Truth or Myth

Body fat is reduced by drastically reducing your calorie intake?

Myth: By drastically reducing your calorie intake you will lose weight but the weight loss is primarily water weight. When you drastically reduce your calories your body goes in search of energy placing it into starvation mode. In the starvation mode the metabolism is slowed and muscle is burnt instead of fat. Once you return to your regular eating pattern the weight is quickly regained.  This is another reason why it is very important for those of us that have had weight loss surgery to exercise, eat lots of protein and take our nutrients and vitamins.

Truth or Myth

Through exercise we can accomplish spot reduction of fat?

Myth:  The info commercials on television and internet can certainly have us believing that we can reduce selective areas of body fat. The truth is that it is impossible to force your body to spot reduce areas of fat regardless of the workout you choose. Doing crunches and leg lifts to reduce belly fat frequently reduces the muscle mass rather than the fat beneath the abdomen. This does not give you an excuse not to exercise but instead of working a single area of your body tone your entire body. Exercise is important to all of us traditional dieter or weight loss patient for it speeds the metabolism and burns fat.

Truth or Myth

Cardio exercise is the best way to lose weight!

Myth: Sorry to disappoint you again but cardio exercise alone is not the best way to lose weight. While a combination of cardio and aerobic exercises will certainly help you lose fat you need to add weight lifting.  Weight lifting promotes fat burning during and following the workout that makes it superior to cardio and aerobic exercise for pure weight loss. For all of us including the weight loss patient and traditional dieter a balanced exercise program is important. To properly keep our body tuned we should follow a balanced routine of cardio, aerobic and weight lifting. By the way, don’t forget that ever so important stretching!

The advantage of maintaining a healthy weight through healthy eating far outweighs the advantages of surgery. Now surgery is not wrong, in fact I had gastric bypass surgery a little over one year ago and am glad I did. Believe me when I say that I first tried other methods of weight loss first.  When I was a young Marine it was fairly easy to maintain a healthy weight. Before joining the Marines and later on when I was not getting loads of exercise it became much more difficult to maintain a healthy weight.  Each of us needs to analyze our own lifestyle and determine what is going to work best for us.

Healthy eating requires us to pay good attention to what we eat and this is something we will need to do either with or without surgery. What we eat is often more important than how much we eat. Following surgery you will need to restrict the amount of foods that you eat. Even without surgery you should restrict the amount of food you eat though it is more important to focus on the foods that you do eat.  For instance, if you were to eat fruit instead of chips, you could have more fruit snacks with your meals than you would be able to if you were just to eat junk food.

So how does one go about losing weight through healthy eating? The best place to start is by familiarizing yourself with healthy meals. You can do this by way of standard internet search or by buying a collection of healthy eating recipe books.  To reduce the boredom often associated with healthy eating, especially if you are not use to it, it is important that you “spice,” up your foods and try to not eat the same meals over and over again each week.

Regular exercise is extremely important to a successful weight loss plan. Through exercise you spark that metabolism and burn calories. Exercise and stretching also help with mood and an improved mood greatly increases your weight loss success. If it has been a while since you last exercised take it slow and increase the time spent and level of the exercise as you go along. Remember that you did not put that weight on in a single day and it is not going to come off in a day.
If you don’t currently have an exercise plan or program in place, you may be wondering more about what you can do.  One of the many ways that you can go about finding exercises or workouts to do is by buying a collection of fitness magazines. Many fitness magazines have detailed exercises outlined in them, often accompanied by pictures.  You may also be able to find free instructional workout videos or exercise moves online.  As a reminder, it is important to start out slow or at least start with exercises that would be easy for you to.

Eating healthy and regular exercise are both important components of losing weight, but there are additional tips that you can use to help you lose weight.  One of those tips involves finding a workout partner or a workout buddy. This is a person who can exercise with you, whether your exercise involves visiting a local gym or just going for a walk at a local shopping center.  Having a workout partner may help to keep you motivated and it may help to keep exercising and losing weight fun and exciting for you.

Another way that you can go about successfully achieving your weight loss goal is by “spicing,” up your exercises. As previously mentioned, you can use the internet or fitness magazines to find workouts for you to do at home.  To help reduce the boredom often associated with exercising you will want to change up your exercises, often on a daily basis. For instance, one day you may want to use a treadmill, the next day you may want to lift weights, and the next day you may want to do an exercise DVD, and so forth.

You should also consider making exercise and healthy eating logs or journals for yourself. These items can be used to track your progress. If you have a good week, like one where you completed all of your exercises, you may want to think about rewarding yourself.  Your reward doesn’t have to include food; it can be something as simple as a sticker or treating yourself to a movie.  Journals and logs have been known to help many individuals looking to lose weight and it may be able to do the same for you.

1. Attitude IS Everything

If you went into last year’s holiday season thinking you could eat like a wolverine and worry about it in January, well, how’s that working out? Swimsuit season is right around the corner. It is now time to get your mind right and realize you’re not as young as you used to be, it’s going to take effort to get the weight off and you need to put down the cheesecake and go for a walk.

2. Eat exactly what you need

You should aim for a comfortable feeling of satisfaction at every meal. You will be amazed at how quickly this becomes acceptable to your stomach. Besides, you can enjoy your meal and feel great afterwards too. This tip alone can save you hundreds of calories per meal. If you want to try all the courses, have smaller portions of everything you really want.

3. MOVE!

Give up the couch this summer and get out the spandex. If you really can’t get to the gym, do a few exercises at home or go for a walk. It won’t just burn calories; it will keep you in touch with your desire to get skinny and healthy. Also keep as active during the day as you can. You know the routine; use the steps, park farther away. No matter what you chose remember that a journey of thousand miles begins with the first step!

4. Trash Day

You just had to buy 6 family size bags of potato chips because you had a coupon right? Time to clean out the cabinets. This is the single best tip you can put into place today. Why? Let’s say you are watching reruns and you get the craving to eat the entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, if you don’t have it in the house then you are less likely to get in the car and go get it.

5. Relax!

Stress makes us do crazy things to our bodies like smoking, drinking, and oh yes, eating. You have many reasons to reduce your stress levels as you do drinking your thousand-calorie Starbucks Frap.

If this describes your pattern of eating you are not alone. This is the single highest response given when asked why people eat the way they do, the nervous eater. If you can recognize it and at least alter the foods you are taking in, you can save yourself thousands of calories a week. So, no matter what you chose, just get out there and do it!

6. Share Your Success

This is a new year for you and a new year for TerminalObesity.com. Lets all share our weight loss successes through our photographs and stories. Losing and maintaining our weight is so much easier when we realize that we are not alone. Submit those photos and stories to Terry@TerminalObesity.com

What will it be this year? What are your goals? Are you going to lose that extra weight, quit smoking, be more active, pay off your credit cards, go back to school, or finally land that promotion? Maybe your resolutions are simple. Maybe you want to just spend more time with your family or get that garage cleaned out. Whatever resolution ideas you have, you will have a hard time accomplishing them if you don’t learn how to set realistic goals and initiate a game plan.

The problem with New Year’s resolutions is that they are often based on fantasy or are too complicated to achieve in a year’s time. The number of New Year’s resolutions that you make can also make it difficult to stay focused. While setting goals is vital for one’s improvement, having unrealistic goals or too many goals will only set you up for failure. So forget about losing weight, remodeling the house, going to school, and traveling to Spain this year. Choose instead one goal and work single-mindedly toward it. After all, a year is shorter than you may think.

When making your New Year’s resolution, remember to keep your goal realistic and specific. For example: Instead of saying, “I want to lose some weight this year,” say “I want to lose 20 pounds this year.” You also need to keep goals realistic or you will never be able to reach them and will only become discouraged. If doubling your business’ profit margin is unrealistic, why not set a goal of increasing profits by 20 percent?

Okay, so now that you’ve got your goal firmly in mind you need to learn how to work toward it. Since large goals can be overwhelming and hard to focus on divide your goal into smaller goals. For example: If your goal is to lose X amount of pounds, divide that amount by 12 to create smaller, monthly goals. Work hard each month toward each short-term goal. Monitor your progress weekly to ensure that you stay on the right track. Find motivation through a support group, a friend, or weight-loss publications. Set up a reward system for each milestone that you complete successfully and don’t look back. Before you know it, the year will be over and you will have realized your goal.

It may sound complicated but it is designed to make sure that you get a wide variety of foods and all of the right vitamins and minerals needed for a healthy body, no matter what age you are.

There are six groups of food which should make up the diet, with a small allowance for treats and sweets (which should be kept to a minimum).

So what are these groups?

1 The Grains

This group covers a wide range of very different foods, but all of them start off as grains. They include: cereals, bread, pasta, couscous and rice. All of these are high in carbohydrates which gives you energy and more than half of your daily calorie allowance should be made up from these. This means eating between 6 and 8 ounce servings of grains every day, with a slice of bread or a half a bagel being a single serving.

To get the most benefit, always choose wholegrain options instead of refined products as these add extra nutrients and lots of roughage to make you feel great.

2 Vegetables

Vegetables are nature’s pharmacy and are packed with vitamins, minerals and fiber.

Nearly all vegetables are very low in calories and you can include a large amount in your daily diet, with at least 2 1/2 to 3 cups being recommended for an adult. When it comes to leafy vegetables a one cup serving is actually two cupfuls of uncooked veg.

Aim to eat some vegetables from all of the different colors available over the course of a week. So include some broccoli, some cauliflower, some red bell pepper, carrots, beetroot and tomatoes to get a good mix.

Fresh is the best, but frozen and canned are good substitutes or you can even drink vegetable juices and still get a lot of the benefits.

3 Fruit

Fruits are also packed with great nutrition, but they contain a lot more sugar and so you should aim to eat between 1 1/2 to 2 cups a day from this group. Again, go for loads of color and variety to make your diet interesting and fun.

4 Meat / Beans

Meat and beans are high in protein and you need to eat between 5 1/2 and 6 ounces every day.

For meat eaters, low fat options include chicken, fish and turkey but red meat is also good, as long as it is lean with little visible fat.

Non-meat eaters also have a great number of options including beans, nuts, seeds and eggs.

It is a myth that a very high protein diet is desirable. In the short term it may help you to lose weight quickly, but too much protein is bad for the body and if a high protein diet is followed for a long time, this has serious health implications.

5 Milk

A good diet should include around 3 cups of milk and dairy products every day and are vital for good bone health. Low and non-fat options are preferable.

In the case of hard cheese, 1 1/2 oz. is regarded as being the equivalent of a cup.

6 Oils

A small amount of oil, 5 to 7 teaspoons, is needed in the daily diet. There are many types of oils but most of the daily allowance can come from oil rich foods such as nuts, fish, mayo or soft margarine.

7 Treats

The “treats” are not officially the seventh group but you are allowed some treats as long as you haven’t used up your whole calorie allowance for the day. If you have 150 calories left over you can treat yourself to a nice glass of wine or a medium sized candy bar.

So forget the fad diets – follow the principals of the food pyramid and you will achieve and maintain your ideal weight the healthy way.

The modern day kitchen is full of plastic. What would we do without plastic containers, plastic cling wrap, and plastic utensils for our parties, plastic dishes, plastic cups, plastic spatulas and more? The problem with all this plastic is that it is made up from chemicals. These chemicals leach into our beverages and into our food whereby the end up in our bodies. The chemicals accumulate inside our bodies where they can cause significant health problems.

Some of the reported health hazards include: Reproductive defects, premature delivery (23% increase since 1980), lowered sperm count (40% decrease since 1945), and early onset puberty. The most harmful chemicals used to manufacture plastic are PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride – a hard plastic) and Phthalates, a group of substances that is added to PVC to make it softer and more pliable. In fact, Phthalates are among the most common contaminants found in the human body. Another common chemical found in the kitchen is Bisphenol-A. This is the main ingredient used to make hard plastic. Hard plastic is used to mould baby bottles, drinking water bottles, and plastic storage containers.

However, there are some steps you can take to decrease your family’s exposure to these chemicals. Avoid heating foods and beverages in plastic containers in the microwave. Even if the container is marked ‘microwave’ it is not the safest option. Avoid using cling wrap as most of these materials have Phthalates in them. Most containers that contain PVC will have a 3 inside the recycling triangle that is imprinted on the plastic. If you come across this symbol it s best to not use that container for food and beverage storage or consumption. Start using glass or stainless steel containers. Use ceramic or enamel plates in the kitchen and use metal kitchen utensils rather than plastic. Avoid storing food and beverage in plastic containers, especially if the food is acidic. If you must use plastic then avoid washing it in an automatic dishwasher and don’t use harsh detergents on it.

In 2005 the European Union banned some commonly used chemicals of the Phthalate family from use in toys. One commissioner was quoted as saying “Toxic chemicals have no place in children’s toys, yet we continue to allow them in our food and beverage containers.” San Francisco instituted a ban in December 2006, although implementation of the ban has been delayed by a law suit. The ban covers Bisphenol-A and certain Phthalates. This is commendable progress, however, society needs more than city wide bans.

At the most general level there are three basic kinds of nutrients – proteins, carbohydrates and fats. While proteins and fats are digested relatively slowly, carbohydrates digest and are absorbed quickly, releasing a surge of glucose into the bloodstream. This sudden rise in blood sugar causes triggers the release of the hormone insulin, whose job it is to lower the blood sugar level. The insulin works to lower blood sugar by removing it from the bloodstream and storing it as body fat. The resulting drop in blood sugar can trigger feelings of hunger, sleepiness or low energy, which many people respond to by consuming more carbohydrates. Which the body turns into more body fat. And so continues the vicious cycle that is almost guaranteed to contribute to weight gain.

All carbohydrates are converted to glucose in the body. And while a small amount of glucose in the bloodstream is essential for healthy brain functioning and energy, eating a diet high in carbohydrates can easily push the blood glucose over the limit, thus triggering the insulin response which ultimately converts that excess glucose into body fat. But this doesn’t automatically mean that all carbohydrates are bad. While there are definitely some “bad” carbohydrates that don’t offer much in the way of nutritional benefits, there are other carbohydrates that contain many nutrients and fiber that’s essential for good health.

What Is The Glycemic Index

The glycemic index measures how much your blood glucose rises after eating a particular food and ranks these foods from 0 to 100 based on the results. You can find a listing of foods and their glycemic index in the database at http://www.glycemicindex.com.

Foods with a glycemic value of 70 or above have a high GI (glycemic index), these foods will cause a rapid increase in blood glucose and insulin levels. Foods that fall between 56 and 69 have a medium GI, and will cause a moderate rise in blood glucose and insulin levels. Anything with a GI of 55 or less will produce only a small rise in blood glucose and insulin, so these are the foods you want to strive to eat more of, while reducing your intake of high GI foods.

How Can A Low GI Diet Help?

A low GI diet can help to control your weight by controlling your hunger. Remember, it’s the sudden rise and fall of blood sugar that makes you crave more carbohydrates. If you can interrupt that cycle, many of your food cravings will disappear.

Processed foods, like white flour, pasta, white rice, and processed cereals rank high on the glycemic index. Since most of the nutrition and fiber have been processed out of these foods they contribute little in the way of nutritional benefits, and the high glucose hit they provide will be turned into body fat, so they are best avoided.

There are however, some high or medium GI foods that are healthy and contain important nutrients essential to a healthy diet. The trick here is to moderate your intake of these foods as well as combine them with low GI foods so that the overall result is on the lower end of the scale. As well as listing the GI of individual foods, the database at http://www.glycemicindex.com also includes some common combinations of foods. If you look up the individual components to see what GI they have and compare that to the combined GI, you’ll start to get a feel for how different foods can influence the total GI of a meal.

The elections are over and we now have the holidays to focus on. Over the next couple months most of us will celebrate holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and New Years. On New Years Eve we so often find ourselves making that annual resolution to eat healthy and go on a diet to shed those pounds. But is there a better way? Can we still enjoy the holidays and not have to worry about packing on the weight?

Even if we are on a diet we need not give up the joy of getting together with family and friends for those holiday celebrations of good cheer. Sure we may be tempted with an abundance of food and drink. Driven mad by the site of those delicious desserts of pies and cookies. Pushed over the cliff as we control our temptations to enjoy the hot chocolate and spiced cider. And naturally we must enjoy that prime rib, ham and turkey along with all of the fixings. And to top this off as we shop for the perfect gifts we will be faced with the challenge of avoiding fast food.

A good start is for us to enjoy that holiday food while not eating in excess. Some of you might be thinking, “But Terry that will be easy for you since you have had gastric bypass surgery!” Well folks I hate to tell you but even those of us that have a smaller pouch due to weight loss surgery can still over eat. For all of us regardless of the method we have chose to lose weight, portion control has to be at the top of our list. While you need to be careful you need not starve yourself. Spread out those delicious holiday dishes over time while taking small portions. So often as little of a tablespoon of a yummy looking food will satisfy our craving so take a small amount to start with instead of loading your plate. Spread out the pleasure, eating slowly and enjoying every morsel. Enjoy the desserts while again thinking portion control and choosing wisely.

Now is not the time to forgo those 6 – 8 servings of daily water. Especially during parties when others may be drinking fancy drinks it can be difficult to stick with water. What helps me is to drink from a glass like others are using for their calorie-laden beverages. If I plan on drinking bottled water this is one time that I might splurge and purchase that designer labeled water. The upside of drinking water is you will find that you will be less hungry and not eating as often. Plus the water will help to flush excess waste from some of those fatty meals causing less bloating.

With all that is happening during the holiday time it is easy to overlook exercise. Take every chance you get to work in some extra walking. Can you think of a better excuse to go to the mall and shop? With the crispy cool weather a short evening walk is still invigorating and will help us to keep down those extra pounds and keep up our holiday spirit.
If you eat too much do not allow it to get you down. Instead look at the next day as a new day as you pick back up and get back into a healthy life style. By using a bit of common sense you will not gain a lot of weight during the holiday season. You may even surprise yourself finding that you have lost weight and have proven that you can maintain a healthy life style.

Happy, Healthy Holidays

Terry