Stop Cleaning Your Plate

Many of us have been conditioned to eat everything on our plates, and in many circumstances it is considered rude not to eat what is in front of you. I remember my father telling me I could have anything on the menu when we would go out to eat as long as I ate everything on my plate. And we all heard that there were starving children in the world.

I became conditioned over years to eat everything on my plate and I learned to stuff myself to accommodate what was in front of me, I could also manage to choke down horrible tasting food when I had to eat a meal that had been prepared by a distant relative who's heart would be broken if a clean plate was not presented to her, but this could be trouble because they would want to reload it when you were finished.

There are a couple of ways you can reprogram your mind to break this habit. One is to deliberately leave a bit of food on your plate when you finish, it can be a very small amount at first, but as you get better at identifying the feeling of fullness in your stomach you will learn not to go on stuffing yourself. If you eat slowly, chewing every bite carefully before swallowing and putting your fork down between bites, you will allow your brain more time to realize that your body is being fed. Once you are full, that is the time to stop eating, even if you have only eaten half of what is on your plate.

Tips to help you lose weight

There are millions of diets today; the truth is diets don’t work. People start a diet and eventually fall off the diet and gain the weight back, perhaps even more. Diets are usually fads and seem to run in cycles. Currently we have been bombarded by the low-carb craze, but more and more information is coming out to say that these diets can be dangerous to your health in the long term. These diets have been shown to help dieters lose weight in the short term, but most people tend to put the weight back on over time. Processed carbohydrates are not good for you in large quantities, so you should avoid candy, fast food, ready made meals and sugary drinks (if you crave fizzy drinks try sparkling water or diet drinks).

Make the right choices. You may say you don’t have time to cook every day or to go to a sit down restaurant on your lunch break, so start making better choices. If you are eating at a burger joint, order a chicken sandwich, make sure it's grilled and not fried. If you skip the mayo and/or the bun you are saving even more calories. Drink water, try to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day (add a slice of lemon or orange to make it more appealing), if you are dehydrated your brain can be tricked into thinking you are hungry, also the water takes up space in your stomach.

Try a starter. Eat a salad or soup, but watch your salad dressing don’t use the ready made kind, they are very high in fat, instead opt for oil and vinegar or use a fat free dressing, and avoid creamed soups, they are usually made with heavy cream and therefore contain a high fat content. Your stomach will fill up with the soup or salad and you will eat less of your main meal.

The Earl of Sandwich had the right idea. Sandwiches are a great lunch food. Turkey and chicken breast are lower in fat, and stick with cold sandwiches; grilled or hot sandwiches are usually cooked in butter and/or contain fat laden sauces.

It's not a race! Eat slowly, put your fork down between bites and chew slowly, your brain will have more time to get the signals that it is being fed and you will begin to feel full sooner. When you start to feel full, stop eating! You don’t have to clean your plate. You may have to break your programming. If you are like me you grew up with your parents telling you to finish what was on your plate, you don’t have to. Try to leave something on your plate at every meal; soon you will see the pounds dropping off. Try not to eat 3 hours before going to bed. If you have to eat something try some raw veggies or a handful of nuts (without sugar or salt).

If you are hungry, eat! The human body has evolved over many thousands of years, your metabolism will slow down if your body thinks that it is being starved, so if you are hungry eat, just don’t over eat. There are many diets today that say to eat 5 to 7 meals a day, you don’t have to do this, but just eat when your body tells you to, this will keep your metabolism burning on an even keel.

Stay off the scale. Your body weight will fluctuate daily depending on water retention etc. If you change your diet and exercise you will start to notice your clothes fitting differently. If you work out with weights you will gain muscle mass, and muscle weighs more than fat. A tape measure is a much better alternative to a scale, measure your waist, chest, hips, biceps etc, and record the measurements once every week or every other week.

Keep track of your progress. Write down your workouts and meals in a journal. You will be able to keep better track of what is going in your body and you will be able to see yourself making gains in the weight room. Studies show that those who track their workouts and meals do far better than those who don’t.

Pump some iron. Many studies have shown that cardiovascular exercise paired with weight training is the best way to burn fat. As your muscles break down they require calories to rebuild, so your metabolism speeds up and you will continue to burn fat throughout the day. Don’t over do it, try to limit your weight training to every other day and on your days off from weights do some cardio. If you want to workout most every day, take at least one day a week off. I have included examples of a day's workout and a day's diet.

Start Losing Now

Simply put in order to lose weight you must burn more calories than you consume. If you are currently trying to lose weight and not getting anywhere you will need to increase your exercise (or calories burned) or reduce your intake of calories, these can be done simultaneously for faster results.

We burn calories, breathing, getting out of bed, manufacturing new cells, maintaining our body's temperature, and even eating; the rate at which we do this is called our Basal Metabolic Rate. There are many factors such as, age, genetic makeup, and muscle to fat ratio that affect the rate at which you burn calories, but the amount you move (exercise) also play a major part, and this is something that you can change.

There is some controversy over how much weight is healthy to lose over a given time, but as a general rule you can aim for 1 to 2% per week, that equates to 2 to 4 lbs in a person who weighs 200 lbs.

Counting calories can be very difficult not to mention tedious. There are some simple things you can do to reduce your calorie intake without any difficult calculations or restrictive monitoring.

Stay tuned….

Lets do it together

I have a few friends that are trying to lose those few lingering pounds, or just want to tone up for their best shape ever! I am going to do this with you. I am going to lose 20 lbs in 6 weeks. Wanna join me? You set your own goals , I help to design the perfect diet and exercise program for you, and its all FREE!

Emotional Eating

Mermaid brings great information to these discussions and recently she brought up the topic of emotional eating. Although I have just outlined it here, I will be covering the topic much more indepth in weeks to come.

Emotional eating is one of the major causes of obesity. Many of the people who are struggling with weight issues are doing so because they eat when they feel stressed, angry, guilty, anxious, or depressed. Some of the vices we used in recent decades to suppress these emotions have proven to be very harmful to our health when over consumed, such as cigarettes, alcohol, and prescription drugs and most people no longer use them. Food however is a readily available alternative poised to take control of these cravings. Sugary, heavily caffeinated drinks are one of the newest forms of these craving busters that are currently all the rage.

To understand why we feel the need to stuff ourselves with comfort foods high in sugar or laden in cheese, we need to understand that there are chemicals released in the brain to help us cope with certain situations, and we will crave certain chemicals to counteract these imbalances. Researchers are especially interested in the foods chosen by night eaters. The heavy preference for carbohydrates, which trigger the brain to produce so-called "feel-good" neurochemicals, suggests that night eating may be an unconscious attempt to self-medicate mood problems and relieve stress.
If we can learn to recognize the difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger we can get this problem under control. A difficult obstacle to overcome is that we can start being programmed to cope this way very early in our lives; when someone close to us tries to cheer us up with a slice of pie or a big bowl of ice cream. As a tip don’t go shopping right after you have had a big argument with your husband or boyfriend, you will probably end up with a cart full of ice cream and cookies, instead try to counter the sudden release of the stress hormone cortisol with another hormone, endorphins. You can do this by something as simple as yoga or Pilates, or perhaps you would prefer something a bit more physical such as running, cardio kickboxing, or lifting weights, the high from the release of the endorphins will feel great and you will soon be in a much better mood.

Thanks for the feedback

Some of you have given me great feedback for this blog, for that reason I am thinking of taking it in a different direction. I plan to make it much more interactive and allow the readers to ask me questions or bring up topics. I will try my best to answer your questions with knowledge that I have gained as a nutritionist, or if I can not, I will research until I can give you some sort of satisfaction.

I may even play with the idea of a blogger personal trainer. I am very eager to know how this works out for you, so your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Calorie Count

I have heard that walkling a mile burns as many calories as running one, is this true?

First it is important for us to understand what calories are. A calorie is a measurement of heat, but for our purposes it is defined as, "a unit of energy-producing potential supplied by food and released upon oxidation by the body, equal to the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1°C at one atmosphere pressure."

Okay so what does that mean? Taking basic physics into account one could quite easily come to the conclusion that walking a mile burns as many calories as running one. Mile for mile running and walking burn approximately the same number of calories, but minute for minute, the faster your speed, the more calories you burn, giving running the calorie burning edge.

In general running should cause more exertion than walking, that being said it there are many other contributing factors that play a part in calorie consumption. Heart rate is one, and optimal heart rate should be taken into account; another is the speed and incline at which you are walking or running.

There is a reason there is so much money invested in exercise machines that offer a low impact alternative to cardio-pulmonary training. Running can be extremely hard on the joints, and can also cause many injuries when compared to a low impact exercise such as walking. Probably the most popular of these new generation machines are the elliptical orbit machines, where the feet actually move in an ellipse pattern, giving the user some of the same bennifits as running while reducing the stress on their joints and back.

More to come....

BMI or Body Mass Index

Allison writes:
My BMI is 21 right now and I want to get it down to 19.

According to the BMI charts, Allison is within the "normal" Body Mass Index for her height and weight. The problem with BMI is that it is based solely on weight and height. It does not factor in age, muscle mass or body fat, and muscle weighs 4 times as much as fat. Probably the worst element is that it does not even make a differentiation between sexes. For some reason this method (considered a fad by many) has been accepted by healthcare professionals, probably due to the fact that it is easier to read than the more critical height weight charts used in the past.

Using this method, more than 50 percent of the American population is obese and at risk of obesity related illnesses. Using the BMI method most professional basket ball players (who we think of as being tall and lean) are considered unhealthy and at risk.

For example when Charles Barkley was in his prime he was 6'6 and 252lbs which would put him at a BMI of 29.1 putting him in the overweight category and just barely under the obese rating of 30. At 6'2" and 257lbs Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been considered obese, with a BMI of 33, when he was crowned Mr. Olympia and considered in peak condition. George Clooney would be considered borderline obese and Brad Pitt would be considered overweight. The list of professional athletes that could be considered overweight or obese using the BMI standard is staggering.

More on this subject to come…