Single Minded Women &#187; Diet & Weight Loss

Getting Rid of Stretch Marks

martinb — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 06:45:54 +0000

Several months ago, I sat down to play action figures with my children. I noticed the Wonder Woman doll was missing a leg.

I inquired, “Do either of you know what happened to Wonder Woman’s other leg?”

I held my breath as I waited for the blaming to start. But instead, my younger daughter responded,

“Mom, her legs don’t bend and it was impossible for her to sit like a lady with her legs together. So, I just took off her leg so she could sit without them being apart.”

Radical, yes. But it was a good example of thinking outside the box! She did not just give up or run to me to solve the problem. The answer might not have been the ideal, but it met her criteria and assuaged her concern. And that, is what led me to my super stretch mark solution.

I used to be so fat I was just a few pounds shy of morbid obesity. And while I knew I should lose weight, I dreaded that my body would always be plagued by ugly stretch marks. When the Wonder Woman incident occurred, I had lost around thirty pounds (today, more than seventy), and it was disheartening to see the ever present stretch marks. Short of surgery, there is no cure for these marks, but thanks to inspiration from my daughter, I began to search for new paradigms. In other words, step outside the box.

I began a daily regimen of easy abdominal exercises that I can do anywhere, and anytime. I just tense my tummy as tight as I can and hold it for a few seconds. I also began holding myself in a “plank” position (illustrated here) which helped to firm me up as well and it only takes a minute or two. Finally, I began a yoga class, just one time per week. That is all. Within just two weeks, these small changes dramatically helped my abdomen change appearance thanks to firmer muscles underneath.

As for the skin, it seems that many of us avoid touching those parts of our body we find to be less than ideal. If stretch marks are plaguing you rub them with lotion, a lot. Not only will you soften the skin and give it a firmer appearance, but the action of rubbing also brings more blood flow to the area helping deliver oxygen and nutrients. The best time to do this is just after bathing, and remember, the more the better. Additionally, about once a week apply a facial scrub to stretch marks to help any dead skin cells to slough leaving behind softer skin. And of course, drink lots of water to stay well hydrated from the inside as well. Dehydrated skin appears dull and old. These easy steps can change the appearance of your body.

And while I still have stretch marks, they are no longer noticeable from across the room. I am no longer embarrassed if my shirt rises up and my midsection is bare for a few moments. For me, that is a huge victory. I had a problem, but was able to improve it so that I no longer expend mental energy thinking about it.

If stretch marks are plaguing you, here is my prescription;

1. See your doctor.
If your stretch marks are new, they could be a sign of an underlying condition.

2.Lose weight.
As the area shrinks, the stretch marks will reduce dramatically.

3. Tone the area.
Firming the underlying muscle will help to give the area a more even appearance.

4. Improve your skin.
Stay hydrated, use a scrub once per week, and apply lotion to the area twice daily.

While there may not be a complete cure for the common stretch mark, there is definitely room for improvement. With some simple steps, we can all feel like Wonder Woman. Here is to the superhero within each one of us. . .

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A board certified emergency physician, Jennifer Hanes, D.O., discovered that patients have greater success when they understand their bodies. With that unique philosophy, she founded Empowered Medicine, PLLC, where knowledge is powerful medicine. She empowers patients with her articles, motivational speeches and private consultations. You can learn more at www.DrHanes.com

The 5 Most Common Diet Mistakes

martinb — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 05:37:22 +0000

Just about all of us know that if we eat fewer calories per day than we burn off we’ll lose weight. But this simple fact leads many of us to make bad choices as to how we actually can lose weight. Here are five common diet mistakes you should avoid:

Mistake #1: The Crash Diet: This works like a cheap patch on an old tire. In other words for a week or two all appears to be fine and then you’re back where you started. Why? Because crash diets tell your metabolism that you’re in a starvation mode and your body quickly slows down and starts burning far fewer calories. That grapefruit, salad, and soup regimen you’ve been on that’s driving you crazy is only losing five pounds instead of 15 because your system has slammed on its brakes. Long before most of us get to our desired weight loss goal we’ve ditched the diet and put back on the few pounds we so painfully lost. So don’t go there!

Mistake #2: Ditching breakfast. This is another one of those diet shortcuts that appears to make sense but really doesn’t work if you stop for just a moment to consider the big picture. The calories you’re losing by not eating breakfast you’l make up for in a mid-morning snack or a high calorie lunch. Here’s the simple truth: Study after study reveals that a hallmark of successful diets is a satisfying and nutritious breakfast. So get your day started right and eat a healthful breakfast.

Mistake #3: Forgetting that calories come in deceptive packages. How could a simple coffee drink be a big deal? Starbucks has fatten up millions of Americans based on that simplistic assumption. Those soothing hot frappuccinos on a cold day, or a yummy iced coffee drink on a hot day can be a calorie super bomb with an obscene amount of sugar and fat. That may not be your calorie blind spot, perhaps it’s a cocktail or two after work. But those extra five hundred calorie oops that you enjoy make the difference between diets that work and diets that fail.

Mistake #4: Not recognizing the value of healthy snacks. There has been a debate raging on for decades about eating between meals. Some say it leads to excess weight gain others say it keeps extra weight off. I favor the mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack. First, it reduces the chances that you’re going to gorge at lunch or dinner. Second, snack breaks keep your metabolism running at a higher rate. And the busier your metabolism the more calories you’ll burn. That said, however, be smart about snacking. Healthful small portions of almonds and dried cranberries, are great. That chocolate glazed donut is not!

Mistake #5: Forgetting to stay well hydrated. Water is the easiest aid to weight loss, unfortunately it’s also the easiest thing to forget. Adequate hydration keeps our metabolism humming along. Poor hydration slows down the system and slows our calorie burn rate as well. But it is so easy to forget to drink water. So here’s a couple of simple ways to up your water intake. One, keep water at your desk and always with you when you walk, run, or do other forms of exercise. Two, be sure to have a glass of water with every meal and every snack. Your goal eight, eight-ounce glasses per day and some of those extra pounds will just float away.

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Martin Brown is the Heath Channel Editor for SingleMindedWomen.com, and co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Finding Mr. Right.

His latest book is Fit in 50 Days.

More SMW Dieting Tips

Why Fiber Is Nature’s Weight Loss Miracle

martinb — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:37:21 +0000

There are many methods you can use to lose weight. And if you’re like most of us, you’ve probably already tried many of them.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who would like to drop ten, twenty, thirty pounds or more don’t know that fiber is nature’s path to both weight loss and weight control.

For about 99.9% of the time humans have walked on Earth, they have eaten about 80 to 100 grams of fiber per day. On average, modern men and women consume 12 or fewer grams of dietary fiber per day. At a minimum, our fiber intake should be between 25 and 35 grams per day.

So why is fiber so important? Fiber performs a number of essential functions in regulating our diet and our overall health. Principally it regulates our food intake by encouraging the release of hormones that signal our brain that we feel full and therefore suppresses our appetite. High fiber foods are invariably the foods that we have to chew for longer periods of time and that as well signals our brain that we are full.

Fiber is found in nature’s bounty: nuts, legumes, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

During the last half century food manufacturers have changed whole grains into processed grains and in so doing they have helped immeasurably to spread the overweight and obesity epidemic throughout the developed and affluent nations of the world. Of course that wasn’t their intention; it’s merely an unintended consequence of their actions.

It’s also important to understand that, as a rule, foods that are high in fiber are also what nutritionists call, “less energy dense.” In other words they are higher in bulk and lower in caloric content. For example a teaspoon of sugar is a high calorie package with no fiber and very little nutritional benefit.

Let’s take a moment to understand that there are two types of fiber, soluble and insoluble.

Insoluble fiber is important for moving material through your digestive system. The reason why constipation is such a problem for hundreds of millions of people eating a western diet is they lack the bulk fiber provides to create proper stool formation. Whole wheat fiber, wheat bran, nuts and vegetables are all good examples of insoluble fiber.

Soluble fiber, on the other hand, dissolves in water. In our gut, it forms a gel-like substance that grabs hold of unhealthy materials like excess cholesterol and glucose, and flushes it out of the system. Some examples of soluble fiber includes oats, citrus fruits, beans, apples, carrots, and barley.

Foods that are high in soluble fiber also delay and regulate the absorption of sugars into the blood stream helping to prevent type 2 (adult onset) diabetes.

It’s difficult to fully imagine all the benefits of eating a high fiber diet until you actually begin to do it yourself. Begin by reading nutritional labels. Pickup, for example, a box of pancake mix and you’ll see one gram or less of dietary fiber versus two or three grams in whole grain pancake mix.

The same is true for cereals. Some have a gram or less per serving, others like oatmeal have four or more grams of fiber. It may seem small but all those ones add up to ten grams at the end of the day and those fours and fives bring you to 35 grams by day’s end. And that can be the difference between a healthy diet and a poor diet, from staying slim or gaining weight.

So if you want to watch your D-I-E-T, remember to think F-I-B-E-R.

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Martin Brown is the Heath Channel Editor for SingleMindedWomen.com, and co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Finding Mr. Right.

His latest book is Fit in 50 Days.

More SMW Dieting Tips

The End of Overeating: Part II

martinb — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:55:30 +0000

Last week in the first part of this two-part story, we focused on the pathways our brain creates in identifying distress relief and how that can serve as a key trigger to overeating. If you have not already done so, please read Part I so that you will have a complete understanding of how this association between emotional need and overeating is established.

This week, we’re going to discuss the essential actions that only you can take to break the link between emotional need and overeating.

The very first step is to become aware of the foods that you are most susceptible to in triggering your overeating. In Part I, I gave the example of cookies as a comfort food. But with each individual, that can vary. For one person it can be doughnuts, for another pizza, chips, or ice cream. Almost always it is foods that contain high amounts of fat, sugar, or both. In other words, the foods that are most likely to trigger a comfort reaction but sadly, also cause us to gain the most weight.

Without awareness of your eating habits, you’ll never successfully move on to the second step of creating new behaviors. Most often what we eat is a matter of habit. This is why I always emphasize the term that you need to think in terms of “diets, not detours.”

Most people go on a diet as a plan to hold onto their favorite foods, just making sure to eat less of them. This is like putting a lid down on a boiling pot. When the steam pressure builds, you hold the lid down more forcefully. This is a losing plan because at some point, as we all know, the lid blows off.

And this is why more than 95% of all diets fail because people take detours around their usual diets rather than taking the bolder, and far more successful step, of creating new diet behaviors.

When you’re aware, for example, that you have always loved to snack, you can start creating competing behaviors that allow you to snack healthfully. Do you like the crunch of potato chips? Instead, buy hard 100% whole grain pretzels. They have plenty of crunch with fewer calories, and much higher levels of dietary fiber.

Can’t do without that sour cream dip? Try a plant based dip, like hummus, that now comes in 20 different flavors. Got to have some chocolate for dessert? Get rid of those cookies and premium ice creams and start trying alternatives like soy chocolate ice cream. Hooked on sugar? Think of added sugars like you would nicotine. Start weaning yourself off of it first using artificial sweeteners, and then replace those drinks with natural orange juice, or apple juice, without added sugars or artificial sweeteners.

Next, start watering down those juices so the higher amounts of natural fructose they contain will be diluted. What you’re doing is withdrawing from a sugar addiction and as you take in less processed cane, beet and fruit sugars the more sensitive you will be to the sweet treats of nature such as sugar snap peas, carrots, and so much more. It’s hard for your palette to enjoy the taste of nature’s naturally sweet foods when its been overwhelmed with everything from sweet ice tea to jellybeans.

Your third step in defeating overeating is to reach out for understanding and support. Everywhere you look in society today there is a friend or family member who has fought their own battle with overeating. Sharing experiences and joining in a shared struggle is often the best support of all. Remember that you are beating a food industry that has made huge profits in making sure that you overeat. Having friends who say, “you look just fine the way you are,” when you know you don’t, are not doing you a favor. Maintaining a healthy body weight is good for your state of mind and state of well being, and people who don’t know and appreciate that truth really can’t support you in your plan to eat well.

Finally let me share a basic truth about all diets: eating mostly plant-based foods will bring you to your natural weight.

When you take animal based foods, meats, poultry, fish, dairy, and make them 10% of your diet, and make plant based foods 90% of your diet; then cut out added sugars; and eat little or no processed foods, such as breads, cookies, crackers, rice, pasta, cereals, and eat only natural whole grain foods, you’re all but assured of living your life at a normal body weight.

You can do this! When you unlearn bad dietary habits, and learn to adopt good dietary habits, your weight worries will be a thing of the past.

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Martin Brown is the Heath Channel Editor for SingleMindedWomen.com, and co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Finding Mr. Right.

His latest book is Fit in 50 Days.

More SMW Dieting Tips

How to End Overeating: Part 1

martinb — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 06:01:08 +0000

What can you do about overeating? The simple answer is obvious: “Don’t do it!”

The honest answer to the question is a lot more complicated than that.

We are driven to overeat by a complex system of triggers in which our brain tells us that food will make us feel better. This is a reaction that well over 95% of us have experienced. It’s a learned behavior that most likely is rooted in childhood conditioning.

You’re age five, for example, and you’re upset because it’s raining and the trip to the zoo has been postponed. Mom pats your hand and says, “Would you like to help me make chocolate peanut butter cookies.” This is one of a thousand scenarios in which food, and the preparation of food, established a despair and relief cycle that your brain long ago came to accept as a way out of a number of difficult situations. Anxiety, disappointment, uncertainty, and a host of other unsettling situations can be relieved, briefly at least, by eating a favorite food.

This is the opening for the trap of overeating. Staying with the chocolate peanut butter cookies as our example, every part of the process can give you relieve. The 36 year old woman, who three decades ago had the disappointment of a rainy day washed away as soon as she smelled those yummy cookies baking will have much the same reaction today. Once those cookies are out of the oven and she eats the first one there is a release of dopamine in her brain, That smile that comes across her face is her brain saying “Ah!” Once that has happened the distress/relief reward link is firmly re-established and having a second, third, and fourth cookie is virtually assured. This is why it’s always easier to turn down the first cookie than it is the second or third.

As Dr. David Kessler, the former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, explains in his fabulous book, The End of Overeating, if this cycle of reward, learning, and habits established in our brains is the root cause of overeating, then “drugs that act on those circuits should alter behavior and help control this impulse.”

In support of that theory Dr. Kessler relays the story of what happened in the 1990s when two drugs, phentermine and fenfluramine, commonly known as phen-fen, appeared to do just that. The drug was released into the market but was pulled in 1997 because of potentially dangerous side effects involving heart function. During it’s brief period in use, however, doctor’s across the country who prescribed it saw similar results. In case after case the drug disrupted the brain’s pathways of distress and reward and relieved individuals of compulsive urges to overeat. Patients often described the relief they experienced when this cycle of reward was broken. Suddenly a compulsion to have a warm Krispy Kreme donut, or a huge bowl of Hageen Dazs premium ice cream left them.

Unchecked, however, these compulsions to eat certain foods become all controlling. If you, for example, have a passion for cheese sausage pizza, you’ll feel the pull reach you with particular strength when passing a favorite pizza place. The internal discussion begins, “Should I stop or just keep going?” This silent dialogue you have with yourself soon becomes the dominant thought pattern and it can be broken and ended by simply getting the food you crave. Having done this the reward relief spurs you on to eat even more. No longer are you seeking to satisfy hunger pangs, if that was ever the case to begin with, but more often you’re cycling through a round of distress and reward and each bite is giving you the reward that you were craving raising the chances that you’ll reach for a second slice as well.

As Kessler rightly points out, almost all diet programs deal with specific restrictive caloric plans but ignore the fundamental question of how we lost control of our food intake in the first place. You cannot reform the habit of overeating without first resolving its root causes.

Next week in part two of this two-part story, I’ll share with you what we can do to turn off the overeating mechanism and take control of our diet and personal weight management once and for all.

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Martin Brown is the Heath Channel Editor for SingleMindedWomen.com, and co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Finding Mr. Right.

His latest book is Fit in 50 Days.

More SMW Dieting Tips

Beating Summer Vacation Diet Disasters

martinb — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:13:41 +0000

There is no more challenging time for a diet than summer vacations. Knowing this simple truth is a big step towards avoiding the high calorie traps that await all of us when we give up apples for appletinis and veggie dips for potato chips.

With life experience most of us learn that travel involves a substantial degree of planning. We consider so many factors. What hotels fit into our vacation budget? What places do we most want to visit? What do we want to do when we get there? What should we bring, and of course, what should we wear?

But as part of our advance planning, few of us give any thought to how we can stay on our diet.

If you read my columns on diet and health you know I stress that successful diets should never be detours. Simply meaning that lifestyle and dietary changes that are temporary are almost certain, 99% probability, to fail. The way to avoid this trap is to change your approach to eating. Putting your regular diet on hold for six weeks might be a successful approach to losing one dress size but it’s an invitation to a lifetime of “yo-yo” weight loss.

So if you’re committed to smart, healthy eating, here are some things you can do before your next trip. Just as you might check to see if there is a scooter rental place near where you’re staying, check online to see what your food options are. That should be for both eating out and for simple meals, like breakfast, that you may want to eat in your room or on the go, saving extra calories and dollars too.

Just about every restaurant offers menus online so it’s easy to have some idea of what your choices will be before you sit down, get comfortable, and find out that nothing on the menu, with the possible exception of a tossed house salad, is something that you want to eat.

Beyond finding restaurants and food stores that have products that meet your dietary needs, take along with you a variety of easy to pack healthy snacks. This is of course easier if you’re taking a car to your destination because you can just fill a grocery bag or two and pop it into your trunk. But the packaging of all foods gets smarter with each passing year, so you’ll find a lot of healthy snacks, protein bars, and more that are convenient for air travel as well. In general always have fruit with you that you enjoy. Apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries, blueberries and grapes in small tupperware containers make for easy carry-ons as well.

Always drink lots of water. Travel in general can be stressful to the body and staying well hydrated turns off that stress hunger switch that causes so many of us to nibble incessantly when we’re on the road.

It’s important to remember that alcohol intake always takes us off our game when we’re trying to be calorie aware. Alcohol is what dietitians describe as “non-nutritive calories.” In other words, just like soda, booze is nothing more than “empty” calories. And, of course, there’s nothing like a couple of margaritas poolside to make you forget that you were ever on a diet. If you’re looking for a simple substitute go for a club soda on the rocks with a lime. You can look like you’re partying while loosing weight at the same time.

Finally, you should not let your desire to watch your weight while on vacation take away from your fun. Knowing what you should eat, and where you want to go to eat takes most of the stress out of eating smart while away. But remember that your biggest goal is to not return home having gained weight! To that end you may find it helpful to keep a diary of what you eat in the hope that you stay on focus about your ultimate desire: to have a great time, bring home lots of wonderful memories, and leave the extra pounds behind!

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Martin Brown is the Heath Channel Editor for SingleMindedWomen.com, and co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Finding Mr. Right.

His latest book is Fit in 50 Days.

More SMW Dieting Tips