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 Tips To Make A Sugar Restriction/Low Carb Eating Plan Work For You (And Lose Weight Fast)

37 grams (10 teaspoons) in a can

A sugar restriction/low carb eating plan is one of the best ways to get healthy AND lose weight. This is the plan recommended by a naturopath I consulted with because my sugar and cholesterol were both bordering on unhealthy levels.

Tip #1  Keep a Food Diary
When you begin a sugar/carb restriction plan to lose weight, the first hurdle is to recognize the amount of sugar in what you eat. The first activity recommended by my naturopath was to keep a food journal.

In my previous post about sugar as a health hazard, I mentioned watching this video entitled Double Your Weight Loss with a Food Journal.

Tip #2  Eliminate Soda (Diet and Regular) and Other High Sugar Drinks
Regular Coke has almost 40 grams of sugar per can. Fruit juice (including OJ) is also high in sugar. Mixed alcoholic drinks are also full of sugar. What do you drink? Coffee and tea without sugar. Water. Carbonated water.

If you find water boring (I do!), flavor it with lemon or lime. Carbonated water is very refreshing. Also, start by adding fruit juice to water. You will cut the sugar content.

Tip #3  Minimize Processed Food
Yes, they are convenient. Sometimes they taste good. But there's lots of sugar in processed foods. Find the ones with the least amount of sugar. For example, for a snack, certain Kashi nut bars contain 5 or 6 grams of sugar.

Stay with this eating plan.

My experience is that it's a keeper for both your health and for losing weight. After you've reduced sugar for a few weeks, a high sugar drink or snack will taste way too sweet.

Carb Overload On The Vacation Weekend

Wow - a weekend in Atlantic City. How exciting! Slot machines, blackjack, luxurious room, and . . . whoops, bad carb overload!

No wonder eating plan/diet books include an "eating out" section. If you go off a low carb plan and eat high carbs for a weekend because you're stupid, then you PAY!

The weekend started with a Friday afternoon late lunch in a fabulous Italian restaurant in Elmsford, NY. Great bread soaked in oil, a shrimp and pasta with red sauce main meal and a bread-crumb filled appetizer. And of course the vodka sour! Good thing the driver was wide awake, because I slept the next 2 hours to AC.

The next day - Bananas Foster for breakfast - you really taste sweet when you go back to a high sugar meal!

After a little gambling and before the show - a trip to the casino buffet. Now I'm unconsiously returning to the low carb arena with shrimp cocktail (minus the cocktail sauce), a salad (ignore the croutons), and roast beef. BUT - gave up and had dessert - apple pie - it wasn't worth it.

After the show - back to gambling and into the vodka sours. They were yucky sweet!

On Sunday morning, no breakfast - just of lunch of lemonade and a burger with the bun and with ketchup. The lemonade was way too sweet!

After just 2 days of going back to the high carb world, I remembered why I started the low carb eating plan - to feel better and to lose a few pounds (http://agedefiance.blogspot.com/2011/01/challenge-your-beliefs-about-losing.html). Won't do that again - feeling good is much too important!

Wonder why so many Americans are fat? Sugar Overload! Try a lemonade with 14 teaspoons of sugar. Can't handle that anymore.

Amazing Sugar Nutrition Facts From Consumer Reports – Guess How Many Teaspoons of Sugar In A 16-Ounce Bottle Of “All Natural” Snapple Lemon Tea?

Every so often Consumer Reports publishes a helpful article like "Where Sugar Hides And How To Eat Less." It packs a spectrum of sugar nutrition facts. None are remotely related to a healthy diet.

Since I started a low carb diet kicked off by the surprising weight loss of a co-worker who gave up drinking a 6-pack of regular Coke every day, I’ve become conscious of empty carbs. White sugar is certainly on the top of the list. (And white flour is a close second).

Here’s just a sampling of sugar nutrition facts from this article that you may find surprising:

1. “Americans consume an average of about 22 teaspoons a day of added sugar.” Picture yourself at the sugar bowl bolting down 7+ tablespoons of white sugar. Yuck! Not only does sugar lack food value, cancer cells feed on the white stuff!

2. The American Heart Association reports that “added sugar is associated with increased risks of high blood pressure and high triglyceride levels.” Want to get off the blood pressure pills? Get into the habit of eliminating foods containing “dextrose, fruit-juice concentrate, glucose, malt syrup, maltose, molasses, sucrose, beet sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and evaporated cane juice.”

3. Here’s the CR short list of where sugar hides:

1 tablespoon of Heinz Tomato Ketchup contains 1 teaspoon of sugar
That means a tablespoon of this ketchup is 33% sugar!

1 slice of Arnold Honey Whole Wheat Bread contains 1 teaspoon of sugar

3 Vlastic Sweet Midgets pickles contain 2 teaspoons of sugar

A half-cup of Newman’s Own All Natural Marinara Sauce contains 3 teaspoons of sugar. That much sugar is “All Natural”?

McDonald’s Premium Crispy Club Sandwich contains 3 ½ teaspoons of sugar

A half-cup of Original Mott’s Applesauce contains about 6 teaspoons of sugar

A 6-ounce contain of Dannon All Natural Plain Lowfat Yogurt contains about 6 teaspoons of sugar.

And the winner is . . .
A 16-ounce bottle of Snapple Lemon Tea (All Natural) contains 10.5 teaspoons of sugar!

If you want to be more than a little healthier, get rid of the sugar in your diet. Note that all the foods mentioned in #3 are prepared/processed foods. It pays to stay away from them.

And the top foods to eliminate – regular soda, bottled teas, and juice drinks. They are “the leading source of added sugar in the American diet.”

If you want to begin a low carb diet to be healthier, you need to know about these sugar nutrition facts. See http://hubpages.com/hub/Best-Diet-Plans-To-Lose-Weight-Fast for more info about a low carb diet.

The Carb Free Diet - Why It Works

I realize I'm getting obsessive with the notion of the low or carb free diet, but so far, I've come up with several reasons why they work:

1. An Amazing Story of Quick Weight Loss Based On Sugar (Carbs) Elimination
This story provides a great deal of evidence for eliminating carbs = eliminating excess weight: Just before Christmas, a 60 year old man I know experienced shortness of breath and was taken to the hospital. A week later, after having a stent implanted for an artery blockage, he was sent home with a nicotine patch to stop smoking and orders to cut out the six-pack of cola (not diet) he drank every day. I saw him several weeks later and was amazed - he had lost a whopping 20 pounds! I'm sure his heart is a lot happier!

He changed from cola to diet soda (eliminating pounds of sugar every day), spent a week in the hospital (that accounts for some of the weight loss!) and lost 20 pounds. Impressive!

2. A MAJOR reason dieting fails is because most people feel deprived on a standard "you have to limit your portions" diet. Not so with a carb free diet - you can eat as much as you want - as long as you restrict sugar, sweets, rice, potatoes, and bread. Two slices of bread account for about 20 carbs, the total daily allowance in the Atkins diet Induction (first stage) phase.

The only restriction you have is carbs. Eat anything else you want, but keep track and minimize carb consumption. Note that my experience is that this is not as easy as it sounds - they're everywhere and in everything.

3. Another BIG reason dieting fails is that after you lose your target weight - you gain it all back! With a carb free diet, you will eventually add back carbs into your diet (although not at the same amount prior to the diet). Since everyone is different, the amount of carbs tolerated differs from person to person.

The science behind the carb free/low carb diet is explained in detail in the Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It book I continue to recommend. This book has created a major controvery in the scientific community, mainly because of the author's shocking explanation for why we get fat. If his intention was to create change to fight obesity, he's got people talking about it. And in a nation of free speech - they do argue his points agressively.

Hey - the proof's in the results - if you stick to the carb free diet, you will likely drop weight faster than any other diet and become much healthier in the process.