Diet Plans, How to Lose Weight and Keep It Off

E-books are the easiest and cheapest way to learn about any subject without groping through hundreds of websites looking for the material you want.

My first e-book is “HowBadDoYouWantToLoseWeight” and it sells for $2.99 on most online bookstores like Amazon.com, BN.com, iBook, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, and Gardner books in the U.K.

My second e-book is available in the same stores. And on smashwords.com. If you use the Smashwords' promotional code You can get my second book for $1.99 (TL96R). Just type in the search line “getting to a healthy weight”.

Monday, October 23, 2017

Is Saturated Fat Bad Or Good?

It's something almost everyone who is interested in nutrition knows: Saturated fats are bad for us. They clog our arteries and cause heart attacks.

It wasn't until recently, however, that many people stopped to ask if saturated fats were truly unhealthy. Many of the other "facts" about nutrition we've thought were true since the 1960s or so have been disproven. In fact, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, on which the famous food pyramids and food plates have been built, have been changing in recent years.

They have stopped emphasizing the importance of eating a low-fat diet. They now advise limiting sugar. White sugar recently has been linked to Cancer. They stopped the long-time idea that cholesterol in the diet is bad. But they still advise serious restrictions on saturated fats.

How Much Saturated Fat Is Advised?

The American Heart Association advises that no more than 5 to 6 percent of calories come from saturated fats, which is about 12 grams of saturated fat for the average person eating 2,000 calories per day. The 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends limiting saturated fat to 10 percent of calories, which is about 22 grams of saturated fat.

I talked to my Doctor about this very subject and he said 12 to 14 grams a day. So, how much is that? 14 grams is 1/2 ounce. The saturated fat we consume comes from animal fat and cooking oil.

Did You Know that a Tablespoon of Olive Oil Contains 2 Grams of Saturated Fat?

We think of saturated fats as mainly being in fatty meats, full-fat dairy products, and coconut oil, but all fats are a mixture of different fats, and they usually include some saturated fats. This is the main reason why it is quite difficult to eat a diet as low in saturated diet fat as the American Heart Association recommends.

It is also very difficult to get all the essential nutrients that are recommended on a daily basis on a diet that is very low in saturated fat.

So, What's the Verdict?

Although eating too much saturated fat could be bad for some people, or perhaps in some contexts (such as what else is in the diet) the evidence for it being bad all the time and for everyone isn't holding up very well. Like many other things we eat, if we consume too much saturated fats it will cause high cholesterol and excess fats in the blood stream. Your liver has to process nutrients in food before they go into the blood stream, but if you eat too much saturated fat the liver can't handle more than about 1/2 ounce per day and the rest will enter the blood stream without being processed first, which will cause clots in the arteries.

Does This Mean That Saturated Fat is Good?

Some of the results I've mentioned might make us think that saturated fats in our diet are not only "not bad," they are actually "good." Like Christopher Ramsden, I would counsel humility on this point. We just do not know at this time.

However, here are some intriguing thoughts and possibilities:

We often say "saturated fat" as if it's only one thing. There are actually lots of types of saturated fats, many of which are known to be used in different ways by the body.
Saturated fats are more stable, and less prone to oxidation than other fats. It could be that some of the negative results found from adding polyunsaturated fats to the diet come from the fact that they are more easily oxidized, and this definitely would have negative effects on the body.
The oils used to provide polyunsaturates are mainly full of omega-6 fats, which could have inflammatory effects in the body, not good.
Obviously, we still have much to learn about this subject. However, the way I read the current evidence, people can stop assuming that the next burger they eat will clog their arteries! It all depends on how much saturated fat you're consuming.

If you really want to lose the extra flab you can get help, I write 4 blogs and I’ve written two E-books. Read some of my other blog posts.

gettingtoahealthyweight.blog

E-books are the easiest and cheapest way to learn about any subject without groping through hundreds of websites looking for the material you want.

My first e-book is “HowBadDoYouWantToLoseWeight” and it sells for $2.99 on most online bookstores like Amazon.com, BN.com, iBook, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, and Gardner books in the U.K.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Can White Sugar Cause Cancer?

Science has proven that white sugar is dangerous to your health. I heard this the other day on a TV news program and I wasn’t surprised. Anything that is processed by man before you buy has been altered to increase profits.

White sugar was been linked to Cancer. So why after centuries of humans using sugar to sweeten food is it now labeled as a cause of Cancer. All of this is linked to why we gain weight. We are not eating our grandmothers sugar, flour, coffee, or even milk and cheese.

If we back up to the 1950’s, food was actually more expensive. Not in terms of dollars but compared to our salaries. In the 50’s we were paying about 25% of the average monthly income for food. Today we pay less than 10% of the average monthly income. Why!! Some of the reasons are because we have a larger number of people earning less than the average.

Manufacturers decided decades ago that they needed to keep the cost of food as low as possible. While Europe never did that. They wanted the quality of food to stay the same, so the price of food in Europe is higher than in this country. Actually, I don’t know of any country that has the same food we do.

Most countries don’t import food. They grow their own. Spices may be the exception to that rule and sugar is conceded a spice.

If you travel to other countries you can tell the difference in the food. Of course, things are different today and the manufacturing of food has spread to other countries. But in other first world countries the quality of food is closely guarded.

For instance, in Mexico, manufacturers of soda like Coca Cola have to use real cane sugar in their soda. In this country Coca Cola uses a chemical substitute. Most food manufacturers don’t use real sugar in anything. Not in breakfast cereal, or anything else o

n the grocers shelves.

Even if a product says sugar on the food label, it’s not real sugar. Additives are put in all processed foods and if the read the food labels you can see it for yourself and people have been reading and they have been complaining.

This has caused such a disturbance in the food industry that manufacturers been scrambling to clean up the food labels. The consumer want the labels but they don’t like what they read. They don’t like chemicals in their food and consumers are switching to fresh food. Even frozen foods are taking a backseat to fresh foods.

The new immigrants in our country are helping to change the food industry. They want to buy the same fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh meat and seafood that they use to buy in their country. Most of them don’t want packaged food. And new immigrants eat more at home than Americans.

North America is the part of the World with the most Cancer cases and we can limit our chances of getting Cancer by limiting our consumption of white sugar, animal fat, stop smoking, lose body fat and be more active. It’s not that hard. We have learned to avoid caring for ourselves and now 2/3’s of the adult population is weight.

You are the only one that can keep you healthy. Chemicals in food is not something that kills you quickly. It might take a couple of decades, but as you age the chemicals you consume over a lifetime stay in your system and if you live long enough you’ll end up with Cancer or something even worse. The chemicals I’m talking about will be absorbed in your fat cells and just keep growing.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Does Body Weight Exercise Work?

Using the weight of your own body to create resistance was one of the earliest forms of strength training. It's easy to learn, effective, and you can do it just about anywhere. In years past, body weight exercise was taught in school and used in the military for several generations around the world.

Although you can get quite inventive, the following exercises are the primary bodyweight exercises and how to do them. It's a somewhat fine distinction, but the core resistance bodyweight exercises are not the same as calisthenics, stretching, plyometrics or most yoga exercises (in my opinion anyway), although they may include elements of all these disciplines.

The exercises form the core of any bodyweight workout program. Many others are variations and trivial modifications.

Push-ups

The push-up is a classic bodyweight exercise, and it demonstrates quite clearly the principle of bodyweight resistance training.

Lie face down on the floor, preferably on a firm carpet or mat or rubber surface, with feet together.
Place your hands on the floor at shoulder level, facing forward. Keep a slight bubble in the hands and fingers, rather than positioning them flat on the hard surface.
Raise your body up on the hands and toes until elbows are nearly straight, then lower to a point where the elbow is at a right angle. Don't let your body touch the floor.
One "up and down" is one push-up repetition. Don't go too fast or too slow. Keep the head and neck steady.
Do as many as you can in one minute, rest, then try again. Rest your knees on the ground if you find the exercise difficult when you first start out.
The push-up develops strength in the chest, shoulders and the triceps muscles of the upper arms.

Variations include resting knees on the floor, using a wide or narrow hand position and using one arm to perform the push-up motion (for the tough guys and girls).

The Squat

The squat without weights may seem easy, but once you get up around the 20 rep mark it starts to take a toll on the knees, upper legs, and butt until you build some condition. I do a flat footed squat, but some prefer to do the squat on their toes.

Here's how it goes:

Stand with feet about shoulder width apart. Keep hands on your hips, crossed over the chest, held out in front, or at your sides. I like the hands out in front because it allows you to settle back a little into the squat and put some emphasis on the butt muscles and hamstrings.
Keeping the back straight, bend the knees and squat down until your knees are at approximately 90 degrees (a right angle).
Push up to the starting position and repeat. The squat develops legs and butt muscles and, over time, may strengthen knee joints. However, be cautious with this exercise if you have an existing knee injury or feel knee pain at any stage in the workout.
Start with 3 sets of 10 repetitions.

Lunges

The lunge is a fundamental bodyweight exercise. Done in sets of 8 or more (each leg), lunges provide strength, balance, and flexibility training. You can see how to perform the lunge in this example of a weighted lunge.

Options include a variety of arm positions -- at the sides, straight out in front, raised at each side, crossed at the chest or straight up overhead.

Try them all, as each arm position provides a slightly different emphasis and perhaps level of difficulty. For example, the arms raised at the sides provides better balance and stability than arms crossed at the chest.

Other more advanced options include the backward lunge and the 45-degree angle side lunge.

Crunches

Crunches are a key exercise for strengthening the abdominal muscles. Many different types of crunches are possible. Some of the best are:

Standard crunch, in which the shoulders are raised off the floor while you contract the abs
Reverse crunch, in which the legs and knees are raised off the floor while you contract the abs
Combo crunch, which is a combination of both of the above
Bicycle crunch, which includes all of the above and you peddle the legs in the air as well.

Some people believe you have to exercise to lose weight and it will help, but you can't sweat off pounds and expect them to stay off. Only a change in your diet will create permanent weight loss.

I write several blogs and ebooks, check out some of my other sites.

gettingtoahealthyweight.blog
idropped40pounds.wordpress.com
howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight.blogspot.com
blogonlosingweight.com
blogonweight.blogspot.com

If you really want to lose your body fat than look for my Ebooks at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my ebooks.

There are two ebooks. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $1.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my Ebook. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, B&N.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new ebook is available on Smashwords.com, just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. I’ll give you a discount coupon you can use at checkout. (PJ42H) not case-sensitive the price is $1.99 w/coupon

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Why Do We Have Fat?

Good question. Some body fat is necessary; we need it to cushion the organs in our body. Also, our body burns good fats as fuel to create energy. Approximately 30% of all the calories burned every day to create energy come from fat you eat or stored fat that you body keeps in reserve.

So why is fat bad? you might ask. There is good fat and bad fat, I'll explain. Your body will try and process all the food and drink you consume, but some things that we eat can't be processed; it has no value to the body, so it's stored in fat cells. When your body processes food it separates it into food it can use and the waste it can't use, but if your body can't process something or you over eat and the body hasn't the time to process it, then it gets sent to fat storage cells before the body can process it.
If you watch old movies from the 40's and 50's you might have noticed that few people were fat. That's not because Hollywood only hired thin people beautiful people. It's because during that period, people ate real food and people were more active. If your old enough like me you might remember that families only had one car and we drove less. We walked more and we sat less. Fewer people worked at a desk and more workers stood all day and worked in manufacturing.

Today life is much different and because of computers your world is changing by the minute.

Our ancestors needed this system of fat storage because Man never knew when he would find food again. Because of the active lifestyle of our ancestors, always doing physical work, always walking about, there was never any thought about Man storing too much fat. Man was not designed to deal with excess body fat. Man was designed to store fat whenever possible for the purpose of survival. And yes we were given brains to deal with our evolution because over time we would evolve. But in spite of the brains we were given, we haven't done a very good job of maintaining our bodies. The body has no mechanism to control our weight. We have no way of knowing that we are eating too much or not eating the right food.

Our activity level is much lower than our grandparents even. Today we do most of our work with our mind's. Yes, we do small things to keep us active, but the average office worker is only on their foot about 4 hours a day. So we do have to be more active all day long whenever possible. But that's not our only problem; American are in the habit of eating whatever and whenever they want. We have food available 24/7 and on average we consume twice the calories we should.

Her lies the problem. To stay healthy and keep a healthy weight you have to burn the calories you eat. Simply right? Not really. If man had a fresh food diet and only fresh food like vegetables, fruits and lean meat and some whole grain like brown rice and there was no other food; than Man wouldn't have a weight problem. As long as you were moderately active you couldn't eat enough to gain weight. But today we eat all types of food that give us no nutrition; the body can't process this type food and stores it as fat. We consume too much fatty foods that overload the Liver, so if the Liver can't process all the fat it passes through into the blood stream and clog up the arteries.

To be healthy and stay healthy you have to stick to a fresh food diet. Look up "The Mediterranean diet" and look for the food pyramid that shows all the choices. If you eat healthy you will lose body fat over time. By walking more, and I recommend the 10,000 step a day program for beginners that don't exercise regularly, you can lose the weight quicker. But losing weight does take time. Don't get discouraged, stick to the program and don't cheat. Cheat days only ruin all the good that you've done.

The Atkins Diet is an alternative. It's a little more restrictive, but it works. Check out both those, they are the best ones I know.

If you really want to lose the extra flab you can get help, I write 4 blogs and I’ve written two E-books. Read some of my other blog posts.

gettingtoahealthyweight.blog

E-books are the easiest and cheapest way to learn about any subject without groping through hundreds of websites looking for the material you want.

My first e-book is “HowBadDoYouWantToLoseWeight” and it sells for $2.99 on most online bookstores like Amazon.com, BN.com, iBook, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, and Gardner books in the U.K.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Follow The 80 20 Rule For Weight Loss

I should tell you before you read any more that this never worked for me. The claim is that if you stick to your diet 80% of the time, that you can cheap 20% of the time. I don't believe you can diet and cheat and still lose fat. I tried that and for many years I would just yo-yo up and down. If you don't lose the taste for the foods that put the extra fat on your body, you'll keep getting the food cravings for the salty, fatty, sugary foods and you end up throughing in the towel and forgeting the diet.
I had to totally stay away for the foods that added all that weight and after a few months you lose the food cravings that comes from processed foods and your body will burn your extra fat. This is not rocket science, anyone can do this. Don't eat fats and don't drink calories. I don't mean to cut back, I mean you have to cut out drinks with calories and any of the foods you love to eat. Stick to fresh foods (that means nothing in a package) and fresh meat and drink lots of water. It's that simple.

Make Simple Adjustments to Lose Weight More Effectively

By Malia Frey

two women eating pizza and drinking wine — Paul Bradbury/ OJO Images/Getty Images

Many dieters successfully lose weight with the 80-20 rule. It's not technically a full-scale weight loss plan, but the 80-20 diet works. If you hate following strict food guidelines, you don't want to count calories or carbohydrates, and you simply can't find the time to balance complicated macronutrients, then the 80-20 diet might be right for you.

I'll add a quick comment, "this won't work for everyone."

What It Is

The 80-20 principle for healthy eating is one of the easiest ways to reach and maintain a lean body.

The simple plan requires that you eat a clean diet 80% of the time and then allow for a few more “fun foods” 20% of the time. The plan allows you to enjoy indulgences on regular basis without feeling the kind of guilt that people often feel when they “cheat” on a strict food plan. For many people, this is the most balanced approach to a healthy diet and a healthy lifestyle.

Effectiveness

While the ease and simplicity of this plan make it a great diet for weight maintenance, the 80-20 plan may not provide the calorie deficit necessary for weight loss for everyone. Whether or not you lose weight on the plan depends on a few factors:

Your starting point. If your current diet involves indulging on high fat, high-calorie foods every day, then the 80-20 diet is likely to help you lose weight, at least initially. The clean eating (80%) days will require you to eat lower calorie foods most of the time. You’ll replace high-calorie snacks with healthier options and make better choices at mealtime. The result should be that you eat or consume significantly fewer calories overall and slim down. This program is better for maintaining weight rather than losing weight.

However, if your current diet is fairly healthy, you’re not likely to see a calorie deficit large enough to produce weight loss. You may need to evaluate your caloric intake and adjust your energy balance to lose weight. Which means in simple terms that you might have to spend more time exercising.

Whether or not you practice moderation. The 80-20 rule is not an excuse to overeat or overindulge. On your relaxed 20% days, you should still practice moderation. The only change is that you are not as rigid about your food choices. For example, on one of your 20% days, you might choose to have a slice of chocolate cake after dinner. That’s reasonable. But if you eat three slices of cake, you’re not really following the 80-20 principle and you won’t really see any change in your weight.

Your activity level. The 80 20 rule is perfect for people who participate in a balanced exercise program and are physically active most (if not all) days of the week. The exercise helps to balance out the extra calories that you consume on your 20% days. If you are not physically active and you don’t exercise, then the calorie deficit created by the diet may not be significant enough to create a change in the scale.
Your schedule. Many people who practice this eating plan consume a clean diet during the week and relax their food choices on the weekends. But if your weekend starts on Friday and ends on Monday, you’re not really practicing the 80-20 diet. To lose weight you must make sure that your 20% is really only 20%. That equals 1½ days per week or about 4 meals in seven days.

Tips to Help You Get Results

In order to lose weight at a moderate rate of one pound per week, you must create a calorie deficit of about 3500 calories. If the 80-20 diet does not help you lose weight, make these adjustments to create a calorie deficit and see results:

Exercise every day. Anyone who is trying to lose weight should get some physical activity every day. But daily exercise is especially important if you are on an eating plan, like the 80-20 plan, that includes some higher fat and higher calorie foods.

Count calories if necessary. If the 80-20 diet doesn’t work within the first few weeks, then keep a food journal for at least seven days. Evaluate your caloric intake and compare it to your caloric needs. Make adjustments to your eating plan or to your activity level to create a calorie deficit of about 500 calories per day.
Practice portion control. The best way to create your calorie deficit is to practice portion control. On your clean eating days, you might be making great food choices but if you eat too much of any food you gain weight or prevent weight loss. Portion control becomes even more important on your 20% days when you eat higher calorie foods.

Adjust to a 90-10 plan. If you practice portion control and exercise regularly and you still cannot create the calorie deficit needed to lose weight, then adjust the 80-20 diet to a 90-10 plan. You still get a “break” during the week, but instead of relaxing your foods choices for 4 meals, you eat two meals that allow for a few indulgences.

The 80-20 rule doesn’t work for everyone, especially people who are trying to lose weight. If the diet doesn’t work even after you make the adjustments, you may need a weight loss program with more structure. Explore other eating programs to find the best diet for you.

That last paragraph is probably the most valuable information. Diet programs don't work for everyone and in some cases work for very few people. Don't be fouled. I don't recommend diet programs but because the 80 20 doesn't require that you spend any money or buy any product or join any clubs, if you think it will work for you and you want to try it, than "why not". It can't hurt.

If you really want to lose the extra flab you can get help, I write 4 blogs and I’ve written two E-books. Read some of my other blog posts.

gettingtoahealthyweight.blog