Mediterranean Diet - Lose Weight Quickly, Easily & Safely
December 3, 2008
If you are looking for a way to lose fifty pounds in two weeks, a high protein diet, a low carb diet, a fruit diet, a no fat diet, a blood type diet, a juice fast, a diet named after a place in Miami, a grapefruit diet, a cactus diet, a coffee and cigarette diet, a diet that includes sweets, a diet based on your body type, a diet based on an ancient religion or a diet based on your hair color, then this article is NOT for you.
Fad and crash diets, such as the ones described above are not only unhealthy but they also cause rebound weight gain. Also most diets, even though diet gurus write them, cause an initial weight loss but the ultimate result is that you gain all of the weight back the minute you go off the plan. If you don’t gain it back within a couple of diets, you are likely to gain it all back plus a bit more within a year.
Crash diets dehydrate you, low calorie diets put your body into starvation mode so you plateau so you can’t lose one more pound and high protein diets stress your kidneys and clog your arteries.
Thirty Hints & Tips to Achievable Weight Loss
December 3, 2008
Here are some everyday, helpful hints to get you started, keep you going, and help you stick to your diet.
1. Never leave home “starving.” Always have a light snack before eating dinner in a restaurant, such as a piece of fruit, a glass of juice or a carrot.
2. Don’t go food shopping on an empty stomach! You’ll be tempted to buy everything in sight.
3. Don’t be tempted by treats. Store them out of view, off counter-tops and as out-of-reach as possible.
4. Don’t eat in front of the TV. Watching the boob tube — instead of watching your plate — lulls you into overeating. Also avoid being tempted by food and snack commercials.
5. Make it a rule in your house to confine your meals to the dining room or kitchen table! Never eat standing up! This leads to mindless snacking.
6. Think before you drink. Alcohol adds lots of calories, but no nutrients. Also, it weakens your willpower to avoid the wrong food choices. Hangovers can cause wicked cravings for fatty or high carbohydrate foods that can sabotage any attempt at weight loss.
Diet Preparaton — The Impact of Sleep and Stress
December 3, 2008
When you have started a diet in the past, how much sincere and attentive focus did you give to preparing for your diet? Isn’t it true that usually you are getting the food together a particular diet requires, buying yet another tread mill (or hauling out the old one covered in dust from the last diet), getting another gym membership, planning that last big blowout gluttonous meal you’re going to eat because you are going to have to starve for the next eight weeks.
The above really isn’t an exaggeration. People spend a lot of time preparing everything else for their new diet program except the body!
If you are to succeed in keeping weight off, you must take seriously the preparation of the whole person–body, mind, and soul, right? Of course you do!
In the next few articles, I will focus on two very important and related components of preparing your body for weight loss programs: sleep and stress.
Close Kept Secrets to Weight Loss Lesson #14
December 2, 2008
You know what is so amazing? We get to keep learning how to improve ourselves. Each day brings a new opportunity for us to practice unconditional love, especially of ourselves. Loving your body is demonstrating unconditional love. Think what your body does for you each day.
Right now, say: I love my body, I love my body, I love my body, I love my body! Feels great, doesn’t it? Our bodies are incredible gifts from God. If we’re experiencing resistance to change, then we’re resisting God’s loving message. What are you resisting?
I was on a teleseminar recently and the topic was visualization. The message was very powerful. Let me share with you what I learned.
Take out a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Write down 5 things that you desire in your life. It can be a car-mine is a red BMW convertible and I have a picture of it on my dream board and look at it everyday while I say affirmations in my energy circle. Of course, in my visualization the real George Clooney is in the passenger seat, not my cardboard cutout of George that a friend gave me.
Want to Succeed on Your Diet, Find a Diet Buddy
December 1, 2008
If you’re like most people who tried losing weight on a diet and failed it’s probably because you didn’t have enough support. Sure family, friends and even your spouse can help but one the best ways to succeed on a diet is to choose a diet buddy. The best diet buddy is someone whose goals are similar to yours. If you have to lose 10 pounds and they have to lose 60 that’s not a good match. The more weight you have to lose the closer that person should be to you physically. If you’ve only got five to ten pounds to lose that person could be across the street or across the country. However if you have 40 pounds to lose you really need someone who can offer you more support. One of the most effective weight loss methods is keeping a journal of what you eat and how much you exercise. You should exchange your journal with your diet buddy and help each other correct mistakes you may have made. You should meet with your diet buddy as often as possible. One of the best places is to meet at the gym every morning and compare your journals over breakfast. Another good alternative is lunchtime, this helps you make smart healthy food choices and resist the temptation to pig out. Try to avoid choosing someone who you live with as your diet buddy. Sibling rivalry or spousal spats are a natural part of life, causing stress and anxiety about not having the full support of your diet buddy leads to unnecessary anxiety and stress or emotional related eating.
Easy Weight Loss
November 30, 2008
A really easy, fast way to weight loss is walking a lot. If the other things you’ve tried haven’t worked, or if the results aren’t quite what you’re looking for, try walking twice a day, every day.
This is the time of year when walking outdoors is easier. It’s usually cooler, and less humid, but not so cold as winter.
Aim for walking 2 miles a day. One mile in the morning, and one in the afternoon.
Most people are notoriously bad about mental distance measurements, so I suggest using your car to stake out a full mile.
As an alternative, use the rough rule that most healthy adults walking a fairly brisk pace will walk at 3-4 miles per hour. So if you do a fast 20 minute walk, you’ve probably got your time in.
20 minutes is also good because most people can get their walking in during a break at work in the morning. Even better, probably, would be walking in the early morning before the day gets going (you’re more likely to get it done) but some folks have trouble fitting that in.
Personal Space: Life After Lap-Band Surgery
November 30, 2008
Have I become invisible or are people just aiming right at me? It seems to me that in a crowd these days, whether at the grocery store or 5th Avenue in New York City, people will walk right into me if I don’t step out of the way. Or they stand so close to me I have to step backward in order to breathe.
Now, I have never felt that I have such a small area of personal space. A busy street or mall never bothered me. I could walk through the crowd at a museum or a concert without being trampled. Only since losing 110 pounds have I begun to notice how the shrinking personal space has begun to bother me.
When I weighed 277 pounds I always felt emotionally invisible; that no one truly saw me or knew I was there. But while I felt emotionally invisible, I knew I was always physically there. I didn’t get bumped into, people didn’t stand so close to me that I felt the need to step away in order to maintain personal space. In the mall or on a San Francisco street, people gave me a wide berth. Bus passengers would hesitate before sitting down next to me judging just how much space they would have for their ride home.
Dieting Strategy — Stop Diet Drop Out
November 29, 2008
Diet drop out, a significant problem for all types of diets, requires a new dieting strategy. Exchange it…and watch diet drop out rates plummet.
What is Diet Drop Out?
To stop a diet plan before reaching your goal or before reaching a pre-defined time limit is called diet drop out. Not one diet succeeds at keeping diet drop out rates low. One or more of the following strategies are used by diet plans in attempts to eliminate diet drop out:
This is a strategy that more often back fires, setting the stage for weight gain. Subjects placed on shorter dieting sessions experienced weight loss at a faster rate than those following longer sessions.
Fast weight loss (over 3-4 pounds/week) is unhealthy and negates any progress made on lowering diet drop out rates.
This strategy follows the same principle as faster dieting sessions. Allow dieters to lose weight fast, and they won’t have time to drop out. Unfortunately, severe calorie restriction also causes weight gain.
This strategy allows dieters to take long breaks or “holidays” from following the diet. However, the opposite result is often observed. Diet drop out rates increase because many dieters never start the diet again.
Tell Me - Do You Really Like Being Fat?
November 29, 2008
Once upon a time, I fretted about going to a family wedding because I was ? gasp ? 142 pounds. I am five foot three. The ideal weight for me was 115 pounds using that old rule of thumb for women ? 100 pounds for the first five feet and then five pounds per inch after that. I think I was a size 11.
I still remember the dress I wore. Red and white squares in a very 70s pattern. Just past the flower child stage and slightly reminiscent of the art deco style. I was almost sick at the thought of going to the wedding looking like a whale. Ha ha ha ha. If I knew then what I know now, it would have been sheer joy. Today, my goal is to get down to 150 pounds.
I really chunked up in my thirties and decried the paternalistic pressures to be thin. I embraced my voluptuousness. I was healthy. What more did I want?
Weight Loss Proteins — The Casein & Whey Protein Debate
November 28, 2008
The weight loss protein debate centers around the effectiveness of casein and whey protein as weight loss supplements. Which type of protein can help you safely lose weight?
Support for Whey Protein
Whey, as a weight loss protein, is derived from animal milk sources.
Supporters of these products report that whey protein is superior to other protein supplements and can help dieters achieve their weight loss goals.
Here are the facts on whey protein:
- Pure whey is most commonly found in a powder form for making a shake.
- Whey protein quickly increases the blood levels of amino acids, usually within 1 hour, after ingestion.
- The increase in amino acids after ingestion a whey protein shake peaks around 2 hours and falls to normal levels by 4 hours.
- Little evidence is available on this fast build up of amino acids and the affects on weight loss. The results of some of the studies are inconclusive, at best.
- A faster recovery and repair of muscle tissue after exercise is a clear benefit of whey protein. This can indirectly help dieters successfully reach their weight loss goals.
- By supporting muscle tissue, whey protein helps to stabilize a fast metabolic rate — a fast metabolic rate is critical to weight loss success.
- However, to benefit from this affect, the protein shake must be ingested right before a workout.
Whey protein appears to help dieters lose weight by supporting muscle tissue.
