Juicing for Weight Loss – What is the Reality?

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I run a juicing blog with my wife and one of the questions that we often get from subscribers and visitors is about juicing and weight loss. Since many of us are trying to shift excess weight we are often asked “will juicing for weight loss work for me?”. My reply is always that I don’t recommend it, which surprises people because so many juicing websites advocate it. So then, why am I different in this respect, and why do I think differently.

Extremes

Don’t get me wrong, there are people who have lost weight with a juicing program, this is why the documentary “Fat Sick and Nearly Dead” is so popular these days. My concern is using extreme measures to lose weight, such as radical changes and especially diets that are very low-calorie. The evidence is that extreme and fast weight loss almost always results in putting the weight back on. There are a few exceptions of course, but this is only for those that actually understand that lifestyle changes are the bottom line factor and not taking extremes.

Long-term healthy weight loss maintenance requires adopting a lifestyle that you can maintain for the rest of your life. Yo-yo dieting is ultimately not a healthy approach, and juicing for weight loss can fall into the extreme category for dieting if not done correctly.

Extreme Low-calorie

Drinking 3 to 5 juices a day in place of solid meals will provide around 350 to 1000 calories per day, depending on what juices you make. Fruits are higher in calories than vegetables generally speaking. While starchy vegetables, such as carrots and potatoes are more energy dense than leafy green vegetables. Regardless of what is juiced, the end result is that the amount of calories consumed per day is extremely low and hard to maintain. The better approach, in my opinion, is to eat 3 solid meals a day and use juice as a snack in-between meals. This way you can still drop you daily calorie intake a few 100 calories below your daily needs and lose weight less dramatically and still enjoy all the health benefits that juicing provides. Add some moderate exercise to the picture and you are developing a lifestyle that is healthy and maintainable.

The Sugar Factor

Another issue with juice only diets is the effect on blood sugar levels – it is not good! Fruit juices in particular are very sugary, and since juice contains very little fiber of the original whole fruit, this makes things worse. Fiber slows the rate at which sugar is absorbed from the gut into the blood stream, it is nature’s way of balancing blood sugar. Without the fiber the sugar in fruit juice creates a rapid rise in blood sugar levels. This leads to the inevitable drop in sugar levels, known as the crash. This leads to hunger pangs, concentration lapses and irritability – not a hormonal or psychological situation that you want to be in when trying to shed weight!

Vegetable juice on the other hand contains much less sugar, especially juice made with green vegetables. Green juice is low in sugar and calories and so loaded with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that they put multi-nutrient supplements to shame. Used as snack between meals, vegetable juice is the perfect addition to a healthy weight loss plan.

The Verdict

“Juicing is an excellent addition to a healthy weight loss plan, providing many nutrients that bring health and wellness to body and mind and help boost metabolism. However, juicing is not the weight loss plan in itself”. I created that statement to really sum-up my view about juicing for weight loss. As a website owner who has promoted juicing for many years, I am a true believer in the health-power of fresh juice; but in terms of juicing and weight loss I don’t think a “juice only” diet is necessarily the best way to go.

Author: Darren Haynes runs JuicerRecipesNow.com with his wife veronica. They blog extensively about juicing, providing free recipes and information about the health benefits of juicing. They also help clear up a lot of misinformation on this topic.

About Hypnosis for Weight Loss

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Weight control continues to be a struggle for thousands of people, especially in the United States. Considering the fact that over 60% of our children are obese, and that morbid obesity is something that plagues the adult population it is safe to assume that weight loss is a problem we all have to look at in our society.

Our world is loaded with junk, low quality foods that offer no nutritional value, from convenience foods, to super sized value packs at McDonalds, fried Twinkies at the State Fair and add to that our hectic schedules, immense stress and our sedentary lifestyles and we have the perfect storm of overweight people.

Getting heavy is always so easy, but losing the weight is much harder. Many people mistakenly look for quick fast fixes, and magic miracle diets without really realizing that old habits need to evolve into a new way of thinking about eating, our own health, healthy cooking, nutrition and exercise.  Without a permanent lifestyle shift, long term permanent weight loss is impossible,  and people will continue to yo yo diet, losing and gaining and looking for the next great diet plan to come along.

How Hypnosis For Weight Loss Works

Hypnosis is a very successful method for improving an individuals lifestyle and ultimately becoming healthy and fit. One of the biggest misconceptions about hypnosis is that it’s brainwashing or somehow dangerous, and nothing can be further from the truth. In reality, hypnosis is just a tool that allows the patient to let in a new reality that can then help take charge of the weight loss quest.  The process of hypnosis is a very open one, and you will get to consult with a professional hypnotherapist where you can explore all the issues that you are dealing with.

The therapist will then guide you to a relaxed state where your inner most deepest needs, wants and thoughts can come to the surface of your consciousness. The hypnotherapist will assist you to conquer negative thoughts and adopt a much more positive attitude about your body, yourself and losing weight.

Visualization can really do wonders when it comes to bringing real results. In fact, any diet will fail if the dieter does not believe that they deserve to look and feel good, they will just sabotage themselves over the over again. Hypnosis for weight loss can eradicate negative thoughts, stress and allow a light to shine on the road to health. It is an awesome tool to stabilize and enhance the mind set that is so necessary for long term and permanent weight loss success.

Medical Opinions

While some may still think it cooky, hypnosis is a widely recognized weight loss tool that has plenty of empirical and scientific research behind it. Actually, a lot of doctors as well as respected healthcare establishments are employing hypnotherapists as a part of practice to assist their patients with addictions like smoking and weight loss.

Research has demonstrated that hypnosis to lose weight can provide individuals the extra motivation that they so desperately need and that adding it to a healthy weight loss and exercise regimen provides for much higher success rates than dieting alone.

A newly released research study demonstrated that individuals that used hypnosis for 20 weeks were able to lose about 20 pounds. And, it should be noted that this 20 pound loss occurred with any type of special diet plan or exercise regimen, it was simply a mental evolution of the thought process. And those results are impressive, since that weight loss occurred without diet and exercise and once you add a healthy eating plan and workouts  the sky is the limit.

What Happens In A Hypnosis Session

Basically what happens in a hypnosis session is the lights are dimmed, a relaxing environment is set and the therapist will take you through a visualization process, usually this is based on personal issues and individual needs. Sometimes it is imagining yourself in a healthy state, or with a great body at the beach in a bikini, or maybe the ability to say no to unhealthy foods, like junk foods. The possibilities are endless and will vary from patient to patient. But, the goal is always the same to bring a new kind of reality to the conscious mind.

Conclusion

If you are sick of yo yo diets, and want to get off the roller coaster then look into hypnosis it can be a new beginning to a better you.

The Importance of Daily Stress Relief for Good Health

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There are still a lot of misconceptions surrounding the problem of stress in daily life. Some people think it’s just a mental or emotional situation that they have to work through. But stress can also have implications on your physical health as it impacts your entire body. In other words, it’s not always just about the way you feel. When left unmanaged, a person with high stress levels can experience fatigue, have trouble focusing, and experience sleepless nights. It can contribute to heart problems and high blood pressure that can become quite severe. If you don’t manage to find a healthy way to relieve stress, it can impact every facet of your life.

You arent alone – it’s important to remember that feeling stress is not a weakness. A lot of people try to power through the situation without acknowledging the way they feel. It’s scary to admit that you might have more on your plate that you can handle, but a lot of people are going through the exact same thing. Denying stress is not a proper way to deal with it. Instead, acknowledge it head-on and find a healthy way to give yourself a break from time to time.

Emotional stress – sometimes we don’t acknowledge how much pressure we put on ourselves. There is pressure on an individual basis with personal goals and job obligations. There is also societal pressure that can be just as powerful. It’s important to be able to take a step back and get a fresh perspective on things every once in a while. Acknowledge your strengths and praise yourself for what you’ve accomplished so far.

Physical stress – people are working long hours these days just to make ends meet. This results in a tremendous amount of physical stress in the form of sleepless nights or long days spent at work. If you are emotionally stressed as well, it can also impact you physically, and the combination can be quite overwhelming. Remember, you perform at your best when you’re healthy, so you should make your own health a main priority.

Taking it Easy – it’s vital that you give your mind and body a break from daily stress. This involves different relaxation activities, and you probably have your own preferences. Just make sure that you actually take time off when you’re not at work. It’s important to give yourself time when you’re not thinking about all of the things that are leading to anxiety and stress. Treat yourself every once in a while with a trip to the spa or buying a personal massager for home use. Another great way to keep occupied while benefiting your health in relieving stress is to exercise more.

Staying Social – other people in our lives are therefore reason. They help to form support systems and they can be a wonderful resource for relieving stress. Even having a simple conversation and talking about your problems can be a tremendous way to take off a lot of the pressure. So make sure that you keep your social connections strong, and don’t isolate yourself even if there is a temptation to do so. You might feel like keeping your stress problems hidden from people around you, but you might be surprised at how much they are willing to help if you talk to them.

The Kettlebell vs Dumbell Showdown

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Time and time again, fitness buffs have argued about different exercise equipments and which ones can best guarantee a perfectly toned body.  When it comes to lifting weights, the debate always boils down to kettlebells vs dumbells.  While most people know what a dumbell is, there are many who haven’t even heard of a kettlebell.

 What Exactly Are Kettlebells?

It is quite understandable that many are not familiar with kettlebells.  They were first used in Russia over three hundred years ago and that explains why some people call them Russian kettlebells.  They first came about as an instrument for weighing grains, specifically, as a counterweight.  They were never considered as sports equipments or  fitness tools and lifting them was only considered as a form of amusement when there was nothing better to do.   In fact, their popularity in sports and fitness dates back only to the 1940’s, when kettlebell lifting became the national sport of Russia.  To date, they are still fondly referred to as Russian kettlebells.  This is probably owing to the fact that, for the longest time, they were not widely available anywhere else in the world.  While Russia had kettlebells, the rest of the world only had dumbells.

How Do They Differ From Dumbells?

Unlike dumbells which have disks or balls of equal weight attached to each end of the bar, a kettlebell has a single ball attached to the bottom of a handle.  Even at first glance, one would know that dumbells are clearly for lifting while kettlebells are for both lifting and swinging.  While both are great tools for exercising, it is quite obvious that they serve different purposes.  Dumbells are excellent for strength training and for toning specific parts of the body.  Everyone has seen how effective they are especially in toning biceps and triceps.  Kettlebells, on the other hand, combine strength training and cardio exercises in every swing.  With proper training and instruction, they have been proven to increase flexibility and endurance.  These are probably the reasons why many people feel that they are getting more from kettlebells than from dumbells.

 Are Kettlebells Better Than Dumbells?

Those who want to focus on strength training alone may opt to have dumbells, especially those who don’t care for cardio and flexibility exercises.   There are also those who prefer to do cardio exercises and strength training separately.  Also, a lot of people merely want to tone specific muscles.  All these can be best achieved by using dumbells alone.    On the other hand, those who want to have a complete workout in 20 to 30 minutes will obviously prefer work with kettlebells.  This option is also ideal for those who can’t spare a lot of time to exercise.  Kettlebells also are a lot more diverse, giving many different types of workouts that can target pretty much all of your muscles.  It’s clear that the long-standing debate on kettlebells vs dumbells can never really be resolved in favor of one versus the other.  In the end, the answer depends on a person’s needs and what he wants to achieve.

Here’s a video of some exercises you can do with the kettlebell.

How to Avoid Mid-Night Cravings

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After a large workout, I tend to be extremely hungry. The brain is thinking that it should reward itself for exercising, and I’m telling myself that I don’t need to eat.  However, late at night, hungry pains start to occur and all I can think about is eating a 2-piece combo from Popeye’s chicken.  So, how can I stop these cravings?

The first thing to do is actually eat something.  I’m not saying mid-night snacking is advocated, but right after my workout, it’s OK to eat something.  However, the important thing is, the foods that I eat should be filling and healthy.  Also, if you really can’t stop yourself from eating late at night, then try to make it something with low carbs, such as chicken breast.  When I have cravings at night, I will usually grab a handful of chicken breast that I’ve previously cooked earlier in the day.  I will then finish it off with a large bottle of water, and this is what usually satiates me until the morning.

P90X Update – Day 2

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Yesterday, I did the plyometrics workout with a side of jump roping. However, I don’t know how long my body can last doing these rigorous exercises.

Also, I’m worried about my diet because every time I exercise, I eat something unhealthy. On another note, has anyone seen the new Nike Fuelband? It works on a gyroscope and gives you points for moving around during the day. If you fulfill your point quota, the band will emit a green light. The band starts out in red and wil gradually increase during the day. I think it’s a bit gimmicky, but I’m sure it does help some people move around more because the band is a constant reminder that you’re not moving enough.   Maybe I should buy one?

I’m Trying the P90X Plus Workout

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So I started the P90X Plus videos and did the Cardio Interval training. The workout was pretty intense and left my quads burning. I really enjoyed the workout, but I hope I can stick with it for a while. This isn’t an internet diet but it does compliment my other internet diets that I am working on. Did you know that you can virtually get all your workout and diet plans off of Youtube?

Information You Must Know About Low Carb Food Diets

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Low carb foods are mentioned in almost all the diets that are popular today. These foods are characterized by their low contents of carbohydrates. List of low carb foods can be created, and foods having excess starch usually get the lowest ranks, and are to be avoided. These foods will include various types of cereals and breads, which are made from white flour and rice that is processed. Various types of fresh vegetables and fruits will be placed at the top of the list. Leafy green vegetables are supposed to be the healthiest foods, as they contain hardly any trace of carbohydrates.

Different types of meats are also included in a low carb foods list. Red meat varieties should be chosen that have the least fat in them. If you were looking for low carb foods among meats, then poultry or fowl would be good choices. The best choices would be chicken and turkey, as they are widely available and leaner compared to duck. When you include poultry and meat into your diet it is advisable to cut down on additives that are usually used in the form of condiments. Dishes can be seasoned with various types of vegetables and herbs, like scallions or onions that are fresh.

Many people reduce their carbohydrate intake, because they want to lose weight. Carbs are a source of fuel for the body, and when they are not burnt, they accumulate as deposits of fat. When you opt for low carbs in your diet, your metabolism is forced to use up the existing fat deposits as fuel. If you are interested in a healthy diet, then it is necessary to reduce the intake of fats and carbohydrates. You will also benefit from reading the labels on food products available commercially, and select items with lesser carbs.