New Year’s Weight Loss Plans Start Today

Fran Buckley, 62, a Jupiter, Florida, real estate agent, realized last fall that she wasn’t leading the life she wanted to lead, and she blamed it on her weight.

She wasn’t golfing because her stomach made it awkward, she says. She wasn’t visiting family or old friends because she didn’t want them to see how much she had gained. And she wasn’t wearing the clothing styles she liked.

She knew she had to lose weight soon or “I was going to be a fat person until I died.”

So she started following an eating plan and walking program designed especially for this year’s seventh annual USA TODAY Weight-Loss Challenge, which starts today. And since late September, Buckley, who is 5-foot-4, has lost 28 pounds, dropping from 226 to 198. She hopes to lose 50 more on the program.

The challenge was created in 2004 to offer nutrition and fitness guidance. The goal of this year’s plan: Lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks.

One reason it’s hard to trim down more and keep it off is that there’s a cascade of biological responses designed to return dieters to their pre-diet levels. A hunger hormone called ghrelin increases, and a fullness hormone called leptin decreases, research shows.

“Regardless of these hormone shifts, it is still possible to lose some weight and keep it off,” says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian in Chicago. “You just need to focus on making realistic diet and exercise changes.”

Blatner created the eating plan. She has helped thousands of people lose weight and has found that dieters are most likely to succeed if they have flexible meal plans that include foods they enjoy. Her meals are designed to help people limit calories while eating a diet high in fiber, moderate in satisfying protein and low in saturated (animal) fat.

To follow this plan, it’s crucial that dieters figure out how many calories they can consume to lose weight.

That’s determined by several factors, but generally, a sedentary woman can lose weight consuming about 1,500 calories a day; a sedentary man can consume about 1,800 calories a day, Blatner says. Use trial and error to figure out how much you can eat and lose weight, she advises.

If you aren’t shedding pounds on 1,800 calories a day, try trimming a couple of hundred more. Some people may need to cut back to 1,200 calories a day.

To lose a pound a week, you have to burn 3,500 calories more than you consume. So you must increase your physical activity and decrease calories to create a deficit of 500 calories a day.

Blatner created mix-and-match menus so that all the breakfasts are about 300 calories, lunches about 400, dinners about 500 and snacks about 150 calories. The plan includes simple recipes you can make at home and meals you can order when you’re dining out at restaurants or fast-food places.

“We are offering lots of choices, but you may want to pick a couple of your favorite breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks and repeat them,” Blatner says. “Many people find that eating less variety is actually helpful when they are trying to lose weight. It makes the program more automatic, and it makes it easier to cook and grocery shop.”

Buckley has adhered closely to the program over the past three months. The way she’s eating now is a far cry from her former habits. She blames her weight gain over the years on “binging, overeating, no portion control and not planning my meals. I am lucky I didn’t weigh more than 226 pounds.”

‘I can do that’

In retrospect, she wonders why she didn’t stop gaining sooner. “Where was I when I got to 160, 170 and then 175? Was I not weighing myself? Was I not looking in the mirror? I just kept buying bigger clothes.”

The weight-loss challenge came at a perfect time for her. She was fed up and wanted to change, and she liked the fact that the plan was simple and that the goal of trying to lose a pound a week for 10 weeks seemed achievable. “I thought: ‘I can do that,’ ” she says.

Buckley read through the menus, cleared her house of junk food and started to plan and prepare her meals.

To keep things simple, she has the same thing daily for breakfast (high-fiber cereal, fruit and skim milk) and lunch (turkey sandwich, small salad), but she varies dinner. Usually she prepares a dinner from one of the recipes in the eating plan, but occasionally she eats out, relying on the dining-out suggestions in the program. Her calories have dropped dramatically from “several thousand a day” to 1,500 to 1,550.

She has learned that she has control over what she eats. “At luncheons and dinners out, when other people have a roll and butter, I don’t. When people eat desserts, I pass.”

But she says she doesn’t feel deprived and rarely feels hungry.

And she has made great strides with exercise. She and her sister, Jonna Convery, 54, walk 3 miles every morning, and Buckley walks another mile in the evening. “The 3-mile walk was taking us 50 minutes, and now it’s taking us 41 minutes. We’re doing a mile in less than 15 minutes. That’s mega,” she says.

Another person who responded to USA TODAY’s request for people to try the program was André Gratton, 43, of Cherryville, N.C. When it comes to losing weight, Gratton has the diet deck stacked against him. He travels frequently for his job, sits almost all day in meetings, airports and airplanes, and has a difficult time fitting exercise into his busy schedule. On top of all that, he’s a gourmet cook, and he adores ice cream and bread pudding.

“I love to cook and eat. For my job, I eat out all the time and eat at the best restaurants all over the country, so it’s tough to stick to a diet plan,” says Gratton, who manages a national staff that installs computer programs for Choice Hotels.

But despite these daily challenges, Gratton has cut calories dramatically and exercised regularly for the past few months and has lost 40 pounds. At 5-foot-9½, he weighs 270, down from a high of 310. “I knew when I committed to the challenge that the weight would come off fast, and so far, it has,” he says. He intends to lose 50 more pounds.

He estimates he was consuming about 6,000 calories a day before he started the program, and now he’s down to 2,000. He has made several changes that contributed to the dramatic cut in calories, including:

•Cutting way back on desserts and ice cream.

•Carefully reviewing restaurant menus and choosing foods that contain a reasonable number of calories.

•Drinking his coffee black instead of with cream. He has two to four cups a day. “I thought it was going to be really hard, but I eliminated cream the first day and haven’t looked back. Just this morning, I thought how good my coffee tastes.”

•Exercising regularly. He alternates weight training one day and working out on the elliptical for 15 minutes the next.

Gratton, a single dad, says he knew he was making progress with his weight loss when his 16-year-old daughter, Katie, told him she was proud of how good he looked. He asked her how she could tell he had lost weight. Her response: “Your stomach no longer touches the steering wheel when you drive.”

As for Buckley, she says now that she has started down the weight-loss path, she doesn’t plan to get off it until she has reached her goal. “I am changing a little bit daily and have given myself a goal to reach a healthy weight within a year.”

PRESS RELEASE: “Weight Loss Top 10: The TOP 10 Strategies You Must Know for Weight Loss Success”

ANITA STONE 
VIDEO FITNESS COACH  
 
http://www.videofitnesscoach.com

New for 2009!

WEIGHT LOSS TOP 10

The “Top 10” Absolutely Essential Strategies You Must Know for Successful Weight Loss

FT WORTH / NORTH RICHLAND HILLS, TEXAS - JULY, 15 2009 - Eat more often, burn more fat. Obviously, this comes with some rules. How many times have you gone on a diet which began by starving? Doesn’t work…nor do fad diets.  Most people make a huge mistake and cut so many calories out of their diet that they put their bodies into a starvation mode, which prevents permanent weight loss.  
 
Local fitness instructor, Certified Sports Nutrition Consultant and Author Anita Stone will be presenting “Weight Loss Top 10: The TOP 10 Absolutely Essential Strategies You Must Know for Permanent and Successful Weight Loss” Saturday, July 18, 2-4 p.m., at the North Richland Hills Recreation Center.  The seminar, new for 2009, outlines the 10 most important aspects of achieving permanent weight loss without starvation or fad diets. 

“You must know these ten strategies,” says Anita, “because diet failure is usually the result of not knowing how all of the strategies work together to formulate success.”

Anita’s “Makeover Story” was featured in the recently released book, “Wake Up Moments of Inspiration,” now available at Barnes and Noble.  The book is the latest to be published as part of the best-selling series, “Wake Up, Live the Life You Love.”  Similar to the popular “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books, Wake Up books are compilations of short stories written by authors from all walks of life.  Anita’s book is co-written by best-selling authors Brian Tracy and Dr. Wayne Dyer.

“At the age of 34, I realized I was so overweight that I had entered the ‘obese’ category, which is 30% or more overweight.  I was at risk for several obesity-related diseases, including Type 2 Diabetes, heart attack, and stroke. I had to draw the line in the sand and do something about it.” 
 
The weight loss presentation is free and open to the public.  Seating is limited to 50, so pre-registration is suggested.  Register online at www.VideoFitnessCoach.com or at the North Richland Hills Recreation Center front desk.  The address for the Recreation Center is 6720 NW Loop 820, and is located on the southeast corner of I-820 and Rufe Snow.

Future presentations will be held on Sept. 12, Oct. 3, and Nov. 7, 2009. 

# # #

BIO AND “BEFORE & AFTER PHOTOS” TO ACCOMPANY THIS STORY ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT:  http://www.VideoHealthCoach.com/anitastone.html

YOU CAN LOWER YOUR BLOOD SUGAR WITH DIET

TIPS FOR MUSCLE DEFINITION

Meal Frequency
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To increase your metabolic rate, eat multiple, small meals spread throughout the entire day. Replace the three square meals a day routine with between five and seven meals. This will keep your body fueled and your energy levels high, and will keep your metabolism busy burning calories all day. You’ll also prevent yourself from overeating, since you never allow your body to become too hungry.
Protein
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Protein is the essential macronutrient for building muscle. When you want to build a significant amount of lean muscle mass, you should eat a minimum of 1 g of protein per pound of body weight. Therefore, a 200-lb. man would need to eat 200 g of protein every day to ensure that he is adequately fueling his muscles for growth, repair and maintenance.
Macronutrient Split
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Your nutritional plan should derive its caloric totals with a split of 40 to 45 percent protein, 30 to 35 percent carbs and 20 to 30 percent fat. Protein is of the main importance so it is put directly to use in building muscle. Carbohydrates are important to maintain your energy supply, and healthy fats such as omega-3 fatty acids taken from olive oil, fish and avocado will help to keep you full and satisfied while supporting overall body health.
Total Calories
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You will need to be strict with the total amount of calories that you eat. To start your plan, you can keep your caloric intake the same as before on days you workout, since you will be burning off lots of calories. On days you rest, reduce your caloric intake by about 15 percent. For faster results, reduce your caloric intake every day by 10 or 20 percent. It’s important to make every meal nutritious when you want muscle definition. You have to limit total calories but also maintain a huge protein supply, which sometimes is a difficult line to walk.
Water and Beverages
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Water is a crucial component of a muscle definition diet. You need to drink plenty of water every day to ensure that your body is properly hydrated. This will leave you with more energy and will help to distribute the nutrients you ingest to all areas of your body. It will also speed up your digestive and metabolic processes. Beverages such as sodas, fruit juices, coffee and alcohol should be left out of your plan as much as possible.

YOUR VIDEO FITNESS COACH,
ANITA STONE

NEXT LIVE TRAINING EVENT:
“WEIGHT LOSS TOP 10: The Top 10 Strategies You Must Know for Permanent and Successful Weight Loss”
Saturday, July 18th, 2-4 p.m.
Register here: http://www.videohealthcoach.com/register.html

Muscle Definition Diets by www.eHow.com

Better Living Through Technology – Better Health Too.

You can do a lot to improve your physical fitness in your living room, your garden or even sitting at the dinner table, if you have the time and inclination and the needs that can be served by such a regime. But depending on the levels of fitness you may be trying to attain, there are certainly ways and means to ramp up how much you can improve on different aspects of your fitness – not least of which are technologically advanced solutions that boost the efficiency of your regime by a power that cannot be estimated. If you are training in order to be able to get up a flight of stairs without losing breath, a few jogs a week and a bit of light cardio exercise will be fine. But if you are trying to gain some athletic chops, your answers may lie in technology.

The latest development to allow athletes to optimise their performance is a GPS watch. By using one of these you can track just about every different measure of your performance that has any relevance. Calories burned – so training to get into shape is catered for – but also the technical measures that athletes need to track to know how well they are doing. You can track lap times – so you know how much you are improving and where you still need to improve. You can track your top speed and average speed, so you know how to pace yourself so as not to throw everything away in the early stages of your run.

All of the technological advances that have been brought to bear on the athletics track in recent years are designed to push the level up by another notch. This is high-intensity training that we are talking about. The benefits of which are to make you that little bit more ready to face whatever it is that you need to face. If you just want a better all round level of wellness, there are plenty of machines that affect that too. Whatever your end goal, there will be a machine that gets you there – and beyond. Just remember that all the technology in the world will be useless unless you put the effort in yourself.

Kick, Punch, Chop, Get in Shape

While some people will inevitably look at martial arts as pertaining purely to fighting and strength, the fact is that more and more people are looking to the immense range of martial arts as a method of keeping fit. And they aren’t stupid, because it really does work. Take a master of karate and put them up against the toughest street brawler you can find, and the martial artist will win with such ease as to embarrass their opponent. The reasons for this are numerous. Not only is the karate expert fighting “smarter”, but the principles they have learned in order to get to that level are ones which tilt the balance firmly in their favor.

By learning a martial art, you learn a lot more than just how to hit someone in a way that really hurts (although if it is required, experts still have that in their locker). It teaches you about breath control, clearing the mind and focusing on the self in such a way that you are always ready to stand and fight. This requires both physical and mental exercise, and when the body and mind work together as martial arts teach, there is a devastating combination. To reach such a level takes discipline, and if you have discipline you are already well on the way to your ideal physical condition. Plus you are versed in self-defence, which is never a bad thing.

You don’t need to have a full understanding of the mystic background to how a martial arts black belt works in order to use it as a keep-fit regimen. As long as you enrol in a class with a good teacher (or sensei) and pay attention to what is taught, you will pick up what you need in order to really up your levels of physical fitness to a point where you can stand and fight someone if needs be – but more importantly you will have upped your levels of physical and mental discipline in a way that can improve every aspect of your life. Look for a class today – karate, judo, tae kwon do or any other – all have valuable lessons to impart.

Pilates – Try It, You’ll Have a Ball

One of the most popular methods for keeping fit in today’s society is Pilates. Developed in the late 20th century, it is a method of exercise that is designed to work on the flexibility of the human body – a major point of difficulty for many, who through jobs which involve being in a fixed position for much of the day lose a lot of their body’s suppleness and can find themselves with back and neck problems. Something which any sufferer can tell you really infringes your quality of life. If you can’t move quickly, you lose out on a lot of fun and in the meantime you will have trouble with even the most basic motor functions.

At its most basic level, Pilates is lying on a big beach ball doing exercises. To its adherents it is a lot more than that. Its inventor, Joseph Pilates designed it with the principle of mind over matter at its core, allowing the body and the mind to fuse, and letting the body move with grace and balance in a way that other exercise regimes did not address. Along with breathing exercises, Pilates encourages the body to flush away waste toxins that are linked with fatigue. The overall effect of the exercise regime that is involved in Pilates is to improve the individual on a number of levels.

It certainly seems to work. Pilates is growing in popularity all the time, and there are few gyms or leisure centers in the world that do not have a Pilates group operating at least once a week. At its best when associated with other exercise regimes, Pilates is something that has really taken off, and with a lot of satisfied customers, it would appear that Joseph Pilates was on to something when he designed it. Born in 1880, and plagued by illness and poor fitness as a child, by the age of 14 Pilates was posing for anatomical charts as an example of what the body could look like with the right exercise regime, and when he died he was 87 years of age. So he was doing something right.

Just Keep Swimming, Swimming, Swimming

When sports players are recovering from injuries, they are often put through training that involves spending time in the swimming pool. There are a few good reasons behind this – first of all, it provides support and soothing for recovering muscles. But just as importantly the water provides them with resistance, which is excellent for building up muscles and making the sportsman (or woman) more ready to return to the competition field. If you have ever broken a major bone, you will have had to wear a plaster cast. When that cast comes off, the muscles in the area appear wasted and dead – without a lot of exercise they just will not be the same as they were.

Even if you have not had a major injury – and even if you have been injury free all your life, swimming is an excellent way of getting into shape. If you go for regular runs, you need to make sure that so many factors are right – pace, surface, footwear and running style. If they are not in tune you can pull muscles, damage ligaments or tendons and several other potential nasty injuries. While it is worth getting a running regime going for cardio-vascular exercise, swimming is one way to get fit where all you need is a swimming costume and access to a pool. Once those are in place, you’re away.

In comparison to running, swimming is a very safe way to get in shape. You have the low impact of water rather than hard, concrete surfaces that exist in most towns, or the treadmills in the gym. In the early days of your training regime, swimming is an excellent way to build towards the right shape, strength and fitness levels. You may well find that you really enjoy it too. There is something incredibly soothing about moving about underwater and letting it wash over you. It’s like a giant bath, only you are not going to accidentally pull the plug.

You Are What You Eat

There are many drawbacks to having a poor diet. Not only will constant takeaways and microwave meals cause you to put on weight, they will have an effect on so many other parts of your make-up that you will suffer more than you can possibly believe. The effects on the waistline are the first that people will notice, but you will also have less energy, your skin will suffer and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that your mental well-being will be affected as well. Your body needs the nutrients that fresh food provides, otherwise it will suffer. You would not buy a new sports car and then put gravy in the petrol tank, would you? You have to make sure that you give your body the fuel it needs too.

Fresh fruit and veg are vitally important. The range of vitamins and minerals that they provide will allow you to function at a greatly increased level, having an effect on all sorts of things from bones to eyes – for example, if you eat bananas regularly you will find that they allow you to function at a higher level for a prolonged period. This is because they contain lots of potassium, which is good for slow-release energy. If you ever watch Championship tennis matches, you will see players eating bananas between games. This is because over the course of a match, a declining energy level can see a player lose performance and be at risk from injury. Keeping the energy coming prevents this.

For your body to function well, you also need to get lots of fiber. Fresh fruit and veg are a good source for this too, while brown and wholemeal bread are also packed with fiber, as are cereals and baked goods with a lot of bran in them. But whatever the issue that you are seeking to address via your diet, make sure that you don’t concentrate on it to the detriment of other areas. This will just move your problems to another area – and after some time you’ll be looking for a way to fix that, too.

Work It Out For Yourself

Getting fitter is never going to happen by itself. It will require a lot of work and discipline on your behalf, and it may also necessitate you spending a bit of money. It will be worth it in the long run when everybody you meet is passing comment on how trim you look. It’s just a matter of taking that first step. For most people, that step is to join a gym. The many different options on offer at the gym of your choice will make a great big dent in the excess flab you are trying to lose, and anyone who is looking to address specific areas on their body will appreciate the range of machines and programs that allow you to concentrate on problem zones.

Don’t get drawn into the old trap of paying for a gym membership and then saying to yourself “That’s that sorted out” – and then never going, or just going every month or so. If you are paying out for a gym membership, then you should try to get there at least once a week. Work on the areas that you feel need the most work, and when they have been addressed go for an all-over workout in order to maintain a trim shape. You will find that the effects are far from just being cosmetic. You will have more energy and drive, and will really notice an all round effect on how you feel physically. Plus, exercising releases endorphins – the body’s “happy chemical” – so you will feel better in mind as well as body.

Do not let it become all that you do, though. Sticking to a strict gym regime may give you a better body shape and more of the body’s natural boosts, but there are risks to going so often that it becomes an obsession. Pro sports players spend hours in the most expensive, technologically advanced gyms in the world, and still some end up the victims of over-training. You may find that your frame is uncomfortable with the amount of muscle you build from exercising, so take it slow and don’t overdo it. When you follow your own pace and let your body benefit from being allowed to have a rest, you will get a true feel for what you need.