Archive for the ‘Weight Loss’ Category:
Best Fruit Drinks for You
My wife used to drink a lot of apple juice as a child. She absolutely loved the stuff. Me? The only juice I ever drank was orange juice. Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice, usually with as much of that juicy fiberous pump as humanly possible. I always thought apple juice was like sugar water and my orange juice was the healthy goodness it was meant to be. Well, according to a study at UCLA, OJ ranks only 8th and Apple Juice ranked 10th in terms of antioxidant goodness. This makes sense though, they always say that the darker berries and grapes have the most antioxidant fighting power and oranges and apples are neither dark berries nor grapes! 
Number one on the list is a fruit that has been gaining popularity, especially in the alcoholic beverage market, and that’s pomegranate juice. The other day we picked up a bottle of pomegranate liquor on a whim and we’ve had Pom brand pomegranate juice in our fridge a few times. Pomegranate itself is quite fun to eat, you crack it open, suck on the little pomegranates and then spit out the seeds.
For those vino lovers, red wine makes in at #2 and even MLM-favorite Açaà juice slides inot the #6 spot. I joke about the MLM-favorite status only because it’s this juice that is pushed by Mona Vie.
Pomegranate Juice is Packed With Antioxidants [Health.com]
Subscribe to the comments for this postOne Pound of Fat = 3500 Calories
One pound of fat equals three thousand, five hundred calories.
If you want to lose weight, your body needs to run at a deficit. If you eat 3500 fewer calories a week, you can expect to drop a pound of fat. If eating 3500 fewer calories seems unreasonable, especially if the typical diet is 2000 calories a day, you need to figure out ways to burn an additional 3500 more calories a week. How can you do that?
First, let’s break it down per day. If you can burn up 500 calories a day extra, or eat 500 less, or any combination of the two; you can cut out one pound a week. That seems much more manageable than the 3500 number right? So, think of ways you can cut out 500 calories a day. If you drink a can of soda, that’s 100 calories. Can you skip it? If so, you only need to burn an extra 400 calories. Take one less bite of lunch and save it for tomorrow. Go low calorie and eat lots of fiber. Eating one fewer calorie is far easier than burning it.
But, let’s talk about burning it. The typical benchmark is that a 150 lb. person will burn 100 calories for every mile they walk on level ground. If you weight 150 lb., simply walk five miles a day and you’ll have burned out 500 calories and well on your way to losing a pound a week. Doesn’t that sound really easy? If you weigh more, you’ll burn more. You don’t burn more by running that mile, though you do improve cardiovascular health.
If you are more ambitious, hit the gym and ride the bike, walk the treadmill on incline, or do the elliptical machine. All those will burn calories far faster than walking on level ground, but require more effort. You could always start walking and then move to the gym. Or simply walk on an incline at the gym while watching TV or something.
Remember, 3500 calories is a pound of fat.
Brush Your Teeth Right After Dinner
Here’s a quick little tip that I picked up somewhere along the way, brush your teeth right after dinner and you’ll start to feel the pounds shed away. Okay, well for a minute there I had you, it’s actually not that simple but brushing your teeth has a lot of positive health benefits and one of them is that it may reduce your desire for snacks the rest of the night.
Another benefit of brushing your teeth has to deal with basic oral hygiene. By brushing your teeth after dinner, you get them as clean as possible immediately after getting them dirty! If your foods are acidic, if you drink soda for example, then washing away the acid will protect your teeth from their damaging effects. In addition to getting things clean, some of the active ingredients in toothpaste enhance the antibacterial properties of your own saliva.
So, why does brushing your teeth reduce your desire for snacks? Lauryl sulfate, an ingredient in toothpaste, drops your taste sensitivity and so everything taste weird. Try to eat something after brushing your teeth, once the minty flavor disappears you’ll notice that your ability to taste food has been lessened. This effect is fleeting though, but it’s long enough to make you think you can’t taste chocolate!
Lastly, there’s the psychological effect of brushing your teeth, it sends a Pavlovian message to your brain that eating is done for the day.
(picture by Eff Bee)
Don’t Focus on the Pounds, Focus on the Benefits
We live in a world of numbers. There’s no getting around it and there’s no sense fighting it. We track our progress with numbers, we track our lives with numbers, and we compare our numbers with the numbers of people around us. Whether it’s the number of cars or the number of dollars you earn, it ultimately comes back to numbers. We need to teach ourselves to stop and the way we do that is by starting with ourselves.
The point of losing weight is be healthier, feel healthier, and to live a healthier, richer, and more rewarding life! While keeping track of numbers is very important, it’s more important to focus on the other benefits weight loss can have on you. Focus on how it’s easier to get up in the morning, how much much energy you have to do the things you enjoy, and how your approach to eating food begins to change. Focus on how, while the weights numerically may be increasing, your muscles are more defined and how you can see your biceps more and more clearly when you flex in the mirror (you know you do it!). Dropping a couple pounds is great, but celebrate the effects it has outside of the number.
Another dangerous reason against focusing on the pounds is that muscle weighs more than fat. As you weight train, you may not see the pounds fall off the scale because it’s being replaced with heavier lean muscle. You may see the felt melt away from your body but it won’t be reflected on the scale - that’s okay. It’s what’s happening in the mirror that matters, enjoy it!
