Personal improvement doesn’t end when you finish school, land that perfect job or find the love of your life. You can continue to improve your physical life, your mental life and your emotional life as long as you live. Every one of those improvements will benefit you and, quite often, the world around you. Just how rewarding is personal improvement? [Read more]
Understanding Realistic Weight Loss Goals
If your weight loss goal is unrealistic, you won’t be able to achieve it. Chances are, you could become demoralized and even backslide by putting on more weight.
Realistic goals are those that you can achieve, provided you take the right action and have the right expectations. As long as your goal is realistic and you are working toward it, you will see progress. Noticing your progress will keep you motivated.
Frequently, unrealistic weight loss goals do not take into account how long it takes to lose weight. Expecting to lose 10 pounds in a week is not realistic because most people can lose no more than 2 pounds a week, for instance.
Another example of a fitness goal that isn’t realistic is reaching a particular goal weight, such as 150 pounds. Numeric weight loss goals tend to be vague. To make a vague goal into a realistic goal, think about how you will get there and how long it will take, based on the 2 pounds per week figure. Consider what steps you will take to encourage weight loss, then commit to a plan of action. [Read more]
Everyday life is a series of daily habits. Most people will acquire at least a few bad habits along the way that they would rather not own. Rather than focus on what is wrong in life and trying to eliminate it, it makes more sense to take a proactive approach and build on the positive and good changes you can incorporate into your life, ultimately crowding out the harmful elements. [Read more]
A diet of junk food and ultra-processed food increases the amount of visceral fat deep in your abdominal cavity. What you drink matters too. One small change you can make to decrease your body’s fat burden is to change the type of beverages you drink. Let’s look at three types of beverages to avoid, and two you should drink if you have too much visceral fat. [Read more]
Gardening has long been considered a fun, fulfilling hobby. A nice-looking garden can even be profitable if it improves a home’s value. What gets less attention is the fact that gardening can be good for the gardener’s health. Its benefits are even more important given the focus in recent years on lifestyle diseases like diabetes and depression, both of which can result from being sedentary. It turns out that spending time planting outdoors is a good idea for many reasons. [Read more]
Cutting calories isn’t easy but if you want to lose weight, you need to eat at a caloric deficit each day. It may be hard to change your eating habits but there are plenty of small changes you can make to the meals you eat at home in order to lower your caloric intake. If you aren’t sure how to lessen the calories in the meals you cook, heed the following tips. [Read more]
For many people who pay attention to their eating habits and overall healthy style of living, the major focus is often on the quantity of food being consumed in the never ending quest to achieve or maintain an ideal weight. Even those concerned with the quality of the nutrients in their diet often pay more attention to the highly publicized and well-known nutrients like calcium, protein and fiber. These are important concerns, but there are some lesser-known nutrients that should not be overlooked, as they are vital to overall health. [Read more]
The key to getting rid of unwanted abdominal fat is understanding what causes it. After menopause, your body stores excess energy around your midsection rather than your hips and thighs. This is partly due to hormone changes, which make it harder for you to burn fat and more likely to store it around your waist. Lifestyle also plays a role in the higher propensity to store fat midline. Let’s look at what causes belly fat to become more of a problem after menopause. [Read more]
It’s no secret that exercise is good for your health. But if you’ve never found the motivation to get up and move, it can feel impossible to start loving exercise in a meaningful way. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to make exercise a natural part of your life! Here are a few simple strategies that will help you fall in love with exercise. [Read more]
It is often said that humans are creatures of habit. If you look at the behavior patterns of most people, you will see a lot of truth to this claim. Some habits are repetitive behaviors that are stumbled upon by accident and slowly become a way of life. Other habits come about as deliberate choices made to change or influence life forever. [Read more]