Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment
When you have that craving for something sweet, don’t head for the cookie jar (or worse)… Instead, get a bag of hard candies at the grocery store and take a few to work or keep them in your car. Life Savers like the ones in the picture are only 15 calories each, and give you that sweetness you might crave say, with coffee or while you are watching TV. These are a great way to hold you over until the next meal or satisfy that sugar craving in the middle of the day. Just make sure you aren’t eating more than a few a day. Also, check the bag of whatever candies you like to make sure they really are low calorie. These Butter Rum Life Savers are really good… I think I will go get one right now.
Posted by: Curt | Under: General Fitness | Add Comment
MSN has a great guide that they got from Prevention on how to cut the calories and fat from a lot of typical restaurant meals. It does a great job in showing two things-
1) Most all of these meals are about 1500 calories and 80 grams of fat. That is a lot since the average adult should be eating about 2000-2500 calories a day total. The typical American has already blown through that by lunch, so it is no wonder 2/3rds of us are overweight. We just eat too much. I will talk more about the psychology of weight gain next week but it is important to see just how impossible it is to lose weight or even maintain if you are eating out a lot.
2) It is possible to cut about half the fat and calories from any of these meals without too much trouble. You just need to know what to get rid of. This works at home too. So look carefully at how they cut the calories from these meals since it is a clue to what is good and bad to eat. If you don’t know that bacon and sour cream account for half the calories on a potato you aren’t likely to order it without them.
Stick around and pretty soon you will be up to speed on this stuff!
6 Meal per Day Diet- Meal 3- Lunch
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment
Eating a good lunch will have a big impact on how you feel the rest of the day. If you eat a huge lunch because you skipped breakfast and a mid-morning meal, you will have that sluggish tired feeling during the afternoon. So skip the crappy fast food or large lunch at a restaurant and try this- get a grilled chicken salad (skip the croûtons) and add some fruit on the side. If you are thinking “where am I going to get fruit?”, remember that almost all grocery stores have a deli where you can get almost anything you want. So get a salad and some fruit or get a turkey sandwich on a croissant. Skip the cheese and mayo if you can and get spicy mustard, lettuce, tomatoes and onions. Add some pickles- they are almost calorie free. Iced tea, water, coffee or low calorie drink is best. Skip the sodas.
Nice lunch and I promise you will feel better during the afternoon. The key here is to be moderate. Remember, you are going to get to eat again in a couple of hours!
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment
These diet tips are posted over at Prevention but they came from America on the Move. Check them out. There are almost too many tips to remember, so look through them and try to remember a few key tips that apply to you. Some of them are common sense, but I have to keep reminding myself that a lot of people still need to be reminded of them. Lots of good stuff here.
Here are a few of my favorites-
- Always start dinner with a salad and lite dressing. Add a cup of broth type soup, like Minestrone (not creamy soups). This will take the edge off your appetite.
- Skip the bread and butter.
- Always have your dish grilled instead of fried.
Lots more tips, so check it out.
6 Meal per Day Diet- Meal 2- Mid Morning
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment
Usually if you go all morning without eating anything significant you are starved by lunch. That is not a good thing since you will always overeat when you are that hungry. So what we are doing by putting a mid morning snack/meal in your diet is alleviating the starvation reflex and also helping to keep your energy level up by keeping you blood sugar fairly level. This makes you feel better and boosts your metabolism.
Depending on how hungry you are at this point in the day, you can eat a variety of things. For instance, if you are not very hungry, eat a small apple and drink a glass of water with it. If you are more hungry or you have a job where you are expending a lot of energy, eat an apple and 1/2 a bagel with some natural peanut butter on it. Same deal with the water- a glass of water really helps you from over eating since you need it and it helps you feel full. You want to try to keep the calories to around 200, so if you want to eat a protein bar- like a Balance Bar, that’s OK but make a habit of looking at the nutrition label so you know what and how much you are eating.
6 Meal per Day Diet- Meal 1- Breakfast
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit | Add Comment
You’ve probably heard it all your life and ignored it most of the time, but breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Unfortunately, most people skip breakfast and either get something unhealthy from a drive-through or just wait until lunch to eat. The solution is really easy and simple- instant oatmeal and fruit. You can get the instant oatmeal in a whole variety of flavors and it even comes in low sugar form. Quaker has a whole line of oatmeal and most supermarket chains have their own house brands which are jsut as good and a lot cheaper. Make it with lowfat milk and then have some fruit with it and you have an excellent 90 second breakfast. Really, no excuses! this is a 90 second solution and it even has the added benefit of lowering cholesterol in most people.
Stay away from the giant muffins and other “fast” breakfast alternatives since they have virtually no nutritional value and are loaded with fat and sugar. Also, stay away from the high sugar and fat coffee drinks at places like Starbucks since they can easily have 400-500 calories and no real nutritional value (In other word, they make you fat). Drinking stuff like that wreaks havoc on your blood sugar levels and gives you a bad start to the day.
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Seniors/fit | Add Comment
Diabetes is a huge problem in the US and it is getting worse every year. Most researchers blame the obesity problem and of course lack of exercise. These all tend to go together and create a 10 headed monster that causes everything from blindness to kidney failure. It really is that bad and a lot of people are ignorant of it until it is too late. Like usual, diet and exercise are critical elements in controlling diabetes.
By 2050, an estimated 48 million Americans will have type 2 diabetes as the epidemic continues unabated, according to new federal projections.
But along with the disease will come increases in accompanying health problems, such as blindness and hearing loss, according to several presentations to be made Saturday at the American Diabetes Association annual meeting, in Chicago.
“From 1963 to 2005, we saw periods of sharp increase in the rate of diabetes cases,” said Linda S. Geiss, chief of diabetes surveillance at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and lead author of the first presentation. “Increases in diabetes cases have been going on for 15 years, and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down,” she added…
In the final presentation, Jo Azzarello, an associate professor of nursing at the University of Oklahoma College of Nursing, collected data on the awareness of diabetes risk among 442 people who said they didn’t have the disease. But, 55 percent of these people were at risk of developing diabetes, and 52 percent were wrong about their perceived risk, the study found.
“Among those who were inaccurate about their risk, 69 percent thought they were at low risk for developing diabetes, when, in fact, they were at risk,” she said. “And 31 percent thought they were at risk.”
Azzarello said older people tended to be a bit more optimistic about their odds of avoiding diabetes.
“Young people were a little more pessimistic,” Azzarello said. “That was worrying. Not only because of needless worry, but if you think that you are going to get diabetes no matter what you do, then people would maybe not be inclined to live a healthy lifestyle. But if you live a healthy lifestyle, you are probably not going to get diabetes.” (From MSN)
You can get more info from the CDC and the American Diabetes Assn.
Posted by: Curt | Under: Children/fit, General Fitness, Youth/fit | Add Comment
My sister works at one of the big Children’s Hospitals in Atlanta, and one thing she comments on consistently is the childhood obesity rate and it’s associated risks like diabetes- which is at epidemic levels in the US. So here is a good article at MSN to help you help your kids. KidsRunning.com has all you need to know about helping your kids stay healthy through running.
Studies show that 17 percent of American children ages 2 to 19 are overweight and that fewer than eight percent of elementary schools and 6.4 percent of middle schools provide daily P.E. class, so it’s obvious that kids need to move their bodies more. And what better activity than running?
“Children involved in running can carry it on as a lifestyle that is maintained into adulthood,” says Teri McCambridge, M.D., chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness.
Encourage your kids to stay active and participate in games and sports- you might even need to make them put down the playstation controllers and go outside. Summer is a great time to take them swimming. Most communities have pools and it is a great way for them to get some exercise. Don’t forget the sunscreen…
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit | Add Comment
One of the main benefits of eating 6 small meals/snacks is that you never really get ravenously hungry and so you tend to eat less. This has the benefit of allowing your stomach to shrink so you feel full sooner. This won’t happen instantly, but it will happen over time. A third benefit is that your blood sugar tends to stay more constant throughout the day and so your metabolism is generally faster and you just feel better.
But, you have to be deliberate in your meal planning- especially if you have a job that doesn’t allow for this easily. So, you might need to take a small cooler with you that has some of your food so you aren’t tempted to eat out of the candy bar machine! Eating out- especially fast food is a killer. Keep it to no more than once a week- or never.
Coming up soon are some suggestions for what these 6 small meals should look like.
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit | Add Comment
This is a really simple diet tip and it is really simple to follow if you will decide to actually do it! Years of bodybuilding experience shows that the best diet and eating schedule is 6 small meals a day instead of 3 large ones. The benefits are huge if you simply discipline yourself to eat this way. One reason this works is because, for lack of a better illustration, it is better to graze like a cow than to eat like a lion.
