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Showing posts from September, 2019

How Long Will It Take?

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This is a frequently asked question. "How long will it take to see results". The answer is different for everyone. If you are only 20 pounds or so over your goal weight then a 200 pound man can expect to loss about 2 pounds a week. If you're a woman who weighs about 140 and wants to lose 20 pounds then 2 pounds every week might be too much to expect. And it also depends on your age. For instance, a young woman who has had a baby recently will loss her 20 pounds faster than a woman in her late 40's who has carried the extra weight for a few years. If you have been over weight for sometime, it will take longer to lose it. So several things being considered, 20 pounds may take 2 months for a new mom to lose, or it might take a man 200 pounds age 65, one years to drop the weight. This is what you need to consider; your weight and your age, what kind of physical shape am I in? The better the condition the more exercise you'll be able to do. How motivated am I? You h

Lose Weight For Good

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Want to lose weight, but feel as though you’ve already tried every trick in the book? It’s time to take a different approach to dieting. Try these 12 proven strategies will help you slim down for good. Change the way you describe your goals. “Call it whatever you want, but don't call what you’re doing a ‘diet,’ ” says David Grotto, RD, author of The Best Things You Can Eat. “Diets have a beginning and an end -- and that’s the problem.” You will only succeed, Grotto says, when you make a  lifelong commitment to a healthier lifestyle. Make your goal meaningful. Shift your focus from “I want to fit into those jeans” to “I want to feel good and have more energy.” Internal goals -- like how you feel instead of how you look -- tend to have greater staying power over time. Concentrating on the feel-good benefits you're getting also helps you to stick with something. I know that when your young (under 40) you may not realize that you lost any of your energy, but if you gained

Advice For Seniors

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I’ve received email lately from seniors that don’t seem to think they can lose weight anymore. We can all lose weight at any age. We can all exercise at any age. You just need to start moving. Change what your eating and start walking more. Seniors have a couple of problems losing weight. First, as you get older you lose some of the good bacteria in your digestive system which means that more of your food is not being digested. It’s being stored as fat. Cut down portions as you get older. Second and more important, I think, as we age and gain weight over time, we lose the ambition to be active. We have a few more aches and pains and instead of working through them, we tend to pamper them.  Some people take a pill for any minor problem, when all you might need is exercise. I'm not talking about a high intensity aerobics class, I'm talking about more walking around and less sitting. Maybe that means to start the day with a walk after breakfast and another walk after lunch and

What Causes Us To Gain Weight?

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Most of us just think it's one of the mysteries of life. Wrong, it's all about your behavior. What you're eating and drinking, and how active you are all day long. Weight gain is all about the way you live your life. The reason it's so hard to lose weight is because weight creeps up on us. For me it started in my 30's. For some of us it starts in College. You might not realize it but most College students are not very active. In Fact, walking from class to class and walking to the cafeteria might be their only exercise. Many of our population work in offices and office workers have about the same activity level as students. Many of us and I'm no exception, are literally tied to our computer a big part of the day. Actually the housewife and mother maybe more active than the office-worker, in fact I'm sure of that. Here is some science for you. After sitting for 20 minutes, your body's metabolism will shut-down and stop burning calories much like when

Okay, I'm Fat Now What Can I Do About It

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  The answer is different for all of us. First, I should say that you don't want to wait as long as this guy before you get so help. Maybe you've been working on getting back to the weight you were at in high school or on your wedding day. But do you really need to go that low? Or can you weigh more than your ideal weight and still be healthy? O.K., that's a question everyone wants to know the answer to. Actually, people lose weight for dozens of different reasons. Maybe you gained weight because you ate the way your family did, the way you grew up eating and that can be the beginning of your overweight problem. But as you get older you see the other school kids and the clothes they wear and you naturally want to fit in, and so your battle with weight begins. Others gain weight later in life, because of their occupation or maybe they've become overworked and depressed or maybe they've done well in life, and food and drink are the rewards. My neighbor has a sale

Keeping Weight Off

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When you change the way you live, the extra weight will disappear. Being overweight is the result of your lifestyle. It's not just what you eat. It's about how you live your life. What you eat and how active you are. How many hours a day do you spend sitting or lying down? A healthy lifestyle means: Eating healthy foods. This includes fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. If you eat meat and dairy foods, choose lean meats and low-fat dairy foods. Healthy eating also means not eating too much sugar, fat, or fast foods. You can still have dessert and treats now and then. The goal is moderation. I follow the food pyramid recommended with the Mediterranean Diet. This isn't a diet plan, it's the way Mediterranean people have eaten or centuries. It's easy to find information online. Also make some kind of physical activity part of your daily routine. "Physical activity" doesn't have to mean regular visits to the gym or running marathons. There

Myths About Dieting

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Bad eating habits often begin in childhood. Subconsciously the habits that were created in your childhood will stay with you forever. I listed 5 of these bad eating habits that I'm sure you remember hearing when you lived at home. 1. No snacking! You'll ruin your appetite! Actually, snacking can be healthy, as long as you choose wisely. "It keeps blood sugar stable" and keeps you from getting too hungry between meals, says Debra Waterhouse, RD, author of Outsmarting the Mother-Daughter Food Trap. "My general rule is going no longer than four hours without eating something, whether a meal or a snack," says dietitian Constance Brown-Riggs, RD. Update: Try cutting back slightly on meals so you can have one or two daily snacks between 100 and 200 calories. Good choices include nuts, fruit, yogurt, or vegetables. 2. Finish everything on your plate. "It's fine to leave a little food," Brown-Riggs says. "Get in tune with your body to k

Bigger Waistline Might Mean A Shorter Lifespan

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Having a big belly means big trouble when it comes to your health, researchers warn. They analyzed data from 11 studies that included more than 600,000 people worldwide and found that people with large waist circumferences were at increased risk of dying younger and dying from conditions such as  heart disease , lung problems and  cancer . Men with waists of 43 inches or more had a 50 percent higher risk of death than those with waists less than 35 inches. This equated to a three-year lower life expectancy after age 40, according to the study. Women with waists of 37 inches or more had an 80 percent higher risk of death than those with waists of 27 inches or less, which equated to a five-year lower life expectancy after age 40. The larger the waist, the greater the risk, the researchers said. For every 2 inches of increased waist circumference, the risk of death increased 7 percent in men and 9 percent in women, according to the study, which was published in the March issue of th

Which Foods are Processed?

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Good question; There's always been confusion about what foods are processed. We are creatures of habit and will almost always buy our food in the grocery stores. Of course, it doesn't have to be that way. You can buy produce from a "produce stand" and buy your meat fro m a butcher, but we all don't have a way to do that so we go to a supermarket.  Most of us live in the city and only have supermarkets to buy from, and there is fresh food like fresh cut meat and fresh produce at a supermarket and you can still get all your dry goods like paper products. And today we can get bulk foods at the grocery stores. Dried beans and nuts, etc. All those foods are healthy and should be consumed every week, but supermarkets also sell a lot of a lot of   processed or manufactured foods like snack foods, pastries, frozen ready to heat and eat foods that are loaded with chemicals, salts, sugars.  So how can you tell the processed from the natural foods? Easy, the simple rule

Five Small Meals A Day

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If you're someone who deals with stress fairly often (who doesn't?), here's something you may not know: your body produces a hormone called cortisol in response to chronic stress which is associated with causing excess belly flab. The more cortisol you have, the more belly fat you typically gain. Now get this: The New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that individuals who consumed mini-meals spaced three hours apart each day actually decreased their cortisol levels by 17 percent compared to those who ate the same amount of food in only three meals per day. And here’s some even better news… This cortisol-blunting, fat-burning effect occurred in just 14 days. So if you want to take control of your body’s cortisol levels, one thing you can do is to simply start eating a small mini-meal every three hours to reduce cortisol up to 17 percent on your own. That's just one of quite a few benefits to eating five mini-meals a day, spaced three hours apa

The Fasting Diet

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The Promise “Fast,” in this case, is not about speed. It’s about  fasting . This is a diet I heard about on WebMD and I think It’s worth reading. Check out their website “thefastdiet.co.uk”. They sell books but you can get enough free info at a bookstore to do this diet. This diet, which started in the U.K., slashes your calories so drastically 2 days a week that you’re basically fasting. That’s not safe for everyone, so you should check with your doctor if you’re considering trying it. The Fast Diet  says that you shouldn’t fast if you’re  pregnant  or underweight, or if you have a history of  eating disorders  or  diabetes , and that you should check with your doctor first if you take medication. The diet also isn’t recommended for kids, teens, frail seniors, or anyone who isn’t feeling well or has a fever. The basic concept behind  The Fast Diet  by Michael Mosley, MD, and Mimi Spencer is to eat normally for 5 days per week and eat very restricted calories on the

What's in Your Food?

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This is an article I found in HealthDay recently, it's definitely worth a read. Your over-weight problem maybe caused from food additives, like salt and sugar. Today they are harder to find on the labels. Manufacturers use chemical substitutes so the words salt and sugar aren't on the labels. Some labeled foods will actually say salt or sugar because they don't want you to think they put chemicals in your food, but added salt or sugar in any form isn't good for your diet.  Fructose -- a kind of sugar found in a wide variety of foods and beverages --may encourage overeating. Fructose may be best known to consumers in the form of "high-fructose corn syrup", which has long been added to manufactured foods from sodas to cookies. Distinct from sugar known as glucose (produced by the natural breakdown of complex carbohydrates), fructose is also a "simple" sugar and a natural component of fruit. However, "in a series of studies we have found t