Blog on weight, How to Lose Fat on the Cheap

By Diana Kelly The Rumor: You have to go on a strict diet to lose weight  "Diet" has four letters, for many of us, it's a curse word. We associate dieting with punishment, starvation, beating ourselves up, avoiding any fun social activities and basically, waiting until it’s over and we can start living our lives again -- in leaner bodies, of course. In 2012, there were 108 million people on diets in the United States. To help them reach their goals, Americans spent about $20 billion on the weight-loss industry, including diet books, diet drugs, and weight-loss surgeries, etc. Is it necessary, though? Can you lose weight without being on a diet? We talked to nutrition experts Amy Jamieson Petonic, RD, of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and the Nutrition Twins, Tammy Lakatos Shames and Lyssie Lakatos, for their tips on how to shed pounds the healthy way  and  keep them off for good.  The Verdict: The most effective weight loss involves lifestyle changes,

“In order for man to succeed in life, God provided two means, education and physical activity. Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise can save it and preserve it.”  --Plato, 400 B.C. Need a good reason to take the stairs? Here are six of them.This post was first published on HealthDay. 1. Stair Climbing Burns More Calories Than Jogging Yes, it’s true: studies have shown that stair climbing, which is considered vigorous-intensity physical activity, burns more calories per minute than jogging. One company, StepJockey, which is funded by the United Kingdom Department of Health and has as its sole mission the goal of getting everyone to take the stairs whenever and wherever possible, notes that stair climbing uses 8 to 9 times more energy than sitting and about 7 times more energy than taking the elevator. As an added bonus, you burn calories not only on the way up but also while going down the stairs! I

Have you started a new diet plan? Maybe you're struggling with a weight loss program that seems to be dragging. Whether you've set short-term weight loss goals or committed to long-term wellness, there are ways to make your diet work better.  And the good news is that it takes just 20 minutes of your time. Set Short-Term Weight Loss Goals Research into weight loss has revealed that goal setting is one of the most important steps in the weight loss process. Why? Because setting short-term diet goals provides a road map for long-term health and wellness.  For example, your long-term goal might be to lose 50 pounds. Losing that amount of weight might improve your health and change the quality of your life. That's exciting! But if you lose weight at a reasonable pace, it might take 6 months to a year to reach your goal. It's hard to stay motivated for that long.  But if you set short-term weight loss goals along the way, you'll have reasons to celebrate du

The market is flooded with activity trackers and apps for counting your daily steps. You can wear a tracker on your waist or wrist, or use an app built into your smartphone. Yet it is unclear which method is the most accurate.  Fourteen healthy adults walked on a treadmill at 3 mph (20 minutes per mile) for 500 and 1500 steps while using 10 devices simultaneously: Three devices on their waistband: a pedometer (Digi-Walker SW-200 by Yamax) and two accelerometers (Zip and Fitbit One) Three devices on the wrist (Fitbit Flex, Jawbone UP24, and Nike Fuelband) iPhone 5s in one pants pocket with three apps running simultaneously: Fitbit, Withings Health Mate, and ProtoGeo Oy Moves  Samsung Galaxy S4 in the other pants pocket running the ProtoGeo Oy Moves app  The step counts generated by the devices were compared against a gold standard, which was a manual count by one of the researchers using a tally counter. (You may have seen event staff use these devices to count the number o

Clean Eating for Busy Families I write about "Clean Eating" all the time and now I found someone else who thinks the way I do.  This article was first published on VeryWell.com, a new site I frequently read. First, what is clean eating? It sounds simple, but when something sounds simple, it rarely is, right? In this case, though, it actually is fairly straightforward. Basically, you stick with foods that are closest to their natural state. And the shorter the ingredient list for packaged foods, the better. No food groups are eliminated in clean eating, which is definitely a highlight.  How amazing would it be to teach our children that this way of eating is the goal for how they should eat most of the time? To get started (or to review if you are familiar with clean eating), here are some foods to avoid: Refined foods, including refined grains Heavily processed foods Foods with added fat, sodium, and/or sugar/sweeteners Foods with preservatives Foods with

Weight loss has gone high tech in the age of smartphones and tablets.  Thirty years ago we used a pen and paper to count calories, but now we have easy-to-use diet apps to lose weight.  So does the convenience of technology have any downside? According to a recent study, it might.  Dr. Cheryl Shigaki, an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Health Professions conducted research and gained helpful insight about the benefits and drawbacks of using diet apps for weight loss. Weight Loss Apps: The Benefits Free diet apps and weight loss websites like  CalorieCount.com  and  MyFitnessPal.com  provide beneficial services that include: convenient calorie tracking.   Most apps provide searchable databases that allow you to input daily food choices on your home computer, tablet or smartphone.  In Shigaki’s research, many participants noted that they preferred apps that provide data for specific foods by brand rather than simply listing generic items. Another

Walking may be the simplest and oldest way to work out. You can do it almost anywhere, and it’s a snap to get started: Just put one foot in front of the other. Especially with the threat of the health crisis we face walking is not only exercise but it's good for the mind. There are many great reasons to walk. Your heart will get stronger, you’ll lower your blood pressure, and your bones will get stronger. Walking also eases stress, helps you sleep better, and can boost your outlook on life. If you have any of those problems it may be because you're not walking enough. How much is enough?  The answer will probably be different for everyone.  What the experts do know is that the average person walks 4000 or 5000 steps a day. And they also know that's not enough to keep you healthy. Remember  that is just and average that doesn't take into consideration your size of your age. Personally, I think if you walk 30 minutes a day more then you walk now that might be enough t

I've always been against cheat days, and I'm still against a cheat day, people tend to go wild and spend the day bingeing. I always felt that If you give a person the ability to cheat as part of the diet, they would know how to control themselves and they'd go overboard. Now the experts are saying that many dieters are slowing down their metabolism with the restrictive diets they're on. When you slow down your metabolism your body stops secreting Leptin, a hormone that boosts metabolism and helps burn fat, and you'll stop burning fat. This will happen over time and we usually don't even realize it's happening. So because I'm still against cheating basically, the question is"how much extra calories do I need to increase my Leptin level and start burning fat again? It turns out you only need to increase your carb calories by 20%, one day a week. The whole idea is about tricking your body. What happened to you is that your restrictive diet put your

Perhaps no question about diet and health has become more fraught than: Should we eat meat?  Prosecution and defense were both greatly agitated by the recent WHO declaration, WHO is the World Health Organization, and they said that processed meats are a carcinogen, and red meat in general. But no one consideration such as that, however provocative, can answer the general question. If meat “caused” cancer, but produces some good, such as enhancing brain or muscle development: well, then, should we, or shouldn’t we eat it?  What Do We Mean by 'Should'? Our discussions about diet and health go off the tracks and down the tunnels into dark oblivion almost immediately when the word “should” is involved. That word takes on moral overtones, and evokes an image of me—or someone—wagging a finger, admonishing you. I protest that construct, right along with the libertarians among you. Health is not a moral imperative. (Let’s leave out of this discussion the economics

Look, the way I see it is; Food is Health, Exercise is Fitness. You need both. It's simple really. Eat good food everyday, move your body a lot every day and health can be yours. We eat the wrong foods and we aren't active enough so we gain weight; it's that simple. Most people put the blame on their parents or their too busy to exercise, but you don't have to do any more then be active when your not working. Being active burns calories and eat fresh foods and stop eating junk food (frankenfood) as it was coined a few years ago. Also stop drinking calories. Don't drink calories, that's worse then eating calories. Remember that little (yet extremely powerful) saying from Hippocrates, "Food is Thy Medicine?" I've seen it first hand in my life. When I began to change my diet many years ago and eat healthy, it changed how I felt physically, my energy levels went through the roof and I was sleeping better and had more balanced moods. Don't know

If you listen to all the commercials on TV and radio you might think that you can't afford to diet. The diet pills are expensive, the meals you have to buy in the frozen food section of the grocery are really expensive that's all you eat 24/7. You could buy the exercise equipment they sell on TV, but you'll be making payments for years, and which one will work for you? How does a person know what to do? I wrote an Ebook on this subject and I write about this on several blogs. You don't have to spend money to lose weight. I should know, I spent lots of money over a couple decades trying to lose weight. And even after I lost some of the 40 pounds I want to lose, I was still fat. I knew I had to read up on this, I knew I was doing something wrong. I learned that I should be working on losing fat and forget about the the number on the scale. So I started reading up on body fat, how we gain fat and how we should lose fat. I found that first of all, you can't exerci

We all make mistakes when we first attempt to lose weight. I think the biggest mistake we make is not realizing we need to lose body fat not weight. We obsess over the numbers on the scale and lose site of what should be the real goal,"to lose belly fat". I could have saved myself a boat load of money if I analyzed my weight problem before I dove in and just start to cut calories. I didn't know what I was doing and I'd skip meals and starve myself,  thinking I would lose weight and all I accomplished was losing muscle tissue and some pounds that came back in a few weeks. When you rely on crash diets, you are training your body to burn calories more slowly.  Skipping breakfast makes you hungry the rest of the day, so you snack more and eat more for lunch. You also never started to burn any calories until later in the day. It makes a difference because your body will only burn so many calories per hours and by not eating breakfast you could be losing 3 or 4 hour