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Simple Rules For Safe Weight Loss

Although there is no magic formula to helping your teen lose weight, the real key to succeeding is by helping them to lead a healthier lifestyle that they can carry on into adulthood.

1. Talk to your Teen

If your teen is overweight, they are probably concerned about it too. Aside from long term health issues, such as high blood pressure or diabetes, there are also the social and emotional issues involved as well.

Offer your teen the support and gentle understanding that they are looking for, and help them to take control of the problem.

2. Unrealistic Images

For many teenage girls, their weight and how they look can be a very delicate matter. You should remind them there is no perfect body. Remind them that the right weight for one person, is not necessarily the right weight for somebody else.

Instead of talking to them about fat or thin, encourage your teenage to focus on behaviors which will promote a much healthier weight. If you want to, talk to your family doctor, and he will help to set realistic goals for your teenager with regards to body mass index, and the weight they should be, based on their age, height and general health.

3. Resist Using Quick Fixes to lose weight rapidly

Help your teenager by teaching them how to lose weight, and then keep it off. Many of the fad diets around are likely to rob your teen of essential nutrients, iron and calcium that they need in their diet, as they are still growing.

Don’t allow them to take weight loss pills or other quick fixes, as they will not address the root of the problem. The effects of these types of treatment are short lived anyway.

It is important to remember that only permanent changes in their habits will help them keep the weight off.

4. Increase the amount of physical activity

Like any adult, a teenager will need to do about 60 minutes of physical activity, several times a week, preferably daily. But this does not mean that they have to do it all at once. They can do the activity in short bursts throughout the day in order to help burn off excess calories or fat.

Team sports, which they do at school or at a local sports hall, are a great way for your teen to get active. However, if your child isn’t an athlete, or finds it difficult to participate in certain sports, encourage them to walk, cycle or skate to and from school, or just to walk a few times around the school before they begin classes. They could spend at least one day away from the computer and do something a little more physical like taking the dog for a walk, or just going for a walk themselves.

Get them to do some household chores, like vacuuming or washing the car. Most housework has aerobic benefits.

5. Ensure that your teen has breakfast

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. A good nutritious breakfast will help jump start your teen's day and their metabolism. It provides them with the energy they need to face the day ahead. You may also find that it stops them from eating too much during the rest of the day as well.

If your teen is not keen on high fiber cereal or whole wheat toast, suggest they eat what was left over from the night before. You could even suggest a piece of cheese, a small handful of nuts and a piece of fruit.

6. Snack wisely

It may be difficult for your teenage child to make healthy choices when they are at school. Encourage them to replace a bag of chips with a much healthier option from home, such as frozen grapes, an orange, strawberries sliced red, orange or yellow peppers, a few cherry tomatoes or baby carrots.

7. Watch the Size of the food portions

When it comes to the portions that a teen eats, size really does matter. If you encourage your child to cut back and stop eating when they feel full, they'll have a much easier time getting their weight under control. You may find that just one slice of pizza, or half the pasta is enough to make them feel full.

8. Drinks

An average 12 ounce can of soda has 150 calories and 10 teaspoons of sugar. The calories and sugar that you find in fruit juice, specialty coffees and other drinks can also add up quickly. So getting your teenager to drink more water, instead of soda and other sugary drinks, will save on the calories and their sugar intake. Suggest they drink flavored water, seltzer water or unsalted club soda instead.

9. Let them have the occasional treat

Allowing your teen to have a late night pizza at a friend’s, or some nachos when they're at the movies, doesn't derail your teen’s healthy eating plan.

Suggest that when they are out, they have a breadstick with sauce instead of garlic bread, or they share a snack with their friend, instead of having an order themselves.

It is important that you let your teenager know that they are in control, and the occasional treat is okay. The most important thing is getting them to lead a healthier lifestyle.

10. Family involvement

Rather than just singling out your teenager to lead a healthier lifestyle, adopt these healthy habits for the whole family.

a. Encourage the whole family to eat more fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grains. It's important that you set a good example for all your children.

b. Forget the junk food. Although healthy food often costs more, it is a good investment in your child’s life.

c. Try out new recipes or healthier alternatives to those family favorites.

d. Don’t allow anyone to eat while sitting on the couch. This will curb mindless eating.

e. Arrange some family activities, such as walks in the evening, or visiting a local recreation center on the weekend.

11. Be Positive in your Attitude when helping your teen to lose weight

Being overweight does not always lead to a lifetime of low self esteem, but your acceptance of your teen’s weight problem is critical. Remember to listen to your teen’s concerns regarding their weight, and comment on their skills, efforts and accomplishments.

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Another easy way of gaining both backlinks and traffic, article marketing is more powerful than many first realize. In fact, some people use it solely for the backlink value, and by doing so, are ignoring a potentially incredible source of extremely targeted traffic.

On the whole, the entire process of article marketing could be summed up by describing it as writing an article, and submitting it to article directories. By including a link of your choice in the ‘resource box’, you will be gaining back links.

However, if it is to be a true source of traffic, then there is much more to the process than simply that. Firstly, the article must be keyword targeted, just like your content, in order to enable people to find it.

Apart from that, the article itself must be a ‘presell’ of your website, albeit in a non-promotional way. Good articles for submission are those that relate to the content of your website, and guide the reader to the resource box which would contain a call to action.

It is here that the article culminates its usefulness, and the call to action should be convincing, and supply the reader with a good reason to want to visit your website.

Note: To further get readers to visit your article, some basic promotion of it through social bookmarking, could help it rank higher and thus increase the traffic flow.

One argument regarding article marketing is that it is a ‘short term’ solution, which basically requires you to submit content to a third party website as opposed to building up your own. While this is very true, at the same time, it is a way that you can tap into the already-high page rank and reputation of article directories.

What you end up with is a high-up search result that basically advertises your website, which is not too shabby at all.

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Once you have a list of keywords that have at least 1,000 monthly searches and fewer than 50,000 competing pages, it’s time to use those keywords to get traffic.

There are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of ways to get traffic, but I’m just going through some of the easiest ways to get traffic quickly and with little to no money up front.

Article Marketing

One of the easiest ways to get free traffic is by writing articles and submitting them to article directories. Many article directories have very good authority with the search engines, so articles you submit will often rank well quickly and bring in traffic.

If you’re going to send people straight to an affiliate link, it’s a good idea to register a domain that you can use to redirect people to. There are a couple of reasons for this.

You can easily change the affiliate link if necessary, without having to go back and edit tons of articles.

Some article directories require it.

Articles should be between 300 and 500 words. It’s actually a good idea to keep articles fairly short so you don’t bore people, and because you don’t want them to feel completely satisfied. To get the really good information, they need to visit the affiliate link in your resource box at the end of your article.

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Time Management

If your schedule gets you up and running beginning at 6 in the morning until 6 in the evening, this day represents 12 hours. There are 24 hours in a day and we’re not recommending you get up at 2 in the morning to do your exercise.

But you could get up half an hour early and use the extra time for some type of physical activity. If you do this three times a week, that means you get 90 minutes of exercise each week.

One easy way to do this is to do yoga in the morning (it requires only a mat and comfortable, loose clothing), or turn on the Jane Fonda CD/DVD, or buy a treadmill (the foldable ones) that you can jump into as soon as you wake up.

Another time management tip: not only do busy managers have back-to-back meetings, they also have luncheon and dinner meetings to meet with clients. Assess each client. Do all of them really need to be wined and dined? Is an hour long meeting absolutely necessary? Can’t a deal be negotiated on the phone?

See how many meetings you can cancel or shorten. Then fit your fitness program into those slots that have been freed up.

How about this: instead of going to lunch with clients every day of the week, why don’t you schedule lunch meetings for say Monday and Tuesday? This way you can incorporate a fitness routine for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 12:00 to 1:00 pm.

A brisk walk inside or outside the office building, a quick swim in the neighborhood hotel pool, a Pilates course in the recreational centre, lifting dumb bells while on the phone?

Any of these exercises is better than no exercise. Your guiding principle should be to move, move, move as frequently as you can manage it.

Cubicle Fitness

Just as ergonomic experts recommend that office workers take their eyes off their computer screen every hour or so, fitness experts are advocating getting up from your chair and taking a brisk walk up and down the stairs.

When you feel the need to take a break, offer to pick up supplies for your colleagues, take the mail downstairs instead of waiting for the trolley, or think of something you could put in your car instead of waiting until 5 pm. That way, you force yourself to get up from your seat and walk for a few minutes.

If you look into the private offices of some people, you’ll see dumb bells, mats and elastic bands - these are clues that they are doing some exercise while on the job - a good and healthy practice to adopt by busy individuals with hectic schedules.

Family Exercises

On the weekends when you join the family in their activities, try to integrate exercise into these activities: if the children are into cycling, join them for bike rides. Are they off to their swimming lessons or skating lessons? See if you can sign up in the adults section, or take a walk outside the recreational center while waiting for them.

Chores Burn Calories

Who says you can’t burn calories while doing housework or gardening? Take a breather from your hectic schedule and devote some down time to tending to your lawn, trimming your rose bushes, scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom floors, etc.

Walk, don’t Drive!

Park your car far away so you can walk to the front door of the office, to the entrance of the mall, to the doctor’s office and to the post office.

Section 3: Busy Traveler? You Can Fit Exercise into your Trips

Hopping in and out of planes is exercise enough, you say. But that’s not the kind of exercise that will condition your heart, make your reflexes and joints more fluid, keep your sugar levels in check or stop mood swings.

Nor is it the kind of exercise that will make you euphoric after a good cardiovascular session. You need to counteract the effects of jet lag, artificial air in pressurized aircraft cabins and sky fatigue. Suzanne Schlosberg says,

"Sometimes your travels help you recognize how humdrum your workout routine has become. At home, it’s easy to fall into a rut - to use the same weight machines in the same order, week after week, month after month, simply out of habit. But a trip may take the routine out of your routine. You may have no choice but to try new strength exercises or jog in the pool instead of swim laps. And you might find these new pursuits so enjoyable that you add them to your fitness repertoire at home.”

Some nice hotels have spa facilities that you can enjoy while on a business trip. Reward yourself with a facial or a massage after a session on the treadmill or 10 laps in the pool. This is a great way to unwind for the evening, and an added bonus for the individual on the go.