Author Archive
New Diet Books of 2008 for weight loss
Today, 2008 is 7/12ths complete, and summer weight loss has only a month to go. It’s time to get back to basics and review those 2008 new years resolutions, goals, and weight loss articles that proliferated in January.
Time Magazine wrote a piece titled: Weighing the New Diet Books which does a good review of the 2008 diet books.
I’m amazed at all the diet books out there, and they keep coming. Of course, I am tempted to write my own diet book. In fact, I have two working titles and I’ve been brainstorming outlines for a while. Besides that, What are the New Notable Diet Books of 2008 for weight loss
- Eat This, Not That!, By David Zinczenko with Matt Goulding, 304 pages.
- How to Eat Like a Hot Chick, By Jodi Lipper and Cerina Vincent, 168 pages. (Such a short book, What! Do Hot Chicks not eat much ?)
- Skinny Bitch in the Kitch, By Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, 192 pages.
- Slim for Live, By Dr. Gillian, 223 pages.
- The GenoType Diet, By Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo with Catherin Whitney, 317 pages.
- The All-New Atkins Advantage, By Dr. Stuart L. Trager with Colette Heimowitz, 362 pages.
- The No-Crave Diet, By Dr. Penny Kendall-Reed and Dr. Stephen Reed, 224 pages.
- The Spectrum, By Dr. Dean Ornish, 386 pages.
- The Ultimate TEA Diet, By Mark “Dr. Tea” Ukra, 306 pages.
- Women’s Health Perfect Body Diet, By Cassandra Forsthe 356 pages.
A couple of notables missing from Time Magazine’s list:
- The Flat Belly Diet, by Liz Vaccariello
- The 12 Second Sequence: Shrink Your Waist in 2 Weeks by Jorge Cruise, 256 pages.
- The Advanced Mediterranean Diet: Lose Weight, Feel Better, Live Longer, 304 pages.
Let me give you a hint (since my book is not yet published). I think you are what you read, and you are what you eat. So, if you read books about science, you’ll become a scientist. If you read books about diet and nutrition, you’ll soon adapt those habits as well. So, you can never read too many books. You’ll always learn something. However, It does not matter how many diet books you read, you still need to DO! Action needs to conincide with your reading Exercise, Fitness, Weight Loss, Diet, or even Cooking Books. If you don’t do, you’ll never reap the benefits.
What are some of my books in my Library that I re-read every so often?
I still recommend the free Hack Diet Book as a great starting place. For other great books, I recommend the following:
- 8 Minutes in the Morning: A Simple Way to Shed up to 2 Pounds a Week Guaranteed by Jorge Cruise and Anthony Robbins
- The 3-Hour Diet: Lose up to 10 Pounds in Just 2 Weeks by Eating Every 3 Hours! by Jorge Cruise
- The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life by David Zinczenko and Ted Spiker
- Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink
- The Cardio-Free Diet by Jim Karas
- You: On A Diet: The Owner’s Manual for Waist Management by Mehmet C. Oz and Michael F. Roizen
- The Volumetrics Eating Plan: Techniques and Recipes for Feeling Full on Fewer Calories by Barbara J. Rolls
What about you? What is your favorite Diet or Fitness Book?
Chinese Diet gives us 10 tips to help with our Western Diet
A great article in The Independent titled:
I encourage you to read the article. It provides a great list of Diet tips. Some I agree with some I don’t, but still great food for thought. I file this in the category of everyone is different, and each person needs to find the diet that works for them. Here are the tips with my summary and comments.
- Stop Counting Calories: The secret of the Chinese people is avoiding the empty calories of nutrient-free (sugary) foods. I think being in a western diet, we’re bombarded with sugary food. So, its much more difficult for us to gauge portion sizes. I also have learned first hand that counting my calories helps me lose weight.
- Think of vegetables as dishes: This goes well with our thought that Eat Plants and Protein.
- Fill up on Staple foods: If your staple foods are carb rich nutrient-free foods. I disagree, but if they are complex carbs. Then, well, it’s acceptable.
- Eat until you are full: Forget the eating to finish the plate or eating for social reasons. you eat when you are hungry, and you stop when you are not. This takes a long time for us Americans to re-calibrate our stomachs, but over time, you will learn to listen to your stomach after you force it for 45 days or longer.
- Take Liquid Food: We’re not talking Starbucks. We’re talking watery nutrient-rich soups.
- Bring yin and yang into your kitchen: Balance wet and moist foods (yin) with dry and crisp foods (yang). In other words, a well balanced diet of Vegetables, with Protein, and Complex Carbs.
- Raw power? Not necessarily: People overcook too many vegetables. All you have to do is slightly steam broccoli or carrots. Or just sautee them briefly to warm them. This makes it easier for us to digest. At the same time, RAW foods have more nutrients.
- Use Food to keep fit: Different foods help keep the body in balance and help the body fight different bugs. I’ve always said that pizza helps sore muscles, and ice cream helps with headaches, but I think that’s just wishful thinking. Remember, food is nourishment for every organ of the body.
- Drink Green Tea: Drink any tea, but green is the best.
- Practice Restorative exercise: Think Yoga, Think Tai Chi, Think Kung Fu, Think Balanced Aerobic Exercise with Rhythmic breathing. While I agree, I also think High Intensity, 5 second methodical interval strength training can provide some of the same rhythmic benefits.
What a great list. Every Culture has positive benefits. Yes, certain diets are healthier than others, but there are food fundamentals that everyone can use regardless of diet.
Take a look at the book:
Why the Chinese Don’t Count Calories
Weight Loss – Back to the Basics
I recently read a ChangeThis manifesto, The New Time Management: Simply Focus on the Fundamentals, and Toss Away the Tips, By Francis Wade.
Francis describes 7 fundamentals he believes are critical for any professional to master Time Management. He makes the comparison to athletes who have to refocus on the fundamentals. For example:
- Tiger Woods going to practice and making 1000’s of putts a day.
- Or a Professional basketball player, such as Michael Jordan, taking 1000’s of free throws or jump shots a day.
- Or Maria Sharapova, a tennis player who takes thousands of tennis swings a day.
All of these all stars, or professional athletes, practice fundamentals deliberately every day.
Can we stop there? As a hobby trombonist taking lessons with Professional Trombone Performers, They all stress fundamental practices such as learning scales, breathing exercises, note flexibility studies, and so on and so forth.

Image: 'THE TENNIS SESSIONS' www.flickr.com/photos/42369167@N00/711672576
Let’s rephrase Francis Wade’s Title:
Weight Loss Manifesto: The New Weight Loss System: Simply Focus on the Fundamentals and Throw Away the Tips.
Every day, we hear tips in the form of fad diets. Flat Belly MUFA Diet, South Beach Diet, Atkins Protein Diet, Mediterranean Diet, French Diet, Don’t Eat Anything Diet, See Food Diet, Peanut Butter and Jelly Diet, I could go on and on. As my brother says, in You don’t diet? you have a diet – now make it a good one.
What’s the deal? What should I do with all these fad diets? Francis Wade Suggest when it comes to Time Management Systems:
…The result is that the users of different systems are either raving fans, or failed adopters.
The fans are the lucky ones whose habits easily fit into the new system they are learning. The failures are those who get fired up for a few days, and after a week are forced to go back to their old habits.My observation is that the vast majority of professionals take a bit from here and a bit from there to craft their own unique set of habits. Unfortunately, they do so without understanding the fundamentals, and the results in some cases are disastrous.
Their system of habits doesn’t work, but they don’t know why. It allows stress, missed appointments and forgotten commitments to occur too frequently, but they don’t know where to start to fix their systems.
…
Luckily for them, the 7 fundamental practices are perfect for the job or fixing, upgrading or adapting personal time management systems.When a professional athlete’s game deteriorates, which happens to all of them at some point in time, they go back to the fundamentals. So must a working professional.
I would add so must an everyday healthy person. Everyday, we must be cognizant of our diet and exercise choices and focus on the fundamentals.
Often times, people start a new diet, see results at first, but then fall off the wagon. Why? Because that system doesn’t fit YOU. Everyone is different. Just as a professional must pick and choose what items fit in their own time management habits, we as healthy eaters must pick and choose habits that fit our own bodies and minds.
Okay, we understand. Focus on the Fundamentals: What are the fundamentals of a becoming physically fit the abridged version?
Monitor your Biometrics at regular intervals
Possible examples:
- weigh yourself everyday,
- measure your waist line every week
- Record your BMI every month
- take a picture of yourself every month
Exercise, and be mindful about the exercise
Find an exercise you like and do it effortlessly.
- Some people are Artists, I say then paint building sized murals that require dexterity.
- Some people are outdoors people, I say hike in the forest, or garden.
- Some people are shoppers, then I say go to the biggest mall you can find and walk and walk, and walk as much as you can as often as you can.
- Do it everyday.
Eat Standard Portions
Healthy Eating has its own set of Fundamentals which we’ll talk about sometime in the future. Generally, I’d say:
- Eat Protein and MUFA at every meal
- Eat Plants as much as possible.
- Learn what the correct portion is, and stick to it!
Retrain your Emotional and Social Eating
How do we do this?
- Keep a Food Diary. By keeping a food diary and writing down what you eat before you eat it, You’ll be mindful of what you are doing. This will you stop binges.
- Making your Weight Management Public and Social. By sharing your goals with your friends, you are putting peer pressure on yourself. It’s amazing how many people will not want to let someone else down, but they’ll let themselves down all the time. In other words, if you tell your friend you are not going to eat ice cream today. You don’t want to let that friend down. If you tell yourself and only yourself, you are more likely to break that self promise since it is not out in the public.
- Become a Positive person.
Some diets say exercise 8 minutes a day. Some diets say eat 60% protein, 30% fat, 10% carbs. Some Diets say eat fish and oil. Some diets suggest walking 10,00 steps a day. Whatever it is, Focus on the Fundamentals.
Since Weight Loss is personal and everyone is different, What are your fundamentals?
8 tips to make a food diary work for weight loss rather than just plain more work.
I was looking around the internet today at people’s reactions to the recent food diary news. Umm asked a great question about food logs:
Do you have any tips for making the journal work instead of having it just create more work?
I responded on her blog, but I thought it might be helpful for everyone to hear.
8 tips for a more effective food journal
- Decide on what tool to use for your diary. My suggestion is to use an online tool to make it simple for you to journal your food.
(shameless plug, I recommend our Simple Weight Loss Tools )
Using an online tool takes some of the hassle out of calorie counting and nutrient searching. As Umm asks, it makes a food diary work for you rather than just more work. - After you decide on your tool, Build the habit of . I definitely agree with you. Have a piece of paper and pen, and write down before you eat, what you are going to eat. If you can, enter it into an online system to get a feel the quantity of calories.
- After you build the habit of logging your daily intake of food, start to move into more advanced habits. For example, I like to use a scale to measure my food. Why? I realized that my two tablespoons of peanut butter on my PB&J is actually more like four tablespoons. So, by being more precise with my journal, I was able to learn that I’m actually eating more than I thought which of course was the cause of my stagnant weight loss.
- Try to write emotions or thoughts down when you eat. It will help you assess your emotional eating habits.
- After you have a month or two of historical data, start to look at reports. Identify if you have been losing or gaining weight. See if you can correlate your trends with your eating habits. Then, start to make conscious small changes regarding your eating habits. For example, if you normally have 1 glass of OJ every day, maybe you cut it to 1/2 a glass of OJ every day. If you normally eat out for lunch 2 or 3 times a week, maybe you create a rule for yourself that says no fries.
- Again after you have the first habits started: Concentrate on Calories. it doesn’t matter if you want to follow the atkins diet, the low-fat diet, the Mediterranean diet, the PBJ diet, whatever. Calories is the first thing one should start to worry about. Although, some people say you’ll be more satiated with Protein or Fat rather than simple sugars, it really does not matter physically. Food In – Food Out = Weight Loss or Weight Gain.
- After you have been concentrating on calories and feel you have a good handle on it, then start to watch and manipulate your macro-nutrient combination. In other words, your Fat to Protein to Carb Ratio. Every person is different, you need to experiment with your diet to find your best weight loss ratio of Fat to Protein to Carbs.
- Finally, after you have all of the above under control, then you can delve into specific nutrients, vitamins, and mineral combinations. Are you getting too much sodium, not enough Vitamin D. etc.
You might ask Why do I go through this slow pattern of process?
here’s an example: if you were to go to a financial planner and ask that person to help you get out of debt and become rich. The First thing a good financial planner wants to know is how are you spending your money now. So, they ask you to track every penny spent. They don’t ask you to pick an investment strategy of derivatives, stocks, bonds, shorts, options, reits, commodities, etc. You have to walk before you can run. So, with food , most people give up after they start step one instead taking it slow and working their way up the food log ladder.
It is a long slow process to lose fat. Think about it, It probably took you 5, 10 , 15, 30 years to build up all that excess fat and weight. Do you really think you can lose it all in 3 months?
So, what do you do to achieve long-term life-sustaining healthy weight loss?
Follow the best practices: There have been numerous studies that state:
Weigh yourself every day, Track what you eat, Get some Exercise, and Make your weight management goals public and social. By following these axioms, you’ll see positive long-term results.
I encourage you to try out simpleweight to help make your food journal easier and simple.
What about you? Do you have any suggestions for making your food diary work for your weight loss rather than just plain more work?
Eating Healthy, 30 minutes Walking, and 60 minutes Quiet Thinking fixes Health Problems
Just another reason to eat healthy and exercise.
As reported by Will Dunham from Reuters, Dean Ornish conducted some studies on men with prostate cancer who elected against surgery for remediation. To try to combat the low grade cancer: the men in the study:
- Ate Healthy,
- Exercised 30 minutes a day, and
- Meditated | Prayed | Thought for 60 minutes a day.
Guess what happened? In three months time, they lost weight as expected, but even more encouraging is they actually changed Genes. The healthy lifestyle activated some disease fighting genes and deactivated some unhealthy genes. WOW!
Read the Original News source: Healthy lifestyle triggers genetic changes: study
I know many a people who say they can’t lose weight or can’t get healthy, because they have bad genes or they are big boned, or you name the excuse. Well, here is a study that says even if you have bad genes, you can get healthy with lifestyle changes. To steal a phrase from someone before me: Yes we can!
What’s stopping you from committing to a healthy lifestyle?
I want you around. I want you to live life! Enjoy what Earth, God, Metaphysics provide for you. Happiness is health and family. Frolic with grand children at the park, Watch your dog chase his tail, or just watching the trees blow in the wind.
Where do I start?
Well, Let’s Think about it.
What do kids get on their children’s menu at restaurants? They get connect the dot pictures. It allows the child to create a dog, lion, car, or any number of pictures by following the dots one at a time slowly and incrementally. It’s much easier to connect the dots to draw a picture than to draw on a blank slate.
So, connect the dots! Start Slow, be methodical and incremental. Work up a ladder. I’ll expand on this method later, but here’s the abridged version:
Dots:
- 0 days – 14 days: Commit to weighing yourself everyday for the first 2 weeks.
Don’t worry about the details. The fact that you are weighing yourself everyday is the accomplishment!
- 14 days – 42 days: Continue weighing yourself everyday, in fact, don’t stop weighing yourself for the rest of your life. Add to that small amounts of exercise everyday. I recommend the 8 minute weight workout, but you could also do 10 minutes of walking everyday, gradually build up.
You’ve got some great new habits now. you weigh yourself everyday and you commit to your 10 minutes of exercise a day!
Lets add another dot.
- 42 days – 56 days: Continue your current weighing and exercise habits. Now add tracking your diet everyday. Keep a pen and paper handy. Write down everything you eat, and just keep track, don’t worry about how much you eat. Just log it.
We’re finding out internally what we do. when we eat. It will guide us in our nutrition plan. Do I really eat 3 starbucks a day? Do I have that many potato chips? you can be amazed at what you eat without knowing it. Again, remember the goal is to Identify and Track. That’s the accomplishment for this dot.
- 56 days – 84 days: Pick one dietary change each week, and focus on that change.
Examples: I recommend lowering your diet each week by 200 calories. Or, Pick a food item that really causes you trouble. For me it is french Fries. If I cut out french fries, I cut out a ton of places I’d go to eat which means I make different diet changes. I also have the challenge of large portions. So, that can be my change. Whatever it is, Pick one and focus while keeping up your habits.
- 84 days – forever: Rinse, Recycle, and Repeat. What I mean, is this is lifestyle change. we have to be willing to commit to the change and keep it at that. it’s a change. No going back. Learn to love new foods and new ways of eating, Learn to love exercising, make it fun for you. By creating these new habits, we can replace our old diet habits.
How do you connect the dots? What’s your incremental lifestyle change you can make? Can you commit?
Of course, I recommend simpleweight for managing this healthy diet and exercise planning.
My Top Three 5 minute MUFA Snacks for weight loss

My favorite MUFA Snacks.
I know I blogged a while back about adding mufa to your diet for weight loss. Of course, I feel bad if I don’t eat my own dogfood. What I mean by that, if I write or talk about something as a positive, I try my best to live what I say. This brings integrity to my life. As a by-product, my actions can then speak louder than my words.
Since Jan 1, I’ve been trying to eat more MUFA and lower my calories. From January to March, I was doing great. I lost about 10 pounds, and all was smooth sailing.
What did I do: I try to eat MUFA at every meal. I try to eat sensible portions, and I try to eat often. Notice the word try. I’m not perfect, but overall, I’ve had a good experience with MUFA. There was a keyword you may have missed: “was”. From March until recently, I stopped eating MUFA at every meal, and I stopped eating sensible portions. So, I gained about 7 lbs back from early in the year weight loss. When eating MUFA, Portions are the number key.
One of my personal nutrition challenges has been: Finding:
- Quick,
- Portable,
- Highly Nutritious
MUFA Snacks that I can eat on the run.
After some searching: here are my top 3 MUFA snacks that can be had in under 5 minutes.
- My number one snack favorite is naked Almonds. Trader Joe’s has the perfect 200 calorie snack-sized packages of naked almonds. If I can’t do that, or I’m more economical, I’ll buy a bulk bag of naked almonds and make my own snack-size using my handy scale. However, that takes a little more time.
- My second favorite snack is Dove 63% Dark Chocolate or Ghiradeli Square Dark Chocolate. Again, these are very easy to take and eat. However, Dark Chocolate is addicting for me. It can be very difficult to stop at just one chocolate square. My MUFA Chocolate hack is only bring one square to work with me. Obviously, I have to stop at only one since I don’t have any more. Additionally, I’ll try to break that square into 4 pieces so it feels like more than it really is. When the whole bag is so close to me, I end up eating more than one.
- My third favorite MUFA snack is well, this is hard. I like walnuts on my cereal, I like sunflower seeds on my salad. I cook my egg whites in olive oil, and I’ll eat Peanut Butter and Jelly, but all of those items are lunch/breakfast/dinner items. They’re not really snacks.I guess my third favorite would be adding two tablespoons of Peanut Butter to Fruit Smoothies. It takes a while to get used to, but you get the punch of Protein from the PB combined with the MUFA, and after a few times, you get used to eating the Smoothie that way. My favorite recipe is add a banana, to some frozen strawberries, add some 1/4 cup of milk, 1/2 cup of orange juice and the two tablespoons of Peanut butter and blend until smooth. This makes a great snack or a great breakfast.
Of course, I’m interested to hear. What are your favorite 5 minute MUFA snacks?
If you liked this post, you’d may want to read: Flat Belly Diet: A Skim Review
How do you share your fitness log with your mentor?
We released the “health club” edition of Simpleweight this past Friday. Someone asked me, what’s the big deal? Why is this feature useful?
So, here’s the point:
When you share your weight loss and make it public you hold yourself more accountable. For many people, its easy to let yourself down, but they wouldn’t dare let someone else down. Think about it, when you want to get somewhere that involves other people, most people try to arrive on time. When you want to get somewhere by yourself, you meander and take your time. Why? It’s that peer pressure.
So, With the latest release, We created a public page for every user.
When you log into simpleweight, your home page has a link that you can send to your friends and family to help you reach your goals.
How a URL might look:
http://www.simpleweight.com/health-club/{insert – your – simple weight user name here}.
— Now, I recently read an article that stated:
But then we looked at the response to this question:
“Have you ever had regular mentorship from someone who was in the exact shape you wanted to be in?”
Note: In this context, regular mentorship is defined as constructive and impartial feedback and direction, on a near-daily basis, for a continuous period of at least 3 months.
And check this out: 77% of the 5’s said “Yes” (37 out of 48)
Only 17% of the 3’s and 4’s said “Yes”And less than 5% of the 1’s and 2’s said “Yes”
source: Mentorship, Support, Accountability – Part 1 Who’s Your Nutritional Mentor?
What does this mean?
First: The article surveyed a group of individuals. In that survey, Users were asked to identify their happiness as related to their physique and fitness. The survey used a scale where 5’s are people who are Extremely Happy with their physique. 1’s were Extremely Unhappy.
So, of the people where were extremely happy 77% of them used a coach, mentor, friend to give them
This unscientific research study demonstrates the impact of making your weight loss social. Some keys:
- Find a mentor or coach who is positive
- Find a mentor or coach who are successful at body weight management
- Try to hang around healthy people
- Receive consistent scheduled daily feedback
- Be receptive to constructive criticism. You may not always like what you hear.
With simpleweight, you can email your coach, mentor, family, friends, co-workers, everyone, about your weight loss. Send them to your health-club page. Ask them to keep tabs and give you fair and balanced (positive and constructive) comments.
Who is your mentor? Join Simpleweight now so you can share your Health Club Page with your social network and increase the likelihood of your weight loss success.
Simpleweight Health-Club Has Started.
How did you spend your Friday evening?
Well, my brother and I had a fun evening deploying simpleweight health-club edition.
It’s late, and I’m tired. So, I’ll save a full report over the next few days. Here’s the abridged update:
All Customers have a new simple weight home page which we call the simple weight health club. You can now easily share your Simpleweight information with Friends and Family.
By the request of some of our users, we’ve made a couple of new reports.
Also, if you hadn’t noticed, we’ve integrated a new wordpress theme into simpleweight.
More Details to come.
What’s the one thing that if we added to simpleweight will help you become more fit and healthy?
Great List of Fast Food Restaurants and their Nutrition
I ran across this list from the Consumerist about Fast Food Restaurants and Nutrition.
It’s a great list describing what Fast Food Restaurants make it easy to find the Nutritional information.
–
I know recently that there has been some talk about New York City law requiring Fast Food Restaurants to post their nutrition information on their menus. I am totally against it. Here’s why?
I think it should be for ALL restaurants. Seriously, why single out Fast Food Restaurants. I think all restaurants should post on the menu calorie, fat, protein, and carbohydrate data.
For those people who think it will clutter the menu, it won’t Graphic Designers are expert at creating quality designs with information, just see Edward Tufte if you need to.
For those people who say it will cost too much money and make small businesses go out of business. That’s a load of crock. New Business and technologies are available to fill the role of making it easier to analyze food for nutritional purposes. As this becomes a requirement across the board, the market will make it cheaper.
I am usually against the government telling us what to do. In this case, requiring nutritional information on menus at the point of purchase is one place that I think restaurants and cafes will not do until forced to.
I suggest we all write our public servants (senators, mayors, governors, trustees, etc..) asking them to enact a law that requires all restaurants to put calorie, fat, protein, and carbs on all items on all menus.
What do you think?
Interactive Health Look of My Body
You didn’t expect to see “my” body did you? I’m not ready for that.
I saw this cool, interactive, guided health tour of the body at NY Times.
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Other Simpleweight News: We’re putting the final touches on our next Simpleweight upgrade. What can you expect?
- Expect a new design.
- Expect a couple of new nutritional reports.
- Expect the ability to create your own public page.
- Expect a little bit of downtime of the blog. I’ll post some timeframes when you will see a hic-up.
- Additionally, expect a price increase to $29/year. We feel we’ve added value and simpleweight is worth more. We’re still going to have a free account, but we’ll also have an advertising-free full account.
Now, if you sign up today, you will lock-in our current price of $18/year.
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What can we do to help you acheive your weight management goals?


