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Best Foods & Exercises To Raise Your Metabolism - Naturally!

Foods That Raise Your Metabolism
Asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, lettuce & zucchini.
You want to know a surefire way to lose weight? Eat fast food. No, not that type, but rather the super-charged,
metabolism raising foods.What exactly are these metabolism boosting (or negative calorie) foods?Although no food is actually "negative calorie", there are certain foods that have such few calories that the act of digestion in the body will burn more calories than the food itself, creating a negative calorie balance.For example, a 25 calorie piece of broccoli (100 grams) requires 80 calories to digest it in the body which results in a net loss of 55 calories! Some great foods which are extremely low in calories and require lots of energy for the body to break them down include asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, lettuce and zucchini.A negative calorie diet is probably the best and most effective way to raise metabolism and burn calories. Eat these foods and you're guaranteed to burn more calories...while doing nothing! They are great foods to include in your weight loss plan.

More about which other foods & diets which will increase your metabolism later... First, here are some tips, ideas and natural ways to raise your metabolism rate...
Raising Your Metabolism Ideas
Best ways & tips to raise your metabolism - naturally
Eating healthy and small meals more often and regularly is one great and simple method. Metabolism is always raised with the intake of food. The frequent small meals you consume keep the metabolism going for a longer duration.
Eating protein-rich foods like low-fat dairy products, lean meat and skinless chicken is found to increase metabolism. Include fish, dark green vegetables and foods high in fiber to your meals. There is evidence to show that foods rich in protein increase the burning of calories by about 25%. More about foods to raise metabolism below. Also, drink at least 2 litres of water every day!
Consume foods that contain antioxidants for speeding up your metabolism. For instance, green tea will raise metabolism better than coffee due to its high antioxidant content.
The temperature of your body environment affects your metabolism. If it is very cold or very hot, the rate of metabolism is found to go up by about 20%. You can manipulate that temperature. You can either chill out or have a sauna to raise your metabolism.
Keep yourself active and moving throughout the day. When you increase your physical activity, your muscle increases and, consequently, the metabolic rate also goes up. Aerobic exercises coupled with resistance training and exercises are very useful in this regard. If you have a job that requires you to sit at the desk for long hours, find ways to incorporate some physical activity and movement that takes you away from the desk, even for short durations, as often as possible.
By increasing the heart rate, you can
raise your metabolism rate. Adding spices, especially chili or green pepper, to your food will most likely do that. (see below). It is believed that spices speed-up the metabolism by about 50%. But you have to develop considerable tolerance for the spicy condiments if you do not already have it.


Metabolism Raising Foods: Low Fat Milk, Whole-Grain Cereal & Oatmeal
Secret Ingredients: Calcium, complex carbohydrates, and fiber

How they work: ==> Complex carbohydrates and fiber raise your metabolism by keeping insulin levels low after you eat.That's good, because spikes in the production of insulin send a signal to the body that it's time to start storing fat. And in order to stockpile fat, your body has to slow down your metabolism, causing you to burn fewer calories, says Margaret McNurlan, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition and medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Since oatmeal breaks down slowly in the stomach, it causes less of a spike in insulin levels than foods like bagels, she says.Besides helping to keep insulin production down, eating breakfast can also help stoke your daily calorie burn. When the U.S. Navy studied the metabolisms and eating habits of a group of its personnel, it found that eating breakfast helped raise the men's metabolisms by as much as 10 percent. "By skipping meals, you slow down your metabolism and prime your body to store fat," says McNurlan.The calcium in milk is a metabolic trigger as well. A University of Tennessee study found that dieters who consumed between 1,200 and 1,300 milligrams (mg) of calcium a day lost nearly twice as much weight as dieters getting less calcium. Be careful though as milk and calcium can
cause bloating and colon problems.
Foods To Raise Metabolism: Salmon, Tuna & Sardines
Secret Ingredient: Omega3 fatty acids

How they work: ==> By altering levels of a hormone called leptin in your body.Several recent studies suggest that leptin directly influences your metabolism, determining whether you burn calories or store them as fat.Researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that mice with low leptin levels have faster metabolisms and are able to burn fat more quickly than animals with higher leptin levels. The best way to lower your leptin? Eat fish.Mayo Clinic researchers studying the diets of two African tribes - one of which frequently ate fish and one of which didn't-found that fish eaters had leptin levels nearly five times lower than the levels found in tribes that primarily ate vegetables.The good news, if you don't like fish: Fish-oil supplements may work just as well as the stuff with scales. French researchers found that men who replaced 6 grams of fat in their diets with 6 grams of fish oil were able to boost their metabolisms and lose an average of 2 pounds in just 12 weeks.

Good Fats and Bad Fats

One of the reasons we love fat so much is that it carries flavor. But if you are trying to lose weight, it is important to remember that a gram of fat contains more than twice as many calories as a gram of protein or carbohydrate. Also, as explained in The Thermic Effect of Food, dietary fat and body fat are so similar that dietary fat is more easily stored as body fat than protein or carbohydrate.
Foods like cheese stand out as among the most fat-laden, with a great number of calories coming from fat. But as important as it is to select the healthiest foods, it is also important to consider how they are prepared.
Fried foods, especially deep-fried, contain a great amount of fat. While chicken and fish are usually leaner than beef or pork, they can contain more fat when they are fried. Look at how the number of grams of fat in a chicken breast changes depending on how it is cooked:
Chicken Breast Cooking Method
Fat
Meat Only, Roasted
3.1
Meat Only, Fried
4.1
Meat and Skin, Batter Fried
18.5
Be careful with salad dressings, mayonnaise, and other condiments that are high in fat content. They greatly increase the calorie count and can negate the healthy aspects of a meal. Replace mayonnaise-based condiments with fat-free alternatives like fat-free yogurt, mustard, ketchup and barbecue sauce.
Study after study has shown that people living in countries that eat mostly low fat, plant-based diets have lower rates of obesity, heart problems, cancer and many other maladies. But when these people are introduced to the fat-laden Western diet -- either because it is brought into their country or because they move to a country influenced by it -- their rates of these maladies sharply increase.
But don't try to eliminate fat altogether, as dietary fat is necessary to maintain a healthy body. It is a vital component for building body tissue and cells, and it aids in the absorption of some vitamins and other nutrients. Many people eat too much of the bad fats, but also eat too little of the good fats required for optimal health.
Types of Fat
The following paragraphs introduce some of the different types of fat we eat. A high-fat diet typically increases the risk of heart disease and cancer. But a low-fat diet could be even worse if it contained the wrong kind of fats.
Saturated Fats: In saturated fats, the carbon atoms contain all the hydrogen atoms they can hold, thus the term "saturated." Saturated fats are usually solid at room temperature.
Saturated fats are found mostly in animal products such as milk, butter, ice cream, cheese, lard and the fat found on meat. In plants, saturated fats are found in tropical oils such as coconut and palm.
Saturated fats play the single greatest role in raising blood cholesterol and putting us at greater risk for heart disease.
Unsaturated Fats:
Monosaturated Fats: Monounsaturated fats come from vegetables. They remain liquid at room temperature, but become less fluid when refrigerated.
Monosaturated fats are found in canola, olive and peanut oils, avocados, olives and many nuts and seeds.
Polysaturated Fats: Polyunsaturated fats also come from vegetables, but they remain liquid both at room temperature and when refrigerated.
Polyunsaturated fats are found in corn, sunflower, safflower and soybean oils, fish, mayonnaise and many nuts and seeds.
Unsaturated fats are better for you than saturated fats.
Hydrogenated or Trans Fats: Hydrogenated fats are created from unsaturated vegetable fats through a process that adds hydrogen. The process creates trans fats, which are more like saturated fats. They last longer and remain solid at room temperature, making them more marketable.
Trans fats are found in margarine, many commercially baked goods including cookies, crackers, doughnuts and pastries, and many deep-fried foods and chips. All the bad stuff we love to eat.
Trans fats raise blood cholesterol, though not as much as saturated fats. They do, however, raise LDL or "bad" cholesterol while lowering HDL or "good" cholesterol. Watch for trans fats on package labels, and where they are not listed watch for ingredients containing partially hydrogenated and hydrogenated oils.
If you use margarine, note that softer margarines have been hydrogenated less and therefore contain fewer trans fats. Tub margarine is usually better for you than stick margarine because it is less hydrogenated. There are also butter and margarine substitutes available that contain neither cholesterol nor trans fats.
A food containing no animal products and labeled "cholesterol free" would look like a healthy food to anyone. But look closely. If it contains hydrogenated oils (trans fats), it could be unhealthy for everyone.
Essential Fatty Acids: Our bodies require these fats for good health, but can't produce them, so they must be eaten. The primary essential fatty acids are linoleic acid, an omega-6 fat, and alpha-linolenic acid, an omega-3 fat.
Most people eat more omega-6 fats than needed and fewer omega-3 fats than are required for optimal health. Omega-6 fats are found in polyunsaturated fats like corn and safflower oils. Omega-3 fats are found in flaxseed, walnuts, green soybeans, tofu and certain fish including albacore tuna, salmon, lake trout, sardines, herring and mackerel.
The actual content of a particular fat is not as clearly defined as these descriptions would lead you to believe. For example, beef fat is listed as saturated, but its actual content is just over half saturated. Olive oil is listed as monounsaturated, but its actual content is just over three-quarters monounsaturated.
Olive oil is so often referred to as being a healthier fat that you might think of it as being healthy. But it is still pure fat, and 14% of it is saturated.
Cholesterol
Cholesterol is a waxy substance that our bodies require for good health. However, excess cholesterol can accumulate on the walls of our arteries and this can lead to heart disease.
Our bodies produce sufficient cholesterol on their own; most of the excess cholesterol in our blood comes from eating other animals. Cholesterol is found in high-fat dairy products, egg yolks, shellfish, liver and other organ meats, and high-fat meats and poultry skin. Plants contain so little cholesterol that they are generally considered to be cholesterol-free.
But What about the Inuits?
Historically, the Inuit people of the Canadian and Alaskan Arctic regions have eaten a very high fat, high cholesterol diet. Yet they experienced very little heart disease until introduced to the typical Western diet.
Since their diet was already high in fat, it wouldn't appear to be the high fat aspect of the Western diet that is to blame. Perhaps it is the heavily process foods of the Western diet that contribute the most to disease, for Inuits and everyone else.
The American Heart Association recommends limiting foods high in trans fats, saturated fats and cholesterol. While there appears to be no debate that trans fats are bad for you, there are those who believe that saturated fats, and even cholesterol, have been unjustly blamed for causing disease only because all fats have been lumped together and labeled "bad."
But it's not that simple. The Inuits' diet was also high in omega-3 fats, which protect from heart disease. And you can't simply look at total cholesterol, as the ratio between "good" (HDL) and "bad" (LDL) cholesterol can have a significant effect; an increase in HDL may have a positive effect on health despite that fact that it raises the level of total cholesterol.
So there are good fats, and bad fats, and some of the bad fats may not really be that bad under the right conditions. We're sorry it isn't a little less complex. But while all this is being sorted out by science, there is one thing you can count on.
The more you move towards a diet of natural, unprocessed foods, the healthier you will be. Just like the Inuits and other populations of yesteryear.

Hui ^_^

学会腹式呼吸法

I read this interesting article as i m browsing thru the chinese web...
will try it out from today onward...to see it is effective anot..the correct breathing technique..50 times each day..try it!!

从70kg大肥女到当红性感瑜伽天后,6年不间断和肥胖对抗的变身心路历程。打开性感天后 的神奇瘦身魔法盒
腹式呼吸有两个好处:一是可以让你运动下腹部的肌肉,消除恼人的小腹;二是可以刺激身体器官、腺体的运作,加速你体内的新陈代谢。
七八年前,我就开始使用腹式呼吸法呼吸,我发现,我的肩颈比较不容易酸痛,小腹也更加结实了!一般人会有腰酸背痛的问题,大部分是因为下腹部的力气不够,下盘不够有力,因此在扛东西或是弯腰举物时,不能分担肩、颈、背部肌肉的负重,很容易造成背痛、脖子酸痛或是腰酸等的问题。因为下半身肌肉无力的时候,上半身肌肉就容易紧张,你很容易将力气放在上半身使用。其实只要适度地锻炼小腹肌肉,这些问题就可以一并解决。练习腹式呼吸法,同时也是在练习下腹部的肌肉。人体是平衡的,练习腹式呼吸法,除了不容易有小肚子之外,当下盘有充足力气时,上半身也会比较有精神!
我还记得,我练习腹式呼吸法的第一天,小腹就有点紧绷的感觉。练了一个星期之后, 小腹就开始慢慢地平坦下去了!真的很有效!而且,下腹部的肥大,通常跟肌肉松弛、肠胃蠕动不好、胀气、便秘有关,所以一开始练习腹式呼吸,这些扰人的问题,都会一起慢慢消失于无形!
LULU老师提醒你,一定要记得喔!刚开始练习时,一定要比较专注地去呼吸;慢慢地,腹式呼吸法会变成你生活中的一种习惯,平常呼吸时 , 腹式呼吸法的呼吸习惯跟一般呼吸习惯 , 大约会变成为1:1的比例,不自觉的,你就开始将腹式呼吸融入生活。这就会变成一种长期而无形的运动,对你有非常正面的帮助!
腹式呼吸的做法
首先,想象你的丹田(肚脐下三根手指头的位置)里,有一个假想中的小气囊。接着,用鼻子吸气,想象你把吸进去的空气一路从胸部、腹部送下来,一直送到小气囊里。此时,你的小腹会微微突出。然后,再深深地吐气,把小气囊里的空气,全部由鼻子呼出。
练习的时候,可以躺着也可以坐着,慢慢的把腹式呼吸法变成你呼吸的习惯。你可以在小腹上放一本书,或是电话簿,来感觉腹部的起伏。最好能够练习到每一天、每一刻都用腹式呼吸法呼吸。腹式呼吸法有两个好处:一是有助于脂肪的燃烧。因为我们人体中的横膈膜可以调节肺部容量,让肺容量增加。肺部进出的气量增多,吸入的氧气量相对也增多。我们都知道,脂肪燃烧需要耗氧,因此腹式呼吸可以帮助燃烧脂肪。二是有助于紧实腹部的肌肉。 三是可以放松胸部、肩部、颈部的线条,让你的上半身线条更加优美!刚开始,每天练习50次的吸、吐。你可以在睡前做,也可以在任何时候做。腹式呼吸可以帮助睡眠,你可以一直做到入睡为止。对于不好入眠,或是睡眠质量不佳的人,也很有功效喔!试试看!你一定不会失望的。 (本文来源:露露胖公主变身记 )


http://v.ku6.com/show/hKUzNOCKEydwzWMI.html
Yoga - Breathing technique in mandarin





(。◕‿-。) ☆hUi

Yummy Cheese Fondue!!


This coming sunday we are trying out the cheese fondue that we bought @ novena cold storage...we had try chocolate fondue before...

quite a headache to think of what ingredient to dip with it...

Mostly, we found from website they dip cheese fondue with bread, mushroom, vegetables(those crispy type)....looking forward to it....will bw taking photos of it and update our comments for your info...yoz!!


PS: When eating cheese fondue, remember to drink some tea to help digestion


Here are some weblink that i found to share with you...

hope u can diy and create a new dishes to share with your loves one...




Hui ^^