At one point in time, every last one of us passionately wanted a chiseled rock-hard mid-section. We all want to know how to get great 6 pack abs. Well here is one of the best kept secrets. It is the most coveted body part, the symbol of sexuality. In study after study researchers and health specialist alike have found that decreasing fat in your abdomen, and waist to hip ratio is the single most significant step that you can take to stay healthy for life, and age gracefully. Most of us have given up on the idea because our quest has for naught. We have been flooded with miss-information from fad diets, fat burner supplements, to exercise gadgets, promoting six week transformations with dramatic before and after photo’s, etc. The key to that coveted six pack is not one thing, it is four things.
Bringing your body-fat level down by:
1.) Following a precise nutrition plan that has the right amount of protein combined together with the right amount and the right type of carbohydrates spaced strategically through-out the day, and around weight training and cardio sessions.
2.) An intelligent cardiovascular program
3.) An optimistic athletic mid-set
4.) Building up the muscles of the mid-section, and building up all other muscle groups
In this article let’s focus on #4.
The secret weapon for developing the musculature of the abdominal wall is a little known exercise called the ab vacuum. It targets you inner most abdominal muscle, the transverse abdominis (TVA for short). Most people don’t even know they have one let alone how to activate it. The TVA is like a corset, it is your own internal weight belt, holding your internal organs in place. It is the foundation for the rest of the abdominal muscles, the internal and external obliques, and the rectus abdominis. If you have done crunches and leg-lifts until you are blue in the face and are still unhappy with your mid-section, this information could take your quest for that fit chiseled mid-section to the next level.
There are other benefits to strengthening your TVA.
- It is the only exercise that has the ability to actually make your waist-line smaller.
- By working and strengthening the TVA you are actually giving your spine more support, so the risk of a vertebrae or a disc slipping out of place is less. Did you notice that the old leather weight belts are not used anymore? That’s because we learned to tighten up our own internal weight belt on exercises verses using an external weight belt that shut off the need to activate the TVA which lead to injuries.
- Better sex. When you strengthen your TVA with the ab vacuum exercise you will be using your diaphragm and you will also strengthen your lower pelvic floor muscles (ala a kegel squeeze). To perform a kegel exercise, squeeze your pelvic floor muscles, as if you’re trying to stop the flow of urine mid-stream. Stronger pelvic floor muscles help women achieve orgasms and help men achieve and maintain erections. It also makes the orgasms more pleasurable. As soon as I tell my clients this, you can always be assured of overtraining of the TVA.
- You can work the other abdominal muscles more effectively. You can’t shoot a cannon out of a canoe. You can’t have strong walls on your building if your foundation is weak. When you strengthen up the foundation of your mid-section you will be able to perform your other abdominal exercises with more focused intensity. You will be able to feel the difference in weeks.
- Athleticism- The TVA is the deepest abdominal muscle group there is. It is truly the core the core. An athlete can have excellent cardiovascular condition and have strong leg and back muscles, but if his core muscles aren’t in optimal condition, this creates a weak link in the bodies muscle chain that affects all his movements. All movements and reactions start at the core. If core muscles don’t do their job to stabilize and move the torso, then arm and leg muscles will overcompensate, trying to do a job for which they are ill-equipped.
To get in tune with and activate your TVA simply place your hands around the sides of your body at your pelvis. Flatten your stomach by gently pulling in your gut, or pulling your belly away from your waist band. You can feel the TVA at work as it reduces the diameter of your torso in that area. This simple exercise also demonstrates the involvement of the abs in respiration, particularly exhalation.
I have put on an incredibly unique twist to this exercise. The combination of two little known exercises takes the effectiveness of this core exercise to the next level. Basically, I have combined an ab vacuum with a kegele squeeze. Most women know what a kegel squeeze is. In child birth it gets the lower pelvic floor muscles stronger which aid in the pushing for child birth. For men, when trying to perform a kegel squeeze, think about stopping the flow of urine mid-stream while pulling your belly-button back toward your spine (as you exhale about Ω of your lung capacity). Also try to think about squeezing your sphincter muscles or like you have a quarter between your butt cheeks and you don’t want it too fall out.
Now lets perform the exercise
To begin, lie on your back with your knees bent at a 90, feet flat on the floor and the small of your back pushed flat into the floor. Take in a very slow long breathe and start to slowly exhale æ of your air while you are pulling your belly button down toward your spine (I like to put my index finger on my belly-button and feel it raise as I take the long breathe in and then feel it start downward as I exhale æ of my lung capacity). While at the same time pushing your lower back into the floor and drive you chin down toward your chest slightly. Once you have æ of your air out hold your breathe and suck in through your throat with your breathe being held for 5-10 seconds. As you are holding your breath and sucking in, think about pulling your innards up and under your rib-cage. It is called the ab vacuum for a reason, it is a little hard to come out of it and resume your normal breathing. But you will, and once you do relax and take a couple breathes and repeat. Starting out do 1 set of 6-9 repetitions, 2-3 times per week.
You can do the ab vacuum anywhere, and need no equipment. It’s a great way to wake up, or to end your day. It will take lots of practice and each week you will be able to feel the muscles working more and more. Once you get good at the technique you will be able to feel a Ω circle burning sensation in the pubic area. Don’t be alarmed, just feel good about mastering one of the most unique and effective abdominal exercises out there. Please don’t give up on this exercise, once you master it you will be able to reverse gravity, and start to put back in place what years of inactivity and bad posture has started to let hang over your belt line.
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1) Calculate how many calories you body needs to consume to maintain your existing weight. This is called you maintenance calories.(Search Google with “calorie needs” and you will find a few different calculators to help you with this)
2) Initially deduct 10%(to a maximum of 500Kcal)off the total maintenance calories. Drastically reducing your calories will result in muscle and water loss – not fat loss.
3)Divide you calories over 5 or 6 meals rather then 2 or 3. You should aim to eat every 3-4 hours.
4)Cut out all simple carbohydrates (except straight after exercise, eat whole grain, high fiber foods.)
5) Exercise at least 3 times a week, doing 30 minutes of cardio to a reasonable level of intensity. This will help to create the calorie deficit and encourage your body to lose fat.
6)Make simple replacements in your diet, Sweetener in place of sugar, diet drinks in place of full sugar drinks, use leaner cuts of meat etc. At first these changes may be difficult but you will get used to them and make vital calorie savings every day.
7) Drink plenty of water – at least 2 liters of water every day – if you are dehydrated you body will be less efficient and will make fat loss more difficult.
8) Try to eat low carb(complex only!), low fat and moderate protein. From my experience the South Beach Diet is excellent.
9)Keep a food diary to monitor how many calories you are consuming – it is very easy to over eat.
10) Supplementing you diet can make fat loss easier. A diet high in protein can help preserve muscle (more muscle means an increase in metabolism). There are also some fat loss supplements available which help boost your metabolism, this is useful as your metabolism may slow during extended periods of dieting.
This article is written from my own experiences. I have lost 20lbs of fat and gained 20lbs of muscle. My body fat is 11%. Please consult a doctor for proper medical advice.
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Aaahhh, the thought of getting up in the morning and going to the gym to lift weights or run on the treadmill. How about the thought of going to the gym after a hard days work when youíd probably rather just go home and relax? Even the thought of exercising at home on your own equipment can be less than desirable. Sometimes trying to get and stay motivated to exercise on a regular basis can be quite a challenge, after all, exercise can almost be downright boring and tedious at times.
So then just how can you get the motivation to maintain an exercise program on a regular basis? What can you do to make exercise something to look forward to everyday and not feel like a chore, like something you feel like you have to make yourself do each time? Well, here are some ideas that just might help to make exercising a little easier and a lot more fun.
To start with, exercise with a friend. Here you can challenge each other, help each other, keep each other motivated and on track, maybe try to make each other laugh during a set or while jogging on the treadmill, make kind of a game out of it.
Try something different. If you go to the gym everyday and use the same piece of equipment or use the same piece of equipment at home try mixing up your routine. Reverse your routine or just change the order of your exercises or sometimes donít even go to the gym or use your home equipment. Go to a city park that has playground equipment. Use the slide, climb on the monkey bars, do pull-ups, hang from your knees, just use your imagination. You donít need to always have a strict routine, just get out and work your muscles.
Do an outdoor circuit in the park. Some parks have circuit courses set up with a planned course and all you have to do is walk or jog to each station and follow the instructions. If thereís no planed course then do a combination of jogging and walking and pick a distance such as 200 feet. Jog 200 feet then drop and do 10 pushups, walk the next 200 feet then drop and do 20 abdominal crunches, then jog the next 200 feet and do 10 pull-ups if a bar or sturdy tree branch is available.
Try an activity like riding a bike around your neighborhood or hike on a hiking trail. A nice walk in the park or just around your neighborhood is a good way to get exercise. A little yoga in the park or on the beach is a nice relaxing way to exercise your body and your mind.
Try playing a competitive sport. Most cities have team activities such as softball, volleyball, tennis, soccer and so on. And these activities not only provide you with good exercise but also put you in circumstances to meet a lot of new people as well.
When exercising, picture your muscles. Studies have shown that if you focus your thoughts on the muscles you are working, they will respond better. Try to see them working with each repetition as they contract and relax.
As you can see, there are many ways to make getting exercise more fun and interesting. You need not always follow the standard routine of going to the gym or using your home equipment and doing the same old exercises day after day. The important thing is just that you incorporate exercise in any various forms into your everyday life and make these habits the kind of habits that will last a lifetime.
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Are you tired of diet tips handed out by someone with apparently unlimited income and time? For some of us, it may just not be practical to spend half of our Sunday preparing carefully portioned meals for the rest of the week, or financially feasible to buy all our meals prepackaged in just the right portions. And there are those of us who cringe at the thought of weighing food to achieve ‘optimal portion sizes’. Here are ten real life diet tips for the rest of us.
1. Eating out? Restaurant portions tend to be enormous, and if it’s on the plate, we tend to eat it. If it’s possible, order from the kidís menu, where portions are more reasonably sized.
2. Keep healthy snacks around and easily accessible. A bowl of fruit on the kitchen table, a container of celery or carrot sticks in the refrigerator, or a couple of pop-open cans of fruit salad in your desk at work will help you grab for something healthy when those first hunger pains begin. In other words, you’ll be more likely to grab something low-calorie and good for you if it’s easy to eat.
3. Substitute frozen vegetables for canned. Canned veggies tend to be high in sodium, which you don’t need, and low in real nutrition, which you do. Buy economy size bags with zip closures to make it easy to pour out a single serving for a meal.
4. Buy a vegetable steamer. Steaming is one of the healthiest ways to cook vegetables. The food retains nearly all of its natural nutrients instead of leaching it out into the cooking water. Even better, it makes your veggies taste great – which means you’ll be more likely to eat them instead of filling up on fatty foods that pack on weight.
5. Never eat standing up. One of the easiest ways to sabotage your diet is to ‘eat without thinking’. Treat eating with the respect that it deserves. Fix yourself a plate. Sit down and eat properly. You’ll be less likely to just pop food into your mouth without paying attention.
6. Spread your meals out. When you eat three meals a day, your body tends to store whatever it doesn’t need right that moment. By adopting a ‘grazing’ habit, you’ll keep your metabolism working throughout the day. Have a small breakfast, a piece of fruit with crackers or toast at mid-morning, a light lunch and an ‘after school snack’ mid-afternoon. Just remember that you’re breaking up the same amount of food into smaller meals, not ADDING more food into your daily diet.
7. Grab a fruit juice or flavored water instead of soda. Soda is nothing but empty calories. No nutrients, lots of sugar. Instead, grab a bottle of 100% fruit juice, or water flavored with a spritz of fruit.
8. Drink water. Even the FDA recommends at least 8 full 8 ounce glasses of water a day to keep your body working right. When you’re dieting, you should drink even more. It’s not just that full feeling – water helps your body digest foods properly and cleans out your system.
9. Can’t afford a gym membership? Make a pact with friends to exercise together. Make a date at least three times a week to play volleyball, take a walk or spend half an hour doing something active.
10. Skip the potato chips. Fatty snacks fried in hydrogenated oil like potato chips contribute fat and calories and not much else. Instead, grab a handful of dried fruit or a cup of yogurt for the same amount of calories and a lot more nutritional benefit.
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This day and age it can be very difficult indeed to go to the gym. Life is very hectic and busy, which will create a serious challenge for remaining consistent with exercise each day. Exercise is however, just what we all need to reduce stress, and give the body the extra energy it needs to carry out normal living.
The best results of exercise are achieved through the use of refined techniques, functional exercises, cardio, the right nutrition, variety, awareness, consistency, and motivation over a period of time.
The refined techniques mean correct form to isolate muscles or to target areas of the body. Efficiency is need to ensure stimulation of the muscles. With weight lift training, which is also known as resistance training, you’ll need to eliminate any type of momentum.
It is also important to move the weight about using a full range of motion. Full range of motion causes the muscle to contract for the right amount of time and help to ensure the right length of the tendons. The goal here is to strengthen the joints of your body by stimulating the muscles.
Cadence is also helpful, as it is a term that refers to the rate in which the resistance or the weight moves. The best results with cadence are gained by slow movements which will cause the muscle to contract for a longer period of time. You can mix in a series of fast and slow cadence, which is very beneficial with sports type training.
Using the correct angles will achieve muscle isolation in target areas and help to decrease the risk of injuries, which is great for those using heavy weights.
Functional type exercise is a popular technique that will stimulate the core and torso of your body while you work on another muscle group at the same time. As an example, when you perform a dumbell press while lying on an exercise ball.
Your abdominal muscles and the core muscles will contract to hold your body into this position, while your chest and tricep muscles will push the dumbells up. This type of exercise and challenge will cause maximum stimulation to your body and keep the workout interesting and refreshing.
Cardio is another exercise that is great for the heart and lungs. The total number of calories you burn is very important along with maintaining the right heart rate. The formula for your heart rate is 220 minus your age times 60 for the lower number, then 220 minus you age and times 80 for the upper number.
This is also known as fat burning zone. Cardio will also de-toxify the body and help to strengthen the immune system along with other benefits. The muscles will contract and pass the lymph along, which will allow the immune system to clear away dead cells and bring new ones in.
Anytime you exercise, warming up is very important, as it will prepare your body for the more demanding workout of cardio. You should always allow 15 – 30 minutes prior to weight lifting and 10 – 15 minutes prior to cardio exercises. You should also stretch as well, as this will help get the blood flowing through your musles and get them limber as well.
An ideal schedule for working out is to warm up then follow with cardio. You can lift weights on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday then cardio only on Tuesday and Thursday.
Even though you may think your schedule is simply too busy to maintain a schedule for working out, you’ll find that adding exercise will actually add more time, as you’ll have a lot more energy in your normal everyday life. You can think of exercise as the batteries that will help to give your life power.
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The problem of setting the training at a certain moment in the day is more serious than it appears to be. The choice of the period when we train depends on more factors.
It’s clear from the start that we cannot consider the period of three hours after every main meal, because this interval must be allotted to digestion only. Considerable physical effort is totally unadvisable in this period (blood must not be directed to the muscles, since gastric digestion has priority).
More exactly, people should train when their stomach is empty, but the level of glycemia must be constant. Considering a normal awake – asleep rhythm, there are two favorable moments when we can set fitness programs and training in general: one in the morning, between 10-12, and the other one in the afternoon, between 16-19.
Current practice in most of the sports confirms these periods as best for training.
Another argument for choosing one of these intervals for training is the body temperature, which now gets to its maximum. The second period (16-19) is even better than the first one from this point of view, because the temperature is higher and this enhances sport performance.
It is not advisable to train very early in the morning, right after waking up and before breakfast. However, there are authors who support the idea of having the training in this period. The reserves of glycogen are limited after the lack of food during sleeping and this is a reason for using the adipose tissue earlier in training than in other cases.
Unfortunately, at the same time, the stress hormones (cortisone) are secreted abundantly, so besides the adipose tissue, there is the risk of losing precious muscular tissue.
Another argument against this is the fact that body temperature is very low in the hours of morning, so no motion parameters (force, resistance, speed, mobility, skill) can be fully activated. Thus, a prolonged and tiring warming up would be necessary, hindering the actual training.
Everybody agrees that training before bedtime is not advisable at all, because they delay sleep a few hours, given growth of cortical activity and of body temperature.
This schedule can be adapted to any biorhythm and time zone and once automatism installed, effectiveness of training will definitely increase.
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An exercise workout program is not going to be successful for anyone unless they can stay motivated and focused on their goal. Home exercise can be even more challenging than other types of available exercise because there are not as many factors inside the home to act in an encouraging manner for a person, which might help them to exercise and stay focused. As a result, while many people prefer working out in their own home for comfort reasons, they can find staying motivated in the actuality of this task to be more difficult. Here are some tips to help individuals stay committed to their exercise regiment and their weight-loss or muscle building goals.
Music is a great motivator. Sports teams play music in their locker rooms, during half-time shows or other game breaks and/or during events when specific players go up to perform in their games. Music is just as motivating for exercise enthusiasts as it is for professional players and training athletes. Most people prefer pulse-beating music while they exercise, but the favored or preferred music of the individual will most likely be the best music to which that person can work out. Taking your mind off the ‘discomfort’ of working your muscles and offering some great motivation, music is a great resource for individuals who want to exercise.
In many gyms today, individuals can find televisions. Most people have this amenity in their home as well. Television is another great way to distract the exerciser when they are performing an activity that does not require their immediate and constant attention. Such activities can include working out on an exercise bike, a total home gym apparatus, elliptical machine, stepper and/or the like. It passes the time and allows the individual to take part in a more ‘pleasant’ activity. At the same time, individuals can utilize the television in another way as well – as a way to play and watch exercise programs. DVDs and VCR cassettes have been designed for exercisers in order to help keep people motivated with a specific exercise program. If you need instruction to stay motivated and with a set timeframe for the program, the television and playable exercise programs can be a great help.
Exercising at home does not mean exercising alone. You can always bring a buddy to your house to exercise. Additional motivation can easily be found in an exercise partner and this is very reassuring to many people who want to stay focused, but who may not want to leave the comfort of their own home.
Lastly, consider visualization. It’s easy to have a textual goal or a number in your mind. “I would like to lose twenty-five pounds”. You might find yourself saying that over and over again in your mind, trying to convince yourself to stay focused. But this number repetition may not be the best thing for you. Instead, find a picture of yourself when you weighed your ideal weight. If you do not have a picture, try to visualize the way that your body would look if you lost that weight. Having a mental image can help you more than a simple number-filled phrase might.
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Everyone knows that we need to burn more calories than we eat to lose weight. But what are calories? Why is it we can lose weight by burning calories? How are calories being burnt?
Calorie is a measurement of heat. It is the amount of energy that is required to raise one milliliter of water by one degree Celsius. Calorie measures the amount of heat or energy that is released when you burn food down.
Calories are burnt through a complicated process that oxidizes food to its basic components. For example, if you burn a sugar, it will turn into carbon dioxide. However in the body, the food burnt is converted to forms of energy.
So therefore when you consume food, the food is broken down and stored as adipose fat or glycogen (which are stored in liver and muscles cells) to be burnt for energy later. Your body prefers to burn glycogen as its first choice of energy rather than body fat when you expand energy such as exercising.
The more muscles you have in your body, the more calories you will burn. The more calories you burnt, the more weight you will lose. This is because muscle cells are metabolically active whereas body fats are not because fat cells do not have much functionality and are mostly inactive.
Different food categories carry different amount of calories. For example, a gram of protein or carbohydrate has about four calories but a gram of fat packs a whopping nine calories. It is thus a no brainer that the more fat you eat the more calories your body will store.
Some people raise their metabolic rate by eating many smaller meals a day instead of three big meals. By eating several 5-6 times a day, your insulin level is also better regulated and less insulin will then be converted to adipose fat.
So how can you burn more calories and further raise your metabolism to naturally burn more calories and body fats? A simple and effective way to burn more calories is to build more muscles as explained above and exercise to expand energy and thus burning more calories in the process.
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How many pounds are you trying to drop for the summer?
What is it about summer anyway? Is it the sun or the sandy beaches that make humans want to run out and buy a skimpy showering litigation? I mean, it’s like they think they don’t absence to be in knead during the winter. While I understand that we all wear further concealing dress during the cold months, I don’t see why it’s not a factor to stay in knead. We should all work to stay join year – round. With advanced weight loss diets and wonderful fitness regimes we can make this a actuality. Stop working like a lunatic toward the end of every spring to lose those extra pounds. It’s time to come to your senses and keep them off permanently with legitimate weight loss diets that really do work. What are your current eating habits like?
I can recall back when I was a kid and my parents would try a variety of weight loss diets. I remember one in particular that my father was doing. I sat down at the table with my brother for some lunch and there it was. While we scarfed down our ham and cheese sandwiches, our father had a plate of saltine crackers and tuna before him. It looked rather bizarre to me and my brother. Regardless, he ate it up like he was starving. And he probably was! Okay, enough jokes at my father’s expense. The truth is that when it comes to weight loss diets, most people will try virtually anything to get those pounds off. From eating tons of meat and no bread, to living on fruits and vegetables, there are certainly a variety of diet plans to pick and choose from. Now, the key here is finding a nutritious diet that’s right for your condition. This may require consulting a professional. Have you ever spoken with a nutritionist regarding weight loss diets? They know what the scoop is. In fact, a qualified nutritionist can help you plan out a regular weekly eating schedule.
Are you in need of some guidance concerning weight loss diets? Maybe it’s time you did some serious research. With the World – Wide – Web at your fingertips, the road ahead is rather simple. Get online and attain tips and weight loss diets that truly work. Sort through legitimate testimonials by others who’ve tried certain diets and swear by them. Stop fretting about those few extra pounds and shed them off with weight loss diets that work.
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How many time did You look for the miracle food for weight loss? Maybe with exotic name and fancy look? Well, maybe you’re forgetting those commonly available foods, often undervalued but second to none in terms of detox and metabolism booster qualities. here’s a list of 19 of them!
1.Gralic. Lots of minerals, enzymes and aminoacids; Vitamins A,B1,B2,B6,B12,C,D. Only 41 KCAL per 100 grams. Helps reactivate Your metabolism while keeping the cholesterol to rock low levels.
2. Banana. Sugars with little fats. Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Potassium, Vitamins: A,C, Tannin and Serotonin. Only 66 Kcal per 100 grams. A great appetite suppressant snack.
3. Onion. Rich of Vitamins A,C,E, and of B group of vitamins. Also Potassium, Calcium, Sodium; help diuretic activity and a great cellulite fighter. Helps to keep blood sugars stables.
4. Med grass. Not much used in today’s alimentation, but a great friend of weight loss. Helps curbing fats intake.
5. Strawberry. Low Sugars, Minerals and Vitamin C rich. Only 27 KCAL per 100 grams.
6. Corn Flakes. Cereals, Legumes mixed though. Helps a lot Your metabolism and only 14 KCAL per 100 grams.
7. Kiwi. Potassium rich and Calcium, Iron, Zinc too. great source of Vitamin C, lots of fibers, very helpfull to stimulate diuretic functions.
8. Salad. Rich of fibers and very poor in calories (only 14 KCAL per 100 grams); diuretic functions and appetite suppressant, thanks to big volume / low KCAL ratio. Lot of minerals too.
9. Lemon. Lowest sugar content for the same fruit family (only 2,3%), rich in Vitamins and only 11 KCAL per 100 grams. Helps blood circulation and fights cellulitis.
10. Apple. Vitamin C and E, Potassium, Magnesium, rich inn Tannin, great high cholesterol fighter.
11. Nut. Rich in Fats, Proteins, Sigars and Vitamins. Helps Fat Burning thanks to good Calciu+Magnesium contents.
12. Wheat. Only 319 KCAL per 100 grams and very rich in Proteins, Amynoacids, Iron, Calcium, Potassium and Magnesium. but also good content of Vitamins B. Helps diuretic functions and fights emotional eating.
13. Chicken. White meat, low fat content, limits intake of fats, sodium and cholesterol.
14. Rucola Salad. Great content of Vitamin A and C, and great Metabolism booster. Only 16 KCAL per 100 grams.
15. Soy. Rich in Proteins and Folic Acid. Fights Weight gaining and helps rebalancing metabolism.
16. Tea. contains fat burning caffeine, minerals and B group Vitamins. Stimulate Metabolism and has a 0 Calories intake.
17. Egg. Hyperproteic food. Lots of Minerals and Enzimes, helps grom non fatt mass which is crucial to encrease body’ fat burning.
18. Wine. Contains antioxidantd substances that help protect the heart and fight aging.
19. Pumpkin. Rich in B,C,E Vitamins, minerals and only 18 KCAL per 100 grams. Helpd diuretic functions.
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