Category: Weight Loss

Physical fitness and overall well being is achieved when you exercise and eat balanced meals every single day. If you made the decision to make a complete lifestyle change to become healthier, it is imperative that you know how long you should be exercising.

Before you begin training, determine what your goals are. Working out is not just a decision you create on a whim. You have to plan it out, create a strategy and set goals. Building this framework will help you go through the expected challenges and succeed through the difficulties.

My Goal Is To Lose Weight

The health risks from obesity or being fat and overweight are not a secret. By simply carrying more body fat than normal, you already put yourself at risk of many weight-related health problems.

Weight loss is not an easy task. In fact, this is perhaps one of the most difficult goals when trying to become fit. If you truly want to lower down the numbers on your scale, you must not let your body settle on cardio exercises alone.

Strength training or muscle building is also vital in shedding those extra pounds. And when you throw in varying levels of difficulty through interval training, you keep your body in constant flux.

It is recommended by health experts that you exercise three to five days a week. For beginners, it is advised that you only aim for three days and one rest-day in between. This schedule helps you build your stamina and strength while losing weight without the worries of possible injuries or burnout.

When you start to feel more comfortable with your training, you can gradually increase the intensity and the number of days from three to five days a week.

My Goal Is To Build Muscle Mass

Once you feel more confident about exercising, you can now move on to strength training to build your muscle mass.

Many experts recommend that weight training or any resistance exercise should not be performed everyday. For every effort you exert, you actually create small tears in your muscle fibers. These micro-injuries need to recover and it would take approximately 24 to 48 hours for your muscles to completely heal and repair themselves.

If you are still at the beginning of your fitness routine, make sure to start at a lower intensity. Space out your weight training to give your fatigued muscles the chance to recuperate and fully recover. This will allow them to grow bigger and stronger.

Strength training should last for 45 minutes to an hour. Make sure that you incorporate this form of exercise 3 times a week, every other day. As muscles need time to build and grow, avoid targeting the same muscle groups for two sessions in a row.

Always remember to stretch out your muscles before and after for best results.

My Goal Is To Maintain A Healthy Weight And An Active Lifestyle

If you have achieved your fitness goal, the American Heart Association recommends 75 minutes of high-impact exercises and 150 minutes of moderate-impact exercises weekly to stay healthy.

Though it does not seem to be much, following this recommendation can already benefit you by reducing your cholesterol, normalize blood sugar levels, improve cardiovascular health, lessen the risk of chronic inflammation and elate your mood.

No matter what your age is, finding a routine that works for you is an easier way to stick to a healthy lifestyle. The trick in achieving top physical fitness is sticking to the routine you have created until you hit your goal.

Do not worry too much if you get side tracked. Falling behind is part of the process. Just stay focused and be conscious with your eating habits, sleeping patterns and exercise program. It will be difficult at the beginning, but soon enough, every activity will come to you as a breeze.

Have you heard of the plant Coleus forskohli? If you’ve lived in Asia, you have probably heard of its medicinal properties. This plant has been used traditionally to alleviate and treat certain conditions. A few examples are asthma, psoriasis, eczema, hypertension, angina or chest pains, and congestive heart failure. Due to its history, Forskolin has become a subject of interest for research in in-vitro and animals. There are also existing clinical studies on humans.

Allergies and Asthma

If you are highly allergic, or asthmatic, you probably know that the drugs in asthma can inhibit the enzyme called phosphodiesterase. This enzyme is responsible of breaking down cAMP . To simplify it, your body simply needs more cAMP for you to feel better. Forskolin has the ability to increase cAMP directly.

Unlike other drugs which contain so many mixtures, Forskolin can be used alone. This helps you increase your ability to fight off allergies and reduce the incidence of asthmatic episodes. Most people who have severe allergies and asthma take forskolin supplements together with their phosphodiesterase-inhibiting drugs.

There are many studies that prove that forskolin is a smooth-muscle relaxer. This is why it is a great bronchodilator for those who have trouble breathing because it decreases resistance in your airways. Forskolin is great for pulmonary function. It is also antispasmodic therefore is relieves intestinal colic, painful urination and uterine cramps.

Cardiovascular Effects

People who are prone to heart diseases suffer from hypertension, chest pains and light headedness. Treating these conditions is among the many benefits of taking forskolin. One of the basic actions that forskolin does to our heart is it lowers our blood pressure, at the same time, increasing the heart’s contractility.

This is due to the ability of forskolin to elevate cAMP levels thereby relaxing the arteries and increasing the force of contraction. There was even a study of 7 patients with a very serious condition called dilated cardiomyopathy. After consistent forskolin administrations, the patients’ left ventricular function and overall cardio performance dramatically improved.

Psoriasis

Many people in the US suffer from a skin condition called psoriasis. Psoriasis is caused when there is a rapid rate of skin cell division – about 1000x faster than the normal rate. This rapid rate of cell division is due to the relative decrease of cAMP therby disrupting the homeostasis of cAMP-cGMP enzyme.

Forskolin acts on it by normalizing the ratio of cAMP/cGMP. Although there are many treatments for psoriasis, you may consider forskolin and evening primrose oil in your skin regimen to treat this skin disease.

Weight Loss

In order to lose weight, you must facilitate lipolysis (the process of breaking down fats) in your body. It’s undeniable that exercise is the best way to do it, but not everybody can exercise like other people can.

Anyone can get a little bit of boost in order to lose unwanted weight, and using forskolin is one. A study conducted in Penn State University College of Medicine found that obese individuals have lower cAMP production. These findings were based on in vitro studies these researchers conducted.

In fact, this study was taken into action through a clinical studies conducted to 6 overweight women. These women were tasked to drink 2 250mg capsules of forskolin per day for 2 months. This experiment showed that the women lost an average of 10 pounds! Aside from the weight loss, their body fat percentage have significantly decreased to 8%. During the trial, their blood pressures were also monitored and they were lower throughout the duration of the study. Based on these results, forskolin is considered safe to use in losing body fat.

Weight gain during breast cancer treatment is often minimized by physicians and caregivers. What are some extra pounds in the face of cancer?

Yet it is very real and this suffering is added to what you already get from the disease and its treatments. Women, already confronted with loss of hair, eyelashes, nails, fatigue, nausea … must in addition all too often face the extra burden of more pounds, and it is so difficult to bear. And these pounds tend to settle down, long after care is over.

On the other hand, it is known that patients with a high body mass index (BMI) have an increased risk of breast cancer and that overweightness and obesity are associated with poorer prognosis. On average, women take between 2 and 4 kg during the treatment, but some have a much higher weight gain and others do not grow fat at all. Unfortunately we are not all equal regarding the kilos.

But why do we gain?

Anxiety and even depression lead to a change in our eating habits. As we know, eating sometimes gives the impression of being able to better manage the stress.

In the same way, the forced immobility due to stopping work and the physical inactivity are not favorable to the maintenance of a correct weight. Stay at home, turn around and then nibbling makes its appearance much more than when we were stuck at an office.

Treatments by themselves, chemotherapy and hormone therapy can make you gain weight. These are recognized side effects of the products. For hormone therapy, it seems that it is more frequent under tamoxifen.

Cortisone, often administered to compensate for the nausea induced by certain chemo, is also responsible for a few kilos.

Finally menopause which can occur after chemotherapy or hormone therapy can make gain weight.

So what to do?

Unfortunately no miracle can happen without a little effort. If during heavy treatments it is difficult to imagine dieting, it is possible, and even advisable to control your weight, once medical care has been completed.

It is said to women in full treatment: please, enduring the side effects is quite hard enough not to impose additional constraints: one is made sufficient violence for in addition, to have to deprive oneself. This advice is binding only to some women and some doctors advocate monitoring your weight from the start.

On the other hand, after, and even under hormone therapy, it is possible to try to lose weight, but without falling into excesses. Indeed, no question of using a hyper protein diet, like the Ducan diet, or a dissociated diet. Healthy eating, consuming fruits and vegetables, lowering intake of sugars and fats, avoiding snacking between meals, seem to me to be basic principles and easier to put into practice.

Ideally, if you can, and if you have difficulty in reasoning, it is best to consult a nutritionist who will help to evaluate the flaws in our diet and explain how to prepare perfectly balanced meals. There are even consultations in some hospitals. But in all cases one should not be too hasty: the body has been subjected to a severe test, our psychological state is not necessarily at the top immediately after treatment, and life does not immediately become the one it used to be before. To allow time, to take care of oneself are an integral part of the process of regaining our body which we lacked.

Of course, it is necessary to start some sport again, because as we all know, activity helps to regulate our weight. It is even recommended to do it during the treatment, but it is not always easy, but some patients are actively doing some sport.

There is no question of running a marathon or getting on with weightlifting; On the other hand, yoga, qi qong, walking … are easily accessible once a normal life is resumed. The fear of lymphedema should not be an obstacle to this resumption of physical activity.

You just have to be reasonable and do not put your arm to too much effort. If there is a feeling of pain, heaviness, simple embarrassment, you have to stop right away and change to something more in tune with your current fitness and strength level.

Of course we all know how difficult it is to diet. In the same way there are often a lot of excuses for not doing sports. To take your time, to be helped, not to hesitate to consider the weight loss as a treatment in its own right are ways to spare both your health and your psychological balance.