Tag Archives: overweight and feeling down

About Dieting

01/12/12 by Debbie weight loss | No Comments

Posted in: About Dieting, Blog

There’s no greater reason to diet than for your personal health and welfare. Those of us who are overweight understand better than most the risks and possible consequences that might result because of our weight. Much like smokers however, the risks don’t always appear quite so cut and dry till we reach our very own turning point.

 

Whether you’re eating habits are born of an addiction to particular foods, an emotional need, or years of learned behavior and conditioning things won’t change until you totally adjust your eating habits and your life-style choices.

 

Dieting for most has become a life-style in and of itself with individuals rapidly flip-flopping or yo-yoing from one diet to another with little success and growing desperation over a sheer lack of results. The truth is that till you decide to forgive yourself for your failures and get right back on the wagon, as it were, after falling off no diet is going to be successful.

 

A simple diet isn’t going to as if by magic make the pounds disappear and constantly depriving yourself of those things you enjoy most may have a more damaging effect than a positive effect.

 

The number one thing most individuals need to learn is that dieting isn’t always a great thing. What most individuals who are overweight need more than anything else is to incorporate positive lifestyle changes into their daily routines.

 

One more thing you should remember if it comes to dieting is that the scale may be your best friend or your worst enemy if dieting. If you’re weighing yourself daily in hopes of watching the scale tick off yet another pound you’re dooming yourself to failure.

 

You’ll never accomplish the results you’re hoping for you if you’re going into depressive bouts of Rocky Road or Chunky Monkey nightly because you didn’t lose 10 pounds overnight.

 

If it comes to dieting there are really few diets that work. There are however, a lot of lifestyle changes that if practiced consistently and aggressively will work. The thing to remember is that you’re the one who must work because it’s quite unlikely that any diet will.

Healthy Food Choices for Weight Loss

10/21/11 by Debbie weight loss | No Comments

Posted in: Healthy Food Choices for Weight Loss

 

One of the biggest changes you can make when it comes to losing weight in a safe and sane way, is centered around the way you make personal choices. As a matter of fact, the issue of making changes in your life is almost completely about choice. Learning how to make healthy choices instead of keeping on with the options and choices that have led you to the overweight place you are right now.

 

There is nothing wrong with the choices you have made up to this point, and in fact many people are quite comfortable with their level of health and weight. But if you are not happy with the way you feel or the way you look, and you wan t to change, then learning how to make different choices is a good first step.

 

When we were growing up, the habits of the people around you, like your parents and your siblings, became your choices in life as well. No blame there, they were only doing the best they could with what they knew how to do. Sometimes, those were the only choices that were available at the time. It’s not like when you are a small child that you are going to tell your Mom that the food she is giving you is not healthy for you. You are pretty much just going to eat it.

 

Of course, there are always some kids who throw tantrums at mealtimes, but for the most part, you learn to eat what you are given to eat. As a result of this choice on the part of somebody else, you learned that these choices were the correct ones. If those choices included lots of good healthy food, then you probably grew up with a healthy body weight.

 

But if the food you were provided as a child was high fat, or high calorie or all carbohydrates, then you learned that those were the correct food choice to make. But now maybe those choices don’t serve you so much anymore.

 

Time to try out a new set of food choices that can help you in your quest to losing weight. So here are some new options that you can try to help you release some of that extra weight.

 

New Choice #1

 

Include some sources of protein with your meals that are NOT beef or pork. Beef and pork are not the horrible bogeymen that they have been made out to be by lots of dieting gurus. But they are usually higher in hard to digest fat than choices like chicken, fish, peanuts or cottage cheese.

 

Your body goes through different steps to metabolize and release the nutrients in each of those foods. What happens is that the energy and nutrients like amino acids help your body perform well. So you want to eat sources of protein that burn cleanly in your body and have fewer calories.

 

New Choice #2

 

At least once a week, try having a meatless lunch and dinner. These two meals don’t have to be on the same day, but they certainly can be.  A lot of people have grown up with the idea that if it doesn’t have meat in it, it’s not a meal. And that is just not true.

 

A meal does not have to include meat and in many parts of the world, meat is served at only one meal and sometimes no meals during the day. Sometimes as little as once a week. Now that doesn’t mean those people are healthier than you, but if you are looking for an easy kind of choice to make in your eating habits, this could be one to try.

 

There is no reason why you can’t have a meal with whole grains, fruits, vegetables and legumes. Legumes are things like beans and split peas. Legumes have a fair amount of protein in them. And if you don’t have things like pork and beans, but instead make your meal of chili beans without meat or something like split pea soup with no ham, you will fell very full. You will get a good nutritious meal and you will have eaten way less calories of fat than you would if you had meat.

 

These choices are actually pretty easy to make in your life, and if you really want to lose weight in a non-suffering way, try a couple of these changes and you will be quite pleasantly surprised with the results.