Will Weighing Yourself Every Day Help You Lose Weight?

This approach works especially well for men, study says

I know weighing yourself every morning seems like a pain in the butt, but the idea is to remind you that you're trying to lose weight today. Some people do the same thing with one of the new fitness trackers and some of us use the bathroom scale. 

I prefer the fitness trackers. For me, it's a constant reminder that I'm overweight and I'm working to lose weight. But that's me, and you should find something that works for you. The object is that you want to remember your diet every time you look at food. This post proves that a constant reminder really works.

(HealthDay News) -- Checking your weight every day could help you slim down, researchers report.

A two-year Cornell University study found that tracking the results of daily weight checks on a chart helped people lose weight and keep it off.

"You just need a bathroom scale and an Excel spreadsheet, or even a piece of graph paper," study senior author David Levitsky, a professor of nutrition and psychology, said in a university news release.

People who lost weight with this approach in the first year maintained that weight loss throughout the second year, the researcher said. That result is significant because previous studies have shown that about 40 percent of weight loss is regained within a year, and nearly 100 percent is regained within five years, according to the study.

This approach "forces you to be aware of the connection between your eating and your weight," Levitsky explained. "It used to be taught that you shouldn't weigh yourself daily, and this is just the reverse."

While daily weight checks did help women, they had a much greater effect in men.

"It seems to work better for men than women, for reasons we cannot figure out yet," Levitsky said.

WebMD News from HealthDay
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My new ebook is in online bookstores now. You can go to Amazon.com and type the title in the search bar: How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight? The price is $3.99. I think you'll find it interesting. I write about myself and my battle with weight and all the mistakes I made and how you can avoid the mistakes and lose the unwanted body fat.

The ebook is also at http://barnesandnoble.com and they have a special introductory offer right now $2.99. Also available on iBooks, Kobo, Scribd, and others worldwide.

Understanding Why We Gain Body Fat

Have you ever noticed that no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you exercise or no matter how many calories you cut, you still can't get rid of the extra fat. There could be another reason for your size.

My friend has a twin born at the same time but one guy's bigger and still is 40 years later. The bigger brother is overweight and the smaller one is thin and fit. The overweight brother can't seem to lose the extra fat. At family, gathering, they always eat the same amount of food but the smaller one never gains weight. So what's going on is pretty normal for siblings. I've read a lot about families with some overweight members and some thin members.

Research shows that we are all different even when we're twins. So even if we look the same, we all process our food differently. It's your DNA that's different. DNA is in every gene that you were born with and siblings from the same parents won't have exactly the same DNA. So in that respect, we are all different. Science is working on this right now. If everyone at the family table eats exactly the same thing, for some of them, it's too much and for some it might not be enough, but it's not just the quantity, because of different DNA each person processes that food differently. Maybe some of those people can't eat starchy foods, for example, their system can't process that much starch so the liver turns it into fat and stores it.

That can happen with any food group, my wife can't eat beef. She can't digest it. Some people can't eat dairy products, everyone's different even though we all look the same or come from the same family. 

You can still overcome these differences by listening to your body and understanding what your limitations are. It will take some work on your part, but if you really want to slim down and get back to a healthy weight You must take your weight problem serious and do the work, investigate your behavior and find out what foods are causing your weight problem. I know guys that are seriously overweight and know that bread and other bakery goods are their problem, but they won't stop. They won't change, they're in denial. Guys are harder to convince that “they need to make the tuff choices”. Generally, they won't change until their Doctor has the big “come to Jesus” talk about their health. 

People who can't lose weight dieting, don't understand what they have to do to lose weight. Just eating less of the same foods won't help you to lose weight. That's the denial I'm talking about. If you want to lose weight you have to change what you're eating.

Personally, I think the overweight problem is mostly genetic. Because of your DNA, you who are African shouldn't be eating Chinese or even Italian. Because of your ancestry, you should be eating more like Africans. Maybe the overweight problem in China is because of the recent prosperity and the introduction of food from different parts of the world. Even American fast food is becoming popular in China. Because of the DNA of different people and the relatively new craze of eating out and eating a big verity of different foods from different cultures, this may be causing the overweight problem. 

There's another possibility, and this one your Doctor can help you with. 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 wheat flour also will spike your sugar levels. And what's so bad about that you might ask. 

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 you're 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, and snacks put on the weight. It can be caused by your blood sugar or glucose levels spiking and dropping so that you keep creating the cravings for more food. So we know sugary foods will spike glucose or blood sugars levels and now science thinks that wheat flour can do the same. Wheat flour is in almost any bakery goods. Bread, cakes, donuts anything that comes from a bakery. 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 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 you 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.

This is the other part of understanding the problem. Most people think that losing weight is all about dieting or all about exercising. Yes, but it's important to understand how you gained the weight. 9 out of 10 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. You don't want to return to the old you, overweight and tired all the time.  
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My new ebook is in online bookstores now. You can go to Amazon.com and type the title in the search bar: How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight? The price is $3.99. I think you'll find it interesting. I write about myself and my battle with weight and all the mistakes I made and how you can avoid the mistakes and lose the unwanted body fat.

The ebook is also at http://barnesandnoble.com and they have a special introductory offer right now $2.99. Also available on Ibooks, Kobo, Scribd, and others worldwide.

How to Lose Weight on 5 Meals a Day

I found this post on HealthNet.com and wanted to reblog it because this Chef thinks like me. This is the way I lost my weight. Read the following and believe me it works.

I'm a chef (and a mom). You might think that eating frequent meals wouldn’t be an issue.

I understand the concept: Five small meals a day takes the edge off your appetite, evens out blood sugar levels, and keeps your energy steady. But I confess: I don’t always eat this way.

Although my fitness trainer encourages me to eat healthy food every few hours, my meals usually look like this: coffee, a bit more coffee, lunch at 3 p.m., dinner at 9 p.m. I start over again the next morning. This is called "eating when you want and whatever you want".

When I decided to change this habit, I found that doing these five things helped:

1. Plan ahead. Five meals a day equals breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks. To do this right, you need to plan what you’ll eat every day for each “meal.” And you need to schedule eating every 2 to 3 hours.
2. Stock up. Face it: You’re going to grab whatever food is closest. So stock up on veggies, fruit, healthy carbs, lean proteins, and low-fat dairy products such as milk, yogurt, and cottage cheese.
3. Go for taste. Choose snack foods that will sustain you and taste good. Remember, healthy food can be satisfying.
4. Whip up a smoothie. Blend fruit, milk, yogurt and a little honey for a sweet filling snack packed with vitamins, fiber, protein, and calcium.
5. Combine carbs and protein to stay full longer. Try whole wheat toast with peanut butter or a hard-boiled egg; whole-grain pasta with olive oil and cheese; or oatmeal with fruit, milk, and honey. Or make yourself a big pot of soup (like my Tuscan chicken soup) to heat up for lunches or snacks.

It's a good plan but it's a little more complicated than that. For breakfast, you want 12 grams of protein with whatever you're eating. I eat 2 eggs and toast with peanut butter or some lean meat. No processed meat, like ham or sausage. You might prefer a protein shake. I make a shake when I have no time to eat. Almond milk and a banana, a serving of the protein powder and blend it for a few seconds, pour it in a glass or commuter cup and go. Your other four meals should all be about 300 calories. Space out the other meals about 2 0r 3 hours apart and don't skip a meal. 

The idea is if you eat healthy all day you won't get hungry. After the 5th meal, it should be about 6 p.m. and that's where you want to stop eating. No late night snacks. You want to eat the last time 3 or 4 hours before bed. If you are a person who stays up late you might want to try 6 meals a day. Just stick to 300 calories per meal.

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

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

blogonweight.blogspot.com

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.com, BN.com, iBook, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, and Gardner books in the U.K.

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

  

Do Protein Diets Work?

In the 90’s, protein diets were all the rage. Remember the TV ad’s with the business women in a steak house eating lunch. The idea behind all that protein is to build muscle mass. Some workout fanatics will only eat meat, vegetables, and fruit; mostly meat. And drink protein shakes, water, tea or coffee. Your body’s mass itself will burn calories, but muscle mass burns much more calories then the mass created by fat and the muscle will also burn the fat you have because you’re not eating enough fat to feed the muscle. O.K., I know that might seem a little confusing but if your body is mostly muscle, the muscle will eat the good fat your consuming. Your body really does need some fat. But there’s good fat and bad fat and it’s the bad fats that are stored and never seem to get burned up. Bad fats are what you have to avoid. 

So, the idea is to eat large amounts of protein and very little amounts of carbs or fat, which might be great for those who like to take supplements. This type of diet and there were many like this one, were labeled “Fad Diets” because you can’t stay on the diet indefinitely. You're not getting enough nutrition, it’s not a balanced diet. So you end up taking supplements and that doesn’t always work. We don’t all absorb nutrition from pills the same way, so you might not receive the same benefits that say I do. 

Food is the fuel that runs your body, and if your body isn’t running right, I first blame it on your diet. Everyone knows, I would hope, that nutrition comes from the food we eat. In the last 50 years, our diets have changed considerably. We use to be more mindful of what we ate and how we looked. Today it seems like we only have time to stuff our face. Fill our stomach with anything to get us by for a few hours and we’ll worry amount it then. And the decisions on what we eat are usually made by how much money we have to eat and how much time we have. That’s one reason fast food and ready-made or frozen prepared foods are so popular. The freezer section of my neighborhood grocery is about 4 isles. Plain frozen vegetables and frozen berries are the only things I buy in the frozen food section.

Understand that I’m not against high protein diets, I just want you to understand that it’s a quick weight loss diet that you can use to jump-start a long-term diet plan. Some people need immediate results. High protein diets are great for us who like meat, eggs and cheese, but for vegetarians, it’s a bit more challenging. This is where you might need to do some research. The internet is a good source, or the library or bookstore. Many books and articles have been written about high protein diets. If you're looking for a way to lose the first 5 pounds quick, this might be one option. Check with your doctor or trainer first. 

Recently there’s been a new type of high-protein diet that most experts are onboard with. You can find a good example of this type diet on the doctoroz.com website. The Total 10 Plan is a high-protein diet that encourages protein supplements and plant protein, fish, and chicken. The plan only recommends red meat about once a week. Low-fat Greek yogurt is the only dairy on this diet and much of the diet consists of vegetables and fruit. These type of diets will recommend protein shakes for breakfast and fresh food the rest of the day. 

I personally like the Mediterranean diet which isn’t a weight loss plan, it’s the diet of the Mediterranean people for the last several centuries. Science first discovered that Mediterranean people had fewer health problems than others in the Western World. They didn’t have as much heart disease or heart-related problems in general. And similar findings were discovered in the far east. The similarities between the two are that both eat almost no red meat; they eat more fish and poultry, vegetables, grains and fruit. They both eat fresh and both have no chemicals in their food. 

The Mediterranean diet is my favorite because I have more choices and I like the foods. You can find this diet plan on-line under Mediterranean diet. You’ll see a 

“food pyramid” that shows you the different choices and how often you should eat each food group. It’s simple to follow and this will give you all the nutrition you need without taking supplements. You can eat all you want, just stick to the food chart. There’s no calories to count and you will lose weight over time. The important thing is that you will become a healthier person and by eating a better diet and eating fresh and doing the extra walking you will lose body fat, your blood pressure will improve and your cholesterol will go down. With this diet, the end game is that you become a healthier person. Doctors love this plan because you eat more fresh foods.

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My new ebook is in online bookstores now. You can go to Amazon.com and type the title in the search bar: How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight? The price is $3.99. I think you'll find it interesting. I write about myself and my battle with weight and all the mistakes I made and how you can avoid the mistakes and lose the unwanted body fat.

The ebook is also at http://barnesandnoble.com and they have a special introductory offer right now $2.99. Also available on Ibooks, Kobo, Scribd, and others worldwide.

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About Weight Watchers

I have readers every week that want to lose weight but don't know where to start. Most of   them have tried for years but have always gained the weight back. WebMD wrote  this post about Weight Watchers  after all these years it's still ranked one of the "top three weight loss programs" ever. The secret behind the program is the education and support they give. It's almost like AA for overweight people.

If you have been struggling with your weight problem it might be time to try to get help. The objection some people have had with the support programs has been "going to the meeting". These support programs will work, but just like AA, you have to realize that you have a problem and you have to want to change your life.

Changing your life and making that commitment to  go to the meeting and stick to the program; learn to  eat the right foods and prepare your own meals, and to help others that are first coming into the program, this is the commitment you have to make before you even join. Read the post and see what the professionals think.

The Promise

Pasta, steak, cheese, ice cream... You can eat what you want on Weight Watchers. While the popular weight-loss plan has been revamped, the basic principle of eating what you love remains -- though the program steers you toward healthier foods with its points system.

In its new program, called Beyond the Scale, fitness also takes a bigger role. You'll be encouraged to move more every day.

Weight Watchers isn’t so much a diet as a lifestyle change program. It can help you learn how to eat healthier and get more physical activity, so you lose the weight for good.

You can follow the plan online on your own. You'll track your food choices and exercise, chart progress, and find recipes and workouts. There’s a coaching option if you prefer one-on-one consultations by phone, email, and text. Or you can go to in-person group meetings, where you’ll weigh in.

A Consumer Reports survey found that people who went to meetings were more satisfied with the program and lost more weight than people who used only the online tools.

What You Can Eat and What You Can't

No food is forbidden when you follow this plan, which doesn’t make you buy any prepackaged meals.

Weight Watchers assigns different foods a SmartPoints value, which replaces its long-standing PointsPlus plan. The concept is the same, though. Nutritious foods that fill you up have fewer points than junk with empty calories. But the eating plan now factors sugar, fat, and protein into its points calculations to steer you toward fruits, veggies, and lean protein, and away from stuff that's high in sugar and saturated fat. 

You’ll have a SmartPoints target that's set up based on your body and goals. As long as you stay within your daily target, you can spend those SmartPoints however you’d like, even on alcohol or dessert.

But healthier, lower-calorie foods cost fewer points.

Level of Effort: Medium

Weight Watchers is designed to make it easier to change your habits long-term, and it's flexible enough that you should be able to adapt it to your life. You’ll be tweaking your eating and lifestyle patterns -- many of which have been years in the making -- and you'll be creating new ones.

So, how much effort it takes depends on how much you’ll have to change your habits.

Cooking and shopping: Expect to learn how to shop, cook healthy foods, and dine out in ways that support your weight loss goal without skimping on taste or needing to buy unusual foods.

Packaged foods or meals: Not required.

In-person meetings: Optional.

Exercise: You'll get a personalized activity goal and access to the program's new FitBreak app, which suggests ways to get moving based on where you are and how much time you have.

Does It Allow for Dietary Restrictions or Preferences?

Because you choose how you spend your daily SmartPoints, you can still do Weight Watchers if you're a vegetarian, vegan, have other preferences, or if you need to limit salt or fat.

What Else You Should Know

Cost: Weight Watchers offers three plans: Online only, online with meetings, or online with coaching. Each has a $20 starter fee, but the company often has specials that waive the charge.

Within each category, you can opt to pay for 3-month or monthly packages. You’ll save a little more by signing up for the 3-month deal, with rates starting around $4.61 a week for online only vs. $8.84 per week for meetings and online, or $10.77 per week for coaching and online. Prices may vary, so contact Weight Watchers for the cost.

Support: Besides the optional in-person meetings and personal coaching, Weight Watchers has an online community, a magazine, and a website with tools, recipes, tips, success stories, and more -- including a section just for men. You can also sign up online for a newsletter.

What Dr. Brunilda Nazario says:

Does It Work?

Weight Watchers is one of the most well-researched weight loss programs available. And yes, it works. Many studies have shown that the plan can help you lose weight and keep it off. 

For instance, a study from The American Journal of Medicine showed that people doing Weight Watchers lost more weight than those trying to drop pounds on their own.

Overall, it's an excellent, easy-to-follow program.

Is It Good for Certain Conditions?

Weight Watchers is good for anyone. But its focus on nutritious, low-calorie foods makes it great for people with high blood pressure or cholesterol, diabetes, and even heart disease.

If you choose any premade meals, check the labels, as some may be high in sodium.

Work with your doctor so he can check your progress, too. This is especially important for people with diabetes, as you may need to adjust your medicine as you lose weight.

The Final Word

If the thought of weighing your food or counting calories leaves your head spinning, this is an ideal program, because it does the work for you. The online tool assigns a certain number value to each food, even restaurant foods, to make it easy to stay on track.

If you don’t know your way around the kitchen, the premade meals and snacks make it easy. They’re a quick and easy way to control portion sizes and calories.

You don’t have to drop any foods from your diet, but you will have to limit portion sizes to cut back on calories.

The emphasis on fruits and veggies means the diet is high in fiber, which helps keep you full. And the program is simple to follow, making it easier to stick to. You can also find Weight Watchers’ premade meals at your local grocery store.

A huge advantage of Weight Watchers is their website. They offer comprehensive information on dieting, exercise, cooking, and fitness tips, as well as online support groups.

Be prepared to spend some cash to get the full benefits of the robust program. It can be a bit costly, but it’s well worth it to reap the health perks of losing weight and keeping it off.

Structured programs like this one aren't for everyone but if you have had trouble in the past trying to keep the extra weight off, maybe a structured program with a support group is what you need.

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My new ebook is in online bookstores now. You can go to Amazon.com and type the title in the search bar: How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight? The price is $3.99. I think you'll find it interesting. I write about myself and my battle with weight and all the mistakes I made and how you can avoid the mistakes and lose the unwanted body fat.

The ebook is also at http://barnesandnoble.com and they have a special introductory offer right now. $2.99

Also available on Ibooks, Kobo, Scribd and many other sites worldwide.

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Is More Exercise Better?

This post published on WebMD confirms my belief that your diet is the most important part of the weight loss journey.

If a little exercise is good, then more is better in terms of calorie burn and weight loss, right? That's what most of us tend to believe.

But it's not necessarily true, a research team says. They found that people who exercise a lot don’t burn extra calories for their efforts beyond a certain point. Their new study is published in Current Biology.

Don’t drop that gym membership just yet, though. WebMD asked two experts to discuss these findings and the role of exercise.

On one point both agree: The new research is not discouraging exercise, which is crucial to keeping your body and mind healthy. But it does provide more evidence that diet, not exercise, is the key to losing weight.

What did the study find?

Pontzer and his team measured the daily activity levels of more than 300 men and women -- along with how many calories they burned -- over the course of a week. They came from five different countries across Africa and North America: the U.S., Ghana, Jamaica, the Seychelles, and South Africa. People in some of those nations tend to be more physically active than many Americans.

The researchers had everyone's body mass index (BMI). They measured activity and calorie burning for a week but didn't track whether people gained or lost weight.

Exercise did have an effect on how many calories people used, called energy expenditure. But the amount of calories burned didn’t increase dramatically as people got more exercise. Those who had a moderate activity level burned a few more calories daily, on average around 200, compared with the most inactive people. But those who exercised beyond the moderate activity level saw no effect of their extra effort as far as how many calories they burned

Although the study didn't define ''moderate'' in hours of activity, Pontzer describes moderate exercisers as those who are active ''but not serious athletes” -- someone who walks a couple miles a day or bikes to work and back, for example. Pontzer's team did find that those with higher body fat percentages actually burned more calories with exercise -- presumably, he says, because there is more fat to burn.

What do the findings say about the role of exercise in weight loss?The study didn’t focus on this specifically, but Pontzer says exercise ''can be part of a successful weight loss strategy. We need to think about exercise and diet as two different tools."“Exercise is good at lots of things, such as maintaining heart health,” he says. “Diet is going to be the better tool for managing your weight."The findings may show that the inactive lifestyle of many Americans hasn't contributed as much to the nation’s obesity epidemic as public health officials believe, Melanson says. He stresses that the study does not prove that, but simply adds information to the ongoing debate about why Americans are so overweight.The study finding, in Melanson's view, seems to tip the scale a bit more toward overeating, not under-exercising, to explain the current U.S. obesity epidemic.

Why is it that more exercise is not better? Do we hit a kind of plateau?Yes, Pontzer says. "If you are more active, your body might be adapting,'' he says. "We hit an energy expenditure plateau. It's part of the reason your body adapts to your new exercise routine." That may be why many find it so hard to lose weight, he says.But, he believes, there is such a thing as an exercise “sweet spot” -- the point at which workout benefits, including calories burned, peak. That spot is probably different for everyone, Pontzer says, although the new study didn’t look into that.

How do you find your ''sweet spot"?Pay attention to your body, Pontzer says. You know you're out of the sweet spot and overdoing it when you feel worn out constantly and you need more time to recover from exercise, he says. At that point, it's time to work out less.

What's the best take-home advice from this research?Even if researchers eventually decide that diet plays a bigger role than exercise in weight control, Melanson says, ''the public health message is not going to change one bit. Exercise does matter [for overall health], whether you lose weight or not.''Working out has lots of health perks, including diabetes prevention, blood pressure control, stress reduction, and boosting your mood to help with depression. It can also contribute to brain and immune system health, experts say."This [study] says the first thing to do is diet and it won't hurt to throw in exercise," Pontzer says.

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My new book is in online bookstores now. You can go to Amazon.com and type the title in the search bar: How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight? The price is $3.99. I think you'll find it interesting. I write about myself and my battle with weight and all the mistakes I made and how you can avoid the mistakes and lose the unwanted body fat.

The ebook is also at http://barnesandnoble.com and they have a special introductory offer right now. $2.99

Several other online bookstores around the world have the ebook available like KOBO, SCRIBD, CIANDO, and several others.

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Why American's are Overweight

It's easier to make a change in your life if you understand how overweight happens to us. If you feel guilty about your weight get over it. It's not all your fault.

What contributes to America's overweight problem?

The food industry creates foods that hijack our brains. They have fat, sugar and salt, which are highly stimulating. They condition us so that even the sights and smells associated with them activate your brain [in ways that make you want food]. In controlled individuals or controlled studies, the brain activity stops when they start ingesting the food, but in some people, it doesn’t shut off when the food is gone. Also, when your body craves food it is not just telling you to eat something, it's telling you that you need something. Maybe it's protein or maybe it's carbs, whatever, somewhere through evolution we lost the ability to understand what are body's telling us.

How can we break this cycle? Changing how people look at food is essential. Look at the public-health success with tobacco. We didn’t change the product. But we changed how people perceive it. Now people look at tobacco and say, “That’s really disgusting.” Tobacco is easy because you can live without it, but you can’t live without food. So you have to cool down the stimulus. You have to retrain yourself to respond to food differently. I talked about this in another post, in Europe people did have a weight problem back in the 50's and 60's but this next generation has changed, even the generation in their 40's today are much healthier than we are. Education is the way you change people's minds. In other countries, they do look at food differently. I have personally been in 15 European countries, 4 Caribbean countries and 3 Latin-American countries. In Europe, they eat differently than we do. I gained 10 pounds in the 5 weeks touring Europe. I couldn't help myself, it was like I was tasting food for the first time. I told my wife, this is real food. No fast food, no low-fat food or low-cal, it was all real food. I loved it, all of it. Actually, that was in the 90's and I did go to Great Britain last year, for the first time since that trip to Europe, and the food scene has changed, but in defense of America, we've changed I little too. 

Today, if you can effort it, we have many more good restaurants that do have healthy food and stores like Whole Foods that sell healthy foods. But like I wrote about in a previous post, restaurants don't have many items on the menu that can be called healthy. They want you to enjoy the food and have a large enough portion to satisfy anyone. There lies the difference between the U.S. and other countries. In other countries the customers expectations are different. The customer wants good quality food and isn't really concerned with the quantity. They also pay more for food in stores and in restaurants.

The idea of being able to buy food cheap anytime or anywhere doesn't help people control their weight. Cheap food is also a problem. Cheap food doesn't have enough nutritional value. The manufacturer can't put nutrition in a low-cost item. They have to substitute many of the ingredients with something cheaper so they can sell the product at a competitive price. Now this is the good part when you are not getting the nutrition your body is craving, then in a short period of time your craving food again. You see if your body didn't get what it was craving then the cravings will come back again and again. You keep eating and your liver will just turn the food into fat and store it. When your body can't use what you just ate, then it will store it and the only way your body can store excess food is to turn it into fat. 

So now you get it, the whole cycle, the body will store any food it doesn't need. That's how you put on weight. The body will only pass through waste matter that has been processed. All other food will be stored in case of emergency. The bad part is your body doesn't know when to stop storing. Your ancestors never had this problem of being overweight because they were very active and your ancestors needed to have that ability to store food because in cold weather it was hard to find food.

So hopefully you learned a little about your body and why you gain weight. And with this info I hope losing weight will be easier.

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My new ebook is in online bookstores now. You can go to Amazon.com and type the title in the search bar: How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight? The price is $3.99. I think you'll find it interesting. I write about myself and my battle with weight and all the mistakes I made and how you can avoid the mistakes and lose the unwanted body fat.

The ebook is also at http://barnesandnoble.com and they have a special introductory offer right now. $2.99

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