Five Sure-Fire Ways to Commit to Calories Loss and Lose Weight
By Rowena French | November 18, 2008
When you start a new diet it is always exciting and easy to ‘commit’ to a daily calories loss menu and regular exercise. You tell yourself that this time you are going to stick with it, this time will be different, this time you are really committed. But do you really stick with the diet or do you go back to your old eating habits and end up with no weight loss and sometimes even a weight gain?
That is what happens to most people because dieting is not always fun, change is usually no fun and there are times when losing weight can just get hard. But in order to make real, healthy, permanent changes you need to make sure that the food you eat over the long term is both enjoyable and provides you with the calories loss you need. You need to be committed to getting healthy and fit and to sticking with your diet and this time you really do make that commitment.
Committing to anything involves letting others in on your secret and using some kind of outward sign that you are serious. If this seems a little contrived to you, do not underestimate the power of an action like this and recall the significance of symbols like trophies, rings and pledges during special ceremonies on other important occasions. Politicians like Senator McCain or Senator Obama will be committing to our whole country in November. If you really are serious about sticking to a balanced calories loss diet and you really want to enjoy the benefits of and successful exercise program then be prepared to commit this to others in your life.
There are some fun ways to make a commitment to become healthier, happier, and fit by losing weight so begin positively and write it down, making a weight loss contract and committing to stay on your diet for at least six months. Include in the contract, rewards for staying committed and penalties for breaking the contract. Then sign it, have a friend witness it then keep it on the refrigerator to remind you of your commitment.
Hire a personal trainer as extra incentive because once you spend the money for a personal trainer, that money is gone whether you use those personal training sessions or not. The same rule usually applies to a gym membership as well, so spending money on exercise this is a commitment to getting fit. And knowing that money is gone whether or not you use that gym membership or get those personal training sessions they are likely to motivate you to exercise more.
Start up a ‘Weight Watching’ club by finding friends and workmates who like the idea of sharing their commitment to a healthier body and life. Make meetings fun, focusing on each others’ weight loss success and include time to hear about what works best for individuals. Support groups like this are public opportunities for members to make initial and then ongoing commitment to themselves and each other and work very effectively for large weight loss organizations as well as smaller groups.
Tell people about your diet especially your friends, your family, the people at work, or anyone that you see on a regular basis, explaining your plans to lose weight, eat better, and exercise more. Once you have told people you are committing to a calories loss diet, they will ask you about the diet and how you are doing and you will have to answer them. Embarrassment about telling people that you fell off your diet can be good motivation to keep going in those moments when you want to quit.
Visualize just how you want to look at your healthiest and happiest and have fun selecting magazine pictures that reflect this or your own photos taken at an earlier and healthier time. Make sure that these are on display in your office and at home as such images say ‘This is who I will be’ and ‘This is where my weight loss will take me’. They will be daily reminders of the importance of committing to a calories loss diet that will bring these results.
Topics: Diabetes | No Comments »
7 ways to Stop Emotional Eating and Promote Calories Loss
By Rowena French | November 16, 2008
Sadly, emotional eating can interrupt your healthy eating and prevent you from losing weight on a consistent basis. Too often our efforts to lose weight come unstuck when we indulge in emotional eating. Using these tips and tricks can help you control your emotional eating, stay on your calories loss diet and enjoy long term weight loss.
Learn how to determine whether what you feel is hunger or just a learned emotional response. The real physical signs of hunger can include a rumbling tummy or perhaps feeling lethargic and weak so if you have experienced emotional responses to eating across many years, you may eat before feeling truly hungry and not recognize these symptoms easily. Allow yourself to get genuinely hungry before eating so that you can become familiar with what this feels like and more accurately pin point when you should eat to provide the fuel your body needs.
Recognize your emotional eating triggers by keeping a little notebook and a pen with you and write down when you feel like eating and what you want to eat and soon you will start to notice a pattern emerging. Do you always crave fried food after a meeting with your boss instead of meals you would eat on a calories loss diet? Do you want cake the minute you walk in the door after the evening commute or do you need a double cheeseburger at lunch just to get through the afternoon?
Deciding on the events and the times when you are likely to resort to daily emotional eating is the key to controlling your response to the stressors in your life that lead you to out of control eating. Plan what food you will eat or what you will do the next time you feel distressed or under pressure and replace eating with other behaviours that will help relieve your stress. Taking a brisk walk or even an exercise class or eating an apple, some low fat yoghurt or other foods from your calories loss menu, getting a friend to massage your neck or even meditating are all healthier ways to manage the pressures in your life and still lose weight.
Cross comfort food off your shopping list as this may give you momentary comfort when things are tough, but if there is none in the pantry, you can not eat it and will learn to seek comfort in other ways. If you feel down and think escaping in front of the TV with a soda and bag of buttery popcorn is the best way to recover, will you drive to the nearest supermarket to buy this comfort food? Probably not, if you are like most people who search for an alternative food at home rather than go out to buy what they would like to indulge in.
Do not use food as comfort and instead of reaching for the ice cream when you are depressed or lonely, find other ways to comfort yourself. Call a friend, take a hot bubble bath, treat yourself to a manicure, write in a journal to try and discover what is making you sad or lonely. There are hundreds of ways you can comfort yourself besides reaching for food so learn to use other things to get you through a tough day and this leaves room for you to continue to eat calories loss meals when you need to.
Stack the shelves that used to store your junk food, with healthy alternatives to use every time you experience one of your cravings and need comfort. In place of those maple syrup pancakes high in calories, keep hummus dip and fresh vegetables, and if you simply must have something sweet, try a fruit salad. It is not a matter of stopping cravings, more a case of satisfying these differently with alternative foods that will in the long term be a way of re-programming your thinking and even your palate as well as accommodating the many foods that you will find on your calories loss diet.
Wait 30 minutes and when a craving does hit, wait it out by setting a timer, looking at your watch, whatever you need to do. But wait a full 30 minutes before acting on that craving. If you still are craving that food after 30 minutes, allow yourself to have a half portion of it, but you will find that usually after 30 minutes that craving will disappear.
Replace your cravings with those activities you enjoy doing and that along with your calories loss eating plan will help to burn fat so you can lose those extra pounds. The additional benefit of exercise is that when you swim, jog, play ice hockey or work out at the gym, your brain releases endorphins and serotonin and this gives you a sense of euphoria that replaces feelings of sadness or frustration. So instead of reaching for the ice cream carton or the cookie jar when you are next under pressure or feeling low, ‘get down and boogie’ doing whatever activity you enjoy most, knowing that your weight loss and your emotional well being will improve as a result.
Topics: Diabetes | No Comments »
Why Calories Loss and More Frequent Meals Help You Lose Weight
By Rowena French | November 10, 2008
Changing your lifestyle instead of ‘going on a diet’ is essential if you want to enjoy a long term weight loss but it can be difficult, at first, to change your thinking about dieting. If you have always been overweight, you have probably spent years dieting even creating calories loss menus but hating your body. That kind of mindset does not go away overnight, but you can change how you approach dieting and how you think of your body because it is not the enemy, and it is not out to get you.
For the likelihood of a longer life and happier disposition, you will do well to spend time and effort now, developing a healthier body. The best foods to eat come from each of the major food categories and are there is enough variety across these to make your new meals and snacks sufficiently different and interesting. The benefits of eating well from a calories loss menu are many but some of the shorter term benefits include better sleep, more energy and a boost to your metabolism where the calories you eat are processed more efficiently.
Exercise is also a necessary part of living a healthy lifestyle because it is crucial to keeping the body strong and healthy. Building muscle will help you burn more calories and help speed up your metabolism. Most exercise will help you do this so but sure that you decide on the type that you will enjoy enough to continue with on a regular basis. Exercise is also a necessary part of living a healthy lifestyle because it is crucial to keep your body strong and healthy. Building muscle will help you burn more calories and help speed up your metabolism. Most exercise will help you do this so but be sure to decide on the type of exercise that you will enjoy enough to continue with on a regular basis.
You can start your new lifestyle now without requiring special meals by ordering a salad for your next lunch, or having a healthy glass of water instead of that soda. When you are at the grocery store, think about the best choice for eating healthily and creating a calories loss in meals across the next week. Instead of reaching for a frozen pizza, select a bag of frozen vegetables for dinner and cook up those vegetables with some white rice and a chicken breast instead of making macaroni and cheese.
It is deciding not only what you eat but also how much you eat that matters in the development of a healthy lifestyle. Many of us have little idea of the capacity of our stomachs to hold food and overestimate the size of the portions we should eat at meal times. The size of your stomach is best compared with the size of your fist and this reflects how much food our stomach should hold at one meal.
Visualize your stomach by looking at your closed fist. Then remember the size of the last meal you ate and imagine how it would have fit into your stomach. The only way your stomach can fit the large amounts food we eat, is by stretching and this means that we are often unaware of the excess food we consume.
So to help you treat your stomach as it deserves, close your fist when you are about to eat your next meal and only eat as much as your fist sized stomach can easily hold. You will need to eat another smaller meal earlier than you normally do and enjoy 4-5 smaller servings each day rather than the 3 larger meals you have been used to. By doing this, your stomach will be filled as it should be and you will not feel hungry.
Calories loss meals containing a variety of healthy foods are at the heart of long term weight loss but your stomach has been an additional, unknown secret to this for too long. The way to eat and the frequency of your meals is another aspect of your new and healthy lifestyle that needs you to consider, accommodate and act upon. Enjoy the benefits of this in a body that you will come to like much more day after day.
Topics: Diabetes | No Comments »
Guaranteed Weight Loss needs both Calories Loss and Food Fuel
By Rowena French | November 9, 2008
It has been common knowledge for many years that the best way to lose weight is to create a calories loss by eating less calories than your body requires and to burn additional fat through exercise. This is accurate information and the secret to a positive outcome to any weight loss program over the long term.
Adult eaters eat on average something like 2,000 calories in the course of a day and this is what our body needs as energy to carry out our daily activities. We need to create a deficit in the calories equation through a calories loss food plan and allow our body to use the energy stored in the excess fat we carry around. An achievable goal would be the reduction of our calorie intake to 1,500 calories and the use of the equivalent energy found in 500 calories from our fat supply.
That will make you lose weight. There are roughly 3,500 calories in a pound of fat so in order to lose five pounds you will need to burn an additional 17,500 calories. That is why it is impossible for those fad diets and trendy diet pills to work like they say they do and why a gradual calories loss through eating a healthy diet is the only way to go.
Medication can not burn the extra calories that you can through what you eat and how you exercise. We know that fat burning does come through calories loss but losing weight is more than just watching your calorie intake. For all aspects of your body’s health you need to balance what you eat by making sure that your menu includes foods from each of the different food groups.
As you plan an eating and exercise program to help you lose weight make sure that you do this to take care of your body and not punish it. Eating salad and drinking water will not help you do this as a diet like this fails to provide the balanced nutrition that you need. Your body needs the right kinds of food as fuel to remain healthy as you lose weight.
Common sense dictates that there is only one way to fuel your body so that it remains healthy even when you are losing weight. This is the inclusion of a variety of foods including fruits, healthy fats, whole grains and vegetables. ‘Not so difficult’ you may think ‘But what about eating these foods even when you’d rather your high calories favorites like donuts with coffee and deep fried fish and fries’?
It is not always easy to only give your body what it needs when you are craving a juicy, cheesy, greasy burger, but if you want to be healthy, you will choose to skip that burger and replace it with a turkey and salad wholemeal roll. Changes like this are not really about going ‘on’ a diet in the traditional sense. They are about a lifestyle change and creating a calories loss and this is just a tool to help lose unwanted weight and keep it off.
If you focus on the development of a healthy body you as you would be wise to do, you can use calorie counting as means of monitoring the path to your weight loss. There will be no need to penalize yourself for carrying too much weight; instead you can respect your body and provide it with foods that will help it become stronger and healthier. Along with regular exercise, a diet that contains lean meat, fruits and vegetables and whole grains is the ultimate way to guide your body to the healthy weight and shape it should be.
When you first start a new healthier eating program it can feel awkward, but after you stick with it for a time, it will begin to feel NORMAL. The trick is getting through that period of calories loss ‘change’. Once you accept the change, accept the new routine and start to notice your weight loss it will feel greatlike, how did I ever NOT do this before?
Topics: Diabetes | No Comments »
A Look at Diabetic low Fat Diet
By Lindelwa Maseko | November 3, 2008
Diabetes may be a culinary inconvenience but you can still enjoy fine food it’s just there are a few rules about what you can eat. An excellent method of reducing the symptoms of diabetes is by controlling what types of food you eat, this is also a good method if you want to avoid diabetes in the first place. If you are living with diabetes, one of the best ways to fight this disease is with a diabetic diet plan.
One of the hardest things to do will be to shed those unnecessary pounds as maintaining your weight is extremely important when you’re a diabetic. One of the best ways to follow a diabetic diet is to eat foods that are from all of the four basic food groups.
Heart disease and strokes are two complications often associated with diabetes but the risk of these can be reduced if the sufferer sticks to a healthy diabetic diet. By creating a healthy, low-fat diet, many of the symptoms of diabetes have been reduced including blurred vision, thirst and at the same time increasing energy levels and reducing fatigue.
A healthy eating plan incorporates a wide range of foods including, lean meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, fruit, whole grains, non-fat dairy products and beans. If you are also subject to a low-carb diet then your diet may consist of certain vegetables like kidney beans, carrots and avocados in addition to meat, fish poultry, eggs and cheese. Saturated fats and cholesterol are a problem if you are a diabetic so you would need to cut down on foods like this and eat skinless poultry as well as fresh fruit and vegetables.
Weighing your food when you’re on a diabetic diet is as important as the foods you consume so you receive the correct amount of calories. Also check the food labels when you shop because they contain useful information and daily intake amounts which are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.
When on a 2,000-calorie diabetic diet, the ideal breakfast should consist of two slices of bread or two rice cakes or half a cup of pasta, one cup of skimmed milk or a cup of sugar-free yogurt, one egg in any form, boiled or poached or scrambled and surely a serving of one’s favorite fruit. A breakfast on a 1,800 calorie diabetic diet would look something like this; a cup of skimmed milk with two slices of bread a serving of fruit (apple, banana or orange) and a tablespoon of cheese.
With your balanced diet you would be able to have an afternoon snack which could be some fruit and a couple of crackers washed down with a half cup of tea or coffee but only with artificial sweeteners. If you wanted to, a cup of skimmed milk or sugar free yoghurt could be used in stead of the tea or coffee. If you study what you can eat there are always alternatives to make your diabetic diet interesting and varied.
Topics: Diabetes | No Comments »