3 High-Fat Foods That Will Help You Get A Flat Stomach

Thursday, 26 April 2012

People are much more aware nowadays about good nutrition, and also about the pros and cons of having fat in your diet. For instance, it doesn't always follow that by eating fat, you will get fat. On the contrary, fat (in the correct proportion) is seen as an important part of a healthy diet. It's also important for things like your blood sugar level and to ensure that your hormones are in balance. But what is not so well known, is that some foods with a high level of fat content, can actually help you to get lean...

1. Healthy chocolate (that is, dark chocolate with a high level of cacao. It's also great for satisfying hunger pangs - just 2 squares (40 calories) can have the same effect as, for example, a piece of apple pie, or a slice of chocolate cake (500 calories).
Dark chocolate with a high percentage of cacao can also have a high fiber content, and the sugar content can be relatively low. A good rule of thumb is to look out for chocolate bars whose fat content is the same or higher than the carbohydrate content - those ones are the best quality (from a dieting point of view).
There is another advantage of dark chocolate - it sometimes contains theobromine, which is an antioxidant. This has been shown to help lower blood pressure, among other health benefits.
Also, dark chocolate of this variety will have very low impact on blood sugar, compared to other sweets.
You could avoid all the calories while benefiting from the antioxidants and fiber - how? By using unsweetened cocoa powder (organic) in a "smoothie" or adding it to your own recipes - but this may be a little bitter for your taste.

2. Coconuts contain healthy fats. The milk and oil are great sources of a healthy saturated fat called medium chain triglycerides (MCT). These are converted to energy by your body more readily than other types of fat and are less likely to be stored as body fat. MCTs also help to bolster your immune system because of a component called lauric acid.

3. Butter - yes, real butter that is the produce of grass-fed cows, contains healthy fat and you don't need to avoid it to lose weight. It's to be favoured way above margarine, especially the awful processed margarine that is sold today. Real butter is full of nutrition - and of course, it's delicious too!

Article Source: Ezine Articles

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How to Lose Weight - By Savouring Your Food

In this age of hustle and bustle, where we seek fast fixes for our problems, few people take the time to stop and savour, anything let alone our food.
Most food that we know we shouldn't eat is literally shoved in our mouths. Fast food seems to have to be eaten quickly. Weight loss needs to be fast and easy. But these things aren't working, so why not try a different approach.
Eating quickly doesn't give you enough feedback as to when you have had enough. It takes about 20 minutes for your satiety centre in your brain to tell you, that you have had enough.
By which time you could have eaten much more than you need to. When people feel they are craving a food they usually stuff themselves. This gives little pleasure. So why not try a different approach.
In mindfulness meditation one exercise is to hold a single sultana in your mouth for 15 minutes, and explore every aspect of it. While this is a useful exercise in itself, we don't need to be quite as intense.
What I suggest is to simply serve yourself a smaller portion than you normally would. Then just eat each mouthful slower than you normally would. But the important thing is to savour the flavour.
Notice the textures, the subtle and not so subtle flavours, and just give yourself the time to enjoy what you are eating.
If you treat food as fuel and you just fill up, like putting petrol in your car. Then the experience can be one of getting in as much as possible as quickly as possible, and then getting on with your day.
But if eating your food is a sensory experience, where you allow yourself the time to enjoy each bite, and you give a little thought to the fact that you are being nourished by this food. Then the internal physical and mental process is very different.
Physically your digestion will be grateful, rather than lumps of food in your stomach you will have a nice soft properly masticated pulp, which is much easier for the stomach acids to further digest.
Mentally, you gain more pleasure from less food and you will feel more satisfied and less likely to go back for seconds. Focussing on being nourished will make it more difficult to consume junk foods as it is quite a stretch to imagine being nourished by a hot dog or a donut.
Weight loss involves many factors, but this simple act of savouring your food is an important component of any successful ideal weight programme.
and now if you would like to know the missing key to men's weight loss Ian Newton invites you to go to http://www.nobullmensweightloss.com/

Article Source: Ezine Articles

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Fun Ways to Get in Shape and Lose Weight

I bet you don't really see exercise as fun, do you? But it is vitally important for you to enjoy the exercise that you do. It will help you to workout more regularly, burning more calories and losing weight faster.
And it can be done; you can really enjoy your workouts! How, you ask? Just pick one of these fun ways to get in shape and lose weight:

Try Zumba
Zumba is one of my favorite cardio dance classes and it's a lot of fun. You also burn a ton of calories in the process. It's a fast paced, high energy super fun class and I highly recommend that you check if your gym or health center offers classes. You won't be disappointed with Zumba!

Take up ballroom and Latin dancing
Dance like your favorite Dancing with the stars star! And after a few months of ballroom and Latin dance classes, you might end up looking like her as well. It's also a great way to spend time with your partner or to meet new people if you are single. Try a dance class today!

Play squash/racquetball or tennis
What's better than getting some fresh air and whipping a ball around? It's a great stress reliever and a great socializing opportunity. You may need to invest in some equipment, but it will be worth it when you see yourself getting fitter and losing more weight,

Walk your trusty dog
It's proven that people who own dogs are fitter than other people. And walking your trusty pet will help you to keep active while having fun. Aim to walk your dog at least 2-3 times a week; he will really appreciate it!

Join a sports club
Membership in one or more sports clubs can not only enhance your social status, but your overall health status as well. And you can meet lots of friends in the process, while nurturing your competitive side.

Plug in your Xbox or Wii
If you try to play mostly games on your gamestation which involves lots of movement, you will lose weight so much easier. And there are lots of fitness games available also which you can give a go.

Pump up your normal workouts
Updating your iPod or music player regularly with the hottest and fastest dance tunes will really make yourself push harder in gym, while also having lots of fun. Don't go to the gym without a fully loaded music player.
As you can see, you don't really have an excuse when you say you don't like exercise. These fun ways to get in shape will really help you to start enjoying exercise more so that you can lose weight easier.

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How You Can Ditch Those Yo-Yo Diets For Good

Like many other people you may be tired of going on endless diet plans and although you may lose some weight at the start it always ends up piling back on again. It's not much fun, is it? Don't worry though, you are not alone, diets don't work for around 95 percent of the people who embark on them and they fail to lose any significant amount of weight for the long-term either.

You may not be aware but the reason diets don't work is that they actually work against your metabolism (your body's engine). It's a fact your body does not like diets at all, and will do all it can to help you to fail. If that isn't bad enough, when you go 'off' your diet your body does its best to restore you to your previous weight usually with some extra as well.

The reasons why you have become and stay overweight are based in your habits, particularly in regard to nutrition and proper exercise. You may be eating the wrong types of foods, too much of them and avoiding exercise and when these things combine it is virtually impossible to remain slim and toned.
You may not even realize it but your habits are like a 'template' in your mind. Hidden patterns of thought and self-beliefs shaped over your life dictate your behaviour and drive your actions (or inaction). This template has a set procedure for "every circumstance" and it just happens automatically without you 'thinking' or 'choosing'.
If this 'mind' template has been formed with misinformation and inherited wisdom about nutrition, dieting and exercise together with some plain old self-delusion losing weight is always going to be a struggle.
Even though you may have good intentions and are fully aware of the healthy changes you need to make that old template is going to override those good intentions every time. This is the self-sabotage we see with stop/start, on/off, yo-yo diets and exercise programs and the pattern is repeated continually causing frustration and misery. Engaging in a battle with yourself can never have a happy ending.

What really needs to happen is those old templates in your inner mind programming need updating so they are a match for what you want to have happen on the 'outside' of your body. If it is a slim, fit, healthy, feel-good body that you want then you need to make some changes on the 'inside' first so you can get out of your own way and achieve it.

Take it from me, your inner mind programming can greatly influence and affect your weight and your health - both short term and long-term. The trick is to know how to make the way you think and what you believe work for you, not against you. Being 'in the know' about why things happen to you in regards to losing weight will make it easier for you to understand what you need to do to put things right.
First we need to find the obstacles and roadblocks in your inner mind and then we change them to more positive and focused thoughts and self-beliefs that will serve you better.

To sum up how it all works - it is about getting to know YOU a whole lot better and there are some simple facts you need to know about how YOU work. This better understanding gives you the control to make the healthy changes that you need to make to lose weight and more importantly KEEP IT OFF.
There is no need for you to be living in an overweight and unhappy body and there is no need for you to live a life plagued by endless diets - it does not have to be this way. Imagine what it would be like to be slim and healthy. It's a great thought, isn't it? But you can make it more than a thought - you can make it really happen and I can help you do that.

The idea that your subconscious mind may be actively blocking your conscious efforts to lose weight can be hard to swallow at first. So in addition to revealing my top 4 secrets to effective weight loss, I have included in my free report "Visualization Secrets For Weight Loss Success" a section on how mastering your subconscious mind through visualization can make all the difference to your level of weight loss success.

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Eat Well And Diet

              You may be wondering if it's possible to eat well and diet, or if the terms are compatible at all. "I need to lose weight but I don't want to constantly feel hungry" - this is a typical request made by dieters - and this is probably why people shy away from any suggestion of a diet. It seems to suggest a restriction, a denial of the food that we have become so dependent on (emotionally and otherwise).

And it's often a surprising revelation to discover that being on a diet does not necessarily mean eating substantially less, but that there is a way to lose weight while eating well (and not have the hungry, stomach-rumbling feeling).

In fact, diets that are punitive in terms of the small quantities that you are allowed to eat can be self-defeating. What do I mean by that? Well, you go on the diet and stick to the plan for those 6 weeks or months and manage to lose your target weight. But when the diet term ends, it can seem like a liberation to go back to your old eating habits. You may even have built up a sort of resentment to dieting (especially if it's a strict one) and your body starts taking back some "ground" it lost! In a situation like this, the weight that was lost could be regained in a relatively short time, so it just defeats the purpose of the diet.

But in fact you can eat well while following after your weight-loss goals. The key is to know your food and not just buy what is convenient to cook, or what you have always assumed will be ok to eat. And you should try to become familiar with the make-up of processed foods (especially since there is so much of it on supermarket shelves).

Do you need to eat so much processed food? I would say that all of us eat more of it than we should, because that is what is presented to us day by day, and we buy (and eat) many different items without knowing what they contain, or how they were processed. See if you can switch in more and more natural foods in to your diet. There is no shortage available nowadays. It may take a little longer to prepare your meal, but the results will be worth it. When I say natural foods I am including "naturally raised" meats, fresh fish, legumes, seeds, organic chicken, organic eggs, raw nuts, and the great variety of fresh fruit and vegetables that we have now.

Article Source: Ezine Articles

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