Can You win the battle of the bulge?

Great article about the reality of being overweight. I'm not talking about most of us who have a few pounds to lost or those women who just went through a pregnancy, this article is about serious overweight people and their battle with weight.

Weight loss is considered a major health goal for people who are obese, but the reality is that few reach a normal weight or keep any lost pounds off, a new study shows.

In any given year, obese men had a 1-in-210 chance of dropping to a normal weight, according to the study, which tracked over 176,000 obese British adults.

Women fared a bit better: Their odds were 1 in 124, the study found.
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Read articles on my website for more information on weight loss

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On the brighter side, people were far more likely to shed 5 percent of their body weight -- which is considered enough to bring health benefits like lower blood pressure and blood sugar.

Unfortunately, more than three-quarters gained the weight back within five years, the researchers reported online July 16 in the American Journal of Public Health.

It all paints a bleak picture, the study authors acknowledged. And the findings underscore the importance of preventing obesity in the first place, said lead researcher Alison Fildes, a research psychologist at University College London.

However, the study does not suggest that weight-loss efforts are futile, stressed Dr. Caroline Apovian, a spokeswoman for the Obesity Society who was not involved in the research.

"We already realize that it's almost impossible for an obese person to attain a normal body weight," said Apovian, who directs the Nutrition and Weight Management Center at Boston Medical Center.

She said the "stark" numbers in this study give a clearer idea of just how difficult it is.

However, she added, the study was based on medical records, and there is no information on how people tried to lose weight. They might have tried a formal weight-loss program, or they might have tried a fad diet.

"So this has no relevance to how effective weight-loss programs are," Apovian said.

Fildes agreed. On the other hand, she said, the results do reflect the real-world experience of obese people who are trying to shed weight.

"What our findings suggest is that current strategies used to tackle obesity are not helping the majority of obese patients to lose weight and maintain that weight loss," Fildes said. "This might be because people are unable to access weight-loss interventions or because the interventions being offered are ineffective -- or both."

For the study, Fildes and her team used electronic medical records to track weight changes among more than 176,000 obese adults between 2004 and 2014. The researchers excluded people who underwent weight-loss surgery, which is an option for severely obese people.

Overall, obese men and women had a low annual probability of achieving a normal weight -- especially if they were severely obese. The odds were as high as 1 in 1,290 for morbidly obese men.

People did stand a much better chance of losing 5 percent of their body weight: The yearly odds were 1 in 12 for men and 1 in 10 for women.

The success, however, was usually short-lived: 78 percent gained that weight back within five years.

Apovian said that because dramatic weight loss is so difficult, obesity specialists do generally advise patients to set a goal of losing 5 percent to 10 percent of their starting weight.

But as the current findings show, even that can be tough to maintain, she added.

Part of the problem, according to Apovian, is that few obese Americans who are eligible for weight-loss medications or surgery actually do get those therapies.

In the United Kingdom, the study authors said, people trying to tackle obesity usually get a referral from their doctor to a weight-management program, which would typically focus on calorie-cutting and exercise.

The new findings suggest that's insufficient, according to Fildes and her team.

For people who are already substantially overweight, Fildes said, staving off further weight gain is vital.

"We would recommend obesity treatment programs prioritize preventing further weight gain and maintaining weight loss when it is achieved," she said.

But given the battle most obese people face, Fildes said, public health efforts to prevent obesity will be even more important.

Beginner's Guide for Runners

Great article if your new at losing weight. Runners can lose weight quicker then any other way. It can be hard on your joints, so if you have a lot of weight to lose, you might want to start by walking first, then build-up to speed walking and then interval running. Beginners need to start out slow to avoid injuries. And if your under a doctor's care, you want to discuss running with your doctor first. But for the average  young adult under 45, interval running is a great way to take off weight.

Running is a great way to lose weight. Countless women and men have shed excess pounds and kept them off with the aid of this simple form of exercise. Success is not guaranteed, however. A sensible diet plan is an essential complement to running for weight loss.

Understanding the most effective ways to run for weight loss before you start will help you avoid common mistakes—and get you the results you want.

There is a widely held belief that exercise—including running—is not an effective tool for weight loss. This belief comes from studies showing that overweight women and men fail to lose much weight when given a structured exercise program to follow. In a recent review, scientists involved in this line of research concluded: “Unless the overall volume of aerobic exercise training is very high, clinically significant weight loss is unlikely to occur.”

That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement for running to lose weight! However, in the real world, the vast majority of people who lose significant amounts of weight and keep it off are exercisers. The National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) researched a population whose members have all lost at least 30 pounds and kept the weight off at least one year. Ninety percent of these individuals report exercising regularly, and the average member burns more than 2,600 calories a week in workouts.

If exercise is so ineffective for weight loss, as the scientists say, then why do almost all of those who are most successful at weight loss exercise? The answer appears to be that while exercise is not as effective as dietary changes in stimulating initial weight loss, it is wonderfully effective in preventing weight regain.

As you probably know, most people who lose weight gain it all back. But studies involving NWCR members and others have demonstrated that exercisers are much less likely to yo-yo. So unless you are interested only in temporary weight loss, you should change your diet and exercise.

There’s another benefit to combining diet changes with exercise when you’re trying to lose weight. When people lose weight through calorie restriction but without exercise, they tend to lose muscle along with body fat. But when they change their diet and exercise, they preserve muscle and lose more fat.

Many kinds of exercise can be effective for weight loss, but running is among the most effective. In a 2012 study, Paul Williams of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that runners were leaner and lighter than men and women who did equivalent amounts of any other type of exercise. The main reason seems to be that people typically burn more calories per minute when running than they do when swimming, riding a bike, or whatever else.

No matter which form of exercise you choose, it’s important to ease into your new exercise program. Increase the challenge level of your workouts gradually to lower injury risk and get the best results. This is especially true for running. As a high-impact activity, running causes more overuse injuries than other forms of cardio exercise. Ironically, the risk of injury is greatest for heavier men and women who are likely to run specifically for weight loss.

Experts recommend that overweight men and women use these three rules to start a running program on the right foot:

Walking is less stressful than running to the bones, muscles and joints of the lower extremities, yet it’s stressful enough to stimulate adaptations that make these areas stronger and more resilient. This makes walking a great tool to prepare your body for running.

Your early workouts may consist entirely of walking or a mix of walking and running, depending on how ready your body is for running. As the weeks pass, tip the balance further and further toward running until you are comfortable doing straight runs.

Bones, muscles and joints need time to recover from and adapt to the stress of running. For most beginners, one day is not enough time for these tissues to come back stronger. So limit your running to every other day for at least the first several weeks of your program. If you wish to exercise more frequently, do walks or non-impact workouts, such as cycling, between run days.

To continue getting results from your running program, you need to run more. But if you increase your running volume too quickly, you are likely to become injured or overtired. The 10 percent rule is a good guideline for sensible running increases. To practice it, simply avoid increasing your total running distance or time by more than 10 percent from one week to the next.

Here is a four-week example of a sensible way to ease into a running program:

In order to lose weight, you must maintain a daily calorie deficit. In other words, you need to burn more calories than you eat each day. There are two ways to do this: Eat less and move more. Running will help you maintain a calorie deficit by increasing the number of calories you burn. You can increase your calorie deficit and your rate of weight loss—at least in theory—by eating less also.

The problem is that running, like other forms of exercise, makes it difficult to eat less due to increasing appetite—something known as the compensation effect. This is the primary reason that exercise often fails to meet people’s expectations for weight loss.

Individual appetite responses to exercise are varied. Working out has little effect on hunger in some people and makes others ravenous. There’s not much you can do about it either way. If running does increase your appetite, you will probably eat more. What you can do to ensure that the compensation effect doesn’t stop you from reaching your goals is increase the quality of the foods you eat.

High-quality foods are less energy dense and more satiating than low-quality foods, so they fill you up with fewer calories. By increasing your overall diet quality, you can eat enough to satisfy your heightened appetite without putting the brakes on your weight loss. Here are lists of high-quality and low-quality foods, given in rough descending order of quality.

When you start your running program, make a simultaneous effort to eat fewer foods from the right-hand column and more from the left-hand column—especially from the top of this column. There is proof that it works. Earlier this year, Danish researchers reported that new runners seeking weight loss who ran more than 5 km (3.1 miles) per week for one year but did not change their diets lost an average of 8.4 pounds. Meanwhile, new runners seeking weight loss who ran more than 5 km (3.1 miles) per week for one year and did change their diets lost an average of 12.3 pounds.

Even 12.3 pounds of weight loss in one year might not seem like a lot. If your goal is bigger than that, there are two things you can do: Run more and eat less. Let me explain.

While it’s important to progress slowly, you can continue to progress with your running until you are doing as much as you can with the time, energy and motivation you have. If you are highly motivated, consider aiming for a long-term goal of building up to 60 minutes of running per day, six days per week. A 150-pound person who runs 10-minute miles will burn more than 4,000 calories per week on this schedule.

These additional increases in running will likely stimulate additional increases in appetite and eating. But chances are such compensations won’t cancel out your hard work. Research tells us that the average person eats roughly three extra calories for every 10 calories she or he burns through exercise.

As I mentioned above, increasing your diet quality will minimize the compensation effect. But if you’re already running as much as you can or wish, and you’ve already improved your diet quality and you’re still not losing weight as fast as you would like, there’s something else you can try: decrease the size of your meals by about one-fifth. Research by Brian Wansink of Cornell University has shown that people can eat about 20 percent less at meals without noticing the difference in terms of satiety. That’s because in our society we have been trained to eat beyond our natural satiety level. Just be sure to do this only after you have allowed your food intake to adjust to your increased amount of running.

The compensation effect isn’t all about increased appetite. For some people there’s also a reward effect at play. Too often, runners celebrate the completion of workouts by eating low-quality treats such as cookies and potato chips. In many cases, these treats contain more calories than were burned in the workout.

The best way to avoid this type of self-sabotage is to view your runs themselves as rewards rather than as chores to be gotten through and rewarded. A recent study by Brian Wansink found that people ate less than half as many M&M’s offered to them after a walk when they had been told before it that it was a “scenic walk,” compared to when they had been told it was an “exercise walk.”

As this study shows, the mindset that you bring to your running program is important. In fact, whatever your weight-loss goal may be, your number-one goal should be to enjoy running—or learn to enjoy it. That’s because you will only benefit from running if you keep doing it, and you will only keep doing it if you enjoy it.

For this reason, you should do whatever you need to do to enhance your enjoyment of running. Studies have shown that when people manipulate their workouts in ways that make them more fun, they are more likely to stick with their programs. If you enjoy running with music, run with music. If you prefer running with a friend or group, do that. If you like running in the park, run in the park. There’s really no wrong way to run for weight loss if you’re having fun.

Take a Good Look at Your Future

I reblogged this post from a website I read called no-brainerfitness.com. The author nailed this. Why can't more people see what they do to themselves?

TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT FUTURE YOU

Why don’t we exercise enough?

Is it because we are too lazy? Not disciplined enough? Unable to stay motivated?

If you’ve read my most recent post, you know those are essentially the questions we were left with at the end. Because we have all the evidence we need about why we should exercise.

If you’ve read anything else on this blog in the past, you know the answer is not in motivation or discipline, two strategies that will fail you eventually, or drive you (and many around you) nuts.

It is pretty clear that only the strongest Purpose can keep us going in the long term. Yet for most this sense of Purpose remains elusive.

So while it seems we have tendency to be lazy, the truth is slightly different. You could say we are “wired” to be lazy, to economize our efforts, and only the strongest of wills can hold firm on their self-commitments.

By the way, this is not a figment of my imagination, or some wild theory I just came up with. It comes from research in behavioural economics, which others could probably explain better than I can.

But I’m going to explain it to you in my own words. With the help of visuals from a really good talk I recently watched on YouTube. (Even if you think you don’t have time, if you are serious about understanding fitness and long-term health, you should be watching that talk. After reading this post.)

The Truth

Most of us have a strong discounting rate when it comes to our “Future Selves”. (That’s a term borrowed from economics, and it is highly accurate in meaning. However, most of us are not bankers and economists, thankfully. So…) To put it more simply, I hope, the problem is as follows: when you think about the way Future You will be, the possibility of a healthy and active Future You is not seen as important enough because it is too far into the future.

Even though you want to be healthy and fit (who doesn’t?), the Future You is too remote, too distant, too hard to see clearly. The present, and very near future, occupy all that your mind can really consider and act upon. No, I’m not saying we live only for the present, but we have a strong bias in favour of the short-term instead of the long-term.

Those of us who have a much stronger Purpose typically enjoy a stronger sense of that Future Self. In essence, to them it is easier to keep their eyes on the prize. (Back to our economics/finance terminology, a stronger sense of the Future You comes from having a much smaller discounting rate). In other words, a strong Purpose can be understood as considering the distant future as equally important, or even more important, than the present or near-future.

Let’s see how this works

Look again at the image at the top of this post.

You have two pictures of Future You: one that is healthy and fit, and one that is frail and, probably, suffering from some illness(es). The road to each Future You is a series of short-term actions, choices that happen everyday, with their specific consequences:

Two images of Future You…

Although there is no absolute certainly about the outcome, we know for sure what the odds are:

Take a good, hard look at those two Future You. Can you see them well? Which do you want to really be Future You? I bet I know.

So what happens? Why is it still not a complete no-brainer to exercise regularly?

Well, each of us considers those futures against the present. It is a decision process in which you pit Present You against Future You. At least in terms of enjoyment:

If the future appears not important enough, you are likely to pick doing nothing.

Conversely, if the Future You is clear enough, and important enough, your choice would be otherwise:

If Future You is “important” enough in your mind, you will act accordingly. Most of the time. Well, often enough.

That’s basically it. How well you can see Future You, and how you manage to keep Future You in mind on a daily basis, influences how you behave. How much you are eager to exercise regularly.

This works whether Future You is simply a healthy and active Old You, or an incredibly fit and muscular Two Years From Now You, or Winning A Race in 6 Months You. Future You is what you envision yourself to be like at some point in the future. Personally, the only Future You I think is truly worth having in mind, having as a Purpose, is Healthy And Active Old You. Which should make You exercise regularly, and in a reasonable way…

Future You, which becomes the source of your Purpose, is not the only contributing factor to exercising regularly, as we’ll see next time. But it is a necessary beginning. Without it, you must fall back on motivation, or worse, on discipline.

The good news is that you can improve how Future You influences Present You. You need to look at Future You regularly.

So keep a picture of Future You where you can take a good look at it everyday, just as you head out to exercise…

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Image credits: All images in this post were shamelessly lifted from an excellent lecture given by Michele Belot, Professor of Economics and Director of the Behavioural Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh (BLUE), as the third lecture in the 2014 Our Changing World series, entitled “Behavioural Economics and Health Behaviours“. It is a really good lecture, about which I will talk again in my next post. And from which I will shamelessly lift more images.

About Fitness Trackers

These trackers are also called "activity monitors”, it depends on the manufacturer. If you make the decision to use a tracker, it’s important you wear it everyday and log in all the data it requires. Many people have a drawn full of these and never wear them or only wear them when they work-out. Using a monitor or tracker is a no-brainer for the dieter who is new at dieting or for someone who has little or no luck before with diets.

I like mine and I wear it 24/7 because it monitors my sleep, my diet and my activity. It helps me to stay focused. It’s a constant reminder when I’m working, to get up and walk around occasionally, when I’m watching TV that maybe I should be doing simple exercises during a commercial. And when I’m eating or ordering food that I have to watch what I eat. Yes, I enter all the info, but besides that it’s a constant reminder just being on my wrist that I’m trying to lose weight.  It keeps me from cheating. 

So yes, it works for me. Mine uses bluetooth to download info to my laptop so I can track the progress or the lack of. It let’s me know how I’m doing so I don’t have to be an exercise guru to know if I have to adjust my weight loss plan.

If you have trouble using your tracker don’t give up on it. You just need to learn how to use it better so you get your money’s worth and reach your goal.

I like the trackers that have a smartphone app to log in your meals and workout. The best way to use a food log is to log in your food before you eat. That stops me from eating more then I intended. I log in my meals for the day the night before and do it after dinner, when your not hungry. When you finish, check the total calories so you stay within your limit. 

Another thing I do is to only eat portions that I can find on the charts, and only eat the food that’s recommended. Pick a plan you can stick with. I stay away from fad diets. After a couple weeks, I’ve usually had enough. Pick a plan you can stick with for the long term. You probably know by now that making your own meals is best. This way you know that everything in your food is good and nutritious. When you’re trying to cut calories, you want everything you eat to give you nutrition and energy. It has to been foods that the body will use. If you can’t process what your eating it will go straight into the fat cells. You want the food you eat to be processed for energy. 

It's also easy to skip needless snacks and high calorie treats when you know that you have a satisfying, diet-friendly meal planned for later.

Some activity trackers don't come with a food log. If you want to lose weight, you need this feature. So connect your device with MyFitnessPal, CalorieCount or another food app to use the food diary features.

Some fitness tracker users wear their monitor during exercise so that the exercise steps count toward their daily step goal. That's not a bad idea. But it's a bad idea if you want to lose weight.

There are two ways that we burn extra calories throughout the day: exercise activity and non-exercise activity. To lose weight faster you need to maximize both of these numbers. That means you need to burn calories from exercise and calories from non-exercise steps.

Some fitness tracker users wear their monitor during exercise so that the exercise steps count toward their daily step goal. That's not a bad idea. But it's a bad idea if you want to lose weight.

There are two ways that we burn extra calories throughout the day: exercise activity and non-exercise activity. To lose weight faster you need to maximize both of these numbers. That means you need to burn calories from exercise and calories from non-exercise steps.

If you're not getting enough sleep, you may eat more the next day out of fatigue. Poor sleep can also reduce the number of calories you burn from activity throughout the day. If that is the case, and if you can make reasonable changes to get a better night's sleep then keep the sleep data in your dashboard. If not, then delete it and focus on the numbers that matter more. 

If you want to lose weight with an activity tracker, you need to wear it every day. That means you wear it even on your lazy days, your "off" days and days when you don't plan to follow any of your exercise or diet rules.  Those days matter more than your "on" days.

If you only gather information on the days when you're perfect, you'll never learn how to address the obstacles that stand in the way of your weight loss goals.

Some dieters find the comparisons to others to be intimidating.   Others find ways to cheat the system to become more competitive and "win" their challenge. 

Remember, your fitness tracker can only be useful if you gather accurate data and if you can use the data to change your behavior and lose weight. The data alone, the wristband alone and the app alone do nothing to help you lose weight. So pick and choose the information you use and make smart changes to reach your weight loss goals.

Some People Do Age Faster Than Others

HealthDay posts articles that I like to read. This one talks about the difference between your age on a regular calendar known as your Chronological age and your biological age which is the actual age of the parts of your body. Your body has no idea how old you are in terms of our calendar, but it does know what body functions you are using and which ones you don't need any longer. So if your not eating enough nutritional foods, the organs that need that nutrition will begin to fail. This is a very slow process that takes many years, because you are born with a stock pile of nutrition that your body will feed off of until your old enough to consume the nutrition you need. So the article explains how the lack of nutrition will cause organs to begin to fail and that's when disease will set in. This whole process of your body beginning to fail, we call the aging process. And because of the lack of nutrition at and early age, that process can start during a person's late 20's or early 30's.

At 38, the biology of some adults was 20 years older than their chronological age

WebMD News from HealthDay

By Alan Mozes

HealthDay Reporter

Adults who look older than their years may be aging at an accelerated pace, new research suggests.

A study of 38-year-olds in New Zealand found their "biological age" -- the state of their organs, immune system, heart health and chromosomes -- ranged from as young as 30 to as old as 60.

And the older their biological age, the older they looked, the researchers added.

"We looked at key markers for the integrity and health of different organs in the bodies of relatively young adults, in order to detect how their bodies were actually aging."

"What we found is a clear relationship between looking older on the outside and aging faster on the inside, And also that it's possible to measure the kind of aging process in young people that we usually only look for in old people."

For most young adults, biological age proceeds in sync with chronological age, the international research team found. But genetic and environmental influences can cause your biology to rack up signs of age much faster -- or much slower -- than your birth date might predict.

The study authors noted that by 2050 the population of men and women aged 80 and older will hit 400 million globally, more than triple the current number.

That trend, the researchers said, highlights the importance of finding ways to spot signs of aging early in life, to fashion therapies that can prolong healthy living by preventing the onset of age-related disease.

The study team focused on roughly 1,000 men and women who had been participating in an ongoing New Zealand study since their birth in 1972-1973.

In 2011, the participants, then 38, underwent tests of kidney function, liver function, lung capacity and metabolic and immune system strength. Cholesterol, blood pressure, dental status, eye structure and heart health were also assessed, as was the length of chromosomal caps known as telomeres. Telomeres are known to shorten with age.

The researchers found a variance of up to 30 years in the different participants' biological age, although all were still free of any age-related disease.

The team conducted a secondary analysis, comparing biomarker information collected in 2011 with information gathered six and 12 years earlier.

That showed that between ages 26 and 38 most participants aged at an equal biological pace. But some were gaining three biological years for every one chronological year. Still others had essentially stopped getting older, as their biological age was essentially on "pause."

What's more, the older their biological age, the worse they fared on physical and mental acuity tests.

The fast-agers showed worse balance and poorer motor coordination, and reported having more trouble with tasks such as climbing stairs or carrying groceries.

"This showed that already early in life we can see symptoms of advanced age in young people, symptoms that correspond to declining physical and cognitive function, long before age-related disease actually develops," Belsky said.

Dr. Rosanne Leipzig, a professor of geriatric and palliative medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, described the investigation as a "landmark" effort to better understand the aging process.

"If we can identify why some people have more rapid biological aging, it may be possible to intervene and reduce the risks of complications and diseases related to aging," said Leipzig, who was not involved in the study.

Belsky said the findings might propel scientists in a new direction. "This can help us as we start to come around to the idea that instead of trying to prevent individual illnesses like heart disease or cancer," he said, "we need to try to find ways to treat the common cause of all these things: aging."

Okay, that said I want to add a few things. The aging process causes disease and this increase in the aging process can be due to a poor diet and lack of exercise. Proper exercise increases the blood flow that your organs need and good nutrition which you get from a good diet will keep your organs healthy. All the pills in the world will not take the place of fresh food. 

Need Help With Weight Loss?

This is why most people give-up on losing weight. Most people who want to lose weight don't want to talk about it. Maybe their embarrassed. Maybe they think it's easy and they can do it. That's the typical attitude of someone who is try to lose for the first time. After trying several times and not being successful or put the weight back on, at that point most people will give up. The following article is about getting help for weight loss. It's just a matter of you realizing you need some professional help.

Help For Losing Weight

Is weight loss harder for you than it is for other people around you? Maybe you've watched friends and family members slim down with popular weight loss programs while you've seen no results at all with the same diet and exercise programs.  Are you just doomed to fail? No. In fact, a new study suggests that the lack of success may not be your fault.

A small study conducted by the National Institutes of Health found that weight loss is simply harder for some overweight patients.

Researchers said that “while behavioral factors such as adherence to diet affect weight loss to an extent, our study suggests we should consider a larger picture that includes individual physiology." In short, they said that since your body may be working against you, a personalized approach to weight loss may work best for you.

How to Get Personalized Weight Loss Help

Online weight loss programs and commercial diets work very well for some people. But those programs usually aren't customized specifically for you. You may need personalized weight loss help to slim down successfully and keep the weight off for good. A personalized approach should take into account your medical profile, your unique lifestyle, and even your emotional feelings about food. There are different ways that you can ask for weight loss help, depending on the type of support you need,

Medical Help For Weight Loss. Your best source of personalized weight loss help is your physician. Your primary care provider can tell you how your weight affects your health.

He or she can also explain to you how weight loss may improve your health.  For example, you may be able to decrease your risk of disease if you slim down. You may even be able to reduce or eliminate certain medications when you lose weight.

Your doctor is also a good place to get a recommendation for a registered dietitian (R.D.) or a physical therapist. An R.D. can create a personalized meal plan that takes your lifestyle into consideration. A physical therapist can work with you if you have mobility limitations to find exercise solutions. You can also talk to your doctor about weight loss surgery and prescription diet pills.

Social Help to Lose Weight.  Some commercial weight loss programs include social support as part of the program. For example, Weight Watchers provides meetings for their members where you gather with other dieters and a weight loss mentor to discuss challenges and successes. You may even be able to find a weight loss support community at your church or in your neighborhood. In addition to those sources, you can also build a personalized support network with friends, coworkers and family.

Emotional Weight Loss Help.  Food addiction can be the source of binge eating, overeating or emotional eating. Some behavioral health experts are trained to help you manage those concerns.  You can get a referral from your doctor, a registered dietitian, or you can find a psychologist who specializes in eating disorders through the American Psychological Association.

Remember, if weight loss feels unusually difficult, it probably is. Reach out and ask for the help that you need to build a personalized diet and exercise program for success.

The important thing is that you have the desire to lose weight. Just because you haven't found a good plan for you doesn't mean you can't lose weight. You have already taken the first step, the desire to lose, don't be discouraged that your plan hasn't worked. Consult an expert and start with your doctor. Even if he's not an expert, he may be able to refer you. Just explain about your budget and what your goal is. Remember that losing weight is more than just making the number on the scale go down. 

Is Your Diet Aging You?

This is a great post that we could all take advice from.

Simple strategies to keep you young, inside and out.

WebMD Feature

What you put on your plate might affect what you see in the mirror. But a few tweaks to your dining habits can go a long way to keeping your skin youthful and your body healthy.

The key approach? Eat better.

"Poor-quality foods, like trans fats, cause inflammation -- and aging is basically a chronic inflammatory state," says Timothy Harlan, MD. He's assistant professor of medicine at Tulane University School of Medicine. "Can you look older because you're eating crap? Absolutely."

For example, eating too much sugar and processed carbohydrates (like pasta, bread, and baked goods) can lead to damage in your skin's collagen, which keeps your skin springy and resists wrinkles, says Andrea Giancoli, MPH, RD. She's a policy analyst for Beach Cities Health District.

What's more, these foods put your overall health on the line. They are tied to diseases like heart disease and diabetes, she says.

Other foods, like fruits and vegetables, are good for your skin.

Foods to try and cut-out

Potato chips and french fries. Anything that's deep-fried in oil can add to inflammation throughout your body. Especially avoid trans fats. It can raise your LDL "bad" cholesterol and lower HDL "good" cholesterol, which increases your risk for heart disease.

Check food labels on baked goods and crackers, and avoid "partially hydrogenated oils" and "vegetable shortening."

Doughnuts and sugary pastries. They're packed with sugar, which Giancoli says may be linked to the development of wrinkles.

Hot dogs, bacon, and pepperoni. Processed meats are usually high in saturated fats and have nitrates in them. Both of those can lead to inflammation.

Fatty meats. These are also high in saturated fats. The key with meat is to keep it lean. Tenderloin cuts tend to be leaner. Look for ground beef that is at least 95% lean. Ground turkey breast and chicken breast are other lean options.

Alcohol. Moderate drinking may be good for your heart, but heavy drinking can rev up the aging process. "Moderate" is one drink per day for women (such as a 5-ounce glass of wine or 12-ounce glass of beer) and two drinks for men.

Foods to Favor

Go for a Mediterranean-style diet, Harlan says. Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low-fat dairy, and lean protein can help fight inflammation and keep you looking your best, he says.

Eat whole foods that are closest to their natural state as possible, says Giancoli. For example, instead of apple sauce, try a fresh whole apple.

Try eating more of these foods:

Romaine lettuce. It's high in vitamins A and C, which curb inflammation. Also try broccoli, spinach, arugula, watercress, escarole, kale and endive.

Tomatoes. They're rich in a nutrient called lycopene. So are watermelon, grapefruit, guavas, asparagus, and red cabbage.

Salmon. It's high in omega-3 fats, which fight inflammation. Tuna is another good choice.

Lentils and beans. These are good sources of protein and are loaded with fiber and nutrients. Try black beans, split peas, limas, pintos, chickpeas, and cannellini beans.

"Your skin is essentially made of protein, so if you don't get enough healthy protein in your diet, your skin will reflect that," Giancoli says. "Along with fish, beans are a great way to get it."

Oatmeal. Whole grains such as oatmeal, whole wheat breads and pastas, brown rice, and quinoa help curb inflammation.

"These also have B vitamins in them, like thiamine and riboflavin, which are important for skin as well," Giancoli says. If you don't get enough. Go for a variety and make this way of eating a habit. Look at your food when your buying and think about what you'll get out of it. Your paying for the food, you want to get something back.

"If you're not getting enough of the good stuff on a regular basis, you won't be able to produce healthy new skin cells in the way that you should," Giancoli says. Eating the good stuff will give you the nutrition to stay healthy. If your not feeling healthy or your tired all the time, we often blame a cold or virus but the first thing we need to look at is our diet. 

I know this post talks a lot about your skin; and what most people don't realize is that your skin and your eyes will tell the story of your bodies health. Skin problems like ache or any sores or rashes can all be caused by your diet. Your eyes should be clear and white around the pupil. And if your using an eye wash everyday, maybe you should see a doctor, you might have a bigger problem.