Health and Fitness

Hi guys! I have been away for a while. A few things changed. I have been watching my health and trying to maintain my weight. There are various information that I have learned throughout this experience that I want to share with my readers. My boyfriend and I enrolled ourselves to the gym, and I have benefited greatly from it. I have been in and out of the gym for about 3 months, and I have lost 6 pounds. I go to the gym for at least 5 times a week. I know that six pounds does not sound much, but I am trying to lose more body fat than muscle. The more muscle you have, the better. I am not necessarily talking about being a body builder and losing my feminine side. I am talking about the complete opposite. A woman can not have manly muscles because we do not have as much testosterone as man have that is required to obtain huge muscles. Building muscles help burn more calories when sitting down, and doing nothing around the house. Cardio alone will only speed up your metabolism while exercising; however, it will slow down after your cardio exercise. It is better to do weight training and cardio together in order to achieve the body you want effectively. Exercise is important; however, you need to maintain a proper diet to go along with it.

Less than 15% body fat is not healthy in the long run because it can cause some complications in the future. If you are planning to have a baby in the future it is not healthy to have a low body fat percentage less than 15% because your body looks at how much body fat you have and see if you are capable of providing enough nutrition for the fetus.

I want to continue my healthy life style instead of trying to loose weight the wrong way. A few years ago after I graduated from middle school, I weighed 122 pounds. i wanted to loose more weight by attending the gym. I thought that it would be a healthy way for me to loose weight. The sad part was that I did not known how to loose the weight properly. After attending the gym, I would not eat anything the whole day. Sometimes, I would only eat an apple as my meal. I dropped the weight fast. I was not thinking of the consequences. I dropped to about 110 pounds. What I didn't know is that the weight I was loosing was not fat. It was muscle. When I do not eat anything the whole day and then exercise vigorously at the gym, my body enters a "fight or flight" reaction. My body started eating away the muscle, which made my metabolism slower. My skin was flabby and I was not toned at all. I gained back my weight after a few years later. I ended up weighing about 125 pounds. I learned from my bad choices, and I was a naive teenager. It is not healthy to take a few bites a day. Your body needs a complete meal. You have to eat at least 5 times a daily to satisfy your self.

Now that you know some of the 411, I will be posting up tips and daily knowledge that I have acquired that I find interesting to share. Starting off with:

1) Drink water before meals: In my opinion, it is NOT true that drinking water before having a meal will cause the food to sit on top of your stomach. It is completely the opposite. I remember my physiology teacher telling me that water helps break food and allows the body to digest. If you pay attention to a planned course meal, you will notice that appetizers are usually in liquid form, such as soup. This is because increasing your water intake help burn calories. We all know that water helps us remove waste from our body, however, it also briefly increases our metabolism.