Originally uploaded by Priki
I’m back.I’ve decided to start blogging here again. I’ve had some health issues, surgery, and lots of other things going on. I’ll get into some of that later, as I feel better about talking about it publicly.To make a long story short, I’ll be blogging here again, and I hope you’ll come by and visit. I look forward to sharing with you again!
I found an interesting article over at the People’s Chemist about how certain foods (and additives) can make you eat more. It’s well worth checking out, and it definitely makes me want to check my food labels more carefully.
It also made me think about paying more attention to what I eat, how much, and when. Let me explain.
Fat free
In the article, Shane discusses how many people get tricked into thinking that fat free is good for you, when in fact that’s not really the case. Here’s an example from my own experience.
A friend of mine used to watch her fat intake religiously. This was several years ago, when it was common to read that fat, and only fat, can turn in to fat on your body. The idea was that you could eat as much as you wanted as long as it was fat free, and you’d magically not gain weight. You’d even lose weight.
I know it sounds silly now, but people believed it. She used to bring an entire bag of fat free fig newtons to work for breakfast, and eat the whole thing. And she wondered why she couldn’t lose weight.
She fell victim to what happens to a lot of people who eat any kind of “diet” food. Knowing that it’s lower calorie, lower fat, lower sugar, etc. often just encourages us to eat more of it. We feel that it doesn’t quite count so much, so it’s o.k. to have one more.
So, the best solution may be to eat “real” foods and watch your portion sizes.
However, I realize that may not always be possible. Take my husband for example. He’s diabetic, so sugar and real sweeteners are a no-no for him. He uses splenda, and when he eats desserts, they’re splenda sweetened. For him, that’s a better option that sugar. Of course, he still has to watch his portion sizes very closely!
Things to avoid
The article linked above lists some foods to avoid, like MSG and high fructose corn syrup. Here are a few others.
Again, common sense rules. Try to eat as much real, whole, fresh foods as possible. Avoid additives, processed foods, etc. If it comes from a box, you can’t recognize it, or it lasts darn near forever, you probably shouldn’t be eating it!
WebMD had an interesting article a couple days ago, Why Willpower Often Fails.
The gist of the article is this, we often over-estimate the strength of our willpower. And those who are the most confident of their ability to resist temptation are the ones who fail the most, and the worst.
If you’ve ever been on a diet, no one has to tell you that temptation often wins out over willpower. If it didn’t you wouldn’t need to keep dieting, would you? There are some things you can do to give yourself a better chance of succeeding.
So, the next time you’re faced with a situation that might cause you to fall off the wagon, take some time to build up your defenses before-hand.
If you’re like me, and you’ve been feeling a tad under-motivated lately, then here are some sites that can help you get back on track.
101 thoughts on losing 100 pounds
Lots and lots of great tips. Some are common sense, but others were surprising and insightful.
What Sugar does to your Brain
High sugar diets are just not good for you!
Blood Sugar 101
A lot of people don’t understand what diabetes is or how it works. Sadly, that applies to a lot of diabetics as well! This site has some great information.
10 Tips for Safe Outdoor Exercise
Great tips for summer exercisers.
Decade by Decade Guide to Exercise
Tips for exercising, whether you’re in your 20′s, 30′s, 40′s or beyond.
Avoid these 7 Danger Foods…
The focus is on avoiding the freshman 15, but this advice applies to anyone.
Top 10 Ways to Stay Energized
Lots of tips for keeping your energy levels high. Not strictly a diet- or fitness-related post, but useful nonetheless.
O.K., so this isn’t going so well.
I made it for about a week. We did some work over the weekend, and I spent a couple hours pulling up old carpet. That’s definitely exercise, but it also made me really sore and tired. I didn’t exercise for a couple of days, and I fell out of the rhythm of it.
Now, I’m coming down with a cold, so I doubt I’ll get back on track for a few days. It just goes to show how difficult changing your lifestyle can be! I never said I thought I’d have an easy time of it.
After I’m feeling better, I’m going to try to come up with some other method to motivate myself. Ideas?
Thanks to everyone who submitted an article. I enjoyed reading these and putting the post together. I was also pleasantly surprised at the number of participants. Many thanks. and enjoy!
Robert Galway presents More Fitness Tips posted at Robs Sports and Fitness Blog.
Robert Galway presents More Fitness Tips posted at Robs Sports and Fitness.
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Broderick Allen presents From Weight Loss to Good Health posted at Broderick Allen – Personal Growth and Creating The Life We Want.
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Katherine Bayno presents The Truth about Appesat Weight Loss Supplement posted at Chief Dietician.
Joel Riley presents Is The Lemonade Diet A Rip Off? posted at The Master Cleanse Diet.
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Joel Riley presents 3 Daily Habits To Shed Those Extra Pounds! posted at The Master Cleanse Diet.
farid presents Smoothing Wrinkles Might Be Difficult, but Preventing Them Is Easy posted at Wrinkle Advise.
Farid presents Experimenting With Acne Care Products posted at Acne Advise.
Extremebody presents Time No Longer an Excuse with Ten Minute Trainer posted at Ten Minute Trainer.
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Pick your Level: Fat to Firm Fast
The routine has good warmup and cardio. I liked the fact that you can follow beginner, intermediate or advanced exercises all along the routine without picking a particular one and sticking with it. So, you can mix any of the three levels if some exercises are easier or harder for you. The music is good without being annoying or distracting. The instructor is pleasant without having any of the creepy cheerfulness that some aerobics teachers have!
This tape does include some floor exercises for toning, which isn’t something I was really looking for. I want something that’s a bit heavier on cardio and lighter on toning, but it’s a good workout nonetheless. I haven’t made it the whole way through the tape yet, but I think it’s one I’ll use again.
I’m out of shape (who’d have guessed?), but I made it a little more than 15 minutes at the beginner level. I could have gone longer, but I wasn’t in the mood to do the floor exercises. I did some additional cardio instead and called it a night. I’m not sure if I’ll do this one again tomorrow, this time with the floor routine, or look for something heavier on cardio. I guess I’ll just see what mood I’m in.
In case you hadn’t guessed, this was my exercise routine for tonight. After two nights of Wii boxing, my poor arms will not take that again. Wow, I wouldn’t have guessed I’d get so sore so quickly!
You’ll remember that I committed to exercising daily this month. Well, that’s been going well, sorta.
We were out of town the first weekend of May, so I didn’t get started when I planned. After that, well I just procrastinated. I finally started yesterday and have exercised yesterday and today. I’ll keep the blog updated on how it’s going.
Yesterday my husband and I did about 40 minutes of Wii boxing and tennis. If you’re thinking that isn’t really exercise, I’d say that the boxing definitely is. I’m pretty competitive with that, so I work up a sweat.
Today, I did just 10 minutes of boxing. My arms are really sore from yesterday, and I was just tired. I committed to 10 minutes a day, and I also promised myself that I’d let myself off the hook once that was done, if I wanted.
I’m really not an exercise person, so I know doing this for 30 days straight will be a toughie for me. I’ve got some exercise videos to try out on netflix, the wii programs, the bowflex, and all of outdoors. I’m hoping that it will be easier if I try to keep it from getting boring!
Here are some things I’m going to do / try to keep myself on track.
And by the way, I’m STILL working on the blog carnival. I was surprised by the number of submissions, and very pleased. As soon as I’ve finished, you’ll be seeing the post.
Anyone else out there doing your own exercise habit? How is it going?
First off, one more reminder to submit your health tips articles by April 30. I’m running this as a blog carnival, so I’ll do a post with links to everyone’s submissions. Please submit yours and pass the word along as well.
I’m also prepping for my May monthly habit — exercising daily. My goal is to establish the habit of exercising every day, not necessarily get in lots of workout time. So, I’m setting a low daily goal of 10 minutes. My thought behind that is that if the goal is easy enough to achieve, I’ll experience less resistance in doing it. After all, anyone should be able to do 10 minutes of exercise, right?
I’m hoping that the habit will “stick” after doing it for a month. Only then will I work on increasing the amount of time I spend working out. For now, I’ll work out for 10 minutes and then let myself off the hook if I want to. Knowing that I can quit, guilt free, should help me build the habit.
To that end, I’ve been planning how I’ll work in the exercise. We have a bowflex that I’m getting ready for use. We also have a netflix account, and there are some exercise videos available there to watch instantly. My husband and I are going to get our bicycles ready this weekend as well.
I think it’s important to plan to change a habit. The bigger the habit change, the more advanced planning is often necessary. I’m working on being ready to kick off my habit on May 1.
Will anyone join me? If not for the exercise daily habit, then maybe there’s another you want to work on?
How many calories do you need per day?
If you’ve tried to lose weight, then you know the basic calculation; one pound is 3500 calories. So, let’s say that you want to lose one pound a week, then you cut 500 calories per day. Easy, right?
Except. How do you know how many calories you’re already eating per day? Can you safely cut more than 500, or is 500 too much to cut?
The first thing you need to know isn’t how many calories to cut. It’s how many calories you need to eat per day to maintain your current weight.
Calculate It
You can use something like the Calories per day Calculator to get an approximation. Most of these calculators will take into account your sex, age and activity level in making the estimate.
Age: In general, the older you get the fewer calories you burn.
Sex: Men will tend to burn more calories than women because of their higher muscle mass.
Activity Level: This one is obvious. Higher activity levels mean you burn more calories.
You can also get a rough estimate simply by multiplying your weight by 10.
Try a few calculators and the multiply by 10 method. You won’t get results that match exactly, but your numbers should hover around a particular range.
Observe It
This method takes longer, but I think it’s more accurate. Take a couple of weeks, maybe a month, and track everything you eat.
This method is more difficult, but it should give you a good estimate of how many calories you can eat. Compare it to the calculations you did in the first section and see how close they are.
One benefit to this method is if you have a particularly slow metabolism, you’re likely to get a more accurate result. Also, you’ll benefit from developing a habit of journaling what you eat!
Daily Calories vs. Average Daily Calories
It’s tempting to think of calories as something that you should watch from day to day, but it’s really the overall effect of your calories that matters.
We’ve all experience this, I’m sure. You eat a huge meal, weigh the next morning and find that you’ve gained a pound or two. You think that it was your binge the previous day, but that isn’t really possible, unless you ate a 7000 calorie meal! (2 pounds x 3500 calories each)
What’s more likely is that you gained some water weight from the big meal, and that it will resolve itself in a few days. OR, you’ve been eating more calories than you ought to for more than one day, and you’ve truly gained 2 pounds.
Watching your AVERAGE daily calories over a period of at least a week will let you keep things in perspective. Let’s say you plan on eating 1500 calories a day, but you have one day in the week where you ate about 2000 calories. That’s bad, right?
Not necessarily, if you were able to keep your average down around 1500. So, maybe you ate only 1400 calories for a few days to make up for the splurge. I find this way of tracking calories more realistic. It allows me to not feel as if I’ve failed when I exceed my daily goals.
Wrap Up
To sum up, this is what I’m doing.