Depression Medicine

This article has been provided by guest author Kyle Wood known as one of the best among up and coming Melbourne personal trainers.  Kyle has a keen interest in new and more effective training for himself and his clients and he believes exercise should contribute to your life and make it more fruitful rather than detract from it. He currently runs a blog in his spare time called Kyle’s Fitness Facts so take a look there if you want to know more...

Exercise for Fat Loss

Diet is very important when losing weight. The best training system in the world cannot out do a terrible diet filled with junk food, irregular meals and no veggies. However, as you reduce your caloric intake your body adapts to that caloric intake and the weight loss will plateau. This is where a lot of people will give up, however for those who continue, more calories must be cut and so on. This reaches a point where the calories are cut so low that you begin to starve your body.

A better solution to making that second cut in calories (or even the first) is to add exercise. If you are already exercising regularly then I suggest adding more intense workouts to your training schedule.  Here are some great ideas (that can all be done without a gym membership):

Sprint Intervals

Find your local track or oval (soccer pitches work excellent). Start off by doing one or two laps to warm up and then follow this cycle:

• Jog 50m
• Sprint 50m
• Walk 50m

Repeat this 4 times. Each week add an additional cycle until you reach 10 cycles. When you can do that move onto something new.

Note: A full size soccer pitch is 50m wide and 100m long so you can complete 2 cycles in one lap.

Circuit Training:

I’m not talking about walking around in a circuit on weight machines for 30 minutes, I’m talking all out circuits that will get your heart pumping through your chest and your fat cells dropping like flies. For these circuits you will need a railing or play equipment bar about 1.2m (4 feet) off the ground and a low bench or steps.

Circuit 1:

• Feet elevated push up x12 (on knees if unable to do on toes)
• Bodyweight squat x12
• Crunches x 12
• Butt Kick Jumps x12

Repeat 2 times before moving onto circuit two

Circuit 2:

• Burpees x10
• Inverted row (on railing) x10
• Forward Walking Lunges x5
• Reverse Walking Lunges x5
• Pushups x10

Repeat 2 times. Each week add an extra circuit to one of the circuits until you reach a total of 10 circuits.

Hill Sprints

Find a small hill. Sprint to the top, walk back down, rinse, repeat. You will be amazed at how awesome this simple activity is for cardiovascular fitness and fat shedding. Do this 5 times and then add an extra sprint each week.

Remember to warm up thoroughly beforehand and then warm down and stretch afterwards. This applies when doing any exercise.

You want more?

If you work your way up to doing all of that in a week then you can add low intensity recovery cardiovascular work to your off days. This kind of exercise is excellent at promoting blood to muscles to aid in recovery from your previous workouts. Good ideas are swimming, bike riding or brisk walks with your partner/family/dog.

Give these high intensity techniques a go. Stick to them for at least 6 weeks before you truly give them your analysis. I believe by then you will be addicted to high intensity training. Not only will they help you lose weight faster but you will also have more energy and feel more alert. Before I go, some great fun facts:

• Muscle requires more energy to exist, so the more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism.
• 20-30 minutes high intensity training burns more total energy (calories) over 24 hours than 60 minutes of low-moderate total training.
• Recent studies are continuing to show that the lactic acid system (shorter bursts of energy like sprinting and circuits) is a far greater channel for fat oxidizing (fat burning) than the aerobic study (longer low intensity training) which might explain why sprinters are so ripped.

Compression stockings are used to treat disorders like varicose veins, venous ulcers, blood clots, and lymphedema. These stockings apply pressure on veins and tissues that are close to the skin. The pressure ensures that the amount of blood that the veins can carry is restricted. This prevents the veins from swelling beyond a limit. Since the pressure applied by these stockings is highest at the ankle and lesser towards the upper parts of the leg, the blood is forced back to the heart. They also apply pressure on the tissues below the skin. These tissues transfer the pressure to the blood which gets pumped into the capillaries that go into the deeper tissues of the leg.

Effect on Varicose veins
Varicose veins are veins that cannot properly send blood to the heart because of the malfunctioning of the valves that are supposed to prevent the blood from flowing backwards. Veins of legs tend to be more susceptible to this condition because they have to withstand the pressure of standing and walking. Compression stockings artificially reduce the diameter of the veins and the blood circulation is partially normalized.

DVT/PTS
These stocking are also used to treat deep vein thrombosis (DVT). In this case blood is forced into the deeper veins where the blood has clotted. This usually happens to passengers who travel for long periods in planes that do not have properly adjusted humidity levels. Low humidity leads to DVT. The condition is commonly referred to as 'economy class syndrome'. Often patients who have DVT develop Post Thrombotic Syndrome (PTS). This disorder can be prevented by the use of compression stockings. Thus patients with DVT are suggested to wear them for two years after they have had DVT.

Other Uses
Compression stockings are worn by pregnant women too because their blood vessels are affected by pregnancy induced hormonal changes. This is because they produce more blood to ensure that the growing fetus gets the oxygen and nutrients it needs. These stockings are also prescribed for patients with lymphedema because they prevent the accumulation of lymph by preventing the fluid from seeping out of the capillaries.

It must be noted that these stockings are not similar to socks used by athletes to enhance performance. The pressure applied by these stockings is much higher and physician's prescriptions are required to purchase some types of compression stockings. The stockings are difficult to put on and require gloves to be worn on feet to reduce friction.



Posted by: Evelyn    Source

This article concludes with the obvious “vary your workout routine for best results” but it does survey some interesting research on rest time between sets. For a few weeks you can spike testosterone and HGH with shorter (1 minute) rests between sets. However the difference declines by 5 weeks into a routine. Over 10 weeks, a 2.5 minute rest would show better gains.

This is a decent article, though the facts are somewhat disturbing. Anabolic steroids you inject are safer than all the methylated prohormones you swallow. Yet the safer option is illegal while the more dangerous option is not.

This guest article was provided by my friend David Huckabay from HowtoBurnStomachFat.netwho believes in a sensible approach to losing weight. Just see how successful he was himself with this.

Hi all – I'm going to show you how I got back into shape without beating myself up.

If you will just take a few minutes to read this, I believe that I can show you how to make a lot of progress very quickly – without much of the waste of energy, self doubt and guilt that can be part of a diet program.

Once you read this, you will be able to move forward with any plan and make better progress with less stress!

First of all, remember that none of us are perfect. Forget the celebrities (they have trainers and dieticians), forget the weight loss gurus (they do this full time) and remember that you do have a life outside of your weight loss program. You are not a “professional weight loser” so don’t judge yourself as if you were. My technique is all about being as kind to yourself as you are to others.

The technique that I used to drop 43 pounds of weight back in 2006, and keep it off since is simple. 90% compliance. That’s it. Simply do what you are supposed to do about 90% of the time, and you will see progress. Will you burn stomach fat as quickly as you would have with 100%? Probably not, but there won’t be all that much difference.

At this point you may be thinking “So what? I cheat all the time and sneak a snack or two.” Exactly. You call it cheating because you are breaking the deal you made with yourself to lose weight and get in shape. So you cheat, feel guilty, slip again, and eventually give up altogether. Why do this to yourself?

Let’s take a look at a weight loss plan implemented with the 90% rule:

For the sake of simplicity, we’ll assume that you are eating three times per day, and working out three times per week. So we have 21 meals per week, about 90 meals per month. We have 12 workouts per month.

Right off of the bat, we know that we can go off of our plan for 9 meals! Awesome!

Now, we need to define what I mean by this. I’m not saying that you should go to some buffet and attempt to eat an entire cow. More like this: You are at a cookout, and yes, you can have a normal plate of food just like everyone else. A burger, some chips, some salad. This helps more than you can imagine. Just knowing that if you find yourself at your niece’s birthday party, you can have a piece of cake like everyone else is a tremendous help. Feeling like an outcast, who has to do things differently from everybody else is no fun, especially at a party. The rest of the time (80 meals!) we stick to our plan.

Personally, I saved my special meals for times when I was out with friends or parties. If I was having dinner at home, I stuck to my plan.

Exercise is even easier to handle with this technique. A lot of it has to do with actually counting all of your activity. Ok we have 12 workouts set for this month. So we know we can only skip one or two. But there is a lot of leeway when it comes to exercise, and we can make up workouts fairly easily.

Let’s say I missed my workout on Wednesday of week two this month. Fine, but then on Friday I mowed the lawn – continuous walking and pushing for over an hour! Does anyone want to try and convince me that that is not a workout? Then on Saturday, we went to the zoo. We walked, looked and laughed for 3 hours. Again, does anyone doubt that we burned up a lot of calories doing that?

I give myself half of a workout for my activity in these situations. In the case above, I would actually have my 3 workouts for the week! Take stock of your activity, and be honest with yourself. I think you will see that you are doing a fair amount of uncounted exercise.

Friends, I’ve shown you how to apply the 90% rule to your diet, and to your workouts. It’s up to you to do it – but I know you can. This is a way to take the pressure off, enjoy family outings and parties, and still meet your weight loss goals. So stop beating yourself up for little slips, and give the 90% rule a try. You’ll be glad you did.

David Huckabay

Corporations spend billions of dollars each year on food advertising. For example, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, and McDonald's each spent more than $1 billion in advertising in 2007. A newly released study in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests those advertisers are missing out if their ads only mention taste and ignore our other senses.

Naturally, most food ads mention the taste of the food being marketed. But authors Ryan S. Elder and Aradhna Krishna (both University of Michigan) demonstrate that tapping into our other senses can actually increase consumers' taste perceptions.

"Because taste is generated from multiple senses (smell, texture, sight, and sound), ads mentioning these senses will have a significant impact on taste over ads mentioning taste alone," write the authors.

In the experiments, participants were randomly assigned to view one of two ads. One ad was designed to appeal to multiple senses (for example, a tagline for a chewing gum read "stimulate your senses"), while the other ad mentioned taste alone ("long-lasting flavor"). After sampling the gum, the participants listed thoughts they had regarding the item and then rated the overall taste.

"The multiple-sense ad led to more positive sensory thoughts, which then led to higher taste perception than the single-sense ad," the authors write. "The differences in thoughts were shown to drive the differences in taste." The results were repeated with potato chips and popcorn.

The authors believe their research can help advertisers reword ad copy to lead to significant differences in taste. "These results are of great value not only to food advertisers, but also to restaurants, as the descriptions contained within menus can actually alter the taste experience," the authors write. "Further, companies can implement the findings into product packaging information to alter the taste of products consumed in the home. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, ensuring positive consumption experiences is critical to success".


Posted by: Evelyn    Source