Does Early Dinner Help in Weight Loss

Many diet plans, nutritionist and people recommend eating dinner at 6-7 and eat nothing after that. Is it practical and how long can an average person stick to this routine to lose weight? How much weight can you really lose from this? What happens when you get back to eating at 9 :00 pm?

Broadly metabolism gets affected by three things: quality of food that we eat, how much gap do we give between meals and how much physical activity do you manage to get in your daily routine. A light snack can take you 2 hours to digest and a large meal can take upto 4 hrs to digest. At night our physical activeness reduces and  therefore might make the metabolism dip slightly.

We know that metabolism is the rate at which the body burns the food to produce calories for energy and digestion. This rate of metabolism can be accelerated or slowed down with the help of food and exercise. When our body gets food at regular interval it fastens the metabolism as it gets into the mode of sufficient food and digests food faster. The metabolism slows down when the body doesn’t get food when it’s hungry and slows the rate at which calories burn. Also more muscles in the body increase the metabolic rate and exercising and other activities also burn calories which revs up metabolism.

In India where our lifestyle is different along with meal timings, so would dinner at 7 pm work best for us? Usually evening time we like to snack and then eventually have dinner by 8-9 pm. But some people who have early dinner don’t eat the evening snack. To understand the scenario better what if one eats dinner at 7 pm. Then ideally they should sleep by 9-10 pm. This also means the next meal will be at 8-9 am next morning. Eating dinner so early causes a gap of 12-14 hrs between the two meals. This gap results in slowing down the metabolism which essentially makes you start storing calories than actually burning them. Read more

Does Sweating Result in Weight Loss

One of the most common myths in fitness is that sweating helps you lose weight and burn more fat. There are lot of weight loss companies that use the technology of steam/sauna baths to make you sweat for weight loss. In reality the weight loss experienced with high temperature is water weight lost through sweating.  Sweating is our body’s natural way of cooling the system. Whenever there is rise in temperature which could be due to physical activity or general increase in temperature we break  in to sweat.

Let us give you an example of what we mean by losing water weight. Start with weighing yourself. Then sit in a room, in the middle of summer, without a fan and ac. You will sweat a lot due to the heat. After one hour you go and weight yourself. You will see you have lost a few grams on the weighing scale. Now go and drink a litre of water and then weigh your self. You will see that the weighing scale is back to your original weight. A note that it is impossible to put on weight with drinking water as it has zero calories. So now you might be more wise before you sign for a spa weight loss program.

There are genetic and fitness reasons why some people sweat more than the others. For-eg men sweat more than women because women sweat at higher temperatures than men. Then fitter people tend to sweat lesser than non-fit people doing the same physical activity  and lastly overweight people tend to sweat the most is because fat acts like an insulator under the skin that raises the body temperature a lot faster. Read more

Dance For Weight Loss

Can dancing help you lose weight ? Is dancing a substitute to exercising or running? Would dancing burn many calories to help us reduce fat in our body? What form of dance is suitable for weight loss and is there an intensity to dance for weight loss? These are few important question that come up when considering  using dancing for weight loss.

Dancing is technical and requires with precise muscular movements to achieve the desired posture. Different dance forms can help develop different kinds of muscles. For eg. salsa requires your lower body to be stronger and muscular. While the famous Spanish dance Flamenco requires a lot of foot work, hands and torso twisting combined with fine motor skills to name a few.

There are different forms of dance like latin, classical, hiphop, jazz, freestyle etc which use a lot of body movement and require performing with right technique and energy. An hour of a dance session can help you burn 200-400 calories. As sometimes the movements are slow, easy or stationary which provide rest in between. Where as running for an hour could burn more calories than 600 calories an hour.

Dancers usually have a flexible body, are lean and have endurance to perform intense acts as demanded by the dance. Though dancing involves a lot of movements which might appear similar to exercise but  in reality there is a world of a difference. Infact most professional dancers use some form of exercise to help achieve the level of fitness as well as to improve performance. Most dancers have  very defined fitness routines to enhance the performance of the muscles relevant to the particular dance. Read more

How to Manage Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is caused due to resistance developed by our body cells towards insulin produced by the body. This leads to a rise in blood glucose level as the cells natural tendency to absorb insulin as much reduces, preventing the body from using glucose effectively resulting in excess sugar levels in the body. Type 1 diabetes is genetic but Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease most commonly caused by obesity. The good news is that because Type 2 diabetes is not genetic and can be controlled, managed and sometimes even be reversed completely.

Recent study on diabetes suggests that you could reverse your diabetes to normal. That means you could balance you blood sugar levels in the body. The study by Newcastle Magnetic Resonance Centre at Newcastle University in England says that eating less calories about 600 per day for three months could reverse the diabetes. In the study 11 people with type 2 diabetes for four years were put on a 600 calorie diet with leafy green vegetables and liquid diet which reversed the diabetes of 7 people.

At Fitho we believe that you dont have to go on such a strict low calorie diet that can damage your daily nutrition intake. Read here to understand what is a  balanced diet and how it is essential for our healthy well being. Diabetes Type 2 can be controlled and managed through healthy diet and exercise without reducing the calorie intake to such low levels. A person diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes needs a special diet chart that ensures that mostly food with low glycemic index should be included. Here is a list of foods that you must include and also avoid. Read more

Dieting for Weight Loss?

Many of us want to lose weight and have tried unsuccessful tips for weight loss. Some tips that work with a few and some dont work with many. Yo-yo diets find no place when it comes to gaining results. The general impulse to weight loss is dieting and people have their own mind behind it rather than the simple thought of weight loss by diet and exercise.

There is so much that you have read or tested for weight loss and the idea of another dieting tip would not be any better. But as there is logic to everything so is to weight loss. Lets understand it why weight loss is not difficult.

Reason for weight Gain: Have you ever thought of the real reasons for weight gain? Is it only due to diet or are there other factors than over eating? Read more

Yoga for weight loss

Yoga helps in weight loss by improving muscle flexibility, strength, stamina and circulation of blood. The yoga asanas along with correct breathing technique and correct posture help in creating the perfect balance between the mind and body. Yoga compliments the other forms of more active exercises and can never substitute it.

Yoga is fit for beginners that want to start losing weight but are not motivated enough to start running or lifting weights. Yoga helps increase the flexibility in the body gradually motivating you to start more active form of physical activity.

Over the years some forms of yoga like power yoga, flow yoga  have become extremely popular for weight loss. There are many schools of yoga that have similar benefits as power yoga  and have infact helped people manage  heart diseases, asthama and other lifestyle diseases.. To know what style is most conducive to your lifestyle here are few schools listed out for your information.

Hot Yoga: Hot yoga is doing yoga poses in a heated room Read more

Strength Training

Strength training is anaerobic style of physical activity that increases the strength of muscles through resistance training, isometric training or weight lifting. The Strength training routine puts the muscles through short duration, high intensity activities that result is better performance and effective weight loss.

Strength training is safe for both men and women of all ages and can be worked according to one physical ability and benefits mental and emotional health. Strength training also helps people with health problems like diabetes, arthiritis, osteoporosis and heart diseases can benefit from it with a good exercise program made around their needs. Old people have many problems like knee pain, back pain which can be a problem in movements. Strength training with light exercise can slowly work on the problem and help you reduce the pain and become fit.

Working on your muscles has many advantages. Read more

Can Exercise Make You Fat

Some researchers are of a belief that exercise makes you fat. And if we continue to be moderately physically active it is enough to maintain the weight. According to them sweating it out in the gym only makes you fat and does not really help in any weight loss.

We partially agree to this theory about moderate physical exercise is enough to keep you fit. Like most things there is a condition that too applies to moderate physical activity, which is  if you are also watching what you eat. Even if you are exercising and at the same time eating more than you are actually burning you are bound to not lose any weight. Keeping this logic in mind we further explain how exercising is really making you fat.

We see a lot of people compulsively exercising at the gym over a period of time without losing any weight. Well there could be two reasons for it. First either you are following a wrong routine which is similar to ‘eating empty calories’ or you are still eating more than you are burning. Like doing a twist with a long rod on the shoulder or walking on a high incline while holding the rod in front. Infact  talking on the phone while walking on the treadmill, elliptical, slow cycling is as useless as sitting on a chair. There is a study that states that while you exercise you need to focus at the activity at hand for best results.  Have you ever seen a sports or a fit person be on a phone while exercising ?

Read more

Caution: Child Obesity in India on the Rise

Pizza’s & Burgers  and junk food joints have become a hot spot for children now a days to fill their tiny stomach’s. Well, pizza’s & the burgers taste nice and exciting but are unable to provide the nutrition that is required for healthy living. Obesity in children has tripled in the past two decades and an alarming concern for us to take note of the fact. The rate of development of mind and body in children decreases with junk food due to the empty calories it provides. A regular pizza provides about 600-800 calories whereas a burger provides you with around 300 calories.

A research report written about a study on Prevalence of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents. According to that report 16 % children 6-19 year old are overweight or obese
“this is three times what it was before. In addition, this report brings out the fact that also during this same time period an additional 15% were “at risk of becoming overweight”.

Researchers also warn that children who are fed with junk food have lower IQ than their counterparts who ate nutritious food.  Junk food may fill the stomach but cant provide the quality of energy which nutritious foods provide. Junk foods are high in saturated fat and oil which leads to high cholesterol levels make you feel lazy and drowsy, resulting in lower concentration levels in children. Junk food decrease the efficiency which is important for children. Heart related diseases are growing with obesity and weight gain is normal for people on a junk food diet.

Once the habit is developed for junk food, it gets very difficult to get rid of the addiction. To ensure that kids do not make this unhealthy lifestyle a permanent part of their life one should start inculcating good nutritional habits from the beginning. Ensuring enough physical activities is an equally important aspect of every child’s growth. In case you need professional assistance to get you started on a healthier lifestyle for your family call us for a free consultancy and speak to our expert now.

Jump Start Your Workout

From now on doing proper workouts will not be a problem once you learn a few basics for workout which you should know. Understand how you can start exercising with some suggestions.

How to start?

Divide up your time through out the day any way you want. 4-6 ten minute workouts can do the wonders Read more