Preparing For Winter

The “W” word – winter.  It’s just around the corner, yes it’s only August but we’re in the last few days of August and then it will be back to school for kids everywhere and before you know it, Halloween will have come and gone and you’ll be getting ready for winter.  Depending on where you live in the world, winter could come with cold and snow, or a lot of rain.

Nothing makes it more difficult to try and lose weight or maintain weight loss than getting sick.  So what can you do this winter so that you don’t get sick?  Here are some simple suggestions…

1. How do you avoid a cold? Keep your hands away from your face and wash them often. Avoid people with colds, and ask your doctor if vitamin C may be helpful and safe for you.
2. Although depression can easily be assumed to be a result of your chronic illness, you could be someone who has Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). If you find yourself blue between October and March, it may be because of the lack of sunlight, which can be a natural antidepressant. Ask your doctor.
3. Feeling stressed about the holidays? Before reaching for that piece of pumpkin pie, grab a banana. Foods that are natural stress fighters include orange juice, yogurt, low caffeine intake, carbohydrates instead of sugar, and lots of water!
4. Need a boost of energy? Here are some ideas that are recommended by health professionals.
   1. Get out into the daylight at least thirty minutes a day, or at least pen up those blinds.
   2. Exercise when possible, but never exercise when you have a temperature of 99.5 degrees F or above.
   3. Eat vegetables! B-vitamins, found in whole grains, green vegetables, potatoes, and beans, keep your immune system primed and stave off winter bugs. They also help produce neurotransmitters in the brain, which moderate your moods. When your vitamin B supply is off-kilter, you’re more likely to feel depressed, stressed, anxious, and cranky.
   4. Make personal time for yourself. Splurge on a new journal or some new pjs to get you through the winter months.
5. There are over 200 viruses that cause the common cold. Before cold season hits, talk with your doctor about what is “normal” and “not normal” for someone with your illness-make a “cold plan.” This way if you get a cold, you will know how soon to call your doctor and what over the counter medications you can safely take. Talk to your doctor now about whether a flu shot would be recommended.
6. Chapped lips bothering you? The Mayo Clinic recommends applying a moisturizer to your lips daily or as needed. You can use a lip balm or skin moisturizer. Generally, the greasier the products, the better. If all else fails, a humidifier in your home may help.

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Sample Walking Program

Losing weight, and maintaining that weight loss is all about making lifestyle changes.

If you eat, and then sit in front of the TV you will gain weight.  There is no doubt about that.  But if you eat, and do a little work before sitting down, you will not only feel better but you’ll not have any guilt that you sat down without doing some level of activity.  The cycle is easy to get into:

• Eat
• Sit on the couch in front of the TV, or on the computer or start playing video games
• Feel guilty and promise yourself you won’t do it tomorrow

Next day…

• Eat
• Sit on the couch in front of the TV, or on the computer or start playing video games
• Feel guilty and promise yourself you won’t do it tomorrow

And it repeats itself.  You need to break this cycle – nobody, not your spouse or significant other, nor your kids can break this cycle.  YOU have to do it yourself for yourself.

This is like binge eating.  You binge on anything you can find, only to feel guilty later on and rather than STOP EATING you keep going because you’ve already started so what the hell…

But once you break the cycle the first time, then the second and third, fourth, fifth… slowly it becomes habit to NOT sit and instead you will force (use the word lightly) yourself to not sit but remain active for about an hour afterwards.

Once you’ve gotten out of that rut – start walking.  Outside.  You DO NOT need a walking program, or plan.  Just walk.  Walk to the corner store and back.  Walk to the grocery store.  Walk around the block.  Walk to the park.  Walk on a trail.  Just walk.  Walking is the least expensive exercise you can do.  It doesn’t cost a lot (a good pair of walking shoes will cost you between $30 and $100) and all you need is some outdoor clothing – track pants, and a light shirt and hat.  You probably have all that at home already.

Walking gets your body moving.  It keeps your mind active.  It helps relax, and refocus.

If you’re a busy professional, walking will allow you to sort out your day and put what has happened into perspective.  Even though you may be thinking about work, it’s in a stress free environment.

You don’t need a walking program.  Just go outside, put one foot in front of the other and see where it takes you.

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Miracle Drink Helps Lose Weight, Eliminate Fat

I really hope that this study was not funded by tax payer dollars, but if you pay attention to the news you probably heard that drinking water will help you lose weight.

Drinking a glass of water before each meal could help you lose weigh, or make your current diet more effective. That’s the conclusion of a study just released by researchers at Virginia Tech University.

Think about the logic behind this – by drinking two 8 ounce glasses of water, you’re filling your stomach up and tricking your body into feeling more full so when the time comes to eat you won’t feel as hungry and as such you will eat less.

This isn’t new – my doctor has been telling me this for years and for those of us that are older it’s anecdotal advice given to us by our parents and perhaps grandparents.  Maybe with this study and it being made “official” people that are trying to lose weight will drink water before each meal.

Has the long-sought magic potion in society’s “battle with the bulge” finally arrived? An appetite-control agent that requires no prescription, has no common side effects and costs almost nothing?

Scientists today reported results of a new clinical trial confirming that just two 8-ounce glasses of the stuff, taken before meals, enables people to shed pounds.

The weight-loss elixir, they told the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), is ordinary water.

“We are presenting results of the first randomized controlled intervention trial demonstrating that increased water consumption is an effective weight loss strategy,” said Dr. Brenda Davy, senior author on the study.

“We found in earlier studies that middle aged and older people who drank two cups of water right before eating a meal ate between 75 and 90 fewer calories during that meal. In this recent study, we found that over the course of 12 weeks, dieters who drank water before meals, three times per day, lost about 5 pounds more than dieters who did not increase their water intake.”

“People should drink more water and less sugary, high-calorie drinks. It’s a simple way to facilitate weight management.”

Davy pointed out that folklore and everyday experience long have suggested that water can help promote weight loss. But there has been surprisingly little scientific information on the topic.

Previous studies hinted that drinking water before meals reduces intake of calories. Lacking until now, however, has been the “gold-standard” evidence from a randomized, controlled clinical trial that compares weight loss among dieters who drink water before meals with those who do not.

Groups

The study included 48 adults, 55-75 years, divided into two groups. One group drank 2 cups of water prior to their meals and the other did not. All of the subjects ate a low-calorie diet during the study.

Over the course of 12 weeks, water drinkers lost about 15.5 pounds, while the nonwater drinkers lost about 11 pounds. Davy said water may be so effective simply because it fills up the stomach with a substance that has zero calories.

People feel fuller as a result, and eat less calorie-containing food during the meal. Increased water consumption may also help people lose weight if they drink it in place of sweetened calorie-containing beverages, said Davy, who is with Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

Pop

Diet soda pop and other beverages with artificial sweeteners may also help people reduce their calorie intake and lose weight, Davy said. However, she advised against using beverages sweetened with sugar and high-fructose corn syrup because they are high in calories.

A 12-ounce can of regular soda pop, for instance, contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar.

Davy noted that that nobody knows exactly how much water people should drink daily.

The Institute of Medicine, an agency of The National Academies, which advises the Federal Government on science, says that most healthy people can simply let thirst be their guide. It does not specify exact requirements for water, but set general recommendations for women at about 9 cups of fluids — from all beverages including water — each day, and men at about 13 cups of fluids. And it is possible to drink too much water, a situation that can lead to a rare, but serious, condition known as water intoxication, Davy pointed out.

Source

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Why You Are Not Losing Belly Fat

If you are like most people with a weight problem, you already know the answer. (Consuming more calories than you burn).

And you probably know exactly what you have to do in order to lose it.  Am I right? You probably have multiple books that all work.  Then why aren’t you doing it?

Most people will tell you that all you need is more, ”will power”.

I am here to tell you that they couldn’t be more wrong!

Here is why…

According to the latest research*, ”will power” is a limited resource.  When you ”will” yourself to stay away from bad foods, it takes away your ability to concentrate on even the simplest of day to day activities.

For example, when subjects were told not to eat chocolate chip cookies, their persistence in puzzle solving deteriorated. And when they were told to suppress an emotional reaction to a movie, they had problems solving a simple anagram.

In short, any act of suppression is virtually unsustainable…

This is why once you start having to think about other stuff, it becomes almost impossible for you to stay away from the cookies, the burgers, the tacos, the beer, the chips, and the soda.

Even worse, whatever habits you have developed around eating lie deep in your unconscious mind. This dictates your ”default” eating choices, and any changes to this using ”will power” are met with massive resistance.

And this is a battle you don’t want to fight, because the unconscious mind always wins.

So if you want to get trim, you have to change your unconscious ”default” eating choices. It is the only real way to get results that stick – and it is a whole lot easier…

How do you work with the unconscious mind, you ask?

Sometimes repetition works, and establishing rituals one at a time can help…

But the only method that is validated by current science and mainstream organizations like The American Medical Association is called medical hypnosis.

Hypnosis is basically the study of creating unconscious changes. Over 80 years of clinical research have demonstrated that with the aid of hypnosis, people are able to have control where they had none before.

Get this; at the University of Iowa they are doing MRI studies where you actually see the brain shutting off feelings of pain in the brain. . . all under hypnosis.

If hypnosis can teach you to block pain, it certainly can help you change your eating habits.

But make sure you get the real thing. You don’t want help from a ”stage hypnotist” – you want to find someone with a proven clinical track record. And finding somebody in person with a proven track record for weight loss is extremely difficult.

This is why it is sometimes better to find a home-use program. And the program with the best track record in the industry was created by Dr. Roberta Temes (author of a hypnosis textbook used in medical schools).

Over 50,000 people have now used this program, and the satisfaction rate is 92%.

This means that over 9 out of 10 people are able to change their eating behaviors and get the slim body they deserve using her hypnosis sessions.

The publisher provides you with a year to try the program, and they even let you sample it for 28 days by just paying shipping. So if you struggle with, ”will power” – then this program is truly a, ”no brainer”.

If you are about to give up – give hypnosis another try.

P.S. Here are a couple of actual testimonials from people that have tried this product…

”I am now down 20 pounds and still have not had any
 problems with stress eating (my lifetime habit is to overeat).
 I am into a size 16 from a 20/22 and people are finally beginning
 to notice. I personally thank you for your program even though I don’t
 understand how it works. I amstarting to like who I see in the mirror.”

Syndi Ellison
Advertising & Finance Manager
Washington State Magazine

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