I want to lose weight but have no idea where to start. What should I do?

I want to lose weight but have no idea where to start. What should I do?

Before you try to make any changes to your habits, first you need to see where you are right now. Find out what your body mass index (BMI) is. See how it compares to a healthy weight. Start keeping a record of what you eat each day and how much exercise you get.

Now people say, “Why bother? I already know what I’m eating right now!” But you really don’t. Eating is something that we do every day without really paying any attention. Once you start writing it down, you may learn things you never knew about your habits. You could be drinking five pops a day and have no idea. Taking stock of where you are now gives you a sense of what needs to change.

The next step is really important. You have to make a long-term commitment. If you’re going to change your eating and exercise habits, you won’t be done after six weeks or six months or six years. You have to decide that you’re motivated to make changes that will last for the rest of your life.

Which commercial diet books, programs, or plans really work?

Basically, almost any diet plan will work for weight loss. Go to a bookstore and buy any diet book. It will give you tips on eating less and you can lose weight. But the problem is that almost none of them work for weight loss maintenance.

If you want to lose weight, I don’t think it matters how you do it or what plan you use. But to keep it off, you will probably have to use different strategies.

I co-founded the National Weight Control Registry, which tracks about 6,000 people who have, on average, lost 70 pounds and kept it off for seven years. What we’re doing is trying to learn how these people manage to do it. What strategies really work? We’ve found some common factors. People in the Registry tend to do a lot of physical activity. They tend to eat a low-fat diet and pay attention to overall calories. They self-monitor: they weigh themselves and keep periodic food diaries. And they eat breakfast every day.

Health Action Plan to Promote Weight Loss

Effective Weight Loss Strategies, A Healthy Way to Burn Your Fats

Effective Weight Loss Strategies,  A Healthy Way to Burn Your Fats

Most women are very conscious of their diet. Some also forgot their diet because of the delicious food that they are consuming every day. With this, they get fatter and fatter unknowingly and end up looking for some shortcuts for weight loss and fat loss.

Most of these women resort and adhere to crash diets. They will not eat anymore and burden themselves of starvation. This weight loss activity is very risky for everyone. It might lead you to muscle breakdown and worse, endanger your health which will need long-term medications. That is why this kind of diet is not recommended especially by those “lose weight gurus.” Others, furthermore, burden themselves with exercise that does not fit them. In the end, these people quit leading to eat more and increase their weight.

There are many ways which you can lose fats quickly. They are very efficient weight loss activities that you can use to burn your fats. However, you have to select the right dietary programs for you and exercise for effective fat loss. With this, let me supply you with some weight loss tips that you can use and maintain without running the risk of damaging your health.

The very basic among these weight loss tips is diet. You have to eat the right food. Not all delicious food that you can find in the market is nutritious for your health. Therefore, you have to be aware of their effects in your diet. Alongside with your diet is the regular exercise. This will help you burn your fats and maintaining your exercise regularly, you can right away see good results in your weight loss activity.

Aside from the basic fat loss tips, you can also use other weight loss strategies that might be effective in your system. These are not weight loss pills. The effects of these pills might be harmful to your health. That is why you have to stick with the natural ways of burning your fats while enjoying foods that are nutritious.

Three Day Diet is one of the weight loss strategies that you can use. This is not similar to crash diet wherein you avoid eating for how many days. In this strategy you will continue to eat yet with only a small amount. This is an effective fat loss strategy for you to lose few pounds quickly. However, it needs a lot of sacrifice to do this and maintain this for three days. Yet, with your sacrifice, the result will surely be plausible.

Another weight loss strategy is Scarsdale Diet. This is for those ladies who don’t want to starve while having their fat loss diet. You just have to plan for your food which has to be full of nutritious contents. This kind of strategy will keep you full and energetic whatever endeavors you have every day.

You can also resort or use the Hollywood Diet. This kind of diet is called juice diet. For 2 or 3 days you will just drink a juice to help you to decrease your weight and burn your fats.

With all these weight loss strategies, you have to plan carefully your activities that will fit for you. In this way, you can maintain doing your fat loss journey while staying healthy and fit.

Diet Patterns Linked With Brain Health

Diet Patterns Linked With Brain Health

People With Diets High in Vitamins B, C, D, E, and Omega-3s Had Less Brain Shrinkage, Higher Scores on Thinking Tests

Dec. 28, 2011 -- Eating a diet rich in certain vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids and low in trans fats may be best for brain health, new research suggests.

Older people who ate this way had less of the brain shrinkage linked with Alzheimer's disease and scored better on mental and thinking tests than those with poorer diets.

Although previous studies have suggested that a heart-healthy diet is also good for the brain, the new study took a different approach by using blood tests to determine the participant’s diet and nutrient levels.

"The combination of the B vitamins, the antioxidants C and E, plus vitamin D was the most favorable combination of nutrients in the blood for healthy brain aging in our population," says study author Gene L. Bowman, ND, MPH, assistant professor of neurology at the Layton Aging & Alzheimer's Disease Center, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland.

Diets high in omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish, were also good for brain health.

Most unfavorable, he found, was a diet high in trans fats. Trans fats are more often found in packaged baked goods and fast foods, including cookies, crackers, and potato chips.

Diet Patterns

B vitamins are found in a variety of foods, such as milk and dairy, whole grain cereals, enriched bread, and peanut butter. Vitamin C is rich in fruits and vegetables, and E is in nuts and oils. Vitamin D is found in the flesh of fatty fish, such as salmon, and in fortified milk.

For the vitamins, omega-3s, and trans fats, Bowman found an association between diet and brain health, not cause and effect.

The study is published online in the journal Neurology.

The average age of those studied was 87. They had very few risk factors known to boost the risk of memory and thinking problems, such as diabetes or high blood pressure.

Besides the blood tests, the men and women were given memory and thinking skills tests. Forty-two had MRI scans to measure brain volume. Decreased brain volume has been linked with declines in thinking ability associated with Alzheimer's disease. The researchers evaluated how much of the risk of declining mental abilities could be attributed to diet and how much to other factors, such as age or high blood pressure.

Brain Health

The team looked at 30 different nutrient biomarkers. Those most consistently linked to brain health were the vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids, and trans fats.

The declines in mental and thinking ability were attributable more to age and other risk factors, but diet did seem to play a role. For the variation found in the tests of mental and thinking abilities, Bowman's team found risk factors such as age explained about 46% of the variation. Diet explained less, about 17%, Bowman says.

For the variation in brain volume, diet seems to matter as much as the other risk factors. Diet explained about 37% of the variation, he says. The other risk factors explained about another 40%.

The study was looking just at one point in time, Bowman says, which is a limitation of the study. "We can't say these patterns predict rate of change over time."

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Practicing Mindful Eating at Restaurants Helps Weight Loss

Practicing Mindful Eating at Restaurants Helps Weight Loss

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 Focusing on the eating experience and the food in front of you may be one key to losing weight while eating out frequently at restaurants.

A new study shows that older women who practiced mindful restaurant eating lost an average of nearly 4 pounds in six weeks, even though they were only trying to maintain their weight.

Women who practiced mindful eating at restaurants also ate fewer calories and fat grams per day and were better able to stick to their weight management goals.

 Weight Loss

Researchers say preventing weight gain that can lead to obesity, especially around the waistline, is important in reducing the risk of heart disease and diabetes in older women as they approach menopause, when these risks increase.

“For those individuals who eat out frequently, developing the skills needed to eat out without gaining weight from the excess calories typically consumed at restaurants may be essential to long-term health,” says researcher Gayle M. Timmerman, PhD, RN, of the University of Texas at Austin, in a news release.

In the study, published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, researchers looked at the effects of a mindful restaurant-eating program on weight among women 40 to 59 years old who ate out at least three times a week. About half of the 35 women in the study participated in a six-week mindful eating trial focused on preventing weight gain, and the other half acted as a comparison group.

The mindful eating program consisted of six weekly, two-hour small group sessions that included:

Discussion of general principles of weight management Working out weekly personal weight goals Planning meals at favorite restaurants using calorie and fat information Learning how to visualize portion sizes

The women were also instructed in the practice of mindful eating meditation. The two key aspects were:

Focusing on awareness of the sight, smell, and texture of the eating experience to maximize enjoyment and increase satisfaction with smaller portion sizes.A series of guided mindfulness meditations to foster relaxation and focus awareness on hunger, taste, stomach fullness, and eating triggers. For example, one meditation had participants explore their fullness before and after drinking a bottle of water.

At the end of the six-week study, the women who practiced mindful eating lost an average of 3.7 pounds, while the comparison group didn’t have any significant weight loss.

In addition, the mindful eating group reduced their daily calorie intake by about 297 calories. But researchers say only about 124 of that calorie reduction was accounted for during eating out, which indicates fewer calories were also eaten at home. ?

Researchers say the number of times that the women ate out at restaurants did not change during the study. That means the women who practiced mindful eating were able to better manage their weight while continuing their usual eating out habits.

They say the study highlights the importance of developing creative solutions to preventing weight gain by learning skills to manage calorie intake in the high-risk restaurant environment.

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Learn How to Find the Right Diet For You

Learn How to Find the Right Diet For You



Sticking to a diet until you lose all the weight that you need to lose can be difficult. Part of the difficulty comes from not finding a diet that works well for your lifestyle and part of it comes from not having the right mindset or motivation necessary to stick to a diet. In this article we are going to talk about the things you should consider when looking for the right diet, and the ways that you can motivate yourself to stick to the diet and finally lose that weight.


Finding the Right Plan


One of the ways that you can ensure that you will stick to a diet plan is to find a diet plan that works well for you. Some people lose more weight if they eat a vegetarian diet. Others lose more weight if they eat a low carb diet. The reason for this is because everyone is different and our bodies react differently to different types of food. When choosing a new diet plan you also want to find one that you:
* Will understand how to use
* Will be able to figure out how it works
* Can afford to follow
* Are allowed to indulge every now and again without quitting
* Understand the restrictions and are able to deal with them.
The right diet plan is a key component in how to stick to a diet. Without the right plan, your body and mind won’t accept the changes. To be realistic, focus on choosing a healthy diet plan, not a fad diet. Healthy diet plans can carry you through over the long haul and help you avoid yo-yo dieting. Those lose-it-now-gain-it-right-back swings are not good for your health and they make it hard to motivate yourself to continue.
Making It Work
Every dieter is different. However, the following can help you to learn how to diet effectively in most situations.

Weight Loss Retreat!

1. Motivation is very important. People do not diet for the heck of it. They go on a diet because they want to lose weight for their wedding day or their high school reunion. They use that as their motivation to lose weight. Unfortunately that is not the type of motivation we are talking about because that is not effective long term. What happens in those situations is that they lose weight for the great event and the next day they go back to their old eating habits and gain it all back. The motivation we are talking about is some sort of reward for losing the weight. Perhaps a new pair of jeans that you will only be able to fit into if you keep the weight off. Or the fact that you will feel so much better about yourself once you lose weight and keep it off. Think about your motivation.
2. Set some goals and stick to them. For example, instead of telling yourself that your goal is to lose 50 pounds why not break your goal down into smaller amounts. Start with losing that first 5 pounds. Then another 5 pounds and so on. Some people assign a timeframe to each goal, but that doesn’t work for everyone. You need to set goals that you can achieve and that make you feel good about yourself.
3. Eat consciously. When you eat, do so because you are hungry and need the nourishment. Don’t eat because you are bored or because it is a habit to do so. Eat when you need to and be aware of what you are eating. Each time you reach for food, ask yourself if this is the best choice for you.
You may have bad memories of the last time you dieted. Sticking to your diet was frustrating and so you gave up. This time make a pact with yourself that you are going to find a diet that you can stick to and work with. Find new foods to eat that are healthy and low in sugar and carbs. Re-think your snacks so that they are more satisfying and do not trigger sugar cravings. Remember this is a new way of living for you, not just a diet.


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Can I use a Popular Program and Add Green Tea to Further Enhance Weight Loss?

Can I use a Popular Program and Add Green Tea to Further Enhance Weight Loss?


Weight loss benefits of green tea are no secret today. Recent studies and research have established that it has properties which help to boost the metabolic rate of the body which in turn accelerates fat and calorie burning process. However, green tea weight loss is not magic. You cannot consume 5000 calories per day and expect green tea to wash it all down. Green tea is an essential element of a balanced diet and workout regime, which all together go hand in hand in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Below is a brief about three popular diet programs that can help you achieve your weight loss goals along with green tea.

Weight Loss,Green Tea

Nutrisystem is an online diet program that provides balanced and nutritious diet plans. These plans are customized according to individual needs of the customers who can choose from over 120 food items. The basic premise of this program is to achieve weight loss through five to six portion controlled meals a day, which enables the body to burn calories faster. You can use your Nutrisystem discount code to enroll for this diet program and supplement it with four to five cups of green tea a day which can help you burn 60- 70 extra calories, without putting in anything extra.


Medifast is another very popular diet program. It basically aims and replacing five meals a day with low carb and high protein meals which are designed by the diet program under supervision of its qualified dieticians. Calorie intake is restricted to 800 to 1000 calories a day. This helps in achieving quick and actual fat loss. Customers can lose up to two to five pounds a week. Supplement this diet program along with green tea weight loss and switch over to a healthy lifestyle. You can make use of Medifast coupon codes to get attractive discounts on this diet program.

Weight Loss Program

If you are looking for a goal oriented weight loss program, then Diet to go program can be an effective one. Program counselors first understand the customer’s weight loss goals and design a diet plan accordingly. The meals on the diet plan are low in calories and high on nutritional content. Dieters can drop up to two to four pounds a week. A combination of? green tea and Diet to go program? can help you to work towards reaching your ideal weight and Diet to go coupon is the best way to sign up for this program .


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What Kind Of Dieter Are You?

What Kind Of Dieter Are You?

Diet,Weight Loss Program

Everyday it seems, we hear stories about people who joined a weight loss program, lost weight and look great! Before and after photographs provide dramatic proof that yes, these programs do work. But how do you decide which weight loss program is best for you, and make it work?


First, you have to remember that the aim of a weight loss program is to take weight off and KEEP IT OFF. Yo-yo dieting puts stress on your body that can make losing weight harder and harder and packing it back on far too easy. It’s important to choose a diet plan that will help you make changes to your eating habits that will last a lifetime.


If you’re a yo-yo dieter, you probably have a history of swinging between very restrictive diets and then returning to ‘normal’ eating once you’ve lost the weight that you need to lose. You’ve proved that you have willpower now what you need is re-education. Instead of choosing a strict regimen that you’ll abandon when the diet is done, commit to following the recommendations for healthy eating from the USDA, and add half an hour of exercise to your daily routing five times a week. You’ll establish healthy habits that will take off the pounds ? and help you keep them off forever.


Secondly, decide just how much help you need. What motivates you? Are you a private person by nature, or do you do best with a lot of social support? Are you a strong-willed person who can decide to do something and ‘just do it’, or will you need help overcoming temptation?


If you thrive on social motivation, joining a weight loss program like Weight Watchers or TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) might be the best option for you. You’ll have social support, motivational rewards and weekly check-ins to help you stay on track and give you goals to aim for.


Next, do you do best with regimented, strict instructions that tell you exactly what you should do step by step, or are you happiest and more comfortable with a little flexibility?


If you do best when you have strict guidelines to follow and like routines, then look for a diet that gives you daily menus with precise measurements and foods to eat. While that may feel restrictive to many people, the trick is to do what works for you. In fact, once you reach your target weight, you can subscribe to a healthy eating or living magazine that has daily menus.


If restrictive diets and inflexible menus aren’t for you, then try a diet that gives you the option of mixing and matching your meals within certain parameters. Whether you count carbs, calories or exchanges, a diet like the Atkins, Weight Watchers or the Zone diet gives you some flexibility within the prescribed ‘allowed foods’.


Finally, how much weight do you have to lose? How long have you been trying to lose it? Will quick results keep you motivated, or is slow-and-steady progress all you really need?


Try a Quick-start with the Atkins diet to strip off the early weight ? a lot of it water weight ? quickly so that you will see results immediately. When your results from such restrictive eating are slow, pick up the activity by adding a little more exercise and vary your diet a little ? but count your calories and carbs. Aim for a steady 1-2 pounds per week, but if you need an extra boost, drop back to a more restrictive pattern to give your metabolism a little kick. The trick is to never stay with an extremely low calorie diet long enough to slow your metabolism. Just drop down and pick up the activity level long enough to wake yourself up again.


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Healthy Snacks from Snackhealthy Helps People Make Smarter Snacking Choices

Healthy Snacks from Snackhealthy Helps People Make Smarter Snacking Choices

Weight Loss

In this day and age of fast food, and convenience, and “I gotta have it now” without much effort other than to get it to one’s mouth to eat, we have a society in the USA that is conditioned to want and need it fast and easy. Like the commercial, “It’s my money, and I want it now!” It ran for months during the summertime all other the place here in Los Angeles where I live and the commercial had to deal with getting a refinance for cash in one’s pocket ? something like that. Anyway, I couldn’t stand the commercial because it depicted adults acting like little crying babies, and whining if they didn’t get their way. I was disgusting to say the least.
I know from first hand experience what it’s like to live in a city based on total and ultimate convenience, because here in Los Angeles, there is practically a convenient store and gas station with a mini-mart on every corner, and this isn’t an exaggeration. Prices are high on just about every item and most stores only have a few specials to get people in the door, then it’s “mark up to the max” time after they have customers coming in again and again for their “junk food” snacks, and fast food garbage.
The convenient stores and the fast food restaurants know it is just a matter of conditioning and getting consumers to develop a habit that they take full advantage of, and that is conditioning customers to think of them first for their “junk food” fix to satisfy their craving like a drug addict would for drugs, and to get them conditioned and in the habit of automatically going to their establishment and buying.
Processed foods are full of the Dr. “feel good” carbohydrates, and ingredients that are anything but natural and good for you and that satisfy your “must have” carb, and sugar “fix”. Again, just like a “drug dealer” gets customers. Get them “hooked” on a certain substance and the rest takes care of itself, and they keep coming back again and again, because after all, they need it now, and it’s a “must have” or they will go through “junk food” withdrawals. That’s where Snackhealthy comes in, and to the rescue. Show people the light and the way to get some of the much unwanted fat, bad carbs and calories out of their eating habits simply by substituting healthy gluten and soy free snacks into their current snacking routine.
From my research, this isn’t that hard, and you are just trying to get people that are already conditioned to eat unhealthy snacks, to make a slight change and make much healthier and wiser snacking choices. In other words, the “friction” is at a minimum and so the chances of someone making the choice go up dramatically. The health and wellness industry is huge, but don’t let that blind you into thinking most people are “into” health and wellness when just the opposite is true, and this isn’t just me speaking. The obesity problem among adults and children is so great even Mrs. Obama is speaking out about it, and speaking all other the place about better food choices, even to the point of making dramatic changes in what is being served in our Nation’s schools.
Again, one very simple and easy change that doesn’t change most people’s eating habits is, just to snack healthier and it’s a great small step in the right direction. Because a wise man once told me, inch by inch, life is a sinch, yard by yard life is hard, so start snacking healthy today, and share the knowledge with your friends, family and business associates still snacking the unhealthy way for a quick burst of energy, only to have their energy levels crashing down 20 to 30 minutes later.
In other words, don’t try to change people, that’s their duty, just show them a better way to do things without having to change much if anything they do. Like snacking, most people eat snacks that are way too full of processed sugars, high fructose corn syrup and other junk. Go figure why they sell the junk snacks to you like “junk dealers”. Now get wise to it, and do something about it without having to change much. Simply switch to healthy gluten and soy free snacks from Snackhealthy and look and feel your best knowing your are snacking healthy.
Again, don’t try to change people dramatically with a supplement, and a weight loss program. Most don’t want it, and really don’t care from my experience, but most people from what I’ve found do snack a lot, because when you are working out, you need to eat right and every two to three hours to grow muscle, and snacking is a big part of the routine. Plus Snackhealthy is simple, just open the healthy snack and eat it, and most people can relate to that, because after all, they are already snacking in between meals and don’t have to change their behavior. Thus, no behavior modification needed.


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Positive Points to Aid in Your Workouts

As you know, it’s good for your health to have a regular exercise program, but it’s equally important to get the most benefit out of your training. As you know, you may not be getting the same results as someone else who visits your same health club. There’s not a lot you can do to change your genetics, which plays a part in how your body responds to training, but you can do a lot to make sure the exercise time you spend gives you the best results. We’ll now take a look at some of the best ways to increase the effectiveness of your workouts.

Your workout will be less like “work” and more like a good time if you have someone to train with ? like an exercise buddy. Of course, you want to make sure that both of you are really exercising and not just hanging out together, but it really can make your workouts more productive to have someone there to motivate you. You and your exercise buddy will have a better workout experience because you have someone to share your time with. You can “challenge” each other and keep each other motivated while having fun. It’ll keep you from just sitting on the patio sipping iced tea. Choose your exercise partner wisely from among your family, friends, or colleagues. Check out the horizon t101 treadmill or the total gym xls home gym. These are a great way to workout.

A useful implement for a variety of purposes is the exercise ball. These have the possibility of making your flexibility more thorough, making your abdomen stronger and expanding your spine. Most gyms have these workout balls, as well as being able to purchase them yourself. Assuming you invest in a ball made for exercising, be sure you purchase one that is the appropriate measurement for your physique. According to how tall you are, these come in three sizes for the most part. You can even do weight training exercises using a ball, which will include more muscle groups in the exercise. Sitting on the ball as you watch TV or work on your computer is one of the convenient benefits to using an exercise ball.

Your body will respond quickly and you will notice an improvement in your strength. A plateau is what occurs when your progress comes to a grinding halt, or slows way down. And that’s exactly what can happen. Even though this is common, and to be expected, it can still cause discouragement. When you haven’t exercised for a while, your body naturally responds to the new activity and rises to a new level. Your body continues to benefit from your workouts. It is just functioning on the new plateau, or fitness level.

Exercise and nutrition are the two chief components when it comes to strength and vigor. A good number of us need to exercise these areas. A lot of us try to eat a nutritious meal without following it up with a little exertion, or eat anything we desire and count on losing the calories at the gym. It is required to be mindful to each of them, in order to maintain a long lasting healthy well-being When trying to lose a few pounds, making sure that you try to eliminate fatty foods is just as important as your exercise program. If you aspire to become a body builder, it is imperative that you eat the right foods; those that will compliment vitality.

Numerous factors need to be considered as you exercise, and there are advantages if you are willing to change in order to receive better consequences. Exercise and fitness are forever being researched, so it makes sense to stay on top of current studies. Occasionally when you create a tiny modification in your routine, like switching the arrangement in which you perform particular exercises, you can observe big outcomes. Therefore make certain to concentrate on what you are feeling.