Tried and trusted exercise bikes have been a fitness companion for many people for years. They are simple piece of equipment and you can use them any time and do not need to prepare too much before you leap on!

They give your legs a fantastic workout and condition your cardiovascular fitness too. They are great if you already enjoy cycling but live in a very built up area and want to avoid the traffic.

Exercise bikes build your athletic fitness and leg muscles in particular. Leg muscles are the strongest in the body so exercising them will lead to an improvement in many areas of your fitness, especially running and walking, playing with the kids and running up the stairs.

Your stamina improves tremendously and using an exercise bike allows you to build up stamina safely because, unlike with running for example, there is no impact. By doing only two sessions a week and increasing the length of session and resistance per session, you will start to notice the difference after the first week and you will be able to run or walk longer distances too.

If you want to train for an event there are many settings on exercise bikes to help you. They can simulate a race with different resistances to help you build up your distance and speed over time. You can program you own course or use the default on the bike.

All exercise bikes will increase your fitness levels, however there are a myriad of features to make it more exciting and here are few to get you thinking.

The two main types are upright and recumbent. Upright bikes are the most common and you ride it just like a normal bike in the same upright position. Your legs are in front a little and you are leaning forward to hold the handlebars.

Recumbent bikes mean you are leaning back onto a padded backrest. Many feel this position is far more comfortable if you are riding for a long time. This bike also comes recommended if you are recovering from back or knee injuries.

Some features to look for include magnetic resistance pedaling motion. This uses magnets to add resistance when you pedal. It will feel like you are dragging something along behind you, giving a more challenging workout. Make sure you get a bike that allows you to combine the levels of resistance and create your own programs.

A heart rate monitor is essential to get a measurement of how hard your heart is working. The bike detects your pulse usually through special sensitive pads on the handlebars. The most effective exercising heart rate for most of us is roughly 70 to 80% of your maximum.

A good digital display is essential to inform you of your distance traveled, your speed and time. Look for controls near the display area which let you change the program or make a new one.

With so many of us canceling gym memberships and turning to home-based fitness regimes, exercise DVDs seem to be the way forward for a cost effective, high energy workout.  But with a whole myriad to choose from in the market, which one do you go for?

The selection seems infinite with a wide variety of DVDs targeting different areas of the body like glutes, abs and legs, or arms, shoulders and abs right through to all over cardio workouts like dance based routines or even pole dancing!  There are also mat based body conditioning workouts such as pilates and yoga.

But, why limit yourself?  We all have low energy days and a more relaxing stretch workout may be more suitable than a high energy one, so purchase a selection.

It is definitely worth spending time reading user reviews to make sure you choose the right workout DVD for you.  However, here are some criteria to get you started.

Start by taking into account your preferences for exercising.  Do you want to use equipment like weights or a step (for step aerobics) for example?  How do you feel about music? Whether it is high octane or relaxing, have a think about whether music suits you.

Also think about the stage you are starting at.  For example, your age is also a key factor in deciding which DVD to buy.  Or perhaps you used to exercise but have stopped due to injury.   Are you very overweight, or just need a bit of toning up in some focused areas?

The best exercise DVDs to get you on the road to fitness whatever your level, are those with a gradual progression-style structure so you are not struggling to keep up from the start.  The DVD should also have an ability specific structure to the exercise in order to cover all fitness levels, meaning a beginner can be moved through a gradual increase in intensity over time but a seasoned exerciser gets a challenge too.

Another key tip is to research the teacher.  Once you have found your favored fitness DVD it is a good idea to check out the professionalism, background and competence of the instructor.  Run a search on Google and see what comes up. Read a review about their DVD as well as comments from users too – the most unbiased information.

Also, when purchasing the exercise DVDs ensure they come with at least a 6 month guarantee.  In general, it usually takes the majority of users about 7 to 9 weeks to really get into the program, meaning a 30 day guarantee is not satisfactory.  You want to make sure you are seeing and feeling the changes the DVD claims to be offering.  If you purchased a legs, glutes and abs program, are you seeing the changes?  It’s unlikely you will notice a real difference in 30 days.

If you have been sedentary for a while for whatever reason, it is worth taking your DVDs to your doctor just as a precaution to make sure the exercises are appropriate for you.

So this gives you a few tips to get started.  Rest assured that you will find the right one for you.  The market for home fitness DVDs is absolutely huge with almost every celebrity jumping on the bandwagon!  So whether it’s Pilates, yoga or high energy aerobics and dance, you will almost definitely find the exercise DVDs to suit you.

Retaining your muscle mass while on a weight loss program is one of the most important aspects that you need to concentrate on as this will help you to keep your fat percentage down long-term.

On the ultra low calorie diets the body begins to cannibalize its own muscle tissue as its defense mechanisms come into play.

An example of this is shown with some of these apparently slim fashion models who have quite high levels of body fat in proportion to their overall size.

The reason for this is the fact that they haven’t done any form of exercise or resistance training to maintain any reasonable level of muscle mass and this is only made worse by the fact that they are often eating a very low quality diet and nutrition is lacking.

It is not uncommon to see skinny models with cellulite and that is a sure sign that they are retaining fat in a higher percentage than they should be.

They would find that if they added a little bit of resistance training or even some form of decent exercise to their daily routine they would be able to still retain a slim figure but the body fat percentage would be considerably lower and they would look a lot more toned and healthy.

And healthy is what you should be aiming for when you go on a weight-loss program and not simply losing weight as actually improving your overall health and well-being will help you to live a better lifestyle for a lot longer.

Increasing your muscle mass also improves your metabolic rate whereas body fat has a very low level of metabolic activity. Nutritionists regard muscle as the furnace that burns in the body and this is what you should be aiming for.

If more weight loss programs focused on retaining muscle mass people would be unlikely to put the weight back on rapidly once they finished the program.

How many times have you heard that statement? The best results are always when anything is done in moderation. You gain body fat because you weren’t eating or drinking in moderation so in order to reverse that situation you also need to plan your weight loss programs so that eating or exercising that is involved with that program is also done in moderation. Excessive exercising for somebody who hasn’t done much in the past can result in injury and that injury can make you less mobile and increase the opportunity to gain body fat.

Sudden changes in diet will send the body into reactionary mode storing fat. Gradual changes to your diet on the other hand done in moderation will not send signals to the body that is a starving and in fact you won’t feel as though you are starving either if you do it in moderation. Making moderate changes to your food and exercise won’t infringe on your lifestyle anywhere near as much and that will in effect make it a lot easier for you to maintain the changes for a lot longer until they become second nature. This is when you will get to the stage where you can gradually keep reducing the body fat and become healthier and healthier and more energetic as time goes on.

Even your intake or water has to be in moderation because drinking excessive water can flush out important nutrients from your system doing more harm than good. You are better drinking a glass of water here and there throughout the day rather than trying to drink gallons of water in the hope that it will help you to lose weight faster.

Even good foods need to be eaten in moderation as excessive quantities of these foods can still cause the body to store them as fat. It’s a simple rule to follow really; if you are eating drinking or exercising too much or too little you are unlikely to get optimum results.

For a diet that keeps everything in moderation whilst fitting seamlessly with your lifestyle: Lose Fat Lose Inches

When we are looking to lose weight successfully we turn to weight loss plans that burn fat, diets of this kind are really effective and you will soon start to see changes in your body. This is because the biggest causes of people gaining weight are the quantity of food they consume and also the quality. What you need to do in order to diet successfully is to speed up your metabolism and thus you will burn fat.

That sounds obvious but you need to understand that there is often a good reason why some people feel the need to consume larger quantities of food than others and in doing so become overweight.

It all relates to the types of foods that we eat and their nutritional value. If you eat foods that are low in nutritional value they will leave you wanting more because they haven’t delivered the nutrients required to supply you with the energy you need and they haven’t satisfied your appetite. They have left you feeling hungry and it is human nature to eat more food until that hunger goes away.

If you were to eat the right foods your nutritional needs would be met and you wouldn’t feel hungry, thus it is with burn fat diets. If you didn’t feel hungry you wouldn’t continue to eat and that in turn would ensure that you didn’t gain excess weight.

You can understand now why fast foods are responsible for the high incidence of weight problems due to the simple fact that they aren’t delivering the essential nutrients that the body needs.

By making some simple changes to the foods that we eat and replacing those foods that are low in nutrition with more appropriate foods for healthy living it becomes a lot easier to maintain a good bodyweight without having the burden of hunger to contend with.

The problem with most diets is the fact that they are just too hard to maintain for any amount of time and this shouldn’t be the situation as hunger is not supposed to be a part of a balanced lifestyle.

Good food in good quantities will help you to maintain a healthy bodyweight and you will feel satisfied after your meals. A successful weight loss plan will burn fat, diets that do this should achieve it without you going hungry, and thus it will become relatively easy to get to your goal weight.

If you have a fair amount of weight to lose then it is realistic to lose 10 pounds in 10 days. The first thing that is paramount in any diet is to set goals, and thus this weight loss of 10 pounds can be your first milestone.

Most successful people find that setting goals is one of the most important parts of achieving their short and long term aims, and this applies to almost everything in life including your ability to be successful with weight loss.

What you do have to realize however is that these goals need to be realistic and you need to believe that you can achieve them, or you will be starting off on the wrong foot and failure will be imminent.

Your first short term goal may be to lose 10 pounds in 10 days but over the longer period you also need to set a weight figure of where you ultimately want to get down to, and to make your goal achievable you need to look at it over an extended period of time.

Keeping a diary helps a lot of people to achieve their goals as it helps to enforce the actions that are required to meet those goals on a daily basis. In your diary you can record your body weight, the foods you’ve been eating, any supplements you have been taking and the results that you have been getting from these actions.

This helps you to readjust your goals and make changes to your fitness and nutrition as things change in the course of your weight loss program.

Within your major goal you should also have short-term goals and once again these need to be realistic to keep you motivated.

These short-term goals will change from time to time as during the course of your weight loss program you will probably find that progress accelerates after certain stages of your plan.

Sometimes you will also plateau for a while where your weight loss will tend to slow down and by having a diary you will be able to look at those areas that you might be able to change to get over that plateau and continue to progress.

By setting a goal you can lose 10 pounds in 10 days but you also need to make sure that once this is achieved you have the next goal ready to progress to, in this way the loss won’t be short lived and you will ultimately get to your desired weight.

The problem with restricting your calories too much is the fact that it slows down your metabolism and in doing so it makes it all the more difficult to sustain weight loss.

This is one of the reasons why it is suggested that you don’t reduce your calories by an excessive amount on a daily basis if you want to keep reducing weight over the long-term.

On the other hand when you have excess calories over and above the energy needs of your body then these calories will be stored as fat.

You can see by the last two sentences that it is crucially important for you to get your calorie intake levels correct if you are to lose weight.

Your daily calorie requirement depends on a number of different factors including your weight, your age, gender and your lifestyle as a more active person will need more calories due to the fact that they will be burning more in the course of the day.

On average every pound of your body weight represents approximately 3500 calories. Based on this average, to lose 1 pound you will need to reduce your calorie intake by 3500 calories.
On diet alone, you can see how it won’t be possible to lose a pound a day unless of course you already have a considerable calorie intake and the reduction will still leave you with sufficient food and nutrition to remain healthy.

Supplements can certainly help to make up for any nutrition deficiencies a lot of the time.

By reducing your calories by only 100 calories per day over the course of the year you would have consumed 36,500 less calories and that converts to a weight reduction of almost 10 1/2 pounds.

That is an easily accomplished weight reduction with very little change to your lifestyle and habits.

Many people have long held the mistaken belief that everybody has a particular fat point where their body realizes that this is the level of fat that is normal to that particular person.

This is not true and we all develop our own fat point based on our lifestyles.
While there are various different body types that are determined by our genes the percentage of fat that we carry around in our body is not due to the genes that we have inherited. It is due to the food that we have been eating from the beginning of our life to the stage where we are at presently.

If you have been over eating for a long period of time and you have remained at a specific fat percentage for quite some time then that becomes your new fat point. And that can change up or down according to the lifestyle that you choose to lead.

If you have remained at a particular fat point for a year or two then your body will develop all the necessary requirements in the form of capillaries, connective tissues, hormonal levels and so on to support that point.

You have determined what that point is and your body will now try to maintain the new level.

Your body will constantly monitor that new fat point by all the messages that are sent to the brain. If you are to go on a crash diet your body will react to the fact that it sees an attack on that fat point and will do all it can to maintain what it believes is the correct balance. The maintenance can be in the form of a reduction in muscle tissue to save fat.

Unfortunately for many people they don’t like to accept the fact that it is not their genes or anything else that has resulted in their fat point being too high.

A disorganized person is always rushing and a person who is always rushing will tend to eat too fast. A person who eats too fast will tend to eat too much and a person who eats too much will tend to get fat.

Mess causes distress and that in turn causes people to eat too much. Are you beginning to see the picture of how having a well organized life will help you to maintain a more balanced and healthy body?

Many people resort to eating in the effort to handle stress and being disorganized is a surefire way of increasing levels of stress in your life.

Being organized will also ensure that you have the right food in your house and you don’t have to resort to low quality foods that you keep as a backup for those times when you run out of the nutritious food that you should be eating.

Being organized will also help you to eat at regular times throughout the day and by being regular with your eating it will help you to maintain more consistent blood sugar levels that will reduce the chance of you getting into low blood sugar and over eating to compensate.

By planning ahead with your meals you can plan to have better meals and you won’t need to resort to fast foods because you haven’t got any other food organized by the time you’re ready to eat.

By being organized and having a shopping list where you have determined in advance the right foods for your diet you will be less likely to buy food that you shouldn’t be buying when you go to the supermarket.

Organization is one of the keys to success in following any weight loss program. It also helps to reduce the amount of time that you have to think about food and think about losing weight and when that doesn’t become such a big focus in your life you are more likely to succeed.

What Paul McKenna teaches in this book is that diets don’t work and whilst your head isn’t in alignment with your desire to be thin, everything is going to work against you. Telling yourself how fat you are and how much you hate yourself simply reinforces in your unconscious mind the word ‘Fat’. In fact that is all it hears and it will fight you tooth and nail to hold on to that keyword fat, as it believes that is what you want, as it is the only word you ever utter in front of the mirror.

Paul explains this in much more depth than I could ever hope to here, but hopefully it gives you the general gist that if you ever want to hope to lose weight and keep it off longterm, you must stop dieting. The key to weightloss is first and foremost what is between your ears.

What also sets this book apart is the CD that comes with it – listen to this at least once a day and it strengthens and supports what you have read in the book. One woman featured in the book, Maureen, lost a total of 18 stone using the CD. I find this absolutely inspiring and you can learn more about this method here.