Archive for the ‘Weight Loss Tips’ Category

Why You Should Give Up Sugar

Friday, November 6th, 2009


article by Shane Ellison

If you could make one simple change in your diet to help you melt fat, sleep better, and improve your memory … wouldn’t you do it? What if that same simple dietary change could increase your energy, conquer depression, save your eyesight, restore your mental alertness, get your bedroom energy rockin’, and increase your lifespan?

This may sound too good to be true. But it’s not. And you don’t have to take drugs. Nor do you have to try some newfangled experimental supplements. Or stop eating. Or even give up the foods you love.

It’s as simple as reducing the amount of sugar you eat.

This is not a trick. I said you don’t have to give up the foods you love. And that includes sweets. You can actually give up sugar and keep your sweet tooth happy. This is the greatest health secret of all time. And I’m gonna teach you how to incorporate it into your life.

Before I tell you how, I want you to know just why you should give up sugar. It’s not just because of all the aforementioned benefits. It’s because sugar can have serious health consequences.
Have you ever been plagued by hard-to-diagnose health problems? You know something is wrong, but your doctor can’t seem to figure out what’s causing them? You …

* can’t lose weight, no matter how hard you exercise or diet

* feel depressed, even though you’re typically a happy person

* can’t get a solid night’s sleep

* feel sluggish at work

* lack mental focus

* have lost your libido

* suffer from rising blood pressure

Well, it’s not all in your head. It could be your sugar addiction.

My six-year-old can recite all the dangers of sucrose (table sugar) in a matter of two minutes. She can also warn you of the risks associated with those artificial sweeteners in pretty packets. And because she still likes to get her “sweet fix,” she can tell you which natural sweeteners are best to use in tea, cookies, and cake. Not bad, considering that the self-appointed custodians of our health – physicians – are totally clueless about the sweetener epidemic that is sabotaging us.

If a first grader can master the problems with sugar and understand how to choose the right alternatives, you can too.
We all have the need to get a sweet fix. It’s part of our biological makeup. When consumed, sweets elicit a chemical cascade of events that lead to the triggering of feel-good receptors within the brain. If this happens repeatedly, an emotional bond between happiness and sugar is formed. We become fully dependent on sweets.

Sugar addiction is best illustrated by children who break down with temper tantrums if not given sugar, women who consume chocolate in times of stress, and men who suck down soda to make it through the “afternoon blues.” In a study comparing the addictive properties of sweeteners, saccharin and sucrose proved more addictive than cocaine!

The irony is that your body doesn’t actually need any sugar. What you do need is glucose for energy. And you can obtain it from fruit and vegetables.

If left unchecked, an addiction to sweets spikes blood sugar and the fat-storing hormone insulin, disrupts satiety (causing users to overeat), and gives rise to age-accelerating molecules known as AGE products (advanced glycation end products). These aging molecules (not cholesterol) are responsible for causing wrinkles and age-related blindness, as well as premature heart attacks and stroke.

Over time, “sweetener addiction” leads to the hard-to-diagnose symptoms listed above, and a host of dreaded diseases like insulin resistance, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. To avoid the sabotage, you must understand how to get your sweet fix without becoming addicted.

Years ago, people didn’t eat much sugar – as little as 10-15 pounds per year. And their health was much better for it. As time passed and sugar production became easier, people gave into their sweet cravings and began to overindulge. Today, the average consumption of sugar is a whopping 160 pounds! It’s suicide in slow motion. Sugar addicts eliminate a 11-20 years from their lifespan.

Few people realize how much sugar they are putting into their body. They are simply giving into an addiction while slowly ruining their health. To judge whether or not you are at risk, read your food labels for one day and count how many grams of sugar you are eating. Insert that number into my People’s Chemist Death by Sugar Calculator found at www.thepeopleschemist.com. Watch as the graph calculates how many pounds of sugar you are stuffing into your mouth annually.

But that doesn’t mean you should replace sucrose with artificial sweeteners to get your sweet fix. Artificial sweeteners are nothing more than drugs in disguise. Splenda is a perfect example.

Splenda contains the drug sucralose. Invented in a pesticide lab, this chemical is 600 times sweeter than sugar. To make sucralose, chlorine is used. Chlorine has a split personality. It can be harmless or it can be life threatening. In combo with sodium, chlorine forms a harmless ionic bond to yield table salt. When used with carbon, the chlorine atom in sucralose forms a covalent bond. The end result is deadly organochlorine, known simply as RNFOC (a Really Nasty Form of Chlorine). Unlike ionic bonds, covalently bound chlorines are a big no-no for the human body. They yield insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides – not something you want in your sports drink or your child’s lunchbox.

Think aspartame (Equal, Nutrasweet) is safe? Think again. Teaching organic chemistry, I taught my students how to identify the active ingredients in soda using a technique known as TLC (Thin Layer Chromatography). The byproducts of sodas containing aspartame are all known poisons (that would slowly kill you): methanol, phenylalanine, and aspartic acid. I never saw my students with a diet soda after that.

Safe alternatives to artificial sweeteners are abundant: erythritol, agave, xylitol and luo han guo.
Choosing which natural sweetener to use depends on which one tastes best to you. Agave nectar usually wins. It stimulates taste buds exactly the same way sucrose does. But unlike common table sugar, very little of its active ingredient – inulin – is absorbed. Therefore, you are protected from the dangers of sugar addiction.

As a “nectar,” agave is a bit harder to bake with. This is where the safe and natural erythritol wins. You can replace it gram for gram with sugar. Even better, I like to use 25% table sugar and 75% erythritol in baking and ice cream. You won’t even notice the healthy difference. That’s the real magic here!

All natural sweeteners are known to help control appetite, keep insulin and blood sugar low, and prevent the formation of age accelerating molecules in our body. None of them are addicting, nor will they diminish your lifespan. They are perfect to use with my Hormone Intelligence Therapy (HIT) program for reversing diabetes, losing fat and feeling great in 90 days.

Getting your sweet fix doesn’t have to be deadly. If you learn to gauge your sugar intake with The People’s Chemist Death by Sugar Calculator and start using natural sweeteners, you won’t be plagued by hard-to-diagnose health problems. And you’ll have more years to enjoy life and those you love.

This Exercise article is provided by Articleteller – The Free Article Directory http://www.articleteller.com

Ellison’s entire career has been dedicated to the study of molecules; how they give life and how they take from it. He was a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. Read the free report at www.thepeopleschemist.com/fatloss

Fat Loss Tips

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

author: Lanny Schaffer, Ph.D

Everybody needs a little helpful advice on the road to weight loss success. Following are eight basic but effective fat loss tips that will make adhering to your nutrition and exercise plan much easier. They will gear your body and your mind for extreme fat burning mode:

1) HOW OFTEN DID YOU EAT TODAY?

To stabilize blood sugar levels, decrease insulin and increase fullness it is recommended you eat 5-6 smaller meals 2-3 hours apart. Fat is less likely to accumulate under these conditions.

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5 Biggest Weight Loss Myths

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

author: Mark McDonald

Why do so many of us fail or give up our efforts to lose weight? And why do we fall for so much false advertising? The key to losing weight is eating good food, in moderation, and doing some form of regular exercise – such as walking. But let’s look at some popular weight loss myths:

1. Low Fat Diets

Low fat diets have had many people fooled for years, and with the result just about every brand has come up with a low fat or fat free alternative at a higher price of course, but do not be fooled any longer. Our bodies need certain amounts of fat to survive and actually help us to lose weight. Unsaturated fats are the good fats and can be found in most “fatty” foods as well avocados, nuts, others.

The real culprit to gaining weight is sugar. It is not the high fat content in chocolate, pizza, sauces, and sweets that cause weight gain, but the sugar content. Sugar is used to make fat free products taste much better, so most fat free “diet” products actually have more sugar then their normal counterparts. Sugar is turned into glucose, or energy, by the body and when you have too mush of it, it is stored in the fat reserves until you need it.

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Natural Weight Loss is Effective

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

author: Daniel Patterson

With so many different products and magic weight loss pills on the market, many people seem to be turning away from the standard, tried and proven methods of losing weight. And the enticement is very real! While many of the diet and weight loss supplements on the market can be very effective aids in losing weight, they should not be the focus of a weight loss mentality or program. So let’s get back to the basics.

With so many different products and magic weight loss pills on the market, many people seem to be turning away from the standard, tried and proven methods of losing weight. And the enticement is very real! Who wouldn’t love to just pop a pill, not change anything in their lifestyle, and lose 10 pounds a week? While many of the diet and weight loss supplements on the market can be very effective aids in losing weight, they should not be the focus of a weight loss mentality or program. So let’s get back to the basics.

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Bob Greene’s Best Life Diet

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

What can Oprah’s trainer do for you?

If you watch Oprah Winfrey you may have caught the shows where she talks about how her personal trainer Bob Greenechanged her life and helped her to overcome the yo-yo weight problems she had between diets. She managed to lose a lot of weight but could never keep it off consistently – until she tried it Bob’s way.

Bob Greene

Bob Greene’s Best Life Diet program consists of three-phases, that you proceed through at your own pace. It introduces gradual changes to the diet – his book even list’s a typical week of Oprah’s eating regime – then “each phase gradually leads you to an increasingly healthy and slimming diet and encourages you to increase physical activity.”

In each phase, you’ll be asked to reexamine the decisions you make on a daily basis and gradually alter your habits to achieve lasting results. The book also includes easy-to-follow meal plans that make it simple to meet your daily energy and nutrient requirements, whether you are on the run and breakfast means a quick smoothie or you have time to shop for fresh produce and make something special.

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Healthy Cooking and Baking

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

author: Caley Walsh

When you are trying to eat healthier, many clever tricks in the kitchen can help, and you can still enjoy your favorite dishes. With simple modifications, even cheesecake can be part of a healthy diet. These easy substitutions and techniques lower the fat and cholesterol in your recipes, without sacrificing great flavor.

For easy reference in cooking healthy, print out the healthy equivalents chart and mount it to the inside of a cabinet door. (more…)

5 Tips for Losing Fat and Toning Up

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Losing weight and inches, and keeping the flab off, requires following a time-tested regime of eating less and exercising more.  Here are 5 steps to follow to lose fat and tone up your body!

1. Lighten Your Load: Lift Weights to Lose Weight

Before your eyes glaze over at the idea of weightlifting, keep in mind that it takes just a few short sessions of resistance training each week to improve muscle tone by adding lean tissue.

Weight training helps you build muscle which turns your body into a fat burning machine since each pound of muscle you make burns about 30 to 50 more calories than a pound of fat which burns only 3 to 5 calories—a tenfold increase!

Strength training accomplishes a number of other health benefits too, including lower blood pressure, improved resting metabolism, increased bone density, better posture, less back pain, and enhanced performance in sports.

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What is a Healthy Diet?

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

author: Ng Peng Hock

Diet, as part of a healthy lifestyle, plays an important role in maintaining one’s healthy body. It will help reduce chances of getting many health issues, including diabetes, hypertension, obesity, high cholesterol, etc that may ultimately lead to the risk of heart disease.

Problems to overcome

Saying is easier than done! For working adults, maintaining a balanced and healthy is even more difficult because most of the time they eat out. Limited time available for meal and tight work schedule frequently cause workers to pick fast food or other convenient foods, usually not very healthy. Or, they simply skip the meal.

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Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diet

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

author: Julia Denhem

Diets don’t work – not in the long term. This is why it’s easy to get burned out with weight loss. When you’ve been on many diets, you hesitate about starting yet another diet which leads to disappointment.

The Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diet is different, because it gives you five keys to a healthy weight loss, and it will be the last diet you never need. You’ll discover that you can eat all you want without putting on weight. (more…)

Benefits of Fitness Walking

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

Walking is the easiest and least expensive method to maintain your weight loss program and to keep fit. A 150-pound person walking for an hour, at a steady pace of 18 to 20 minutes to complete one mile, will burn about 320 calories. You can hike in the woods, around the neighborhood, or do it on a treadmill. And don’t forget you can take the stairs instead of the elevator, and park further away at the store.

It’s easier and more convenient to make walking a daily regular routine than almost any other exercise.

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