Do Carbs Make You Gain Weight?

This post from the HungryGirl website. It explains why you don't have to be afraid of  carbs.

Carbs can be downright confusing: Some sources claim that eating carbs can hinder weight loss and cause weight gain; others say carbs are a diet essential. I’m Hungry Girl Lisa Lillien, and I’m here to clarify the truth about carbs.

There are rumors out there that eating carbs can be detrimental to your diet. Low-carb diets have gone through periods of being super popular for weight loss. But here’s the deal:

Reality: Carbs Don’t Make You Gain Weight; Excess Calories Do

Carbs don't cause instant weight gain, but starchy carbs do have a tendency to be calorie-dense. And if you eat too many calories, you’ll probably put on weight, whether those calories are from carbs or another nutrient. Sure, it’s a problem if your diet consists only of carbs, but it’s also problematic if you’re skipping them completely. Carbohydrates play an important role in your diet; they provide energy to your body. The name of the game is balance: The USDA recommends that 45 to 65 percent of an adult’s daily calorie intake comes from carbs, with the remainder of calories coming from a mixture of protein and fat.

When it Comes to Carbs, There Are a Few Things to Keep in Mind

1. Not all carbs are created equal.

Certain carbs are better for your health than others. It’s important to limit refined carbs, which are prevalent in foods like processed white bread and cakes.

The process of refinement means the whole grains have been extracted, removing much of the fiber and nutritional value and leaving you with sugary carbs and empty calories. 

A better way to fill your daily carb quota is with complex carbs, which are found in whole foods like oats, whole grains, beans, green veggies, and potatoes.

Complex carbs are low in sugar and tend to be high in fiber. And fiber takes longer to digest than other carbs, so it keeps you satisfied and feeling full for a long time. That’s definitely true for me — if I snack on something like an apple, I’m much less likely to reach for a candy bar later in the day.

2. Even complex carbs can be calorie-dense, so watch your servings.

Always read nutritional labels, and practice portion control. One of my favorite ways to enjoy calorie-dense carbs in moderation is to bulk up the serving size with low-calorie foods like veggies: You get the health benefits of the carbs, plus a big portion and a low calorie count!

Green-leafy vegetables are carbs too and they are important to everyones diet. Complex carbs are the ones you want and the man-made carbs are the ones to avoid. 

Losing body fat should be your goal. Read up on weight loss and losing body fat. It doesn’t cost money to lose weight. The internet is full of free information. But the quickest way and cheapest way is to buy an ebook online and get everything you need in one short read. I have two ebooks on Amazon:

How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight

Getting To A Healthy Weight

Check out one of them, I think you can find all the info you need and plenty of tips on how I lost my body fat. 

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. 

Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find these e-books. These books give you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my books 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. 

How Healthy Are You?

We all take our health for granted. We have that attitude if it's not broken don't fix it. So if we feel as good as we did yesterday we must we all right. 

Most of us think that we're in good enough shape. We tend to judge ourselves by others about the same age. Actually, that's probably not good. We tend to judge ourselves by others who aren't in good condition. I don't know anyone who compares himself with the 80 year olds that Golf three times a week. If you don't know anyone like that it might be you don't live in Arizona or Florida.

Your physical condition is a good indicator of "how long you'll live". Most people think they're in better shape than they really are. No one can predict exactly how long you'll   live, but researchers have devised some surprisingly simple tests that are strongly correlated with a risk of early death - or a longer life - in the years to come.  Here's a look at some basic ways scientists are attempting to assess your physical capability and the associated chances of living longer.

1.   Sitting-Rising Test:  Developed in the late 1990s by Brazilian scientist Claudio Gil Soares de Araujo at Gama Filho University in Rio de Janeiro, this test simply involves going from a standing position in a small (2 meters by 2 meters) area to a sitting position on the floor, and then rising again.

Subjects are scored according to how many supports they require to perform the cycle: a point lost for using a hand, forearm, or knee, for example, to either sit or stand.  Another half-point is deducted for generally unstable execution.  A total of 10 points can be achieved for each full cycle.

In a 2014 paper published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, Araujo and others discovered that older adults had a 5 times greater risk of mortality during the 6.3-year follow-up period, if they scored only 0-3 points on the test, relative to the top-performers scoring between 8-10 points.  A total of 2002 adults between the ages of 51 and 80 years participated in the study.

Araujo's team writes that the Sitting-Rising Test (SRT) is a simple gauge of musculoskeletal fitness, with the capacity to predict mortality among community-dwelling adults in this age range.

Another version is the Chair Rise Speed Test, which calculates how many times you can rise from a chair and sit back down again, within a minute.

 A 2014 paper published in the British Medical Journal compared the fastest sitters with the slowest among 2766 53-year old adults. At baseline, women performed anywhere from 21 stands/minute on the low end to almost 37 stands/minute.  The range among men was just under 22 stands/minute for the low performers, to 39 stands/minute at the high end.

After 13 years, those of either gender who performed poorest at the outset had more than twice the risk of death from any cause when compared with those with a higher chair rise speed at the start of the study.

2.    Grip Strength:   The strength of your hand grip is typically measured using an electronic dynamometer.  In numerous studies, a stronger grip has been linked with lower all-cause mortality, especially among older adults. In the 2014 UK study of adults aged 53, women's grip strength ranged from 21kg (46lb) to almost 34kg (75lb), while the men squeezed from 36kg (79lb) to 54.5kg (120lb).  Averaged across both sexes, and taking other risk factors like body mass index, smoking status and physical activity levels into account, the 53-year olds with the poorest grip strength had anywhere from a 29% to 98% greater risk of death from any cause during the 13 years of follow-up.

3.    Standing Balance Time:  The same 2014 BMJ paper examined how long its subjects could stand on one foot with their eyes closed.

 The resulting times were short, with a maximum average of just 19 seconds for men, and 10 seconds for women.  The good news: achieving simply those brief standing balance times was linked with lower mortality.  Poor performers of the standing balance test -  clocking in at just 3 seconds for both women and men - had a 2.5 greater chance of dying from any cause, during the 13-year study.

4.    Sitting Height:  If you think your overall height is the only tallness measure researchers are interested in, you're wrong.  Sitting height, an anthropometric measurement which compares the relative proportions of the torso and legs, has been linked in Western populations to the incidence of heart disease. Greater leg length (and less relative sitting height) has been viewed as an indicator of better childhood health, which may protect against age-related illnesses like heart disease and diabetes in adulthood.  

Data on other ethnic populations are less clear, however; a 2007 Chinese study found that greater sitting height was linked to more diabetes and abnormal lipid levels (dyslipidemia), whereas a 2011 paper published in the International Journal of Epidemiology found no relationship between height (including sitting height) with mortality among 136,202 adults in the Shanghai Women's and Men's Health Studies.

5.    Gait Speed:  Can how fast you naturally walk say anything about your longevity?  Yes - according to epidemiologists from the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere, in their 2011 paper published in JAMA. The researchers examined 9 separate studies involving a total of 34,485 participants and found that among both sexes, gait speed was linked with survival at all ages. A natural gait speed of 0.8 metres/second (about 1.8 miles/hour) corresponded with average life expectancy for each age; walking faster than that as a natural pace was linked with better than average longevity.

Since walking requires energy, balance, and engages multiple organ systems to work together, the researchers suggest slower speed may indicate hidden illness or poor overall conditioning.

6.    Waist to Height Ratio:  Some researchers believe that waist to height ratio - calculated by dividing the waist circumference in centimetres by a person's height (also measured in centimetres) is a better predictor of disease than weight or body mass index.  The advice is simple: keep your abdominal fat down, and make sure your waist measurement is not greater than half your height.

Bottom line:  These tests are simple tools to measure the statistical probability of an early death, as indicators of overall health and conditioning.  You can improve your own odds of living a long, healthy life by staying physically active, eating an anti-aging diet, staying active within your social circle, keeping stress at bay, not smoking, and drinking only in moderation.

Medical science knows little about how long human should live. They can only go by past records. But they do predict that humans will live longer in the future because we are learning more about the body and what we need to do to take care of ourselves. The benefits of living a healthy lifestyle will be to age slower and to stay young longer and if that leads to a longer life, okay, but for me, I want to enjoy my days as long as a can. 

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 Are 2/3 Of Americans Overweight?

America Loves Fast Food

Latest Nutrition, Food & Recipes News

Americans love fast food -- even if they can afford meals that aren't prepackaged in grease-resistant wrappers, according to a new study. Is it any wonder so many of us have a weight problem. This blog post will give you the truth about America's overweight problem. It's no wonder health care costs are sky-rocketing. This blog post first appeared on Medicinenet.com. 

The study found that Americans of all economic classes eat fast food. Middle-income Americans are the most likely to eat fast food, but only by a slight margin from other income groups. Even the wealthiest Americans admit to eating fast food, trailing other groups by just a bit, the researchers said.

"It's not mostly poor people eating fast food in America," said study co-author Jay Zagorsky, a research scientist at Ohio State University's Center for Human Resource Research.

"Rich people may have more eating options, but that's not stopping them from going to places like McDonald's or KFC," he said in a university news release.

The study included information from a national survey. The researchers zeroed in on roughly 8,000 people who were questioned about their weekly fast food intake in 2008, 2010 and 2012.

The participants, who were all middle-aged, were asked how many times they had eaten food from a fast food restaurant, such as McDonald's, KFC or Taco Bell, in the past seven days.

The answers were then compared to questions about their wealth and income. The study found that the fondness for fast food transcends economic classes and is shared by rich and poor alike.

Overall, the researchers found that 79 percent of the participants ate fast food at least once a week. Twenty-three percent ate fast food three or more times during any one of the weeks examined in the study.

The researchers noted that people whose income fluctuated dramatically in either direction didn't change their eating habits. "If you became richer or poorer, it didn't change how much fast food you ate," Zagorsky said.

Income may not have influenced the participants' fast food habits, but their schedules did. The researchers found those who opted for fast food tended to have less free time and were more likely to work longer hours than those who didn't rely on fast food for their meals.

Some of those polled admitted to eating all of their meals at fast food restaurants.

The study's authors said the respondents didn't reveal what they ordered from the fast food restaurants. Some people may have eaten salads or other healthier menu items.

Since all of the people included in the study were middle-aged, the study doesn't reflect differences in fast food intake among people of other age groups.

Still, the researchers suggested their findings could help health officials develop strategies to curb the obesity epidemic and guide Americans to follow a healthy diet.

"If government wants to get involved in regulating nutrition and food choices, it should be based on facts," said Zagorsky. "This study helps reject the myth that poor people eat more fast food than others and may need special protection."

When I was working in an office all day, I'd say that 90% of the office workers would eat fast food mainly because of the convenience.

Losing body fat should be your goal. Read up on weight loss and losing body fat. It doesn’t cost money to lose weight. The internet is full of free information. But the quickest way and cheapest way is to buy an ebook online and get everything you need in one short read. I have two ebooks on Amazon:

How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight

Getting To A Healthy Weight

Check out one of them, I think you can find all the info you need and plenty of tips on how I lost my body fat. 

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. 

Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find these e-books. These books give you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my books 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. 

The Easiest Diet To Follow

Most of us make the same classic mistake, they pick the diet that promises the most results. Wrong!! You have to pick the diet plan that you can stick too.

I reblogged parts of this post from VeryWell.com.

This is one reason most people quit their diet. "It's too hard to follow". I don't care which diet you think might work for you and I don't care who is on the diet and how much someone else lost on the diet, "if you can't stick to a diet, it won't help you". This is a classic mistake that people make, they take advice from someone who likes this new diet and has had luck on the diet, but you have to look close and read the fine print and if you can't stick to a cabbage soup diet, don't start it. I don't care how much your friend lost. The best diet ever created isn't going to work for you if you can't stick to it. 

When consumers look for a weight loss program, they usually look for the easiest diet to follow. After all, who wants to spend weeks learning a complicated system? But almost every program claims to be easy so it can be hard to choose the best plan.

3 Ways to Find the Easiest Diet

Everyone has a different lifestyle and different food preferences so the easiest diet for your co-worker or your neighbor might not be the easiest diet for you.

The key to getting sustainable weight loss results is to find the plan that works best with your specific skill set and your specific lifestyle.

Ask yourself a few important questions before you look for a diet:

How much time do I have to cook and prepare foods?
Do I like to cook and spend time in the kitchen?
Do I like to try new tastes and flavors?
Do I have time to grocery shop?
How much weight do I have to lose?
How much money can I spend on a diet and for how long will I be able to maintain this budget?
Do I enjoy eating foods that are considered to be healthy, like fruits, vegetables or lean meats?
Do I prefer comfort foods like pasta, bread, and baked goods?
If you find a diet that fits into your regular routine and satisfies your food preferences, you're more likely to stick to it long enough to see real weight loss results. In addition, if the plan is simple you're likely to maintain the good eating habits after you've reached your goal weight, so weight maintenance becomes easier as well.

The maintenance is important, if you're not going to work on maintaining the weight loss then why bother losing weight?

Tops Picks for the Easiest Diet to Follow

Easy diets fall into one of three categories. You'll notice that almost every easy diet has certain key characteristics in common. Portion control, for example, is essential for almost every diet to work. But there are some differences between top diets that may make one plan easier for you to follow.

Your answers to the questions above will help you find the best plan for you.

The Most Convenient Diet
Meal delivery plans are the easiest diets for people who have very little time to cook and prepare food. Often these plans provide small microwavable meals that you can heat up on the go, calorie-controlled shakes to drink, or small snack bars to nibble when you don't have time to sit and eat.

Top picks in this category include Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, or Weight Watchers. My personal recommendation in this category is Weight Watchers simply because it provides the option of face-to-face support, which makes weight loss easier for many dieters, plus a new on-line program for those who can't do a face-to-face.

This is the best easy diet for people who can make a financial commitment to a diet program (depending on the amount of weight you have to lose, your total cost can run in the thousands) and people who don't like to or don't have time to prepare three meals each day. Keep in mind, however, that plans like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers do encourage dieters to learn to cook for improved weight loss and weight maintenance.

This is not the easiest diet for people who enjoy large quantities of food (meals and snacks are usually quite small), people who enjoy cooking all of their meals, and people who don't want to invest too much money into their weight loss program.

The Quickest Diet to Learn
If you don't want to spend time and money learning a point system or setting up food delivery, then you need a diet that is quick and easy to learn. There are some diets like Atkins, Mediterranean diet, or The South Beach Diet that provide simple food lists. If you eat the foods on the approved list and avoid other foods, you'll lose weight. But to really take advantage of these programs long term, you should read the books associated with the diets.

My pick for the big winner in this category is calorie counting. Why? Because counting calories simply requires basic math skills that you already know and there are free apps that make the process super simple.

Calorie counting is like budgeting. You take five minutes to use a calorie calculator and determine your daily calorie budget, then each day deduct calories from your budget as you eat. It's simple, but it takes consistent input, which is easy for some but overwhelming for others.

This is the best easy diet for someone on a budget who is willing to use tech devices (like a smartphone) to put forth small consistent efforts on a daily basis to slim down.
This is not the easiest diet for someone who isn't likely to be consistent with food tracking. This might include someone without access to their smartphone at mealtime or someone who isn't likely to be honest about what they eat and how much they eat.

The Most Accessible Diet
Sometimes the easiest weight loss plan is the one that is easiest to find. There are certain diet products you can find at your regular grocery store that will help you to slim down. They allow you to eat (at least some of) the foods that you normally eat. In this category, the Lean Cuisine diet or the SlimFast Diet plan are top picks.

You'll find frozen meals by brands like Lean Cuisine or Smart Ones in nearly every market in the country. The meals are relatively inexpensive, portion-controlled, and microwavable. For around 300 calories you can eat foods that you are familiar with, like meatloaf, pasta or turkey, and stuffing.

If you choose the SlimFast Diet, you simply consume two easy-to-find SlimFast products as replacements for two meals during the day and eat three low-calorie snacks. Then enjoy one additional 500-calorie meal that you buy or prepare on your own.

This is the best easy diet for consumers who don't want to read books, compare online programs, or make a long-term investment in a food delivery service. These diets are also better suited for dieters who have less weight to lose.
This is not the easiest diet for those who have more pounds to lose or for those who have medical concerns that limit the amount of salt or added sugar in their diet. Some frozen meals and shakes are high in sodium and some have added sugars.

What's the Easiest Diet Ever?

One of the problems with many of the easy diets listed is that they include a lot of processed foods. Frozen products and microwavable meals are generally not as nutritious as a home cooked meal. Meals that come to you frozen contain lots of sodium and sometimes sugar. Be sure to read the labels. I prefer the fresh meals you can buy at the deli section of your supermarket. You can get low-calorie, low-sodium meals.So which plan would I recommend as the easiest diet to lose weight? Portion control. Simply eat the foods you currently enjoy at mealtime, but eat less. Sounds easy, right? But it doesn't work. If you're adding fat to your body it's because of the foods you're eating, generally when you eat fresh foods and nothing processed you don't eat as much. Fresh foods will satisfy your appetite, processed foods don't, they only fill you up for a short time. You don't have to control portions if you eat fresh foods, mostly vegetables and fruits.

So which plan would I recommend as the easiest diet to lose weight? I found the best way is to completely change your diet and don't look back. Changing your diet I liken to stopping cigarettes. You might as well know now, weight maintenance means never going back, if you do the weight will return.

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.

Finding The Right Weight Loss Program

I don't like using the word Diet because most beginners will misunderstand the meaning. I don't

believe you can achieve permanent weight loss by just dieting. It's always going to be part exercise

and part the kind of food you're eating.

Advertisers bombard you with weight loss advertising. It's a huge industry that's looking

for a piece of your money. Don't swallow everything you hear or read, most of it is just

Hype. Most weight loss plans give you quick results but when 100 dieters were

interviewed one year later, almost 90% had put the weight back on.

Finding a reliable weight loss program is important. More than a third of people in the U.S.

are considered obese. And it's not just adults. The CDC says 1 in 6 kids are dealing with

the condition, too. Weighing too much puts you at risk for many serious health problems,

including diabetes and heart disease.

"Eat less and exercise more" has always been the golden rule for dropping pounds. But how do you really accomplish that? Here are the five must-haves in a weight loss program, according to the researchers at Johns Hopkins.

1) Plenty of interaction and support. You want ongoing contact with the program's support team. Researchers recommend at least 14 sessions over 6 months. This might be in person or by phone or email. "Support is so critical in helping people through the weight loss process," Gudzune says.

2) Diet changes that are backed by science. "Things like the Paleo diet are very hot right now but haven't been studied with their effects on weight loss," Gudzune says. You want an approach that has solid evidence to support it works. This might be a low-calorie eating plan or meal replacements, or a well-studied diet for weight loss, like Atkins, she says.

3) Exercise encouragement. Opt for a program with some type of plan to get you moving more. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services guidelines recommend 150 minutes of moderate activity (like walking) each week. You can divvy that up however you like. Keep in mind that exercise is key if you want to stay at your lighter weight once you've dropped pounds, but doctors say it's hard to lose weight with just exercise alone.

4) Behavior strategies. Your program should encourage things like weighing yourself, meal planning, or tracking your food or exercise.

5) Approved meds only. Steer clear of programs that push fat burners or other supplements that aren't FDA-approved for weight loss. The FDA offers a list of dangerous weight loss products. You can sign up for email alerts, too. 

Weight loss is about changing what you eat and less about how much you eat. If you eat fresh, healthy food I think you can eat all you want. Fresh, healthy food  is not processed, it's fresh, not frozen vegetables, fruit, lean meat, mostly fish,  brown rice, and drink mostly water, tea or coffee. Don't add anything with calories and avoid dairy.  

Follow a diet like this and don't go back to your old ways. Never cheat, no cheat days allowed and increase the walking and you will lose fat. The more you walk the faster you'll lose fat. I believe the more a person walks the longer they will live.

Losing body fat should be your goal. Read up on weight loss and losing body fat. It doesn’t cost money to lose weight. The internet is full of free information. But the quickest way and cheapest way is to buy an ebook online and get everything you need in one short read. I have two ebooks on Amazon:

How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight

Getting To A Healthy Weight

Check out one of them, I think you can find all the info you need and plenty of tips on how I lost my body fat. 

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. 

Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find these e-books. These books give you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my books 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. 

Protect Yourself From A Serious Illnesses

Surprisingly Simple Longevity Tests

No one can predict exactly how long you'll live, but researchers have devised some surprisingly simple tests that are strongly correlated with a risk of early death - or a longer life - in the years to come.  Here's a look at some basic ways scientists are attempting to assess your physical capability and the associated chances of living longer. Being in good shape doesn't have anything to do with "how strong you are". Being fit and healthy is what keeps us from have a serious illness. We can get a head cold and it never slows us down but if we get some type of bronchial infection that's serious. Take the simple test below and see how fit you are. 

1.   Sitting-Rising Test:  Developed in the late 1990s by Brazilian scientist Claudio Gil Soares de Araujo at Gama Filho University in Rio de Janeiro, this test simply involves going from a standing position in a small (2 meters by 2 meters) area, to a sitting position on the floor, and then rising again.

Subjects are scored according to how many supports they require to perform the cycle: a point lost for using a hand, forearm, or knee, for example, to either sit or stand.  Another half-point is deducted for generally unstable execution.  A total of 10 points can be achieved for each full cycle.

In a 2014 paper published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, Araujo and others discovered that older adults had a 5-6 times greater risk of mortality during the 6.3-year follow-up period, if they scored only 0-3 points on the test, relative to the top-performers scoring between 8-10 points.  A total of 2002 adults between the ages of 51 and 80 years participated in the study.

Araujo's team writes that the Sitting-Rising Test (SRT) is a simple gauge of musculoskeletal fitness, with the capacity to predict mortality among community-dwelling adults in this age range.

2.    Grip Strength:   The strength of your hand grip is typically measured using an electronic dynamometer.  In numerous studies, a stronger grip has been linked with lower all-cause mortality, especially among older adults. In the 2014 UK study of adults aged 53, women's grip strength ranged from 21kg (46lb) to almost 34kg (75lb), while the men squeezed from 36kg (79lb) to 54.5kg (120lb).  Averaged across both sexes, and taking other risk factors like body mass index, smoking status and physical activity levels into account, the 53-year olds with the poorest grip strength had anywhere from a 29% to 98% greater risk of death from any cause during the 13 years of follow-up.

3.    Standing Balance Time:  The same 2014 BMJ paper examined how long its subjects could stand on one foot with their eyes closed.

 The resulting times were short, with a maximum average of just 19 seconds for men, and 10 seconds for women.  The good news: achieving simply those brief standing balance times was linked with lower mortality.  Poor performers of the standing balance test -  clocking in at just 3 seconds for both women and men - had a 2.5 greater chance of dying from any cause, during the 13-year study.

4.    Sitting Height:  If you think your overall height is the only tallness measure researchers are interested in, you're wrong.  Sitting height, an anthropometric measurement which compares the relative proportions of the torso and legs, has been linked in Western populations to the incidence of heart disease. Greater leg length (and less relative sitting height) has been viewed as an indicator of better childhood health, which may protect against age-related illnesses like heart disease and diabetes in adulthood.  

5.    Gait Speed:  Can how fast you naturally walk say anything about your longevity?  Yes - according to epidemiologists from the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere, in their 2011 paper published in JAMA. The researchers examined 9 separate studies involving a total of 34,485 participants and found that among both sexes, gait speed was linked with survival at all ages. A natural gait speed of 0.8 metres/second (about 1.8 miles/hour) corresponded with average life expectancy for each age; walking faster than that as a natural pace was linked with better than average longevity.

Since walking requires energy, balance, and engages multiple organ systems to work together, the researchers suggest slower speed may indicate hidden illness or poor overall conditioning.

6.    Waist to Height Ratio:  Some researchers believe that waist to height ratio - calculated by dividing the waist circumference in centimetres by a person's height (also measured in centimetres) is a better predictor of disease than weight or body mass index.  The advice is simple: keep your abdominal fat down, and make sure your waist measurement is not greater than half your height.

Bottom line:  These tests are simple tools to measure the statistical probability of an early death, as indictors of overall health and conditioning.  You can improve your own odds of living a long, healthy life by staying physically active, eating an anti-aging diet, staying active within your social circle, keeping stress at bay, not smoking, and drinking only in moderation.

I like the Waist to Height Ratio as being the best way you have to know that you have too much fat. Some woman become very concerned with fat arms or fat legs but the only fat that's important is belly fat. Once you lose your belly fat the fat in other places will also drop off. 

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. 

The Problem With Being Overweight

Good question, several people ask this same one. So here is the facts the way I understand it.

When you remember yourself as being healthy and fit you might have been in school and playing sports or training for your next sport. You were somewhere between 18 and 22 years old and probably thinner than you are now. I'm using this as an example because most people fall into this

senerio.  When you are at a proper weight for your height and, you can find this out on several websites like WebMD, you might have a BMI or Body Mass Index of about 20 or a couple points higher. This is considered very good, you can ask your doctor, So what is "Body Mass"? It's the soft tissue in your body, muscle, fat, and any other soft tissue and 20 means that about 20% of this soft tissue is body fat.

That's a good number, but in general as we get more involved in making money, getting married, raising a family, we start to slow down our activity level and that's a normal part of life, but the mistake we make is slowing down on our calorie intake. We get use to consuming the same three meals a day, snacking on the same things and drinking the same things.

When we finally see our pants are too tight we decide it's time to lose some weight. Most people just start skipping meals to cut calories and that might work for a couple of weeks, but then you stop losing. You gained this extra weight by eating too much of the wrong foods, and you're not going to lose weight by eating less of those same foods.

The problem with gaining body fat is that you are slowing down your normal body functions. Your body has to keep all your body parts working properly and all your body tissue alive and that includes stored body fat. So if you have a BMI of 30 today instead of your normal BMI of 20, you're working your body overtime trying to feed blood to all parts of your oversize body. And when some of that body fat can no longer survive and that tissue dies, Cancer cells start to appear. Usually this happens over a long period of time and by correcting your diet you will feed the body more nutrients and stop any type of disease from spreading. Losing weight and changing to a health diet can prevent many different health problems. Start as soon as possible. By losing weight and giving your body more nutrients you will slow down aging, you'll have more energy, and be much happier.

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.