Shine Fm Blog

Week Fourteen: Bummer-Proof your Summer!

Summer conjures up thoughts of hot days, warm nights, and for some, the dreaded idea of putting on a bathing suit or bikini and lounging on the beach. After hiding under warm clothes all winter, many people emerge from their season-long slumber to find they've packed on a few pounds.
The summer season is still a couple months away, so you still have time get your body ready for the warmer weather. It requires some effort and consistency, but the results will be fabulous! If you need to boost your weight loss and get the results you're looking for, try adding our accelerated weight loss regimen to your current U Weight Loss® program for even quicker weight loss.

How U Can Get Ready for Summer: Your Summer Weight Loss Program

Our program is designed to get you the best results in the least amount of time. It makes modifications to all components of your U Weight Loss® program – nutrition, exercise and lifestyle – to help you reach your goals and shape-up for summer.

Get Moving

If you haven't been doing this on your program, it's definitely time to start. The U Exercise program is a great place to begin if you've never exercised before. Exercise helps to burn calories, and burning calories helps you lose fat. Regular exercise helps to increase metabolism, increase muscle mass, reduce the risk of heart disease, lower blood sugar and blood pressure and helps increase energy. Cardiovascular training, strength training and flexibility are all important components of a comprehensive exercise program that work together to turn your body into a fat-burning machine. In most cases, doing any type of physical activity is usually enough to improve weight loss. However, accelerated fat loss often requires a different type of exercise routine that is more targeted at burning the maximum number of calories.  A major way to maximize the amount of calories burned is to vary and progressively increase the intensity of the exercise. Additionally, exercises that continue to burn calories after they are completed are ideal for helping to achieve that summer body.

Eating to Lose

Drastically dropping calories isn't the best way to lose weight. Intensely restricted diets (those under 1100 calories) can trigger your body to reduce your metabolic rate by as much as 20%. That means that the less you eat, the less you burn; the less you burn, the less weight you lose. The reason is that when calories are restricted, the different processes that happen in the body respond as if in a famine. The body uses up less energy to do the same work it would do if you consumed more calories.  If you don't eat enough before exercising, the amount of calories consumed won't be enough to fuel your exercise, and the metabolic processes that occur in the body won't be able to operate efficiently. Nutritionally, the key to improving the amount of fat burned and weight lost is not to reduce more calories. It lies in changing the nutrient amounts so your body can use fat as a fuel source instead of other macronutrients, like carbohydrates and protein. Changing your eating plan in this way can help to boost your metabolism while dropping the pounds.

Lifestyle

There is more to losing weight than just proper eating and exercise habits. Lifestyle factors also play an important role when it comes to shedding those extra pounds. Factors such as lack of sleep can put a damper on your weight loss efforts. Lack of sleep can result in excess stress hormones and reduced growth hormone. This is an equation for weight gain. Some of the effects of excess cortisol are an increased appetite, increased insulin levels and carbohydrates cravings, a lowered metabolism and weight gain - especially around the midsection. It is important to note that sleep also influences appetite. Lack of sleep has been reported to increase appetite-enhancing hormones and decrease appetite-curbing hormones, resulting in a desire for high-calorie, high-sugar foods. People who sleep less may have more trouble keeping their blood sugar stable. Stress is another factor that can slow down the weight loss process, as the amount of cortisol produced by the body is increased during stressful times. Modifying specific lifestyle factors can lead to improved weight and fat loss.

With the U Weight Loss® Uturn program, you can experience dramatic weight loss just in time for the warm weather. The program is simple and easy to follow. By modifying your meal plans, changing your exercise routine to turn up the metabolism and implementing fat-busting lifestyle habits, you'll lose the weight you want and ensure that U are ready for the summer.

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