Showing posts with label Diet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diet. Show all posts
Millions of Americans have a constant struggle with weight – losing it, maintaining it, even a few who struggle to gain it.  The key to weight management is all wrapped up in a tiny little invisible thing called the calorie.

How many calories does this pie have in it?  How many calories did I eat today?  How many calories do I burn sitting at my desk chatting online?

If I walk a mile, will I burn enough calories to go out for drinks later?  Yes, its all about the calorie – calories eaten and calories burned every day.

How exactly are calories burned?  Well, calories are basically the measurement of how much heat, or energy, is required for your body to process the foods we eat.  So, are calories burned constantly in our bodies?

Yes, the good news is that everything your body does – every movement, every internal process, even breathing – requires a certain amount of energy, so we are always burning calories.  That being said, the number of calories burned by batting your eyelashes or picking up a fork are miniscule and are not going to help you lose or even maintain your weight.

Obviously, then, for most of us, losing weight requires a combination of reducing the number of calories we take in on a daily basis and increasing the number of calories burned by our daily activities.

If you are among the majority who work behind a desk, pushing papers and talking on the phone all day, and then are too tired to do more than a few remote-control curls in the evening, reducing your caloric intake may not be enough to reach your fitness goal.

Fortunately, there are some relatively easy ways to add to your physical activity (despite your busy schedule) and thus increase the calories burned throughout your workday.  Try taking a brisk walk on your lunch break.

At 10:30am, instead of hitting the vending machine, hit the street – walk to the corner to buy a paper or do some stretches in your office.  Wear a pedometer.  Just seeing the numbers flip on this tiny inexpensive device is psychological impetus to get moving – to walk to the other department rather than calling – just to see the numbers go up.  And with each step, you will also see a few more calories burned.


One of the biggest mistakes most people make when undertaking a new diet is to completely cut out the foods they love. This is the single biggest cause for the binging sessions that ruin a diet and, in some cases, end it all together.

It is incredibly likely that at least some of your favourite foods are high in fat, and therefore every diet in the land will tell you to forsake them. However, you should always view a diet as a lifestyle change, or you’ll spend your life yo-yoing from one weight to another. Looking at it like this, is it really possible that you’ll never touch your favourite foods, ever again? Of course not, and that’s why diets tend to fail.

The key word here is ‘moderation’. There is truly nothing wrong with having a curry on a Friday night, so long as it isn’t every Friday night. Make it a monthly event, set in the calendar, that you can look forward to. But you must be strict – if you break and indulge in a curry before that set date, the date needs to move back another four weeks.

If a calendar-strict system of operation won’t work, then perhaps altering the days on which you diet will. Try dieting 80% of the time, or put simply, on week days. Most of our socialising – and therefore, our indulgent eating – happens on the weekend anyway. So make Saturday and Sunday a diet-free zone and indulge. You aren’t going to lose weight as quickly this way, but it definitely is more conducive to building a slimmer lifestyle that you can stick with for years.

Then there are the small changes you can make to your favourite foods that keep the essential reason you enjoy them but lower the fat content. Making foods more diet friendly takes a little effort, but it’s worth it. For example, a typical English fry-up is calorie laden and would make most dieticians scream with horror. Yet with a little alteration, it might be a little heavier than salad, but it’s not in the red zone.

To begin, switch from frying or scrambling eggs to poaching. When choosing your bacon, be selective, buying cuts with as little fat as possible – then grill, not fry. You can also try microwaving bacon, which is even better, but it is something of an acquired taste. 

Switch the butter for your toast to a low fat one, grill your sausages, leave a tomato uncooked and use low-fat baked beans. Small changes, but big ones when it comes to fat content.


When it comes to weight loss, food trumps even increased activity, for its ability to dramatically affect your success or failure at achieving your weight goals. It's especially key to any longterm success at maintaining a healthy weight.

A common problem with dieters is that they believe they're doing the right thing by eating and drinking 'diet' foods or by eating things they consider to be healthy, when in fact these foods are anything but that. Truth be told, in this age of fast foods, microwaveable meals, dinner-in-a-box, preserved lunch meats, sugar-packed and artificially colored cereals, 'vitamin' flavored waters, and whatnot, most Westerners unknowingly don't even know what real food is.
They aren't telling you the truth

Trust me when I say this - no matter what the marketers tell you on TV and no matter how healthy and happy the actors look in the commercials - a processed waffle is not a healthy, smart choice for breakfast. No matter what they say, peanut butter packed with sugar and hydrogenated oils is not a good option for your kids. And no matter how many pounds lost by that one guy, eating highly processed sub sandwiches loaded with preservatives, salt, and sugar is not a smart weight loss strategy. Get my point? This is not real food. Once you learn to eat what your body is actually designed to eat, then and only then will you truly crack the code and achieve successful and permanent weight loss.

The best way to learn what real food is, is to address what it's not. Keep in mind that this is not a comprehensive list of bad foods, but it addresses some of the heavy hitters. If you want a healthy, fit body - if you want to age in such a way that you remain active and vibrant well into old age and you look younger while doing it - then avoid these fake 'foods' at all cost.
Soda

Why it's bad for you:

    One can contains as much as 10 teaspoons or more of sugar.
    Contains sodium benzoate, a DNA-damaging preservative, which can lead to cancer, Parkinson's disease and other serious ailments.
    Artificial colorings have been linked as cancer causing agents and to increased hyperactivity in children. Caramel food colorings common in popular soft drinks have been linked to diminished immune system functioning.
    Each can or bottle can contain up to 300 times the pesticides of a similar quantity of tap water.
    The chemical compound Bisphenol A (BPA), found in the linings of soda cans, is considered an endocrine disrupting chemical and is linked to cancer, altered behavior, infertility and obesity. Canada recently declared it a toxic substance.

Diet soda, diet lemonade and fruit punch powders, and basically any diet beverage period

Why it's bad for you:

    Diet soda has all the same issues as regular soda (except it doesn't contain sugar).
    However, the artificial sweeteners in diet sodas and other diet beverages have a number of serious problems. Aspartame, just one of many artifical sweeteners, is broken down by the body into formaldehyde and stored in body fat. Formaldehyde-based products are used in automobile manufacturing, plywood and carpeting adhesives, paints, explosives, and embalming. Artificial sweeteners also contain two known tumor-causing agents, formic acid and diketopiperazine.

Processed 'food'

Processed food is any food that's been altered from its natural state for either safety reasons, taste, and/or convenience. Examples include potato chips, cereal, pre-made meals and dishes found in the frozen food section of any supermarket, salad dressings, pre-packaged lunch meats, and much more. Not all processed foods are bad for you though. For example, pasteurized milk is technically a processed food, but pasteurization is actually beneficial in that it kills bacteria. There are other exceptions, and in the case of processed foods at even a natural, whole foods type market, they should still be eaten in very limited quantities and with very careful label reading. However, understand that most processed food is unworthy of being consumed at all.

Why it's bad for you:

    Often stripped of their vitamins and minerals while processed, many of these foods are then enriched with synthetic vitamins in order to give you some sort of nutritional value when you consume them. There is no scientific proof that synthetic vitamins actually provide any health benefits, and may even cause adverse reactions in some people.
    Like sodas, many processed foods contain preservatives and artificial colorings which can be downright dangerous to your health.
    Processed foods are notorious for their use of ingredients like sugar, salt, high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and simple carbohydrates - all of which are designed to not only impair your health, but make you fat. Period.

Fast food

Why it's bad for you

    Fast food is basically processed food on steroids. Full of fat, sugar and sodium, fast foods are designed to addict you to its flavors. And that it does very well, making the Western world very fat and unhappy.
    These 'foods' are chock full of preservatives and cancer-causing flavor enhancers. And that's just the tip of the iceberg lettuce in some cases. 

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