Archive for the 'Weight Loss' Category

DIET IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

The word “diet”, just like all those other four-letter words, is whispered in a kind of hush.  It slips off one’s tongue reluntantly.  It stirs up feelings of dread and doom and makes one feel defeated even before one starts.  What a shame; it doesn’t have to carry so much weight or have so much power.  We, the people, need to take the reins and steer the course we intend on taking.

In reality diet is defined as the act of restricting your food intake (or your intake of particular foods) or to eat sparingly, for health reasons or to lose weight.  However, the word “diet” conjures up all sorts of things; deprivation, hunger and restrictions being just a few.

More often then not, when one discusses going on a diet, one becomes resigned to the fact that life will become unpleasant; meals will become bland and boring and eating won’t be any fun.  The word “diet”, just like all those other four-letter words, is whispered in a kind of hush.  It slips off one’s tongue reluntantly.  It stirs up feelings of dread and doom and makes one feel defeated even before one starts.  What a shame; it doesn’t have to carry so much weight or have so much power.  We, the people, need to take the reins and steer the course we intend on taking.

And while I believe that diet is a 4 letter word, I also think that the word “exercise” is just as daunting.  Personally I hate to exercise.  I know I need to move and to be active and I know that the more active I am, the more calories I will burn.  But tell me I have to exercise and I will swiftly head off in the other direction.  I don’t want to diet and I really don’t want to exercise.

That’s okay, because I know how to move and I know how to eat.  Therein lies the secret of success. 

Because I have such an aversion to diet and exercise, when it came time for me to lose those unwanted pounds that had slowly crept on (seemingly from nowhere), I had to create a plan of my own.  My plan involves eating foods that are healthy for you and adding movement to everything you do.  The best part of my plan, though, is that it allows me to eat my very favorite foods.  I don’t have to stop putting cream in my coffee, eating my favorite chocolate or having dessert.

When I finally gave in to the fact that I don’t like to go to a gym, follow an exercise video or use some expensive fancy equipment, I was able to devise a personal plan that worked for me.  I strongly believe that it will work for everyone.  It is simple, user friendly and doesn’t cost a thing!  The basis of the plan is easy; move more today than you did yesterday and give some attention to the foods you eat.  And eat in smaller portions; use a salad plate instead of a dinner plate, a dessert bowl instead of a soup bowl and eat one bite of that something you love instead of ten.  Make a consious effort and you will see results.

First of all, any movement that you make, that is more than you made the day before, will contribute to the burning of calories.  Step it up a notch; move more and burn more.  You can exaggerate your movements as you go through your normal daily activites.  Whether it is doing household chores, going to get your mail from the box or watching T.V., there is a way to incorporate more movement.  And while you might start off slowly, the more you move, the easier it becomes.  And the easier it becomes, the more you move.  It becomes a visious cycle, but one that is healthy for you and ends with the most positive of results.

When it comes to food, the first and most important necessity is to STOP EATING FAST FOODS and stop drinking sodas (drink lots of water instead)!  You can eat well, you can eat healthy and you can eat the things you love…in moderation.  I lost 45 pounds without starving myself or giving up any of the foods I find so appealing.  I was honest enough with myself to know that there were certain foods I didn’t want to do without.  If it meant I had to move a little bit more, than so be it.

Now, while I found a way to incorporate more movement into everything I do, one secret to my success is dancing.  And I was doing it way before Kirstie Alley and Janet Jackson testified that they used dance to shed the pounds.  The secret is to put on music that you love and then dance your heart out.  When I’m home alone and there’s no one there to see me make a fool out of myself, I rock the music and dance around the house like a crazy person.  It’s fun and it works!

So, in closing I’d just like to say, if you banish that four-letter word (diet) from your vocabulary, eat well, but in moderation, drink lots of water and step up your movements, you can be successful at losing those unwanted pounds.  ]

Good luck!

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Stomach Surgery An Option for the Morbidly Obese

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Stomach surgery is known under many different names with the most common being gastric bypass surgery.

Morbid obesity is a chronic health condition that affects millions of people. For a person to be classified as morbidly obese by medical standards, they must exceed ideal body weight by 100 pounds or carry enough excess body weight to cause severe health problems. While there are a wide variety of treatments available for weight loss, often these can be ineffective for patients with such severe weight issues. Of the available treatments, one that has shown promise is stomach surgery, an option for the morbidly obese that can enable substantial weight loss in cases where all other methods have failed.

This difficult health condition has serious affects on the sufferer in a variety of ways. Aside from the physical health problems that morbid obesity causes, there are social and mental health implications as well. Often, people who have morbid obesity try the traditional routes of treatment, such as diet and exercise regimens, with very little success. In fact, for most obese people, diets actually exacerbate the problem and they actually gain weight instead of losing it. If any weight loss is obtained with these methods, success is often fleeting, the extra pounds gained back over time. This cycle of weight gain and loss creates a great deal of frustration and stress, and is quite damaging to the body. Once all of the less invasive weight loss treatments have been exhausted without favorable results, physicians often suggest stomach surgery as an option for the morbidly obese as the best alternative.

While it may seem a drastic measure, surgery as an option for the morbidly obese is often much less of a risk than the serious health issues that can be caused by a severe weight problem. Hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes are very common complications for those who suffer from morbid obesity, as are respiratory problems and osteoarthritis in weight bearing joints. Bariatric surgery, or weight loss surgery, has had great success in the treatment of morbid obesity, giving many patients the means to reduce their risk of these dangerous complications.

While often extremely effective in treating severe weight problems, surgery as an option for the morbidly obese requires careful evaluation according to the circumstances of each particular patient. For this option to be successful, the patient must be willing to make a long-term commitment to better health, adhering to a solid nutrition and exercise program to aid in the process. Bariatric surgery cannot solve the problem of morbid obesity alone, but paired with a healthy lifestyle this treatment can offer promising results.

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Hypnosis 2.0 - Its The New More Effective Technology For Losing Weight

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Are you sick and tired of dieting? Do you take off 2 lbs. and gain back 5? Do you get your hopes up whenever a “miracle” diet comes along, only to find out that you still cannot beat your cravings and urges? What you really need is a diet that lets you lose weight by watching television. Do you think this is a fantasy? Keep reading.

Are you sick and tired of dieting? Do you take off 2 lbs. and gain back 5? Do you get your hopes up whenever a “miracle” diet comes along, only to find out that you still cannot beat your cravings and urges?

What you need is a diet that lets you take the weight off by sitting in front of the television. Think it’s a dream? Go on and keep reading.

You have read and probably heard the information:  We are getting fatter than ever before. From young child to old adult, the stats tell the tale: Obesity is a plague. Why?

There are numerous explanations, but here is one that I do not think you’ve heard:  We have been programmed, hypnotized–if you will–to buy and eat more and larger portions of everything, mainly junk food, sugary soft drinks and fast food.

How did this come to pass?  What could possibly have such a powerful, insidious outcome on so many millions of people?  The answer is sitting in your living room.  It’s your TV.

Yes, advertisers have slowly and intentionally hypnotized you. They sell their empty calories using the most powerful and effective marketing medium ever invented: television commercials.

Commercials are carefully crafted to entice and motivate. They can actually make your mouth water as you watch a sizzling steak being delivered to a table or a delectable candy bar being devoured by an overly happy, and athletic actor.

What is happening to you during these commercials?  You are being hypnotized!  Your mind is being programmed to want…even NEED…a candy bar of your own, right NOW!

The image on the screen is zoomed in on the candy bar so it dominates the entire television screen. You see practically every grain of processed sugar, they get so close!

And guess what? You are probably salivating right now, at this very moment, just from this description?  Your mind has conjured up images that were stored deep in your unconscious when you watched television commercials long ago. Can you see how controlling the video images on television can be? Yes, they can control even your physical reactions!

If you are familiar with hypnosis, then you know that it is the alpha level of consciousness. You pass through this dream like state of mind as you fall asleep at night. And you pass through dream like state again as you awaken in the morning. Research has established that if you watch much TV, you are in this alpha state for two-thirds of your viewing time. What can you do to overcome this indoctrination?

First, of course, you could stop watching television commercials. But what about the programming that advertisers have already embedded in your unconscious? How do you eliminate it and reprogram your thoughts? Video hypnosis made you put pounds on, and video weight loss hypnosis will present your solution.

If you have read this far and you still think that I am joking, I promise you that I am not! Video lose weight hypnosis is for real and a US Patent was granted on the methodology! Here is a semi-technical explanation of why and how it works:

The average person feels cravings and oral urges for two main reasons:

A. When a man feels tense, he feels compelled to put something into his mouth because it provides relaxation and pleasure.

B. When a person pairs eating with any other behavior, the other behavior will trigger cravings and a compulsion to eat.

Let us talk about Part “B” first. Over seventy percent of the population learns much more quickly and easily by seeing, rather then by hearing. Think about it for a moment: If you experience an urge to eat or smoke when watching TV, it is because your unconscious mind recorded the video image of either food in your hand, or a cigarette in your hand, and then associated that mental picture, with the mental picture of the television.  From that point on, every time that you watch TV, your unconscious mind flashes the mental image of the cigarette or food in your hand, and you experience cravings and urges.

So you have actually “programmed” your subconscious to make you feel cravings and urges as a “conditioned response” to watching television. The same thing happens when you eat when you watch a movie, or when you talk on the phone, etc.

Video weight loss hypnosis will erase the conditioned responses. It will reprogram your subconscious to have the television (or whatever) trigger unconscious images of you watching the television without eating.

When the video weight loss hypnosis makes you lose your unconscious image of food, then you will lose your cravings. When you see yourself in a behavior, you get a compulsion to generate that behavior. So with video lose weight hypnosis, you actually get a compulsion to reject food when you watch television.

But what about Part “A”?  Our feelings of tension are created by our thoughts. If you think offensive thoughts, you experience tension and upset. If you think cheerful thoughts, you feel happy and pleasant.

If you think an unpleasant thought while you are doing work on your computer, your mind can associate that thought with the computer.  And thereafter, when you sit down at your computer, you have a conditioned response, your mind flashes to that offensive thought and you experience the feeling of tension.

The methodologies used in video weight loss hypnosis are based on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). This technology works based on the utilization of a person’s existing thought processes instead of post-hypnotic suggestion. With Neuro-Linguistic Programming, we use the thought processes that are creating your tension and cravings, to eliminate your tension and cravings.

Video lose weight hypnosis can program your subconscious to use offensive thoughts as a trigger for relaxing thoughts. So if you start to think of something that is offensive, your unconscious will automatically change to a relaxing thought in a millisecond. You become relaxed, so there are no feelings of tension to cause you to feel oral cravings or urges.  And without an appetite to overeat, it is easy to lose weight and keep it off permanently. Medical research has proven that all of the popular diets work well. But it has also proven that most people fail with these diets because they cannot stick to them because their appetite is out of control!

(c) 2007 By Alan B. Densky. This document may be re-printed as long as it is not altered and the author’s name and clickable links are retained.

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The High Cost of Dieting

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Fad diets don’t work, and what’s more, they are expensive! Here’s how much some popular diets cost to follow for one week.

Our American culture is weight-obsessed . In fact, on any given day, 33% of adults are dieting! Chances are good that you are either on a diet today, or have been in the past. Chances are also good that you tried a special diet, lost weight initially, but eventually gained it all back again. If your dieting attempts haven’t given you the results you were hoping for, you are not alone.

This is how it is for most dieters.

If you want to lose weight, stop dieting. That is the conclusion reached by a recent study published in American Psychologist. After examining numerous studies about dieting, UCLA researchers concluded that short term weight loss (up to about 6 months) can be achieved with a variety of diets. The problem is that two-thirds of all dieters regain the weight they lost within 4 - 5 years, regardless of the diet they followed. The researchers go on to speculate that dieting success rates may actually be lower than this, due to the poor reporting methods used in many of the studies they examined.

This is especially dismal when one considers that Americans spent over $46 billion on diet products and self-help books in 2004 alone. Combine this with the fact that one-third of all Americans are overweight, and one-third are obese. That means 2 out of 3 adults in this country are above their healthy weight! Something clearly is not working.

Dieting is also very expensive.

In an article published by Forbes.com in 2005, ten of the most popular diets were examined to determine how much a dieter spent on food to follow one of these diets for a week.* Here’s how they compare:

Jenny Craig………….$137.65

NutriSystem…………..113.52

Atkins…………………..100.52

Weight Watchers……..96.64

Zone………………………92.84

Ornish……………………78.74

South Beach……………78.61

Slim Fast………………..77.73

Sugar Busters!…………69.62

Subway…………………. 68.60

*These figures were calculated based on food costs in NYC, and include start-up fees and any needed books or other materials, averaged over six months.

Pretty amazing.

The reason that these diets ultimately fail is that often the underlying causes of overeating aren’t addressed. The focus is all on counting calories, restricting fats, cutting out carbs, not eating after 7pm, or other such tactics.

If you are a veteran-dieter, think for a few minutes about the reasons why you overeat. Is it what you turn to when under stress? Do you refrain from expressing your feelings, stuffing them down with French fries and milkshakes instead? Do you have a nightly date with Ben and Jerry, a bag of Ruffles and your favorite TV program?

Reflecting on the following questions may help: How do you eat, fast or slow? Do you sit down, or do you eat on the go? Do you eat alone or with others? Do you let advertisements persuade you to eat when you are not hungry? If someone offers you something to eat that you don’t really want, do you eat it anyway to avoid hurting their feelings?

Most diets do not even begin to address these questions. Dealing with the issues behind food choices and eating can be a slow process because it takes time to establish new habits.

Dieting is not only expensive and ineffective, but recent evidence indicates it also reeks havoc on brain chemistry. Dr. Cheryl Harte and Mary Kay Grossman, RD, in their book, The Feel Good Diet, believe that frequent dieting leads to a condition they term “yo-yo brain”. From their 10 years of work with women at the Wellness Workshop in Spokane, they believe that dieting depletes the brain of neurotransmitters, the chemicals which regulate appetite and food cravings, overall mood, energy levels, metabolism and sex drive. Serotonin is probably the most well known of these neurotransmitters. Dieting causes serotonin levels to drop, resulting in fatigue, food cravings, bad moods and appetite regulation problems. In other words, yo-yo dieting causes yo-yo brain.

So if dieting doesn’t work, what does?

In her book, What to Eat, NYU professor Marion Nestle says ” The basic principles of good diets are so simple that I can summarize them in just ten words: eat less, move more, eat lots of fruits and vegetables. For additional clarification, a five-letter word modifier helps: go easy on junk foods.”

If it were only that simple.

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Hypnotherapy 2.0 - Its The New Technology For Dieting Successfully

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Have you had it with dieting? Do you take off a couple of pounds, and gain back more? Do you get your hopes up whenever a new “miracle” diet comes down the pike, only to find out that you still can’t beat your cravings and urges? What you really need is a diet that lets you lose weight by watching television. Do you think this is a fantasy? Keep reading.

Have you had it with dieting? Do you take off a couple of pounds, and gain back more? Do you get your hopes up whenever a new “miracle” diet comes down the pike, only to find out that you still can’t beat your cravings and urges?

What you need is a diet where you take the weight off by sitting and watching the television. Think it’s a fantasy? Go on and keep reading.

You have probably read and heard the information:  Society is getting fatter than any time in history. From young to old, the statistics tell the tale: Obesity is a plague. Why?

There are numerous explanations, but here is one explanation that you probably have not heard:  We have been programmed, hypnotized–if you will–to buy and devour more and larger portions of everything, mainly junk food, sugary soft drinks and fast food.

How did this take place?  What could possibly have such a controlling, insidious consequence on so many millions of people?  The answer is sitting in your living room.  It is your television.

Yes, advertisers have slowly and methodically hypnotized you. They sell their empty calories using the most potent and effective marketing medium ever invented: television commercials.

Commercials are carefully crafted to entice and motivate you. They can literally make your mouth water as you watch a sizzling steak being delivered to a table or a delectable candy bar being devoured by a happy, and shapely actor.

What is happening during these commercials?  You are being hypnotized!  Your mind is being programmed to want…even NEED…a candy bar of your own, right NOW!

The video is zoomed in on the candy bar so it dominates the entire screen. You practically see every grain of processed sugar, because they get so close!

And guess what? You are probably salivating right now, at this very moment, just from this description?  Your mind has conjured up images that were memorized deep in your unconscious when you watched commercials long ago. Can you see how powerful the video images on television can be? Yes, they can control even your physical reactions!

If you’re familiar with hypnosis, then you know that it’s the alpha level of consciousness. You pass through this dream like state of mind as you fall asleep at night. And you pass through this daydream like state again as you awaken in the morning. Research has confirmed that if you watch much television, you are in this alpha state for two-thirds of your viewing time. What can you do to overpower this programming?

First, of course, you can stop watching television commercials. But what about the programming that advertisers have already embedded in your unconscious mind? How do you delete it and reprogram your thoughts? Video hypnosis made you gain weight, and video weight loss hypnosis will present the solution to your problem.

If you have read this far and you still think that I am joking, I promise you that I’m not jesting! Video lose weight hypnosis is for real and a US Patent was granted on the methodology! Here is a semi-technical explanation of why and how it works:

The average person feels cravings and oral urges for two main reasons:

A. When a woman feels tense, she feels compelled to put something into her mouth because it provides relaxation and pleasure.

B. When you pair eating with any other behavior, the other behavior will trigger cravings and a compulsion to eat.

Let us talk about Part “B” first. Over seventy percent of our population learns much more quickly and easily by seeing, rather then by what they hear. Think about it for a moment: If you feel an urge to eat or smoke while watching television, it’s because your subconscious recorded the video image of either food in your hand, or a cigarette in your hand, and then associated that mental image, with the image of the television.  From that point on, every time that you watch TV, your subconscious flashes the mental image of the food or cigarette in your hand, and you feel cravings and urges.

So you have actually “programmed” your unconscious mind to make you feel cravings and urges as a “conditioned response” to watching television. The same thing happens when you eat while working on your computer, etc.

Video weight loss hypnosis will snuff out the conditioned responses. It will retrain your mind to have the television (or whatever) trigger unconscious images of you watching the television without eating.

When the video weight loss hypnosis makes you lose your unconscious image of food, then you will lose your urges. When you see yourself in a behavior, that gives you a compulsion to generate that behavior. With video lose weight hypnosis, you will actually get a compulsion to NOT eat - even reject food, when you watch television.

But what about Part “A”?  Our feelings of tension are created by our thoughts. If you think distressing thoughts, you feel stressed and upset. If you think cheerful thoughts, you feel happy and pleasant.

If you think a distressing thought while you are doing work on your computer, your mind can associate that thought with the computer.  And thereafter, when you sit down at your computer, you have a conditioned response, your mind flashes to that distressing thought and you experience the feeling of tension.

The methods used in video weight loss hypnosis are based on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). This technology works based on the utilization of a person’s existing thought processes instead of post-hypnotic suggestion. With NLP, we use the thought processes that are creating your problems, to eliminate your problems.

Video lose weight hypnosis can program your unconscious to use distressing thoughts as a trigger for relaxing thoughts. So if you start to think of something that is distressing, your unconscious will automatically change to a relaxing thought in a millisecond. You become relaxed, so there are no feelings of tension to cause you to feel oral cravings or urges.  And without an appetite to overeat, it’s much easier for you to lose weight and keep it off permanently. Medical research has proven that all of the popular diets work well. But it has also proven that most people fail with those diets because they cannot stick to them because their appetite is out of control!

 

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How to Obtain Natural Weight Loss

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

More and more, we are becoming a world of overweight, and even obese, people. Every time the people in a country “make progress” and start to eat the diet of industrialized nations, they start having all kinds of diseases and weight problems. Apparently, there is something about our so-called modern civilized diet which causes this. This is why many people start looking for natural weight loss help…

More and more, we are becoming a world of overweight, and even obese, people. Every time the people in a country “make progress” and start to eat the diet of industrialized nations, they start having all kinds of diseases and weight problems. Apparently, there is something about our so-called modern civilized diet which causes this. This is why many people start looking for natural weight loss help.

Most of us are told to simply eat less and exercise more. True, in our modern society we are more likely to sit for hours on end in front of a computer or tv and not get the exercise that our ancestors did in hunting and foraging for their food. But if it was as simple as just eating less and exercising more, surely by now our society would be on its way to thinner people, not with increasing numbers of overweight people. Just think of the years of low fat foods and all the ads on tv and special exercise programs in our schools. Guess it’s just not that simple.

So maybe we should look at what a more natural weight loss might be. Let’s address our diet to start with.

The food we eat today is far from what our ancestors, who did not have the diseases and obesity problems we have today, ate. They ate lean, grass-fed meats that they hunted or trapped. OK, just to be a little more exact, not all the animals they ate eat grass. Deer, for instance, are browsers and more likely to be eating broad-leafed plants and leaves on trees just like goats will as well. Even wild cattle and bison ate a varied diet of what was growing and in season as they migrated along their migration routes. We just use the term grass-fed to indicate that they did not eat industrialized grains. The meat sources of our ancestors were browsers and grazers, not grain eaters. Our cattle being grain-fed is due to the cheap grain that was available mid-last century. Grain produced marbled meat which then became the standard, though it never had been before.

Our vegetables and fruits as well are not what our ancestors ate, even a hundred hears ago. Our soils have been depleted and our fruits and vegetables just don’t have the nutritional content now that they used to have. This is why it is important to buy organic products. It takes three years of crops being grown using organic methods before they can actually be certified organic. The soil will recover some from organic practices in that time, but not totally. The soil, especially where there has been commercial crop production, just cannot recover in that little bit of time. This is why you will still need to consider some supplements to help you with your natural weight loss.

Further, even fish sources are not safe. A lot of salmon, considered one of the healthiest fish, is farm raised. They are fed grain as well and kept in quite polluted and crowded circumstances not eating the diet that made these fish so healthy at one point. Most likely you know of the pollution of our seas. That is why even wild caught fish may not be safe. The amount of mercury and PCBs in warm water fish definitely is cause for concern. You need to be careful to get wild caught salmon preferably from cold Pacific waters if you use this meat as part of your natural weight loss program.

Turning to exercise, it should be obvious by now, that after decades of aerobic exercise programs and exercising for long durations, that we have not become healthier. In fact, as stated above, our obesity rates are increasing and those exercisers now have to contend with bad knees and heart problems. It’s doubtful we could lay all that onto TV watching and computer time (though we agree that this does have an impact - look at our kids). Perhaps it’s time to look at the type of exercise.

For more natural weight loss, let’s look quickly at what our ancestors did. They exercised by hunting and migrating or traveling around from wintering spots to summer locations, whichever gave them the most food and resources depending on the time of year. So yes, walking is a good exercise. Exercise in short bursts is good as well. But for the most part, our ancestors did what they had to do to get the job done (i.e., get a deer for dinner) and then they took it easy.

Our modern day equivalent of this would be walking, as stated above, and interval training. In this interval training, you do quick bursts of intensive exercise followed by periods of lesser exercise. And the overall time of the exercise does not go on for more than about 20 minutes at most. As your ability to exercise more intensely goes up, the time can actually become less. Add to this some body weight exercises or resistance training and you have an exercise program that will help you with your natural weight loss.

So if you are wanting some natural weight loss help, look to the type of food your are eating and the type of exercise you are doing, if any. Add in the proper supplements to support your efforts and your health in getting the proper nutrients.

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2 major tips to maintain your weight loss goals

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Have you ever sabotage your weight loss efforts? What did it feel like when you ate something you knew didn’t support your weight loss goals? Cap Josue Cano will share with you 2 tips to overcome those negative feelings that bring you down and prevent you from moving forward with your weight loss goals.

I remember when I would start my week eating healthy and exercising. I would pumped and motivated focusing on what mattered most to me. As the weekend would unfold it wouldn’t be too long before I would justify to myself eating a really unhealthy meal. The pleasure of the moment distracted me from focusing on what really mattered most…and that was my fitness and weight loss goals. As you are enjoying the moment you justify to yourself that you will work out harder at the gym tomorrow. Afterwards, the feelings of guilt and contempt start to set in. To make matters worse, you don’t even go to the gym because you don’t feel good about yourself. You feel fat and you think that you are fat and veer off your goals. This type of sabotage happens all to often. There are steps that you can take to avoid this type of behavior so that you stay on top of your goals but most importantly you feel good about yourself.

What kind of glasses are you using?

Imagine that you are viewing yourself and the prescription of glasses that you are using are not the right kind. How distorted is your vision of yourself going to be? Do you really think that you will be viewing yourself with the most accuracy? Weight loss has more to do with feelings than anything else. What is important is to get the right prescription glasses so that you are viewing yourself with objectivity and not negativity. What you do is question your feelings about yourself. If you don’t like how you feel about yourself then start questioning those feelings. Are you really a bad person? Are you really a loser? Are you really that overweight? Whatever the questions may be the point is to create enough doubt about your feelings that are bringing you down that you create an eagerness within to feel better, more positive about yourself. The goal is to have a positive self reflection.

Who do you think you are: Judge Judy?

Your thoughts determine the words you’re going to say. Are you using words that are encouraging you or holding you down? When you use words that are not very encouraging you begin to judge yourself. When you label food ‘bad’ and ‘good’ when you eat ‘bad’ food then you judge yourself as a ‘bad’ person. When you label yourself as such what do you think that does to your self perception? I can tell you that it doesn’t make you feel better. Plus, it’s true that you are not a ‘bad’ person. Start believing that and it can change your outcome. Use encouraging words such as I can, I will, I am. Start saying that you are a powerful person. Start saying to yourself that you are an amazing person. Avoid words that insinuate judgment like good and bad, would, could, and should. The point is to eliminate words that bring you down and that judge you and others. Replace those words that will encourage you and increase your self perception.

It took me awhile for these words to integrate into my daily vocabulary. But by doing so, I was focusing on keeping what mattered to me most and that was feeling good about myself. As a former binge eater, I had to battle with the temptation of indulging in unhealthy foods because they taste great and bring instant pleasure. However, by delaying the gratification I was able to put away those temptations. The feeling after was so empowering because you no longer surrender to those temptations that bring you down. Food is not the enemy. There are no enemies. There are only adjustments to be made. You are in control of your emotions. It’s your responsibility to practice your choice that you have. Because you always have a choice as to how you want to experience any situation.

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Where Did The South Beach Diet Come From?

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Diet South Beach Basics

Everybody is talking about the South Beach Diet today. It is the best thing, that is happening to people who really want to lose weight yet hate dieting. This is a new program in the market. However, it is already making waves as one of the most effective weight loss programs available.

Dr Arthur Agatston has developed the South Beach Diet. This diet was initially designed for controlling the cholesterol in heart patients. This was meant to help reduce the threats of cardiac problems in people who were prone to it. However, the diet that Dr Agatston had engineered for his heart patients turned out to be an especially effective weight loss program. Since Dr Arthur Agatston was practising in a clinic in Miami South Beach, this diet was baptised as the South Beach Diet. So the question is asked, what is the South Beach Diet?

§ The South Beach Diet is an unusual diet, which concentrates on what type of carbohydrates you consume rather than stopping you from eating them.

§ Most of the diet programs would advice to eliminate all carbohydrates. However, the South Beach Diet helps you separate the good carbohydrates from the bad carbohydrates and allows you to eat to your heart’s content as long as you consume only the good carbohydrates.

§ The South Beach Diet emphasises on quality of food and stresses. The fact that if your diet is balanced and you learn to consume the right carbohydrates in the right proportions, you would be able to eat all that you wanted to eat and still loose as much as 10 pounds per fortnight.

§ The South Beach Diet allows you to eat just as you always ate - you can have three meals and two snacks. However, you should pay close attention to what goes into your mouth.

§ The good carbohydrates are meant to keep your hunger satisfied for longer period than the bad carbohydrates. The latter would promote hunger instead of satisfying it. Hence, the South Beach Diet promotes that you eat only good fats and good carbohydrates and in turn you would be able to loose weight almost effortlessly.

Many people have said that the South Beach Diet is similar to the Atkins Diet; actually it is an improved version of this successful weight loss program. What Dr Agatston concocted as a preventive for his patients have turned out into one of the most successful weight-loss programs in USA. The best thing about the South Beach Diet is that side by side with weight loss, it keeps your heart healthy and improves the insulin levels in the body.

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Five ways to stick to your diet

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Beginnings are difficult times and diets are no exception - here are five tips totally guaranteed to get you started and make sure your diet gets off the ground.

Starting a diet is a time of hope and excitement but, unfortunately for so many, it is set to turn to disappointment and regret before the month is out. To ensure that this does not happen to you, here are five ways to make sure that you stick to your diet and see it through to the end.

1. Learn how not to give upThe first few days are great -you wonder what all the fuss was about - but then it starts to get hard and finally there’s that day when you really can’t stand dieting any longer and wonder why you went into this.

OK, everyone’s been there and the main thing is not to panic. What you have to do is accept that it’s going to happen and plan for it. Say to yourself that when this day arrives you’ll try your best to stick it out but that if you give in then it’s no big deal. Just accept that you had a problem but now it is over and you are back on your diet. The next day just carry on as if nothing has happened.

2. MotivationTo keep going you need to have a goal. Find something that you want (and make sure it is something that is not food based) and set a date three or four days away. Now, say to yourself that when you get there you’ll treat yourself and, once that’s over, set a new date for another three or four days and carry on with these short goals. Remember, short goals are easier to get to than long ones that take forever but, of course, you may need to set yourself smaller rewards!

3. Learn to stay away from temptationKnowing you’re about to start a diet - you wouldn’t take a job in a chocolate factory, would you? So think about the next week or so and try to avoid temptation. In particular, if you know that you have an invitation to something that is definitely going to be a diet-buster make plans before you go.

Alternatively, if you can’t or don’t have time to plan, ensure that you are prepared to say: “Thank you”, and just take a small helping (this is what naturally slim people do). Afterwards, just carry on with your diet as if nothing had happened.

4. Variety, variety and yet more varietyOne thing guaranteed to totally torpedo a diet is the same mix of boring old food day after day after day; especially at a time when you can see all around you the food that you want and would like to eat.

So, before you even begin your diet, look over the food that you will eat and check that you can eat all, or at least, most of it and check, too, that there is a good variety. What you want is some change from one week to the next and some choice from day to day.

5. SupportAlthough last, this is really the most important part of dieting. If you can get someone or (better) a group of people to support you in your dieting then you are half way there. This really is true so, if you can, join a dieting group or, if that’s not possible, try to find someone who will diet with you or, alternatively, someone who understands what it is to diet.

If you can’t do any of these, advertise a new diet group; you will always find people in your area who want to diet as much as you do and who, like you, are looking for support.

To make sure you achieve success, follow these five tips as best you can and you will be set up to start your diet and follow it through to the end.

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Find a South Beach Recipe to Help You Lose Weight

Saturday, May 5th, 2007

South beach recipe, what are the ingedients of a south beach recipe

The South Beach diet was designed to help medical patients who were having trouble on high carbohydrate, low fat diets. These heart and diabetes patients needed help improving their health, but on standard diets, their cholesterol and insulin levels weren’t affected. Dr. Agatston, a cardiologist, developed the South Beach diet to give these patients a new option to become healthy. It was so successful that he soon consulted with a nutritionist to bring the South Beach diet to the world. This eating plan focuses on avoiding bad carbs and bad fats, but unlike most low carb diets, it doesn’t cut out all carbohydrates. High fiber carbohydrates and low cholesterol oils are considered a good part of your diet. Dieters using South Beach are encouraged to avoid carbs entirely in the first two weeks, when the greatest weight loss happens. After that, it slows down to a more normal pace, with the reintroduction of more of the good carbs. The South Beach diet is intended to be a lifestyle change, and the third stage of the diet is a maintenance phase. The South Beach diet restricts carbs for the duration, but the last phase of the diet allows a wide variety of foods. You can enjoy all your old favorites on the South Beach diet.

If you’re on the South Beach diet, and you are looking for an interesting change, or just some delicious new ideas, keep an eye out for a South Beach recipe. Whether you find it on the Internet, in the pages of magazines and cookbooks, or get them from friends, a South Beach recipe can help you prepare tasty dinners, lunches, snacks, and other meals. Try lean meats like grilled steak and chicken breast, or fresh tuna, salmon and shrimp. If you’re craving pasta, try your favorite sauce over spaghetti squash. You can try a pizza made with portabella mushrooms or eggplant instead of starchy crust, or sweet potatoes made with non-calorie sweetener. For dessert, try fruit dipped in dark chocolate, ricotta cream with lemon peel, or mini cheesecakes with Splenda and fruit. You can also combine succulent, juicy pears with the crunch of gingersnaps for a spicy treat.

The South Beach diet offers a great way for you to lose weight while still enjoying your favorite treats. Almost any food can be modified for this great new diet. Whether it’s low carb foccacia bread you crave or Tuscan grilled steak, the South Beach diet can provide. With the South Beach diet



, you can watch the pounds disappear without giving up your favorite tastes. You can find a great South Beach diet recipe to tantalize your taste buds.

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