Weight Loss vs. Weight Control – Know the Difference?

Maintaining a healthy weight is a two-part process: weight loss and weight control. It’s the latter we struggle with more than the former. If someone offered you a smart, sensible guide to eating, exercising, and understanding how the body works; one that would keep you at a healthy weight that you could follow for life, would you take it? Of course you would. So remember that healthy weight loss begins with understanding the intricacies of the human  body…understanding how and why we get fat. Most diet plans focus on their isolated, pet issues, whether it’s a low-carb diet, buying an all-in-one piece of workout equipment, or filling up on liquids. But none of these address the core underlying issues. They rarely educate the consumer or speak to all the possible factors that play a role in weight loss. No two people are the same and therefore, weight loss cannot be addressed as a one-size-fits-all remedy. Identifying the culprits that cause excess weight and choosing the right approach for your body type and lifestyle can make allthe difference.

Bikini season is almost here so many of you out there may be looking to lose a few pound to look your best in that new swimsuit. To help, this post begins a series dedicated to healthy, long term weight loss. Enjoy and leave your thought is the comments.

Weight Loss vs. Weight Control

First, let’s address weight loss. You’ve heard it before—eat those fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Though practically a dietary cliché, it’s still golden rule number one in maintaining a healthy diet, which will lead to weight loss. What to minimize in your diet? High fat foods, processed foods, trans fats, and sugar. While these guidelines are staples for a healthy food plan, they’re still only part of the picture.

Once you’ve developed a habit of swapping Twinkies for almonds, and you notice weight loss, your next step is to maintain that desired weight. This requires lifestyle changes. But it’s not as drastic as you may think. Often, it’s what you’re NOT eating that’s making you fat and unhealthy. Rather than focus on dieting, starvation and all the things you need to STOP doing…try the simple approach of ADDING a few basic practices. The first, last and best secret to help control your weight is to add more healthy nutrition to your diet. Even if you don’t stop all the bad eating habits right away, just adding super nutrition from nutrient-dense foods, you’ll be well on your way to a healthier, slimmer you. One of the easiest and most reliable ways to add high levels of nutrition to your diet is to take a green superfood drink once or twice per day. Boku Super Food is the one we’ve created from what we believe is the best formulation on the market.

Sometimes it’s necessary to reverse some of your long-held beliefs about health. For example, many people feel that they get enough nutrition from their food and shouldn’t need any other supplements. Others believe that their vitamins are taking care of their supplemental needs. These are both beliefs that stem from lack of information. Our  foods today largely come from industrial farms that load the soil with chemical fertilizers and pesticides that end up in your food and your body. Many vitamins and supplement products are chemically produced in laboratories and are often derived from questionable sources. Studies have shown that many vitamin products pass through the body  irtually unchanged and unabsorbed by the body. In other words, the body recognizes these products as waste matter!

After nutrition, the next big part of weight control is committing to a regular exercise program. Thirty minutes a day or more is ideal but don’t avoid exercise if you can’t stick to that schedule. The person who has only 15 minutes a day to exercise will have gotten his blood pumping for 105 minutes a week, which would make a marked difference in weight compared to the person who didn’t exercise at all. The same principal applies to physical health as it does to financial health: A little bit done over a long time has the ability to create compounded interest and big returns! That’s why we recommend taking a little Boku Super Food and getting a few minutes of exercise every day over many years.
Finally, you may want to become more of a label watcher at the supermarket. The information in later sections will make you a savvy consumer but the key is to be diligent and watchful because it’s easy to misread labels. For example, a common mistake is looking at how many calories are in a serving but then neglecting to notice that the manufacturer defines a serving as one cookie, not three. Observing ingredients such as fats, carbs, protein, and calories must become second nature in the fight against flab. The secrets of healthy weight loss are about knowledge, understanding the  various weight loss options and making sensible decisions.

Do TV Ads Affect Children's Diets or Cause Obesity?

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago Institute for Health Research and Policy have received a $2.2 million federal grant to determine whether or not TV food advertising affects children's diet, physical activity and weight.

The four-year project, funded by the National Cancer Institute, is unique because it will separate out the effect of food advertising from the amount of time that children watch TV.

"A number of studies have shown that increased TV watching is associated with higher weight outcomes among kids, but they haven't been able to determine whether or not this is directly due to the type of ads children see," said Lisa Powell, research professor of economics at UIC and lead scientist on the study.

Watching television may also contribute to obesity because children are sedentary and likely to snack while they watch TV.

The research, Powell said, can provide important information for policymakers and public health advocates about the potential effectiveness of regulating television food advertising to children and using TV media campaigns as policy tools for improving these health outcomes.
Previous research conducted by Powell and her colleagues showed that 98 percent of food-product ads viewed by children ages 2 to 11, and 89 percent of those viewed by adolescents ages 12 to 17, were for foods high in fat, sugar or sodium.

The current study is the first to combine food, beverage and restaurant ad ratings and nutritional data with individual data on obesity to analyze the relationship between product exposure, nutritional content of ad exposure, and food consumption, diet quality and obesity, according to the researchers.
The study will also examine the relationship between exposure to health promotion ads -- those that encourage eating fruits and vegetables or getting regular physical activity -- and individual behaviors related to diet, activity and weight outcomes.

By measuring the types of ads that children of different ages and races are exposed to, the researchers hope to be able to determine if advertising practices and television viewing patterns contribute to differences in diet and obesity among white and black children.

This work builds on previous studies Powell and her colleagues have conducted examining the effects of environmental factors on children's obesity.

Powell hopes this study will play a crucial role in determining whether or not stronger regulation may be needed for food advertising on children's programming.

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news186083052.html

Tips to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain

The average American tends to gain 1-2 pounds over the holiday season.  This may not sound like much but most people don’t lose that weight after the season ends, and it just accumulates year after year. Here are a few steps you can take to avoid the extra weight that creeps up on us in between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. 

Most importantly, be aware of what you eat and how much. Allow yourself to indulge in holiday foods and treats a little, but always in moderation. Eat slowly and savor your food, this aids digestion and makes it less likely that you will overeat.

Make gatherings about socializing and not about food. Have something healthy before a party, like a BōKU® smoothie. Flooding blood with nutrition just before diving in will go a long way toward avoiding over indulgence and give you more energy for having fun! Also, don’t stand around the food or snack while making small talk; get more involved in your conversations and you won’t want to eat to fill silences. You’ll have a much better time and maybe even make a friend or two.

Try to find opportunities for exercise (go for a walk after dinner, take an extra lap around the store while holiday shopping) even 5-15 minutes a day is better than nothing. Try to manage stress by having a buffet style or potluck dinner so you don’t feel overwhelmed, and make sure to take some time for yourself when you need it. Regular exercise will help with this too.

Also limit your intake of alcohol as well as food, and drink plenty of water. Drinks are full of empty calories and may lessen your willpower causing you to eat more than you should. One can also come up with their own creative ways to remind themselves to exercise and eat in moderation. For instance you can wear snug fitting clothes so you can feel them tighten when you’ve had enough to eat, brush your teeth to keep from going back for more food, or leave little notes around the house reminding you to go for that jog.