Weight Loss and Fat Loss: Big Differences By Traci D Mitchell

You can lose weigh. Anyone can. Often times, the number on the scale is the only thing we pay attention to when we try to drop a size. We eat less and exercise more, and eventually - the weight comes off. Great, right? Yes...well, sometimes.
Weight loss can happen rapidly by crash dieting, or by doing some crazy amount of cardiovascular exercise for periods of time that is probably difficult to maintain for more than a couple weeks. Maybe its a combination of both. Regardless, if you're losing more than two pounds a week, it's highly likely that you'll gain some of that weight back. More importantly, there is a good chance than you also lost some muscle

Diet Plateau: A Sign of Success?

If you started a diet in January, you are probably hitting a diet plateau right about now.  Ugh, right?!  In my 6 Weeks to a Better Body program, we address diet plateaus and how to get past them.  Here's the most important thing you need to know: diet plateaus are a sign of success, not an indication of failure.  So don't get discouraged and quit your weight loss program when you hit one.

Why Do I Hit a Diet Plateau?
If you have successfully followed a weight loss plan, you'll hit a plateau. Everyone does.  It is your body's way of fighting back to stay at your pre-diet weight.  Your metabolism acknowledges your new normal - the new eating plan and the new exercise regime - and makes adjustments to keep your weight steady.  Wear it as a badge of honor that you stuck to your plan and use it to boost your self-efficacy so that you can reach you goal.

How to Bust Through the Weight Loss Plateau
Your best strategy is to stick to your plan and hold steady through the plateau.  But there are also 10 things you can do to bust past the plateau more quickly and see greater weight loss results.  Check my list and see if any of the little things you do might be leading to a longer plateau stage.

1. Have your portion sizes increased? 
2. Are you counting calories correctly? 
3. Should you re-evaluate the number of calories you need to eat? 
4. Has your fitness level improved?
5. Are you active during the day?
6. Am I building muscle?
7. Am I eating enough protein? 
8. Should you re-evaluate your goal? 
9. Am I still motivated? 
10. Are there medical factors at play?  

 Articles by Malia Frey at :

http://weightloss.about.com/b/2013/02/05/diet-plateau-a-sign-of-success.htm
and
http://weightloss.about.com/od/DietPlateau/a/Weight-Loss-Plateau-10-Quick-Fixes-To-Get-Past-The-Hump.htm

 

Weight loss vs fat loss

When you get on that dreaded scale and see the kilos melt away, the excitement is unparalleled. Some get motivated to work even harder; Some others drop off the fitness routine, thinking 'that's enough for now'. But what about the possibility that all you might have lost was body weight, and not fat? Reduction in weight from loss in bone density and muscle tissues and not from fat, is not healthy in the long term. When a person is extremely overweight or obese, any change in lifestyle or any new exercise will result in massive weight loss, mainly from water loss and initial fat loss. But the closer you come to your ideal weight, the more careful you need to be about whether you are losing weight the right way.

How do you know whether your weight loss is from fat or not?
How you feel is a very good indicator. When you are dropping weight on the scale, but feel weak, exhausted, cranky or maybe slightly nauseous, you are probably losing more than just fat. Beware of banking too hard on this indicator though, as the euphoria of the plummeting scale may just keep you elated enough not to pay heed to any of the above symptoms. If you are losing weight through fat loss, you may see the scales remain the same but your clothes will fit better. This means that you are gaining muscle and bone density but losing fat, which is why you feel stronger, with more energy and not fatigued.

How to lose fat and not muscle?
What you eat and how you workout determines how you lose weight. Here are some dos and don'ts to help you get fit the right way.

Don't

- Starve. Instead, eat food rich in protein, complex carbs (including salads and fruits), and good fats for energy. Eating right, eating so that you are not hungry, and eating food that is nourishing is important so that you lose fat.
- Eat empty calories. Eating empty calories like biscuits or snacking on empty calories that do not satisfy you in anyway, needs conscious effort. Snack on healthy, filling snacks instead.
- Do only cardio. While cardio is important, you run the risk of losing muscle if you focus only on cardio and not on strength training. It is therefore advisable to mix up your workouts in order to get the best of both worlds. If your workout plan involves just running, swimming, or walking, it's best if you throw some yoga, and weight training into the mix too. If you're eating right, then this will be invaluable in building muscle, which in turn burns fat faster.

Do

- Sprint. Throw in some really fast sprints on your cardio days. Even once a week is more than enough. This stimulates the HGH (human growth hormone) that facilitates the growth of muscle and resultant fat burn.
- Lift heavy weights. Push yourself to do bodyweight workouts, or lift heavy weights at the gym to grow muscle, that increases your metabolism and burns fat even when you are not working out. No you will not bulk up.
- Lead an active lifestyle . Sitting at your workplace for 10 hours a day and then being a couch potato for the rest of your waking hours is the perfect recipe to hamper all your hard work. Being active outside of the gym, low levels of cardio like evening walks, helps towards your fat loss goals.

Don't worry too much if you're looking better than ever, feeling energetic and active, and the weighing scale is not budging an inch. You may be losing fat and gaining muscle, the only path to good health and weight management in the long run.
Read more Personal Health, Diet & Fitness stories on www.healthmeup.com

The Fat Loss Factor Review - Is The Fat Loss Factor a SCAM?

Losing excess fat is no walk in the park. Sadly, many fat loss programs out there give the impression that it is an easy process where you simply eliminate certain foods from your diet and the shedding starts. For the most part, such diet programs will help you lose ‘water weight’ within a short period of time and the program will seem to be work. In reality, users quickly realize that their new, often radical diet changes are unsustainable over the long haul, and they give up. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people often find themselves caught up in a vicious cycle of losing fat after dieting, then regaining the weight a few months after abandoning the diet program. One of the most important issues to acknowledge is that losing fat has no magic formula. The majority of ‘magic pills’ on the market that have no credible scientific basis to back their claims, and are merely hype. The approach used by the Fat Loss Factor is a holistic one that not only focuses on what you put into your mouth but also tackles other important aspects of your lifestyle that affect weight. Although the Fat Loss Factor program doesn’t claim to be a scientific authority per se, most of its guidelines are premised on credible scientific facts. This can’t be further from the truth given that one of the authors, Charles D.C, is a doctor while the second author, Lori Allen, is a certified nutritionist. In fact, Lori Allen was the first person to test the program herself, having battled weight issues for some years after the birth of her 3 children. The Fat Loss Factor At A Glance The Fat Loss Factor is unlike other weight loss programs in a number of ways. Firstly, the program gets off by taking users through a two-week metabolism boosting phase that entails eating natural foods only. By sticking to an all-natural diet in the first two weeks of the program, you rid your body of harmful toxins that are abundant in a typical meal laden with processed food. Fat cells are a repository for toxins in the body, so this phase is aimed at eliminating those toxins. Fruit, vegetables, coconut oil, legumes, raw seeds and nuts are some of the natural foods on the two-week cleansing diet. In addition to natural foods, users are supposed to walk for a minimum of 30 minutes daily and up to a maximum of one hour. According to Dr Charles, this program is unique in that users break down their ‘body and mind’ in the initial stages, and then spend the rest of the stages rebuilding it. This helps them to completely overhaul their lifestyles without being too drastic. More than 200,000 people from 107 countries around the world are claimed to have been helped with this program. The second phase is the ‘master cleanse’ and lasts anywhere from 3 to 10 days. Like the two-week cleansing phase, the master cleanse phase is aimed at ridding your vital organs of toxins as well as building a healthy blood stream. In this phase, there are instructions for flushing out impurities from the digestive tract by using herbal laxative tea and the saltwater flush preparation. However, before you get carried away with the cleansing routines, the Fat Loss Factor is not all about flushing impurities out of the body. It is a guide for a complete healthier lifestyle that emphasizes natural foods and smaller meals with a lot of physical activity. Admittedly, many users will not find what they expected because whatever is taught in this guide requires patience and consistence. As stated by the author, the program requires high levels of mental strength to go through with. People looking for quick fixes will certainly be disappointed. The good thing is that there are dozens of recipes provided, along with a list of groceries and cooking guidelines to make the shopping and cooking easier. There’s a list of 15 foods that achieve maximum weight loss and another list of 17 foods that guarantee weight gain. But most importantly, the Fat Los Factor shows you how to eat the foods you love without and still manage to lose weight. You don’t have to ‘cheat’ just to eat your favorite foods. After the master cleanse phase, next comes the crucial exercise phase. There is the ‘dreaded cardio’ routine and the weight training exercises that each achieves different goals. The special cardio routines are efficient at ‘blasting’ the fat away and have enough balance that makes it easier to perform regularly. The high intensity interval training (HIIT) routines are aimed at sculpting muscle mass so that you achieve a defined physique. However, the focus of these routines is to speed up the fat burning process rather than to build muscle mass. What you’ll particularly appreciate about this program is that throughout the eBook guide, there are sections dedicated to useful tips in every chapter. Tips range in topic, from how the body uses food to stress and weight gain, among other topics. The author repeatedly makes reference to scientific studies and research that relates to a particular topic, thus giving the material more credibility. Offering The program is available only in digital format as a downloadable eBook. You will hardly find a user of this intuitive fat loss program that doesn’t recommend it. Its ratings average at approximately 9 out of 10 points going by reviews of leading weight loss experts and fitness websites. It is a complete lifestyle solution that not only focuses on weight loss, but also on the overall lifestyle of the user.

The 10 Best Weight-Loss Tips Ever

Dieting sucks and never seems to work long-term anyway. These easy habits will slim you down.

Losing pounds doesn't have to be torture (we're looking at you, cayenne-pepper cleanse). Adopt at least three of these behaviors — they're simple to integrate into your day-to-day routine, and all are enthusiastically backed by nutritionists — and you'll be thinner and healthier in days. (Plus, the weight will stay off.)

1. SNACK, BUT SMARTLY
Grazing between meals used to be on the weight-loss hit list. But nutritionists now know that it's better to satisfy a craving with healthy grub than ignore it and risk a junk-food binge later. The best picks are filling, protein-packed snacks, such as one stick of string cheese, a tablespoon of peanut butter on a piece of fruit, or a medium-size bowl of edamame.

2. TURN OFF THE TV
Dining while viewing can make you take in 40 percent more calories than usual, reports a new study. And texting, driving, or any other distracting activity during a meal can also result in your eating too much. Instead, make each meal something you put on a plate and sit down to, even if you're eating solo.

3. STEP ON THE SCALE DAILY
If your regular weight increases several days in a row, it's a red flag letting you know you need to cut back a little or beef up your workouts slightly.

4. SCULPT THREE TIMES A WEEK
Doing 5 minutes each of push-ups, lunges, and squats (in 30-second intervals) will help build and maintain muscle mass. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism will be, so you'll torch more calories as you go about your day.

5. REACH FOR YOUR CELL
Next time your mind gets stuck on a certain food, call a friend and redirect your brain by asking how her day's going. Research shows that cravings only last about 5 minutes, so by the time you hang up, the urge to devour junk will have subsided.

6. EAT A BIG, BALANCED BREAKFAST
An a.m. meal made up mostly of carbs and protein with some fat keeps blood-sugar levels steady and hunger pangs away so you're not susceptible to pigging out come lunch, studies show. Opt for something satisfying for your stomach and taste buds — like egg whites and turkey bacon with whole-wheat toast.

7. WATCH THE BOOZE
One innocent-looking margarita or cosmopolitan can rack up hundreds of calories that do nothing to quench your appetite. Treat yourself just on the weekends and cut back somewhere else or stick to a glass of wine, light beer, or vodka and soda — three drinks that each have about 100 calories per serving.

8. HAVE FRUIT TWICE A DAY
Fruit has no fat and is mostly water, so it'll fill you up while leaving less room on your plate (and in your stomach) for high-cal fare. Don't freak about fruit's carb count — we're talking the good kind of carbohydrates that contain lots of healthy fiber.
 
9. STAY ASLEEP LONGER
Getting to bed just 30 minutes earlier and waking up 30 minutes later than you normally do can help you make better food choices, researchers report. Also, when you're well-rested, you're less prone to snacking out of fatigue or stress.

10. VISUALIZE YOURSELF THIN
When you feel your willpower breaking, conjure up a mental picture of yourself when you looked and felt slim. The visual motivation keeps you focused on your goal weight and reminds you that it is attainable, since you've achieved it before.

Read more: 10 Best Diet Tips - Tips to Lose Weight - Cosmopolitan

Scientific Tips to Lose Weight

Ever heard of Masala Bhangra?

Masala Bhangra is the latest cardio workout to hit the scene. For those of you who have never heard of it, you may want to watch the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Essentially, it is a workout based on the Bollywood dances we have all grown to love so much. It can help you burn around 420 calories per hour