Diet & Life Style Info

ere are nine diet tips that are a combination of common sense and also supported by various diet professionals. Some involve different ways to eat, or adding certain foods to your diet. Others involve learning new behaviors or strategies to help you stay on track. Either way it involves changes to your daily routine and perseverance in sticking to your diet plan, but they are relatively easier to follow.

• Variety Is Overrated
• Have Barley for Breakfast
• Beef Up Your Lunch Salad
• Stock Up on Frozen Vegetables
• Make Yourself a Party Tray
• Turn Down the Thermostat
• Downsize Your Dinnerware
• Go Out for Treats
• Try on Your Skinny Jeans Every Friday

Variety Is Overrated

Who hasn’t heard the advice to “just take a bite of everything” if you’re at a buffet?

I have done this myself. The problem is when there are over 100 items on a buffet, by the time you take one spoonful of everything, your plate will be overflowing! Also if your favorite foods are on the buffet, you probably will take more and increase your intake.

Be selective and focus on low calorie food just as if you were at home. Don’t let a buffet boot you off your diet plan!

Have Barley for Breakfast

Barley got its hunger-fighting reputation after Swedish researchers found that eating barley or rye kernels for breakfast kept blood sugar on an even keel. That’s because the carbs in barley and rye kernels are “low glycemic index,” meaning they raise blood sugar more slowly than some other carbohydrate foods. This helps you avoid a spike, and then a drop, in blood sugar, which can leave you feeling famished.

Buy hulled barely, not pearl barley. The Swedish researchers used minimally processed hull barley, and they can’t vouch for the same effects for more processed forms, such as pearl barley.

Beef Up Your Lunch Salad

One of the most common mistakes dieters make is to eat a vegetable salad with little or no dressing for lunch and then they are starving by mid-afternoon. A salad is a great choice,  if you add some protein and a little fat to help keep you feeling full longer.

Add 3 oz piece of chicken breast, and you’ve added about 26 grams of protein but just 140 calories. Add about two tablespoons of light salad dressing, and your salad may be filling enough to get you through the 3 p.m. hunger slump without hitting the vending machine.

Stock Up on Frozen Vegetables

Sure, fresh vegetables are delicious and nutritious. Preparation of the vegetables is a pain and most consider not worth the time, so they reach for chips  instead. Why not buy frozen vegetables that are already chopped and ready to be served. Just heat in the microwave and they are ready!

Make Yourself a Party Tray

A big vegetable platter, maybe with some low-fat dip on the side! Now that is good for you, good to eat and will help you lose weight at the same time. If you have it in the fridge and it is the first thing you see when you open the door, there is a good chance you and your family are going to reach for this party tray first before reaching for anything else.

Turn Down the Thermostat

Spending time in a chilly house — about 61 degrees Fahrenheit — may boost the fat-burning power of the “brown fat” in your body. Brown fat is considered “good” fat, as opposed to regular or white fat, which stores calories and tends to accumulate.  Scandinavian researchers found that exposure to these chilly temperatures boosted the metabolic rate of brown fat 15-fold, helping burn more calories.

Downsize Your Dinnerware

The larger your plate, the more you’re likely to put on it. So serving your meals on smaller plates can help you eat less. Even if you still go back for seconds, there is a strong likelihood that you will eat less overall. You can still use the dinner plates for salads instead.

Go Out for Treats

If you must have a sweet, try not to keep them in the house. Go out instead. Just the mere energy needed to go out is going to dissuade you from heading out to the doughnut shop or the grocery store to buy that special treat. The trip to the fridge or the pantry is much shorter and too hard to resist.

Try on Your Skinny Jeans Every Friday or before you go out for Dinner

Weekends are always  a tougher time to stay on diet and Friday mornings try-on will motivate you to watch your eating during the weekend. If you wear them out to dinner, you will be even more motivated, since they are snug and not many people can eat a lot when they are wearing tight clothes.

Many people, including this blog have preached that you must reduce the calorie intake and if you want to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than what you eat or drink on any given day.  While this is a true statement, as with all things the devil is in the detail and it is no different with weight loss.

Now that Christmas and New Years are over it is time to pay attention to managing your weight over the year and to meet those goals you set for your self. The following points may be of interest to readers who are trying to lose weight and not having a lot of success for a variety of reasons. We will discuss each of them in more detail.

• Exercise is only part of the weight loss story.
• Exercise is a must for weight maintenance
• Food splurges may undo your efforts.
• Exercise machines may not tell the whole calorie story.
• One daily workout may not be enough.

Don’t get discouraged if you are not losing weight as fast as you would like. Like any problem, you have to dig into the detail before a solution will present itself.

Exercise is only part of the weight loss story.

If you are not seeing the results you are expecting, it is time to examine what is really happening in your life. Calories in vs. calories out is the principal mantra. If you are exercising but not reducing your intake or perhaps even increasing your intake because you are exercising, chances are you are not going to lose any weight. Embarking on an exercise program is an excellent thing to do, but you need to examine the intensity of the program as well as the amount of calories you are taking in. Cutting your intake by a 1000 calories, combined with exercise that burns a 1000 calories every week will have an impact.

A healthy diet is important as well. Healthy foods, vegetables and fruit will also contribute to reduced calories. If you are starting in an over weight condition, you probably already know that it is difficult to exercise with all of the that extra weight that you are carrying around. Just watch the biggest loser to find out.

It is actually easier at this stage to start exercising slowly and cutting a 1000 calories out of your diet at the same time. Exercise at least 3 days a week. As you reduce weight, you will find it much easier to lose weight and to exercise as well to build muscle.

Exercise is a must for weight maintenance.

No matter how you lose those  extra pounds, most people will find that they are going to need to be active to keep the pounds off. While you may be successful at losing weight through diet alone, over time you are going to fall off the wagon sometime and if you do, the binge eating is going to be absorbed by your body. With a combination of exercise and diet you have a much better chance of maintaining your weight as well as being much more fit as well.

Food splurges may undo your efforts.

Let’s say you have adopted the program and are managing your weight through diet and exercise. We all have temptations and it may be in the form of parties we go to , special events, or a special food we just cannot stay away from. Chances are that if you succumb to these temptations, often enough you will start to gain that weight all over again.

In addition, many restaurants serve huge portions of food. We have been all trained to finish our meals and this alone can contribute to weight gain. Split portions, share them, use take home. Whatever you do try to get the portion size under control and avoid splurging on more food than what you can handle or are losing through exercise.

Keep track of all of the calories, not just at the table. Fancy coffees, soft drinks etc contribute a huge number of calories to our overall weight gain. If you have a desk job, you are not burning many calories during the day when you are consuming these calories. Try to drink water instead!

Exercise machines may not tell the whole calorie story.

Treadmills and other exercise gear often have monitors that estimate how many calories you’re burning. This is an estimate only and an indicator of the number of calories you are burning. They are not accurate enough to plan your food intake with.

Consider that you probably will burn 70 calories in an hour just sitting at your desk  or even watching TV. If you burn 300 calories on a treadmill or some other device in an hour, you are only actually burning 230 calories in this example incrementally. This is a much lower number than what you might have thought or planned with respect to food intake.

If you are looking for net calories burned as a result of exercise, subtract 70 calories per hour to obtain a better number for use in food planning.

One daily workout may not be enough.

Whether you exercise or not the real culprit is the sedentary lifestyle that many of us lead. For example, taking the car to work, riding the elevator, sitting at your desk all day, elevator can car on the way home, watching TV at night is a typical day for many people.

Leading a more active lifestyle will help you control weight gain and exercise sessions will also help. Consider walking to work, walking up the stairs, walking at lunch time, walking after work and doing physical activities around the home in addition to 30 minutes of exercise 3 times a week will make a huge difference in your weigh control battle.

The message is to “get active during the day” to control and lose weight. This activity will also assist in better sleeping habits and less stress as well all of which contribute to weight gain.

Many posts talk about various diets and the amount of weight that you can lose if you go on one diet or another. Some diet plans will discuss the benefits of losing weight on other related illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. Most people find that when they lose weight, that these various problems will become less of an issue or disappear all together. In fact on the show the “Biggest loser”, many of the contestants who lose significant amounts of weight will talk about how much better they feel and how they have stopped taking medicine for various health issues that they may have had.

Another major benefit is the ability to take a deep breath without wheezing and to walk without becoming short of breath. There is a major difference between exercising and being short of breath vs. taking a short walk up and down your driveway and being short of breath.  Add to this the complications of bronchitis or asthma and you have the conditions for a major illness and possibly death due to lack of oxygen. If you have ever been short of breath and know the fear of not being able to breathe then you will know what I mean!

I am slightly over weight and in relatively good shape having exercised regularly, doing many miles on my bicycle and going to the gym about 4 times a week. Recently I had a case of severe bronchitis, needed treatments at the hospital and was very short of breath. Even though I was in good shape, nothing prepared me for the shortness of breath and gasping for air. This is a frightfully scary thing to have happen.

What If You are Also Over Weight

I am slightly over weight, however what if you are significantly over weight. If you are, chances are that your lungs are already compressed and you may even now be unable to take a deep breath. Add to this  challenge of breathing, bronchitis or asthma and you have a truly scary situation. Your lungs are already compressed and now your air ways are swollen due to a virus, a cold or environmental contaminants in the air such as smoke, deodorizer or other things that are naturally occurring.

You are in big trouble and need to see a doctor quickly because your body will shut down on you if you do not get enough oxygen to it!  Some symptoms besides being shortness of breath are:

Fever

High blood pressure

Chest pains

Swelling in the ankles

If you have any of these symptoms do not wait, get checked out immediately.

Basically the extra weight you are carrying around compresses your lungs and makes it more difficult for your diaphragm to push air out of your lungs and to also draw deep breaths of air into your lungs. All of this extra weight is hard on your heart and of course your joints as well, but we will stay focused on just taking a breath. If you cannot get air into your lungs then you are not getting enough oxygen into your blood stream and now you are in serious trouble because your heart cannot do it’s job. This is bad news.

Fix the Initial Problem , then Lose Weight

Obviously you need to get over the asthma or bronchitis or whatever is causing you to be short of breath. This is the most important near term issue, however as soon as your bronchitis attack etc is under control, start the process of losing weight and getting into shape. You just have to look at the people on the “Biggest Loser” to see the dramatic effects it has on their overall well being as well as their ability to get a full breath of air and not be short of breath or gasping for air all of the time.

Most of us need that one big scare to get our acts together. For some people it is a heart attack, for others it is getting sick from too much alcohol, still for others it is gasping for breath because we are too heavy and our bodies just cannot deal with the extra weight. We cannot get enough air into our lungs and cannot move around the way we used to. Make the commitment now to get into shape and lose weight.

With the exception of environmental triggers, your bronchitis and asthma will occur less often and you will be stronger and more able to deal with these sudden onsets of bronchitis.

If your bronchitis is triggered by environmental issues, find out what they are and avoid them like the plague. There is no sense in exposing yourself to these triggers. Just stay away from them. Avoid people with colds and fevers, avoid people that smoke, avoid dusty situations or places with lots of contaminants in the air. In my personal situation, in addition to all of the above, I am also going to avoid hotels that do not have smoke free environments and also hotels that use deodorizer to hide the smells of cigarette smoke or other odors in the rooms. These are the worst for me and will set me off with  bronchitis attack for sure.

We would be happy to hear your comments and any other suggestions for dealing with shortness of breath. Please post a comment to our blog.

Weight loss and life style are tied very closely together when it comes to managing your weight. If you do not manage your life style, and perhaps change it for the long term , you may not lose the weight you want to lose.  Worse you may continue to gain weight which of course only makes the situation a lot worse.

So what do we mean by life style and it’s effect on our weight?

Many people are extremely busy with their lives. They have to get to work, they have to look after the kids and they have to look after the house. Then there are the school activities, the after school activities and if there is time  , a social life. Exactly were is there time to exercise or eat properly? Rushing home from work, grabbing some fast food something and then heading out the door again to one of the kids activities is just not conducive to managing your weight. The jobs we have today are leaning more and more towards low activity jobs. Whether we sit behind a desk or push a button to control a robot on an assembly line, we are not buring many calories on the job either.

This is the lifestyle that many of us face today. Without changing this lifestyle we cannot possibly lose weight and we are lucky to not gain weight.

The Fundamentals

Energy into your body less energy burned during the day equals positive or negative results. If it is positive you are going to gain weight. If it is negative, you are going to lose weight. It is just that simple. There is a lot you can do on both sides of the equation to influence it in the right direction and a lot of it is life style changes that you need to make.

Let’s look at the fast food area to start with. Whether you grab something at the fast food restaurant or you heat up a prepacked frozen meal, they are all high in calories and high in salt content. A high salt content helps the body retain fluids and contributes to high blood pressure. One of the first steps is to get away from the prepared fast food syndrome and it is relatively easy to do and watch your salt intake.

Prepare Your Own Fast Food

Pick a day, perhaps on the weekend and prepare a large meal. Does not matter what it is, but make sure that it is far more than what your family can eat. Prepare a healthy meal and capture all of the vitamins by cooking  properly with a balance of vegetables, meat and a carbohydrate. Once you are finished dinner, prepare casseroles which you can freeze to be taken out for dinner sometime during the week.  Every time you cook a meal always cook more than you need. Before you know it, there will be a freezer full of meals that you can select for your family to have an excellent meal.

Book Your Schedule

Just in the way you book meetings and the kids activities, book some time into your schedule so that you have time to exercise even if it is going for a walk around the block for 15 minutes. Remember what we are trying to do is alter your lifestyle. Scheduling time for your self even if it is a few minutes at a time is a good start. Walk to meetings. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Whenever there is an opportunity to exercise in some small way, take it. This will burn calories and also increase your metabolism at the same time which burns even more calories.

Involve Your Family and Friends

It is really hard to lose weight if you are the only one trying to watch what you eat and to exercise while others enjoy themselves over eating and not worrying about what they eat.

With a partner to help you when you are down and support you in sticking to your goals the job can get to be much easier. Having your friends involved, as well as your family has other benefits as well. They will participate with you as well and gain some of the benefits of losing weight. Your kids and spouse will be able to work with you and help you to prepare meals, go for walks and generally increase your families overall activity rate. This is a bonus to your weight loss and life style changes.

Long Term Benefits

Whether you know it or not, by involving your family in your weight loss program, there are multiple benefits that you will see for a long time. The obvious benefit is that you receive the support you need to stick with the program when you find it difficult. Your family will also benefit since they will also lose weight at the same time if they stick to the life style changes you are mapping out. But the real benefit is the long term results and influence you have on your kids.

By being more active, by eating better and staying away from fast food, your kids will develop the habits needed over a lifetime to help them sustain their weight at acceptable levels. If you are overweight as a kid you will be overweight as an adult. If you learn to eat properly , to manage your portions, to exercise when you can, they will do the same. They will follow your lead and this is one of the most important gifts you can give to your family. Long term healthy habits is so important to living a higher quality life and to living a healthy life.

Try it and work at it and you will see the results over time. The fast weight loss programs that you pay for just will not work unless you can also change your lifestyle.

There are a number of weight loss tips that will benefit many people. However the major tip for consideration everyone needs to think about is whether you are ready or not. Each person regardless of their weight, have to first realize that they need to lose weight to gain a healthier life style and then they need to decide that they actually are going to lose weight.

Make a Decision and Stick With It

This statement may seem trivial, however unless you have the conviction to lose weight along with the perseverance, most people will go on a diet for a short period, lose a few pounds and then go off the diet. So the first major tip is recognize that you need to lose weight and the second is to decide with commitment that you are going to do what is needed to lose weight.

Change Your Life Style

Once you have decided to lose weight and are committed to losing weight the next step is to decide what attributes of your lifestyle that you need to change. Perhaps it is fast food, perhaps it is snacking in front of the TV at night, perhaps it is eating very large meals.  What ever it is you need to set up your environment so that you are not tempted to continue bad habits such as snacking.

Exercise Routine

Part of changing your lifestyle is to begin exercising. Even if it is a walk around the block, it is better than sitting in front of the television and snacking. If you have been a couch potato and this is the first time you decide to exercise start slowly and build up. If you are seriously unhealthy, talk to your doctor first. Even if you start by walking a short distance and build up over time this is a huge improvement.

Exercise will improve your circulation, help you lose weight when combined with a diet program, build your muscles including that of your heart, and increase your lung capacity. Exercise will also increase your metabolism which will burn more calories and help to burn off those pounds.

Fit Your Exercise into a Busy Life

Sometimes we are just so busy that we do not have time to go to the gym and exercise. There are various ways to get your daily exercise. For starters consider taking the stairs instead of the elevator. If it is only  a few floors, chances are you will save time since you can cover several floors before the elevator even arrives. Go for a walk at lunch. Park your car further away from the entrance to your office or shopping and walk the extra distance.

If you are waiting for the kids at an activity, don’t sit and wait, go for a little walk even if it is around the parking lot. There are numerous ways to get in that extra few steps every day while you are building up your endurance.

Walk 10,000 Steps a Day

You have probably seen or read about walking a minimum of 10,000 steps per day. I have personally tried this and found it quite hard to get all of the steps in. I bought a step counter and away I went walking around the mall to get my 10,000 steps in. I have to admit it gets a bit boring, so try to vary the routine, go for walks in your neighborhood or around your work place. Drive the car to a different location and walk. Before you know it you will be walking your 10,ooo steps every day.

Eating Habits

This is probably the most difficult thing to do and why we left this weight loss tip until the end. We are all used to fast food prepared quickly with lots of sauces and salt. The salt is bad for high blood pressure or hypertension and all of the fried food and sauces have thousands of calories in them.

Start cooking natural foods and make your own casseroles to be frozen. That way you manage the salt and the fat that goes into the meal and it is ready when you need it. Just a quick dethaw, heat it up and supper is ready. These are excellent meals when you are in a hurray and pressed for time.

Stay away from fast food restaurants or any restaurant were the food is cooked in oil of some kind. Try doing without all of the sauces such as ketchup, mayonnaise, salad dressing, and special sauces. Not only are they high in fat content, they are also high in calories and salt as well.

Snacking

Snacking is like a silent villain that sneaks up on you. We all love to snack, however the problem with snacking is that we lose track of how many calories we are actually eating. It is relatively easy to sit in front of the television and snack on a bowl of peanuts while watching our favorite program. Before we know it the bowl of peanuts is gone and we have consumed a thousand calories or more. While nuts are an excellent food type, we really do not need these extra calories unless you can burn them off in some way. Let’s face it most of us cannot burn them off easily.

If you must snack, have sticks of sugar free gum around to chew on. They have few calories and provide that chewing sensation that we need. Far better to chew several sticks of gum than to eat many different snacks.

In summary, make a conscience attempt to change your life style, exercise, change your eating habits and avoid snacking. You will find that the pounds will come off. The rate of losing pounds will depend on how well you do in sticking to your plan. Let us know if there are other ideas and tips that have helped you to lose weight and keep it off.