5 Sure-Fire Tips To Lose Weight Fast

Think you can do 5 things all at the same time so you can lose weight fast?

It's possible.

You need to do them all. 

No cheating.

Here they are (in order of importance):

1. Prepare mentally and emotionally for weight loss and a new body image. Goal-setting, and daily visualization and meditation drive the mental and emotional prep. Meditation and mindfulness will also help reduce stress (always a factor in weight management). See this article: Determined To Lose Weight? PROGRAM Your MIND For Weight Loss.
2. Limit sugar to 15 - 25 grams per day. If you have been reading this blog, you know that sugar is poison and counter-productive to weight loss and good health.
3. Limit carbs to 120 grams per day (no bad carbs). Bad carbs are foods made with white flour as well as white rice.
4. Increase fiber to 30+ grams per day with supplementation (a fiber supplement).
5. Increase physical activity (especially strength training). If you can increase your physical activity with a hobby you have a passion for, this step will be a snap. A good example is landscaping/gardening. Digging holes for plants, lugging bags of mulch and dirt, and moving rocks (I live in New England - it's part of the landscape) sound a lot like strength training to me.

This process works if you stick with it.  In fact, if it becomes a permanent lifestyle change, it will help you maintain your ideal weight.

Best Diet To Lose Fat For Women Over 50 (NO Calorie Counting)

www.bestmediterraneandietonline.com

I have been blogging for more than a year about the diet/eating plan that helped me lose a stubborn 20 pounds. The weight came off easily after I visited a naturopath who advised a low sugar, low carb eating plan coupled with moderate exercise and stress management.

After  a few months on this plan, I lost the weight AND lowered blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and cholesterol.

More recently, I found out the hard way that this eating plan also should include high fiber foods and a fiber supplement.

When you put the plan together, it requires NOT counting calories or restricting food, but paying attention to the following:

1. Low sugar consumption (no more than 25 grams a day).
2. Low carb consumption (no more than six servings for a total of 120 grams per day of good carbs). Bad carbs are anything with white flour and white rice). Also, carbs should not be consumed after 5 PM.  I'm also experimenting with gluten-free food, but that's another story.
3. High fiber consumption (35 grams per day) with a supplement of your choice. I'm stuck with Metamusil for the next few weeks but after that, I am trying PGX.

Note that this diet/eating plan closely resembles the Mediterranean diet. 

This is my observation, and it is confirmed by the father of functional medicine, Dr. Jeffrey Bland, in his book The Disease Delusion: Conquering the Causes of Chronic Illness for a Healthier, Longer, and Happier Life. 


You can buy excellent Mediterranean diet recipes online at Amazon: 

The Mediterranean Diet for Beginners: The Complete Guide - 40 Delicious Recipes, 7-Day Diet Meal Plan, and 10 Tips for Success

The Mediterranean Prescription: Meal Plans and Recipes to Help You Stay Slim and Healthy for the Rest of Your Life

Have fun losing weight and eating healthy, 

valmillsy

3 Simple Ways To Eat A Healthier Diet For Faster Weight Loss

If you want to lose weight, eating a healthy diet should be your first priority.  Exercise is important, but diet is king when it comes to lifelong weight management. 

This post provides 3 simple ways to make healthy changes in the way you eat on a daily basis.

#1 Make sure to eat healthy fats in most of your meals. 
Eating enough healthy fats is important for maintaining proper fat burning and muscle building hormone levels in your body.  Adequate healthy fats in your diet also helps in keeping your appetite under control.

The healthiest sources of dietary fats are raw nuts, seeds, egg yolks (from organic free range eggs), avocados, extra virgin olive oil (highest antioxidant content of olive oils), coconut oil (a great source of healthy saturated fats), and grass-fed meats (a great source of the healthy fat, conjugated linoleic acid, which can help burn body fat and build muscle).

Eat a handful of raw nuts (pecans, walnuts, almonds are great healthy choices) 3 times a day about 30 minutes prior to meals.  This can help to quell your appetite and give your body some protein, fiber, and healthy fats so that you eat less calories overall at your meals and get more nutrition at the same time due to the high nutrient density of most nuts.

#2 Try to eat a high quality protein source with each meal and snack that you eat. 

Quality proteins from grass-fed meats, grass-fed raw dairy, and even from plant sources such as nuts and beans provides appetite suppression so you can control your caloric intake easier.

Getting quality proteins also helps you to build lean muscle (if you're working out hard regularly) so that your metabolism can run at a higher rate from the increased lean muscle on your body.

Eating sufficient protein at most of your meals also aids your body in controlling blood sugar and insulin levels by helping to slow the breakdown of ingested carbohydrates.

#3 Minimize your grain consumption (from cereals, bagels, breads, pasta, etc) and you will start to lose body fat much easier.  

Focus carbohydrate intake on fruits and vegetables solely. This simple step alone usually helps people to start managing their weight more easily.

One of the main reasons that so many individuals struggle to lose weight for most of their lives is due to eating excessive processed carbohydrates such as refined grain-based starches and refined sugars on a daily basis.

The natural sugars in whole fruits and berries are okay because the fiber in fruits helps to slow the blood sugar response in your body.  Just make sure to avoid fruit juices, which are mostly sugar and have the fiber removed in processing the juice.

Incorporate these 3 ways to eat a smarter, healthier diet into your daily routine and you’ll see a leaner body and more energy in no time.

valmillsy

P.S. This article courtesy of Mike Geary - Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Specialist and Catherine Ebeling - RN, BSN, authors of  bestsellers The Fat-Burning Kitchen and The Top 101 Foods that Fight Aging.

Warning: Avoid These 3 Foods When Eating Out At Restaurants

Eating out at restaurants frequently is one of the biggest reasons why so many people put on weight. Until now, you may have found it difficult to lose weight if you eat out a lot. 

But now you can follow a couple simple tricks to make every restaurant meal healthier, reduce calories, and not lose control.

The 3 most important foods to avoid at restaurants are as follows:

• deep-fried foods
• refined starchy foods
• sodas, juices, or other sugary foods (except whole fruits, which are great)

This eliminates the major food sources that do the worst damage in our food supply – trans fats, the inflammatory refined vegetable oils, refined starches, and processed sugars.

This means to skip the table bread, skipping the french fries (that come with every single sandwich on every menu known to man), and reducing or eliminating all of the heaping portions of rice and pasta that are often loaded on the plates as well. And oh yeah – forget about the cola, diet cola, lemonade, and sweetened iced tea.

How to do it healthier, but still satisfying . . . 

Click HERE to discover what foods to substitute for a meal like this:

• Sandwich or burger (starchy food - the bun)
• fries or chips (trans fats)
• soda or other sweetened drink (sugar/high fructose corn syrup)

valmillsy

P.S.

Another warning - If you order a drink at a restaurant, be sure to insist that you do NOT get the lemon/lime fruity wedge. Turns out they have a whole lot of yucky bad bacteria associated with them.

How A Core Strength Training Program Can Help You Lose Weight

Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove, the authors of The New Rules of Lifting For Abs: A Myth-Busting Fitness Plan for Men and Women who Want a Strong Core and a Pain-Free Back promise the readers who execute their workouts and follow their diet plan a fat-burning body with an improved and strong core (lower back, hips and abdominals).

Cosgrove is a fitness trainer with a track record of effective fitness programs IF you follow his workouts and eating plans. Schuler is an entertaining journalist who will debunk some very common beliefs; for example, restricting calories will help you lose weight. Yes, you will lose weight, but it's not the type  you want to lose - fat AND muscle. I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to lose muscle. In fact, I'm about gaining muscle. Especially if you're over 50.

The following is a reviewer's take on Cosgrove's programs:

Alwyn's programs have several advantages:
1. They are eminently do-able regardless of your expertise or the shape you are in.
2. The workouts are compact.
3. The workouts are safe.
4. You don't have to know what you are doing.
5. The program adds mobility exercises and metabolic exercises to the mix. This allows you to get stronger while getting more agile as well. This carries over to every other sport you may engage, and is a prime consideration in not getting injured while increasing your performance.
6. The program addresses an appropriate fitness diet and lifestyle, and how to "think" about a fitness diet. The point of lifting weights is to get stronger. Poor nutrition, poor lifestyle and poor sleep will kill this goal dead in its tracks.

Here's the book - buy it and use it wisely:

P.S. When you do strength training, your body needs more protein for muscle growth. Use this Protein Calculator to help you select the proper nutrition for your program aimed at increasing the muscle mass of your body.