High-Calorie Diets Lead to Diabetes

Everyone knows that high-calorie diets are tied to obesity and, too often, to type 2 diabetes. Now, a small study suggests that gorging on food can quickly tip the body into a "pre-diabetic" state. Gorging on food or "bingeing" is generally caused by skipping meals. Some dieters who don't really understand the way a person loses weight, will start trying to lose weight by skipping meals and I know people that only have one meal a day and generally it's the evening meal.

Some of these people aren't dieters, that just the way they eat. Coffee in the morning, no lunch and then after work they eat a big dinner. I remember when I was younger that's the way I was eating. When I was in my 20's, I was working manual labor and burning 1000's of calories a day, so I had lots of energy, I was thin and muscular and strong and the bad eating habits I developed didn't bother me.

When I was in my  30's, I owned my own business and I was still doing manual labor but the work was easier and I was able to eat more. I was eating pizza and pasta on a regular basis. I gained about 50 pounds in 5 or 6 years. This is the type of diet that will cause you to be pre-diabetic. Pizza, pasta and bread is too much processed foods. Yes, the food was home-made but it was all made from enriched flour and now we know that enriched flour is worse for your body then sugar. Sugar, real cane sugar can be burned for energy, so if your not consume a lot, your body can burn that type of sugar. Enriched wheat flour is a factory made product, only part of the product can be used by the body as fuel. Most of it will be stored as fat.

It's that type of diet that includes large amounts of enriched wheat flour that will cause a pre-diabetic state when you overeat. Generally people eating this type of diet will eat only small amounts of fruits and vegetables. It's a type of food addiction that I believe is causing a lack of nutrition and that will add body fat.

If your trying to lose weight you want to avoid any processed or enriched flour and you can buy products without wheat flour. The easiest way to find these products is to look in the gluten-free section at your grocery store. Gluten-free means no wheat and because today's wheat is not your grandmother's wheat, it's all enriched, it's better to avoid it.

In the "gluten-free" section, you can buy pizza crusts, pasta, bread, bagels, chips, pretzels and much more. Most of it is made with rice flour. Get use to reading labels, there's hundreds of new food products coming out, so read the labels and choice the best ones for your diet.

Losing Weight Made Easy

It’s not that hard to lose weight but there’s a “but” clause in here. There’s many different way to lose weight and not every way will work for you. That’s the BUT CLAUSE, "not every way is going to work for you". There's going to be some "trial and error” if you’re going to find the best way for you. 

There is one constant that applies to any diet, YOUR BODY HAS TO BURN MORE CALORIES THAN YOU CONSUME. The way the body works is what we might call “real time”. In other words, we are suppose to first eat (that first hour after we wake-up from a nights sleep) and then use that food for energy and then eat again and use that food for energy and so on. You want to eat first thing in the morning because your body has been working all night on repairing the body and doing the basic organ functions like pumping blood and breathing air. So you need some nutrition and you need to drink a full glass of water to hydrate your body after that long sleep.

As I mentioned before you have to burn more calories then you eat. So the big question is "how many calories do I burn?” That’s the part that most everyone gets wrong. And if you get that wrong you won’t lose weight. Statistics show the the average women who works 8 hours a day may only burn about 1200 calories all day, because most working women will spend most of that 8 hours sitting at a desk.  While the average mother with school age children will burn a little more because there more active and have more time to workout, so the average goes up to 1500 calories for non-working or unemployed women. For men the number are a little different. Actually most men not working out of the home will burn less calories, about 1500 and men working out of the home will burn closer to 1800 calories. 

Now these are marly averages, and that’s were most dieters go wrong. I thing the numbers may be correct if your of normal weight, but if you’re overweight you’ll burn less calories. Why, you might ask. As you gain body fat you tend to burn less calories. You may not realize it, but you’re slowing down as you add weight. It’s a gradual process so in most cases you don’t realize that you’re slowing down. Most people don’t realize their overweight until their 30+ pounds over. 

So what has really happened is that you may be only burning 800 or 900 calories a day. At this point you have to cut your calories down to 800 a day to see if you can start losing fat. I understand that it’s not going to be easy and here is were exercise can help. If you don’t exercise now and you want to lose weight, one hour a day of real heart-pumping exercise will burn about 300 calories, so if you were burning an extra 300 a day you could eat more calories.  So now you would be up to 1100 calories. If you change your meal plan and go with 5 small meals a day about 3 hours apart, eating 200 calories per meal, you can stay under 1100 calories and control food cravings. 

Now you have to find 200 calories that will give you nutrition to hold you for that 3 hours. Your in luck, just GOOGLE “200 calorie meals” and there’s several websites to help you. Remember to spend your 200 calories wisely, that’s all you get for 3 hours. If you just eat a snack and think that if you save 200 calories now so I can eat more later, that doesn’t work. It takes your body time to process food and if you eat say 500 calories for one meal, your food won’t have fully processed in 3 hours and your body will have to store some of those calories in fat cells so it can begin to process the next meal. 

If you find that your losing weight and you want to increase calories, I suggest 6 small meals a day about 2 hours apart. This is better for cutting out food cravings but you have to be the judge of which plan will help you lose weight.

If you really want to lose your body fat than look for my e-books 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 e-books. 

There are two e-books. “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 e-book. 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 e-book is available on Smashwords.com, just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Why can’t I lose weight?

This is a reblog from WebMD.com

We all have had trouble lose weight at one time or another.

In this post the author explains some of the most common 

reason that people can't make their diet work.

Is it because I skip 

breakfast?

It could be. When you take a pass on that first meal of the day, it can work against you. You're likely to get hungrier later, so you may overdo it at lunch.

Try to eat within an hour of waking up. A high-fiber, protein-packed breakfast can help you feel full, longer. Try cottage cheese with fruit, eggs with whole-wheat toast, or Greek yogurt with a banana.

Do I eat too close to 

bedtime?

A late-night meal or even a snack can spell trouble for your weight loss plan. It may raise your body temperature, blood sugar, and insulin, which makes it harder for you to burn fat. Try to eat dinner at least 3 hours before you go to sleep.

Be careful about snacking after supper. You take in more calories than you realize when you nibble while you watch TV or use the computer. You may also be tempted to eat unhealthy foods like ice cream or potato chips.

Is it because I'm under too 

much stress? 

It's possible. It can make you reach for high-calorie, high-fat foods. Your body also tends to store more fat when you're stressed out.

To reduce stress, try exercise or meditation.

Is it because of my 

gender?

It could make a difference in how you lose weight. A recent study suggests it's easier for men to drop pounds quickly. But women tend to have more success with long-term efforts.

Where you lose weight can also differ. Guys lose belly fat first, but that area can be tougher for the ladies.

Do I burn calories more 

slowly than other people?

Possibly. How fast you burn them is based on your metabolism -- chemical reactions that maintain your body.

If you have a slow metabolism, your genes may be to blame. Or you may not have enough lean muscle mass. People with lean, muscular bodies burn more calories than people with a higher percentage of body fat.

Do I burn calories more 

slowly than other people? 

continued...

Other things that can affect how you burn calories:

Getting older. Your metabolism slows down about 2%-8% every decade. That may be from decreased muscle mass.

Eating too little. It sounds strange, but the truth is, if you skip meals or follow a very low-calorie diet, it can backfire by making you burn calories more slowly.

Want to ratchet up your metabolism? Lift weights to boost your lean muscle mass. And avoid diets that have extremely low-calorie counts.

Am I getting enough 

sleep?

When you don't get your sleep, it can make it harder to lose weight. Your metabolism may slow and you won't burn calories as fast as you'd like.

You may also have less energy when you don't get enough sleep. That makes it harder to exercise.

When you're tired, you're more likely to make poor diet choices, like choosing sweets over fruit. In a recent study, people who didn't get enough sleep ate about 300 more calories per day than those who got more rest.

Is it my genes?

Maybe. Some bodies are simply better at burning fat than others. It's something you inherit from your parents or grandparents.

You don't have any control over the genes that were passed to you, so you may need to work a little harder to burn calories and lose weight.

And yes, it can be a medical problem, maybe your thyroid or maybe a medication your taking. These are problems your Doctor can help you with. If your under Doctors care, he's the first one you should be talking to about your weight.

Is Your Food Aging You?

"Can you look older because you're eating crap? Absolutely."

I like this post from WebMD.com. It tells you the truth about what bad food choices can do to your health. 

“For example, eating too much sugar and processed carbohydrates (like some pasta, bread, and baked goods made with enriched flour) can lead to damage in your skin's collagen, which keeps your skin springy and resists wrinkles”, says Andrea Giancoli, MPH, RD. 

“What's more, these foods put your overall health at risk. They are tied to diseases like heart disease and diabetes”, she says.

Did you know that Obesity can cause heart damage without any symptoms. Other foods, like fruits and vegetables, are good for your body and your overall appearance. When you look good, you feel good and your body is working the way it was built to.

A person can be considered middle-age even past 65 or even 70 by the condition of their body. Your body doesn’t know what the calendar is. Your body only knows that your not fully grown or that your are fully grown or that your getting close to “end of life”. And your body can determine this by the condition of your body. This is what is call your “biological age”. 

Aging is really not about how old you are in chronological years, aging is about how old you are in biological years. A study done in a university in New Zealand recently showed that out of the 1000 people in a study of people in the late 30’s, some had a biological age as high as 60, some of them have actually stopped aging and some had a biological age less then their chronological age.




You can’t reverse aging but the study shows that in some cases people have actually stopped aging. Yes, some of this may be caused by the genes you were born with, but most of these people have stopped aging because of their diet and activity levels.




Everyone is born with a different set of genes and some genes maybe better then others, for instance we know that your genes depend a lot on the condition of your parents at the time you were conceived. As an adult goes through life his or her genes age along with the biological age. 




So genes your born with do play a factor in your biological age and that maybe why some people in the study were found to have a biological age 20 years older then their actual age. But most of the aging process can be controlled by your diet and exercise.

Science doesn't know how long man can live. It only has history to go by. Science and a team from Google are doing research now to try and determine if man can live to age 500. Other scientists believe we can live to age 1000 in theory but I don't think any research is being done yet. No one really knows how long man can live. 

Medicine may have it all wrong. Today Doctor's are treating the medical problems the patient has, but now they think that they need to be preventing the diseases and illnesses that people could get. Prevention is the next step for medicine. So in theory, if we never get a disease or illness then how long could we live?




You don’t have to age, it’s mostly up to you. You can slow down or even stop the aging process if you want. You won’t stop aging forever but in the study some of the adults did have a biological age younger then their chronological age. When your biological age is younger, your body stopped aging several years ago because of your lifestyle. If your interested, you can calculate your biological age by looking on the internet and finding the formula. Just do a search Biological Age and you'll find several websites to help you. 

You can stop the aging process at any age if you take control of your diet and exercise. Losing body fat will make a big difference in your health. I have a friend about my age with a weight problem and his Doctor warned him he was pre-diabetic and would have to start taking insulin if he couldn't lose weight. My friend could remember when his father had to take insulin and he knew that wasn't for him. In 6 months he lost the weight and was off his medications. At the age of 60, he was one happy guy. 

I write several blogs and e-books, check out some of my other sites.

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

If you really want to lose your body fat than look for my e-books 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 e-books. 

There are two e-books. “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 e-book. 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 e-book 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

The Truth About Protein

Reviewed by Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen, MS, RD 

This is a post from HealthNet.com. It tells us the importance of protein in your diet and also stresses the importance of getting protein from a variety of sources.

Most people get enough protein. But are you making the best protein choices, or are you in a rut?

You need protein for your muscles, bones, and the rest of your body. Exactly how much you need changes with age:

• Babies need about 10 grams a day.
• School-age kids need 19-34 grams a day.
• Teenage boys need up to 52 grams a day.
• Teenage girls need 46 grams a day.
• Adult men need about 56 grams a day.
• Adult women need about 46 grams a day (71 grams, if pregnant or breastfeeding)

You should get at least 10% of your daily calories, but not more than 35%, from protein, according to the Institute of Medicine.

Just about every type of food has protein. Some have more than others. Whether you eat meat or not, you can get enough protein from your diet.

Apart from protein, you might also want to think about what else you're getting from protein-rich foods.

For instance, to limit saturated fat, you'd want to choose lean cuts of meat over fattier cuts. And to cut back on sodium, skip the processed meats like hot dogs and sausage. The bad thing about eating meat is the saturated fat that comes along with it. Try to get most of your protein from plants. Plant protein is just as rich in nutrition and there's no down-side. High-protein diets actually lower the amount of fat you burn. Low-fat diets (that's low in animal fats) will not change the amount of fat your body is burning. The fat in fish is good fat and eating eggs and eating low-fat greek yogurt are good for your diet. 

If you're trying to get more omega-3s, you might choose salmon, tuna, or eggs enriched with omega-3s.

If you need to get more fiber, look to beans, vegetables, nuts, and legumes. All good sources of protein.

To help lower the chance of getting heart disease, it's a good idea to limit the amount of red meat, especially processed red meat, and eat more fish, white meat poultry, and beans, according to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. Most nutritionists agree the best approach is to choose from a variety of protein sources.

If you're watching your weight, try including protein with every meal. It will help you feel full longer. Spreading protein evenly across your meals is also good for your muscles, which is especially important as you get older and start to lose muscle mass.

How Can I Stop Food Cravings?

If you seriously want to stop the cravings you have to stop eating food or drinks that spike your blood sugar. Your blood sugar will normally increase when you eat, but you want the increase to be slow and gradual. We know that sweet foods or sweet drinks will spike your blood sugar, but now science says that “enriched wheat flour” also will spike your sugar levels. And what's so bad about that, you might ask. A big spike in blood sugars meanings that blood sugars will crash hard and in a very short time will be lower than normal and that will cause a craving to bring your blood sugar level back to normal. Then depending on what you eat, you might spike those levels again which will set you up for another crash and yet another craving. So snacking at night would be inevitable. If you want to avoid food cravings avoid anything that will spike your glucose levels.

I'll explain as if you're looking at a graph. If a normal blood sugar is below 5.6 and you eat ice cream and your blood sugar spike to 8, and your body is working normally, your blood sugar will drop rapidly to say 4 because the effects of the sugar won't last very long, but now your below your normal level and your body will trigger another craving to get you back up to your normal level of 5.6. Now, these numbers are just numbers and if you're concerned about your level you want to see your Doctor and get a blood test. When you're overweight it's important to have regular checkups that include blood tests. High blood sugar levels are a serious problem.

But let's get back to cravings, people that snack a lot often don't understand why their snacking, and snacks put on the weight. So we know sugary foods will spike glucose or blood sugars levels and now science thinks that enriched wheat flour can do the same. Enriched wheat flour is in almost all bakery goods. Bread, cakes, donuts anything that comes from a bakery and that includes chips, crackers, pretzels and any other type of snack food. Now you might think because you don't eat wheat bread that you're safe. All processed flour is made from wheat flour or partial wheat flour. You want to start reading the labels and avoid foods with processed or enriched flour.

Ever wonder why gluten-free is so popular now. Gluten-free means there's no wheat flour or any wheat in that food. Read the label on gluten-free bread and you find it's made of rice flour. Gluten-free products will help you control the spike in your blood sugar which in turn help you avoid cravings. You can buy gluten-free bagels, pasta, rice cakes, cereal and bread just to name a few at any of the major grocery chains. So gluten-free will help you control your weight and avoiding sugary foods and drinks will also help cut your calories.

Most people think that losing weight is all about either dieting or all about exercising. But you have to do both. Nine out of ten people put the weight back in a few months. If you're going thru the trouble to lose the weight and don't forget the money your spending, it's important to keep it off. Losing the weight and staying with a moderate exercise plan will make you much healthier. You're going to feel like a kid again after you lose your first 10 pounds of body fat. You don't want to return to the old you, overweight and tired all the time.  

If you really want to lose the extra flab you can get help, I write 4 blogs and I’ve written two E-books. E-books are the easiest and cheapest way to learn about any subject without groping through hundreds of website looking for the material you want. 

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

My second e-book is available in the same stores. And on smash words.com. If you use the smash word promotional code You can get my second book for $1.99 (PJ42H). Just type in the search line “getting to a healthy weight”.

Avoid Stress To Lose Weight

We can have stress and not even know it. A fast paced life is 

stressful. Stress will cause a person to concentrate on those things 

that worry them most. They lose their focus on their everyday life. 

They start to forget about their normal routine and look for a way to cut time from their schedule. They stop working out or just walking with friends and they stop doing the regular chores like cooking at 

home. They spend more time watching TV because it takes your 

mind off the stress that's worrying them. Stress is one of the biggest 

causes of obesity. It will make you less active.

People will stop eating real food and just start filling up on snack food and bottled or canned drinks. All of this is 

caused by stress. Eating too much snack food, not preparing real 

food, not caring about your food and not caring about exercise. All 

of these are signs of a downward cycle that are heading toward 

obesity. And the food manufacturers are happy to help you.

Because of our stressful lifestyles, we are constantly looking for 

convenience and preparing meals is close to the top of the list of 

those conveniences. Supermarkets are great but all the food is not always healthy. Supermarkets have to sell all types 

of food and some of it is processed food. Processed food is 

manufactured and not grown. Convenience foods and even restaurant food will only add more fat to your body. When you're trying to lose weight avoid foods that you aren't making at home. This is a good way to simplify your life by taking some of the hustle out of it. Try to take a lot of the aggravation out of life by organizing everything just a little better. 

You can make quick meals and they can still be healthy. By planning your meals and plan for shopping ahead of time by knowing what's for dinner before you go to the store. Shopping out of habit and just buying the same stuff week after week might be the expensive way to shop. Planning your meals before you shop maybe the easiest and cheapest way to shop. And by organizing just that much of your life can make a big difference in your stress level. The less stress in your life the happier you will be. You're also going to be more organized and be a better decision maker.  

I write E-books and blogs about fitness and weight loss. I’ll show you the cheapest, inexpensive way to lose weight. Right now and for a limited time, my E-book, "How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight”, is $1.99 on all the major sites. Amazon.com, iBooks, B&N.com, Scribd.com, Kobo.com and many others in several other countries.