I love pizza and I found these great finds
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Archive for January, 2009
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Best weight lost tips of all
Comments(3) Eight Great Weight Loss Tips
By Brian Stramel, Certified Personal Trainer
Here are some great, free weight lost tips to help you reach your fitness and body composition goals. Why eight weight loss tips and not ten…or even fifty weight loss tips? I want to keep it simple so that there is an increased chance they might be followed. All the weight loss tips in the world won’t do a bit of good if nobody can remember to follow them. You don’t even have to follow all these weight loss tips. For starters just pick one and when that becomes a habit, try the next weight loss tip that strikes your fancy.
The most important weight loss idea has to do with the Law of Thermodynamics. This law means that in order to lose weight, you need to spend more energy than you take in. In order to gain weight you need to take more energy in than you put out. So, losing weight is simple; eat less food while moving more often! The weight loss tips below are just ways to take advantage and make more efficient use of this unavoidable law of nature.
Weight loss tip #1: Don’t go On a Diet! Yep, I said it, don’t go on a diet. Most people can’t stick to a diet for a long period of time. They get discouraged and quit. You need to make healthy changes to last a lifetime, not look for the next fad quick-fix. Does this mean diets and diet books are bad? Certainly not, you may be in the minority who find one that works for you. If not, you still can learn something about nutrition that you can apply to your eating habits. Make small changes to your nutritional habits and over time you will reach your goals and be able to maintain them.
Weight loss tip #2: Make 1 small healthy change that you can live with today! For me, that was cutting out sugary sodas and other sugary drinks. A typical regular can of soda has about 140-170 calories. Two of those per day equals 280-340 calories a day, or about ¾ lb weight loss per week if you were maintaining your weight before that change (see weight loss tip #6).
What do you drink instead? Cold water!!! Not only is water healthy, one once of cold water will burn one calorie when your body heats is up. So, drinking the recommended 64-96 oz. of water per day could equal up to 96 extra calories burned (depending on how much cold water you drank before).
It doesn’t have to be sugary drinks. It could be cutting out desserts, or limiting them to once or twice a week from every day. Try replacing one un-healthy snack per day with a healthier one. You pick one that you can stick to (but start drinking more water anyway).
Weight loss tip #3: Eat breakfast! There’s a reason for the cliché about breakfast being the most important meal of the day. That’s because after fasting all night, your metabolism is at its lowest point in the morning. You need to stoke the metabolic fires with a good breakfast that contains both carbohydrates and protein. If you don’t, your body will think it is being starved and will want to store any excess calories from the first thing you do eat (say at lunch) as fat to hedge against long periods with no energy intake. Breakfast first thing keeps this from happening and gives you energy to start the day.
Weight loss tip #4: Eat 4-6 smaller meals per day instead of 2-3 big ones. The easy way to do this is by having breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, and then dinner. There, that’s 5, good enough. A piece of fruit makes a great snack. By spreading your energy intake out in smaller, more frequent increments, it will increase your metabolism (you will burn more calories) because your body never thinks it is starving.
Weight loss tip #5: Reduce stress. Stress causes our body to release cortisol which is a hormone that helps us deal physiologically with stress. Simply put, the adaptations our body does in response to stress are contrary to weight loss. The release of cortisol promotes fat storage and suppresses the manufacture of other hormones that promote building of lean muscle mass. Try yoga, try meditation, try a hobby or punching a heavy bag. Just do what works for you to lower stress.
Weight loss tip #6: Determine how many calories you need to maintain your current weight, and how many you need to reduce per day to meet your weight loss goals.
Step 1: Determine your basal metabolic rate (BMR). This is how many calories your body burns just to maintain minimal life-support functions and is about 75% of all the calories you burn. The formula is simply your body weight ____ X 10= base metabolic rate.
Step 2: Determine how many calories you need each day to maintain your current weight by multiplying the basal metabolic rate by a “lifestyle factor” based on how active you are.
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For sedentary people (office workers, people who mostly sit or drive all day) use 1.4.
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For moderately active people (people on their feet all day like wait staff, service industry, moderate exercise) use 1.6.
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For very active people (jobs with lots of physical labor, movers etc., athletes, workout at high intensity three times or more per week) use 1.8.
If you think you are in between two of the examples, then you can split the difference.
Let’s plug some numbers in: Weight 195 pounds, office worker. 195X10 = 1950 calorie base metabolic rate. 1950 X 1.4 = 2730. This is roughly how many calories they need to consume to stay at 195 pounds. A note on the formula: it is just a rough estimate, females will need a few less calories (perhaps 200) than this formula indicates. Males might need 100 more. As you age, you will require fewer calories as well to maintain weight. So, use the formula to get you started, then adjust your daily caloric needs based on your results (this is where a nutrition log is important, see weight loss tip #7).
Now you can set your weight loss goals based on how many pounds you want to lose and in what time-frame. The maximum sustainable healthy weight loss level is about 2 pounds per week. In order to lose 2 pounds per week, you need to decrease your energy intake (and/or increase your energy output, see weight loss tip #8) by 1000 calories per day. A 500 calorie per day reduction will result in a loss of approximately one pound per week.
So, losing 40 pounds will take 20 weeks, or about 5 months at 2 lbs per week. If you decrease your daily intake by 500 calories per day as well as increase your energy expenditure by an average of 500 calories per day. From our example above, to lose 2 lbs per week, they would either need to eat 1730 calories per day (2730-1000) or 2230 calories with about 500 calories worth of exercise averaged out over each day.
Weight loss tip #7: Keep a food log. In conjunction with weight loss tip #6 above, write down everything you eat for 3 days (every single calorie!) then total up the calories and divide by 3 to get an average. Now that you know how many calories you are taking in, you can plan out how many you need to reduce per day in order to reach your goals.
Weight loss tip #8: Move more! This doesn’t mean you have to start some grueling exercise program. In the beginning, just look for ways to move a little more than normal. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk to the store down the street, or the park instead of driving. When you do start an exercise program, start slow and easy. No more than 3 days per week to start. Twenty minutes of walking 3 times per week is a great start. Or, a short walk every day and 3 shorts workouts at the gym or at home per week. This will start to increase your caloric expenditure so you don’t have to cut quite so many calories out of your diet and still lose weight.
Like diets, most people overdo it when starting an exercise program, then burn out and quit. It’s OK to miss a few workouts, or even have a rough week and not workout at all. No reason to quit in frustration, just start up again next week. Make your workouts appointments with yourself. Have a short workout as a backup plan for busy days. This can be as simple as doing some pushups, some sit-ups and walking fast around the block. It will only take a few minutes, but it will still be beneficial and you will feel good that you did something.
That’s all the weight loss tips I have for ya…just remember that slow and steady wins the race. You didn’t get overweight in a short period of time…it will take some time to lose the weight as well. Make one change at a time, add to it when the previous change becomes part of your lifestyle. Stop making changes when you are happy with your results, your health and lifestyle. The good news is you can start making some small changes today that will last a lifetime and have you feeling better, being healthier and living longer and those are the best weight lost tips of all.
The 11 Worst Foods of 2008
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The 11 Worst Foods of 2008 By: Stepfanie Romine : 1/5/2009 10:28:01 PM : 490 comments
Fast food and chain restaurants have evolved significantly over the last few years. Burgers, fries and sodas are still the status quo for many diners, but those who seek healthier foods have plenty of options, from fruit and yogurt parfaits and baked potatoes, to apples cut like fries and grilled chicken. Trans fats have been reduced and eliminated; lowfat milk, fresh fruits and vegetables grace the menus at even the most ubiquitous roadside eateries; and more companies are disclosing nutritional information. Despite those changes, fast foods menus remain dichotomous: Healthy choices reside next to triple-stacked burgers and extra large fries. We’ve rounded up 11 of the worst foods we’ve seen this year. Stay far, far away from the foods listed below, and instead select from the plentiful healthy choices at each of the restaurants included in this article.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know you need your caffeine fix. And yes, we know, Starbucks is delicious. But these Signature Hot Chocolates are drinkable desserts, plain and simple. The no-frills version has 430 calories, which has more than three times as many calories as a grande skinny Caffè Latte and almost twice as many calories as a skinny Caffè Mocha. (You save a few calories by getting iced hot chocolate, but in the middle of winter, who wants to drink that oxymoron?) Hazelnut Signature Hot Chocolate (no whip)* Salted Caramel Signature Hot Chocolate (no whip)* Signature Hot Chocolate (no whip)*
Wendy’s Gourmet Mushroom Swiss Burger Wendy’s worked hard to class itself up in 2008, giving its namesake a tuxedo in ads and stressing the freshness and “gourmet” items on its menu. The home of the fresh-never-frozen-burger earned a respectable B rating on its restaurant report card, thanks to a variety of salads and healthy side items such as yogurt, chili, baked potatoes and mandarin oranges. After last year’s Baconator, we thought Wendy’s had learned its lesson. Then Wendy’s came out with this: 600 calories
Burger King Mushroom Swiss Steakhouse Burger Wendy’s, we take back what we said. Yours is not the worst mushroom Swiss burger to show up on fast food menus this year. That award goes to Burger King, which relied on Simon & Garfunkel style warbling ballads to sell its upgraded burger: “Flame-grilled Angus beef, tender mushrooms, warm, melted Swiss cheese,* crispy onions, golden corn dusted bun. (*Processed and pasteurized cheese)” Burger King doesn’t mess around with lettuce and tomato on this burger and nixes the bacon, too. I’m not really sure where those extra 220 calories come from, but they’re certainly not helping you reach your five a day vegetable and fruit quota! Maybe, instead of naming each of these burgers to our list, we should have just named “Mushroom-Swiss fast food burgers” the worst food trend of 2008. 850 calories
Romano’s Macaroni Grill Why bother even calling this a salad? Could we ask restaurants to have a calorie and fat limit for the salad section? I’d like to be able to order salads without worrying I’m consuming an entire day’s worth of protein and fat. Judging from the Macaroni Grill menu, it’s impossible to create a salad with more than lettuce and dressing for under 500 calories. Macaroni Grill flunked the Men’s Health restaurant review. “Seared sea scallops, tender leaves of spinach, arugula, feta cheese, crispy prosciutto, toasted walnuts and Parmesan crisps with light citrus dressing.” Psst… vegetables and lean protein taste good. You don’t need to douse them in fat for us to eat them. (Don’t you just love that it comes with a “light” citrus dressing? Nothing in this salad is light, judging from the nutritional info!) 1,270 calories
Butterscotch Rocks Pancakes at IHOP That IHOP doesn’t provide nutritional info should be enough reason to skip breakfast. Most of the foods gracing the pages of its large glossy menu are desserts masquerading as breakfast and have more toppings than a banana split! We shook our heads at the “stuffed” French toast, dropped our jaws at the coffee cake pancakes and finally threw down our forks at the Butterscotch Rocks pancakes: “Four fluffy buttermilk pancakes filled with pecans, granola and butterscotch chips, then topped with whipped topping and drizzled with caramel sauce.” We conservatively estimated the nutritional content of these pancakes based on menu description. 1,310 calories A standard 4″ pancake has just 80 calories and 3 grams of fat; however, IHOP’s flapjacks would dwarf your homemade ones. You could eat more than a dozen regular 4-inch pancakes with a 1/4 cup of syrup and a tablespoon of butter for the same calories.
KFC Original Recipe Fully Loaded Box Meal Nobody needs a box of food. Chances are good that if your restaurant food comes in a box, it should be shared or just avoided. KFC made our Worst Foods of 2007 list with its Chicken & Biscuit Bowl. Now, the folks that brought you a chicken dinner in a bowl bring you the “KFC Original Recipe Fully Loaded Box Meal.” It comes in a Guitar Hero box, but we’re slightly confused. Are you supposed to eat this while playing Guitar Hero? When I think about rocking out to a video game, I don’t conjure an image of myself holding a drumstick seasoned with 11 herbs and spices. “The KFC Original Recipe Fully Loaded Box Meal brings all your favorites together for an over-the-top concert of flavor. Each box is jammed with two Original Recipe Strips pressure-cooked in the Colonel’s famous 11 herbs and spices, plus an Original Recipe Snacker, your choice of a drumstick or thigh, 2 individual homestyle sides, a famous KFC freshly-made biscuit and 32 oz drink. Man that’s a lot of food!” 1,320 calories (calculated with barbecue baked beans, cole slaw, a drumstick and a Pepsi)
Taco Bell Fully Loaded Nachos If there were 10 Diet Commandments, somewhere on that list would be this sage piece of advice: Thou shalt never eat the receptacle in which thy food is served. Nothing healthy comes in a carbohydrate bowl! Taco Bell has taken the edible food vessel one step further. Their “Fully Loaded Nachos,” which are already a big pile of greasy chips with “double the seasoned beef, fiesta salsa, guacamole, hearty beans, three cheese blend and nacho cheese sauce,” are served in a giant fried tortilla. Nachos served in a nacho. Na-cho best idea, Taco Bell. Parent company Yum! had been making tremendous progress on the healthful fast food front, by touting its Fresco menu at Taco Bell, adding lighter items at Long John Silver’s and volunteering to post nutritional info. This, along with that whole “Fourth Meal” campaign, is a giant step back across the border, Taco Bell! 1,390 calories
Olive Garden Chicken & Shrimp Carbonara Carbonara pasta is essentially bacon-and-egg pasta. Delicious, yes. Healthy, no. The simple dish is traditionally made with “egg, pancetta (Italian unsmoked bacon), black pepper, and parmesan or pecorino” cheese. Olive Garden’s version “combines chicken and shrimp with bucatini pasta in a pancetta and parmesan cream sauce.” It’s then “baked and topped with seasoned breadcrumbs.” UPDATE: Olive Garden now lists nutrition info! (Score one for the Olive Garden! Thank you!) However, we now know that this pasta has 1,440 calories, 88 g and 3,000 mg sodium! Maybe someday Italian food in America will no longer be drowning in butter, cream and cheese. Plenty of traditional dishes contain those rich ingredients, but Italians have learned a word that’s been lost in translation: moderazione, or moderation.
Jack in the Box Egg Nog Shake Jack must have been knocked in his noggin before he came up with this eggnog shake. Egg nog, that delicious yet caloric holiday beverage chock full of eggs, sugar and cream, is blended with ice cream for a seasonal treat. That’s almost an entire day’s calories in a glass. You could eat four Jack in the Box hamburgers with cheese for about the same calories and 23 fewer grams of fat. Pretty hard to swallow, isn’t it? 1,450 calories (large shake)
“It’s the sandwich your mouth always wanted,” says Quizno’s. It’s the sandwich your heart always feared, we say. This beefed-up cheesesteak boasts “prime rib, Swiss, sautéed onions, mayo” on toasted bread. Let’s return to the list of Diet Commandments for a moment. #4:Thou shalt not eat anything thy can’t fit in thy mouth. No one needs to eat sandwiches so big you must unhinge your jaw like a snake to consume. Pass them by, Dagwood, unless you want to eat an entire day’s worth of sodium and saturated fat in one meal. Large sandwich
Chili’s Texas Cheese Fries with Jalapeno Ranch dressing Whose idea was cheese fries? They’re delicious, sure, but really, did we need to top deep-fried potatoes with greasy melted cheese and bacon and dip them in dressed-up mayonnaise? No, we did not. Now they’re a staple at chain restaurants, who try to one-up each other with signature ranch dressings, extra toppings and, ultimately, more fat. Chili’s boasts: “homestyle fries topped with melted cheese, jalapeños, applewood smoked bacon & jalapeño-ranch dipping sauce.” One hundred and sixty grams of fat. One-six-zero. 160! (Oh, and you’ll get 1 1/2 days’ worth of sodium in one meal!) 2,070 calories Eating away from home–even when you’re on the run–doesn’t mean eating unhealthfully. We’ve got 11 ways you can slim down your fast food order. Have you tried these foods? Do you intend to try them? Know of a food that should be on our list? |
Starbucks Signature Hot Chocolates 
Quizno’s Prime Rib Cheesesteak 
Over half way
Comments(1) I like to report i i lost 2 more pounds this week making it 74 pounds goen .and i got 74 to go so i over half way Yea !
Thank for all of you that have support me .through this .I’m Looking to a good 2009 years with all my friend here
Linda
Dieting Truths
Comments(0) Dieting Truths
Most people who decide to lead a healthier lifestyle go on traditional diets. The truth is, however, that 95% of those who go on such diets fail; what’s worse, they often end up in worse shape than when they started.
Diets are both ineffective and potentially harmful; long-term health-oriented programs should replace them.
Low calorie diets, result in muscle loss, in preference to fat so that the most useful tissue is preserved for times of starvation. Fat produces 9 cal’s of energy per gram compared with only 4 cal per gram produced by your muscle tissue.
However, muscle determines the overall metabolic rate of the body, so if muscle is lost, the metabolic rate will be reduced. This means that when the dieter returns to a normal pattern of eating again, the lower metabolic rate will result in rapid weight gain.
The other problem with having a low level of lean muscle tissue is the feeling of fatigue, when doing simple exercise tasks. The muscles and the liver both store energy supplies, in the form of glycogen.
This situation has developed simply because many people are looking for an easy way to lose weight that delivers quick results. No such approach exists, yet the slimming industry continues to misguide people into believing that fast weight loss can be achieved with minimum effort.
Achieving target weight requires lifestyle changes. These changes include regular exercise, a sensible approach to healthy eating and the right mental attitude.
Why Dieting can make you FATTER The conventional approach to dieting is a disaster. The first mistake is to call a program a “weight loss program”. There are many weight reduction programs, which if followed can produce rapid weight loss.
However, this weight loss is neither sustainable nor healthy as it involves dehydration and loss of muscle tissue.
When you are ill and bed bound similar results are produced in only 48 hours, especially if you have a complaint like food poisoning. How much weight do you think is lost in the form of excess unhealthy adipose fat tissue?
DEHYDRATION 70% of the body is made up of water. It is easy to design a dehydration diet that results in losing 10 lb. of water within several days. Many naive slimmer’s are encouraged by these rapid results. Simply dehydration by 2-3 % of body weight can result in a 7% drop in physical performance.
LOSS OF MUSCLE TISSUE If you lose weight too quickly, much of the weight loss will be muscle tissue. It is estimated that when people lose over 2lbs of weight a week, 30-40% of the weight lost will be muscle.
This is a disaster for keeping the weight off in the long term because muscle is five times more active metabolically than fat tissue.
Exercise and Healthy Eating are the First Priority The aim of an exercise program is to lose fat without losing muscle and without reducing metabolic rate. The exercise needs to be customized to fitness level and to specific goal of fat loss.
Together aerobic exercise and resistance training are the ideal combination of exercise to achieve fat loss and it should be part of your lifestyle.
Aerobic Exercise Aerobic exercise metabolizes calories and raises the metabolic rate. The heart rate needs to be raised to a comfortable level for 20 - 30 minutes at least 3 times per week. By exercising aerobically, calories will be burnt at a rate of 300 + per hour depending on your weight and fitness level.
If you consider that just 1 pound of body fat has around 4,100 calories, then you can get a rough idea, of just how long it will take to shed those extra pounds permanently. Look again at how long it took to put them on, normally years or a complete lifetime of your own bodily abuse.
Now comes the debate of how hard to work. Personally I recommend that you work at a level that you know that you can maintain for a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes.
The debate comes in, when various fitness bodies suggest training at a high heart rate 75/90 % of max, or for short periods or 55/80 % of maximum heart rate for easier longer periods.
I am no scientist, but I have tried both methods on a number of clients, and have found like most things in life, it may work for one person but not necessarilly for another.
In short try both methods, unless you are a complete beginner to fitness, in which case I would recommend training at a steady pace for as long as comfortably possible.
Aerobic exercise will also raise the metabolic rate for up to 24 hours after you have finished training. This helps to burn up extra calories and prevents the metabolic rate declining.
Resistance (or weight) Training Look in the section on this web site dealing with weight training for guidelines, or speak to a qualified trainer to aid you in both the correct exercises and techniques for yourself.
Inactive people lose about 10 % of their muscle mass every 10 years after the age of 25. However with regular resistance training it is possible to regain this muscle mass.
Resistance training should be carried out 2-3 times per week for around 30 minutes. Although not generally effective as aerobic training for burning calories, resistance training will still burn about 250-500 calories per hour and will raise metabolic rate.
Don’t feel that by doing weight training that you will develop a body that resembles a body builders, as these men and women spend a great deal of their time as well as strict diets and grueling weight sessions to achieve the physiques that they have.
Another important point is that muscle will not turn into fat, if you stop training. The muscle tissue will naturally break down and shrink in size, (hypo trophy)
Important point because lean muscle tissue weighs more than body fat, your actual body weight may stay the same, during the early stages of your new lifestyle regime.
Don’t be alarmed, the weight will come off, however if it does not, your overall ratio of body fat compared to lean muscle tissue, will certainly be in a healthier ratio.
Try and avoid using the scales, unless they can monitor your body fat as well, instead measure your body at various points e.g. your hips, chest, stomach and thighs. Using an item of clothing is also a good way to measure yourself, as with a bit of time and dedication, you will find that the clothing fits you properly.
Healthy Eating Good nutrition is very important for fat loss, and focusing on health and health promoting foods is far more productive than focusing on fat loss and denial of favorite foods.
Adopting a whole food diet, avoiding salt, fat, sugar, additives, preservatives, processed and refined foods, needs to become part of a life style change.
By increasing natural foods with a high fibre and water content (fruit and vegetables) more food can be eaten to appease the appetite without gaining weight.
A whole food diet also has a much higher vitamin and mineral content than a typical diet containing processed and refined foods.
Gettin-up… AGain
Comments(3) So, I fell off the “horse” last week. I didn’t track my food, I didn’t track my exercise (perhaps because there wasn’t any), I didn’t even weigh-in. But I’m here to tell ya, I’m getting back on. I went to the store and (finally) bought some healthy treats. I started back journaling again .I’m ready to get these 5 pounds off i put back on over the holidays . I feel like I’m finally in that zone…the one you HAVE to be in to succeed at getting the weight off.
