Posts by curepanicattacks8:
How to Control Emotional Eating and Stay on a Calories Loss Diet
November 26th, 2008Just as you get into the swing a new eating plan and begin to enjoy the results of this through a healthy weight loss, something can go wrong in your life and you can feel stressed and turn to food to help relieve this. The emotional eating busters below, will help you control your eating regardless of how you feel and help you stay on a calories loss diet that will lead you to a permanent weight loss and a healthier, happier life.
Learn the difference between being truly hungry and wanting to feel better is not always easy, especially if you have eaten in response to your changing emotions over an extended time. You need to learn to recognize that true hunger comes with feeling physically fatigued and can include a grumbling stomach. Make sure that before you next eat food that will help fuel your body that you permit yourself to get really hungry as this is the only reason you should ever eat.
Recognize your emotional eating triggers by keeping a little notebook and a pen with you and write down when you feel like eating and what you want to eat and soon you will start to notice a pattern emerging. Do you always crave fried food after a meeting with your boss instead of meals you would eat on a calories loss diet? Do you want cake the minute you walk in the door after the evening commute or do you need a double cheeseburger at lunch just to get through the afternoon?
Deciding on the events and the times when you are likely to resort to daily emotional eating is the key to controlling your response to the stressors in your life that lead you to out of control eating. Plan what food you will eat or what you will do the next time you feel distressed or under pressure and replace eating with other behaviours that will help relieve your stress. Taking a brisk walk or even an exercise class or eating an apple, some low fat yoghurt or other foods from your calories loss menu, getting a friend to massage your neck or even meditating are all healthier ways to manage the pressures in your life and still lose weight.
Stride past comfort food in the grocery store never stopping, to make sure that you do not have any junk food within arm’s reach at home as a temptation. When your emotions rollercoaster next and you find yourself feeling low and in need of chicken and fries, are you as likely to go out to buy it if it is not in the house? Generally the answer is ‘No’ so stock up with as many healthy replacements for the foods that you know you will crave from time to time and you also know are not good for you, then start to satisfy your cravings in healthier ways.
Find other means of comfort instead of food if you feel down, pressured and hyped up, like taking the dog for a walk, going for a bike ride, reading that book you have been dying to start, or meeting with a friend and discuss life over a low fat coffee. There is an endless list of what you can do when you are feeling sad or stressed apart from reaching for the munchies in those places you have always kept them. So start including these alternatives in your life as ‘pick me ups’ and keep on that calories loss diet at the same time.
Fill your cupboards with healthy foods because these will replace the comfort food from which you are starting to wean yourself. If you replace those high carb and high sugar foods with healthy calories loss foods you will have fewer cravings so do not keep any junk food in the house. When you feel desperately in need of something sweet, instead of filling up on chocolate or fudge, recognize the craving you are experiencing and test out better alternatives that will not set back your weight loss program like a platter of fruit or healthy food bars.
Always allow 30 minutes to pass after your craving registers before you take any action. Time yourself to make sure that you do not eat anything for the full extent of this time. You should eat half of what you craved at the end of half an hour if you still want it but it is often the case that cravings disappear in that time especially of you have replaced them with another activity.
Get exercise because exercise is not just good for burning calories as when you exercise, your brain releases serotonin and endorphins, which make you feel good and make you happy. Twenty minutes or more of exercise can trigger the same feeling of peace and happiness and well-being that you get from food. Emotional eating is not responsible for your entire weight gain, but it can be a factor in why it is hard for you to make a consistent weight loss. Using these tips and tricks to control your emotional eating will help you stick with a calories loss diet and might be the way for you to start losing weight and keeping it off.
Ways to Lose Weight: A Failed Dieter Finds Answers She Craves
November 23rd, 2008I searched for a solution to my see-sawing weight and poor shape for most of my adolescence and early adulthood. I know I’m not alone and that at some stage most of us want to find ways to lose weight and become fitter. When I realized that most popular diets and exercise programs did not help me over the long term, I decided to approach this from another angle.
Like me, see if following diets and joining gyms have failed to bring about any permanent change when you check yourself in the bathroom mirror. I was shocked with what I saw when I did, but this drove me to find a way to lose my unwanted body fat and keep this weight off. Interestingly the secret I discovered is a simple one but it is often overlooked by others.
The thing about weight gain is that it happens gradually, without us feeling it or even realizing it. Before we know it, we have become over weight or even obese and lack the energy we need. To reclaim our healthy body, lose our extra flab and keep weight off, we need to alter the daily behavior that caused this in the first place.
We can make small changes to the nutrition in our diet, our exercise and our lifestyle and then keep adding more changes to these. These will all become successful ways to lose weight. Eating, exercise and lifestyle behaviours that have been the source of our weight-gain can be permanently reversed as we reclaim our body shape and fitness.
Introduce gradual changes into your day-to-day living. Don’t survive the pain of weight loss, then throw out any changes that brought this about when you reach your goal weight. Don’t ignore the pounds that gradually slip back on. Eating healthy foods, by cutting out just some of those that you know you should avoid and replacing these with healthier alternatives is just one of the ways to lose weight without feeling overwhelmed.
Balancing both your food intake and your daily exercise is an important way to reduce your weight and avoid obesity. If what you eat and how much you exercise is out of balance, you WILL gain weight. Take a good look at the kind of food you eat and see how well you work this off through exercise.
Begin an exercise routine and discover that taking a regular early morning swim or walk can be one of many ways to lose weight. Choose ways to increase your metabolism from a range of easily accessible exercises. When you decide on this, make sure to gradually work towards a target that you will be able to reach.
Weight loss can show itself in more ways than just the pounds on your bathroom scales. Remember to keep details of inches lost around your stomach as well as your hips and chest so that you can that you can see all aspects of your changing body shape.
Make sure that you include progress incentives for your ability to lose and keep weight off. A new piece of jewellery or a new gadget are probably better than eating treats and are known to be very successful ways to lose weight!
If you are prepared to look at what you presently eat and how you exercise and then start to change this little by little making the right choices, you will lose and keep weight off and stay healthy. By doing this you will be able to enjoy the benefits of sure-fire ways to lose weight that will re-shape your body and your life like I did.
How my Hair Stylist Cuts Hair and Fits in Every Day Exercise
November 9th, 2008I met my new and interesting hair stylist today when I changed hair salons. We got to talking and discovered that we had much in common. This included the challenge of staying trim and fit through every day exercise.
We discovered that we were both interested in weight loss through a healthy diet and exercise. We discussed our individual approaches and took note of each others’ successes.
Amy is at the centre of many lives including her husband, teenage kids and her clients. She was overweight by about 20 pounds when she decided to start an every day exercise program and to modify her diet. She is very proud to have lost half of her excess weight already despite her busy schedule at work and at home.
Amy works long hours but she is so committed to her better health that she has negotiated different start and finish times at her work place. This means that she can workout on her every day exercise routines daily. She has come to enjoy these over recent weeks and would not miss.
The most interesting aspect of our discussion was the portable heart rate monitor that Amy wears when she exercises. She tells me that they are not expensive so I have decided to get one to measure when my heart-rate gets to 1.3 its regular rate. I know that I need to include this level of cardiac fitness in my fitness program.
I know my heart beat is generally 70 beats a minute. With the new monitor I intend buying, I expect to know when it reaches an elevated rate of 90-100 beats a minute for my cardio-vascular exercise each day. This kind of every day exercise will help me lose weight.
The other thing I learned from Amy was how important social support is in her program. She exercises with a girlfriend and they keep each other motivated. They have (non-eating) rewards for reaching goals that are part of their every day exercise and they have enlisted friends and family as their ‘support group’ to enquire about their progress and encourage them to continue.
I know that every day exercise can get a little dreary and you need to know whether you are making any gains so it is essential that you actually chart your progress. This can be either for changes in body shape or reduction in the circumference of various parts of your body for example your butt, your waist, or your upper arms, or your chest.
The danger with charting is that some people do it too frequently and become discouraged when they do not make sufficient gains. Another danger is that some people chart at the wrong time. Always measure your weight at the same time each morning not in the afternoon or evening when there is greater fluid retention or when you have been eating.
So set a regular routine for exercise and a regular process for charting the gains you are making. I have decided that I am going to use a pedometer and a portable heart rate in my drive for a fitter, healthier body. I think I will build some rewards into my program and find a buddy to join me in my every day exercise too!