10 Real Life Diet Tips
Are you tired of diet tips handed out by someone with apparently unlimited income and time? For some of us, it may just not be practical to spend half of our Sunday preparing carefully portioned meals for the rest of the week, or financially feasible to buy all our meals prepackaged in just the right portions. And there are those of us who cringe at the thought of weighing food to achieve 'optimal portion sizes'. Here are ten real life diet tips for the rest of us.
1. Eating out? Restaurant portions tend to be enormous, and if it's on the plate, we tend to eat it. If it's possible, order from the kid’s menu, where portions are more reasonably sized.
2. Keep healthy snacks around and easily accessible. A bowl of fruit on the kitchen table, a container of celery or carrot sticks in the refrigerator, or a couple of pop-open cans of fruit salad in your desk at work will help you grab for something healthy when those first hunger pains begin. In other words, you'll be more likely to grab something low-calorie and good for you if it's easy to eat.
3. Substitute frozen vegetables for canned. Canned veggies tend to be high in sodium, which you don't need, and low in real nutrition, which you do. Buy economy size bags with zip closures to make it easy to pour out a single serving for a meal.
4. Buy a vegetable steamer. Steaming is one of the healthiest ways to cook vegetables. The food retains nearly all of its natural nutrients instead of leaching it out into the cooking water. Even better, it makes your veggies taste great - which means you'll be more likely to eat them instead of filling up on fatty foods that pack on weight.
5. Never eat standing up. One of the easiest ways to sabotage your diet is to 'eat without thinking'. Treat eating with the respect that it deserves. Fix yourself a plate. Sit down and eat properly. You'll be less likely to just pop food into your mouth without paying attention.
6. Spread your meals out. When you eat three meals a day, your body tends to store whatever it doesn't need right that moment. By adopting a 'grazing' habit, you'll keep your metabolism working throughout the day. Have a small breakfast, a piece of fruit with crackers or toast at mid-morning, a light lunch and an 'after school snack' mid-afternoon. Just remember that you're breaking up the same amount of food into smaller meals, not ADDING more food into your daily diet.
7. Grab a fruit juice or flavored water instead of soda. Soda is nothing but empty calories. No nutrients, lots of sugar. Instead, grab a bottle of 100% fruit juice, or water flavored with a spritz of fruit.
8. Drink water. Even the FDA recommends at least 8 full 8 ounce glasses of water a day to keep your body working right. When you're dieting, you should drink even more. It's not just that full feeling - water helps your body digest foods properly and cleans out your system.
9. Can't afford a gym membership? Make a pact with friends to exercise together. Make a date at least three times a week to play volleyball, take a walk or spend half an hour doing something active.
10. Skip the potato chips. Fatty snacks fried in hydrogenated oil like potato chips contribute fat and calories and not much else. Instead, grab a handful of dried fruit or a cup of yogurt for the same amount of calories and a lot more nutritional benefit.
Dangerous Weight Loss Methods
We're all looking for the magic bullet. You know - the one that we can take and lose weight without really trying! What would you give up to be skinny? How about your health? Some of these methods of weight loss just may cost you exactly that. Before you decide that the way to lose weight is to follow one of the below regimens, take a second look. Do your research and be sure that you understand the risks.
Prescription diet pills
Amphetamines are available only by prescription, and most doctors are leery of handing them out these days. While they do suppress appetite, you learn nothing about healthy eating, don't change your eating habits and are likely to gain the weight back the moment you stop taking them. In addition, they can be habit forming. The side effects include high blood pressure, heart arrhythmia, sleeplessness, hallucinations and delusions
Ephedra
This all natural Asian herb is found in many herbal remedies and weight loss powders. It has a powerful appetite suppressant effect, but has been implicated in over 70 deaths.
Phentermine Fenfluramine-phentermine (fen-phen)
Fen-phen was a popular weight loss supplement in the 90s until it was implicated in deaths due to heart-valve damage. Phentermine alone is still sold in many weight loss aids. The side effects include headaches, dizziness, heart arrhythmia, high blood pressure and insomnia
Laxatives
One of those popular home remedies, used for purging. Regular use and abuse of laxatives can result in low potassium’s, arrhythmia and pancreatic damage
Artificial Sweeteners
Aspartame, the most commonly used artificial sweetener, has been implicated in multiple lawsuits alleging damages that include blindness, seizures and brain damage
Smoking
Afraid you'll gain weight if you quit smoking? The National Institute of Diabetes says that you'd have to gain 100-150 pounds to match the health risks you invoke by smoking. Instead, set up healthy strategies to help you deal with food cravings and put down the cigarettes.
Purging
Like laxatives, purging by forcing oneself to vomit or taking emetics can have very damaging effects on health. Depletion of nutrients like potassium and vitamins, damage to the esophagus from stomach acids, and esophageal rupture are all possible side effects
Diuretics
Taking diuretics encourages your body to rid itself of fluids - including vital electrolytes. The depletion can lead to dehydration, and cause your body to start retaining water, starting a vicious cycle. Repeated or prolonged use of diuretics can lead to kidney damage and serious electrolyte imbalances, which may result in kidney or heart failure.
Herbal Remedies
We have a tendency to equate 'herbal' with 'harmless', but say nutritionists, this isn't always the case. Remember that many medications are derived from herbs, and because of the lack of regulation, dosages of active ingredients can vary widely from one manufacturer to another. Below is a list of some of the most common ingredients found in herbal weight loss powders, along with cautions about their effects in certain conditions.
Ephedra (ma huang, ephedrine, ephedra extract, epitonin, ephdra sinica and sida cordifolia) should not be taken by people with heart, thyroid or kidney disease, or with hypertension
Cascara and Senna should not be taken by people taking diuretics (both are often found in herbal weight loss teas)
Selenium and Capsaicin should not be taken by people with bowel or digestive disorders
Kava should be avoided by people with mood disorders who are taking mood altering medication, and people with Parkinson's disease.
Gingko biloba, licorice root, and dong quay should not be taken by people who are taking blood thinners or anti-coagulants.
While weight loss is a worthwhile goal, guarding your health is an even more important one. Be sure that whatever weight loss method you choose won’t lead to other serious medical conditions.
Five Common Diet Tips That Really Work
Losing weight is a national preoccupation. I challenge anyone to turn on the television or radio, surf online or open a magazine without finding an advertisement for a weight loss product or an endorsement for a new diet or eating plan. Everyone wants to be healthy and look their best, and for possibly the first time in the last half
The current ideal of beauty is far closer to what's attainable by a 'real' person than it has been in decades. Thanks to the re
If you've been working toward that comfortable ideal body weight, chances are that you've read the same diet and weight loss tips time and time again. In some cases, it's because someone said it and it got repeated endlessly. In others, though, it's because the tip really works. Here are five of the most common diet tips that really work - and why.
Tip #1
Drink a full eight ounce glass of water 20 minutes before each meal. It's only partly because you trick your body into thinking that it's full. The real trick is in giving your body all the water that it needs. The usual recommendation is at least an 8 oz glasses of water a day. That's WATER - not soft drinks, not coffee. Just pure water. Your body needs water to maintain all its systems and to flush wastes away.
When you don't take in enough water, it starts trying to conserve it by retaining water in muscle and fat tissues. Water your body as faithfully as you would a plant, and you'll find that it starts ridding itself of excess water regularly as well. Is it just water weight? Well, yes. But that water weight is weight you don't have to carry around with you as long as you're taking in enough water for your body's needs.
Tip #2
Eat your fruits and veggies raw. Aside from the fact that raw fruits and vegetables pack more nutrition per calorie, in many cases you're actually getting LESS calories when you eat your produce raw. Especially if you generally opt for canned fruits or vegetables, there are added preservatives and flavorings that can increase calories substantially.
But there's another reason as well: your body works harder to digest raw fruits and vegetables, and that means that it uses more calories in getting all the nutrients out of it. Your body NEEDS the extra roughage present in fruit and vegetables that haven't been cooked and processed to keep it working right.
Tip #3
Eat a balanced diet. It's obviously more healthy, but will it help you lose weight? The answer is yes, and here's why. When your body lacks ANY nutrient in its daily intake, it tries to make up the difference by substituting other nutrients. The result can be false messages that you're hungry, when what your body really craves is enough of ONE particular nutrient. Eating a balanced diet provides all the nutrients your body needs in the proper proportions so that it isn't telling you it's starving.
Tip #4
Half an hour of moderate exercise five times a week. Your body uses the food it eats to produce energy for your daily activities. The more energy you use, the more of your food your body will use to fuel it. When you eat fewer calories than your body needs, it will turn to stored reserves to keep it going.
Adding one half hour of moderate exercise to your daily routine five times a week increases your body's consumption of energy. But there's more. Your body is using up calories even when you're not exercising just to maintain circulation and health in its tissues. It uses up more calories maintaining muscles than fat. As you exercise, your body is converting fat to muscle -- resulting in a higher metabolic rate as it increases its activity to keep your muscles in tone.
Tip #5
Snack between meals. Our bodies were never designed for the 3-times-a-day eating schedule we've adopted. They work round the clock, and need energy all the time. Rather than eating all your calories in three sittings, spread them out over 5 or 6. The trick is to eat smaller meals - not add more food. You'll keep your digestive system busy, and your body at full energy all day long.
A Simple Plan for Weight Loss
The math is pretty simple. One pound of fat equals 3500 calories. Want to lose a pound a week? Then you need to consume 3500 calories less per week than you use. That's about 500 calories a day. By cutting out 500 calories a day from your normal daily diet, while keeping your activity level the same, you can lose approximately one pound a week.
All right - that doesn't sound like much, especially if you're more than 25 pounds overweight. Study after study has shown, though, that those people who lose weight gradually - at a rate of 1-2 pounds per week -are far more likely to keep the weight off and maintain a normal weight for a lifetime.
So how much exactly IS 500 calories? If you're going to reduce your daily intake by 500 calories, it helps to know what you need to cut out, right? Here's how easy it is to lose 500 calories a day:
* Use milk instead of cream in your coffee. Savings? 50 calories per cup.
* Skip the butter on your baked potato. Savings? 100 calories
* Drink fruit-flavored water instead of a 16 ounce soda. Savings? 200 calories
* Skip the Big Mac and have a salad instead. A Big Mac weighs in at a whopping 460 calories. A fresh salad with a light dressing? Less than 100! Savings? 360 calories
* Pass by the bag of potato chips. An average snack size bag of chips has over 300 calories. Savings? 300 calories
* Eat your corn on the ear. A 1 cup serving of canned corn has 165 calories. An ear of corn has 85. Savings? 80 calories.
* Switch to low-fat cream cheese on your bagel. Savings? 90 calories per ounce.
* Love those fries and can't give them up? Swap the skinny fries out for thick steak-cut ones. Thin French fries absorb more oil than the thicker, meatier ones. Savings? 50 calories per 4 ounce serving
If you'd rather look at losing weight from an exercise perspective, you can also lose one pound a week by upping your activity level by 500 calories a day. How easy is that to do? Take a look:
* Take a half-hour walk around the park. Aim for a pace that's a little faster than a stroll, but not fast enough to be breathless. Burn: 160 calories.
* Get out your bike and take a ride. Tackle a few moderate hills and aim for about five miles total. Burn: 250 calories
* Go dancing - and really DANCE. The longer you're out on the floor instead of at the table drinking up high-calorie drinks, the more you'll get out of it. Dancing that makes you breathless and warms up your body will net you a nice calorie savings. Burn: 400 calories for one hour
* Swimming is great for you, and a lot of fun, too. The water resistance means you burn more calories, and you avoid the stress impact on joints from aerobics, dancing or walking. Do a few laps at a slow crawl - if you can get up to an hour you'll be doing great! Burn: 510 calories
* Get out into your garden. An hour of gardening tasks that includes bending and stretching can burn up to as many calories as a brisk walk. Burn: 250 calories.
* Play a game of tennis. Hook up with a friend for a weekly tennis game and you'll be amazed at the difference. One hour of vigorous tennis is one of the best calorie burners around. Burn: 800 calories
It’s important to keep in mind that all exercise/calorie numbers are based on a woman weighing 130 pounds. If you weigh more, you'll burn more. Want an added bonus to burning calories through exercise? When you exercise, you build muscle by converting it from fat. Three guesses which kind of body tissue burns more calories - even when you're not exercising. You got it - your body uses more energy to maintain and feed muscle than it does fat.
For best results, mix and match food savings with exercises that burn calories. Do keep in mind that eating less than 1000 calories a day for more than a few days will convince your body that it's starving and slow your metabolism. Keep calorie ranges reasonable, and consult a doctor if you want a quicker, more drastic weight loss.
