Keeping Fit is A Daily Battle

The amount of muscle you can achieve is regulated by testosterone, also known as the Holy Grail of muscle growth. Quite simply, testosterone is the most important muscle-building hormone in your body and is one of the limiting factors that determines how much muscle you can ultimately build. Here is just a small handful of the many amazing benefits that increased testosterone levels will provide you with: Increased muscle size and strength, decreased body fat levels, increased sex drive and sexual endurance, improved mood and decreased levels of “bad” cholesterol.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well it is, and in this article I’m going to outline 10 simple steps to naturally elevate your testosterone levels and achieve all of these incredible benefits. While these steps will not result in “steroid-like” muscle gains, they will definitely contribute to your overall bottomline results.

1) Utilize combination exercises as the foundation of your fitness routine. I’m talking about the basic, bread-and-butter lifts such as squats, deadlifts, bench presses, rows, chin-ups, dips, lunges and military presses. Going to the gym and following the training that places your muscles under the largest quantity of pressure will compel your body to add to testosterone production.

2) Always put forth maximum exertion and intensity when preparing. You must be willing to really push your body to its physical limits if you hope to build muscle. The more stress you put on your muscles in the gym, the more testosterone your body will create.

3) Exercise your leg muscles just as hard as your exercise your upper body. You may already know that growth in the chest, back, and arms will be stimulated by intense training of the legs. The increased testosterone produced through leg training exercises is one of the reasons for this.

4) Increase your EFA consumption. Necessary fatty acids that come from origins such as peanuts, avocadoes, healthy oils such as omega 3 fish oil and flax seed. To boost testosterone levels naturally, nothing beats olive or canola oil.

5) Minimize your consumption of soy. There is a direct negative effect on testosterone levels when the estrogen levels in the body increase, which can be caused by soy protein.

6) Limit your consumption of alcohol. Alcohol has been shown to have quite a dramatic effect on testosterone levels, so try to limit your “binge drinking” nights and keep your alcohol consumption in moderation.

7) Up your dietary consumption of cruciferous vegetables. Broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, turnips, cabbage and brussel sprouts have all been shown to dramatically reduce estrogen levels, thereby raising testosterone.

Reduce your everyday stresses. When you have too much stress, your body releases the catabolic hormone “cortisol” and this makes your testosterone levels drop dramatically.

9) Have more sex. Becoming sexually aroused increases oxytocin in the sytem which increases the production of endorphins and raises levels of testosterone.

10) Make certain that you get enough sleep each night. Insufficient sleep may result in a reduction of your testosterone levels due to the production of cortisol.

To boost your muscle size and gain strength, implement these techniques regularly for a noticeable difference.

YOU PROBABLY HEAR it a lot, casually thrown around in your gym, the fact that, “Weight loss is all about revving up the metabolism”. Your body’s physical shape is very closely connected to its rate of metabolism, which simply refers to all of the body’s physical and chemical processes that use energy.

“It’s calculated as a basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is the number of calories your body burns per day at rest,” says clinical nutritionist, Dr Nupur J Krishnan. Metabolism varies vastly from person to person, depending on factors like age, sex and weight.

If you starve yourself in the morning, the signal that your body gets is that food supplies are low and whatever meal comes in next has to be stored as fat. Fruits contain fibre that is essential for the metabolic process.

”The normal BMR range is 1,200-1,300 for women and 1,400-1,600 for men. People with a sluggish metabolism may find it difficult to lose weight,” adds Dr Krishnan.

If your doctor finds your metabolism slower than normal and you’re having a hard time losing weight, here are 10 tips from the pros on how to speed up the burner.

Build muscle
The body burns more calories in maintaining muscle tissue than it does with fat. Regular cardiovascular exercise that trims fat, and weight training that helps build muscle mass will definitely rev up your metabolism.

“Weight training is the best way to raise your metabolic rate and burn more calories. It adds to your overall weight loss - the more lean muscle tissue there is, the more calories the body burns at rest,” says fitness expert Leena Mogre.

“Weight training causes muscles to breakdown and then rebuild themselves better when you’re resting, which increases muscle mass, which in turn increases metabolic rate,” says Ritesh Patil, fitness consultant and operations manager, Sykz Gym.

Aerobic exercise
Any form of cardiovascular exercise raises the body’s BMR for over an hour or so after the workout. “People with very sluggish metabolism are often advised more cardiovascular workouts to increase their rate of burn,” says Mogre.

Small, frequent meals
You stimulate your metabolism every time you eat. So six small meals a day will actually help you burn more calories than three large ones. The body utilises multiple packets of nutrients in smaller meals much better than it does a single load of nutrients from one large meal.

“Keeping up this eating pattern will boost your BMR in the long run,” says Mogre.

Never skip breakfast
It’s the first meal of the day when you literally break your fast after eight to 10 hours of sleep, so a good breakfast provides a critical energy surge as you begin your day.

“A proper breakfast also keeps your energy levels high throughout the day,” says Anjum Shaikh, chief nutritionist, Sykz Gym.

Skipping breakfast could actually leave you piled with extra kilos of fat. “If you starve yourself in the morning, the signal that your body gets is that food supplies are low and whatever meal comes in next has to be stored as fat. Starving yourself for too long also leads to muscle breakdown,” says Mogre.

Don’t cut off carbohydrates
The first thing most of us do to lose weight is cut down on carbohydrate or starchy food.

Bread, pastries, pastas become off limits. “But drastically reducing carbohydrate intake can reduce the body’s metabolic rate. You have to eat enough carbohydrates to keep your metabolism high. And cutting carbohydrates totally is never a good idea,” says Shaikh.

Pack in the proteins Protein-rich foods like egg whites, chicken, fish, dal, and sprouts don’t directly cause your metabolism to shoot up. “But protein and calcium absorbed by the body through milk and milk products will help strengthen your bones, increase your lean body mass, and thus your BMR,” says Shaikh.

Managing thyroid trouble
Improper functioning of the thyroid gland, which manages your body’s metabolism, can slow down weight loss. “People with hypothyroidism don’t produce enough thyroid hormone, which leaves them with a slow metabolism. But it’s not impossible for them to increase their metabolism,” says Dr Krishnan.

Eating right is critical. “Avoid foods like cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, turnip, broccoli, soyabeans and tofu. These are rich in goitrogens, a substance that interferes with the functioning of the thyroid gland. Those suffering from hypothyroidism should especially avoid these foods,” says Shaikh.

Drink lots of water
Water is directly involved in the metabolism process and the more you have of it, the higher your BMR. But that doesn’t mean indiscriminately gulping down 10-12 glasses per day. “It’s no longer a blanket rule applied to everyone. If you sit at a desk in an air-conditioned space, you don’t need 12 glasses of water a day, simply because there’s hardly any loss of water due to sweating.

Up to eight glasses a day is good enough to keep your metabolism running,” says Dr Krishnan.

Trim the trans fat
The reason is simple. Too much fat or oil intake increases the body’s fat percentage, which slows down metabolism. “Avoid junk food and oily snacks - they only make your system sluggish and lower your metabolism,” says Shaikh.

Metabolism boosters Complex carbohydrates and high-fibre vegetables and cereals burn more calories than simple carbohydrates and are more likely to get your metabolism going than a large serving of French fries.

“Eat lots of colored vegetables like carrots, tomatoes, red and yellow capsicum. These are rich in anti-oxidants and phytochemicals that help the fat burning process,” says Dr Krishnan.

Doctors advice to have your testosterone levels checked if you have reduced levels of sexual desire or libido. You can replenish your depleting testosterone with injections, gels, pills or patches but these medical treatments and synthetic driugs do not come without adverse side effects which include acne, high cholesterol, shrunken testicles and liver damage.

The best alternative is to have an natural or herbal pill that does not have side effects and acts as an HGH releaser which helps your body to increase it’s own production of growth hormone. An increase in growth hormone not only raises testosterone production but also helps your body to reverse age effects significantly.

Men with borderline testosterone scores, can raise their levels through exercise and weight loss before going on testosterone therapy. And it might pay to start young. Since your testosterone declines at a steady rate, it’s conceivable that raising your hormone levels naturally in your 20s and 30s could help you maintain higher levels later on. Either way, the reward can be a stronger physique and better bedroom sessions than you’d otherwise deserve.

Below are 13 tips designed to get your juice up — safely.

Get Rid of the Flopping Belly

Excess body fat is likely to elevate your estrogen levels which affects testosterone negatively. Though 2 or 3 extra pounds do not matter and will not cause any change in hormone levels, the hormonal shift takes place if you are 30% over your ideal body weight. Unfortunately due to improper eating habits and lack of physical activity, this is fairly common now.

But Lose Only One Pound a Week

When you want to lose weight quickly, you probably starve yourself. One of the many reasons this stops working in your 30s, when your natural testosterone levels start dropping, is pretty simple: Cutting your calorie intake by more than 15 percent makes your brain think you’re starving, so it shuts down testosterone production to wait out the famine since it is functioned in a way that there’s no need to reproduce if you’re starving. Ironically, this dive in circulating testosterone stops you from burning body fat efficiently, so you’re actually thwarting your hard efforts to melt that tire off your gut.

Skip the Atkins Fad

Research suggests that eating a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet can cramp your testosterone levels. High amounts of dietary protein in your blood can eventually lower the amount of testosterone produced in your testes as observed in a study of 12 healthy, athletic men.

Your protein intake should be about 16 percent of your daily calories. So, if you’re the average 170-pound man who eats 2,900 calories a day, you should eat about 140 grams of protein daily, which is about the amount in two chicken breasts and a 6-ounce can of tuna.

Have Morning Sex

German scientists found that simply having an erection causes your circulating testosterone to rise significantly — and having one in the morning can goose your natural post-dawn testosterone surge. It’s a sure bet you’ll burn a little fat, too.

Stick With Tough Exercises

To beef up your testosterone levels, the bulk of your workout should involve “compound” weight-lifting exercises that train several large muscle groups, and not just one or two smaller muscles. For example, studies have shown that doing squats, bench presses or back rows increases testosterone more than doing biceps curls or triceps pushdowns, even though the effort may seem the same. This is why doing squats could help you build bigger biceps.

Make Nuts Your Midnight Snack

Nuts are good for your nuts. Research has found that men who ate diets rich in monounsaturated fat — the kind found in peanuts — had the highest testosterone levels.It’s not known why this occurs, but some scientists believe that monounsaturated fats have a direct effect on the testes. Nuts, olive oil, canola oil and peanut butter are good sources of monounsaturated fat.

Squeeze Out Five Repetitions per Set

Throwing around 5-pound dumbbells won’t help you effect a rise in testosterone. Start off by using a heavy weight that you can lift only five times. That weight is about 85 percent of your one-repetition maximum. A Finnish study found that this workload produced the greatest boosts in testosterone.

Do Three Sets of Each Weight-Lifting Movement

Researchers at Penn State determined that this fosters greater increases in testosterone than just one or two sets. Rest a full minute between sets, so you can regain enough strength to continue lifting at least 70 percent of your one-rep maximum during the second and third sets.

Rest Harder Than You Work Out

If you overtrain — meaning you don’t allow your body to recuperate adequately between training sessions — your circulating testosterone levels can plunge by as much as 40 percent, according to a study at the University of North Carolina. The symptoms of overtraining are hard to miss: irritability, insomnia, muscle shrinkage, joining the Reform Party. To avoid overtraining, make sure you sleep a full eight hours at night, and never stress the same muscles with weight-lifting movements two days in a row.

Drive Home Sober

To maintain a healthy testosterone count — and titanium erections — cut yourself off after three drinks. Binge drinking will kill your testosterone levels. Alcohol affects the endocrine system, causing your testes to stop producing the male hormone. That’s one reason drinking often causes you to go limp at the moment of truth.

Have a Sandwich at 3 p.m.

As any sensible woman knows, the way to put hair on a man’s chest is to fill his stomach. Your body needs a ready supply of calories to make testosterone, so regularly skipping meals or going for long stretches without eating can cause your levels of the hormone to plummet. Then again, that’s probably the warden’s plan.

Buy the Fried Tortilla Chips

If you want to raise your testosterone score, eat a diet that includes about 30 percent fat, and not much less. Your body needs dietary fat to produce testosterone, so eating like a vegetarian aerobics instructor will cause your testosterone levels to sink drastically. This is bad, unless you actually are a vegetarian aerobics instructor.

Stop Surfing for Porn at 2 a.m.

Sleeping less than seven to eight hours a night can screw up your circadian rhythm. That’s why it’s no wonder your testosterone levels are higher in the morning after a good night’s sleep. So if your work or social schedule keeps you stooped in perpetual jet lag, don’t be surprised if you stop craving sex. At least that’ll make it easier to stay out of bed.

Your metabolic rate determines how much calories your body can use up in a particular daily. A very metabolic rate amounts to high calories burnt or being used up. If you have a metabolic rate, then you won’t won’t be burning calories at a faster rate.

Any one who is trying to lose weight must maintain a fairly high metabolic rate but unfortunately, many people who want to lose weight have bad diet plan. Please hardly exercise, many still skip meals or at worst go about starving themselves all in the name of losing weight. For many, it takes a drastic change in their daily eating and exercise habits for them to finally lose weight. It might seem hard, but it can be done!

Though it usually seem hard to increase your metabolism but you can increase your metabolism by following the under listed tips.

1. First before the start - make sure you are ready for this

Ask yourself the following questions:

a)Do you really want to lose weight? b) Is dieting right for you? c) do you have enough motivation ? d) Are you able to devote 20-30% of your time to your body? e) Would you accept the things you can not change? f) would you be ready to have a change in your lifestyle? g) Do your family and friends support you?

If your can answer yes to all or majority of the above questions, then you are ready and on your weight to increase your metabolism and lose weight.

2. Workout smartly

You can increase your metabolism and lose weight by engaging in 3-to-4 short 10 minute work outs instead of the usually tedious 30-40 minute work out.

Medical researches at the University of Pittsburg shows that women who divide their 30 to 40 minute work outs into 4 10 minutes work out sessions lost 20 or more pounds while another group of women who did 1 big 40 minute work out only lost 14 pounds.

The reason for this is, when you engage in short 3-4 10 minutes work out sessions, you are not giving your metabolism any time to rest or slow down.

3. Eat little and often - There is no point in over eating and eating less or starving yourself is also dangerous to your weight loss progress - moderation is the name of the game. There’s evidence that eating small, regular meals throughout the day, instead of the normal one or two big meals or starving yourself, may help to keep your metabolism ticking over. You need to know that around 10 % of your daily calorie intake goes on digesting and absorbing food - this means the more times you eat, the more the effect on your metabolism.

4.Drink More Water

One of the best weight loss secrets is to ditch the sodas and stick to water! Experts say you should drink approximately eight glasses of water a day to stay hydrated and healthy. Instead of turning to calorie-laden or sugar-rich drinks, grab a refreshing glass of water. In addition to flushing toxins out of your system, drinking water encourages you to build muscle.

5. Work Out with Weights

One great way to maximize the amount of fat you are burning is to add a weight program to your work out routine. Weight training will not only tone your physique, but will strengthen your body and improve your general health. Lifting weights will also burn calories and fat more quickly than traditional exercising, and it will also boost your metabolism.

6. Aerobic/cardio Work out : Aerobic/cardio workout helps in the reduction of fat and an increase in metabolic rate. Ensure to do serious aerobic/cardio workout for at least 3-4 times per week. Doing this will not only help you lose weight but also help spike up your body metabolism. Many weight loss experts believe more calories are being burnt doing aerobic/cardio training but the truth is that you are not only burning calories during aerobic/cardio workouts but also preparing your body to burn more calories even after the workout sessions. Short cardio sessions ( 10 - 20 minutes ) for at least four times per week will help increase body metabolic rate so as to burn off more calories even when sleeping or resting.

7. Do not Skip Meals : Eat regular small meals instead of infrequent big ones -you won’t feel as hungry and your body will use more energy in digestion and also keeps your blood sugar level balanced. Instead of eating 3 big meals, try to eat 5 - 6 smaller meals throughout the day.

8. Passionately kiss your partner 10 times a day. According to a medical by kinsey Institute report on sex, passionately kiss your partner helps your burn as much as 6.4 calories per minute which Ten minutes a day of kissing equates to about 23,000 calories — or eight pounds — a year!

This is a scary study - a major European study has found that a thick waist almost doubles the risk of premature death, showing there’s nothing lovely about love handles.

Importantly, the risk is similar even when body mass index (BMI) fell within normal range, according to the authors of the study of 359,000 people aged 51.9 on average, including 65.4 percent women, appearing in Thursday’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The research found that excess fat stored around the middle of the body was a major health risk even when people are not considered obese or even overweight by statistical BMI standards.

In fact, each five centimetre increase in waist size increased the risk of death by 17 percent in men and 13 percent in women.

“The most important result of our study is the finding that not just being overweight, but also the distribution of body fat, affects the risk of premature death of each individual,” said Tobias Pischon, the lead author of the paper from the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam-Rehbr�cke.

The data should encourage physicians to routinely measure patients’ waists as well as their BMI on routine office visits, according to the study carried out by the Imperial College London (GB), German Institute for Human Nutrition and other European participants.

“The good news is that you don’t need to take an expensive test and wait ages for the result to assess this aspect of your health - it costs virtually nothing to measure your waist and hip size,” said Elio Riboli, the European coordinator of the EPIC study from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Imperial College London.

“If you have a large waist, you probably need to increase the amount of exercise you do every day, avoid excessive alcohol consumption and improve your diet. This could make a huge difference in reducing your risk of an early death.”

Let me go out on a short limb here and say: dieting works . . . at least in the near term. But you can increase the effectiveness of most diets and improve your long-term chance of success by mastering several simple diet changes.

Over the past years, I’ve compiled a long list of simple lifestyle changes that combine to build a practical, long-term approach to dieting. Add a few of these changes to your current routine individually until they become habit. In a short while, you’ll notice better, more lasting results if you are able to absorb these changes. Plus, they’ll help kick-start any fast weight lose diet.

Ice cold water: drink an ice-cold glass of water (16 ounces) when you first wake up and prior to every meal. Your body will be forced to raise the water to its temperature, burning a few extra calories in the process. Additionally, it will make you feel fuller when you eat and help keep you properly hydrated.

Add negative calorie foods: there are a handful of foods out there that consume more energy when burned than are contained within the foods themselves; i.e. they have a net negative caloric impact. Try adding asparagus, broccoli, blueberries, beets, radishes, cucumbers, strawberries, tomatoes, and similar foods.

Two-hour rule: don’t eat for at least two hours before bedtime, and ideally, in the final three hours that you are awake, consume only fresh vegetables or salad. This is actually easier than it sounds. If you eat dinner at 7:00 PM and go to bed at 11:00 PM, add a small garden salad as an evening snack around 9:00 PM. This will keep you from snacking late at night when the food will have little chance of being metabolized.

Switch to anaerobic exercise: exercise burns calories — you know this. But effective exercise can burn calories for up to 24 hours after it’s performed and spare your muscle mass at the same time. The secret is interval training. Drop your long cardio workouts in favor of short interval sessions.

Eat brown foods: try to stay away from processed foods or foods that increase your blood sugar. Whole wheat bread, sweet potatoes, brown rice are good substitutes for white bread, potatoes, and white rice.

3:1 deficit-to-normal ratio: after three days at a caloric deficit, add a normal day. If you’re dieting at a 30 percent deficit for 3 days (e.g. 2400 calorie diet dropping to 1650 calories), make the fourth day a 10 percent deficit. That is, in this example, give yourself an extra 510 calories on every fourth day. This will keep your body guessing.

Remember, for maximum effectiveness, add these habits into your current fast weight loss plan. When you stop dieting, retain these habits for the long-term to help you keep off the weight it took so long to lose. It’s always easier to maintain than to lose!

When it comes to dieting, many people rely on mainstream diets. Whichever diet that is being promoted, many people looking to lose weight by jumping on the bandwagon. However, later on, many people learn that these diets cause many health risks. Therefore, you should create your own healthy diet with the use of fat burning foods. These fat burning foods are healthy for you and you can use them together and feel one hundred percent secure that you and your family are eating well. Fat burning foods are much tastier then these commercialized and mainstream diets so you are actually in a win- win position if you incorporate fat burning foods into your diet.

So what do fat burning foods consist of? All fat burning foods are all natural. This means that a variety of fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood and herbs are all included on this large list of fat burning foods. Also, many people give up on their diet because the food becomes repetitive and bland. Using fat burning foods in your diet, means that you will never encounter this problem. There are over one hundred different types of fat burning foods that you can eat and create wonderful fat burning foods that are unique and scrumptious.

By starting the day of bright and early with different types of fat burning foods such as fruit will give you a good start to the day you can consider a grapefruit or what about a fruit salad consisting of melons,oranges,apples,strawberries,blueberries,papaya,watermelon,tangerines,nectarines,rasberries and peaches if this doesn’t fill you up you could add adding oatmeal or even a whole wheat grain mixed cereal which is delicious i have been eating this fat burning food in the mornings and i wouldn’t do without it now.

You can interchange your fat burning foods for lunch and dinner. If you have fat burning foods like meat for lunch you may want lighter fat burning foods for dinner such as seafood or salad, or vice versa. Such types of meat and seafood that are excellent fat burning foods include Chilean Sea Bass, Crab, Cod, abalone, flounder, oysters, bass, catfish, mussels, steak, trout, turtle, clams, frog legs, tuna, lobster shrimp, clams and the list goes on. You can see that there are so many fat burning foods on this list alone that it would take months before you would have to repeat a fat burning meal. The best part about these fat burning foods is that they do not need to be eaten plain.

These fat burning foods can have various different herbs on them allowing for an excellent seasoning that only helps to burn your fat. Such fat burning foods herbs that you can use include parsley leaves, chervil, garlic and celeriac. Garlic is one of the best fat burning foods available on the market. You can also saute your fat burning foods in a mix of onions, leeks, chives, shallots and scallions for even more fat burning flavor. All of these fat burning foods have one things in common; they allow you to have great tasting meals while dieting. Many diets may make you feel deprived, but by adding fat burning foods to your diet you are able to eat healthily while burning away the fat. This will also be a diet that you will enjoy staying on by incorporating fat burning foods into your diet.