Revamp Your Kitchen for Weight Loss Success

When it comes to eating healthy, there is almost always a battle. Don’t fret - it is a battle we can win. We often sabotage ourselves with the things that we keep in our home. Eating healthy is twice as hard when all you stare at each day is sweets and fattening food. Give yourself a break and make it easier by cleaning out that kitchen.

First, take inventory of the entire kitchen. We normally think about what we have in the fridge because we are always in there. My kids can open the door and stand there for five minutes trying to decide what they want to eat. You would think we had the entire supermarket in there as difficult as it is for them to choose some times.

We neglect the cupboards and other hiding places. You might say that the cupboard is full of canned foods and bags of this or bags of that. But, what is in those bags and is it good for you? If not, they need to be exchanged for better food choices.

Take a can of soup for instance. If it has more than 1,000 milligrams of sodium, or salt, per serving, that is too much. The body only needs two grams of salt a day. Half of that is in your soup. Instead, choose lower sodium varieties or better yet, make some homemade soup and skip the salt.

I’m going to pick on pasta for a minute. We all love pasta. It goes well with a variety of meats and sauces and is easy to fix when you are in a hurry. Pasta made from enriched white flour is not good for you. It goes straight to the hips. Substitute whole wheat pasta and keep your blood sugar on an even keel.

I keep my cereal boxes on top of my refrigerator. The kids love pre-sweetened cereal. It is tasty, but we can make better choices for ourselves and our children. Now I get Honey Bunches of Oats and other cereals that have more nutritious ingredients. There is just enough of a hint of honey and cinnamon to sweeten the cereal but also give my kids their needed amount of fiber for the day.

Eating vegetables is better than drinking them. For one thing, a glass of apple juice will stick to my ribs exactly ten seconds before I want something more substantial. An apple or an orange will last a lot longer than that. Hopefully until it is time to eat lunch or dinner. Lighten up on the juices and buy more fresh fruit. To keep it fresh longer, place fruit in a wicker bowl in a cool dry place where it’s easily accessible when those cravings hit.

To help make your weight loss a successful journey, ask yourself what’s in your kitchen. Your answer could very well be the thing that is keeping you from reaching your weight loss goals. Take inventory and clean out those foods that are not in your healthy eating plan.

Helping Kids Lose Weight

Kids learn from watching their parents. When they see us struggling with our weight, they may struggle with it as well. All the pressures of school and friends don’t go a long way to helping the weight situation. Kids swing from too thin to too fat. Here, we will talk about kids who need to lose weight and ways you, as a parent, can help them do so.

Gaining weight doesn’t happen overnight. It would be nice though so we could get rid of it just as fast. Alas, that is not how it is. When you need to lose weight, you must do the work. No one can change their body image unless they are willing to work for it.

One way to help kids to lose weight is to do some family exercise sessions. It doesn’t have to be a competition or any type of rigorous activity. Start out slow and build up to a faster pace. Take a walk before or after dinner. If you walk before dinner, you will eat less at the meal. If you work out afterwards, the body burns off some of that stored fat.

For kids, exercise has to be fun. If it is a chore, kids will quickly become frustrated and turn away. Play kickball or volleyball in the backyard. Take a few laps in the pool. Each of these activities burns calories and gets the heart rate up. Kids can get behind those activities and improve their weight.

In many school curriculums across the country it is required to take a gym class. Gym class five days a week can whittle down the waistline in no time. Because everyone has to do it, there is no pressure on your child to be singled out.

The hardest part of losing weight for kids is food. They love to eat and eat and eat. Kids feel invincible and that extends to their body. They can put anything into them and still be healthy. Not! What you put in your mouth determines where it goes.
Foods high in fiber are going straight through you, but not before grabbing a little fat on the way. Foods that digest slower, like complex carbohydrates, keep the body fueled. When you grab a snack from the vending machine, the sugar will give you a rush for about an hour and then it’s like someone put a pair of lead weights on your eyelids.

Turn your kids onto healthier snacks like carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and fruit. It is easy to carry a piece of fruit in your pocket and munch on the bus or as you walk home. Veggies can be eaten with low calorie dressings and dips to make them taste better.

How do you get your kids moving and shaking? As you work on the exercise portion of weight loss, don’t forget the food. Teach them how to eat healthy by doing so yourself and watch as your children begin to make healthier choices that will serve them well for life.

Menu Planning Central can help you plan quick, healthy meals for your children.

Recovering From Weight Loss Setbacks

It happens to each of us at least once on our weight loss journey. We go on vacation and live a little only to come back and step on the scale. When we do, we’ve gained back some weight and are disappointed. Or, you could be an emotional eater who is going through a personal crisis that results in added pounds.

The next step is the most important one. The choice is between struggling to recover and continuing to slide back into old habits. Before the choice is made, we must realize something about ourselves. It’s okay to slip up. Forgive yourself and forget that it ever happened.

Setbacks are a part of weight loss and any kind of goal we set in life. There has yet to be a time when everything in our life went according to plan. If it did happen for you, you need to write a book and let the rest of us off the hook. Assuming that it has not, it is something that we must learn to deal with or it will crush us to dust.

If you wisely choose to struggle and recover, try to discover what caused the setback in the first place. The answer will help you not to repeat the same pattern again. A common cause of setbacks in weight loss is emotional eating. Unfortunately, you don’t find out that you are an emotional eater until you get emotional and begin to eat.

It is not normal eating. Emotional eaters eat to relieve stress. You don’t have to be hungry. The act of eating something that pleases you releases those same “feel good” endorphins as exercise. It’s a cruel joke, I know, but there it is. The trick is to pinpoint emotional eating before you’ve gained too much weight.

Struggling is not pleasant for anyone. As you battle back, your mind may tell you that you messed up. Learn to ignore it by replacing that negative feedback with positive words of encouragement. Accentuate the positive things about yourself. Are you a star on your job? Tell yourself how good you are at what you do. If you have kids, bask in the knowledge that you are a great mom or dad.

Take on a partner. This person can be trying to lose weight also. They will be charged with telling you the truth and not just what you want to hear. You will do the same for them. By pointing out the good attributes of someone else, you will learn to do it for yourself.

Weight loss is a lifelong process. Even when you lose the weight, you must work to maintain that loss and continue to be healthy and fit. Don’t give up so early in the game. Learn to deal with setbacks and get on with working towards your weight loss goals.

How to Get Started with Weight Loss and Food

Weight loss is the topic of the moment. However, while we want to lose a little weight, most people don’t know how to go about it.

What is the hardest part of losing weight? I used to think it was exercise, but choosing what foods to eat is even harder. Why? When you start to exercise, the body takes care of itself. The muscles are worked and they in turn start to grow and reshape themselves.

With food, it is a different story. We truly are what we eat. Making poor food choices can set us back with our fitness goals. It can be frustrating when you have to continually worry about what you are eating. Each bite can be distressing.

Well, we are about to do away with all that. If you don’t remember anything else, commit to memory that food is not the enemy. No food in and of itself is bad. As long as we practice portion control, we can eat almost anything in moderation. For most foods, there are substitutions to make it a healthier meal.

As long as we are familiar with the basics of food, we can go about choosing foods that will be healthier for us to eat. Let’s start with carbohydrates. The news would have us believe there are good carbs and bad carbs. In reality, there are carbs that are digested more efficiently by your body and those that are not. A combination of the two will help us throughout the day.

Simple carbohydrates are digested quickly. Things like candy bars and sugary snacks are used up quickly which is why we get bursts of energy after we eat these things but then we crash and burn an hour later. With complex carbohydrates, the body takes longer to break them down so their energy is released throughout the day to keep our blood sugar steady. These include fiber-rich foods, whole grains, bran, and other grains. The one exception is refined white flour products.

Protein is meats, fish, and legumes. Beans are a good substitute for eating animal protein. They are high in protein and low in fat and cholesterol. Instead of adding hamburger to your salsa dip, put some black beans and garbanzo beans with a little cilantro into the mix for a tangy taste. Protein fuels the muscles and other cellular functions in the body.

Last is fat. Not much to say about that. Fat tastes good. That’s why we like it so much. Unfortunately, it also fills those fat stores in our body. Did you know that there is no limit to the amount of fat that can fit into those cells? For that reason alone, we need to learn how food works so we can keep our weight under control.

Use the information here to help you choose foods that will help you to lose weight or maintain that weight loss.

How to Stay Motivated When it comes to Weight Loss

According to magazines, everyone stays with a workout program for the first month or so. It’s fun and the gym is full of stimulating energy. You can’t help but come and be a part of it. Slowly though, the momentum begins to slow and we see the inside of the gym or the track at the high school less often.

What can you do? We all have our off days. Work drives us crazy, the kids are screaming, and on top of that we burned dinner. Okay, so all of these things don’t happen at the same time, but they could. The last thing on your mind will be driving to the gym or throwing a tape in the VCR.

The problem with exercise is that when we miss one day it is easier to miss the second and the third day. Even when we enjoy it, other factors come into play. Family, work, stress, and things outside our control all can derail us at some time.

On the other side of the coin, we workout each day and watch what we eat. When we step on the scale after all that hard work and it hasn’t budged, that is not encouraging. It is a blow to the stomach and can send some people for the ice cream in the fridge to alleviate their heartbreak.

Stay motivated by remembering why you decided it was time to lose weight in the first place. Losing weight can be the difference between living a healthy life and being on medication for conditions that are a result of obesity. Knowing that you may not be alive to see your kids grow up or grow old with your spouse is a major motivation.

It is not the one cupcake or the one time you eat too much pizza. We all have times when we want to eat what we want as a way to kick back. It is falling back into bad habits that are the problem.

Another way to stay motivated is by changing your thinking. When you are stressed, exercise relieves stress. You don’t have to go to the gym. You can work in the garden. Ripping out weeds is a good workout and a way to beat the stress in your life. Imagine each weed is a problem you are gaining control over and pull baby pull.

I actually banned myself from using the scale. I stood on it to find out my starting weight, but then used my clothes as a guide for gauging how well I was doing with my program. This made a huge difference to my self-esteem and will to keep going.

Whatever matters most to you, remind yourself of that fact when you feel like giving up. Post it on the wall in big neon letters if you have to, just don’t throw away the progress you’ve made and remember Rome wasn’t built in a day and you’re weight won’t all come off that fast either.

How to Lose Weight Fast and Permanently!

End the yo-yo dieting madness and discover a proven weight-loss program that truly produces long-term results. Lose weight FAST and PERMANENTLY. If you follow this program, you will improve the quality of your life, as well as improve your self-esteem, alleviate depression, improve overall health, and physical stamina. People are hungry for a weight loss program that truly produces outstanding long-term results. This program is more than simply weight loss, it’s also about establishing positive lifestyle habits that can be easily applied on a long-term basis. There are many weight loss strategies out there, but only a few really work. Therefore, to lose weight fast and effectively, there are basically four lifestyle changes that need to be modified: what to eat, how to eat, behavior and activity level.

Here are some proven methods to lose weight fast and keep it off:

First: Eat meals that consist of a balance of complex carbohydrates, proteins, and some fats. That is, the good fats such as olive oil and flaxseed oil. Protein helps to increase your metabolism up to 25% and may improve blood-sugar levels. The more steady your blood sugar levels, the more likely you are to keep your weight down for the long haul.

Second: Set realistic goals. A good place to start is to lose 1-2 pounds a week. If you lose weight too quickly, then you’re most likely losing water weight and not fat.

Third: Always eat breakfast. This revs up the metabolism first thing in the morning. Good breakfast choices are those low on the glycemic index, such as protein-rich foods and complex carbohydrates. These foods also keep blood sugar levels steady. High blood sugar levels have been associated with increased inflammation and increased fat retention.

Fourth: Consume more foods that are abundant in fiber. Fiber creates a feeling of fullness, slows down digestion, and balances blood sugar levels. Fiber also helps to flush out excess toxins and FAT! Fiber-rich foods include low-glycemic raw vegetabes, fruits, beans, and whole-wheat.

Fifth: Avoid saturated fats in the diet completely. Instead, focus on consuming more of the healthy fats, such as monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Some example of foods that contain good fats include avocados, raw nuts and seeds, olive oil, wheat germ, and essential fatty acids. Fish is another good source of the much needed omega-3 fatty acids that is sorely missing in the American diet. Omega-3 fatty acids help to reduce your risk of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Sixth: Drink plenty of water! Drinking at least six to eight glasses of water a day removes toxins and waste products from your body, keeps skin healthy and glowing, helps you lose weight, improves energy level, and allows for proper digestion.

This program is one of the most highly effective programs available today and will make a big difference in your life!

For more information on how to lose weight FAST and PERMANENTLY, please click here.