Lets say that you wanted to lose weight and instead of counting your calories every meals and watching your BMI and exercising at exactly 7:35 in the morning you decided instead that everyday you would try to add one more thing to your life that would make you healthier.

What kind of change would this make in your life?

Lets look at a list of what you could add each day that could make a big difference over time and especially compounded over time:

• One less pop a day
• One less chocolate bar a day
• One more piece of fruit
• One less car trip to the corner store or mailbox
• A better Breakfast
• Eating a really great for you snack
• Thinking about how much better you are today to your body than you were last year
• Stretching when you wake up
• Actually drinking those 8 glasses of water that you say you are already drinking
• Turning down that donut
• Drinking one less cup of coffee in the morning…or evening?
• Finding a fun hobby that you can do once a week with some other people
• Committing to some more exercise each day
• Cutting out a sugary treat in the evening

Read the rest of this entry »

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Losing weight has gotten a bad reputation. People avoid it, dread having to do it, try it and give up, and generally approach it with the idea in mind of how hard it is! But it can be much easier than that. The trick is to approach it gradually.

Don’t try to make huge changes all at once.

Make one small change at a time and give yourself some time – maybe a week or more – to get used to it. Then add on another small change. If you keep it up, which is not very hard to do, after only a few weeks you will start to notice changes in your energy, your strength, and how your clothes fit.

What kinds of things can you change? Well, we can start by remembering that weight loss or gain come from the foods you put into your body and the exercise you do with it. That gives us a lot of possibilities. One week you can add a short walk after dinner or lunch. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning my wife bought my daughter and son a couple of jump ropes, the problem was they were really long ones that are to be held by two people.

It is a snowy day today in Calgary and so of course the kids wanted to jump rope so we pushed the table aside in the living room and the kids learned to jump rope. It was tons of fun and of course pretty good exercise.

Did you know that a 160 pound person would burn 760 calories in an hour jumping rope? This is the same exercise output of running 6 miles in an hour. I am not sure how good a shape you would have to be in to do this and the coordination that you would need to jump rope for an hour but jumping rope is the speed secret for boxers and other athletes.

Jumping rope is not only good for your coordiantion but it uses the muscles in your arms, shoulders, legs and glutes and is great also for improving your balance. Another great thing about jumping rope is how easy it is to do. Nowadays with 10 foot ceilings in houses it is easy enough to jump rope indoors all winter.

Try jumping rope and see how exhausting but fun it can be as an alternative exercise for you.

Well I have to preface this post with a warning that what I am about to write about is a high fat high calories snack that anyone trying lose weight will want to always avoid.

Okay, Peanuts and raisins. This is a great snack for people that have trouble gaining weight and people that are tying to bulk up. I know that most people are not too interested in bulking up, instead they will want to lose weight. I remember back a few years working out a lot with weights and having friends that could not gain muscle trying anything to get the calories needed. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you hungry because you’re fat, or are you fat because you’re hungry? This is no chicken-or-the-egg question. To some degree, at least, you are hungry because you’re fat. You have more body area and that means greater surface to radiate heat and call for calories.

That being the case, foods which satisfy your hunger fastest will help you to cut down comfortably on your calories. Nutritionists call the hunger-satisfying properties of foods “satiety value.” Satisfying foods are those that remain longest in the stomach and small intestine, demanding the most vigorous attention from the digestive machinery.

Meat is the most satisfying of all foods, containing extractives that stimulate the stomach to highest activity. Milk ranks next to meat in satiety value; whole milk is more satisfying than skim milk. Fish is slightly less satisfying than meat because usually it contains less fat. Read the rest of this entry »

I got an email from Craig Ballantyne of Turbulence Training and today he dropped an article that he said I could reprint to my blog so here it is. The article is about all the ways that you can make sure that you do not gain any weight this holiday season. I hope you learn some tips from it.

By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining.com

I was at a big event last week and was reminded how important it is to have strategies for this season of high-calorie parties and busy schedules. But I get ticked off by the tired old suggestions you find on the Internet or in magazines like Woman’s World.

Often the suggestions are lack any substance, because the writers don’t want to imply you actually have to make a sacrifice to succeed. They make fat loss sound easy, as if all you had to do was park at the far end of the parking lot and you’d burn all the calories from 5 shortbread cookies. Read the rest of this entry »

One interesting line I heard once has stuck with me for years when it comes to carbohydrates,

“If it is white, don’t eat it”

Well that may be true for a few reasons that I wanted to cover today. When we eat carbs they tend to come in all colors, fruit has all sorts of colors, vegetables have all sorts of colors and bread, rice and potatoes some in one color often and that is white.

So why should we avoid all of those white carbohydrates? There are two ways that colored carbs are better than white carbs but I don;t think that we really ever hear why…so I will tell you now Read the rest of this entry »

I set off a bit of an email flurry a couple of days ago when I suggested that Gastric Bypass surgery is bad and is the wrong way to lose weight so I thought that I would explain why I do not like the idea of losing weight using gastric bypass surgery.

Gastric Bypass for those that are not aware of the idea is a surgery that either puts a band around a part of your stomach or staples your stomach so that it is smaller. This smaller stomach of course can hold less food so most people are going to lose a lot of weight very quickly and because of this Gastric Bypass surgery has become very popular.

OK so it is relatively easy to shed pounds with Gastric Bypass surgery how could I then be against it as a way to lose weight?

The truth is that Gastric Bypass surgery does not make you fit or healthy. The day after your gastric bypass you will have the same issues with food that you had the day before but now you will now be able to eat as much food. Also any emotional issues will not be solved with your weight loss. Most of these issues cause you to overeat although most people that are overweight think that that is the cause of their emotional problems.

Another more important problem is the nutrition that we all need from our food. If you starve yourself like is going to happen then you will have no way of getting the nutrients that you need and have to rely on supplementation to get everything that you need to live a healthy life. Now that I have broached this subject, how about the health aspect of this kind of weight loss? Being thin does not make you healthy as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, in fact being thin can lull you into the false expectation that you are healthy. If you are getting lots of exercise then you need more calories to feed your muscles and after a gastric bypass you are not going to be able to get what you need actually get healthy.

Lastly there is no guarantee with Gastric Bypass. Once you are at the point of needing gastric bypass you can either die on the operating table or die after during recovery as your body is not strong enough for the surgery. Also there is a way that if you do overeat after your gastric bypass surgery that you may be able to stretch your stomach and now you will be in the same place that your were before.

So what can you do instead of Gastric Bypass?

Gastric Bypass used to be the only way that people that are morbidly obese could think of to lose weight but now that we are in the fourth season of the Biggest Loser anyone can see that there is another option. Sure it may be very difficult and take a long time to lose weight through diet and exercise but people that are really overweight can lose 100 pounds in a year and over this time you can become healthier, happier, build incredible self worth and overcome all of those food demons as well.

If you have been thinking about gastric bypass surgery I certainly hope that this has given you pause to reconsider. There is an alternative.

Everyone likes to have shortcuts to losing weight. Although as we all know the important things really are to have a good diet and to get exercise.

Having said this though there are times that you can make a real difference quite easily. Some people make such incredibly poor decisions that they can turn things around pretty easily. So for these people here we go.

1. Stop smoking - Smoking lowers the amount of oxygen that your body can get to your muscles. In fact if you quit smoking the amount of oxygen in your system will increase even within the first day. Some people smoke in the bizzare thought that by smoking you will eat less and although it is hard to eat with a smoke in your mouth, this will be counteracted by the fact that you will not have the energy to exercise and keep yourself healthy.

2. Don’t drink - Drinking alcohol will lower your metabolism and force your body to store more fat. I do not know the details of this but if you go about having a couple of beers every night then cutting these beers out will make a huge difference to how you feel, your outlook on life, and your chance to be motivated to workout in the evening. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a pretty busy weekend for me and even though I did read through lots of my RSS feeds I did find lots of interesting stories this morning that I would like to share.

A new study seems to show that all of these weight loss pills on their own do not help people lose weight in the long term. I was a little suprosed at just how ineffective the results were but you can see for yourself.
Weight Loss Drugs Produce Minimal Results

I read Natasha’s Weight Loss Journey every day but today I saw a great post on just how motivated people can be. Even though she can try to make the excuse that she has to work late so she can’t workout she instead makes the decision to workout in the morning. Good for her!
My Weight Loss Journey » Day 23 of 26: Lost Track, lol

I love Quiznos over Subway subs and do not like to have sauces, mayo or butter of any kind but The Diet Blog has the results of Quiznos coming our with there nutritional info for their menu and the amount of fat is through the roof.
Quiznos Calories: No Wonder They Concealed Them

A couple of days ago I said just go out and get 20 minutes of cardio. Well Workout Mommy says hell no push 30 tough minutes though the cardio. I can’t agree more and if you are at that level of fitness that it won’t scare you off of tomorrows workout then great.
Move it Monday: More cardio please | workoutmommy.com