Archive for October, 2008
Review of the 5 Factor Diet
The 5 Factor weight loss diet was made by celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak for celebrities that need to loose weight fast and get in shape without getting hungry and weak. The diet is based on the number 5. For five weeks you eat five meals a day and do five workout sessions a week with five exercises each.
Harley Pasternak wrote the book 5 Factor Fitness in 2004. The book 5 Factor Diet was published in 2007; it is an expanded version of the dietary portion of the 5 Factor Fitness book. This is not just another Hollywood diet gimmick, this is a nutritious, balanced diet that includes all the recommended food groups, it helps people get control of their appetites and lose pounds.
If you want to lose 10 pounds or lose 20 pounds this is a good diet because it emphases nutrition and not getting hungry. The best part is it works; it can help you change the eating behaviors that caused you to gain the weight in the first place.
Each meal has no more than five ingredients and takes no more than five minutes to prepare. Each of the 5 daily meals is low in fat and calories and a proper mix of lean protein like chicken, fish, or low-fat dairy. Each meal also has fruits and vegetables, whole grain fiber, monounsaturated fats and water or other sugar-free fluids, all in proper proportions. All refined flour and added sugar is banned.
All of the carbohydrates must have a low rank on the glycemic index scale. Lower glycemic carbohydrates will give you a more stable blood sugar level. The Glycemic index is a measure of the effects of carbohydrates on blood glucose levels. High GI carbohydrates break down rapidly during digestion and cause your body to release glucose rapidly into your bloodstream; carbohydrates that break down slowly, releasing glucose gradually into the bloodstream, have a low GI.
Drinking water before a meal helps you fill full so you will eat less food. Fiber is a part of each meal. The insoluble fiber will wash out of your system and take some of the fat from the meal with it.
It is important not to skip meals, this causes the body to store fat instead of burn it. Skipping meals tells the body to keep the fat. Eating 5 times a day, increases the metabolism so you lose fat. The 5 Factor diet has one day a week when can eat favorite foods that you have eliminated from your diet.
You are not left on your own with just a book, the website is useful and informative; it is loaded with meal plans, menus, eating and exercise plans, journals, and much more. The exercise portion of the 5 Factor diet includes activity five days a week for twenty-five minutes a day.
Weight Loss Nutrition Tips
Weight loss programs and diet programs are a huge business. I am always seeing ads for weight loss products that promise miraculous results. Some of them are magic pills, some have meal plans, and others are magic diets that increase your metabolism. You can have marvelous success with many of these programs. You will have much better success over the long if you learn how to lose weight and incorporate it into your life.
Healthy Weight Loss Tips
Weight loss nutrition is much better than weight loss pills. Eating many fruits and vegetables will help you slim down. Fruits and vegetables are low in calories and high in fiber, this will help you feel full without the excess calories. Fruits and vegetables also increase your metabolism, much more so than doughnuts. Fruits will help you with your cravings for sweets.
There are foods that you are going to need to cut out of your diet. One of the main ones is fried foods. It is much better to bake or steam your food or eat it raw.
It will do a lot for you if you stop eating meat. Once you stop eating meat for a few weeks you will not want to eat it any more. I saw a man lose 90 pounds over a year just by not eating meat and sweets. He still ate more than any two people would ever need but he still lost weight. He did do Yoga and walked but that was all he did that was different. He did not need diet pills or any special programs. Just good, healthy foods.
You need to replace the doughnuts and angle food cakes with fruits. Not canned fruit with added corn syrup but fresh or at least frozen organic fruit. If you find it hard to let go of your cravings for sweets, try to at least limit your intake. You can indulge in a treat once in a while just go for the lowest calorie treat you enjoy and eat it with fruit, then go walk around the block.
No ice-cream. The trouble with ice-cream is it is in the freezer for you to eat. Every time you open the freezer it is there looking at you, what else is there to do but eat a bowl every night. That is what you don’t want to do. If you must eat ice cream buy the smallest and best you can find and eat it with fruit. The fruit will help fill you up.
My advice is to lose weight the healthy way. It still will not be easy but eating many fruits and vegetables will help you preserve your willpower and you will lose weight without starving yourself. At some point life gets easer, your new way of eating is normal to you and you are not trying to lose the weight, you are just doing weight control. Weight control is much easer because you do not need to lose it, you just need to keep it off.
How Calories Loss AND Food Fuel Cause Weight Loss
You have probably heard that if you use a smaller number of calories than your body needs for fuel through a calories loss eating program and if you exercise then you will lose weight. It is true, and this is the only way that you will ever successfully enjoy a healthy weight loss and keep this weight off.
Generally, we consume around 2,000 calories each day and experts suggest that this is what the average person requires. If by following a calories loss eating plan, you reduce your food intake and only eat 1,500 calories daily, your body needs to search for the energy required from the 500 calories you did not eat from another source. This source happens to be the fat your body is storing and that you want to shed!
A calories loss diet together with exercise is a certain way to lose weight. Losing as an example, 5 pounds, will require you to reduce you calories by 17,500 as there around 3,500 calories in each pound of fat. Even when they promise this and more without effort, the latest quick result diet, diet powder or diet pill can not provide the weight loss results you want in the long term.
Medication can not burn the extra calories that you can through what you eat and how you exercise. We know that fat burning does come through calories loss but losing weight is more than just watching your calorie intake. For all aspects of your body’s health you need to balance what you eat by making sure that your menu includes foods from each of the different food groups.
If you only eat a salad and drink diet sodas for calories, you still won’t lose weight because you are not giving your body what it needs to function. Your diet should not be something that you use to punish yourself or to punish your body. Your body needs food for fuel.
Common sense dictates that there is only one way to fuel your body so that it remains healthy even when you are losing weight. This is the inclusion of a variety of foods including fruits, healthy fats, whole grains and vegetables. ‘Not so difficult’ you may think ‘But what about eating these foods even when you’d rather your high calories favorites like donuts with coffee and deep fried fish and fries’?
Old eating favourites like deep fried chicken pieces and a soda are not always easy to replace but if you want to reach your weight loss goal you will need to eat grilled chicken breast and an orange juice instead. These are the small but significant modifications that you can make to your normal eating patterns that will make all the difference. They become part of your changing lifestyle and the impact they have on your overall calories loss will bring about your weight loss for good.
If you focus on the development of a healthy body you as you would be wise to do, you can use calorie counting as means of monitoring the path to your weight loss. There will be no need to penalize yourself for carrying too much weight; instead you can respect your body and provide it with foods that will help it become stronger and healthier. Along with regular exercise, a diet that contains lean meat, fruits and vegetables and whole grains is the ultimate way to guide your body to the healthy weight and shape it should be.
The difference in your healthy eating and exercise program will take some adjusting to, because it is different and takes some accepting on your part. If you persist with this, especially as you adjust to your calories loss menus, your new lifestyle patterns will begin to feel NORMAL. As this sense of normality begins to take effect your weight loss will be underway and you will find it difficult to recall why you had not lived like this earlier.
Calories Loss Means Weight Loss
The most popular weight loss programs across the past twenty years have been concerned with a low carb or low fat foods. The fundamental reality about all eating programs devised to assist us to lose weight however, is that regardless of their focus, diets only bring about weight loss if they include calories loss.
How can you calculate the number of calories that you should eat every day? There are a number of different ways to do this. Some are complex and require mathematical calculations involving your Base Metabolic Rate, the energy you use in physical activity, and the way your body processes food.
You can go to a nutritionist who has tools to measure those values and get a very precise figure of how many calories you should be eating each day. But if you want a simpler formula to figure out how many calories you should be taking in each day to keep your body functioning, there is an easier way. First, you need to assess your activity level.
You belong to the sedentary category if you have an office job and are no more active than getting to or from the car that takes you to you workplace. The formula for calculating your preferred calorie intake each day involves multiplying your weight by 14 and getting for example 150X14 if you weigh 150 pounds. This means that you need 2,100 calories a day to maintain your weight but you should factor in a calories loss with an intake below 2100 if you are planning to lose weight.
If you are moderately active, you don’t work out every day, but you might hit the gym two or three times a week or walk or bike ride around the neighborhood at night. To figure out how many calories you need each day, take your weight and multiply it by 17 so the total will give you the number of calories you should take in to maintain your weight. To lose weight through calories loss your intake will need to be less than this.
If you commute to work on a bike, or run for an hour each day you lead an active life. Your ideal calorie count to maintain your healthy body is calculated by multiplying your weight by 20. If you change aspects of your diet to include a calories loss you can and expect to lose weight in this way.
Keeping details of what you eat and how many calories this contains across each day can be recorded in a food diary. Many people find that these commercially produced books are a helpful tool to manage their weight loss, especially as the act of recording the calories they consume gets them to pay closer attention to exactly what they eat. Notation in food diaries also helps identify those foods most calorific that can be eliminated or reduced to allow sufficient calories loss for a healthy weight loss.
There are plenty of calorie counting websites that have the same information for free and will help you manage your calories loss and the impact of this on your overall weight loss. Counting calories may take a little time at the outset but you it becomes a lot easier and will help you control what you eat so you can lose weight and keep it off forever.
Are you interested in finding cabbage soup diet recipes?
The cabbage soup diet is a very low calorie restriction diet. so you’ll be eating much fewer calories than you and ordinarily consume on a daily basis. But, beware the diet should not befallen for more than seven days at any one time. The Soup consists of the following ingredients.
6 large green onions, 1 or 2 cubes of bouillon (optional), 1 or 2 cans of tomatoes (diced or whole), 3 Carrots, 1 Container (10 oz. or so) Mushrooms, 1 48oz can V8 juice (optional), 1 bunch of celery, half a head of cabbage, 1 package Lipton soup mix, 2 green peppers, Season to taste with salt, pepper, parsley, curry, garlic powder, etc.
Here’s my favorite way to prepare the cabbage soup:
Slice the green onions, put them in a pot and begin to saute with a little cooking spray. Then cut the stems off the green peppers, halve them, then take the seeds and membranes out. Chop the green peppers into pieces that are no bigger than bite-size and add them to the pot. Next take cabbage remove the outer leaves, cut into small bite size pieces too and add them to the pot.
Clean the carrots, chop into bite size pieces, and add to pot. Cut the mushrooms into thick slices, add to pot. If you would like a spicy soup, add a small amount of curry or cayenne pepper now.
You can use beef or chicken bouillon cubes for seasonings. These have all the salt and flavors you will need. Use about 12 cups of water (or 8 cups and the V8 juice), cover and put heat on low. Let soup cook for a long time - two hours works well. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
The cabbage soup diet should not be followed for more than 7 days. Check out my site for a completely free 7-day plan. Once there you’ll find great recipes, diet plans, and other fantastic diet review, tips and ideas. When you visit today sign up for our newsletter and you’ll receive a BMI calculator and a free ideal weight calculator. Visit Today!
Who wants cabbage Soup diet recipes? Click here!
The cabbage Soup diet is a calorie restriction diet. This means that you be eating vegetables with much of your calories than regular diet. But that should not be followed for more than seven days. The actual cabbage soup consists of the following:
6 large green onions, 2 green peppers, 1 or 2 cans of tomatoes (diced or whole), 3 Carrots, 1 Container (10 oz. or so) Mushrooms, 1 bunch of celery, half a head of cabbage, 1 package Lipton soup mix, 1 or 2 cubes of bouillon (optional), 1 48oz can V8 juice (optional), Season to taste with salt, pepper, parsley, curry, garlic powder, etc.
Here is how you should prepare it:
Slice green onions, put in a pot and start to saute with cooking spray. Cut green pepper stem end off and cut in half, take the seeds and membrane out. Cut the green-pepper into bite size pieces and add to pot. Take the outer leafs layers off the cabbage, cut into bite size pieces, add to pot.
Clean the carrots, chop into bite size pieces, and add to pot. Cut the mushrooms into thick slices, add to pot. If you would like a spicy soup, add a small amount of curry or cayenne pepper now.
Use either beef or chicken bouillon cubes for seasonings. This ingredient has all the salt and flavors you will need. Use 12 cups of water (or 8 cups and the V8 juice), cover and put heat on low. Let soup cook two hours. Season to taste with pepper and salt.
The cabbage soup diet should not be followed for more than 7 days. Check out my site for a completely free 7-day plan. Once there you’ll find great recipes, diet plans, and other fantastic diet review, tips and ideas. When you visit today sign up for our newsletter and you’ll receive a BMI calculator and a free ideal weight calculator. Visit Today!
Snacks and Foods You Thought Were Off the Calories Loss Menu
If want to reach a weight loss goal, the power of temptation about the wrong kind of food is enormous, especially when we can see or even worse, touch or smell it. So, if you have surrounded yourself with high calorie, high fat foods for a long while don’t be surprised that you’ve eaten them and kept gaining weight. To remove the temptation, and to make sure that you have the right kind of food to promote a calories loss in your new eating program, overhaul your kitchen and get that junk food out.
Condiments can be used to add flavor and zest to a lot of low calorie meals so keep easy to find condiments on hand so that if your low calorie meal needs a kick, you have a low calorie way to spice things up. Low calorie salad dressing or oil and spices to make your own along with low calorie mayonnaise both make any vegetables in salads more interesting and even tasty. Keep a supply of vinegar, cocktail sauce, lite soya sauce, olive oil and spices like salt, pepper, lemon pepper and others like these to add to meat dishes, especially fish and chicken.
Hot and spicy salsa with tomato, onions and chili is another popular low calorie sauce that can be serves as a dip or as part of a salad. On a sweeter note, there are low calorie jams and spreads available for that time of sweet indulgence. Toast and jam can be part of a breakfast menu and when eaten as part of a controlled calorie diet are suitable foods to enable the calories loss you want in your menu.
Not always viewed as the most exciting addition to our diet, canned foods do have some definite advantages for those who need a calories loss to drop some extra pounds. They can be low in calories, kept for extended times and are easy to include in other meals or eaten alone. Canned fruit, tomatoes, beans are all good examples of this and mixed canned vegetables can be added to a meaty casserole to great effect.
Get organic soups and broth when you can and throw some soup in your bag for a quick work lunch or use soup as a base in a low calorie meal especially those using organic broths that are a great base for calories loss meals. Tuna is a quick protein pick me up or last minute casserole, hummus a Middle Eastern dip that makes a great low calorie snack and peanut butter that every house needs to stock.
Buying fresh fruits and vegetables can be expensive but you should try to have some around whenever possible. During the spring and summer, hit the local farmer’s market to get great deals on fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables. Most of the time, fresh fruits and vegetables are cheaper than frozen during the spring and summer but to maintain your calories loss across the year, you might need to use frozen fruits and vegetables during the fall and winter when the markets close and fresh produce is harder to find.
Junk food can take many forms but it is generally high in calories, salt or fat and does little to satisfy hunger for long. As available junk food adds to the challenge of weight loss, the best action to take is to remove it and buy in its place healthy snacks, all part of a calories loss menu and enjoyable to eat. Try trail mix, tortilla chips, popcorn or pretzels along with pita bread dipped in olive oil all with much fewer calories than salt and vinegar potato chips.
Replacing all your unhealthy junk food will help you reprogram your own healthy eating patterns and establish these so that your kids will have them for a lifetime. Although changing old habits is not always easy and not having junk food in the house may upset you, stay strong and don’t stop snacking, just eat the healthier alternatives we’ve suggested. This is likely to be one of the most important ways for your calories loss to have a positive affect on your weight loss, your health and your happiness.
How to Fit Grains and Butter into a Calories Loss Diet
Breads and grains have endured a poor reputation in diet programs of late but it has been good to see a return to common sense where weight loss menus again accommodate servings of these foods. Although too much of these foods does not assist with a calories loss diet, we can eat some bread and grain foods and still lose weight. Bread is often best included in our menu in one sliced open or traditional closed sandwiches or even as a low calorie snack.
You can throw some cereal on top of your yogurt to add some fiber and crunch and make a great, fast and healthy breakfast that has less than 300 calories by using whole-grain, reduced sugar and bran cereals. You do not need to buy special low calorie bread as most whole grain bread has under100 calories per slice. Just remember, if you are aiming for calories loss, a serving is one slice, not two.
Pita bread containing less than 200 calories is a most versatile and suitable food to include in many meals like snack time where it can be an alternative to high calorie chips. Fresh pita bread with hummus and salad can become a delicious ‘wrap’ for lunch. Brown rice with vegetables and a chicken breast either steamed or stir fried in a wok is a healthy low calorie dinner at any time of the year.
Oatmeal is a great filling food for breakfast and has lots of fiber that will help you feel full throughout the day. At lunch or dinner, eat pasta sparingly, and look for whole grain pasta, but do keep some around for a quick meal. Remember to eat more of an accompanying salad than pasta when you want the benefits of calories loss.
Eat whole grain crackers and cheese as a snack instead of potato chips and you will be surprised at how much of a calories loss this accounts for. Crunchy and filling with hardly any calories, rice cakes are the classic diet food. Add a tablespoon of peanut butter on top for some taste and protein.
Dairy products do expire so bulk buying should be carried out carefully. The diary essentials for any calories loss program should include low calorie margarine, 2% milk, low calorie cheese and yogurt. Cheeses add wonderful flavour to low calorie meals and along with yogurt are ideal for dieters because of their portability and their capacity to bring about the calories loss you may need.
Low calorie yogurt is a delicious and nutritious food to include in a calories loss diet mainly because it is sweet enough to enjoy as a snack or part of a meal and contains all the calcium essential for the ongoing development of our bones. It won’t last forever but it is worth buying as much as you can eat over the length of its life.
Some grain food and dairy food can be frozen and along with other frozen foods contribute to a calories loss diet across the length of your weight loss program. Pre cooked and frozen meals are a fabulous way to provide a meal at work, especially since you are aware of the calories they contain. Frozen vegetables can be added to any meal in ways that provide interest and flavour and frozen fruit in unsweetened juice is great for a smoothie or a dessert served with low calorie frozen yogurt.
Is The Zone Diet Different Than Atkins
Dr. Barry Sears developed the Zone Diet. The diet uses the 40/30/30 strategy. This means that you consume 40% carbs, 30% fat, and 30% protein. The good Dr. Sears advocates a balanced diet plan in order to lose weight and avoid diseases.
The Zone Diet lasers in on insulin production as the major precursor and cause of weight gain. Eating foods that cause a spike in insulin production cause weight gain. This happens because highly sugary foods spike insulin production. Insulin attacks the sugars and loads it into your cells storing it fat. These spikes in insulin production are negatively correlated with diabetes and heart disease. That is, they cause diabetes and heart disease.
As we discussed some foods cause a spike in insulin. Which foods you ask? Well white flour and processed foods contain empty calories (simple carbohydrates) that cause insulin to flood the blood streams. Avoid these foods and white flour like the plague. Instead eat fruits and vegetables because the sugars (carbohydrates) in these foods are generally more complex and don’t cause the unhealthy insulin spike!
The Zone Diet recommends eating 3 daily meals and two snacks. Snacks prevent hunger and overeating. However, your snack must contain good carbohydrates in order to avoid the dreaded insulin spike. Meals, of course, must follow the 40/30/30 rule. The largest portion coming from carbs like green vegies, corn, cauliflower, squash, peppers, zucchini, and other similar vegies. As for protein, a good measure is to choose a portion about the size of your hand. And fat should probably be cut off of your meat prior to eating.
Fats are included in the meal to slow the digestion and provide steady energy. Slower digestion means that dieters won’t feel hungry right away. The Zone diet recommends fats that are good for you like nuts and oils like canola and olive.
Avoid insulin spiking foods whenever possible. Sweets like candy, cakes, pies, chocolate treats and such are terrible. But be aware that other more common foods like breads, pasta noodles and heavy starches are similarly bad. Candy, breads, and pasta are addictive and its very easy to overeat when consuming these foods.
The Zone diet provides affordable pre-packed foods to help you get started and stick to the diet. Also, we can provide you with dozens of sources of zone diet recipes. With just a few changes to your weekly grocery list you’ll be Zone Diet Compliant! In fact, your family probably won’t even notice the change to their menu once you do the switch.
Tips on Weight Loss: NutriSystem Diet, Does It Work?
This diet has been all over the television. There is even one spokeswoman who says that she has lost weight twice with the program. People have lost as few as thirty-five pounds and as much as 125 pounds with the program.
NutriSystem began with its clients being primarily women. Today, they provide men’s plan and a senior citizens plan for both sexes. They have plans for vegans and Type II diabetes sufferers.
The Nutrisystem program is based who9lly upon the glycemic index. The glycemic index corresponds with the affect foods have on blood sugar and insulin production. Some foods have a high glycemic index. When consumed they cause the body to secrete large amounts of insulin. The increased levels of insulin cause hunger more quickly after these foods are eaten Foods with a lower glycemic index provide a more stable blood sugar and do not spike insulin levels. The result is a more even insulin production (no spikes) and more energy throughout the day. Insulin levels remain even and most people find themselves more satisfied with their meals and less hungry.
Nutrisystem is a food delivery program. They ship food to your home every four weeks. The food does require refrigeration because of the process used to package the foods. Each dish has easy to follow preparation instructions.
The food is proportioned to provide nutritious, low glycemic index foods. These are called “good carbs” and they cause fast fat loss without much work. According to the Nutrisystem, the weight and fat will just melt away.
The Nutrisystem plan urges participants to add fruits, salads, low fat milk and dairy to each meal. The primary focus of the diet is to change the carbohydrates that we eat. Protein is protein, but carbs are not. In fact, as discussed above, this is evidenced by the numbers reached through the glycemic index. Processed carbohydrates raise blood sugar, while those that are made of whole grains stabilize it.
The plan doesn’t shun exercise but it is designed to work without it. Exercise can only enhance this program since they are already giving you foods that are optimal for you. Whether weight loss will increase with activity is unknown.
The meal delivery program is expensive, but you may qualify for a payment plan. If you can afford to spend a few hundred dollars on yourself and then the same amount on the rest of your family each month, this may be the plan for you. NutriSystem requires no counting, recording of meals, or anything else like that. You just choose your meal, add some healthy extras, and eat.
But if you don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars per month, per person and all you need is a quick, much cheaper alternative. You should try a safe, healthy cleanse. I’ve put together a plethora of information about this attractive option on my website. Please follow my links below and learn more about it.