Blog on weight, How to Lose Fat on the Cheap

This is a frequently asked question. 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 lose 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 lose 20 pounds faster than a woman in her late 40s who has carried the extra weight for a few years. If you have been overweight for some time, it will take longer to lose it. Losing fat depends on training the body to burn body fat instead of the food you eat.  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 year 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....

You might want me to explain the title of this post. New studies have proven that sitting 8 hours a day can be just as bad for your health as smoking. If you sit for more than 30 minutes at a time you put your body into hibernation mode. In hibernation mode many of your normal body functions slow down to give the body time to repair itself. That means that your body will burn fewer calories in hibernation mode. That means that your body will store more calories than if you were moving around. The body only has one way to store calories by turning those unused calories into fat and storing the fat in fat cells.  This just happened to me last week. My neighbor volunteers at a non-profit that grows plants to raise money to fund their projects. My neighbor does maintenance work in the greenhouses. He asked me to help him install a new irrigation system in one of the new greenhouses. I said okay, I need a little physical activity after the holidays. The project took 2-4 hours days, and ...

Yes, I’m one of those who receive AARP mags every month. For the first couple of years, I never admitted it but now I’m coming out of the closet. In December the mag had this article about meat in your diet. It’s important because we all eat meat but if you're one of those meat eaters you want to read the article. For years the Food and Drug Administration has been preaching to cut back on red meat or beef in general. They always maintained that cardio diseases, type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer, and several other types of cancer including Breast Cancer in women are caused by eating red meat. This most recent study didn’t refute the claims but said we can go ahead and eat red meat anyway. Since the study was published doctors have come out against the study and said that the new study red meat with a method called GRADE which was designed to be used in drug trials and not food. Doctors refute the results and argue that the study isn’t valid. So I conclude that the Mediterranean-st...

Tired. Drained. Pooped. No matter how you phrase it, you’re beat and need to drum up some energy. Generally reported by more women than men, sluggishness can be caused by many things. But experts say poor nutrition is a big culprit. “Food is truly our body’s fuel,” says Cindy Moore, director of nutrition therapy for The Cleveland Clinic. “What we choose as our fuel is going to absolutely impact the performance of our bodies.” Here’s what the experts have to say about making sure your body gets the right fuel when it needs it. The Forgotten Meal At the beginning of the day, most people dash off to work or school without a thought to their body’s dietary needs. Who has time to eat in the morning anyway? Mary Ellen Camire, Ph.D., professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Maine says, “Breakfast is an easy meal to forget. But if people are skipping breakfast and find they’re tired by midmorning, then it’s time to re-evaluate breakfast.” Research shows breakfast impr...

I was at a basketball game at a local high school with my daughter and I started to talk about a friend's new diet. I was skeptical because it goes against all the diet plans I write about. I always believed that you should eat most of your calories as early in the day as possible. This gives you time to burn them before dark when the body goes into hibernation mode. Hibernation is necessary to give the body time to heal itself. The man sitting next to me was on this same fasting diet and had lost 30 pounds and actually had to stop because he was losing too much weight. He explained that he only consumed calories between 4 pm and midnight. The rest of the time he only drank water, black coffee, and black tea. He didn’t consume any calories between midnight and 4 pm the next day. In a couple of months, he lost thirty pounds. So I read about this type of diet and found that it’s very popular right now. Humans and animals have been eating this way for thousands of years. The article w...

Of Course, this is taken out of context. Read the whole thing. Dr. Oz Says “Skip Breakfast!”  Should We? Jan 17, 2020 In a videotaped interview this week with Fox News, Dr. Oz admits that doctors don’t learn much about nutrition in med school. I wondered then, how did he discover this remarkable “new” idea of skipping breakfast? He learned this dietary concept through Hugh Jackman. He's terrific, talented and one of my favorite actors, but hardly an expert on physiological nutrition. Dr. Oz went on to claim the average person eats continually over a 17-hour day. Very few healthy people I know eat “continuously.” If consuming potato chips at 11pm is a habit, then we have a counseling problem. I do agree that eating before bedtime is not beneficial to sleep. Sleep releases beneficial growth hormones – lack of it leads to mental deterioration, internal stress, and illness. “I think for 2020, the first thing I’m going to do is ban breakfast, ” the celebrity doctor recently told  T...

On the Fox TV Network the other night, one of the big stories was about high-protein diets. A new study has shown a link between the overconsumption of animal protein and how it can stimulate the growth of cancer cells. It seems we all have cancer cells but they don’t normally grow unless we consume too many cancer-causing chemicals from foods or drinks or breathe in pollutants. Older adults between the ages of 50 to 65 years of age are in that age bracket where cancer cells will grow at their fastest rate. But interestingly enough, after 65 it seems like the body needs animal protein and larger percentages don’t affect the growth of the cancer cells. Now your doctor will tell you there are many other ways to get cancer but the truth is that medical science doesn’t really know. Older adults and those with a family history of cancer who are under 65 should reduce the amounts of animal protein to a daily amount of less than 10% of total protein intake. Dairy products are animal ...

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 Emory Unive...

This is the one big promise we make to ourselves every year but seldom keep. I can't speak for everyone, but for the ones obsessed about losing weight, don't make that resolution about the bathroom scale. If this is the promise you have been making for years, "this is the year I'm going to lose weight", it's time for a change. This year you want to promise you are going to "live a healthier life", exercise regularly, and eat better. You want to buy a smaller pair of jeans. Step off the scale now and no one will get hurt. Focusing just on weight loss can lead to cycles of losing and regaining weight, lower self-esteem, and a preoccupation with food and body image. “You’ll do better if you have goals that have to do not with weight, but with health,” says Carol Landau, Ph.D., clinical professor of psychiatry and medicine at the Alpert Medical School, Brown University. While a New Year’s resolution is a great way to get in touch with what’s important an...