Too Much of Winter

A lot of people are able to manage their weight just fine during spring, summer and fall, but have a hard time dealing with winter. They spend most of their time indoors, and if they do get out to do winter sports, it's usually downhill skiing or sledding, not something that gets them a lot of exercise.

Nevertheless, it's important to remain active during winter. There are indoor roller rinks, or outdoor/indoor ice skating rinks, which really help tone up the legs.

Food management is also more difficult during winter, especially when the two big food days, Thanksgiving and Christmas, take place within a month of each other.

But, really, those two days are easy to deal with. As with the rest of the days of the year - eat what you want. The deserts, the sauces, etc. Just use portion control.

Habits Help You Lose Weight

When I was young, I developed the habit of opening up a Pepsi every time I sat down at my home computer. (Pepsi is my tipple of choice.)

I work from home, on my computer, so I ended up drinking quite a lot of Pepsi asthe day progressed. Every Pepsi has 150 calories, so I ended up having an extra 1,500 empty calories a day because of this.

I cut back gradually. Every other time I got up, I'd substitute a cold glass of water for the pepsi.

Cutting back consumption of 600 calories a day is that easy. Make no other changes in your routine, and you'll lose weight.

But of course it'll help to increase your exercise level as well.

What habits do you have? Start keeping a journal and write down how much food and drink you consume in a day - and when. And why. (Because you're hungry, bored, stressed, taking a break, visiting friends, etc.)

Breast Cancer Is All Year Round, not Just Once a Month

and that goes for all other health issues as well!

If you're a certain age, it's time to start getting mammograms once a year or so. If you're a woman, especially if you have a family history of breast cancer, make sure you get a mammogram.

The worst thing you can do is ignore your health.

My mom was diagnosed with high blood pressure 30 years or so ago, when she was 40, and prescribed medication. Well, she took her pills for a couple of days, or perhaps weeks, but didn't like the way they made her feel. Rather than talking to her doctor about ajusting the medication...she just stopped taking it.

For 30 years she's been buying books on healing naturally, foods you can eat to keep you healthy, etc...and it didn't do her any good.

Ten years ago, 20 years after she'd been diagnosed, she had congestive heart failure. Now, instead of taking one pill once a day to control her high blood pressure, she takes five or six pills, plus medication - i.e. Metamucil - to counteract the side effects of all the medication she takes.

All of this could have been avoided if she'd just taken her medication 30 years ago, instead of trying to take care of it "naturally."

Not that I'm against natural healing. Or perhaps natural preventatives. But once you've been diagnosed with a disease, take your medication until you've got proof that dealing with it natually works. And if you've tried natural cures for a month or two and it hasn't helped, go back on your medication!

I say this because I've had to deal with my mother and her health issues for over ten years, and it is extremely sad to contrast her today with what she was even fifteen years ago, and all of it unneccesary.

Establish good habits and a good routine

One way to lose weight - and maintain your new weight once you've achieved it - is to establish new, good, habits, and a routine, that allow you to eat whatever you want without bothering to count calories.

(Indeed, you don't need to count calories, every. All you need to do is practice portion control, and run/walk/jog at leat 30 minutes a day.

Beware things that break your routine. For example, I'm currently in the process of driving from my old home in Yorktown, VA to my new home in Cheyenne, WY, via Burleson, TX where I have relatives.

Now when you're traveling - or at least when I'm traveling - I like to get out every hour or so and walk around. And buy a snack from a vending machine. And since I'm in a hurry I get fast food via McDonalds or some similar restaurant, instead of going to a sit down restaurant.

And since I regard travelling as a treat, I'm more likely to stop in at a Dairy Queen for a hot fudge sundae - despite the ridiculous prices.

Also when you travel, you're exercise routine gets interrupted, unless the hotel in which you're staying has an exercise room, or your relatives are also health conscious and go walking every day.

(Sadly, although my aunt is health conscious and does go walking every day, she does it at 5 in the morning. No thank you! I don't even get up until 9!)

Choose a few sports/actvities for variety

Depending on where you live, there's lots of activities you can take up to keep you active...and the more active you are, the better. It's a lot easier to get in shape when you're young, and stay in shape, then to wait until you are in your 50s.

Don't get me wrong - it's never too late to get into shape - it's just easier to do it when you are young and more active than you will be in future.

The cliche is that it's only guys who will go out and practice their basketball skills - playing HORSE, etc, but if you have a driveway and room for a hoop - why don't you go out and play some HORSE. (I'm assuming that all my readers are women.)

Or if you've got kids, play catch with them, or take them to play tennis, and so on.

Biking is perhaps the easiest hobby to get into, but you also want to work on your upper body strength as well. In order to prevent those flabby under arms, you need to get a couple of dumbbells and do a few exercises with them every day - I'll share those exercises in a future entry.

Stretching Exercises

Depending on the weather, you may or may not feel like going outside for a walk or bike ride. But one thing you should be able to do every day is stretching exercises - from touching your toes to performing the splits.

Regardless of how old you are, start now with stretching exercises. Choose a certain time to do them - on getting up, when you get home from school or work, or before you go to bed.

Here's a test. If you sit on the floor with your legs stretched out in front of you, can you bend forward and touch your forehead to your knees...or does your belly get in the way? If your belly does get in the way...time to lose weight!

Stretching exercises won't help you lose weight in and of themselves, but they will keep you limber as you grow older.

Choose Your Sport

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that you add exercise to your weight loss regime.

Biking is fun, but walking will work as well. Jogging can cause shin splints, depending on what kind of you surface you jog on.

Whatever exercise you choose - jogging, biking, walking - the important thing is to keep track of what you do every day - how far you jog/bike/walk, and how long it takes you. In this way, you're able to measure your progress every day. It's also fun to see your distances and times increase.

As far as bikes are concerned, the best thing to do is get a man's bike, rather than a woman's bike - men's bikes are simply sturdier built because of that top bar. Go to your local bike store, rather than to a Walmart (have you seen the furniture put together there? Do you really want to trust them to put a bike together properly?)

Hello faithful readers!

I've been driving from my old home in York County, VA to my new home in Cheyenne, WY, via Burleson, TX where my mother's sister lives. For various reasons I just haven't bad time to post here, which I apologize for.

I've now "fetched up" (as the Texans say) in Burleson, and will be able to start posting from now on.

So thanks for your patience.