Curb Your Appetite by Adding New Choices to Your Meals

Curb Your Appetite by Adding New Choices to Your Meals

Losing weight might be accomplished by adding new choices to your meals to feel full and curb your appetite. You can also use these choices to help your metabolism, reduce obesity and resist high-calorie foods such as sweets.

Walnuts are thought to be a great choice as a food to add that will help curb your appetite. One research involved two groups – one that was given a smoothie that contained approximately 14 walnut halves and the other given a placebo smoothie with the same caloric content and taste as the walnut smoothie.

The study involved only adults who had a BMI that was considered obese. The research time was five days of drinking smoothies by both groups. Each group also took part in a neurocognitive test that included photos of high-fat foods such as fried foods or sweets.

Each group also saw low-fat foods such as veggies and fruits and even non-edible flowers. After the five days of the test, the group resumed their five-day diet smoothie plan with only the placebo smoothies.

MRI testing was also performed during this time. Researchers found that those who consumed the walnut-smoothie were less apt to overeat and the part of the brain that controls impulse and appetite control was better activated.

Walnuts can be a tasty addition to oatmeal, salads, yogurt and other foods. Other examples of foods that help control cravings and appetite include almonds and coffee. Almonds help induce feelings of fullness and coffee provides a temporary boost in your metabolism.

It’s been known for some time that green tea contains catechins or substances that help stabilize the blood sugar – making food cravings less likely. Apples can also reduce weight gain by adding fiber to your diet.

Or, add cayenne pepper to your food to spice it up and to boost metabolism. Tofu and oatmeal provide protein and fiber to make you feel full and reduce cravings during the day.

And don’t forget water as a valuable component in reducing weight. It’s an inexpensive way to keep you from feeling hungry by making your stomach feel full. A great addition to your food choices is broth-based soups.

Consume a bowl of soup before a meal and you won’t eat as much during the meal. Curbing your appetite by adding these healthy foods to your diet will help you reach your weight goals and introduce you to a new way to think of food – and it’s natural.

The year 2018 promises many changes and innovative methods of thinking about diets and weight loss. Dieting is an important part of keeping our bodies healthy and functioning properly. Stay tuned for all the new developments.

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Try the MIND Diet

Try the MIND Diet

Your mind has everything to do with how you lose weight and keep it off. It also has much to do with keeping our brains working at their best, especially as we age. It’s not a “brain food” diet, but what researchers have named the Mediterranean/DASH-Intervention for–Neurodegenerative-Delay.

Although it sounds like a lot to take in, it’s actually a very simple concept. DASH stands for Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension and researchers at Rush University Medical Center (funded by the National Institute on Aging) that a mix of DASH and Mediterranean style meals can effectively reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers carefully tracked the dietary habits and cognitive ability of almost a thousand adults over a nine-year period of time. They found significant differences of those in the group who followed the MIND diet.

The MIND diet encourages the consumption of such foods as nuts, berries, fish, olive oil, wine and green leafy veggies. The group who followed the MIND diet plan enjoyed a 53 percent lower chance of contracting Alzheimer’s.

Butter and/or margarine, sugary and processed foods and red meat should be avoided, but not banned. Those who cut down on these foods significantly enjoyed a 35 percent less chance of suffering from Alzheimer’s.

The MIND diet uses two of the best diet plans, Mediterranean and DASH, and focuses on the foods in those diets that explicitly affect brain health. Foods such as red meat, cheese, butter and margarine, fried foods and sweets should be avoided, but you don’t have to completely give them up to get great results.

You can expect to see more research on comparisons of those who follow this diet plan rigorously, those who follow it modestly and those who eat very little of the foods on the plan.

Although the MIND plan doesn’t necessarily target weight loss, you will probably lose weight simply based on the fact that you’ll be consuming lower calorie foods. Combining the MIND diet with a moderate amount of exercise delivers even better results for overall health.

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Schedule Meals at Certain Times Meet Your Weight Loss Goals

Schedule Meals at Certain Times Meet Your Weight Loss Goals

Fasting isn’t the same difficult way to lose weight as it was once thought. The new way of fasting has you consuming food during a certain time period each day. For example, you might choose to eat the dinner meal before 6 P.M. each day or no lunch after 12 P.M.

The health, spiritual and mind benefits you get from intermittent fasting has been the practice of many groups of people for thousands of years and the future will reveal much more information about this healthy and beneficial lifestyle plan.

Once again, this is a plan that slowly eases you in to a lifestyle that will be sustainable for the future and not a crash diet plan where you only see brief results. You begin gradually until your body accepts the new way of eating and build on that success.

Celebrities have already latched on to this healthy method of dieting to lose weight and keep it off, but you can expect much more information in 2018 as more people realize great success.

When you teach your body to adapt to a certain routine, great things begin to happen. For example, your skin will glow, glucose tolerance will improve and even your day will go smoother because your life will be simplified.

Those with pre-diabetic tendencies and those who are resistant to insulin may see that they no longer need medication for their condition and weight reduction and fasting glucose levels will help Type2 diabetics.

It may take a while to adjust your new way of eating meals with your family’s schedule, but you can always tweak the plan to meet your lifestyle needs. It won’t take long to get in the rhythm of timing and choosing healthy meals.

Most diets rely on three meals per day and snacks in between, so fasting can never be realized. But, when you realize how your body works and responds to the fasting process, you’ll be pleased at the results.

Fasting often improves or alleviates completely the problems of skin conditions. You should always avoid the inflammatory foods that offer very little nutrition and choose high quality foods that can resist food intolerance and sensitivities.

You’ll also be better able to differentiate between true hunger signals and cravings that often come from eating too many processed and high-calorie foods. You’ll have a better understanding of your body’s needs and how strict meal times can help you lose weight.

When you choose definite meal times and quality foods, you’ll be more in control of your own body and notice much more about how food affects your body’s functioning. Heart function, mental acuity, cancer prevention, immune system and even stress can all be improved by this nutritional way of planning meal times.

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Do Away With Deprivation

Do Away With Deprivation

Diets have often been perceived as depriving ourselves of the rich foods we love. That’s why diets are doomed to fail and you’re destined to add even more pounds to the load you need to lose.

Not only does the long-term effect of deprivation dieting mean sure failure, but it can also be very harmful. People think they’re going to diet for a short period of time and lose the excess weight and be done with it.

This method may be temporarily successful, but at the end of the diet people go back to their old eating habits and the body immediately turns the food into fat cells to replace the ones lost on the diet.

The reason diets are doomed to fail is that they’re based on deprivation – some of it very extreme. You may cut calories or certain foods, be required to weigh the ingredients on a food scale or only eat certain meals at certain times.

These rules are difficult to follow on a long-term basis – especially for the rest of your life. You may have brief control over the weight loss situation and lose a few pounds, but it isn’t feasibly sustainable.

Deprivation soon gets old and self-control wanes on the limitations diets demand. Back to square one you go – and the guilt and negativity that comes with it can ruin your mindset of achievement.

Leading a life free of deprivation diets should not give you the green light to eat whatever you want, whenever you want. Sweets, alcohol and fast foods should be considered along with everything else with a mindset that leads you to ultimate success.

The new recommendation about weight loss is to make small changes in your eating habits that are sustainable and keep adding changes you want to make as you become used to each change.

For example, you might give up or cut down on the amount of sweets you have each day or eat earlier than just before bedtime. You’ll be surprised at how quickly the results of just that one small change will affect your weight and mindset.

This method is slower than the immediate weight loss you may have from a deprivation diet, but it makes more sense in the long run because you’re adhering to the change and not facing multiple changes at one time that are more difficult to control.

If you’re contemplating a vegan diet, give it some time by beginning with a couple of handfuls of veggies at a certain time of day for a couple of weeks. It’s a slower change, but it’s more likely to last rather than a quick and complete change to your habits.

A sugar cleanse diet may last three weeks or longer, but if you simple cut out that morning chocolate croissant and make eggs instead, you’ll be able to control the sweet intake and eventually cut it out completely.

The future of dieting is changing rapidly and the more we know about how our bodies react to certain diets such as deprivation, the more we realize that it doesn’t work in the long run, but small changes over a period of time can help you be successful in your weight loss efforts.

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Using the Scale for Weight Loss

Using the Scale for Weight Loss

One of the best weight loss tricks for success is to use the weight scale you’ve hidden and dread to step on. But, scientists have recently revealed that it’s the best tool for shedding pounds – without diet or exercise.

The old way of thinking was to only weigh yourself once a week or even once a month. Now, studies indicate that when you weigh yourself every day, your chances of weight loss success increase tenfold.

Stepping on the scales can be a daily wake up call for you to cut down the calories and hit the gym. A recent study followed almost 300 women after measuring their body fat percentage.

Over the course of two years, the women were not on a weight loss diet. But, one group weighed every day and the other did not. The unexpected results showed that women who weighed themselves on a daily basis lost more weight and fat percentage than those who didn’t.

Weighing yourself daily is a form of motivation that can be highly effective when trying to change your eating and exercising behavior each day. Every pound you lose is concrete evidence – on the scale – that your weight loss plan is working or not.

As the scale indicates weight loss or gain, you can adjust the way you’re eating and exercising. The scale won’t lie to you and you can quickly see what’s working in your life and what isn’t.

The scale will also tell you a lot about your lifestyle. A night of drinking and binging on snacks will show on the scale as soon as the next day and you’ll have a good idea about what you must lose to maintain or shed pounds for health and wellness.

Things are changing rapidly in how we view weight loss methods. What was shunned in the past may have a popular revival in 2018 as more studies are performed and more is revealed about what works – and what doesn’t – for weight loss and healthy living.

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How Social Media Can Help You Lose Weight and Stay Healthy

How Social Media Can Help You Lose Weight and Stay Healthy

Gone are the days when we thought social media was just a fad. We now know that it can provide helpful information that can use to change our lives – or save our lives. You’ll be hearing and noticing much more in the coming year about the social media way of dieting.

The Instagram Diet is rapidly moving ahead to help people lose weight by offering information and social support. Besides getting motivation from others, you can give motivation by sharing your experience through the photo sharing process of Instagram.

The community involvement that Instagram provides is a valuable asset for those trying to lose weight and achieve life goals. People are clamoring for information that will help them in their struggles – and Instagram meets that need.

Rather than attend weight loss meetings and trying methods that don’t work in the long run, the community you’ll connect with on Instagram and other social media sites can be reached any time and is a more personal way to give and receive help.

On Instagram, you can separate your accounts into those meant for sharing with different groups of people – such as family, friends, weight loss support and more. One of the main motivational techniques that Instagram offers is the ability to post pictures and recipes for healthy food.

This can be a great tool for encouraging others to choose low calorie and healthy foods rather than high fat and high cholesterol foods. Pictures and food journals also act as learning tools for recognizing healthy foods compared to unhealthy ones.

And you don’t have to write a description of the meal if you’re in a hurry. A picture is worth a thousand words when it comes to recognizing low calorie and health-oriented foods.

So many exciting new developments are being launched on the Internet and social media is one of the areas that’s going to enjoy even more popularity as people discover the benefits of using the Instagram Diet and other Internet support for weight loss and healthy living.

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Fix Your Sleep to Fix Your Weight

Fix Your Sleep to Fix Your Weight

“Get a good night’s sleep” is often the last thing we say to family members at bedtime. That phrase may mean more than we originally thought. Sleep is now considered to be the best and simplest way to beat the battle of the bulge by losing weight and keeping it off.

The Sleep diet has nothing to do with food – and everything to do with getting healthy by stabilizing hormones and balancing metabolism. These two factors are essential to your overall health and can prevent diabetes and heart disease.

Studies about sleep continue to grow – and 2018 will reveal even more about how our sleep habits affect our health. Research has already revealed that sleep restriction causes an overload of stress hormones and prevent your metabolism’s ability to function properly.

Lack of sleep also causes an extreme decrease in the hormone, leptin. Leptin regulates your fat storage and can cause weight gain. Ghrelin is also a hormone that has much to do with an increase in appetite. Lack of sleep increases the presence of that hormone in your body and can cause overeating.

Studies show that there is a definite connection between sleep time and weight gain. If you sleep less than five hours or more than nine hours per night, your chances of weight gain are increased.

Your body views excess weight as a holding tank for energy, so when you’re tired the body piles on more fat to get the energy you need. The remedy for fatigue and weight gain is – sleep.

It’s important that you get enough sleep and that it’s quality sleep to get the weight loss results you want. Food diets often don’t work because they’re restrictive and make extreme changes to the foods you eat.

That’s when cravings occur and you give in only to gain more weight. The sleep diet doesn’t work like that. It can work very effectively to shed pounds – but there are certain rules you must follow to make it work.

You can try the sleep diet for a week to see how you fare. First, you must know how much sleep you want each night. What would your bedtime be if you set your desired number of hours to 8? Now, stick to that time.

It may be more difficult than you think. You should give up alcohol and sweets that might keep you awake at night during the sleep diet so you can get an accurate reflection of how the diet will work for you.

Studies up to now indicate that constant sleep deprivation might increase cravings for high-calorie foods. Women who are sleep deprived have much more chance of gaining weight than those who slept at least seven hours per night.

Sleep is a great benefit for your body. You’ll feel less fatigued and it will be much easier to stick to consuming healthy foods. Do what you need to do to get a good night’s sleep and you’ll rest easy knowing you’re doing the best thing for your body.

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Banish Foods that Cause Weight Gain

Banish Foods that Cause Weight Gain

Food that you consume will either help you lose or gain weight. It’s going to be much easier to choose the healthier foods in 2018 because of new research conducted on various foods and how it affects your body.

Rather than diets which may not focus on what your body needs to lose weight and become healthy, making the right food choices is likely to become the new celebrity diet plan for 2018.

Whereas constant dieting ends up making us gain weight, getting rid of the foods that will help us lose weight and keep it off for good is the better choice by far. Banishing foods from your shopping list isn’t a quick fix, but a life change that will reset your body’s method of dealing with excess weight.

The great thing about this method to lose weight is that you’re never hungry. You don’t need to limit your intake of food – you just need to make better choices. Fruits, grains and vegetables are some of the healthy choices you can make.

Some of the foods you should avoid if you want to lose weight are coconut oil (choose olive oil instead), white bread (choose whole grain bread instead), cheese (lower your cheese intake to once per week) – and alcohol (choose water for zero calories).

Also, choose fresh fruit rather than dried to enjoy sustainable weight loss. Dried fruit contains much more calories than fresh and contains no water. And, watch out for enhanced water.

They could contain as many as 130 calories per drink and lots of sugar as well. Green tea is one of best drinks (after water) that you can choose and research has proven that it helps with weight loss.

Artificial sweeteners have also been found to promote long-term weight gain. Even though the calories aren’t there, our bodies react by changing our metabolism and by changing our insulin response and glucose levels.

This disruption of our metabolism and other reactions of the body leads to excess storage of fat and many illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and metabolic syndrome.

We all know that potato chips are fattening and contain treacherous trans fats. But, did you know that potato chips can cause the most weight gain – even more than ice cream and other fattening foods. Choose fresh fruits and veggies for an energy-laden snack.

The year 2018 will see people concentrating on making better food choices than trying to adapt themselves to a diet that will only make them gain more weight. Start making better food and drink choices now and reap the benefits right away.

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Meditate to Get the Best Weight Loss Results

Meditate to Get the Best Weight Loss Results

Over the past years, meditation has enjoyed an increase in popularity as more people realize that meditation techniques can do for their health and outlook on life. This ancient practice has been around since the Stone Age and has become trendy in recent years.

Now, it’s become more than a trend as studies indicate that it delivers health benefits beyond what we originally thought. In 2018, meditation techniques are poised to become more popular than ever as science releases more information about its amazing benefits.

And meditation offers even more benefits than we originally thought. For example, new studies indicate that besides stress reduction, meditation can also help balance your hormones and that it surpasses the most popular diet plans for losing weight.

Now we know that dieting is actually a bad idea. It may cause inflammation and cause changes in your metabolism that can produce weight gain, binging and even eating disorders.

Research on the effects of meditation on weight in a controlled group shows that those who practiced meditation lost more weight than the dieters. Meditation actually changes the way you eat because you’re thinking more with your mind than giving in to cravings.

With meditation you’re focusing your attention on the present moment to have a calm and clear path to success, especially when it comes to stress. Stress is the catalyst which drives many people to eat more or eat in an unhealthy manner.

You’ll become more aware of the thoughts and urges you have when it comes to food by engaging in a more mindful way of dealing with weight loss – rather than a strict diet plan which may result in more emotional eating habits.

Another benefit of meditation is that it doesn’t cost anything. All you need is a quiet place, a comfortable position and an attitude that you’re going to focus your attention on something else – a phrase (mantra), your breathing or something else to relax you.

For meditation to be successful, you must make a commitment to stop what you’re doing and become more aware of what’s within and surrounding you. This may take some time to master, but when you do you’ll have transformed your thinking to a more positive way of looking at things.

Meditation, in the New Year of 2018, will garner much more attention than in the past as a way to support positive changes in your life and helping you to become more in touch with your body’s needs. Learn all you can now and be ahead of the crowd.

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Unlock Your Genes to Change Eating Habits

Unlock Your Genes to Change Eating Habits

You’ll learn much more in 2018 about using DNA results to unlock the health and diet secrets you hold in your genetic code. DNA is becoming a big business and more people are becoming aware about genes and how they affect the body’s ability to metabolize what we consume.

For the first time in our lives, medical and scientific research has determined that our DNA can affect not only our eating habits, but the way our bodies metabolize foods we consume to make us gain or lose weight.

For example, certain types of genes metabolize many foods and drinks (such as caffeine) much more slowly – increasing the risk of serious health problems. The New Year will bring about significant changes in the way we think about diet and health.

DNA testing is available now and the future of genetic startup companies looks promising as more people are willing to take the genetic test so they can choose which foods they should eat to promote health and lose weight.

In the past, we’ve used certain diet plans (at least one every year) for everyone even though we’re all different and our genes determine what we should eat – or not – for maximum results.

Personalized DNA testing more accurately guides you to the medical recommendations for intake of Omega-3 fatty acids, sodium and vitamin C – and as a bonus, provides information about food and drink you should avoid – such as alcohol and sodas.

With all the interest in DNA testing, there are bound to be new businesses that pop up to take advantage of the surging demand. DNA-based products are ready now, and 2018 promises to offer many options.

The personal genomics company, Helix, recently launched the first online site that you can shop for services. You can have your genome sequenced and even have access to other services such as Vinome which advises you how to use your genomic results to choose the right wine for you, for example.

Another service – EverlyWell – provides testing for food sensitivities and how your metabolism operates. You’ve been able to test your genetic makeup for a while to determine your nationality makeup, but now you can go beyond and see what you’re doing that directly impacts your overall health.

DNA testing is expanding at a rapid rate, soon offering diagnostic tools, wireless clothing that provides health reports and other personalized products.

The entire genomics market is expected to grow rapidly and generate billions of dollars on a global scale. In 2018, fad diets, weight loss plans and supplements will begin to take a back seat to the more personalized way to determine the best method for you to lose weight and achieve maximum health benefits – through your DNA.

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