A lot of people want an instant answer to their food issues. Something that will help them to eat more healthy foods without such a struggle over old favorites. But perhaps thinking slow and steady is a better way to go.

One of the first things you need to recognize are the things that cause you to eat too much. For some it’s stress, others boredom, others just simply have a lot of bad eating habits.

It’s important to recognize the areas that give you the most trouble. If you can either break the habit or find a healthier, lower calorie snack for those times, you could be on your way to controlling your weight. That can be a wonderful thing.

Of course, many people need help with this, which is why diet plans are so very popular. And there’s nothing wrong with needing a little help. If it were easy, we’d all be our own ideal weights.

The next thing is to recognize that you can’t always change all your habits in one easy shot. It often takes time. It definitely takes discipline. And if you leave yourself feeling too deprived, it will be easy for all your new control to be broken. Tiny steps are better for most people.

This can carry over into your fitness habits too. If you can convince yourself to start something as simple as a 15 minutes walk daily on your lunch break, you can build up into more fitness habits. Combine better eating habits with better fitness habits, and your overall health should improve.

Of course, there’s no saying exactly what results you will get. These things do vary by the individual, but if you’re eating better and working out, that’s an accomplishment you can be proud of.

Gaining weight is sooo easy over the holidays. Or so everyone says. And in a lot of ways that’s true.

There are a lot of food temptations around at this time of year. It starts with Halloween candy, moves on to the Thanksgiving feast, then you’re slammed with Christmas parties, family holiday gatherings, feasts and of course New Year’s parties.

Is it any wonder a lot of people consider weight gain at this time of year to be inevitable?

I have absolutely no problem with saying “just for today, I’ll indulge”… provided that you mean it. But if you say that day after day you will end up sabotaging your efforts.

Honesty with yourself is essential at this time of year. You have to know what you are doing to your efforts to live a healthier lifestyle. If you think it is acceptable to gain weight right now you need to be okay with the results when you see them on the scale. Fooling yourself is not a good plan.

Eating healthy when you have no say in the menu is one of the greatest challenges. But if it’s an event you go to year after year, you probably have a pretty good feel for what will be served. If you know that healthy foods are not likely to be featured, eat enough that you can limit your portions better at the event. But if healthy foods are there, plan to eat more of them and be more moderate with the more indulgent options.

If you’re fine with gaining weight over the holidays, just say so! Be ready for what it will do for how long it takes you to reach your fitness goals, however. But if you can’t stand the thought of having your goals further away at the start of the new year, be honest with yourself and don’t let temptation control your eating no matter the time of year.

The holiday season can be challenging when you want to be careful about your diet. There are so many temptations and high fat recipes, not to mention the sheer temptation to eat, eat, eat. It’s not easy to cope with.

And it’s less than a week away.

How are you going to cope with all the temptations? There are some steps you can take to help.

Step 1: Watch the fat

A lot of holiday foods are higher in fat than what you normally eat. It’s not just the desserts, it’s the creamy sauces. Even if you aren’t cooking, offer to bring a dish so that you have some control over the content of at least one item. Make it healthier yet still delicious.

If you don’t mind eating the white meat from the turkey, do so. Many people prefer the dark meat, which has a stronger flavor, but the white meat has less fat. But overall turkey meat is not that bad for you, so there’s only so much guilt you should feel if you just have to have dark meat.

Step 2: Think before you eat and drink

It’s not just the food, after all. If you spend all of Thanksgiving day snacking and drinking sodas, wine, beer or anything with calories, you’re going to greatly increase your caloric intake. Try to keep your snacking under control and remember that water is good for you.

Step 3: Watch your portions

How much do you really need to eat, even on a holiday? While a single day’s indulgence is not a complete disaster it can be an uncomfortable feeling knowing that you have completely blown your carefully laid diet plans.

Step 4: Eat the things you will enjoy

Just because you want to control your eating doesn’t mean you should completely deprive yourself. Depriving yourself too much will only make later misbehavior too tempting. Take smaller portions if necessary, but eat the things you really want.

Step 5: Go easy on desserts

Desserts can be hugely tempting and very high in calories. Pick a favorite and don’t eat too much of it.

Step 6: Take a walk after dinner

Get out of the house and walk. It’s a nice easy bit of exercise that you can get the entire family involved in. It’s a delightful time for just talking. Any kids in the crowd will probably really enjoy the time out as well.

Step 7: Don’t regret what you do enjoy

If you go overboard on Thanksgiving, don’t beat yourself up over it. Allow yourself to get back into your routine rather than giving up. The more time you spend regretting not getting tit right, the more time you’re wasting getting back on track.

For many people, trying to lose weight is quite simply a miserable experience. Conflicting advice, weight loss pills, tough exercise regimes, deprivation of your favorite foods… it’s just not fun.

Worse yet is how often it’s not sufficiently effective. All that work and too often the goals still appear unattainable.

But no matter how much weight you want to lose, there are a couple things that are very important to keep in mind.

1. Exercise.
   If you aren’t exercising, you aren’t increasing the number of calories your body is burning, and it becomes much harder to lose weight. Make sure you include at least 20 minutes three times per week of aerobic exercise to most improve your overall fitness. Find something you enjoy doing to make this a bit easier.
2. Eat more healthy foods.
   Low carb, glycemic index, whatever rules you want to go by, the most important is to include a lot of healthy foods, especially fresh fruits and vegetables. If you work at finding recipes you really enjoy this will become an easier lifestyle change to maintain, making it easier to maintain your weight loss for the long run.
3. Eat less.
   No matter the diet, there’s a part of it that comes down to calories. Eat too many calories of any type and you’ll gain weight. If you need to snack to get through the day comfortably, find healthy alternatives to your old snacks that won’t add so many calories to your daily total. It doesn’t have to be rice cakes and celery; it can be what tastes good to you and keep you from thinking on less healthy and higher calorie alternatives.
4. Don’t get in your own way.
   Sometimes you will get frustrated. But giving up because things aren’t going so smoothly as you like won’t help matters any. If you slip up, start right back up again. If the scale isn’t showing the changes you’d like to see, remind yourself that it all takes time.

Within these basic parameters you can find plenty of ways to drop unwanted weight in a way that is comfortable for you. If one way is too stressful or leaves you feeling too deprived, try another way. There are plenty of alternatives out there; no point sticking with one you hate.

Yes, the dreaded Halloween candy season is here. Worse yet, tomorrow if you have kids they will be bringing home bags full of the stuff after trick or treating. You may even have a lot left over if you don’t get as many kids as you expected trick or treating in your area.

It can make avoiding temptation more difficult than usual. And the holiday season is just beginning.

Different families have different ways of coping with this influx of sugary treats. Some avoid having candy leftovers by handing out something healthier than candy. This can be challenging since few things are quite as popular as candy with all ages, but it’s not impossible.

Some parents only allow the candy to stay a short time, then dispose of the rest one way or another. I’ve always thought this wasn’t fair to kids, especially those who aren’t currently facing weight problems. Better is if you can teach them how to enjoy it in moderation, in my opinion.

But it may be your own self control that is the real issue.

If it works for you, try having a favorite, yet much healthier snack available and try to stick to it when the candy comes calling. This won’t work for everyone, but if it does the job for you, it’s a fairly easy solution.

Limiting how much you can have works for adults as well as kids. If you tell yourself one piece a day and stick to that rule, the Halloween candy can only do so much to your weight loss efforts.

Think of the Halloween candy as practice for the challenges of the holiday season. Keeping control of your dieting and eating habits only gets harder as we go through Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So you want to lose weight. Fast.

Doesn’t a diet pill sound wonderful? A quick way to get your metabolism burning that fat off or controlling your appetite, right?

Some do a bit of what they promise, but rarely nearly so much as they claim. This article on eDiets is well worth the read.

The simple truth of the matter is, however, that you need to learn to control your eating habits in most cases to control your weight. This won’t work for everyone, but most people can lose weight if they simply eat fewer calories than they burn.

The trouble with many diet pills is that their claims are insuffiently proven or flat out exaggerated. Some will claim to have a particular ingredient, but in fact have it in amounts lower than other products claiming the same ingredients.

I don’t like diet pills on the whole, but if you choose to use them research which brands have been most careful about their claims and have the best quality of ingredients. And remember that even when you quit using the pills you have to eat the same way to keep the weight off.

Technorati Tags: diet pills, weight loss, losing weight

A healthy diet is one of the big keys to successfully managing your weight. It’s not all about calories. In fact, I’ve often suspected that it should most be about nutrition.

Many Americans these days eat a lot of prepackaged foods. It’s quick and easy, going well with hurried lifestyles. The trouble with this is that there is so much stuff added to it, and much of it is not as good for you as foods you can prepare on your own, often will only a little more work.

When you’re concerned about your weight, the simplest rule of dieting is to eat less. This can help, but in my experience it’s not the only thing it takes. I do believe eating healthier helps quite a bit, whether or not you’re counting calories.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to cut out drinks with calories, especially if they have a lot of calories. Think about sodas. Fruit juices. Coffee, especially with a lot of sugar and cream in it.

Now here’s one of the advantages to eating fresher foods rather than packaged ones. Fresh fruits and vegetables fill you up, but have fewer calories than most packaged foods. So you have the chance to fill up without going overboard on the calories. Plus they’re flat out good for you.

Think on food preparation too. Quit frying and start baking. Use healthier oils when you do need it.

Now work on those times that you find it hardest to eat right. Lunch is a big one for a lot of people, as eating at fast food restaurants can be much easier when you’re at work. You can’t cook there, right?

But you can use a microwave in many workplaces. Bringing your lunch can help you to eat better. It can also help you to deal better with leftovers from your meals at home. Add in some fresh fruits or vegetables for a side dish or when you need to snack, and you won’t have to buy food elsewhere so often.

If your favorite foods really aren’t all that healthy, think moderation. Smaller amounts, less often. I am not an advocate of giving your favorites up completely. It’s just too much deprivation for most people.

Eating right is not the only solution for losing weight. It helps some people more than others. But at the very least it’s better for your health.

Technorati Tags: healthy eating, eating habits, diets, dieting, food

Lots of people would rather diet than exercise. The trouble with this is that if you aren’t exercising, you aren’t burning off the old fat as fast, and you certainly aren’t building muscles.

But sometimes this can also mean that you don’t want to increase the exercise you already do. Maybe you have a basic routine, but you don’t want to do more. Yet you still want to lose weight.

It can happen.

It’s just not going to be easy.

I can tell from personal experience that cutting calories doesn’t always do as much as you might hope. It’s definitely a slow process. Most people in my family, myself included, have cut out soda except for special occasions, yet no one has noticed any weight loss from it over two years. It can be very frustrating.

Most people these day say to cut the white carbs. That means no white rice, white bread, potatoes, breading on your food, cereal, and most pasta. Some feel you can have whole grain versions when available of these kinds of foods, since they do at least have more nutritional value. But if you pay attention to the glycemic index, they aren’t so good, especially anything that includes any sort of sugar early on the ingredients label.
Cutting out as much soda, juice, coffee and other drinks that have significant calories also helps. Let your calories come from food when possible.

You’ll also need to keep yourself to the healthiest possible foods. Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes, lean meats. Use herbs instead of salt or oil for flavoring.

Every day, make sure you’re getting enough calories to keep your energy up even as you keep to the healthier calories. If you’re eating nothing but low calorie vegetables, you run the risk of having too little energy, and you won’t want to stick to it.

Then there’s the fun day. Eat what you want day. Gorge day. Call it what you want, you eat what you want one day a week. This helps to keep your metabolism up, from what I’ve read.

Good meats include boneless, skinless chicken breasts, turkey and tuna (and other fish). Eggs are also a good choice.

If you want to get serious about weight loss, there are a few great titles out there to help:

The Ultimate Weight Solution, The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom by Dr. Phil
The New Glucose Revolution

Keep in mind that not every diet works for every person. You often have to experiment to find the right diet for you. There is certainly something to the fact that you need to take in fewer calories than you expend in order to lose weight, and some people need only remember that. Others will do better with something a little more organized.

Technorati Tags: weight loss, dieting, glycemic index

A big thing for foods right now is to advertise that they have no trans fats. That’s nice, but there’s so much more to it than that. Trans fat free may well have an excess of saturated fat. In fact, saturated fat is more often found in our foods.

In some areas there aren’t easy tradeoffs. You can’t always use a healthy oil such as olive oil instead of butter, especially if you’re baking.

The American Heart Association has a site called My Fat Translator that can help you to get a feel for how much fat you should be eating in a day. It breaks these down into total fats, saturated fats, trans fats and cholesterol. You also get information on how much are included in various popular foods. I’ve included a screen shot below:

Technorati Tags: fats, trans fats, health, saturated fats, healthy eating

I’m not a big dieting fan. Really, I’m just not. You look at the research, and not dieting makes more sense than dieting.

So how do I expect people to lose weight? Exercise alone won’t always cut it, after all.

As I see it, there’s dieting and there’s adopting a healthier lifestyle. If you want to lose weight, working on your lifestyle is far more likely to have a positive long term impact.

Start out just by eating a healthy breakfast every day. It doesn’t have to be the old, hearty, bacon, eggs, sausage, pancakes, etc. kind of breakfast. That’s good for people who burn a lot (and I mean a lot) of calories during the day but is far more than most people need to start off with. But it has been proven that if you eat breakfast you are likely to consume fewer calories throughout the day.

You should also try to break free of the 3 meals a day habit. Cut back the size and eat 5 meals a day. If you have too much trouble with that concept, lighten up your meals a little and think more carefully about how you snack. A snack between breakfast and lunch, and another between lunch and dinner will help you keep going. Focus on healthy eating for your snacks, don’t just grab some candy.

Do not deny yourself your favorite foods completely. Don’t overindulge in them either, especially if they’re high in sugar and/or fat, but denying them completely makes it too easy to feel like you failed when you do give in. Go easy on yourself.

Keep a food diary. This can help keep you from lying to yourself about how much you eat, especially when it comes to treats. You may also be able to catch the times that you are weakest about eating and find a way to avoid it. Maybe bringing a healther alternative along.

Do exercise, of course. They combine very nicely with better eating habits to help you feel healthier, look better and be more fit.

Technorati Tags: eating habits, dieting, getting fit