5 Goals to Losing Weight

To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you eat. Every good weight-loss plan has the same two parts: food and physical activity. Wise food choices can help you eat fewer calories and daily (or almost daily) physical activity helps you burn off some of the calories you consume. You lose weight more easily and you're more likely to keep it off, too.

1. Keep portions smaller than your fist. It’s easy to overeat when you have too much food on your plate. Smaller portions help prevent overeating. Overeating can make health problems worse, especially if you have diabetes. One way to control overeating is to reduce portion sizes when you eat. For most foods, a reasonable portion is ½ to 1 cup – about the size of a woman’s fist. Even if your fist is larger than that, it is still a handy measuring tool that goes everywhere you go. Just keep your portions smaller than your fist.

The two most common exceptions are:

• Meat, chicken and fish. For these foods, keep portions the size of a deck of cards (about half the size of your fist.)
• Plain vegetables, including salads without dressing. You can have as much as you want because these foods are filling and low in calories.

2. Control your hunger with filling foods that are low in calories. Foods such as soup, salad, fruits and vegetables can help fill you up without adding a lot of calories. These foods will satisfy hunger and help you lose weight. Research shows that people feel less hungry when they eat a certain volume (amount) of food. High-fiber foods, such as fruits and vegetables, can provide a feeling of fullness and also digest slowly. That helps you feel satisfied longer so you eat less.
3. Keep track of what you eat. When you keep track of what you eat, you're more likely to meet your food goals. Studies show that keeping a food log or diary helps people lose weight and keep it off.
4. Make trade-offs to reduce how much fat and sugar you eat. Foods high in fat and sugar are usually high in calories, too. But that doesn't mean you have to give up your favorite foods. Learn to make trade-offs instead. If you want to indulge in your favorite dessert, eat a lower-calorie meal.
5. Enjoy more physical activity. As you already know, regular physical activity is important for keeping your heart healthy. Increasing physical activity may help you lose weight and strengthen your heart at the same time.

Instead of ...	Try ...
Counting every calorie and fat gram	Keeping a food diary. Once you know what you are eating you may be able to reduce the amount without having to count every calorie. Try eating ½ portions.
Eating dessert after dinner	If you feel like you have to eat dessert, try eating dessert only after lunch, and choose a low-calorie dessert like fruit. The earlier in the day you eat high-calorie foods, the more time you have during the day to burn off those extra calories. (That doesn’t mean eat dessert after breakfast.) Refer to the “make trade-offs” section above.
Skipping meals to lose weight	Eating 4-5 smaller meals during the day. Eating every 3-4 hours helps control hunger. Just make sure that your smaller meals do not exceed your daily total calorie goals.
Starving between meals	Planing ahead and bringing healthy snacks with you wherever you go so you won’t be tempted to pick up something unhealthy on your way. Drink a tall glass of water to get you through a craving.
Tasting food while you cook	Resisting eating the food you are making until you are sitting at the table with a plate and proper portion sizes in front of you.
Stopping at the grocery store on the way home	Shopping after you eat. Never go to the store hungry or you’re asking for trouble. If you must go to the store before eating a meal make sure you have a healthy snack (see above) to eat before you get there to curb your appetite and reduce the likelihood of binge-buying.
Weighing yourself every day	Weighing yourself once a week. We recommend choosing the schedule that works best for you. If you have heart failure, you must check your weight every day to look for sudden changes.

Source : American Heart Association http://www.heart.org

Weight loss - a healthy approach

Weight loss can be achieved by balancing a healthy level of physical activity with eating a nutritious diet. Crash diets, fad diets and ‘yoyo’ dieting do not help you lose weight. They can also cause stress and increase the likelihood of binge eating.

Eating a balanced, nutritious diet and being physically active is the best way to stay healthy and help reduce your risk of disease. To maintain a stable weight, your energy (kilojoule) intake needs to equal the energy you use. If you use more energy than you consume, you will lose weight. On the other hand, if you eat more than you use, you will gain weight.

The sensible answer to losing excess body fat is to make small healthy changes to your eating and exercise habits. These changes should be things that you can maintain as part of your lifestyle – that way you will lose weight and keep it off.

Don't skip meals

Skipping meals is not recommended. In fact, if you skip meals you may find you eat more when you do eat and this may lead to a larger stomach capacity. Studies show that stomach capacity can increase if large individual meals are eaten. This can then increase the amount of food you need at each meal before you feel ‘full’. This is not a reason to starve yourself if you’re trying to lose weight.

'Yoyo' diets will slow your metabolism

Many people who need to lose weight try crash dieting, which is a short-term solution that will increase your body fat levels in the long term. Continual cycles of dieting, weight loss and weight gain are called 'yoyo' dieting. Yoyo dieting does not help you to maintain a healthy body weight. Your body responds to these periods of semi-starvation by lowering its metabolic rate.

When you lose weight, you lose fat and muscle. Muscle burns calories but fat doesn't. So, when you then stop dieting and eat normally again, your body will burn even fewer calories than before because the relative amount of muscle in your body has decreased and your metabolic rate is slower.

This kind of eating pattern can also affect your general health – just one cycle of weight loss and weight gain can contribute to an increased risk of coronary heart disease, regardless of body fat levels. That's why it's important to maintain the weight loss.

Think about when and why you overeat

Some of the factors that can lead to weight gain include:

• Night eating
• Social eating
• Habitual eating.

If you can avoid unplanned or habitual eating, and keep to regular meals and snacks, this will help you to lose weight. You could also try to eat less food at each meal and increase the number of high-fibre, high-carbohydrate, low-saturated-fat meals and snacks you eat throughout the day.

You should try to find healthy ways to cope with stress or emotional upsets. 

A healthier approach to food

You can lose body fat by making a few easy changes to your eating habits. It will help you lose body fat if you:

• Avoid yoyo diets.
• Eat a wide variety of food from all food groups. Check that you eat from the following food groups every day – wholegrain bread and cereals, vegetables, fruit, milk and dairy, and meat, fish or legumes and where possible choose low-fat varieties.
• Reduce your intake of foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt. Make soft drinks, lollies and snack foods an occasional 'extra'. Most adults should eat no more than one or two 'treats' a day. If you are overweight or inactive you may need to limit treats to less than one a day.
• Try to balance an 'extra' food with extra exercise. The more energy you burn, the more treats you can afford to have. Remember, you should only add extra foods after you have covered your nutrient needs with choices from the healthier food groups.
• Cut down on saturated fats and alcohol.
• Try to eat more fresh foods and less processed foods.
• Avoid using food for comfort, such as when you are upset, angry or stressed. Explore other healthy ways to cope with these feelings.

Read more at http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au

A Look at Weight Loss with Weight Watchers

Weight Watchers believes that dieting is just part of long-term weight management. A healthy life style will result in a healthy body. Weight watchers has achieved lasting success with their weight loss program, and the program now has more flexibility than in past years. We are going to look at a few reasons their program works.

Part of their secret to success is the community involvement. The community in this case is a group of like minded people meeting on a regular bases to share their weight loss wins and failures. It is that feeling your not in this alone or I see what you did and I think I can do the same thing. Their pep rallies ( meeting) are encouraging and motivational.

The weight Watchers point system is probably the best known of their programs. A large number of foods have been evaluated and given a point value. If one stays within there daily point recommendation the chances are good that weight loss will result. Although they have booklets giving the point values of various food,this formula will be of help when the book is not available. 

Points= calories/50 +fat grams/12 - fiber grams/5'

So how many points are recommended? Weight Watchers provides these guidelines:

Less than 150 pounds = 18-25 Points
150 to 174 pounds = 20-27 Points
175 to 199 pounds = 22-29 Points
200 to 224 pounds = 24-31 Points
225 to 250 pounds = 26-33 Points
Over 250 pounds = 28-35 Points

Plus there some flex points involved. Flex points allow a person to pig out on a special occasion and and not feel that they have abandoned their comment.

Another program is the Core Plan. Basically this plan gives a wide scope on the variety of food recommended and relies on the discipline of the individual to limit the quantity. Most beginning dieters find that the community aspect, discipline and motivation supplied with the Points Plan is an excellent way to begin. When weight loss happens and they feel comfortable with the system, then the Core Plan may be advisable.

Their website (http://www.weightwatchers.com ) contains a lot of helpful information. Your favorite recipe can be found changed to abide by the Weight Watchers guidelines. For people to busy to take time for a meeting or if a meeting is not available in you local they also have an online application of their plan.

Although Weight Watchers may not be for everybody the program can be very beneficial as it address the mental, emotional and physical health aspects of dieting. Weight loss is each individuals responsibility.

A Mediterranean Diet Recipe - Seafood Couscous Paella

Seafood Couscous Paella

Whole-wheat couscous soaks up this savory saffron-infused broth.

2 servings, 1 1/2 cups each

Active Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon fennel seed
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• Pinch of crumbled saffron threads
• 1 cup no-salt-added diced tomatoes, with juice
• 1/4 cup vegetable broth
• 4 ounces bay scallops, tough muscle removed
• 4 ounces small shrimp, (41-50 per pound), peeled and deveined
• 1/2 cup whole-wheat couscous

Preparation

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion; cook, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes. Add garlic, thyme, fennel seed, salt, pepper and saffron; cook for 20 seconds.
2. Stir in tomatoes and broth. Bring to a simmer. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 2 minutes.
3. Increase heat to medium, stir in scallops and cook, stirring occasionally, for 2 minutes. Add shrimp and cook, stirring occasionally, for 2 minutes more. Stir in couscous. Cover, remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes; fluff.

Source : http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/seafood_couscous_paella.html

What Causes Weight Gain?

Whether or not your weight changes depends on a simple rule:

Weight change = calories in - calories out

If you burn as many calories as you take in each day, there's nothing left over for storage in fat cells and weight remains the same. Eat more than you burn, though, and you end up adding fat and pounds. Many things influence what and when you eat and how many calories you burn. These turn what seems to be a straightforward pathway to excess weight into a complex journey that may start very early in life.

Genes: Some people are genetically predisposed to gain weight more easily than others or to store fat around the abdomen and chest. It's also possible that humans have a genetic drive to eat more than they need for the present in order to store energy for future. This is called the thrifty gene hypothesis. It suggests that eating extra food whenever possible helped early humans survive feast-or-famine conditions. If such thrifty genes still exist, they aren't doing us much good in an environment in which food is constantly available.

Diet: At the risk of stating the obvious, the quantity of food in your diet has a strong impact on weight. The composition of your diet, though, seems to play little role in weight—a calorie is a calorie, regardless of its source.

Physical activity: The "calories burned" part of the weight-change equation often gets short shrift. The more active you are, the more calories you burn, which means that less energy will be available for storage as fat. Exercising more also reduces the chances of developing heart disease, some types of cancer, and other chronic diseases. In other words, physical activity is a key element of weight control and health

Read more at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-weight

Raw Diet Recipe - Zucchini Pasta with Marinara Sauce

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Raw Diet Recipe - Raw Food Salad

For more free tips and ultimate guide to raw food diet, sign up for your free E-book here.

What is Raw Food Diets And Its Benefits ?

Have you heard about a Raw Food Diet? Just what is a Raw Food Diet? This diet is gaining in popularity, not just as a way to loose weight, but a change in lifestyle that helps you live a long and healthy life. I found the idea very interesting, so I did some research and the following is what I discovered.

A raw food diet, also known as a Living Food Diet, is essentially a vegan produce diet that includes fruits, nuts, vegetables and juices. This diet differs from other vegan diets in that no food is heated above 116 degrees Fahrenheit. This is important because heating food above this temperature destroys the inherent food enzymes and the majority of vitamins and minerals in the food.

The importance of raw food enzymes is that our bodies have only a limited ability to produce their own enzymes. The body produces both metabolic and digestive enzymes. The metabolic enzymes are essential to every reaction in the body. The digestive enzymes are used to breakdown the food we eat.
When you eat cooked foods, you force your body to use more of its own enzyme reserves to digest the cooked food.

Over time, and with continued eating of cooked foods, you will run out of enzymes. Eating living foods helps preserve the body's precious enzymes. On a strict Raw Food Diet you may not eat those foods that are fried, grilled, baked, steamed or processed. You may heat foods as long as the temperature does not exceed 116 degrees. Now that I understood what a raw food diet was, I wanted to know some of the benefits.

The Benefits of Living Food

There are many health benefits. Some of the benefits include weight loss, better digestion and body detoxification. This diet promotes weight loss by helping the body burn calories faster due to improved digestion. The health benefits of this diet can include a reduction in cholesterol and reduction in some of the risk of heart disease and a reduction in cancer risks. The diet is low in saturated fat, sodium and cholesterol, and high in potassium, magnesium and fiber. It is also a great way to detox the body. The diet contains no chemicals or toxins. Over time this diet will help cleanse the colon, kidneys and detoxify the liver.

What's For Dinner?

What can one eat on a Raw Food Diet? It is not only fruit and salad... Since the diet is vegan, it contains no dairy, meat or other animal products. Other than this short list, everything else is allowed in the diet as long as the food is not heated over 116 Degrees. So the diet consists of fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts, sprouts, seaweed, dried fruits, juices and seeds. If all this sounds far too "green" for you, then there is some great news.

As long as 75% of the food you eat is raw, then you can consider yourself on a Raw Food Diet. As with most everything, moderation will help you succeed. You can always try eating the living food during the day, before dinner. This program suggests raw food for breakfast and lunch, follows with a healthy, "traditional" dinner. The health benefits from eating raw food is not an all or nothing proposition.You will get health benefits from introducing more fruits and vegetables into your existing diet.

How to Get Started

If you are starting a raw food diet for weight loss, you may want to begin slowly by introducing these foods into your meal plans. Otherwise you may find the diet too difficult and give up on your diet before you see the desired results. If you do a less extreme version, like simply changing certain meals to living foods, like at breakfast and lunch, this may be all the help you need to loose a few extra pounds. This way you are changing your eating habits slowly, permanently and hopefully worry free.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3368504

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3368504

Green Tea And Weight Loss !

Weight loss may not be as hard as you thought.   A new study suggests that simply taking high doses of green tea extract may also help prevent weight gain or help weight loss in those who can't stop eating a high fat diet or typically the Western diet.

The study led by J. Bajerska of Poznan University of Life Sciences in Poznan, Poland and colleagues showed that rats on a high fat diet supplemented with 2% green tea extract, which was water soluble, for eight weeks decreased body weight gain by 5.6 percent and prevented visceral fat accumulation by 17.8 percent, compared to those not using green tea diet.  In other words, taking green tea extract may help weight loss.

In their report published in Nutrition Research, the authors say that green tea extract is associated with lots of health benefits mainly because is is able to reduce body fat and hyopcholesterolemic activities, which further reduced risk of heart disease among other things.

For the study, rats fed with a high fat diet enriched with 1.1 and 20.% green tea aqueous extract for weeks had significantly decrease atherogenic index by about 14%, but only 2% supplementation resulted in a weight loss effect, helping prevent weight gain and fat accumulation.

The downside is that green tea extract at both doses reduced the digestion of protein by about 11%, compared to controls. This is not something food consumers need to worry about because according to Dr. T Colin Campbell, a distinguished nutrition professor at Cornell University says Americans eat too much protein.  Normally, around 11% is sufficient, but Americans eat about 16%.

The researchers concluded " Green tea aqueous extract may have preventive effects on the accumulation of visceral fat but only in higher doses." That means green tea benefits now include the prevention of weight gain or helping weight loss.

Green tea extract is available as dietary supplements.  Forget those weight loss pills or weight loss supplements.  Green tea or green extract supplements  have been known for a long time to help weight loss.  They are not as cheap as wheat flour, but they are not as expensive as weight loss surgery either.

What needs to be kept in mind though are the dosage and the timing of taking the supplement.  The study found only the high dose delivered a weight loss effect.  

One previous study led by C.H. Hsu of National Yang-Ming University in Taipei, Taiwan found that taking one capsule 400 mg) three times per day for 12 weeks did not result in a signficant weight loss in women with a body mass index greater than 27 kg/m2.  The study was published in Clinical Nutrition.

It is believed that green tea extract supplements should be taken right after a meal. This practice allows green tea extract to inhibit pancreatic lipase so less fat can be picked up and utilized by the body.

Source : foodconsumer.org

How To Start The Raw Food Diet

A short video to get you started on raw food diet. Enjoy !