Thank You For Visiting Our Blog, FEEL BETTER AND LIVE LONGER!

The purpose of our blog is to share what we have learned about nutrition, weight loss, fitness, and health, in order to help you find ways to feel better and live longer. It is amazing how much our diet and lifestyle affect our health and well-being.

Did you know that you can reduce your risk and even prevent many diseases and health conditions simply by making some changes to your diet? Check back often for valuable tips and information.

HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT & KEEP IT OFF:

For the first time in my life I have found weight loss success. During my adult life I have tried dozens and dozens of so-called "diets" and none of them worked over the long-haul. Oh, I was able to lose weight with some of them, but once I went off of the "diet" I quickly gained back all of my weight (plus some).

I have finally learned that losing weight has to be a lifestyle change, not a temporary fix. Crash diets and all the other crazy diets will not only cause you to fail, they are harmful to your health. To lose weight and keep it off you must NOT go on a "diet." What? Why? Because we all consider a "diet" a temporary thing. For example, how many times have you said, "Oh, I will go on this low-fat diet until I lose 20 pounds." Okay, what happens after you lose the 20 pounds? Or you simply give up? You go back to your old habits and gain that 20 pounds back.

The only way you will ever be successful at losing weight, with the added benefit of improving your health, is to make healthy changes that you can live with for the rest of your life. Period. Not for a week, a month or 3 months, but for life. For me, my initial goal was to lower my cholesterol level. I had to have a blood test for my insurance coverage and my cholesterol level had to be lower than the previous year's levels or I would have to pay a much higher premium. Well, that was a pretty good incentive for me make some positive changes.

I sat down and figured out what I needed to do. I knew I had to change the way I ate and I knew I had to exercise in some form or other every day. So, I made a list and I stuck to it. It was difficult at first. To make matters worse, I am a compulsive eater. However, as the days went by, it became much easier because my body stopped craving sweets and processed foods. For the first time in my life, I was never tempted to binge because I never felt deprived.

Use the list below and make whatever changes you need to make in order for it to work for you. FYI, my cholesterol level dropped 65 points after 7 weeks, and my triglycerides dropped 70 points! Another benefit that I hadn't planned on was that after being an insomniac since my teen-age years, I now sleep like a baby every night!

MY LIST FOR WEIGHT LOSS SUCESS:

1. Avoid "white" Foods & Processed Foods. These foods have no nutritional value and are "empty" calories. Sweets, anything made with white flour,and anything that comes in a package with a long list of ingredients. Always read the food labels. Stay away from those long lists of ingredients. The longer the list, the more chemicals and additives are present. These are extremely toxic to your body.

2. Drink Lots of Water. Water keeps your body's organs hydrated and flushes out unhealthy toxins. It helps to fill you up and reduces your urge to over-eat.

3. Eat a Healthy Breakfast. Instead of coffee and donuts, try fruit, yogurt, grains like oatmeal or whole grain toast, and lean protein. NEVER skip breakfast. By eating a large, healthy meal when you get up in the morning, your metabolism will "rev up" and you will not be hungry by mid-morning. If you skip breakfast, your body will go into starvation mode and store calories in your body as FAT, yes FAT! So do yourself a big favor and eat breakfast.

4. Reduce Your Stress Level. So many of us live with too much stress. Stress lowers your immune system, making it easier to get sick. It also makes us lethargic, tired, and depressed. There are a lot of simple things you can do and a lot of ways to feel better about yourself and your life. Take a long, hot bath, read a book, listen to music, get a massage. Do something nice for yourself. Giving yourself something to look forward to is a tremendous mental incentive.

5. Move! Oh my gosh! There are so many ways to incorporate movement into your day, even at work. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Get up every hour and walk around your floor, your hallway or your desk. Park your car in the farthest space from where you need to be. Walk or bike to work. Skate, dance, golf, jump rope, clean house, play tag. The best exercise you can do is to walk. Try to take a walk every day! The more you move, the more your metabolism will be your friend. (I walk 3 miles every day whether it is raining, snowing or freezing.)

Where Did the Time Go?

2:15 PM    No comments


Is time going by too quickly for you? Do you ever wonder where the time went? We all do at one point or another in our lifetime. We sit around and look back and wonder how it is possible that so much time has gone by and how much time we have wasted.

What if we had planned, organized, worked hard, and set goals? Then, instead of wondering how much time we had wasted, we would be wondering what other objectives we could plan for and add to our already achieved goals.

PLAN AHEAD

The first step to successfully managing your time is to plan ahead. When you plan for the future, you are setting goals for yourself to achieve over a certain course of time. When you plan ahead, you are projecting an understanding that you will have accomplishments. Therefore, it’s important to make sure you plan for both short and long-term goals.

START SMALL

If you plan too big, you will get discouraged and distracted, and time will run away from you. If you start out with small goals and work hard to achieve them, your long-term goals will be a much easier endeavor. As long as you are trying to attain reachable goals and put forth the necessary effort, you will be successful.

We all make mistakes, but the trick is to learn from those mistakes. If your plan is in action and you find a problem area has developed, step back and take a good, long look at what caused the problem. If the problem occurred as a direct result of your planning, then you know right off the bat that your plans need modification. 

  
MAKE IT WORK

Time management is the process of making plans work by developing skills and using actions that make the process run smoothly. Don’t sit around looking back. Never look back and feel sorry for yourself. This only wastes time. Develop a plan that fits in with your schedule and your situation and get to work!

Whatever your plans are, make sure you calculate any factors that could have an effect on them. What sort of factors are we talking about? For successful planning, you should always consider changes that can occur in life like relocating, divorce, weather disasters, family relationships and other life-changing events.

Life is constantly in motion and is ever changing. Planning ahead for such factors is only being realistic. The key is to keep moving forward, albeit cautiously, and don’t waste time worrying about the things you have no control over. Things happen, but don’t let them happen because you were negligent about planning ahead.

Everyday, if possible, you should make list of the tasks you want to achieve and work through those tasks until they are completed. Anytime we complete a task, we are encouraging our self-esteem and promoting the motivation for future plans.

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