Quote to Card

Almost 108 million Americans were overweight or obese in 1999. Even today, obesity continues to be a very serious problem and is expected to reach epidemic levels by the year 2020. One way to prevent this happening is to make people aware of the risks of being overweight or obese. Here are some diseases that you are putting yourself at risk to, if you are carrying a lot of extra pounds: 1. heart disease; 2. stroke; 3. diabetes; 4. cancer; 5. arthritis; 6. hypertension.

Losing weight helps to avoid or control these diseases. The rapid weight loss methods that have spread like wildfire recently do not offer lasting results. More often than not, dieting programs which involve dietary drinks, foods and supplements or pills do not necessarily work. If they do, the results are just temporary. It is better to rely on a healthy weight loss option which will provide lifetime results. You have to set realistic objectives and not expect to lose a lot of pounds in a short span of time. Here are some tips on how you can lose those excess pounds in a healthy way:

1. Do not starve your self. The only path to a safer, healthier method of losing weight is: Do not diet. You may be happy that you are shed those excess kilos on your stomach and thighs by skipping meals. However, just remember that this can not go on long. Your body can not tolerate having insufficient sustenance to fuel the energy that you expend everyday. If you try missing one or two meals a day, your body will go into starvation mode, meaning that when you do eat, it will go right to your thighs, buttocks and hips.

2. Start your day correctly. Mothers always say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and they are right. Have a healthy meal in the morning to jump-start your metabolism. A traditional breakfast of bacon, eggs etc. will keep your stomach busy all day, staving off your hunger pangs.

3. Eat smaller, healthy meals often. Five small servings a day is far better than three hearty meals. Eating more often, and in smaller amounts, can help avoid over-eating. This will also speed up your metabolism and force your body to burn more calories faster.

4. Decide on how much weight you want to lose. Keep your aims realistic. In the long run, it is virtually impossible for you to lose 40 pounds in two weeks. Have a mindset that you want to eat healthy to stay healthy for the rest of your life. Once you have decided on a weight loss plan or program, keep to it and make certain that you follow your own set of dieting rules.

5. Drink plenty of water. Your body needs sufficient water to burn fat and keep your cells hydrated and healthy.

6. Avoid too much sugar. Plan your meals around lots of fruits and vegetables, some bread, rice or pasta for that carbo fix that you want, plus lean meat and protein rich-foods. Sweets, sodas and pastries should be once-in-a-while indulgences only.

7. Watch your fat intake. Fat is not the reason for being overweight. You need fat to keep your weight at the correct level. There is such a thing as a healthy fat. Olive, peanuts and canola oil have them. Tuna, salmon and mackerel have omega-3 essential fatty acids which are great for the heart.

8. Exercise.

Leave your car where it is, if you are only travelling a few hundred yards from home, take the stairs instead of the lift, jog, cycle or skate. Use these activities and other home chores if you are too busy to go to the gym and take exercise classes. Make sure that you do this frequently and you will not even notice that you are already shedding pounds with these mundane chores.

It does not matter how many kilos you want or have to to lose. What is important is that you set achievable goals for yourself. Go slowly. If you have already lost 5-6 pounds, give yourself a break then try to lose the next five pounds. Eat healthy, drink lots of water, have plenty of sleep and exercise. This will give you a higher chance of losing weight and improving your health, which will result in a new, shapelier you.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a variety of subjects, and is now involved with Italian Pasta Flour. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Gourmet Food and Good Health.

It is a good idea to set yourself targets, if you want to reach a goal. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about this. For example, if you are a size 14 and you spend a fair bit of money on some gorgeous size 8 dresses as motivation, you will probably feel quite cheesed off if you are not wearing them a month later.

It is not a good idea to make yourself feel bad, so the right way to have done this would have been to set smaller, more easily attainable, less expensive goals. A consequence of disappointing yourself like that could be depression or / and desperation and desperation to meet your targets can lead to stupid decisions.

Foolish decisions like following a fad diet, because it promises you rapid weight loss. There is no such thing as sustainable rapid weight loss without a change of lifestyle. Yes, you can go for surgery and have lumps cut off yourself or you can pump yourself full of diuretics and squeeze the water out of yourself, but the weight will come back, unless you change the way you live.

Any diet that promises rapid weight loss without recommending a healthier, more active lifestyle is dubious. Many of these kinds of diet are fad diets. The organizers of these diets are only interested in selling you magic potion drinks or powders as meal substitutes. I have even seen one company selling magnetic earrings which were ‘guaranteed’ to make you lose weight, if you dieted and did more exercise!

Of course you will lose weight if you diet and exercise, but carrying the earrings around with you is not helping. It just adds to the depression when you read in the newspaper that the guru you have been following is outed as a con artist.

Here are a few tell-tale signs to help you spot a phony diet:

Any diet that tells you to miss meals should start red lights flashing. If you stop eating, you are reducing the amount of calories you are consuming, so you can expect to lose weight. That is not rocket science. You do not need to pay for advice like that.

However, this approach does not necessarily work either. If you miss a meal, your blood/sugar levels will drop and that has different consequences for different people, but none of them are good. It will also increase the likelihood that you will overeat at the next meal. It would be better to eat a salad, an apple or a banana instead.

Any weight loss program that says you can lose weight without exercising or without dieting is definitely iffy too, because exercise is essential for good blood circulation and metabolism, which are vital to your losing weight and living healthily.

However, exercise alone will not guarantee good health, you have to diet too. In this context ‘dieting’ just means eating healthily.

You do not have to wear anything special to lose weight either. Electric vibrating belts, magnetic earrings, sweat-inducing cummerbunds and the like, do not work. Full stop. They do not work and in a similar vein, powder and liquid substitutes are not worth it either. Get a liquidizer and make your own or just eat properly.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several topics, but is now involved with Speedo Swimming Costumes. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Swimwear For Big Busts.