Weight Loss Archives - Nirvana Diet

How to Boost Your Metabolism

December 9, 2016 by Skyler Madison Leave a Comment

How to Boost Your Metabolism

The best way to boost your metabolism is to change your body composition. This means to have more muscle and less fat. As we age, we lose muscle and it is replaced with fat. The average adult loses about 6.6 pounds of muscle a decade.

By age 65 the body has doubled its fat mass and lost half its muscle mass. This is a reason why many people gain weight. Since muscle is more metabolically active than fat, you either have eat less and less, excursive more or you gain weight. The best way to boost your metabolism is to engage in a progressive weight training program to prevent the decline in muscle. This should be done at a gym or preferably with a trainer.

Most trainers recommend doing three sets of an exercise with 8 to 12 repetitions until you cannot do more than the 12 repetitions but light enough so you can do at least 8. It is important to do the repetitions slowly count to 2 holding at the two of the contraction for 1 second. Lowering should be done to the count of 4.

The recommended exercise to boost metabolism is also to do aerobic exercise most days of the week (at least 5) and strength train for three days with a day off in between for recovery. You might also want to alternate between upper and lower body. For example do upper body on Monday and Friday and lower body on Wednesday. The following week you would do the opposite.

You can also boost your metabolism with the right aerobic exercise according to the latest research.

Muscle and aerobic exercise is what is what you need to burn fat and that means and boost your metabolism.

The best foods to boost your metabolism are: blueberries, turkey, spinach, salmon, and almonds and avocado.

Click here to check out The Nirvana Diet Course and jump start your weight loss goals, boost your metabolism and increase your motivation.

Click here to ask Skyler Madison about one on one coaching with a Nirvana Diet Coach.

Live a Happier Healthier Life

June 27, 2015 by admin 1 Comment

Many people overeat and can’t break free from their bad habits because the habits are serving a purpose.These habits keeps you from dealing with what is underlying it… What we really want- to be happier and find more meaning and purpose in our lives.

Research shows that we are not that good at figuring out what makes us happy. There are a lot of myths about happiness. So if you think that just by losing weight or fulfilling any one “goal” you will be happy, you may be surprised.

The real power lies in why you want to lose weight, to find a bigger meaning to what you want and focus on that; such as improving your health, or having more energy to do fun things with your loved ones. Most of the myths you will see are around the fact that we seem to misinterpret pleasure for happiness.

Re-Defining Real Happiness:

1. Happiness is a final destination…you aren’t suddenly happy one day. Taking care of yourself and your “happiness” factor requires a daily commitment and certain habits you were not necessarily born knowing.

2. Being happy depends on how your day is going. When you understand nothing is bad or good, it’s all how you see it you’ll understand how happiness is an inside job.

3. I’ll feel good about myself after…having a daily spiritual practice like sitting in meditation and or journaling will help you feel a deep sense that things are unfolding “perfectly”…as they are without feeling tossed about by the “ups and downs” of life.

4. Eating and pleasure is happiness. The fleeting happiness that is pleasure based will never satisfy you in the long run.

5. Denying your feelings make you feel better. Your feelings serve an important function, to serve as an internal guidance system. If you make a habit of listening to your feelings, they will give you clues as to what you need to do to get back on track.

6. You’re really okay with the way things are and don’t like change. Why have a life that is just ok? If deep within you sense there is something more…it never too late to get on the right destination that will help you fill what is missing.

7. You either are happy or you are not, it’s a character trait. There are actually skills, and ideas you can learn that can help you turn lemon in lemonade, enrich yourself by learning from your life, and feed what your soul is really hungry for…and it’s not what gets talked about on TV or in the media.

So what is it that makes us happy? Finding meaning in our lives and doing things that bring meaning to our lives. If you figure out how to do this, you will find it becomes easier to lose weight, and to change any unwanted habit that is really a cheap substitute for what you really want. Let me know what you think makes you happy.

Are you an optimist and why is optimism so important?

May 30, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

In a recent article in The New York Times Jane Brody discussed the merits of being an optimist. Seeing the glass as being half full as opposed to half empty is very much a function of how you see it. An important distinction was made between being an optimist and two other character traits that complement optimism: persistence and what is called motivation (not giving up).

This was found in a research study by Dr. Segerstrom and others to be the gift of optimism because when you combine optimism with persistence it leads to being able to creative solutions. All great moments of creativity began with a problem. Frustration and not giving up on finding a solution to a problem is the genesis of creativity. Pessimism derails creativity which often requires one to keep on keeping.

Insights come when we least expect yet when we are still waiting expectantly for an answer. In order to do this, a problem has to be turned around into a question and not viewed just as a problem. That takes character.

The other gift in optimism is the capacity to see a set back into a learning. Once again this is a function of how you view it and how a negative once again gets spun into a positive. These gifts appear to have some basis in genetics specifically one’s that affect neurotransmitters in to the brain such as dopamine that affect goal focused behavior.

The question then becomes if you were not born with the optimism gene can you acquire it? According to Dr. Segerstrom and other researchers the answer is yes. Perhaps we should focus more attention on optimism than happiness? Her advice is to “fake it until you make it” which is another way of saying how taking actions have the capacity to rewire the brain. I think a key to this is to reawaken the creativity within which then leads to the qualities that help turn problems into solutions. Creativity is a state of mind and a way of seeing. If you think you can, the likelihood that you will is much greater.

Losing weight is really the same dynamic. If you think you can, you will, but you must think of yourself first as a thinner person, from there you have the ability to make changes that become your way of living. Another way to approach this is to take up meditation. Meditation has the capacity to increase the cells in the brain that register optimism. Download Meditation Made Easy and get started now on thinking like a more optimistic person.

Why watching TV causes weight gain

May 16, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

The most important piece of information I got out of watching The Weight of the Nation which was focused more on the consequences of weight gain than how to lose weight is the effect of watching TV on weight gain. Why would watching TV cause people to gain so much weight? The Weight of the Nation focused on children, and called the advertisements for soda and cereal predatory. Food companies understand how brand loyalty works. The younger you get them the more hooked they get. The more you eat junk food the more food you eat and the cycle is hard to break.

The other reason watching TV causes weight gain is that the commercials border on being hypnotic. The continual parade of fast food and junk food commercials which now position Coke as happiness, or happy meals, or other subtle messages that link food with feeling good are having the effect of re-wiring the brain to think like that.

The other obvious reason watching TV causes weight gain is the couch potato syndrome. People tend to eat mindlessly while watching TV and the time spent watching TV takes away from other things you might do that cause you to be more active.

I think the writing is clearly on the wall. The first step you should take to lose weight may have to do with your TV habits. The second obvious step is to stop drinking sugar with which most drinks are loaded. The most remarkable statistic presented on The Weight of the Nation is how the obesity curve sky rocketed beginning in the 1980’s. This is also when food companies started putting high fructose corn syrup in everything. It is also saturated fat, hormones in milk the list goes on. The next step you can take is to stop eating foods that have ingredients on the label you do not recognize. It’s simple. Eat real food…preferably grown locally. This is of course the genius of my program The Nirvana Diet™.

Let me know what you think are some of the keys steps to take to lose weight.

Not all calories are created equal…we have been misled on the weight problem

May 14, 2012 by admin 1 Comment

There is a new documentary about to air The Weight of the Nation. This well researched documentary has come to the same conclusion I have on the weight problem in America. The best way and only way to lose weight and keep it off which to me is the only successful way to lose weight you must treat the way you lose weight as your lifestyle. That means the changes you make must be permanent and not viewed as a diet. This is hard to do because the brain tricks you into thinking its ok to eat this or that and not exercise every day. The problem is before you know it the weight starts to come back.

The other important piece of information you need to successfully lose weight and keep it off is to stop allowing yourself to be brainwashed about how the weight problem is an energy imbalance- you eat too many calories and expend too few calories. The problem is not just with calories in and out but the type of calorie you consume. Gary Taubes has written this in his bookGood Calories Bad Calories and in an article in Newsweek The new obesity campaigns have it all wrong. There is a different theory which says holds certain foods accountable- foods that contain refined sugar and grains which are loaded with them because of the affect it has on creating metabolic syndrome and their effect on the hormone insulin which regulates fat accumulation. These foods also change the way the brain operates by increasing the production of ghrelin and decrease the production of leptin so you feel hungrier and are never satisfied. Sound familiar?

The single easiest thing you can do to put a stop to this is to stop looking at calories and low fat and start looking at the sugar or carbohydrate content in the food you buy. This includes the biggest offender which is soda, including diet soda. The other simple thing is to stop buying packaged food or fast food. This is why the nation is heavy and getting heavier. This is really important that people start paying attention to this. It’s time to wake up. We as consumers can put a stop to what the food and drug companies are doing to us. Just stop consuming it.