It's The Holidays, It's Okay To Gain A Couple Of Pounds

It's a very special time for every family. A season of celebration. I hope you can spend some time with your family, even if it's on the phone.

Celebrating has always involved food and drink, it's a tradition that has gone on for thousands of years and I'm sure it will continue on, but we don't have to pig-out.

Yes, you have to taste the important traditional dishes that your friends or relatives have taken hours to prepare, but use a small plate, take small amounts and try and avoid the sugary stuff. Remember you can't work-off a lot of calories.

A one hour workout for an experienced athlete will only burn about 300 calories. For a person with less athletic experience you might only burn 100 calories. On a festive holiday like Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year it's easy to consume 3000 to 4000 calories between all the food, snacks, and drinks for the day. That kind of consumption can increase your weight by 2 or 3 pounds at least.

So if you can hold down your calorie count to say 2000 calories which should only be a few hundred more than normal, you should be able to work off those extra calories in a couple of day.

The problem we all have this time of year is the continual party, one after the other with very little time inbetween to recoup. Than there's the shopping for gifts. We go after work and spend a couple hours trying to find gifts and no time to eat, so we eat in restaurants with friends which involves more celebrating and more calories.

Did you know that the hoiday season is the busiest time of the year for restaurants. It's not unusual for a family to eat out 4 or 5 times a week during the holidays. So if you add up all the meals we eat in restaurants and all the social events we have to attend, it's no wonder that the average adult will gain between 5 and 10 pounds during the holidays.

This is the typical weight gain you have to avoid. It can take months to recoup, if you can recoup. Most of us will try to diet in January. We'll lose some weight but not much, because the winters are cold and in the cold weather we tend to eat more comfort food and that's high-calorie food.

Eating the wrong foods even in small portions will keep you from losing weight. You can't exercise away a bad diet. Once the weather starts to warm up most of us find it easier to cut back on food, but by that time it's hard to break the bad habits we had during the winter. We will trim down a little because we are more active in the spring and summer because the days are longer and we have more time to work outside.

I know all about this life cycle because that is the way my life was. All the weight I would gain during the cold months never quit left me. I always ended up one or two pounds heavier at the end of the year. Of course, we never remember how much we weighed the year before, so we don't realize we keep gaining weight every year. That cycle is call "creeping obesity". The one or two pounds you gain every year and don't even realize it. Then when you get to be 50, you wonder how you gained all that weight. On average, a 50 year old male will weigh between 40 and 60 more than he did on his 21st birthday. The more you weigh when your 21, the more you'll gain over the years. This doesn't hold true in all cases, it's an average over the entire population, some people are very athletic and never gain weight. I weigh the same today as I weighed when I was 17, of course I spent years yo-yoing from 220 pounds down to 160.

Be mindful what you eat. Keeping your body is good condition is your responsibility. It would be better for you and better for your health if you never gained any extra weight. When an adult gains weight they are adding body fat. Not good. The human body is only built to carry a small amount of body fat, like 15% of your weight. It's there in case of emergency. When you can't find food your body will still have fat to survive on. But because of the American diet we are adding too much fat and it only causes health problems.

Controlling your weight and keeping your body in good condition is your responsibility. Your doctor can only relieve your symptons. Give a pills or repair a broken bone. Your body has to heal itself and your have to feed it the nutrition it needs to do that.

If you really want to lose your body fat than look for my Ebooks at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet.

There’s two ebooks.  “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my Ebook. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, B&N.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new ebook is available on Smashwords.com, just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page.

Reconsider Yoga

If you've ruled out yoga for physical reasons, it might be time to reconsider.

This is a great article for anyone who thinks it's too late for them. It's never too late.

If you think you're not the yoga type, think again. Just about anyone can do it, and it's not about bending yourself into a pretzel.

For men and women of all shapes, sizes, and abilities, yoga builds strength and balance. It's also a great way to ease stress.

"In a gym, you're really pushing yourself to go further when you're working out. In yoga, it's the opposite. The poses encourage all the range of motion that the body is designed to do," says Megan Dunne Krouse, a yoga instructor in Chicago.

                

When Megan Garcia signed up for yoga at Smith College, she felt intimidated because she was the only overweight person in the class. She stuck with it, though, and noticed she started gaining strength, plus feeling and sleeping better, too.

Now she is a plus-sized model and Kripalu-certified yoga instructor who teaches in New York and specializes in teaching yoga to people of all shapes and sizes.

Garcia found that yoga changed her in unexpected ways.

"Before I started doing yoga, I really lived life from the neck up," she says. "After yoga, I began to really feel at home in my skin. If I didn't have yoga, I can't imagine feeling so good in my body. Yoga has made it comfortable for me to sit on the floor, to twist, to bend. It grounds me in my body."

RaeAnn Banker, who owns River Yoga in Lahaska, PA, started taking yoga classes on her 42nd birthday as a present to herself.

"I was overweight, and since my mother was morbidly obese, I knew I better do something or I was going to end up just like her," Banker says.

"It took several months of driving by the yoga center before I got up the courage to go in. But once I started, I loved the classes. I was the weakest student in the class, but I kept going," Banker says. "I ended up losing 35 pounds over the next 2 years and becoming a yoga teacher. Yoga literally changed my life."

"Yoga doesn't discriminate," he says. "Yoga will make you feel good. Yoga, at its root, is about bringing more awareness to action and to movement. The more you get in your body, the more connected you are to the world."

Tips for Trying Yoga

Check with your doctor before starting yoga or any new exercise program. And keep these pointers in mind:

• Choose a style of yoga that suits you. Not all yoga classes are alike. Some are more vigorous than others; others may emphasize meditation.
• Find a teacher you like. Classes that are billed as "intro" or "beginner" can attract a wide range of skill levels. You can sign up for a private one-on-one session customized to your needs.
• Go at your own pace. You can modify yoga poses using blocks, straps, and other tools so that you don't overstretch. Ask your instructor for help and for modifications that suit your needs.
• Listen to your body. If you're forcing yourself into a position that's painful, that's a signal to stop.
• Don't compare yourself to others. It's not about being as flexible as everyone else -- or as the people you see in yoga magazines who have been practicing for years. And always remember, there's room for you, too.

WebMD Feature

If you decided to join a class don't do it blindly. Find a group about your age and a class with other beginners. Yoga can make the aches and pains go away. Like anything else it will take time. But even Retirement Homes have Yoga class for their residents. You can find free classes in your area.

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 $3.99. 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 Easiest Diet To Follow

I re-blogged parts 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?

Top 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 made fresh daily in your supermarket. 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 $3.99. 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.

Losing Weight Is All About The Food We Eat

Dieting isn't really necessary if you "clean up your diet". But if you want some guidelines just read on.

Eat the right food and you won't add on body fat. Eat the wrong foods and you'll add body fat everyday. And then there are some foods that help you lose fat. Losing weight is not about counting calories as much as it is about eating the right foods.

This is a common mistake many people make. I want to lose weight so I'll go on a diet. My friend went on a 1000 calorie a day diet and lost 20 pounds in just a few weeks, I'll try that. So I'll have coffee and toast for breakfast, for lunch I'll have a salad with bottled dressing, I like that low-cal french. And for dinner I'll go to Subway and get a foot-long. I think that's under 1000 calories, I'll do that.

Okay that's under 1000 calories alright, but you have very little nutrition. Yes, you made a good choice with the salad if it has the right veggies like kale, tomatoes, beans, spinach leaves, cucumbers etc. Just a pile of lettuce and a couple cherry tomatoes isn't a salad. It just looks like a salad and use some olive oil on that salad. Just because lettuce is green doesn't mean it's loaded with nutrition. Toast and coffee has no nutrition and you can't lose weight if you're going all morning without eating any protein. And as far as that foot-long sandwich, bread, lunch meat and processed cheese isn't a good choice for any meal. If you eat the right sandwich you can keep the calories low, but if you want to stay on this diet for any long period of time, you need to pack more nutrition in those 1000 calories.

This is the typical mistake people make when they are new at dieting or their not taking the diet seriously. 9 out of 10 people who start a diet end up quitting. 9 out of 10 people who try to lose weight will quit. So what's the problem? Most people don't do their homework and are not really serious about lose weight.

If your really serious you'll first either do some homework and change the way you're eating, or get some professional help.  We are a country that loves to eat out. Restaurants will have some healthy food on their menu, but their real goal is to make food that tastes good. Restaurants have to take care of their customers, so popular food items will never go away. But because of public opinion restaurants are putting healthy food choice on the menu and if they become popular then they'll stick around.

It's  going to be the consumer that will change the grocery stores and restaurants. If we don't demand better quality foods we will only get what the manufacturers can produce at the highest profit margin. So until we can buy already prepared foods that are healthy we need to buy fresh and eat clean. That means we'll be preparing a lot of our own meal and trying to make some healthy choices on the salad bar.

So if your ready to get serious about losing weight you need to do some homework and learn what you can eat and more important the foods you can't eat.

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. 

Can Stress Cause Overweight?

Want to lose weight, but feel as though you’ve already tried every trick in the book? It’s time to take a different approach to dieting. Try these 12 proven strategies will help you slim down for good.

Change the way you describe your goals.

“Call it whatever you want, but don't call what you’re doing a ‘diet,’ ” says David Grotto, RD, author of The Best Things You Can Eat. “Diets have a beginning and an end -- and that’s the problem.” You will only succeed, Grotto says, when you make a lifelong commitment to a healthier lifestyle.

Make your goal meaningful.

Shift your focus from “I want to fit into those jeans” to “I want to feel good and have more energy.” Internal goals -- like how you feel instead of how you look -- tend to have greater staying power over time. Concentrating on the feel-good benefits you're getting also helps you to stick with something. I know that when your young (under 40) you may not realize that you lost any of your energy, but if you gained weight in the pass 10 years you've lost energy. You might not realize it, because you don't use a lot of energy so you still have enough for the work you do. But if you can remember back to those college days or back when you started working or when you bought your first house and had to paint the whole thing, if you can remember back when you weighed less and could work all day and party at night, do you still have all that energy? Believe me, lack of energy has very little to do with how old you are. 

Break up with things that don't work.

Consider what you’ve done in the past to try to lose weight. What you could do differently this time? For example, if your downfalls were snacking at work and waiting until the end of the day to exercise, start packing a healthy snack to  take with you each day and go for a run first thing in the morning before the day's demands get in the way of your good intentions.

Make it easier on yourself.

Set yourself up for success with some small tweaks, starting at home. Do things that will help, not hinder, your weight loss. If you want to make that early-morning jog happen, lay out your running gear before going to bed. Want to get in the habit of snacking on fruit, not chips? Put a bowl of fresh apples or pears on your kitchen table or counter. If it's convenient, it's more likely to happen. Get use to packing food at night to bring to work. That's one of the best first steps you can make.

Form a fan club.

Tell supportive friends, family members, and co-workers about the changes you’re trying to make. Let them know what you need and how they can help. Be specific. Don’t leave this up to them to figure out. For instance, maybe you don’t want them to remind you of what you are or aren’t supposed to eat, but you would like them to give you ongoing encouragement or pep talks when you need them. Everyone will feel like quitting at one point, so you need your friends if you want to stay on course. Don't be afraid to tell your family that your going to start eating differently. You want to start feeling healthier.

Be flexible.

Something is bound to pop up that can throw you off track (the grocery store sells out of your favorite salad ingredients, or your favorite Zumba class moves to a new time). Expect the unexpected. You might have to create a backup plan on a moment’s notice -- like trying a new class at the gym, or buying celery or snap peas to go with your hummus. The key is to be ready, willing, and able to revise your routine and find ways around obstacles. Don’t let one surprise throw off your whole routine. Be prepared to make changes to your weight loss plan.

 Be your own best friend.

When you miss the mark, show yourself some compassion. You’ll avoid letting a slip become a fall. His research on New Year’s resolutions found that most people who succeed at keeping them say their first slip-up strengthened their resolve. So give yourself a pep talk, just as you would a close friend. Then dust yourself off, learn from the lapse, and pick up where you left off. You have the same goal, It might take longer then you thought but never quit.

Tune into your hunger.

To prevent overeating, rate your hunger on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being extremely hungry. Eat when you’re first getting hungry. If you wait too long and your on the high-end of the scale, you'll start eating everything in sight. If you know you won’t be able to eat later, have a snack or small meal when your hunger is low. This helps you avoid getting overly hungry, which can set you up for overeating later on.

Make yourself accountable.

Keep a food and exercise diary on paper, online, or with an app on your phone. Consistently recording your eating and exercise habits, along with weighing yourself regularly, gives you some advantages. Seeing the results you want motivates you to keep going. If the results aren't so great, you can make changes to fix that.

You can monitor your progress any way you want to. Experiment and pick the method works best for you and that you are most likely to do. You can get a free app for your phone or look into a Fitness Tracker.

Know your emotional triggers.

Using food to handle boredom, frustration, stress, anger, or sadness can sabotage your diet. Feel your emotions, but don't let them get the best of you. Figure out what helps you relax and feel positive. Try listening to music, chatting with a friend, or going for a walk.

Make sleep a priority.

Studies show that not getting enough sleep triggers hormonal changes that can lead to feeling hungrier. There’s no underestimating the importance of a good night’s rest. The recommended amount for adults is 7 to 9 hours of shut-eye per night.

Practice mindful eating.

Chew your food thoroughly, and put your fork down between bites. Eating more slowly will help you appreciate your food more and give your stomach a chance to notify your brain that you’ve had enough. Once you get that signal, put down your fork and ask yourself, "Can I stop eating now and walk away from this table satisfied? ”  If the answer is no, eat some more. If the answer is yes, push your plate aside and focus on the conversation or something other than the food.

I try never to eat a meal alone, I always eat too fast and eat too much. If I have to eat alone, I read something like a book or newspaper. It slows down the meal and let's me stay interested in something besides eating.

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 $3.99. 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. 

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 be 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 that 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.

Why is this important to know? Maybe some of us should be taking early retirement. Yes, you will get more money per month from social security if you wait till 67 to collect, but are you going to live that long?

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, BN.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. 

Want To Start Living Healthy

You can stop getting colds twice a year, stop feeling run-down and tired. You can have more energy, lose body fat and be a happier person just by changing your diet. Sounds crazy? It the truth.

The science is clear: Eating the right foods can lead to a longer, healthier life.

Yet some people, as they get older, find it harder to eat right. This can happen for many reasons: Maybe they don’t feel like eating. Maybe they have trouble cooking or eating. Maybe they don’t know what’s healthy.

Maybe they do and they just don’t like the idea of kale.

“You know what? You can live a long, healthy life and never eat a piece of kale,” says Cheryl Rock, a professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

She’s all for finding food that you like -- healthy food -- and building on that.

“If you’re eating foods you like, then you’re more likely to stick with it. You won’t force it down for four days and then go out for a double cheeseburger,” Rock says.

It’s more than just finding the right foods. Michele Bellantoni, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, points out that you need to eat them in the right amounts, too.

“It looks like the optimal calories [for most older adults] will be 1,800 [a day],” she says. “And for successful aging, we think about the entire body, rather than just specific organs.”

Many foods are especially good for certain parts of your body. Bellantoni suggests starting with 1,800 calories, then splitting that up with proteins for your muscles, calcium for your bones, and a basic heart-healthy diet.

That approach can do a lot of things for you:

Make sure you have salmon and other fish like trout and herring. They’re high in omega-3 fatty acids, which help reduce the risk of heart disease and slightly lower blood pressure, among other benefits. Shoot for two servings a week.

You should also know that the fiber in veggies -- also found in whole grains -- helps lower your odds of cardiovascular disease. It also helps digestion and regularity, which often are a problem for older adults.

Remember that no one food is going to help your heart, any more than just one would help your brain or your bones or your muscles or any other part of your anatomy.

You need a complete, healthy diet.

“If you’re eating a lot of fish but, in addition to that, you’re living on ice cream and candy and stuff like that,” Rock says, “it’s not going to save you.”

It Can Help Your Brain

A loss of memory, a big worry among some older adults, has been linked to, among other things, a lack of vitamin B12. You can get that in:

• Meats
• Fish
• Milk products
• Some breakfast cereals

Alzheimer’s disease has been linked to chronic inflammation, which can be caused by foods like white bread, french fries, red meat, sugary beverages, and margarine.

The science is still emerging on the relationship between some foods and brain health. Check with your doctor or dietitian.

“There was some issue with the Food and Drug Administration disallowing food claims for memory loss,” says Adam Drewnowski, the director of the Nutritional Sciences Program at the University of Washington.

“I would not want to identify a specific food that prevents memory loss. I probably would tell someone that if you want to be functioning well, then some fruits and antioxidants will do better for you than another slice of cake.”

Antioxidants, found in many vegetables and in fruits like blueberries, help reduce inflammation. They also help you get rid of damaging stuff created when you convert food into energy.

It’s important to realize that good brain function may be as much about what you don’t eat as what you do.

“Your brain runs on blood flow, just like your heart,” says Rock. “So if you’re eating a lot of saturated fats, it makes it less likely that you’ll have those nice clean arteries to supply that brain tissue with blood.”

Make sure you have tomatoes, blueberries, green leafy veggies like spinach and kale, turmeric, and nuts (especially walnuts).

You should also know that those omega-3 fatty acids, found in salmon and other oily fish, are inflammation fighters.

Okay, you might not know what inflammation really is. You don't have to know. All you need to know is that inflammation is what ages your body and many people right now are walking around with a body that's 20 years older than they really are. In Great Britain doctors tested hundreds of people all age 38 and found that some body a body older than their real age and some had bodies younger. 

The doctors determined that some of the aging process is because of DNA but most of the aging process is due to lifestyle. How active you are and how you eat.

Eating the right food can help your muscles

They’re always breaking down and getting built back up again. That’s just the way your body works. As you get older, you need more protein for that rebuilding process.

“So if you don’t eat enough protein, you’ll be breaking down more than you’re rebuilding,” Rock says.

Make sure you have low-fat or fat-free yogurt, cheese, milk, lean meats, fish, other seafood, and beans.

You should also know that eggs are an excellent source of protein and don’t have the saturated fats that meat have. Don’t worry about the cholesterol in your eggs, Rock says. It’s not absorbed well by your body, anyway.

It Can Help Your Bones

Older adults need calcium, because it promotes healthy bone growth. Getting enough vitamin D is important, too, because that helps you absorb calcium.

It’s not always easy.

“The risk for low vitamin D in older adults, that’s kind of a challenge, because it’s not like there’s lots of foods that are high in vitamin D,” says Stephen Anton, from the Department of Aging and Geriatric Research at the University of Florida.

Calcium is also difficult for many older people to absorb, yet too much can cause constipation. It’s something you need to discuss with your doctor or dietitian.

Make sure you have yogurt, low-fat cheeses, and milk for calcium. Few foods naturally carry vitamin D. Calcium and vitamin D are in fortified foods.

You should also know that in addition to being a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, canned salmon is full of calcium and has some vitamin D.

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.