Burning Calories Diet, Part 2
61. Go through the buffet line one time only.
62. Load up at the salad bar. Gelatin or plan green salads should be abundant.
63. Pile on the grilled food looking for baked roasted or grilled entrees like fish or lean roast beef.
64. Avoid the breaded fish or fried chicken.
65. Select soups that you can see through. If you can see through them, they are broths with less fat and calories.
66. Eat slowly. Savor each bite. Take your time and enjoy eating. If you eat too fast, your stomach will be full long before the message to stop chowing down reaches your brain.
67. Ask yourself if you really tasted and enjoyed that last bite of food. If your answer is no, it's time to slow down.
68. To help downsize your portions, use a smaller plate. Instead of a dinner plate, use a salad plate for your entire meal.
69. When eating in a restaurant ask for a child's portion or ask to have the entrée split and have the second half packaged as takeout.
70. As an assist to making certain you are getting the right nutrition from your vegetables, alternate the colors from day to day. One day eat fresh yellow and orange vegetables like squash, pumpkin, and carrots then switch to green the next day, like spinach, or dark leafy lettuces.
71. Pass up peanuts for snacking. Two ounces of salted peanuts has 328 calories. Nibble on pretzels instead. 20 of the small ones have as little as 80 calories and most are fat free.
72. Skip fried shrimp. A three ounce serving has 206 calories while the same size boiled are only 84 calories.
73. If you love pie, stick with the fruit pies. Pumpkin and other fruit pies are lower in calories. Pecan pie has about 430 calories while the same slice of pumpkin pie is only 240. You can drop another 100 calories if you don't eat the crust!
74. Try Canadian bacon instead of regular bacon. One ounce of regular bacon is about four medium cooked slices and carries 163 calories. A one ounce slice of Canadian bacon is much leaner and only has about 57 calories.
75. Avoid the high fat temptations when dining out. Call ahead. Many high quality restaurants will accommodate your needs if you give them sufficient time beforehand. Explain that you are on a low fat diet and ask if they can prepare your food without frying.
76. If you frequent a specific restaurant, ask to take a menu home so you can study what they offer and learn how to plan your meals out.
77. Steer Clear of fast food restaurants. Most of their food is 40 to 50 percent fat. Many are finally wising up, however, and you can get salads, plain hamburgers or grilled chicken. You can also ask for the restaurant's nutritional information. Many now offer that.
78. Stay away from the appetizers unless you request crackers, pretzels or fresh vegetables like carrots or celery with a honey-mustard dressing (not ranch).
79. Put your waiter through his or her paces. Ask lots of questions and don't stop until you are satisfied. How is the fish grilled? If it is in butter, ask for it dry. If a fried entrée is offered on the menu, ask if the chef can bake it, broil it, grill it or steam it to cut down on the fat. Make sure they follow up. It's your meal and your money paying for it and within reason you should be able to get it the way you want it.
80. If a restaurant won't split a portion in half for you, preparing half of it "to go," request a doggie bag or box be delivered with your meal and split it yourself immediately before you begin to eat.
81. You can also carry a "survival kit." Use a small plastic sandwich bag and carry packets of low fat dressings, herbal teas, spices or other essentials that may not be readily available at a restaurant.
82. Split a meal with a friend. Order soup or salad a' la carte with one entrée and ask the waiter for an extra plate. It will save you money AND reduce the fat in each meal.
83. Visit pizzerias that offer salads and pizza by the slice. Don't order pizza with meat. Stick with vegetable toppings and, if possible, a wheat crust. Some pizza places do offer that option.
84. Eliminate tartar sauce. If you order a fish fillet sandwich ask that the tartar sauce be left off the bun.
85. Bake with cocoa instead of chocolate. For each ounce of unsweetened chocolate called for in a recipe, substitute 3 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder.
86. Use evaporated skim milk for sauces and soups. It has the texture and the flavor of cream but without the fat. Each cup contains 80 grams less of fat and 600 few calories than heavy cream.
87. Plain nonfat or low fat yogurt is a great replacement for sour cream. Use it to make salad dressings. It's also good as an add on to breakfast cereals and desserts.
88. Low fat foods may seem less flavorful when you first try them because fat adds flavor to some foods and you are used to that. Add zip with lots of herbs and spices like basil, garlic, ginger, onion powder tarragon and oregano. Vary the spices and come up with your own combinations.
89. Yogurt can help you lose weight while protecting muscle. A recent study of overweight people who at three servings of yogurt daily for 12 weeks lost 22% more weight, 61% more body fat and 81%more abdominal fat than people who ate a similar number of calories but no dairy products.
90. Spicy foods curb appetite as evidenced in a recent study. People who ate a sauce containing capsaicin (the compound that makes hot pepper spicy), consumed an average of 200 fewer calories over the next three hours than those who didn't eat the sauce. Consider eating more spicy foods.
91. A 12 ounce cola has 150 calories, two tablespoons of full fat salad dressing 150, a glazed doughnut 250 and a four ounce bagel, 300. Just eliminating these items will help you to lose weight.
92. Another recent study shows that calcium from diary foods is more effective for weight loss than supplements. Why? Food is a complex mixture of known and unknown components. There is a cooperation among the components that can't be reproduced in a nutritional supplement. Dairy contains calcium and a host of other biologically active components including the amino acid leucine. Recent research reveals that leucine may increase the ability of muscle to use fat. Have low-fat or skim milk before a meal.
Studies show that getting a liquid form f dairy before eating helps you feel fuller sooner at that meal and eat less at the next meal. If you are lactose intolerant, try yogurt with live culture (it has very little lactose) or take a lactose supplement when consuming dairy.
93. Eat fish at least twice a week. The omega 3 fatty acids in fish have been shown to reduce heart attack and stroke risk in addition to helping you maintain a nutritional diet.
94. Sometimes you can go with fast food. Burger Kings BI Veggie Burger with reduced fat mayonnaise contains 340 calories and 2 grams of saturated fat. It's better than just about any burger at any other food chain.
95. McDonald's Fruit and Yogurt Parfait is low fat vanilla yogurt layered with berries and topped with granola. It's a nutrient rich bargain at only 380 calories.
96. Subway's 7 subs with 6 grams of fat or less include ham, roast beef, chicken and turkey and range from 200 to 300 calories for a six inch sub.
97. Wendy's Mandarin Chicken Garden Sensation Salad is a creative salad alternative of mixed greens, chicken and mandarin orange sections, roasted almonds and a half packet of Oriental sesame dressing is a great alternative at just 470 calories.
98. A veggie sandwich may not always be the ideal choice. The two ounces of cheese added to these popular lunchtime meals contain three quarters of a full day's allowance for saturated fat. Tuna salad (because of the mayonnaise), has 720 calories and chicken salad is 550 calories. Stick with turkey, roast beef, chick breast or veggie sandwich without the cheese.
99. All salads are not created equal. A taco salad is served in a fried taco shell filled with ground beef, cheese, sour cream and guacamole. It contains 1,100 calories a full day's quota of saturated fat!
100. Not only is a single order of Fettucine Alfredo an artery clogger, it also weighs in at a whopping 1,500 calories! When eating Italian food, opt for pasta topped with marinara or meat sauce (skip the meatballs), red or white clam sauce or chicken Marsala.
EXERCISE
Well, you knew it was coming, didn't you? We've discussed at least 55 ways to adjust your eating habits. Some of the tips we covered will help your metabolism burn extra calories, but the bottom line is that you still need to burn more calories than you consume if you wish to lose those extra pounds.
The dawn of the Information Age has given us more labor saving devices than any other period in history. Along with this knowledge we have settled into a more sedentary lifestyle.
Taking a little trip back in time can really open our eyes. A typical day for your great grandmother began long before the sunrise. She was usually the first to awaken so she could have a hearty breakfast on the table for the rest of the family.
She would probably stoke her range with wood brought in the previous evening. Unless one of the children were old enough to be charged with the task, she would put on her coat, scarf and gloves and trek out to the barn to milk the cow, stopping on her way back to gather eggs from the chicken coop, home-cured ham and sausage from the smoke house, cheese (that she had made herself) butter (that she churned) and potatoes from the cold storage cellar.
Returning to her kitchen with her collection in tow, she would prepare a breakfast that most likely consisted of ham, sausage and eggs fried in lard she had rendered, biscuits, gravy made from the leavings in the frying pan, flapjacks, whole milk and strong coffee.
That picture can pretty much turn your veins to instant concrete!
Bear in mind that after her pre-dawn preparations she would spend the remainder of her day, sweeping, dusting, polishing, scrubbing clothing using hot water that she boils herself, hanging the laundry out to dry, tending her vegetable garden and often toiling in the fields with the men.
The comparison between your great grandparents is not so much what they ate, as how they used the calories they consumed. Life was hard. Normal physical activity usually burned off the calories they consumed. They worked hard and ate hearty and, yes they did have a shorter life expectancy.
Today we eat foods that are processed and contain more fat and chemicals than nutrition. To top it off, we also live sedentary lives. Unlike grandma's hearty breakfast we are more likely to grab a cup of coffee on the run. We rush to an office, only to spend the next 8 hours sitting in front of a computer screen, just as you are doing now.
Getting a handle on your diet is just the first step toward losing weight and living a healthier lifestyle. In order to tame the weight loss beast, you MUST change your physical habits as well as your eating habits.
You don't necessarily have to exert yourself as if you were training for the Olympics, but you definitely need to learn how to burn off more calories than you consume. Once you have accomplished that, you can step in to a regimen to maintain your ideal weight.
Before you begin a fitness/exercise program, you need to know what you want to accomplish. Once you have your plan firmly in place you can begin to incorporate the following tips.
101. Always warm up before beginning your exercise activity using smooth and fluid movement. The purpose of the warm up is to minimize discomfort and prevent injury and loosen up your muscles for the exercise to come.
102. Begin with a couple of deep breaths, inhaling through the nose and exhaling from your mouth.
103. When you plan to walk or run, do just a few hundred yards at a slower walk or a gentler jog.
104. Use the cool down routine in the reverse of the warm-up, gently slowing down. This will enable your breathing and heart rate to return to normal.
105. Learn to listen to your body and differentiate between good pain and bad pain.
106. Never exercise on a full or empty stomach.
107. Drink plenty of water to reduce the chance of dehydration. Experts usually recommend 16 ounces either one or two hours before exercising.
108. Always use stretching routines. These are not just for jocks and fitness gurus but should be used by everyone. The older you are, the more important this becomes as you can help retain flexibility and good range of movement for all your daily activities.
109. When warming up and stretching, use the movements for five to ten minutes. This will help to loosen your muscles.
110. Do not bounce when warming up with stretching as you can cause tears in your muscle fibers.
111. To increase your flexibility, hold each stretch for fifteen to twenty seconds or longer.
112. Be sure you stretch lightly during warm up to prevent stretch reflex. This is caused by over using a cold muscle.
113. Breathe slowly and evenly throughout your warm up.
114. If you have a tendency to become stiff, take a hot shower or bath before beginning your warm up.
115. Breathing is extremely important when exercising as your body need to process oxygen that will transfer from your lungs through the bloodstream to the muscles that are being worked. Normal breathing is shallow meaning that the air is not reaching deep into the lungs. This can tighten neck muscles which can cause stiffness and pain in the neck, shoulder upper back and chest.
116. Always inhale before you lift, exhale as you lift and inhale as you lower the weight for maximum benefit.
117. Turn every day activity into exercise. Try balancing on one foot without support while putting on your shoes and socks.
118. Forget about the elevator and use the stairs.
119. Take the stairs two at a time.
120. Instead of shoving your chair, lift it bending your knees and keeping your back straight.
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