Archive for June, 2008

Are you really concerned about your addiction towards sugar? Over consumption of sugar can incredibly lead to weight gain.

So, combating with sugar cravings is extremely important for you, particularly if you want to lose those extra pounds of your body.

Initially, it becomes very essential to develop certain will power and assertion or determination to manage your sugar cravings.

But, gradually it becomes very easy for you to reduce your desire or addiction towards sugar.

Most of the causes for these sugar cravings vary widely. But, the most common causes that make you to addict towards sugar are due to certain hormonal imbalances, particularly insulin and serotonin, various eating disorders, adrenal fatigue and unhealthy dieting.

So, if you really want to combat with your sugar cravings, then here are certain tips which can successfully help you in managing your sugar cravings, which is very essential for you to lose some extra weight of your body.

Tips to stop sugar cravings:

Prefer fruits instead of sweets!
Always try to give more preference to fruits instead of sweets. Fruits are naturally sweet and they mostly contain fibrous material, which can help you to feel full. So, this fiber present in fruits gradually slows down the over absorption of sugar in your body. As a result, your blood sugar goes down and your sugar cravings are also minimized accordingly.

Most of us immensely love partying with our friends and relatives. Spending wonderful time with your friends and family members can give you lots of pleasure and happiness.

It can really help you to shed your stress of balancing both work and family together.

But, for many people, who are exceptionally trying to live with better health, exploring tasty healthy food can become a great challenge.

You might have determined or resolved yourself to lose certain extra pounds or perhaps you have decided to enjoy healthy food.

No matter whatever may be the reason for you to prefer healthy and nutritional food, it is quite easy to cut down your party food menu without sacrificing the taste and fun involved in it.

Planning for a healthy party food!

If you want to make your party unforgettable with healthier yet tasty food, then here are certain tips, which can help you greatly in preparing healthy food for your party.

• Always prefer low fat creamy dressings or dips by merely using low-fat or fat free yogurt, instead of using sour cream or mayonnaise. Try to offer hummus as a low fat spread for vegetables and crackers [Benefits of Vegetarian foods].

Are you having a hard time stretching your grocery dollars during the current economic downturn?

You’re not alone. But before you stop buying fresh fruit, meat, vegetables and other items often perceived as costing a lot, check out these tips from a University of Michigan Health System dietitian.

Holly Scherer, R.D., says you can follow a few easy guidelines and still buy healthy foods, rather than switching to a diet of potato chips, macaroni and cheese, and a fast-food burger.

She suggests that you make your own coffee, buy fruits and vegetables that are in season, occasionally replace meat with protein sources like eggs and beans, and, no matter how tempting it is, skip the fast-food drive-thru window.

“Hard economic times don’t mean that you have to eat less well,” says Scherer, a health educator with MFit, the health promotion division of the U-M Health System.

“By planning ahead, shopping the sales and trying out those generic or store brands you really can save a significant amount of money while also providing healthy, well-balanced food for your family.”

More information at Medical News Today

Did you choose gastric bypass surgery to lose those extra pounds of your body? Then try to know more about it before you select the surgery.

Any kind of weight-loss surgery can mainly alter the basic anatomy of your digestive system. These surgeries can significantly minimize the amount of food that you actually eat and digest.

Weight loss surgeries mainly help in reducing the risk of developing other health conditions, which mainly associate with your obesity problem.

Gastric bypass surgery is the most favored weight-loss surgery and it is greatly preferred as it provides safety and very few complications for your health.

In this surgery, your stomach is made smaller in size, which accordingly allows the food you eat to bypass through the part of your small intestine.

After the surgery, you can feel full much quicker than when your stomach was in its original size. This procedure of bypassing a part of small intestine mainly helps you to absorb only fewer amounts of calories and subsequently leads to weight loss.

According to the preliminary results by physician-scientists from Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia University Medical Center, teenagers’ obesity-related medical complications improve just six months after laparoscopic gastric banding surgery.

The study reports that the small group of extremely obese teenagers who received the minimally invasive surgery, also called the Lap-Band procedure, as part of a clinical trial lost an average of 20 pounds after six months and had significant improvements in abdominal fat, triglyceride measurements and blood sugar levels as measured by hemoglobin A1c — all risk factors for diabetes and heart disease.

The patients’ liver function and a measure of immune response also improved, according to the abstract.

“Extremely obese teenagers have obesity-related health problems, particularly diabetes and increased cardiovascular risk.

Laparoscopic gastric banding, which has been shown to be a safe and effective way to lose weight, now offers the possibility of reducing obesity’s medical complications,” says lead author Dr. Ilene Fennoy, a pediatric endocrinologist at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian and clinical professor of pediatrics at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Can you easily name 10 fat burning foods within 20 seconds? How did you do that? Well! There are wide varieties of foods, which are more nutritious and can also help you in burning extra fat in your body.

These fat burning foods are also known as negative calorie foods or foods that have high thermogenic value.

Each and every food item which you eat contains certain amounts of calories.

When you eat more and burn less, fat deposits in various parts of your body and cause various over weight problems.

Even though if you take healthy food, it contains certain amounts of calories, which can lead to fat deposits in your body, particularly when you fail to burn them.

Foods which contain high proteins and fibers are considered as best fat burning foods. So, here is the list of foods which are nutritious and also help you to burn the deposited fat in your body.

Eggs!

Eggs are exceptionally high in protein and can significantly help you in burning fat. They contain an essential vitamin B12, which plays a prominent role in breaking down the extra fat from your body.

Do you think that consuming carbohydrates can lead you to extreme weight gain? Most of the people actually think that consuming carbohydrates can significantly increase body weight.

But, in fact it is very essential for you to know that these carbohydrates actually act as the main fuel sources for certain vital organs of your body.

These major organs mainly include kidneys, brain and also central nervous system. So, consuming carbohydrates is not a bad idea.

But, eating high carb diet can become dangerous for your health and it can also considerably increase the weight of your body.

So, how to choose carbohydrates? While choosing healthy carbohydrates for your weight loss, it is particularly important for you to distinguish between a simple carb and complex carbohydrates. You can digest simple carbohydrates easily and they rapidly increase the blood sugar level in your body [Foods containing low carbohydrates].

On the other hand, your digestive system takes longer time for complex carbohydrates to break down into sugar and they typically enter into your blood much slowly. Due to this reason, your blood sugar levels considerably increases. So, it is very essential for you to choose healthy carbohydrates to lose extra body weight and at the same time to maintain optimum health conditions.

Fruit and vegetable juices are excellent natural sources of vitamins and minerals and, in moderation, can be part of a healthy diet.

Eating fruits and vegetables helps keep you healthy and protects against disease, but it’s not always easy to consume as much produce as experts advice.

Fortunately, juices can be a convenient way to squeeze in extra servings.

Six ounces — just 3/4 cup of juice — counts as one serving of a fruit or vegetable.

Many fruit juices contain potassium, which helps balance sodium in the diet and lowers blood pressure[Lower blood pressure]. Vitamin C in some fruit juices helps heal cuts and bruises, prevents infection, and aids in the absorption of iron (helping our bodies use the iron we get from foods), and vitamin A benefits eye and skin health.

Carbohydrates from natural sugars in 100 percent juice provide energy, and the water content in juice helps meet fluid requirements. The increase in calories is due to the increased percentage of sugar as a proportion of the juice.

Grapefruit juice can interfere with the metabolism of a number of prescription drugs, including certain cholesterol-lowering statins, antidepressants, and even Viagra. Grapefruit contains a natural substance that inhibits the liver’s ability to metabolize (break down so the body can utilize) certain drugs.

Do you have any strong desire on any specific food, which is quite potential to increase your body weight? At one time or the other, it is quite common for all of us to experience food cravings, a strong desire for specific kind of foods.

These foods, on which you develop strong desire to eat more, can be any thing from chocolates to cakes and from pizzas to popcorn.

Experiencing food cravings is quite normal and actually it can help people to feel much better by improving their moods, soothing nerves and also boosting up their energy levels.

The way you respond or take action towards food cravings can just make or break your accomplishments at weight loss and also for maintenance of your body figure.

Turning off from your routine eating plan eventually will not become a devastating issue for you, but once if you get habituated to give off those triggers of food cravings, your moments of weakness to those specific foods will obviously catch up with you.

If you follow these simple tips to manage your food cravings, then it can be quite easy for you to overcome those pesky cravings of food.

—— Simple Ways To Stop Yourself From Overeating!

All of you are instinctively born with the habit of eating when you feel hungry and stop when you feel it is full.

However, as you grow up and expose to those trendy and stuffed diets, it is quite obvious that many of you tend to neglect this well balanced way of eating and begin to eat excessively [Various diet plans].

However, eating when you feel hungry and stopping when you feel full or uncomfortable is one of the best ways to maintain healthy living and balanced eating habits.

Many people usually suffer from their senseless eating habits, which can mainly lead to gain undesirable weight.

So, if you want to live a healthy standard of living, then it is very essential for you to create a perfect balance between eating when you feel hungry and stopping when you feel full or satisfied.

But, most of you might be worried about how to control yourself from eating excessively. If that is the case, then don’t get nervous about it. These are couple of tips, which you can easily employ to control yourself from over eating and also to keep yourself healthy and fit.