Take Responsibility for Your Health and Weight

While most of us know we need to exercise and eat healthy to lose weight, we often blame our inability to do so on things like overloaded schedules, low energy, confusion and boredom. Playing the blame game not only gives us more excuses to skip workouts, it also distances us from the fact that how we live our lives is a choice. Taking responsibility for your own choices may be the most important step you take to lose weight.
Why We're Fat
Obesity is on the rise, despite our obsession with six-pack abs and movie-star bodies. There are many things that contribute to our current weight problems including:

• Sedentary jobs
• Computers and the Internet
• Hundreds of TV channels to keep us entertained for hours
• Long hours spent in cars
• Neighborhoods that aren't exercise-friendly
• Technology that makes it possible to do almost everything from a chair
• Medical advances that let us off the hook (such as plastic surgery)
• Busy schedules
• Lack of physical activity in schools as well as easy access to junk food for kids
• Denial - Most people know that quick fix pills and gadgets don't work but they keep trying them anyway to avoid exercise.
• Confusion - There are so many rules about eating and exercise that we allow ourselves to get overwhelmed by the choices and don't do anything.
• The belief that, if we can't meet the exercise guidelines, why exercise at all?
• Fear of failure, doing the wrong thing, injury or even making fools of ourselves.

Of course, there are other factors involved with obesity, such as genetics or certain medical conditions that preclude weight loss, but for most of us, we're overweight because of our own choices. If you're tired of making excuses for your health, now is the time to take control.
How to Take Control of Your Own Choices
Losing weight means creating a calorie deficit by exercising more and eating less, but the first step in doing that is taking a look at how you live each day and asking yourself: Where am I going wrong? What am I really in control of? Take a moment to make a list of all the choices you make each day that can affect your weight such as:

• What, when and how much you eat
• Whether you exercise or not
• How active you are throughout the day
• How you deal with stress

Looking at that list or your own list, what comes to mind? Do you feel like you're in control of these things and, if not, why not? You may feel that your choices are limited (or even nonexistent) because you're overwhelmed by a busy schedule, trapped by a job that doesn't allow for much movement each day or you're simply too tired to workout.
However, even with the busiest life or the most sedentary job, there are always healthy choices you can make. Even one good choice can put you on the right path and, more importantly, make you feel more in control of your weight, your health and your future.
Think about one healthy choice you could make each day, something that would give you back control without having to overhaul your entire life. Some ideas:

• Bring your own healthy lunch to work
• Use part of your lunch hour for a brisk walk
• Incorporate simple office exercises into your work day
• Look for one task, appointment or to-do item you could delete in favor of a workout session
• Find 10 minutes each day for a quick workout
• Get up 10 minutes early for a walk around the block or a short yoga workout

No More Excuses
To take control of your health and fitness is to take full responsibility for what you're doing or not doing. It isn't easy to change how you live. In fact, it takes tremendous courage, strength and will to look at your life, see where you're going wrong and switch directions. However, the more you do it, the more you realize you can do it and that's what you really need to lose weight.

Take Responsibility for Your Health and Weight

While most of us know we need to exercise and eat healthy to lose weight, we often blame our inability to do so on things like overloaded schedules, low energy, confusion and boredom. Playing the blame game not only gives us more excuses to skip workouts, it also distances us from the fact that how we live our lives is a choice. Taking responsibility for your own choices may be the most important step you take to lose weight.

Why We're Fat
Obesity is on the rise, despite our obsession with six-pack abs and movie-star bodies. There are many things that contribute to our current weight problems including:

• Sedentary jobs
• Computers and the Internet
• Hundreds of TV channels to keep us entertained for hours
• Long hours spent in cars
• Neighborhoods that aren't exercise-friendly
• Technology that makes it possible to do almost everything from a chair
• Medical advances that let us off the hook (such as plastic surgery)
• Busy schedules
• Lack of physical activity in schools as well as easy access to junk food for kids
• Denial - Most people know that quick fix pills and gadgets don't work but they keep trying them anyway to avoid exercise.
• Confusion - There are so many rules about eating and exercise that we allow ourselves to get overwhelmed by the choices and don't do anything.
• The belief that, if we can't meet the exercise guidelines, why exercise at all?
• Fear of failure, doing the wrong thing, injury or even making fools of ourselves.

Of course, there are other factors involved with obesity, such as genetics or certain medical conditions that preclude weight loss, but for most of us, we're overweight because of our own choices. If you're tired of making excuses for your health, now is the time to take control.
How to Take Control of Your Own Choices
Losing weight means creating a calorie deficit by exercising more and eating less, but the first step in doing that is taking a look at how you live each day and asking yourself: Where am I going wrong? What am I really in control of? Take a moment to make a list of all the choices you make each day that can affect your weight such as:

• What, when and how much you eat
• Whether you exercise or not
• How active you are throughout the day
• How you deal with stress

Looking at that list or your own list, what comes to mind? Do you feel like you're in control of these things and, if not, why not? You may feel that your choices are limited (or even nonexistent) because you're overwhelmed by a busy schedule, trapped by a job that doesn't allow for much movement each day or you're simply too tired to workout.
However, even with the busiest life or the most sedentary job, there are always healthy choices you can make. Even one good choice can put you on the right path and, more importantly, make you feel more in control of your weight, your health and your future.
Think about one healthy choice you could make each day, something that would give you back control without having to overhaul your entire life. Some ideas:

• Bring your own healthy lunch to work
• Use part of your lunch hour for a brisk walk
• Incorporate simple office exercises into your work day
• Look for one task, appointment or to-do item you could delete in favor of a workout session
• Find 10 minutes each day for a quick workout
• Get up 10 minutes early for a walk around the block or a short yoga workout

No More Excuses
To take control of your health and fitness is to take full responsibility for what you're doing or not doing. It isn't easy to change how you live. In fact, it takes tremendous courage, strength and will to look at your life, see where you're going wrong and switch directions. However, the more you do it, the more you realize you can do it and that's what you really need to lose weight.

Healthy Weight Loss Diet Plan

Keeping Your Weight Loss Permanent
Losing weight is a sometimes daunting task but when successful it is a cause for great pride. Keeping the weight off is also a hard job but with some key guidelines to help it is possible to keep the weight off and enjoy yourself at the same time.

How You Eat
First, it is important that in your original plan you accomplished the loss in a healthy way with a good variety of healthy foods and exercises that fit your lifestyle and attitude. This is important because to maintain your new healthy lifestyle you will need to permanently incorporate your new eating habits and exercise regime. Variety and things that suit your pace of life is the best way to stay the course with your new healthy lifestyle.

A Healthy Attitude
You need to reinforce a positive mindset in your new habits for eating and exercising. Making sure you keep with your new routine is important and keeping an upbeat view about your new habits is vital. Luckily the nutritious food and exercise will actually help in making you physically and mentally feel better and keep an optimistic outlook.

Exercise
Exercise is a crucial step in maintaining your new lifestyle. There is a huge variety of exercises and styles of workouts. You have no excuse in not finding something to suit your schedule and temperament. It's important to remember that while you can take off weight with just wholesome and nutritious eating habits adding a cardio and weight-lifting program greatly increases your chances of losing more weight and maintaining it over time.

Motivation and Support
Sharing your goals with some friends or your family can be a good motivator and an additional help in staying the course for a healthier you. Even better include them in your new weight loss arrangement, it's an excellent way to keep up your enthusiasm and attitude.

Carefully Choose Your Weight Loss Plan
Remember to choose carefully in your weight loss ideas and plans as well as the people you let on to your intentions. You do not want any negative thoughts or feelings to hamper your goals. Losing weight can be fun and interesting if you approach it with a positive attitude. Learning about new foods and workout styles can be quite enjoyable. Learning to cook, meet new people and travel to new and different areas can all be part of your new improved life. Approaching weight loss with a fun and yet practical outlook can be extremely rewarding and life-changing.

Losing weight is challenging but can be done with some effort and the right attitude. To learn more about the healthy and natural way to not only lose weight but to keep it off visit Healthy Diets and Weight Loss Solutions to get access to a variety of resources and help.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Albert_Joseph

Ten Great Weight Loss Foods That Help You Burn Fat, Build Muscle, and Increase Your Energy

Oxford University and Pennsylvania State University have found that certain foods have fat-burning, muscle-building, or satiety-inducing properties. Here are ten great weight loss foods that help you burn fat, build muscle, and increase your energy. They also help you to control cravings.

1. Raw Fruits and Vegetables
Fruits and vegetables high in vitamin C, such as oranges, lemons, pineapples, grapefruit, apples, limes, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, celery, carrot, and watermelon liquefy body fat so it can be easily flushed out of your body, according to researchers at Arizona State University.

Pennsylvania State University researchers discovered that people who ate a large apple, approximately 128 calories, 15 minutes before lunch took in 187 fewer calories during lunch than those who didn't snack beforehand. They also reported feeling more satisfied afterward. Apples are loaded with belly-filling fiber, and they require lots of chewing, which can make you think you're eating more than you really are, says study author Julie Obbagy, Ph.D.. Apples contain pectin, a strong appetite suppressant that keeps you satisfied for long periods of time, helping you to avoid overeating so you lose weight.

People who ate half a grapefruit three times a day lost 4 pounds in 12 weeks, even though they hadn't deliberately altered any other part of their diets, according to a recent study from Louisiana State University.

2. Oatmeal
Oatmeal is high in fiber, which helps prevent your body from storing fat and suppresses your appetite. If you eat it about 1 to 2 hours before doing a weight loss workout, it will give you sustained energy, allowing you to work out longer and more intensely which results in faster weight loss.
Oatmeal can help to control cholesterol and blood glucose levels. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concludes that the use of fiber is an effective and well-tolerated part of a prudent diet for the treatment of high cholesterol. Fiber incorporated into food products is more effective at reducing blood glucose response than a fiber supplement taken separately from the food. Our blood glucose levels can determine how hungry and energetic we feel, and whether we store fat or burn it.

3. Dairy products
Dairy products like low-fat yogurt, cheese, and milk are high in calcium, which breaks down fat cells faster. In a recent study, people who ate low-fat dairy products 3 to 4 times a day lost 70 percent more fat than people on a low-dairy diet. Scientists also believe that foods high in calcium suppress calcitriol, a hormone responsible for making fat cells bigger. Other studies have shown that dairy products contain high-quality proteins that help suppress appetite.

A diet consisting mainly of high calcium foods resulted in an average weight loss of 24.6 pounds in 16 weeks, more than the average weight loss in a year in trials using weight loss drugs like orlistat and sibutramine, according to a 2003 edition of the International Journal of Obesity & Related Metabolic Disorders.

Cheese is an excellent source of casein protein, one of the best muscle-building nutrients you can eat. Danish researchers found that even when men ate 10 ounces of full-fat cheese daily for 3 weeks, their LDL ("bad") cholesterol didn't budge. Researchers at Boston University found that casein protein caused more weight loss and a higher muscle ratio than whey protein. You can eat your cheese and lose weight.

Drinking milk at breakfast can help you eat less at lunch, say Australian scientists. In their study, overweight people who drank about 2 1/2 cups of skim milk in the morning consumed 8.5 percent fewer calories at an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet than people who drank the same amount of fruit juice. Both beverages had an equal number of calories, but the milk contained 25 grams of protein while the fruit juice had virtually no protein and 63 grams of sugar. The high sugar causes your energy to crash after a couple of hours and increases your cravings. It also leads to a depressed emotional state. It's the protein that helps you feel satisfied and nourished throughout the morning.

4. Nuts
Eating a variety of nuts as a snack helps to ward off hunger, and gives you a healthy dose of protein and omega-3 fatty acids, which help you burn fat faster and for men, they help to produce more testosterone. Eat raw and organic nuts instead of roasted and salted to get the full weight loss benefits.

Studies at Loma Linda University in California found that eating about two ounces of nuts a day, five times a week lowered participants' blood cholesterol levels by 12 percent. Walnuts were used, but similar results have been reported with almonds and peanuts. It appears that replacing saturated fat in the diet with the monounsaturated fat in nuts may be the key. It makes sense to eat nuts instead of other fatty, salty snacks.

5. Fish
Eating more fish such as salmon, tuna, and sardines makes your body more sensitive to a fat-burning hormone called leptin, which promotes satiety (Leptin means "thin" in Greek). It controls whether you store the calories you eat as fat or if they are burned for energy.

Because fish are high in protein and omega-3 fatty acids, they make you feel full, stabilize blood sugar, and help to stimulate your metabolism, which helps you lose weight. In a research study from Iceland, dieters who ate salmon felt fuller 2 hours later than those who ate low-fat fish like cod or didn't eat any fish at all. The researchers found that eating foods high in omega-3s increased blood levels of leptin. Don't care for fish? Take a fish oil capsule every day - one that has 500 milligrams of the omega-3s DHA and EPA. It offers the same benefits as salmon.

6. Spices
Add spices to your foods like cayenne peppers, cinnamon, garlic, and hot mustard to increase your fat-burning metabolism by 8 to 20 percent. Spicy foods can reduce your appetite by increasing your body's norepinephrine and epinephrine levels. Dr. Jaya Henry at Oxford University proved that adding 3 grams of chili peppers to meals can significantly increase your fat-burning metabolism. In another British study, spicy mustard made people burn an extra 45 to 75 calories over 3 hours.

Garlic is recognized for its healing powers in ancient times. It is a strong diuretic that can help you flush out excess water weight. Its active component, allicin, may help to prevent weight gain and reduce your levels of insulin, blood pressure, and triglycerides, says T. Rosenthal, lead author for a study published in the American Journal of Hypertension. It is also effective against cancer and heart disease, according to Richard Rivlin, an attending physician at Weill Cornell Medical Center.

7. Resistant starch
Resistant starch is just another kind of dietary fiber, but according to a study done at the University of Colorado, you'll burn 20 to 30 percent more fat by including more foods loaded with resistant starch, such as navy beans, bananas, potatoes, lentils, oatmeal & whole grain breads.

Resistant starch prevents your body from storing too much fat, so you'll never gain weight (and only lose weight). Like other dietary fibers, it leaves you feeling satisfied longer and reduces hunger pangs.
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8. Pork Chops
Purdue University researchers found that a 6-ounce serving daily helped people preserve their muscle while losing weight. Australia's Pork CRC study revealed that pork had a more positive effect on PYY, one of the human hormones controlling appetite, than chicken. Initial results found that the pork-based dieters lost weight consisting of body fat while the control group gained weight.

Further research shows that pork chops contain almost five times the selenium per gram of protein as beef, and twice that of chicken. Selenium is an essential mineral that helps the thyroid gland to produce thyroid hormone, which plays a major role in fat metabolism and energy production.

9. Beans
In the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, scientists found that people who regularly ate beans were 23 percent less likely to have large waists than those who never ate them. The bean eaters had lower systolic blood-pressure measurements, according to researcher Victor Fulgoni III, PhD.. Legumes are rich in belly-filling fiber as well as potassium, which helps fight hypertension. Eat half a cup of cooked beans 3 or 4 days a week to gain their many benefits and help you lose weight.

10. Eggs
Eating eggs for breakfast can help you control your hunger later in the day. Indiana University scientists determined that dieters who consumed their biggest dose of daily protein at breakfast felt full longer than those who ate more of the nutrient at lunch or dinner. They were less likely to overeat the rest of the day, says study author Heather Leidy, Ph.D.. To ward off hunger before lunch, eat 20 to 30 grams of protein or more for breakfast.

According to research from the Rochester Center for Obesity and Louisiana State University, eating eggs for breakfast could help to limit your calorie intake throughout the rest of the day by more than 400 calories. Eggs are low in calories and high in essential amino acids, selenium, choline, vitamins D, B12, E and A, zinc, and iron..

Implement these ten great weight loss foods that help you burn fat, build muscle, and increase your energy, and you'll live a longer, healthier, and happier life without sacrifice or struggle. Enjoy the new you!.

Michael Locklear is a researcher and consultant with 30 years experience, studying health, nutrition, and human behavior. He has been president of the Global Peace Project since 1986, and he administrates the website www.QuickWeightLossTips.info [http://www.quickweightlosstips.info] as part of the Global Peace Project Educational Outreach Program. You can also find him on Facebook.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Locklear

5 Super Weight Loss Foods (Also Suitable For Vegetarians and Vegans)

Let's cut to the chase.

Carrot
Carrot is one of the best plant-based weight loss foods due to its low calorie but high nutritional content (such as vitamins A, C, beta carotene and fiber). It fills you up easily, preventing you from heaping on excess calories.

Tip: Carrot is more nutritious when eaten cooked than raw as cooking breaks down its tough cellular walls. This enables your body to convert more beta carotene into vitamin A.

Apple
Like carrot, apple is also relatively low in calories and high in fiber. You can eat one or two as one single meal but do not consume apples for all your meals. You need a balanced mix of all weight loss foods to obtain multiple vitamins and minerals for good health and effective fat loss.

Banana
Banana contains a good amount of natural sugar (sucrose, fructose and glucose) and fiber that together, provide you with sustained and substantial boost of energy within minutes. This boost of energy in turn kick starts your metabolism for fat loss.

Reminder: Banana works effectively in an active body. If you eat lots of bananas but refuse to move, the excess calories in the fruit will get stocked up in your fat reserve when not expended via exercises.

Whole Grain Bread and Biscuits
I always choose whole grain bread and biscuits as they are rich in vitamin B, iron and fiber. The goodness of fiber, whether soluble or insoluble, is plentiful. You're aware that constipation is a common problem in obesity and during dieting (with meat-laden diet). Fiber not only gives you a feeling of fullness but also helps to prevent constipation by flushing out toxins from your body.
Fiber also stabilizes your blood sugar and controls your food cravings as it slows down your sugar absorption into the bloodstreams. Thus fiber plays an extremely important role in your weight loss diet. Keep your body free of toxins and you'll lose weight easily and naturally.

Coconut Oil
Unlike other oils, coconut oil contains fat-burning fat. It helps to regulate thyroid function and boosts your metabolism to effect weight loss. I was skeptical at first when a doctor told me that. But after few years of consumption, I am convinced. All you need is to replace your existing cooking oil with coconut oil or you can also add 1 - 3 tablespoonfuls into your diet, and you can start reaping the weight loss benefits of this powerful metabolism-boosting food.

Laura Ng shows you 80 over more low calorie foods for vegan at iNotFat.com. When you include these foods in your diet, you'll improve your health, get more energy, break your weight loss plateau and lose your belly fat easily, without suffering from loose skin and weight rebound. Want faster fat loss? Download the free vegetarian weight loss meal plan now.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laura_Ng