None of us likes to look in the mirror and see our fat rolls. We don’t like to feel them either when we zip up our jeans.
Fat, however, is much deeper than skin deep. It is not only about outward discomfort. Too much fat puts us at greater risk for pre-diabetes, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, gall bladder and liver disease, sleep apnea, stroke, heart attack, and joint problems.
So how do you know if your weight is too much? How do you know if your weight is putting you in the disease danger zone?
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A man at church shared about how God is working in his life as he comes clean from drugs and alcohol. He said, “It took a long time for me to get where I was and it will take time to change, but God is working on me.”
I thought, “Hmm, that sure is a good thought.”
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Genetics play a powerful role in body weight. How you’re made up can make it really easy to stay slim, or make it very difficult to stay at a healthy weight.
One reason is metabolism. This is basically the rate at which you burn calories. Someone with a high metabolism can eat a lot of calories and burn them off quickly. Someone with a slow metabolism will burn calories very slowly and will not need as many each day. Unfortunately, you inherit your metabolism.
Another reason is your fat cells. If you are over overweight (by about 25 pounds or more) your body manufactures fat cells to hold the extra fat. When you lose weight, the fat cells empty out, but they never go away. They are constantly “wanting” to fill back up.
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Eat a balanced diet.
Your body needs all the nutrients, vitamins and minerals, carbohydrates, and proteins that come from the different food groups. When your body gets a good balance of these foods, it can work efficiently.
This helps with weight loss because it keeps your blood sugar and metabolism stable. Eating balanced also helps you feel satisfied and fuller longer. (And you don’t want to feel hungry when you’re dieting!)
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Get rid of all junk.
Now we come to a touchy subject. Many people feel resistant, or even resentful, about giving up all their junk food. They want to hold onto a few “little” things.
It’s not that one pretzel or three chips will sabotage your weight loss. It’s that one pretzels turns into five, and three chips turn into half a bag.
Junk food is engineered to make you want more. Flavor enhancers, sodium, and sugar are used to cause cravings and make the food addictive. It’s almost impossible to stop once you get started.
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Watch portions and calories.
Weight loss still comes down to calories in versus calories out. Over the course of the day, you need to burn more calories than you eat.
How do you do that? By paying attention to your portions and calories.
The best way to do this is by keeping a food journal. Most people grossly underestimate the amount of food and calories they eat in a day. By journaling, you can keep accurate account of your food intake.
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Eat frequently.
Our bodies are like machines. They work all day, around the clock. We don’t always realize it while we’re sitting at our desks or driving in our cars.
There are thousands of processes going on. Our bodies are repairing and rebuilding muscle, building bone, pumping blood, digesting food, etc.
To do all this well and efficiently, our bodies need fuel. Just like we wouldn’t expect our car to work without gas, we shouldn’t expect our body to run without fuel.
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Eat breakfast.
Did you ever hear the saying, “Eat like an elephant in the morning and a mouse at night”? For weight loss, there’s a lot of truth to this.
Many people eat exactly the opposite. They skip breakfast and maybe even lunch. They grab a snack a few times during the day along with their coffee and soda. Then at night when they get home or go out to dinner, they eat a large meal. This is often followed by late night snacking too.
Because they didn’t eat properly during the day, their body is now “demanding” the calories it needs. Having all those calories late in the day, however, is disastrous. Now they’re loaded down with calories and they go to bed.
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I’m getting ready to go on a trip for work next week. I’ll be staying in a hotel and will be in meetings all day.
So I’ve been thinking ahead and checking the area out. I want to stay on track with both my eating and exercise. I know this can be tough when traveling, but I want to do well.
For food, I’m packing protein bars, almonds, tea bags, and diet cocoa mix in my suitcase. There is a small store in the hotel where I’m hoping to get fruit and yogurt. (I’ll have a small refrigerator in my room.) This will take care of my snacks.
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One of the members at the gym where I work said to me, “I don’t know what to do. My fitness level isn’t increasing.”
I noticed that he took long breaks between exercises and spent a lot of time socializing with friends. “Try keeping your heart rate up,” I told him. “Work a little faster, with a little less talking,” I smiled.
It’s easy to get into an exercising rut. We get too “casual” with our workouts. We’ve lose focus and intensity.
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Salads are a great way to get in your veggies. They’re fast and you can top them with all kinds of healthy goodies.
First, either buy the prewashed greens or wash a bunch of lettuce at one time. Pat the lettuce dry and tear it. Place the prepared lettuce in a storage container or Ziplock bag with a paper towel. This will keep it fresh for several days. You can even precut carrots, celery, broccoli and cauliflower. Then making a salad will be a snap.
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I was really frustrated with my weight. Those stubborn pounds just wouldn’t come off. Then I had my physical and the doctor ordered full blood work since it had been five years since it’d been done. The results were encouraging. My numbers were “ideal” the nurse told me. It made all the exercising and food control worthwhile.
You may not be at your ideal body weight. In fact, you may be struggling with your weight right now, feeling like you’ll never reach your goal.
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I noticed on one of my client’s food logs that she often skipped breakfast or ate very little for breakfast. Then she was snacking all evening. She needed to understand that for weight loss breakfast is very important. It gets the metabolism going for the day AND it really helps prevent high hunger late in the day.
I asked her why she was skipping breakfast. “Oh, it’s just too hard to eat breakfast,” she said. “I don’t have time to make food in the morning.”
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Though it’s tempting to “let your hair down” on the weekend, two days of overeating can mess up your whole week. It’s pretty easy to eat so many calories over the weekend that you spend the whole next week trying to burn them off. And trying to get your weight back down!
Instead of letting your food control go for the whole weekend, try limiting your splurges to one or two meals. This will help keep your calories consumption from getting out of hand.
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When you’re restricting your calories for weight loss, it’s super important not to blow your calories on a little piece of junk food. You don’t want to feel hungry. You want to be able to fill your belly up.
Well, you can feel full and satisfied with the right choices.
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If you want to lose weight and be healthier, it’s really important to choose quality grains. You have make a conscious effort to look for them. Refined grains (not the good kind) are used for so many products.
Even if something says “wheat” or “multi-grain” it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s made with quality grains. What you want to look for is “whole” grains.
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“It’s always like this,” one client said to me. “I do good for about three weeks then I mess up.” She had tried many diets in the past and always fell off track a few weeks into her efforts.
I found out she began feeling resistant and resentful about dieting soon after she started. “I want to eat what I want to eat,” she told me. She soon stopped following her food plan and quit journaling.
Yet she also professed how much she desperately wanted to lose weight.
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I was watching an info-mercial on an exercise system this morning while pedaling away on the elliptical. I should say I was sort of watching it while listening to music on my Ipod. Then something caught my attention
A young man was giving his “testimony” about how great the exercise DVDs are, how he’d lost weight, got fit, and loved doing them. He is a delivery driver and drives a large box van. During his lunch break, he gets in the back and exercises to his portable DVD player.
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Well, if you’re a dog, death by chocolate is certainly a possibility. However, if you’re a human being (and I assume you are if you’re reading this), you can actually benefit from chocolate.
That’s just what you want to hear in anticipate of devouring chocolate for Valentine’s Day!
Delicious, rich, and creamy, chocolate has been called the food of the Gods. When it was first “discovered” it was reserved for the wealthy, the nobles. Mere peasants like us never had the fortune of enjoying chocolate’s pleasures.
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We’ve been buried under snow, winds and drifts. The neighbor kids came over to play this morning before the wind was torrential. Then they all piled into our house to warm up. Nobody had eaten breakfast so I made pancakes.
How tempting those pancakes looked and smelled!
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Exercise is an awesome, positive way to burn off emotions.
Some of my best workouts have been when I was running high on emotions – bad or good. There is restless energy when your emotions are up. This energy needs to be spent – in a healthy way.
When we don’t have a good way to vent, we often end up trying to relieve our emotions through other means. This could result in overeating, treating others unkindly, or restless sleep.
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I know very few people who eat only when they’re hungry and stop as soon as they’re full. They don’t overeat. They don’t eat for emotions. They eat because they’re physically hungry and that’s it.
Most of us fall into a different category. We’re emotional eaters. We eat when we’re miserable – stressed, angry, sad, bored, lonely – and we eat when we’re happy – celebratory, relaxed, or excited.
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Not everyone can run or kickbox or jump rope. Many people suffer from knee pain, low back issues, or weak bladder problems. They cannot tolerate high impact exercises.
If this is the case for you, be assured that you can still work out hard and get fit. The key is finding low impact exercises that get your heart rate up and burn calories.
Here are 5 low impact options to get you going:
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Want to go out this weekend and totally blow your diet? It’s easy. Follow these tips:
- Don’t bother to check the restaurant;s website for nutritional information.
- Go to dinner famished.
- Get a bread basket.
- Start off with appetizers.
- Assume anything chicken or seafood is good for you.
- Don’t ask for the salad dressing on the side.
- Drink soda or cocktails instead of water.
- Clean your plate.
- Peruse the dessert menu “just” to see what they have.
- When the server asks if you want dessert, hesitate and think about it.
Does this sound ridiculous to you? That’s just how ridiculous it is to go out to dinner without planning ahead. You know the old saying: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
If you watch this week’s cooking shows, read the recipes in the newspaper, or clip coupons from the grocery store you’ll see it’s all about food for the Super Bowl. Sodas, pizza, chips, nachos, mozzarella sticks, brownie bars, etc.
If you’re going to a Super Bowl party, you’ve got a challenge ahead of you. No doubt you’ll be surrounded by all kinds of tempting foods. This makes sticking to the diet pretty tough.
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