Are there easy ways to lose weight?

Yes

Three things define your future weight: your present weight, future activity, and future food intake.

If you are healthy your present weight is a good indication of your history of activity (or lethargy), eating habits, and, to some extent, your age. That's history and you can't do anything about it.

Activity

Increasing activity probably means modifying your lifestyle although very simple changes can produce large effects. Here are some suggestions:

o Walk to whatever destination that you have to reach that is under half a mile away

A half-mile is just two long blocks or four short ones, but you will notice fat people driving the distance. Guess why they are fat.

o Park at the far end of any parking lot.

Parking at a distance provides a little exercise and has the additional benefit of protecting your car from the dings and dents that you accumulate by parking amongst the SUVs closer to the building.

o Enter a building by a less convenient door and climb the stairs.

Long corridors provide just as much activity as strolling through the park and stairs are even better.

o Do some work in the yard.

Bending over to pull out a weed is equivalent to doing bends in the gym and you get rid of the weed to boot. Mowing the lawn is something that has to be done, but it's better to do it yourself than to pay that slim yard boy to do it for you. Why should he get the benefit of the exercise?

o Walk in your lunch hour or before dinner and discover places that you never visited before.

Go out for whatever time you have, perhaps 30 minutes

o Help your spouse to carry things up and down stairs.

That is even better than walking up and down stairs at work. Helping your spouse earns double credit.

o Later, you might feel like taking up a sport but there are differences.

Playing baseball in the park involves a lot of standing around and, if you cycle, at least half the time is spent resting on downhill cruises. Walking and running, however, are continuous exercises. Guess which is best for you. What you need is aerobic exercise that exercises your metabolism through breathing.
Food

Fortunately, healthy foods tend to be lower in calories than equivalent unhealthy foods. Varying your diet can easily reduce your weight without much effort on your part. Here are a few starting guidelines.

o Reduce nibbling and eventually cut it out. If you eat three meals a day you don't need to nibble.

Unfortunately, our lives are constructed to make it easy to nibble. The refrigerator is right there every time you enter the kitchen and it is full of nibbling goodies. Moreover television seems designed to give you opportunities for another beer or some chips.

o The best way to reduce nibbling is not to buy nibbles.

A cupboard empty of chips and cookies and a refrigerator empty of cheese and ham are great aids to losing weight.

o Keep to three meals a day.

Omitting a meal, however light, makes it more difficult to avoid nibbling.

o Foods high in fat are also high in useless calories. They provide no energy.

Consider omitting red meat. It is not only full of fat but it's also full of hormones and chemicals injected to make the cow heavier for market. Moreover, the non-fat content of meat is protein, a growth food, which you do not need if you are over 30. You get healthy protein from fish.

o Carbohydrates, breads, cookies, pastas, and bagels provide the energy needed for the extra stairs that you are about to climb. Consider them desirable in moderation if you exercise.

Carbohydrate energy foods are much to be preferred to fatty foods. Take care not to buy doughnuts and Danish, which not only contain carbohydrates but immense quantities of fat.

o Fish on the other hand is very light in fat whiting, pickerel, sole, cod, and shell fish are typically low in calories and provide all the protein that you might need.

Salmon and red trout are higher in calories but they also provide very healthy omega oils so apart from their tastiness there are good health reasons for developing a taste in salmon.

o Salads provide good nutrition if you take care.

Avoid salad dressings and, instead, use the original seasonings, salt and pepper. A tablespoonful of Ranch dressing can undo all the good that a salad provides. Moreover, without the dressing you can taste the salad. Furthermore toss aside those oily olives they provide no nutrition.

o Fruit is necessary for a healthy diet but like everything else moderation is the key.

Vary the fruit for taste and remember that apples and pears are higher in calories than berries or citrus fruits. Unfortunately, today's fruit growers try to produce the biggest specimens. One apple can now rate three times the calories a smaller and tastier fruit provided.

o Some fruits are especially healthy because they provide vital minerals and should be eaten for that reason alone.
Tomatoes for magnesium and bananas for magnesium and potassium help to prevent cramps when you're active. The kiwi is especially valuable.

o You should beware of extreme diets that deprive you of something more than just calories and fat.
For example if you cut out red meat in the interests of health you need to add another source of iron: beans are a very good one.

o Wine has calories, red more than white, but a couple of glasses a day makes very little difference to weight and has other health benefits.

However, you should avoid spirits and liqueurs, which are much higher in calories.

Only if you enjoy counting, count the calorific value of every portion of food that you eat. Otherwise it is a needless chore.

Eating out

Restaurant portions have become distorted in the past few years. An excellent information website showing the consequences is at http://hp2010.nhlbih in.net/portion/. It will boggle your mind.

Here are some guidelines:

o Immediately, abandon any thought of eating in fast food restaurants.

They aim to satisfy customers and so the proprietors make sure that their foods are full of fat. Taco Bell has been shown to be the worst a typical lunchtime offers more calories and fat than anyone should eat in a whole day.

o When you eat at good American restaurants, first, avoid eating several courses.

Eat the course you most enjoy, be it appetizer, soup, salad, main dish or desert. Make that one course your meal and then eat only half of what is offered on your plate. The average American serving is now twice to three times as much as it was only five years ago.
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o Do not even consider the nasty habit of accepting a Doggie Bag'.

Taking excess food home is simply taking the problem home with you for another serving of microwave mush.

Losing that Weight is not difficult. In summary, do more and eat less.

However, it does require determination and being able to see benefits as they arrive. It should be a longer job than is advertised because if you take time, each time you drop below a weight marker you can have some assurance that by sticking to your rules you'll never see that number again on the scales.

When you reach a satisfactory weight you still need to be careful and monitor your weight to be assured that your eating and activity levels are in balance. Some of us are cursed with metabolisms that point towards being overweight and we need extra vigilance to maintain a good weight. For that metabolism blame your parents for your weight loss be pleased with yourself.

Congratulations!

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