Nutrition: Feeding the Image You Want

Many diet fads have come and gone through recent decades. There's always a new "quick fix" around the corner. Unfortunately, most of these "quick fix" diet plans give only temporary results and the leave many dieters frustrated and even worse off afterward. A truly realistic diet plan is for a lifetime. It's about changing your eating habits and food choices. It's about nutrition and exercise that becomes part of a totally new lifestyle...a lifestyle of health and vitality! One of the first indicators of whether you have a "healthy lifestyle" is maintaining a healthy weight.

However, maintaining a healthy weight does not have to be complicated. The truth is that weight is controlled by calories in versus calories out. Not to say that where the calories come from is not also important. Your calorie sources certainly directly affect your health. But what the scale reads is directly related to the amount of calories consumed versus the amount that are burned.

So to see a reduction in weight, you should decrease your caloric intake appropriately while also increasing the amount of calories burned. About 60% of calories burned by an individual are due to the Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). These are the calories you burn while you relax, and especially while you sleep. The RMR cannot be totally influenced by physical activity. RMR is mostly affected by genetics, age, gender, surface area, and hormones.

About 30% of the energy a person uses comes from physical activity. This is an area that can be greatly influenced by an individual's exercise regimen, or lack of.

An easy way to quickly start making positive effects on the 30% that you can control is utilizing the F.I.T.T. principle. This stands for Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type.

Frequency: As you might expect, this refers to how often you will exercise. After any form of exercise is performed your body completes a process of rebuilding and repairing. So, determining the frequency of exercise is important in order to find a balance that provides you just enough stress for the body to adapt and also allows you enough rest time for healing.

Intensity: Defined as the amount of effort or work you must invest in a specific exercise or workout. This too requires a good balance to ensure that the intensity is hard enough to overload the body but not so difficult that it results in over training, injury or burnout. Taking on an exercise programme that results in injury can make you have to stop your programme for a long time or lose interest in it altogether.

Time: Again, this is rather self-explanatory. Time is simply how long your individual session should last. This will vary based on the intensity and type.

Type: What type of exercise will you be doing? Will an exercise session be primarily cardiovascular, resistance training or a combination of both? And what specific exercises will you perform? Always take the precaution of consulting your family physician for his or her advice, especially if you have a history of hypertension or cardiopulmonary disease.

Use the F.I.T.T. principle, together with sound nutrition, to start making positive changes in your weight and health immediately. It can help guide you in choosing aerobic and anaerobic workouts (both important variables to see decreases in weight and in body fat) that will be the most effective to help you meet your goals. For more resources on Fat Loss and Nutrition, see Get Lean.

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Tips For Healthy Living

In order to be really serious about a healthy lifestyle, you need to be really serious about changing the way you treat food and what foods you eat. I'm not talking about going on a 'diet'. That's the wrong mindset right at the beginning. 'Going on a diet' is the same idea as 'Going on a vacation.' It means you're looking forward to coming back to the place you started. A healthy lifestyle, however, should mean you're moving to some new understanding and commitment that makes your life better! It means having a nutrition plan!

Let's start with the kitchen, the place that can support or sabotage all of you efforts. If high-fat snacks are the first thing you see on the kitchen shelf, it can undermine your goals. Eliminate them as much as possible. Here's a good rule to follow:'If you don't have it, you can't eat it!' So go through your kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator to get rid of those high-fat and sugar-laden foods that don't belong in a healthy food plan. This will make room for the foods that are filled with solid nutrition.

Here is a general nutrition plan for making your kitchen cabinets a source of healthy food:

1. Keep protein snack bars in stock rather than simple chocolate bars. Protein snack bars will give you that filled up feeling without filling you out! Read the label, too. You want snack bars that have a good quantity of protein and low carbs and fat. 12 grams to 15 grams means it's a good source of protein.

2. Dump the chips and cheesy puffs, and get used to buying roasted soy nuts, or roasted peanuts. If you're on a low salt diet, take this into account. Too much salt is not good for anyone.

3. Avoid full fat ice cream and look for low fat varieties or yogurt iced desserts. To add variety, top with fresh or frozen berries, or just eat fresh fruit by itself for a sweet snack.

4. Rethink the kinds of staples you use in everyday cooking. Use herbs, spices, nuts, seeds and small amounts of monounsaturated cooking oils to add contrasting flavours to foods you prepare at home. Low fat salsas and chili peppers add a special nutritious snap and citrus friut adds a sweet, tangy twist.

If you get your kitchen in shape, you've taken an important step to getting into shape and getting back your health! For more resources on Fat Loss and Nutrition, see Get Lean.

Following is a recipe for a balanced evening meal. The main source of protein is a 6 ounce chicken breast, but the principle is the same for read meat or fish:

Chicken - 345 Calories
6 oz of chicken
1 cup of green beans
2 pats of low-fat butter
1 small tossed salad
2 tablespoons reduced fat oil and vinegar dressing
12 oz water

If you are following a regular form of exercise, you could add a slice of whole wheat bread (toasted or plain), a cup of pasta or a cup of boiled potato. Examples of regular exercise include, but are not limited to, daily brisk walking for 30 to 45 minutes, cycling for an hour 5 times a week or resistance exercise for at least 45 minutes 3 times a week. Always check with your family physician being beginning any diet plan or exercise program. Try a reduced calorie diet for 2 weeks. You WILL see results: You'll start to lost weight in the form of fat and you'll feel more energy. As 'Martha' would say, 'It's a good thing'.

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