Archive for September, 2008

Did you include more fluids or drinks in your weight loss plan? Drinking beverages only satisfies your urge to nibble whenever you are trying to shed those extra pounds of your body.

Even though milk and juice have many essential nutrients required by your body, they also contain lot of calories.

A calorie in the form of liquid is the same as a calorie in solid food. So, try to be aware of the kind of drink you include in your weight loss diet plan.

When you follow a balanced diet for effective weight loss, you must essentially include at least 2 servings from milk group and 2 servings from fruit group every day.

When it comes to beverages, it is always suggested to drink 8 ounces of low-fat or fat-free milk and 6 ounces of reduced calories fruit or vegetable juice.

So, when you drink more than these recommended servings, you can certainly add unwanted calories for your body.

Effective weight loss drinks!

Ice cold water:

When you drink ice cold water, your body tends to burn more calories to heat the ice cold water into your body temperature. The amount of calories you can burn and extra pounds that you can lose mainly depends up on your cold water consumption.

About one in two American adults has borderline or high cholesterol levels, which increase one’s risk of heart attack and cardiovascular disease.

Statins, medications that lower levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, are now among the most prescribed drugs in the country (and the world).

But medication is only part of the solution: To keep cholesterol under control, maintaining a healthy weight and diet is just as important as taking a daily pill.

The guidelines for treating high cholesterol from the National Cholesterol Education Program recommend that patients try to lower their cholesterol through Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC), which include exercise and a healthy diet, before starting a statin.

Lowering your cholesterol through eating habits and exercise means you can avoid the risk of side effects from medication entirely. Indeed, the only side effects of TLC you’ll encounter are more energy, weight loss, and better overall health.

Reduce saturated fat to no more than 7 percent of total calories, and cholesterol to no more than 200 milligrams per day.

Saturated fat is likely to raise blood cholesterol more than any other food in your diet (except for, perhaps, trans fats, which are slowly being phased out of many foods).

Do you feel that you consume more food other than your diet plan? You may feel hungry, when you are actually not and tend to eat more food than your actual diet plan.

This is the main reason behind your overeating behavior.

Most of you tend to overeat because of various reasons. It can be your stress, irritation or frustration making you to consume more food.

The potential triggers of overeating can mainly include emotional patterns such as eating when you are upset and various situational and social patterns like eating out at restaurants frequently.

So, identifying the triggers of your overeating behavior can be helpful for you to avoid various eating disorders associated with overeating behavior.

Most common triggers of overeating!

Feeling overwhelmed!

If you feel that you have got so much to do, which is quite difficult for you to initiate, it can certainly raise your food cravings. Pressure at your job and deadlines can leave you with discouragement and finally you’ll drop-out without giving a try at least.

So, in such sort of situations, you feel to eat more. This type of eating tendency is mainly referred as emotional eating and at times considered as normal behavior of every human.

It’s been another one of those days: places to go, deadlines to meet, meals to cook. You find yourself daydreaming about crisp, salty potato chips.

Pretty soon it’s an insistent, must-have-it-now craving, and before you know it, your hand is deep in the bag.

Rather than berate your lack of willpower, once in a while, indulge yourself. In a 2007 Tufts University study of healthy women, 91 percent reported having food cravings (which the researchers define as an intense desire to eat a specific food).

In other words, cravings are common, and the key to successful weight management, experts say, is learning to address cravings rather than always deny them.

“You first have to accept that having cravings is normal, but you don’t have to give in to every one,” says Tufts study coauthor Susan Roberts, PhD.

“The people in our research who manage their weight the best are not those who crave foods less often but those who give in some of the time.”

What triggers a food longing? Hormonal fluctuations are thought to be the cause in premenstrual women, though no one knows for sure, says Roberts.

Are you aware of thin foods that can help you better in your weight loss program? If you fail to take proper advantage of thin foods, then your job of maintaining appropriate weight can become a tough task for you.

To make your weight loss process much easy and long-lasting, here is the list of certain effective and important thin foods that can help you greatly in your weight loss process.

Fiber!

How much fiber do you take in a day? Many studies recommend that 25-38 grams of fiber [fiber diet] is very essential for a human body.

This is because of the reason that lower level of fiber content in your body considerably contributes to a wide range of chronic health diseases, including cancers.

So, it is very essential for you to take sufficient amounts of fiber in a day.

Fiber mainly provides a kind of feeling of fullness of your stomach. As a result, you can limit your calories and at the same time it also provides essential proteins and vitamins for your body.

Fruits and vegetables are certain best sources of fiber. So, don’t forget to include them in your regular diet routine.

Are you trying to lose extra pounds of your body? Whether you are trying to lose weight for health reasons or of vanity’s sake, there are many factors which can prevent you from reaching your weight loss goal.

If you really want to reach your goal successfully, try to know more about those most common weight loss mistakes, which you have to avoid during your weight loss program.

Unrealistic expectations!

This is the first mistake most of the dieters often commit during their weight loss program.

Never try to expect any results that are merely tough to reach and also never try for rapid weight loss. Studies show that people who rapidly lose weight often gain it back.

Starving!

Reducing too many calories, particularly protein calories, makes your body to conserve extra calories rather than burning them.

So, it is not essential for you to cut more calories to lose weight, rather you can reduce 500 calories every day by simply eliminating one can of beer, 35 chips and also one Oreo from your diet.

But, it is very essential for you to ensure yourself that you eat at least 1600 to 1800 calories per day in turn to keep up your body metabolism.

Menus and advertising affect our emotions, and if we understand those emotions, we make better food choices, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Authors Blair Kidwell, David M. Hardesty, and Terry L. Childers (all University of Kentucky) examined the “emotional intelligence” of consumers, including obese people.

They found that people who made the healthiest choices had high correlations between their emotional intelligence and confidence in their emotional intelligence - what the authors call “emotional calibration.”

“When perusing a restaurant menu, many consumers may not be aware of the subtle implicit feelings of arousal elicited by visually appealing presentations of unhealthy food choices,” the authors write.

Faced with choices between healthy food and unhealthy food options, individuals who are confident that they can appropriately interpret and employ their emotions, but who do not actually possess these emotional abilities, are likely to make low-quality decisions.”

In the first of two studies, the authors measured emotional ability, confidence, and nutritional knowledge. They asked participants to plan meals from a menu with a wide range of options - some healthier than others.

They found that people with emotional miscalibration chose foods higher in calories, even more so than people with low levels of nutritional knowledge.

Are you a teen with obesity problem? Teenage obesity is quite dangerous and rapidly growing problem now-a-days.

There is no magic bullet for losing extra pounds of body in your teenage. But there are many ways to achieve desired weight loss in your teenage.

If you really want to get rid of teenage obesity and desire to get healthy weight of your body, here are certain effective ways that can be useful for you to lose weight effectively.

Exercise regularly!

This is the best way to cut down excess calories from your body during your teen years. Add more general physical activity and vigorous exercises in your regular day schedule.

Certain effective physical activities, which you can practice for losing extra weight of your body, can mainly include riding a bike, sports, dancing, running, swimming and also walking.

Check out your calorie intake!

Apart from being physically active, look at what you are eating throughout your day. This is one of the most important aspects of losing extra body weight. Always try to make healthy food choices while you buy foods.

According to the Italian researchers, sticking strictly to a Mediterranean diet rich in fruits and vegetables offers substantial protection against cancer, heart disease and other major chronic illnesses.

People who did this had a 9 percent drop in death from heart disease, a 13 percent reduction in incidence of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease and a 6 percent reduction in cancer compared to those who were not as diligent, their study found.

“These results seem to be clinically relevant for public health, particularly for encouraging a Mediterranean-like dietary pattern for primary prevention of major chronic diseases,” wrote Francesco Sofi, a clinical nutrition researcher, and colleagues at the University of Florence.

The traditional Mediterranean diet is full of vegetables, fish and healthy fats such as olive oil, and low in red meat, dairy products and alcohol.

Sofi and his team reviewed 12 international studies which included more than 1.5 million people whose eating habits and health were tracked for follow-up periods of three to 18 years.

The researchers also developed an “adherence” score to rate how well people followed the Mediterranean diet, a tool they said doctors could use to help improve people’s health and encourage them to eat better.

Did you ever feel that stress is making you fat? Weight gain under stress is partly due to hormonal imbalances that can significantly make you to put on some weight.

When you frequently experience stress in your life, it can be quite difficult for you to maintain healthy eating habits.

Whether you are eating to fill your emotional needs or snack fast food as you find no time to prepare something healthy, it is believed that a stressed-out lifestyle is possibly unhealthy for you.

Cortisol hormone plays a critical role!

Cortisol is the stress hormone, which is responsible for various actions in your body. This stress hormone mainly stimulates your body fat and carbohydrates for metabolism process to release energy quickly.

It also stimulates insulin release and maintenance of appropriate blood sugar levels in your body. As a result of these actions, your appetite levels can increase.

When cortisol is excessively secreted during certain situations of psychological or physical stress, the normal pattern of cortisol function is altered. This excessive secretion of cortisol promotes weight gain.

Certain studies show that stress and elevated levels of cortisol mainly lead to fat deposition, particularly in abdominal areas of your body.