Spring/Summer is very busy time for garden birds and it's at this time of the year that garden birds will be most active in your garden. If you observe their behaviour during this time, you will witness several stages in their busy life's, including finding a partner, building a home and raising a family.

Remember that if you want to attract birds to your garden, you will need to make sure you make your garden is bird friendly. You can do this by doing things such as putting out bird food regularly, siting nest boxes and using bird tables. Remember that good hygiene is also vital, or feeding may actually do more harm than good. Also remember when putting out feed during the summer months that birds require high protein foods, especially while they are moulting.



Finding a partner



During the early part of the year our garden birds need to look and be fit, strong and healthy, thereby convincing their prospective mate of their capability to support and provide for a family in the busy months ahead.



Offer seed blends with a higher content of energy boosting seeds, like the sunflower. Remember to cater for the Softbills (Robins, Blackbirds and Thrushes), whose natural diet consists of fruits, insects and berries, many of which are hard to find at the end of winter and the beginning of Spring. They also need to supplement their diet with the ground and table mixes especially formulated for them that include high energy and fat-rich ingredients.



Building a home



An exhausting time for both male and female birds alike - constantly on the go from dawn to dusk. It's important to provide the families in your garden with a regular supply of nutritional, high-energy value foods. They will still forage in the wild for their normal foods but the more assistance you can offer the more successful and healthy they will be during this frantic time when all their energy is devoted to finding enough food for themselves and their young dependents. And if conditions are favourable they may even have a second brood!



A clean and fresh supply of water is also essential throughout the year.



Raising a family



By caring enough to provide the basics of food, water and shelter in your garden you will be lucky enough to witness and enjoy the immense pleasure of this stage in the life of your garden visitors. Entertainment guaranteed!

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Everybody puts on a lot of weight during the holiday season. Everybody also wants to lose the fat for the coming summer. This can be relatively simple provided you follow a correct fat loss cutting diet. Here are some of the facts that support fat loss during summer months.

The heat: Summer is hot and the external heat is a natural thermogenic. People lose fat without any effort just because of the eat.

The sweat: You sweat a lot in summer. This causes you to lose fat along with the sweat you're losing.

Appetite suppression: People generally eat a lot during winter and automatically eat less during summer. This is because your body cant digest food too well because of the heat. So you naturally take in lower calories.





So what kind of diet are you supposed to follow to aid fat loss? Here are few simple guidelines for that.



Lose the carbs: Believe it or not its the carbs and not the fats that are responsible for fat gain. Excess carbs are converted to fat upon release of insulin. Reduce carbs to as low as you possibly can.

High protein: Eat a lot of protein. This builds up muscle and keeps you full. Proteins are the building blocks of your body and they build muscle. Make sure you get one gram per pound of body weight.

Eat essential fats: Fats are very important to the body because they are the raw materials to many hormones. Most important among these are a group of fats called the EFAs (Essential fatty acids) These comprise of Omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids. Good sources for these are fats are Fish, nuts, olive oil etc.





Now you have a basic idea of what you need to do to lose fat for the summer.

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Following a diet plan during the holidays can be a really difficult thing and most people just give up dieting during that time. However, you can still watch your weight and enjoy yourself during the holiday.

1 - Work out - even if it's a holiday you shouldn't skip your workouts; this way you can easily minimize the influence all that holiday food will have on your body. If you simply don't have time to work out, at least go for walks or go out dancing with your friends. To make things easier you can always schedule your workouts and make sure you have time for them; they shouldn't last more than 30 minutes - 1 hour so even if you are extremely busy, you can always squeeze 30 minutes of weight training in your program.



2 - Party Eating - We get invited to a lot of parties and gatherings during the holidays and there's a lot of bad food served there. A good tip would be to eat only healthy food at first and then you should start eating the high calorie food. This way you can get full faster with healthy food and there will be little space for high calorie food. Also, alcohol can really influence your metabolism and diet, so don't drink too much. If you have to drink, stay away from sweet drinks and opt for dry wine instead. You can always try to mix your wine with sparkling water to make sure that you don't get too many calories from it. Also, many people don't eat before parties because they think they will eat more and this way they will cut some calories. That's not a very smart thing to do because you can end up eating more than you would have eaten throughout the day. If you want to look slimmer you can eat something light before you go to a party but never leave the house with an empty stomach.



3 - Starting a Diet - Try not to start a whole new way of eating during a holiday because it might be hard for you to commit to it with all those temptations. Instead, you should try only to eat less and exercise a bit. After the holiday is over, you won't have extra pounds and you can start your healthy diet. If you are already on a diet during a holiday, making sure that you follow it and only cheat during family meals is the key. One or two meals where you eat whatever you want won't compromise your diet at all, but the mistake most people do is eating whatever they want during the entire holiday.

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