Weight Loss Goddess

Physical activity
A low level of physical activity is one of the most important factors in the high and rising rate of obesity in the United States. People are simply not getting enough exercise.

Becoming physically active can have a tremendous impact on your total daily energy expenditure. For example, a sedentary person burns just a few hundred calories above his or her resting metabolic rate while going about daily activities (performing household chores or walking to the mailbox, for example). (see our section on Metabolism for more information).

Someone who exercises regularly at a moderate pace doing light gardening or yard work, walking, or dancing can burn an additional 150 calories per half hour—and build muscle mass.

Exercises that build strength also raise the resting metabolic rate because muscle requires more energy for maintenance.

Dietary intake continued
To point to overeating as the cause of obesity is overly simplistic, however. It does not explain why one 125 pound woman can eat 1,800 calories a day and not gain weight, while another woman at the same weight struggles to avoid gaining weight on 1,200 calories a day.

This difference occurs because numerous other factors contribute to weight gain, including resting metabolic rate and physical activity, as we have discussed.

Nevertheless, obese people must be consuming more calories than required by their individual makeups and activity levels. Otherwise they would not store excess body fat.

Thus, if you’re overweight, you must reduce your calorie intake to lose weight successfully, and then moderate your calorie intake in order to keep it off long term.

Lifestyle Factors That CAN Be Changed For Weight Loss

The following factors affect weight and ARE under your control. So if you are worried about your weight, even small changes in these areas can add up to big results.

Dietary intake
Eating more calories than you expend is an important cause of obesity.As we have said, gaining one pound requires only 2000 excess calories, but losing the same pound means you have to burn 3000.

Once you realize this, you might never look at your chocolate cake or ice cream the same way again…

The plain fact is, you ARE what you eat. Regardless of your genetic predisposition to obesity or your resting metabolic rate, you can’t gain weight without consuming more calories than you burn.

Sadly, even small excesses in calorie intake can add pounds over the long term. For example, a person who overeats by just 25 calories a day will consume 9,125 excess calories over the course of a year and thus gain weight, unless they make up for it with more exercise. A woman weighing 125 lbs who starts this pattern at age 20 would weigh 200 lbs by the time she was aged 50.

A new addition to an old favorite, for lots of vitamins, fiber, and sweetness without the sugar.

What You Need:

6 sweet potatoes
1 (16 ounce) can of plums, remove pits
3/4 C honey
3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
1 fluid ounce prune juice
2 tbsp. lemon juice
1/4 C margarine, melted

How to Make It:

Heat the oven temperature to 425 degrees.
Poke the sweet potatoes with a fork all the way around.
Lay the potatoes on a cookie sheet.
Bake 55 minutes or until tender.
Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees and allow it cool to that temperature before returning the casserole to the oven.
Cool the sweet potatoes to just about room temperature.
Peel and cut the cooled potatoes into 1/2 in. slices.
Pour the honey into a medium size mixing bowl.
Sprinkle in the cinnamon and salt.
Pour in the prune and lemon juice.
Carefully stir in the melted margarine until all the ingredients are completely incorporated together.
Layer half of the plums into the bottom of a rectangular baking dish.
Lay the half of the potato slices over the plums.
Pour half of the honey mixture over the top.
Layer the remaining plums, then potatoes and top with the remaining honey mixture.
Bake 40 minutes, basting occasionally, until heated through.

8 Servings

Sprinkle the top with chopped pecans before baking to give this dish a little crunch.
It is much more healthy than all the sugar in marshmallows and gives a nice contrast with the soft moistness of the casserole.

Just beware of nuts around the holidays. They have protein, but also fat. They can, however, help you feel full if you eat them in small quantities, which will help you stop overeating.

 Let’s face it, it seems more like a military drill, than a holiday.

It’s Thanksgiving. Or Christmas, and it’s going to be at YOUR house.

So, all hands on deck, but here is some timely advice about how to plan the big family meal at your house this year without stressing out or breaking the bank.

And let’s face it, when we stress, we eat. So let’s be organized, AND stay slim this year!

Hints and Tips on Planning The Thanksgiving Meal

Our friends over at 1MyLive have got a full Thanksgiving menu that won’t break the bank or your waistline this year:

 Great Recipes for Thanksgiving

Happy and Healthy Holidays, everyone!

Metabolism continued

Set point theory
According to this theory, you have a predetermined weight and level of body fat—called a set point—that your body wants to maintain.

This body fat level is determined by genetics, just like your height. Exactly how the body controls its fat stores is unknown, but the regulatory mechanism, sometimes called the adipostat, is located in the brain.

The adipostat monitors the body’s fat stores, possibly through the actions of the hormone leptin, and works to maintain the set point by adjusting appetite, physical activity, and resting metabolic rate to conserve or expend energy.

Thus, eating and physical activity may be subtly controlled by the set point mechanism.

For more information on Metabolism, visit the Metabolism section of this website.

Metabolism continued

So it is important to remember that due to metabolism, weight loss or gain  is NOT a one-to-one ratio, as we thought. If a gained pound is equal to 2000 extra calories, a lost pound is equal to 3000.

This is bad news for all of us who thought we were not going to suffer the consquences of that little microwave chocolate cake that comes in at about 500 calories, or the fast food meal at over 700.  Or the coffee house beverage that comes in at a whopping 750, with MORE saturated fat than the fast food meal!

So successful weight loss is not just about watching what you eat. Your metabolism does have a part to play. However, as we will be discussing later, it is also all about making SMART choices about what you choose to spend your ‘calorie allowance’ on.

Metabolism continued

Whether or not obese people have an abnormally slow metabolism is controversial. In fact, it takes more energy to maintain a greater body mass.

For example, a person who weighs 200 lbs has a higher resting metabolic rate than someone who weighs 150 lbs. In addition, the 200-lb person expends more calories than the 150-lb person for any given physical activity.

But even when people of the same height, weight, age, gender, and muscle mass are compared, their resting metabolic rates vary by 20% or more.

This means that if you are predicted to use 1,200 calories through your resting metabolic rate, you may actually use anywhere from 1,080–1,320 calories.

This variability explains in part why two people who weigh the same may require different amounts of calories to maintain, lose, or gain weight.

It’s important to remember that whatever your resting metabolic rate, if you consume more calories than you expend, those extra calories will be stored primarily as fat.

This will happen regardless of whether the extra calories come from fats, carbohydrates, or proteins (although dietary fat is converted into body fat more efficiently than dietary proteins or carbohydrates).

Your Metabolism
This is the process that extracts and utilizes energy (measured in calories) from food. Even at rest, energy is needed for many functions, such as: the beating of your heart, breathing, and cell growth and repair.

The amount of energy used for these basic functions while you are at rest is known as your resting metabolic rate, which accounts for about 70% of your body’s use of energy each day.

Your resting metabolic rate is affected by your weight, age, level of physical activity, and the amount of muscle in your body. Having more muscle increases your metabolic rate, since muscle utilizes more energy than fat, even at rest. Your resting metabolic rate is also in part genetically determined. (see the Metabolism section of this website for more information on metabolism)

The act of eating also uses up energy, because energy is needed to digest food, absorb nutrients, and store excess calories as body fat.

This process—called thermogenesis—accounts for 10 to 15% of the body’s total daily energy expenditure. Some research suggests that obese people require slightly less energy for thermogenesis than normal-weight people, and thus more of the calories they eat are stored as fat rather than used to process food.