10 Tips for Better Health Even When You’re Obese

Being overweight or obese doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to good health and well-being. Naturally, the best thing you can do to improve your overall health and well-being and to decrease the risk of various diseases is to work hard to lose weight.

However, most people make various mistakes when trying to lose weight thus jeopardizing their health. Throughout this article, you will get to see 10 different ways to stay healthy or to improve your overall health and well-being even when you are overweight or obese. Let’s start.

1. Exercise

Regardless of your weight, size, or age, physical activity is essential for good health. A sedentary lifestyle is associated with excessive weight gain, weakening of muscles and joints as well as heightened risk of numerous diseases.

If you’re overweight or obese, you usually think that regular exercise is something you can never do mostly because you don’t believe you are strong enough to do it. Luckily, there are many things you can do to become physically active.

You can start by taking nice walks every day, opt for stairs instead of elevators, or by consulting a personal trainer who can create a list of exercises based on your shape and weight. Optimal health requires a healthy diet and exercise, and these two aspects of a healthy lifestyle go hand in hand.

2. Create a list of your eating habits

According to CDC improving your eating habits is a key factor in maintaining or strengthening your overall health and losing weight. To improve your eating habits, you have to know more about them. Keeping a food journal is a good way to get to know your eating habits and determine what you should change.

Food journal should contain everything you eat and drink throughout the day. Most people discover they tend to overeat when they are stressed out, depressed, or when they are coping with unprocessed emotions.

All these habits have a direct impact on your overall health and weight as well. Besides keeping a food journal, you should also:

• Highlight bad habits
• Identify triggers that make you make those unhealthy and bad eating habits
• Identify different things you can do to avoid triggers
• Replace unhealthy habits with healthy alternatives.

3.  Make weight loss shake

Weight loss shakes are delicious and healthy tools for improving your health and losing weight. These nutrition power bombs offer the abundance of protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that your body needs to function properly.

These shakes speed up your metabolism thus contributing to weight loss. Plus, they’re easy to make which means you can have healthily started your day and still have plenty of time to get ready for work.

Do you need some ideas? Not to worry, here are 3 recipes you can use to make your shakes for weight loss.

#1 Mango smoothie

• Mango cubes – ¼ cup
• Ripe avocado (mashed) – ¼ cup
• Mango juice – ½ cup
• Fat-free vanilla yogurt – ¼ cup
• Freshly squeezed lime juice – 1 tbsp
• Sugar – 1 tbsp
• Ice cubes – 6.

#2 Blueberry Shake

• Skim milk – 1 cup
• Frozen unsweetened blueberries – 1 cup
• Cold-pressed organic flaxseed oil – 1 tbsp.

#3 Peach smoothie

• Skim milk – 1 cup
• Frozen unsweetened peaches – 1 cup
• Cold-pressed organic flaxseed oil – 2 Tsp.

4. Eat regularly

Overweight or obese people and even individuals who don’t want to gain weight make the same mistake – they skip meals. After all, if you skip meals, you can’t gain more weight, and you will easily shed those extra pounds.

Wrong! Skipping meals makes your body to store fat faster regardless of the size of the portion. Plus, your body requires a variety of healthy nutrients throughout the day to remain healthy.

5. Use reliable weight loss supplement

Dietary supplements are available in all drugstores, and you can also buy them online. They are made of natural ingredients and usually contain herbs which have been used for medical purposes for centuries. With that being said, you should bear in mind that not all weight loss dietary supplements are created equal.

Some of them are effective, while others include bold claims without proving the effectiveness. Effective weight loss pills prove their reliability by providing a complete list of ingredients.

Before you buy any dietary supplement, you should consult your doctor first. Remember, if there’s no list of ingredients; skip the product and move on to the next one.

6. Drink water

If you want to stay healthy, then drinking water throughout the day is extremely important. Water doesn’t only help your body function properly; it can also improve your weight loss endeavor. According to Authority Nutrition, drinking water boosts your metabolism by 24 – 30% over a period of 1-1.5 hours thus helping you burn off more calories.

7. Drink green tea

Green is one of the healthiest beverages in the world which is why you should have a cup of this tea at least once a day.

This healthy beverage is abundant in powerful antioxidants which improve your overall health, memory, and concentration and detoxify your body.

Did you know that most weight loss supplements and teas for weight loss contain green tea? Take a walk to the nearest store and buy this tea to start a healthy lifestyle today.

8. Use smaller plates

Overeating doesn’t only make you gain weight at a faster rate. It is also associated with:

• Diabetes
• Increased risk of stroke
• Cardiovascular diseases
• High blood pressure etc.

When you use big plates, your mind makes you eat until the plate is empty. It plays a trick on you making you think you’re not full just yet. Now, it’s your turn to trick your mind, and you can do it by using smaller plates.

Instead of a big plate, opt for a smaller one and eat smaller portions of your breakfasts, lunches or dinners.

This practice can improve your health by preventing overeating, and it can help you lose weight. French women are famous for their elegance, and the obesity rate in this country is significantly smaller than in the US.

Their secret is simple – they eat different foods using smaller plates and avoid refilling once the plate is empty. You should try this as well.

9. Eat fruits and vegetables

Instead of pizzas, burgers, French fries and other unhealthy foods, you should make sure your diet contains more fruits and vegetables.

They are rich in vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients essential for your health. Plus, they contain antioxidants which inhibit free radicals thus protecting your body from oxidative damage.

10. Eat more fiber

Fiber-rich foods are essential for your health and weight loss. Why? It’s because fiber stabilizes bowel movements and improve your digestion.

Regular digestion is crucial for improving your health, and it’s a significant part of weight loss. Fruits and vegetables are excellent sources of fiber as well as whole grain products.

 Conclusion

Being overweight or obese makes you more prone to various diseases including the most severe ones. To avoid this scary scenario, there are many things you can do to improve your overall health and losing weight at the same time. It’s important to remember that all you need to become healthier is strong willpower and lifestyle adjustments.

Happy Guide: 6 simple lifestyle changes for health and happiness

There are a thousand problems with just one solution: lifestyle.

 

Poor lifestyle over years and decades causes all kinds of health problems.

 

Drugs and other medical interventions aren’t a long-term solution because they don’t address the underlying causes. A lifestyle problem needs a lifestyle solution!

 

Being happy and healthy is NOT complicated, and health-seekers are being bombarded with unnecessary and misleading information.

 

It makes me so sad to see people trying all kinds of expensive pills, patches and potions in an attempt to correct symptoms of not living well.

 

The only true solution is to see the “happy and healthy” finish line clearly and then manage the “change” period carefully, so there’s no resistance and no feeling of denial.

 

My half-brother Michael Kinnaird went through a living hell for 13 years. Desperate for answers, he searched for a simple guide to being happy and healthy. Every one, without exception, was complex, unclear or incomplete.

 

To cut a long story short, he ended up writing it himself. It’s a simple one-hour guide that I’m delighted to say is transforming lives. It’s called Happy Guide.

 

You can read the first chapter “The Happiness Secret” for free, on our home page.

 

And because The Zeit seems to be very much on our wavelength, we’ve agreed to offer a half-price discount on the eBook version to all its readers, for the next 7 days!

 

Visit Happy Guide   (use code zeit at eBook checkout for 50% off) 

This is not an affiliate link, The-Zeit get’s no commission.

 

 

To your health and happiness!

James Riddett

Maintain positive health in the winter – Let’s do it!

I wrote this post with people who live in parts of the world, where winter is cold, gloomy and bleak in mind. During the winter months, this is the time of year where many are susceptible to being the unhealthiest. While summer yielded endless days of blazing hot sunshine, women unveiled their bikini ready bodies whilst the men displayed their ripped physique.

The impact of summer on health

Summer is the quintessential time for putting our best foot forward. Our clothing shifts into a direction where the entire body is accentuated or exposed. It is also a time of year where people are more body conscious, be it comparing ourselves to the latest hot celebrity or observing the body type of our male or female counterpart(s). This combination of image awareness, soaring temperature and determination to look flawless enforces the notion of optimising good health.

From a psychological aspect, our emotional state elevates during the summer time. We have a tendency to be more sociable, do outdoor activities and frolic. In other words, we become much more motivated. I find it amazing how people (myself included) manage to accomplish more during the sunny days.

Shocking Revelation on Why You Quit Exercise!

You could be exercising and eating right and still not getting the results you should. You know why? The surprising answer could be that you are suffering from the “nocebo” effect. It’s the evil twin brother of the “placebo” effect.

A Fit and Healthy 2018 Starts With Your Mind

 

Bridge the gap between your fitness goals in 2018 and where you are today. Image by stockimages

Well, here we are again – New Year’s resolutions time! It’s that time when we resolve to do all the things we know we should do in order to live the better life we imagine for ourselves. And for most of us, those resolutions last all of ten minutes! Then we’re back doing the same old things that have brought us to a life that we’re less than happy with. And as the old saying goes: If you want things in your life to change, you have to change things in your life.

This is true for all areas of our life, but specifically we’re going to look at health and fitness in this piece. Most of us aren’t exactly where we want to be in terms of our health and fitness level. We want to be healthier, more trim and toned than we are at the moment.

We start off with the best of intentions. We decide that once and for all: We’ll eat more healthily, we’ll go to the gym and do all the things we know we need to do in order to get fit and healthy this year. So we do that stuff for a while, and then we stop.

What usually happens is that we reach a point where the temptation to eat or drink what we know we shouldn’t becomes too strong. We succumb to the bad weather blues when it comes to going out for a run, or we stay in bed for that extra hour instead of getting up and going to the gym for the workout that we committed to a few weeks ago. Then we gradually slip back into our old patterns of too little exercise and too much of the wrong kinds of food.

So how can we avoid slipping back like this and keep our new healthy eating and fitness regime going?

Before You Ever Let Someone Stick Their Tongue Down Your Throat Ever Again

Tongue colors & shapes. A guide to help you. Photo courtesy of  Emperor’s College of Traditional Oriental Medicine

People, you need to take your tongues seriously. I don’t mean like the way Miley Cyrus does. I mean she was recently sued for nearly killing someone with it according to a report by Rolling Stones.

What I am talking about is even more serious.  Did you know that you could see how fit or healthy you are just by examining your tongue?

Traver H, Bloem of breakingmuscle.com explains: “TCM believes the tongue is a microcosm of the entire body and will reflect its excesses and deficiencies. Being directly related to the stomach by proximity and availability, the tongue acts as a very good reflection of our digestive systems. If your tongue’s neighbor the stomach is having problems, it’s most likely going to spill over into your tongue’s life.”

Vegetarians and Vegans Don’t Live Longer, They Just Miss Out on Juicy Steaks

Are you missing out on Grilled Wagyu Beef Steaks for nothing?
image by Vichaya Kiatying-Angsulee

Did you know that a number of vegetarian and vegan websites promote health benefits of such diets through shoddy research like the one below?

In a research by Seventh Day Adventists published on the The Wall Street Journal here it is claimed that in a period of 6 years a diet study was conducted on 70,000 people. The researchers claim that “male vegetarians have a 12% lower chance of dying than meat-eaters”

However people who actually ate fish and even ate meat occasionally were added to the vegetarian group. When you take the fish-eaters and occasional meat-eaters and put them back to the meat-eating group, there is actually no difference in the life expectancy of vegetarians vs. meat-eaters.

How You Can Beat the Evil Food Industry

We all complain and worry about not really knowing what is in our food. We may be slowly creating cancers in our own bodies without knowing. If I asked you what you think the solution is, most of you would reply that there is nothing much to do. I would have given the same answer a few weeks ago. But all that changed after I met the woman of my dreams.

Here’s the thing; you would be dead-wrong if you believed that there is nothing you can do. The average Joe/Jane like you and I wouldn’t know where to start but the woman of my dreams does. She is the woman of my dreams because she has given me a voice to take on the food industry.

Tips to Thrive During Holiday Season

Going into the holidays invites excitement, but for a lot of people, it also means feeling a lot of stress…particularly stress around family relationships and stress around gaining weight.

There is often a vicious cycle that happens: feeling stress–>turn to food for comfort—> feel guilty—> beat self up—-> feeling stress; repeat cycle.

For those of you who are conscious eaters or have a certain eating style (paleo, vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, weight watchers, insert your eating style here), it can be increasingly stressful since there may be many holidays meals shared at friends and family members’ homes.

It’s not uncommon for my clients to feel more anxious around food and weight gain around this time of year.

So here are some tips to support you to stay grounded through the holidays, regardless of your eating style.

1. SET BOUNDARIES

Boundaries are about stating the imaginary lines of your personal comfort zone to create and maintain mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.

When it comes to maintaining healthy boundaries to stay out of family “drama”, proactively have assertive heart to heart chats with the family members to let them know what your boundary is, and that if they cross your boundary, you will cue them with a code word, and how you will behave (e.g., walk away), shall they continue to cross your boundary.

When it comes to food policers (“Are you going to eat all that?!”, “Wow you eat a lot!”, “you’re not eating enough!”) and food pushers (“Come on, have another bite!”), you will definitely need to state your boundaries.

For food policers, you can state: “I would appreciate it if you just let me choose what I want to eat and not comment about it. Let’s talk about something more important than what I’m eating”.

For food pushers, politely state “Thank you but I am feeling satisfied right now and would like to hold off. I may try it in a bit” and redirect the attention to another topic.

2) HYDRATE with H20 and Drink Green Tea

Most likely you will be eating food with more salt and sugar, so drink a lot of water and green tea. Green tea has plenty of antioxidants and there are studies that show that green tea has been shown to boost the metabolic rate and increase fat burning in the short term. Plus, I personally find green tea soothing to drink.

3) BRING YOUR OWN DISH TO SHARE

When it comes to family dinners, if you have a certain eating style that you know may not be met at the guests’ home, bring a dish of your own that accommodates your eating style to share with the guests.

Now I also have a disclaimer with this suggestion because it really depends on your mindset. If you have a very strict, structured, rigid way of eating and you’re “afraid” of eating other foods because you will “get fat”, bloat, gain weight, etc. (and not because of healthy reasons like having a severe allergic reaction), then I caution you to check in with yourself to ask yourself, “Am I bringing this food because I fear eating foods outside of my eating style?” If the answer is yes, then I suggest connecting with me to coach you to stop fearing food for good

4) PUT SOCIALIZING IN THE FOREGROUND and FOOD IN THE BACKGROUND

Food is very central to holiday events, and of course it is associated with love and celebration. There is nothing wrong with this. What isn’t helpful is when people focus so much on the food in ways that gets them obsessed about it, and forgetting that holiday events are also about connecting with others, having fun, and being grateful for things in life. So I encourage you to focus on social relationships, and have 3 questions in mind to ask people so that you can focus on learning more about them (and think less about food).

5) EAT MINDFULLY

When it is time to eat, check in with yourself using a mental hunger scale from 1-5, where 1 = hungry and 5= almost uncomfortably full. You want to eat to the point of 4, which is energy. You could have another bite, but you could also leave it and move on to the next activity. This is a practice, and it will take some trial-and-error to figure out what a 4 feels like for you.

6) KEEP YOUR SELF-CARE RITUALS

Even if you’re away from home, proactively create some self-care rituals to help you stay grounded. So for me personally, I like to make sure I get at least 20-30 minutes exercise time in daily.

If I’m away, I will- ahead of time- research where the gym is or yoga classes or even just know that I can go outside for a walk/run or YouTube 20 minute workout videos that involve body weight (or my kids as my weights!)

Moving my body is really important for me to stay energized, relieve stress and get those endorphins going (which creates the “runner’s high”). Plus it’s just nice to have some personal space away.

I also continue to start my day with  positive affirmations and breathe in my Young Living Essential Oils. And for my nighttime self-care ritual, hot showers are a must.

So I encourage you to think of 3 self-care rituals to engage in throughout the day to keep those as your grounding points.

Enjoy your holiday season, from my family to yours!!!

Rosalyn Fung, M.Sc., Holistic Body Love Coaching

http://www.holisticbodylove.com

 

Holistic Body Love Coach & Psychologist on A Women’s Fitness Magazine Cover Inspiring you to Flex Your Self-Love Muscle

WOW WOW WOW!!!!!!

A DREAM COME TRUE!!!!

Ever since I was a teen, I’ve always dreamed I’d be on the cover of a fitness magazine…

However, I NEVER dreamed it to be when I have a fuller, curvier and softer shape, with stretch marks on my “squishy” belly (as my son likes to describe it) until I learned to LOVE MY BODY 

After almost a decade of chronic dieting to finally achieve a lean, 6 pack physique to compete in a figure competition in 2008, it was my “A-ha moment” that having what our society would see as an “ideal body” only brought on, for me, extreme obsession and rigidity with eating, binge eating behaviors, self-consciousness, constantly beating myself up and never feeling good enough – not to mention comparing myself to others to see if I measured up (and what do you think I felt? Yep- still never felt as pretty, as fit looking, muscular and lean enough…

Unfortunately, we live in such a society that focuses so much on WEIGHT and IMAGE.

So I had enough of trying to chase and maintain the perfect body, and decided to just learn to love myself and my body, and SEPARATE MY WORTH as a person FROM MY BODY’S SHAPE, SIZE & WEIGHT.

And today, I am so proud to be on a cover of GORGO Fitness Magazine, an AMAZING women’s international online fitness magazine that embraces STRONG, HEALTHY, FIT, INSPIRING AND EMPOWERING WOMEN in every shape and size!!! I wouldn’t want to have my first fitness cover be any other magazine!!!

I chose purposely to wear a tiny sports bra so I could show my belly-the part of my body that I HATED for most of my life (even when it was smaller and flatter)… and now, my belly being the biggest it’s probably ever been (not counting pregnancies), is a part of me that I have grown to love, no matter what it looks like.

Thank you GORGO Fitness Magazine for NOT retouching my photo, I LOVE my tiger stripes and my soft round gorgeous belly. There is so much loving energy that is held here.

I am SO DEEPLY HONORED and in ABUNDANT JOY to be able to be part of a BODY LOVE MOVEMENT and show off my INNER STRENGTH & CONFIDENCE on a cover of a magazine!

My body doesn’t have to be lean, streamlined, muscles popping to be strong, lift more than my body weight, sprint fast, be flexible, agile, do weighted burpees regularly, squat jumps, run half a marathon on trails, and kick butt in martial arts.

Words cannot describe how AWESOME it is to feel so FREE with food and feel ROCKIN’ in my naked body 

Go and download your very own copy, in which I also wrote a powerful article on Flexing Your Self-Love Muscle on p.22!!!

There’s so much juicy stuff in this magazine from self-love, to nutrition, to moving your body, inspiration and so much more! I HIGHLY suggest you subscribe 

And while you’re at it, contact me here for a complimentary body love coaching strategy session so you can feel FOOD FREEDOM and feel ROCKING in your naked body too!!!