Posts Tagged ‘well balanced diet’

The first thing that comes to mind when people think of weight loss is being hungry and miserable. Over the past ten years we have seen one fad diet after another claiming to help you shed those extra pounds within days. Unfortunately those diets are all doomed to failure simply because they do not promote healthy weight loss.

One well known low carbohydrate diet claims you can healthily lose ten pounds per week while another carbohydrate rich diet claims the same. Both diet plans promote drinking lots of fluids and maintaining a daily exercise regimen.

Exercise alone can help you shed the pounds and inches before swimsuit season, but don’t overlook the importance of a well-balanced diet and full-body detoxification. One of the most important steps to detoxifying your body is a simple colon cleansing. Cleansing the colon of toxins can help flush out that bloated, fat feeling as well as help enhance your weight loss goals.

There are several options for a healthy colon cleanse and full body detoxification. Simply the addition of water, fruits and vegetables to your diet goes a long way in promoting a healthy lifestyle. Steamed or raw vegetables are a great source of vitamins and minerals as well as fiber to help cleanse the colon. Adding green, leafy vegetables to your diet will also increase your fiber intake, helping cleanse your colon and digestive tract very effectively. Cutting back on red meats and dairy products is also advised, as these foods congest the digestive tract.

Fruit and vegetable juices are also very good ’snack’ fillers for when you need a quick little pick-me-up. Avoid that afternoon candy bar and soda, both are very high in fats and carbohydrates that will only help reverse your weight loss goals. The addition of eight to ten glasses of water per day will help flush your body of unwanted toxins and fat.

To many people, adding eight to ten glasses of water to their diet per day is a bit overwhelming. One way to remember to drink your water is to drink two to three glasses before every meal. This will also help you achieve a feeling of being full more quickly; thus aiding to your weight loss.

There is also a very wide variety of herbs that help aid in the cleansing of the digestive tract and colon. Herbs such as phylum are often found in over-the-counter laxatives. Phylum adds the fiber that your body needs to help it become regular and help flush out toxins that may hinder weight loss.

Detoxification and colon cleansing is a very important part of weight loss. Just changing one’s eating habits can drastically improve your overall health. Studies have shown that the poor eating habits we all fall prey to cause our colon to store mass amounts of unhealthy toxins. In fact, the human colon can hold more than thirty-five pounds of toxins and feces.

The addition of rice, nuts, seeds, fish, beans and other protein-rich foods can help cleanse the colon of most of these unwanted toxins and pounds. Simply detoxifying your body by eating more healthily and drinking lots of water is an excellent way to jump-start any diet and exercise program. It’s also probably the easiest thing you can change about yourself.

Brad Hodges is
President of BRAD HODGES ENTERPRISES
A Health e-commerce.
For more information on this article go to:
Top Secret Fat Loss Secret
A free report is available to help.

A good nutritious diet is a basic requirement for every individual in order to live a healthy life. Today, health is everyone’s top priority, which can be ensured only by good nutrition. Here are the ten important reasons as well as steps to prove that you must ensure good nutrition if you are willing to lead a healthy life.

1) A good and well balanced diet assists in development of strong bones and maintenance of normal cell growth pattern, a key to good health.

2) Consuming food rich in Vitamins after consulting your dietician as per your body’s need help your body to get the vital nutrients and keep you healthy.

3) Consuming 8 to 10 glasses of water in a day to avoid dehydration and assist in skin cleansing. This is a prerequisite for a healthy and beautiful body.

4) Certain fruits like apples and oranges are termed to be rich in negative calories and might lead to calorie deficit in you body. The moral is to avoid intake of similar kinds of fruits in a short span of time. This balanced approach for nutrition would help you remain healthy.

5) Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, as the body has to replenish the low blood sugar level in the morning. It should comprise of food rich in vitamins and minerals and have minimal fat or cholesterol. This increases the strength and endurance of the body. You can include skimmed milk or fresh fruit juice as part of your daily breakfast.

6) Fruit salad can be consumed before your main meals to decrease your appetite. Many health and diet experts consider fruit salad a necessary component of your daily diet and necessary for god health.

7) Avoid intake of unhygienic food, especially at a time when you are away from home. It can cause more problems than the delight you derive while having it. Maintaining a healthy food intake will help you avoid diseases- a prerequisite for good health.

Try to stay away from fast foods and that too at irregular hours of the day like in the evening or early morning. Fast foods contain harmful ingredients that are injurious for your health.

9) There is a prevailing misconception that exercises alone can help you to stay fit and healthy. However, it needs a supplementary role to be played by good nutrition. Nutrition and exercises are two equally important pillars of good health.

10) Stick to your diet and avoid excessively fried food. This would help you stay healthy and free from diseases.

Now that you know the importance of good nutrition and the steps for achieving balanced nutrition, follow a nutritious diet plan and enjoy good health.

Terence Young – For more great personal growth articles visit http://www.personalgrowthunlimited.com.

When buying diet pills, there are a couple of different ways to go about it. Some pills are only available by prescription, while others can be purchased over the counter (OTC). There are several different types of weight loss supplements, which will be discussed in the following few paragraphs.

Some of the more popular prescription drugs are: Bontril, an appetite suppressant; Xenical, a pill which helps the body absorb fat; Meridia, a supplement that encourages your body to shed pounds, and Phentermine which is easily the most popular appetite suppressant in the United States today. Whereas prescription drugs are available only from a licensed physician, over the counter supplements can be purchased by anyone and contain such ingredients as amino acids, vitamins, minerals, botanicals, herbs, etc. They typically come in capsules, powder, and pill form but are not a substitute for proper diet and exercise. When combined with a healthy well balanced diet and exercise, these pills can be effective in helping you lose weight.

When purchasing any weight loss supplement, it is important to speak with your doctor beforehand. When buying an OTC supplement, it is especially important that you check the ingredients, and read the labels carefully. Some serious side effects can occur when using drugs with Ephedra in them, such as arrhythmia, heart valve lesions, and high blood pressure. Fortunately, Ephedra is no longer widely available. Even the most popular weight loss supplements can cause problems, with or without Ephedra present! High doses of caffeine (which many weight loss products have) have been known to cause problems with the heart, and still other drugs are under the suspicions of the FDA. The bottom line when taking any supplement designed to expedite weight loss is to check the ingredients list carefully, make sure it will not react with any other medications you are taking, and speak with your doctor before going on any weight loss plan.

It should be noted that even weight loss drugs prescribed by a physician carry risks. If a doctor has prescribed a supplement for you, generally they feel that the benefits outweigh the risks but that does not mean it is safe. You must always follow instructions exactly as prescribed, and stop taking them immediately if you notice any unusual symptoms. Even prescription drugs must accompany a healthy diet and exercise to work. Contrary to what diet pill manufactures want you to believe, no one pill is going to make you lose weight. It takes time and effort, and only a willingness to invest in both will ensure success.

If you are serious about losing weight and would like to purchase a weight loss supplement to aid you in your goal, make sure to incorporate a well balanced diet and exercise into your plans. Buying diet pills can be beneficial to your weight loss plans, but only if you are smart about your lifestyle choices.

Ken Black is the founder of Weight Loss Discovery at www.weight-loss-discovery.com, a site that provides helpful information on weight loss.

I think it was an early Smothers Brothers routine that told the tale of a man who fell into a vat of chocolate. To summon help, he yelled “Fire!” Why? Because who would come running if he yelled “Chocolate?”

In our apparently endless quest to shed our too, too solid flesh, we seek help from the diet gurus who populate the afternoon talk shows, the monthly magazines, the tabloids, and the endless infomercials. We scan the latest diet program and research reports on a never-ending quest for the secret ingredient that will inexorably melt that fat while giving us guilt-free pleasure. We may yell “Fire!” for help, but what we really want is chocolate.

And now they’ve given it to us. Without cheating on our diets or lying to our inner selves, we can now honestly quote recent scientific reports that declare that certain properties of dark chocolate are good for us. What a triumph! Godiva and Nestle and Hershey and Cadbury are not our enemies after all. Their decadent morsels are the dietary equivalent of a work-out – something we do to make us healthy and slender. As Woody Allen promised in “Sleeper,” science has finally proved that junk food is good for us. It is a dieter’s dream, an incredible fantasy transforming diet horrors into orgies of satisfaction.

Wake up and smell the (black, unsweetened) coffee! Does chocolate have a place in a healthy, well-balanced diet? Possibly. Does it merit inclusion in any serious weight loss program? Absolutely no. The key to any of the hundreds of diets out there is to increase activity and reduce the number of calories. No matter what kind of healthful substances it may contain, chocolate carries far too dense a calorie load to be included in any weight loss plan that can expect to have a modicum of success.

We weight watchers are so gullible, so naive, so desperate for relief from the drudgery and boring routine of a diet, that we clutch at any straw that promises an interruption to our misery. We embrace any concept or substance that will make us human again. We erase our guilt with the sure knowledge that we are only following the dictates of objective science.

A co-worker of mine bakes a variety of goodies and brings them in to sell to staff as a side business. She proudly informs her potential customers that she only uses dark chocolate which has been proven to be healthy. The gang goes wild, weekly buying her entire stock of cake and cookies. Munching down on their thousand calorie snacks, they positively purr with satisfaction that what they are eating is healthy and nutritious.

A voice in the wilderness, I remind them that healthy snacks like vegetables or fruit would confer the same benefits but would also avoid that insidious waistline bulge. Happy tubbies all, they assure me that I am not up-to-date on my knowledge of nutrition and that eating dark chocolate is a proven road to health and I should hop to it.

I look around me at women considerably younger than I am, ranging from pleasantly plump to obese. (Okay, there are one or two skinnies who eat anything they want but they are the rare exceptions in any group, even though the objects of all our envy). It is hard to reconcile the sight of a rotund woman, eyes closed in ecstasy, cheeks bulging, with the concept of optimum weight and health.

What are we doing? We are fooling ourselves yet again. We have convinced ourselves that as long as something we eat has some redeeming nutritional value, it’s okay for us to eat it. We conveniently “forget” about the energy-in/energy-out equation that is the basis for stable and healthy weight. We assiduously avoid our secret internal recognition that what a skinny or normal weight can enjoy occasionally, we on weight loss programs can not. We assure ourselves that indulgences are necessary to keep up our morale and help us stay on our diets.

What diet? Any weight loss plan that promises us that we can eat all we want (and we want a lot) of any particular food, and never feel a pang of hunger, is, quite simply, a scam. Restricting our intake of food necessarily means that we can’t keep eating the way we have in the past – remember, that’s what got us fat in the first place.

Losing weight is tough, boring, frustrating and generally devoid of much pleasure. For the few seconds of elation we feel when we step on the scale and detect a definite loss, we must endure hours and days of refusing what we would like in order to do what we must to reach our goal.

Chocolate, like any food that excites and obsesses us, holds the seeds of our weight control destruction within it. Unlike so many foods we can avoid without a backward glance, it carries a toxic temptation that haunts our dreams, crushes our willpower, and murders our unceasing efforts to control our own appetites. It offers the promise of heaven: pure satisfaction for the pleasure centers of our brain.

It is a powerful weapon that we touch dangerously. It is almost impossible to handle it safely – one bite and the restraints fall off. Our taste buds, our tongues, our neurotransmitters, and our very being, all cry out for more. Like the junkies we are, we beg for one more fix.

It is impossible for an alcoholic to stop after the first drink, unthinkable for a meth head to walk away while crystals are still available, out of the question for a compulsive gambler to leave the table while there are still chips to play. For the true overeater, one taste of the sweet, smooth confection is a diet death sentence.

The only way we tortured weight control freaks can handle it is through total abstinence. One day at a time, we must fight the urge for one taste, one morsel, one shaved corner of a forbidden bar. The longer we can avoid the taste, the more its memory will fade but, like the addict, we will never totally eliminate the cravings and must constantly guard against relapse.

Substituting a low calorie chocolate alternative is tantamount to starting a methadone maintenance program – we no longer get high (gain weight) but we need a constant dosage to maintain a sense of well-being. As long as the taste of chocolate is a fresh and vivid memory, even if a low calorie version is used, the lure of the precious stuff remains and will eventually overwhelm our “no” power and lead to the dread of all we yo-yo overweighters: diet suicide.

Dr. Bola is a psychologist and an admitted diet fanatic, specializing in therapeutic reframing and the effects of attitudes and motivation on individual goals. Visit her at: http://www.DietWithAnAttitude.com/index2.html