no connection. I include it as credit for taking their letter and re-posting here. The Mediterranean Diet is 50% fat, 20%-30% protein, and about 10% carbohydrates.

If you don’t count calories, you get the idea of the proportions and the concept that carbohydrates are cut. The Keto and Atkins Diet do the same with various proportions of fat an protein, but they cut carbohydrates. The reason is carbs are sugar and sugar is moved to fat.

So their letter:

Hello,

Did you know that even a few extra inches around your tummy might signify a build-up fat and plaque in your precious arteries?

Let’s face it — belly fat is both unattractive and unhealthy. People who have more of an apple shape have an increased risk of heart disease and cancer, even if they are at a normal weight. 

Fortunately, losing just 5% of your body weight could drastically reduce your odds of developing cancer and heart disease without shuddering at the thought of dieting.

Want to try it yourself?

CURB YOUR SUGAR CRAVINGS WITHOUT GUILT

– Mix Greek yogurt with raw honey and a sliced banana. This is a win-win situation. They’ll help you sleep better and promote your heart health.

– Chocolate. It’s not just for dessert anymore. Raw, unprocessed cacao powder can be mixed into nearly anything. Try this: Blend into smoothies, oatmeal, or pancake batter. Add to chili for a rich flavor. And of course, it’s still fantastic in frozen dessert treats.

– Lean turkey and granny smith apples are an intriguing, sweet sandwich pairing. 

SNACK WHENEVER YOU WANT

– Air popped popcorn is a great bedtime snack. It’s dirty cheap and has tons of heart-healthy fiber. Add a tbsp. of Parmesan and olive oil to boost its antioxidant load and make a tasty low-calorie snack.

– Pumpkin seeds are a low-fat, mineral rich alternative to almonds that possess antifungal and antiviral compounds. While low in fat, pumpkin seeds are still calorie dense, so a little goes a long way. 

– Take a slice of toasted sourdough bread, slather it with natural peanut butter, and top with sliced banana and a drizzle of melted dark chocolate (80% cocoa). This is our favorite daily snack to trick our sweet tooth. 

‘ALL YOU CAN EAT’ SALAD DRESSING

Fennel tastes a little like licorice and is loaded with antioxidant phytonutrients known to bring down inflammation. 

Try this: Mix sweet apples, fennel, and crunchy endive to make a bright, light salad, which is a lovely side dish for lunch or dinner. And then dress it with this healthy salad dressing.

Fill 1/3 of your salad dressing container with balsamic wine vinegar

Fill 1/3 of your salad dressing container with apple cider vinegar

Fill 1/3 of your salad dressing container with extra virgin olive oil

Add 2 Tsp. of real maple syrup or raw honey

Add a touch of dried onion and garlic

Add black pepper

Shake in your salad dressing container to combine all ingredients well.

As you can clearly see, the reason the Mediterranean diet works is simple: You’ll always eat.

You can eat up to six times every day so you never feel hungry or deprived. You can enjoy snacks in the afternoon and before dinner (even at night while watching TV).

So, how can you eat so much and shed pounds like crazy?

The Mediterranean diet secret is in the combination of foods you eat every day.

That’s why the Mediterranean diet lets you drop excess pounds so quickly. Without effort and deprivation.

You’ll enjoy a variety of lean meats, sweet, juicy fruits, pasta, sauces – and many snacks.

Everything is at your local grocery store. No need to buy special foods.

And here’s the best part…

Once you lose those excess pounds, you can keep them off. For good!

Let’s face it; most fad diets force us to change our eating lifestyles.

On the Mediterranean diet instead, you can continue to eat the foods you love because no one is forcing you to change.

In minutes from now, you’ll discover how easily you can be free from the chronic disease risk and transform every meal into a special occasion to enjoy delicious food without guilt and deprivation.

No guesswork nor plans you can’t stick to. Just one day of your new lifestyle and you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Doesn’t it sound too good to be true? It’s a small “investment” that will deliver tremendous benefits.

Don’t wait another day, Click Here and Get Your 28-Day Mediterranean Diet Meal Plan Today! 

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Any diet works if you stick to it. The main focus is eliminating your sugar and white flour addictions in pastries, desserts, snacks, sodas, energy drinks, pasta, and pizza, Then you must up your water intake to half your body weight in ounces (a 200-pound person drinks 100 oz.). But try to get to 100 oz and a gallon.

You must also track flammable foods. Our guts are individually different. What will cause you to gain weight won’t bother me. If you gain weight from a food without it having many calories, you are allergic to it and your body will retain water in defense. You have to be conscious of what you eat every day and weigh yourself every morning.

If you have insulin resistance and are or not diabetic, your cells will not absorb glucose(carbohydrates) and they will all be pushed to fat. If you have a hormonal imbalance (thyroid) you will have difficulty controlling you appetite.

If you have belly fat, you have the precursor to most debilitating diseases including heart attacks and strokes. Check your Body Mass at the calculator to see if you are overweight or obese.

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People desirous of losing weight often ask What is the Keto Diet? It has become popular among weight lifters and athletes as a diet that trains the body to burn fat with the right exercises and adherence to the principals

The common description is high protein, high fat, and low carbohydrates. This can be a major change for people who regularly consume pasta, pastries, desserts, cereals, white bread, pizza, sodas, alcohol, and energy drinks.

The concept is exercise creates the demand for fuel. The body will first seek glucose which is what the liver converts from carbohydrates. In the absence of sufficient glucose the body next seeks fat stores. Weight lifters, runners and other athletes that engage in endurance feats can quickly use up glucose. The body only stores about 900 calories in the liver, muscles, and blood stream.

It is an excellent diet for surfers who want to be lean and not have bulky muscles that add weight on the surfboard. Surfers cross train out of the water to develop the strength and stamina necessary for big waves and long sessions.

The problem carbohydrates creates is excess that cannot be stored in the muscles or blood stream are stored in fat. The muscles develop receptors to help absorb more glucose and athletes want to build glucose storage capacity in the muscles. Glucose in the muscles results in greater stamina for weight lifting or running.

Some Popular Keto Diet Foods

Some of the foods that are popular on Keto Diets are:

1. Meat and poultry
2. Fish and Seafood
3. Natural Fats like Coconut Oil or Olive Oil
4. Cheese
5. Plant Protein
6. Eggs
7. Beans
8. Fruit that is Low Glycemic
9. Above Ground Veggies
   1. Eggplant
   2. Green beans
   3. Olives
   4. Avocados
   5. Cabbage
   6. Tomatoes
   7. Garlic

Important on all diets for losing weight and maintaining health is drinking water. The minimum is half your body weight in water ounces (200-pound persons drinks 100 oz) Extra water should be consumed for drinking caffeinated beverages, long duration exercise, profuse sweating in hiit classes, aerobic classes, spinning, or treadmills.

The athlete on a Keto Diet may utilize calorie restriction and intermittent fasting. Both result in weight loss. Each body has a different metabolic rate in which energy is expended. The average male before vigorous exercise can consume about 2200 calories a day to stay in homeostasis. A female consumes less. The more calories burned in exercise, the more calories can be consumed.

The athlete on a Keto Diet wants to stay in ketosis in which the body is burning fat for energy. It is recommended to stay under 50g of carbohydrates a day to remain in this state. Recommendations are to consume 5% to 10% of calories in carbohydrates, 20% to 30% in protein, and 60% to 70% in fat.

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How to Get Better Every Day begins with having measurable activities. Each morning have journals to measure how your progress has changed from the day before.

You can track anything. Weigh yourself to see how yesterday’s diet changed your weight. If you gained a half pound or a pound, you probably ate something that was inflammable for you, did not drink 100 oz of water, ate too much after dinner, or consumed too many calories. You can do better today.

What was your physical activity yesterday? Did you run, work with weights, swim, ride a bike, do yoga, do pushups? How was the duration, speed, distance, enjoyment? Log what you do each day. Make comments if you feel like it. How is the amount of activity comparing to last month?

What are some metrics for your work? Do you have followers, website traffic, customers, or production metrics? Are you in the process of developing, creating or building something? Did you add to the project and bring completion closer?

Prepare for Your Goals

A football player on the Cincinnati Bengals was asked about preparation for the playoffs. He said we work to get better every day. We work on making everything better. We want our progress to be ascending as we play our last games because the playoffs are one and done.

Luckily, we are rarely one and done in our daily life. But we don’t want to live our days aimlessly. It is more fun to track progress and take meaningful steps every day. We don’t have to reach success tomorrow. We just have to have in mind that we would like to be successful.

How you progress is your contribution. Everything you do is who you are. I laughed when I listened to Taylor Swift at end of a song say “you are what you love”. My first thought was that would make me chocolate cake. It emphasizes that passions define us. I have several. I love exercise, health, writing, teaching, building websites, and writing books.

I can measure my progress in most of my activities. That doesn’t create pressure or judgement, but guidance. How am I doing in each? It gives me so much to do when I wake up. I like to get up at 5 a.m. to get started so I can make progress without interruptions in the morning nor feel time pressure. It gives me a lot of hours before I might have an obligation.

Think about who you are and what you want to be? Think about your contribution. What are you doing that makes your life meaningful? What are you doing that helps make the lives of others meaningful? We do live in a hive or colony of mankind. Like the cells in our body or every aspect of Nature, our purpose is to make everything better for those around us and the next generation.

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Some wonder if You Can Have Perfect Health. What would perfect health look like? Not ever being sick because your immunity is so strong. Being very fit to enjoy most recreations.

There is more. Having normal weight as per the Body Mass Index. The normal scale on the index is 18 to 24.9. Being at 22 or 23 makes you very lean. You will enjoy the pleasure of feeling light and comfortable in all your clothes.

Your diet would be well balanced, and you would never feel stuffed or bloated or suffer indigestion. This comes from having a healthy gut which you created from eating all healthy foods and taking probiotics.

Your blood sugar levels, blood pressure, hormones, and heart health are all normal and functioning optimally. No worries at the annual doctor checkup

The Practices to Reach Great Health

1. Exercise 2 hours a day. This may seem impossible for busy people, but the rewards are greater than most other life experiences. This can be a combination of aerobics and weights or just aerobics with some resistance training included during the week.
2. Drink 100 oz of water. Water fuels your energy and digestion. It is crucial to maintain and/or lose weight. Try for a gallon. No one thing will make you feel better than water.
3. Restricted Calorie Diet. Restricted diet is necessary for weight loss and maintenance. After dramatic weight loss, the metabolism will be slow for a long time. The restricted calorie diet becomes your lifestyle. This means not gaining weight and maybe continuing to lose weight.
4. Intermittent Fasting. Fasting is good for your body. You are not starving your body for nutrients; you are just consuming them within a restricted window. Your digestion has more hours to rest and your metabolism more time to repair.
5. Sleep at Least 7 Hours. Find your perfect cycle. Go to bed at the same approximate time each night and your waking time will also become consistent. Wind down before bedtime. The body repairs during sleep. A lack of sleep creates cortisol which can lead to craving sugar, fats, and alcohol.
6. Consume a Low Carb Diet. This doesn’t mean exclude fruits and vegetables. It means excluding sugar, white flour, and therefore pastries, pasta, pizza, candy, sodas, and sugary energy drinks. Carbs are sugar and the body sends excess to fat. No system in the body enjoys refined sugar.
7. Seek Work Life Balance. This means too much work may create stress. When people have passion for their work or causes, it doesn’t seem like work or like they need balance.
8. Eliminate Addictions. There are all kinds. Food is only one. Addictions throw you out of balance whether it is healthy eating or healthy living.
9. Reduce or Eliminate Alcohol. The rewards are tremendous. Don’t suffer the social isolation you think it might cause. Moderation is also acceptable, but people who don’t drink enjoy not drinking. The health benefits are innumerable. (stop smoking as well)
10. Meal Replacement Shakes. They are great for breaking through plateaus in dramatic weight loss efforts. They extend the fasting window. They contain vitamins, minerals, protein, and probiotics you may not consume in a normal calorie restricted diet.
11. Seek Special Supplements. Find foods supplements you may not consume in a normal diet. Green tea is great and matcha is better. Collagen is superior for nails, hair, skin, and joints. Reishi mushrooms support every system including immunity, blood sugar, the brain, and heart. Flax seed powder is full of nutrients including the Omega-3s for brain health.
12. Find the Spirituality in Your Venture. Seeking health is aligning with Nature’s intent for you. Find the unity in your existence and your environment. Be grateful for your gift of life and the wonderful vessel you inhabit. Make the biggest contribution possible to your world.

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Following the 18 Ways to Lose Weight is a good New Year’s Resolution to have an exciting 2022 with a new fit body. There is more than just restricting calories to have a successful weight loss program.

Losing weight changes the energy you consume and how your body utilizes that energy. It takes more than a negative calorie balance to lose weight and maintain that loss after you have reached your target.

1. Start thinking about consuming fewer calories than you burn. A pound is 3,500 calories. How can you consume 500 calories less a day and exercise to burn an extra 500 calories (about an hour of most types of aerobics)
2. Consume a Low Carbohydrate Diet. Carbohydrates are sugars. They are in fruits and vegetables which are good carbs. They are in pasta, pizza, beer, pastries, desserts, sodas, and energy drinks which are the bad carbs.
3. Eliminate addictions. These are the go-to meals, snacks, pick-me-ups we crave. We consume them during the day when we are tired, after dinner, when we are hungry, and often when we are not hungry. Use a substitute that might be just as bad but to break the addiction.
4. Drink at least half your body weight in water ounces (a 200-pound person drinks 100 oz a day). Shoot for 100 oz and then a gallon (128 ounces). It is difficult to lose weight without enough water.
5. Start intermittent fasting. Create an eating window. 8 hours is a good start. Breakfast at 8:30, Lunch at Noon, and Dinner at 4:30. This is a 16-hour window for the digestion and metabolism to rest. Weight-lifters and athletes attest to the positive results.
6. Have a healthy meal replacement smoothy. If you have it for breakfast, it extends the intermittent fast to 19 hours. It will also provide a lot of nutrients you won’t consume in a limited calorie diet. It will also help you break through the weight loss plateaus you will reach.
7. Only eat when hungry. One of the problems with weight gain is non-stop mindless eating. Eating whatever is in front of you or available. Eating from emotional or boredom triggers.
8. Only eat what you like. Weight gain is supported by eating anything whether you like it or not. Start planning to eat what you want and you may start consuming less.
9. Weigh yourself every morning. If you gain weight, consider your previous day’s diet and whether you drank enough water. Then plan to do better today.
10. Be alert for inflammatory foods. They will cause weight gain regardless of the calories. If your diet is the same, but you added one small thing and gained two pounds, your body doesn’t like it. Your body will suck up water into its tissues in defense. If you gain weight, you might be eating an inflammatory food.
11. Sleep an adequate amount at 7 to 9 hours. Inadequate sleeps raises cortisol which will increase your cravings for sugar, fats, alcohol, and mindless eating.
12. Avoid beer. It is the most sugar laden alcohol. Hard liquor has fewer sugars, but try to limit alcohol consumption. It often leads to late night eating.
13. Consume moderate amounts of dairy and nuts. They are both healthy, but contain fats. The best dairy foods are non-fat milk, grass fed butter, and sugar free yogurt. Nuts have protein, fiber, vitamins, and fat. A few every day is perfect.
14. Eat more protein. It can be animal or plant. Protein speeds up the metabolism for digestion. Digestion consumes a lot of energy from the metabolism and can burn unwanted calories.
15. Get daily exercise. Exercise forces the muscles to absorb glucose. Glucose is converted by the liver from carbohydrates. Absorbing glucose keeps it from being stored as fat.
16. Train the body to burn fat. This is a favorite of weigh-lifters and athletes. Long moderate intensity aerobics or training burns through the carbohydrates and forces muscle to seek fat for fuel. This is complementary to low carb diets, intermittent fasting, and meal replacement smoothies.
17. Eat real foods and eliminate more packages. Read ingredients. Avoid added sugars and sodium. Avoid foods cooked in oils used by restaurants. Seek olive, coconut oils and grass-fed butter.
18. Don’t over-eat fruits and vegetables. The body carries about 900 calories of glucose from carbohydrates and pushes the balance to fat stores.

Thank you Dr Andreaas Eenfeldt MD for some of ideas.

This list should give you some goals. There are a few other things to watch. Insulin resistance is a metabolical disorder that leads to and is a result of diabetes or high blood sugar. It causes cells to reject insulin so glucose cannot be absorbed. This forces the pancreas to over produce insulin and kills the pancreas’s Beta cells at some point. Then you have to inject insulin. The precursor is a big waist-line, for one. If you are overweight, be sure the doctor is checking your blood sugar, triglicerides, cholesterol, and blood pressure.

Hormone imbalance can affect weight. If the thyroid is imbalanced, hormones might create uncontrollable weight gain. Hormones cause hunger and satiety. It is important these are normal for us to have a successful weight loss program.

See the Home Page for Healthy Fun Products that work on any diet.

Get a perfect start with more information in my Free E-Book The 3 Week Plan. It will get you started and hopefully to the point of self-monitoring in which you are motivated to pursue the right habits and drop the harmful ones.

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Surfers Get Lean and Get Fit to support their surfing progress. Professional surfers want to be lighter and have lean muscle. They often spend more time out of the water cross training than in the water surfing.

Getting surf fit is excellent for most athletic and recreational endeavors. People who learn to surf say they see why surfers are lean. It is a lot of exercise. It is full body exercise. The paddling is the most tiring and requires strength and stamina.

The Essentials of Getting Lean and Fit

Getting lean is a process that can be gained with patience and persistence. Losing weight and getting fit requires discipline and consistency. There needs to be a strong “why” to keep one engaged when the going gets tough.

Get Weekly Tips on the process of losing weight, getting healthy and getting fit.

Losing weight, of course, requires negative calorie balances each day. A second important criteria is eating foods that are non-inflammatory. Inflammatory foods will cause weight gain regardless of the calories. A third important criteria is not having insulin resistance. Insulin resistance can cause weight gain regardless of the calories.

Most popular diets feature healthy foods and eliminate sugars, white flours, and harmful oils. Eating whole foods provides the body with foods it will utilize and not encapsulate in fat. That is the main feature of a healthy diet. All diets will work if you stick to them.

Diets differ on their perception of which macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat) to emphasize. The Keto and Atkins diets believe in more protein and fat and less carbohydrates. Other diets balance out the macronutrients but usually have a target of the percentages they want to include.

Exercise is about movement and strength (muscle) building. Movement and muscle building condition the muscles to absorb glucose. Glucose is the converted result of carbohydrates and the first fuel for muscles. When the muscles absorb glucose, glucose does not get transported to fat.

The second goal of exercise for getting lean is to utilize fat for fuel. This is accomplished with long duration low intensity exercise. After the muscles have burned through the glucose, it will look for fat. After fat it will burn muscle. It is important to supply the body with enough protein so it will not resort to muscle for fuel and recovery.

Additional Methods for Getting Lean

Weightlifters want to build muscle and get lean while eating enough nutrients to supply muscles with fuel and recovery. They will eat a lot of protein and engage in intermittent fasting. The protein increases the metabolism in digestion. The intermittent fasting allows the digestion to rest and the body to use energy to repair.

Losing weight is supported by copious amounts of water consumption. Consuming have your body weight in water ounces (200-pound person drinks 100 oz of water) is a start. You should try to get over 100 oz and close to a gallon a day.

Getting adequate sleep is important. The body repairs during sleep and will burn fat. Inadequate sleep results in cortisol production which leads most people to seeking sugar and overeating to compensate for feeling sluggish.

Supplements can be complimentary. There are so many superfoods that energize and cleanse. Superfoods have vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, protein, omegas, and healthy fats. These are all necessary for optimum health and performance.

See the Home Page for Healthy Fun Products that work on any diet.

Get a perfect start with more information in my Free E-Book The 3 Week Plan. It will get you started and hopefully to the point of self-monitoring in which you are motivated to pursue the right habits and drop the harmful ones.

Get the Weekly Newsletter to gain insights on superfoods, exercise, and healthy diets.

Want to Build Immunity, Energy, Health? Get 5 Resihi Mushrooms in one package

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Sticking with a Weight Loss Program is Difficult for most people, because it fights the mind and the metabolism. The first pounds might come easy because there is determination. Then what happens?

Three major battles are fought in dramatic weight loss of 10% to 20%. We hit plateaus. We fight the mind’s effort to sabotage the discomfort. We fight the metabolism’s effort to maintain fat stores against emergencies.

If you have great discipline and determination, you will find ways to win the battles. Since they are battles, we need good strategies. Strategies require tactics. We have a good idea. We need to implement the steps to be successful.

The first important step is the why. Why are we beginning this endeavor? What is the goal and why is it meaningful? If it is not meaningful, we will lose the enthusiasm quickly. Are we trying to reverse diabetes so we can live a normal life? Have we had a major event and weight loss is the strategy to stay alive? Do we have a strong desire to experience all the benefits of a healthy, lean, and fit self?

Setting Out the Strategies for Weight Loss and Fitness

It is common knowledge and scientific knowledge that weight loss requires negative calorie balance. This is where the debates begin on how to do it best. How do we change eating habits to achieve negative calorie balance? How do we include other life factors to support the effort?

The first step can be evaluation. Those who spend some time evaluating their eating habits have been found to stick to programs for a longer period of time. Strict immediate restrictions often backfire with binging. Consider when you eat and whether it is always because you are hungry. Consider whether you only eat things you like. Consider whether there are triggers such as emotions or boredom that begin mindless eating. Do you know when you are full? Do you ever stop eating before you are full? What are your addictions?

A second step can be to take action on the problem areas. We want to eliminate addictions. We want to eliminate eating when we are not hungry. We want to notice when emotions or boredom are triggering the desire to use food as the solution. We want to only eat food we like.

A third step is to start including more quality foods. Quality foods are often bulky without the calories or sharp tastes of sugar and salt. That means we have to get used to eating bland and not getting the stuffed feeling that is often our goal at meals. Bland can be offset with spices but substituting an apple for a cupcake might be a chore for some. Substituting a salad for a cheeseburger might not be attractive.

Along with evolving into healthier foods while eliminating the fat creating foods, we want to start moving. Getting the consumption side of the equation is more important, but at some point, we will want to support the negative calorie building with calorie burning. Moderate movement and weight training are acceptable. Move is first, muscle building is second.

Selecting the type of diet is an arena with many opinions. There are diets for every taste, so to speak. The diet with the most athlete supporters is the Keto or Atkins diets which favor more protein and less carbohydrates. There is good scientific evidence that this is a good strategy.

Fighting the Mind and the Metabolism

Our two major opponents in this endeavor are our mind and our metabolism. Our mind will immediately fight our effort to eat healthier. It likes calorie dense sweet and salty foods to which we might have become accustomed. It enjoys getting stuffed at every meal. Eating less calorie dense foods and stopping before we are full will create resistance in the mind.

The metabolism will begin to fight our efforts with dramatic weight loss. Its job is to preserve energy for the body’s important functions. When it senses resources (food) is dwindling, it becomes alarmed. It decides it better hold on to what the body has stored as fat and reduce services to certain functions. Our weight loss may therefore plateau.

I have successfully fought this metabolic resistance with meal substitutes and intermittent fasting. The meal substitutes supply needed nutrition, and the intermittent fasting allows the body to reduce the need for the metabolism to find energy for digestion.

At a certain point, we stop having cravings. We stop having driving hunger. When we have lost our addictions, we start enjoying healthy substitutions. The mind jumps on board and starts supporting our efforts to health. It realizes we are not trying to kill ourselves, but putting us on a better path.

After a while our habits become our lifestyle. We start enjoying it. We start becoming ambitious as is in our human nature to achieve more. The main strategy is to get to this point.

See the Home Page for Healthy Fun Products that work on any diet.

Plan your behaviors. Start to plan your meals. Start to plan your exercise. You can lose weight and build strength, flexibility, and aerobic fitness at the same time. It will be a new you. Get a perfect start combining these behaviors with reading the Free E-Book The 3 Week Plan. The idea is to get your behaviors into routine so that health becomes your mode of operation.

Sign up for a Weekly Newsletter that will provide tips and successful strategies for weight loss and fitness.

See Coaching for Weight Loss and Building Fitness. I suggest you read The 3 Week Plan. It is a no fail plan if you stick to it.

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Weight loss and Getting Stronger certainly begs the question Do You Have the Discipline to Achieve Goals? One of the benefits I enjoyed in my weight loss routines was the discipline I created was transferable to other goals.

Discipline is the will power to overcome the mind’s relentless efforts to sabotage change. When you want to eat healthy foods and drop the harmful foods, your mind resists. When you set a goal to leave the house for aerobics, your mind says you are too tired.

Wim Hoff is well known for his cold-water exploits where he sits in a tub of ice and swims underwater in freezing conditions. He suggests taking a cold shower every morning. Other than being good for you, it conditions you to doing something you don’t want to do.

Getting started on losing weight and getting fit is not something the mind welcomes. You have to have a strong reason why. This reason will pull you through the mind’s resistance and develop your discipline and will power.

The beauty of getting engaged and making progress is that the body starts to acclimate to the strain or the new conditions and rewarding you with good feelings. The body is meant to consume nourishing foods and exercise. The more you engage, the better you feel.

This is why people become health fanatics and develop a passion for feeling good. As you progress, you are testing what works. Losing weight is the discipline of eliminating bad foods. Getting fit is the discipline of adding intensity to work outs through duration, speed, and less time in between intervals for rest.

Starting Your Rewarding Routines

The difficult part is always to get started. The second difficult part is to continue when the mind says you don’t want to. The third difficulty is getting back on track when you have fallen off course. This is a good reason for a coach.

As a Health Coach and Personal Trainer I know our job is to get people motivated, get them on an action plan, and then help them reach the point they are self-monitoring. At the point of self-monitoring, they have accepted the benefits of their routines and don’t have to be coached to continue.

The final difficulty of Coaching is helping people who relapse. At a point, many people decide they have had enough. They resist the discipline. They want to go back to old ways. After hitting a weight loss goal, it is difficult to maintain the weight without great discipline.

The point is to start. Develop routines that become enjoyable. Develop a passion for the pursuit as the benefits increase. Make weight loss and fitness priorities. Create the time and don’t let responsibilities curtail your efforts toward health. Health in the long run will make you more productive.

Analyzing Your Environment

Start losing weight by analyzing your consumption habits. When do you eat? Are you always hungry when you eat? Do you eat only foods you enjoy or will you eat anything? Do you have emotional or boredom triggers that cause mindless eating? Do you have healthy foods in your environment or are there too many unhealthy temptations?

What are the difficulties with starting your exercising routines? Is there a time shortage? Do lack support of the people in your circles? Do you not know what to do? Does your mind sabotage your desire to change?

Start with the minimum to get moving. Ten-minute walks are a good start. Build to a half hour and then an hour 5 days a week. It will become routine, easy, and enjoyable. You want to get to the point it is a priority. What is your health worth? Diseases and chronic illnesses are very inconvenient, and they dominate your day more than any of your productive activities.

See the Home Page for Healthy Fun Products that work on any diet.

Plan your behaviors. Start to plan your meals. Start to plan your exercise. You can lose weight and build strength, flexibility, and aerobic fitness at the same time. It will be a new you. Get a perfect start combining these behaviors with reading the Free E-Book The 3 Week Plan. The idea is to get your behaviors into routine so that health becomes your mode of operation.

Sign up for a Weekly Newsletter that will provide tips and successful strategies for weight loss and fitness.

See Coaching for Weight Loss and Building Fitness. I suggest you read The 3 Week Plan. It is a no fail plan if you stick to it.

See More Posts

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Fitness is a Lifestyle that brings happiness and health. Fitness may look like an impossible dream from a sedentary lifestyle. It has to start with the first step and progress from there.

The beauty of getting fit is it grows on you. You start to feel better and have better self-esteem. It is a spiritual adventure because fitness is what Nature intended for you. Man is the only creature that becomes content without moving.

On the other side of the spectrum are the people finding bliss through movement. Getting fit becomes a lifestyle and something people look forward to every day. Yes, it does mean you can consume a few more calories, but the more fit you become, the more you want to tailor your calories.

The Start to Fitness

Just about every new behavior requires a why. We get a job so we can eat. We want a relationship so we can enjoy love. We want friends so we don’t feel lonely. We want exercise when we know it makes us feel better.

The problem many people encounter in getting fit is they can’t get past the first week. I used to run 60 miles a week and people wanted to join me to start running. They would run that first quarter mile and their lungs were coming out of their body and they would quit. I would say, it gets better after a week.

The more fit you get, the more it becomes ingrained into who you are. The more it becomes your purpose and identity. A fit person may list that as one of the main reasons they enjoy life. Fitness transforms who you are.

Several benefits from fitness are

1. A leaner body
2. A more energetic brain
3. Better fitting clothes
4. More attractive to others
5. Greater energy
6. Better discipline
7. Identity with Nature
8. Reduced stress
9. Better health
10. Enjoyment every day

Start with the Why

This is the key for any achievement. Why does an entrepreneur want to risk? Risk is exciting. Risk is a challenge. Challenge grows our brain. Challenge stimulates our creativity. Challenge is how man has progressed from the cave. Challenge identifies who we are by how we progress.

There are so many psychological benefits to the challenge of getting fit. It is a challenge. At the beginning you may have to struggle with putting your running shoes on or beginning your floor exercises. You may struggle when the effort gets tiring. A Navy seal said when the brain says we are tired, we are only 40% there. That is the point of Seal training-finding the 100%.

I love to bike and hike. I reach limits of duration in my mind. Right now I feel content to bike for 3 hours and hike for two hours. But I have a near term goal of riding 45 miles over the 36 I have been riding. I have plotted the route and am psyching up. I just have to push past my comfort barrier that my mind has created.

Why? I want to know what I can do. If I can ride 45 miles, can I ride 70? I have ridden 70, but do I want to do it again. Why will be the sole motivation. Do I have to prove something to myself? Do I want the satisfaction of achieving? Do I like how it feels? Is it my identity? Why?

Engage and Push Through Mental Limits

The mind is often a saboteur. Once while in a routine of running the 20 stairs near my house on the beach, I was about to begin. My mind said I was tired. I knew I had rested a day and should not be tired. I ran 80 times up and down instead of the usual 20-40 times. I wanted to prove to my mind that I was the boss.

Set reasonable goals and don’t listen to your mind when it says you shouldn’t. The mind wants to rest on the couch. The mind doesn’t want you to experience the pain of pushing your limits. The mind doesn’t want you to go through the exercise of creating reasons to push on when it is telling you you are tired. It takes a strong will to overcome the mind’s resistance.

Once you can conquer these challenges, you can set your will to anything. You have developed the discipline to complete tasks you often don’t want to do. Success requires we often do things that are challenging and that we would rather not do.

I do these tasks first thing in the morning when I am fresh. I get up at 5 a.m. most days so I will have plenty of time. I don’t feel the resistance early in the morning. If I get up at 7 a.m., I have a totally different mindset. I feel like I am already running out of time and I won’t be able to fix complications I might encounter.

I exercise after my morning work. By then, I am looking for a break. I am looking to engage and drop into flow while I ride or hike. I want to feel my body working. I want to conquer a challenge that is within my control. I want to feel my life and world are more in my control and physical exercise is one of the few things in our control.

Fitness is a lifestyle.

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How I Lost 40 Pounds through a combination of measures. One of the first steps is having a strong “why”. Set a goal, have a strong why, and grit your teeth to begin your discipline.

I started at 203 pounds which was a surprise weight that I learned when visiting the doctor for my annual physical. I had no idea. I thought I was still around 185 or maybe had climbed to 190 over the holidays. I was shocked and upset with myself that I could let my seemingly healthy diet get so out of hand.

As a Certified Health Coach, Personal Trainer, and Surf Instructor, I thought my vegetarian diet and regular exercise were controlling my weight. However, with gyms closed and missing my three times a week visits, the carbohydrates from my vegetarian diet were in excess. I was thinking, the more the merrier, but excess carbohydrates, which are sugars are hustled to fat.

Starting the Journey

My goal became, as I had in a previous effort, to return to my graduating high school weight of 175 pounds. Years ago, I had lost 50 pounds to return to 175 pounds and I enjoyed the journey because I took it slow over 4 years.

In that process, I started eliminating my addictions, which was ice cream after dinner. I started eliminating all the bad foods and adding the healthy ones. Foods to eliminate are the high-density calorie foods. A sandwich at a fast-food outlet can have a thousand calories. Pastries, sweets, and desserts have a lot of calories and limited nutrition.

I started adding whole foods with limited calories and lots of nutrients. I purchased Jonny Bowden’s book The 150 Best Foods on Earth and begin to select a few. Kale was my first choice. That would be a roadblock for many. Slowly I started adding the best foods and eliminating the excess calorie foods.

I eliminated the sugar. I eliminated foods with white flour. This alone is a challenge. This alone will have a big impact on fat stores. I started drinking more water. Lyn Genet-Recitas in her book The Plan claims you must drink at least half your body weight in water ounces (a 200-pound person drinks 100 oz) Drinking more water will have an immediate impact on weight loss.

This time, I went to the Keto, Dr. Atkins models of high protein and low carbohydrates plus foods with good fat. We want the body to burn fat for fuel instead of sugars. This is the fastest way to reduce our waistline. Waistline fat is the most dangerous because it leaks toxins and is the primary precursor to chronic diseases.

Exercise is important but most people can’t lose weight on exercise alone. The reason is that building intensity takes time and as we build intensity in weight training or aerobics our metabolism starts compensating and reducing services to the rest of our body to conserve fat.

Fighting The Metabolism

Eliminating sugars and white flour plus drinking more water is a good start. Adding protein and eliminating carbohydrates is a good step. We want a moderate amount of fruits and vegetables and no pastries, pizza, white bread, sodas, energy drinks, or alcohol.

The first steps of discipline start yielding results. As we lose weight we then encounter the resistance of our metabolism. My goal in losing weight is to lose a half pound to a pound a day. We must weigh ourselves every morning. Genet-Recitas teaches us that if we gain a half pound or more. we ate something that was inflammatory to our system or didn’t drink enough water.

If we followed the correct regimen and didn’t lose weight, our metabolism is fighting back. Its job is to preserve life by allocating energy to the various systems that keep us functioning. In rapid weight loss, the metabolism fights back. The trick is to get sufficient nutrients, so we don’t suffer nor reduce our energy and make the metabolism work with us.

My next two steps were to engage in limiting consumption to a window called intermittent fasting. Everyone finds this effective. I created a 16-hour window by having breakfast at 8:30, lunch at noon, and dinner by 4:30. Now I have to limit the after-dinner eating because evening consumption is the worst for both weight and sugar control (if you have high blood sugar)

The next step was to add a meal replacement shake for breakfast. This extends the fasting window to 19 hours while limiting calories. Each time I added a step like intermittent fasting and then a meal replacement shake, I defeated the metabolic resistance without starving my body.

Setting New Goals

As I progressed, it became easier. I lost my food cravings. I lost driving appetite. My life did not center around food. I enjoyed being lighter and the way my clothes fit. As an active exerciser, I felt my oxygen uptake was improving. I like to bike, hike, and surf. My pop ups became easier as I got lighter.

I decided that I could easily hit 175 pounds and why not go for 168 pounds. When I started, I was 28 on the Body Mass Index, which is overweight. 30 is obese. 168 pounds for my height is 23, which is between the 18 and 24.9 for normal weight. Calculate your BMI on this calculator

I lost 25 pounds in 90 days. That was a little more than 10% of my original body weight. 168 pounds was about a 16% reduction of my body weight. When I hit 168 pounds, I though why not go for 160 pounds. The regimen was now my lifestyle. I enjoyed it and it was easy. I enjoyed the challenge of maintaining it and using it to reach a new goal. The challenge became part of my lifestyle.

I hit the 160-pound mark in 5 months. I thought this is sufficient. It was 20% reduction of my original weight. In the process, I was exercising with both aerobics and some resistance training. My favorite muscle building routines are pushups, squats, and dead lifts. These utilize the largest muscle groups in our body.

Maintaining the Lost Weight

The final challenge is maintaining the lost weight. We might have the desire to let go since we achieved our goal. The problem is we have greatly reduced our metabolic rate in the process. Any extra calories will be quickly absorbed and stored.

This is when exercise becomes more crucial. In my process of losing weight, I was also building my exercise capacity. When not teaching surf lessons in season, I have more time. I built my bike riding and hiking to longer duration. I now can bike for 3 hours and hike for 2 hours.

I like to engage most days. Not everyone has this time, but we have to fit in regular exercise to maintain our lost weight as well as stick to all the routines we utilized to get there. Now I am enjoying finding the foods that I enjoy and that help me maintain my weight. I like variety, like everyone, so I experiment with foods that will keep me energetic, support my athletic endeavors, and not add weight.

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“We found (omicron) to be markedly resistant to neutralization by serum not only from convalescent patients, but also from individuals vaccinated with one of the four widely used COVID-19 vaccines. Even serum from persons vaccinated and boosted with mRNA-based vaccines exhibited substantially diminished neutralizing activity against B.1.1.529,” the study said.

The best protection is building your own immunity. If ever there was a time for an improved healthy lifestyle, this is the year. Our body has many systems responsible for our vitality. We have the endrocrine, cardiovascular, digestive, and nervous systems to name a few.

They are supported with

healthy weight,

a nutritious diet,

regular exercise

sufficient sleep,

minimized stress, and

ample water consumption.

1. Healthy weight. Belly fat is responsible for many diseases because the fat leaks a toxic substance. It is a symptom of Metabolic Disorder which among other symptoms leads to diseases such as diabetes. Normal weight is under 25 on the Body Mass Index. It is a function of height and weight. Check yours on the BMI Calculator.
2. Nutritious Diet. Eating properly includes consuming sufficient ingredients and supplements to support bodily functions. Correct foods help the body build immunity. Toxic foods place the body on defense and reduce immune response. Get your own meal plan with help from PerfectBody.me. My clients with this link get 50% off.
3. Adequate Sleep. The body repairs during sleep and relaxes the nervous system. Many habits can support good sleep. Don’t consume caffeine late in the day. Retire from screens an hour before bedtime. Regular exercise promotes relaxation and better sleep. Meditation and yoga promote a relaxed nervous system.
4. Minimized Stress. Stress produces cortisol which can result in anxiety disorders and weight gain. A certain amount of stress may be good for productivity, but it can cross the line to compromise immunity. Compromised immunity is result of stress to any of the systems named above. Extreme stress can lead to fatal evens.
5. Ample water consumption. Our body is 65% to 70% water. Need I say more. The bodily systems including the epidermis need water. We should consume at least half our body weight in Oz of water (200-pound person drinks 100 Oz.) but try for over a 100 oz. to a gallon a day. Sufficient water consumption is a prime ingredient in weight loss.

Healthy Habits for Strong Immunity

Create a daily plan to build health. This includes meal planning. The stressful life we live often neglects a healthy approach to shopping and preparing for healthy food. We want to eat some vegetables, fruit, lean protein, nuts, and healthy fats. A Keto diet emphasizes protein and quality fats with reduced carbohydrates. We naturally should reduce sugar and white flour.

Plan to exercise. Any walk is good but try to engage in an hour a day five days a week with either low or mixed intensity aerobics. Weight resistance is important for training muscle to absorb glucose and prevent it from being shuffled off to fat stores. Weight training can be executed in the home with a push up program, floor exercises, cables, and owning a few dumbbells or barbell plates.

Trying to adapt a routine of going to sleep and waking up at the same hours helps us regulate our sleep patterns. I like to be in bed by nine because I like to wake up at 5 a.m. My body is now used to both and performs well. I prepare for sleep and get psychologically ready to end the day even though I often don’t want to.

Exercise is one of the best ways to calm the nervous system. It utilizes energy and reduces inflammations while replenishing the body with vitalizing fluids. There is a reason regular exercisers feel great after their efforts. I have now worked to two and three hour sessions on my bike and hiking and hate to miss a day. I consider it a priority, not an inconvenience keeping me from other duties.

Water is a necessity. Drinking lots of water is a bonus. It appeases hunger. It aides’ digestion. It supports weight loss. It revitalizes our skin. It prevents dehydration headaches. It helps us stay alert. It helps all our immunity systems.

There are many foods that aid immunity including garlic, onions, fresh cold wild caught fish, tumeric, kale, almonds, apples, coconut oil, and mushrooms. Reishi mushrooms maybe the most valuable immune support supplement. I have taken a 5 Reishi blend of extracted powder form supplement that makes me feel I am consuming the top supplement for immunity. Take a look at this high-quality supplement and get a discount with the link. I like it so much I promote it. You can mix it in smoothies, oatmeal, baked goods, or just drink it in water. Shown below.

Healthy living leads to optimized production, mood elevation, weight control, and health. Make it a priority and not a burden. It becomes a lifestyle.

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Weight loss and fitness building require increased discipline and will power. Both are terrific for any other goals one might have in life. We can train to achieve goals by focusing on what is important over our lazy tendencies to avoid challenge.

The extreme athlete known as the Ice Man named Wim Hoff promotes exposing ourselves to cold conditions for training and discipline. One method is taking a cold shower every morning. No one enjoys a cold shower in the morning, but the point is to start doing things we don’t necessarily want to do.

Our mind fights our desire to improve our lifestyle with weight loss and exercise. At first, we don’t want to do it. Then as we engage, we find it is not so bad. We stop suffering. We start enjoying the rewards. Soon we are passionate. This may take a while, but it happens.

How to Start Your Weight Loss and Fitness Building

The best way to become engaged for most is to start slowly. We have to bring our mind along which will want to sabotage any changes. It likes being addicted to certain foods and not getting off the couch to move. Yet once we get into our routines, we find the mind is our biggest supporter.

The trick is to start. Begin weight loss by identifying what current habits are leading to weight gain or weight loss prevention. Then slowly start correcting these behaviors. We must start avoiding sugar and white flour. They are empty calories, which in excess are distributed to fat.

People have proven to make a point, that they can lose weight eating junk food. Their trick is they are consuming fewer calories than they burn. The problem is they don’t become healthier because they are consuming toxic ingredients and not supplying the body with useful vitamins and minerals.

Start eliminating the toxic meals and replacing them with healthier choices. At the same time start moving and exercising muscles. Balanced exercise combines both aerobics and muscle resistance. Developing muscle trains our body to absorb glucose which is produced by carbohydrates. Glucose is fuel and becomes strength and stamina.

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For a more extensive list of how to begin a weight lost regimen see the Post Perfect Start for Losing Weight

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The Perfect Start to Losing Weight and Getting Fit can begin the path to long term success with weight target goals. Most people now have a target weight they would like to achieve. It is often a dream rather than a commitment.

What keeps people from starting? Past failures. Fear of suffering. Belief nothing will work. Thinking they won’t stick with a regimen. No desire to eliminate favorite addictions. No desire to exercise. Too many theories of how to do it are confusing.

All of these are realistic evaluations. It is like starting any new venture. What if business start-ups had the same perspectives? This will be tough. No one knows who we are. There are too many obstacles. What if no one buys our products or services? Too much competition.

Can you see the whole economic momentum of the global economy griding to a halt if no one could face their fears? Why won’t we face our fears in creating a new healthy lifestyle that could make life wonderful? Think about being lighter, looking great in clothes, receiving complements, feeling wonderful each morning, having more energy, engaging in more recreations, dropping medications, attracting more interest from social contacts, being a model of discipline, having high self-esteem.

Taking the Right First Steps

A long-term weight loss-get fit program has lots of moving parts. Think of a football team. With 11 players, each one has a function. The coach has to recruit and optimize the production/function of each individual. Coaches are always looking for better players to improve each function. So goes it with a long-term weight loss-get fit plan.

You start with a few steps. You increase the number of steps as you gain momentum. You keep improving your behaviors as time passes. You have patience. You have consistency. You believe you can do it. You look for support. You keep learning.

Yes. The right frame of mind is an important first step. You have to want to do it. You have to have a meaningful reason why. In a football game, one team often comes out more willing to play than the other team. It can make all the difference and why there are upsets and why the underdogs are often a great bet. You have to ask yourself, can you do it?

The second step is taking a few trial tests to see if you are committed. Why do most sale programs these days start out with trials? They want to give you the opportunity to get engaged. That is the secret. If you get engaged, the chances of you continuing when you have some success and develop some COMFORT, with the program are increased. The mind will work with comfort.

Taking the Right Second Steps

What can you begin to become engaged and comfortable? This is not saying losing weight and getting fit are going to be easy. It is saying that once you become engaged, there may be no obstacle you cannot overcome. Nothing succeeds like passion. Can you get engaged to the point it becomes a passion? Probably not until you have some success.

There are lots of moving parts in losing weight and getting fit. Like a football team that wants to build for a championship. Where do you start? Some teams say we need a good quarterback and others might say we need a good defensive end to rush the passer. A team needs everyone.

What do you need in a weight loss and fitness program? Lots of things. One easy process is to begin thinking about your eating habits. Maybe take a week just to observe what you consume, when, and why. This is huge. Without engaging in any new habits, you start evaluating what you do now.

Do you only eat when you are hungry? This is huge. Do you only eat what you like? Do you know when you are full? Do you have some sugary addictions or white flour addictions (pastries, pizza, cookies)? Are your environments loaded with bad temptations (refrigerator, panty, office, coffee shop, fast food restaurants in your path, parties, family gatherings, other people who don’t care about what they eat)? Good. You are thinking.

You have taken a good first step. At the end of a week from observing and maybe journaling (better) what you eat, you should have some realizations. Now it’s time to tackle one of the steps that could improve future performance. Like starting your team with a tackle (player position in case you don’t know football, sorry).

What are some things you could do to begin? Maybe we do one or two for the next week.

1. Drink more water. You should begin drinking at least have your body weight in water ounces (200- pound person drinks 100 oz of water). Try to drink 100 oz and then a gallon. This alone should cause weight loss.
2. No carbohydrate foods after dinner unless it is a low glycemic (low sugar content or offsetting fiber, like berries) food like blueberries.
3. Find a substitute for sugary addictions. I used to indulge in ice cream after dinner. For a cure, I ate Snickers bars instead. Not good, but it broke the ice cream craving and then I move to granola bars.
4. Start taking non fruit or vegetable carbohydrate foods out of your diet (bread, pastries, pizza, white flour cereals, white rice, desserts, sugary drinks, alcohol, packaged foods with sugar added). Start substituting with protein. Protein can be lean, and it can be plant based. Protein is filling whereas carbohydrates cause sugar spikes and then more appetite.
5. Add a few vegetables to your diet. Dark leafy greens (kale, spinach), peppers, celery, zucchini, tomatoes, broccoli, mushrooms, avocado).
6. Add a low glycemic fruit as a snack (apple, peach, plum, berries, mango).
7. Start moving. Take a short walk. Ride a bike, Go for a swim. Climb some stairs. Get on a treadmill. Go for a hike. Park farther away from store entrances.
8. Buy a digital scale and start weighing yourself every morning. Write it down.

Taking the Third Steps to Losing Weight and Getting Fit

You have now embarked on two weeks of baby steps. You are assembling your championship team. It is time to add some more steps. How tough has it been so far? Have you lost any weight? Are you comfortable with the measures you have taken? Are you happy with any of the improvements you have made? Are you ready to add some more team members for the 3rd week?

1. Progress can be easy. Go back to the second steps and start adding one at a time until you have them all. Maybe it takes a year. Hopefully, you can do it sooner. I once lost 50 pounds over 4 years. I was happy with my new habits. I became more engaged as time passed. I became more adept at following habits because my mind signed on and stopped sabotaging my efforts.
2. Start adding more exercise. Exercise falls into two main categories; muscle building and aerobics. Aerobics build muscle, but I am talking about floor exercise and weights, cables, or machines. Muscles absorb glucose which keeps carbs from going to fat. Exercise speeds up your metabolic rate so you burn calories while you sleep.
3. Eat only when you are hungry. Only eat what you like. Find low sugar snacks. Add protein. Drink lots of water. Keep moving.

At this point you should be on your way to reach your weight target goals. This should be a lifetime endeavor. You will be getting healthier every week. At the end of the year, you will have made great progress. At the end of 5-years you will be a physical specimen. You will enjoy more recreations, feeling great, looking good, wearing smaller sizes, attracting more attention and having greater self-esteem.

The point I always enjoyed was learning to have discipline meant I could point it toward any goal I wanted to achieve. Life becomes richer with more goals to work on. There is also an added bonus as you find you will become more spiritual as you make progress. You start to realize how Nature wanted you to live.

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Battling the 5 Difficulties of Losing Weight are important to achieve success. Most people only think about the need to restrict calories and they already have formed resistance.

Losing weight is difficult because the body is not predisposed to lose weight. The metabolism needs energy to make the body function and it jealously guards against calorie restriction.

Five Difficulties People Face in Losing Weight:

1. Getting Started
2. Staying Disciplined
3. Fighting Suffering
4. Patience
5. Motivating Goal

Getting started is difficult because people don’t want to deny themselves what they like. Most people have a few additions and by definition they feel they can’t live without them. There are ways to work with addictions and not everything has to be denied to lose weight.

Staying disciplined is extremely difficult as the mind wants to sabotage all efforts at the beginning. After a while, the mind signs onto the program and starts warning against violating it. Then there is the social phenomena of parties and family get togethers. Finally, too much suffering results in binging.

Gaining results without suffering is important. Trying to lose too much too fast will lead to binging and jumping ship. It is important to restrict calories in a slow but progressing manner. The body adjusts and soon cravings disappear. Then there is very little suffering.

Patience is needed to follow a plan and accept the results. Most diets work if you stick to them. As one adapts to stricter routines, stricter routines become easier. Soon the program becomes one’s lifestyle and the potential is envisioned.

Having a strong goal that is sufficiently motivating during the tough times is crucial. If our goal is a whim, we will have no commitment. Life or death is a good goal. People recovering from a disease or event might have motivation to get healthy.

Forming the Right Habits

Good practices can be habit forming. In fact, when the mind and body begin to appreciate the rewards of healthy routines, they can become addictive. Health doesn’t have downsides. Getting lean, getting strong, and aerobically fit are rewarding in themselves.

People do become addicted to living healthy. I have always tried to eat the best foods and think that I continuously progress. I have always enjoyed exercise and hate to miss a day. I like the feeling of lightness and capability. I have better self-esteem from living a healthy life.

My book The 3 Week Plan is a perfect start to lose weight and get fit. It begins the routines that can become like muscle memory in our daily patterns. We naturally start to be attracted to certain foods and have no issues avoiding the harmful ones.

I can also coach people wanting to get started and I have a partnership with PerfectBody.me to provide daily meal plans for those who have a weight target. As a Personal Trainer and Health Coach my goal is get people to be self-monitoring. At a point after following the right routines, a person no longer needs to be supervised.

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Planning Daily Meals for Weight Loss can be done a week in advance or the night before. It is good to have a commitment to calorie restriction and be psyched up to follow your plan.

Having a strong reason why you are making what you think are sacrifices is crucial to getting you through the beginning. After a while, the restrictions become easy and part of your desired lifestyle.

For most people, a good diet strategy begins with eliminating addictions to bad food choices. Number one on the list is sugar. Number two is white flour in carbohydrate meals like pizza, pasta, pastries, and desserts.

The second strategy after eliminating harmful foods is adding the right good foods. Food choices can be built around some excellent nutrient dense foods that are not harmful. Good food choices must be in the three macronutrients of Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fats. Most diets tend to favor one or two depending on your goals and preferences.

Meat eaters are urged to select lean meats like chicken or fish. Vegetarians have a wide variety of protein-based foods. Carbohydrates should be a variety of colors in fruits and vegetables and include nuts and seeds. Healthy fats help the body let go of encapsulated fat. Healthy fats can include coconut and olive oil, low fat cheese and milk, nuts and seeds, omega 3 foods and supplements, and olives to name a few.

Twelve Nutrient Dense Healthy Foods:

1. Salmon
2. Kale
3. Seaweed
4. Garlic
5. Shellfish
6. Potatoes
7. Liver
8. Sardines
9. Blue Berries
10. Egg Yolks
11. Dark Chocolate
12. Almonds

Beating the Inflammation Foods

Weight Loss is frequently based on not consuming inflammatory foods. In her book The Plan, Lyn Generet-Recitas starts dieters on three days of foods she has found to be the less inflammatory in her experience with 1000’s of clients. Then she allows the addition of one food per day to check whether it is inflammatory to you.

We are all different. Coupled with drinking at least half your body weight in water ounces (200-pound person drinks 100 oz of water), you should lose at least a half a pound a day. I tried it and it worked

Here is a list of 13 most anti-inflammatory foods:

• Berries
• Fatty Fish
• Broccoli
• Tumeric
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Dark Chocolate and Cocoa
• Tomatoes
• Cherries

You can’t plan a meal with these foods, but they can be added to meals and are good additions to any diet. Most people can eat lean meats and protein-based foods like legumes (peas, beans, and peanuts) Obviously some are allergic to peanuts and know it. Nuts, seeds, and oats have protein, carbs, and fiber. Dairy products like non-fat milk, non-sugar yogurt, and low-fat cheese are excellent in meals or snacks.

Looking at the Glycemic Indexed Foods

Low glycemic index fruits and vegetables are prime for weight loss diets, diabetics, and people with allergies.

They include;

1. Green Vegetables
2. Chickpeas
3. Raw carrots
4. Organic fruits
5. Kidney beans
6. Bran breakfast cereals
7. Avocado
8. Broccoli
9. Spinach
10. Kale
11. Yams
12. Lentils

Medium Glycemic Foods:

1. Sweet corn
2. Raw pineapples
3. Bananas
4. Raisins
5. Oat breakfast cereals
6. Rye
7. Oat bread

High Glycemic Foods:

1. White rice
2. Potatoes
3. Plaintains
4. White bread
5. Sports drinks
6. Pastries
7. Desserts
8. Sodas
9. Energy drinks
10. Packaged foods with added sugar (read the labels)

The problem with high glycemic food is they can be empty calories that are stored as fat and cause weight gain. They can also cause high blood sugar and lead to obesity. Both these conditions can lead to chronic diseases and fatal events.

Now you have a basic idea of how to begin planning meals around basic nutritious foods and what kinds of foods you should start eliminating from your diet.

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The metabolism is charged the task of keeping energy flowing to all the systems that work subconsciously. These systems include your brain, heart, and digestion. The metabolism is aware of the calories consumed, the calories burned, and how much potential energy is stored in fat.

All weight loss diets are trying to manipulate the metabolism into thinking we are not starving while slowly reducing the number of calories supplied for energy. If the energy consumed does not alarm the metabolism, it will let go of fat storage.

Exercising to Increase Negative Calorie Balance

Everyone’s body has a metabolic balance in which calories consumed and calories burned for energy are at homeostasis. The average male can consume about 2,200 calories and the energy used to by the metabolism for system functions, plus energy used for digestion plus energy burned in daily activities will be equal. Weight will not be lost or gained.

The point of diets is to reduce energy consumed. Various tricks are used to increase the metabolic rate like consuming more protein. Another trick is consuming fiber which slows the conversion of carbohydrates to sugar. Excess sugar becomes fat.

A great way to increase the metabolic energy consumption is adding calorie burn to our daily activities. Any additional activities can achieve this. A half hour walk may burn 200 calories. If that is paired with a reduction of calories consumed by 200 calories we have a negative balance increase of 400 calories. A pound is 3,500 calories. You can do the math.

Reducing calorie intake by 500 calories a day and increasing exercise to an hour a day may result in a negative calorie balance of 1,200 calories. This means in 3 days the body will lose one pound. We have to be careful of the dieter’s trap of consuming more calories because they think they have earned the right by exercising.

Working with the Metabolism When it Becomes Alarmed

Most every time a person has lost a certain amount of weight the metabolism will become alarmed that its host is short of resources and it should do its job by holding onto fat stores. This is a plateau in our weight loss progress.

In losing 40 pounds in 5 months, I had several plateaus. I lived on a calorie restricted diet. I exercised moderately with an hour most days. I consumed calories in non-dense calorie foods meaning no sweets or foods with sugar added. No white flour. No alcohol. Restricted carbohydrate consumption of fruits and vegetables and especially late in the day.

I found I had to add a few more influences. Water consumption is crucial to losing weight. A minimum is half our body weight in ounces (a 200-pound person drinks 100 oz of water a day). Water consumption accelerates weight loss. Even though the minimum for me is 80 ounces a day at my current weight, I try to consume over 100 ounces and reach for a gallon.

Eating in a window of time called intermittent fasting helps digestion consume more calories. I like a 16-hour window. I have breakfast at 8 a.m., lunch at noon and dinner at 4:30 to 5 p.m. (Doctors may warn diabetics about this practice). This practice assisted the metabolism in burning fat for fuel and releasing bad fats.

Finally, I started having meal replacement shakes. This gave me more nutrients to supplement my calorie restriction. It also extended my fasting window. If I have a meal replacement shake for breakfast, I am fasting from 5 p.m. the previous night to noon of the current day. That is 19 hours.

The most successful exercise utilized by most athletes to teach the body to burn fat for fuel is to engage in long endurance with slow speed. After 20 minutes, the body has utilized most of the carbohydrates stored in the liver, muscles and blood stream. Muscles will then seek fat for fuel.

My goal for weight loss was a half-pound to a pound a day. Utilizing all these practices I was successful and the practices even took me through the plateaus after a week or so, at times, of my metabolism adjusting to each lower weight level.

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Diets seem to argue over the percentages of macronutrients you should consume each day. They also have ideas of which foods should be included and which should be avoided. It could be very confusing if you read everything.

Macronutrients are protein, carbohydrates, and fat. None are bad if you are selecting the right source and moderate in consumption. There are some essential results from consuming each.

The Basics of the Macronutrients

The biggest controversy is over carbohydrates. They are the best of foods and the worst of foods. Carbohydrates are a sugar. Sugar is harmful to our body. Therefore, there are sources that allow sugar to be absorbed slowly and those that travel directly into the blood stream.

The ultimate problem with sugar is that an excess may over whelm the insulin hormone charged with regulating sugar. It is a receptor that allows sugar to enter the cells. It is produced by the pancreas. The pancreas will produce insulin to serve the need. An excess of sugar can cause the cells to reject insulin. At this point, the sugar is stored in the body as fat. Insulin resistance can lead to the death of beta cells in the pancreas and the need to inject insulin.

Since an excess of carbohydrates increases fat stores, it seems advantageous to eat fewer. But fruits and vegetables supply essential nutrients for energy. The carbohydrates we want to minimize are those made with white flour and have sugar added. This includes pizza, pastries, desserts, and the greatest offender, soda.

Protein is an essential for several body functions including maintaining or building muscle. It is harder to digest than other nutrients and speeds the metabolism. Weight trainers and exercisers want to eat protein for both effects. It can promote weight loss and make the body stronger.

Fat is not a villain. It is an essential fuel. The body first looks to glucose converted from carbohydrates by the liver and then will seek fat and finally muscle. Training the body to burn fat as fuel is a major weight loss strategy. Runners train the body to utilize fat because the carbohydrates burn first and then there would be no energy. The “wall” in distance running brings the runner to a stop.

Other Key Players in Weight Loss

The metabolism is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. It serves the body by allocating energy to all the functions unconsciously to us. When resources are short, it reduces services to less essential functions. Top of its list are the brain, heart, and digestion. When resources are short, it holds onto fat.

Losing weight and working with the metabolism are essential. We don’t want it to think we are starving. As we are successful in losing weight, it does slow down and make it more difficult to lose more weight. Maintaining the support of our metabolism in the process of losing weight is important. The problem after we have hit our weight target is the metabolism doesn’t quickly accelerate as we try to resume a normal diet.

Water consumption makes it easier for the digestive process to consume energy and not seek water from food. Often hunger is the body crying for water. Drinking half our body weight in oz of water each day is a minimum (200-pound person drinks 100 oz of water) Weight loss is accelerated with more water. At 160 pounds, instead of the minimum of 80 oz., I try to drink at least 100 ounces and shoot for a gallon.

Exercise is essential and can be a trap. Too often dieters think they can eat more liberally because they rationalize they have exercised. A good blend is to exercise moderately burning 500 to 1,000 calories and reduce consumption by 500 to 1,000 calories. A pound is 3,500 calories so achieving a negative calorie balance of 1,000 plus calories a day speeds up weight loss.

Calories are certainly at the heart of the matter. We want to consume calories from non-dense sources like fruits and vegetables. The bulk is filling without having high calorie counts. They also have sugar. The sugars they contain are balanced by their fibers which slow sugar absorption. Juices have high sugar and no fiber.

If someone has insulin resistance, they will gain weight from consuming more carbohydrates than the insulin can neutralize. They will hit the thresh hold much sooner than a person without insulin resistance. This person wants to consider the Keto or Atkins diets with higher protein and fat and lower on carbohydrates. Check with your doctor if you seem to have uncontrollable weight gain.

This is a lot of pieces to put together. It requires a strategy for calorie balance, water consumption, and exercise. They are all important to make diets work.

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Fighting Metabolism to Lose Weight is one of the bigger battles dieters face. The metabolism is the subconscious system that distributes energy to all the necessary functions that keep us vital.

When the metabolism senses energy sources are depleting (calories), it starts reducing services to the body. It preserves the main high energy consuming functions of digestion, heart, and brain and lowers it to luckily things like inflammation.

Negative calorie balance is necessary to lose weight. There is a fine line between reducing calories through diet and exercise and keeping the metabolism burning energy. The metabolism is responsible for 60% of our caloric burn each day.

Balancing Negative Calorie Burn and Losing Weight

The body gives up the first fat loss pounds easily from a moderate diet and a minimum amount of exercise. Then most dieters reach a plateau in which the metabolism is holding onto fat because it fears starvation.

A moderate negative calorie balance of 250 to 500 calories a day is tolerated by the metabolism because the dieter is still consuming adequately. Increasing water consumption to a minimum of half our weight in water ounces makes it easier for the body to shed fat. (A 160-pound person would consume 80 oz of water a day.)

One great way to ease the burden of the metabolism is to restrict consumption to a limited number of hours. The digestive system then has more time to process food and may use both calories and fat to operate. Consuming during an 8-hour period and resting for 16 hours is a good start.

A second great way to accelerate calorie burn and assist the metabolism is a meal replacement shake. The body is getting vital nutrients and minimum calories. Instead of having a 1,000- calorie breakfast, the shake with fruit might be 400 calories.

Breakfast is the best time to consume calories and especially carbohydrates because it may limit appetite the rest of the day and the carbohydrates will be consumed for energy. The advantage of a meal shake for breakfast is it extends the fasting period. If our last meal is at 5 p.m. and the next morning we have a shake and lunch at noon, we have a 19-hour window of no meals.

Exercise in the morning after a meal replacement shake accelerates the calorie burn and may force the body to consume fat for fuel. Followed by a protein lunch of chicken and cheese or other healthy fat like avocado and the metabolism continues to utilize fat for energy.

These three steps of calorie restriction, increased water consumption, and intermittent fasting plus exercise are a balanced way to work with the metabolism to accelerate dramatic weight loss. I used this process to lose 40 pounds in a five-month period. The process helped me fight the plateaus and consistently lose weight.

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