I eat in front of my computer.

I eat more when I’m stressed.

I put food in my mouth because the food looks good. It’s like it is talking to me : Eat Me, Eat Me.

I’m eating without being hungry and without the intention to eat.

I just learnt this about myself. I have to admit I was a little surprised. It is great to believe that you know what you’re doing. That you are in control.

Only sometimes you’re not.

We can get so used to habits that we don’t even notice them anymore. Michelle May’s book Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat has been a real eye-opener for me. I can recommend it to everyone even if you’re not struggling with a weight problem.

Michelle has an online quiz so you can test your eating habits. Once you’ve completed the free test she sends you all the information you need. Are you following your instincts or do you eat out of habit? Maybe you’re following strict rules, to strict for your own good?

If you eat without being hungry, how do keep a healthy weight?

If you eat without being hungry, how do you know when to stop?

Maybe your eating habits is what stopping you from losing weight.

Here is how you can find out How and Why You Eat:

1. You take a two minute quiz.
2. You get the results right away. Write them down!
3. Add you email address to receive a full explanation in your inbox.

Michelle even gives you access to a the chapter of her book that explains all this. Very generous! What she has to say is so natural and easy it is just that many of us a caught in bad eating habits. All you have to do is SEE IT!

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/data_op/ / CC BY 2.0

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Last Sunday I was ready to take the plunge.

I had been waiting for the perfect day to fast. That day never showed up.

There was always something. Lunch I had to go to. Kids I had to take care of. Appointments I couldn’t miss. Or of course my Thursday Zumba class.You can’t fast and exercise, right?

On Sunday I realized that there would never be a perfect day for a fast. I felt bloated, dehydrated and fat from a dinner party the night before.

So I made up my mind. I would start my weight loss fast after dinner that night.

The idea is to consume as few calories are possible from after dinner on day until dinner the next. By water fasting for 24 hours I will lower my total calorie intake even if I don’t change my normal diet.

We’ll see if it works. I’m going to drink only water and tea during my fast. Anything with no calories works but I wouldn’t recommend diet sodas since they typically make you more hungry. Coffee would work.

Doubts were going through my mind:

Would I get really hungry?

Would I feel to weak to take care of the things I had to do?

Would I get a head ache?

Would I transform into the worst version of myself?

Would I make it?

I couldn’t help being a little concerned since I would have 3 kids at home all afternoon. The I decided that it would be ok. After all the house is full of food and if the fast really didn’t work out I could always eat something.

So I did it. I plunged in.

Here is the log I wrote during the  24-hours:

6.15 pm Finished dinner, I’m full. No more food for 24-hours.

8.30pm Having a cup of herbal tea, still full

10:30p Find myself looking around for food despite the fact that I am feeling full. Maybe it’s time to go to bed….

Midnight Starting to feel hungry. Bringing a bottle of water to bed. I’ll probably wake up starving.

7:30am Tired (as always) but for that I have myself and a book to blame. I ‘m not hungry, surprisingly. I feel pretty good actually. Time to get up and make breakfast, for the kids that is..

9:30am Wow, that was an efficient morning. You do have a lot of extra time when you don’t eat breakfast. All the kids are off to school and I’m going to make myself a pot of green tea. Starting to get hungry.

10:45am Had 2 cups of green decaf and my hunger is gone. I think I’ll have some herbal peppermint tea for dessert while finish my personal footprint for a class I’m taking.

11:15am With a pleasant peppermint taste in my mouth I’m taking off to pick-up 1 preschooler and 2 kindergartners. Then I’ll have to make them lunch. That will be interesting. By the way my ecological footprint is 2.58.

12:15pm Came home from elementary school to find my husband had made soup for himself and the kids. Grateful that I didn’t have to make lunch. That soup smelled so good. Feel like I have to watch what my hands are up to. While I was chatting to my husband over yet another cup of tea and I saw my hand reaching out for a piece of cheese. Oops. Then when I put the milk back in the fridge it almost reached out for a piece of bell pepper. And those clementines are really shiny. I’m not really hungry. I’m not longing for food. It’s just the habit of putting food in my mouth that I need to watch.

2:00pm Not very hungry but I wouldn’t mind eating.

2:15pm 4 hours to go. Maybe it’s time to start preparing dinner..?

2:50pm I think I want freshly bake bread tonight. I’d better get started.

4:15pm Back home after 2nd grade pick-up. I have tons of energy, don’t know what to do with it.

4:30 I just made a crazy decision. I’m going to join the rest of the family to the gym. They all have swim lessons and I think that I’m going to do some fitness. I’m not a fitness person I tired to make myself go last spring but after a couple of times I stopped, as always.

5:05 Prepared some dinner for myself to have after fitness. A small salad with prosciutto and my bread rolls. The rolls will be ready in 5 min. It smells like heaven in here.

5:50pm On the elliptic, hungry, what did I get myself into? (yes I brought my iPhone)

6pm Feeling great, warm up done ready for the machines.

6:45pm Sitting with my meal in front of me. I feel fantastic!
Fitness was great. I used low weights. I blame the fast for that decision but to be perfectly honest since I hadn’t done any fitness for 10 months… The food taste great! Now I’m going to play with my kids in the pool.

8:10pm Back home. I feel fantastic!

Next morning I woke up feeling awesome. I had extra energy for 48 hours after I finished the fast. I’m pretty sure I ate less during those days too. It was as if I did less pointless eating. Instead I appreciated what I put in my mouth.

I’m really surprised that I got an energy kick instead of a down. I must admit that normally I get very impatient and pretty horrible when I’m hungry. That didn’t happen at all. I never felt as if I had a blood sugar low. I never felt bad. I never felt like I couldn’t go on.

You have so much time on your hands when you don’t have to worry about food.

You don’t spend any money. At least not on food and drinks. I did use a fair amount of tea bags but that won’t add up to much.

Intermittent fasting is a really cool thing. I’m going to do this again because I want to lose weight but I really don’t feel like dieting.

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A beer, a snickers… Does it really matter?

You’ll be surprised to see how those extra calories adds up.

That tiny little snickers or brownie that you think would not matter at all. That one adds up a full 8 pounds in just 3 months.

What do you treat yourself to:

• 1 glass of wine a day
• 1 beer a day
• 1 coke a day (0.5 l)
• 1 brownie a day
• 1 snickers a day
• 1 bag of pretzels a day (120g)
• 1 bag of potato chips a day (200g)

Check this out!

Here is a graph showing how that extra treat effects your weight.

The red graph is for a starting point of 160 pounds. This is how fat you’ll be in 3 months.

The gray graph is for a starting point of 190 pounds.

Compared to potato chips my beer a day doesn’t seem so bad. But do I really want to gain 4 pounds in 3 months? That is 16 pounds a year. Yikes!

And by the way…poor cat.

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The amount of diets and weight loss programs out there is just blowing my mind.

How on earth are you supposed to know where to start?

For me personally many diets are just too demanding. I need to LIVE!

We’re all different in how much efforts we are willing to put into our diet. That’s why I was happy to see this article that helps you make a reality check on whether or not a diet will work for you. There is a diet out there for everyone. You just need to find it!

By Brad Pilon, MS

URL: www.eatstopeat.com

If you and I went to the local magazine stand and scanned the covers of the fitness magazines we would find dozens of ‘weight loss’ rules.

In fact we could spend the rest of the week reading magazines about the latest greatest weight loss tricks many of which may actually work for someone. But realistically there’s just no way you could actually follow ALL of them. So how do you know which ones are right for you?

The easy answer is you have to decide which rules fit best for YOUR life and then try to stick to just one or two that will make the most sense for you and have the most benefit.

This may be the first time in your life you become a scientist, and your experiment is you. Here’s what you do…

Browse any of the popular magazines, blogs, websites or anywhere you like to get fitness information. Read up on the diet and weight loss tips and tricks, these could be simple changes like not drinking calories, or a bigger philosophy like limiting the amount of carbs that you eat.

Make a top 10 list of diet strategies you’d like to try, and that sound doable to you. At this point add one new diet strategy to your life for two weeks. Record your bodyweight at the beginning of the two weeks and again at the end. If you haven’t lost any weight this strategy doesn’t work (for you). Discard it and move on to the next one.

This is the simplest way to tell if something will work for YOU. If the strategy you picked sounds like a good idea but seems too difficult for you to manage then it’s simply not a good fit for you in this stage of your life. If it worked for your friend but not for you that’s ok, there will be one that works just for you, this is why you make a top 10 list and try each of them, one at a time.

Let’s suppose you find one that works over a two week period and you don’t want to stop. That’s fine, just add the next one in the list, if you can handle more than one strategy at once more power to you and you’ll probably lose fat even faster. My guess is that sticking to more than one or two rules will be almost impossible, so it will be pretty easy to tell which strategy is really working.

For me the simpler the diet is the better, (which is the main premise behind Eat Stop Eat).

Even when you are following the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle you can still use the top 10-diet rule as a way to guide how you eat on your ‘eat days’.

The top 10 diet rule experiment is the fastest way to find dietary habits that work for you – after all you’ll never know until you try.

****
Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, visit www.eatstopeat.com

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Here Krista and Dan are walking as fast as they can to lose weight.

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You can make your body burn more fat without moving a muscle.

This is must be the best news of the decade of everyone who wants to lose some weight easily.

Fat burning is not something your body does only while you are exercising.
In fact, you can burn a lot of fat while you’re sleeping. All you have to do is tweak who, what and when you eat. But you DON’T have to go on a strikt diet.

Here are the easiest, non-sweaty ways to burn more fat:

1. Don’t drink alcohol before bedtime.
   Your liver is your second most important fat burner. It works best a night. However if you have alcohol in your body the liver will use that instead. Skip the alcohol and burn fat while you’re sleeping.
2. Drink water.
   Fat needs to be transported from your fat cells to your muscles. If you are dehydrated the transportation will be less efficient. Drink more water, juice and milk to ensure that you are properly hydrated.
3. Eat protein.
   Protein stimulates different hormones, for example glucagon, which helps your fat cells release fat.
4. Add fat to your diet.
   A too little fat intake is very bad if you want to burn fat efficiently. 20-30% of your energy intake should come from fat. The hard part is that the fats should be unsaturated.
5. Eat all you want one day a week.
   By eating more food and not watching your diet one day a week you stimulate your body to burn more fat.

If you are looking for a flat stomach just crunches won’t work. You have to lower your overall fat percentage to let your abs show. These changes will burn fat all over your body.

Our focus is usually on exercise when we talk about burning fat but dietary changes can have a considerate effect.

Talk about sneaky weight loss.

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How was your Thanksgiving? I hope you had a great time. Some of you are probably worried about gaining weight after a very festive dinner. But don’t panic, you can lose all of them with just a minute’s exercise.

This exercise includes all of your body’s major muscle groups including your abs and butt. All you need is a pair of dumbbells. Watch this video to see how it is done.

Image by DJOtaku.

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I’ve compiled all the recipe tips from Sierra Trading Post in one video. I hope you enjoy it!

If you have more healthy ideas for Thanksgiving, we’d really love to hear them!

Image by Martin Cathrae.

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You must have heard already about the positive effects of probiotics in digestion and overall health and wellness. Recently, the link between obesity and good bacteria has become quite popular, as well.

The Correct Weight Loss Blog tells us about the findings of the study and explains the probiotics and obesity link.

Women who took probiotics during pregnancy had a lower incidence of central obesity, one year after pregnancy. Central obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of more than 30 and a waist circumference of more than 31.5 inches. The group of women that took probiotics had a 25% incidence of central obesity when measured 1 year after pregnancy as compared to 43% in women who did not. These women also had the lowest body fat percentage.

The link between obesity and gut bacteria has been gaining popularity in recent times with more research showing a correlation. Not everyone consuming the same food will absorb the same amount of calories. Gut bacteria have been identified as a possible reason for this.

2 recent studies focusing on mice and humans were published in the magazine Nature. These studies identified a correlation between gut bacteria and being overweight. Apparently a family of bacteria called firmicutes was found to be more in obese people. Obese people carry 20% more of this particular family of bacteria. The study also listed another family of bacteria called bacteroidetes that were almost 90% less in obese people.

According to the study, obese mice were more efficient than lean mice at harvesting calories from complex sugars and depositing those calories in fat. The researchers attributed this to the gut bacteria. When obese people lost weight, virtually all the bacteroidetes increased, while the firmicute bacteria shrank.

As such, they may be a lot or merit in trying to build up on the useful gut bacteria by consuming food rich in these friendly bacteria such as yogurt. Alternatively, one could also consume a probiotic supplement.

Make no delay, get your probiotics now and load your gut with good bacteria!

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Protein is an essential nutrient that makes you feel full and gives you sustained energy. That’s why your breakfast should have lots of it.

Your choice of breakfast might be tasty but it probably lacks the amount of protein that will help you last through lunch break.  If you are trying to lose weight, you would definitely want to avoid picking up unhealthy snacks before lunch. So to avoid unnecessary weight gain, make sure you eat a high-protein breakfast.

Fitsugar recommends the following high-protein foods.

• Nonfat Greek Yogurt: Chobani Nonfat Vanilla contains 16 grams of protein, and if you go for plain, it’s 18 grams.
• Cheese omelet: Two scrambled eggs offers 12.6 grams of protein. Sprinkle on an ounce of mozzarella cheese and that’ll add 7 grams of protein.
• Cereal and milk: Look for a cereal that has at least 8 grams of protein per serving. Kashi Go Lean has 13 grams. A cup of skim milk contain 8 grams of protein, and if you go for plain soy milk, it contains 11 grams.
• Peanut butter on toast. Two slices of whole-wheat bread contain 8 grams of protein. Smear on two tablespoons of peanut butter, and it adds 8 grams of protein.

Image by startcooking kathy & amandine.

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