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Early New Years Resolutions Before Christmas.

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

Are you making your list of New Years Resolutions? You probably are not doing it consciously, but how many of you are thinking, oh well I can start after the holidays. Buy it now, pay later, Eat it now, lose it later.

While that sounds OK, it leaves you with two things. Extra fat to lose and more debt to pay off. If you are really serious about getting to your healthy weight, you cannot diet only when it is convenient. There is no miracle pill or exercise that will take the extra pounds off over night, nor will it keep them off.

I generally do not encourage taking supplements to lose weight. Truth is, there are some ingredients that do help you lose weight. The key word here is helps. It does not take off the extra weight, it merely helps you to take it off while you are changing your life habits. Zinc and Chromium are two essential minerals that we do not get the minimum daily does of in our daily diet. These are two ingredients in a lot of supplement. Zinc and Chromium not only give your body what it needs, but also aides the body to shed the extra weight.

To lose weight and maintain weight you have to change your eating habits, your activity habits, and your thinking habits. I am not going to list the eating changes as I have listed many of them in other posts. Basically you have to eat less, eat smarter, and drink water. You have to move more. And you have to give yourself a break. You have to change your attitude or relationship to food.

When you do get ready to make your New Years resolution, when it comes to losing weight I suggest that you make the resolution to improve your attitude about yourself, to increase your activity or exercise through the year, and to work on changing your eating habits. Make a resolution to get a good nights rest each and every night. But do not sabotage yourself by making a resolution to diet for three months to take off 50 pounds with the idea that after you reach your goal its over.

Weight maintenance is a way of life. It becomes more and more important the older you get. Just as you have to keep your mind active to maintain your mental abilities, you have to keep your body active to maintain your health, strength, movement, and weight. As your life slows, you have to adjust your eating habits.

Habits are not made in a day, nor are they changed in a day. We must work on them every day. In fact, we need to consciously continue to practice our new habits more through the holiday season so that we do not practice our old habits.

I find the holidays are filled with tons to do and not enough time to do it, which leads to grabbing food at the fast food place to save time and because it is convenient. The same habit that helped me to become overweight. Food and goodies show up every where as co-workers bring treats to work to share. Bedtime gets later and later, even though the alarm sounds at the same time every morning. Exercise routines get tossed aside as I drop in my recliner exhausted from the day.

I cannot afford to wait until New Year’s to continue on my weight loss journey. I have worked to hard to get this far. How about you?

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Tags: attitude, Changing Your Life, Christmas, diet, Eating Habits, Holidays, Life Habits, losing weight, New Years Resolution, New Years Resolutions, Supplements, Weight Loss, Weight Loss Journey, Weight Maintenance, Weight Management
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A Daily Eating Schedule to Lose Weight Fast

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

: Image via Wikipedia

When you eat is just as important in weight loss and weight maintenance as what you eat and how much you eat. We are told that a 1200-1500 calorie a day diet will allow us to lose weight. Some lucky people are larger boned or taller, so they can eat more a day. Let’s go with the lower number for an example.

The next rule pounded into us from birth is 3 meals a day. Let’s allow 300 calories per meal. That leaves 300 calories to use another time during the day. If we eat our 3 meals 8 hours apart, we can insert 3 ’snacks’ into a day of 100 calories each. Eating veggies like carrots, and fruits – lets have an apple, and a low sugar, low fat dessert will fill in the snacks and use up the other 300 calories.

What is the advantage of eating every 3-4 hours? It keeps the metabolism going and levels out the blood sugar. It also keeps us from being so hungry that we are tempted to binge. Eating smaller portions more frequently has been proved to help in weight loss, and also weight maintenance.

Have you ever tried to exercise running low on fuel? Doesn’t work too good. You don’t have the energy to put your all into the workout, and when you are done, you are so hungry you want to binge. End result, less calories burned and more calories taken in. Not the way to lose weight.

Try eating a low sugar, high fiber breakfast with a fruit or a serving of milk. 1/2 cup of fruit juice can be substituted for the fruit. A cup of coffee with non-dairy no fat creamer and sweetener if you wish, or tea if you prefer, would also be good.

Mid-morning have a multi-vitamin along with a no fat yogurt such as yo plait or dannon. The yogurt contains as your second milk portion for the day – that’s it for the dairy. Have fruit in your yogurt also.

Lunch have 2-3 oz of meat, high fiber bread or pasta 1/2 cup, and a veggie salad with non-fat dressing – 2 tablespoons. Have water or a non-sugar drink.

Mid-afternoon, chump on those veggies – carrots, cucumbers, raw squash, etc.

Supper have 3 oz of meat, a portion of starch (about the size of an egg), veggies such as broccoli, green beans, squash. Have another veggie salad if you wish.

Wait a couple hours. Have a non-fat 100 calorie bag of popcorn – spray with non-dairy butter or butter flavor spray pam. Or have a non-fat small piece of cheesecake with 2 tablespoons of non or low fat whipped cream. Or jello with or without the whipped cream. No sugar Popsicles are good.

Be sure to have 6-8 glass of of water a day. Have 20-60 minutes of activity/exercise a day. Then the most important part – get 8 hours of sleep.

Also read: 10 Elements of a Healthy Diet