Posts

The Basics Of A Healthy, Balanced Diet

Image
Eating a healthy, balanced diet can help you keep trim and give you lots of energy. You want to eat a diet with the right number of calories, lots of fresh foods, and a whole lot less of processed foods that are bad for you. OK, that seems a little too simplistic. In reality, it takes a bit of work to eat a healthy, balanced diet, so I'll walk you through the process.  How Many Calories Do You Need? On average, an adult will need somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 calories per day to maintain his or her current weight. The number of calories you need depends on your natural size, muscle mass, activity level, age, and gender. There are calorie tables and calculators that will help you estimate your daily calorie need. But keep in mind these really are estimates—since you may have differences in your metabolism, you may need a few more or a few less calories than what the calculators show. Over time, you will know to adjust your overall calorie intake up or down by mon

How Alcohol Will Effect Your Waist

Image
If you've been trying to lose weight for any length of time, you're probably pretty good at monitoring your calories. Even if you don't keep a detailed food journal, you probably have a rough idea of the calories you're eating. But there's one area we often fall short and that's in the calories we drink. Energy drinks, juice and smoothies can add extra calories, but alcohol is often our biggest enemy, going down so smoothly, we may have no idea just how many extra calories we're taking in. If cocktails are a regular part of your diet and you're trying to lose weight, being more aware of what and how much you drink can make a difference. Drinking, Weight Loss, and Your Health If you're a moderate drinker, which is defined as two drinks a day for men or one drink a day for women, some studies have found possible health benefits such as: Reduced risk of developing heart disease Reduced risk of ischemic stroke Lower risk of dying of a heart

Ways To Lose Weight Without Going On A Diet

Image
Sometimes we do some really dumb things that keep our diet from working. Read this post for some tips on how to keep your diet on track. Don't drink your calories.  Beverages are bottomless these days. You can't order a soft drink or iced tea at a restaurant without being provided quick, free refills, or having the freedom to get them yourself. To keep from drinking a day's worth of calories, choose herbal tea, unsweetened iced tea, flavored water or ice water with a spritz of lemon or lime. If none of those choices suits you, allow yourself one glass of the "real thing" and drink only water thereafter. Calories from sodas and other sweetened beverages add up to mega inches on your waistline and many pounds on the scale. Eat a healthy breakfast.  Taking the time to eat may help prevent costly calorie mistakes as the day progresses. If you skip your morning meal, you might fall victim to an out-of-control afternoon appetite, oversized portions, poor

Changing Your Life

Image
If you’ve already broken a New Year’s resolution or two, take heart. I can let you in on the ultimate secret for successfully making a change in your life. "Is this going to be about weight loss", one reader asked. Yes, it is. Successful weight loss will require a life change. Whatever your doing every day in your regular routine is part of your weight problem along with your diet. Changing your life is a broad term but you'll have to change that routine and start a new life. A life of training to be a healthier person and if you do this every day you will be a happier, thinner, healthier person.  A century’s worth of psychological research reveals an interesting paradox in who we are. On the one hand, once we reach adulthood our basic personalities remain unchanged for the rest of our lives. We keep doing the same things—and feeling the same ways—over and over. But, on the other hand, every day we change our behavior drastically in response to different environments

We All Gain Weight Over The Holidays

Image
We all have spent the last few weeks on an eating binge. You can’t just give up because you gain some weight and blew your diet. Don’t think you're the only one who gained some weight lately. But you can get your eating back on track. Here’s how. First, Relax You need some perspective. You need to eat 3,500 calories to gain one pound of body fat. One unplanned treat — a slice of cake, some fries, or even a rich meal — probably won’t make a major difference on the scale. “We call these ‘taking timeouts,’ and we all take them,” says San Antonio nutrition consultant Rebecca Reeves, RD. “No one is perfect in their eating habits. What we have to learn is that we are giving ourselves permission to do this, and as soon as it’s over, we should go back to the eating plan we normally follow.” The goal is to not make a habit of it. “Most people overeat somewhere between 500 and 1,500 calories every single day,” says cardiologist Allen Dollar, MD, assistant professor of medicine at E

How To Quit Sugar

Image
Anti-sugar fever seems to be on the rise. Especially now, since sugar has been linked to Cancer. Last week, a friend who does not have type 2 diabetes asked me about my diabetes diet: “How many carbs can you eat without raising your blood sugar?” Another pal is on a 21-day-cleanse – no sugars allowed. And folks in my neighborhood recently formed a support group for going cold turkey on sugar, which one member claimed is harder than giving up cigarettes: “No one wants you to smoke, but they’re happy to see you eat a slice of birthday cake.” This is a blog post from WebMD, but I want to stick my personal opinion in here. "I think that sometime in the future medicine will know for sure that refined sugar might be one of the causes for most of our health problems." I know that sounds a little vague and I'll explain. Sugar, the real sugar, isn't the same as refined sugar that you buy in the stores. The real sugar is the sugar in produce and in dairy products. The g

Eating The Right Way; It Worked For Me

Image
I found a great article I want to share with you. I added a few comments along the way. These are the same beliefs I have and I write about in all my blogs. The chef who wrote this is a typical full-time worker who squeezes in family-time and a busy work schedule. The whole idea of 5 or 6 small meals a day is not a new concept. In some parts of the world this is the way they eat everyday. But because this country began as a country of mostly Europeans, we adopted their ways and in part we still do. The three heavy meals per day really became popular as the population became more industrialized. As more and more of the population worked in factories and other types of production jobs the 3- meal plan was adopted. People got use to eating before and at mid-day and in the evening, after work and around the work schedule. That meal plan worked because the population was more active. Today we life a different lifestyle and it's not hard to see the big differences in our population. W