Almost everyone out there wants to be fit and sexy, and most want to lose weight. Actually no one really wants to lose weight. What people really want is to lose fat. But just how do you go about losing fat? Is there some top secret method that can just melt the fat away? Unfortunately, there isn’t. There are, however, several things that you can do to increase your fat loss and speed it along.
Here are our Top 5 Fat Loss Tips
1. Drink lots of water. You should drink at least 8 glasses of water a day minimum and really try for a gallon. The water will keep you hydrated, decrease that hunger feeling, help your body eliminate fat and the toxins from the burning of fat.
2. Change your carb intake. There is no need for you to eliminate carbs from your diet but you do need to make some significant changes. The bread, the pasta and anything made from flour has to go. Replace them with fruits and vegetables. Your best choice would be dark green leafy vegetables. They will lower your overall carb intake and provide your body with the vitamins and minerals that it needs during this stressful period.
3. Change your exercise routine. There has always been an argument as to which type of exercise is better for burning fat, aerobic or weight training. Stop arguing over it because the best way is to include both of them in your daily routine. They will increase your metabolism and burn more fat if you do them in conjunction with each other. Give yourself the benefits of both.
4. Eat protein and fiber in every meal. Protein and fiber will make you feel full sooner so that you eat less. Both also have a positive effect on your body, raising your metabolism, and increasing your caloric expenditure throughout the entire day.
5. Substitute green tea for your coffee. Coffee isn’t bad for you, but the cream and sugar that most people put into it can destroy a diet. Avoid that by just eliminating it altogether. Green tea has the added benefit in that it contains substances that have been shown to increase your body’s ability to burn its own fat and to boost your immune system.
Bonus Tip 1: Ditch alcohol. Alcohol contributes an absolutely nutritionally deficient 7 calories per gram. Alcohol has also been shown to make it easier for your body to store fat and more difficult for you to lose it. There is no way around the fact that alcohol is going to derail your efforts if you don’t eliminate it.
Bonus Tip 2: Get yourself a good night’s sleep. Dieting is a very stressful experience for your body. You need to get enough rest in order to allow your body to recuperate and repair itself. A good night’s sleep will do wonders for you.
Really, these are no secrets and fat loss is a long process, you can’t expect to get fit and sexy overnight. Make a goal, plan your diet and stick to it. Be focused and never give up. Slowly but steadily you’ll achieve what you set out to.
All the best
Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009)known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible". He is credited with many recording innovations. Although he was not the first to use the technique, his early experiments with overdubbing (also known as sound on sound), delay effects such as tape delay, phasing effects and multitrack recording were among the first to attract widespread attention.
His innovative talents extended into his playing style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques and timing, which set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many guitarists of the present day.He recorded with his wife Mary Ford in the 1950s, and they sold millions of records.
Among his many honors, Paul is one of a handful of artists with a permanent, stand-alone exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.He is prominently named by the music museum on its website as an "architect" and a "key inductee" along with Sam Phillips and Alan
Skin experts sometimes tell their clients that they should let their skin breath. If you want to get rid of the accumulated toxins, you should detoxify your body once in a while, so that you can have a healthier well being as well as glowing skin. You don’t have to pay for expensive treatments just to detoxify. Here are some effective ways to detox your body without making a hole into your wallets.
Detox with water – we all know water has many benefits, it not just helps make your skin radiant, but water also helps clean out your system. Drinking lots of water, atleast 8 glasses a day, can really be helpful to flush out toxins from your body.
Eat foods which are rich in fiber – vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, chlorella and artichokes are just some of the best foods that are high in fiber. Aside from the detoxifying benefits of these vegetables, it could also help you be in shape and avoid reduce the risk of cancer.
Do activities that can make you sweat – exercise has a lot of benefits including natural detoxification. When you sweat through activities like jogging or brisk walking, you are also taking out all those unnecessary toxins that have been accumulated over the year. If you do not want to gym, although we highly recommend you do make it a part of your daily routine, you can just do some floor exercises at home. Also visiting a sauna during weekends, is a good way to sweat while you rest at the same time.
Breath deeply – do you know that breathing deeply is also one way to detoxify? If you could take time breathing correctly and keep your mind calm, you are also allowing more room for oxygen to circulate through your body. Try it for 15 minutes a day, it works!
Stretch – yoga, tai chi and other activities that allow you to stretch can also help you detox.
Bonus Tip: Fasting once in a month is a great idea, more so if your 35 plus. Plan out a day for fasting, drink lots of water and consume plenty of fruits. This is one of the best ways to detox your body.
Mentioned above are some tips to get rid of the toxins and detoxify your body naturally. Most detox products are useless, do consult your physician before using them. Maintaining a healthy diet, having food on time, getting enough rest, exercising for a few minutes everyday and avoiding too much of stress can all go a long way in achieving, what most of us these days neglect, good health.
There is one common problem that is experienced by teens and adults alike. And this is no other than acne also known as pimple. Even the most gorgeous celebrity that you know is troubled by this skin problem. But just like any other problem, there are solutions that can help you get rid of pimples and avoid the next one from appearing on your face.
Here are Top 5 ways to get rid of Acne / Pimples naturally
1. Do not pop it – Never be tempted to squeeze those pimples, even if it would make you feel better or you are dying to “pop” it, never do it. You will only make it worse.
2. Wash your face – Whether you had makeup on or not, you should always wash your face with the right facial soap and with clean water. Washing your face is important even if you don’t have any activity during the day, it helps you get rid of the accumulated dirt and oil on your skin.
3. Eat healthy and eat right – there are actually certain foods that can trigger acne especially to those who have oily skin. Burgers and other foods, especially those from fast food outlets have a lot of oil which can contribute to acne. It’s not bad to have fries once in while, but see to it that you include vegetables and fruits in your next meal.
4. Be active – rather than storing toxins in your body which causes acne, you should try to exercise. Believe it or not, your skin becomes radiant every time you workout.
5. Try to relax – stress at office, work or your personal life can be a big factor in contributing to acne. Get rid of acne by giving yourself a time to chill out and relax your mind.
Bonus Tip 1: Drink 8 glasses of water a day, bare minimum. Drink more if you can. Water cleanses your system and is very effective in preventing pimples.
Bonus Tip 2: Smoking harms your skin and could cause acne. So if your a smoker, the sooner you get rid of the deadly habit the better it is for your overall health.
Bonus Tip 3: There are thousands of products today in pharmacies that could get rid of acne fast.
However, you should first know the components of the product especially if you have oily or sensitive skin. Acne can be treated easily as long as you follow the tips mentioned above and if you do decide to use products, do remember to use the right ones.
Note: If nothing works, do consult a skin specialist.
The bottom line: After the last version's radical new interface that brought this security stalwart into a visual comparison with its competitors, Avast looks to the future with version 6's edgy improvements.
Review:
Avast made great strides in its previous update. Version 5 set the stage for the modern, massively popular, and free security suite with a new interface that ditched a quirky, late-'90s jukebox style for a more polished look. Easier to navigate, it also became easier to add new features.
Make no mistake; Avast 6 adds features both big and small. Some that had previously only been available to paid upgrade users are now free for all versions, and newer features have been seamlessly added to the interface experience. If you're familiar with Avast 5, upgrading to Avast 6 won't be that big of a leap.
Installation
Installing Avast is a painless process that compares well against its free competitors like AVG, although--like those competitors--it's much slower than installing paid programs like Trend Micro, Kaspersky, or Norton.
Some items of note during the installation that will come up later in the review: to completely avoid the new Windows 7 and Vista desktop gadget, or the new WebRep browser add-on, you must choose the Custom install option and uncheck those here.
Automatic installation of these features is frowned upon, although Avast does provide a clear method for uninstalling them. It's just not as simple as a check box that gets its own installation window, since you have to go through the Customize menu, which makes the auto-install sort of surreptitious.
On the plus side, installing Avast doesn't require a reboot, and using its uninstall tool we detected no remnants in the Registry or on the desktop. Avast has said that the installer has shrunk for all three versions by about 20 percent, although it's still a large download at around 57MB for the free version.
Avast Internet Security 6 (screenshots)
Interface
Avast 6's interface is virtually identical to the previous version's. Perhaps the most major change, aside from a slight lightening of the gray in the color scheme, is the removal of the Windows Explorer-style forward and backward buttons. We actually liked those, since they made it easy to return to a previous pane, no matter how deeply into the settings you had explored.
The only other change is the addition of the Additional Protection tab to the left nav area, which hosts the new AutoSandbox and WebRep feature controls.
For users new to Avast, the sleek user interface is a change that came at the end of 2009. The gray-and-orange color scheme stands out well on the screen, and the tab-based navigation on the left makes it easy to navigate between features. Highlighted with the familiar security colors of green for safe and red for dangerous, the Summary tab gives up-to-date info on shield status, auto-updates, virus definitions, the program version, and whether the silent/gaming mode is on. There's also an unobtrusive ad urging you to upgrade to Avast Internet Security 6.
The Summary tab contains a second submenu, Statistics. If you're curious to see how Avast's shields have been performing against threats, here's where you can get your math geek on. For each shield, it tells you how many files were scanned and when, and presents the data in a concise graph.
Avast 6 keeps its interface from Avast 5, and adds features both big and small. Some that had previously only been available to paid upgrade users are now free for all versions, and newer features have been seamlessly added to the interface experience. If you're familiar with Avast 5, upgrading to Avast 6 won't be that big of a leap.
The scans live in the second tab, where you can choose and adjust four default scan types plus a custom scan option nestled into the bottom right corner. Real-time shields live in the third tab, and again the clean interface comes into play here as navigating what could be a mess of options and tweaks is instead dead simple. Click on a shield to reveal a real-time chart of what the program's been defending you against, with a Stop button and settings options at the top of the window. Another button at the top takes you to the advanced settings for that shield, and links at the bottom expose the shield's history as a graph and export a log file.
Below the Additional Protection tab, which we covered above, the Maintenance tab contains the virus chest and manual update buttons. On the top right of the interface live the Help Center and the Settings, from which you can get much more granular control of Avast. This includes everything from toggling the system tray icon to managing updates to password-protecting Avast access. This is also where you can "uninvolve" your anonymously submitted data from Community IQ, the Avast crowdsourced behavioral detection engine.
One last change: a green Like Avast button has been added to the bottom of the left nav that expedites your Avast-related social networking. Fortunately, it's unobtrusive.
Features and support
As mentioned, the two big new features in the free version of Avast 6 are the AutoSandbox and the WebRep add-on. The debut of the AutoSandbox makes Avast the second antivirus option to offer a sandboxing tool for free. Competitor Comodo introduced a sandboxing tool in January 2010. Avast's sandbox probably works differently, as Comodo has a pending patent on its version. And certainly, one of the most frustrating things about sandboxing technology is that there are some indications that it doesn't work perfectly.
The AutoSandbox, new in both free and paid Avast versions, automatically places suspicious programs in a virtualized state when it suspects them of being threats. As the program runs, the sandbox keeps track of file behaviors and what it reads and writes from the Registry. Permanent changes are virtualized, so when the process terminates itself, the system changes it made will evaporate.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
Avast's version automatically places programs in a virtualized state when it suspects them of being threats. It walls off suspicious programs, preventing them from potentially damaging your system while allowing them to run. As the program runs, Avast's sandbox keeps track of which files are opened, created, or renamed, and what it reads and writes from the Registry. Permanent changes are virtualized, so when the process terminates itself, the system changes it made will evaporate.
The company hasn't said whether the virtualized state begins after the program already has access to your system, so it's theoretically possible that it could be compromised. There's not a single security feature in any program that hasn't been been compromised at some point, though, so "theoretically hackable" is true of all security features.
The AutoSandbox is different from Avast's paid-upgrade sandbox, and the paid upgrades to Avast Pro and Avast Internet Security include both the automatic version and the older, manually initiated version.
You can access the AutoSandbox settings from the new Additional Protection option on the left nav. It defaults to asking the user whether a program should be sandboxed, although you can set it to automatically decide. There's a whitelist option for programs that you always want to exclude from the sandbox, and you can deactivate the feature entirely.
Avast 6 also marks the debut of the program joining (or succumbing to) the browser-security add-on, with the new WebRep. Security add-ons have a long-standing word-of-mouth reputation for decreasing browser performance, although Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate's impact meter pegs Avast's plug-in at 0.07 second, well below the threshold of 0.2 second that IE uses as the default upper limit for browser performance impact.
WebRep works with IE and Firefox out of the box, and Avast says it plans to release a Chrome version soon. It supports a search result ranking and Web site reputation service that uses a combination of data from Avast's virus labs and user voting to determine a safety score for a site. User voting is a crapshoot for many security vendors, although Avast is known for its vast user base and their passionate support of the program, so the company's plans to give users incentives to vote could easily work in its favor. And make no mistake, Avast fans are truly fanatics: Avast Free has an average 4.5-star rating from Download.com readers, extremely unusual for a program with more than 15,000 votes.
It's important to note that the add-on installs to both Firefox and IE as you install Avast 6. If you don't want it, it's surprisingly easier to remove from within Avast instead of from within the browser. Currently, removing the add-on using the browser's interface will cue Avast to reinstall the add-on the next time the computer is rebooted.
Many of Avast 6's small improvements are worth noting as well. The Troubleshooting section now comes with a "restore factory settings" option, which makes it easier to wipe settings back to a familiar starting point, and comes with the option to restore only the Shields settings, leaving other changes untouched, like permanently running in silent mode. There's a new sidebar gadget for Windows 7 and Vista, and you now can set automatic actions for the boot-time scan. Available under the Scan Computer tab, the boot-time scan customizations give you far more flexibility in managing the lengthy and time-consuming boot scan.
Two features that have trickled down to the free version in Avast 6 are the Script Shield and site blocking. The Script Shield now works with Internet Explorer 8 and 9's protected mode.
Avast doesn't offer an on-demand link-scanning feature, like AVG and Norton do, although the company says that the way that Avast's Web shield behaves ought to protect you automatically from any malicious URLs by automatically preventing the URL from resolving in-browser. A page will appear letting you know that Avast has blocked the site because it is suspected to contain a threat.
If you're running Avast Pro Antivirus 6 or Avast Internet Security 6, the big new feature is the introduction of SafeZone, a virtualization feature that the company envisions people using for secure online banking. The basic difference between SafeZone and AutoSandbox is that the sandbox is designed to allow suspicious activity to run within a safe, walled-off, easily discarded environment, while SafeZone is the opposite. SafeZone creates a secure space that, ideally, prevents threats from getting in.
The AutoSandbox, new in both free and paid Avast versions, automatically places suspicious programs in a virtualized state when it suspects them of being threats. As the program runs, the sandbox keeps track of file behaviors and what it reads and writes from the Registry. Permanent changes are virtualized, so when the process terminates itself, the system changes it made will evaporate.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
SafeZone is accessible from the right-click Windows Explorer context menu, from the middle icon in the Windows 7/Vista desktop gadget, and from the Additional Protection tab in the Avast interface.
The difference between Avast Free and Avast Pro is that Pro gets the SafeZone, whereas Avast Internet Security differentiates itself by including SafeZone, antispam measures, and a firewall.
If you're new to Avast, the core features are what make it one of the best security suites around. The antivirus, antispyware, and heuristics engines form a security core that also includes multiple real-time shields. The adjustable mail and file system shields join the pre-existing behavior, network, instant-messaging, peer-to-peer, and Web shields. The behavioral shield is a common-sense feature, as security software publishers draw on their large user bases to detect threats early and warn others.
Other features include a gaming mode that can be used to permanently "silence" Avast notifications, and an "intelligent scanner" that only looks at changed files after establishing a baseline.
Program scans live in the second tab, where you can choose and adjust four default scan types plus a custom scan option. What's useful about Avast's layout here is that you can adjust all Avast-related scans from this tab. This includes Quick and Full scans, the Removable Media scan, and the Folder scan. In a polite turn, running a scan does not prevent you from exploring the rest of the program.
You can also schedule a boot-time scan and access scan logs from the scan tab. While running a scan, Avast will tell you not only how long the scan has taken and how many files have been examined, but also how much data has been tested and how fast it's being tested. As with the summary graphs, Avast exposes a lot of data here.
Performance
As far as Avast's impact on system performance goes, in a real-world test Avast completed its scans in a timely yet not blazingly fast manner. A Quick Scan took about 20 minutes, and the Full Scan took 59 minutes. RAM usage was surprisingly light, with Avast 6 only eating up about 16MB when running a scan.
As you can see in the chart below, CNET Labs benchmarked Avast 6 as having a moderate impact on system performance. It wasn't the overall best suite we tested, but the three versions of Avast did perform better than average in every category execpt one.
There were some notable areas where Avast did well. Avast had a minimal impact on startup time, with Avast Internet Security 6 adding 6.25 seconds, Avast Pro Antivirus 6 adding 5.76 seconds, and Avast Free Antivirus 6 slowing down the boot cycle by around five and a half seconds. All three posted a tiny impact on system shutdown, around 1.3 seconds slower than an unprotected computer. Scan times as well were competitive, slower than AVG, Trend Micro, and Panda, but faster than most competitors including Microsoft Security Essentials, Norton, and Ad-Aware. Also, Avast Pro Antivirus posted the best Cinebench score we recorded.
Avast's one point of weakness in the lab was its MS Office decoding test performance, where it was slightly slower than average but by no means the slowest suite tested.
