Source: Shutterstock

Anne Alexander is the writer of a book called Win the Fat War. I am still trying to track her down but it looks like she is a writer for Prevention magazine. As you probably remember from last weeks Biggest Loser Couples Prevention magazine does all sorts of weight loss articles and also has great news otherwise.

Anyway Anne, If you get a chance to read this post, I have posted all of these tips that Anne Alexander wrote in a Prevention magazine article and they are fantastic. This is a list that can help anyone lose weight and gain muscle and take control of your eating and health.

Read these and comment on what you think. I will try to find an email address for Anne so we can email and thank her as well for these great tips.

Believe in Yourself

1. Ditch all-or-nothing thinking. Every time that Sandra Wadsworth, 41, attempted weight loss, she’d quit at the first slipup. “But I finally lost 20 pounds when Weight Watchers helped me see that I wasn’t a bad person. Everyone makes mistakes. The key is to learn from them.” Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

LA Weight Loss, Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig are all organizations that can help you with your weight loss goals. they are all popular diet programs and for years women have turned to them in order to shed the extra flab. All three of these diet programs have gotten praise from millions of customers, who have successfully lost weight with their help, but as with anything else, the critics were also very forthcoming in criticizing these diet plans for making money off the back of fat people – some even going as far as labeling them scams.

The most important thing to remember is that the LA Weight Loss, Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig weight loss programs are not for everybody. It is important for you to understand what YOU want before you even attempt to join any weight loss organization. This will save you a lot of heartache later.

Why are you so eager to join LA Weight Loss, Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig Weight Loss programs? Is it simply to lose a few pounds? Well, you can do that simply by dieting and burning calories – in simple terms, all you need to do is eat less and exercise more. If you are already aware of this simple rule of weight loss, why is it that you want to join any of the big three? Read the rest of this entry »

With the switch back to Weight Watchers for my wife we have also added a new twist to our daily eating, no eating after 7:00 PM.

I didn’t want to mention this until after we had done it for a few days but what started out as a joke has become a great change in our lives. We started on Wednesday night not eating after an hour or so after dinner and over the last three or four nights I have missed snacking less and less.

The first two evenings of not eating I found that I was hungry when I went to sleep and my stomach was a little unsettled for some unknown reason but in the mornings I have not felt any different then I did before, not too hungry.

I have spoken to a few people that have done the exact same thing and found that they have lost weight wityhin the first week or two just from making the cahnge to no evening snacking.

What do you eat at night? Is it good or bad food or nothing at all? I know that I was not eating any really bad foods although I was eating some not very great food. I was eating fruit as well as trail mix and other kinda salty food.

There is one drawback that I am concerned about and that is the really long time between meals and what it will do to my muscle mass and my metabolism. I am a bit of a graser usually and eat throughout the day so my body never has to get nervous about me starving and because of this my metabolism is always pretty high and good.

Next of course is the whole catabolic balance. If your body is looking for energy it will use the energy within your muscles but if your muscles and the rest of your body can not find any energy it will go into a catobolic state where your body eats away at the protein and fat in your body. I know that this is what we are really looking for when we try to lose fat but the problem is that with any prolonged fast that you will lose the muscle that you really want to keep at as great a pace as you are losing fat.

Time will tell if this experiment with not eating at night will be a great method of cutting some calories and maybe even helping improve sleep cycles.

My wife is an on again off again Weight Watchers addict. I say that in just a joking way because we both know that she loves Weight Watchers but if she sees some shiny new other idea or gets discouraged for a couple of weeks then she will drop Weight Watchers and move on, but only for a while.

I have written about Weight Watchers a lot of times before and even have a Weight Watchers blog that I do not pay as much attention to as much as I used to but the fact is that for many reasons Weight Watchers seems to work really well for lots of people. There are lots of reasons why Weight Watchers works for my wife and the same reasons pull her away from it.

What is good about diet programs

Portion Control – Portion control is the most important thing with any diet. People generally eat too much and having a way to see how much you really should eat makes a big difference.

Food portioning – Weight Watchers has a point system that will say that a hamburger is 10 points and apple is 1 point. How are you going to portion out your 25-35 points a day? Probably by eating more of the right foods that are lower points.

Don’t miss the important thing – the food calendar thingy that every Weight Watchers person has on their kitchen counter makes you mark off your milk and fruits and water for the day. This leads to one of the most important reasons that organized diet centers work.

Accountability – You need to be accountable to yourself and if you are writing it down and having to answer to yourself every day and every week as to why you had something bad and congradulate yourself on all the things that you did right then you are going to be far more successful then beating yourself up for wanting to eat cake. With Weight Watchers there are also weekly meetings where you can talk about what works and what doesn’t and this seems to hel pa lot of people as well.

Do you need Weight Watchers?

You do not need Weight Watchers to be successful. Knowing the above rules and having the right diet principles will give you everything that you need. Millions of people may be overweight but millions of people also lose weight and this in itself proves that it can be done by everyone.

What Weight Watchers and other diet programs are is a bit of a crutch. They help you to stay focussed and to do all of the above. This is a great thing as most people after a few days on a diet lack the consistency and after just a couple more weeks fall off of their diet entirely.

Whether you join Weght Watchers, or Jenny Craig, or LA Fitness or any others great. I believe though that if you come to this blog daily I can help you to stay on track by giving tips and motivation to keep your head in the right place to stay on your diet.

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 »

Often things take a bit of time to take affect. Sometimes you do all the right things but see no results and change tactics, don’t do that ride it out instead.

When people start a new diet they get excited do all the right things and then in the first week they lose 5 pounds or so and are very excited with the results, then the next week comes and the only lose a pound or nothing at all and discouragement sets in.

You hear a lot about yoyo dieting, gaining and losing weight only to gain it back again and often this will happen because people become discouraged and don’t let the changes that they are making to take affect and change to a different type of diet. Although our bodies are complex and in many ways can change very very quickly, losing weight does not tend to be one of these things

If you eat all of the right foods and get the exercise that you need and then at the end of the week you have not lost any weight is it becasue the diet and exercise are not working? probably not. Often when you make big changes your body will start a bit of a backlash. You will retain water, your metabolism will slow down in fear of starvation or your body will just not have caught up with the changes. Often the diet and exercise changes that you make will not show up for a couple or even three weeks. Many of the bog diet companies know this. Jenny Craig only has you weigh in once a week as does Weight Watchers and Weight Watchers cautions people not to weigh themselves at all during the week. As you have probably noticed beofre your weight will fluctuate all over the place during a single day so any changes that you see are very hard to predict from week to week even.

Stay on a course doing the right things and give yourself at least a few months to see if you are tending in the right direction. Do not just take the scale into account but also look at how you feel, how your health is, how your energy is and how well you are sleeping. What you want out of any diet and exercise program is to improve all areas of your life, not just the bathroom scale

Most people that have tried to lose weight have heard of both the Jenny Craig Diet as well as Weight Watchers. Studies have shown pretty conclusively I believe that these diets seem to help people lose weight over the long term although the weight loss never seems to be very substantial according to the studies. So why do these diets seem to work pretty well? I have thought about this and as usual I have a list of things that I think make Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig work where most fad diets just don’t seem to.

1. Commitment by spending money – It is hard to give up on a diet that you have to pay money to every week. When you know that on Tuesday they are going to charge your credit card or some other form of payment you are going to think twice before eating that piece of chocolate cake.

2. Success all around – In a Weight Watchers meeting or at a Jenny Craig office you get to see people like you and people that used to be like you that have lost weight. It does not seem like so much of a fantasy when you see a few people that you can actually see and talk to that have lost 50 pounds and feel great about it.

3. Something to believe in – There is a long track record in both weight Watchers as well as at Jenny Craig. Both of these diets have seen a lot of other diets come and go so most people look at them both as pillars in the weight loss community.

4. Writing things down makes you accountable – This is the big one to me. Both Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig both make you right down in some form what you have eaten today and what kind of exercise or other activity that you participated in.

I don’t think for a moment that either Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers are the best thing out there for everyone but they do seem to work for most people. The real diet that will work for you is a process that you believe in without a doubt so that you will not question it and a way to hold yourself accountable.