One of the dangers of dieting is the ‘diet mentality’. The constant need to weigh, measure, count and account for food that most dieters feel can become an obsession with food that comes close to that experienced by someone with an eating disorder. Is it possible to lose weight without becoming obsessed with food?
Dr. David Katz, author of “The Way to Eat”, suggests a better way.
While it’s important to balance the calories you eat with the calories you burn, he says, it’s not necessary to obsess about food by counting every calorie. Instead, he suggests, focus on eating well for your health and permanent weight loss will follow.
Dr. Katz’s suggestions include replacing highly processed foods which contain added sugar, fat, starch and salt with more wholesome foods with short ingredient lists. Avoid foods with added ‘flavor enhancers’ like monosodium glutamate and high fructose corn syrup which tend to stimulate the appetite and make you want to eat even more.
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There are many benefits to juicing, especially if you prepare them yourself:
1. If drank fresh, the juice is full of live enzymes, which is helpful the body.
2. Unlike coming out from a packet, the juice is fresh and not pasteurized. Pasteurization many have its conveniences but it has resulted in nutritionally dead foods. During pasteurization, high heat is used and this destroys the vital nutrients within the juice.
3. You consume more vegetables by drinking than by eating. As you probably have experienced, it’s not always possible to eat as many vegetables as you would like. Drinking fresh vegetable juice helps take care of this problem.
4. Digestion and assimilation of the vegetable nutrients is much easier. Your body is in fact, like a juicer. When you eat a celery, your body will digest the celery by extracting the juice to get the nutrition. The fiber is eliminated via the colon and bowel movements. However, if you juice, you have already extracted the juice for the body thus making it easier for your assimilation. Nevertheless, it’s still important to eat whole vegetables and fruits because you need some amount of fiber as well.
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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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What is a calorie? The definition of a calorie is “the amount of energy, or heat it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius”. A calorie is a unit of energy that is associated with food and drink and is a measure of the energy, or heat, that food produces as your body uses it as fuel.
The first step in counting calories for your personal weight loss is to calculate how many calories you burn in a day (your total daily energy expenditure), this is the total number of calories that your body expends in 24 hours, including all activities. This is known as your maintenance level and will be the reference point (number of calories) from which to start your dieting.
The average calorie maintenance level for women in the United States is approx 2000 per day and the average for men is approx 2500 per day. These are only basic averages and are usually much higher for athletes or active individuals.
A quick and easy method to find out how many calories you require per day for weight loss and maintenance is to calculate a calorie value with a multiplier as set out below.
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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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It is a well-known fact that heart diseases and excess body weight are related. Obesity, heavy alcohol consumption and lack of activity are the main factors causing high blood pressure. Too much body fat leads to an increased risk of health problems through clogging the blood vessels with cholesterol. That is why the successful treatment of high blood pressure starts with following a diet specifically aimed at reducing high blood pressure.
If you already have high blood pressure, you cannot reverse it to low permanently. Instead, you can control your high blood pressure by taking a prescribed medication and amending your diet. Research has shown that a high blood pressure diet can effectively prevent blood pressure from rising above normal.
Today, most of our meals still contain more fat than the government recommends, and most of the vending machines and fast-food options do not meet the nutritional standards set by the U.S. government. With fast-food snacks available at every corner, it’s often hard to switch to a healthy diet.
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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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Hannah was distressed that, with all the inner work she had done on herself, she still found herself binge eating.
“There are times when I just can’t stop eating. I feel awful after, but at the time I just want another cookie and another until they are all gone. Or I’ll intend to take a few bites of ice cream out of the carton and find myself unable to stop until the whole carton is gone. I just don’t get why I’m still doing this! And it seems worse since I married Roger, even though I really love him. I just can’t figure this out!”
I asked Hannah to tune into the addicted part of her and allow that part to speak about why she needs to fill up with food.
“Well, sometimes I just feel so empty and alone inside. I just can’t stand it. The food makes me feel so much better. I don’t feel so lonely when I’m eating and filled up. But I don’t get why I feel this way. I’m not alone. I have Roger and he loves me.”
“It sounds like you want to eat when you feel alone inside, when your Inner Child - which is your feeling self - feels alone and abandoned inside.”
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