Here's a link that to a healthy body calculator that can tell you all kinds of interesting facts about yourself. You will want a tape measure to fill out the form.
Healthy Body Calculator
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
6 Rules to Curb Junk Food Cravings
Cravings - well get them. Here are some tips on how to stop them.
1. Watch who you eat with.
You can tend to eat more when you're out with a friend, or a group. Mindless emotional munching is common when you're having fun and not thinking about food. Also, depending on who it is you're with, you may eat more or less. If you're with friends who love to pig out, and never care about what they're eating, it's likely that you'll do the same. Follow in the footsteps of the friends who have some control. It'll pay off.
2. Buy smaller portions.
If you're going to be doing something that keeps you occupied on whats happening in front of you, as opposed to what you're putting in your mouth, buy a smaller portion to start out with. For example, when you go to the movies, you might usually buy a tub of popcorn. Most people will finish that tub whether they feel full or not. So, if you're going to finish something, it might as well be the smaller size.
3. Eat breakfast.
People who get up and eat breakfast in the morning are less likely to get hungry when they go out, whether it's to work or for fun. When you go out, the foods around you most likely will not be as healthy as a nice bowl of cereal or some whole wheat toast which you could have had at home. Chances are higher that if you skip breakfast, you'll be snacking on something worse for you later on. Therefore, skipping your breakfast really has no gain - and mostly, it'll just be a sabotage on your diet!
4. Don't compensate.
Sometimes if people go for a long workout and feel proud of all the calories they've burned, they'll reward themselves with food. And worse, the food they eat after is usually higher in calories than what they actually worked off. It's easy to get the mindset that you just worked hard, so having a snack won't hurt you. This can be true, if you choose wisely and don't fill up after a workout on something that will erase the hard work you've just done.
5. Portion your food.
You can control how much you eat if you're aware of the amount you started with, and how much is left. If you have a big bag of chips at home, divide it into 8 or 10 sandwich baggies and take one for a snack. This will keep you from overeating and not knowing it. A study has shown that people who eat from the bag eat almost twice as much as people who ate from divided portions.
6. Don't treat reduced calorie/fat foods as freebies.
Just because they're not bad for you doesn't mean they won't make you gain weight if you eat the whole package. Treat these health foods the same way you'd treat a food that you don't think of as a "safe food", and you'll do alot better. A low-cal/fat food will end up being the same as eating something fatty if you eat three times as much of it, because you think it won't hurt your diet.
Source:
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/
1. Watch who you eat with.
You can tend to eat more when you're out with a friend, or a group. Mindless emotional munching is common when you're having fun and not thinking about food. Also, depending on who it is you're with, you may eat more or less. If you're with friends who love to pig out, and never care about what they're eating, it's likely that you'll do the same. Follow in the footsteps of the friends who have some control. It'll pay off.
2. Buy smaller portions.
If you're going to be doing something that keeps you occupied on whats happening in front of you, as opposed to what you're putting in your mouth, buy a smaller portion to start out with. For example, when you go to the movies, you might usually buy a tub of popcorn. Most people will finish that tub whether they feel full or not. So, if you're going to finish something, it might as well be the smaller size.
3. Eat breakfast.
People who get up and eat breakfast in the morning are less likely to get hungry when they go out, whether it's to work or for fun. When you go out, the foods around you most likely will not be as healthy as a nice bowl of cereal or some whole wheat toast which you could have had at home. Chances are higher that if you skip breakfast, you'll be snacking on something worse for you later on. Therefore, skipping your breakfast really has no gain - and mostly, it'll just be a sabotage on your diet!
4. Don't compensate.
Sometimes if people go for a long workout and feel proud of all the calories they've burned, they'll reward themselves with food. And worse, the food they eat after is usually higher in calories than what they actually worked off. It's easy to get the mindset that you just worked hard, so having a snack won't hurt you. This can be true, if you choose wisely and don't fill up after a workout on something that will erase the hard work you've just done.
5. Portion your food.
You can control how much you eat if you're aware of the amount you started with, and how much is left. If you have a big bag of chips at home, divide it into 8 or 10 sandwich baggies and take one for a snack. This will keep you from overeating and not knowing it. A study has shown that people who eat from the bag eat almost twice as much as people who ate from divided portions.
6. Don't treat reduced calorie/fat foods as freebies.
Just because they're not bad for you doesn't mean they won't make you gain weight if you eat the whole package. Treat these health foods the same way you'd treat a food that you don't think of as a "safe food", and you'll do alot better. A low-cal/fat food will end up being the same as eating something fatty if you eat three times as much of it, because you think it won't hurt your diet.
Source:
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/
BMI
I'd like to take a minute to write about BMI. BMI is a useful tool to get a general idea on whether your weight is healthy or unhealthy. It is much better than just hearing someone else say that they're 100 pounds, and then deciding that you'd like to have this weight, too. That person may be 5 inches shorter than you!
BMI stands for Body Mass Index. It is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. It's usually pretty accurate, but is only meant as a guideline. People who work out very often and have a larger amount of muscle may find that their BMI is overestimated. Someone who is actually very healthy may be shown as overweight because of their large amount of muscle. This is when body measurements will probably come in handy.
Above is an idea of how BMI scores are categorized.
A BMI scoring in the healthy range can reduce your chances of diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
Above is a chart I made. If the chart doesn't go far enough to the right to show your weight, you are overweight. If it doesn't go far enough to the left, you are underweight. (According to medical standards, anyhow.) The weights in pink font are ideal.
I like to keep my BMI at around 19, and in my opinion, a BMI of 22 or over has some room for fat loss. Personally, my highest BMI was 23, at almost 140 lbs, and I had plenty of fat to lose. All it took was a bit of exercise and cutting out the non-stop McDonald's. ;)
BMI is not the only tool you should use to determine whether you are healthy. You should never just use your BMI as the final answer. Your waistline measurement, waist to hip ratio, and food logs are also great things to go by.
Sources:
http://caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.html
http://www.randypollak.com/html/bmi.html
BMI stands for Body Mass Index. It is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. It's usually pretty accurate, but is only meant as a guideline. People who work out very often and have a larger amount of muscle may find that their BMI is overestimated. Someone who is actually very healthy may be shown as overweight because of their large amount of muscle. This is when body measurements will probably come in handy.
| BMI | Category |
| Below 18.5 | Underweight |
| 18.5-24.9 | Normal Weight |
| 25-29.9 | Overweight |
| 30-39.9 | Obese |
| 40 and above | Morbidly Obese |
Above is an idea of how BMI scores are categorized.
A BMI scoring in the healthy range can reduce your chances of diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
Above is a chart I made. If the chart doesn't go far enough to the right to show your weight, you are overweight. If it doesn't go far enough to the left, you are underweight. (According to medical standards, anyhow.) The weights in pink font are ideal.
I like to keep my BMI at around 19, and in my opinion, a BMI of 22 or over has some room for fat loss. Personally, my highest BMI was 23, at almost 140 lbs, and I had plenty of fat to lose. All it took was a bit of exercise and cutting out the non-stop McDonald's. ;)
BMI is not the only tool you should use to determine whether you are healthy. You should never just use your BMI as the final answer. Your waistline measurement, waist to hip ratio, and food logs are also great things to go by.
Sources:
http://caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.html
http://www.randypollak.com/html/bmi.html
Monday, August 27, 2007
Sacred Heart Diet
So, I've seen this diet around for a while, and I've decided to make it into the first one I test for the site. I have seen various recipes that all call for similar ingredients, and have devised my own recipe from the examples noted, but tailored to my own tastes.
Also known as the GM diet, the Sacred Heart diet apparently comes from a hospital by the same name who puts overweight patients through the eating cycle before heart surgery to establish a total weight loss of around 10 or 15 pounds. I highly doubt that this is true. But hey, I'm not here to find out where the diet came from, I'm here to find out if it works.
So, here are the rules of the diet.
1. You must eat the soup (recipe below) along with the assigned complimentary foods for each day.
2. You must drink 6-8 glasses of water per day, and may have any of the other following beverages: black coffee, cranberry juice, skim milk.
3. This diet does not allow alcohol or carbonated beverages (including diet coke, or whatever your usual pop fix is.) and during no point in the diet can you eat bread, sweets, or fried food.
And here is the meal plan.
Day 1: Soup + fruit. Eat as much soup, and as much fruit as you'd like. Any fruit at all, with the exception of bananas.
Day 2: Soup + vegetables. Today you will switch fruits for veggies. The diet notes that this should include one baked potato at dinner time.
Day 3: Soup + fruits + vegetables. Have any fruits and veggies that you'd like today, but no potato, and still no banana.
Day 4: Soup + bananas + milk. Eat as many bananas today as you want, and make sure to drink lots of milk.
Day 5: Soup + beef + tomatoes. Beef calls for 10 - 20 oz of beef. Which is about 1 - 2 steaks, or 2 - 3 hamburgers' worth. Also, a can of tomatoes.
Day 6: Soup + beef + vegetables. Same as Day 5, except you may eat other veggies than tomato. Any veggie with the exception of potato.
Day 7: Soup + brown rice + vegetables. You may also have a different fruit juice today, instead of or in addition to, the cranberry.
Finally, here is the soup recipe.
The original recipe seems to be posted differently on each website that I read. But there are some things which appear in most, or all of the recipes. All of them called for 2 to 4 packets of soup mix. Most websites said onion, but I have seen chicken noodle as well. I went with onion, because noodles are carbs, and this diet doesn't seem to want those included. Onions, green peppers and tomatoes were the other key ingredients that kept popping up. Numbers varied, but 2 - 4 of each seems to be agreed upon. Other than that, a variety of other vegetables (usually "negative-calorie" types, and never starchy types, like potato or dry beans) and in some, an additional method of soup flavoring, such as broths, herbs and spices.
Here's the recipe that I chose:
2 packets onion soup mix
1 can beef broth
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can peas
1 can whole baby corn
1 can baby carrots
2 green peppers
2 onions
What I did:
First I filled a big pot with about 6 cups of water. I boiled the fresh veggies (green pepper and onions) until they were soft. Then I added all the canned veggies. After that, when I made sure my water to veggie ratio was okay, and I had enough room left in my pot, I poured in my broth, and the 2 packets of soup flavoring. I boiled it all for a few minutes, and then turned the stove down and let the pot simmer until everything was soft.
Results of this was a nice light vegetable soup. Tastes almost like the store bought kind. It's definitely got more flavor than I had thought. I sprinkled in a very slight amount of chili curry powder to flavor a bit more.
Sources:
http://www.everydiet.org/sacred_heart_diet.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Diet
Also known as the GM diet, the Sacred Heart diet apparently comes from a hospital by the same name who puts overweight patients through the eating cycle before heart surgery to establish a total weight loss of around 10 or 15 pounds. I highly doubt that this is true. But hey, I'm not here to find out where the diet came from, I'm here to find out if it works.
So, here are the rules of the diet.
1. You must eat the soup (recipe below) along with the assigned complimentary foods for each day.
2. You must drink 6-8 glasses of water per day, and may have any of the other following beverages: black coffee, cranberry juice, skim milk.
3. This diet does not allow alcohol or carbonated beverages (including diet coke, or whatever your usual pop fix is.) and during no point in the diet can you eat bread, sweets, or fried food.
And here is the meal plan.
Day 1: Soup + fruit. Eat as much soup, and as much fruit as you'd like. Any fruit at all, with the exception of bananas.
Day 2: Soup + vegetables. Today you will switch fruits for veggies. The diet notes that this should include one baked potato at dinner time.
Day 3: Soup + fruits + vegetables. Have any fruits and veggies that you'd like today, but no potato, and still no banana.
Day 4: Soup + bananas + milk. Eat as many bananas today as you want, and make sure to drink lots of milk.
Day 5: Soup + beef + tomatoes. Beef calls for 10 - 20 oz of beef. Which is about 1 - 2 steaks, or 2 - 3 hamburgers' worth. Also, a can of tomatoes.
Day 6: Soup + beef + vegetables. Same as Day 5, except you may eat other veggies than tomato. Any veggie with the exception of potato.
Day 7: Soup + brown rice + vegetables. You may also have a different fruit juice today, instead of or in addition to, the cranberry.
Finally, here is the soup recipe.
The original recipe seems to be posted differently on each website that I read. But there are some things which appear in most, or all of the recipes. All of them called for 2 to 4 packets of soup mix. Most websites said onion, but I have seen chicken noodle as well. I went with onion, because noodles are carbs, and this diet doesn't seem to want those included. Onions, green peppers and tomatoes were the other key ingredients that kept popping up. Numbers varied, but 2 - 4 of each seems to be agreed upon. Other than that, a variety of other vegetables (usually "negative-calorie" types, and never starchy types, like potato or dry beans) and in some, an additional method of soup flavoring, such as broths, herbs and spices.
Here's the recipe that I chose:
2 packets onion soup mix
1 can beef broth
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can peas
1 can whole baby corn
1 can baby carrots
2 green peppers
2 onions
What I did:
First I filled a big pot with about 6 cups of water. I boiled the fresh veggies (green pepper and onions) until they were soft. Then I added all the canned veggies. After that, when I made sure my water to veggie ratio was okay, and I had enough room left in my pot, I poured in my broth, and the 2 packets of soup flavoring. I boiled it all for a few minutes, and then turned the stove down and let the pot simmer until everything was soft.
Results of this was a nice light vegetable soup. Tastes almost like the store bought kind. It's definitely got more flavor than I had thought. I sprinkled in a very slight amount of chili curry powder to flavor a bit more.
Sources:
http://www.everydiet.org/sacred_heart_diet.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Diet
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