It’s Not Sexy…It’s Fiber
Yeah, I know. Fiber. It sounds like something your grandparents might talk about. It is important though, you need to get enough fiber into your daily diet. Losing weight and toning up takes more than just exercise. You have to eat a balanced diet, and fiber is an important part of that.
Eating enough fiber can help lower your cholesterol by helping your digestive tract work properly and keeping you ‘cleaned out’.
Fiber can also help with weight loss becasue fiber takes longer to digest which means you’ll feel fuller longer so you’ll eat less.
Soluble fiber is the type that plays the biggest role in lowering bad cholesterol levels and is fully broken down by the body. Good sources of soluable fiber include: oat bran, oatmeal, beans, peas, rice bran, barley, and fruits.
Insoluble fiber, on the other hand is not digested by the body and helps to slow down gastric emptying, making you feel fuller longer. This is what will provide the biggest benefit when it comes to weight control.
Good sources of this type of fiber include whole-wheat breads, whole-wheat pasta, brown rice, wheat bran, cabbage, beets, carrots, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and the skin of apples.
So, even though it’s not sexy, eating enough fiber can actually help you lower your cholesterol and help you feel more sated for longer periods of time which can help you eat less and lose weight. Fiber may not be sexy but eating enough of it can help you look sexy!
3 Tips To Lose Belly Fat
It’s almost spring! Do you know where your belly button is? Hardly anyone is immune to putting on a few extra pounds over the winter. It’s tough not to. Now is the time to take it off. There is no quick fix, or pill that will magically make your belly fat disappear, but there are a few simple things you can do so that you can be saying bye, bye belly fat…in time for summer.
The first thing you want to do is carefully, and honestly, analyze your diet. You don’t want to completely avoid carbs, but you do want to make sure your protein, carb, fat intakes are in the proper proportions. If you’re not sure what that is, ask you doctor for the best combination for you.
The next thing to do to lose belly fat is move. Walk, run, dance, ride a bike, swim, whatever it is that you enjoy doing, which means you’ll be a lot more likely to stick with it. Try to move at least 30 minutes every day. The sad thing is that for most of us, just doing our normal daily activities isn’t enough. We need to do more than our body is used to.
The last thing that can really help you lose the belly fat is weight training, and ab work. Any type of resistance training can not only help you create a more toned appearance, kind of like a girdle of muscle around your mid-section, it can also help you burn more calories throughout your whole day. So if you do a nice weight training routine in the gym today, your metabolism will be burning hotter long after you’ve left the gym! Cool, huh?
So, the bottom line is that to lose belly fat your best bet is to use the 3 prong appraoch. Diet, cardio, weights. Start now, and by summer you’ll not only be hot, you’ll look hot!
