Lose Weight And Have Fun? Here's Six Things To Try In 2015

Pasha Kovalev and Caroline Flack on Strictly Come Dancing - and dancing is one way to burn off calories while having fun

Full of mince pies, Quality Street and shortbread assortment, and desperate to shift the festive pounds now New Year’s here?

How about singing them off?

It might sound like an odd way to exercise, but a joining a rock choir is the latest - and possibly most fun - way to lose weight and get fit for 2015.

Studies show that singing as part of a group doesn’t just lift your spirits, it can actually help you get healthy. A 90 minute session at a rock choir can burn in excess of 200 calories as members not only exercise their lungs to belt out the songs, but also get moving learning dance steps.

Rock choir leader Anthony Seaman, who runs weekly sessions in Birkenhead, Liverpool, Maghull/Ormskirk, Southport and West Kirby, knows first-hand how much being part of the choir has helped his singers.

“It’s amazing to see how much the members benefit from taking part in rock choir on a weekly basis,” he says. “I’ve seen confidences grow and friendships develop and it’s awesome to see, especially when they’ve taken part in a performance.”

Professor Stephen Clift, who’s researched the benefits, agrees. “Singing, especially in a group environment such as rock choir, encourages deeper, more controlled breathing, giving the lungs an exercise work out,” he explains. “It also gives a boost to the immune system, reduces stress levels, improves mental wellbeing, enhances concentration and memory and builds confidence.”

Rock choir is kicking off the New Year by offering everyone a free first taster session, via www.rockchoir.com or 01252 714 276 , but if you don’t fancy a carrying a tune for 2015, here’s five other fun ways to lose a few excess pounds ...

Be Romantic

10 minutes of kissing, twice every day, can burn up to 100 calories depending on how enthusiastic you are. Locking lips with a loved one could burn between two and five calories a minute.

A kiss can burn calories

Add that up over the course of a year and it amounts to 36,500 calories which could help you lose 10 pounds. Get carried away with the kissing and head to the bedroom and you can take off a further 120 calories for an hour of passion.

Have sex three times a week and that burns around 7,500 calories - the equivalent of jogging for 75 miles, and far more enjoyable!

Shopping

Not the frantic sales type, but not just a slow wander round Liverpool city centre fashion stores either. Pick up the pace a bit as you walk from shop to shop in search of the perfect dress or shoes and you could reap the benefits.

Bargain hunters could lose 245 calories in a 20-minute dash between the rails. If you’re in one of those shops which offers a basket so you can carry all your best buys, take advantage of it and grab one, it’ll work wonders for your arms.

Let's Dance

Yes, you can go clubbing if you feel the urge, but a little boogie around the kitchen in the privacy of your home will work just as well for calorie shifting. Get your favourite dancefloor filling tunes blasting out and move like no-one’s watching (because they’re not). Keep it up for just 15 minutes and you’ll have burnt through 100 calories.

Not only that, but it’ll improve your leg muscle tone, cardiovascular fitness and give you the feelgood factor too.

Do the dishes

OK, this one probably isn’t as much fun as the others, but it will get you brownie points from your partner which is never a bad thing. Depending on just how many people came for dinner, you could burn up around 100 calories in one clean-up.

Standing at the sink on washing duties will lose you 22 calories for every 15 minutes - add to that, collecting the dishes from the table and walking backwards and forwards with them, and you’re up to 26 per 15 mins.

Sweep away calories

The Echo from December 1964 suggested housewives should improvise and “tone up after the eating spree” with a broom handle and washing line!

A cutting from the Echo in December 1964 offers Broom Handle Beauty tips

We published a series of seven-second Broom Handle Beauty exercises, courtesy of football fitness coach Bill Watson who said all women needed was a 12ft clothes line (costing about 2s 6d), two broom handles and “spare second between the housework.”

Source:- http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/real-lives/lose-weight-fun-heres-six-8369428

The Secret To Losing Weight From A Former Fat Guy

Photo, Getty Images.

It’s been 20 years since I was overweight, and I’ve learned a lot of tips and tricks for staying lean over the years. Think of this as part two to my last article about losing weight without losing your sanity. In this article I’m going to expand on the benefits of going to bed a little hungry.

Anyone who’s read my columns knows I eschew weight loss “miracles” and “magic,” but the trick of going to bed hungry is not that well known, especially when you consider how powerful it is as a tool for weight loss.

But it’s not always easy to do, and I’ll explain how to manage it later. First, let’s get into why you should do it.

It’s important to understand that when it comes to weight loss, calories are everything — the fundamental math has been proven time and again. This trick has nothing to do food getting stored as fat when you eat before bed – that’s a myth – and everything to do with restricting caloric intake in a smart way. The reason this trick works is because going to bed hungry is the only time of day it’s okay to be hungry!

“Obese people tend to eat little in the morning and much in the afternoon and evening,” wrote nutrition researcher France Bellisle in the Scandinavian Journal of Nutrition. “In extreme cases, a ‘night-eating syndrome’ is observed.”

The importance of eating breakfast isn’t about “revving up metabolism” – another myth – but establishing a healthy meal pattern that keeps you satisfied during the day. If you allow yourself to get hungry during the day, it builds. It builds to the point where, come the end of the day, willpower is overwhelmed and you can be tempted to stuff in lots of unhealthy calories before bed, taking in too much overall for the day and not achieving your desired weight loss.

The smart way to restrict calories is to eat three or four satisfying meals and then after dinner, stop eating. Going to bed a little hungry, a number of days each week, is going to drop the pounds. It’s the smart way to do it because your appetite resets overnight, and you don’t have to worry about runaway “night eating” later on. You start fresh with breakfast the next morning.

Be cautious, however, not to go to bed so hungry you wake up in the middle of the night needing to raid the fridge.

That’s the why, now here are three tips on how to do it:

1. Establish a meal patternAs I mentioned above, it’s important to focus on three or four meals at regular intervals during the day. Snacking is to be limited as a way to fuel exercise by eating something healthy. The focus should be on eating at regular intervals like breakfast, lunch and dinner.

2. Have all your meals at the dinner tableDoing things like eating on the couch, at your desk or in your car create a snacking mentality that allows you to eat anywhere, at any time. When you program your brain to think that you should only be eating while seated at a proper table (to focus on eating and nothing else) then it makes it a lot easier to resist snacking.

3. Beat late-night snackingThese are a number of tricks, because you may find that at around 9 p.m. you’re starting to feel that hunger, and you want that snack. You need to power through another hour or so to make it until, and here are some tactics to succeed:

a) Realize that it may be boredom instead of hunger. Chances are you’re busy all day long, and this is the time you’re finally not busy. You’re used to always doing something, and eating is doing something, so you eat. Things you can do instead of eating to relieve this boredom are to stretch, take a short walk, call or send an email to a friend you haven’t spoken with for a while, play a game or write in a journal.

b) Chew gum.

c) Brush your teeth. Most people associate this with an inability to eat so give it a try.

d) Have some hot herbal tea. Make it hot enough so that it takes time to drink in small sips. Don’t burn your tongue, though.

e) Go to bed and read.

Again, you don’t have to do this every day, and you don’t want to be starving, but just a little hungry. Remember that it needs to be coupled with a focus on being “satisfied” during the day rather than “full.” Throw in a regular exercise routine and you’ll be on your way to a healthier, leaner you.

Source:- http://www.chatelaine.com/health/fitness/the-secret-to-losing-weight/

YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE WEIGHT. BELIEVE IT.

Before we even get into the hows and whys of the program, I have to repeat what I’ve already said in the program introduction; you absolutely WILL lose weight on this program. And not just “lose weight” either, you will achieve your goal weight (I’ll tell you what that is in the next section, it’s probably less than you’re thinking, too) and not put the weight back on again like with most diets.

I need you to believe this, so I’m going to keep saying it until you do!

I’m gonna explain it to you so that you have a reason to believe in just a moment, but first let’s look at some of the reasons why people (other people, not you) might not actually believe that they are able to lose weight.