From Fat to fit: How to Reduce your Body Weight

You are overweight for the most simple of reasons -- because you're eating the wrong foods, the wrong types of calories per meal, and you're also eating meals in the wrong patterns each day.


While no one should judge themselves by the number on their weighing scales, it's a fact that we all do. Those who tell you they are happy being overweight are only fooling themselves. Self-consciousness, embarrassment, feeling out of control, these are not the feelings of a happy person. These are the feelings of someone who feels hopeless and helpless when it comes to their weight.

Many make the complaint, “I have big bones.” “I’m naturally a fat person.” “I’m too old for that now”

But the truth is: “you’ll do it if you had to, if your life depends on it”.

To illustrate:

The Chilean mining accident occurred on August 5, 2010, when part of a gold mine collapsed, leaving 33 men trapped deep below ground. Several methods were proposed to rescue them and most were rejected for their impracticability until one workable plan was discovered.
A news report described the rescue plan—"the main focus is a machine that bores straight down to 688m and creates a chimney-type duct that could be used to haul the miners out one by one in a rescue basket.

The New York Times reported that the "miners will have to aid their own escape, how? well, The diameter of the rescue borehole was 66 cm (26 inches), meaning each miner had to have a waistline of no more than 90 cm (35 inches) to escape.

They had to slim down! They had to lose weight to fit into the narrow capsule. It’s a matter of “reduce your bulk and live or stay fat and get left behind and die”.

Well, they did reduce their weight and on October 13, 2010, all 33 miners were successfully brought up to the surface and rescued!

So, you now understand what I meant by “you’ll do it if you had to, if your life depends on it”.     
Many have reduced their weight, changed their looks, and are living happier, healthier lives. See some pictures below:

Exercise for mental and physical well being

What Amount of Exercise Burns 1 Pound of Fat?

To burn sufficient calories to lose one pound of body fat, you might:

• Briskly walk a total of 35 miles;
• Swim moderately fast for 6 hours
• Dance for 12 hours;
• Play about 12.5 hours of golf, carrying your own clubs;
• Jog for about 29 miles.

At the same time, you would need to monitor your eating habits to ensure that you are not increasing your calorie-intake in line with your increased exercise!

Be Patient When Trying to Burn Fat by Exercise

As you can see, it takes time and considerable physical effort to achieve any kind of rapid fat-loss by exercise alone. So if you want to burn off your last pockets of fat by increased fitness training, give yourself enough time and don't jump onto your bathroom scales more often than once a month. Also, be aware that muscle is denser (heavier mass) than fat. So while you may look leaner, your weight may show only a slight reduction.

Exercising Without Stretching Can Increase Bulk

Paradoxically, even though some exercise routines (e.g. abdominal exercises) produce a leaner look; other types of exercise (lower-body training) can make you look bulkier, especially around the thighs. To prevent this, make sure you start and finish your fitness workout with at least 5 minutes of stretching exercises to elongate the muscles worked.

Exercise Doesn't Turn Fat into Muscle

One popular misconception is that you can convert fat into muscle by exercising. Unfortunately, this is not possible. Exercise can burn enough calories to force the body to burn fat, but it cannot turn fat into muscle. However, certain types of exercise (e.g. abdominal exercises) can strengthen muscles in an area of excess fat (e.g. stomach) and give the appearance of a leaner shape.

The key to weight loss is fewer calories and more exercise. A diet high in raw food provides fewer, low-density calories, and higher-fiber, more-filling foods.


Overeating or eating too fast
Healthy people burn more calories. They also eat less because they are more active and feel better about themselves. They don't need food as a security blanket. We overeat far too much of the wrong kinds of food.   Increase the percentage of raw food in diet. Eat natural unprocessed food. Overeating taxes the body, stores fat, creates excessive mucus. Eat slowly and enjoy.  Chew food well to assist digestion. Feed the body, starve the cravings, and don’t feed depression.  

Reducing weight through fasting

How to do proper fasting
Here is a method of doing one day fasts: taking no food and (if your body is strong) no water in a period from the sunrise of one day to the sunrise of the next day.Successful fasting has three stages: preparation, the actual fast, and breaking the fast. Each one of these stages is important.

Preparation

If you are not prepared both mentally and physically you will find it difficult to go one day without food. The mental preparation is simple, but very important. The night before the fast you have to take a firm determination that tomorrow you are going to fast, that you are not going to eat any food. If you fix your mind in advance then you will not start deliberating during the fasting day whether you should continue or not to continue. If you are undecided or waffling you can always find a hundred reasons why you should start eating.Physical preparation is also important. The day before you fast you should eat a normal amount of food and take a good amount of liquids (especially if you are going to be fasting without taking any liquids). If you miss some meals on the day before fasting, then you may start feeling hungry during the fasting period. If you do not take enough liquids, especially during the night before the fast, then you will feel uncomfortable when you are fasting.If you are physically and mentally prepared you will not feel very hungry while you are fasting. Once you decide to fast, your hunger just "shuts off" for the fasting period. This sounds hard to believe, but if you do it a few times you will see that it is true.

The actual fasting day

It is best to do light physical tasks and concentrate more on intellectual and spiritual work during the fasting period. It is not a good idea to spend your time thinking about what you are going to eat tomorrow! If you have prepared yourself properly this shouldn't be a problem and you can use the time that you gain by not eating to do some constructive things that you normally don't get time to do. 

Breaking the Fast

One of the benefits of fasting is that it helps to eliminate toxins from the body. However, you can only get this benefit if you break your fast correctly. On the morning following the fasting day, take two glasses of lemon water. Put the juice of have of a lemon in one glass and add a bit of salt. (The drink should taste both lemony and salty). After some time, you can eat your breakfast. The lemon water will help you to flush your digestive system with a strong bowel movement and many toxins will be eliminated.One day fasts like this can be done twice a month. This kind of fasting will give rest to your digestive organs, help eliminate toxins, build your will power and strength of mind. On top of this, the overall reduction in calories that you get from going two days without food each month, will definitely be one of the elements of a balanced and sustainable weight loss program.


You can do it!
Make today the start of the best day of the rest day of your life!

Get better, get stronger!

Do you love cartoons? I love cartoons, I watch cartoon, I draw cartoons. In fact I would have been a cartoonist. I remember, while I was growing up, (and those in my age group will know this) in primary 1, we use chalk and slate, my Mum will give me one white chalk and maybe 2 colour chalks/day to write in school. After writing my ABC, I’ll wipe it off and use all my chalk to draw to the extent that I’ll have no chalk left to write other assignments and also I wouldn’t want to wipe off what I’ve drawn on the slate which wouldn’t go down well with my teacher (we call her Mummy). Before that time, when I’ve not started school, I use to draw in sand with sticks, while playing with friends. Later, when we started using notebooks, pencils and biro (pen), I would fill my notebooks with drawings of Superman, Spiderman, Ironman, Voltron and all other Super heroes. My Mum would chastise me “Dare, face your studies, don’t draw.” You know, our parents then just didn’t know how important it is to allow children follow their natural inclination.

Well back to my question, you see there is this cartoon or animated children movie called “The Incredibles.” In the film, the Hero, Bob – Mr. Incredible, had to battle this robot called – Omnidroid, created by his archenemy, the super villain named Syndrome. Of course, Mr. Incredible destroyed the robot, but the interesting this about the robot is that it is a learning robot, it learns from its defeats and gets better. So Omnidroid 2 was more difficult to fight, though he managed to also destroy it. And Omnidroid 3 totally knocks out Mr. Incredible.

Now you’ll wonder, “he is talking about cartoons, I thought this site is suppose to be about physical fitness.” Well, the point I’m trying to make is that our muscle is like that robot. It love challenges, it gets better and stronger to handle tougher and tougher challenges.The first day I started to jog, I plan to run down to the end of my street, couldn’t make it to the middle! Then today, I tried it again, and I made it to the end of the street! It was tough, I was all out of breath, at a point I nearly gave up, but I kept at it and I made it to victory! Waooo!!!

Then, I do some brisk walking half way back and did home run for the remaining distance back home. Then according to my plan, I did some press-up for my upper body exercise (formally, I could only do 10 press-ups, maximum of 15. Today I did 28!) Lastly, I did about 40 crunches to abs exercises.

I hope to do some swimming and weight lifting in the evening.

To summarize, “you don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to become great”

So start today from where ever level you are. If you do, you’ll become better, you’ll become stronger!

To your success!

My Training plan

“Failing to plan to plan is planning to fail” this age old adage has remain for so long because there is truth in it. If you want to achieve anything of value, any goal, then, you've got to have a plan of action. This also applies to an exercise program.

Therefore, I had come up with a training plan. Now you don’t just come up with any plan, you've got to understand what type of exercises to put on your plan, having in mind your “unique” goal.

The 3 Goals of any Exercise program

From what I have gathered (mind you, I am not claiming to be an expert on this subject. I am just learning and gathering experience as I progress on this journey) having said that, the goal of any exercise program is:

• To get your heart rate up: that is give you stamina, what is called “staying power”. You should be able to walk for reasonable distance, climb the stairs or even play with your children, without running out of breath. For this, you need the support of your heart. You need to strengthen the muscle of the heart to support the muscles by pumping the required nourishment and oxygen through the blood to all parts of the body. For this you need to do what is called “cardio exercises”

• To build muscle: The second goal of an exercise program is to build muscle. Resting is rusting; this also applies to our muscles. Have you ever take note of those beggars we see on our streets, those ones whose legs are paralysed and they have to move themselves about on their hands. Have you noticed how well built their shoulders and arms are? It’s because they use their arms so vigorously. When we use our muscle less, they grow lean and weak (what is called atrophy) but the good news is that, the more we use them, the bigger and stronger they become. To build muscle you can either do weight training (i.e. lift weights) or do exercises using body weights (i.e. using your body as weight rather than equipments)

• Tone and definition: Lastly, the goal of an exercise program is to tone up and define your muscles. You see, everybody has six packs but for most of us it’s hidden under layers of fats. So, a good exercise program burns up the fat and tone and define the muscle giving you that sculptured look.

Ok, now my “Transformation Agenda” see below:

Cardio	Building Muscle	Tone/Definition
Running and other indoor aerobic exercises	Weight lifting	Swimming

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Run Upper body exercises Weight lifting	Stretching exercises	Run Lower body exercises Weight lifting	Stretching exercises	Run Upper body exercises Weight lifting	Run Lower body exercises Weight lifting	Stretching exercises
Swim	Swim	Swim	Swim	Swim

As you can see the training plan consists of:

•          Running;
•         Indoor aerobic exercises;
•         Weight lifting;
•         Body weight exercises (upper and lower body)
•         Swimming; and
•         Stretching exercises.

These is what is called “cross training” that is different types of exercises to target the muscles from multiple angles and approaches. Also, they are proportioned in the right mix to achieve maximum result. The stretching exercises is incorporated into the program to soothe and relax strained muscles, these is called recovery.

So don’t over train, incorporate “rest days” in between your training program and take it easy as a beginner as you gradually build strength and stamina.

To your success!

My incredible journey to good health, fitness and an athletic body

Fat can creep up on you and before you say Jack Robinson  you are bloated and out of shape! A few flight of stairs and you are all out of breath, you can’t bend down without saying “my back!” your stomach is so big, you can’t see your toes – now that is disastrous!

My story

The above was true in my case. I use to be a very skinny child growing up, a “broom stick” what people would normally called “Leppa”. But after school, I got a desk job, married, got a car and the story changed.

Desk job mean you are sedentary, you only work with your hands (and brain of course!) but very limited physical exertion. Marriage means, in my case, more foods to consume! And when your wife is a good cook (you know, women get this sense of fulfillment and satisfaction when they see their man devour their food and ask for more!) and of course you know that the typical Nigerian food is heavily starchy (carbohydrates) based and our soup is rich in palm oil. Lastly, getting a car mean an end to walking to bus stops, trekking to the office from where the bus will drop you and generally taking it easy and relaxed.

So in my case, I ballooned, by the way, I don’t drink beer, it just those 3 factors above. I transformed from a “Leppa”  to “Orobo”

The Turning Point

The changing point came when during my lunch break, I tried to walk to the restaurant just a few blocks away from my office. By the time I made it (eventually) to the restaurant, I was all out of breath and I said to myself “this is unacceptable”

Now, it’s not as if I am new to exercising. I have always exercised but in an off-and-on, disjointed manner. There was a time I even went on a one week fruit fast (only fruit for 1 week) but the problem is I always negate any benefit from exercising by eating heavily.

So finally, I sat down with a wonderful lady, at my place of work, she is into fitness and health and quite passionate about the subject. She taught me the exercises, the forms, the types, the combination (cross training) she gave me the website to visit and most importantly the food to eat, how, when, what quantity and combination. And eventually, I believe that I have all the needed information to set out on my journey to good health, fitness and an athletic body!

So this blog is a diary to chronicle my journey. Come with me!