Lately I have discovered that eating canned vegetables has not helped at all with my hunger. As an experiment I recently started eating raw vegetables like crooked yellow squash, zucchini and red and yellow onions.  I simply just cut up and mixed the vegetables in a large bag with my own homemade dressing.  The ingredients are:

• Grape Seed Oil
• Olive Oil
• Flax Seed (liqued form)
• Paul Newman’s Italian dressing
• Salt (just a little here)
• Pepper
• Vegetables

I just dumped all the ingredients in a large Zip Lock bag (didn’t use specific measurements) and shook the bag to mix everything together.  Not only are the fresh vegetables better for you, they taste really good this way too. Not only is this low in calories, it is also great in the good fats. The plus side is that eating my vegetables this way seems to help with the hunger too.  Why don’t you give it a try and let me know what you think. 

The one thing I have learned from helping people and being a member of a few weight loss forums is that a lot of people do not know how to figure their calorie intake. Sometimes their caloric intake will be a little too high or too low but I see some cases where the caloric intake is extremely low.

When you reduce your calories at extreme amounts your body will think you are starving it. What usually happens is that you will lose weight at first but eventually your weight loss progress will hit a plateau and stop losing weight. As a result a lot of people will decrease their calories even more which ends up causing their body to burn their muscle for energy while saving the fat.

The most important thing I tell everyone is muscle is so important and you NEVER want to compromise it. The more muscle you have the more fat you will burn. Yes muscle does weigh more than fat, but in the long run if you have a “well built” machine then you don’t have to worry as much all the time about the calorie content in food. For example, have you ever seen a hard core athlete? They can eat things like pizza or ice cream, in moderation, and not worry about it as much as the rest of us because their body burns it up so quickly. Of course they can’t do this all the time or they would eventually have a weight problem. So my advice is don’t shoot in the dark on calories.  I recommend using the instructions below to get an estimate on how many calories you should eat in a day.

The first step is to calculate your BMR which is the number of calories you burn at rest.  Click here to calculate your BMR.  The next step is to multiply your BMR by your activity level.  This is used to calculate how many calories you burn a day (also known as your TDEE - Total Daily Energy Expenditure).

I personally decrease my TDEE by ~500-750 calories per day.

*It takes 3500 calories to burn a pound of fat so you will need to consume fewer calories than your TDEE if you want to lose weight. However, you don’t want to go too low and starve yourself!

Activity Levels 
Sedentary - 1.2 x BMR - television or office work as main activity
Light - 1.375 x BMR - exercise or workout 1-3 days per week
Moderate - 1.55 x BMR - exercise or workout 3-5 days per week
High - 1.725 x BMR - exercise or workout 6-7 days per week
Extreme - 1.9 x BMR- exercise or workout twice per day

I have really only hit the tip of the iceberg on how you can calcualte your calories but it should help you get started thinking that just eating less isn’t the best solution.  I highly recommend you learn more about your TDEE and the book that has really helped me understand a lot if this is Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle.  I have already recommended this book in a few of my previous post and if you are really serious about losing weight the right way then I personally feel it is a must read. Click here for additional details on Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle

Hello everyone,

I am back, not fully recovered, but I am back in the gym 3-4 days a week, well sort of.  Over the holidays things were kind of crazy for me with my knee surgery and both of my children’s birthdays also being in December. There were things that kept coming up and I didn’t always make it to the gym but I did always make it to the physical therapy sessionsJ.

We had a great holiday, a little too great. Since I wasn’t following the diet real well and not being able to work out the way I would like to, I gained 14 POUNDS in about 6 weeks L

I started back at work January 8th and I work 2nd shift in a hospital.  I’m now back into a schedule of not getting as much sleep and I was recently hit with a BAD cold. I was sick for 2 ½ weeks so of course I didn’t follow the diet that well (didn’t eat much) and didn’t workout.

I’m finally over my cold now and this past week was the first week I followed the diet to a T J and worked out 3 times, including PT.  I would have liked to have gone to the gym more this past week but life does happen (Dr.’s appt.’s). However, I lost 4 pounds this week and feel like I’m back on track again.

Lately I have been reading a few health related web forums and it appears that most people are looking for the same thing.  I think that a lot of us are searching for the magic solution to get rid of the fat and permanently become thin. There are so many people, including myself, that have spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars searching for the magic pill.

However, the funny thing is that I have personally seen men and women transform their bodies without a magic pill but through diet and exercise alone.  I have seen examples of both men and women that started at around 20-30% body fat slim down to a low 3-12% body fat in a matter of 12 to 20 weeks. I even witnessed my husband accomplish these types of results when he competed in a bodybuilding contest several years ago. It is amazing the amount of will power it takes to stick with the diet and exercise routine but the results are astonishing.

I always tried to lose weight via a random diet and/or exercise program but failed to no avail. It wasn’t until I became sick and tired of being fat and feeling unhealthy that I decided to change me life (the weight loss contest was a big motivator too). I never thought I would be able to stick with a diet routing but then again I never thought I would achieve the results I have accomplished so far. I can truly say that the only solution to lose weight is getting the RIGHT information and putting it into practice.

If you are just starting out on a diet program then I highly recommend reading Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle.  I have learned a lot about what to eat and when to eat from this ebook.  However dieting alone, as Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle will tell you is only half the equation.  You still need to exercise and for that I recommend joining your local gym or fitness center.  It’s not the easiest journey but if done right it is the one that produces the best results.

I wish everyone the best of luck on their journey

Since changing my diet this past year I have learned so much about the American diet. I now read the ingredients of everything that I buy and have discovered that most of the foods we eat are REALLY bad for us.  Take for example enriched flour; do you know what that really means? It means that the flour has been processed so much that they have stripped out the good stuff and had to then enrich or add back to it the quality nutrients. Yuck!

Another example of a common ingredient in a lot of our food is corn syrup.  Have any ideas of what corn syrup does to your body? You have sensors in your body that tell you when you are hungry and when you are full. Well, corn syrup stops the sensors from telling you that you are full which results in you eating more.  Corn syrup will also spike your glucose levels which in return will cause the glucose levels to go down fast, crash, resulting in you wanting eat more.

Milk, wow I can’t say enough. The milk you buy at the grocery has been possessed so much that there really is nothing left that is good for you. Not to mention the antibiotics and hormones that goes into the cows.  YUCK!! Now if you love milk then I recommend finding a good source that doesn’t give there cows all the hormones and antibiotics. My kids can’t drink it and I don’t really like it either. Most of the time we use almond milk as a substitute which has as much calcium in it as regular milk and almonds are REALLY good for you too.

One last example of a bad ingredient that is commonly found in a lot of the foods we eat is Trans fat or hydrogenated fats.  These fats have to be one of the worst things for your body!  One of the major side effects of Trans fats is that your body can’t recognize it so it stores it in your arteries.

Make sure that you read all your labels when buying groceries.  You will be amazed at the amount of junk that is included in most of the products you buy.