No one dreams of aging ungracefully. After all, you don’t spend your life trying to increase your number of wrinkles, dying your hair grey before its time, or trying to add on those few extra pounds that seem to come with advancing years, yet they seem to happen almost automatically. Or do they?

Unless you practice certain behaviors that repel these common signs of aging, you’re going to draw them closer to you like water to a sponge. What are these behaviors that will keep you young as long as possible?

A Regular Exercise Regimen

Getting regular physical activity helps you age with poise in a number of ways. First, it keeps your heart healthy which allows you to live life to the fullest. You will be able to engage in various activities that you enjoy well into your senior years like golf, mountain climbing, or simply playing with your grandchildren, without worrying about increasing your risk of a heart attack or stroke.

Whether you spend your days in front of a computer or can’t move around much in your daily life, your sedentary schedule may be impacting you more than you realize. Or, perhaps you understand that your inactivity during your workday is causing you to not look or feel your best, yet you don’t know what to do about it.

Either way, you do have options that will help you improve your fitness levels despite being desk or office bound.  But first, you need to understand why making changes to your sedentary job is important and needs to happen right away.

The Health Consequences of a Sedentary Job

According to the National Center on Health, Physical Activity, and Disability, living a sedentary lifestyle is detrimental to your health. For instance, they report that physically inactive people have a 40% higher risk of developing cancer in the colon or breasts and a 50% higher rate of dementia. Being sedentary also increases the rate at which you lose muscle and bone strength, as well as raises the possibility that you’ll suffer from depression.

(This is Part 3 in our three-part series: How 3 Ancient Alternative Methods Can Help You Lose Weight. CLICK HERE to read Part 1, Acupuncture. CLICK HERE to read Part 2, Can Hypnosis Help You Lose Weight?)

Meditation is part of our earliest recorded history. Long ago, it was used mostly in conjunction with religious practices. Some say that meditation is the oldest form of mental, spiritual and physical health and wellness practice in existence.

The earliest known root of meditation is with the Hindus in India who used forms of meditation to discern the true nature of Brahman. Buddha reached “enlightenment” while he was meditating under a Bodhi Tree. Those that followed Buddha, however, did not believe that mediation was a way to understand a higher being but rather a way of sensing ones connection to all things. Forms of meditation are present in all major religions.

It’s that time, yet again!  Is weight loss one of your resolutions for the New Year? If you’re like most people, this resolution is high on your list year after year – to get healthy and lose weight. Would you like 2014 to be the last time you make a weight loss resolution?

While it may seem like losing your love handles and jiggly thighs is a resolution that just keeps repeating itself, that doesn’t have to be the case. You can reach your weight loss goal this year, and here are our best suggestions to help you reach those goals, once and for all:

Define why you want to lose weight. You can’t go after something and expect to get it if you don’t have a clear understanding of why you want it. Take some time and think about why weight loss is important to you. Make a list of the positive ways your life will change once you reach a lower, healthier weight, and keep that vision in front of you at all times.

If you ask most any weight loss expert about how easy their program is to follow, they’ll tell you that it is very easy. But are they just trying to make a sale or is it true that their plan is simple to follow? What’s the answer? It depends.

The Plan vs. The Mindset

Generally when someone wants to know if the diet plan is easy, they think they are asking about the mechanics of it, or how the plan works. For instance, eating every three hours or adding certain foods into your menu would fall under this umbrella of information and certainly help you lose weight.

However, in reality, the person posing the question is more than likely asking about how easy it is to change their mindset to properly work the plan. This is a completely different question.

What would you say if you were told that every time you grab a diet soda from the fridge or vending machine that the liquid you are consuming almost guarantees your weight loss failure? Would you believe it?

Or how would you feel knowing that with every sip or guzzle that you take in the name of health and fitness you are pushing yourself further and further from your goal of being fit and trim instead of getting closer to it?

What if you learned that the more diet soda you drink, the greater the likelihood that you are going to wind up adding weight to your body despite the word “Diet” displayed prominently on the side of the can?

Although you may be inclined to disbelieve these statements, you may be surprised to learn that they are true – and there has been a ton of research, available to the public, to prove it.

The Science Behind ‘Diet’ Soda

There are lots of diet programs available that will help you lose weight, but nothing beats the ones that offer you results at lightning speed. You realize that achieving weight loss is a process, but that doesn’t mean that the process has to be slow.

So, if you want to lose weight at the fastest rate possible, without sacrificing your health, here are the diets you’re going to want to consider:

Finding a diet is easy. Finding a diet that works for you - not so much. So what can you do to increase the chances that you’ll achieve weight loss success on the diet that you choose to follow? It starts with selecting a diet that will work for you, which is easy to do if you follow these seven simple steps:

Tip #1: Examine your readiness

No diet in the world is going to work for you if you aren’t ready to lose weight. How do you know if you are ready? Ask yourself if you are willing to commit to making changes no matter how hard they are? Will you choose to make failure not an option on your route to weight loss success? If your answer is yes to both of those questions, then you are probably ready to kick butt on your weight loss journey.

Tip #2: Define your goal

Have you tried to lose weight so many times that you would need more than just your fingers and toes to count them on, as well as those of every member of your family? And does each attempt eventually result in you weighing the same as, if not more than, when you first started your weight loss journey? If so, unfortunately you are not alone.

Dieting is one of the most understood lifestyles around the globe. People everywhere are watching what they eat in an attempt to lose weight and gain health. But, if that’s the case, why is it that there is an obesity epidemic that is threatening the health of people all over the world?

The answer is simple: diet. Not diet as in what food people eat (although healthy eating is obviously very important), but diet as in the process. It’s about what effect calorie restriction has on your physical body.

You Can Blame Your Slow Metabolism on Your Grandparents

You want to lose weight but aren’t sure where to begin. It can seem overwhelming when you are first getting started. There are many factors involved in successful weight loss and they each play an important part in a good weight loss program. In order to make the best choices you need to get the best information.

It is essential that you understand how your behavior affects your weight loss results, or you won’t be able to make lasting changes. One thing you will want to consider, according to researchers, is the role that your quality and quantity of sleep plays in losing weight.

Lack of Sleep and Weight Gain

Sleep is a challenging subject, especially in the U.S. where productivity defines many individual lives. It seems the more you get done, the better respected you are. Unfortunately playing around with the amount of sleep you get each night can become a dangerous habit when it comes to your waistline.

There have been numerous studies that examined the link between lack of sleep and weight gain. The following are examples of the many studies that have found a direct link between the two.