1. Eliminate junk food

Doing your shopping on your own is the easiest way
to shop, as children and sometimes spouses are
usually the ones requesting junk food. Shopping
alone will prevent this, and ensure that you only
buy the foods you need.

2. Water or milk instead of soft drinks

You can still enjoy your favorite drinks at a
sporting event or night out, although you should
stick with the smallest size when shopping to save
money and calories. Children and even adults need
milk or milk products on a daily basis. Milk will
also help you get strong and provides calcium for
healthy bones and healthy teeth.

3. Buy fruits in quantity

When they are in season, buy fruits in quantity
and freeze any extras. You can buy several pounds
this way, and freeze extras to have them when the
fruit goes out of season. Wash the fruit well,
remove any spoiled pieces, dry thoroughly, then
freeze in plastic zipper bags.

4. Meats and beans

Meats and beans are the best sources for protein.
Lean meat is more expensive than meats with a lot
of fat. Canned beans are a great deal as well,
as they give you protein at a great price.

5. Beans as a substitute

You should use beans a substitute for meat on a
frequent occasion. There are several varieties,
so you can prepare them in a crock pot, so when
you return home they are ready to consume.

The USDA recommends eating beans at least 4 times
per week. If you experience gas after eating
beans you should try washing them, covering them
with water, bringing the water to a boil, then
draining it off and refilling the pot.

6. If you live in a coastal area or an area
where fish are around, make that an integral
part of your diet. You can catch them from the
lakes or rivers, saving money in the process.

7. Peanut butter is great for those on a budget
as it’s popular with almost everyone. You can
use it for sandwiches instead of eating hot
dogs. It does need to be refrigerated, although
bigger jars can last you for weeks.

8. You should fill up with foods that have a high
content of water. Watermelon, salads, and even
sugar free gelatin are all great examples.

Eating healthy is always something you can’t go
wrong with. You can eat healthy for just a few
bucks, which makes it perfect for those on a
budget. Now, you don’t need a lot of money to have
the lifestyle and health you’ve always wanted.

To Your Health

Clink
PPPPP

What are some of the other harmful consequences of this recession with regards to our health?  First off, the place people cut down in spending during hard times is in our daily food costs.  We stop eating out on a regular basis, start cooking more at home, and unfortunately today’s society is less skilled in culinary arts as our parents generation were so it is really easy to choose pre-prepared processed food items to comprise our meals. This can have a dangerous impact on our health and weight because as we all know, processed foods with high calories and that lack nutrition can be way cheaper and easier to prepare than even fruits and vegetables.

Secondly, with everyone caught in this quagmire of doom that I believe we talked ourselves right in to, the upbeat or positive mood necessary for exercising is just not present.  So we don’t go for our walk, we stop going to the gym, we just sit and watch the gloom on the television and we get even more depressed.

So what are we going to do about it?  Numero Uno, as i said the media and us talked ourselves right into a recession.  We can also talk ourselves right out of it.  Turn off the terrible news, stop reading the daily gloom and doom in the paper, and avoid like the plague all negative influences in our everyday life.  Adopt and force a positive outlook. Taking a walk will get you off the couch, let you enjoy this wonderful spring season, and actually relieve some of your stress.

Second, if you simply cannot boil water by yourself, buy an easy and inexpensive basic cookbook.  Cooking at home can be fun and extremely nutritional.  If you have a family then make meal preparation a fun family project.  Get back to the basics of meal planning, vegetables are really easy to cook and are great for your body, cheaper cuts of meat can be prepared in delicious recipes that rival  your favorite eating establishment.  Add a shot of grains, cheap dried beans and some fruit for dessert and you have the makings of an affordable healthier diet.

Third and last, even if you don’t have a lot of room, grow some of your own food.  Gardening is theraputic and not really hard to do.  Planting a garden and watching it grow is one of the most enjoyable activities in my life.  It may seem like a lot of work if you grow a big garden such as I do, but I am going to save a s-load of money on my grocery bill this year.  Even if you are limited on space, such as living in an apartment, you can still plant a tomato plant on the balcony and save some bucks.

Unfortunately, we became accustom to being to frivolous with our food dollar in the pre-recession era and our waist line shows the fruits of that orgy.  We can grow out of this current situation both wiser and healthier.  But in order to do so we have to take the first step towards a positive outlook on life and use this temporary inconvience to our healthier advantage.  Remember, we are the nation that was build on positive attributes and strength, not drudgery.

To your health.

Clink

I love to garden and reap the rewards of healthy, organic vegetables  that are essential to a healthy diet and consequently a healthier life.  Gardening is hard work at the beginning of the season with all the soil preparation, planting, and daily watering of the new seed beds.  I do find this spring ritual most invigorating and a few scant weeks from now when I harvest my first spinach plants, most delicious.

A diet full of organic fruits and vegetables is a sensible and healthy endeavor that all of us should try to adopt.  This is also the premise of Jordan Rubin’s  book the Maker’s Diet.  His diet plan comes solely from ancient Biblical scriptures on how God wants us to eat.  The diet and scriptures he quotes to support his diet recommend eating organic meats, fruits and vegetables that come from known clean sources.

This natural, organic approach to eating suggests that you should only eat things created by God in the way it was intended which means in its purest and most natural form. That means no processed foods or those produced with contact to hormones, pesticides or fertilizers.  What it also means is following the ancient myths about not eating pork (swine don’t chew their cud and so are unclean), not eating shellfish or catfish (because they don’t have scales).

Mr. Rubin’s book is not only about weight loss but as he puts it, is a truly holistic approach to health and wellness focusing on the four components of total health, physical health, mental health, spiritual and emotional health.  The plan includes related sections preaching how the human mind influences your body and spirit and how you must change spiritually for optimum health.

To quote the some parts of this diet:

• Eliminate your consumption of processed foods and chemicals in Phase 1. This will likely cause a reaction similar to detoxification, but this is expected and healthy
• INCREASE YOUR WATER INTAKE AND REST AS OFTEN AS YOUR BODY NEEDS.
• Remember that if you stray, you’re always only one meal away from regaining success.
• MINIMIZE OPPORTUNITIES FOR FAILURE BY AVOIDING SITUATIONS WHERE YOU CANNOT FOLLOW THE DIET.
• DON’T EAT WHEN YOU’RE ANGRY, SAD, SCARED or ANXIOUS. These emotions shut down digestion and depress your immune system.
• GET OUT IN THE SUN. Exposure to sunlight is very beneficial to your health, and can aid in balancing hormones, enhancing mood and building strong bones.

The 40 day diet prescribed by Mr. Rubin includes a modest exercise regime such as walking, rebounding and simple stretching exercise, which is better than not including exercise at all.  The recipes included in the diet plan seem balanced and sound pretty good.  Easy egg scramble for breakfast, Coconut Milk Soup for lunch, and either Cilantro-Lime Chicken Cacciatore or Wild Alaskan Salmon with Pecan Pesto for dinner just to name a few.

In all, aside from the Biblical approach to the whole thing, trying this diet is not going to be as bad for your body as the traditional low carb, low calorie diet fads we saw earlier this year.  And if Mr. Rubin’s diet brought him from the brink of death to excellent health today, it could be worth a try.  As I have always contended, a diet including good healthy fruits and vegetables is just plain good for you.  BTW Amazon has the book going for $13.59 a copy and if you subscribe to the on-line support etc. it will set you back about $5.00 a month.  For a preview of the book, mouse over to the left sidebar and click on the Amazon button.  Thanks and as always.

To your health,

Clink.

These diet fads are getting as obnoxious as internet marketing launches. My e-mail inbox this morning had every guru in the world blasting me with the most important launch in the history of the internet. And every home page I mouse to has numerous ads on how you can lose a lot of weight really fast with this new Flat Belly Diet. I really do feel like we’re truly overloaded with hype.

The Flat Belly Diet certainly over delivers in the hype department. Can you imagine a weight loss program that initially promises pound shedding results without the need for exercise? That’s what the media is touting; however in the book the author highly recommends exercise for faster results.

This diet is nothing more than a regurgitation of any of the thousand or so low calorie regimes with the misguided inclusion of the magical MUFA as the most effective belly weight loss miracle known to mankind. You can and will lose weight with any decrease in caloric intake or decrease in carbohydrates. If you reduce your 2000 calories a day to the prescribed 4 meal / 1600 calorie a day program, you are naturally going to lose weight.

The Flat Belly Diet starts you out on a grueling 4 day anti-bloat regime consisting of only a 1200 calorie a day intake along with the sassy water only liquid intake. Sassy water is water infused with lemon, cucumber, ginger and mint. That actually doesn’t sound that bad (the Drink). This jump start will allow you to lose weight pretty quick as testimonials from this diet’s fans attest.

This initial weight loss is achieved because when you limit the body’s intake of calories or carbohydrates, the body starts to burn its store of glycogen. Glycogen contains large amounts of water and by burning the glycogen in your body instead of calories or carbohydrates, you naturally lose weight by the reduction of water in your body.

The MUFA Magic

The Flat Belly Diet claims that the inclusion of a serving of MUFA every meal will magically dissolve belly fat. NOT. MUFA (Mono Unsaturated Fatty Acid) has no effect on the reduction of belly fat. They certainly didn’t find any substantiating studies to support this miracle. In fact belly fat, which is truly dangerous to your body as is all viscersal fat is actually better trimmed using basic exercise rather than any prescribed diet.

MUFA’s certainly do have their place in any diet plan. Some of the choices for this good fat in the diet are nuts, avocado, and dark chocolate. These snacks are some of the richest sources of serotonin on the planet. Serotonin is a compound we have in our brains that promotes good mood feelings and produces the satisfied feeling after we eat, i.e. feelings of satiety (fullness).

In weight loss an outside boost in serotonin levels can fake our bodies into thinking we’re full, thereby helping us with our reduced caloric intake we need to achieve the weight loss. That said I do believe that the amount of MUFA’s allowed in this diet may be in excess of the amount we need. Eating one avocado a day exceeds the recommended 10% daily intake of good fats. So inclusion of a MUFA at every meal, unless in far smaller amounts may be counter productive.

As I wrote in an earlier post, these diets may work in the short run but most always fail due to the constant chore of counting calories, or because of the way this diet will trigger your metabolism into shutting down and thus delaying weight loss after the initial spurt. Plus, these diets naturally make you feel hungry all the time and also make your body feel sluggish and tired.

Lastly, this diet is expensive, the book is $39.95 and then the online guide is around $15 a month. Save your money. Go and read my review on the Belly Off Diet which is about half the price and in comparison is more sensible because it includes a metabolism taming one day a week full calorie meal plan and includes an exercise component that works.

To your health, clink.

]]> http://fat2phatt.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=118 http://fat2phatt.com/blog/?p=118 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fat2phatt/ifIS/~3/zMT7u8b35h8/ http://fat2phatt.com/blog/?p=101#comments Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:38:01 +0000 verdeman http://fat2phatt.com/blog/?p=101 The “Belly Off” Diet

The day after Super Bowl and all the festivities, eating, and drinking that this “holiday” requires.  Did you wake up all fuzzy headed, bloated, and hoarse from cheering on your favorite team?  Did you completely blow your diet plan that we all started on New Year’s Day.  Well, I certainly fell for the rivalry and fun and now am thinking of ways to get back on track with the battle of the bulge.

It is not too remarkable that one of the hot and spicy items searched for this morning was “The Belly Off Diet”.  This diet has been featured on the Men’s Health online community since 2002.  The “Belly Off! Club” has collectively lost over 2 million pounds since it was started.  This club achieved this phenominal feat by a combination of reducing intake of refined grains and sugar, portion control, exercise, and healthier eating.

The paper back book on this diet is scheduled for release on April 28 of this year.  It is written by Jeff Csatari and the editors of Men’s Health.  Not to be confused with The Flat Belly Diet written by the editors of Prevention Magazine, this diet plan is geared towards men’s weight loss while the Flat Belly Diet is targeted towards the fair ladies.

MSN actually did a preview of both of these diet plans, go to MSN Health and Fitness and enter both diets to review.

The Belly Off Diet is a well designed plan that features three satisfying meals a day with two snacks in between.  This plan encourages a high protein breakfast, a sensible lunch and varied dinner suggestions that keep the diet interesting.  As I talked about in an earlier post, low calorie and low carb diets don’t work that well and can actually be harmful to your body.  In that particular post I explained how these types of diets trigger the body’s metabolism into shutting down the weight loss that we first enjoyed at the onset of these plans.

The Belly Off Diet addresses this diet plateau by allowing a full calorie day once a week thereby insuring no weight loss plateau and so keeps your metabolism working toward your weight loss goals.  Every Tuesday is steak night with this plan accompanied through out the week with dinners such as Tex-Mex Chicken, Broiled BBQ Pork Chops, BBQ Chicken, Spicy Fish etc.  And it allows one beer a night on certain nights. Yay!

Breakfast  is varied between eggs, oatmeal, fruits, juice and coffee, lunch is usually light and the two snacks are a combination of fruit, yogurt, nuts, and popcorn.  My earlier post entitled “Pepper your nuts” explained how a handful of spicy nuts would dramatically decrease your appetite between meals.

Go and check out the 8 week meal plan that includes a daily meal plan, a weekly shopping list, recipes for all meals, and even a dining out guide which includes over 70 different dining facilities including Chili’s, Outback Steak House, Olive Garden, and Red Lobster just to name a few.

To check it out go to http://bellyoff.menshealth.com

If you want to pre-order your copy of the paperback book go to the Amazon button in the sidebar.

To your health.

Clink!

The natural appetite suppressant

You’ve seen the commercials on TV telling you about the newest and best appetite suppressant cutely named Slim Shots.  They look like those little coffee creamer containers, are small enough to take with you to the office, on a trip or wherever you want to go.

Slim Shots have been around for several years but have only been introduced to the U.S. recently.  There has been an aggressive marketing campaign recently as you can tell with the TV hype.  Now available in vanilla flavor only but Slim Shots has said it will be coming out with a chocolate flavored version sometime in March.

Slim Shots act as a natural appetite suppressant by triggering you body’s appetite control mechanism thereby making you feel full quicker and longer.  Clinical studies have proven that Slim Shots can effectively reduce your appetite by 12 to 30 percent which makes you to eat less food without giving up some of the foods that you really enjoy.

Slim Shots are made with natural oat, palm oil, vanilla flavoring and an artificial sweetener.  (I guess their claim of all natural needs to be looked at, anything artificial is not natural).  Slim Shots contain no sugar of caffeine and so do not give you the jitters, they are not habit forming, and since they contain no animal products is user friendly for vegetarians and vegans.

It is recommended that you start out by taking one shot at breakfast and one shot at lunch time the first week. No dummy, a Slim shot, not the other kind.  After the first week you wean yourself to one Slim Shot per day in the morning.  Slim Shots contain only 20 calories per shot can be mixed in your favorite beverage of food if you don’t want your shot straight.

Of course a sensible healthy diet is the best way to lose weight or maintain your girlish figure, but if you think this might help you to curb your appetite, it probably would be worth a try.  A thirty shot package is affordably priced at $29.99 with discounts available if you purchase in bulk quantities.

If you want to try this out, mouse over to the Amazon Health Products button in the sidebar to order today.  If you are taking any medications consult your doctor before trying this or any other supplements.

Have a great one.

Clink

Well we’re three weeks into the New Year, we’ve sworn in a new president, the outlook is rosy, and everything is good.

Or is it?  The good intentions of our resolutions to lose weight this year and the shedding of pounds we have experienced in the first three weeks have simultaneously come to a screeching halt.

We have arrived at the infamous diet plateau.  Our bodies have figured out that we are trying to deceive it and it has systematically adjusted itself to counteract our deception.  It is not anything you are doing wrong.

Our bodies are very complex machines that adjust accordingly to what we try and make it do and no matter how good our intentions may be, you simply cannot fake it out.  This is the precise reason most diets will not work, this is the reason most people become discouraged and quit a diet and then re-gain the weight lost.

It really doesn’t matter what type of diet you decided to try, the results are always the same.

Low Fat – Low Calorie – High fiber Diets

As discussed last, these diets don’t work for the long term weight loss program.  The Pritikin Diet, Dr Barbara Rolls’ Volumetric Program, or any of the numerous other low fat, low calorie, high fiber diets are all doomed to fail.

The reason behind this failure is really very simple.  First of all your body needs a certain amount of fat in order to survive.  Every cell in our body needs a little fat to keep that cell healthy.

Secondly, you cannot lose weight by starving yourself and that is precisely what you are doing by cutting fat and calories from your diet.  When you deprive the body of necessary fat and calories, the body automatically adjusts your metabolism accordingly.

Your body will detect the major drop in caloric intake and lower your metabolism as a defense.  If you are accustom to a 2500 to 3000 per day calorie diet, your body is accustom to burning approximately the same amount of calories per day.  If you lower your fat and calorie intake to 1200 calories per day, your body will slow your metabolism to burn fewer calories.  You can’t win this fight no matter how hard you try.

Low Carb Diets

Low carb diets are only marginally better for weight loss than low calorie, low fat diets.  Some of the more famous Low Carbohydrate Diets are of course the Atkin’s Diet, The Sonoma Diet, and The South Beach Diet.  All of these trigger a faster weight loss initially than other diet programs. 

This initial weight loss is achieved because when you limit the bodies intake of carbohydrates, the body starts to burn its store of glycogen.  Glycogen contains large amounts of water and by burning the glycogen in your body instead of carbohydrates, you naturally lose weight by the reduction of water in your body.

The body’s adaptation to you removing carbs can be very dangerous to you in the log term.  By switching from burning carbs to burning fat at first will leave your body with less energy and you feeling weaker.  The longer term problems with the reduction of carbohydrates are that your body defensively adjusts you metabolism to a state of ketosis i.e. burning fat not glucose for energy.

The state of ketosis can, in the long run, cause your organs to start failing, increase your risk of cancer, heart disease and bone loss.  It just ain’t worth it.

Another important reason not to take on a low carb diet is that it deprives your body of many minerals, vitamins, fiber, and anti-oxidants you need to maintain a healthy life and body.

Now don’t get discouraged, there are eating/diet programs that can safely help you lose weight with out the drastic measures of the aforementioned plans.  If you change your eating habits to a varied intake program, you can and will lose weight without the problems or unhealthy consequences.

For a healthier and less intrusive plan for you and your body, go to my sister site http://fat2phatt.net for an in depth preview.

Have a great one.

Clink.

Way back in the 1950’s, when Nathan Pritikin was diagnosed with severe cardiovascular problems, he created his own diet to combat these problems. The Pritikin Diet or Pritikin Principle is based on a heart healthy low fat – high fiber diet with the added benefit of weight loss included.

Nathan founded the Pritikin Longevity Center in 1976 for the purpose of teaching folks how to plan and prepare very low fat meals that along with physical exercise and stress reduction techniques would allow for a longer and healthier life.

His son Robert has, since after his fathers death by suicide in 1985, changed the center to Pritikin Longevity Center and Spa.  The mission is predominately the same but with a renewed emphasis on the weight loss aspect and the spa like atmosphere.  The spa has been very successful and has to date helped over 100,000 people to achieve better health.

The Pritikin Diet which has a very low 10% fat content consumption is almost entirely vegetarian in nature and allows you to eat as much as you want of identified veggies, fruits and grains.  This no portion control method, combined with eating six meals a day is supposed to trick your body into thinking its full and thus you should lose the fat. (Eat fewer calories than your body burns everyday.)

This weight loss program is also based on the premise that you should eat veggies and fruits of low caloric content.  These caloric density comparisons are included in the Pritikin Principle’s more than 20 pages of caloric charts, identifying various foods and their caloric density.

The Pritikin Diet is very successful in decreasing the risk or onset of cardiovascular disease, controlling blood sugar and blood pressure along with, as said before, the added benefit of weight loss.  If you are planning on following this or any other low fat diet, it will take a very serious commitment by you especially if you are a meat lover.

Typically a low fat diet has several drawbacks that you should consider before trying them.  These include the feeling of hungriness even though you’re eating six times a day, these diets eliminate some important food groups that are necessary for optimum health, and low fat diets produce a lot of embarrassing gas.

Your body needs some fat intake to keep your metabolism in check, elimination of these fats and other nutrients not found in a low fat diet tend to trigger your body into a slower metabolic rate thereby defeating the purpose of the low fat diet.

I hope this is helpful, for a comparison of low fat diets, low calorie diets, and low carb diets check out fat loss 4 idiots on the sidebar.

Have a great one.

Clink

Stop thinking like that. Did you know that walnuts are one of the richest sources of serotonin on the planet? Serotonin is a compound we have in our brains that promotes good mood feelings and produces the satisfied feeling after we eat, i.e. feelings of satiety (fullness). The serotonin levels of our bodies tend to diminish depending on age, diet, stress, and state of mind.

In weight loss an outside boost in serotonin levels can fake our bodies into thinking were full, thereby helping us with our reduced caloric intake we need to achieve the weight loss.

That said, eat a handful of walnuts a couple of times a day to help control your food cravings.

Now spice it up a notch.

Numerous studies have shown that the addition of hot spices in your meal can increase your metabolic rate by as much as 25%. One study conducted across the pond in England showed that the addition of salsa or mustard to a meal produced this 25% increase in our bodies metabolism and the subjects that received the added spice lost weight faster that the control group that didn’t get the hot stuff.

Some great spices that can elevate our metabolic rate are:

 Cayenne pepper and cinnamon both create a thermogenic burn in
    our bodies thereby increasing this metabolic increase,

 Garlic contains allicin which reduces unhealthy fat and the bad
    cholesterol while preserving the good cholesterol,

 Chipotle pepper, the powder from smoke dried jalapenos has
    the same qualities as cayenne but adds such a great flavor.

Okay lets combine them altogether to make a great appetite suppressant that has its own metabolic energizer also.

Spicy toasted walnuts

Get yourself a bag of walnut halves

Mix together in a gallon size storage bag:

1 Tbsp Chipotle Powder
1 Tbsp Cayenne Powder
1 Tbsp Cinnamon
1 Tbsp Garlic Powder

Lay walnut halves on a sheet of foil, spray very lightly with canola oil spray, throw in to the bag of spices and shake it up.

Spread the seasoned walnuts on an ungreased cookie sheet, place in the center of a preheated 350 degree oven and toast for 7 to 10 minutes or to your preferred crispiness.

Like I said before eat just a handful of these walnuts a couple times a day to curb your appetite – enjoy.

Have a great one - clink