You’ve tried virtually every “diet” you can think of and still haven’t lost weight. Or, perhaps you’ve lost weight only to quickly gain it back. You feel like you are in a never-ending battle that you just can’t win. Does this sound familiar? Stop beating yourself over the head in frustration!
More than likely you just aren’t armed with the right information to help you be successful in reaching your weight loss goals. There are so many diet misnomers floating about that it’s easy to feel like your drowning. The first step toward success is distinguishing fact from myth and using the power of knowledge.
To help you get started on the path to permanent weight loss and healthy living, read below to learn what’s true and what’s false in the world of diet and fitness. Take the quiz below to test your knowledge and you’ll learn what it really takes to beat the scale. Read each question and answer true or false. Then read below to find out whether or not you guessed right.
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For the first time ever, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) dietary guidelines has identified sugar as a part of our diet we should limit, prompted by an overwhelmingly amount of evidence that proves high-sugar foods, such as cookies and soft drinks, not only lead to weight gain, but they often replace the foods that really need to be eaten each day to survive and thrive.
If you eat a healthy diet and meet your nutritional needs on most days, you can still enjoy guilty pleasures like a sweet dessert or an occasional sugary soda. But, keep in mind, that no matter what form of sugar you eat - from Gummi Bears to Wheaties - carbohydrates (sugars) contain 4 calories per gram, they break down to simple sugars during digestion (except for fiber which is indigestible) and are either used for immediate energy, or stored as fat!
While you need sugars in your body to keep it running, you should pick sugars that come in the form of nutrient-rich starches like whole grains. You should also eat plenty of vegetables - which do contain sugars, but do contain an abundance of valuable vitamins, minerals, and disease-fighting chemicals.
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During the dark years that followed my diving accident, I deviated from my wholesome eating habits. This deviation was partly due to my limited control over my diet, as I lived in a hospital or a group home. It was also due to my reduced health-consciousness. Largely disgusted with life, I was proportionally hedonistic and suicidal. I sought consolation in gustatory pleasure at the risk of undermining my health. To be more precise, I often overindulged my fondness for fatty and savory foods or sweet ones, with the result that I gained weight and lost my edge, that is, part of my vitality. This loss was ominous. It took a wealth of vitality to accept and overcome the difficulty of attaining happiness. The more I was devitalized and consequently weak, the more I was likely to be daunted by this difficulty.
Devitalization was the worst form of impoverishment. In a state of weakness, it was tempting to deny that happiness was possible or worth the effort and choose the easy option: idleness and carelessness or death. I never gave in to this morbid temptation, but my overindulgence in fatty and savory foods or sweet ones caused my vitality to lessen and my depression to worsen, thereby reinforcing my hedonistic and suicidal tendencies. I had entered a vicious circle, or rather a downward spiral that led to hell.
Fortunately, before it was too late, I became disgusted with my way of life, as opposed to life itself. I was less a victim of circumstances than a fool who brought about his own misery, on account of his negative attitude and self-destructive behavior. I began my uphill journey to wisdom and health.
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For everyone who’s been on a diet themselves or knows someone who’s been on a diet, you know how bland the food can be sometimes. With foods like rice cakes it’s no secret why you lose weight, if the foods taste like carboard.
For everyone who’s had this experience there is hope. You should look at the Mediterranean Diet. The Mediterranean Diet isn’t a new fad or quick loss weight scheme, in fact it’s been around for over 40 years. However it’s taken science that long to fugure out what it was and why it works. The Mediterranean is a diverse region that is made up of 16 countries along the Mediterranean Sea. Countries like France, Spain, Italy and Greece have diverse and different cultures. While the foods are different on a nutritionally level they share many similarities. They contain lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. Wine is consumed in moderate amounts daily. Eggs are consumed in moderate amounts, and foods like poultry, fish and dairy are consumed on a limited basis.
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We all know that adding fish to our diets can help increase our body’s ability to repair itself, as well as its ability to burn body fat and keep our energy up, but it’s important to choose fish that’s also going to improve your health as opposed to silently poisoning you.
Being exposed to too much mercury can cause memory loss, tremors, neurological difficulties, advanced aging, decreased immune functions, and death.
But how is all this mercury getting into our body?
Well here’s the top 4 places that contribute to the levels of mercury in our body (not in any specific order):
- Vaccines (past and present)
- Dental fillings
- The environment
- And Fish
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Recently, I was reading about a diet plan where you throw everything out of your pantry. Although this sounds like great news for the supermarkets, over the short-term, this leaves very few choices for you to actually eat.
Can you exist on salad, topped with Flax seed oil dressing, for the rest of your life?
People believe that they must pay penance for their eating sins. Dietary and exercise torture seems to be good for the conscience and the prescription of the day. How else can we explain “off the wall” diets and “extreme” exercise programs?
Whatever happened to eating in moderation and using common sense? Even if you are eating a “diet cookie,” you can’t have all you want.
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Today, there are at least 20 million people living with diabetes in America and the sad part is that it is possible to prevent and heal pre-diabetes and diabetes type 2 naturally with balanced nutrition, and basic exercise.
People at risk of getting the disease drop by a staggering 60 percent if they manage to lose just 10 pounds by following a healthy diet and engage in regular exercise such as walking, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. (May 3, 2001).
Pre-diabetes
This term means that you are at risk for getting type 2 diabetes and also heart disease.
The good news is if you have pre-diabetes you can reduce the risk of getting diabetes type 2 and even return to normal blood glucose levels if you follow the guidelines in this article.
Type 2 diabetes
Formerly called adult-onset diabetes, this is the most common form of diabetes. This form of diabetes usually begins with insulin resistance, a condition in which the body cannot use insulin properly. People can develop this type of diabetes at any age and is usually associated with today’s modern lifestyle of fast food, stress and no exercise.
Being overweight and inactive increases the chances of developing type 2 diabetes dramatically. Traditional treatment includes taking diabetes medicines, aspirin daily, and controlling blood pressure and cholesterol with prescription drugs.
But with modest weight loss and moderate daily physical activity, you can delay or even prevent type 2 diabetes and lead a normal life. Lets look at a few steps you can use straight away in your daily life that will make a big difference to your condition.
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Have exercise misconceptions prevented you from starting an exercise program? Clear up any confusion and let these exercise tips improve your workout routine. Hopefully none of these common exercise myths, mistakes and misconceptions have prevented you from working out.
1. Common Mistake: Failure to set goals. Do you exercise without a clear goal in mind? Having a clear goal set is a critical step in exercise and weight loss success. Tracking your progress in a journal will help ensure you see your improvements, will help motivate you and help you meet your ultimate goal.
2. Common Misconception: No Pain, No Gain. Pain is your body’s way of letting you know something is wrong. Do not ignore this. When you go beyond exercise and testing yourself, you will encounter physical discomfort and need to overcome it. An example of this would be training for a marathon. It is important that you have the “base training” before getting into the advance training. The base training develops the body and gets it ready for extensive training. You need to learn to “read” your body. Is the heavy breathing because you are pushing your body or could it be the beginning of a heart attack. Exercise is important. Do it correctly and you can do it for the rest of your life.
It is normal for you to hurt after you exercise, but it must be done gradually with a good amount of rest periods to allow proper healing. There are two common problems here with beginning exercisers. You can cause long lasting damage to muscles, tendons and ligaments if you work out while you are in pain, without allowing enough rest time to heal. You might find yourself in constant and long lasting pain if you do this which means that you will no longer be able to exercise.
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