What To Ask You Doctor

 To help you lose weight, your doctor might have said things like, “Get more exercise,” “Cut back on calories,” or “Eat less junk.” It’s all good advice — but what exactly does it mean? How much exercise should you do? How many calories do you need to stop eating in order to shed pounds? Remember that your doctor is also running a business and him or her wants to keep you for a customer, so how “frank” can your doctor be without hurting your feelings or making you mad.

In some respects some of what the doctor doesn't tell you is because you didn't ask him. Sometimes you need to be blunt and just ask him for a diet that you can follow to lose weight. Just ask "how much should I weigh?" If your blunt about it they will give you an honest answer. "How much body fat should I lose?" These are questions you should be asking. Too many of us depend on a trainer at the gym for advice. Your doctor is impartial, a dietitian is impartial, but anyone who can sell you on diet pills or a gym membership want to convince you that you need what they're selling.

Learn how to turn your doctor’s well-meaning, yet sometimes vague, strategies into real steps you can start taking today.

You weight 220 pounds and your 5 ft. 8 inches. Your waist is a 40 us and your doctor tells you that you should exercise more. “What does that Mean?” “I try not to walk, my feet are killing me.” “Then he tells me I should eat better. I eat healthy food.” You might think you do but why are you gaining weight? How did you get so big? Ask yourself the tough questions and be honest with yourself. Remember you put on the weight. You have to be the detective. If you can’t be honest with your answers you won’t learn how you gained the weight and you won't lose the weight.

Let’s face it, unless your 7 feet tall a 40 inch waist is too big.

The Advice: ‘Get Down to a Healthy Weight’

What It Means: For you, gauging a healthy weight might be about how your clothes fit (like whether you can still squeeze into your favorite pair of jeans). For your doctor, getting to a healthy weight has more to do with lowering your odds of getting conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Keeping an eye on your weight is important. Although some studies have found you can be both overweight and healthy, other researchers say that if the numbers on the scale are high, your health is at risk. Personally, I don’t believe in healthy obesity. Our friend in the last paragraph, who has a 40-inch waist, is classified “Obese”, but did his doctor tell him, no. Being a doctor is still a business and no one wants to lose customers. Doctors know when you’re overweight and that you should do something about it. Why can’t they be honest about your condition and refer you to a weight loss specialist.

The way I look at it, the patient needs to know that being overweight or just having too much body fat can cause serious health problems unless he wants to take insulin for the rest of his life. That kind of talk may be a little strong but sometimes a person needs that Strong language before they understand your serious.

 

Surprising Reasons You’re Gaining Weight

Yet stepping on your bathroom scale alone won’t tell you if you’re at a healthy weight since it doesn’t take your height into account. At 150 pounds, you’re overweight if you measure 5 feet 2 inches tall, but just right if you’re 6 feet 2 inches.

A more accurate measure is your body mass index (BMI), which calculates your weight in relation to your height. A BMI of between 18.5 and 24.9 is healthy. My doctor actually has a record of my BMI each time I get a checkup.

BMI isn’t perfect. It doesn’t consider how muscular you are, or where your fat is located. So also check your waist circumference. A woman of average height should have a waist measuring less than 35 inches, and a man should be 40 inches or less around the was it at the navel. Together, your waist size and BMI can give you a good guide to how much you need to trim.

The Advice: ‘Lose 1 to 2 Pounds a Week’

What It Means: Not sure how to get to those numbers? Well, think of it this way; we all consume too many calories. On average we consume twice the calories we require. We sometimes forget that the calories we drink are just like the calories we eat. The average North American will consume about 3500 calories a day. Half of those calories come from liquids.

Some people are pretty active without exercise. Not everyone sits behind a desk all day. But even the active people can be too heavy because of the food they eat. You don’t have to starve to cut calories. Stop eating out. Make the food you eat. Know what you’re eating and how it’s made.

If you trade your usual bag of chips for an apple, swap your grande blended coffee drink for a small iced coffee with skim milk, and hold the cheese on your sandwich at lunch, you could cut 400 calories from your diet. Toss in a 25-minute walk to burn the other 100, and you’ve skimmed 500 calories for the day.

You have to take responsibility for your weight problem and your health. Your doctor is looking at you as another customer. You’re the only one that cares about you.

The Advice: ‘Cut Back on Junk’

What It Means: You’re probably thinking of sodas, chips, and candy. Reframe that idea. Any food that’s low in nutrition and high in calories — including jams and jellies, sauces and gravies — isn’t doing your body any favors.

You don’t have to stop all splurges. Just cut back on empty calories. Eat smaller portions, less often.

Make simple, smart swaps. Bake chicken instead of frying, drink sparkling water instead of soda and top your pizza with vegetables instead of meat. Finish your meals with a piece of fruit.

This author never tried to lose 100 pounds, I can tell. Small changes in your diet usually don’t work. I had to give away almost all the food in my house and all the alcohol and soda, beer and wine. I had to eat white meat chicken, wild salmon, green vegetables, black beans and Oatmeal for breakfast. I worked out on a stationary bike every day because my knees were so bad I couldn’t walk around the mall for 20 minutes.

After a few months, I had dropped about 40 pounds and felt much better. I could finally walk a couple miles without stopping. I stayed on a strict diet for several more months and now that I lost my body fat I can eat other things but I still avoid meat and that means hamburger, and I eat very little dairy. I do eat seafood, poultry, all the fruits, and vegetables, rye or whole grain bread and a beer or wine a few times a week. Life is good and I feel good. I’m 6 foot tall and weight 155 and have more energy than ever before.

 The Advice: ‘Get More Exercise’

What It Means: To lose weight, you need to burn off more calories than you take in each day. Part of the formula involves diet. The rest requires exercise.

When you need to trim off a few pounds, aim for 60 minutes a day, or 300 minutes a week, of moderate aerobic activity. You don’t have to do all 60 minutes at once. Break them up into 10- or 15-minute bursts. If you can ramp up to a higher intensity during those short periods, you may burn fat even more efficiently.

Lift weights at the gym or do exercises like sit-ups and pushups at least twice a week to build muscle strength. Stronger muscles boost your metabolism and torch a lot more calories than fat, even when you’re not moving.

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

If you really want to lose your 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. 

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, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

This Coming Year, Think about Getting Healthier

Some of us get wrapped up in the wrong things in life and we don’t take care of ourselves. How does this happen you might ask. We think that we are multi-taskers but in reality, we aren’t very good at it. We try and do more than we can do and become overloaded. This can happen to anyone, but a lot of us don’t realize it’s happening to them.

You can easily analyze your own situation by stepping back for a minute and looking at your life from an outsider's point of view.

Are you skipping meals? Do you make time for exercise? How much did you weigh when you got out of High School? How much do you weigh now? Are you eating healthy foods? Are you sleeping 7 hours a night?

Often we can find out for ourselves if we have a health problem if we can be objective. Americans often rush through their day so fast just to get it over with and never slow down to see what they’re doing wrong.

We cause our own health problems by not paying attention to our bodies ' needs. We constantly ignore our health and we are ignoring the things in our life that are difficult to manage. We rush so fast through our day just to get the work over with so we can do things that we enjoy doing. We have become obsessed with finding more ways to entertain ourselves rather than concentrating on the things that matter.

It was never like this a couple generations ago. I see this problem that we have in our modern world is that technology has advanced so rapidly that we all have this thirst for knowledge and have become obsessed with having all the new gadgets. Thank God that this next generation is trying to pay more attention to their health and their physical condition. We’ll have to see what happens to them as they grow older.

If you are concerned at all with your health and have been reading my posts and other health blogs, you probably know that your body fat is the cause of most health problems. To avoid those problems you should lose body fat and how do you do that? Simply, change the foods you eat and increase your activity.

All of us sit too much. It’s not all your fault. Today most Americans work sitting down. Actually, that’s the reason most people are overweight. One hour at the gym every day can’t make up for 8 hours of sitting. Have you ever noticed that people who have to work standing up are thinner on average than people who work sitting down? For instance, most people who work in retail, as a cashier, on average are thinner than an office worker.

If you spend your workday sitting 90% of the time and going home and sitting more after dinner and then spending 8 hours in bed, how much stand and moving around are you really doing. This might surprise you but the average office worker only spends about 4 hours a day on their feet.

This is a major change from a few generations ago when our grandparents spent 12 hours a day minimum on their feet. So the results are that we are heavier and have poor circulation and several other health problems that have all sprung up recently because the population is growing fatter.

Look for my podcasts on anchor.fm, or the podcast app on your cell phone. Search “howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight".

If you really want to lose your body fat then 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.

Post Thanksgiving

I know all about eating too much at those family gathering. In this case we are talking about Thanksgiving. Around my house or at anyone’s house that I know there is two parts to the big feast. First we eat a huge dinner, sometimes three kinds of meat, two different types of dressing, two types of cranberries, several types of potatoes, and several different vegetables. The idea is that no one, no matter how fuzzy, will go way hungry. There is always something for everyone in unlimited quantities.

Than comes the second part, which usually is about one hour later, “dessert”. This is what everyone has been waiting for. If it’s a big gathering like 10 or 12 or more the whole table will be filled with pies, cakes, chocolate candies, brownies, lemon squares, and other ethnic tricks that we only see once or twice a year. These are times that no one should miss, even if your on a diet.

The really bad part of the Holidays is that you might have to eat this meal more than once. We all have large families and you can’t say no to an invitation this time of the year, so what does a person do? You try and sample the things you like but do it in small amounts and remember that you don’t have to finish your plate. Another tip to help you from overindulging is to only eat half of each food on your plate.

Some other tips:

Don’t drink calories, save the calories for food.

Stick to low calorie desserts.

Eat before you go. Don’t go to a party without eating first. The food you eat out may be high in calories, but you’ll eat less if you eat something healthy before you go.

Try and walk after dinner.

The average holiday meal can add 5 pounds because you can easily consume 5000 calories when you include the drinks. Do you remember how long it took to lose 5 pounds? It’s easy to add 10 pounds over the Holidays and it can take months to lose it. You’ll be expected to eat and drinks so be careful you don’t hate yourself after the season is over.

Look for my podcasts on anchor.fm, or the podcast app on your cell phone. Search “howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight".

If you really want to lose your body fat then 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.

Your Diet Is The Secret To Losing Weight

I wrote other posts about changing your life if you want to lose weight. You’ve heard about the French and that the French have a diet that would put weight on any American, but they’re thin. The men and women of all ages in France are thinner than Americans.

When medical science first looked at their diet they thought that the red wine they drank was the answer. These people eat out as much as we do, they don’t even know what low cal means. So how do they do it?  First of all, they walk more. Urban people don’t use cars that much, They walk everywhere. Also, bike riding is more popular, you see gasoline has always been expensive in Europe and the people have learned to conserve.

Conserving on food is something that France has done since World War II when food was scarce. So today their meal portions are smaller than ours and combine this with the increased amount of walking the French do and it’s much easier for them to control their weight. Also, the French eat real food, fresh food. Fresh locally grown food with the emphasis on poultry and seafood. All the time I spent in France I didn’t see any processed foods. No Manufactured food. I’m sure the food scene is a little different today, but not that different. You still buy produce at a produce market, seafood from a fish market, meat from a butcher and bread from a bakery. And from what I remember, there was a lot of competition. The food was amazing, I gained 10 pounds that summer. I loved the food, I ate like I never ate food before. Then I came back to the states and back to reality.

When I was in France the exchange rate was 10 francs to 1 dollar, great for Americans, but expensive for the French. Food for the locals was expensive, maybe that’s why the portions were smaller than our portions.

We should take a lesson from France, they had the same kind of overweight problem and they beat it. Now it’s our turn as Americans to whip the overweight problem in this country. It’s our overweight problem that has caused Health Insurance to escalate to an unaffordable level, to the point where we now have a Health Insurance crisis.

Being overweight and bad eating habits are the cause of most of our health problems. This is something we can do something about if we try.

Look for my podcasts on anchor.fm, or the podcast app on your cell phone. Search “howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight".

If you really want to lose your body fat then 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.

What's The Secret To Losing Weight?

I get this same question over and over again in my inbox. So I’m writing this post to give some answers to those who haven’t been successful.

So you’re finally ready to lose weight. Now the question is: How?

The standard advice — to eat less and move more — isn’t so helpful when it comes to the “how.” You probably know you need to cut calories, but how many? Are you better off getting those calories from low-fat or low-carb foods? And what’s going on with your metabolism, your personal energy-burning furnace? Is it programmed to keep you overweight? Is there any way to fan the flames so you can dream of one day eating a piece of pie without gaining a pound?

Even science is still stumped on many of the basic questions of weight loss.

“Amazingly, in this era of obesity, there are still many things that medicine really doesn’t know,” says Robin Callister, PhD, professor of human physiology at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Here’s what we do know about some of the most persistent mysteries of weight loss.

Do You Have to Cut 3,500 Calories to Lose a Pound?

The idea that dieters need to cut this many calories — with diet, exercise or both — to lose 1 pound of weight comes from an influential scientific paper published in 1958. Max Wishnofsky, MD, a doctor who lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., tried to sum up everything we knew about how calories are stored by the body. He concluded that when the body is in a steady caloric state — meaning it isn’t fasting or starving — extra calories will be stored as fat, and it would take 3,500 extra calories to create a pound of fat. In that same steady state, he also said it would take a deficit of 3,500 calories to lose a pound of weight. For decades, the “Wishnofsky Rule” has been math that determined dieters live by.

The trouble is that it’s wrong.

The 3,500-calorie rule doesn’t work because the body adjusts to weight loss. It quickly decreases the number of calories it needs to maintain its new, lighter size, says Corby Martin, PhD, director of the Ingestive Behavior Laboratory at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, LA. That means weight loss slows down over time. People who expect to drop a pound for every 3,500 calories they cut will soon become frustrated when the scale doesn’t cooperate.

Let’s say a dieter knows they need to eat 2,500 calories a day to maintain their current weight. But they want to slim down. So they decide to shave 500 calories off their daily intake. According to the Wishnofsky Rule, after about a week of doing that, they should lose a pound.

“For the first week or two, the 3,500 calorie-per-pound rule kind of works, roughly, but after the first couple of weeks it doesn’t work,” Martin says.

Here’s why: In 3 or 4 weeks, you need less food to maintain that new, slimmer shape. I know you only lost a couple pounds and if you might only have to lose 10 pounds, you’re going to plateau several times. The problem with this formula is that we don’t have the same food today that we had in 1958. Believe me, I was there, I just started high school. In those days farmers did use pesticides to control bugs but we didn’t chemically engineer our food like we do today. It’s chemicaly engineered food that will cause food addiction and furthermore cause obesity.

Forget cutting back on the food your eating; you have to go back to eating fresh foods. When it comes to fruits and vegetables, it’s best to buy organic. Ration the red meat your eating; it’s marbled with fat and it’s causing you to increase your body fat. Seafood and chicken or turkey are a better choice. Never eat tube meat or any other processed or manufactured food. If you don’t eat foods that add to your body fat, your body will burn the stored fat you have.

Are All Calories Equal?

Fujioka counsels his patients to pay attention to how alcohol affects their eating.

“Some folks, when they drink alcohol, feel like they have license to eat whatever they want to, and they get into problems,” he says.

If a glass of wine weakens your will to resist that plate of cheese and crackers, it’s not doing your waistline any favors.

But if booze doesn’t affect your eating, then one or two drinks is probably OK, he says.

As for calories from fat, carbohydrates, and protein, this is where one size, or one eating plan, really doesn’t fit all.

There is good science to show that people who have high blood sugar levels — associated with conditions like type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, gestational diabetes, polycystic ovary syndrome, and fatty liver disease — benefit from diets that are lower in refined carbohydrates and higher in healthy fats and lean proteins. Examples of this kind of diet are South Beach, the Zone diet, the Mediterranean diet, and the low GI diet.

If insulin levels aren’t a concern, there’s little difference in the amount of weight people lose if they cut their calories from fat or from carbs, says Kevin Hall, PhD, a senior investigator and expert in metabolism at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, MD. But he says protein calories are a different story.

In the lab, researchers have shown that higher-protein diets tend to increase the number of calories a person burns, Hall says. “So in that sense, a protein calorie is not equivalent to a carbohydrate or a fat calorie,” he says.

Protein helps you burn more calories during the day and helps preserve muscle. When people lose weight, they don’t just lose fat — they also lose muscle. The more muscle you lose on a diet, the more your metabolism slows. That can make it tough to keep the weight off down the road. Protein also helps you feel satisfied for longer after your eat.

But people can eat only so much protein without changing their kidney function. U.S. dietary guidelines recommend that adults keep their protein in a range of 10% to 35% of total calories each day. Most diets fall into that range. Atkins, for example, one of the highest protein diets around, supplies 35% of daily calories from protein.

Weight loss is a mystery to some of us because we don’t know how we gain the excess body fat, so we don’t know what we have to do to lose the fat. Most of us think if we can just lose some weight the fat will disappear, but it doesn’t work that way and that’s why most of us give up trying.

Change the food your eating and you will lose weight. In other words, stop eating the foods and stop drinking anything with calories and try eating foods on the “food pyramid”.

There are three catagories with lots of choices so pick your foods and drinks from the food pyramid. The  “Daily” section you can eat every day, the “weekly” means only once a week and the “monthly” means only once a month. No need to count calories on this diet just stick to the pyramid.

Look for my podcasts on anchor.fm, or the podcast app on your cell phone. Search “howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight".

If you really want to lose your body fat then 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.

Can You Play Catch-Up With Exercise

 I found this post today and it’s worth reblogging. This is a question often asked. Even people in good physical condition are prone to miss workouts. Maybe because of your job or maybe your family or maybe we haven’t workout in years and want to start all over again. This author answers that question. Exercise at any age will improve your health. Once you start, stay with it and over time your vitals will improve and you will lose body fat.

By Brenda Goodman, MA
We’re are approaching the new year, and for many of us, that means our resolutions to eat better, get more sleep, and exercise are probably running headlong into real life.

Sure, it’s great to get to the gym every day, but sometimes a daily workout has to go if you’ve been up all night with a sick child or maybe you’re not ready to get back to the gym. Ditto for the idea of packing a healthy lunch and getting plenty of shut-eye.

But don’t give up. Science shows that even if you’ve been less than perfect, you can still reap big health benefits if you catch up.

Didn’t exercise enough last week? Being a weekend warrior has almost as many benefits as Monday-through-Friday workouts. Didn’t get enough shut-eye? Extra ZZZs for a couple of nights can help undo some of the physical harms of cheating your sleep. Ate too much? Studies show that you can make up for overindulging — and even lose some weight — by just being a part-time calorie counter. In fact, experts say, embracing imperfection can help you reach your health goals.

Weekend Warriors Still Win

Before you read on, I want you to know that I tried the hit and miss game when I was trying to lose weight. If you’re doing maintenance you can play that game of missing some workout or overindulging once in a while, but when you’re trying to lose pounds I found it hard to cheat without gaining the weight I lost. In other words, if I was on course to lose 2 pounds a week and I had been losing for several weeks, just one binge meal might cost me a week of progress. I would stop losing, and maybe in gain a pound, but if might take me two weeks before I’d start to lose again.

You’ve probably heard that you need to get about 150 minutes of moderate physical activity like brisk walking, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity like jogging, or some mix of the two, each week. But very few of us reach that goal, which is recommended by the CDC and World Health Organization.

In fact, most Americans get less than 10 minutes of moderate exercise every day, according to a 2015 study that used data collected on nearly 8,000 adults who wore activity monitors for a week. A tiny fraction of people in that study — about 3% — were barely active during the week, but they made up for it on weekends, averaging about an hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity on both Saturday and Sunday.

Now, a new study suggests these “weekend warriors” may be on to something. The study, which included data from more than 63,000 adults in the U.K., found that adults who reported meeting physical activity recommendations by squeezing all their exercise into just one or two sessions a week had a 30% lower risk of early death than people who got no exercise at all. They also had a lower chance of dying from cancer or heart disease than people who were sedentary.

Okay, I can see that something is better than nothing, but you can’t lose weight being a weekend warrior. If you are doing maintenance and are in fit condition, then a weekend warrior might be able to stay fit with two hours or so of extreme exercise on the weekends.

My secret is every day, even if it’s only for 10 minutes, I’ll run through all the exercise I can squeeze as fast as I can. If that’s 10 minutes, okay, tomorrow I’ll do more, but every day I do some exercise. And If I have time, I’ll do yoga after dinner. I’ve been doing this for a few years and have no trouble maintaining my weight strength.

The secret to good health is to lose your body fat and strengthen your muscles. By doing this you’ll increase your blood flow and become a healthier person. When your body is functioning properly, which doesn’t just mean that your feeling fine, it means that all your organs are doing what they should be doing, you will be a much healthier, happier person who doesn’t have to depend on their doctor for their quality of life. 

I'll add one tip: Missing occasionally won't hurt your fitness plans, but those who miss too many times tend to ease off their plan and end up quitting so be careful.

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

If you really want to lose your 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. 

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, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

When You want to Lose Weight Fast

I don't advise trying to lose weight fast but several of my readers want to lose weight before the holiday parties start.  

Working on weight loss? Then you probably want results — fast.

Let me save you some time: skip the fad diets. Their results don’t last. And you have healthier options you can start on — today!

You can safely lose 3 or more pounds a week at home with a healthy diet and lots of exercise, says weight loss counselor Katherine Tallmadge, RD.

I will warn you that this might not work for everyone. And I’ll add that if you're under a doctors care consult them first before changing your diet or doing lots of exercise. Not everyone can achieve weight loss, so if you are taking medications talk to your doctor about a diet that's right for you. 

Personally, I have to watch how much dairy I eat and how much gluten I eat. I have trouble digesting both. 

How to Lose Weight Fast

If you burn 500 more calories than you eat every day for a week, you should lose about 1-2 pounds

If you want to lose weight faster, you’ll need to eat less and exercise more.

For instance, if you take in 1,050 to 1,200 calories a day, and exercise for one hour per day, you could lose 3-5 pounds in the first week, or more if you weigh more than 250 pounds. It’s very important not to cut calories any further — that’s dangerous.

Limiting salt and starches may also mean losing more weight at first — but that’s mostly fluids, not fat.

“When you reduce sodium and cut starches, you reduce fluids and fluid retention, which can result in up to 5 pounds of fluid loss when you get started,” says Michael Dansinger, MD, of NBC’s The Biggest Loser show.

Diets for Fast Weight Loss

Dansinger recommends eating a diet that minimizes starches, added sugars, and animal fat from meat and dairy foods. For rapid weight loss, he recommends focusing on fruits, veggies, egg whites, soy products, skinless poultry breasts, fish, shellfish, nonfat dairy foods, and 95% lean meat.

Here are more tips from Dawn Jackson Blatner, RD, author of The Flexitarian Diet :

Eat vegetables to help you feel full.
Drink plenty of water.
Get tempting foods out of your home.
Stay busy — you don’t want to eat just because you’re bored.
Eat only from a plate, while seated at a table. No grazing in front of the ‘fridge.
Don’t skip meals.
Keeping a food journal — writing down everything you eat — can also help you stay on track.

“Even if you write it down on a napkin and end up throwing it away, the act of writing it down is about being accountable to yourself and is a very effective tool for weight loss,” says Bonnie Taub Dix, MA, RD, author of Read It Before You Eat It .

Besides jotting down what you ate, and when, you might also want to note how you were feeling right before you ate it. Were you angry, sad, or bored? We often focus so much on foods and calories, but our emotions are a huge part of our eating habits.

If you see a persistent pattern in your emotional eating, please consider talking to a counselor about it. They can be a big help in finding other ways to handle your feelings.

You have to take weight loss seriously if you’re going to make it work for you.

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.

If you really want to lose your 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. 

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, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page.