How can I improve my endurance for running?

I am terrible at running, so much worse than most people my age (15). I used to be okay at it, but now, I have difficulty breathing after a lap around the track. I am planning to try out for my school’s soccer team in about two months and plus, I have gym in the second semester which is also in about two months; I’d love to improve my running before then. Can anyone give me any advice? Thanks. :]

Raw Food Diet: the Co-relation With Love and Consciousness

Everybody knows that Mum's home-cooked meals taste better. Why? Besides the fresher ingredients, the care for hygienic measures, there is an ingredient called "love".

"Love" is an intangible and yet unmistakable ingredient which is lacking in all our commercially available food products.

There is a whole world of difference between eating commercially processed foods produced by machines, and raw organic produces cultivated with care and love for Earth.

We all know that due to commercialization and profit-maximization, the quality of produces have deteriorated tremendously.

Right at the bottom of the food chain, we have the corn industry, which feeds the cattle industry. With the inflated Big Buck Brother Oil, how many farmers can choose to feed their cattle with high quality organic corn?

There had been news of farmers whom, in their efforts to shorten growth processes, resorted to unspeakable farming methods.

Not only did this accumulate negative vibration in the animals, but also bring forth hygienic concerns.

The dairy industry, which uses products from the cattle industry (and therefore inherits all the associated factors) is another huge interest today.

Eating clean, organic foods is similar to eating Mum's cooking. These produces are cultivated without harsh chemicals, taking care of Earth and basically – "love".

"Love" for both the environment, and the crops itself. It has been long known that plants are alive and they resonate to human contact. Plants flourish with Tender Loving Care.

In organic farming, more effort and care are required – mainly because man had done some pretty bad damages to the ground over the years.

Only the true crop farmer will know that our ground is no longer like what it used to be. It has become harder for crops to flourish.

All organic farmers know the pain of losing crops due to soil infertility, pests invasion and natural calamities.

Organic farmers want their crops to live! Every organic farmer wishes for its crops to live and flourish, so much so that it seems almost like a silent prayer.

So how does raw and living foods fit into this?

Making use of only clean, unprocessed organic ingredients, raw vegans concoct all kinds of gourmet dishes.

In their attempts to "beat" conventional processed food laden with additives and all the harmful stuffs, they put extra heart into planning the details for flavors, textures, colors and presentations.

Having loved ones, friends and family to enjoy the food together is priceless. Nothing rewards the raw vegan chef more than appreciating looks of satisfaction on their eaters' faces!

Lots and lots of "love" are put into designing raw food. It's like an art, and who knows, maybe this could be a subject in college after 10 years!

Minus the negative vibrations, additives and preservatives, add in "life" from freshness and "love" from Consciousness, we have a "Super-Food"!

Have you had the chance to eat 1 raw meal today yet? Let me know if you did, so we can start jumping in joy

Part 1. Where the Spirit Leads: Bobbi Gibb, First Woman to Run the Boston Marathon

Athletic Association as the pre-sanctioned era womens winner in 1966, 1967, and 1968. Copyright 2008 Bobbi Gibb. All rights reserved. … “Bobbi Gibb” “Roberta Gibb” “Roberta Louise Gibb” Gibb “Boston Marathon” “Where the Spirit Leads” “To Boston with Love” “gender barrier” “first woman” “women’s winner” “women’s winners” “marathon woman” “spirit of the marathon” “women’s rights” “women’s movement” “feminist movement” “long distance runner” “long distance running” feminism feminist feminists …

How much is the effect of alcohol on my fitness level?

I am an athlete and I play pro basketball at my local club. I also am an occasional jogger and love to play other sports as well. But occasionally I go out on weekends and consume alot of alcohol. Im talking about beer, rum, tequila, vodka, and many other kinds! I dont get to the state of getting drunk, because I usually stop when I feel like Im getting there. I know that alcohol cant be good in any form, but I just would like to know what kind of damage are we talking about here? I have an almost perfect fitness level according to recent tests, but I wasnt consuming much alcohol then as well.

Now Im planning to take a vacation and I KNOW that ill be drinking alot, therfore I would like to know what are the given consequences if any with regards to my fitness level.

Thanks for the input.

How do I become a certified yoga instructor?

I am interested in becoming a yoga instructor, specifically for prenatal and mommy and me yoga (also known as Itsy Bitsy Yoga in some places). I used to do yoga all the time and I am now getting back into it and my love for it keeps growing. I know it will take a long time, and I am starting by taking regular Hatha Yoga classes, I just want to know the steps I will need to take, and any tips from anyone who has been there.

How To Lose Belly Fat

 

• Spare Tire
• Love Handles
• Muffin Top
• Pot Belly

All somewhat comical terms for belly fat. Most people don’t like having that extra flab around their midsections, but we tend to just put up with it. There is much conflicting advice out there, and besides, we’ve failed in the past so there’s no guarantee we’ll succeed anyway.

Take heart, there is a truly effective strategy to lose belly fat, but you may have to loosen up some old preconceptions. Please note that in this article I am specifically talking about fat loss as opposed to overall weight loss (fat, muscle & water).

How To Lose Belly Fat – The Guide

The strategy involves both diet and exercise – nothing new there. However, it entails 2 unique ways of going about it.

The Diet – Become a Fat-Burner

Low-carbohydrate nutrition is the most-effective way of shedding pounds of fat from the body.

Why?

Basically, the body burns energy in the following order:

1. Carbohydrate (from food and stored glycogen)
2. Fat (from food and bodyfat)
3. Protein (from food and muscle tissue)

If you eat what most government guidelines recommend you eat, you are a carb-burner. It then becomes obvious that in order to become a fat-burner, you should remove the current primary energy source i.e. carbohydrate.

When you do this, your body takes a few days to flip a ‘metabolic switch’ and become a fat-burning machine. At that point, the fat you eat gets consumed first, and then you start burning away bodyfat as your primary source of energy. Obviously, you don’t therefore consume copious amounts of fat, and you don’t need to go zero carb to benefit. Anything under 100 grams of carbs a day is considered ‘low-carb’, but ideally under 60 grams would produce great results.

On low-fat diets (which by nature are high-carb diets), when your ‘food calories’ are gone, the body will burn a mixture of both fat and muscle tissue (protein). As muscle is ‘metabolically active’ — it burns calories all day long just by being there — losing it is a disaster for the dieter. Their metabolism will continually slow down over time.

This is one of the main reasons why low-fat diets very often produce temporary results: you lose weight for a while, but then it stops working (as your metabolism has crashed) and you pile it back on – and then some!

The Exercise

Loads and loads of cardio, right? Wrong.

Overdoing cardiovascular exercise will also put your body in a state where it breaks down lean muscle tissue (catabolism). So the question is, how do we complement our fat-burning nutritional strategy with fat-burning exercise.

It’s called ‘Interval Training’, or more specifically ‘High Intensity Interval Training’. The idea is to perform some sort of cardio in ‘fits and starts’ i.e. a period of lower intensity followed by a period of higher intensity.

Why?

Research shows that this type of work burns more fat than steady-state cardio, typically by about 50%. In fact, one study showed a 9 fold increase in fat loss for HIIT compared to low-medium intensity cardio.

Also, with respect to belly fat in particular, research has shown (though the reason is not clear at this time) that HIIT can produce more fat loss in this area than other parts of the body. An Australian study found that the HIIT group lost 3 times more fat and significantly more belly fat than the steady-state cardio group who actually exercised for twice as long!

The even better news is that HIIT need only be performed for 10-20 minutes at a time.

Hopefully you can see that these unique approaches to diet and nutrition will work synergistically to produce truly effective fat-loss:

1. Get your body to burn fat for energy.
2. Then add exercise that will utilize the most fat possible.

There’s obviously more to talk about on this topic, but a single post doesn’t permit me to get into it all. I hope you enjoyed it and if nothing else, you feel inspired to find any weight-loss program that you feel you can work with to bring permanent results.

10 Unconventional Diet Tips: How to lose 50 pounds in three months

 

The following are 10 unconventional weight loss tips that worked for me. Between January 4, 2006 and March 31, 2006 I lost fifty pounds. These tips work well because almost every tip is focused around completing a small goal. In my opinion, to stay motivated and lose a significant amount of weight, you should complete many goals in a short period of time. The reason I call these tips unconventional is that I had not seen a majority of them before starting my diet

.

I will start by recognizing the typical “calories in, calories out” schpeil. Yes, to lose weight you have to eat well and exercise. But there is much more to it than that, and I don’t want to spend time regurgitating ideas you’ve heard before. That brings me to the first point:

Buy a digital scale
This seems easy enough. I recommend that before starting a diet, buy a scale that is accurate to .2 (two-hundredths of a pound). I will explain why below. I also recommend either buying a scale that can record your daily weight, or manually logging your weight everyday. I bought a scale that was accurate to .2 and logged my weight at Sam’s Club for $22. It has been a great investment.

Weigh yourself everyday
You’ll find that almost every other dieter will tell you to weigh yourself only once a week. I recommend the exact opposite. I am very goal oriented and I like to see results everyday. The reason I recommend buying a scale that is accurate to the .2 is that there is a very big difference between weighting 170.8 one day and 170.0 the next day. Losing .8 pounds in one day is excellent. However, if your scale is not accurate enough to report the loss and still shows 170 after a day of healthy eating and working out, you will feel extremely discouraged. A more detailed scale makes it easier to keep a positive outlook. The more successes (days with positive weight loss) the easier it is.

Drink 8 glasses of water everyday
This one is obvious and broadly recommended, however, the reason I recommend it is slightly different. Drinking eight glasses of water per day helps you “feel less hungry.” I can’t prove this scientifically, however, when I am at work, I drink 4 cups in the morning and 4 cups in the evening. On the days that I don’t drink the water, I feel hungrier, earlier. Also, on the days I don’t drink water I feel sleepier, sooner. Don’t feel intimidated by trying to drink 8 glasses of water. Try doing what I do: I have a pint glass I keep at work, it holds sixteen ounces (as all pint glasses do). All I do is drink two pints of water in the morning and two in the afternoon.

Make your diet public
Tell people you’re on a diet. There’s no reason to be ashamed to be on a diet. I found that trying to keep my diet a secret was harder than just telling people. In fact, telling your coworkers, girlfriend, family, etc. will increase your accountability. It motivated me knowing that my coworkers and family knew that I was dieting because I did not want to fail. I also chose a typical “fat picture” and put it on my fridge, in my cubicle, and on my wall. I wanted to have a continual reminder to lose the weight. I know it’s a cliche, but it was important for me to remind myself of my ultimate goal.

I feel I should also note that although I was 50 pounds over weight, when I told people I was on a diet they often said “you don’t need to diet.” I found this surprising because I was obviously overweight. Beware that you will likely hear similar comments. I found it easier to just accept the “compliment” than to try to justify my diet to them. Remember that you are on a diet for you, and that you do not need to justify yourself.

Don’t diet on the weekends
This is another unconventional bit of advice. I was able to lose 50 pounds without dieting on the weekends. I found myself tired, depressed, and unmotivated if I tried to continue my diet into the weekend. I felt that Friday and Saturday (my weekend) was a time to celebrate 5 days of dieting. You may not find this necessary, especially in the first few weeks of a diet. However, as many weeks passed, the weekend became a time for me to celebrate my weekly successes and get myself mentally prepared for another five days of dieting. I considered it a mental recharge.

Don’t sacrifice your life for your diet
On occasion, you will find yourself unable to eat healthy. Whether this is because of lunches with your team at work, birthdays, or special occasions, there will be events that you just can’t (or don’t want to) eat healthy. A diet will feel overwhelming if you have to sacrifice special events in your life. The way I combated this was to exchange a day that I was not going to diet on the weekend. In other words, if I didn’t diet on Tuesday, for example, I would diet on Saturday, instead.

Make the small changes
This is a pretty common tip, however, I have a twist to it. Rather than giving up what most diets say you should give up (soda, coffee, beer, caffeine, etc.) just make healthier decisions. I didn’t want to give anything up, so I decided to make some changes instead. The first switch I made was switching to diet soda. Don’t worry, you’ll quickly get used to the flavor. Before I started my diet, I swore I would never drink diet soda. Now thanks to my girlfriend, diet is the only soda I drink. The second switch I made was to drinking black coffee. Cut out the sugar and creme, and you get the benefits of coffee (caffeine) without the calories. The last major switch I made was to “healthy” beer. I’m a Miller Lite drinker, however, by temporarily switching to Beck’s Premier Light (60 calories per serving) I was able to still enjoy a healthy social life while maintaining my diet.

In addition to making the small changes in your diet, make the small changes in your life: park further away, walk to the end of the train platform and get in the last car, and vow not to take an elevator for an entire week. I also found it advantageous to wear a pedometer and try to compete against myself for how far I could walk in a single day. The furthest I walked in a day was 6.5 miles. I voluntarily walked to work twice a week.

Gain perspective by understanding the fractions
Your diet is an incredibly small fraction of your life. If you live for 80 years, and dieted for four months, that would only be .42% of your life. That’s right, if you diet for four months, it will be less than one half of one percent of your life. On the other hand think of the major benefits you can get from .42% of your life. If it helps you stay motivated, count down the days starting at 120.

Rationalize your workouts
Finding the time to get to the gym can be very difficult. However a 1/2 hour workout is only 2% of your day (assuming 24 hour days). For me, the most motivating thought was comparing my workouts to sitcoms. As a huge Everybody Loves Raymond fan, every time I would sit down to watch an episode, I would remind myself that in the 1/2 hour that I was sitting and doing nothing, I could complete my daily workout.

You’ve lost the weight, what now?

Have a red flag weight
Once you’ve lost the weight, you need to keep it off. This is where the red flag comes in. You need to pick a weight and vow to never get heavier than it again. It is normal for your body to fluctuate five to ten pounds. I recommend picking a weight that is ten pounds heavier than what you “normally” weigh and never weigh more than it again.  Setting a red flag weight allowed me to keep off every pound for over 1 year.

Lastly, for the curious out there…I followed the Weight Watchers diet. I did not pay for the diet, nor did I go to meetings. I found out all the information about the diet on-line. The first place to look is at their patent.

All well known diets are available via Google Patent Search.  For the several months that I was dieting, I also gave up red meat and made sure to drink a lot of milk.  The preceding tips worked perfectly for me and they will work for you, too. Prior to creating my own diet plan, I tried to diet several times and failed every time. I swear by these weight loss tips.  What do you think of them? Do you have a tip that didn’t make my list?  Let us know in the comments.  I will be glad to answer any questions or defend any point.

Dr. Atkins Diet

 

Phase 1:

14-Day "Maximum fat-Burning" Dr. Atkins Approved Ketone-Inducing Foods

The first 14 days of the Dr. Atkins New Personalized "Weight Loss For Life" System is a corrective diet to counterbalance your unbalanced metabolism.

 

During the first 14 days you will

1. Switch your body from a carbohydrate-burning to a fat-burning metabolism!

2. Stabilize your blood sugar (and stop associated symptoms like fatigue, mood swings, brain fog, and weak spells).

3. Stop your cravings through not eating those "addictive" foods.

4. Break addictive eating habits to chocolate, wheat or corn derivatives, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, grain gluten, and other "allergic" or "addictive" foods.

5. Feel your metabolic advantage for yourself.

6. Be amazed by how much fat you can burn off while still eating the foods you love.

The induction diet and 14-Day "Maximum Fat-Burning" foods will also help serve you as part of your long-term Dr. Atkins diet program. If at any time you have broken your Dr. Atkins diet program, for any reason, you will simply return to the "Maximum Fat-Burning" phase for a quick "jump start" to your long-term health program.

The Rules of the "Maximum Fat-Burning" phase / 14-Day Rapid Fat Loss Foods:

1. 20 Grams of Carbs a day is your limit. With this intake of carbs, you can go into ketosis and begin burning your fat!

2. Eat until you are full, not stuffed. When you are not hungry, eat nothing or a small protein snack.

3. Stay only with approved foods. This is essential to your success! Don’t cheat with just a little sugar or chocolate, or any of the other "addictive" foods.

4. Stick with pure proteins, pure fats (butter, olive oil, mayonnaise, etc.), and combinations of protein and fat. No protein and carbs or fat and carbs!

5. Use a carbohydrate gram counter to make certain what the carb content is of the foods you are eating.

Breakfast Ideas

1. Ham, cheese and mushroom omelet

2. Bacon and scrambled eggs

3. Smoked fish with cream cheese

4. Poached eggs and trout

5. Salmon omelet

6. Fried eggs and sausage

7. Soft-boiled eggs with bacon

8. Deviled eggs with sardines

9. Shrimp omelet

10. Scrambled eggs with ham

11. Crabmeat omelet

12. Fried eggs with bacon

13. Medium-boiled eggs with sausages

Lunch Ideas

1. Chef salad with hard-boiled eggs

2. Bacon cheeseburger (no bun)

3. Half a chicken with salad

4. Sole with bed of greens

5. Tuna salad with bacon

6. Chicken salad with radicchio and arugula

7. Turkey breast with cucumber salad

8. Hamburger (no bun)

9. Chefs salad with sliced duck, chicken and turkey

10. Seafood salad on Romaine

11. Stir-fry with beef, celery, mushrooms and peppers

12. Lobster salad

13. Cottage cheese with tuna

Dinner Ideas

1. Rack of lamb

2. Poached salmon

3. Roast chicken

4. Filet mignon

5. Lobster tails

6. Seafood skewers

7. Lamb shish kabob

8. Shrimp cocktail

9. Steamed mussels

10. Roast beef

11. Grilled Tuna

12. Pork tenderloin

13. Venison burgers

How do you lose a fat belly and lovehandles?