Category : Article
So the Chinese have had green tea now for around 4,000 years. They’re keen with herbs and stuff, and they stick with green tea’s ability to help you lose weight. Case in point: the Japanese. Their society is literally addicted to green tea, with local demand pushing the local supply of high-grade green tea to the limit. And if you notice, it’s rare to find overweight Japanese. And they attest it all to their insatiable thirst for green tea.
So here’s the question: are green tea weight loss diets plausible?
The quick answer to that question is a resounding yes! Whether through drinking green tea or through dietary supplements, green tea weight loss diets revolve around the time-tested reliability of green tea to help in weight reduction.
Green tea weight loss: The Scientific Studies
The Study:
There is this physiologist, William Rumpler, who’s currently investigating the effects of green tea on the energy expenditure and fat oxidation of the body when exposed to green tea. In English, that means your body’s generation of energy for you to work and the tendency to burn up fat for fuel. Both are ways for you to lose weight.
The only weight-reducing component that they’ve identified in green tea is the caffeine. However, when they had other subjects consume caffeinated water instead of full-strength green tea, they experienced some strange results. Not surprisingly, the subjects who took full-strength green tea had significantly greater energy expenditure and fat oxidation levels in their body.
The Implications:
All they could do is attribute the weight-loss effects of green tea to confounding variables. Simply put, this means that they don’t know what the heck it is in green tea that helps people lose weight. The only thing the scientists are sure about is that it helps you lose weight. More studies in this field will probably isolate what makes you lose weight when you drink green tea.
But no matter what research will yield, they’ve already proven the fact that green tea weight loss diets work. And that’s what really counts.
The Bonuses:
Other related studies about green tea indicate that not only will you lose weight, but you’ll also have a healthier life in the process: antioxidants help clean up the damaging free radicals that float around in your body, your intestinal track is less likely to absorb excess cholesterol, and your risk to get cancer is significantly lowered.
What more could you ask from green tea weight loss diets? You get what you want and even more, all for just drinking a couple of cups a day!
The Wrap-up
Green tea weight loss diets not only help you lose weight, but you’re losing it naturally and healthily. There’s no need to take in chemical poisons to lose weight; no need to undergo surgical procedures that’ll cost a small fortune and create a scar on your body. All you need is a healthy lifestyle complemented by a green tea weight loss diet, and you’re sure to go down the road to a slim and healthy future.
Mull about it over a cup of green tea.
Obesity is having too much body fat. The body consists of water, protein, fat, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins, bones, and muscle. When the body has too much fat you have a much higher risk of developing heart disease as well as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and stroke.
Obesity increases the risks of heart disease since it raises the levels of cholesterol, lowers the good cholesterol, raises the blood pressure, and can cause diabetes. Even if a person does not have the any of the mentioned medical problems, obesity does highly increase the risks for heart disease. It is the major cause of gallbladder disease and harms the heart and the blood vessels as well as degenerative joint disease.
Obesity is caused generally by consuming more calories than used in physical activity or other daily activities. When too many calories or too much saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol is consumed, the levels of cholesterol in the blood rises increase the risks of heart disease.
To determine if a person is obese a test called body mass index or BMI is used to calculate the obesity factor. This type of test is widely used and even though it does not take into consideration the amount of muscle a person has, it is pretty accurate to determine the health levels of a person and their general amounts of body fat.
A standard measure, if a person is obese, is if the waistline in a woman is more than 35 inches and in a man is more than 40 inches, they are considered high risk for being obese.
Using the BMI to calculate the fat of the body use the following example:
Weight 150 pounds
Height 5’9″ = 69 inches
Divide the weight in pounds by the height in inches squared (69*69 = 4761) equals .0315 multiplied by 703 equals 22.14 BMI rate. The 22.14 is in the healthy range for body mass.
The BMI ranges for the body are 18.5 or less is considered underweight, 18.6 to 24.9 is considered healthy, 25.0 to 29.5 is considered overweight, and 30.0 or more is considered obese with 40.0 being considered extreme obesity.
To help prevent obesity eat a healthy diet of fresh fruits and vegetables with whole grains, less fat from meats such as fish, chicken and lean beef, and nuts. The foods with fewer fats will help with the risks of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis, and obesity.
Add an exercise regime to your life style. Take up walking for thirty minutes every other day to get some physical activity in your life. Walk instead of driving places, including at work, when you usually take the elevator take the stairs instead.
Posted in Article on April 26, 2012
One of the most often quoted misconceptions when it comes to dieting is that you somehow need special foods to go about doing this. The food companies have taken this idea and blown it out to epic proportions, one only needs to go to any grocery store in the country to see aisles and aisles of specialty “diet products” which all claim to help the eater lose weight faster as compared to those who are eating regular food.
The truth of the matter is that this is about as far from the truth as you can get. If you’re looking to be healthy but don’t have the money to shell out for all of these high priced diet foods, you’re not incapable of losing weight. The fact of the matter is that if you choose to live healthy it’s a lifestyle, not a diet. Eating diet foods may help people lose weight, but unless those people choose to camp out in the diet aisle for the rest of their lives, the moment they start eating “normal food” again the weight will come back on and they will be stuck in an endless yo-yo procession.
The real secret to losing weight is to make reasonable changes in your lifestyle that you can maintain for a long period of time. If you can’t afford specialty “diet foods” or simply have no interest in consuming them regularly for the rest of your life, you’d do well to avoid them. Where you’d eat diet foods, instead start eating fresh fruits and vegetables, and try to stay far away from processed foods of any kind.
Not only are diet foods expensive, in many ways they may be more detrimental to your health than you realize. More and more nutritionists are speaking out against dietary additives like artificial sweeteners, saying that at the end of the day they are both bad for your body and relatively ineffective when it comes to losing weight. A better strategy is to slowly wean yourself away from sweet foods in general, rather than simply getting addicted to artificial means of sweetening products. In addition, there have been some studies that suggest that eating artificial sweeteners could be harmful to your health. These studies have not as yet been substantiated, but the fact that their harmful capabilities are in question should discourage most consumers from eating them.
Essentially, even those who are not on a budget should avoid diet foods. Instead, learn how to enjoy real foods, and you can save both money and inches on your waistline!
Posted in Article on April 24, 2012
Obesity is a rising metabolic disorder that affects the entire world. Obesity is closely related to heart disease and other health issues. It is the condition based on the body mass index (BMI), calculating the fat ratio from a formula using the height and weight of the individuals.
The formula is weight in pounds divided by the height in inches squared divided by 703. The total of that calculation then is used against the chart to determine if the individual is underweight (18.5 or lower), healthy weight (18.5 ñ 24.9), overweight (25 ñ 29), or obese (30 +).
Obesity and coronary heart disease are closely related based on clinical studies. Obese people tend to have a higher risk of heart disease due to their other health related factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol. The one contributing factor with heart disease is directly connected to the high cholesterol, which also has issues with clogging of the arteries; increasing the risks of heart disease in every individual, but is extremely higher in obese people.
People with high risks of heart disease; generally have other health issues that once were thought to contribute to the disease. Yet in recent studies it has been discovered those that are obese have a higher risk of heart disease; even without the other factors. Obesity causes heart disease since the obese person is not as active as the healthy weight individual is. The amounts of exercise play a role in heart disease.
Other contributing factors include the diet of the individual. Obese individuals tend to have a high caloric and carbohydrate diet, which blocks the blood vessels and can lead to heart muscle damage.
When the individuals limit their amounts of fat, sodium and starch, which are turned into fat when not burned up by the body with physical activity and exercise, the individuals can reduce their weight and risks of heart disease. Learning to eat a healthy diet will help with the levels of risks, while not completely removing the risks, if damage to the vessels and heart muscles has previously occurred; prior to the weight loss.
Medication is available for heart disease to help with the complications. Other methods are extensive such as surgery for heart bypass and heart transplants in extreme cases.
The fact of learning to take care of the heart and blood vessels, prior to any damage, is the most important factor, many need to realize. As once the damage is done to the cardio system, it is not possible to repair the damage; short of surgery and transplants.
Several methods are available to reduce the risks of heart disease including eating a healthy diet, avoid smoking, add a daily exercise regimen to the life style, and avoiding stress when possible.
Posted in Article on April 23, 2012
Obesity is defined as having too much body fat. The body consists of water, fat, protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. When there is too much fat, you are at higher risks for health problems such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.
When you are obese, you magnify your risk for heart disease. When there is excess body fat it raises your cholesterol and triglyceride levels. It raises your blood pressure and can lead to diabetes. In some cases for people with diabetes, they have doubled their risks for a major heart attack or stroke.
Obesity is caused by having more calories consumed, than are burned with physical activity, whether from daily activity or exercise. When there is a great deal of calories consumed, with too much saturated fat and cholesterol, the levels of cholesterol in the blood rises. This increases the risks for heart disease.
Determine If You Are Obese:
Body fat is measured by waist circumference and by body mass index. The high-risk waistline is more than 35 inches for women and more than 40 inches for men.
The body mass index assesses the body weight in comparison to the height. It is a method to measure the body’s composition in correlation to the body fat. It is calculated by taking the body weight in pounds divided by the height in inches squared then multiplying it by 703.
The National Center for Health Statistics has the following levels for mass body index calculations:
18.5 is considered underweight.
18.5 – 24.9 is considered healthy.
25.0 to 29.9 is considered overweight. This is generally 10% over the ideal body weight.
30.0 or greater is considered obese.
Extreme obesity is defined as a body mass index of 40 or greater.
Here are some suggestions to reduce or prevent obesity:
1. Add physical activity to your daily routine. Adults need to have at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity three or four times a week. Children need to have at least 60 minutes the same amount of times a week.
2. Reduce time watching television or sedentary activities including time on the computer or playing video games.
3. Create opportunities for physical activity at work as well as home.
4. Promote healthier choices of food serving five to nine servings of fruit and vegetables every day.
5. Reduce the portions of the food consumed. Avoid “supersized” meals and value meals with larger portions.
Taking steps to avoid or reduce the chances of obesity has many benefits for everyone. The fact of living a healthy longer life is incentive to work on the weight issues leading to heart disease and other health related issues. Americans have the highest rate in the world for heart disease based on the amounts of people that are overweight.
