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Flat Belly Diet for weight loss, eat MUFA

One of my goals with this blog is I hope to browse the internet to read diet and fitness articles and give you the low down so you don’t have to search all over the place.

The article I saw tonight was by MSN and Prevention magazine titled:
Lose Inches of Belly Fat Now
Here’s what you need to know:

1. Include Monounsaturated fats (MUFA) at each meal
2. Have a clear calorie goal
3. Eat Often
4. Improve your attitude towards food. ( In other words, Think to lose weight.)
   Examples:
   • Manage Stress
   • Ask for help
   • Control Emotional eating

It seems that Omega 3 fats (Fish Oil and Flax seed) are the ones that have been getting all the buzz in 2007, but other oils such as MUFA’s are healthy too.

What are examples of MUFA’s (monounsaturated fats)?

• Olive Oil, 9.8g MUFA in 1 Tablespoon, 119 calories
• Peanut Oil, 6.2g MUFA in 1 Tbsp, 119 calories
• Canola Oil, 8.2g MUFA in 1 Tbsp, 124 calories
• Almonds, 12g MUFA in 1/4 cup, 212 calories
• Peanuts, 9g MUFA in 1/4 cup, 207 calories
• Most Nuts.
• Avocado, 19.7g MUFA in 1 avocado, 322 calories
  (mmm, another reason to eat guacamole)

Now I notice one problem with this. Notice the quantity of calories for these foods. They’re high in calories Some people read, I have to eat more Fat to lose weight. Well, it works great, BUT, you must watch your calorie intake.

Notice Step Number 2.

Have a clear Calorie goal.

For the average woman, 1600 calories a day is a decent goal. For the average man, 1800 calories a day is a decent goal. Now, if I eat a MUFA at each meal, that does not leave much for other items such as Protein and Carbohydrates. Before I know it, I am at my calorie goal for the day, but I don’t feel full. What can I eat? Eat Vegetables! Many of these have very little calories. The key here is Journal your Food.

Eat Often

In Jorge Cruise’s book, the Three Hour Diet, he recommends eating every 3 hours. It’s the same in the Abs Diet, and Cardio Free Diet, and almost all other diets. The idea is to eat often to prevent you from getting starved. You also feel full, because you are eating all the time. Some people like to do 4 400 calorie meals. Some people say 5 300 calorie meals. Other people like to do 3 bigger meals and 2 smaller 100 calorie snacks. Regardless, by eating often, your body can easily burn the food into energy rather than eating a one or two huge meals. The body can not burn it all once. So, it stores some as fat.

Improve your attitude towards Food

Most of us are emotional eaters. When we meet friends, we meet for coffee, drinks, dinner, lunch, or parties. All Social events where eating is concerned. We’re having fun when we eat a beautiful big meal where we’re stuffed. Come On, think about it. The Super Bowl, Thanksgiving Day, and July 4th Barbecues are all events with huge eating. We equate happiness with eating. So, what can we do? Change the equation!

Friends + Eating = Happy.

Couldn’t we change it to:

• Friends + Morning Walk = Happy.
• Friends + Hiking Trip = Happy.
• Friends + pick-up soccer game or basketball game = Happy.
• Friends + Ski Trip = Happy.

Notice the change? We’re social creatures. Making exercise a social event instead of making eating a social event. There is a strong correlation between living in an active community and physical fitness vs. a lethargic community and obesity. The obesity rates are higher in areas where exercise is not as social. So, Improve your attitude towards food. One way to do so is by making your exercise social.

Another way to do so, is by journaling. If you write what you eat, and then also write how you felt when you ate it. you can look back and help determine what caused your bout of emotional eating. Life is an experiment. We all need to find what works for us. The key though is to learn from others. Researchers are finding out what works for the majority, and that’s where you should start.

So, the Flat Belly Diet to me sounds like every other successful diet.

• Eat less food than you Burn. (Food in < Food Out)
• Eat the Right Foods.
• Learn to control your Emotional Eating.
• Measure your Goal Progress.
• Make it social.

Photo Credit: Avocado via Flickr, by: ingserban

Photo Credit: Day 161 – Losing It, by: gotplaid?

Update:  If you like this post, you might like: How to Add MUFA to breakfast, lunch, and dinner for weight loss?

Think and Lose Weight

Think and Lose weight? What a load of dirty socks, you say. Is this some weight loss take on the psychic book The Secret?

Well, a recent NPR Article, Hotel Maids Challenge the Placebo Effect, describes the weight loss effects of Hotel Maids. If you are not familiar with the placebo effect, the placebo effect is when you think something is going to happen and it happens even though whatever you did really did not cause it.

When you think of a Hotel maid, they’re doing working all day. Would you call that work exercise?

What about a roofer or construction worker? Is that work considered exercise?

Most of us would say yes, but to the Maid, they just think its their job. So, the Maid is not aware of the physical exertion he or she is doing on a daily basis. What the article demonstrates is that if you think you are not doing exercise, your body acts like you are not doing exercise.

Wow- What a negative placebo effect. You mean if I am carrying my 6 lb baby around the house all day, and I don’t think that is exercise, then I don’t benefit from the exertion.

That’s what the Harvard psychologist states in the NPR article.

I’d personally like to think I would probably benefit from the exercise, but maybe not as much if I think carrying a baby around is exercise.

Can we do the opposite? If I think my work, which consists primarily of desk work, is exercise, will my body react by losing weight?

Sure why not? As long as you can convince yourself that your day-to-day activities actually burn calories, then yes, I think you would have some positive effect from the placebo.The key is Can you convince yourself with honesty? You have to make the vision so realistic and so vivid that you convince yourself as well others.

So. Can you think and lose weight?

Yes! That’s an emphatic Yes! In fact, I say if you don’t think you will NOT lose weight.

So, let’s think, think, think (as Winne the Pooh says)

So many diet plans say,

• Lose weight without trying.
• Lose weight the easy way.
• Lose weight by eating the same foods.
• Lose weight without making any changes.
• Lose weight without thinking.
• Lose weight by surgery.
• Lose weight with diet pills.
• Lose weight without going to the gym.
• Lose weight with only 7 minutes a day.
• Lose weight…. etc.

How can any diet, exercise, fitness plan make these claims? If I read that, I have to NOT think to believe those claims. Everyone knows to lose weight one must eat less food than they expend.

My take from the NPR article is: The only way to lose weight is to think.

By thinking, we live consciously. Some examples:

• Think: that food going into my mouth is good for me and helps me lose weight.
• Think: the bouncing of my leg while working at my desk helps burn extra calories and stimulates weight loss.
• Think: the standing up straight and smiling is more difficult to do than slouching and frowning so it uses more muscles and I burn more calories providing better weight loss.
• Think: Before I take this bite of food, Am I full? Can I live without it?
• Think: At the restaurant, that plate of food sure is big, before I even take a bite, Can I get a to-go box?
• Think: I am losing weight therefore I am.
• Think: My clothes are starting to feel big on me.
• Think: While doing exercise, think how many calories you are burning and how great it feels to burn those calories. Stay focused. Remember, if you are doing the exercises mindlessly, you might as well be a hotel maid doing work.

By Thinking, you will actually begin to create habits. By creating habits, that’s when you can lose weight without even knowing it.

Many people shoot down books like The Secret, Think and Grow Rich, and Creative Visualization, because they tell the reader you can think to achieve some goal. But, really, You have to think.

Another example, I have to think to remember to record my weight every day. I have to think don’t eat all that fatty restaurant food, because they’re just giving you a ton to make you feel like you had a good value.

So, yes, for every action, there is an equal reaction.

You can Think and Lose Weight!

You don’t believe me, do you?

Here is a challenge:
Before you go to bed tonight, Write down your weight loss goal in present tense and describe in vivid detail you in your perfect form. When you wake up tomorrow morning, read your goal out loud. Do it again the next day, and I do literally mean physically write out again your weight loss goal and perfect body in graphic present tense detail. Then wake up in the morning and recite the goal. Repeat these steps every day for 30 days.

For example,

By entering my weight into simpleweight, tracking my activities, and by logging the calories I ate daily, I am losing 2lbs this week while eating less and thinking my activities are burning calories. I have a size xxx pants, and the feeling of my flat stomach in the form fitted shirt makes me confident, etc… I am burning calories by standing up straight, walking to work by parking my car in a far away parking spot, and walking up two flights a stairs each day, etc…

The key here is try to be as specific as possible and do some variation from day to day reflecting what you visualize for the next morning.

By taking this action daily of writing down your goal at night and reciting your goal in the morning, you will Think and Lose weight.

Photo Credit: ‘why yes I love him, but keep it secret!’ via Flickr, by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

Update 80% complete

Hey Everyone,

We’ve finished our update of Simpleweight.

We’ve got a few more things to finish with the new search index, but the site is back up and usable. We will have another scheduled downtime to complete the next step. Thanks again for your patience.

Keep in mind, if there is anything we can do to help you achieve your weight management goals, let us know.

Introducing Freemium simpleweight

What’s new with simpleweight?

As I started earlier, we’re planning an update to simpleweight tonight. For many of our users, you will not notice a ton of difference. As I stated in the Weight Loss Incubator, this update is more a behind the scenes technology update.

What are the big changes?

1. We’re updating from Ruby on Rails 1.x to the latest Ruby on Rails 2.x release.
2. We’re fixing quite a few bugs related to indexing and searching food. We’ve tried to keep this bug from effecting anyone, but occasionally when someone searches, our index would freeze while using ferret. We’ve fixed that by using more of a distributed process.
3. We’ve updated our paging of foods which will make it easier to jump through a large list of foods.
4. We’ve made it easier for us to add new features which we hope to do so more often.
5. Some other minor changes to some custom food and recipe functionality.
6. We’ve moved to implementing Google’s chart api for faster response times and easier printing. We’ll leave flash charts in some areas that require more interactivity.
7. Finally, the big change……

After debating dead accounts and researching successful websites, such as 37signals.com products, we’ve decided to move to a more ad-supported freemium product. what do we mean?

Well, we are going to have two types of products.

1. Free ad-supported accounts with some restrictions like limits on the custom foods or recipes one can enter.
2. Paid Premium accounts which include increases in our prices for 2008. However, if you sign-up now, we’ll guarantee the $18 price will remain the same for this next year.

Please tell us what you think, and as always. you can’t change what you don’t measure. So, add your weight today to learn what you want to change.