Have you ever met someone for the first time and noticed that something about them reminds you of someone or something else? This is a visual anchor or an anchor triggered by your sense of sight. Until now all of your anchors have been installed in your subconscious mind by someone else or by accident and in most cases you were not even aware of them. Now for the first time through the process of Burris MIND/FITNESS, you can learn how to anchor a reaction or behavior you want on purpose and consistently get the results you want over and over, until you are assured of attaining your weight goal.

It is important to understand that your subconscious mind can be triggered into a negative anchored behavior without even pausing to consider what it is doing. It is this type of behavior that is responsible for your worst eating habits. I refer to this type of behavior as “No Thought Eating.” At the time of “No Thought Eating” your subconscious mind has given no consideration to what it is doing and your conscious mind is not even aware that anything is taking place.

A good example of this is when you are feeling fearful, guilty angry, or bored. You immediately look for something to eat, even if you are not hungry. In most cases you will look for what you refer to as your comfort foods, which is anything that is high in sugar, fat or both. Let us say you come across a bag of cookies, without any hesitation you eat one and before you realize it, you are eating the whole bag. Sometime during this “No Thought Eating” binge your conscious mind awakens to what is taking place. You stop your eating binge and now along with feeling fearful, guilty, angry, or bored; you are also probably a little nauseous. The first thought that pops into your mind is: “Why Did I Eat That? I wasn’t even hungry!” How many times have you asked yourself this self-defeating negative question “Why Did I Eat That?”

The second you asked yourself this question, your subconscious mind is triggered into action to find an answer, which in turn produces a correlating picture. Surprise, surprise what did it find in your subconscious eating behavior program? It found you ate the cookies because you were feeling fearful, guilty, angry, or bored. Of course it did because that is exactly how you were programmed as a child to react to fear, guilt, anger, or boredom. Once again your subconscious mind will take this answer and the correlating picture of you being overweight and use it to anchor you even deeper to your childhood program.

Here is where the fun starts, what you have to do in order to change your existing negative anchored behaviors of “No Thought Eating?” You simply restructure your question from its negative form of “Why did I eat that?” to a positive form question of “How can I stop this no thought eating when I am feeling fearful, guilty, angry, or bored?” Your subconscious mind will now produce a positive answer to your new positive question such as: When you are feeling fearful, guilty, angry or bored, find an activity you enjoy in place of eating. Once again these new answers will produce empowering correlating pictures that will move you toward your weight goal. It is truly that simple, positive empowering questions = positive empowering results.
From this time on, it is essential that you are always conscious of your inner voice, thereby insuring that all of your self-questions are positive ones and insuring that you always maintain a positive emotional state.

Regardless of weather your goal is a change in diet for weight loss, an increase in your fitness program or to take control of an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia. In the end the question you need to ask yourself is…Am I completely happy with the mind running itself or do I need to take control of it? If your answer is I need to take control of it, then Burris MIND/FITNESS is the answer.

The health of your body is dependent on your mental health and taking control of the subconscious is the key to lasting permanent change of any behavior.

Related posts:

1. Weight Loss, Fitness Motivation & Your Subconscious Pictures The second component of Burris MIND/FITNESS is your subconscious pictures....
2. The Best Weight Loss Program And Ultimate Self Help Book For The New Year Reprogramming the Overweight Mind 7 Steps to Taking Control of...
3. The Subconscious Control Of Your Diet And Weight Loss What determines human behavior and in particular your eating behavior?...

This is a dilemma which affects dieters the world over. They think they are taking the steps necessary to lose weight, but nothing seems to be happening. In essence, they are trapped in a dieting rut and they don’t know how to free themselves. As a result, they become frustrated and depressed and may then engage in binge eating.

One of the problems with diets is that they are often standardized. As a result, they don’t take into consideration your individual physiology and metabolism. They provide a cookie-cutter approach to weight loss—an approach which may not work in your individual case. As a result, an increasing number of people are turning to dieticians to formulate a person weight loss strategy for them. This process has been made easier through the Internet, where you can correspond with a dietician any time of the day or night via e-mail. The dietician can also act as your personal coach, helping you through your dieting dilemmas.

Another reason that you may be failing at your diet is because of a lack of support. You may have family members who can eat whatever they want and seemingly not gain a pound. As a result, they may fill your refrigerator with junk food, leading you into temptation. Also, you may feel as if you have no one to turn to in order to discuss your weight problems. In order to solve this problem, many individuals look to psychotherapists to help them with their food-related issues. This can be particularly important if an individual has turned to purging in an effort to combat their weight problems. Bulimia is a serious disease which must be treated in order to ensure the good health of the patient. Thankfully, there are a number of treatment programs throughout the U.S. specifically focusing on bulimia.

Yet another reason for diet failure is hidden calories. You may literally be consuming calories and not even realize it. For instance, the frappucinos that are so popular today are loaded with calories—as many as 600 in a single serving! You may also be indulging in sugary sodas—another source of extra calories. By taking a few simple steps, such as eliminating the exotic coffee drinks from your diet and substituting skim milk for whole milk, you may be able to eliminate the hidden calories that are denying you dieting success.

Lack of consistency can also be a diet-killer. You might go on a diet for a while, then quit before you’ve made any measurable progress. It’s only natural to want to see quick results. The problem is that healthy weight loss involves losing only a couple of pounds a week. That means you’ll have to stay on your diet for months before you see appreciable weight loss. Discouraging? It can be, but if you keep a positive attitude you can achieve your ideal weight.

You may also be more successful in your dieting if you consider it to be a lifestyle change. Therefore, your diet becomes a meal plan for life. This means that you must change the way you look at food. It is designed to be fuel for your body, and nothing more. As a result, you should not turn to food to make you feel better or to provide you with a sense of comfort. A lifestyle change implies commitment; it means that you are prepared to follow the plan for the long haul. If you feel as if you cannot be on your diet for any appreciable length of time, perhaps it’s time to consider a different diet. Your aim ultimately should be not simply to lose weight, but to become healthier. A fad diet will not allow you to reach that milestone. Therefore, you must choose your diet carefully.

Related posts:

1. Why Your Diet Might Be Working Against You Jennifer is a middle-aged single mother with a young daughter....
2. A Lot Of People Diet To Lose Weight These Days When we chose to change our eating habits, we usually...
3. Diet With A Buddy To Lose Inches, Pounds And Temptation A successful diet requires a commitment to nourish your body...

Asking yourself ‘Why can’t I lose weight?’ is actually one of the best things you can do for yourself. It says you know that what you’re currently doing isn’t working for you.

You’re at the place where you’re ready to look at alternatives – try something different to get a result you want.

So why can’t you lose weight? Here are 3 possible reasons you may not be losing weight – and some suggestions on what you can do about it.

#1) Medical Reasons

Now this is not the same as saying you’re genetically programmed to be overweight. That is hogwash. In fact scientists estimate that even if you do have a genetic propensity to gain weight, your genes only account for 15 – 25% of your current weight. So forget the genetics excuse.

But there are medical reasons that some people can’t lose weight. Low thyroid, adrenal exhaustion, insulin resistance and other medical conditions can make losing weight near to impossible.

That’s why before starting any weight loss plan, you should talk to your doctor first. Have a full workup and make sure that you don’t have any health issues standing in the way of your weight loss.

There’s nothing more frustrating that trying to lose weight, doing all the right things and not losing an inch – all because of a medical condition. Get the medical condition cleared up first and then address the weight (in fact, the weight may just go down on it’s own once you get the medical condition addressed).

#2) Emotional Eating

I recently read an article where a nutritionist estimated that 75% of overeating was due to emotions. 75%! Can you imagine what would happen if you learned to eliminate emotional eating and cut out all those calories? What a weight loss impact! The weight would be falling off.

Unfortunately, in today’s world, emotional eating is on the rise. Most people today are feeling the pressure of an increasingly hectic lifestyle. We hardly have time to tie our shoes, never mind deal with our emotions.

Because of this, our emotions get stuffed down and ignored until finally they explode and we’re face-down in a bowl of Rocky-Road ice cream with extra chocolate sauce.

Here’s the bottom line: you are human and you have emotions. Your emotional needs are important and need to be addressed properly with love. You need emotional nurturing and proper emotional care.

If that means you take a 5 minute break every few hours at work to regain your emotional balance, do it. If that means you need to unwind by doing a mall walk and window shopping after work – don’t let anything stop you.

Learn to nurture your emotional health and you’ll nip emotional eating in the bud – and start losing weight FAST.

#3) Mismatched Weight Loss Plan

There are many different ways to lose weight and dozens of weight loss programs to choose from. Some plans emphasize a change in diet, others emphasize a change in exercise, others focus on the inner reasons for overeating.

Every person is different and will lose weight in their own unique way. If what you’re doing now isn’t currently working, it may be a simple case of personality-plan mismatch.

Maybe instead of a diet-focused weight loss plan, you would feel better with a fitness-focused weight loss plan or a psychological weight loss plan. There are lots of plans to choose from and you deserve to take your time and find one that fits your personality and lifestyle best.

If you think this is the case, take some time to review different diet or weight loss plans. Find one that you can get excited about, one that makes sense to you and that fits your belief system and personality. That’s when you’ll make real weight loss progress!

So those are 3 possible reasons for your weight loss plateau. You don’t have to stay stuck in a weight loss rut. You don’t have to keep asking yourself the frustrating question: Why Can’t I Lose Weight?’ Keep believing in yourself and in your dreams. Don’t give up and you will get there!

Related posts:

1. Does Hoodia Work? 3 Ways Hoodia Helps You Lose Weight You've seen the name everywhere. Hoodia Gordonii has taken the...
2. Does Hoodia Work? 3 Ways Hoodia Helps You Lose Weight Hoodia Gordonii can help you lose weight in 3 specific...
3. Best Diet – 3 Key Ingredients For Ultimate Weight Loss Success In order to have fast weight loss success, you have...

How Overweight Is America?

How serious is obesity in America? According to Kathleen Donnelly for MSN Health & Fitness, statistics show that “…60 percent of adult Americans weigh too much, and 17 percent of American children and teens are overweight.”
And the problem continues to escalate. In the past thirty years, children in the USA are increasingly tipping the scales. The rise of obesity among children between the ages of 6 and 11 has gone from 4% to 13 % in three decades. Obesity in US children ages 12 to 19 has gone from 5% to 14%. And if a child is obese at the age of 6, it has a 50/50 chance of being obese for life. Obese thirteen year olds have a 75% likelihood of being obese for the rest of their lives. This problem is even more severe among blacks and Hispanics.

To remedy their plight, 103,000 morbidly obese Americans living in the United States had gastric bypass surgery in 2003. The complication rate was 7%.

What causes obesity?

Several causes for obesity have been suggested, including heredity, social-economic conditions, diet, and exercise. Since we can’t control who our parents are, let’s focus on social-economic conditions, diet, and exercise.
Obesity & Social-economic conditions
Numerous studies have concluded that there is a direct cause and effect relationship between a person’s level of education and their odds of being overweight. The greater their level of learning is, the slimmer their odds of obesity are.

Dysfunctional Diets, Inadequate Exercise, and Bulging Belt-lines

Of course, two obvious causes of obesity are dysfunctional diets and a lack of proper exercise. Americans are exercising less and less while simultaneously consuming too much junk food. The average US woman is now consuming 335 more calories per day than the average woman in 1971. Calorie intake among men has increased to an additional 168 calories per day. Is it any wonder that America is increasingly becoming an obese nation?

Health Risks Associated with Obesity

Discomfort about one’s appearance, however, is not the only downside to obesity. There are numerous health risks associated with being overweight. Obese individuals have a higher-than-normal rate of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, high lipids, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, strokes, respiratory disease, some types of cancers, heart disease, and other chronic and deadly conditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts obesity will soon be America’s number one killer. In 2000, tobacco was linked to 435,000 deaths while obesity was close behind at 400,000 deaths.

What to Do About Obesity

There are primarily three things that most experts recommend to help maintain a healthy weight level: 1) Getting the proper amount of exercise, 2) eating a healthy, well-balanced diet, and 3) supplementing one’s diet with nutritional products.

The Value of Exercise

If you’re considering going on a diet to lose weight, remember that the important thing is not just to lose weight, but to keep it off. In order to lose weight and keep it off, there is no substitute for exercise. One study reported by The National Weight Control Registry shows that out of 3,000 individuals who lost a minimum of 30 pounds and kept it off for more than a year, only 9 percent lost weight without exercising.

How much exercise should an individual get?

The proper amount of exercise that an individual should get of course varies from individual to individual. To make certain you are getting the proper amount of exercise, consult your family physician.

Melissa Tennen, HealthAtoZ writer, says: “Get at least 30 minutes of activity on most days. To prevent weight gain, 60 minutes a day may be necessary.”

What is a Healthy Diet?

The short answer to the question, “What is a healthy diet?” is to eat a well-balanced diet that is as close as possible to the way nature intended. Fast foods and highly-processed foodless foods have been proven to have ill-effects on one’s health. Many are high in calories and low in nutritional value.
Yet not everyone has the time, the money, or the ability to eat “The Perfect Diet.” So what’s the solution?

The Importance of Supplementing Your Diet

No doubt, in a perfect world, we would not need vitamin pills, diet pills, and other nutritional supplements. We’d simply get everything our body needs from our food. But let’s get a reality check: This is not Eden. And getting everything your body needs from your diet alone is almost impossible. Plus, if you are overweight, you need extra help.

What to look for in a Weight-Loss Pill

If you’re looking for “The Perfect Weight Loss Pill,” there are a number of things to consider. Here are just a few:

Does the product’s formula utilize nutrients in the most absorbable and potent form available?

Most companies compromise on their nutrients. They use poorly absorbed forms or synthetically derived fractions of nutrients.

Does the product use ephedra stimulants or dangerous fat blockers?

For accelerated fat-loss support and increased performance, you need help with reducing hunger, utilizing fat, enhancing metabolism, and increasing true energy levels. Insist on a weight loss product that delivers all natural support for healthy weight loss, without using ephedra stimulants.
Also, avoid dangerous fat blockers. The perfect solution is to find a weight loss pill that works by helping support healthy digestion of stored fat and a healthy metabolism. Lipase is the enzyme responsible for breaking down fat, making it available for utilization as energy. Without lipase, fat is stored as excess body fat.

Does the product contain Citrin K™ and CLA?

Research shows Citrin K™ and CLA as two powerful ingredients in helping maintain healthy fat burning. Also important are Guggul lipids and chelated minerals. They help maintain a healthy thyroid and will reduce cravings. Weight loss pills containing these ingredients make for a healthier, safer and more effective body fat reduction formula.
Don’t forget the importance of fiber

Special types of fiber will expand in your stomach and will reduce your hunger without stimulation and drug-like effects. This, in turn, will help to nutritionally support healthy body fat levels.

Your body needs energy to burn fat

Finally, the most needed factor in losing body fat is keeping your energy levels up so you have the energy burn more fat.

Are there really any nutrients available today that help promote healthy and safe fat reduction? YES! Although there are many supplements today containing herbs like Guarana, MaHuang and Ephedra that can have potentially harmful side effects, there are still many that safely help the body reduce its fat stores.

Here are just a few of the most powerful nutrients which have been well-documented:

CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid)

A study published in The Journal of Nutrition (December 2000, V12) established that the natural dietary supplement conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) reduces body fat. Jan Wadstein, MD, PhD, associate professor at Lund University in Sweden states, “CLA may be a valuable weight management supplement to any diet regimen. Keeping lean body mass and speeding up fat loss are the keys to a successful weight program.”

Garcinia Cambogia

Another supplement essential for weight loss is natural organic acid extract from the rind of the Malabar tamarind called Garcinia Cambogia. This compound has been associated with gradual decrease in body fat, nutritionally supporting healthy cholesterol levels, and suppressing hunger cravings frequently. A study performed by Katts, et al, concluded the administration of Garcinia Cambogia reduced deposition of body fat and promoted increased weight loss in human subjects. Citrin K is a proprietary formula proven to suppress appetite. The best and most researched form of Garcinia Cambogia can be found in our proprietary blend called Citrin K. Citrin K also supplies potassium, which plays a major role in maintaining the body’s fluid balance. There are other forms of Garcinia Cambogia on the market, but they don’t have the potency guarantee that Citrin K does.

Other micronutrients needed to support body fat metabolism include vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C and Zinc and Chromium. Look for a weight-loss supplement that will supply you with the highest quality of whole food vitamins and amino acid chelated minerals. This will help to nutritionally support a healthy metabolism, further enhancing your results.

Theobromine

Theobromine is an extraordinary nutrient found in chocolate. It helps maintain healthy levels of stress, giving you a confident and powerful feeling of health. This is a vital component to look for in a weight control product because it nutritiously supports the body in appetite suppression and provides an energetic, euphoric effect. This is very important, as many people scrap weight loss programs because of irritability and their inability to curb cravings.

So if you want to lose weight and keep it off, get the proper amount of exercise, eat a healthy, well-balanced diet, and supplement your diet with a weigh loss pill that meets the aforementioned criteria. The final word on diet pills is this: “The Perfect Weight Loss Pill” should contain the most powerful and safest nutrients available to help you nutritionally support healthy fat burning metabolism without harmful stimulants.

NOTES:

1. OBESITY in America. http://health.msn.com/reports/obesity/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100133520 .

2. National Center for Health Statistics. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 1999.

3. Moran R. Evaluation and treatment of childhood obesity. Am Fam Physician. 1999;59:758, 761-762.

4. Hedley AA, Ogden CL, Johnson CL, Carroll MD, Curtin LR, Flegal KF. Prevalence of overweight and obesity among US children, adolescents, and adults, 1999-2002. JAMA. 2004;291:2847-2850.

5. Newman C. Why Are We So Fat? National Geographic. August 2004.

6. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Surgeon General’s call to action to prevent and decrease overweight and obesity: what you can do; 2001.

7. Newman C. Why Are We So Fat? National Geographic. August 2004.

8. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Surgeon General’s call to action to prevent and decrease overweight and obesity: what you can do; 2001.

9. Obesity Swallowing America http://www.healthatoz.com/healthatoz/Atoz/dc/caz/nutr/obes/alert08032004.jsp

10. The Journal of Nutrition. Vol 130, No 12, Dec 2000.

11. Kaats GR. Reduction of body fat as a function of taking a dietary supplement containing garcinia cambogia extract, chromium picolinate and L-carnitine: A randomized double blind placebo controlled study. 3rd International Conference on Anti-aging Medicine and Bio-medical Technology. Las Vegas, NV., Dec. 7-11, 1995.

Related posts:

1. Will A Spoonful Of Sugar Make Your Child Overweight? Childhood obesity is on the rise. According to a recent...
2. Is A Cattle Prod The Answer To A Life Overweight? If you're not sure what a cattle prod is, here's...
3. Effective Weight Loss Obesity is the widespread accretion of excessive fat in the...

Certainly, there are numerous diets available and it seems like every few months a new diet or eating plan has emerged to become the new successful diet rage. Is it possible that all the ‘popular’ diets can help you lose weight or are there certain diets that can help you lose more weight than others?

This is the question that a group of researchers set out to answer recently. Over a period of two months, 160 individuals were monitored closely as they followed a supervised program. The varying factor among all 160 program participants was that they were allowed to choose whichever diet suited their fancy. Researchers waited and watched in anticipation to learn which diet or diets would prove to be most successful.

What they learned at the conclusion of the study proved to be quite interesting. The data they collected not only helped them to learn more about which diet programs tend to be more successful in terms of total weight loss but also which diet programs more individuals were more likely to stick with for long term weight loss and maintenance.

While the study participants were allowed to choose their favorite diet plan, most participants opted for one of the following: Atkins, Weight Loss, Ornish and the Zone. Even though initial data was conducted after just two months, researchers continued to study the remaining participants. They discovered that after a period of time more than half of those participants who opted for diet plans that focused on low carbs and high fat, such as the Atkins plan, dropped out. Additionally, approximately the same percentage of individuals who chose the Ornish plan, which focuses on low fat and high carb vegetarian foods, also quit their diets. Weight Watchers participants fared moderately better, with about two-thirds of that group’s participants sticking with it. The Zone participants showed similar results.

So, which diet plans performed best overall in terms of total weight loss? Surprisingly, they all performed about the same. Those individuals participating in the Ornish plan who were able to stick with their diet for the entire year achieved a weight loss rate of about 6%; the highest of all groups. Atkins came in at about 4%, with Weight Watchers and the Zone performing at an average of 5% weight loss. Health risk factors related to obesity were an entirely different matter; however. In terms of heart disease risk, Weight Watchers participants decreased their risk by 15%, while other diet plans hovered in the 12% range. The Ornish diet plan participants, who showed a higher overall weight loss, showed a lower decrease in risk of heart disease, at just 7%.

Overall; however, researchers concluded that in the end, there is no one magic diet. If you’re planning to resolve to lose weight in the New Year, your best strategy is still the same regardless of which diet plan you ultimately choose. Eat sensibly, cut back on portions, drink plenty of water, participate in a moderate exercise routine and find a diet buddy to support you in your weight loss goals.

Related posts:

1. Which Diet Plan Is Best? Study’s Surprising Results As the old year comes to a close and everyone...
2. Atkins Diet Plan – It’s Really Not Easy You can easily be bored with the limited carb choices...
3. The Atkins Diet Over the years, the Atkins plan has become synonymous with...

Certainly, there are numerous diets available and it seems like every few months a new diet or eating plan has emerged to become the new successful diet rage. Is it possible that all the ‘popular’ diets can help you lose weight or are there certain diets that can help you lose more weight than others?

This is the question that a group of researchers set out to answer recently. Over a period of two months, 160 individuals were monitored closely as they followed a supervised program. The varying factor among all 160 program participants was that they were allowed to choose whichever diet suited their fancy. Researchers waited and watched in anticipation to learn which diet or diets would prove to be most successful.

What they learned at the conclusion of the study proved to be quite interesting. The data they collected not only helped them to learn more about which diet programs tend to be more successful in terms of total weight loss but also which diet programs more individuals were more likely to stick with for long term weight loss and maintenance.

While the study participants were allowed to choose their favorite diet plan, most participants opted for one of the following: Atkins, Weight Loss, Ornish and the Zone. Even though initial data was conducted after just two months, researchers continued to study the remaining participants. They discovered that after a period of time more than half of those participants who opted for diet plans that focused on low carbs and high fat, such as the Atkins plan, dropped out. Additionally, approximately the same percentage of individuals who chose the Ornish plan, which focuses on low fat and high carb vegetarian foods, also quit their diets. Weight Watchers participants fared moderately better, with about two-thirds of that group’s participants sticking with it. The Zone participants showed similar results.

So, which diet plans performed best overall in terms of total weight loss? Surprisingly, they all performed about the same. Those individuals participating in the Ornish plan who were able to stick with their diet for the entire year achieved a weight loss rate of about 6%; the highest of all groups. Atkins came in at about 4%, with Weight Watchers and the Zone performing at an average of 5% weight loss. Health risk factors related to obesity were an entirely different matter; however. In terms of heart disease risk, Weight Watchers participants decreased their risk by 15%, while other diet plans hovered in the 12% range. The Ornish diet plan participants, who showed a higher overall weight loss, showed a lower decrease in risk of heart disease, at just 7%.

Overall; however, researchers concluded that in the end, there is no one magic diet. If you’re planning to resolve to lose weight in the New Year, your best strategy is still the same regardless of which diet plan you ultimately choose. Eat sensibly, cut back on portions, drink plenty of water, participate in a moderate exercise routine and find a diet buddy to support you in your weight loss goals.

Related posts:

1. Which Diet Plan Is Best? Study’s Surprising Results As the old year comes to a close and everyone...
2. Atkins Diet Plan – It’s Really Not Easy You can easily be bored with the limited carb choices...
3. The Atkins Diet Over the years, the Atkins plan has become synonymous with...

It’s just simple mathematics, right?

After all, if you’re eating 3,000 calories per day and you cut back to 1,000 calories per day, then those extra 2,000 calories have to be burned from your body, right?

It’s as simple as 2 + 2 equals 4, right? Well, this is not exactly true.

First, let’s talk about the average person who begins a diet. The scenario usually goes something like this…

One day you look in the mirror and you finally get fed up with the way your body looks (or the way that your clothes fit) – and on this day you get “angry” with yourself, and you begin cutting way back on calories in an attempt to starve yourself thinner.

So you officially begin your “starvation diet.”

On the first day you skip breakfast altogether (after all, you’re so filled with anger and motivation that it’s easy to skip breakfast).

Then, a few hours later your motivation quickly gives way to severe hunger – since your body is not accustomed to being without calories for so long.

Finally, by lunchtime you’re so hungry that you feel weak and miserable, but yet you tell yourself that you can make it through this tough hunger (after all, you don’t want to look like a quitter to your friends and family who know that you’re dieting).

So you have a small piece of fruit for lunch perhaps, bravely trying to stick to your plan of starving yourself thin.

Then, hours later when dinnertime arrives you’re so hungry and weak that you have a big migraine headache – and you’re beginning to realize that starving yourself might not be such a good idea after all.

However, you try to hold out for another day or two on this miserable diet – since nobody likes to feel like a quitter.

So you’ll probably hold out for another day or two, making yourself miserable in the meantime.

There are even some brave dieters who may hold out for a week or so, possibly even 2 weeks for the bravest of dieters.

However, regardless of how long you hold out — the result is still the same.

You see, even after 2 weeks of starving you won’t have made any noticeable difference to your body when you look in the mirror.

Why?

Simple, because the weight lost during a starvation diet is largely water weight, not real weight loss. This water weight will be gained back immediately when you stop dieting and begin eating normally again.

Also, when you starve yourself your body begins burning fewer calories each day — so even though you’re eating fewer calories each day you must remember that your body is also burning fewer calories.

For example, let’s say that you normally eat 2,500 calories per day (before you begin dieting). Then, you suddenly try to starve yourself by eating only 1,000 calories per day.

Guess what?

Even though you’re eating 1,500 fewer calories per day your body will begin burning 1,500 fewer calories per day – so your weight will remain the same even though you’re starving yourself.

When your body begins burning fewer calories it’s called a weight loss “plateau.” This is why virtually all starvation dieters cannot make the scale go down after about 2 weeks of dieting.

This is why even the most determined of “starvation dieters” always fail after just a couple of weeks.

The truth is that “noticeable” weight loss simply cannot be achieved by starvation, and it’s pointless to even try that type of diet.

True weight loss can only be achieved by giving your body the right types of calories at the right times each day. Your body is like a big engine, and the truth is that it needs all 3 types of calories (protein, carbs, and fat) to some degree.

The best way to lose weight is to effectively manage these 3 types of calories, so that your body receives the proper amount of protein, the proper amount of carbs – and also the proper amount of fat each day.

Related posts:

1. Fast Weight Loss for Special Occasions You have all been through it before, the family wedding...
2. Weight Loss Or Fat Loss – Important Differences To Lose Weight And Fat Healthily Some people used the term “weight loss” while others call...
3. Weight Loss Tip #12: How Starving Your Body Can Make You Gain Weight No, that title is not a typo. One of the...

The women shared some important things in common. For instance, they all achieved their weight loss through either Weight Watchers or TOPS, which meant that they had a firm support network as they tried to maintain their weight. The group meetings were highly important, because they learned to recognize that they were certainly not alone in their struggles with weight. The women were also quite unusual because up to 90 percent of individuals who have lost weight end up putting it back on within five years.

Another common trait of these women is that they appeared to undergo a profound mood shift as they made the transition from fat to thin. From all indications, they appeared to be depressed when they were heavy but, as they attempted to lose weight, their mood brightened.

For these women, healthy eating became a habit—a habit they refused to break. They themselves recognized the tremendous role that psychology plays in weight loss. They refused to give in to negative feelings of frustration and denial and chose a positive path instead. The women also made it a point to weigh themselves regularly so that they could chart their progress.

And they recognized that maintaining weight loss would be a lifetime struggle. They knew that they could not attempt a weight loss program then put it back on the shelf. They had to learn new eating patterns that they could continue week in and week out. In some cases, they likened their struggle to that of an alcoholic. In other words, they recognized the gravity of their problem and took steps to correct the situation.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these women’s experiences was the fact that their weight loss actually came in spurts. At times, they regained their weight, but they did not let that deter them from their final goal. They simply viewed their setbacks as challenges that they needed to overcome. This may be the key psychological trait that separates successful dieters from unsuccessful ones—perseverance. In essence, these women were able to change their personalities in a positive way in order to achieve their long-term weight loss goals.

Another interesting aspect of this study was that it showed that the women who had undergone weight loss transformation were genuinely happy. This shows the tremendous psychological impact that weight loss can have on an individual. Once an individual is free from the burden of extra weight, he or she is better able to meet the challenges of life head-on. The dieter benefits from positive reinforcement, as relatives, friends, and co-workers congratulate him or her for the weight loss. In this way, losing weight can be quite a life-affirming experience and can lead to a more optimistic outlook on life.

It must be noted here that the psychology of weight loss is a complicated matter. There is no single ingredient that can turn a fat person into a thin one. However, recognizing that there is a psychological component to successful weight loss may, in fact, be half the battle. Once an individual recognizes that he or she is engaged in a psychological fight, he or she is better able to do battle. By retraining oneself to seek healthy approaches to diet, one can, in effect, mold oneself into a new individual—one that no longer lives to eat, but simply eats to live.

Related posts:

1. The Psychology Of Weight Loss You see the razor-thin models gracing the covers of magazines…you...
2. Weight Loss Tips and Diet Information Even the most seasoned weight loss expert can use some...
3. Weight Loss and Motivation It should be noted that the key to a successful...

Top 10 Weight Watchers Weight Loss Strategies That Worked for Me

10. I make sure to have lots of 1 and 2 point treats in the house. I work at home and I’ve learned that I like to snack and nibble during the day so it’s important to have low point treats available so I don’t feel guilty.

9. I let other people know (my friends, family and colleagues) what I’m working on so they can support me and give me kudos when I succeed.

8. I share my success and challenges on a blog (http://www.slim-people.com). This has been a great outlet for me to focus myself on what I need to keep doing, reading and thinking about in order to stay on track.

7. I use the Weight Watchers online etools. I’m a nut for details so the online program is great for me. I work at home and sit in front of a computer all day. It’s no problem for me to add my food immediately to the online points tracker. I also enter my weight every Saturday after my weekly Weight Watchers meeting. I get an immediate visual representation of how I’m going as I view the graph.

6. I attend the weekly Weight Watchers meetings without fail. I think in 8 months I’ve only missed two due to being out of town on business and unable to get to a meeting. Though, when I know I’m going to be out of town, I will usually at the very least go the day before and weigh in.

5. I weigh and measure my food. I learned quickly that what my eye thinks is 2 ounces usually is a lot more. I’m not consistent about this but more often than not I do weigh or measure what I’m eating and drinking.

4. I track my points. I write down what I eat. I hear Flora in my head saying, “You bite it, you write it.” I’ve learned that when I slack off from writing everything down, I either don’t lose or I gain weight that week. Again, my eyes are not a good judge of quantity.

3. I work out 4 times per week. Before Weight Watchers I took Pilates classes 3 times per week. Though I was getting stronger, I was not losing weight. In fact I was gaining weight due to hormones, a sedentary job and eating too much. I switched to 2 days of Pilates and 2 days of cardio workout. I started the cardio workout the same day I joined Weight Watchers and I know it has make a big difference. Last week I even started walking to my Pilates studio since it’s only a 10 minute walk. Up until now I’ve been driving, if you can believe that.

2. I have a buddy. My dear friend and I joined Weight Watchers together, as well as joined the gym together. We go to the meetings together. We work out 2 times per week together. We talk about food and how we’re doing all the time. We evangelize about Weight Watchers. Without my buddy I don’t think I would have stayed with the program. No, I know I would not have stayed with the program.

1. And number 1. I made the decision to join Weight Watchers. I had heard a lot of success stories about Weight Watchers and after putting on 30 pounds over the course of 3 years, I decided it was time to take action. I had been telling myself it was age and hormones that contributed to the weight gain and that may be partly true, but I had to take action and do something so I could feel good about myself, my body and my health.

That’s it. There are probably more things that could be added to this list. Now my challenge goal is to maintain for 6 weeks and get to Lifetime Member.

Oh, I just remembered one more thing I did. I read an article, I think on Weight Watchers Online, about rewarding yourself when you do well. So I set up a savings account and deposited $10 every time I lost a pound. I call it the “Pamper Me” account. Now, I will add $10 every week I maintain my weight. Then, eventually, I’ll do something wonderful to pamper myself!

Good luck and best wishes to you in your journey to weight loss!

Related posts:

1. Mind Over Matter: Key Strategies for Weight Loss Success Research indicates that those who have a positive outlook on...
2. Weight Loss Strategies If you want any weight loss program to work you...
3. The BAsics Behind Weight Loss It would stand to reason that if diets worked then...

Do you look at yourself and say, “I’m fat”, or “My hips are too big”? Many of us look in the mirror and immediately compare ourselves to those ‘perfect’ human specimens we see every single day on TV, in magazines and in the newspapers.

Often we talk to ourself and make excuses, “It’s my genes”, “I’m much too busy to get fit”, “I like myself this”, as a way of protecting yourself from the way we see ourselves now and the way we want to be.

If we were to be truly honest with ourselves most people actually want to lose a few pounds – if we only knew how.

The good news is you CAN achieve your desired body shape with the right thinking about yourself, an understanding of how to get optimal nutrition, healthy eating habits and how to incorporate activity into your lifestyle to keep your muscles toned.

But most important of all, you need a regular mental workout to keep your self-image in shape.

Self-image is closely connected to the success or failure of any goal you choose to seek after, but none more so that the goal to get yourself fit and healthy.

So how do you go about strengthening your self-image? Well fortunately your self-image, just like your muscles, will respond well to a regular work out. You can actually strengthen your self-image with a few daily exercises.

Exercise One – Self Examination

Start by compiling a list of all those negative thoughts your have about yourself…I’m undisciplined, I can’t manage my time, I let people down, I can’t succeed, I don’t exercise enough. You will need to decide before you start this process that you won’t get discouraged….these are things that you will admit to yourself but they most certainly don’t have to control your life.

Next, compile a second list including everything you LIKE about yourself. Keep going until this list is LONGER than the first list you compiled. You might include things such as, I am a good cook, I can make people laugh, I contribute to the soccer club, my daughter loves the way I decorate her room.

Then, take your ‘negatives’ list and turn it into your ‘potentials’ list. You do this by creating a positive self-image to every ‘negative’ you listed. Instead of “I can’t succeed”, write a counter belief, “I will succeed”.

Ceremonially throw out the ‘negatives’ list – you are saying goodbye forever! Burn them, trash them, destroy them….they are no longer going to be a part of your thinking about yourself.

Now, keep your list of potentials in a prominent place. On your refrigerator door, in your daily journal, or in a picture frame on your desk. Make sure you have them in front on your every single day so that you are reading them constantly and reprogramming your daily thoughts.

Exercise Two: You Can Be What You Want to Be

Now that you have your list of potentials… run your own visualisation stories so that you can ‘see’ yourself in a new light. For example, if your list of potential includes “I eat just the right portions”, visualise yourself with a moderate portion on your plate, and feeling completely satisfied at the conclusion of your meal.

Read through your list of potentials every day taking a few moments of personal quiet time to reflect strongly on your visualisations. Try starting your day first thing in the morning and finishing as the last thing at night with visualising yourself being the person on your list, and doing the things you want to do.

Exercise Three: Keep a Journal of Your Daily Successes

Keep a record of all the positive changes in thoughts you have about yourself. We all have triumphs and ‘failures’. You must record and remind yourself of the positive changes because our human nature will replay the negatives – sometimes blowing them out of proportion. It’s important to nurture and celebrate the small steps you make every day.

Exercise Four: Go Easy On Yourself – You Are Beautiful Work In Progress

Don’t listen to the criticism…not your own nor that of others! Remember you are the designer of your self-esteem, do not hand this over to other people. You are way too important to give this away. Protect your role as creator of your own self-image and do not, take on board negative criticisms. We all make mistakes, and mistakes can be used to help us learn. Do not criticise yourself for being human and making a mistake. The only last mistake in the one from which we never learn to grow.

Exercise Five: Forget About The Past

The only moment you can live is the current one. You can’t live in the future and you most certainly shouldn’t live in the past….the challenge is to take charge of our thinking so that we think in the same time zone in which we live!

For example we may be tempted to think about yesterday’s failures…”If only I hadn’t eaten second helpings”, “If only I didn’t reach for the chocolate cookies”. If we concentrate on the mistakes of yesterday this will our brains to replay our failures and reinforce them to us.

Yesterday is over, today is where you live….make sure that today you do NOT replay yesterday’s failures and make your resolve to change TODAY.

Exercise Six: Resolve to Change Today

Just as you shouldn’t live in the past, you can’t live in the future. You can only live or change today. The oldest cliché in the world is perhaps one of the greatest truisms of all…’tomorrow NEVER comes!’

There is no better time than now. So, no matter what excuses you may have to wait to take those healthy steps you know you should take, none of them are valid. Do it now, do it today. Resolve to make a different in your own life before you go to sleep tonight.

Exercise Seven: Write a Plan For your Life

This is your success plan. If you have not already done so it is time for you to create direction and purpose in your plans for yourself. Review your list of potentials and record next to each potential when you want to achieve this by.

Exercise Eight: Carry Affirmation Cards About Yourself

This is one of the fastest tools for your success. You are what you think. Strengthen your self-image every day by reviewing your thoughts. One of the easiest ways to do this is to carry affirmation cards in your wallet and review regularly. Affirmation cards are short bursts of words in business card that prompt and remind your self-image of your intentions. An example might be:

* I can achieve anything that I put my mind to.

* I will be satisfied with single helpings.

Try it, you have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain!

Exercise Nine: Change Your Eating Habits

Now that you have set the groundwork in place, you are now ready to change your physical habits. You are ready to add a balanced nutritious diet, healthy eating habits, regular exercise and relaxation.

By using these nine exercises daily to change your thinking habits, you will be strengthening your self esteem and unlocking your internal power to make a change in your life. Before you can change lifelong eating habits, you must first change life long thinking habits. We are what we think. We can’t be something other than what we believe we can be!

So, do yourself a favour, liberate your self-image and then, see how much more effective your healthy living plan becomes!

Related posts:

1. Eat Your Way to Weight Loss Experts tell us we are what we eat. A disturbing...
2. Bust Through the Weight Loss Plateau! Dieters dread the plateau. You're on a roll, losing weight...
3. Weight Loss Myths Exposed It probably won’t come as a surprise to hear there...

They’ve tried many supplements on the market and failed, and wonder if there really is a weight loss program than can work for them. I understand that I should consult a health provider before taking supplements for weight loss. Weight loss approaches that target diet, exercise and motivational support have the highest success rates. #1 source for weight loss, health, fitness, bodybuilding, personal training and general health and fitness related information and services – Brandon, Florida. Most weight loss supplements have a single action, usually targeting metabolic increase. Calcium supplements don%u2019t promote weight loss as well as dairy products. While all dairy foods are a good source of calcium and protein, not all products contribute as well to weight loss as others. A real weight loss solution requires working with your biochemistry, not against it. See also facts on fat loss supplements, patches, recipes for rapid weight loss, clinics & obesity support groups. Because exercise can cause weight loss, they were asked not to alter their exercise patterns for the study%u2019s duration. Getting the basics of fat loss nutrition right, along with the right kind of exercise, will lead to weight loss. Focus on fat loss nutrition, rather than actual weight loss. Your health should always be the number one thing anyone should consider, especially with weight loss. Anyone who has dieted and kept weight off knows this is the right approach to weight loss success. Lean muscle tissue can therefore be stimulated by exercise to burn energy and promote the weight loss process. The fat calories are said to be flushed out in urine, resulting in rapid weight loss. Perhaps the most common sort of weight loss pill are those that work by decreasing appetite. Setting goals that are impossible to reach will only result in frustration and may lead to the abandonment of the weight loss program. For safe, healthy weight loss, you must preserve your muscle tissue (including heart muscle) and burn fat instead. You can also turn to weight loss products like diet pills that will facilitate your weight loss program. The more you exercise the easier the weight loss! Only then will you be able to accomplish your weight loss goals! Exercise and proper diet are necessary to achieve and maintain weight loss and muscle definition. Make the most important step of your life and start to achieve your own personal weight loss goals today! If you’ve been researching weight loss programs, your head is probably spinning. Since muscle cells burn calories even when at rest, adding more muscle also helps increase your metabolic rate and further enhances weight loss. Calorie restriction and glycemic load in diet Calorie-restricted diets differing substantially in glycemic load can result in comparable long-term weight loss. The consumption of grapefruit with each meal was said to increase the metabolic rate, burning fat and enabling rapid weight loss. A successful weight loss diet is all about energy in vs. I might caution that for weight loss newcomers, Burn the Fat is not really all that simple. Mostly, it’s the attention allotted to each and every element of successful weight loss. Weight Loss Resources has a great set of tools to help you find a way of dieting you can live with. Most nutrition experts are less happy with the recommended weight loss. The sensible solution to weight loss, Quick Trim isn’t going to deprive you of everything you know and love. For over a two decades, Cybergenics has developed fitness and weight loss products that get results. Individual weight loss will vary and depends on your metabolism and body composition. Read more about a weight loss breakthrough… To estimate how many calories you need to consume daily for weight loss, simply multiply your body weight (in pounds) by 10. Read about rapid weight loss tips and diets. The best way for weight loss is balanced nutrition and active lifestyle. For weight loss to be truly healthful, you need to establish enjoyment for habits of healthy metabolism, regular exercise and proper nutrition. Water Often overlooked, consumption of water often contributes to weight loss. Antioxidants Since weight loss usually involves a mild process of detoxification, with the body burning fat and sometimes other tissues, antioxidants may be useful.

Lose weight

You’ll never burn fat and lose weight by starving and skipping meals! Weight Loss for All – natural weight loss exercise, diet, nutrition, metabolism, energy balance and fat oxidation information to help lose weight naturally. One final caution: the research shows how calcium helps people who are dieting lose weight faster and may help keep the weight off. You may also need my weight loss pills, it can definitely help you lose weight. People who lose weight rapidly are less likely to maintain the loss for life. There are as many different recommendations for supposedly successful diets as there are people trying to lose weight. The only way you can lose weight and keep it off is to get your natural fat-burners functioning normally and at peak efficiency again.

Diet plan

All of the subjects received an individualized diet plan that provided 500 fewer calories than their usual intake. Cooking is a great way to put calcium-rich dairy into your diet plan. When choosing a plan, please review the overall diet plan carefully. By providing you with a clear head and by working as a metabolism aid, Ginger Root is the perfect compliment to any diet plan. Then decide your diet plan. No diet plan would work properly without good nutrition, therefore it is a major factor in the SixPackNow Program.

Diet pills

There has always been a lot of debate over the effectiveness of hoodia diet pills. Compare prices on popular prescription diet pills and purchase them from top online pharmacies. Like those that affect the hypothalamus however, stimulant-based diet pills should be used in moderation and never on a long-term basis. Adding supplemental diet pills to the mix will help speed up the process and return positive results. You can also turn to weight loss products like diet pills that will facilitate your weight loss program. But remember diet pills should be combined with two steps, that is, a balanced diet and exercise. Also try losing weight with diet pills, vitamin pill, exercise equipment, natural metabolism gain and more cellulite pound busting diet methods.

Loss program

They’ve tried many supplements on the market and failed, and wonder if there really is a weight loss program than can work for them. Consult your physician before starting any weight loss program or taking any dietary supplements. Setting goals that are impossible to reach will only result in frustration and may lead to the abandonment of the weight loss program.

Rapid weight

See also facts on fat loss supplements, patches, recipes for rapid weight loss, clinics & obesity support groups. The fat calories are said to be flushed out in urine, resulting in rapid weight loss. Typically with weight training alone, the fat loss is equal to the muscle gain, give or take a few pounds. Certain dietary modification can have much greater impact on fat loss than with weight training alone. For individuals attempting to achieve fat loss for aesthetics, the intensity of weight training can be a double edge sword. Make the most important step of your life and start to achieve your own personal weight loss goals today!

Healthy diet

We Americans (children and adults) are more confused than ever about what constitutes a healthy diet. Researchers to study how food choices affect cancer risk Study to compare Mediterranean diet with standard healthy diet. To get the most out of your healthy diet and regular workouts, you need healthy metabolism.

Related posts:

1. Nutrition Notes on Weight Loss Supplements and Diet Pills More and more spend hundred and even thousands of dollars...
2. Selecting the Right Diet Pills for Weight Loss With so many diet pills on the market today, it...
3. Take Hoodia diet pills with a Smart Diet, not a Starvation Diet Hoodia, the new African weight loss supplement taken properly, with...

Why the discrepancy between our aspirations and our reality? There are a plethora of reasons, most of which can be traced to the simple fact that life gets in the way.

“I’d love to cut back on my food intake,” we think, “But I have to attend all these work functions and have little control over the meals that are served.” “I would really like to get in shape,” we complain, “But there’s no free time and I can’t afford a personal trainer like the movie stars I see.” “I really want to take care of my skin and my body,” we wail, “But I’m so busy that a quick shower and a slap of moisturizer is all I can fit into my schedule.”

It would be so wonderful to have loads of free time: to plan our days; to cook low calorie, healthy meals; to exercise without time constraints; to be able to pamper ourselves without the pressure of deadlines. Unfortunately, our lives are too hectic for that to happen in the foreseeable future. We can throw up our hands in frustration and join the legions of the overweight and the unfit, or we can work out a personal plan that fits within our lifestyle, taking us where we want to go, albeit not quite as quickly or completely as we would prefer.

Your life, your time, the demands and responsibilities you face, vary on an individual basis. You will need to calculate what works for you, and what cannot be realistically accommodated. Here are some ideas to consider:

1. Diet

Eating on the run, at your desk, or on the rubber chicken circuit, wreaks havoc with even the best-laid diet plans. If you weigh even a pound more than you’d like, try to identify where you are going astray.

If fast food on your way to an appointment is your downfall, look at what you order. Almost all drive-thrus these days offer salads. The problems with those salads can be minimized by throwing away the little bag of croutons (fried) and omitting the packaged dressings (loaded with fat). Carry your own individual container of low calorie dressing, opt for (unsweetened) ice tea, black coffee, or a diet soda, and avoid those sugar-laden colas like the plagues they are.

If you lunch at your desk, ask yourself what are you eating? If it’s takeout, by all means have a cheeseburger or a sandwich. Just discard the bread or bun and eat with a plastic knife and fork, cut into raisin-sized pieces that will fill you up fast. French fries and onion rings? You just don’t want to go there.

Is your office always filled with snacks and treats (as most of them seem to be these days)? When the snacks come by, go to the bathroom or, better yet, take a brisk walk around the building to beef up your “won’t” power and clear the vision of goodies from your head.

If business lunches, dinners, or those awful meeting banquets are your obstacles, plan ahead. Lunch is relatively easy: salad (with your own dressing, of course) or fish and cottage cheese are available almost anywhere. For dinner, try two low calorie appetizers instead of an entrée. Best of all is something that you have to work at – crab legs, unpeeled shrimp, an artichoke (hold the hollandaise) – it will take a lot of time and no one will notice how little you are actually eating.

Banquets are particularly difficult because a plate is plunked in front of you, filled with food you would never order by choice. Cut whatever protein and vegetables there are into little pieces and chew slowly. Spread the rest out over your plate and play with it to delay the onset of a syrupy dessert. Get a cup of black coffee and place it squarely in front of you to thwart that eager-beaver waiter who keeps trying to slide a plate of pie onto your table.

Entertaining in the home creates a different set of problems because usually you know the hostess and want to avoid creating any bad feelings. Fall back on allergies as no one wants to see you break out in hives in the middle of their party. Carry a club soda or mineral water with you and no one will notice that you’re not drinking.

Over a period of time, these little changes can have a significant impact on your weight. If you’re hungry when you get home, make sure that you have some liquid protein or a health shake available to complete your daily nutritional needs.

2. Exercise.

With the best of intentions, millions of us purchase gym memberships. If we all actually used them on a regular basis, as we promise ourselves we will, there would be waiting lines spilling into the streets. Health clubs can keep signing up more and more members because they know that the number of regulars will stay about the same as the new enrollees will show up in a burst of initial enthusiasm but within a few short weeks will gradually fade away.

Unless you have a job with very regular hours, something few of us enjoy these days, it’s difficult to commit to going somewhere on a regular basis. We mean to go but then an important meeting comes up, our significant other asks us to do something, or the kids pester us to drive them somewhere.

Our high demand lives almost force us to obtain our exercise at home. Television is replete with home equipment that promises to flatten our abs, define our pects, and re-sculpt our entire bodies. Despite their assurances that the equipment easily folds away, we know our apartments can never accommodate a Bowflex or a Nordic Track. Where do those buyers live? In the suburbs, we suspect, where the expensive equipment is soon relegated to the basement or the garage to gather dust until some future yard sale comes along. Equipment, except for minimal contraptions such as elastic bands and hand weights, are just too much trouble, and setting them up takes too much time.

Slipping exercise into your schedule is most easily handled (and therefore more likely to be regularly repeated) by pursuing activities that can be initiated without any preparation time, special clothes, or long periods free of interruption. The old standbys of pushups, situps, stretches with weights, yoga, and calisthenics have stood the test of time for a reason. They can be inserted into your crowded schedule at odd moments of the day and require no preparation except a short warm-up. Some of the newer programs: callanetics, pilates (some), killer exercises, and video workouts also fit these requirements.

When you unexpectedly find a secret half hour free, take a walk and, if you can, magnify its benefits with an occasional bout of sprinting.

Such a plan may not make you into a Mr. or Ms. Universe but it will keep you limber and semi-fit while avoiding that energy-devouring guilt you develop when you set your sights too high and then fail to follow through.

3. Taking care of yourself.

We have all read the accounts of Cleopatra bathing in asses’ milk to bleach and smooth her skin. But she was a Queen, for heaven’s sake! She didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to fight the traffic into the office. She didn’t have to take care of a husband, a house, or a child. You’d have the time to leisurely bathe if it weren’t for cleaning the house, washing the clothes, finishing that report for the office, helping the kids with their homework, cooking dinner, and picking up Aunt Mildred at the airport.

We know we need to take care of ourselves. We want to perform the routines that will stave off the signs of age that wait just around the corner. We would love to take a long daily bath or shower, polish our skin to perfection with a loofah and scrubbing powders, envelop ourselves in skin softeners and lotions, and pamper our face and hair with special cleansers, masques, and skin brighteners.

Again, our lives get in the way. We work out a minimal routine of makeup remover, toner, and moisturizer. We shampoo our hair when we can and occasionally find the time for a special oil treatment or facial. It is hard to be fully motivated when the signs of age are brief and fleeting. When I have more time, we tell ourselves, I’ll work on it. Twenty years later, the wrinkles have set in, the jowls have puffed out, and our skin carries the scars of sun, wind, and gravity. Then we bemoan our lack of care through the years and try to minimize the ravages of time already indelibly imprinted on our looks.

By all means, stick to your rapid daily routine. Sure, you could get up earlier in the morning and have time for more self-care but you’re already, like most working-age Americans, sleep-deprived.

One solution is to identify one period a week when you can steal a couple of hours for yourself. Women, especially, shortchange themselves, too busy taking care of everyone else and ignoring themselves. Stake out your claim to that two hour window as if your life depended on it. Use it only for you. Use it to take deep treatments for your face or your hair. Use it to practice relaxation, listen to music, or walk in the rain. Use it to pamper every part of your body and spirit. Use it to think about yourself, and your goals, and your dreams. Use it to appreciate yourself and the good things life has brought you. Use it to lay plans for future self-development and use it to become your own best friend and confidant.

Our lives are so filled up with what we have to do that our wants and internal needs are often unmet. In even the busiest and most demanding schedule, there are moments we can carve out for ourselves, but only if we absolutely insist on it. Right now is the time to become assertive about your own self. You too deserve a brief moment in the sun.

Related posts:

1. Weight Loss Tips – Live a healthy lifestyle Obesity is one of the biggest problems faced by millions...
2. Weight Loss At Work: Non-Food Rewards The e-mail comes out at noon. “To celebrate your hard...
3. Weight Loss and Motivation It should be noted that the key to a successful...

However, this shouldn’t be alarming, I mean the average person does have the desire to be liked, sought after and popular. This might explain why we are so captivated with celebrities and perhaps why we at times blindly follow whatever fad or trend they might propagate in the quest to lose weight and be slimmer, sometimes at the cost of our own health.

An observation of Nature will show that no animal free of captivity is upholstered with excess weight and are oft times very fit, agile and sharp. This is because unlike man, all animals adhere to the simple laws of nature to maintain health which include eating the right foods for your type and getting adequate exercise. Well these are the basic laws, others might include getting sufficient rest, getting sunshine, interacting with others.

There are so many myths and fads that promise to aid you in losing weight that when they are intelligently dissected will make you wonder what ever made you think to give them a shot, which is part of the reasons why I am writing this to inform you that as the slogan of my site on drugless healing says: “if one way is true, it is the way of nature”.
Moreover, Nature bows at no alter, seeks neither praise nor applause, she only asks for a hearing, my friends.

For weight loss, your best bet will be to embrace the three limbs of Naturopathy:

-Proper Exercise

-Proper Diet

-Positive Thinking.

Now I will explain each one in brief detail:

PROPER EXERCISE:

Now, there was a time, like almost everyone, that I assumed big and inflated muscles meant fitness and health. Wrong. Maybe it might depict strength-to a degree and that, for only a while, but you ask anybody about one of the greatest martial artists of all time, Bruce Lee, here was a guy who was said to do a thousand (1000) push-ups and other feats of strength and any picture of him shows he was not a blown up mass of muscle waiting to atrophy and deflate as is the case with most fitness experts and body-builders using artificial supplements, I mean look at the agedness depicted across their faces most of the time.

This leads one to conclude that for exercise, basic Aerobic-with oxygen-exercises (such as walking, jogging, and dancing) and Anaerobic-without oxygen-exercises (such as push ups, pull-ups, dips, using the ab-wheel and weight lifting for body builders) can be sufficient without the use of synthetic products. For those who want an exercise for the mind as well as the body, Yoga definitely is unmatched.

From my experience, if you were to do the Sun Salutations (hailed in Yoga, Martial Arts and African Wrestling as the ‘best exercise for humans’) which have been passed down from centuries with a proper and sensible diet, which I will be explaining soon, you are well on your way to weight loss and strength.

Some Indians perform about a 100 plus rounds of this marvelous exercise on a daily basis and have immense fitness, strength, agility and virility. Add some other poses like the inversions (Shoulder-Stand), Forward Bends (Head to Knee Pose), Backward bends, Balancing Poses (arguably the best exercises to tone the arms, abdomen and restore a sense of balance and self confidence in humans who practice them) and you are bound to see the immense results. Speaking of emulating celebrities, well did you know Sting, Madonna, Russell Simmons, Beyonce and Prince all practice some form of Yoga and need I mention how fit and good they look?

I could go on and on about Abdominal exercises and Breathing Exercises of the Yoga genre (which in the case of the latter is also EXTREMELY effective for weight loss) but that will be another subject in itself, the bottom line is: in my opinion, exercises that use the body’s weight for resistance such as Yoga, Calisthenics and Pilates are arguably the best for the human body.

Have you ever seen a chimpanzee lifting rocks repeatedly? Yet that distant cousin of humans can rip a door off a car and is easily 8 times stronger than an average modern day human. Still, if we share about 98% DNA with this primate (as well as other apes), its evidence to make one wonder how much healthier and fit we would be by adhering and living as close as possible to Nature’s laws of diet and exercise.

PROPER DIET

-“You are what you eat” (Anonymous)

-“Let your foods be your medicine and your medicine your food” (Hippocrates, the father of medicine)

-“Every herb bearing seed and every tree bearing fruit with seed in it shall be yours for food” (Gen 1:29)

From these radical quotes above, it should be plain to see that most modern day meals and mixtures are totally against Nature’s intent for us as humans for fitness, agility and strength. It will be safe to say that if you want to lose weight, re-read these three quotes and the proper diet will stare you right in the face: Fruits and Vegetables.

Admittedly, and you can take this from a guy who was a raw vegan for several months, (Now, I mostly fast and eat mono meals of fruit and raw or cooked vegetables every other day) that might be kind of hard to accomplish or adhere to. Well, if you approach it the wrong way, being radical in nature and as with all things that don’t have a strong foundation, you may be bound to fail.

The good news is there are several books on the subject of this kind of a diet and though adequately addressed in the core e-book of my site, you can type up Vegan Diets, Raw Vegan Diets, Vegetarianism in any search engine to be educated-to a degree- on the subject. I have experimented with each of the three kinds of diets and have been on the Standard American diet and am now of the firm belief that the first two and maybe the third if done sensibly and wisely are the best for humans, period!

I touched on the subjects of internal cleanliness and non-animal product diets in my article available in my blog and some article directories under the title “Is a Low-Carb, High Protein diet the best for weight loss?” but I will briefly state again that based on the quotes above, and the facts that this diet has been proven countless times to be the best (Ask Bill Pearlman-four times Mr. Universe winner!), without the need for much of an argument, a diet free of animal products is simply the best for humans.

For an idea of a daily menu, you can look for my article “How to Cure Acne in 10 days” in some of the major article directories online, last time Google did its spider crawl, it came up in most of them but I also put in my blog for my readers just in case.

I’ll leave you with this factor to consider though on the subject of proper diet, based on the anthropological approach of several authors of Naturopathy, and from simple observations, we as primates, just like our distant cousins, the great apes, are frugivores, eaters of mainly fruits and green leaves and it cannot be a co-incidence that these substances make up the mucus-less or alkaline forming foods that even science has proven to be the best for human life and of course, weight loss.

POSITIVE THINKING:

Some quotes from perhaps the most rugged book ever put together, that being the Bible, bring to mind just how important it is to think positively-and wisely so-in any endeavor one is undertaking. “As a man thinks in his heart; so is he…” and “Guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life”. That stated, what you constantly think over and over is eventually what comes to pass.

The mind has such powers that are beyond human comprehension at times, but according to the author of the “Power of Positive Thinking”, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, “You are what you are now based on your thoughts five years ago and will be in five years what you constantly think of yourself now.”

Although one’s thoughts are very important, without taking the steps to act on them (of course when they are constructive and positive) they do end up being a waste, but your reading this article does depict a desire to want to improve yourself be it through weight loss or any other factor.

Like with any journey in life, of course, you will have times when you may want to give up, lose faith or focus and consequently get off the path to success, which may explain why most people fail at diets and fads in the quest of losing weight, well, my friend, you will have to literally tune your thinking to be positive so as to overcome the doubts and fears as you go about accomplishing your goals. It honestly will be easier applying the two other limbs of drugless healing above for weight loss as they do go hand-in-hand.

In conclusion, forget the fads and hypes. For a healing program to be successful at anything, especially weight loss, it must cover the three limbs of health: diet, exercise and positive thinking. It is my hope that this article will show you how to choose the best methods of attaining not only weight loss, but fitness and health on the inside and out.

Related posts:

1. How to borrow from Yoga for Weight Loss. From India to America, the whole world over is discovering...
2. The BAsics Behind Weight Loss It would stand to reason that if diets worked then...
3. Is A Low-Carb, High Protein Diet really Effective for Weight Loss? You may have heard that to increase muscle and to...

Several studies have shown that the body makes little distinction between a vivid mental experience and an actual physical one. Your subconscious images are simply corresponding pictures of your self talk. Choosing to think in pictures may seem strange at first, but it is a powerful way to cut through the chatter in your head and a realistic source for communicating with your subconscious mind. It is surprisingly easy to develop your own weight-goal imagery. Through regular practice you will become more and more comfortable in delving into your imagination. Just think of it as creative constructive daydreaming.

Most people are not aware that there is always a corresponding picture for their thoughts or self-talk; the fact is they take place so fast you are not aware of them. If you did not use pictures, you would not be able to answer the simplest question. Think about it. If I were to ask you: “What did you have for breakfast this morning?” You immediately repeat my question to yourself which in turn triggers a picture in your subconscious mind of what you had for breakfast. It is only after you have triggered this picture that you are capable of answering my question.

You will find that your subconscious more clearly defines its pictures from questions than from statements. As an example, say to yourself body relax. You can see this has little or no effect. Now turn this statement into a question: What do I need to do to relax? The subconscious mind will now produce an active picture. For example, you might see yourself relaxing in your favorite chair or taking a warm soothing bath or possibly getting a massage. You are able to see the masseuse’s expert hands gently soothe the tension from you body. You can feel the wonderful sensation as your body begins to relax and you feel as if you are floating on air. Now I am sure you understand the power of visualization and how you can use your self-questions to bring it about.

The most important picture you will ever change in your subconscious mind is the picture you now have of your body or how you perceive your self-image. All people with a weight problem have accepted a picture of themselves as being overweight. Until you change this picture, your subconscious mind will use this existing body picture as a guideline for how you should look. This is why it is imperative that you change the image you have of yourself before you begin a weight loss program. I will talk about how to change your subconscious pictures in my next article, Changing Your Subconscious Pictures for Permanent Weight Loss.

Regardless of weather your health goal is a change in diet for weight loss, an increase in your fitness program or to take control of an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia. In the end the question you need to ask yourself is…Am I completely happy with the mind running itself or do I need to take control of it? If your answer is I need to take control of it, then Burris MIND/FITNESS is the answer.

The health of your body is dependent on your mental health and taking control of the subconscious is the key to lasting permanent change of any behavior.

Related posts:

1. The Subconscious Control Of Your Diet And Weight Loss What determines human behavior and in particular your eating behavior?...
2. The Best Weight Loss Program And Ultimate Self Help Book For The New Year Reprogramming the Overweight Mind 7 Steps to Taking Control of...
3. Your Anchors & How They Keep You From Your Weight Loss Goals Anchors are the reasons that attach you to any behavior....

Since its introduction into psychiatric care in 1990 Burris MIND/FITNESS has established itself as the only clinically proven process for behavior change and has been endorsed by all psychologists, physicians, and psychiatrists who have evaluated it.

7 Steps to Taking Full Control of all Behaviors, not just Weight Loss, Diet, Health, Fitness, & Eating Disorders

Step 1 – The Emotional Checklist
Burris MIND/FITNESS is based on the reality that all behavior is emotionally driven. The Emotional Checklist establishes a baseline by which you can measure your results from day to day, week to week, month to month or year to year.

Step 2 – Subconscious Perspective & Empowering Questions
On the first page of the program process you will literally put your subconscious on paper and discover what brings about a behavior at the deepest level of the subconscious. It is imperative that you know what the subconscious is doing because the subconscious mind runs approximately four times faster than the conscious mind and right now you have virtually no idea what the subconscious is doing. All responses from the Subconscious Perspective are turned into Empowering Questions.

Step 3 – Subconscious Self-Image
If you set a goal that has to do with a change of your physical image without restructuring the image in your subconscious, your chances of success are at best remote. It is like wearing clothes that do not fit, you are never comfortable. This discomfort will lead you back to where you began. There will never be a more important image you have in your subconscious mind or a more important image that you will need to change than the image you have of yourself right now.

Step 4 – The Stop & Replace System
This is the most powerful part of the program. The Stop and Replace System will allow you to make an assault on any subconscious programming you wish to change and make dramatic changes in your emotional state and behavior. All the elements from the first three pages of the program are used on this page to help you Recognize, Access and Change subconscious programming that simply does not work.

Step 5 – The Heart of MIND/FITNESS
The Heart of MIND/FITNESS consists of your Love, Health, Wealth, and Self Image. Once you understand how to take control of your emotional state and behavior, it is necessary that you use these skills on a daily basis. The way you process information can be dramatically changed in a short period of time, simply by consistently implementing The Heart of MIND/FITNESS.

Step 6 – Food & Fitness Planner
Getting consistent control of your emotional state includes consistent control of what you eat, drink, and the type and amount of exercise you get. It is important to plan your food and fitness schedule because the process of an unconscious assault on the body with food, alcohol, or drugs can start a day or even days before you indulge in a behavior that will throw you completely off course and out of control. Planning your food and fitness schedule is a big part of reprogramming these behaviors, and you need to plan them until it becomes automatic.

Step 7 – The Trance-Formation
The most powerful guided meditation you will ever experience is on an Audio/Data CD that is included with the book. The dialogue used during the meditation is specific to you based on the first six steps of the program. What you say to yourself is more important than anything anyone will ever say to you or about you. Once you have learned the dialogue of the induction, you can use this to put yourself in a relaxed state that will allow you greater control over all your subconscious processes.

Regardless of weather your health goal is a change in diet for weight loss, an increase in your fitness program or to take control of an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia. In the end the question you need to ask yourself is…Am I completely happy with the mind running itself or do I need to take control of it? If your answer is I need to take control of it, then Burris MIND/FITNESS is the answer.

Read or download and post the first two chapters of the book on your web site, listen to the first track of the Audio/Data CD or become a Certified Burris MIND/FITNESS Life Coach by going to http://KellyBurris.com. Kelly Burris has spent the last 20 years in the development of Burris MIND/FITNESS and is the author of the new self help book Reprogramming the Overweight Mind: 7 Steps to Taking Control of Your Subconscious.

Related posts:

1. The Best Weight Loss Program And Ultimate Self Help Book For The New Year Reprogramming the Overweight Mind 7 Steps to Taking Control of...
2. The Subconscious Control Of Your Diet And Weight Loss What determines human behavior and in particular your eating behavior?...
3. Weight Loss, Fitness Motivation & Your Subconscious Pictures The second component of Burris MIND/FITNESS is your subconscious pictures....

When we diet, by decreasing our calorie intake too drastically, we cause our metabolism to slow down, making it progressively more difficult for us to lose weight. Most diets fail, yet we continue to try one after another, always hoping that each new regime will provide the ‘magic’ solution. If this sounds like your problem, there may be a simple answer. Let’s look at why most diets fail, and how strength training, combined with a healthy food intake can speed up your metabolism, making it easy for you to lose weight.

By drastically cutting our food intake, our body’s natural instinct is to switch to a ‘starvation response.’ The fewer calories we consume, the more our bodies become efficient at using these calories – leading to slower weight loss. This was once a useful mechanism for our ancestors when food supplies were less predictable, but this ’vicious circle’ can make life almost impossible for the modern dieter.

When the body is persistently kept short of calories, it breaks down muscle tissue to use as fuel. Our body, using water from our tissue cells, quickly washes this away causing an instant reduction in weight through water loss. However, this weight loss will be short lived, and will quickly be regained when we take in water and the muscle we have lost will slow down our metabolism in the long term.

The reason for this is that each pound of muscle requires a certain number of calories each day just to maintain it. Therefore, the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn even when you’re doing nothing, even sleeping! If you lose muscle, then your daily calorie requirement becomes less. For example, imagine a dieter loses 10 pounds of muscle (along with maybe 20 lbs. of fat) on a strict diet. Now suppose that each pound of muscle had been burning 50 calories a day. Together, those 10 pounds of muscle had been burning 500 calories a day. With this muscle tissue gone, the dieter must now consume 500 less calories a day in order to maintain that weight-loss!

However, of course people do not stick to their diets for ever and when they return to their old eating habits, the weight that they have lost, invariably comes piling back on. Unfortunately, whilst they lost both muscle and fat during the diet, all the weight they regained was fat. So, even though they may weigh the same as they did when they started, they now have a lot more fat and a lot less muscle than they did before the diet. Therefore, their metabolism is slower and their calorie requirements are less. Even if they return to their pre-diet eating habits, they still require 500 fewer calories a day due to the muscle loss. That’s one reason dieters are prone to regaining all of the lost weight, and conversely sometimes even gain weight afterwards.

A good solution is an active lifestyle that includes aerobic exercise, a good weight-training program, and a healthy diet containing fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grain cereals and plenty of lean protein. It is a good idea to eat ‘little and often’ – keeping your metabolism in high gear by eating 4 to 6 small meals a day, rather than one or two larger ones. No food is forbidden, but sweets and high fat junk food are eaten less often, and in smaller quantities. A healthy diet is a realistic and permanent way of eating – not a diet that you suffer through for a week or two and then give up!

The goal is to consume as many calories as you can, while still losing body fat and maintaining or adding lean muscle at the same time. If your calories are already below normal, don’t restrict them further. Instead, maintain your current amount and instead try to become stronger and more active, so you can gradually increase your calories to a normal healthy level. If your calorie intake is already in a healthy range, decrease it only slightly, if necessary. A small reduction of about 250 calories a day, or 10-15 percent less than usual, is more likely to protect your lean muscle, and less likely to trigger a go-slow in your metabolism.

If you follow this type of routine, it’s possible to gain about one pound of muscle per week and lose about one pound of fat per week. The end result is that the number on the scale might not move much at all, it may even go up. Your clothes will feel looser, and you’ll feel great. Yet the numbers on the scale won’t move!! It’s at this point that a lot of people give up the weight training because they don’t understand what’s happening.

The truth is that when you’re strength training it’s possible to get smaller and heavier at the same time, as muscle is a much denser tissue than fat. The fat takes up more space on your body. At this point, it’s best to ignore the bathroom scales and rely on the way you look and the way your clothes fit.

The conventional way of dieting can lead to a weak, tired body, exhausted by the constant cycle of starvation and weight gain, unable to enjoy food. However, by following these easy steps above, you can easily reach your goal – the slim, strong, healthy body of a naturally lean person who can enjoy their food without guilt, for life!

Related posts:

1. How to Naturally Turn Your Slow Metabolism into a Fast Fat Burning Machine When Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays come around where I...
2. Your Metabolism And Fat Loss If you know someone that has been trying to lose...
3. Weight Loss Is Just Simple Math Think of your body as a giant scale. That scale...

These are more than another set of statistics — they predict things that can and will affect you, your family, your health, and your pocketbook. If you are among the two thirds of adult Americans struggling to escape escalating weight gain, (or even if you’re teetering on the edge with ten persistent pounds you can’t seem to lose), as a physician, I recommend that you take action to lose weight and protect your future health.

And I have good news for you. I’ve developed a simple plan to help you lose weight automatically based on a new scientific breakthrough.

Despite the abysmal failure of conventional medical approaches, this plan is different because it’s based on recent, groundbreaking scientific research, research that I predict will totally revolutionize weight loss and change the landscape of medicine as we know it.

Many of the answers to our weight and health problems are buried in thousands of research papers. With the aid of a number of very brilliant thinkers and scientists, I’ve gathered and synthesized the greatest advances in medical science over the last 20 years — advances that usually take decades to get incorporated into medical practice. Translated into a simple program that has brought easy, sustainable weight loss to thousands of people, you can access them today.

In the recent past, many pundits theorized that society-wide weight gain was due to our genes. In a sense, they were right, but genes only tell half the story. We share the same genes as our hunter- gatherer forebears who foraged in the woods and hunted wild game 20,000 years ago. What’s changed is the environment within which our genes operate.

Up until modern times, man’s natural environment supplied the foods we were genetically programmed to eat. But with the advent of industrialized agriculture and food production, we began eating mass-produced and processed foods that genetically program us to add pounds.

Here’s how:

Food is information — not just calories — and food information speaks to our genes, turning some genes ON and other genes OFF. That’s why it’s genes, not calories, that count.

Until recently, scientists believed that the critical mechanism for weight loss was caloric intake and expenditure — you eat little and exercise hard to lose each pound. But that’s hard to do and harder to maintain, recent scientific studies reveal (and no doubt not surprising to anyone who has tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to lose weight).

Using the caloric mechanism for weight loss is a bit like manually cranking a lever to open your garage door inch-by-inch and then having to hold the door open. Wouldn’t you rather push the button that activates the circuitry to open your garage door automatically?

To do that for weight loss, you have to access the master biological mechanisms controlling weight loss and weight gain. Using those mechanisms opens the door to automatic weight loss. The recent scientific discoveries I’ve assembled decode the instruction manual of our basic biology. At last, we can control the master mechanisms: our genes themselves.

The new genetic science (called Functional Medicine) teaches that our genes interact intimately with our environment. Every bite of food we eat, every thought we think, every stress we experience, or toxin we inhale carries a specific message to our genes, turning them on (or off), and telling them how to behave.

As a result, our genes are programmed moment-by-moment to actively create either weight loss or weight gain. Scientists have tracked exactly how all the different foods trigger the messages sent to your genes. With that knowledge, you can give your body the foods that work in your favor — and avoid ones that don’t.

For instance, for decades, people were warned to avoid fats at all costs, but now we know that the type of fat you eat is more important than the amount of fat you eat. The new science traces the biological impact of good fats, like the omega-3 fatty acids (contained in fish, fish oils, certain nuts and many other foods) and bad fats like the trans-fats contained in many processed foods.

What researchers found is that good fats turn on your body’s fat burning genes and bad fats turn off the fat burning genes. When you consume EPA or DHA, both omega-3 fatty acids, they access a metabolic gateway called the PPAR receptor, to activate genes that increase your metabolism, help you burn fat, and assist you in processing bodily glucose more effectively so that foods won’t get stored as fat.

It’s as if the EPA and DHA opens up an extra lane on your hormonal superhighway, making for a smooth and easy route towards slimness and health. That’s why, for automatic weight loss, I recommend adding EPA and DHA (both found in fish oil) to your diet, beginning today. On the other hand, unhealthy transfats (such as found in many processed and fast foods) act as a metabolic roadblock to weight loss, and if you eat them, you may find yourself crawling along at a snail’s pace, going nowhere.

These are just two of the hundreds of ways that you’ll learn to awaken the fat-burning code hidden in your DNA. In my new book, UltraMetabolism, due out in March, 2006, you’ll discover a wide range of foods that tell your genes to shed pounds, while learning to avoid the many other foods that tell your genes to pack on the pounds. Eating the foods right for your genes allows you to literally program your body to lose weight automatically, even as you sleep!

And that is the key: be simply learning to eat the foods that ignite your body’s fat burning engines, and avoiding the foods that snuff out these engines, you finally begin the process of working WITH your body, instead of against it — something that all fad diets fail to do, which is why they all fail in the long-run.

But, because UltraMetabolism teaches a simple plan to harness your body’s own powerful fat burning forces — ones that have evolved over millions of years — you are actually programming your body to lose weight, automatically.

Why struggle and suffer with ineffective diets when you can actually teach your body to be slim and healthy? With the simple two-step plan I’ve developed, you can program your body to lose weight automatically. In the first step, you eliminate all of the bad foods that slow your metabolism, make you feel lethargic and lead to disease; in the second step, you add the good foods that crank up your metabolism, boost your energy and revitalize your health.

Twenty-first century weight loss is easier than you’ve ever dreamed. And it’s something that I am confident about since I’ve treated over 2,000 patients, many of whom have experienced the very same automatic weight loss that I’ve described here.

My message to you is simple: If you want to fit into your jeans, you have to learn to fit into your genes!

Mark Hyman, M.D.

Related posts:

1. A Simple Plan For Weight Loss The math is pretty simple. One pound of fat equals...
2. A Simple To Follow Weight Loss Program This article gives free tips and advice about how to...
3. 5 Super Simple Weight Loss Tips Weight loss is one of those subjects that everyone is...

Genes do influence our size and shape, but studies clearly show that if you change your diet and lifestyle, you can override hereditary effects to a great degree. Contrary to popular understanding, genes are not dictators, they are committees. They do not give orders; they make suggestions. You can counteract your fat genes and boost your thin genes.

We often think of genes as unchangeable because, when it comes to eye color or hair color, they really are decisive. If they call for blue eyes or brown hair, that’s it. But the genes that establish your size and shape are much more flexible. They need to be able to adjust your appetite and your calorie burning, depending on whether food is plentiful or not, and whether you are working hard or resting. Unlike eye or hair color, your body has to be able to change its composition from minute to minute, from day to day.

Although your chromosomes are extraordinarily complex, there are just five key gene groups you need to know about:

* Taste genes determine the foods you crave. In taste experiments, scientists use a test substance called PROP (6-N-propylthiouracil). About one in four people can taste its bitterness very strongly. These people avoid grapefruits and never go near black coffee. Although their acute taste sense is generally an advantage, the downside is they may avoid healthy vegetables, such as broccoli or cabbage, that have a hint of bitterness. If this group includes you, you’ll want to find ways to flavor these healthy vegetables so you will include them in your routine.

Another one in four people cannot taste PROP and are called “taste blind.” Their problem is they may tend to overeat, making up in quantity what they are missing in taste. If this includes you, and you tend to be indiscriminate in what you’re eating, you’ll want to take care to emphasize fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans, and to be very cautious about fatty foods and their hidden calories.

* A gene on chromosome 7 makes leptin, the appetite-taming hormone. In 1997, English researchers reported the case of two cousins who became extremely obese very early in life. They demanded food continuously and ate much more than their siblings. At age 8, one weighed 189 pounds. She had so much trouble walking she had to have liposuction of her legs. Her cousin was only two years old but already weighed 64 pounds. It turned out they shared a rare mutation blocking the leptin gene. With no leptin to curb hunger, their appetites were voracious.

You are not likely to have this same gene abnormality. However, your leptin may not be working perfectly either. Very-low-calorie diets disrupt its appetite-taming effect, causing your appetite to run out of control. The key to keeping leptin working right is to avoid severe calorie restrictions. If you eat at least 10 calories per day per pound of your ideal weight, you are unlikely to run into serious problems.

* A gene on chromosome 8 builds LPL, the key enzyme that stores fat in your cells. It waits along the walls of the tiny blood vessels that course through your body fat, and its job is to extract fat from your bloodstream and pass it into your fat cells for storage. If your LPL is doing its job a little too well, you can change this genetic tendency by choosing foods that have little or no fat in them. Once again, vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains are your best friends.

* The hormone insulin, coded on chromosome 11, is part of your body’s system for increasing your metabolism after meals. Depending on the type of foods you choose, you can help insulin spark a pronounced after-meal burn that releases calories as body heat rather than storing them as fat. Low-fat, vegan diets, along with regular exercise, make insulin more efficient.

* Believe it or not, exercise aptitude is largely biological, too. People who love to go for a five-mile run at the crack of dawn are genetically different from other people. They are endowed with a better capillary network that brings oxygen to working muscles and a more efficient fuel-burning mechanism. If you did not get these genetic advantages, you can do the next best thing. If you begin a regular exercise program and stick with it, your muscle cells begin to look more and more like those of natural athletes.

There is no need to be daunted by your family heritage. Yes, some of us will always be bigger and others smaller. But with a healthy, low-fat diet and regular physical activity, your genes can stop working against you and start working for you.

Related posts:

1. 10 Secrets to a Fit Family It’s no secret that many parents and their children are...
2. 10 Real Life Diet Tips Are you tired of diet tips handed out by someone...
3. 10 Easy Ways to a ‘Healthy-Diet’ for Kids Creating a Healthy Home can be easier than you think....

But by following three simple steps in your everyday life you do not have to become one of the above statistics. They are easy to follow without time constraints and don’t require a complete lifestyle change. These three steps are:

1. Strength Training – Nowadays you do not have to live in a gym to put on functional muscle. Short High Intensity sessions performed once a week is all that is required to elevate the metabolism for total fat burning.

2. A Small Decrease in Daily Calories – Diets don’t work (everybody knows this by now) but by decreasing your daily calories by a small amount, the weight loss is body fat alone and not lean tissue and water that is associated with crash diets. Remember fat accumulates on the body over a long period of time so it must come off slowly.

3. More Incidental Activity – Instead of driving try walking, walk instead of taking elevators or escalators; take the stairs and so on. Just keep moving through out the day.

Lets have a look at the Three Steps in more detail below:

Strength Training

Between the ages of 20 and 70 the average person loses one quarter of their muscle mass. Running, cycling or other aerobic sports will not prevent this loss. This is very disturbing because the muscles are the engines of the body and every pound of muscle burns 100 calories every day.

By adding just 10 pounds of functional muscle to your body, you will burn off 60 pounds of fat over the next year. Providing you take in the same amount of calories it will keep burning those extra pounds year after year! The amount of fat the body
can burn is directly related to the lean muscle your body has.

If you don’t perform weight training to maintain your muscle tissue, you will lose half a pound of the fat burning tissue per year after the age of 20 years. In simpler terms the more functional muscle you have on your body the more fat you will burn up.

Small Decrease in Daily Calories

For years now, we have been told to use dieting to rid the excess fat from our bodies.

The trouble with this concept is that the low calorie restricted diet would throw the body into starvation mode, with the body holding onto the fat and using precious muscle tissue for energy.

This would then lower the metabolism causing greater muscle loss and when the diet is broken the unwanted fat would not only return but actually increase because to the lowered metabolism.

The way around this is to cut your daily calorie intake by a small amount of calories only. This will stop any starvation mechanisms from clicking in. You can do this by making up a seven day eating plan and writing down every thing you eat for the week, and then work out the calories you have eaten with a calorie counter. Divide this figure by seven and you have your daily calorie value.

Decrease daily calorie value by a couple of hundred calories per day and no more. This will generate slow weight loss and the majority will be fat loss only. The daily calories should be consumed during the day with small frequent meals.

The calories should come from a balanced diet (no fad diets please) with the required amount of micronutrients, vitamins and minerals. As well as containing the required amounts of fibre, fat, protein and carbohydrates.

More Incidental Activity

Fat is burned from the body when cells oxidize to release energy in the form of exercise. When the exercise is done slowly to moderately then the majority of energy is taken from the fat stores.

The key to effective aerobic training that burns off maximum fat is long-term consistency not intensity. It doesn’t matter if you run a mile, jog a mile or walk a mile you will burn exactly the same amount of calories.

The best exercise by far for the purpose of fat-loss is fast walking either indoors on the treadmill or outdoors. Other aerobic activities are the treadmill, bike, climber or any other training gear found in or out of the Gym.

Start with 100 minutes of controlled incidental activity per week increasing this to 200 minutes a week or more. In all other activities try to move, move, move. Try parking the car further away from your destination so you can walk the extra distance, hide all your remote controls so you have to get up and change the channels manually. These all help burn those extra calories and body fat from your frame.

By incorporating these three simple fat loss steps into your everyday life you will not have to change your lifestyle or be subject to time constraints.

Related posts:

1. Scientific Guidelines for Effective Weight Loss If you have been dieting and haven't lost weight, stop!...
2. Weight Loss Is Just Simple Math Think of your body as a giant scale. That scale...
3. Fast Weight Loss for Special Occasions You have all been through it before, the family wedding...

Although the above would probably be the major mechanisms by which whey could help the dieter, there are several secondary effects of whey that may assist in weight loss. For example, whey’s effects on serotonin levels. Serotonin is probably the most studied neurotransmitter since it has been found to be involved in a wide range of psychological and biological functions. Serotonin ( also called 5-hydroxytryptamine or 5-HT) is involved with mood, anxiety, and appetite.

Elevated levels of serotonin can cause relaxation and reduced anxiety. Low serotonin levels are associated with low mood, increased anxiety (hence the current popularity of the SSRI drugs such as Prozac and others), and poor appetite control. This is an extremely abbreviated description of all the functions serotonin performs in the human body – many of which have yet to be fully elucidated – but a full explanation is beyond the scope of this article.

Needless to say, Increased brain serotonin levels are associated with an improved ability of people to cope with stress, whereas a decline in serotonin activity is associated with depression and anxiety. Elevated levels of serotonin in the body often result in the relief of depression, as well as substantial reduction in pain sensitivity, anxiety and stress. It has also been theorized that a diet-induced increase in tryptophan will increase brain serotonin levels, while a diet designed for weight loss (e.g., a diet that reduces calories) may lead to a reduction of brain serotonin levels due to reduced substrate for production and a reduction in carbohydrates.

Many people on a reduced calorie intake in an attempt to lose weight find they are often ill tempered and more anxious. Reductions in serotonin may be partially to blame here. One recent study (The bovine protein alpha-lactalbumin increases the plasma ratio of tryptophan to the other large neutral amino acids, and in vulnerable subjects raises brain serotonin activity, reduces cortisol concentration, and improves mood under stress. Am J Clin Nutr 2000 Jun;71(6):1536-1544) examined whether alpha-lactalbumin – a major sub fraction found in whey which has an especially high tryptophan content – would increase plasma Tryptophan levels as well reduce depression and cortisol concentrations in subjects under acute stress considered to be vulnerable to stress.

The researchers examined twenty-nine “highly stress-vulnerable subjects” and 29 “relatively stress-invulnerable” subjects using a double blind, placebo-controlled study design. The study participants were exposed to experimental stress after eating a diet enriched with either alpha-lactalbumin (found in whey) or sodium-caseinate, another milk based protein. They researchers looked at:

* Diet-induced changes in the plasma Tryptophan and its ratio to other large neutral amino acids.

* Prolactin levels.

* Changes in mood and pulse rate.

* Cortisol levels (which were assessed before and after the stressor).

Amazingly, the ratio of plasma Tryptophan to the other amino acids tested was 48% higher after the alpha-lactalbumin diet than after the casein diet! This was accompanied by a decrease in cortisol levels and higher prolactin concentration. Perhaps most important and relevant to the average person reading this article, they found “reduced depressive feelings” when test subjects were put under stress.

They concluded that the “Consumption of a dietary protein enriched in tryptophan increased the plasma Trp-LNAA ratio and, in stress-vulnerable subjects, improved coping ability, probably through alterations in brain serotonin.” This effect was not seen in the sodium-caseinate group. If other studies can confirm these findings, whey may turn out to be yet another safe and effective supplement in the battle against depression and stress, as well as reduced serotonin levels due to dieting.

Although there is a long list of hormones involved in appetite regulation, some of which have been mentioned above, serotonin appears to be a key player in the game. In general, experiments find increased serotonin availability or activity = reduced food consumption and decreased serotonin = increase food consumption. If whey can selectively increase serotonin levels above that of other proteins, it could be very helpful to the dieter.

Other possible advantages whey may confer to the dieter is improved blood sugar regulation (Frid AH, Nilsson M, Holst JJ, Bjorck IM. Effect of whey on blood glucose and insulin responses to composite breakfast and lunch meals in type 2 diabetic subjects. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Jul;82(1):69-75.) which is yet another key area in controlling appetite and metabolism.

Finally, calcium from dairy products has been found to be associated with a reduction in bodyweight and fat mass. Calcium is thought to influence energy metabolism as intracellular calcium regulates fat cell (adipocyte) lipid metabolism as well as triglyceride storage. It’s been demonstrated in several studies the superiority of dairy versus non-dairy sources of calcium for improving body composition, and the whey fraction of dairy maybe the key.

The mechanism responsible for increased fat loss found with dairy-based calcium versus nondairy calcium has not is not fully understood but researchers looking at the issue theorized “… dairy sources of calcium markedly attenuate weight and fat gain and accelerate fat loss to a greater degree than do supplemental sources of calcium. This augmented effect of dairy products relative to supplemental calcium is likely due to additional bioactive compounds, including the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and the rich concentration of branched-chain amino acids in whey, which act synergistically with calcium to attenuate adiposity.”

It appears components in whey – some of which have been mentioned above – are thought to act synergistically with calcium to improve body composition (Zemel MB. Role of calcium and dairy products in energy partitioning and weight management. Am J Clin Nutr. 2004 May;79(5):907S-912S.).

Conclusion

Taken in isolation, none of these studies are so compelling that people should run out and use whey as some form of weight loss nirvana. However, taken as a total picture, the bulk of the research seems to conclude that whey may in fact have some unique effects for weight loss and should be of great use to the dieter. More studies are clearly needed however.

So what is the practical application of all this information and how does the dieter put it to good use? Being the appetite suppressing effects of whey appear to last approximately 2-3 hours, it would seem best to stagger the intake throughout the day. For example, breakfast might be 1-2 scoops of whey and a bowl of oatmeal, and perhaps a few scoops of whey taken between lunch and dinner.

If whey does what the data suggests it does in the above, that should be the most effective method for maximizing the effects of whey on food (calorie) intake on subsequent meals as well as the other metabolic effects covered. If working out, the schedule may be different however and people should follow the pre and post nutrition recommendations made in my ebook “Muscle Building Nutrition” or advice easily found on the ‘net via the many sports nutrition and bodybuilding related web sites.

Related posts:

1. The Role Of Whey Protein In Achieving Significant Muscle Gain Most bodybuilders would agree that supplementing with whey protein is...
2. Common Myths From The Weight Loss Crowd Myth: You’ll be OK with a high protein/low carb diet...
3. Benefits of Whey Protein In recent years, the subject of whey protein has come...

The next question is: What are the components of this information? The components of the information that determines your emotional state and behavior are words and pictures. The next logical question then is how do you Recognize, Access and Change the information that is driving a behavior that simply does not work? This is where over 20 years of research and development come in with a program process now known as Burris MIND/FITNESS. MIND/FITNESS answers the last question with great precision and accuracy by virtue of starting out with the first two questions. In the resolution of any problem it is always about the question. Never has this been more relevant. Imagine if for the last 60 years psychologists asked, How can I fix it? instead of Why is it broken?!

Why You Absolutely Must Take Control of Your Subconscious

To give you an idea of the power of the subconscious, you can speak at a rate of about two to three hundred words per minute. Your subconscious runs at a rate of about one thousand to twelve hundred words per minute which is about four times faster than you can speak. This is why you can talk on the phone and perform other tasks like typing on the computer or driving a car because the subconscious is already programmed to do the other tasks. You can look at the conscious mind and the subconscious mind like a tug of war with a vat of mud in the middle for whom ever loses. The conscious mind is one-person on one side against the subconscious, which are four people on the other side. If the conscious decides to move in a different direction like changing your diet, losing weight, increasing your fitness program, quitting smoking or any number of other things, it is usually a losing proposition because you are simply out numbered with information. This is why it is so difficult to attain spontaneous change. Burris MIND/FITNESS will to make sure you have the most people on your side in the tug of war.

Burris MIND/FITNESS is based on the reality that all behavior is emotionally driven or in other words your emotional state = your behavior. How you feel about things you do will always determine whether you move toward them or not. You will always move toward perceived pleasure and away from pain. The key component of any behavioral change program must include how to get control of your emotional state. So what is the biggest difference between MIND/FITNESS and any other behavioral change program? The question MIND/FITNESS asks is: How can I fix it? as opposed to Why is it broken?

Example: If you get a flat tire on your car, do you want to walk back down the road to find out why you got the flat or do you want to know how to fix it so that you can keep moving forward? It is certainly not necessary to spend the last 40 years of your life analyzing the first 40 years of your life.

It is imperative that you understand how to take control of the subconscious because the mind is like a car without an off switch and an unknown driver, if you do not predetermine the destination. If you decide not drive it, it is going to drive itself or someone else may get in the seat and drive it for you. Someone else driving might be ok if you agree to where they are going but what if you do not like where they are going?

For the first eighteen years of your life someone else drove the car. This was usually with little or no consideration to the younger passengers. Almost every decision was made for you. You were told what to do, what to eat and learned how to react to any given situation. All of this information is stored in the subconscious and will arise randomly to determine your life’s path.

There are also a tremendous number of variables that can occur in your initial programming that may have little to do with your parents. The bottom line still remains. Do you, at some point, want to drive or do you want to continue letting someone or something else drive?

Regardless of weather your goal is a change in diet for weight loss, an increase in your fitness program or to take control of an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia. In the end the question you need to ask yourself is…Am I completely happy with the mind running itself or do I need to take control of it? If your answer is I need to take control of it, then Burris MIND/FITNESS is the answer and the ultimate self help program.

Related posts:

1. Weight Loss, Fitness Motivation & Your Subconscious Pictures The second component of Burris MIND/FITNESS is your subconscious pictures....
2. The Best Weight Loss Program And Ultimate Self Help Book For The New Year Reprogramming the Overweight Mind 7 Steps to Taking Control of...
3. Weight Loss, Diet, Health, Fitness, And Eating Disorders: 7 Steps To Taking Control Of It All With The Ultimate Self Help Book Reprogramming the Overweight Mind: 7 Steps to Taking Control of...

The average woman gains more than 25 pounds during her pregnancy. The procedure of childbirth may result in a weight loss of up to 14 pounds, which means that new moms still have considerable weight to lose once they leave the hospital. However, some women simply assume that this “baby fat” will never go away. Yet, it is entirely possible to lose weight during the post-partum period.

A number of medical experts recommend easing into a weight loss program after the birth of your baby. This means that you will not start dieting until about three months following birth. You should combine a low-fat diet with moderate exercise in order to achieve weight loss.

Don’t expect instant results. It will take you a good nine months to get back to your weight prior to pregnancy. A go-slow approach is best because you need to give your body time to recover after childbirth. Certainly, you might be able to lose weight faster, but you might be sacrificing valuable nutrients as a result.

Interestingly enough, breastfeeding actually enhances weight loss. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has found that breastfeeding leads to the release of hormones which enable your uterus to return to its normal size. However, breastfeeding alone won’t bring down your weight. You need to combine it with a sensible diet and a moderate exercise program. Keep in mind that you need to have at least 1800 calories a day while breastfeeding in order to keep yourself and your baby healthy. Still, stay clear of junk food during this period. You should rely on food with high nutritional value to maintain the proper level of calories each day.

There are many good reasons to exercise during the post-partum period. In addition to helping to accelerate weight reduction, exercise can help alleviate post-partum depression, improve your mood, and boost your confidence. Exercise can also “clear your head” so that you’re better able to meet the demands of motherhood. You might consider joining a “Mommy and Me” exercise class so that your baby can exercise right along with you. Another helpful hint is to enlist the help of a friend or relative to act as your exercise buddy so that you’ll have some emotional support while exercising. An added bonus of exercise is that it should boost your energy level, which is quite important when battling the fatigue which comes from caring for a newborn.

Your diet should generally be low-fat but not fat-free; vitamin rich; and high-fiber. Under no circumstances should you go on a fad diet. Such a diet could be quite harmful to your health and could actually slow your recovery from childbirth. It’s a good idea to set weight-loss goals, but don’t go overboard. Recognize that there’s a limit to the amount of weight you can lose during a given period of time.

You may see a number of actress-moms gracing the covers of magazines shortly after the birth of their children. They appear svelte and elegant, totally devoid of baby fat. In the accompanying article, they may even talk about exercising right after childbirth. Such articles send new mothers a dangerous message: that you must do all you can to become thin as quickly as possible after your baby is born. Such a philosophy is not only ridiculous, it’s also unhealthy. As a result, you’ll need to “tune out” such messages from the media and stay the course with your own gradual weight loss plan.

The time right after the birth of a child can be quite challenging, taxing both your physical and emotional strength. While it is certainly a good idea to eat healthy, you’ll need to pace yourself as far as weight loss is concerned. Over time, you should be able to lose the weight you gained during your pregnancy. In fact, you might find that you’re actually healthier after your baby is born.

Related posts:

1. Weight Loss After Pregnancy – What They Didn´t Tell You! Sarah is a pregnant mother of three who continues to...
2. Weight Loss After Pregnancy Weight loss following pregnancy and hanging up the tent sized...
3. Exercising During Pregnancy Everyone knows that exercise is very good for your health....

Yet “we decide” is a mental function. When and why we make such a decision depends on our mind, not our body. We may make the decision when we are five pounds heavier than we would like, or after passing the two hundred pound mark and entering true medical obesity. The actual size of the body does not trigger the decision to lose weight, such a choice in made in the brain.

Since the start (and the continuation) of a diet program is a mental process, it would seem to be worthwhile to explore what factors might trigger such a decision.

1. Self-Image.

Each of us has a dual image: the face we turn to the world and our internal idea of how we appear. Although we dress and groom ourselves in an effort to be seen as attractive by others, we are far less influenced by others than by our satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, with ourselves.

Explore this concept by observing yourself and others over the course of the next week. You will notice that you often receive compliments on clothes you wear that, to you, don’t feel “quite right.” Wear a favorite outfit that fits perfectly, that you think looks outstanding, and that makes you feel especially dashing – and no one notices! The same phenomenon occurs with a hairstyle. One morning, rushed for time, you can’t get your hair to do anything so you angrily pull it back with clips and hope that no one important sees you looking so awful. Voila! Three people comment that they like what you’ve done with your hair.

There is the same disconnect when it comes to our weight. If we look good in our mind’s eye, we don’t feel fat, even if friends and coworkers are whispering about our steady weight gain. However, if we see ourselves as overweight, no amount of reassurance from those around us is going to make us feel less fat. Carried to the extreme, this mental picture of our body size can lead to the eating disorder anorexia nervosa in which painfully thin individuals continue to dangerously restrict their caloric intake because they consistently see themselves as too heavy.

We decide to go on a diet, therefore, in response to our internal self-image. Some of the benefits we envision that go along with being slim and fit do take others into account: I will be more attractive to the opposite sex; I’ll be noticed at work when it’s time for a promotion; my family and friends will be jealous and will have to re-evaluate me as a stronger person than they had thought. But the real payoff for getting in shape is what it does for us personally. It is the desire to feel great about ourselves that carries us through the pain and monotony of diet and exercise. It is the future vision of ourselves in our mind that spurs us toward our goal. Losing that vision, or concluding that we won’t feel that much better about ourselves, are the reasons we give up and fall back into the relative comfort of settling for just “okay.”

2. Body versus Mind dominance.

We all wage a lifelong internal battle between our body and our mind. Each is dominant at different stages of development. As infants, we are little more than a collection of sensations. We explore the exciting new world around us through touching everything within reach, tasting everything we can put into our mouths, watching the movements of everything around us, and listening to all the sounds we hear until we eventually learn to imitate them.

As we move into our early school years, we start to concentrate on our minds. We voraciously devour immense amounts of information. We learn to read and our world expands its boundaries by a thousand percent. We learn to use the Internet and a limitless universe is at our fingertips.

Then we move into puberty and, overnight, our appearance becomes the dominating factor in our everyday lives. We navigate the pitfalls and pleasures of adolescence where popularity and being cool are so much more vital than mere learning or mental development. We spend an inordinate amount of time on our bodies. We try new clothes, new hairstyles, and new makeup. We have body parts pierced and undergo the pain of a tattoo because it will make us stand out. We primp, and groom, and force ourselves into the styles our peers have judged as “in.”

As we mature, we seek to balance our mental and physical selves. While our bodies reign supreme in the attract-a-mate environment, we need to exercise our minds to advance our careers and to develop deep relationships that move far beyond mere physical attraction.

It is when we settle down, and start to build the good life we want, that our efforts and energies turn towards things outside ourselves: children, significant others, friends, family, and work pursuits. We have so much happening around us and so much to do that we lose touch with both our bodies and our minds. We slip into our own comfort zone where so many of our needs are fulfilled by food. It eases our anxiety, relieves our frequent frustrations, and makes periodic bouts of the blues bearable. It oils our social interactions. It becomes a vital cog in how we demonstrate affection for those we love. We continue to see ourselves as we have always been and ignore the love handles and pockets of fat that attach themselves to parts of our body we resolutely ignore. Our bodies, and our internal image of our bodies, become more and more discordant.

3. Our sense of self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is a term used in psychology to describe an individual’s belief that any action they take will have an effect on the outcome. It is not self-confidence, nor a belief that one is competent to do something, although it may involve both. It reflects our inner expectation that what we do will effect the results we want.

If I lack this belief, then I fear that whatever I do will not bring about my desired goal. Bordering on helplessness, it leads to self-defeating thoughts:

“No matter how carefully I diet, I don’t lose weight . . .” “I could work out every day but I’ll never get rid of these thunder thighs . . .” “I try to eat healthier foods but my hips just keep on spreading . . .” “No matter what techniques I try, nothing is going to keep the wrinkles away . . .”

If I have a strong sense of self-efficacy, my belief system and thought patterns will sound like:

“All I have to do is get motivated and I can whip my body into shape in a few weeks . . .” “I just need to pick a date to start my diet and I’ll be on my way . . .” “I may have neglected myself for a while but some hard work will bring me back . . .”

Whether or not we start a diet, decide to get in shape, or start taking better care of ourselves is, ultimately, a personal decision which may, or may not, be made as we have planned. The difference lies in the expectation of success and it is always easier to set out on a journey we anticipate will be successful than it is to drag ourselves toward a goal where failure is the most likely outcome.

How can we combine these concepts to work for us in our desire to become slim, fit, and attractive?

We begin by examining our self-image and how we appear to others. Merely asking others “Do you think I’m getting too heavy?” doesn’t work unless you have a brutally honest friend or you ask someone who dislikes you. Most of us are culturally trained to spare others’ feelings so responses to such a question are more likely to be polite than true.

Concentrating on specifics can produce better feedback. Tell everyone that you’re completing a survey for a class you’re taking. Hand out a brief one page questionnaire requiring that each friend or coworker list three adjectives to describe different aspects of your physical appearance. Complete one of the sheets yourself. Make sure that the answers are anonymous by requesting that no names be used and having someone else collect the completed sheets.

Once you have the responses back, compare them to your own answers and see where the descriptions diverge. You may find yourself becoming a little defensive: “My hips aren’t that big . . . my clothes do too make me look slim.” This isn’t an exercise to make you feel bad about yourself nor for you to gloat over the unexpected complimentary remarks you received. It is an organized effort to help you identify where your self-image and your image-in-the-world move apart. Those areas of divergence are a place to start in the effort to make the two images overlap.

Once the areas where work is needed have been identified, it is time to call on the immeasurable strength of our wonderful mind to start imposing the structure and organization we are going to need to effect the desired changes. Our mind can only get us where we want to go if it is supported by a belief in our ability to bring about a successful conclusion. Now is the time to dismiss any expectations of failure. There may have been many unsuccessful dieting and fitness attempts in the past. Leave them in the past. We are not somehow doomed to continue unproductive behaviors forever. We possess that jewel of evolution, the human mind, which is capable of just about anything. If we set our mind to any task, it will accomplish it, if our doubts and misgivings don’t get in its way.

We build up our positive expectations by exploring our memories to pile up a long list of prior successes. There may be major benchmarks such as bringing about a promotion we wanted, orchestrating a fantastic event, or working ourselves into an intensely satisfying relationship. However, the small personal triumphs count the most but are usually quickly forgotten or discounted as unimportant.

Studying hard and obtaining a good grade in a difficult class clearly demonstrates your ability to bring about the results you want. Go for quantity: the day you smiled at someone across a smoky room and ended up with a brief but lovely affair; the report you brought in on time which no one expected; the night you mastered a spin on ice skates. Keep going: making the drill team, shooting a stolen basket, making your own prom dress, dying your hair a wonderful color in your own bathroom, catching a fly ball, figuring out new software on your computer, burning your first CD. The list can be endless and will be, as you keep remembering snippets of the past that you had long buried under more important things.

Keep this list close by and read it regularly. It is your personal self-efficacy pep squad.

You now know the areas you are going to work on and are developing a belief in the effectiveness of your own efforts. Now you need to identify the internal rewards that successful weight loss will bring. Feeling good about yourself, enjoying stepping on a scale, and easily zipping up your clothes are easy starters. Unselfconsciously walking to the pool in a brief suit is a reinforcement to dream about. Making a sales presentation with the confidence that you are looking your absolute best is an image to relish as you fall asleep. Seeing someone you love watch you admiringly, or seeing your competitive coworker jealous, underscores your resolve and keeps you going through the discomfort of dieting and the demands of boring exercise routines.

You know where you’re going, you know what it’s going to take, and you know you’re going to be successful. Your mind is fully prepared, simply awaiting your day of decision. You’ll make that decision whenever you choose because you are now in control.

Related posts:

1. Life Is One Damn Diet After Another Allowing ourselves to think of a diet as a delineated,...
2. Weight Loss, Diet, Health, Fitness, And Eating Disorders: 7 Steps To Taking Control Of It All With The Ultimate Self Help Book Reprogramming the Overweight Mind: 7 Steps to Taking Control of...
3. A Healthy Diet Check Up…From The Neck Up If you have tried every so-called healthy diet plan on...

Never underestimated the power of a food diary. Using it daily will ensure you become much more conscious of your current bad eating habits. Through its use you can identify the cause of your weight problems.

So what is a food diary?

Well it is simply a small book you carry with you everywhere you go for at least two weeks. After this you can store it some place safe and refer to it three times a day.

So here is a quick explanation of a food diary:

Week 1.
In your diary on the first page note your current weight. Now for the rest of the week you must make a note of everything you eat during the day. This is why it is so important to carry the small book with you at all times. You must be disciplined in this. Every time you eat anything, even a small piece of meat or a nibble you must enter exactly what you ate and the time at which it was eaten. Then describe your motivations for eating it. Where you really hungry? Was the temptation of it being there too much? Where you feeling lonely or stressed? Take a note of all the feelings that lead you to eat the food.

At breakfast, lunch and dinner list all the foods you ate, why you ate them and how you felt before, during and after you ate them. Also note every bit of exercise to take during the day. It doesn’t matter how small it is just jot it down anyway. Also note when you went to the shops or to pick up the kids or just to get a message. Did you take the car or bus? Describe how you were feeling prior to taking the car or bus. Why didn’t you walk? Was it too far? Did you not have enough time?

Week 2.
Write down your current weight and follow the plan outlined for week 1. In addition, you can now start to analyse your diary.

Look over your entries for the previous week and the amount of food you ate. What type of food where you eating. Why were you eating it? For example you may have noted that you ate a chocolate bar at 1pm because you were feeling bored. You notice that this is a recurring theme almost everyday. So, go to your empty diary entries for week three and pencil in at the same time of day an activity that will relieve your boredom. If you can’t think of one then pencil in that you will go for a walk or start to do that odd job you have been putting off for months!

Perhaps you ate the chocolate because it gave you a certain feeling you enjoyed. Look at the feeling. Is there anything else you could do that would make you feel the same or a similar way? There are always alternatives. Jot one down in your diary!

Maybe you notice that the temptation to eat the chocolate was too strong to resist because it was just there. Pencil into your diary, on your shopping day, that you are to buy no chocolate!

Now look at your exercise activities for the previous week. When did you take the car when you could have walked? Could you pencil in an extra 15 minutes walking a day. Divide the 15 minutes into three 5 minute exercises, this way it will not seem like that much of a change. Park the car 5 minutes away from the shop. Walk to a bus stop that is 5 minutes further away. Did you not have enough time? Structure your diary to compensate, even if it means getting up 15 minutes earlier.

In this way you can use your diary to set out a plan for the coming week. Be strict with yourself and follow your plan. Tick off the things on your diary one by one as you complete them. Pencil in activities that you have always wanted to do. You will find that organising your food intake and exercise routine in this way will have a major knock-on effect on the rest of your life. You are getting organised!

Your food diary is a also great way of tracking your progress. Make sure you note in it all your accomplishments and list all your weight loss achievements. When you reach week 3 you can begin using your diary only 3 times a day – once in the morning to check your schedule for the day. Once after dinner to note your activities during the day and once at night to review your progress that day and structure the same day for the following week.

It is important to reward yourself every time you succeed at a task that you have put in your diary. Pencil in that at the end of a certain week you will buy yourself new clothes. Constantly review your achievements and give yourself credit for having done so well. This will keep you motivated and ensure you keep to your plan, continue using your diary and of course keep your weight healthy.

Related posts:

1. Weight Loss Tips and Diet Information Even the most seasoned weight loss expert can use some...
2. The BAsics Behind Weight Loss It would stand to reason that if diets worked then...
3. Time To Take Control Over Those Food Cravings One of my greatest problems with the control of my...

How does this work? This works based on a well-known scientific fact, that the “Flavor Point”, it is a phase in your eating experience where the appetite center (hypothalamus) in your brain recognizes the fact that your appetite has been satisfied.

The Flavor Point diet is arranged around “flavor themes”. This means, each day has a set of meals based on a specific flavor. You could get apple flavored meals on Monday, oregano on Tuesday, or blueberries on Wednesday, etc. Better yet, you do not feel deprived of food or nutrients at any time.

David L. Katz M.D. a renowned authority on nutrition and weight controls, working at the Prevention Research Center and the Rudd Food Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, is the writer/creator of this diet.

He conceived of this diet program and tested the recipes by conducting a pilot study of 20 women, men, and their families for over 12 weeks at the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center.

At the conclusion of the research project, the participants and their families saw their body fat drop, blood sugar, and cholesterol, insulin, and blood pressure drop significant levels.

Dr. Katz said ‘The Flavor Diet’ book , whose recipes have been created with the help of his wife Catherine a neuroscientist, has three aims:

To guide people, to stay committed to their weight loss goals, in a responsible manner.

Be an agent of positive change, by altering the negative concepts Americans have and feel about dieting.

Change the way the foods are cooked and presented in homes, hotels, and restaurants. Dr. Katz contends today’s prevailing culinary environment has led to flavor overload, leading people to eat more, before they feel full.

For whom is the Flavor Point Diet intended? Dr. Katz recommends the diet to be used by persons with an obesity problem, chronic dieters, and those who simply choose to eat the healthy way.

The Flavor Point Diet can be a healthy aid in lowering the obesity levels, for in the United States today, obesity has become a serious health epidemic.
Figures taken from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from to 1999-2002, show that 15% of American children ages 6-11 and 64% of adults aged 20 years up are classified as obese.

The second reason, is the fact that every year, hundreds of diet and weight loss programs are introduced. A majority is faddish, and some of these are dangerously very unhealthy.

The Flavor Point Diet plan with its’ three dieting phases, where the more obvious flavors are set at the beginning and the subtler ones towards the end, will suit the chronic dieter. For the chronic dieter has a tendency to jump from one diet fad another, or skip certain stages in a diet plan.

The nutritional profile of the diet is steady, and it meets all the dietary guidelines. Because of these, the chronic dieter can safely stay at any phase of the diet plan, for an indefinite time, stay healthy, and keep losing weight.

Lastly, the diet plan is intended for and is appropriate for all the members of a household, whatever ages they may be.

The Flavor Plan Diet provides you with the ability to select one flavorful food and to eat only this, to your heart is content for as long as you want to. You will feel full and satisfied. Your nutritional requirements are met, even if you are eating fewer calories. See the unofficial support site at http://www.flavorpointdiet.org for more info.

Related posts:

1. The Atkins Diet Everyone is still talking about it! Hard to believe that a diet that has been around...
2. Weight Loss Tip #3: Moderate Drinking May Help You With Weight Loss The connection between moderate drinking and avoiding heart disease is...
3. Take Hoodia diet pills with a Smart Diet, not a Starvation Diet Hoodia, the new African weight loss supplement taken properly, with...