Made Better Choice Today

Real example of making better choice while eating out. Two photos are from the same place. 

I am posting them to show what worked for me at lunch time today. See the difference? 

The person I had lunch with made the choice in the upper photo and drank soda. 

I made the choice in the lower photo and drank water. We both were happy with our choices.

Remembering why we want to lose weight or maintain it, if you are already there, helps when ordering in restaurants. 

Planning what to eat and where makes it easier for me.

Guest Post: Life Style Changes to Feel Good for Life

Failure is everywhere. People are sick and in pain. This is not necessary. Let's learn how to be successful in our health. People have lost 50, 75, 100 pounds with minimal effort. They feel so good, they would never go back to old habits.

Myths: 

If I stop eating, I'll lose weight.

I have to be hungry to lose weight.

I'll never be able to have a piece of cheesecake (substitute your favorite) again.

I'll feel deprived.

I'll have to exercise 2 hours every day.

Diabetes runs in the family.

Foods are either Carbohydrates, Proteins, or Fats. Meals should have 50% Protein, 25% good carbs, and 25% fats. Monosaturated are the best.

Carbohydates:  Which are good, which are not? Rule of thumb. Don't eat the white stuff.  Also known as processed. Eat fruits and vegetables for your carbs. Avoid white flour, white sugar, white potatoes, white rice, white pasta, and white bread. Substitute whole grains, sweet potatoes, brown rice, couscous, quinoa, pasta made of spinach, bell peppers, whole wheat. Bread made of whole grains. No enriched white flour.

Why?

The white stuff is highly processed. This means it gets into your blood stream as sugar way too fast. Your blood sugar spikes. Your pancreas has to quickly release insulin to get your blood sugar back down. It goes too far down. Now you are famished!!  Quick, eat something with sugar or highly processed to get your blood sugar back up. This roller coaster is bad for your whole body- every cell. Insulin is our fat storage hormone. Spike blood sugar, release insulin, hold onto fat like a sponge holds water. This happens when we eat high Glycemic foods.

Eat Protein, good fats, and unprocessed carbohydrates.

Your blood sugar stays within a nice normal even range. Your pancreas now releases Glucagon. Glucagon   is our Fat Releasing Hormone. Your blood sugar stays in the good range. No hunger, no shakiness, no foggy thinking, and Release Fat!! This happens when we eat low Glycemic foods.

Jump Start with low Glycemic foods for five days. Sugar cravings will go away. Drink 1/2 your weight in ounces of water. Flavor the water with fruits and herbs so it's not boring. Walk 30 minutes 3 times a week. Eat low Glycemic foods every 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Nibble a little dark chocolate as a reward.

Focus on what you want, not what you don't want.

Our brains will believe whatever we tell it over and over. Say everything in the positive.

Picture yourself as your new You. Tell yourself how good you look, and how great you feel. 

     

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Guest post provided by Janice Moranz, MD.  Janice runs Albuquerque Health and Fitness MeetUp Group. The group has over 400 members. You can contact Janice at janicemoranz@comcast.net

http://www.meetup.com/Albuquerque-Health-Fitness/

Nation of Fat People?

Almost everyone seems to be on some kind of diet these days. 

Most of us want to live healthier lives, lose a little bit (or a lot) of weight, and generally feel better about the food we put into our bodies. 

After decades of portion control and counting calories we still consume lots of empty calories and are becoming a nation of fat people. 

If we don’t seriously and effectively confront it, we may become a nation of inert, unhealthy, unproductive fat people by the middle of the 21st century.

One does not need a degree in science to understand why it happens. Diet fatigue and diet failure happen for a reason. If you restrict how much we can eat you are likely to end up with the following pattern. You take a break, and start again later, take another break, start again later and so on. 

Even if lose weight, you will regain your weight or more, when you jump right back to eating “normal” (pre-diet) size meals.

Exercise is excellent for health but not that important for weight loss

While the exercise myth for weight loss still appears in high-profile initiatives like the first lady's Let's Move! Campaign, more and more individuals learn and experience that the role of exercise in weight loss has been wildly overstated. 

Message that exercise is not important in helping people lose weight is getting more support in research and in media. 

I always pointed out that exercise was good for your health. At the same time I also dared to say that exercise wasn't necessarily helping us lose weight. My simple truth that that you don’t have to exercise to lose weight was not getting me many new online friends. 

This statement was considered too controversial on some weight loss forums. It even got me banned from a website that declares that it “helps facilitate honest conversation about weight loss”. 

Can you lose weight without exercising? Of course you can. Physical activity is a minor component to the economy of weight loss. The critical component is what you eat.

We always have a choice

I did not post for a few months. It was not because I stopped caring about weight loss and healthy eating. I moved South West from jungle of tall buildings in Manhattan to a beautiful state of New Mexico.  

I want to thank all of you who contacted me to ask for help with weight loss. I want to thank you for trust and for sharing with me your challenges and successes. I know that losing weight is difficult. As soon as we stop doing what works for us, we start regaining weight.

To everybody who lost weight by using my method, I hope you remain strong and continue to live your new live style. I am proud of all of you made an effort. I am glad that I could help a little. I want to thank you for allowing me to show you that weight loss is possible without feeling hungry, without exercise, and most important without paying for any products or services.

I know that it is not popular message, because there is a huge weigh loss industry that profits from misery of people who are overweight or obese. The industry that pays bloggers and others to maintain opinion that weight loss is difficult and that one must buy products or pay for services to lose weight.

Keep doing what you are doing if it works for you. Situations and circumstances are different for all of us, but we all have something in common. Something powerful that nobody can take away from us.

We all have and always will have a choice. Choice of what we eat.  And that is the most important factor for those who have struggled or continue to struggle with weight issues.

Weight loss blog credibility

I read healthy eating and weight loss blogs every day. While some of the posts are based on personal experience or on new research, I see many that appear to be designed to generate buzz, sell products, and keep consumers “tuned in.”

Bloggers who accept ads participate in marketing. Many of those who successfully lost weight and initially started blogging to share what worked for them, choose to monetize their blogs by advertising weight loss products and services.

Most likely the ads are for the products that pay best publishing rates, not necessarily the ones that had been used by the blog owners.

How important is it for you that the person who renders weight-loss advice to you is struggling with or used to struggle with weigh issue himself?

Do you consider this factor when you assess his credibility and value of the advice received?

Food labels are confusing for a lot of people

Food manufactures and the food marketing industry are in business of enticing you into buying their products. 

They will use jargon to make you think their products are good for you. For example, a food might be fat-free, but the rest of the product might consist of ingredients that are bad for you. 

Look at the back of the product. The front contains the marketing; the back (the label) contains the facts. Food labels are confusing for a lot of people. I know that labels can be tricky, but the label is where you will learn which products are good for you and which contain ingredients you should avoid. You should be concerned with saturated and trans fats, syrups and added sugar.

Reading the labels arms you with information to make smart choices about what you eat.