The diet Chronicle

With all of the “miracle” weight loss products on the market, it is easy to forget about the original weight loss solution that has, and remains to be the most effective when used together. Diet and exercise keep the body operating as it should. A proper diet helps keep the body’s natural digestion on track and exercise keeps the body’s fat burning process running at a high rate. The fact of the matter is that without diet and exercise, the body will not burn fat at an efficient rate.
 
Exercise keeps the metabolism rate higher which means more calories are being burned throughout the day. The more calories that are burned the more weight loss occurs. The more you exercise, the more metabolism stabilizes. However, if diet is not consistent in addition to exercise then the body cannot establish a regular metabolism rate.
 
Having a proper diet and dieting are often times confused. A proper diet must be consistent in order to achieve the goal of weight loss. The body is equipped with the ability to burn fat at an efficient rate as long it is getting a consistent diet. If the body is starved one minute and stuffed the next, it stores those fat cells for later use when no food is coming in. So a proper consistent diet is important in keeping the metabolism stabilized.
 
The body is outfitted with the ability of keeping a healthy weight. Day to day living, stress levels, poor diet, and lack of physical activity all affect the weight loss process. Not only will proper diet and exercise increase metabolism and promote weight loss, but it will improve the overall sense of well being. Exercise promotes proper circulation and increases the amount of oxygen that gets to the brain. Appropriate diet and level of physical activity are not only important for weight loss, but also the overall well being of the body.
 
The biggest problem that most people have when dieting is keeping the weight off once it has been lost. Generally diet and exercise alone can be enough to promote a healthy weight loss. If a weight loss supplement is being used, then diet and exercise should be incorporated in order to achieve and keep the targeted weight loss. Makers of weight loss supplements even tell you this in their advertisements. Weight loss will improve dramatically with a normal exercise routine and a consistent diet. Whether you choose to use a supplement or not, weight loss or maintaining a healthy weight, diet and exercise are extremely important.

Visit Nature Drugstore Website for more informations.

Some people have great luck losing weight by taking diet pills, but those pills do come with risks attached to them. These pills are not required to be tested by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before they are released to the public.

On the upside, if the drug is found to be dangerous, the FDA will work quickly to make sure it is banned from future sales. 

This happened in 2003 when the FDA banned products that contained ephedrine after it was found to be at least partly responsible for the death of a prominent athlete. 

These pills work in different ways. Many are appetite suppressants containing phenylpropanoline or caffeine. 

Some claim to increase your metabolism thus increasing the body’s ability to burn fat while at the same time causing you to feel less hungry. 

Other pills say they can block the body’s ability to absorb fat or help you lose weight by removing fluids from the body. These pills contain a diuretic or laxative.

It’s very important for you to consult with your doctor before you start taking any kind of diet pills – even the ones that claim to be all-natural. 

This is especially true if you have a medical condition. Taking these pills could interact with medication you are already taking or it could aggravate a previous condition such as anxiety disorders.

Diet pills can be addictive, so take caution when beginning their regimen. Follow the directions for dosages exactly and be aware of any possible side effects. If you experience any of the following symptoms while taking diet pills, stop taking them immediately and consult with your physician:

•  Anxiety or nervousness.
•  Irritability.
•  Insomnia, restlessness, or hyperactivity.
•  High blood pressure.
•  Tightening in the chest.
•  Heart palpitations.
•  Fever.
•  Dry mouth.
•  Excessive headaches.
•  Dizziness.
•  Blurred Vision.
•  Profuse sweating.
•  Menstrual cycle or sex drive disturbances.

 Because diet pills can be purchased over the counter or on the internet, it is up to each individual person to use them correctly. Some people stupidly take more than the recommended dosage in hopes that it will speed up the weight loss, but this is very dangerous! You can overdose on diet pills which can cause tremors, breathing problems, convulsions, renal failure or heart attack.

And remember that nothing takes off weight and keeps off weight like a sensible, balanced diet and exercise.

Even with those “miracle” diet pills, you still cannot lose weight without increasing your physical activity. Exercising in some form will help to burn calories that can be converted into fat and extra weight. This is why you need to devise an effective workout plan that will fit into your abilities and interests.

Most people don’t really like to exercise. For them, it seems too much like work. And it is work, but it doesn’t have to be tedious work. There are ways to exercise doing things that you love to do.

First, you need to choose an activity that you enjoy. Do you like riding your bike as the sun sets in the sky? Maybe swimming is more your idea of fun. Even a good round of golf can be a great form of exercise – but only if you leave the cart in the cart barn!

Once you find that activity, you need to pursue it at a minimum of three times a week for at least 30 minutes at a time. The more you exercise, the more calories you will burn, but you don’t have to be fanatical about it!

Start slowly then increase your level when you feel stronger until you are at a point where you think you are at a high level of intensity. It’s OK to rest at intervals to recharge your batteries, but get back up to that level again until your workout is complete.

The ideal exercise plan is going to involve some form of aerobic exercise sustained for 30 minutes at a time. This could be in the form of an aerobic class or something as simple as taking a walk. 

This will get your heart pumping effectively so that your body can burn the calories that you have consumed!

When should you do this type of workout? Believe it or not, there is a best time to perform your cardiovascular workout for best results.

We want to tell you that the important part about exercise is that you get out and do it! No matter when you exercise, you will burn fat and calories as long as it’s a good workout. But to get the maximum benefit, try exercising in the morning before you eat your first meal.

Early morning aerobic exercising on an empty stomach has three benefits over working out later in the day.

First, your levels of stored carbohydrates and muscle are at a low when you first get up in the morning. 

This is because during the night, your body is burning any calories that were consumed at dinner the previous evening by performing bodily functions that occur even while we sleep.

As a result, you’ll wake up with lower carbohydrate levels and lower blood sugar levels which is the optimum environment for burning fat instead of carbohydrates.

How does this work? It’s actually quite simple. Carbohydrates are your body’s primary and preferred energy source. When this source is in short supply, your body must tap into its secondary energy resource: body fat.

If you do your exercise workout after eating, the body will burn off the carbohydrates you’ve consumed first. It’ll take a little longer to get to that fat you need to burn.

A second benefit to doing exercise in the morning is called the “after burn” effect. You’ll not only be burning fat during your workout, but that fat burn will continue on even after your workout is finished. How?

An intense session of cardiovascular activity can keep your metabolism elevated for hours afterward. Exercising at night won’t give you that extra metabolic lift because once you go to sleep, your metabolism drops dramatically once you become sedentary. When you sleep, your metabolic rate is slower than at any other time of the day.

The third reason for doing early morning exercise is more emotional than anything else. Your body’s endorphins are elevated when you exercise.  It lifts your mood and gives you a sense of accomplishment that will likely stay with you all during the day.

That being said, exercise is something that many consider a tedious chore. We tend to procrastinate and put off doing something we consider to be less than enjoyable. If you commit yourself to morning workouts, you’ll have “gotten it out of the way” freeing your mind from having to do it later.

This can create guilt and stress and affect your whole day – don’t let it!  Plus, you are more likely to blow off exercising later in the day because you are tired or just don’t feel like it.

You might find it difficult to get up and exercise first thing in the morning. Not everyone is a “morning person”. So how do you motivate yourself to get up and get moving?

First, remember that you are trying to lose weight. You have a goal that you are trying to achieve. That should remain in the forefront of your mind. If you stay focused on your goal, the motivation should come.

Think back to a time when you tackled a difficult task and finished it. Remember how great you felt afterward. Completing any challenge can give you a “buzz”. When that task is physically demanding, that “buzz” is both psychological and physiological.  That’s because your body releases endorphins into your system.

Endorphins are opiate-like hormones that are hundreds of times more powerful than the strongest morphine. Except for endorphins are made by YOU, not a laboratory. Endorphins create a natural high that can make you positively euphoric! Endorphins can reduce stress, improve your mood, increase your circulation, and relieve pain.
 
This “high” you feel is partly psychological too. When you get up early and get your workout done, you’ll feel a sense of completion that will kick start your day and get it off on the right foot! You will have a sense of completion and accomplishment that will stay with you throughout your day.

First, you need to drink a lot of water. Most individuals don’t drink nearly enough water. Colas and coffee don’t count! Yes, you really should drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day - maybe more, depending on your weight.

Water is a natural appetite suppressant. If you drink a full glass of water before beginning your meal, your stomach simply doesn’t hold as much food.

No, you will not gain weight from drinking a lot of water. It’s when you don’t drink enough water throughout the day, your body gets dehydrated. When it does finally get water, it holds onto it and stores it for a future need. That’s when we feel swollen, and bloated with water weight. 

However, if you give your body enough water on a regular basis, it releases it naturally. Drinking enough water gives you the benefit of hydration and fullness.

You should always eat a balanced meal. This might be the one thing we learned in elementary school that we really can use in our adult life – the basic food groups.

Proteins and carbohydrates are essential to a healthy meal. Carbohydrates are the main source of energy in our diet, and proteins burn fat. At a bare minimum, each meal should consist of a protein and a carbohydrate.

DO NOT skip meals. One of the worst things we can do, in our attempt to lose weight, is to skip a meal. I’ve seen it countless times: Motivated to lose weight, an individual decides to eat just twice a day. But your metabolism needs the consistency of regular meals. With erratic eating schedules, the body thinks it’s starving.

So, everything it takes in – it stores as fat to be used for energy.

Finally, exercise. You just can’t lose weight when you maintain a sedentary lifestyle.  People who exercise live longer and feel better. And, they lose weight quicker. But, keep it simple.
 
Thomas Jefferson said, “The sovereign invigorating of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best.”

It’s never too late to get in shape. We’ll give you a whole separate section on exercise, but you don’t have to join a gym and become the next famous body builder. 

There’s plenty of ways you can get enough exercise to aid in your weight loss efforts.

Of course, there is a simple formula to help calculate weight loss: consume fewer calories than what you burn every day. For example, if you consume 2000 calories per day and you burn 2500 calories per day, you will lose weight.

You might just say "Why don't I just cut down on my calories intake considerably, hence I don't really have to burn many calories to lose weight?" Well that would be starving yourself and is not a good idea at all. This will make you weaker, hungrier and you will eat quite a lot after.

Your body needs food and calories to get energy. You need to eat enough so as not to starve yourself and be able to burn these calories and more after. On the other hand, if you burn out the exact same amount of calories that you take, you will stay the same.

The secret to losing weight without going hungry is to make the right food choices. You need to choose foods that are low in calories but can satisfy your stomach so you don't become hungry.

We found a very interesting study that illustrates how the way we eat affects our weight. It was performed by New Zealand’s University of Auckland in 1999. 
 
The researchers divided male participants into three groups. Each group was put on a diet with different fat percentages (their total daily calories were composed of 60, 40 or 20-percent fat) but no calorie limits. The men were told to eat as much they wanted from the food choices they were allowed.

As expected, the men eating the 20-percent fat diets lost weight because they were consuming fewer calories. Fat contains nine calories per gram compared to four calories per gram for carbohydrates or protein. Therefore, the more fat a food contains the more calories it will have. However, in spite of the lower calorie diet, the men in this group were not at all hungry.

What the researchers discovered was that the men in the low-fat group unconsciously compensated by choosing foods that weighed the same as the men in the higher-fat groups and, therefore, were not hungry.

What this suggests is that the weight of the food you eat may play a more important role than fat or calories in satisfying your hunger. In other words, you may not need to eat high-calorie or high-fat foods to feel full but your stomach has to feel the weight of a certain amount of food.
 
There are several other studies suggesting that people tend to eat the same weight of food daily, regardless of the fat or calories that the meals contain. It's almost as if your stomach has an internal scale with a pre-determined weight that has to be reached for you to be satisfied and not hungry.

This may explain the rationale behind drinking a glass of water or having a bowl of soup before eating to cut down on your appetite. It may also explain why people can go on a low fat diet and yet gain weight if the majority of their food choices come from starchy food that is highly processed and low in fiber.

You can eat many slices of fluffy white bread before you feel full while eating two slices of whole wheat multi-grain bread already makes you feel like you swallowed the whole loaf. Eating high fiber foods like oatmeal helps you eat fewer calories (seven ounces of oatmeal only has 120 calories) without going hungry.

So how do you choose the right foods?

Look at your weight loss as your own personal sporting event. Just as you need to know the rules of the game as well as the basics of performing that game in sports, you also need the right information in your diet to make it effective.

When you have all the tools you need, you can become an excellent performer in almost anything you try in life. One of these tools is the right frame of mind. 

The right frame of mind will give you motivation, commitment, and the skills you need to overcome the obstacles that you might face along with temptations and distractions.

Think this sounds a little too “new age” for you? Think again! When you have the right psychology during your weight loss journey, you will make your weight loss fun, easier, more exciting, and be able to develop changes towards a healthier lifestyle that will stay with you forever.

Your mindset controls your behavior, actions, and thoughts.  As people grow, they develop habits and associations that govern their life. Most of these habits are controlled by our sub-conscious and we are generally unaware of them. However, your subconscious could also sabotage your efforts – also while you unaware of them. This can be detrimental to your weight loss attempts.

The right mindset entails using various techniques and strategies to control your behavior by monitoring your thoughts and actions. When you obtain this mindset, you will be better equipped to replace the old habits and associations that formed your thinking in the first place with new and more positive habits that will enable you to lost weight and be happier while you do so!

Developing the correct mindset doesn’t occur overnight. It take a little bit of effort, but in the end, it is well worth the time you’ll spend doing so. You will have to regularly monitor your progress and behavior.  Sometimes it will be easy – at other times, it won’t. The good news is that there are some easy ways to begin to put yourself into the right mindset.

1. Write your goals down - tell yourself what weight you want to get to. While you’re at it, write down any other personal goals you might have as far as your life in general.  Since you’re undertaking something as huge as losing your extra weight, you may as well also focus your efforts on improving other aspects of your life while you have the motivation and drive.
2. Be specific about what those goals are. When you generalize your goals, you are trivializing them. Your goals ARE IMPORTANT. Make them important!
3. Assign yourself a deadline. You want to lose weight. You want to do it by Christmas, or your wedding, or the next class reunion. When you assign a deadline, you give yourself a goal to work for, and like we said, your goals ARE IMPORTANT!
4. Make those goals measurable and achievable. Don’t think TOO big or try to undertake more than what you are capable of. If you need to lose 100 pounds, don’t expect to do it in a few weeks. Give yourself enough time to do so in a healthy manner.  You could also try to break the goals down into easier increments. Tell yourself that you will lose 10 pounds over the next month. Then tell yourself the same thing the next month. Eventually, you’ll reach that goal and feel the satisfaction of being lighter than you were before.
5. Focus on those goals everyday. Post them on your refrigerator.  Write them in your date book.  Put a reminder on the visor of your car. When you focus on your goals, you will keep them in mind all the time and when they are first and foremost in your mind, you will be well on the way toward achieving them.
6. Be committed to those goals – at all costs. There’s a reason why you want to achieve those goals. When you are committed, those goals become the focus of your mind and they will be much easier to realize.

The battle with our metabolism as we age can’t be denied. Our metabolism, which transforms our food into energy, slows down with each passing year. If we don’t adjust our eating habits and our exercise to compensate, we slowly add additional pounds.

If you take things one step at a time, there are basic steps that can be adopted. Stop telling yourself, “I just can’t do it.” You can coax yourself into a new habit of healthy eating.

Developing a psychology towards weight loss will help you achieve you goals and realize success. Aim high, push yourself to become the type of person you want to be and live the life that you want and deserve. We are not given the power of dreams without the power and ability to achieve those dreams. It’s time to start – RIGHT NOW!

I suppose the easiest answer is fast food, but the problem extends out to so much more. Yes, the prevalence of fast food restaurants certainly doesn’t help.

At any rate, many of these restaurants are now offering health-conscious choices including salads, potatoes instead of French fries, yogurt, and grilled meats instead of fried meats. So with these items now included on their menu, why aren’t we losing weight? The answer lies within our choices. Those choices extend to home life as well.

Many people live horridly busy lifestyles, and they more often than not opt for pre-packaged foods that contain high amounts of salt, fat, and other unhealthy components that contribute toward weight gain. We tend to maintain a mostly sedentary lifestyle choosing to watch a favorite television program after dinner rather than going out for a walk like they used to do decades ago.

This type of life style unfortunately is being learned by our children as well. When I was young, we couldn’t wait to get through dinner so we could go outside and play a game of kick the can as the sun went down. We rode our bikes everywhere and only watched television when “The Brady Bunch” or “The Partridge Family” was on. Hey, we had our priorities!

Today, you’re more likely to find kids on the computer or in front of the TV with a video game controller in their hands.  Kids know more about the story line on Desperate Housewives than many of their housewife mothers. They can tell you about all of the new products being offered through commercials they see in between their programs. In fact, the average child these days will watch more than 15 hours of television each and every week.

Now, we’re not saying television is BAD. In fact, some programs can be beneficial and even helpful in making kids smarter. What we’re saying is that kids need to get outside more instead of sitting in front of the TV eating Cheetos and drinking sugar rich soda.

The statistics are showing this to be true. Fifteen percent of all children and teens are overweight - a number that has tripled since a previous study done in 1990.  

Some people blame their excessive weight gain on slow metabolisms.  In some cases, this might actually be true. However, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has confirmed what no one really wants to face:  we’re overweight because we simply eat too much of the wrong foods.  

Losing weight is actually quite simple – eat less, exercise more. But we’re resistant to that message. Mainly, it’s because we’re looking for a quick fix – an easy, painless way to drop pounds without sacrifice. After all, losing weight just CAN’T be that easy, now can it?

No, it isn’t. You have to consider portion control, food choice, exercise, how much exercise, what kind of exercise, etc. But worrying about all of the specifics will do you little good. You need to get the big picture in mind first before worrying about the specifics.

What you want to do is lose those extra pounds. And there are many, many ways to go about that. But before you wait around for the next miracle diet, try some of the tried and true methods we’ll show you. It’s not as monumental as you think it is!

Our natural instinct tells us to eat when we are hungry. Hunger is a signal telling the body that it needs to eat. It is also a signal to the body that it is in danger, that it needs food now. Our self-preservation instinct makes us scarf down everything in sight in response to feelings of starvation.

Our body doesn't care that we live in the modern world where food is plentiful. It acts the same as it would if we were living in a wild, having to hunt for our food. And it is not wise to go against the instinct that is designed to protect us from starvation death.

So, get ready for a surprise: you do not have to be hungry in order to lose weight. On the contrary, eating regular meals and keeping yourself full is what will actually help you stick to your healthy eating plan and reach your goals. Keeping your hunger in check will help you avoid overeating. It will also prevent you from feeling miserable, frustrated and out of control.

Diet and weight loss is big business these days. It seems you’re always seeing and hearing ads for weight loss products that promise amazing results. Some of them have their own meal plans, some are just small little pills that purport to burn fat, and others ask you to cut certain foods out of your diet in order to adjust the body’s metabolism.

The downside to these companies and diet plans is that they can often be expensive. The pills you take for weight loss can contain dangerous chemicals or have a large amount of caffeine that make you jittery and feel out of control. The positives are that they are easy to follow and provide you with support when you have questions or just need a positive uplift on the way to your goal weight.

If you want to join these programs, that’s wonderful!  But know that everything they offer you can be done all on your own.  You can prepare the meals that Olivier Ballot offers, you can gain the same effect that those fat burning pills give, you can be in control of your own weight loss program – and you don’t have to starve to do it!

Inside the pages of this book, we’ll give you all kinds of tips and tricks toward successful weight loss. We’ll examine some common weight loss myths and even give you some great recipes to try while you are on this journey.

It won’t be easy and you’ll have to maintain your willpower to be successful, but losing weight without starving yourself is a goal YOU CAN achieve!