Healthy Eating Tips

Are you looking forward to a wonderful summer? Beaches, warm weather and of course - BBQ’s.

Along with the relaxing atmosphere and ease of preparing a BBQ dinner or picnic for friends and family come some well known risks. You are likely aware that e.coli and salmonella can cause symptoms that range from mild discomfort to life threatening emergencies. But why is this more common during summertime meals and how can you protect your loved ones without ruining your summer?

During the summer when we are picnicking or having a BBQ we are not preparing a meal with the usual amenities we have in the house - sink, oven, fridge. Because of this we are more likely to forget to wash hands, store food properly or even grab a clean plate to serve food.

Here are some ways you can protect yourself from summertime dining outdoors:

SEPARATE

From the grocery store, to the cart, to the fridge, to the table - keep meats and other food separated.

Always wrap meats even when thawing to prevent the juices from dripping onto other foods, especially produce. Produce has been identified as a culprit in some food poisoning cases.

WASH

Wash hands, cutting boards, dishes and food.

Always wash your hands before and after preparing foods. Never serve cooked meat on the same plate or tray that you had it on when raw - make sure the resident BBQ expert is given a clean plate to place the finished product on. Also thoroughly clean knives and cutting boards. Ideally you should use a separate cutting board for bread and produce and another for meat products.

Wash produce in cold water and scrub thick skinned foods like cantaloupe as the bacteria can come in contact with the flesh of the fruit when being cut.

COLD and HOT

Keep cold food cold and hot food hot.

Food can normally last for two hours at room temperature, but that is decreased to one hour in warm weather. Cold food (potato salad, sandwiches etc.) should stay in the fridge until ready to serve. If the food must travel, be certain to use ice or commercial freezing gel packets. Hot food should also stay insulated.

When eating outdoors try to keep cold food in the shade and be sure warm food is wrapped and insulated.

When the food is no longer being eaten it should be returned to the ice box or insulated carrier. Food should remain hot or cold for as long as it is being served and then refrigerated in clean, covered containers. If you are not able to refrigerate it within a couple hours it is best to throw it out.

If you suspect a mild case of food poisoning than try to limit the foods you eat to the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce and toast. In more severe cases you should seek emergency treatment when there are signs of pain, vomiting for several hours or bloody diarrhea. Pregnant women, elderly, those with immune disorders and children are more at risk.

Food safety is an important part of a fun summer. Taking precautions will help you enjoy your meals and avoid serious consequences.

Healthy Eating Tips — Sign up for our FREE newsletter to further improve and enhance your health. Our articles have information on healthy eating tips, healthy living, weight loss, diet, nutrition and fitness for an active lifestyle!

Visit us at http://www.foryourhealthinfo.com

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If you’re stalled on a weight loss plateau despite sticking to your diet, the first thing to check is your water intake. Research suggests that most Americans unknowingly suffer from mild, chronic dehydration, and you could be one of them!

So why should you care? Because water is an essential ingredient for your weight loss. In fact, water is needed for a wide range of the body’s biochemical processes, but lets just look at what water does for dieters:

Water is essential for your body to metabolize stored fat into energy - so much so, that your body’s metabolism can be slowed by relatively mild levels of dehydration. And the slower your metabolism, the slower your weight loss (and the greater your fatigue), until eventually your weight loss just crawls to a halt, and you hit the dreaded diet plateau.

Water is a natural appetite suppressant. In the hypothalamus, a region in your brain that controls appetites and cravings, the control centers for hunger and thirst are located next to each other, and there tends to be some overlap. This has both advantages and disadvantages for the dieter: on the down side, it means that chronic mild dehydration can confuse these control mechanisms, leading to feelings of hunger, rather than thirst. But on a positive note, it means you can use water to reduce your appetite. For example, in one University of Washington study, drinking a glass of water reduced nighttime hunger cravings for most of the dieters studied.

Water is an essential component of the processes that enable muscle to contract. This means that water helps to maintain muscle tone. Better muscle tone means a better looking body, and isn’t that what dieting and weight loss is about?

Water also helps to prevent the sagging skin that often follows weight loss - water plumps the skin cells, giving the skin a younger and healthier look.

Water helps rid the body of waste. During weight loss, the body has a lot more waste to get rid of, as a byproduct of all that metabolized fat. So adequate water is essential to your health while dieting.

Water can even help with constipation. When the body gets too little water, it siphons what it needs from within, particularly from the colon. This leads to constipation. But normal bowel function usually returns with adequate water intake.

More generally, mild dehydration can cause a number of health problems, in addition to your diet plateau. The symptoms of mild dehydration can include: -

- Headaches & feeling light headed, as dehydration interferes with normal body processes, including waste disposal.
- Fatigue, as the body’s metabolism is slowed - mild dehydration is probably the most common cause of daytime fatigue.
- Hunger & cravings due to weakening of the thirst mechanism
- Fluid retention as your body tries to hold on to the water it already has
- Constipation, as the body works to conserve its internal water sources

Not a pretty picture, is it? But once you get your water in balance, you reach the “breakthrough point”, a concept pioneered by Dr. Peter Lindner, a California obesity expert. Once you’ve reached the breakthrough point, fluid retention eases, the liver and endocrine system start to function more effectively, you will start to regain your natural thirst and your hunger cravings will be significantly reduced. And so the end result of reaching and sustaining the breakthrough point in your water balance is that your body is able to metabolize fat more effectively.

So how much water should you drink daily, for a healthy and ‘adequate’ intake? First, a couple of basic principles:

1) The easiest way to tell if you are drinking enough water is to monitor the color of your urine: It should be clear or a very pale yellow in color. (but note that some supplements and medications may also affect your urine color).

2) Get in to the habit of drinking regular and adequate amounts of water. Never wait to drink until you’re thirsty, because if you’re feeling thirsty, then dehydration has already started to occur!

Having said that, an adequate water intake for a sedentary but normal-weight adult during cool weather, is generally recognized as 8 x 8 oz glasses.

Note that you need additional water in hot weather, when you lose more water through sweat.

You also need additional water when you exercise. Athletes attempt to enhance their performance by maintaining an optimal fluid balance while exercising, estimated to require 6 to 12 oz of fluid at 15 to 20 minute intervals. Even if you’re not concerned about your athletic performance, you should consume a similar amount of water when exercising, in order to maintain adequate hydration.

And if you’re overweight, you’ll need an extra glass of water for each 25 pounds overweight, because the extra weight creates extra metabolic demand

But how do you manage to drink so much water? A typical recommendation from the weight loss experts is 3 glasses of water with every meal. That’s 3 glasses with breakfast, 3 with lunch, and 3 with dinner. Plus, of course, additional regular water between meals when you’re exercising or when its hot.

So if you’re dieting, stalled on a weight loss plateau, or suffering some of the classic symptoms of dehydration, do, first of all, ensure that you have an adequate water intake. It could be the ‘missing ingredient’ in your diet regime.

Healthy Eating Tips — Sign up for our FREE newsletter to further improve and enhance your health. Our articles have information on healthy eating tips, healthy living, weight loss, diet, nutrition and fitness for an active lifestyle!

Visit us at http://www.foryourhealthinfo.com

Do you find it almost impossible to stay conscious and contentious about weight and nutrition during the holidays? Of course you do. More than half of all Americans are overweight. All American’s are in this together.

You can take heart from a new government study which shows most Americans gain about a pound over the holiday. You’re not alone. The study shows that during the holiday period, for the people in the study, two main things influenced the holiday weight gain: level of hunger and level of activity. Those who reported being less active or more hungry had the greatest weight gain.

If you can stay focused on dealing with just those two things, you’ll probably win.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of weight gain,” according to Dr. Samuel Klein. He is Director of the Center for Human Nutrition as Washington University in St. Louis, MO. “Preventing the increase in weight is a lot easier and better than actually gaining weight and then trying to get it off again.”

The answer is simple. Eat less and exercise more.

The good news is that most of the people overestimate how much they had gained. Fewer than 10% gain 5 pounds or over.

The bad news is that although the one pound gained seems like a small amount, that weight WAS NOT LOST during the rest of the year and those single pounds accumulate over the years and add up to obesity.

Here are some helpful hints and tips put together by skinny people to help you avoid the tiny little weight watching issues you face during this joyous season [along with the thoughts going through weight watcher Wanda’s head as she listened to the skinny people happily chirping out their advice. NOTE: Wanda isn’t her real name.]

1).”You SHOULD stay active, darling. The best thing for you to do is to stick to your regular schedule and routine.” [Routine? Wanda’s family doesn’t have no stinking routine in November and December. Wanda doesn’t have no stinking time for her regular yoga classes, workouts at the gym, long dog walks, you ninny, because in addition to shopping, home decorating and cooking, Wanda has to take every one of the kids to EXTRA practices and activity for pageants, concerts and freaking fund raisers! Wanda’s too ACTIVE to stay active, darling.]

2). “Don’t let yourself get hungry. Don’t arrive at the party starving. Be sure you eat your normal, healthy meals, especially breakfast. A protein rich breakfast “resets” the body and starts it off not hungry. Don’t starve yourself, thinking you can “save up” calories. Fill up before the big holiday feasts with healthy vegetable snacks.” [Normal? There ain’t no stinking “normal” in November and December, and Wanda’s not sure she ever has normal, healthy meals. She’s got a life to run. Wanda doesn’t't’t know where YOU’RE having Thanksgiving, but Wanda’s family’s appetizer table has God’s own Cheese Puffs and Ruffles with sour cream/onion dip, Brie on sourdough and 80 plates of cookies and bowls of peanut M&Ms on every available surface! There is nary a vegetable snack in sight.]

3) “How can you keep the pounds off at calorie rich parties? Stay away from the food! Literally … stay on the other side of the room from the buffet table or appetizers tray. [Wanda liked this one. She’ll just go plant herself in the bathroom and lock the door. Maybe she can find a place under the pile of coats in the back bedroom. A nap sounds nice.]

4). “Wear clothes which are slightly tight and your favorites. You’ll think twice about the third helping if you can’t let your belt out a notch. Always remember there’s about 8 pounds between dress sizes.” [What skinny sadist came up with this bright idea? Wanda bets she’s a size 2, and hides an eating disorder!]

5). “Portion size is the real secret. Keep salad portions large and all other portions extra small. When it comes to sweets, think quality, not availability. Just because the candy corn is there doesn’t mean you have to eat it. Don’t be afraid to cut off “just a bite” of a high calorie treat. Put the rest back on the serving tray. If you’re the hostess, pre-cut high calorie items into tiny portions to help your friends. Just a bite may be plenty to satisfy you. [Just a bite! Just a bite? Wanda’s stressed to the max and darn it, Wanda DESERVES a candy treat … and a WHOLE one. Heck, Wanda’s double stressed, so she deserves …]

6). “You don’t need to be stressed. Take Time for You. Get a massage or a nice facial. Sit down and slip your shoes off.” [Don’t you know Wanda’s facing a month and a half on shopping overdrive and the only place to sit down is at the mall’s fast-food court? McDonald’s doesn’t have a massage spa. If Wanda slips her shoes off, she’ll NEVER get them back on again, you fool.]

7). “Keep up your food diary … every day of the holiday … it will help you pinpoint your special weaknesses. Just one 150 calorie chocolate chip cookie each day will add up to an extra pound in only 3 weeks.” [Wanda can’t even find her food diary in chaos house. And, she really needed the information on the cookies. Thank you very much. Wanda just ate three, and she doesn’t need any food diary to pinpoint this little weakness.]

8). “Only eat things you really want and care about. So what if your neighbor brought okra au gratin everyone’s raving about? Use that space on your plate for a homemade roll, hot from the oven. Put real butter on it. Life is choices. Treat yourself to what you want and LEAVE THE REST IN THE SERVING DISH.”[Good advice. How thankful do you think Wanda’d be after a feast of Brussels sprouts and tofu salad while she’s passing the yams, potatoes and gravy to Aunt Lucille? Wanda bets Lucille’s glad she got granddad’s wiry build instead of those wonderful wide childbearing hips from grandma’s “peasant” stock!]

9). Drink water instead of alcohol which has empty calories and lowers will power. Avoid sugary sodas which throw your metabolism into pendulum swings. [You didn’t mention eggnog. Eggnog is OK, then, right?]

10). “Don’t eat while you cook. Those little “tastes” can turn into 1000 calories before you’ve blinked.” [Wanda just spent 304 hours in the kitchen, cooking. She HAS to taste everything before she serves it, or they’ll hate it and won’t love her any more. And besides, cookie dough doesn’t have any calories, does it?]

Well, that’s all 10 pieces of holiday advice. Here’s just one parting thought from Wanda.

[Santa’s fat and everybody loves him! The baby Jesus is fat, too. The turkey is so fat it can hardly stand up! Nobody buys a skinny Christmas tree, do they? Get a grip. Get a life. Have a HAPPY holiday.}

Healthy Eating Tips — Sign up for our FREE newsletter to further improve and enhance your health. Our articles have information on healthy eating tips, healthy living, weight loss, diet, nutrition and fitness for an active lifestyle!

Visit us at http://www.foryourhealthinfo.com

Cleveland Clinic hooks up with Weight Watchers - International Herald Tribune
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Most of us are “regular” people. We don’t eat the perfect diet all the time and have our struggles with food, same as everyone else. But having an awareness of this fact and knowing a little bit about our health and food nutrition can help when it comes to making wise decisions.

Many people struggle with food “cravings.” Studies tell us that it’s fairly common for food cravings to happen at certain times, quite often at around bedtime. Your guard may be down, you may have had an unusually hard day, and off you go on your not-so-merry way to find that tasty treat. Fatigue and stress often combine to take their toll on the best of intentions.

When food cravings are unconstrained, what starts out as a bedtime snack quickly turns into a full blown feeding frenzy…not something most of us fully understand or appreciate. We head to kitchen and every other place where food can hide, clearing a path as we go.

Most food cravings are not about satisfying a nutritional need or imbalance. They seem to be more emotionally related, or God forbid, are caused by plain old gluttony. Exactly why we over-indulge is not completely understood, however our knowledge about this subject continues to grow.

Listed below are some thoughts and ideas about food cravings:

- If the food isn’t available, you can’t eat it! Empty the cookie jar and keep it that way! Keep healthy food choices on-hand.

- Recognize the feelings and emotions that lead-up to a food craving. Do you have food cravings when you re bored, lonely, or stressed? If you can identify a trigger, you can deal with the emotion that s making you desire a certain food. Try to deal with the triggers in the best way you can.

- Sometimes, even recognizing that a craving is about to happen doesn’t seem to help. Don’t beat yourself-up. There is always tomorrow. Call a friend, make good use of your support network and share your feelings with someone.

- Get enough sleep. When you re tired, you re more likely to crave things.

- Never give-up. When you “slip”, press-in, bear-down, get a grip, do whatever is necessary to re-gain control. Try to practice restraint most of the time, but don’t get legalistic and un-balanced in your weight loss approach. Think moderation and not abstinence at all times!

- Understand that self-control and discipline by themselves, won’t cut it! If you depend totally on yourself for control, you will fail. Forming caring and supportive relationships is required. If you do not currently have a support network, start building one TODAY.

- Exercise. It increases feel-good endorphins that cut down on your cravings. Try to get at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day.

- Use moderation. Instead of stuffing yourself with every kind of food hoping that your craving will go away, eat 100 to 200 calories of your “craved” food.

- Substitute with low-fat foods and complex carbs. If you re hungry for chocolate, eat non-fat chocolate yogurt. Try fig bars or raisins for a sweet craving.

- Never skip a meal. Eat every three to five hours. Try six smaller meals or regular meals with nutritious snacks.

- Understand that hunger craving are oftentimes stress related. Practice other ways to treat chronic stress a walk in the park, spiritual connections, a cozy fireplace, baths…all these stimulate neurochemicals that activate regions of the brain that stimulate pleasure. Relaxation techniques may work by reducing the psychological drives on stress output, which can be the root causes of stress. Bottom line, substitute pleasurable experiences for comfort foods.

- Beware of certain medications. They can stimulate appetite. Drugs used for the treatment of depression and bipolar disorder can be appetite stimulants. Other drugs, both prescription and over the counter, may influence appetite as well. If you are on a medication, and troubled by food cravings, discuss this with your doctor or pharmacist. You may be able to find an alternative that doesn’t send your cravings out of control.

- Distract Yourself. What’s that old expression…idle hands are the devils workshop? Get busy. Do anything other than cave-in to your desire for food, and keep doing it until the cravings subside.

- One final thought, take a look inside your refrigerator and kitchen cabinets and do some general “house cleaning.” Throw-out all that unhealthy stuff that is waiting to sabotage your diet, and start shopping more wisely. A little forethought and careful planning will go a long way for improving your chances of success.

Eat wisely, be happy, and live long!

Healthy Eating Tips — Sign up for our FREE newsletter to further improve and enhance your health. Our articles have information on healthy eating tips, healthy living, weight loss, diet, nutrition and fitness for an active lifestyle!

Visit us at http://www.foryourhealthinfo.com

Shrink’s Progress - American Reporter
ORINDA, Calif. — In just one year Debbie, all of 17, had watched her young life plummet down hill in every conceivable dimension. She felt isolated from her family and friends. She no longer cared about boys, and they no longer even talked to her

If you’re stalled on a weight loss plateau despite sticking to your diet, the first thing to check is your water intake. Research suggests that most Americans unknowingly suffer from mild, chronic dehydration, and you could be one of them!

So why should you care? Because water is an essential ingredient for your weight loss. In fact, water is needed for a wide range of the body’s biochemical processes, but lets just look at what water does for dieters:

Water is essential for your body to metabolize stored fat into energy - so much so, that your body’s metabolism can be slowed by relatively mild levels of dehydration. And the slower your metabolism, the slower your weight loss (and the greater your fatigue), until eventually your weight loss just crawls to a halt, and you hit the dreaded diet plateau.

Water is a natural appetite suppressant. In the hypothalamus, a region in your brain that controls appetites and cravings, the control centers for hunger and thirst are located next to each other, and there tends to be some overlap. This has both advantages and disadvantages for the dieter: on the down side, it means that chronic mild dehydration can confuse these control mechanisms, leading to feelings of hunger, rather than thirst. But on a positive note, it means you can use water to reduce your appetite. For example, in one University of Washington study, drinking a glass of water reduced nighttime hunger cravings for most of the dieters studied.

Water is an essential component of the processes that enable muscle to contract. This means that water helps to maintain muscle tone. Better muscle tone means a better looking body, and isn’t that what dieting and weight loss is about?

Water also helps to prevent the sagging skin that often follows weight loss - water plumps the skin cells, giving the skin a younger and healthier look.

Water helps rid the body of waste. During weight loss, the body has a lot more waste to get rid of, as a byproduct of all that metabolized fat. So adequate water is essential to your health while dieting.

Water can even help with constipation. When the body gets too little water, it siphons what it needs from within, particularly from the colon. This leads to constipation. But normal bowel function usually returns with adequate water intake.

More generally, mild dehydration can cause a number of health problems, in addition to your diet plateau. The symptoms of mild dehydration can include: -

- Headaches & feeling light headed, as dehydration interferes with normal body processes, including waste disposal.
- Fatigue, as the body’s metabolism is slowed - mild dehydration is probably the most common cause of daytime fatigue.
- Hunger & cravings due to weakening of the thirst mechanism
- Fluid retention as your body tries to hold on to the water it already has
- Constipation, as the body works to conserve its internal water sources

Not a pretty picture, is it? But once you get your water in balance, you reach the “breakthrough point”, a concept pioneered by Dr. Peter Lindner, a California obesity expert. Once you’ve reached the breakthrough point, fluid retention eases, the liver and endocrine system start to function more effectively, you will start to regain your natural thirst and your hunger cravings will be significantly reduced. And so the end result of reaching and sustaining the breakthrough point in your water balance is that your body is able to metabolize fat more effectively.

So how much water should you drink daily, for a healthy and ‘adequate’ intake? First, a couple of basic principles:

1) The easiest way to tell if you are drinking enough water is to monitor the color of your urine: It should be clear or a very pale yellow in color. (but note that some supplements and medications may also affect your urine color).

2) Get in to the habit of drinking regular and adequate amounts of water. Never wait to drink until you’re thirsty, because if you’re feeling thirsty, then dehydration has already started to occur!

Having said that, an adequate water intake for a sedentary but normal-weight adult during cool weather, is generally recognized as 8 x 8 oz glasses.

Note that you need additional water in hot weather, when you lose more water through sweat.

You also need additional water when you exercise. Athletes attempt to enhance their performance by maintaining an optimal fluid balance while exercising, estimated to require 6 to 12 oz of fluid at 15 to 20 minute intervals. Even if you’re not concerned about your athletic performance, you should consume a similar amount of water when exercising, in order to maintain adequate hydration.

And if you’re overweight, you’ll need an extra glass of water for each 25 pounds overweight, because the extra weight creates extra metabolic demand

But how do you manage to drink so much water? A typical recommendation from the weight loss experts is 3 glasses of water with every meal. That’s 3 glasses with breakfast, 3 with lunch, and 3 with dinner. Plus, of course, additional regular water between meals when you’re exercising or when its hot.

So if you’re dieting, stalled on a weight loss plateau, or suffering some of the classic symptoms of dehydration, do, first of all, ensure that you have an adequate water intake. It could be the ‘missing ingredient’ in your diet regime.

Healthy Eating Tips — Sign up for our FREE newsletter to further improve and enhance your health. Our articles have information on healthy eating tips, healthy living, weight loss, diet, nutrition and fitness for an active lifestyle!

Visit us at http://www.foryourhealthinfo.com

To say that Americans are obsessed with dieting is an understatement! Pick up any magazine, tune-in or turn-on any source of advertising and you’re bombarded with the latest diet schemes and food fads. More often than not, they are endorsed by some familiar Hollywood celebrity, or promoted using some other cleaver technique.

It’s no mystery that the weight-loss industry has built a thriving empire. In America, for example, we spend about 35 billion dollars every year on an assortment of weight loss products and plans. In addition, we spend another 79 billion dollars for medication, hospitalization, and doctors to treat obesity-related problems. Even with this, the obesity epidemic continues to spread. Sadly, we have become the heaviest generation in our Nation’s history.

The National Center for Health Statistics reports that we have some very good reasons to be concerned about our weight-gain. Americans, for example are packing-on the pounds faster than ever before and weight-related medical problems are taking center stage. Diseases like heart disease, diabetes and yes…even certain forms of cancer have all been linked to obesity.

Here are a few of the surprising statistics about our weight:

- A whopping 64 percent of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese. That’s up approximately 8 percent from overweight estimates obtained in a 1988 report.

- The percent of children who are overweight is also continuing to increase. Among children and teens ages 6-19, 15 percent or almost 9 million are overweight. That’s triple what the rate was in 1980!

- Nearly one-third of all adults are now classified as obese. At present, 31 percent of adults 20 years of age and over or nearly 59 million people have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or greater, compared with 23 percent in 1994.

(The BMI is a number that shows body weight adjusted for height. For adults, a BMI of 18.5 - 24.9 is considered normal. A BMI of 25.0 - 29.9 is overweight and 30.0 or above, is considered obese.)

Modern life both at home and at work has come to revolve around moving from one “seated” position to another: whether it’s television, computers, remote controls, or automobiles, we seem to be broadening the scope of our inactive endeavors.

At times, life seems to have gotten almost too easy! For entertainment, we can now just sit-down, dial-up our favorite TV program or DVD movie and enjoy hours of uninterrupted entertainment…

And all those simple calorie burning activities that were once a normal part of our daily routine not so long ago? Long gone! You know the ones I’m talking about…activities like climbing stairs instead of using escalators and elevators. Or, pushing a lawn mower instead of riding around on a garden tractor. And what about that daily walk to school? Now, our kids complain when the school bus happens to be a few minutes late getting to the bus stop!

Along with the convenience of our affluent lifestyle and reduction in energy expenditure, have come changes in our diet. We are now consuming more calorie rich and nutrient deficient foods than ever before.

Here are a few examples of what we were eating in the 1970’s compared to our diet today (information is taken from a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture survey):

- We are currently eating more grain products, but almost all of them are refined grains (white bread, etc.). Grain consumption has jumped 45 percent since the 1970s, from 138 pounds of grains per person per year to 200 pounds! Only 2 percent of the wheat flour is consumed as whole wheat.

- Our consumption of fruits and vegetables has increased, but only because the U.S.D.A. includes French fries and potato chips as a vegetable. Potato products account for almost a third of our “produce” choices.

- We’re drinking less milk, but we’ve more than doubled our cheese intake. Cheese now outranks meat as the number one source of saturated fat in our diets.

- We’ve cut back on red meat, but have more than made up for the loss by increasing our intake of chicken (battered and fried), so that overall, we’re eating 13 pounds more meat today than we did back in the 1970s.

- We’re drinking three times more carbonated soft drinks than milk, compared to the 1970’s, when milk consumption was twice that of pop.

- We use 25 percent less butter, but pour twice as much vegetable oil on our food and salads, so our total added fat intake has increased 32 percent.

- Sugar consumption has been another cause of our expanding waistlines. Sugar intake is simply off the charts. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, people are consuming roughly twice the amount of sugar they need each day, about 20 teaspoons on a 2000 calorie/day diet. The added sugar is found mostly in junk foods, such as pop, cake, and cookies.

- In 1978, the government found that sugars constituted only 11 percent of the average person’s calories. Now, this number has ballooned to 16 percent for the average American adult and as much as 20 percent for American teenagers.

The days of the wholesome family dinners so near and dear to our hearts, where we all sat around the kitchen table to discuss events of the day, are now a part of our sentimental past. They have been replaced by our cravings for take-out and fast-food. We have gradually come to accept that it’s “OK” to sacrifice healthy foods for the sake of convenience and that larger serving portions mean better value.

And, since I have been throwing-out statistics, here’s one more: Americans are consuming about 300 more calories each day than we did twenty years ago. We should actually be eating less because of our decreased activity level, but instead are doing the opposite!

Decide TODAY that healthy eating and exercise habits will become a permanent part of your life!

Begin to explore your values and thoughts and other areas of your life where change may be required, and then take action. Begin slowly, but deliberately to make improvements in the areas you identify. And remember, it has taken a very long time to develop your habits, and it will take some time to undo them so be patient!

Healthy Eating Tips — Sign up for our FREE newsletter to further improve and enhance your health. Our articles have information on healthy eating tips, healthy living, weight loss, diet, nutrition and fitness for an active lifestyle!

Visit us at http://www.foryourhealthinfo.com

I ve put on 40 pounds in one year! It doesn t matter how much I workout, I can t lose weight. My doctor must think I m eating pizzas in the closet. With nearly 4 million Americans weighing in at over 300 pounds, is it any wonder the above cries are heard each and every day by countless frustrated people who can t lose weight? One such cause for the ever increasing need to buy larger pants is a disease known as Syndrome X.

Syndrome X is also referred to as Metabolic Syndrome, Metabolic Syndrome X and Insulin Resistance. It is a very common disease; however it is widely overlooked by many medical professionals. One statistic reveals 1 in 3 people suffer from it.

This syndrome is a precursor to developing Diabetes Type 2. Sufferers have a high level of insulin. Their bodies are unable to process all the insulin that is being made from their diet. As a result, they become insulin resistant.

Think of it like this: You knock on someone s door because you want to come in. If they don t answer, what normally happens? You knock again, right? Sometimes you may even knock a third time, trying to gain entry. Insulin works in the same manner. The pancreas produces insulin (knock). Some foods cause the body to produce even higher levels of insulin (knock again). Once you become insulin resistant, develop Syndrome X, the body is unable to properly process the glucose, therefore the pancreas tries to make up for it by producing even more insulin. It thinks no one is home and just keeps making more.

The main purpose of glucose is to be used as fuel for the cells in the body to produce energy. Unprocessed glucose translates into fat. If the body keeps making it and it s not being processed, where does it go? Hips, thighs, stomach, and buttocks, that s where!

In addition to hypertension and heart disease, elevated insulin may be associated with weight gain and difficulty with weight loss, other blood sugar problems such as hypoglycemia, and some menstrual related imbalances.

Genetics is partially responsible for causing this disease. More likely though is lifestyle. In many cases years of high starch, processed foods, simple sugars, lack of exercise, smoking, and increased stress may be the culprit for Metabolic Syndrome X.

Now what? For starters, start exercising today. Increase water intake and totally omit starches, sugars, processed foods from your diet. Limit or omit caffeine. Try to maintain at least one third of your daily food intake to vegetables. Ask your doctor to test your sugar levels. Change what you re eating and get walking and you ll be amazed at the pounds start to fall off. The fatigue and fuzziness will start to disappear and in turn you ll feel much better.

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