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Little Calories Count, Too

When it comes to wanting to lose weight and get into shape, most people overhaul their diet. They’ll switch from high fat foods to low fat foods and cut out some of the bad habits they have such as eating in front of the television.

But changes like that aren’t enough if you’re not paying attention to the little calories. These are calories that you’re either not aware of that are hidden in food or they’re additives that jack up the calorie count in an otherwise low calorie meal.

The little calories can add up and once you recognize what they are and are on the lookout for them, you’ll be able to lose weight faster. Some little calories are more obvious than others.

These are the ones that you add to meals. Your coffee, whether you make it at home or you buy it out at your favorite coffee shop, isn’t loaded with calories. A cup of black coffee with nothing extra has two calories as long as that cup size is an 8 ounce size.

Two calories for a beverage isn’t bad. But when you add in milk, you add in calories. Some people add sugar which has 16 calories per teaspoon. Most people add a couple of teaspoons.

If you add syrup to your coffee, that’s more calories, too. Just getting one shot of syrup from somewhere like Starbucks can add 30 or more calories to your coffee. If you also add whipped cream, depending on the kind you add, you can end up with 50 or more extra calories.

Since most people have more than one cup a day, you can see how these calories can quickly add up. That 2 calorie cup of coffee can quickly become one that’s over 100 calories per cup.

You want to be careful that you’re not drinking your calories in things like coffee or tea or any drink where you add extras to it. Condiments are loaded with little calories. You can make what starts out as a healthy salad and quickly make it over half your day’s calorie intake just by the extras that you add.

Salad dressing is loaded with calories, but it’s not the only thing that can make that salad too calorie heavy. Adding cheese adds calories and so does putting on croutons or nuts.

Sunflower seed toppings and bacon bits can also add to that calorie count. Sauces for meats and gravies can be loaded with calories. Things like barbecue sauce, ketchup and other condiments can turn a low calorie meal into one that blows your calorie limit.

Little calories can be hidden in foods that say they’re low fat. Many people think low fat means no hidden calories but that’s not true. Dried fruit is an example of that. At first glance it appears that dried fruit would be a low calorie snack but these can be laden with carbohydrates as well as calories.

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Kosher Diet - For Food Safety and Weight Loss

If you want to lose weight, one of the diets that you can follow is the Kosher diet. The upside of this diet is that the food is healthier, but the downside is that you’ll probably end up paying more for your groceries.

You’ll find that the Jewish laws are what govern a Kosher diet. Within these laws, there are certain foods that must be made in a specific manner. A Kosher diet is gaining popularity and it doesn’t have anything to do with any particular religious motive but rather because the food is better all the way around.

You’ll find that Kosher foods tend to taste better, be better for you and have a more stringent inspection policy. The foods that are labeled Kosher are manufactured by following the Jewish laws passed down through history.

These laws pertain to everything from what kinds of foods are allowed to eat to what foods can be mixed and how these foods are allowed to be made. On this diet, you’re allowed to have meat and poultry, but the process used in bringing the food from the manufacturing process to the supermarket is tougher than for non-Kosher foods.

There are more stringent operations and checks in place to make sure that bacteria is eradicated during the process. This step is what helps to make eating Kosher meats safer for consumers.

Kosher foods are examined by inspectors more often than foods that are not. During inspections, the food is checked to make sure that certain types aren’t mixed - such as between things like eggs and milk with meat processing equipment.

These inspections help to ensure there are no crossover food issues such as an E. coli contamination. These frequent and tougher inspections are one of the reasons why Kosher meat is safer to eat.

Some people think that because a food is labeled Kosher that it’s organic and that’s not the case. Just like with regular food, if a Kosher food is organic, it has to be labeled as such.

If you’re planning to use the Kosher diet to lose weight, you have to make sure that you avoid the meats that are considered non-Kosher approved such as pork. You should also be aware that some foods cannot be eaten at the same time as other foods.

For example, you cannot have something from the dairy food group at the same time that you’d eat chicken. The killing of animals for the meat allowed in a Kosher diet is followed according to a specific ritual that makes the process as quick as possible for the animal.

Eating fruits and vegetables on the Kosher diet is allowed but some parts of certain vegetables are not allowed. Following the Kosher diet also means you have to pay attention to how the food is prepared. Some food items cannot be cooked in the same pot as another.

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Ideas to Stay Fit When You Don’t Have Time to Workout

Part of losing weight and keeping it off is to get physically fit. That might be your goal, but you’re struggling to find time to work out on a regular basis. There are some things that you can do that will help you to stay fit when you just don’t have any time to spare.

You’ll still have to do your day to day tasks even when you can’t work out. So the key to fitness is to turn those tasks into the workout. When you go to the grocery store, don’t park up close to the door.

Choose a spot further away so that you can get in more steps. When you’re inside the store, walk the length of the store and back while pushing a cart before you ever place the first item in your cart.

Stretch to reach for things. Extras of the same item are often placed on a higher shelf or a lower one. So reach up and reach down to get the things that you need. This works your muscles out.

You can burn a lot of calories just by grocery shopping. When you get home, rather than carry as many bags in as possible, carry in one bag at a time and make several trips back and forth to your car.

Those extra steps count. Everywhere you go, choose the stairs and skip the elevator. It can be even better for your body if you skip every other step as you climb. This move works out your calf as well as your thigh muscles.

When you’re at work, take the long way to the breakroom or restroom. When you leave your desk, take a second to stretch your muscles. If you have the kind of job where you do a lot of sitting, use a balance ball instead of a chair.

You can also use a standing desk if that’s available. Standing instead of sitting can burn calories. You can burn almost 800 calories per every 8 hour day if you stand to do your job versus sitting.

Play a sports game with the kids. Get outside and toss a football or play a game of jump-rope. Join them on the trampoline. Make your household chores count. While chores such as vacuuming normally burns calories, you can take it to the next level by stretching out the vacuum to reach a spot rather than stepping closer.

You can also dance while you’re doing tasks. Put on your favorite fast paced music and dance while you sweep or make the bed or load the dishwasher. When you watch TV, move.

Walk back and forth, pace or sit on an exercise ball. Inconvenience yourself as much as possible. Walk while you do things such as talking on the phone or answering your email.

When you have to go to the bank or to pay a bill, park the car and walk inside instead of using the drive-thru. Use wrist and ankle weights when you’re walking around at work or home or put weights in your purse to carry around when you’re running errands. This forces your muscles to work out while you’re taking care of the stuff you’d normally do.

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How Journaling Can Help You Lose Weight

Most people can’t remember what they ate for lunch every day much less how they felt while doing it. Yet eating and how you feel that day can often determine whether or not you’re going to have a good day during your weight loss journey.

Keeping a journal can help you to lose weight because it can track the type of exercise that you’re doing and how much you’re exercising. It can let you know how you felt when you ate a meal or when you grabbed a snack.

You’ll be able to know if you were eating more when you were upset or not. Keeping a journal can help you lose weight by tracking how much water you drink. It can also help you track how much mindless eating you’re doing.

Having a record of your weight loss can help you see when you get off track and it’s one of the best and simplest tools to use for keeping weight off for good. What a journal does is it teaches you about yourself.

You’ll be able to pick out how you act when you’re under stress and what triggers the desire for crunchy, salty junk or fast food. You’ll be able to understand the motivation behind why you do what you do when it comes to your eating habits.

If you have a bad day, a journal will help to show you what was going on and let you see how you reacted to it. A journal forces you to be mindful of what you’re doing and how you’re eating.

It can reveal patterns or ruts that you get into when it comes to certain issues such as having to work late, dealing with fatigue and so on. Most people find that changing their diet isn’t enough to stay on track and even when they add exercise, they still have many days where they struggle to lose weight.

When you keep records and make yourself accountable, it lets you see past any excuses or problems. This, in turn, enables you to identify them and learn methods to succeed.

If you’re someone who craves sweet, calorie laden food when you feel down, write that in your journal. Then the next time that you struggle with the same emotion, you’ll be able to see what you did to overcome it.

This type of accountability is like a supportive friend in that it makes you aware of issues about your weight loss that you may not have understood. Everything related to your weight loss should go in your journal.

Include things like how you felt that day, what you ate and why as well as if it was for breakfast or a snack or you reached for something because you were mad or hurt or whatever.

You should track the times that you overate as well as how much sleep and how well you slept that day as well because poor sleep habits can be tied to weight gain. For best results, make journaling a daily habit.

You can either handwrite or use an app for it. Keeping a weight loss journal lets you see the days that you had the most success and shows you how you can make that into a pattern for your life.

Be sure that you record the goals that you reach while you’re journaling as well as your every day journey.

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Find Inspiration to Keep on Your Weight Loss Journey

Losing weight can lead to a healthier you, but along the way, especially if things get hard, you can lose your inspiration and that can lead to discouragement. To stay motivated, there are some simple steps you can take to guarantee your success.

You want to first understand the reason behind what you’re doing. When you know the reason behind your weight loss goals, it’s easier to keep focused on that. It might be something like you want to be healthier or you want to be able to do things that your weight is holding you back from doing.

Once you identify your reason for losing weight, don’t lose sight of that. Write down your reason or even multiple reasons on a notecard and tape it up so that you see it every day.

That way, you’re reminded of why you’re doing what you are. Always make your goals specific. You don’t want to have a goal of wanting to lose some weight. Instead, pick the number of pounds that you’d like to lose.

Put that goal at the top of your page. Then list steps that lead up to that goal. These are smaller goals that feed into that larger goal which is the completed weight loss. Make these goals something that you can accomplish – like you promise to commit to exercising twice a week with an emphasis on building muscle the third day of the week.

Then, every time you achieve that workout goal for the week, you put a check mark by that day. This helps you see what you’ve accomplished already, and it keeps you inspired to keep going.

Losing weight doesn’t have to be a solitary journey. Studies have shown that it helps to have people who are going through the same thing so that you can get support.

This can be in the form of having friends or family lose weight with you as long as they’re just as committed.

If you don’t have anyone in person that can be your support, look for an online community. You can find a lot of these where you can share goals, wins, weight loss roadblocks and more.

The success needed to lose weight begins in the mind. You have to keep a positive mindset and don’t let yourself dwell on negatives, difficult steps in the journey or setbacks.

Instead, keep a positive mindset. This can help you when you feel like you’re not making any headway. Write down positive thoughts or quotes about weight loss and read those daily if you have to.

Make sure that every single goal that you accomplish you inspire yourself through a small reward. This can be something like new music, going to the movies, buying a new book or an outfit or a new piece of workout gear. These rewards help you to look forward to reaching the next goal.

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Eating Fat to Stay Slim

You may have heard the advice that if you want to stay slim then you need to give up eating fat. The opposite is actually true. You need to eat fat in order to stay slim. When you eat foods that are high in carbs or high in sugar, this creates a reaction in your body that makes you crave more of the same.

So you begin to hold onto fat and the more fat your body holds onto, the more you weigh and the more you’ll battle hunger and cravings. Without enough fat in your diet, you can get caught in an endless cycle.

Trying to lose weight while eliminating fats is a blueprint to diet failure. When you consume more fat, your body in turn lets go of stored fat. The types of fat that you need to consume matter.

When you plan your meals, you want to make sure that your carbohydrate portions are not as great as your fat. You’ll want to cut out processed foods and eat things like plenty of fish and chicken as well as fruits and vegetables.

By creating an eating plan that uses a healthy balance of fat and carbs, you can spur your body to lose fat and pounds. It works based on the science of Adenosine triphosphate  (ATP) which basically means that it’s your body’s currency.

When you need energy, your body will use fat to fuel that energy through oxidizing the fat. If you eat more carbs than fats, your body uses the carbs instead. Which means you burn calories but not fat.

To slim down and lose fat, you have to eat fat to give your body that fuel. That doesn’t mean that all fats are equal. Some are pretty bad for your overall health and especially for your heart.

Fats are listed under the umbrella of being either saturated or unsaturated. The fats in foods will be found in one of these groups. Unsaturated fats are the ones that you want to look for.

These are the fats that are best for your heart health because they help keep your cholesterol levels low and they’re also good for weight loss. Other fats in this group contain omega-3 which is good for the heart.

You’ll see this in fats that are in vegetable oils and certain types of fish such as salmon. Olive oil is a good oil to consume for helping you to stay slim. Good fats are found in things like some types of seeds, nuts, avocados and olives.

Fats that you should limit or avoid when you’re watching your weight because they’re bad for your heart as well as unhelpful when it comes to losing pounds are things like the skin of some meats, solidified fats, cookies, potato chips and other kinds of junk or fast food.

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Colon Cleanses to Boost Your Weight Loss Goals and Keep You on Track

You might not realize that what’s adding pounds to the number that you see on the scale is all the waste that you have in your colon. This waste can also contribute to bloating, which can make your clothes feel tighter and add inches to your waistline.

When you do a colon cleanse, you usually end up losing at least five pounds or more right away. Cleansing your colon is something that’s available using a variety of methods and what you choose to use can completely clean out your colon.

It will remove all the waste and you’ll notice it immediately. It’s good for anyone to use who wants to shed some weight. Because your digestive system is constantly working, the waste will accumulate again.

However, losing the weight with a colon cleanse can help to boost your motivation and keep you on track for your weight loss goals. When you eat foods that aren’t good for you or foods that are known to have certain toxins such as dye, then your body holds onto those toxins.

When they remain in your system, it can make you feel sluggish and just not like yourself. When you use a colon cleanse, you get to start with a clean slate for your digestive system.

The kind of colon cleanse that you use depends on which one you choose. Some colon cleanses are medicine based such as laxatives. Some involve the use of enemas while others rely on supplements to clean out the colon.

There are homemade colon cleansers that you can make at home using all natural ingredients. These are usually juice based or rely on the use of herbs and they have a laxative effect on your system.

The length of time that you’ll use a colon cleanse is based on the type of cleanse that you choose to do. Some will last for a day or two while others last longer than that.

During your colon cleanse, you’ll follow a strict eating plan.

You’ll focus on consuming foods that are all natural such as fruit and vegetables. You’ll avoid foods that have added ingredients such as dyes, artificial sweeteners and anything that’s been processed.

The point of this is to keep unnatural foods out of your system while you go through the cleansing process. When you’re on a colon cleanse, you will get rid of all the waste in your intestines so that when you do have a bowel movement, it’s completely clear. A colon cleanse is a great way to boost your weight loss and it helps many people find the start they need to stick with a longer weight loss plan.

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Cleansing Detox Diet for Quick Weight Loss

Detoxifying your body can give you many health benefits as you get rid of all those chemical and environmental toxins within. But a detox can do more than just get rid of toxins.

It can also give you a quick weight loss. If you follow a cleansing detox diet, you’ll notice a few things right away. You’ll notice that your skin looks amazing. It’ll be softer and look younger.

You’ll notice that you suddenly feel better and have a ton of energy. You’ll see that you’ve lost inches too once you’ve been on the diet a few days. Though some naysayers claim that there’s no need to detoxify, that’s not true.

A detox diet isn’t a fad and it’s not an unhealthy diet either. It’s used to help your body to get healthier and that’s just a side effect of both the weight loss and the way that you’ll be eating.

There will be certain foods that you can’t have such as dairy and alcohol. You’ll also have to refrain from eating foods that contain sugar while you’re on the diet. The length of time that you follow the detox diet will depend on which version of the diet that you choose.

Some of them last for a week and some of them last longer. To get started, you’ll want to make sure that you have time to be at home for the first day or so. This is because a detox diet can cause you to have some side effects in the beginning.

These side effects are normal and happen as your body adjusts to eating differently as well as ingesting foods that can cause you to experience the need to remain near a bathroom.

After the first day or two, these side effects will be gone. Some people confuse a fast with a detox diet - but on a fast, you usually don’t eat any food at all except water. On a detox diet, you do eat food but they’re limited to raw foods which means things like vegetables, nuts and fruits.

You are allowed to have eggs and some meats and you’re also allowed to have tea as long as it doesn’t have caffeine. Anyone on the diet will need to drink a lot of water in order to aid in flushing out the system.

You can also drink smoothies that are made from vegetables and fruit. You can find a good detox eating plan and recipes by looking online or buy buying a book that has step by step instructions as well as recipes. Most detox diets do allow you to continue your workouts just not to the point that you don’t have enough calories to give you the energy that you need.