Gregory Camp asked:


Good Nutrition Can Lead to Desired Weight Loss

 Personal body image invariably involves how we view our physical selves, and how we perceive others see us.

 We are constantly bombarded with advertisements, depicting perfectly-proportioned men and women, who seem to be enjoying themselves tremendously.  The message:  if only you could control your eating habits you could live the good life too.

 Good nutrition, as it applies to our daily lives means that we take in what we need, to maintain our body’s healthy state.  Nutrition has become an important word thanks to the involvement of the USDA in our daily food requirements, and the FDA’s involvement in determining what is, and is not, dangerous for us to consume.

 What about eating habits?  What roles does our daily intake play in our health?  The body’s ability to remain well, under anything other than ideal conditions is a direct result of the nutrition received on a daily basis. 

 How do we determine that we are providing the essential nutritional needs?  That knowledge comes by educating ourselves about what our individual needs are, the needs of our family, and then taking that knowledge and applying it to the foods we buy, that we prepare, and that our families consume.

 Health is taught as a science course.  Little individual attention is given to how to attain optimal health via our eating habits.  It’s funny that we skip the most important, fundamental building block to good health:  our nutritional and caloric consumption in our food. 

 The body’s metabolism is a unique process for each individual person.  No two people metabolize food at the same rate; therefore no two people have the same metabolism.  We all use our calories at different rates, with different results.  Our metabolism, like our fingerprints is unique to each of us.  But the need to understand and accommodate this metabolism is an issue that we all face.

 The dictionary defines metabolism as the sum of all biochemical processes involved in life, or the sustaining of life.  In application, concerning our health, metabolism is related to the intake and use of food.  In reference to the case in point, it is our ability to utilize our food to the fullest extent. 

 Right now, the greatest results in raising our metabolism come from exercise and building our muscle mass, while reducing our body fat.  Adding more muscle to the body, in turn causes us to burn more calories, and this helps to elevate our metabolic rate.  Muscle tissue, per cubic gram burns calories at twice the rate of fat, per cubic gram.

 Our metabolism functions also depend on how well we have taken car of our nutritional needs.  Some people have really high rates of metabolism.  In other words, when they consume food, their bodies burn it up almost as fast as they consume it.  Then there are those of us who use our food intake so slowly, as to not even notice that we’re burning calories.  These people who burn quickly are often slim and trim, the people who burn more slowly are the people with the tendency toward obesity.

 For years, people have sought ways to raise the metabolic rate.  If you can raise someone’s metabolic rate, you are then better able to control the burn of calories especially for overweight or obese people.  This would make the goal of better or improved health a much easier reality for these people.  Efforts to date have produced very little results.  There are food that we can consume that naturally raise our metabolic rate, but not to a great extent.  What we need is a way to directly alter the rate.  We need to be able to raise our metabolism to a point where we can actually see a benefit.

 There is where the effort to stay physically fit and active provides tremendous payoff.  Over the course of your life, if you stay active, exercise, and maintain optimal health for your muscles, you will see a tremendous difference in the rate that your body metabolizes food.  As people age, their metabolism quite naturally slows down.  The greatest way to prevent this from happening is through exercise and staying fit.

 The best way to date to control our metabolic process is through proper nutrition, daily exercise, eating foods known to have an effect on our metabolic rate, and plenty of rest.  The metabolic process can be indirectly controlled by these methods.

 If we can understand that a pound of fat represents 3500 calories, then it’s simple mathematically to see, that a 500 calorie reduction per day, will result in a one pound loss per week.  An increase in exercise and a decrease in daily caloric consumption will result in the desired weight reduction, over time. 



Kansieo.com

Sandra Ahten asked:


1. Everyone is on a diet. Healthy dieters choose a diet that will bring them closer to their life goals.



Diet is a not dirty word. You are on a diet every day, and making it a healthy diet is not as challenging as you may think. It is not about starvation. It is not about being deprived. It is about being able to breathe in your jeans. Even more than that, it is about living your best life. It is about having integrity in your actions.

2. Healthy dieters intentionally plan their diets.

Without intention and planning, most people will eat what they’ve always eaten; whatever is convenient; whatever is marketed to them—just like the rest of society. Unless you want to look like the rest of society looks and want the body you currently have (or the one you’ll have after the next five pounds, or the next . . .), then you can’t continue to eat like the rest of society eats, and you certainly can’t continue to eat what you’ve always eaten. Instead, you must deliberately plan and pursue a healthy diet.

3. Healthy dieters don’t make excuses.

There is no one-size-fits-all diet. There are untold ways to cut calories, get more exercise, and improve the healthfulness of our diet. It is important not to argue for what you can’t do, but instead search for what you are willing to do to achieve a healthy diet that fits your life and goals.

4. Healthy dieters don’t whine about the effort it takes to eat a healthful diet and are willing to spend time planning and preparing.

Dieting is hard. Dieting is easy. Either of these could be true, depending on your attitude. The truth of the matter is, dieting just is. Ever since Eve plucked the apple from the tree, the cavewoman rubbed sticks together to roast the bear, grandma strung a string bean, the Irish boiled the potato, or the Koreans pickled a cabbage, we’ve had to put effort into having a healthy diet. Modern, successful hipsters that you are—you do not escape this reality just because you can order Chinese takeout.                               

5. Healthy dieters base their diets around a weekly planning routine.

Diets are not a one-time decision. Just as soon as you get comfortable in your routine, you’ll remodel your kitchen, go on vacation, sprain an ankle, hit hormone hell, or simply get bored. Part of having a healthy diet means having the flexibility to roll with life’s changes.                                                                                                               

6. Healthy dieters embrace dieting from the top down, expressing curiosity about the whys and wherefores of eating habits.

As babies, the first comfort you received was at the ****** or bottle. You are hardwired to eat for comfort. You also eat to socialize, to procrastinate, and out of pure habit. There are a myriad of reasons for eating that go far beyond nutrition. Sorting those out, exploring alternatives, and finding ways to enjoy a healthy diet for any of these reasons—without sabotaging your health and well-being—is an interesting process.

7. Healthy dieters combine the top-down approach with the bottom-up approach to dieting and understand they have to impose some structure to change their deeply ingrained habits and learn new behaviors.

Calories in/calories out, keeping a food diary, making a meal plan, devising a strategy for getting to the gym, or going grocery shopping with a list are just some of the practical, bottom-up approaches that might be used for diet accountability and information gathering, all of which are necessary for healthy dieting.

8. Healthy dieters use the inside-out approach to dieting—using diet as a means for self-inquiry and as a catalyst for personal development and spiritual and emotional growth.

Life lessons are learned through difficulty. No one would choose to have a rocky marriage, credit card debt, or an illness, but savvy men and women learn valuable lessons from the curves life throws them, and that includes the need to diet. Healthy dieting is one of the easier curves through which you get an opportunity to learn life lessons—at least it is something you can control.

9. Healthy dieters spend five minutes each day setting their intentions and planning their diet direction. They commit five more minutes to reviewing their day, noting their accomplishments and opportunities to self-correct.

Demanding perfection will give you an excuse not to “diet” at all. The truth is that you’ll sometimes stray off of your ideal course, but part of healthy dieting is learning to make those detours less drastic and frequent.                                                                                              

10. Healthy dieters get the support and motivation they need to succeed—and understand this support goes beyond “getting to goal weight.”

Changing something so ingrained in your own personal psyche, society, families, and workplaces can be a major undertaking. Healthy dieting requires a support system to help you when the challenge seems particularly daunting.

11. Healthy Dieters learn to normalize their relationship with food and their body so they can spend their time and energy being more present in the world around them.

The healthy dieter understands that there is more to life than dieting—much more!



Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress

Steven N. Muller asked:


In order to optimize your health a good diet is essential. But, with all the fad diets around it can be difficult to know what is ‘good’. Nutrition science to the rescue! Though some things are still controversial, numerous studies reinforce the following basic information.

A healthy diet requires not just items from the four basic food groups, but in the proper proportion. The average person will need about 2000-2500 calories (sometimes more for larger men, less for women and those looking for rapid weight loss). About 50% of those calories should come in the form of carbohydrates, with 30% from fats (yes, fat is good!) and 20% from protein.

Carbohydrates are the main source of compounds needed for energy. Simple sugars, such as glucose and fructose, are rapidly broken down in the intestine and absorbed. Some processing starts the minute they hit your tongue. Complex carbohydrates – starches, such as those found in potatoes – take longer, but are also healthy in moderation.

Fats are chemically similar to carbohydrates, and contain fatty acids essential to health. Proteins are lysed (split) to make amino acids, that are then recombined to form proteins used in muscles and other structures.

Meat is a valid and healthy source of protein for almost everyone. About 3 ounces per meal is about right for the average sized person. A cup of pasta is a good source of carbohydrates. Two cups of leafy green vegetables supply fiber, minerals and vitamins.

A balanced meal can be made up of a serving of meat or other protein source, starchy carbohydrates such as pasta, rice, corn or potatoes, and fruit. Easy on the butter or margarine, go light on cheese, sauces and anything high in sugar or fat.

Though you could get the basics from a variety of sources, when considering weight control in addition to getting the proper balance, it’s important to know which sources are high in what.

Fat contains nine calories per gram, which is double than other energy sources. Thus, you need to keep those foods high in fat down to modest levels. That also helps control cholesterol levels.

All sources of carbohydrates have four calories per gram. But healthy sources also contain needed minerals, vitamins and fiber. Some examples are fruits (apples, pears, peaches), nuts (walnuts are lower in fat than peanuts or cashews, for example) and grains (for fiber and minerals).

Why is candy bad, unless consumed in very modest portions? Because they are designed to be high in fat, high in sugar with much lower amounts of helpful nutrients. Neither fat nor sugar are harmful in moderation. Indeed, they’re essential to good health. But when consumed in a form that contains an excessive proportion, they provide enormous calories and fewer other nutrients.

A single Snickers candy bar, for example, contains 63g, with 53g of sugar, but only 2g of fiber. This kind of snack, especially at the beginning of a new diet of nutritional regimen, can be hard to resist. A cup of broccoli (something that you probably don’t often crave) has, by contrast, only 6g total, of which 2.5g are fiber, 1.5g are sugars. A cup of sweet corn has 31g total, 21g are starch (complex carbohydrates), 3g of fiber.

Unfortunately, listing the good and bad traits of the foods you eat doesn’t help healthy foods to sound more appealing, or unhealthy foods less tasty. Fortunately, there are ways to help control unhealthy cravings. One of the best ways to curb cravings for sugary, salty, and unhealthy foods is to have a clean and healthy digestive system. A short-term cleansing program, such as Isagenix 9-Day Cleansing and Fat Burning System, is a great way to jumpstart a lifetime of new eating habits, as it re-trains the body to crave healthful foods.

In the end, the best way to being a launch a true lifestyle change is to change the way your body sees food. Visit www.loseweightandcleanse.com for details on Isagenix’s 9-Day System, and how it can jump-start your health and weight loss goals.



Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress