Archive for June, 2009

You Think You Got It Bad with Calorie Consumption….

Wow, this is one of those stories where you thank the stars that you don’t have some obscure and bizarre disorder like this, because it can definitely mess with your attempts at maintaining health and your weight at a reasonable point throughout your life. Have you ever heard of “sleep eating”? Well, it’s a form of sleep walking, only people actually wake up and raid the referigerator and eat anything they want, but don’t actually have a conscious memory of doing so.

At least so they say they don’t! This is supposedly a real disorder though, and a real concern, especially since some patients with this problem can consume hundred or, like this woman, thousands, of calories without even consciously making the decision or enjoying. Jeesh, I hope she at least gets some enjoyment out of it, I know I’d want to! Can you imagine how many hours of exercise you’d have to do to counteract this level of calorie consumption? Many, many hours my friend!

There is actually a medically assigned name to the aforementioned sleep eating disorder, it’s called SRED, Sleep Related Eating Disorder, and it can cause people to pile on pounds at alarming rates because A, they are eating a lot of calories and then going straight back to bed, not burning anything off, and B, they are not consciously making good decisions about the foods they choose when they go on their midnight binges, nor are they restricting their calories, instead they are unleashing the worst eating habits without any consequence thoughts of their actions in eating the wrong foods.

The poor woman that I read about would eat anything in her fridge, even just butter, because she wasn’t even conscious of what she was eating, and piled on many pounds in just one month without knowing why – at least at first until she started putting the pieces of the puzzle together and realized she was raiding her cupboards and fridge at night – I mean, how could you not notice that after a while?

She said that she tried everything from putting locks on her cupboards and fridge and also taking medications so that she would sleep straight through and not go on her bizarre eating binges, but nothing worked and her health continued to suffer because of her nightly habit. She also tried reducing the amount of food that she keeps in her cupboard, but that did not work either. It seems this is a difficult thing to treat, seeing how only a tiny percent of the population suffers from it which probably doesn’t make it a high priority for a cure in the medical research arena.

High Fiber Diet Key to Permanent Weight Loss

Did you know that on average, most Americans are almost a full ten grams short of getting the recommended daily allowance of dietary fiber in their diet? That’s really alarming, considering that fiber is what fills us up and what makes foods whole and satisfying to eat. It’s also a huge key to regulating your blood sugar and making sure that you “stay regular”, which helps you to regulate your weight and keep the pounds off after you lose initial weight. I know I myself probably come up short during the day in my fiber intake, so if I do, I really try to make sure I make up for it with dinner by eating mostly vegetables, a little bit of meat, and a big salad with dark leaves, like spinach instead of iceberg lettuce.

Studies have actually proven that people with high fiber diets keep weight off longer and also lose more weight initially when they are going through the weight loss process. To the tune of 2 to 3 more pounds, which is nothing to sneeze at! I read once that we are actually subconsciously drawn to high fiber foods because nature has made them brightly colored, like fruits and veggies that are high in vitamins, antioxidants and fiber such as blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and grapes.

Also, whole grains are tasty, giving us that hankering we get for refined carbs, without all that refined sugar, and with a lot of dietary fiber to boot, which – you guessed it, fills the belly and helps regulate the blood sugar for a longer period of time than those foods without the fiber content. They also are easier for the body to get rid of the food – as in to not clog up the colon and the intestines, which can add pounds on and build up toxins in the body.

The reason that it’s called “roughage” or bulk is because it actually acts as a bulking agent for your waste (ie bowel movements), and makes it easier for the body to process and get rid of it. Foods that have zero fiber need to be counteracted by a lot of water and by eating other foods with a high fiber content in between so that your body can process and eliminate these foods, as well as digest them properly, which helps you to absorb nutrients and vitamins better and contributes to your overall health and well being.

Apple Cider Vinegar and Weight Management

You may have already heard some hype about how apple cider vinegar, or as it is also know, ACV, has helped some people lose or manage weight successfully. And for every success story, you’ll probably read about a failure story where apple cider vinegar did not work to help someone lose weight. Now, ACV is no miracle cure for weight loss, but some people report that since they have been taking it a couple times a day, or mixing it with their water and sipping on it all day instead of plain water, that they lose a few pounds – over a long period of time.

There’s a theory that apple cider vinegar helps to balance the pH and the blood sugar, but only when it is taken periodically throughout the day, and it is taken consistently for a period of time. The theory isn’t really 100% or proven, but I remember reading a study that showed that diabetics took ACV and had a great success with it lowering their blood glucose levels after meals, which means that they were less hungry since spikes in glucose cause hunger.

The groups that took the ACV regularly also reported a nice side effect of very mild weight loss, to the tune of anywhere from 2-4 pounds in a 4 week period. As to whether this was just dumb luck or circumstance, no one can truly tell, but there are some people who swear that drinking it and not actually dieting has made them lose a few pounds – but there are no miracle stories out there really of people losing ten or more pounds without also dieting – the stories usually are small ones where people have lost modest amounts of weight to the tune of two to five pounds, over a period of time.

However, even if you don’t want to include ACV in your diet to lose weight, you may be interested to know that it is useful in helping people with heartburn and acid reflux, but usually only if it is taken diluted with water or with juice or something else, since it can actually cause throat erosion and worse acid reflux in some people if it is taken by itself. If it also reported to make the skin glow, as some people claim. This may be due to the fact that it can lower glucose and regulate inflammation, as well as help to cure acne.

Dr. Suzanne Gudakunst Fat Loss Secret : Scam?

Hmm, good question. I came across this Dr’s supposed fat loss secret that has earned her “death threats” – from who, it vaguely even gives the details on that, and is highly doubtful. Who’d want to broadcast it if they really were threatened life and limb because of a supposed “discovery” that the medical establishment didn’t want them to reveal anyways? I’d think if my life were really threatened, I’d want to be a little less conspicuous and not disclose this fact to the public, but hey, that’s just me!

Ok, here’s why I doubt this program is anything totally revolutionary, and maybe I shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but some warning bells went off when I surfed the website of this fat loss secret plan. Dr. Suzanne Gudakunst, first of all, is a woman who is shown several times on the website, in a cowboy hat and some young looking gear no less, trying to look hip and sexy, which is my first warning sign and which sets off alarms whether this woman is really a Dr. at all to be perfectly honest. I’m not sure what kind of doctor would want to present herself this way, as a brash and low brow salesman.

She goes on and on in sales copy about being thin, sexy, losing weight, and how these worms and other parasites are eating you alive from the inside out, causing disease and premature death, and even going into some unbelievable stories about young, healthy patients of hers that have died out of nowhere only to the puzzlement of their friends and family, seeming to attribute these untimely deaths to an unhealthy colon and digestive system. Hmm, really, because I’d be willing to bet autopsies would show that they dies of some unfortunate disease of sleeper disorder that was never evident until it was too late.

The problem I have with advertising like this is that it really plays on people fears and desires, and gives the reader little substance. For example, I have no idea what her product actually is by reading through the sales copy. Is it a book, a supplement and a book, a DVD? You don’t really know what you’re getting, and it comes in a platinum version which is more expensive, and a regular version as well. So, what more do you get with the platinum version? It doesn’t really say.

She goes on and on about how she “cares about you” also, which seems pretty doubtful considering this sales copy is set to push a product that is poorly communicated. If anyone has any further information, good or bad reviews, please post them here, I’d be open to hear both sides, and I’ll admit I haven’t tried it, so I can’t really give it a review, I can only judge by the cover so far.

iPhone Apps Can Help You Lose Weight

I have an iPhone. I know they’re all the rage and everything, and that’s actually not the reason I got one. I got an iPhone because my boyfriend and I are on the same cell phone plan and he decided that he wanted one and I figured hey why not, I’d love to be able to check my emails and look at the internet more easily anyways, considering how often I’m online to do my various business and non business activities. I’ve found the iPhone to now be indispensable personally, like I don’t know what I did with a “regular” cell phone before this or something. Talk about victim of technology!

One of the best things of course about the iPhone and probably what has make it catch on so fast are the vast number of “apps” it has to offer. You can do everything from download fun apps that are full of sound effects, to downloading compasses that will show you where to go when you’re on some national park trail. The thing really is quite amazing, and I think it’s the invention that has sort of defined the twenty first century, I dare say! One of the other things you can do with this phone is download several different kinds of apps that will help in your quest to lose weight.

The most notable of these types of apps are the ones that help you to calculate calories. There is also one that will help you to figure out how many calories a day you are allowed if you enter in your current weight, and the amount of time you want to go by to get your desired weight. Say for example, you want to figure out how many less calories you need to consume to be able to lose ten pounds in two months. There is an app that will calculate for you how many less calories you need to eat to achieve that in that amount of time.

There are also fast food calorie counter apps, where you can find the amount of calories in a vast array of common fast foods like McDonald’s double cheeseburgers (one of my weaknesses, I must admit), pizza chains pizza, and KFC, for example. Because we don’t necessarily realize how many calories are in these foods when we are forced to get them out of convenience, then if we have an application that can tell us, it may help us to make smarter choices when we’re on the road, or at least help us come to the conclusion that fast food usually is way high in calories for what you get and for how full it keeps you.

So, not only can the phone work for you in ways that make your life much simpler and much more high tech and information getting, it can also help you in your weight loss goals by providing you with the tools you need to make the right decisions when it comes to your diet. Hey, they probably even have exercise apps to help you out with that part of losing weight too!

You Need Less Calories as You Get Older

I always wondered why my grandparents seemed to eat less and less as I saw them age through the years. Then I slowly started to learn that you need less of a lot of things, and more of some others, as you start to get up there in years. One of the things you need less of they say, is sleep. The other is calories. Remember when you were a kid, or even a baby, and you seemed to be able to sleep for ten hours straight and wake up refreshed? Try sleeping that amount of time in one night nowadays when you’re older and see how crappy you feel. It’s too much sleep when you get older.

Same thing goes for calories. You don’t need as many calories once you start to age. For example, once a woman passes forty years old, she needs about 100 calories less per day than she did previously. The reason is that your metabolism gets a bit slower and so you need to cut the calories accordingly so you don’t put on the weight since you’re not burning as much of those calories off.

Many times it can be difficult to gauge this, and this is why we often tend to gain weight as we get older. We’re used to eating those same calories, and yet our metabolisms aren’t as fast as they used to be, so we’re actually eating more than we’re burning which results in excess fat storage. On trick you can use is to make sure you leave some food unfinished on your plate in the evening, when reduced calorie intake is all that much more important since you are not going to burn it off in bed (unless you’re doing some sort of activity, wink wink).

Or, perhaps you can just eat a calories controlled lunch of something like a Lean Cuisine or Smart Ones so you know that you are only consuming 400 calories or so instead of consuming more than that. Lunch is an easy one to control,at least for me. It’s at dinner when I seem to have more trouble keeping myself in control of my eating habits. This is when most people consume most of their calories, which is the worst thing you can do. Instead, try to consume most of your calories in the first part of your day so you can burn them off while you are awake, up and about doing things.

HGH in Spotlight for Fat Reduction, Muscle Building

HGH, or human growth hormone has been used as an anti aging regimen for a while, except the catch is that doctors cannot prescribe someone HGH for anti aging or for weight loss or muscle building and fat loss, but they have to hear the words “hormone deficiency” before they can give out that magical little piece of paper that allows people into the elite world of HGH injections. As you probably know, as we age, there is a certain amount of muscle wasting that happens, along with additional fat gain in parts of body that tend to hold onto fat in the first place.

Hence men and women with spare tires and beer guts as we age. This is because our bodies metabolisms slow as we get older, and also our ability to gain muscle and lose fat becomes harder to activate because our levels of human growth hormone start to go down, and this hormone is responsible for that easy physique that seems to come to us in a breeze when we are younger, even forgiving our occasional forays into the burger and fries joints with greater ease than it does when we get older.

Have you ever heard the expressions that your body changes and rearranges as you age? Or that you seem to just look at a plate of food and gain weight, whereas you didn’t have that problem when you were younger? A lot of that is due to a deficiency in HGH as we age, because this is essentially the hormone of youth. You can help your body produce more by taking an HGH supplement, and by living a healthy lifestyle, but also getting enough sleep is vital, since your body makes this hormone primarily at night when you are getting a good nights sleep.

I just watched a documentary that was about the world of illegal injections such as steroids and other abused performance enhancing and muscle building drugs, and found that HGH was not as widely prescribed as we think, mostly because the FDA prohibits it from being prescribed for what most people think it should be, which is for anti aging purposes, muscle building and fat loss, along with energy enhancement, but rather can only be prescribed for a hormone deficiency of some sort or for people with special health problems that need it.

That of course doesn’t stop some people from getting it on the black market since it is available that way if you can’t get it from a doctor. However, beware that there could be potential side effects using these injections, and that it is illegal which means you could get in trouble if you don’t have a prescription. Also be aware that they have no long term studies on these since they are used so seldom for long term and therefore they have no basis to provide a study.

Summer Weight Loss Goals : Survey

What are you weight loss goals for the summer? Or are you one of those lucky genetically blessed few that has never had any problems with your weight ballooning up or of having cravings for the wrong kinds of food, and lots of it, at that? Most of us aren’t, and we have struggled on and off, especially the older we get, since our metabolisms slow down when we start to age, and it seems like the smaller weight gains turn into longer periods of time, and that the foods we eat tend to stick to our problem areas a little more. That’s right, you can’t each cheeseburgers and pizza with no repercussions when you get older, no sir!

Most people I know, women and men, have some sort of weight loss goal when they start to see summer coming on the horizon. Myself included. Shoot, I dropped ten from my winter pounds and I still want to lose another five to ten pounds now that I realize it’s totally doable without torturing myself since I really love some of the healthy foods I’ve now become accustomed to. It’s hard in the summer I’d say to not eat out because you do tend to be out and about more since the weather is nicer, and it’s hard not to do the social eating and alcohol drinking thing, so although most people think it’s easier to stay thinner in the summer, it actually isn’t for a lot of people.

Most of my friends have a mild weight loss goal for the summer time, the common ones being ten pounds, maybe fifteen here and there, and some of the naturally thin ones who haven’t had many weight struggles might say five or so pounds just so they can comfortably fit in some of their summer clothes without feeling like they’re spilling out of them.

What’s your summer weight loss goal, and how do you plant to achieve it? Mine is ten ideally, and I plan to achieve it by limiting my calories to about 1500 per day and exercising a lot, especially jogging down our road since jogging really seems to melt the calories away better than anything else since it’s constant stress on the body and forces the body to burn mega calories. Plus it’s great for burning off fat on the legs and thighs I’ve found.