Today is the day I...

1. Today is the day I went back to Weight Watchers, after a three-month absence.

2. Today is the day I faced the Weight Watcher's scale and a 13-pound weight gain in three months.

3. Today is the day I acknowledged my weight is 175.8.

4. Today is the day I get serious about my health and losing weight.

5. Today is the day I start counting Points, again.

6. Today is the day I get back to tracking my food online.

7. Today is the day I follow the healthy eight eating guidelines on the Weight Watcher plan.

8. Today is the day I stop beating myself up for screwing around for the last eight months.

9. Today is the day I pat myself on the back for not gaining everything back, plus some. I acknowledge I still have a loss of 63 pounds. That's a good thing.

10. Today is the day I love myself just the way I am right now, and not wait until I weigh [fill in the blank] pounds. I forgive myself.

Here's the official weigh-in:

Usually I reward myself with a gift after I have a weight loss. I'll set a goal, and if I make it, I buy something for myself.

Today I bought something for myself just because I went back to Weight Watchers. I'd been telling myself for weeks that I needed to at least get back down to where I was back in June (162.8), when I stopped going to the meetings. I know that logic was really stupid, but it's what I've been telling myself.

It's a leather eggplant (purple) Junior Drake purse. It's a lot prettier (and softer) in person. And it was on sale!

 

I bought this clicker thing at Weight Watchers to keep track of Points. I know there will be days when I just can't bear to track my food online. On those days, I'm going to use this clicker.

Here's my workout from today. I write down my workout every day (silly I guess, but I've been doing it two years).

Well, I started writing this several hours ago. It's 9:30pm and time for bed. I need to eat something before bed because I've only had 16 Points today. Something around five Points should do it. So far, so good. :)

When Exercise Is Not Enough

It may seem unusual, but often exercise is not always enough to prompt fat loss, even if you are eating correctly...



However, if you are working out and still putting on excess lbs, you may need to contemplate including the following techniques into your

fat loss program

.

• 1. Go to your doctors
  
  There might be a medical reason why you are putting on excess lbs including hypothyroidism, stress, the menopause or certain prescription medications. Because of this attend your physician, get them to assess you and tell them your fat loss problems.
  
  
• 2. Check your heart and breathing
  
  The simplest way to review this is by using the Borg Scale of Perceived Exertion, and ensuring you are running enough to guarantee results, but not so full on that you are causing yourself to gasp for air. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 sleeping and 10 running full pelt), you should be around a 6 or a 7.
  
  
• 3. Start a food diary
  
  No matter how much you work out, if you are eating too many calories this can lead to weight gain. The problem many of us have is under guessing our calorie content. Even the littlest of drinks - crisp or a cappuccino - can add tonnes of calories to your daily content.
  
  To discover if you are unintentionally letting calories slip under your mouth try weighing, measuring and keeping track of everything you eat and drink in a food diary. Then, at the end of each day, sit down and count how many calories you have had over the course of the day.
  
  You will quickly be able to discover which snacks are making problems. However, for added support talk to a nutritionist who can help you to discover your strengths and your weaknesses.
  
  
• 4. Try a pedometer
  
  Supposedly for every 2,000 steps you take per day, you can burn roughly 100 calories. To figure out how far you walk each day begin using a pedometer and keeping track of how many steps you take in a week. If for example you are already doing 10,000 steps, boost this by another 2,000 to get the results you crave.
  
  
  
  
• 5. Start strength training
  
  Muscle is more active metabolically than fat, so by including strength training to your exercise plan 3 times per week, you can gradually enhance your lean tissue mass and speed up your metabolic rate.
  
  For maximum results, aim to utilise free weights, resistance bands and exercise machines...
  
  
• 6. Quicken your pace
  
  As with many things in life, it is simple to get into a rut with your exercise routine. Try pushing yourself further by including quick bouts of fast-paced training such as cycling. Attempt to cycle as fast as you can for 30 seconds (every 3 to 5 minutes) or including hills to your running program.
  
  
• 7. Stay focused
  
  It is easy to get distracted by the numbers on your bathroom scales, especially if your daily routine is the same. Instead, try mixing up your exercise routine by doing a new activity, listening to fast-paced music and most importantly ensuring you focus on feeling positive and healthy.
  
  
• 8. Get plenty of sleep
  
  Sleep is essential. Sleep infrequently and this can cause your body to start putting on fat. Equally, being tired all day can prompt you to eat more as a means of deal in, contributing to extra weight gain. To overcome this, attempt to nap for roughly 6-8 hours every day.
  
  For permanent

  successful fat loss

  , it is important that you find an equilibrium between your nutritional content and work out routine. However, to help give your diet a boost, the help of a credible fat loss pill can help.
  
  Scientifically tested through 6 medical trials, Proactol has been found to make up to 28% of your daily fat content indigestible, reduce your cravings, improve your cholesterol levels and double your energy; the perfect combo for helping your fat loss to go in the correct direction.
  

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Tummy-Trimming Strategies at the Salad Bar

1. Start with a generous base of mixed greens and baby spinach.
2. Add a layer of bell pepper slices.
3. Top with cherry tomatoes and broccoli florets.
4. Sprinkle with slivered almonds.
5. Drizzle with oil and vinegar.
6. Enjoy a whole-grain bun on the side.

High Protein Diet Plan: A Meal Plan that Helps You Lose Weight Fast and For Good

High Protein Diet : A Meal Plan to Get You Started to Lose Weight

3 Power Protein Foods for Weight Loss

When there's no time to diet, enjoying just one of these high protein foods per day can jumps-start weight loss, helping you lose weight fast and for good.

EGGS

Eating two eggs a day helps women lose 65 percent more weight and 83 percent more belly fat than eating a bagel of equal calories, a study at Baton Rouge's Louisiana State University reveals. Each egg has 6 grams of protein to promote satiety. And amino acids (like leucine) in the yolk stimulate muscle cells, resulting in a 25 percent spike in metabolism.

SOY

Snacking on protein-rich soy foods like edamame activates lipolysis (the burning of fat for energy), initiating weight loss in as little as three days, say researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Soy is rich in branched-chain amino acids that stimulate fat-burning mitochondria, which can reduce the production of new fat by 57 percent. An easy soy snack: Genisoy Soy Crisps (comes in different flavors: Deep Sea Salted, Roasted Garlic & Onion, Tangy Salt and Vinegar, Creamy Ranch).

CHEESE

A daily serving of low-fat dairy increases fat oxidation (the breakdown of fatty acids for fuel) as much as twenty fold, according to research in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Studies suggest this can help women lose 60 percent more body fat than if they'd shunned dairy. The credit goes to dairy's protein and calcium, which inhibit the production of parathyroid hormone, a compound that spurs fat storage.

Quick Overview of the High Protein Diet Plan:

Studies indicate that 75 percent of women are currently protein-deficient. According to researchers at Stanford University, a deficiency becomes more pronounced once women reach 40, due to the declining production of enzymes that are needed to break down and absorb protein's amino acids.

Compounding the Problem: "Many weight-conscious women are consuming as little as 13 percent of their total calories as protein", notes nutrition researcher Tom Venuto. "Yet for optimal health, permanent weight loss and easy maintenance of strong, trimmed, slimming muscle tissue, that number should be 30 percent."

For amazing results, aim to eat approximately half your body weight in protein grams daily. So if you weigh 6 pounds, enjoy about grams of protein each day. And to ensure weight loss is both fast and permanent, follow these study-proven strategies:

Eat your first protein meal within an hour of awakening:

An early-morning dose of protein stimulates the brain's hypothalamus to send out powerful fullness signals, resulting in more reliable appetite control throughout the day, according to research in the British Journal of Nutrition.

Indeed, extensive studies at Tufts University and elsewhere indicate that women who begin their day with a protein-rich mini meal eat 55 percent fewer calories overall- than those who shun protein until the afternoon. The early eaters are also 75 percent less likely to struggle with stress, blue moods and fatigue since eating protein soon after awakening stabilizes blood sugar and dampens cortisol production, explains weight loss expert David Heber, M.D., Ph.D.

Snack on at least two types of fruit a day:
Fruit provides hundreds of slimming phytonutrients, like grape's resveratrol (which promotes belly-fat loss), apple's pectin (which increases satiety) and banana's magnesium (which helps inhibit muscle breakdown).

"But more importantly, eating fruit is a great way to quickly satisfy your sweet tooth, which makes sticking to a healthy weight-loss plan significantly easier," says Venuto.

And studies at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine suggest that fruit is an essential component of this mini-meal plan since it does what protein alone can't do: It quickly stabilizes blood sugar, cutting the risk of binge-triggering blood sugar swings by 31 percent or more.

Sneak in 10 minutes of Muscle Motion:

To double fat loss, consider spending at least 10 minutes each day weight training. "You can get the same results you would get using fancy equipment at a gym by lifting your own body weight at home, doing exercises like sit-ups, push-ups, lunges and squats," says Venuto.

Research at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta shows that women who pair a protein-rich meal plan with such exercises lose up to twice as much as those who simply diet. That's because muscle motion increases the pituitary gland's production of human growth hormone, a compound that encourages the formation of calorie-hungry lean muscle mass and helps keep resting metabolic rate at its peak.

A Sample Day to Get You Started to Lose Weight:

Breakfast: 2-egg omelet with 1 slice low-fat Swiss cheese, 1/2 cup spinach and 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes, seasoned to taste. Total protein: 24 grams.

Mid-morning meal: 1 oz. low-fat Cheddar cheese with 1 medium Granny Smith apple, sliced. Total protein: 8 grams.

Lunch: 3 cups salad greens mixed with 2 slices turkey, 1 slice cheese, 1/2 cup shredded carrots, 1 Tbs. chopped red onions, 5 cherry tomatoes and low-fat dressing. Total grams: 20 grams.

Mid-afternoon meal: 1 cup red-pepper slices with 1/4 cup prepared hummus. Total protein: 5 grams.

Dinner: 4 oz. grilled salmon (with lemon, if desired), 1/2 cup brown rice and 10 large asparagus spears, roasted. Total protein: 38 grams.

Dessert: 3/4 cup frozen cherries, micro waved 1 min., or until bubbly, topped with 3 Tbs. part-skim ricotta cheese and 1 Tbs. slivered almonds. Total protein: 5 grams.

Source: First

The China Study on Wheat

Denise Minger has just put up another great China Study post that's worth reading if you haven't already. Denise has been busy applying her statistics skills to the mountain of data the study collected. She noted in a previous post that wheat intake was strongly associated with coronary heart disease (CHD), the quintessential modern cardiovascular disease. I, and several other people, requested that she work her mathmagic to see if the association could be due to some other factor. For example, wheat is eaten mostly in the Northern regions of China, and CHD rates are generally higher at higher latitudes (vitamin D insufficiency?). This is true in Europe as well, and may be partly responsible for the purported benefits of the Mediterranean diet. You can mathematically determine if the association between wheat and CHD is simply due to the fact that wheat eaters live further North.

To make a long story short, nothing could explain the association except wheat itself, even latitude. Furthermore, she found a strong association between wheat intake and body mass index, typically a predictor of fat mass although we can't say that for sure. That finding echos a previous study in China where wheat eaters were more likely to be overweight than rice eaters (1, 2). Head over to Denise's post for the full story.

The China Study has major limitations built into its basic design, due to the fact that it was observational and pooled the blood samples of many individuals. Therefore, its findings can never prove anything, they can only suggest or be consistent with hypotheses. However, the study also has some unique advantages, such as a diversity of diets and regions, and the fact that people had presumably been eating a similar diet for a long time. I feel that Denise's efforts are really teasing out some useful information from the study that have been de-emphasized by other investigators.

There has been so little serious investigation into the health effects of wheat in the general population that I have to rely mostly on indirect evidence, such as the observation that the diseases of civilization tend to closely follow the introduction of white flour around the globe. Researchers studying celiac disease and other forms of gluten allergy, and the efforts of the paleolithic diet community in spreading that information (for example, Loren Cordain and Pedro Bastos), have been major contributors to understanding the health effects of wheat. Denise's analysis is one of the strongest pieces of evidence I've come by so far. One of these days, I'll post all of my references incriminating wheat. There are quite a few, although none of them is the smoking gun. I think there's enough indirect evidence that investigators should begin taking the idea seriously that wheat, particularly in the form of industrial flour products, may contribute to chronic disease in more than just a small subset of the population.

Favorite Lunch

The garden is in full production and veggies are coming out of my ears!

Lately for lunch I have been eating this:

It's light, surprisingly filling and very easy to make.  Okay, bust out your pen and pad of paper because you will want to write this down so you don't miss anything. ;o)

1. Chop up various tomatoes (Make sure you add the juice left on the cutting board)

2. Drizzle with Balsamic vinegar.  (Enough so you can see it accumulating on the bottom.)

3. Season with salt & pepper

4. Crumble blue cheese, feta or whatever cheese you have lying around.

Voila! That's it. Enjoy!

Treadmill Success Story

Janet used to weigh 337 pounds. She bought a treadmill and initially just walked on it for five minutes a day. She increased the time gradually. By the time the treadmill gave out she had put 3,000 miles on it over two years and had lost 100 pounds. She was eager to buy another one.

But then she plateaued and wanted to try weight loss surgery. (She is only 5'1") Her doctor suggested she first try the Medifast diet for one month. She ended up doing this for 12 months and losing another 120 pounds.

Read her inspiring story and see her 'after' photo here.