The "F" Word: FEAR

These are the Top 4 fears that stop people from taking the road to success.

Fear of Failure – “What if I can’t lose the weight?” Ultimately, some people would rather not try to lose the weight due to the looming possibility that they might fail. Previous failed attempts only strengthen this fear! They can become so overwhelmed and fearful of letting themselves or others down that they never actually start.

Fear of Success – You’re thinking, NO WAY, why would anyone fear success?! Because people with this fear think, “If I lose the weight, my life might change or friends might judge me and not want to hang out with the new thin me.” Some people have friends and family that are overweight and they fear that if they are successful that it might negatively affect their relationships. This leads us into the next fear people have…

Fear of Rejection – These people fear being judged or rejected by the people they love the most. Some peoples’ lives revolve around food and social situations; they can feel that if they change how and what they eat, then their friends might not enjoy their company because this person is not participating in the usual and customary way. They also can fear that their friends might not like to hang out with them if they are fit and healthy because their friends might feel uncomfortable or feel compelled to change themselves.
We so often don’t realize that those who love us, who genuinely wish us well, want us to be happy and most of the time are prepared to join us on our journey!
And then, there's...

Fear of Limitation or Restriction – These folks can feel like they are going to somehow miss out; they often say things to themselves like, “I don’t want to deny myself life’s pleasures like Friday Pizza Party, Saturday Beer and BBQ, Sunday Nachos & Margaritas!" They even justify it, “I work hard and this is some of life’s simple pleasures,” or some people feel that life is already full of restrictions or limitations. These feeling can come from many issues - big ones especially, such as money struggles - and these folks commonly feel that food is the one thing that they can go crazy with, without limits.

Yes, these are all head games, but fear is the number one reason people fail to even start to lose weight. These people can be terrified into inaction. Please be aware... these fears are NOT REAL, and otherwise known as "Inauthentic Fears"; friends and family will not run away because you are getting healthy…
These fears do exist in some people's heads, and they do hold people back. You may recognize yourself in some of these fears or situations. And that's OK. But what you need to understand is that this is your psycho-cybernetic mechanism messing with your head! Remember the weight gauge we talked about towards the beginning of this book? … That gauge will resist change by sending you these feelings of fear! That thermostat is kickin' in!

To read more about how to beat fear in your weight loss program check out Mindset for Weight Loss by Michael Mountain. You can also opt in for a free diet from Michael right here by filling out the form to your right!

How to Maintain Weight

There is so much discussion on how to lose weight that the question on how to maintain weight is grossly ignored.  Yet, if you were to look strictly at the statistics of the number of people who lost weight and kept it off, it is a little disheartening. 

Approximately 95-97% of all people will fail to maintain their weight after achieving their weight loss goals.  So indeed this is an important topic of discussion.

Here is a generalized way to understand the difference between weight loss and weight maintenance. Weight loss is 75% psychology and 25% mechanics - learning what is healthy nutritious food and eating it in amounts that lead to consistent weight loss, as well as exercising or not in a way that works for you. Maintaining weight is 100% psychology because you already know what you should eat and in what amounts.  There is no new information to know in regards to exercise, diet or nutrition unless you are just furthering your education.  But, it is not necessary for maintaining your weight.  

Unless…

…if your diet was so extreme that you find yourself without a working knowledge on what is healthy and how much you should be eating, in other words you are ill-equipped to begin living health as a lifestyle.   It would benefit you to look into continued information on diet and nutrition.     This is why so many diets out there make no sense and have such a high percentage of their clients gaining the weight back…they are too extreme and have them eating ridiculous types and incredibly little amounts of food, amazingly many of these are found in hospitals or are doctor supervised!

Moving forward, regardless of the diet you used to lose the weight,  it would be inaccurate thinking if your idea for maintaining your weight was to quit on your diet completely.  To go back to the very habits that caused the weight gain in the first place and attempt to control how much you eat is a recipe for disaster…you might as well pull out your “big clothes” and start banging your head against a wall right now. What is necessary for a while is keeping your health and weight in your present mind consciousness.  For how long… for as long as it takes for your new healthy lifestyle to move into your unconscious mind.  The second it does, that is when the entire system will run itself.  That is correct, when all of the new healthy patterns; what you eat, when you eat, how much you eat, and daily exercise have gone from conscious disciplined thought to become ingrained habits in your unconscious mind, that is when you can relax. 

If you have not learned how to accelerate this process then you may have to forever run yourself through checks and balances.   On the other hand if you learn some key strategies that accelerates the formation of new unconscious habits, freedom from policing yourself can be yours very fast,  learning these inner-strength strategies will lead to easy permanent weight management.

 Until then you have got to be aware of yourself and the priority of health in your life.  Take the time to create a process to monitor your weight, your exercise and your food choices.  It’s as easy as… in the morning; weigh or take a look at yourself in the mirror, plan your days meals and what exercise you will do in advanced, and in the evening re-evaluate your follow through.

About:  Michael Mountain is a transformational author on health, weight loss & personal growth and is featured on Amazon.com. He is the author of the Ultimate Fat Loss Solution Diet which is available presently free of charge at www.michael-mountain.com.   He is also the author of Mindset for Weight Loss transformational program - a revolutionary step-by-step program designed to provide the “inner-strength strategies” to take any diet and make it effective for permanent weight loss.  This program allowed him to end his own personal 20 year struggle with weight and poor health!  You can sign up to receive his blog updates on weight loss and motivation at www.michael-mountain.com

Is The Cost of Eating Healthy Foods a Legitimate Excuse?

One of the common excuses I hear from people who say they want to lose weight but can’t because of “blah-blah-blah” is because of the cost of eating healthy.

Commonly, this is stated by people who buy their Starbucks every morning,  and eat out breakfast, lunch and dinner at fast food joints.  There is no way that these people are spending less than I spend on an average day to eat 5 very nutritious meals a day.  My average daily expenditure is well under $10 dollars for all my meals total. 

Even on a cheap, fast food diet – it would be very difficult to eat 3 meals, let alone 5 meals for under $15.00.  The truth is that eating healthy, especially if you prepare your meals at home and take them with you, is very inexpensive.  My wife and I figured it out;  when we began to eat healthy we were saving $200-400 dollars a month by not eating fast food or low end eating out- we still have occasional date nights at nice restaurants.

 The reality is that the cost of eating healthy is just an untrue excuse. Similarly, all excuses like cost of food, no time, bad influences or no-support are just that, excuses. 

Excuses and blame are cut from the same mold.  Neither one can exist if you are to be successful losing weight.  Excuses and blame create a prison within the mind of the person using them.  By pointing your finger at things outside of yourself as to why you just can’t lose weight, you are robbing yourself of power you possess.  This power - your personal power is the very key to personal freedom and permanent weight loss. 

Even when you lose weight on a diet and then gain the weight back; if you blame that diet for your lost result, then you are positioning yourself in your prison as a victim. In my past, I lost and gained weight back on seven different diets, so I know how easy it is to play the blame game.
So how did I begin the process of changing my result? I took responsibility!

Permanent weight loss will never be achieved until you take responsibility for your life and your health.

The second you start to tell yourself that you and you alone are responsible for your health and the weight your presently have, you will get your power back.  By taking responsibility for your present state of health, you place the responsibility for action likewise upon yourself and will start actively finding a way to move boldly towards your goal! 

When you blame, make excuses or justify – you accomplish the other, weakening your position and shutting down appropriate action!

Taking responsibility for your health and your results are one of the keys to permanent change and successful weight loss!

Here is something that you should begin to say to yourself with emotion everyday!

“ I am responsible for my health, I am responsible for my feelings, I am responsible for my weight loss results!” 

Try repeating that 5-10 times each day and see if your life doesn’t change dramatically!

Pleasure and Pain

Your desire to seek or experience PLEASURE and…
Your need to avoid or not experience PAIN.

These are things that bring us pleasure we are attracted to --- and things that cause us pain we try to avoid. Plain and simple. And almost all our daily decisions are based on these two simple needs. But, let’s clarify some important points beyond your initial thought that chocolate, pizza and ice cream give you pleasure….and… Exercise, lean chicken and broccoli give you pain. (LOL)

You see, it goes much deeper than that... In fact, YOU really didn't create your own likes and dislikes.
Mostly during childhood; your culture, family, friends, personal experiences, the media and advertisements directed what we have linked to pleasure.
And for clarity…
There is Short Term Pleasure and Long Term Pleasure
There is Short Term Pain and Long Term Pain
Pain is not always bad… for example, the pain of being overweight, unhealthy and wanting more has driven you to The Mindset for Weight Loss program and to finally losing the weight for good. So, that's good.
People who get healthy and stay healthy for a lifetime have associated pain with being OUT of shape. They have also linked pleasure with respecting their bodies, feeding it health, and exercising daily.
So that being said, we can, by choice, learn from others and change our behavior by changing what we LINK to pain and pleasure.
Here is an example using ice cream… Have you ever eaten a bowl of ice cream that brought you pleasure at the time, but as soon as you were finished, you felt Pain? Let me elaborate… Let's say that you ate the ice cream because of the immediate pleasure it gave you; not only did it taste good, but you had always been given ice cream as a reward or treat by your parents and you linked that feeling of reward, connection and love to ice cream anytime you ate it. Also, it lit up the taste buds in your mouth just like the advertisement said it would.
But after, it caused you pain because you knew that it would make you fat, you would feel bloated which in turn would make you feel unattractive… ultimately you had let yourself down. Now as a second option, have you ever chosen not to eat the ice cream?… which caused you some pain because you were denying yourself that immediate pleasure - But after the pangs for the ice cream go away, you feel great about yourself; you realize that you have taken one more step towards your goal, you feel more attractive and confident in yourself and are empowered because of your own self-discipline! Two similar scenarios with dramatically different actions and interpretations, right?

The above is an excerpt from my book Mindset for Weight Loss.  You can purchase the full book at http://tinyurl.com/7vbxkjo

Fast Food And Why We Are Becoming Fatter And Fatter!

The Fast Food industry is smart. They are killing it in regards to profit and they are killing us in the process!
Never before has more unhealthy, nutrient poor food, laden with combinations of fat, sugar and salt been served up in such huge quantities. It seems that even Starbucks has decided to join the long list of food retailers that provides no inherent restraint to portion size or calorie control. They have begun introducing their new line of “supersized” coffee drinks beginning with the frozen blended drinks. Guess who the large consumers of those drinks are? Kids between the ages of 12-25!

These "trentas", as they are being called, hold 31 ounces of your favorite blended drink. What is interesting to note is that the calorie intake of one of these drinks could be as much as 1200 calories plus! Way over half of the calories that people that age should be eating for the whole day!

Why did they do this? It would appear that McDonalds has been giving them a run for their money, or said differently McDonalds has been stealing away customers from Starbucks because McDonalds has been offering supersized blended coffee drinks.

We all know that McDonalds and most the other fast food chains out there do not consider the public’s health a priority when creating it’s products, but instead looks at the scientific research of what ratios of high fat, high sugar and high salt creates the strongest cravings for people to go back for more and more! It would appear now, that the all mighty dollar has motivated Starbucks to likewise forgo any thought as to what is O.K. for its consumer’s health... 31 ounce drinks filled with sugar and fat! That is insane!

When is enough... enough? Many years ago, before this huge obesity epidemic, it used to be that getting a 10-12 ounce soda (140 calories) was a real treat and more than enough… Even though my family's eating habits weren't necessarily in the "healthy" category, I remember as kids, we were lucky to get a soda more than once a month!

What has happened? As much as we would like to blame the fast food companies who are motivated only by money, ultimately blame must go on the consumer because WE are buying this crap!

But…why? Why do people feed their faces to such excess? Even in the presence of increased rates of; obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure and Diabetes?

Some would suggest that it is because of our evolutionary experience. That, in Paleolithic times, we ate in a feast or famine way. We did not get fat then because the availability of the food was limited and sporadic. We also didn’t get fat because the type of food that made up our diet was mostly lean meats, nuts, seeds, vegetables and some fruit.

It is suggested that we continue to eat in a feasting pattern based on that preserved behavior, the only problem now is: there is food available everywhere and at any time. Others would blame the agricultural age and the increase in production of grain, flour and cereal consumption as well as the more contemporary addition to our diets of preservatives, increases in sugars, salt, and manufactured syrups and fat. It is very true that these types of food create chemical and hormonal changes that lead to powerful cravings to want to eat more of the same. And certainly much of that has lead to poor health and disease, but is that REALLY why we are driven to consume outrageous amounts of food?

The answer is that all those things together have contributed to this time in history… a time where obesity, Diabetes and heart disease run rampant. But… they are not the biggest reason.The truth is that for the majority of people, they eat without much thought. So yes, we can consider as part of the problem our learned feasting patterns, exposure to unhealthy, nutrient poor foods and effects of bad, even toxic food that trigger cravings in the body. But all of that pales in comparison to the one truth... eating for us is a habit. We have learned to eat a certain way, eat certain types of food and consume a certain amount of food. It occurs over time and is handed down from the previous generation to generation. Each generation is teaching the younger generation that there is no such thing as too much of a good thing!

Have you ever been told…”finish what is on your plate.” Even better, that learned habit is reinforced with even more food. “If you finish what is on your plate, then you can have dessert!” This bad habit is accentuated by the fact that the general serving size has been getting bigger and bigger. Regardless of how much you give us, we keep “finishing what is on our plate”. This is just one example of how poor eating habits are learned. We learn them from seeing, doing, participating and modeling from sources like parents, family, friends, culture, television etc.

Unfortunately, with each subsequent generation the bad habits, the negative patterns, the shear amount of consumption increases! We have been trained to think that bigger is better and more is better, like we are “getting our money’s worth”, and it is killing us.

McDonalds and now Starbucks is simply added fuel to the fire of an out of control flame of over consumption built on bad habits and poor diet choices. If we are ever to stop the insanity we are going to have to do two things….

1. Change our eating habits and stop handing bad habits down to our children.
2. Learn what foods in what amounts our body truly needs to thrive and be healthy.
3. Ignore the insanity that is seen in advertising and make smarter choices in restaurants and fast-food establishments.

Most importantly we must realize that the beneficiary of over consumption is the bank accounts of the fast food companies and they are not going to grow a conscience. You will be dead long before they start serving healthy, balanced food products served up in reasonable amounts… So, it is up to us to stop the insanity!

Article Source: http://www.streetarticles.com/weight-loss/fast-food-and-why-we-are-becoming-fatter-and-fatter

 

Calling All People who Want to Lose Weight

Calling All People Trying To Lose Weight!

Finally, a Way to Elevate Your Self Esteem, End the Guilt and Lose the Weight!

Guilt, self esteem and being overweight are intimately linked, there is no denying it.

The fact that this is established and well understood should be the foundation for a complete solution that ultimately addresses all these factors.

Unfortunately, Diet books and “Gurus” only ever talk about nutrition, diet and exercise.

As a result the documented success rate for people on a diet is about 5%. Well there is no doubt that that is a pathetic statistic. What it really helps us identify is the fact that diet and exercise alone are an incomplete solution. It proves that you can’t ignore all the things that are going on inside your head and hope that it will all change because you are forcing yourself to eat healthy.

Here is why.

The choices you have made about food and exercise in the past have created the health and weight you have now. These choices are ingrained within you….that is why you have struggled to break the pattern. You literally eat based upon learned patterns of emotional behavior and bad habits. They can include daily fast food, boredom eating, emotional eating, weekend binge eating, etc. In essence, prior to going on a diet, you had a pattern of eating behaviors that created what we can call your food and health “Autopilot”.

This autopilot or negative patterns of eating and dis-empowering relationships with food are very powerful. It is the reason that people struggle with weight, binge eat, cheat on their diet and why the majority of folks fail to ever reach their dream weight. This struggle of course wreaks havoc on your self esteem as does the fact that you are not happy with your appearance.

It is no wonder that substantially overweight people or the obese feel like they weigh much more than even the scale tells them… all that guilt and negative self image must feel like the weight of the world on their shoulders. So what do we need to understand?

Think of it this way, a plane can be set on autopilot so that it is set for a certain direction.

That setting can be circumvented by someone steering the plane off course, but the second that that person releases the controls then the plane will eventually return to it’s original heading because of the autopilot.

That is how it is for you. You ate a certain way with certain patterns, associations and emotional relationships that created your negative autopilot for food and health. Your autopilot has given you the weight and health you have today.

By going on a diet, it is like you steered your plane off course, the autopilot is still on and it will take you back to it’s original heading whenever it can. That is why people who have lost tons of weight regain it back. They have been eating healthy for months, even years and yet that did not create new habits or change their autopilot because changing what you eat is not enough.

In order to lift the weight of the world off of your shoulders, raise your self-esteem, end the guilt and finally lose the weight forever you must reset your autopilot for a whole new course or direction.

Only changing what you eat will not change your autopilot…but, just like a plane, if you turn off the autopilot, turn the plane in the NEW desired direction and then turn the autopilot back on then you will reach your destination with ease. The same thing will happen to you when you change your present negative food and health autopilot to a positive, empowering food and health autopilot.

Your self-esteem will soar and you will reach your weight loss goal with ease!

Yours in health, weight loss, and plain old happiness!

Is There Such a Thing as Good Calories and Bad Calories?

There is a common question that I hear and that is, “is there such a thing as good calories and bad calories?  Well the answer would be yes and no. 

You see, a calorie is defined as the approximate energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.  Oh geez, that doesn’t make it any clearer either, does it?

Now that you are totally confused, let’s cut to the chase and let me try to make it clear.

A calorie is a calorie, as long as you ignore the overall benefits or ill-effects the calorie has on health and metabolism.  Said differently, and this was tested quite recently by a man who lost approximately 25 lbs eating nothing but Twinkies, that a calorie equals a calorie regardless of what the calorie is made of.  This is why, simply from a calorie breakdown perspective the answer is that there are no good calories and bad calories.

Many people preach that weight loss is simply nothing more than a calorie deficit, energy in has to be less than energy out or expended.  In essence, as long as you eat less than your body needs – it will burn calories stored as fat, the type or quality of the calories being irrelevant.   And this is true if you don’t care about; health, energy, body composition, and stagnant weight loss!   That is why that man could lose weight on a Twinkie diet, and the same can happen eating nothing but cookies, cabbage soup, subway sandwiches, cardboard, etc.   As long as you eat less than your body needs, you will lose some weight.

The problem lies in that the type and quality of the calories have an effect upon the body;  those effects lead to increases or decreases in energy and health as well as facilitate weight loss or inhibit weight loss.  That is why I said that indeed there is such a thing as good calories and bad calories!

So, we could say that Good Calories are nutrient dense calories that promote a health and weight loss advantage, whereas bad calories are nutrient poor calories that diminish health and create a weight loss disadvantage.

Good Calories accomplish the following that Bad Calories do not…

•     Increases the health and function of the liver – the liver is the major organ for burning fat in the body, when it works better you accelerate fat burning and weight loss!  Bad Calories decrease the function of the liver.
•     Decreases inflammation in the body – the number one problem of fat in the body is the production of inflammatory chemicals that lead to heart disease, thickening of the arteries, chronic pain and a whole slew of other stuff you do not want. You can lose weight eating crap but your body will continue to suffer with ill-health and disease due to inflammation.
•     Burns mostly fat – Good calories burn the largest percentage of fat compared to muscle, bad calories do the opposite!
•     Maintains and Increases the formation of new lean muscle – lean muscle burns more fat, so that your new muscle very quickly starts to accelerate fat loss.  Dieting while eating only Bad Calories will have you losing as much muscle as you do fat, the scale might say that you lost weight but your body will be weaker than ever! 
•     Increases your energy and the health of your entire body – By increasing the health of your body by giving it the vitamins, minerals and nutrients it needs to function better, it will affect all aspects of your body!  Dieting while eating only Bad Calories will have you feeling terrible regardless of any weight change!
•     You don’t have to be obsessed with counting calories when you eat good calories – They all increase health and increased health accelerates fat loss.  Dieting while eating bad calories means you have to be obsessed with every bite.  One too many French fries can tip the balance and screw up a day’s dieting efforts!  Do you really want to bring a calculator to every meal?   

Please review the Ultimate Fat Loss Solution Diet for a list of Good Calories vs. Bad Calories at www.UltimateFatLossSolution.com.

4 Keys You Must Know to Prevent Weight Loss Plateaus

It is very common for people who are trying to lose weight to experience a stall in their progress.  This weight loss plateau can be what stops people from continuing on with their diets, they become emotionally frustrated and lose their will to continue.

Surely there must be something that can be done?

Unfortunately, the usual responses to these plateaus are to eat fewer calories in hopes of shocking the body into burning fat.  This is on top of an already calorie restricted diet.   The other way is to change or increase your exercise program.   But, are these smart changes and for that matter….is a plateau an inevitable part of losing weight or can they be avoided all together?

Let’s look at why this happens and the 4 Keys you must know to prevent a weight loss plateau.

When someone goes on a diet and they begin to eat less than they were, then of course weight begins to fall off.  Depending on what you are eating and how much, you will be losing a percentage of weight from; water, fat and muscle.  The capacity to lose almost all fat and preserve lean muscle mass is hugely important and is discussed in a different article.  For now let’s focus on plateaus.

Likewise, if someone begins to exercise or increases their exercise or energy expenditure then again they begin to burn calories.

So, we know in a simplistic way that calories in/eaten – calories out/energy used = calorie deficiency and weight loss. …..if you are eating less than you are burning.

But, what we also see in the human body is a continual and perpetual attempt to minimize body functions and activities.  Said a different way, your body is inherently lazy, it tries to be as efficient as it can so it can use the least amount of energy possible in it’s functions.

When you start eating less you put yourself into an energy deficit.  Your body needs more energy than you are supplying it with (eating), so your body starts to metabolize fat and release energy from your bodies storage shed (fat cells).

So what happens with plateaus?

Your body, being efficient (or lazy depending on how you want to look at it) starts decreasing it’s metabolism to meet the new amount of food or energy being supplied.  It is trying to become efficient in energy needs to the point where it no longer needs extra from the storage shed.

Unfortunately when you go on a diet, you of course want your metabolism to speed up but your body is trying to slow it down so it can hold onto it’s storage (fat) shed and learn to be comfortable using only the calories that you are supplying it with.   So your weight loss slows and stalls.

Here are some things that you should avoid because it is an easy way to reach a plateau, really fast.

• Eating too few calories.  More of a deficit is not better.
• Not exercising.
• Not eating often enough.
• Only doing cardio for exercise.
• Not eating enough protein in your diet.

Since nobody wants to experience a plateau in their weight loss, here are the four Keys you must know to prevent them.
Key #1) Diet Habituation: Is the process of eating a diet with a designed calorie deficit and reaping diminishing returns from that deficit.  Said another way….eating less than your body requires consistently but seeing the benefits from that calorie restriction become less and less until finally it plateaus.
Here are some solutions….

• Eat enough calories to keep your metabolism turned on.  More on this in a minute in Key #2.
• Exercise – get your body and metabolism moving
• Eat an ample amount of protein – it speeds up your metabolism and preserves and makes lean muscle.
• And most importantly….Key #2

Key #2)  Calorie Confusion: Eating different amount of calories from day to day will prevent Diet Habituation from occurring!  Because your body is always trying to efficiently minimize its output and metabolism.  You must mess with it, so it doesn’t know what is happening.  If you change your caloric intake from day to day then your metabolism will stay on high!

Here is how not to do it…

…a cheat day.  You hear of diets that recommend a day off, eating what ever you want.  One day a week of unlimited calories, it’s not healthy and if you have read our other articles you know why it is completely counterintuitive to making health and a lean, fit body…a lifestyle.

Key #3) Exercise habituation – is the process in humans where there is a decrease in response to exercise after repeated exposure to that same exercise over a duration of time.

Let me give you an example; if you walk 3 miles a day and that is a struggle for you.  Then you will benefit from the exercise at first, but when you get to a certain level of fitness, then your body will start to minimize its effort to walk that distance.  It will become so efficient that your benefits will practically disappear.   Your body will stop improving and that applies both for weight loss and cardiovascular health.

Why?  Well, that leads us into the last key.

Key #4) Muscle confusion – is the process of continually changing the stress (exercise) to the muscular system to maximize gains, cardiovascular health and lean muscle growth.

You have got to challenge your body and change up your Exercise routines every 4-6 weeks!

Have you ever heard the definition of insanity…”doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”  It doesn’t happen!

Apply these simple changes and remember the 4 keys to avoid the dreaded Plateaus of weight loss.

Yours in health and weight loss,
Michael Mountain

Watching TV can make you Fat

Watching TV can definitely make anyone fat.  No, not just because it is a sedentary activity, but because the information most commercials are giving is extremely misleading and really confusing, to say the least.
Most people who know me, know I am not a TV watcher. Actually, I don’t even have cable at home (A rare thing these days, I know.) Very often, I have no idea which show is the “latest craze” and which commercials are all the rave.

Last week the TV did catch my attention. I was at my parent’s house and my mom had the TV on in the background. I was helping her cook and I nearly chopped my fingers off because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!

“Eat Cheerios to lower your cholesterol.” “Three or more glasses of skim milk a day are a great way to lose weight”. Then it got ugly “Splenda is just like sugar and is great for kids”.

The worst of them all (the one where my mother had to nearly restrain me from attacking the TV “There is nothing wrong with High Fructose Corn Syrup. It comes from corn and can actually be good for you.” I nearly passed out.

I can see why people are totally confused about healthy eating. I can also see why obesity, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes are at an all time high in this country and in many others as well.

After I was done hyperventilating, I decided to first turn the TV off (because my heart just couldn’t take anymore) and then write this newsletter to clear up a few misconceptions.

1. Cheerios biggest claim to fame is that eating them will help you lower your cholesterol. I am here to tell you that eating processed grains, especially in the form of cereal can actually make your cholesterol go up! The cholesterol study done showed how soluble fiber can help the body eliminate bad cholesterol from the body. Cheerios has 1 gram of soluble fiber per serving. Woop-dee-doo. Big deal. I can get 2 grams of soluble fiber from an apple, 3 grams from broccoli and carrots, and more than 4 grams from kidney beans. (Beat that Cheerio Man). Honestly, I don’t think there are many foods in a box that are healthy at all. They have to be highly processed to stay shelf stable, many times loading them up with chemicals and fillers that are making us gain weight. My recommendation is ditch the cereal and pick up some wholesome natural foods like fruits and veggies. Natural grains like brown rice, millet and quinoa are 10x’s better than any boxed cereal.

2. Milk does a body bad! That’s really what the commercial should say. Ok, that is not entirely true. Conventional milk does a body bad. If you have read the Dairy chapter in The Diet Solution Program, you know my stance on milk: Organic is a must and Raw Milk is even better. If you didn’t read my article on milk, you can read it here: http://www.thedietsolutionprogram.com/articles.aspx?article=Is-Milk-really-Healthy?

But don’t go yet until you read #3.

3. Give Splenda to my children? Never! Splenda has not been out on the market long enough to show whether it is actually safe or not. Until then it is a public health experiment (No thanks, I don’t’ want to be your guinea pig). Being the organic chemistry nerd that I am, I know exactly how sugar is converted to Splenda. I will spare you the chem lesson but tell you that Splenda (or sucralose) is a synthetic compound stumbled upon in 1976 by scientists in Britain seeking a new pesticide formulation. Huh? Did you say pesticide? Yup. Many chemists believe this molecule resembles a pesticide much more than it resembles natural sugar. If this is still in debate, I will not be a test subject. I highly recommend you take yourself and your children out of this experiment as well. My tip: Stick to natural sweeteners like whole fruits, stevia and agave syrup and stay away from artificial sweeteners like Splenda, Equal and Sweet & Low.

I could probably go on and on. If I watched TV long enough (or if I actually purchased cable) I could probably find 10, 20, 100 more commercials that are giving us false info, all in the name of selling products.
Now, go shut the TV off will ya?

Read the Real Truth about Healthy Eating and Weight Loss and get started on your own fat loss and health goals right away.

Food, Weight Loss and The Law of Attraction

It has been said many times in the past that, “You are what you eat!” But what if I was to add also that “You are what you think”?

The first one makes sense to us on some level. Even if you don’t understand the science or the effects of what you eat on your biology or how it works, you know that your body uses what you eat to create the cells and health of your entire body.  But what about the second one, “You are what you think”?
I am going to guess that this might be a tough one for you to wrap your arms around.  Let me help you to understand this, for it is a key to health.

First,  to say “You are what you think” is really incorrect; it is really more accurate to say that, “You are what you think AND FEEL”.  Because your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings change everything!  Let me share with you what science is now proving…

… have you ever felt sad or depressed, in fact so much so that it lasted all day or more?  It would be fair to say that you were in a negative headspace so to speak, yes?  Here is what I want you to embrace: the way you felt that day and its effects on the health of your entire body can most easily be compared to… a day or more of eating nothing but; high sugar, high fat, fast food!  Both will decrease your health, both will make you fat, both will make you be less appealing to others and both attract more of the same to you!

Now, have you ever felt great, upbeat and excited, or full of unwavering love and connection for at least a day?  It would be fair to say that you were in a positive headspace, wouldn’t it?  The way you felt for those couple of days and the effects of those positive feelings can be most readily compared to a couple of days of eating nothing but healthy, nutritious foods!  Both will increase your health, both will make you a leaner, fitter version of yourself, both will make you more appealing to others and both will attract more of the same to you, if you know how!

Let me make sense of each effect. Here is a simple way to get it!

• Food and Health – You are what you eat!  Any food that you eat will, based upon its level of nutrition and health, either increase or decrease the health of your entire body.  Through digestion and chemical reactions your body uses what you give it to continually re-construct all the cells of your body.  Just because you don’t die the second you eat a super-sized meal from your local fast food joint, don’t be fooled… you have taken a step towards the grave.
• Food and Weight Gain – When you eat junk and you eat more of it than your body can use, then your body will add it to your storage cells; the fat on your body.  Eating junk destroys the organs and hormones associated with metabolism, burning fat and feeling like you have had enough to eat.  You stack the cards against yourself every time you have a day of eating unhealthy foods because the system that is supposed to reverse the process and help you lose weight becomes weaker and weaker!  Besides that, you feel hungry all the time, even when you truly are not – because the hormones that send that message are not working!
• Food and Weight Loss – When you consistently eat healthy foods you will heal the organs and hormones associated with weight loss.  Even if you are eating amounts that would not result in immediate weight loss you have taken steps to start losing weight because your body will be working better, and you won’t feel hungry all the time, since you are eating higher quality foods.    If you add a calorie deficit (eating less than your body needs) and you eat healthy foods, then you will massively increase health and weight loss.NOTE: Be careful of what diet you choose because some of the fad diets out there help you to lose weight but are also decreasing the health of your body, so that long term you will gain weight because your metabolism and fat burning organs have been further injured.
• Negative thoughts and feelings – Your thoughts and your feelings have a direct effect upon the health of your cells, not just of your brain but of your entire body.  Science has proven that your thoughts and feelings communicate with all of your cells.  Negative feelings decrease the health of your cells; they create a stagnant cesspool within the cell itself.   When you feel this way you just feel cruddy all over, don’t you?  If you have any body aches or pains they get worse, don’t they?  The thing to know is that the less health you have in your cells and throughout your body, the harder it is to process fat and toxins out of the body.  It makes it easier for your body to hold on to the fat!  Have you ever been on a diet, not lost any weight and wondered why?It has been shown that today more than any other time, people are in a negative headspace over 70% of the time! Truly it appears that negativity has become the default setting in most people.   Our obesity epidemic is likewise at an all time high… hmmmm,  I wonder – is there a connection?!  Most definitely.
• Positive thoughts and feelings – When you are in a good headspace and feelings of love or optimism fill your head, those feelings are actively increasing the health of your whole body.  Your entire mind and body are vibrating at a higher level!  Think back to a time in the past when you had positive thoughts and feelings. When you felt that way didn’t you feel great all over? That is because you not only felt good but you had raised the vibration level in all of your cells and that vibration sent out positive energy in all directions, in your body and outward!  The body and the cells also now actively want to get rid of the unwanted fat!  Ever been optimistic about losing weight, feeling good about it and the weight started to come off?
• The Law of Attraction – the law of attraction states that like attracts like, but think of it as things or people with similar vibrations levels will be attracted to each other.  Likewise, things with different vibration levels repel each other.  When you are in a negative headspace you attract more negativity and other negative people to you.  Do you have bad days regularly? Do you sit around the water dispenser at work complaining and griping with all the other people who complain and gripe?  Or are you upbeat and positive most of the time, attracting other positive people and opportunities to you?  You attract to you what is in your life based upon your predominant thoughts and feelings!  Including regularly eating unhealthy  or healthy foods depending on your thoughts or feelings.
• The Law of Attraction and Weight – So, now you realize that your thoughts and feelings helped to  create the level of health or weight that you now experience.  If you are not at the weight you want to be, you must not only change what you eat and create health within your body, but you must make sure that your predominant thoughts and feelings are positive.  In essence, you become what you think about most of the time; don’t play the head game of, “I am sad because I am overweight, not overweight because I am sad!”  The two are intimately linked; ask yourself why you eat most of the time?  Only because you are hungry or because food helps you to change the way you are feeling at a given moment?  Unfortunately for almost everyone who is overweight they are linked, you can’t address one without the other. In order for you to change your health and weight you also must change your mindset just a little bit from the inside out!
• Thoughts and feelings are the key to health and weight loss; they are as important as the very food you eat!  If you are going to achieve your perfect weight, true health and a life that is fulfilling and full of passion you must embrace that the changes you need to make will begin on the inside!  From there, a diet that is founded on health will only help!

Why do you think that losing weight raises your self esteem so much? Only because of how you look? No, because of how you feel;  it changes the very essence of you!  The mind-body connection is the key to an incredible life and you can use the Law of Attraction to strengthen and reshape your very own mind-body connection.

Protein and Resistance Exercise Reign Supreme

Are you trying to lose weight?  What is best?   These and other head scratching questions and considerations come to mind when people are trying to figure out what diet they should go on.

 

There is a lot of conflicting information out there that can lead folks into a state of over-analysis paralysis!   Diet Guru’s only seem to foster a greater level of confusion because instead of sharing the results of research, they choose only to promote their own agenda by substantiating their perspective.

 

So here is some unbiased information of 3 different research papers that looked at the superiority of a high protein diet compared to a high carbohydrate diet.  They looked at the advantages of protein or carbohydrates with resistant exercise and without. They looked at the effects of a high protein diet on Cardiovascular disease, belly fat, nutrient profile, lipid profiles and weight loss.

 

The results for all 3 research papers were unanimously conclusive that a high protein diet is a superior way to go.  Weight loss was superior in the group that ate high protein, and even more so when combined with resistance exercise.  CVD or markers for cardio vascular disease decreased substantially with the high protein diet as did the test subjects amount of belly fat.  Important nutrients like vitamin B-6 and B-12 increased with a high protein diet, the same cannot be said with the high carbohydrate diets.

 

In fact it was found that when you eat protein, you can increase your metabolism more 30% for as long as 12 hours!  Fat and Carbohydrates elevate metabolism less than 4 % for less than an hour. 

 

All in all this research is conclusive that high protein diets are important not just for increasing lean muscle mass but also for important health markers: such as CVD markers, lipid and nutrient profiles, as well as losing belly fat, over all body weight and effectively changing your body composition.

 

Please note that protein is not your only consideration when trying to eat both for health and a lean, fit body.

 

But, this is a good start to build on.

 

Why Dietary Fiber Must be a Part of an Effective Health and Fat Loss Program

To eat your veggies or not eat your veggies…that is the question.

Children and parents alike sometimes find themselves struggling to eat a healthy amount of fiber rich vegetables.  You can’t get them at the fast-food joints, sandwich shops or any convenience store.

Yet vegetables and fruit, and the fiber they contain are paramount to health.  In this article we are not going to discuss the nutritional content of vegetables, that is well understood and goes without saying, but, we are going to discuss the value of dietary and supplemental fiber.

There have been more and more studies documenting the beneficial effects of high fiber diets.  Here are just a few, fiber…

• Increases your sense of feeling full (satiety), so that you control your hunger.
• Decreases Leptin resistance so that your hormones tell your brain that you are full appropriately.  So you don’t eat more than you should.
• Decreases your bad cholesterol and elevates your good cholesterol or HDL.
• Decreases markers for (CVD) cardio vascular disease.
• Buffers insulin responses and normalizes blood sugar levels.  Helps prevent spikes, resistance and all of the associated effects like low energy and mood swings.
• Increases the absorption and removal of toxins in the body.  As you lose weight – you release toxins stored in your fat cells, it is very important for health and well being that these toxins are removed quickly.  A toxic body will not burn fat efficiently!
• Increases your fat burning – butyric acid is released in association with the fiber…butyric acid accelerates fat metabolism.
• A boat load of studies shows us that when fiber intake increases, that the subjects lost the greatest amount of weight compared to isocaloric diets (same calories eaten) with less fiber.

So I think we can all agree that fiber is important for our purposes of getting healthier and losing unwanted pounds quickly.  It is incredible effective when eaten with lean protein.   So what are our sources?

Vegetables are the number one source, next comes enriching your food or protein shakes with supplemental fiber like psyllium or ispaghula husks, then comes fruit.  Fruit, because of it’s glycemic response should be eaten in a calculated way to maximize fat loss like right after your exercise. 

In these studies it was found that weight loss increased in direct proportion to the amount of dietary and supplemental fiber taken.  When considering how much you should eat.

Begin by eating all of the fresh vegetables that you can, then after a week or so start adding supplemental fiber into your shakes or meals. Add the fruit at the appropriate times…for example an avocado with breakfast or an apple right after a workout…and you should have the makings of a fast-track to health and fat loss!

Yours in health and weight loss,
Michael Mountain

 

Weight Loss Diets for Women

To know what diet will best assist a woman, first we should talk about a woman’s life:

Women are busier today than at any other time in the history of humanity.  Some women work, some women raise children, most do both;  all women carry the burden of taking care of the household, all members of the family and contributing to society.    Women much more so then men, feel and burden themselves with the stress of their own responsibilities, as well as the struggles and stress that they share with their significant other, children, friends and the world.

After a day that is spent from the wee hours of the morning till well after the family is fed and all have been put to sleep, they finally get to a point when they can actually consider themselves and their own needs. 

But, here lies the problem; by that point their energy has gone, their motivation is spent and there is no-time to even begin to take care of themselves, let alone exercise.   Some will reflect on the day and recognize that the food choices they made throughout the day were not the best for health or their weight, most if not all of those choices were driven by convenience and cravings.   So they find themselves by the end of the day; unhappy with their health, their body, their lack of energy and motivation, and struggling with how to change it.   This will negatively affect their self-image, their self esteem, their relationships and most all aspects of their lives.

So gals, how do you change it?  How do you stop this from occurring each and every day when all of the responsibilities and stressors are not going to disappear?  How do you get back the control of your weight, your health and your energy?  How do you jump off the insanity train and start feeling great about your body and yourself once again?

Look for the solution in the problem.  When your life is that busy, hectic and full of stress,  two things will drive you to eating the wrong things in the wrong amounts; convenience and most importantly cravings.  

Eating the wrong things purely out of convenience is easily changed;  it boils down to preparation and scheduling.  So, do you have the motivation for each and would you know where to begin?  If not….then you need a little more information than just diet.  Don’t forget to read the authors box for more on that.

Cravings is really where choice of diet begins to become important.  There are two types of cravings; there are cravings created by the type of food you eat and there are cravings created by your responses to stress, boredom and emotions.

Cravings created by food – We now know that high fat, high sugar and large amounts of salt made into food products in just the right ratios feeds the chemical cravings that lead us to eat more and more of the same trash.  The junk food manufacturers and fast food companies know this and that is why they employ it against the unknowing public,  to keep them coming back day after day.  I know that might make you feel a little bit like a pawn, but that is the reality.  Your body’s hormones and chemical balance is all out of whack because of these food products and these changes create cravings for more of the same.  As a result it destroys the organs that metabolize fat, create inflammation and disease, mess up the balance of your female hormones and leads to poor health, diabetes and unwanted weight gain.

That is why trying to eat just less of this same junk never works because you just can’t compete with the power of these cravings.  But a healthy diet can, in fact a healthy diet can heal most of these problems quickly!

When I evaluate any diet it has to meet certain criteria…

• It can’t be extreme…extreme does not work, especially not for long term weight loss.
•  It has to be based on sound nutrition that focuses as much on increasing health as it does on consistent weight loss!
• It has to be a diet plan that can be followed as a lifestyle and it should not require you to count calories or points!  Reason coming shortly.
• It has to be comprehensive; in that it provides all necessary information including the do’s, don’t and sometimes of eating certain foods and provides recipes that make it easy to follow!
• It has to quickly repair injured hormones and organ systems so fat can be burned.  And it must massively increase energy and restore chemical balance so cravings disappear.  I have seen this happen within 5 days with the Ultimate Fat Loss Solution Diet.

Cravings created by responses to stress, feelings, etc. -  It might or might not surprise you to find out that you eat less than 25% of the time because you are hungry or because of food cravings described above.  You eat most of the time because of the way it makes you feel; if you are stressed, sad, depressed, overwhelmed, bored, they can all create the cravings for food.  This occurs because food will at least temporarily remove those painful, negative feelings or emotions.  It is a brief moment of reprieve from how you feel or your daily stress.  Of course we know in the long run, emotional eating just adds more stress and guilt, but unfortunately the short-term benefits most often wins out.

Now just think about this for a moment.  These responses or cravings are the biggest contributors to weight gain in women, but many diets would have you count points or calories as a solution.  The reason this fails 95% of the time in achieving permanent weight loss is because counting is an analytical, mathematical, left-brain activity.  Your cravings or responses to emotions and feelings are a right-brain phenomena.   The two will not cancel each other out, in fact it will only create internal turmoil.  You can count all you want while all is well and peaceful in your life, but the moment stress from your busy day, screaming kids, conflict of any kind and emotions start to surface…your right brain will take over and it will sabotage your counting, your diet and trigger a craving for food not found on your diet!…ice cream anyone?

Successful weight loss Diets for women begins with:

• a nutritious, health focused diet that can be followed as a guide for a lifestyle and that quickly rids the body of unwanted cravings.
• While on the diet you must also have other critical information that is available that will lead to permanent change!  This information will help you create the small mental shift or change in thinking that will not only give you the motivation and inspiration to prepare and schedule your food.  But, it will also give you the key tips and strategies that will let you end your negative emotional connections with food!

It has been my experience when helping countless women lose weight permanently and it has been echoed by other leaders in the personal growth field;  that anything a person wants to change in their life can be broken down into changing two things -  25% mechanics and 75% psychology.

In the case of women permanently losing weight - the 25% you must change… is picking the right diet,  the 75% psychology you must change… will give you the motivation and inspiration to do what you need to do, and it will release you from your negative habits and emotional connections with food!

About:  Michael Mountain is a transformational author on health, weight loss & personal growth and is featured on Amazon.com. He is the author of the Ultimate Fat Loss Solution which is available presently free of charge at http://www.michael-mountain.com/.   He is also the author of Mindset for Weight Loss transformational program - a revolutionary step-by-step program designed to provide the “inner-strength strategies” to take any diet and make it effective for permanent weight loss.  This program allowed him to end his own personal 20 year struggle with weight and poor health!

How to Stay Focused and Motivated While On a Diet

All People Struggling with Weight Loss Want To Know How to Stay Focused and Motivated While On a Diet!

Staying motivated and focused, while on a long-term diet plan to lose unwanted weight, is one of the top challenges for people trying to lose weight.

 

It is the topic of continual conversation on weight loss forums and is the overwhelming reason that people go there in the first place.

Yes, diet and exercise (D&E) is discussed but the reason that thousands flock to these forums is not so much about D&E, but is more about sharing the challenges, frustrations, set backs and victories associated with weight loss.

It is about connecting with others with similar goals and similar challenges on a forum where they can feel comfortable and not feel judged.    There is huge value in this type of implied team effort and the comfort of feeling like you belong and share a common thread or goal with others.

This sharing in other’s progress and interacting with others is a way to stay motivated and focused.  Especially considering for some that…

….their weight loss journey may take over a year.

Unfortunately, even with the forum groups – these dieters will still experience an approximate 95% failure rate!  And here is where the problem lies….

….because although these forums are a good thing, the understanding of the limitations of motivation are not understood.

Motivation is and should always be considered temporary in regards to weight loss.   Motivation by definition is short lived.  It comes and it goes.

It should be considered temporary because it is needed in the beginning to actuate change, not change in weight but change in habits.

The food, exercise and eating choices you have made in the past have created the body and level of health you have today.  So the question comes down to … how did you make those choices?

You made those choices based upon ….

•Your learned bad eating habits!

•Your negative patterns of eating!

•Your Emotional relationships and connections to food !

Motivation can override such habits but only for a short, temporary period of time.

Motivation should always be a stepping stone used to accomplish the goal of changing these bad habits, negative eating patterns and relationships with emotional eating!

What people do instead is not identify these issues, do not try to replace them with empowering habits but try instead to simply eat healthier and hope it becomes a habit.

To eat healthier, while your bad habits keep trying to jump up and sabotage your weight loss efforts requires a never-ending supply of motivation to accomplish it.  Not only that, but the second that they are distracted (from their motivation) or not focusing on their diet, then these inner issues and habits will rise up and they will find themselves reverting back to these inner demons or bad habits.

You see, simply trying to force your self to eat healthy will not change your eating habits.

Unfortunately on the forums, you hear this happening on a daily basis….. people having a weak moment and binge eating on junk food with all the associated guilt that goes with it.

Luckily, supporters are quick to get them back on track with a suggestion, kind words or a pat on the back.
The only true step they take towards habit changing is keeping a daily food journal.  Although it is a good step…it is but a single step in an entire multi-flight ascent to the top of the building.

The greatest use of motivation is to use it appropriately, as a short term tool to focus your will power on taking action steps to change your negative eating habits.

When the right steps are followed then the old negative habits are replaced with new, empowering healthy habits that allow you to stay on a diet without effort and with out any need for a continual supply of motivation.

I Can’t Stop? Understanding Binge Eating

Trying to prevent binge eating is a major struggle for many people trying to lose weight. There is nothing more self-esteem destroying and guilt creating than to eat healthy for a short period of time and then flip a switch in your brain and go crazy eating everything in sight.  For some the binge can be over in a single meal, but for others it can last for days!

 

What causes this unknown power that drives people to binge and sabotage their own weight loss efforts?

Well, there are physical reasons that cause people to binge as well as mental/emotional reasons….let’s discuss them both.

 

The number one contributor to binge eating from a physical stand point is hunger.  When you go on a diet you are eating less than your body is use to or wants. If the diet plan is poorly designed then you may be very hungry at times.   So in moments of weakness you finally relent to the hunger pangs.  But, before you beat yourself up for being weak, keep reading, because it gets a little more complicated than that.

People who have been overweight for a long period of time develop something called Leptin Resistance.  Leptin is a hormone in your fat cells that is released to tell your brain that you have eaten enough.  High sugar/carb diets or being chronically overweight create resistance to leptin so that no matter how much you eat….you still feel hungry.

Mental/emotional reasons for binge eating require that we understand ourselves at a deeper level.

Throughout the world an abundance of food is readily available. We can go to the cupboard or refrigerator (ice box) and grab something whenever we want it.  Likewise we can reach a drive thru, convenience store or fast food joint in very little time and eat for very little money.  Yet, this in of itself is not the problem because lean, fit people don’t binge eat.  So what is the problem?

 

Unfortunately, it is our own baggage…..or said differently it is our own emotional connection with food, our negative patterns of eating behavior and learned bad eating habits.  Now, that is a mouth full so let me explain.

 

We eat based upon patterns of behavior.  Through modeling (from parents, friends, and cultures), observing (patterning ourselves after others) and participating as well as linking food to stress, love and emotional comfort, we have created our own eating patterns or habits.

 

The problem is that in most cases these are bad eating habits.

 

Binge eating is a knee jerk response to either an emotional stressor or a trigger that initiated one of your negative patterns or bad habit.

 

You see these behaviors and patterns function like a bad recording that just keeps replaying itself over and over again.  Any emotional stressor, feeling or incident can trigger the recording to play or run and you will binge.

 

So, what can be done about it?

 

Two things:

 

1.  Eat foods that create a sense of fullness, that control changes in blood sugar and that repair leptin resistance and function!

2.  Learn how to replace negative eating patterns, emotional triggers and bad habits with empowering ones!

 

 

Yours in health and weight loss,

Michael Mountain

Calorie Counting – The Pitfalls of Micro-Managing Your Daily Meals!

Calorie Counting every meal absolutely sucks. So, what if there was a better way? 

We are bombarded with the idea that we have to eat less than our body needs in order to lose weight, to create a calorie deficit. We then are lead to believe that the only way to achieve this daily deficit is to account for and mathematically analyze each and every ounce or calorie of food we eat.

This left-brained approach to eating is supposed to be the way that we will successfully lose weight – and not only lose it, but hopefully lose it permanently.

That, in and of itself, is the inherent problem with calorie counting: it is a left-brained activity.  The problem lies in the fact that we as human beings eat predominantly because of emotions and feelings.  We eat sometimes because we are hungry,  but we eat most of the time because of the way it makes us feel, mostly a right brain phenomenon.

We eat because we are bored, and often because we are sad or depressed; to deal with stress… we eat to feel better.  In essence, we eat largely for emotional reasons.

Counting calories is so polar opposite to the very reason we are eating, that it is only a matter of time before our brain rebels against this dichotomy and sabotages our diet plans.  You will take all of the joy out of eating and because of that your brain will say, forget this…this sucks!  And you will sabotage your diet! Here is the proof!

How successful do you think calorie counting is?  This approach will lead to permanent weight loss in about 3% of all those who are using it to lose weight!  The statistics prove that this method doesn’t work; a 97% failure rate is not exactly inspiring, is it?

So what do we do when it is important to be able to evaluate whether or not we have eaten an appropriate amount of calories at a meal?  How do we make that assessment easily, in a split second – to know that we are on track with what we are eating?

Firstly, because we are eating largely to enjoy the experience, we should not destroy that enjoyment by counting calories or points.  That way we don’t create more stress and turmoil in our brain that may lead to self-sabotage.

Secondly, a smart diet is one that creates a calorie deficit by design not by counting.    Through easy to use eyeball assessments and combining the best of health restoring and fat burning food combinations you should never have to count.

On the flip side if trying to eat less of high fat, high sugar, processed foods in the amounts that will let you lose weight is your way of getting healthy, then count away!  Try to figure out whether or not you should eat 3 French fries or 4… two or two and a half bites of your Big Mac… that is when you have to count calories.

And that is a lesson in frustration and leads to certain failure!

I suggest you embrace both your mind and your health by finding a smart diet plan that throws out the calorie counting all together.

How To Want To Lose Weight

Are you asking yourself, “How can I want to lose weight? I know I want to, but I don’t know how to make myself REALLY want it.”

The question that the above thoughts are truly covering up for you is this: How can you elevate your motivation and commitment level towards a goal of self improvement, in this case for your body and health, so that you take the actions required to get you to your end goal?

Well, if you have a lukewarm attitude towards losing weight it means that you feel that there is more to lose by going on a diet, than there is to be gained by going on one and losing the weight.  You might have to do some self-reflecting and ask yourself…

1)  What are you afraid of losing if you lose the weight or said differently, what is to be gained by not losing the weight? 

Do you use weight as a way to protect yourself, as a way to push people or someone away?  Is it a way for you to protect yourself from potential rejection or putting yourself in a vulnerable situation?  Do you feel that you could be rejected by loved ones if you change?  Do you use food as a coping mechanism for stress, sadness or depression and fear losing your crutch?  Is food so important that energy, health and living life fully is less of a priority?

We eat predominantly due to feelings or emotions; if you want increase how much you want to lose weight you are going to have to learn to love and appreciate yourself for more than what you eat.  You should try to embrace the fact that if you live to eat, food has taken on an unhealthy level of importance in your life.  There is opportunity to end these dis-empowering relationships with food.

2)  What could be lost if you don’t lose the weight or what can be gained by losing the weight?

Take a moment and approach this question by looking at what you have missed out on in the past because of your weight or your lack of energy.  What has it cost you? Missed opportunities to live fully, love fully or to participate fully?

What will not changing your weight cost in the present?  What is it costing your right now?  How does your weight affect your life and your self esteem?

What will it cost you in the future – your health?  Obesity is the number one reason for health related deaths in the western world!  If you die an early death, what could you potentially miss out on?

If you want to raise your level of motivation and commitment, you must get leverage on yourself and use it to raise the huge importance for health.   When you realize what it has cost you and realize that you are holding onto your weight for unhealthy reasons, you will begin to increase your “want”, and  to develop the commitment that leads to permanent weight loss.

This is the key to knowing how to want to lose weight.

The Best Belly Fat Burners

Belly fat, also known as “visceral fat”, is associated with increased risks of heart disease.  It presents us with abdominal distention that is commonly referred to as a Beer belly, even if the affected person doesn’t drink beer.

To understand how to get rid of it quickly requires a little bit of understanding about what is happening below the surface of your tummy.  What you should know is that not all of a big belly is fat! A lot of it is fluid retention, that is why it gushes around.

Let’s get right into it, so it all makes sense and then I will give you a list of how to burn the belly fat as fast as possible.

When you are gaining weight, the first place that the fat goes is of course into your fat cells all over the body.  As the fat cells begin to expand with fat and toxins (there are toxins in most fat) then the amount of inflammation in the fat cells starts to increase.  It will increase until the fat cell is so engorged that the inflammation will start to spill out into the circulation, raising the overall inflammation in the body.
This inflammation can lead to other health problems, but it will also raise the amount of cortisol (a hormone) in your body and start increasing the accumulation of fat specifically in the belly.   As cortisol elevates it shuts off your HES1 protein in the liver, that turns off the liver from being able to process fat and leads to fat accumulating in the liver.

The struggling fat cells will send the fat storage problem back to the liver, the liver then begins to become further congested with fat and toxins and stops functioning properly.   As a result you start to spill triglycerides or fat into the digestive track and you begin to retain fluid in the abdomen and produce more inflammation in the gut.  This situation is made worse by eating high carbohydrate meals.

The fat cells have something called leptin and as it rises, the amount of Adiponectin inversely decreases.  A low level of Adiponectin causes insulin resistance in your liver!

Now your blood sugars start to rise, raising the release of insulin… unfortunately, practically all carbohydrates that you eat will be converted into belly fat.  A fatty liver raises your chance for type 2 diabetes by 500%.

If you have ever had a weekend when you drank too much alcohol and ate a lot of unhealthy carbohydrates, you have experienced this at least temporarily.  The alcohol shuts down the liver, you start retaining water and it is made worse because likewise carbohydrates makes you retain water and you can’t process the carbohydrates properly.

So what do we do about all of this?

The following are some simple steps to reverse this process quickly.

• Decrease your carbohydrate intake dramatically until the liver is de-greased.  Eat nothing white or processed.
• Eat smaller meals to decrease the effort on the liver.
• Limit your calorie intake.
• Increase your intake of lean healthy proteins; it will accelerate the healing within the liver.
• Increase your intake of nutrient-rich fibrous vegetables.  Fiber will absorb excess fat, toxins and cholesterol out of the body at a faster rate; vitamins and minerals will promote healing.
• Stay away from high fat diets so that the liver can detoxify and de-grease!
• Exercise at least 30 minutes a day.  Burst training or high intensity interval training are shown to be best for belly fat.  Hot-box yoga is great for dumping toxins as well.
• Take at least 500mg of green tea extract – decreases belly fat.
• Take 900-1200mg of DHA – it de-greases the liver.
• Take 200mg Resveratrol and 200mg Turmeric – as anti-oxidants to combat the inflammation.
• Take a Probiotic 8-12 billion active cultures – heals inflammatory effects on the gut.

I recommend doing much of the above as a lifestyle, but especially at the very beginning of a belly fat burning program – because it will virtually guarantee that you will lose the belly fat, very quickly.