New Website!!!

Just wanted to let everyone know that I have a spankin' new website!!!!

Please visit me at http://vphealthandfitness.com as I will be doing all my updates there from now on.

Also, please update your blog roll’s & links to re-direct to the new site.

I tried to maintain the same look and layout so nothing will be much different except that it’s my OWN now!!!! YAY!

Hope to see everyone there!!!!!

To your health,

~ Vilma

UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess persistence does payoff. After a CRAZY almost no sleep weekend... I was contacted by wordpress support & my wordpress.com blog is back up and running. They didn't provide any specifics on why my blog was suspended, but i'm going to go back and remove all obvious affiliate links & pictures for now.

Now... another dilema... which blog should I keep up???? I've contacted most people that linked to my site and have told them of my new blogger site. I like blogger because there is html & I can put my affiliate links & pictures on it without worrying about it being shut down.

Well, for now I am keeping both. My wordpress.com BLOG is more updated with lot and lots and lots and lots of subjects, resources & daily/weekly journal updates. Please check there if you cannot find what you are looking for on this blog.

Thanks for visiting & for your support!

To your health!

~ Vilma

I’m a Food and Fitness Guru!

Well… almost. :D I still struggle with some areas of nutrition… but I take it day by day & so far it’s helped me lose over 40 inches & 30 lbs of fat! Here are my results:

Food & Fitness Guru
You know a lot about eating right and
exercising. Just make sure you’re also putting that knowledge into practice.
Here’s to a fit and healthy you!

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So… What would you say? Take the Food & Health Survey.

This quiz will score you on your knowledge and habits, and show you how your answers compare to the average American.

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To your health!

~ Vilma

The TRUTH about fast weightloss

Cache version

I’m really disappointed today… people just DO NOT LEARN!!! A friend of mine announced yesterday that she is going to start doing the Kimkins Diet to get undo the damage done in her weekend weight gain. :?

The Kimkins diet is based on the theory of Ketosis. She has an induction period that puts your body into Ketosis. When in Ketosis you lose your appetite, thus the low calorie intake. It is somewhat like Dr. Stillman’s induction minus the cheese and she allows a little oil for cooking. Then Phase 2 is Kimkins which is with the 2 cups of salad and .5 of veggies but only those on the list, or 3 cups of salad greens. She does not allow net carb counting and no processed Low Carb foods. She recommends no exercise & does not promote drinking water either.

I understand that my friend wants a drastic change, but come on!!!!!!!!!!!! Less than 1000 calories a day (view the creator’s fitday eating plan) and less than 20 g of carbs.
I can’t believe the “advice” that this girl Kimmers is giving…

Ask Kimmer: http://www.lowcarbfriends.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=431338&pp=30

Uh… yeah… your gonna lose weight, but you should also kiss your lean muscle buh-bye if you’re going to be eating low calories. What happens after the “diet”? What happens when you reach your goal? Are you going to go back to your conventional way of eating?

Let me tell you the truth… as SOON as you start to eat more than 20 g of carbs a day, I guarantee you that your “weightloss” will stall and/or you will start gaining weight again. If you are eating very low calories, your muscles have also catabolized & you will not have as much muscle as before. Therefore your metabolism is slower & your body will start retaining every g of carb you consume.

Sad, Sad, Sad…

OK, I guess that’s enough.

End of rant.

Just had to let it out. Couldn’t do it on the boards, so that’s why I did it here. I also found this interesting article written by Tom Venuto about the consequences of fast weight-loss.

All truth here. Open your eyes & ears people… unless you want to be afraid of carbs and calories for the rest of your lives, don’t try a quick fix. It does not work in the long run!!!
Anyhow… Enjoy the article!

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Here is an excerpt:

…The faster you lose weight, the more muscle you will lose right along with the fat, and that can really mess up your metabolism. An even bigger problem with fast weight loss is that it just won’t last. The faster you lose, the more likely you are to gain it back. It’s the the “yo-yo diet
effect” - weight goes down, but always comes back up.

Don’t Be Fooled By Water Weight Losses
One thing you should also know is that it’s very common to lose 3 - 5 pounds in the first week on nearly any diet and exercise program and often even more on low carb diets (because low carb diets deplete glycogen and every gram of glycogen holds 3 grams of water). Just remember, its NOT all fat - WATER LOSS IS NOT FAT LOSS - AND WATER LOSS IS TEMPORARY!

The Truth About FAST Weight Loss - by Tom Venuto NSCA-CPT, CSCS

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To your health,

~ Vilma

P.S. Other articles that might be of interest:

• FDA: The Facts About Weight Loss Products and Programs
• Low Carbohydrate Diets: Do they work and are they healthy?
• The Biggest Loser, Where are they now?
  

Kimkins Diet Review

OK…. This review has been LONG overdue.

A couple a months ago the Kimkins Diet was all the craze when it was featured on the cover of Woman’s World with the title, “Better Than Gastric Bypass!”. I heard about it on the WAHM.com Fitness boards and was 100% against it from the start because it was very unbalanced & too low in calories!

You can read my rant HERE.

Here are other post’s that came up about the Kimkins Diet:
http://www.wahm.com/forum/forum_posts.aspTID=394682
http://www.wahm.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=400655

Now, months have passed & the Kimkins diet craze has passed and also raised a few eyebrows & questions about the validity of the person behind Kimkins & her “diet”.

Below are websites that I have compiled which talk about this controversy. Please check them out before making ANY decision on following this plan.

My own personal recommendation: DON'T try a quick fix. It does not work in the long run!!!

The Diet in question: http://www.kimkins.com/
Kimkins “rules”: http://www.lowcarbfriends.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=431457

Resources & References:
How to Spread the Truth About the Kimkins Diet Controversy
Kimkins Business Partnership Case Study
http://kimkinsexposed.wordpress.com/
http://www.kimkinscontroversy.com/
http://antikimkins.blogspot.com/
http://www.thesteaksarehigh.com/2007/07/kimkins-controv.html
http://kimkinsdangers.blogspot.com/
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=307119

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Exercise & Weight Training

• ExRx.net -Great source for weightlifting techniques and exercises organized by muscle groups; includes animated GIFs that shows proper performance technique of most exercises
• SparkPeople.com Resources - Full of Fitness, Nutrition, Motivation, Health, Quizzes & Assesment Resources
• Stumptuous.com Women’s Weight Training - Are you a woman? Do you want to lift weights? Check out Krista’s site!
• Bodybuilding.com training articles - HUGE article database
• Bodybuilding.com workout database
• Tom Venuto - The honest fitness site (author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle)
• Burn the Fat Blog - Tom Venuto’s fitness blog
• Deepsqautter.com - Strength List Archives
• Kristin Reisinger- Website includes training and nutrition articles & recepies
• Turbulence Training - Workout Logs & Newsletters from Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, M.Sc
• Turbulence Training 4 week workout - the Original 4-Week TurbulenceTraining Bodyweight Workout.
• T-Nation - a place where chemists, scientists, nutritional theorists, and exercise physiologists come together to share their discoveries with the world. Many articles!!!
• Muscle with attitude - T-Nation’s sister site (geared towards women)

Weightloss Support Groups

• WAHM.com - my favorite women (and a couple of men). This is where I get my daily support!
• Lean & Strong
• JP Fitness Forums
• Precision Nutrition Forums - becoming one of my favorite forum to visit. Alot awesome information on every nutrition-related topic under the sun. If you’ve got a question about nutrition, they’ve answered it - and you can defenitely find it on this site. Alot of people with the same goals as I have — fat loss the right way!
• Pink Dumbbells - Serious and Sound Fitness & Nutrition for Women

Tracking Tools & Calculators

• Sparkpeople.com- the ONLY premium and personalized weight loss and healthy living program available on-line for free. Food log, weight, and exercise tracker plus a lot more!
• FitDay - Free food log and exercise tracker
• Fitprofile - Non-program specific fitness profile site
• 600 exercises at bodybulding.com - how many calories are you burning?
• Fitness Jumpsite - Activity Calorie calculator (type in your weight & activity minutes.)
• Fitness Tools and Calculators at Natural Physiques
• Hussman’s BMR calculator
• Basal Energy Expenditure: Harris-Benedict Equation - Allows you to estimate your Basal Energy Expeniture. Also contains links to other medical calculators.
• Fitness Buddy Body fat test at biofitness.com - claims that their method is 3.5% (+ or -) as accurate as a hydrostatic water tank test ($50 to $100) and .7% (+ or -) as accurate as a multi-site skin caliper test ($15 to $25).
• Active.com - pretty accurate body fat circumference body fat calculator. About 2-3% + or -
• Rusty Iron Body Fat Calculators Enter your three or seven site caliper measurements here and have the site calculate your body fat for you!
• MyBodyComp A circumference-based body fat calculator (no caliper needed, but measuring tape would be handy)
• Health Status Calculators - many handy calculators including body fat estimator, body mass index, calories burned, daily energy expenditure, frame size, ideal weight… and more!
• am-i-fat.com - another body fat% calculator
• Body Fat Estimator at sixpacknow.com - This Body Fat Calculator will give an approximation of your current body fat levels. For visible six pack abdominals a body fat percentage of 15% or lower for women and 10% or lower for men is required.
• Caloriesperhour - How many more diets do you want to go on? Many many tools you need for FREE!
• Better Ideal Weight - set a REALISTIC “Ideal Weight” for your body.

USDA Interactive tools - Many many links to check your health risks, design your diet, calculators & counters, and to test your knowledge. Links include:

• How Can You Lower Your CholesterolDHHS. NIH. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.Features heart healthy and therapeutic lifestyle changes for treatment and preventing heart disease. Provides meal plans, grocery shopping, reading food labels, and dining out.
• Personal Fitness Planner - Dairy Council of California.Helps adolescents determine physical activity levels.
• MyPyramid Tracker - USDA. Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.An online dietary assessment that provides information on diet quality, related nutrition messages, and links to nutrient information. Also assesses physical activity. Note: Replaces the Interactive Healthy Eating Index
• Interactive Menu Planner - DHHS. NIH. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.Helps user plan meals to meet specific calorie requirements.
• Eat Smart. Play Hard. for Kids - USDA. Food and Nutrition Service.Web page which connects kids to healthy eating and physical activity interactive learning and skill-building experiences within a virtual community setting. Includes songs, experiments, activity sheets, comics, clipart, worksheets, games, posters, e-cards, recipes, and more.
• Estimating Your 10-Year Risk of Having a Heart Attack - DHHS. NIH. National Cholesterol Education Program.Risk assessment tool to predict an onset of a heart attack.
  and many, many, many, many more!!!

** More in the Downloads - Spreadsheets/Worksheets section

Fitness & Nutrition Articles

Fitness Articles

• Prepare A Beach Ready Body With Diet, Mentality & Exercise
• How should women train?- common misconceptions regarding female weight training
• The Couch-to-5K running plan - beginner’s running schedule has helped new runners get off the couch and onto the roads, running 3 miles in just two months.
• The Great Abs mistake - 1,000 Sit-Ups And Crunches A Day and Still No Abs!?
• All about HIIT training - the best, quickest way to get in shape, and lose fat.

Nutrition Articles

• Five foods that can kill & you should avoid
• The zig-zag diet for fast fat loss
• You are what you drink
• The truth about FAST weightloss
• The #1 Food to Toss - Doctors now worry your sodium intake could be endangering your health — even if you don’t use the salt shaker. Here’s how to cut down on surprising sources of sodium

Online Programs

• Sparkpeople.com- the ONLY premium and personalized weight loss and healthy living program available on-line for free. (compare to eDiets). You can also review more about their program by clicking HERE.
• eDiets.com - Many plans to choose from, a decent general exercise plan, recipes, and support groups
• Burn the Fat Inner Circle - premier BFFM fat loss support community CLICK HERE for a FREE preview of Burn the Fat Inner Circle.
• Beachbody - Makers of the P90X Extreme Fitness and Turbo Jam DVD workout programs–active support board, WOWY (Work Out With You) virtual gym where you can sign up to workout simultaneously with other people around the world at a scheduled time, and more information about their products
• Million Dollar Body - part of Beachbody - you can win up to $1000 every day just for working out.
• HOOAH 4 Health - US Army health promotion & wellness website
• America on the Move - A national initiative dedicated to helping individuals and communities across the nation make positive changes to improve health and quality of life.
• Precision Nutrition - For more great training and nutrition wisdom, check out Dr Berardi’s complete system, Precision Nutrition. Containing system manuals, gourmet cookbook, digital audio/video library, online membership, and more, Precision Nutrition will teach you everything you need to know to get the body you want — guaranteed. And what’s more, your online access allows you to talk exercise and nutrition 24/7 with thousands of fellow members and the Precision Nutrition coaches.