FabulousBody@Home: Saunas for Losing Weight

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Saunas for Losing Weight

Posted by fabulousbodyathome@yahoo.com at 6:51 AM

There are many health benefits to using a sauna. This method of relaxation and health maintenance has been in use for several thousand years, and cultures like the ancient Romans and the Scandinavians recognized the advantages of a good, regular sweat. The mental and physical benefits to using a sauna are plenty, and if you have the opportunity to use one, you should take advantage of it!

Some benefits of using a sauna include:
* It works as a stress reliever by helping you to relax and unwind. Relieving stress can lower blood pressure, decrease headaches, and elevate you mood. This will make you more productive, and more pleasant to be around!

* Saunas cause your body to burn calories. Your sweat glands produce sweat, which requires energy, and therefore increases caloric expenditure. Saunas should not be solely relied upon, however, as a weight loss system.

* Saunas raise your body temperature slightly, which gives the effects of a fever. This prompts the body to fight off any viruses or bacteria that can cause illness, thus boosting your immune system.

* Saunas provide a slight cardiovascular benefit in that the heat and steam require the heart to work a little more to send more blood to the capillaries.

* Saunas are an effective way to rid the body of toxins that we ingest from the environment around us through sweating, such as mercury, lead, sodium, and sulphuric acid.

When you take a sauna, you lose a great deal of fluids through the sweating. This might cause a sudden loss of a few pounds, but it is only fluid loss. When you re-hydrate (and you should take in liquids before, during, and after a sauna) your body, the weight will return. There are certain sports that require athletes to make a certain weight class in a very short period of time. These athletes often use saunas as a means of rapid weight loss. Any type of weight loss through dehydration is not safe.

The use of a sauna should be moderate. Sessions should only last for about 20 minutes, due to the increase of body temperature. And older people, or those with heart conditions should consult a physician before trying a sauna.

Using the sauna provides a variety of health benefits, and can be included as part of a sensible diet and exercise program. It can help you maintain your weight, it can rid your body of toxins, keep your complexion clear and bright, and it can help to reduce stress. Saunas are an effective method of health maintenance, if used moderately and properly.

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1. Water and Weight Loss

It is recommended that you should drink eight, 8oz. glasses of water every day for successful weight loss. This works out to be half a gallon, or almost 2 liters of water a day.

How Water Helps with Weight Loss

Drinking a big glass of water whenever you feel hungry and before a meal or snack fills the stomach briefly and makes you feel fuller and stop eating sooner.
Breaking down body fat and body muscle during weight loss produces wastes that must be eliminated through the kidneys. Drinking enough water is important to keep the kidneys functioning to remove these wastes.
Popular high-protein diets produce more waste products from digestion, let alone from breaking down stored fat.
Kidney function is even more important when on a high-protein diet.
Drinking more water does not "flush fat."
If the dieter is drinking plain water, he/she is less likely to be drinking something with calories in it.

If you want an added benefit from water, drink cold water. Doing this will make your body have to work a bit to warm up the water and will burn a few extra calories.

Drinking Water and Your Metabolism

Drinking 500 mL of water (a half-liter or about a pint) increased the study participants’ metabolism briefly - for about a half hour. In that time they burned an extra 25 calories. That’s about a quarter of a piece of sliced bread, or 5 M&Ms. The researchers theorized that most of the effect comes from warming the water in the stomach. In the male participants the calories came mostly from stored fat, in the women it came from stored carbohydrates. The paper was published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, December, 2003. It was conducted by researchers in Berlin.

2. Avoid Skipping Meals

Skipping meals doesn’t help with weight loss - it slows down your metabolism and can actually cause you to gain more weight.

Fact! Many dieters think skipping meals can help them to shed unwanted pounds, but it actually does the opposite. By denying the body of calories, you’re also denying the body’s metabolism, thus slowing it down. A suddenly lowered caloric intake will force the body into “starvation mode” where it conserves calories from what you’re already eaten, and slows down the metabolism, thus storing more calories as fat. Skipping meals actually causes you to GAIN weight!

What’s more, skipping important meals, such as breakfast, can actually lead you to consume more calories later in the day because you are hungrier than you normally would be. The best way to cut calories safely and healthfully is to eat 4-6 small meals throughout the day, giving your body a steady flow of calories to keep your metabolism going strong. You help to optimize your metabolism by feeding your body multiple small meals throughout the day.

3. Controlling Portion Size

The key to losing weight isn't to restrict the number of times you eat, but how much you eat when you do. Controlling portion size is a critical part of losing weight and is a necessary lesson to learn if you are going to keep the weight off after it's gone.

Eating Smaller Meals results in Weight Loss

Filling yourself to fullness at meal time is a part of eating that many people have a hard time letting go. For this reason, ome people would rather reduce the number of times they eat each day than the portion sizes of their meals. This method of dieting however is destined for disaster and failure.

In order to lose weight and keep it off for years to come you need to learn about controlling portion sizes and eating more often, not less. Eating in this way helps your body to maintain a more stable insulin level, which in turn stabilizes blood sugar levels. So instead of two or three large spikes in insulin and blood sugar every day that your body has to fight to recover from, controlling portion sizes and eating more frequently will help to keep your sugar levels stable, which positively affects your health and your mood.

Best Foods to Eat When Controlling Portion Sizes

When you begin to eat more frequently, controlling portion size becomes very important. Meals should be healthy and calorie-restricted. Avoid junk food and empty calorie foods that will leave you hungry for more. Instead, choose foods that will satiate hunger (high protein or high fiber), such as fish, high fiber grains, seeds and nuts.

Eating protein is an important way to get that needed energy as you strive to eat less, but more often. Not only does protein benefit your body, but it also provides the brain with Important amino acids that help to keep you mentally alert. Protein also increases your energy by elevating the brain chemicals called dopamine and nor-epinephrine.

Incorporating protein into your meals is very easy. For example, instead of just having a healthy snack of fruit, try combining it with yogurt for added protein. Protein doesn't have to come from meat either. Low fat versions of yogurt and cheese, eggs, tofu, and beans are some of the excellent ways to include meat-free protein into your diet.

4. Exercise and Weight Loss

Exercise is a crucial part of any weight loss program. Exercise and weight loss are stongly linked together and this relationship should never be ignored. Not only is exercise important for healthy weight loss, but it is also great for your body and long-term health.

Regular exercise naturally increases your body's metabolism so that body fat is burned more efficiently. It does this in two ways; by using body fat stores for energy during exercise and by increasing lean muscle mass. More muscle mass increases metabolism because muscle tissue consumes more calories than fat tissues.

For the best weight loss results from exercise make sure to incorporate aerobic activities, like walking, swimming or cycling. Aerobic exercises have the added benefit of speeding up your metabolism for 4 to 8 hours after you stop exercising.

Weight lifting, resistance or strength training, builds more lean muscle tissue and increases your resting metabolic rate, but is not an efficient way of burning stored calories during exercise. A combination of aerobic exercise and resistance training is best exercise program for optimal fat burning and metabolism boosting. Exercise any time you can fit it into your day and you will burn fat away. By exercising just a little more than usual you can speed up your metabolism and use up stored fat in the process.