Five Simple Strategies for Weight Loss

There are so many diet plans out there that it’s enough to drive you over the edge. If you’ve tried some of them—and failed—it may through no fault of your own. That’s because most fad diets come with too many complicated concepts and strict rules about what you can and cannot eat. With all the confusion about what really works, it’s no wonder that most people become frustrated and simply give up.

Ready for a change? While there’s no sure-fire, rule-driven diet plan to lose weight that works as a one-size-fits-all formula for everyone, there are a few simple strategies that can work for every body of every age, size and shape. And here they are…

Break the Fast. If you think the way to become a skinny Minnie is to skip breakfast, you’re wrong. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. When you don’t break the fast from the night before the body thinks that it’s going into starvation mode, so it prepares by storing up more fat instead of burning it for fuel. To avoid this, you should try to eat breakfast within 45 minutes after getting up each morning.

Drink More Water. This is an important strategy. If you did nothing else to shed extra pounds but drink more water throughout the day you would still lose weight. That may sound hard to believe, but it’s true! Your body needs to be hydrated in order for your metabolism to function properly. So, try to drink about 1/2 ounce of water for every pound that you weigh every day.

Keep the Food Coming. Huh? Doesn’t dieting mean that you’re supposed to be eating less? Not necessarily. In fact, the way to keep your metabolism in high gear and burn fat is to keep up the supply of calories need to do the job. You can do this by eating 5-6 smaller meals throughout the day instead of the traditional ‘three square.’ Make sure that each meal contains a balanced variety of lean protein, healthy fats, and carbohydrates.

Understand the Rule of Three About Carbs. Carbohydrates are good for you and necessary to maintain energy, a healthy metabolism, and to keep your blood sugar in balance. However, if the carb of choice wasn’t 1) grown in the ground, 2) plucked from a vine, or 3) harvested from nature, pass on it. That means skip refined carbs, such as pastries, white bread, pastas, etc.

Lifting Weights = Weight Loss. Which burns more calories, muscle or fat? The answer is muscle. That means that building more muscle will help your body to burn more calories. You don’t need an expensive membership at a gym or health club either to get into weight training. Simply practicing lifts with any object that has weight to it will do the trick.

Lose Weight, Live Better with a New Way of Thinking

If you’re struggling to lose weight as part of your quest for healthy living, equipping yourself with a diet plan and a tape measurer isn’t necessarily the only route to go. While adhering to a balanced diet and an exercise regimen are certainly important to remain healthy and physically fit, putting these actions into practice may require a total lifestyle change. Perhaps the most important tool you may have at your disposal to effect this change is actually your brain.

Some people find change to be something to dread. We often fear career changes, for instance, or relocating to another city. Why? Maybe it’s a fear of the unknown, or we simply don’t like upheaval from our regular routines. After all, taking the path most traveled is safe and secure, right? However, we cannot expect to gain real results if we don’t take the risk on the path toward change. And change cannot happen on the tangible level if we don’t change our way of thinking too.

But, let’s back up a minute…even well worn paths were once new. That is, they too were tried and tested, revisited, and developed over time and remain supported by current thought. Consider the words of Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century essayist who wrote, “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in your mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kinds of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

Those words are just as fitting today as they were in Henry’s day. Real change won’t happen if you simply wish for it, but can if you believe that it will. In short, be—or think--what you want to become. When you practice life-changing thoughts that support your goals and that validate their becoming a reality, then you’ve effected change. This is a process, mind you, that must take place on an ongoing basis until such thoughts become the natural way of thinking for you.

Your mission today is to keep in mind at least one positive thought about how you see your life beginning to change and the benefit that comes with it. Then repeat this step tomorrow, and the day after that, and for as many days as it takes to make positive change a reality for you.

And here’s something else to ponder while on the path to positive change that Mr. Thoreau also penned for us: “If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Healthy Living Starts from Within

Our true state of health cannot simply be measured in statistics or numbers. Still, as human beings, we seek to assess our health using some kind of formula to calculate how much we measure up to our peers—or by how far we miss the mark. To that end, we constantly find ways to quantify and evaluate what we eat, how often we exercise, how much temptation we have strength to avoid. In the end, though, this process leads us to fact-finding protocols to compute how our weight and body shape compares to that of other people, and not necessarily what the right ingredients are for us as individuals. As a result, our focus is taken away from practicing a mindful approach to healthy living and is placed with complying with social pressure instead.

How can we change this pattern? Well, the first step might be to throw away your bathroom scale.

Each of us, believe it or not, already possesses all the equipment necessary to measure our success at achieving a healthy lifestyle. When we feel energetic and buoyant, then we know we’re in the right zone, regardless of how much we weigh or what dress size we wear. When we can move, bend and walk without interference from pain or immobility, then we can be sure that our joints are in sync with our movements, just as they’re supposed to be. Likewise, when we feel good about ourselves, we’re able to keep moving forward as our minds also exist in a place of well-being.

If we look at healthy living from this framework rather than from a quantitative point of view, we can begin to see that real whole-health adds up to a lot more than any number of pounds, inches, or how many low-fat recipes we can collect in a lifetime. Rather, our guidelines for looking and feeling good can be based on our innate system of monitoring instead—and none of it has anything to do with the numbers on a scale. When we choose to listen to the signals that our own bodies give us over measurements that only serve to make comparisons, we can truly walk the path to healthy living.

Some key points to remember as you start each day on this path…

- People are like snowflakes; no two are alike. Diversity is a blessing. So are your natural curves.

- Satisfy what your body truly craves—a hunger for whole, nourishing foods and freedom of movement.

- Stop counting calories. Instead, make your caloric intake count.

Lose Weight by Putting Mushrooms on the Menu

It may have been trendy to replace a burger with a grilled Portabella ‘steak’ before, but now science backs up the benefits of doing so as part of a successful weight loss program. New research out of John Hopkins Weight Management Center indicates that replacing what are known as high-energy-density foods, such as lean meat, with low-density substitutes, like mushrooms, can help you lose weight.

This simple weight loss strategy was fueled by the results of a preliminary study that compared the caloric and fat intake of beef or mushroom-based meals given to participants over a two-week period. Each group consumed either lunches made with beef or mushrooms for a week, and then switched to the opposite menu. Measurements after the study period showed that both groups felt satisfied with both the meat and vegetable-based versions of their meals. However, eating the mushroom meals resulted in an average of 420 less calories and 30 less grams of fat per day. Even better, the participants didn’t feel cheated on taste or substance when they ate the mushroom dishes and weren’t inclined to snack or eat more at a later meal to make up for the lack of meat.

The fact that mushrooms are low in fat and calories isn’t exactly new news, but this study does add meat to previous findings. For instance, research has shown that going for a four-ounce grilled Portabella mushroom instead of a four-ounce grilled hamburger adds up to saving a lot more than the cost of meals. After one year, this diet also saves about 18,000 calories and 3,000 grams of fat. To put that into perspective, that equates to 30 sticks of butter, or more than five pounds of body weight per year.

Mushrooms can do a lot more for your body than help trim your waistline; they’re packed with nutrition too. In fact, mushrooms are the only fresh food that delivers enough vitamin D to help your body produce 100% of this nutrient after only five minutes of exposure to the sun. Mushrooms are also an abundant source of selenium, as well as riboflavin, niacin and pantothenic acid, members of the vitamin B family that are needed to help break down fats and carbohydrates. They’re also a good source of dietary fiber.

How to Cook the Other White ‘Meat’

Wondering how you can please your palate with Portobello ‘shrooms? They’re actually quite versatile and easy to prepare. In fact, they can be grilled, oven roasted or sautéed.

Grilled Portobello Mushrooms
Brush each mushroom on both sides with extra-virgin olive oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Grill for 5 to 6 minutes on each side, or until tender.

Oven Roasted Portobello Mushrooms
Brush each mushroom cap with extra-virgin olive oil. Place on a baking sheet with the caps facing up. Roast in a pre-heated 425 degree Fahrenheit oven for 15-20 minutes.

Sautéed Portobello Mushrooms
Add a small amount of olive oil to a sautée pan and heat over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms (whole or sliced, your choice) and sautée until tender, about 5 to 6 minutes. If you wish, sliced onions, peppers or other vegetables may be cooked with the mushrooms at the same time. Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper, herbs, or spices, as desired.

Take Your Diet to Lunch

Most of us spend a considerable amount of time planning what’s for dinner. We might even put an effort into assembling the ingredients needed to make a healthy and satisfying breakfast the next morning before flying out the door to get to work on time. Unfortunately, lunch is usually given the least amount of thought and preparation during the week. In fact, it may often be dictated by the offerings on the collection of take-out menus at the office. Worse yet, there may be a tendency to grab something convenient from the vending machine or your ‘snack stash’ drawer (uh-oh) and eat that at your desk. Does this sound familiar?

It doesn’t have to be this way, though. With a few simple tips for planning ahead, you can start looking forward to lunch making a comeback, starting today.

Better the second time around. A great lunch can be made from leftovers from the night before. For instance, a piece of leftover grilled chicken can be blended in a food processor with a chuck of red onion or sliced scallions, a handful of raisins, a few chunks of apple, and a bit of low-fat mayo for a fantastic chicken salad. Got leftover steak instead? Cut the meat into strips and toss with some fresh greens and a low-fat dressing for a dressed-up salad.

Let us eat lettuce. Instead of reaching for carb-heavy breads or rolls, make a sandwich wrap with crisp romaine lettuce. Fill ‘em with just about anything you might place in a regular tortilla wrap. Be creative!

Lunch around the world. Keep a variety of salad and wrap fixings on hand at work so that you can create a different exotic lunch for each day of the week. Monday could be Greek style, Tuesday Mexican, Wednesday Thai, etc.

Stuff it. Stuff tomatoes or peppers with low-fat croutons and cheese, bake, and reheat the following day at work for lunch.

Soup on the go. Create ‘instant’ soups and stews in the microwave from a variety of shredded veggies, cooked rice or pasta, canned beans in a based of vegetable stock or chicken broth.

Okay, but what if you don’t have access to a refrigerator or microwave at work? Don’t worry…here’s some ideas for brown-bagging your lunch that won’t require either:

- String-cheese and grapes
- Cucumber slices
- Low-fat peanut butter and an apple
- Zucchini sticks
- Cream cheese and fruit spread on whole grain bread
- Hummus wrapped in a pita
- Carrot sticks and broccoli florets and low-fat dip
- Bean dip spread on toasted pita rounds