Health and Fitness Addiction

Yes...it's possible! The word "addiction" give us images of people in dark rooms, listening to bad music and sticking needles in their arms, but many addicts can be found in the gym or on the local school track, getting just as addictive a fix. In fact, the positive nature of the word "healthy" makes health and fitness addiction all the more alluring. Despite the positive media, health addicts have done as much damage to their families and lives as any other kind of addict. In this article, we'll look under the surface of health and fitness addiction and find a path to recovery.

How Can Something So Good Be Bad? In our modern Western culture, those willing to pay the price for fitness are to be applauded. There are just so many temptations to do otherwise. Exercise is mostly boring, painful and smelly, so those who endure it for about an hour, 3-5 days a week, have achieved a level of discipline most only dream of.

Health and fitness addiction is not about health or fitness...it's about a compulsion to use healthy activities to fill a void we see in ourselves. Addicts are compelled, not disciplined. The addictive chemicals involved in exercise are much the same as those in sex and porn addiction. This may explain why many people suffer from both sexual addictions and health addictions.

Types Of Health And Fitness Addiction: These are addictions to the activities of health and fitness, as opposed to the TV, Internet and shopping addictions which could involve health themes. Health and fitness addictions are compulsions to engage in "healthy" activities, like exercise, dieting, etc. In fact, anorexia and bulimia nervosa have both been described as severe health and fitness addictions. Two key symptoms of these mental disorders are exercise and dietary control to a compulsive and excessive extreme. The specific exercise or diet plan doesn't matter. It's an addiction when you feel compelled to do it.

How Do I Know I'm Addicted? We addicts don't often recognize addiction because a common symptom of addiction is denial, which is even easier to have about health. That's why it's easier to find out from a friend or loved one if you have a problem in this area. For health addiction involving eating, see Anorexia Nervosa Quiz. Here are some things to watch out for concerning fitness exercise addiction:

1. Do you regularly spend more than 8 hours a week exercising and is the time you spend increasing?

2. Does your exercise schedule interfere with normal family activities, home or work responsibilities?

3. Do friends or family members complain about the time or money you spend on fitness?

4. Have you wondered if you're being too compulsive about your fitness program?

5. Have you lied to your family, friends, or employers about the time you spend in fitness activities?

6. Do you often see fitness as a way to gain acceptance or praise from others?

7. Have you ever pushed so hard in your fitness program you hurt yourself?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should consider yourself at risk of addiction. If you answered yes to 3 or more, you're probably addicted.

How Do I Recover From Health And Fitness Addiction? This is caused by a negative self-image, like any other addiction. Instead of alcohol, you use exercise to fill a void you feel in yourself. Since the relief produced by exercise is only temporary and you become conditioned, you need regular increases in the activity to produce the same relief. Unlike alcohol, a certain amount of fitness activity is required for health, so, you can't just quit. Instead, we have to hold ourselves to no more than an hour a day, 3-5 days a week.

Spend the rest of the time you used to exercise going to AA or other addiction meetings and engaging in self-development activities. You could read, go back to school, join a volunteer group. You could take up a hobby, like gardening or building model airplanes. To help in building yourself up, avoid negative mental inputs, like the news, drama, negative, insulting friends. Replace those with good music or reading or other activities that build you up. Push all the negative, self-defeating, limiting thoughts out of your mind with positive, uplifting, encouraging thoughts.

Because there are risks that health and fitness addiction could develop into full-blown anorexia, if you try and fail to get a handle on your addiction, please see a doctor. Sometimes medical and psychological therapy can prevent a more serious condition from developing, and allow you the mental energies you need to get control of yourself.

Health and fitness addiction can be just as severe as any other addiction. It can imprison us into destructive, compulsive activities. We can place our families, our careers, even, ironically, our health at risk through addiction to exercise and other fitness activities. The good news is, there is hope for anyone willing to live in and work on recovery.

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Is Natural Weight Loss Really Possible?

Natural Weight Loss Is Permanent

Only natural weight loss can be permanent. Going on diets and taking weight loss pills to eliminate food cravings is only temporary and leads to obesity.

Not only is natural weight loss safe, but you'll eliminate food cravings without taking weight loss pills.

Most weight loss systems are not natural, and that's why the "failure rate" is over 98%.

There are no diets whatsoever, which lead to natural weight loss, because every single diet slows down your metabolism, which means that when you go off the diet, you will eventually gain back more weight than you lost.

How many people do you know, who actually kept it off?

So, dieting is just not an option, if you want to keep the weight off for good.

Weight Loss Pills

Most weight loss pills or diet pills are nothing more than appetite suppressants, which help to take away food cravings so that you don't eat, or don't eat as much.

So in reality, what you've done by taking weight loss pills, is actually putting yourself on a very drastic starvation diet, during which your body is getting progressively more starved for nutrition, and also...

Your metabolism will slow down to a crawl, and that's your guarantee that when you go off the weight loss pills, you are going to blow up like a balloon, and eventually gain all the weight back, plus a few extra pounds as a bonus.

Food Supplements

Taking a safe and healthy food supplement that your body can absorb, can really enhance a good natural weight loss program, because the extra nutrition will help your body to become more nutritionally satisfied.

This will help to eliminate food cravings without taking weight loss pills. Cutting back on food cravings by becoming more nutritionally satisfied, means that...

You won't slow down your metabolism, and you won't have the same problem with regaining the weight.

The problem however...

Is that most food supplements are not absorbed very well by your body. When you take a Vitamin and Mineral supplement for example, most people are only able to absorb between 4 to 5%, so it's a total waste of money, plus...

If you are not absorbing the supplement, it will definitely not help to eliminate food cravings, so you're no further ahead.

In the Slim America Weight-Loss Project, we only recommend natural food supplements which are fully absorbed by the body. As a result, these totally safe food supplements really help to enhance and speed up our natural weight-loss program, and also...

Not only are food cravings greatly reduced, but our students are reporting lots of extra energy, more stamina, and are finding it much easier to stay away from junk foods which provide very little nutrition, but really help to put on the pounds.

Exercise for Natural Weight Loss

Proper exercise is an essential ingredient in any natural weight-loss program, because there is no way that the weight loss will be permanent without exercise, and that's a fact.

But here's the problem...

Over 95% of all the weight loss exercises, that people do in order to burn off fat, actually burn almost no fat whatsoever. Most of these exercises burn almost exclusively sugar, and that's why it's so hard to get rid of the fat.

For most people who are overweight, especially if you're obese, doing all the normal weight loss exercises like running, swimming, playing sports, using all the fancy exercise equipment in gyms, weight lifting etc., are practically useless for getting rid of fat.

Most of these exercises are very hard to do, require a lot of work, and a lot of sweating, for very little results. For sure, if you stick to it long enough it will certainly help, however...

The results are so minimal for most people that 99% of people will give up long before achieving any realistic results.

In the Slim America Weight-Loss Project, we only recommend walking for weight loss, however just normal walking is not very effective either.

In the Slim America Project, we actually teach 10 secrets about walking, which not only help to turn walking into a very effective fat burner, but more importantly, also helps to rebuild your metabolism.

Walking for weight loss has to be part of any natural weight loss system because it helps to turn your body into an effective fat burning machine, which will cause you to burn more fat during the whole day.

Complete Natural Weight Loss

Only a complete and natural weight loss system which is totally safe, without the use of weight-loss pills to eliminate food cravings, and which includes a good walking program will result in permanent weight loss...

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Fitness and Health

For most of us from the government schools, PE (physical education) was in the school curriculum. So we had no choice but to comply and treat it as one of the school subjects. For the outdoor initiated, the PE lessons were great as it gave many an outlet for all the youthful hormones to exert themselves. For those of us who dread PE (including myself), our main thoughts were more like "what is the use of PE when it doesn't improve our exam scores." We were so wrong then.

Only now, as we approach the middle age do we realized the mistake of not having built up a more robust physique through our younger days to handle the pressures and stress of today's life. However, it is not too late. It is not the end of my life yet. I can still make a difference.

Didn't someone once said, that the glory of this temple in our later days will be more glorious than our former ones. So here I am, writing something on fitness hoping to spur my middle aged body on to greater heights.

The best way to good health is mild to moderate physical exercises. This suits me just fine, because we are so, so busy and time is a precious commodity in today's economy. The least amount of time spent on physical torturing exercises and yet be able to help me maintain a healthy body - will be just right for me.

All I want to achieve is a healthy body. I am not a fitness guru or an exercise freak (sorry for the term used). I enjoy a little bit of laziness once a while.

I like to pamper myself with some pleasures such as fine dining and couching in front of the TV. But I realized that this cannot be the norm or else I will be digging my own grave sooner rather than later.

Do you want to be fit or do you want to be healthy? Hey, I thought that meant the same.

Well, fitness has been defined in relation to a concept called physical work capacity, or how much work the body can do. A person's fitness can be determined in a laboratory by looking at how much energy they can produce on a cycle ergometer when cycling at a specific heart rate, or on an athletic track by looking at how far they can run in a set time. Fitness can also be understood in relation to a number of components including endurance, flexibility, strength and power. You need to be fit to play many sports, including football, hockey and tennis.

On the other hand, good health is a broader concept that includes being free from sicknesses and diseases, and be in a proper state of mental and spiritual wellbeing.

Normally, being fit and being healthy go hand in hand. But it is not always so. For example, you can be very fit, through playing tennis, but suffer a major health problem such as alcoholism.

When we understand these two concepts and the difference between fitness and good health, then you will realized that actually you need less exercise to be healthy. You actually need more exercise to get fit and to remain fit.

How to be fit?

Many people have a need to be fit because their jobs or careers demands it. If you are an athlete or a sportsman you need to be fit or else you are out of the game. If you are a soldier or a fireman, you need to be fit because it could mean a life or death decision for you just when you need it the most.

To be fit, you will have to follow a set program of exercise which we call training. Proper training will always take place in a right and professional environment that have the facilities to train you through expert and regimented supervision. Examples of such fitness training are gymnastic training, running, weight lifting, swimming programs etc.

In such an environment, the intensity of the exercise program is varied to achieve the different levels of fitness. It means that if you want to be very, very fit, you need to exercise at an above moderate or high intensity level. Normally, in achieving such fitness goal levels, the individual will undoubtedly also become healthier. However, if you don't want to be fit but just healthy, you don't have to exercise as hard.

How to be healthy?

On the other hand, if all you want to be is healthy, then you just need a milder level of exercises to be healthy and to remain in good health. Sometimes the fear and anxiety of suffering from heart diseases, excessive cholesterol in blood stream, obesity or mental health problems, propels us to remain physically active.

You do not need to have the same intensity of training to remain healthy as compared to remain fit. You can encompass your physical exercises into your normal routine. Instead of getting into your compact car and drive round the block, purpose to park at a distance and walk all the way. Walk through the golf course and carry your own bag instead of hitching a golf cart or engage a caddie. Perform some simple exercises behind the office desk using isometric exercises when nobody is looking. Do some pushup or situps in between commercials in the TV.

All I am saying is you don't need to torture yourself to remain healthy.

Some active living tips:

* Use the stairs instead of the lift or escalator.

* Don't use the remote control to change TV channels. Get up from your chair.

* Bring along your jogging shoes when you travel outstation, just in case you find
some free time for a short walk/jog.

To be healthy, some experts recommend being physically active on at least five days out of seven.

We're increasingly living in a world where we require less and less physical activity in our lives. We have domestic appliances to wash and dry for us, cars to transport us and desks at which to sit and work or study.
In school we are always told to 'sit still'.

In view of these "bad" technological influences that have stopped us from moving, any physical activity is a health gain.

Not everyone can subscribe to a magic formula on the amount of exercise in order to achieve a benefit.

The right key is to make an effort and persevere. As soon as you move, you win!

If you have no idea at all for keep-fit ideas, consider some of the following?

* dancing - you name the style

* bikes, scooters, inline skates and skateboarding

* ice skating, dry skiing and snowboarding

* gymnastics/tumbling

* swimming

* martial arts

* gym-based activities

* team sports (football, volleyball, basketball, baseball etc)

* walking

* skipping or jump rope

* kites and frisbees

* hide and seek

* dog walking

For young people, you can also exercise and earn money at the same time: wash the car, shovel snow, do the shopping, wash the windows, vacuum or do the gardening.

Cheers to Healthy Living.

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Abdominal Weight - Lose it Fast

Is it easy to lose abdominal weight fast? It can be if you are motivated enough to stick to a routine and particularly, limit your dietary intake to only essential healthy foods. Even the slightest slip up can result in extra tummy fat if you are particularly prone to putting on weight in that area.

Both men and women struggle with excess weight around the tummy area and it seems that it is always easier to put it on than it is to lose it. But don't let that deter you from abdominal weight lose - you can do it!

To lose belly fat you should not starve yourself. You should never starve yourself to lose ANY weight as this is exceptionally unhealthy and dangerous. In fact you should keep yourself well fed when you are wanting to lose weight. It is the hunger pangs that will have you eating too much, so if you can stave them off then you are on the way to weight loss.

How do you stop yourself feeling hungry? The best way is to eat small regular meals instead of three large ones. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are considered to be mandatory meals but you can add a few more in between such as brunch and mid afternoon tea. Breakfast should be your largest meal of the day, but it should be a healthy one. For abdominal weight loss, bacon and eggs are off the menu. Replace that unhealthy fried breakfast with whole wheat cereal, soy or skim milk, fruit and oats. You will find this meal tides you over for several hours.

Brunch (mid morning) should be a mix of fruit and healthy snacks like muesli bars (just beware of the high sugar ones). For lunch consider a risotto and boiled vegetables. Mid afternoon snacks can consist of some fruit again or anything else that is of low calorie. Dinner should be light. Having a big dinner will reduce your chance of a good night sleep as your body processes the food. It will also result in weight gain around the belly because when you are sleeping you will put on the extra weight as your metabolism slows down.

The above eating regime leaves little room for hunger and as such you are less likely to crave unhealthy snacks. Abdominal weight loss is not difficult - just follow a smart eating plan and mix it up with some regular exercise and you will see results within a few weeks.

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Lose Weight - Lose Weight Fast and Healthy

Health is the most important thing a person can have and that anyone should be desiring. A healthy body can do so much, bear so much, and live much more longer. Also one can show that healthy body to the world without been ill at ease.

Although everyone keep saying that losing weight is not easy, the fact remains that it is at least simple.

There are tons of ways to lose weight but two-third of them are unhealthy. In the diet field for instance, most of the diet plans will require you body to go on a quasi-fasting since you will only get to eat teenie-weenie dishes or worst, going on with your day with only a meal inside your stomach. Those kinds are not recommended at all.

There are a few ways that will truly help you losing weight and fairly easily. There are diet plan that, unlike the unrecommended, will have you eating more. Those diet plans have discovered a secret in the human body that other diet plans does not even know about. They have discovered the way to stimulate one's Fat Burning Hormone and thus making it burn and burn fat from the body incessantly.

Imagine eating what you like, and having the food you are eating making you lose fat. Well there are such diet plans. And all thank to the food you will be able to control that Fat Burning Hormone, however you will also control another important hormone, the Fat Storage Hormone and accordingly you will control how much calorie you store inside your body, obviously here, as less as humanly possible.

That is why it is so simple to lose weight. However the right diet plan is required. With the right diet plan it is possible to lose weight so fast while eating healthily (3 meals a day and more). There is even diet plans that will have you lose 9lbs in 11 days for as long as you use it! 9 lbs every 11 days, that means around 25 lbs a month.

So look for a simple diet plan that will show fast result through healthily food. Doesn't it sound easy?

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How to Lose Weight Without Losing Meat - The Weight Loss Program For Meat Lovers

How to lose weight while still being able to eat meat has to be given serious consideration in all diet eating plans. Weight loss programs must focus on protein and nutrients. Without it, you might lose weight, but you won't be able to function.

How to lose weight without losing the juicy meat that you've become accustomed to is not only possible, it's healthy. Meat provides valuable micronutrients - nutrients that your body doesn't naturally produce. Planning a diet to lose weight by eliminating meat from your diet can also eliminate iron, selenium, Vitamin A, B12 and folic acid. Planning to lose weight by substituting greens in your diet's eating plans won't help either, because these micronutrients generally don't occur naturally in plant derived food. Dieting with meat should be a necessary component of a healthy weight loss program. For the benefit of your health, you should seriously consider how to lose weight with meat in your diet eating plans.

Meat not only provides important micronutrients, but it's a rich source of protein and necessary for healthy growth. Protein is one of the most important dietary resources that your body needs, especially when you are on a weight loss program. Protein takes a systematic approach to your body, from your brain to your waistline and down to your toenails. Protein helps brain cells, lung cells, muscles, bones, and repairs just about everything. It carries oxygen to our cells and makes enzymes to digest the food we eat (whether we're trying to lose weight or not). It also runs through our blood and is responsible for our hair, fingernails and toenails. Learning how to include meat in your diet when you're trying to lose weight is necessary for every part of your body - from your head down to your toes. Meat, unlike other foods, contains the complete amino acids for total body functioning. There's no sense trying to lose weight if you're not going to be functioning after your weight loss program.

A healthy weight loss program that helps you learn how to lose weight, and teaches you how to conjure up some new recipes to help you lose weight, is the Atkins diet. This decades old diet plan survives because it is successful, and time has provided the opportunity for scientific studies to prove the health benefits of the Atkins Diet Weight Loss Program. Atkins found another benefit of meat - it lowers food cravings. And that dietary benefit works particularly well in foods with high carbohydrates, which are the foods that the Atkins diet restricts. This discovery made it possible for dieters to learn how to lose weight without losing the meat in their diet eating plans.

How to lose weight without losing the succulent meat that is now a part of your daily diet is possible with the Atkins Diet Weight Loss Program. Since meat has properties that hinder food cravings, people are more successful when dieting with the Atkins Diet Weight Loss Program compared to other weight loss programs. Losing weight while maintaining the proper level of the proteins and micronutrients will keep your body functioning healthy, even with other dietary restrictions. The Atkins Diet Weight Loss Program is the meat-lovers diet. Learn how to lose weight with the Atkins Diet Weight Loss Program, and you'll be able to lose weight along with the calorie-inducing food cravings that are inevitable with most diets. Try the Atkins Diet Weight Loss Program if you're looking for a weight loss program that allows you to eat the healthy meats you've grown up with. Diet to lose weight, not meat.

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How to Lose Weight With Exercise Alone

If you have been trying to lose weight, and reading on the literature regarding weight loss on various forums (both online and forum), then you must have by now come to the

realization that going by all this weight loss literature, the only way through which you can get to lose weight is through the use of diet change, exercise and supplements. You could also have found yourself asking whether it is possible to lose weight with any of these methods alone, as in, whether it possible to lose weight with the help of diet modification, exercise or the use of supplements alone, without having to seek the help of the other two.

Well, the truth of the matter, at least according to most commentators on this subject, is that besides exercise, none of the other two main weight loss holds any promise to make weight loss possible on its own. True, there have been cases of people trying to lose weight through the use of diet alone, or through the use of one or another supplement alone, but weight loss so attained tends to be very short-lived; so that one ends up regaining the weight they had lost, and perhaps some more, upon stopping to use the said diet or supplement. On the other hand, though, there have been cases of people actually getting to lose weight through the use of proper and consistent use of exercise alone; that is, without any drastic diet changes or the use of any particular supplements - and where such people went to maintain the healthy weights so acquired for the rest of their lives.

The key to losing weight with exercise alone lies in ensuring that you are using the right type of exercises, and that you are exercising on a very regular basis. Use the wrong types of exercises, and you could actually find yourself gaining rather than losing weight, as there are exercise that are more suitable at increasing rather than losing weight.

With regard to consistency, the only way that one can get to lose weight with exercise alone is by building the exercise regime into being a part of their life - so that one doesn't only exercise once in a while, and start wondering when the scales won't budge. Ideally, one should be exercising both inside the gym and outside the gym (at home), so that besides the focused exercises one undertakes inside the gym, they also take to a more active lifestyle outside the gym (walking to work rather than driving, whenever possible, taking the stairs rather than the lifts on tall buildings and so on).

It is worth mentioning, of course, that while one won't be making use of 'diet' as a weight loss aid here, overindulging in the wrong varieties of food would be, for all purposes and intents, self sabotage; so one still has to ensure that they are eating sensibly all along, even though they don't get onto a formal 'diet.

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