You have to be creative to conquer so I am going to share an idea with you that may help in your efforts to add exercise to your weight loss plan. I once heard that the hardest step is getting started and after that the greatest obstacle to overcome is to continue with your exercise plan. When it comes to those that are resistant of exercise we are just like children not doing something that we know we should and are supposed to do. My proposal is true discipline. Think of something you like or live and then discipline yourself with rewards and restrictions based upon those things. For example, if you love to watch movies on Friday nights then make a commitment that you can only watch your movies if you have only completed a certain amount of exercise by the time Friday night movie hour rolls around.

When you actually do exercise make a list of non-food rewards that will inspire you for the exercise you have done. Perhaps a new outfit within budget, a spa treatment or some extra personal time enjoying what you love. This will cause a formed response that associates pleasure and reward with exercise that is done and deprivation or punishment with exercise that is not done. Overall your mental patterns concerning exercise will be reshaped as will your body. All exercise machines work if you use them. If you are like me you have ordered a few with great intentions that are now sitting in the corner with dust on them. It is time to take action and force success. “If you do what you have always done you will get what you have always gotten.” It is time to do something new for the new and improved you. Get addicted to exercise and not food. Start with easy exercises like a 30 minute walk a few times per week. Don’t put the cart before the horse and definitely don’t eat like a horse unless you plan to consume large amounts of green vegetables.

 Together we can do this. I would love to hear your responses and success stories on initiating an exercise plan. Grow up in your weight loss by being disciplined.

Don’t let dieting drive you nuts let it drive you to nuts. Most dieters are extremely conscious of their fat intake making nuts taboo on a diet. Nuts don’t have to be taboo and can actually benefit you helping your heart and cholesterol levels too. It’s time for weight loss and health nuts to do something nutty according to an article on BNET that encourages you to GO NUTS! Not only do nuts provide a great source of protein which can increase metabolism and reduce hunger, they contain “good” fat which is unsaturated fat helping to block the absorption of fatty acids by your arteries and reduce blood cholesterol. Nuts contain a type of protein with blood vessel relaxing amino acids.

Snack on nuts and get your craving for something crunchy satisfied while doing a great favor to your body. When it comes to eating nuts count them in your daily calorie intake and stick to the proper serving size. If you like nuts and decide to go nuts choose natural nuts without added salts and sugars which are a big no-no in the weight reduction scenario. I wouldn’t advise eating nuts everyday but I would incorporate them into your diet occasionally as a satisfying and healthy deviation from the norm. It is OK to come out of your shell from time to time especially since nuts help crack the code for heart health.

Try getting your nuts from a health store or health oriented grocery food source such as Sunflower or Whole Foods Market. These are the types of places where you can find the nuts you need to enhance your weight loss efforts. When it comes down to it adding nuts to your diet can help prevent you from going nuts as they also help to satisfy cravings in a good way that dieters often experience.

Check out these Healthy Seed and Nut Recipes. Eating these foods may be a little nuts but not crazy just crazy good in a nutty sort of way.

The next time you feel like going nuts on your diet…go for the good nuts. After all, you are what you eat so eat something GOOD and become good. One of my favorite quotes is, “The mighty oak was once a small nut that stood its ground.” Stand your ground in your plight to fight fat and lose weight and you too will be mighty in reaching your goals of becoming a big loser which in the weight loss game means you are a winner. In a nutshell; you can gain additional weight loss in a satisfying way by eating the right kinds of nuts in moderation. Go nuts without going completely nuts on your diet.

 

Where's the Beef?

I always thought that red meant stop and that when it came to dieting I had to throw the beef out with the chips, Nips and dips. As it turns out beef isn’t so bad after all and all those cows trying to get you to eat more chicken just want to save their own lives.

 According to an article posted on CNNhealth.com in January of 2008 red meat was listed among “Bad foods that are actually great for your waist”. Don’t you just love it when something you thought was bad turns out to be good? The only thing you want to watch out for is making sure that the beef you consume is lean such as ground chuck rather than ground beef and the leanest cuts of steak. Also be sure to watch your portion size and keep it to around 3 oz. and before you know it you will be a lean mean beef eating machine. To learn more about the fat content in different cuts of beef take a look at this “Fat Content Table”.

The top 3 reasons you should make lean beef a part of your weight reduction plan are: 1. It is rich in protein and can help you lose weight, 2. It satisfies hunger more than other foods which helps you stay fuller longer and eat less, 3. It tastes great and can help give you have a positive dieting experience. For 20 more reasons to include beef as a part of a healthy weight reduction plan check out these 20 Low Calorie Beef Recipes that are all less than 300 calories per serving. So if you are in the mood for some steak, relax and enjoy because you have nothing to lose but weight.

Exercise is vital part of a weight loss program and living a healthy life but it isn’t easy. The hardest part is getting started and the second hardest part is keeping it up. Exercise not only improves your health but it is a great weight loss aid helping you to burn off the calories that want so badly to become another pound of fat on your body. You need to develop a mental vendetta against fat accumulation. When you exercise you go to war against calories that have the sole purpose of making you gain weight.

I know it is difficult to get in a regular exercise routine but it doesn’t have to be drama. All you need to do is to find easy ways to insert life-changing, fat-altering exercise into your daily or weekly routine. This can be a very dramatic change but the key is to not overdramatize it. If you already exercise on a regular basis that is great, and if you increase your exercise it can help you lose more weight by burning additional fat.

Here are some ways to start exercising without the drama and to increase exercise for those who already have a regular exercise plan: 

• Use regular everyday activities like climbing stairs to get exercise. If you live in a two story house make it a point to go up and down the stairs a certain amount of times. If you have stairs at work, plan to go up and down the stairs a few times a day during lunch or a break.
• When you go to work or school, park far away from the building so you will get some additional exercise by walking.
• When you get home in the evening, make it a point to take a few laps around the block. If you have kids involve them and take them on the walk with you. Don’t procrastinate but do this as soon as you get home while you still have energy.
• If you work or go to school near a Wal-Mart or other large store pack a pair of tennis shoes with you to work or school and on your break or lunch hour put the tennis on and walk the large isles and outer perimeters of the isles inside the store for 30 minutes to burn calories that will help you lose weight.
• Try doing small amounts of exercise throughout the day like ten sit-ups or leg-lifts at a time.
• Get a real bike and ride it. It is a lot more fun than an exercise bike and will get you some fresh air and fun at the same time.

Regardless of what your lifestyle is, there is a way to incorporate exercise in an easy way that will not add drama to your life. Sometimes we get so caught up in the drama of exercise we simply don’t do it when it can simply benefit us. It is time to start being smart with the simple things in life by taking the drama out of exercise and adding dramatic results to our weight loss.

If you’ve learned anything from your dieting mistakes in life you can use your experience-gained dietary intelligence to outsmart the menu that is working to sabotage you. That’s right…I said sabotage you. The menus we order from at restaurants from fast food to fine dining are generally not geared to support the weight conscious. And speaking of conscious this is the part of your mind we are going to work to train so that you begin to operate in unconscious consciousness or in other words that natural actions we take without thinking by first developing and practicing the actions of everyday life with heightened awareness and specific purpose.

All this fancy talk simply means that by thinking more about the items you decide to eat everyday you can develop automatic behaviors that work in favor of your weight loss and I call this “Mind over Menu”. This little phrase can help you achieve big results on the scale and just about everybody can accomplish this with a whole lot of ease and little effort. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to make better choices it just takes a person that is willing to allow their mind to dominate over the power of the menu.

The best place to start is by initiating a food diary that you keep daily. OK, I know it is a pain to write down everything you eat everyday but doesn’t the pain of having extra pounds on your body outweigh the effort it will take to write your foods down? The first thing that keeping a food diary does is it helps you become aware of everything you are putting in your mouth. This is step one in gaining the power of Mind over Menu. You can use food diaries as a blueprint towards the building of a new you, as well as, help you identify areas you need to improve in, in food selection.

Food diaries also hold you accountable and force you to think about what you are eating. I want you to begin to think of your food diary as a term paper that will determine your final grade in a very important class and over time you will begin to edit out the mistakes and bad grammar which in this case are equivalent to poor food choices. In the age where the internet is a great dieting assistant you can conveniently keep a food diary online at www.myfitnesspal.com or www.self.com which are just a couple of places where you can register for free to keep an online food diary that allows you to select commonly consumed foods from a database and these food diaries even calculate the amount of calories you are consuming.

It is helpful to plan out what you will eat ahead of time. Make your own menu that includes foods you like and love. Once you prepare a menu for yourself look it over and find places where you can cut back without feeling too deprived and save calories. Remember that this is a process that works to implement a lifestyle change that is realistic enough for you do continue forever.

Secondly, in this whole Mind over Menu phenomenon; just make better choices. If you must have the bacon cheeseburger, don’t eat french-fries with it sending your weight loss into a starch and grease comma otherwise known as a weight gain. Veggie fries are gaining great popularity. I like to call this method sacrifice for satisfaction. Begin to think in ways that tell your brain that you get enough satisfaction out of the burger so you can do without the fries and in place of the fries have a salad with low calorie or fat free dressing or slice vegetables up into long slivers that resemble fries and pretend a little.

If you have a heavier meal, make it a menu meal selection that you consume earlier in the day and not a few hours before bedtime when it is sure to stick to you. Also adjust the other foods you have that day to be lower calorie more healthier selections including lean low fat proteins and lots of vegetables. Before you know it you will automatically be adjusting your menu to both enjoy the foods you love while still consuming a daily amount of calories that can result in weight loss. Do you love ice cream? I have found that most yogurt places have a fat-free sugar-free frozen yogurt with all the taste minus the guilt. It is going to take time to adjust your menu to where it needs to be but the important thing is to start today. Losing one pound a week isn’t a lot but it is realistic, easy to achieve by implementing Mind over Menu and it also equates to 52 pounds per year. Your mind has power so use it to empower your weight loss.

Of course there are all the king’s horses and all the king’s men which in the Humpty Dumpty dieter’s world represent the hundreds or even thousands of diets and weight loss products available on the internet that promise to fix you right up. We all know how the nursery rhyme ends that Humpty Dumpty can’t be put back together again so I decided to come up with a happy twist to what seems to be a very sad ending.

My idea is to help the Humpty Dumpty dieter disappear from existence and come out of their shells by receiving realistic, sound and simple advice to lose weight that can be incorporated into your everyday living so you can forget about the gone bad diet fads and embrace a new way of life gradually that will result in steady, safe and consistent weight loss.

 If you are starting to admit that you may be one of those Humpty Dumpty dieters I have mentioned then here is the Humpty Dumpty version of using lemons to make lemonade. Crack open an egg, cook it up and eat it with a smile that shows you know broken eggs can assist your weight loss efforts while breaking the Humpty Dumpty Dieter’s Syndrome off of you. According to an article blog called “Can Eggs Help You Lose Weight?” published on LIVESTRONG.COM in August of 2008 eating two eggs for breakfast may assist in weight loss efforts by helping people stick to a reduced calorie eating plan for the remainder of the day.

Eggs are also high in protein and help boost the metabolism. Women are advised to eat no more than six eggs per week while men can get away with having nine eggs in a week. Eggbeaters can be used in place of eggs a couple times a week so you can incorporate this new trick as a part of your new way of life. Fix your eggs different ways and even add some fresh vegetables and fat free or light cheese to make an incredible omelet offering variety in a delicious way.

Regardless of the amount of weight you want to lose or even if you just want to maintain your weight and stay healthy realize that an egg a day can help keep the flab away. Check out these “eggceptional” recipes for your new journey. Stop scrambling for something to eat and give your Humpty Dumpty story an ending that is simply sunny side up. There is hope after falling off the weight loss wall so check back for more tips that help you Gain Wisdom and Lose Weight.