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Build Health: Initiate A Health Strategy Makeover
My mother-in-law, a widow of a doctor, recently died. The way she exited was a nightmare. This was because her health strategy produced a lousy result.
Shortly before passing away, she had a colostomy to fix an intestinal blockage, the result...
Purchase Discount Contacts Online and Save!
One major difference between contacts and eyeglasses is that people generally purchase eye glasses less often (generally once every year), while people replace their contact lenses more frequently. Contacts are generally more inexpensive than...
The Core: Unleash Your Inner Caveman
An alternative name for this article could have been, 'How to undo Generations worth of Damage Caused by sitting on our Backsides and Letting Machines Teach us Not to Stand up Straight'.
That doesn't exactly roll off the tongue though, does it?...
The Truth About Fat
Fat has had a lot of bad press and for many people, just a mention of the word can evoke misery. You can try to lose it, try to hide it, try to avoid it, but your body still needs it! Did you know that fat helps to insulate our nerve cells,...
Turning Obstacles Into Blessings
“Your capacity to be creatively alive in virtually all life circumstances will depend in large part upon the kind of attitude you choose for yourself.”
- Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Author/Lecturer
In almost every part of daily living, there are...
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The Truth About Counting Calories And Weight Loss
Do calories matter or do you simply need to eat certain foods and that will guarantee you’ll lose weight? Should you count calories or can you just count “portions?” Is it necessary to keep a food diary? Is it unrealistic to count calories for the rest of your life or is that just part of the price you pay for a better body? You’re about to learn the answers to these questions and discover a simple secret for keeping track of your food intake without having to crunch numbers every day or become a fanatic about it.
In many popular diet books, “Calories don’t count” is a frequently repeated theme. Other popular programs, such as Bill Phillip's "Body For Life," allude to the importance of energy intake versus energy output, but recommend that you count “portions” rather than calories…
Phillips wrote,
"There aren't many people who can keep track of their calorie intake for an extended period of time. As an alternative, I recommend counting 'portions.' A portion of food is roughly equal to the size of your clenched fist or the palm of your hand. Each portion of protein or carbohydrate typically contains between 100 and 150 calories. For example, one chicken breast is approximately one portion of protein, and one medium-sized baked potato is approximately one portion of carbohydrate."
Phillips makes a good point that trying to count every single calorie - in the literal sense - can drive you crazy and is probably not realistic as a lifestyle for the long term.
It's one thing to count portions instead of calories – that is at least acknowledging the importance of portion control. However, it's another altogether to deny that calories matter. Is it necessary to count every calorie to lose weight? No. But it IS necessary to eat fewer calories then you burn. Whether you count calories and eat less than you burn, or you don’t count calories and eat less than you burn, the end result is the same. Personally, I’d rather know exactly what I’m eating rather than take chances by guessing.
I believe that it's very important to develop an understanding of and a respect for the law of calorie balance (and portion control). I also believe that it's an important part of nutrition education to learn how many calories are in the foods you eat on a regular basis – including (and perhaps, especially) how many calories are in the foods you eat when you dine at restaurants.
Yes, calories do count! Any diet program that tells you, "calories don't count" or you can "eat all you want and still lose weight" is a diet you should avoid. The truth is, that line is a bunch of baloney designed to make a diet program sound easier to follow (anything that sounds like work – such as counting calories or eating
less - tends to scare away potential customers!)
The law of calorie balance is an unbreakable law of physics: Energy in versus energy out dictates whether you will gain, lose or maintain your weight. Period.
To maintain your weight, you must consume the same number of calories you burn. To gain weight (muscle), you must consume more calories than you burn. To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn.
If you eat more calories than your body can utilize, you're going to gain fat, period. If you only count portions and haven't the slightest clue how many calories you're taking in, it's a lot more likely that you'll eat more than you realize. (Or you might take in fewer calories than you should and trigger the dreaded "starvation mode" which causes your metabolism to shut down).
So how do you balance practicality and realistic expectations with a nutrition program that gets results? Here's a solution that’s a happy medium between strict calorie counting and just guessing:
Create a menu using an EXCEL spreadsheet or your favorite nutrition software. Crunch all the numbers including calories, protein, carbs and fats. Once you have your daily menu, stick it on your refrigerator (and/or in your daily planner) and you now have an eating "goal" for the day, including a caloric target.
That is my definition of "counting calories" -- creating a menu plan you can use as a daily guide, not necessarily writing down every morsel of food you eat for the rest of your life. If you’re really ambitious, keeping a nutrition journal for at least 4-12 weeks is a great idea and an incredible learning experience, but all you really need to get started is one good menu. If you get bored eating the same thing every day, you can create multiple menus, or just exchange foods using your one menu as a template.
Using this method, you really only have to count calories once when you create your menus. After you've got a knack for calories from this initial discipline of menu planning, then you can estimate portions in the future and get a pretty good (and educated) ballpark figure.
For more information on calories (including how calculate exactly how many you should eat based on your age, activity and personal goals, and for even more practical, proven fat loss techniques that strip off body fat fast, check out my ebook, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle at www.burnthefat.com
Tom Venuto is a certified personal trainer, certified strength & conditioning specialist, natural bodybuilder and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book, "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle. You can get info on Tom's e-book at: www.burnthefat.com. To get Tom's free monthly e-zine, visit www.fitren.com
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| The Alternative Dictionaries |
| Includes a list of slang terms and phrases in various languages. |
| www.notam02.no |
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| AlterNet: Home |
| Syndication service and online community of the alternative press, featuring news stories from alternative newsweeklies, magazines and web publications. |
| www.alternet.org |
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| Open Directory - Health: Alternative |
| the entire directory, only in Health/Alternative ... "Alternative" search on:. AltaVista - A9 - AOL - Ask - Clusty - Gigablast - Google - Lycos - MSN ... |
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| Alternative Radio |
| A weekly one-hour public affairs radio program that provides analyses and views that are ignored or distorted in most media. |
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| The Alternative Medicine Homepage |
| Information on unconventional, unorthodox, unproven, or alternative, complementary, innovative, integrative therapies. Maintained by Charles B. Wessel, ... |
| www.pitt.edu |
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| Alternative Medicine, Home for Natural Remedies & Healthy Solutions |
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| Alternative rock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Alternative rock (also called alternative music [1] or simply ... The music now known as alternative rock was known by a variety of terms before ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
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| EERE: Alternative Fuels Data Center Home Page |
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| www.eere.energy.gov |
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| Alternative Comics: Publisher of cool comic books & graphic novels |
| Alternative Comics, publishers of cool comic books, releases some of the most original and intelligent titles being created today. |
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| Alternative Tentacles - Store |
| Alternative Tentacles Records supplies the world with punk rock music from the Dead Kennedys, Nomeansno, and Jello Biafra. Featuring secure online ordering. |
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| Google Directory - Health > Alternative |
| Related Categories: Health > Animal > Alternative Medicine (498) Science > Science in Society > Skeptical Inquiry (179) ... |
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| The Alternative Museum |
| Free of physical restrictions, it presents online digital exhibitions, and live webcast events. Headed by international curators with cyber artist ... |
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| Centre for Alternative Technology Home Page |
| CAT aims to 'inspire, inform, and enable' people to live more sustainably. A solutions driven organisation, offering practical solutions to environmental ... |
| www.cat.org.uk |
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| Los Angeles Alternative |
| LA's only alternative weekly that is locally-owned and independent, bringing you the people, arts and ideas that make Los Angeles the center of the ... |
| www.laalternative.com |
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| NewsLink | Newspapers | U.S. | Alternative |
| Updated links to all Alternative newspapers (US) from NewsLink Associates. |
| newslink.org |
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