We buy many wares off-the-shelf and don’t require them to be custom-made to match our requirements. Nevertheless, when it comes to websites it seems to be different. Most business owners assume that their website will be planned to their precise stipulations. This is perfectly natural of course, and in many business plans it’s unavoidable.
But wait a minute - is that truly the best way to go about things for all cases? Take content managed websites as an example : these will feature dozens of facilities, with stringent security prerequisites, a backoffice area so the website owner can update the content. All of this, while requiring the front-end to be easy to use and buy products for website visitors. Answering all those requirements is no insignificant undertaking, and if one thing goes wrong, you’re going back to the developer to ask for fixes. Tailor-made websites in this light are burdened with so much to consider.
However, there’s an alternative to this way which is far more money saving, potentially gives you a lot more facilities, and offers more stability,reliability and security - e-commerce templates.
People realise nowadays that bespoke websites frequently aren’t essential and that in plenty of cases, it’s best to alter your goals even ever-so slightly so they fit a robust, popular and proven web template than to risk a bespoke website design to match your goals. Why? Due to the demands a contemporary website asks for. You want a strong, tried and tested template that runs your site, not freshly written code that hasn’t had the benefit of months and years of real-life testing. Not just that, but templates ordinarily come with free updates, so your website is tracking all the latest technologies the ability to copy and paste fashionable widgets onto your pages.
But perhaps the greatest selling point is this however: templated solutions are far cheaper than custom sites. Why would you spend £7000 on a site if you can get a ste with lots more facilities for only £600, for example?
The above issues ought to cause you to consider carefully your online plans and whether to pick out a bespoke website or a templated one.
We know that the key to permanent and effective weight loss is
to speed up our body’s metabolism. Metabolism simply means the
speed in which our body utilizes and burns through food.
A fast metabolism means that your body processes and utilizes
the nutrients which it needs and then eliminates those it
doesn’t.
There are primarily two ways to naturally speed up your body’s
metabolism.
The first is through resistance training, lifting weights. Lean
muscle tissue is a very metabolically active tissue, it requires
a lot of energy to maintain. The body gets this energy from
burning calories. So the more lean muscle you have, the faster
your metabolism becomes and the more calories that you will burn
at rest.
The second way to effectively speed up your body’s metabolism is
by eating small, well-balanced, nutritious meals or snacks every
three to four hours. This alone can drastically improve the
efficiency of your body’s metabolism.
Now, for those of us with busy, often hectic lives, eating every
three to four hours can be challenging, if not impossible.
What are the chances of eating something healthy and nutritious
every two to three hours? Unless you have a lot of time to
prepare and package meals or hire yor own personal chef to cook
for you, this can be a daunting task.
Well, now there is a solution: Meal replacements.
Meal replacements are probably the most valuable and underrated
supplement on the market. People are always looking for the
magic solution to weight-loss by buying some drink or pill that
promises miraculous results.
We gain weight and body fat by having poor eating habits, so the
only way to undo the damage is to reverse the cycle by
developing good eating habits. Meal replacements make this
possible.
Meal replacements are pre-packaged powdered drink mixes that you
mix with water, milk, or juice and then drink in the place of a
meal. They are convenient, inexpensive, and most taste pretty
good.
For optimum fat-burning and muscle-building results, we need to
consume a high-protein, moderate-carb, low-fat meal about every
three to four hours. This is approximately five to six meals per
day.
So, replace two or three of your whole food meals with meal
replacements and you will drastically start cutting out unneeded
calories, calories that can add up and, if not burned off, be
stored as body fat.
Meal replacements provide a perfect, compact meal in a packet
that is high in protein, low in fat (some have no fat) are low
in carbohydrates, and contain a wide array of vitamins and
minerals. They are low in sugar and cholesterol. They are very
nutrient dense and can be mixed easily and conveniently.
In order to get the same benefits from whole food as some of the
high quality meal replacements, you would have to put together a
large meal like a chicken breast (protein) a potato for some
carbs, and a salad for the vitamins.
You would have to intricately construct the unique amino acids
profile for a huge variety of intact foods and you would have to
combine enough different nutrient dense foods to yield a
complete 100% recommended daily allowance of all vitamins or
minerals and antioxidants.
At the same time doing this while keeping unwanted fat and
sugars to a bare minimum. Now imagine doing this five to six
times a day.
Why bother when you can just rip open a meal replacement packet
and toss it into a cup with some water or skim milk. Presto!
Instant nutrition.
One of the meal replacements I have tried and really liked is
Nature’s Best Perfect Rx. This shake comes in chocolate and
vanilla and mixes up smooth and rich. It costs only about $2.00
a shake. It’s hard to find something that nutritious and low in
calories for fewer than 2 bucks.
I also like AST Sports Science Ny-Tro Pro-40, which is delicious
in the Strawberry flavor. Met-Rx is the granddaddy of all meal
replacements. It’s been around for 10 years.
If something did not have any value to a consumer, it would not
be around for 10 year. Met-Rx and AST Ny-Tro Pro-40 are a bit
more expensive than Natures’ Best Perfect Rx. They are about
$3.00 per packet.
Choose a meal replacement that is high in protein, with about
30-40 grams. Carb sources should be from maltodextrin, a corn
derivative that provides a slow energy release.
Carbs should be around 20-22 grams, but no more than 3 grams of
those from sugar. Fat should be no more than 3-4 grams. Pick one
that mixes up rather thick. The “mouth feel” helps with the
satiety feeling. If you are left full by these meal
replacements, you will not have the urge to eat again for at
least 3 hours.
Check the ingredients. Stick with meals replacements that use a
combination of whey, milk, and egg proteins as the first
ingredient. Most meal replacements, if taken with water, offer
at least 40 grams of protein with minimal fat. Most are under
300 calories, chock full of vitamins and minerals, and taste
rather pleasant.
Many people I have spoken to over the years attribute meal
replacements being on of the biggest reasons why they we able to
lose weight. They are able to get vitamin-rich, high-protein,
moderate carb meal for less than 300 calories.
All of this for about 2 dollars. You cannot even buy a Happy
Meal for fewer than 2.00 dollars and Happy Meals are loaded with
fat!
“Fitness” is an elusive term covering a vast array of
attributes: flexibility, cardiovascular endurance, muscular
endurance, strength, power, balance, coordination, body-fat
percentage and more. While its generally accepted that multiple
30-60 minute sessions per week are optimal for producing
results, the truth is that it’s possible to do a great amount in
far less time.
EVERYONE has five minutes a day…the only question is, can
anything really useful be done in just 300 seconds?
The answer is a resounding “yes”, but we need choose our
exercises carefully. If there is such a limited amount of time,
the best choice is to pick the most important muscle group.
Chest? Back? Shoulders? Legs? All wrong. The abdominals are the
most important muscles in the body. In no particular order, they:
1) Protect the low back.
2) Are vital to sports performance, transferring power from the
lower to upper body.
3) Aid digestion, and massage the internal organs.
4) Are important for proper, healthy sexual function.
5) Are “the window of health”–we judge fitness and health more
rapidly with a glimpse at the waistline than any other single
indication.
6) Are vital for posture, which increases physical energy and
mood.
7) Are the linchpin of your entire fitness program. You’ve never
seen someone with toned abdominal muscles and flabby arms and
legs, have you? The reverse is not true.
Are the most important muscle group for physical
attractiveness in men or women. No matter the wonderful
definition of arms or legs, if your gut is sagging, you have a
problem!
There are other reasons, but one of the best is the fact that of
all body parts, the abs tend to be the least favorite body part
to work. They’re hard! That reason alone should be enough to
motivate you: anything other people don’t like working is a
golden opportunity for you!
But how can you do anything useful in just five minutes? One
daily approach is to perform five minutes of the toughest ab
exercises you can find, and a fantastic tool for this is a
“Roller Wheel” available for five dollars at any sporting goods
store. Not the fancy ones, just the simple get-on-your-knees
variety. Try this: perform one rep, and take a breath. Then do
two reps, and take two breaths. Then three, and take three
breaths…and so on until you can’t go any higher. Then, drop
back to one rep, and start climbing again. When that gets easy,
take one breath for every two reps.
An even better method is to break up your exercise into multiple
daily sessions. The roller wheel is useful here as well, but you
might want to investigate some of the powerful “Vacuum”
exercises from yoga, or the dynamic-tension style “stomach
flattening” exercises. In these, you exhale all air, and flex
the abdominal muscles for several seconds. Believe me, if you do
these properly, even without aerobic exercise your waistline
will decrease!
While there is no serious disagreement that longer sessions
produce better, and more balanced results, the busiest man or
woman on earth can find five minutes a day…and sometimes, that
toehold is what it takes to get you started on a new, healthier
lifestyle.