We Are Big Losers

To be successful with most diets, you have to be able to stick with restrictive food guidelines and a gnawing feeling of hunger most of the time that just won’t go away. People diet for two reasons, 1) to lose weight, and 2) to improve overall health or both. Diet is often a scary word because diet usually means deprivation, but there is a healthier and easier alternative that doesn’t deprive you of the foods you love to eat, the low carbohydrate diet. Research has shown that the more food choices a person has, the better they are going to do on the diet, which is maybe why low carb diets work so well for so many people. The Atkins Diet is probably the most familiar of the low carb diets, and even though it lacks in the sweets department, this diet features lots of delicious Atkins low carb recipes to satisfy your taste buds.

Carbohydrates are found in whole grains, fruits and vegetables, which are replaced with fats and proteins on a low carbohydrate diet. If you recently started a low carbohydrate diet program, you may be surprised to find how many Atkins low carb recipes there are online from a multitude of sites dedicated to losing weight the low carb way. Visit HealthRecipes.com where you can browse through your favorite recipes at your leisure, and instantly download Atkins recipes and meal plans, including beverages, cakes and pies, biscuits, salads and dressings, desserts, eggs and breakfast, breads and pastries, soups and stews, sauces and dips, appetizers and snacks, sweets, poultry, pork, beef, lamb, veal, fish, and vegetables. Of course, during the first two weeks of the diet, certain types of foods are restricted and you won’t be able to enjoy all of these foods right away, so be patient!

To sustain a low carb way of life, make sure you eat healthy foods that you enjoy, and discover lots of gourmet ideas for Atkins low carb recipes that are sure to keep your palate satisfied. For a tasty dinner idea, check out this recipe from The Low Carb Cookbook by Karen Barnaby found on Amazon.com: seared tuna with soy wasabi glaze, or flat roasted chicken with prosciutto and green olives. Now doesn’t that sound absolutely delectable?  Remember that snags come with every type of diet, but just stick with it and you’ll reap the rewards for the rest of your life.  

Although I had heard a lot of information about low carb weight loss, I was still quite skeptical, to say the least. Atkins weight loss simply sounded too good to be true. I had a friend who was on the Atkins meal plan, and although I didn’t get to see her frequently since she lived across country, she claimed that the results were stunning and spectacular. Through the Atkins diet plan, she said she had lost 10 pounds in just over a week. It was hard for me to believe that that was true. Furthermore, it was hard for me to believe that it was healthy. The Atkins meal plan involves eating nothing but high protein food, and small helpings of non-starchy vegetables.

Nonetheless, I was desperate. Spring was fast approaching, and I knew I wouldn’t look good in my bathing suit. I decided the Atkins weight loss was my best bet. It was the only way I would look and feel my best in time for lounging on the beach. When I first started the weight loss Atkins plan, it was a lot of fun. After all, who doesn’t want to sit there all day and gorge on fatty foods? Soon, however, I started to really yearn for something healthy. You really cannot stick with that plan for very long without starting to miss fresh fruits and vegetables. Your body starts to feel gross after a few days of nothing but meat, and you long for a nice healthy salad.

I decided to stick with it for a little bit longer. After all, I had spent all the money on the Atkins advantage bars, the meal plan, and the Atkins weight loss book, so it seemed like I should at least give it a fair try. Wouldn’t you know it, I started losing weight by the fourth day! It was amazing how quickly the pounds dropped off. I didn’t know the science behind it, but I didn’t really care. All I knew was that I would be slim in no time with the Atkins meal plan.

Although many people think the Atkins diet is unhealthy, I ate healthier than I had before I started.  I had lots of salads with a protein.  The only hard part for me was breakfast, but I soon learned to work with different foods like the vege sausages for instance.  That with egg substitute for scrambled eggs worked well.  And I had a recipe for Flax seed muffins that helped in the morning as well….so all in all, you can mold it to be a healthy diet for you.  By the way, I did end up losing 30 lbs.

Most people are concerned with eating a healthy diet these days and many people are cutting down on red meat consumption. One of the recommended food types is fish, especially oil rich fish with plenty of Omega fats such as mackerel, herring and sardines. There are plenty seafood recipes to inspire and they are very often, quick and easy to prepare.

It’s a good idea to encourage children to eat fish from an early age and parents can be cunning in how it is presented! There are seafood recipes for fish cakes, fish burgers and pizza with fish toppings. Kids love any sort of cheese and fish dish or fish in pita bread.

When having a dinner party, seafood makes an excellent starter. It refreshes the palette for the main course and some dishes are quite sophisticated. Angels on Horseback is a well known dish and has various versions around the world.  The traditional recipe is to use oysters, wrapped in streaky bacon rashers. These should be grilled and go well with a mixed green salad.

Many starter dishes involve prawns and Citrus Prawn and Avocado is a particularly tasty one. Ingredients consist of peeled tiger prawn tails, lemon juice, lettuce and an avocado. The avocado should be ripe and chives make a good garnish. The perfect dressing is sunflower oil, orange juice, white wine vinegar, salt and black pepper.

People who like spicy food can still find a kick in seafood recipes. Curried sole, made with lemon sole fillets is cooked with curry sauce, onion and lemon rind. The garnish is toasted flaked almonds with coriander and rice is a good accompaniment.

Cheesy Citrus Cod is a delicious blend of flavors and haddock can be substituted if preferred. The other ingredients are orange rind, seasoning and soft cheese. The sauce is made with crème fraiche, orange juice and rind, seasoning and chives. If calories are of concern, the soft cheese can be low fat and the crème fraiche can be half fat. This dish goes well with creamy, mashed potato and a green vegetable.

Casseroles are not just for meat based dishes and they are a convenient one pot way of preparing seafood recipes such as Beachcombers Casserole. This contains red snapper fillets, a popular choice at the best restaurants these days. The snapper is cooked in a flameproof casserole dish with dried crushed chilies, onion, cayenne pepper, garlic, canned tomatoes and cream coconut. This dish could be served with rice or pasta. It also makes a tasty filling for a baked potato.

  There are some families that are dessert families and some that are not. Mine was definitely a dessert family. Growing up, we enjoyed the most sumptuous and extravagant sweets with our dinners. Whether we were going out or staying in, we would have cake, ice cream, truffles, tarts, or some other delicious treat at the end of the meal. Even if we were eating something basic like meatloaf or grilled chicken, dinner was not thought of as complete until we had something to counter the otherwise healthy meal. I would not say that we were hugely obese people, but we were definitely overweight. After all, even if you are otherwise eating healthy food, all those sweets can add up after a while. And add up they did!

When I moved out on my own and wanted to lose some weight, my solution was to cut out sweets entirely. I hated not having something sweet after dinner, but I didn’t see any other way to do it. I would eat no sweets until my willpower gave out, then binge. I don’t know why fresh fruit didn’t occur to me as an option earlier, but it didn’t. Once it did, however, it revolutionized my eating habits.

My parents would cook with fresh fruits, but they would never use them for dessert when I was growing up. Then one day, I received a fresh fruit basket from a friend. It was filled with fresh citrus fruit from Florida: oranges, lemons, and pomegranates. A lot of people scoff when they get fresh fruit baskets. They consider them to be a mediocre and uninspired gift. I reacted much differently. I was overjoyed to be getting all those fresh fruits. I practically ate myself sick!

A lot of people talk about the problems of eating too much fresh fruit. Supposedly, raw sugars are not much better for you than processed ones, and you can  gain weight from eating fresh fruit almost as easily as from eating chocolate cake. This opinion is rubbish. If you eat your fruit fresh, you get the fiber, vitamins, and minerals that are incorporated into these natural foods, without the fats and carbohydrates that typical deserts are filled with. Yes it is possible to eat too much fresh fruit, but you can eat too much of anything! The bottom line is, fresh fruits are a great way to enjoy a little taste of something sweet without compromising your diet.

This article was from someone doing the Atkins Diet.  I also tried the Atkins about 4 years ago and had success.  I lost 30 lbs which I had never done before, so it was good for me at that time.  Here is another’s experience with the Atkins Diet:

Have you ever noticed how different eating habits affect what you can buy in a supermarket? When the eating habits are wide spread, different choices also appear on menus in the major restaurants. When the trend was to eat lower fat foods there were suddenly little hearts next to menu choices that were lower fat. When the Atkin’s and south beach diets became popular there were suddenly lower carbohydrate choices on menus. Many restaurants now offer Weight Watchers selections complete with point values and exchanges. The main reason for this is that restaurant owners do not want people to stop eating out because they are dieting.

When the Atkin’s diet was first out I started following it. At that time there were no low carbohydrate choices in the restaurants or grocery stores. It was hard to find cookbooks that included low carb recipes. There were a few recipes in the Atkin’s book, but they tended to use ingredients that were not readily available or were quite expensive. I was always looking for low carb recipes because we were getting bored with the same dinner of a salad and lean meat. A friend of mine is a dietician. She was not thrilled that we were following the Atkin’s diet because she feels that too much protein is not good for you, however she did have a book of low carb recipes that she let me borrow. I was craving crunchy foods as well as sweets. At this time Splenda was not yet available in the United States and I did not like the after taste from the artificial sweeteners. My sister’s husband went on a fishing trip to Canada and he brought back some Splenda for us. When I was looking through the low carb recipes I saw a recipe for cheese cake. The cake did not have a crust but it had all the other things that we were allowed, cream cheese, sour cream, butter and whipping cream. The recipe included artificial sweeteners but I used the Splenda instead. The cheese cake turned out wonderfully. It was so good that I made it for guests when we had a dinner party. We found that it was easy to have people over for dinner when we were on the diet. We would grill meat and make a nice big salad. For the guests I would have bread or a potato.

I was successful at losing weight on the low carb diet. I slowly added carbs back in when I reached my goal weight. I find that if I over eat and need to drop a few pounds I can successfully do this be following the restrictive first two weeks of the diet.

Obesity is on the rise and a large section of the populace is overweight. Even kids are showing a trend of being overweight. Much of the problem comes down to the food we eat, but one must seperate the fact from the fiction to understand.

Weight loss is a multi-billion dollar industry. Companies make piles of money selling diets programs. This creates confusion for the average person as each diet touts one type of food while bashing another. Let’s debunk some of the myths.

Whatever you do, definitely don’t eat that. Wait, says another weight loss guru, do eat it. A body builder can tell you the stark truth. The issue is calories, not what you eat. Eat fewer calories than you expend and you will lose weight.

The type of food you eat is important because of its caloric density. Certain foods like vegetables have low calorie counts. An entire head of lettuce has about 100 calories. A fast food specialty cheeseburger may have 700 to 1,000 calories.

Eat your last meal before five in the afternoon and you will lose weight. That’s the old folks tale. It isn’t accurate. The issue is what you eat, not when and the total amount of calories you take in during a 24 hour period.

You can lose 20 pounds in a couple days if you try this magical diet. Yes and no. Certain diets can result in massive weight loss, but the weight loss is mostly water. You realistically can only lose one to two pounds a day even if you fast.

Fats are horrific and must be avoided if you want to lose weight. This is another statement that seems to be written in stone, but is not really true. Fat from McDonalds is not good for you, but fat from nuts and seeds is.

Cut out one of the three daily meals and you will lose weight. More than a few diet gurus have mentioned this one. It is a strategy that almost always fails. Why? You tend to overeat during the remaining meals of the day.

You can satisfy your hunger by drinking a full glass of water before eating. This myth is false because you will not quench your hunger. It is effective, however, because you feel full sooner and stop eating.

How many body builders do you see that are fat? Not very many, yet they inhale massive amounts of calories. So, what is their secret? Exercise. Exercise burns calories. Watch what you inhale, exercise often and watch the pounds drop off.

Sol Ferdinand writes for WeightLossLodge.com - where you can read free weight loss articles online.

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I do believe there are some pills out there that help you lose weight, but I’m not sure at what cost?  I worry about the affects some pills may have on overall health.  I have a friend that is taking “diet” pills prescribed by her doctor and she is doing fantastic.  She has lost about 35 lbs and looks great.  I guess you have to take in consideration the reason you want to take the diet pills in the first place.  As for my friend, she has had several heart attacks due to being obese, so the pills are probably worth the risks the pills may have.  On the other hand, if you are heathly and want to take off the pounds to look better and want to feel better and are in overall good health, I would go with the good old fashioned way of losing weight.  Here are a few tips that could help that cause:

1. Stop all between meal snacking, especially late at night.
2. For dinner, eat early and eat light. (An interesting study done in Tunisia with 160 obese women, aged 23-45, found that they lost 15% of their body weight by not eating between 5 pm and 6 am. During the day they could eat whatever they wanted to.)
3. Stop drinking juice – it is loaded with calories.
4. Save dessert for the weekend.
5. Walk or exercise at least 45 minutes per day.

Portion control is so important when trying to lose weight.    With all the fast food places and restaurants out there, everything is being supersized.  A serving is not what  you put on your plate.  It’s a specific amount of food measured in ozs., cups, or pieces.  If  you can incorporate good portion control with healthy foods, you have a good start to losing the unwanted pounds.  You can read more about portion control here

Workout DVD

One of the best ways to get a good workout when you think you don’t have time to go to the gym is to get a workout DVD you can do in your home. You may think that you don’t want to go to the gym because you feel too large, or perhaps it takes you too long to get there and back. If this is something you are thinking, make sure that is a real issue and not just a cop out. If you really want the workout but can’t get to the gym, a great workout DVD is just what you need.

When you are choosing a workout DVD, you have to consider what it is you like to do. If you choose something that you are going to get bored with rather quickly, you are going to end up stopping your workouts due to boredom. I once had a Body of Steel workout DVD and I stopped using it because I couldn’t stand it another moment. You really have to find something that works for you, and remember that perhaps you should change what DVD you use on occasion to stop yourself from getting bored of the same workout day after day.

If you have friends that are also using a workout DVD, you might want to work out together. If you don’t feel comfortable with this, you might have another option. You can still workout on your own, but you can take walks with each other a few times a week. You can add extra workout time to your weekly schedule this way, and you can find a way to spend time with each other while doing so. You may want to do a workout DVD swap with a few of these friends so you can all switch up your routines.

You should know that a workout DVD does not have to have the word ‘workout’ on it. You can use any sort of movement for a workout. I have a couple of “Walk Away the Pounds” videos..They have a 1 mile, 2 mile, 3 mile and 4 mile..I purchased the 2 mile and 3 mile. I like these workouts because there’s no jumping and running or “hardcore” workout movements. It’s simply walking in place, raising your knees, stepping from side to side..and some arm movements. I find these very easy to do, especially when you are starting out and haven’t “moved” in awhile. As time goes on, you can always move to the 3 or 4 mile workouts. Like I said before, you can mix these with other workout videos so as not to get bored with just one.

It might be my age, I don’t know, but I am now more worried about what I put in my body. It might be because I have children and want to instill good eating habits for them and and I don’t want them to grow up with bad ideas about food like I did. Whatever the case, I have tried my best to incorporate good health food into some of the things that we eat most often. It is actually harder than I thought to find what I consider to be healthy, and I wonder if many are mistaken because things are often misleading.

Most think that whole grain bread is a health food. In theory, this type of bread is better for the body in many ways. However, there are many things that people do to bread that makes the whole grain variety almost as bad as white bread. I can’t seem to find a loaf of whole grain bread that does not have added sugar. No matter how hard I try, I do not think of sugar in bread as a health food. It is better than white bread, which also has sugar, but it’s still not the ideal that I am looking for.

Most don’t think of peanut butter and jelly as a health food dish. However, it can be if you know what to look for. You can find some great brands of peanut butter that have no added sugar. They are simple peanuts and nothing more. You do have to stir them when you first open the jars, and you do have to keep in in the refrigerator, but it is much better and tastes great. You won’t miss the sugar. As for the jelly, you can find brands made with just the fruit. They also have no added sugar. They still taste wonderful and sweet, but the sweetness comes from the fruit, not from added sugars. It might not be an every day health food dish, but add it to whole grains, and it’s not all that bad.

You can find other ways to introduce health food into your family’s eating plan. You should look for organically grown fruits and vegetables, and products that do not have added sugar and a lot of preservatives. Some of these things will have to be stored in the refrigerator or used more quickly than what you are used to due to the lack of preservatives, but many feel that is much better than putting unknown chemicals into the body.

That, along with eating more fruits and vegetables should help me get back to a healthy way of eating.  Once you’ve fallen into the depths of junk food, it’s hard to claw your way out, but I will do it and myself and my family will be the better for it.  I just can’t wait to get started.  Stay tuned!