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| AVOID extreme or faddy diets: No matter how much excess weight or fat you have, if you want to lose weight permanently your diet program should be directed toward a slow, steady weight loss. You should expect to lose no more than 2 pounds of fat a week. Losing more weight is no guarantee that weight loss is likely to be permanent. | |
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| AVOID or Reduce Consumption of: Sugar, alcohol, fizzy drinks. Refined or processed foods including takeaways, microwave meals, ready-meals, burgers, crisps, sausages, chicken nuggets, pizzas, biscuits, cakes, white bread, pastry and sweets. Full-fat milk, cheeses and cow's milk dairy products, margarine. | |
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| Burn that fat: Exercise raises the metabolic rate so calories are used up faster. To get started, simply go for a walk - it's a great way to shift fat. Whenever you can use the stairs instead of the elevator. Climbing stairs can be as effective as going to the gym! | |
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| Choose brown instead of white: rice, bread and pasta. |
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| Don't drink colas: Fizzy drinks are "liquid calories", "empty calories" with no nutritional value at all. All they do is make you fat and deteriorate your teeth. So take advantage of the simplest and easiest weight loss tip on earth: substitute water for sugary drinks. Since sodas don't fill you up, it's quite easy to do without them. | |
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| Don't eat just before you sleep: Late-night eating can lead to weight gain because the body stores more food during sleep. Eat the last meal of the day at least a couple of hours before bedtime. |
| Don't go on fad diets: Dieting slows down your metabolism. Your fat cells bloat, become toxic and store more fat, you lose muscle tone and you get depressed. Instead, eat more than before but choose the right foods. |
| Don't skip meals, especially breakfast: Your stomach and spleen are at their strongest first thing in the morning. You also have the whole day to burn off the meal. If you want to raise metabolism, you should eat at that time. |
| Drink eight glasses of water a day: Water is a natural appetite suppressant. Also, nettle tea is a great weight-loss drink as it supports metabolism and has diuretic properties. |
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| Eat fruit before a meal: Ideally at least 30 minutes before. Fruit holds the record for the fastest digestion rate out of all food groups so if you eat fruit after a meal it gets stuck behind the other food which take much longer to digest. |
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| Exercise little and often: You still need to exercise daily if possible but rather than cramming your sweat session into one 30 minute stretch or whatever do it in 3 X 10 minute intervals throughout the day. According to new research from university of Missourri Columbia intermittent physical activity such as jogging or fast walking is just as effective at clearing fat from the blood stream as exercising continuously for 30 minutes. Furthermore fat clearing enzymes peak about 10 hours after exercise. So if you are exercising throughout the day you should always have the fat clearing enzymes in your blood stream. | |
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| Fats: There are certain fats, or more properly fatty acids, that are needed by every single cell in your body to function properly. You need those fats, and you avoid them at your peril. This is one of the reasons the low-fat or no-fat approach to eating is a disaster. What is not good for you, on any level, is the man-made, mutated, refined fats found on supermarket shelves and masquerading as "healthy." These include virtually all vegetable and cooking oils, including sunflower, safflower and soy. To make these palatable, they are treated with chemicals, then acid, then bleach, and then heated to above frying temperature to remove the disgusting odors. All this refinement gets rid of any possible nutrients, antioxidants or other beneficial properties that the original might have had. Trans fatty acids are essentially mutated fats that have been created by processing; they are, in my opinion, one of the worst health hazards on the planet. Margarine is loaded with them, and it's a disgrace that food manufacturers have been able to pass that food product off as "healthy" for so many years. Other prime sources of trans fats are baked and processed goods such as cakes, pastries, cookies and crackers. If you see "hydrogenized" or "partially hydrogenized" on the label, you can be sure it contains trans fatty acids. The take-home point from all of this is that there are fats that give life and fats that don't. You should not be skimping on the fats that do. They are found in fish, nuts, beans, avocados, free-range organic eggs, extra virgin cold-pressed olive oil and flax meal. The flax meal itself, by the way, is also a wonderful source of something called lignans, which are anti-cancer plant substances very beneficial in the diet. Some healthful fats are also found, believe it or not, in butter and coconut. The bottom line: Avoiding fat is a strategy that is virtually guaranteed to lead to health problems and rarely results in weight loss, especially since we tend to replace the missing fat with junk carbohydrates. The type of fat we eat is much more important than the amount, so select your fat from the wonderful choices mentioned earlier: fish, nuts, seeds, avocados, extra virgin cold-pressed olive oil, flax meal, and even some butter and coconut in reasonable amounts. Just stay away from the fried stuff, the refined oils and "partially hydrogenated" anything Jonny Bowden, MA, CN, CNS | |
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| Food combine: Don't eat foods that are hard to digest together. Keep heavy carbohydrates (such as potatoes, rice and bread) separate from heavy proteins (such as meat, fish or eggs). Eat proteins with vegetables or salad. |
| Fruit and Veg: Eat 7 servings a day of fruit and vegetables Eat something green, something orange/red and something citrus every day to guarantee a good mix of vitamins and minerals. What is a serving:
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| Get out and about: Start to acquire the walking habit and climb stairs whenever you can. These activities are very beneficial. But if you're not accustomed to taking any exercise you will not immediately notice how good a daily exercise regime will make you feel. After just two or three days of moderate exercise you will start to feel more energy, to feel refreshed, and to notice you are lighter and in better shape. | |
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| Get your metabolism going: First thing in the morning, drink a cup of warm water with a squeeze of lemon. |
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| Keep the cupboard thoughtfully stocked: Find a few things you like that are also good for you and make sure you always have some to hand ready to eat. It doesn’t have to be raw celery sticks - lightly cooked vegetables are also tasty and nutritious. Then if hunger pangs strike you can snack away without spoiling your next meal. | |
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| Lifestyle Change: I firmly believe that if we want to stop tipping the bathroom scales, we've got to CHANGE THE WAY WE LIVE OUR LIVES. We don't need to diet. The word diet is a scam, it's a synonym for temporary. We need a permanent solution to these problems. We need to think about what we eat, but more importantly, why we eat. We also need to find an activity - something we like to do, other than raising a beer to our mouth, and start doing it. Walking, for example, provides a great release at the end of the day or a great "wake-up" at the beginning of the day. We think we're tired, but you're never too tired to walk and you can do it until you're 100. Want to do more? Fine - jog, swim, or ride a bike. It's a choice each of us make every day and it should be OUR choice, not something a commercial, or video or even a web site editorial (hee-hee) tells us to do. That's the real beauty of America. We have the right to be free thinkers. Heck, you've got the right to get fat or stay fat. That's fine, as long as it's a conscious decision. The problems lie in the fact that we spend too much of our time being UN-conscious. We can actively decide whether to "sleep in" on every spare day we get, thinking that IN-activity is going to rescue us. It is also our decision if we're going to immediately flip on that intoxicating TV first thing in the morning. You know what happens when we do? We get bombarded by ads, telling us what to buy, what to eat and where to buy it. One of my favorite advertising ploys usually hits TV screens about 10:00 at night. That's when all the fast food breakfast ads hit you - to get you thinking in ADVANCE of your hunger so the next day, you wake up thinking, "Gee, maybe it should be a Mickey D breakfast day." Never be confused by advertising. Advertising's sole purpose is to sell you something that you don't really and truly NEED. The ADVERTISERS need you to buy their product - that's the only need going on here. Try and go without some phony Brand-name product for a week and see if you miss it. Nine out of ten times, your life will be just fine without Spam, Jolt Cola, or Fruity Pebbles. Bruce Campbell | |
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| Take a good multi-vitamin: All overweight people are deficient in major nutrients. | |
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Taste: Modern diets often contain an excess of salt. This kills the sensitivity of one's taste buds. Yet if a person is weaned off salt, an appreciation for the natural flavours of food returns within 10 days as the taste bud receptor cells regenerate.